Jump to content

U.S. Politics: The Bipartisan Dismemberment of the VA


lokisnow

Recommended Posts

On Thursday, April 07, 2016 at 3:04 AM, ThinkerX said:

 

 

Permanent three party situation possible, but not likely.  Breakdown:

Republicans: Theocrats, libertarians, and Tea Party types. Paranoid, distrustful of government, especially 'socialism.'

Democrats: Urban types. Greens. Progressives.

'Corporate Party' - combination of upper echelons of current democratic party and 'business lobby' of the republicans.  Wholly owned and operated by corporations, corporate drones expected to vote the party line or else.

But again, not likely.

The theocrats, libertarians and Tea Party types will end up hating each other more than any other groups.  Look at what happened when Protestants split from the Catholic Church.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

This is the sort of realignment that happens maybe every fifty years.  Sixty years ago, the democratic party was the one filled with KKK types, and the republican party was a different animal.

My contention is that class will be the dominating factor in the realignment.

Today, the Democratic coalition is unions (or what is left of them), blacks, hispanics, young people, social liberals, and the well-educated. The current Republican Party offers absolutely nothing for any of these groups. As Shryke has mentioned, if a switch of working class whites was to happen, it'd have done so already (and indeed has).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's too early to predict how the two parties will look after a realignment (and to be sure, one is going to happen sooner than later). So I say grab a drink, kick your feet up and watch the Republican Party cannibalize itself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey y'all remember in 2010 when newly elected Chris Christie cancelled a 3 Billion Hudson River tunnel project from New Jersey to New York, paid for almost entirely by stimulus spending with only a few hundred million kicked in by NJ because he claimed it was a waste of tax payer money and also because it would prove he was a big-penis-manly-man-not-beholden-to-evil-kenyan-muslim-socialist-democrat-Obama-and-his-stimulus-rail-money?

Well there's an update to that story. Post Sandy, the extant 100 year old tunnel is in terrible shape and they have released plans for the rail tunnel they want to build now. It's called Gateway. Basically it is the same thing as the 3 billion tunnel Chris Christie canceled.

It now costs 20 BILLION with estimated cost overruns to 25 billion.

Chris Christie is on board that New Jersey tax payers should shoulder half the cost.

Way to save the tax payer's money with your moronic small government ideology. You can't even be consistent in it and wind up costing tax payers massively more in the long run you jerk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

Hey y'all remember in 2010 when newly elected Chris Christie cancelled a 3 Billion Hudson River tunnel project from New Jersey to New York, paid for almost entirely by stimulus spending with only a few hundred million kicked in by NJ because he claimed it was a waste of tax payer money and also because it would prove he was a big-penis-manly-man-not-beholden-to-evil-kenyan-muslim-socialist-democrat-Obama-and-his-stimulus-rail-money?.

*BEGINS SLOW CLAP*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why is there an assumption there will be a realignment? There is plenty of examples around the world of one party dominating for years because the other(s) do t have sufficient support. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On April 7, 2016 at 0:35 AM, ThinkerX said:

My take: The 'business lobby' of the republican party goes democrat, though not all at once.

A lot of not so well off democrats - especially those with careers imperiled by trade deals and immigration - go republican. 

Almost a class or caste based realignment: the democrats geared towards the upper castes and certain category's of immigrants and minorities, while the lower orders, including more established immigrants, flock towards the republicans.  Corporate democrats, populist republicans.  Take several years minimum to take effect.    

While I agree the Demographic problem the R's are faced with nationally makes there position terrible going forward for General elections. It's just as likely that the Dems lose the far left to third parties as those voters reject the policies of worlds policeman and a domestic police state. I think were closer to that (Antiwar, Green types leaving) now than the Dem establishment realizes, as they continually obsess with moderate branding.

At some point liberals will look for other seats if we continually have to just vote for these candidates that have a main selling point of "I'm not as bad as the other asshole."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/9/2016 at 6:43 AM, ants said:

Why is there an assumption there will be a realignment? There is plenty of examples around the world of one party dominating for years because the other(s) do t have sufficient support. 

