U.S. Politics: Alabama Jones and the Template of Doom

[Altherion]

45 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I understand you're really invested in pushing the "both sides" narrative. But the Dems did pass the ACA and got Dodd-Frank done. And they aren't talking about cutting taxes for the rich all the time.

You do realize that Dodd-Frank and ACA were quite likely the main contributors to the outcome of the 2010 elections, right? I don't think the vast majority of people who don't work in the finance industry understood what Dodd-Frank does, but almost everyone understood what it didn't do. It didn't punish the people who brought the nation to this crisis in any meaningful way and it didn't break the the "too big to fail" institutions so when they find a way to circumvent the new regulations and gamble to the point where they need another bailout, we'll see exactly the same arguments about systemic risk trotted out again.

ACA was even worse: under the guise of helping people who didn't have insurance, it gave a significant amount of money to the health care and insurance companies. Guess who got to pay for it? To be fair, the proposed tax plan is way more ambitious than ACA and I suspect the Republicans will suffer the consequences in 2018, but ACA made a whole lot of people angry and not without cause.

2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Look, I can's stand Jaime Dimon Democrats. And there is a grain of truth of what you are saying. But, when do this both sides thing, you go off the rails. 

Nowhere in the Republican Party is anyone really taking any of these issues seriously.

Keep on doing both sides.

If took on second to stop doing "both sides" you'd note their are plenty of people on the center left that are trying to address these issues. And have come up with various policy proposals to combat this stuff, like better minimum wage laws and so forth.

It is true that the Republicans are more open about what they do, but I don't see how this is different from the usual game of "good cop, bad cop". The two parties appear to be at odds with each other and yes, the Democrats appear to be less plutocratic than the Republicans, but policy inevitably moves towards plutocracy despite the Democrats being in power as often as the Republicans. How many decades must this continue until it occurs to you that despite the apparent differences, they actually have crucial ideas in common?

2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

The Democrats maybe not be perfect, but the Republican Party combines alt right nonsense with blatant plutocratic preferences. There is simply no reason for you to continue to play this game you want to play.

The Republican Party, at this time, is a horrible party (on everything. Not just economic matters). And it needs to be ground into dust.

I do not see any moral difference between the alt-right and the menagerie of identity politics groups supported by the Democrats. I agree with you about the Republicans being more plutocratic, but on cultural issues the two sides are simply on opposite divisions of various divide-and-conquer games. Also, I suspect that if you did manage to grind the Republican Party to dust, you're not going to like the replacement.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 minutes ago, Crazydog7 said:

 

Doug Jones made a perfectly prudent political move.  The first Democrat from Alabama in 25 years can't do something this knee jerk liberal (which Jones isn't anyway) in the first week.  Get Roy Moore to admit he lost first.  Fantastic illustration of internet culture hero on Wednesday and worse then Hitler on Sunday.  

What do you expect? We live in the great online Age of Fickle.

[aceluby]

8 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I do not see any moral difference between the alt-right and the menagerie of identity politics groups supported by the Democrats.

Yeah, because genocide and white supremacy is so very much alike to LGBT rights and equal pay for women.  So morally equivalent.

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Except he's doing it at the expense of women.  Democrats have this nasty habit of throwing women under the bus.  As though sexual assault and harassment aren't real issues.  Fuck him.  

Dems have no issue tossing women aside, and only using people of color for their votes then fuck them on policy.

 

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

Yeah, kinda ironic the only reason Jones got elected was people coming out in droves against Moore, the Republicans, and Trump.  Especially women and the black community showing up to vote.  He was literally elected by people saying 'fuck Trump and the horse Moore rode in on'.  

The majority of white women voted for Moore. I think 65% of the women that voted in the election voted Moore. 

He won because of POC, mostly WOC.

Completely fucking tone deaf, but the bar is so low right now a tone deaf privileged white guy is better than a child molesting confederate who wants to stripe women of their right to vote and thinks the country was better off when slavery was going on.

 

25 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Yeah, because genocide and white supremacy is so very much alike to LGBT rights and equal pay for women.  So morally equivalent.