Because that doesn't work when things are bad and keep getting worse. There must be at least some pretence of change which in the US is provided by occasionally switching parties. The alternative is control of the media and repression of dissidents neither of which is ever going to work in the US.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well there was a political realignment of sorts in 2006-2008 and it resulted in the democrats getting control of both houses of congress and the presidency, however they moved to far to the Left and they threw the more conservative members of their caucus under the bus and they quickly lost control of the house. I see a similar opportunity in this election but I'm not sure if it will bear out. Still I continue to think that the most likely realignment will be that more conservative voters from the South will go back to the democrats at least in the congressional elections if the democrats move to the middle. It will be restoration of the old order that controlled congress for about 60 years pre 1994 and not a true realignment or at least not a radical one.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Altherion said:

Because that doesn't work when things are bad and keep getting worse. There must be at least some pretence of change which in the US is provided by occasionally switching parties. The alternative is control of the media and repression of dissidents neither of which is ever going to work in the US.

Everything about this post confuses me.  I'd like to see some elaboration on what, exactly, you think is bad and getting worse.  Not that I disagree with you that some things are in fact worsening, but I feel like you have a much dimmer outlook on the future/present than, perhaps, is warranted.  Secondly, I'm utterly confused by your optimism about how "repression of dissidents" will never work, nor will direct control of the media, given that I can easily imagine both (though direct media control seems unnecessarily heavy-handed)..  Its like you're wildly pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, and I don't understand at all. You're convinced that things are going to be worse, but that specific instances of how they could be worse will never work in the US because...???

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

Everything about this post confuses me.  I'd like to see some elaboration on what, exactly, you think is bad and getting worse.  Not that I disagree with you that some things are in fact worsening, but I feel like you have a much dimmer outlook on the future/present than, perhaps, is warranted.

The economic situation of a substantial fraction of the population. It's difficult to show this from the official statistics as most of them are not designed to show it, but you can tell by the number of anti-establishment voters this election for both major parties. There is a lot of anger out there -- we might already have had serious changes if the angry people didn't hate each other.

Quote

Secondly, I'm utterly confused by your optimism about how "repression of dissidents" will never work, nor will direct control of the media, given that I can easily imagine both (though direct media control seems unnecessarily heavy-handed)..  Its like you're wildly pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, and I don't understand at all. You're convinced that things are going to be worse, but that specific instances of how they could be worse will never work in the US because...???

Because Americans have the right to bear arms. Repressing dissidents works best when people cannot fight back: while the government will almost certainly win, it's almost never worth the direct and indirect costs to the ruling class.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Because Americans have the right to bear arms. Repressing dissidents works best when people cannot fight back: while the government will almost certainly win, it's almost never worth the direct and indirect costs to the ruling class.

Are you living in a YA novel?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The type of people who constantly reiterate that they need their guns in order to fight back against the tyranny of an illegitimate federal government are also the type of people who happen to believe that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim communist who acts by unconstitutional executive decree. This begs the question - if that's what you really believe, why haven't you already started shooting? How much worse does it need to get than the Presidency being taken over by a foreign agent? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because Americans have the right to bear arms. Repressing dissidents works best when people cannot fight back: while the government will almost certainly win, it's almost never worth the direct and indirect costs to the ruling class.

this is the great joke that undergirds second amendment fundamentalism.  all of the greasers who loiter at gun shows or do their cute little militia occupations of public parks or douches who keep AR15s in their house in case zombies/swarthies show up together can offer no resistance whatsoever to the grand army of the republic.  as if the US would not drone strike their ass back to the stone age.  hunting rifles don't work against ablative armor and helicopters and whatnot.

i.e., we already had second amendment vs. the united states; the united states mopped the floor with the second amendment resistance, abolished the way of life thereof, and expropriated $4B worth of resistance property, the greatest expropriation of private property between the dissolution acts of henry VIII and the bolsheviks.  i suspect that the US military could now disarm or otherwise neutralize every single gun owner in the US with less casualties than were suffered in the recent iraq war.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

The type of people who constantly reiterate that they need their guns in order to fight back against the tyranny of an illegitimate federal government are also the type of people who happen to believe that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim communist who acts by unconstitutional executive decree. This begs the question - if that's what you really believe, why haven't you already started shooting? How much worse does it need to get than the Presidency being taken over by a foreign agent? 

Because there aren't that many of them and the government is careful not to provoke them. There needs to be a kind of critical mass and some sort of incident, usually with loss of life due to mistakes made by the authorities.