For a fragile privileged white guy like him it certainly is. People need to stop acknowledge his garbage. 

[OldGimletEye]

On 12/17/2017 at 8:49 PM, Altherion said:

You do realize that Dodd-Frank and ACA were quite likely the main contributors to the outcome of the 2010 elections, right? I don't think the vast majority of people who don't work in the finance industry understood what Dodd-Frank does, but almost everyone understood what it didn't do. It didn't punish the people who brought the nation to this crisis in any meaningful way and it didn't break the the "too big to fail" institutions so when they find a way to circumvent the new regulations and gamble to the point where they need another bailout, we'll see exactly the same arguments about systemic risk trotted out again.

The Democrats took a shellacking over Dodd-Frank? I don’t think so. Start talking about the finer points of what the Orderly Liquidation Authority does or about capital requirements or leverage ratios and watch most people’s eyes glaze over.

Now Dodd-Frank is not a perfect bill. But, it was a hell a lot better than what we got from the Republicans. The Great Recession went on for about 10 years, being the most devastating recession since the Great Depression. And what’s been the Republican attitude about it? It’s been pretty much “meh, no big deal.”

If improving the stability of the financial system is your thing, and it’s certainly mine, as many people will never recover from the Great Recession, you’re chances of getting it improved are lot better with Democrats than Republicans.

But maybe you think Jeb Hensarling's Financial Bomb Act is just as good, because you know both sides.

Anyway, the Democrats likely did take shellacking over the ACA. But, I think the inference you’d like us all to make is dead wrong. They got shellacked for trying to expand coverage for people that were uninsured. That was a big political gamble to help people and they paid a price for it. I don’t think you’d see Republicans doing the same thing.

On 12/17/2017 at 8:49 PM, Altherion said:

ACA was even worse: under the guise of helping people who didn't have insurance, it gave a significant amount of money to the health care and insurance companies. Guess who got to pay for it? To be fair, the proposed tax plan is way more ambitious than ACA and I suspect the Republicans will suffer the consequences in 2018, but ACA made a whole lot of people angry and not without cause.

If I had my druthers, we probably do single payer. But, given political realities, the ACA was likely the best that could be done.  And bottom line, it did help people get coverage.

And really, I find it rather amazing that you complain about this wealth inequality and then sit there and complain about the ACA. Maybe you don't think universal health care coverage isn't a crucial component of the welfare state. But, most lefty's would think so. That you don't think so, makes you rather odd, for somebody that complains about income and wealth inequality all the time.

And yeah, a lot of people did get angry, largely because the Republican Party lied its ass off about it. And in case you haven’t noticed lately the bill had been gaining in popularity.

And LOL at trying to compare the Republican Party's sorry ass tax bill to the ACA.

On 12/17/2017 at 8:49 PM, Altherion said:

It is true that the Republicans are more open about what they do, but I don't see how this is different from the usual game of "good cop, bad cop". The two parties appear to be at odds with each other and yes, the Democrats appear to be less plutocratic than the Republicans, but policy inevitably moves towards plutocracy despite the Democrats being in power as often as the Republicans. How many decades must this continue until it occurs to you that despite the apparent differences, they actually have crucial ideas in common?

A big reason the Democratic Party has a hard time gaining any traction, quite frankly, is because of people like you that go “it’s both sides” and then vote for Donald Trump for the insanest of reasons. 

At one point, I detailed for you a list of policy disputes between the parties. When it comes down too it, you don’t seem to be that interested in where the parties differ on policies. You just dismiss evidence and throw your hands up and declare “it’s both sides!!”.

Also, the reason the country has become more plutocratic is simply because starting around the 1970s, the conservative movement was able to engineer several political victories. And they managed to be successful through the 1980s, 1990s, and right up to George Bush and then Donald Trump. It turns out that the home of the conservative movement is the Republican Party. Now if you don't like this march to plutocracy, I'd suggest you quit pretending that both sides are the same, and stop supporting people like Donald Trump. As soon as that clown hired people like Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow, the writing should have been on the wall, what he was going to do. If you want to check this crap, then you need to check the Republican Party.

Also, what is you want? Seriously? What policies do you want? You sit there and do this all the time. You make vague allegations about how both parties are really the same. But, then when it comes to actual policies you have little to say.

I mean, I know several things I want to happen as far as policy goes. And while maybe not every Democrat would agree, many or most of the party is on board.

On 12/17/2017 at 8:49 PM, Altherion said:

I do not see any moral difference between the alt-right and the menagerie of identity politics groups supported by the Democrats. I agree with you about the Republicans being more plutocratic, but on cultural issues the two sides are simply on opposite divisions of various divide-and-conquer games. Also, I suspect that if you did manage to grind the Republican Party to dust, you're not going to like the replacement.

Dude, this such a load of crap. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite aware there are plenty of average joe white guys that are struggling and it ain’t all gravy for them. But, the fact of the matter is all this white nationalism hurts them too. And the sooner they wise the fuck up about it, the better off they will be.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans have long taken advantage of white resentment and other "isms" to push their plutocrat agenda. And the sooner white guys start to realize that, the better off they will be, or at least most of them.

But, aside from the issue of white guys wising the fuck up, the alt right is just plain repulsive. Any group that preaches the  racial superiority of one group over another is repulsive. I’m shocked you wouldn’t think so. 

And it’s ridiculous to compare them to other groups which have faced historical discrimination and are asking for that to be corrected.

[Altherion]

18 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

The Democrats took a shellacking over Dodd-Frank? I don’t think so. Start talking about the finer points of what the Orderly Liquidation Authority does or about capital requirements or leverage ratios and watch most people’s eyes glaze over.

As I said, most people didn't know or care what it did -- but they knew and cared about what it didn't do.

21 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

At one point, I detailed for you a list of policy disputes between the parties. When it comes down too it, you don’t seem to be that interested in where the parties differ on policies. You just dismiss evidence and throw your hands up and declare “it’s both sides!!”.

It's not that I don't care where they differ on policies, it's that I evaluate the latter by results rather than statements. Where was your list in 2009 and 2010? That Congressional session had about as large a Democrat majority and about as motivated a public as we're likely to see in the current political environment as well as a popular Democrat President. This is as close to carte blanche as the Democrats are likely to get in the near to middle term and they used it for... Dodd-Frank and ACA?! Officials policies are well and good, but implementation matters (the devil is in the details) and the will to act matters even more.

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Also, what is you want? Seriously? What policies do you want? You sit there and do this all the time. You make vague allegations about how both parties are really the same. But, then when it comes to actual policies you have little to say.

I have little to say because I refuse to pretend that I know the correct policies -- I have my guesses and sometimes I am reasonably certain about what specific laws will or will not do, but a country of over 300 million people is absurdly complex and to figure out the exact policies requires either a transcendent genius or a large team of people.

What I want is relatively simple: return the relative income and wealth distributions (especially the share of the 1%) to roughly what they were half a century ago. How to accomplish this is not obvious or somebody would have already pointed it out and ridden the idea into power.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite aware there are plenty of average joe white guys that are struggling and it ain’t all gravy for them. But, the fact of the matter is all this white nationalism hurts them too. And the sooner they wise the fuck up about it, the better off they will be.

Of course the divide-and-conquer game hurts the divided -- that is its very point. In fact, I suspect that a large number of them at least suspect this... but what can they do? The set of desirable social positions is decreasing and this decrease is projected to continue or possibly even accelerate (see the automation thread). If others insist on demanding a share of this set based on immutable physical characteristics, what choice do people who do not fit any of these characteristics have but to fight back?

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

But, aside from the issue of white guys wising the fuck up, the alt right is just plain repulsive. Any group that preaches the  racial superiority of one group over another is repulsive. I’m shocked you wouldn’t think so.

I do think so, but the number of people who actually hold that view is small even within the alt-right. They exist and it is a warning that they've crawled out from wherever they were hiding from and now command a share of media attention significantly greater than warranted by their numbers, but, for the moment at least, there aren't many of them.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

And it’s ridiculous to compare them to other groups which have faced historical discrimination and are asking for that to be corrected.