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

this is the great joke that undergirds second amendment fundamentalism.  all of the greasers who loiter at gun shows or do their cute little militia occupations of public parks or douches who keep AR15s in their house in case zombies/swarthies show up together can offer no resistance whatsoever to the grand army of the republic.  as if the US would not drone strike their ass back to the stone age.  hunting rifles don't work against ablative armor and helicopters and whatnot.

Again, my point is not that they would somehow defeat the US army -- unless a substantial fraction of the latter switches sides, they obviously would not. However, think about what happens in the areas where we currently use drone strikes and helicopters and the like. We write it off as "collateral damage" when it happens in Pakistan or Yemen, but I suspect there would be much less tolerance for it if it happened internally (and it almost certainly would bring out all of the "tyranny of an illegitimate federal government" guys). I'm sure somebody has planned for this scenario, but I very much doubt anybody in the ruling class actually wants it -- it's pointlessly risky and expensive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

The economic situation of a substantial fraction of the population. It's difficult to show this from the official statistics as most of them are not designed to show it, but you can tell by the number of anti-establishment voters this election for both major parties. There is a lot of anger out there -- we might already have had serious changes if the angry people didn't hate each other.

Because Americans have the right to bear arms. Repressing dissidents works best when people cannot fight back: while the government will almost certainly win, it's almost never worth the direct and indirect costs to the ruling class.

...No, you can't.  People being angry about it does not mean that there is actually a problem, just the perception of a problem.  People are angry about transpersons in bathrooms right now:  are you asserting that there's a problem with transpersons in bathrooms?  People are very angry about police brutality.  Are you asserting that the police are more brutal now than they have been in the past?  People are furiously angry about the homofascist liberal atheist feminazi agenda of our Kenyan Islamic communist president.  Please tell me that means you think there's a homofascist liberal atheist feminazi agenda being pushed by our Kenyan Islamic communist president out there, because I desperately need my new SJW marching orders from Soros,  I'm lost without them!    People are angry about all sorts of things because they are goddamn idiots who do not understand statistics, risk, probability, intersectionality, biology, economics, chemistry, math, religion, human interaction, and basically everything else.  And that's why I asked:  if you're going to scream about the sky falling, you need to show its actually falling.  Do I think that there are tons of issues in the United States right now?  You're damn right I do.  Do I think that, overall, things are better for the least advantaged of our population than they have been?  Yeah, I do.  I think we're making a ton of progress in a lot of areas, societally, enough that I'm not willing to support whatever weird accelerationist unstable revolt you seem to want to see, because its nowhere near that bad, nor do I think it is inevitable that it get worse.  

And fucking lol.  I suggest you look at the Malheur occupation.  The darlings of the "keep your powder dry!" crowd put out a call for mobilization and was met with crickets while the only man disconnected enough from reality to try to actually shoot the "oppressing" federal agents was killed, the others were arrested, and the entire farce of a movement was systematically destroyed and mocked in the general media.  The powder is as dry as its going to get and they're still sitting on their ass.  You're underestimating how spiteful Americans can be at the people who protest.  People will happily cheer protesters being beaten and gassed if those protesters inconvenienced their daily commute. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, MerenthaClone said:

...No, you can't.  People being angry about it does not mean that there is actually a problem, just the perception of a problem.

If enough people are angry, there is actually a problem. There are no objective criteria by which we can compare arbitrary societies and state that one of them is better and the other is worse. Most people will agree on some limiting cases, but most real-world societies are far more complex than any human being can understand and make countless tradeoffs which make things better for some people and worse for others and there is no objective (or even widely agreed upon) way to judge these. For example, your post references the least advantaged and that is certainly one philosophical position, but there are also arguments for judging by the median or by the average.

I can certainly present to you a bunch of facts and statistics which show things getting worse. Even if we agree on the facts and statistics, you will probably argue that some of them are not as important as I think they are and present others which you believe are important and show things getting better. Amusing as this would be, it would be much more illustrative of our values and of the limits of our ability to evaluate societies than anything about the society itself.

On the other hand, the fact that enough people are sufficiently angry to almost (but, as it currently appears, not quite) deprive the elites who usually buy elections of their biggest purchase is a much more valuable indicator than anything in the piles of statistics produced by servants of the ruling class. You may not agree with some of their reasons for being angry (I certainly do not), but this is irrelevant. Much more important is that "not quite" -- but we're getting there...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...