It is not possible to correct historical discrimination after a certain period of time -- probably as short as a decade, almost certainly a quarter century and definitely half a century -- simply because the people who were discriminated against and those who did the discriminating have moved on (or are dead). What is happening right now is not correcting for discrimination; it is discriminating against individuals of certain groups (many of whom were not even alive when the discrimination took place) based on very broad immutable characteristics without any attempt to prove whether said individuals (or even their ancestors) had anything to do with the discrimination. This is an utterly absurd and completely transparent pretext for securing a greater share of resources on the part of certain groups and I don't see how so many people don't understand that it will provoke a response.

[The Anti-Targ]

15 hours ago, denstorebog said:

Trump's and the GOP's popularity has been remarkably untethered to the economy so far, which is, on paper, pretty strong. The chance that the tax reform is going to be so awesome for so many families that they rejoin the proud GOP familiy of enthusiastic voters is ... pretty slim.

Why is it that people love the story of Robin Hood so much, but they buy into the idea of giving back to the rich via tax cuts that disproportionately benefit them and taking from the poor by dismantling social support spending, partly to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy?

[drawkcabi]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Why is it that people love the story of Robin Hood so much, but they buy into the idea of giving back to the rich via tax cuts that disproportionately benefit them and taking from the poor by dismantling social support spending, partly to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy?

 

 

[denstorebog]

8 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

School counselor unsure of how to deal with far right bigoted students.

This is a problem. The up and coming generations will without a doubt be fascist little shits. 

And Universities allowing scum like Richard Spencer to speak on their grounds is only going to reinforce that they are right and empower them to stick with it. 
 

 

I've been lurking enough on 4chan over the last two years to realize that this is indeed going to be a fucking huge problem down the line. Used to be that these radicalized elements were pretty isolated in their school or wherever, which would give counselors something to work with. Belonging to the fold is a powerful instinct.

But with the alt-right permeating the internet and creeping into the real world, I have no idea what counselors can offer. I doubt a whole lot of these little shits feel out of place in life. The alt-right provides community, culture, its own coded language that shapes humor and way of thinking. This is decentralized radicalization from the age of 13.

Wearing their swastikas   symbols of bigotry  Pepe the Frog in public is only the logical next step. I don't have any reason to believe that the next generation will be more fascist on the whole, but I can't help but feel that the political polarization that our children will have to deal with will make the current environment look like a fucking knitting club.

[Eggegg]

54 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

I've been lurking enough on 4chan over the last two years to realize that this is indeed going to be a fucking huge problem down the line. Used to be that these radicalized elements were pretty isolated in their school or wherever, which would give counselors something to work with. Belonging to the fold is a powerful instinct.

But with the alt-right permeating the internet and creeping into the real world, I have no idea what counselors can offer. I doubt a whole lot of these little shits feel out of place in life. The alt-right provides community, culture, its own coded language that shapes humor and way of thinking. This is decentralized radicalization from the age of 13.

Wearing their swastikas   symbols of bigotry  Pepe the Frog in public is only the logical next step. I don't have any reason to believe that the next generation will be more fascist on the whole, but I can't help but feel that the political polarization that our children will have to deal with will make the current environment look like a fucking knitting club.

The answer is to give some sort of counter argument and not just feeds these trolls with endless ammunition that makes them feel they are correct. These are mostly kids who have only one source of information and don’t get well rounded arguments from anyone. But also labelling them as nazis or fascists is just confirming their beliefs about mainstream culture 

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

As I said, most people didn't know or care what it did -- but they knew and cared about what it didn't do.

So people end up supporting Trump because the Democrats didn't go far enough?
It's not just illogical, it's actually just plain dumb.
Yeah, it's true the Democrats have moved much closer (too close) to the center. They're still closer to the left than the Republicans though.
If you don't vote as far to the left as you can for economic reasons, then how can you blame the Democrats for slowly abandoning these issues?
People forget that politics is not a public service. If you don't vote according to your interests then you can't expect politicians to take them into account. At best you can expect lip service from them.
You often blame "divide and conquer" politics Altherion, but have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, the reason identity politics have become so popular is that minorities were just better at organizing?
What if the origin of your confusion was that this is flat out wrong:

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

It is not possible to correct historical discrimination after a certain period of time -- probably as short as a decade, almost certainly a quarter century and definitely half a century -- simply because the people who were discriminated against and those who did the discriminating have moved on (or are dead).

What if you understand jack shit about US history and blacks haven't moved on? What if, after the sixties, blacks understood that they had to "play by the rules" and continued to push for their issues to be addressed in the political arena and some Democrats at least saw that they could capitalize on it and that is what fueled identity politics...
And now that the 1% is busy fucking the middle-class big time, the whites are waking up, realizing that they have been ignored and, instead of finally developing some kind of class awareness, turn to the usual scapegoat: minorities. After all, I'm sure for Joe Hillbilly it hurts to realize that people with brown skin may have understood the rules of the political game better than he ever will. Or perhaps if Joe Hillbilly hadn't been busy thinking that politicians were all the same anyway he might have realized that politics does, in fact, affect his life.

My point is, for all your supposedly smart analyses, you fail to see that the "both sides" argument is a major part of the problem. When people don't vote, or vote with their ass, the political center of gravity tends to move to the right. This makes things worse.
You seem to see politics as a place for miracles and saviors. That's not how things work ; that's how things get romanticized after shit has happened. Anyone with a modicum of historical perspective knows that politics is a slow bottom-to-the-top movement. You need grassroot activism, solid intellectual foundations, and all that.
The conservatives and the billionaires that fund them understand that pretty damn well. What you're seeing today is the result of about fourty years of work -if not more. If you truly want things to change, you're going to have to accept that you need to get your head out of your ass and actually do something about it. At least know what policies you want to see implemented for starters. Because if you dont know, with absolute certainty, you can be pretty damn certain that no politician is going to bother courting your vote.
Why the fuck would they? If you don't know what you want you are politically irrelevant. At best you can be easily manipulated to drink the Trump "MAGA" cool-aid or -if I'm being mean- the Obama "yes we can" chant. And you won't ever see the difference.

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

What I want is relatively simple: return the relative income and wealth distributions (especially the share of the 1%) to roughly what they were half a century ago. How to accomplish this is not obvious or somebody would have already pointed it out and ridden the idea into power.

No one knows for certain, but most smart people agree hat a start would be to go back to the public policies of half a century ago. Especially go back to progressive taxation.
The very opposite of what Trump & co will do.

Perhaps the problem isn't knowing what to do, but convincing people that it is the right thing to do.
And quite honestly Altherion, for all your professed hatred of neo-liberalism, you end up being pretty damn good at helping it.

 

[OldGimletEye]

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

As I said, most people didn't know or care what it did -- but they knew and cared about what it didn't do.

People like you didn’t know what it did. So they could sit there and say “both parties are the same!” You know it seem to me if you don’t like financial crises and the havoc they cause, you could bother to do a little homework.

But, I guess it's just easier to support Trump and defend the alt right.

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

It's not that I don't care where they differ on policies, it's that I evaluate the latter by results rather than statements. Where was your list in 2009 and 2010? That Congressional session had about as large a Democrat majority and about as motivated a public as we're likely to see in the current political environment as well as a popular Democrat President. This is as close to carte blanche as the Democrats are likely to get in the near to middle term and they used it for... Dodd-Frank and ACA?! Officials policies are well and good, but implementation matters (the devil is in the details) and the will to act matters even more.

Both Dodd-Frank and the ACA were big and important pieces of legislation, even if they weren’t perfect pieces of legislation, and even if they still need some work.. You chose, however, to just pooh pooh them so you can make whatever point you’d like to make, which I gather is that there was a logical reason to support Donald Trump.

And as far as my priorities in 2009 and 2010? Well both Dodd Frank and the ACA were good starts. But my other priorities was fighting the Great Recession as I was well aware of the damage and havoc it would cause to people, many of whom will never recover. So my priorities was using both aggressive fiscal policy (and by the way Democrats did get a stimulus package done) and monetary policy to fight it. But, while this whole thing unfolded, Republicans were running around like fuckin’ idiots saying the stupidest things, like John Bonehead claim stimulus crowded out private investment. I guess some nitwits ie the Republican Party, the Say’s Law believers, just refused to internalize the lessons of the Great Depression. And their idiocy and stupidity damaged most working people in this country. There simply no excuse for Republican and conservative stupidity and dipshittery over the last ten years.

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

I have little to say because I refuse to pretend that I know the correct policies -- I have my guesses and sometimes I am reasonably certain about what specific laws will or will not do, but a country of over 300 million people is absurdly complex and to figure out the exact policies requires either a transcendent genius or a large team of people.

"I have little to say because I refuse to pretend that I know the correct policies" Well that explains the shilling for Trump.

It seems to me there a several policy ideas to combat the stuff you don’t like or claim you don’t like. But, rather than acknowledge that these policy ideas are held by Democrats or Democratic leaning circles, you choose to writ stuff like, “I have little to say because I refuse to pretend that I know the correct policies -- I have my guesses and sometimes I am reasonably certain about what specific laws will or will not do, but a country of over 300 million people is absurdly complex ”

This is a complete cop out on your part. You want to say, “eh I don’t know what we should do. I’ll vote for Donald Trump!” It’s nonsense.

If you are sitting there clueless about what can be done, perhaps you should start with what not to do. Say like not passing idiotic supply side policies, handing tons of cash to the wealthy, and then cutting funding for thins like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. That Trump and the Republicans would go this route should have been clear to any reasonable person, several months before Trump got elected.

It isn’t obvious to you because its better to complain and say, “eh, both sides are the same!” There a lot of things that could be done to combat this stuff and there is no way the Republican Party would be interested in doing any of  it. If this corporate tax cut, and the Republicans plan to gut safety nets, hasn’t clued people in to what the Republican Party is all about, then those people are pretty hopeless.

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

Of course the divide-and-conquer game hurts the divided -- that is its very point. In fact, I suspect that a large number of them at least suspect this... but what can they do? The set of desirable social positions is decreasing and this decrease is projected to continue or possibly even accelerate (see the automation thread). If others insist on demanding a share of this set based on immutable physical characteristics, what choice do people who do not fit any of these characteristics have but to fight back?

What you refuse to acknowledge is that the Republican Party and conservatives have used a divide and conquer strategy for a very long time. Until all these “ism” are gone, you’ll never get the type of economic policies you’d like (though it seems you really don’t know what you want).

And I think it’s completely obtuse by you to not acknowledge that some groups in this country have been subjected to unfair discrimination and that any fair minded person would want to put a stop too it.
And finally, if economic inequality is your thing, you would realize that a good deal of it has both a racial and gender angle. And if you don’t think along those axis, from time to time, then it seems to me your not all that serious about fighting it.
 

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

I do think so, but the number of people who actually hold that view is small even within the alt-right. They exist and it is a warning that they've crawled out from wherever they were hiding from and now command a share of media attention significantly greater than warranted by their numbers, but, for the moment at least, there aren't many of them.

The alt right is repulsive full stop. No decent person should want to belong to that bunch. No decent person would try to defend their bull crap.

And no matter their numbers, at the current moment, their agenda should be alarming to any decent person. They are an embarrassment to this country. They are an embarrassment to humanity.

On 12/17/2017 at 11:44 PM, Altherion said:

It is not possible to correct historical discrimination after a certain period of time -- probably as short as a decade, almost certainly a quarter century and definitely half a century -- simply because the people who were discriminated against and those who did the discriminating have moved on (or are dead). What is happening right now is not correcting for discrimination; it is discriminating against individuals of certain groups (many of whom were not even alive when the discrimination took place) based on very broad immutable characteristics without any attempt to prove whether said individuals (or even their ancestors) had anything to do with the discrimination. This is an utterly absurd and completely transparent pretext for securing a greater share of resources on the part of certain groups and I don't see how so many people don't understand that it will provoke a response.

This is a load of crap.

Let’s start with something like sexual harassment. Why can’t we fight this again? I think we can. But, people like you just want to hand wave the whole issue and just say, “uh well, nothing can be done.” Bullshit. We can and should do something about it.

And if economic inequality is your thing, then I’d hope you’d realize something like sexual harassment makes it worse. Making a living is hard enough for most folks. It’s even harder when you have some creeper hangin’ around in your general area making unwelcomed and inappropriate comments.

Economic inequality has both a racial and gender component. It’s a huge blind spot on your part to not acknowledge this and try to hand wave it. I think it’s completely ridiculous for people like you to ask to be treated fairly, and then completely ignore other groups that want to be treated fairly.

You don't even want to try to understand these issues and how we can fix them. It's pathetic on your part.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And quite honestly Altherion, for all your professed hatred of neo-liberalism, you end up being pretty damn good at helping it.

Yup.

[OldGimletEye]

On 12/18/2017 at 5:55 AM, Rippounet said:

My point is, for all your supposedly smart analyses, you fail to see that the "both sides" argument is a major part of the problem.

I’ll just add here that if your “analysis” led you to believe that Trump would be good for combating economic inequality, then that analysis wasn’t all that smart.

For one, Trump strongly signaled what his policies would be like when he hired the conservative clown crew of Kudlow and Moore.

But, even if Trump, hadn’t hired conservative clowns as “advisors” it should have become apparent that Trump had no clue about policy and as a result of his cluelessness and laziness, he’d mainly rely on the Republican establishment to make policy.

Economic issues aside, though, Trumps personal behavior and his blatantly playing to white resentment and prejuidice should have been revolting to any decent person.

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, denstorebog said:

I've been lurking enough on 4chan over the last two years to realize that this is indeed going to be a fucking huge problem down the line. Used to be that these radicalized elements were pretty isolated in their school or wherever, which would give counselors something to work with. Belonging to the fold is a powerful instinct.

But with the alt-right permeating the internet and creeping into the real world, I have no idea what counselors can offer. I doubt a whole lot of these little shits feel out of place in life. The alt-right provides community, culture, its own coded language that shapes humor and way of thinking. This is decentralized radicalization from the age of 13.

Wearing their swastikas   symbols of bigotry  Pepe the Frog in public is only the logical next step. I don't have any reason to believe that the next generation will be more fascist on the whole, but I can't help but feel that the political polarization that our children will have to deal with will make the current environment look like a fucking knitting club.

Have you ever read A ClockWork Orange by Anthony Burgess?  

[denstorebog]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Have you ever read A ClockWork Orange by Anthony Burgess?  

Yes.

[GAROVORKIN]

16 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Yes.

That's the world of tomorrow .  Things might just get that bad.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

For one, Trump strongly signaled what his policies would be like when he hired the conservative clown crew of Kudlow and Moore.

But, even if Trump, hadn’t hired conservative clowns as “advisors” it should have become apparent that Trump had no clue about policy and as a result of his cluelessness and laziness, he’d mainly rely on the Republican establishment to make policy.

Yeah, generally speakng, whatever you think of our Western "left-wing" parties, it would be foolish to count on anyone on the right to reduce economic inequalities. By definition, the right is perfectly fine with inequality at best, and even tends to increase them most of the time.

And it's high time people understood that minorities are just scapegoats. They are not responsible for economic inequalities and are their primary victims.

[denstorebog]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

That's the world of tomorrow .  Things might just get that bad.

That's good to know, I'll be sure to make preparations to be assaulted with a large porcelain penis in my own home.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

 

No one knows for certain, but most smart people agree hat a start would be to go back to the public policies of half a century ago. Especially go back to progressive taxation.
The very opposite of what Trump & co will do.

I think re-regulating the finance industry and instituting more capital controls would be a better way forward. Progressive taxation schemes are not effective against large corporations or the ultra rich in today's environment, since they can just shop around for countries with lower tax rates and move their assets there instead, leaving their original countries with nothing. To avoid progressive taxation systems mostly hitting the upper middle classes and small businesses, you'd need to go back to more restrictive laws for investing or moving cash between different countries, which most of the West did have a number of decades ago. 

In the American case there can also be a lot more done to strengthen the bargaining power of employees against employers, which is very weak there compared to other developed countries (if you want to do that via unionization or legislation is another question). 

Anyway, I think one shouldn't focus too much on just taxation.