USA Politics Bottomlined?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

On the subject of Democrats vs. Social Freedoms, I would have to agree with FCH here that it's bullshit. They will make token gestures toward progressives during campaigns, but after election day the most you get from them is "uh.. well... it's not just that easy..." They are not on anyone's side but their own, and none of them have any intention of changing the game that's played in DC unless it means creating more rules to make it harder to remove them from power. Same with the GOP.

As for the entire premise of funding social welfare with Government funds, I tend to think it's only a necessary evil. I can't see allowing people to starve to death, freeze to death, or die of curable diseases being an ethical option for any nation. On the other hand, the subsidies that the government dispenses (to industry as well as to individuals) creates a loop of dependence and therefore undermines freedom. The modern welfare state is not designed to save people from poverty or sickness, it is designed to make sure they never escape, or if they do escape, that their security is bound by so many strings that they'll never even consider bucking the system.

Personally I don't know that the current economy is all that terrible a thing, in the long run. If the government enacts a bunch of austerity measures and revokes the public teat, maybe people will quit assuming they can fumble around and they'll still be taken care of if they fail. Maybe people will take more chances. Personally, I'm building a plan for a new business right now and I wouldn't be if I thought I could fuck up my present job and move on to one of a hundred just like it, or sign up for unlimited unemployment insurance. I'm thinking now in terms of what I can do to improve my own situation, not what others can do to make sure I stay safe and my kids have food.

[Adios]

People in power make better liars, study shows.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35836844/


Not that this will be a surprise to any here.

[the last yatto]

Taxes really depends on the state, there's also benefits... healthcare 401k I've heard magagment rant about labor costs taking up too much of the pie. Heck the prison industry is even hit hard (maybe why they are starting to arrest more "trash") with their workers agreeing to a wage freeze.


Sims (used to be king county executive) ranted a few times about the tax burden on small business and the new income tax won't help much. I'm sure its not perfect, but his guy was the orginal hope.

no ones collecting on the big guys so the quarter million with cheese is just an attempt to draw where the middle class ends and rich protected status starts. Sims was still happy in his role back when Bill was in charge. And he had good ideas, even if he was willing to over look war crimes happening overseas. Sure we hung some japs for what we are doing now but domestic policy helps the poor even if the bastards in the bread line don't deserve it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Sims

[East Coast Hustle]

I know who Ron Sims is. I have a long and glorious record of never having voted for him.

[the last yatto]

 Figured you would

And while yes the tea party is the same dumbasses as there always was, but for the most part these people were limited to local elections, they are taking seats at the invite only national and state level. Political hitmen like Rove and Rossi now have to share the stage with PTA mothers.

[East Coast Hustle]

Rossi is a joke (thank fucking god). Two-time loser, about to be three.

[Bobby Campbell]

This is all great stuff!

I come from a long line of not giving a fuck, but having found my curiosity stirred somewhat lately, I'd like to understand better what comprises the political spectacle.

Thanks again to First City Hustle for demolishing my naive speculations. I couldn't back up my assumptions with actual facts, but I didn't know it! Interesting experience to notice some of your own fallacies. 

So maybe no difference exists at all between function of left & right? Or no difference that benefits the majority of Americans?

Totemically speaking, I still feel quite glad that we have President Obama as the figurehead/paper champ, eloquently expression nice sentiments, rather than John McCain yelling at people to stay off his lawn or whatever.

Does it become a cultural vote then? Instead of a socio-economic operational adjustment vote?

If the function stays the same no matter what, do we choose which puppet show we wanna watch?

If I gotta get jacked up by the tax man for nothing good anyways, maybe I can at least get a tax man who won't say racist shit on TV?

Educate me, Principia Discordia, I am a dummy!

[East Coast Hustle]

If the function stays the same no matter what, do we choose which puppet show we wanna watch?

I'd call that a pretty good distillation of my take on the matter.

[Cain]

Totemically speaking, I still feel quite glad that we have President Obama as the figurehead/paper champ, eloquently expression nice sentiments, rather than John McCain yelling at people to stay off his lawn or whatever.

Does it become a cultural vote then? Instead of a socio-economic operational adjustment vote?

If the function stays the same no matter what, do we choose which puppet show we wanna watch?

Pretty much it all comes down to cultural resentment at this point.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/11/20/sarah-palin-wwe-star/

At the end of this decade what we call "politics" has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you're a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day's news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who's wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn't, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn't, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn't, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn't).

It doesn't matter what the argument is about. What's important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they're blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we've now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming's sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book's significance, because in some ways it's really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin — and there's just no way to deny this — is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

Most normal people cannot connect on an emotional level with Rush's meanderings on how Harry Reid is buying off Mary Landrieu with pork in the health care bill. They can, however, connect with stories about how top McCain strategist and Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt told poor Sarah to shut her pie-hole on election day, or how her supposed allies in the McCain campaign stabbed her in the back by leaking gossip about her to reporters, how Schmidt used the word "fuck" in front of her daughter, or even with the strange tales about Schmidt ordering Sarah to consult with a nutritionist to improve her campaign endurance when she herself knew she just needed to get out in the fresh air and run (If there's one thing Sarah Palin knows, it's herself!).

Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes. Me personally, I waste an enormous amount of time seething over people who get onto crowded subway cars with big backpacks on and/or talk in the Amtrak quiet car and/or drive 57 mph in the fast lane or, my personal favorite, walking with glacial slowness in a horizontal row four overweight tourists across on a New York City sidewalk. We all get into furious arguments at work that make us want to explode in self-righteous fury (in my office dramas I always realize I was actually the asshole a day or so later) and when we get home from work, this is usually what our loved ones hear about for at least the first hour or so.

Not health care, not financial regulatory reform, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but — assholes.

Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. It's all she thinks about. She doesn't really have any political ideas, in the classic sense of the word — in fact the only thing resembling real political convictions in Going Rogue revolve around the Trans-Alaska pipeline and how awesome she thinks it is.

And that's basically it.  The Dems and Republicans will play it the same on 90%+ of issues, but allow their little proxies and tools in the media to blow these cultural resentments out of all proportion so you will have to take one side or the other, based on your personal inclinations and that, right there, when you feel compelled to take one side over the other, is where the trap is. 

When Sarah Palin criticized Andrew Sullivan as a "leftist reporter", that was very revealing.  For those of you who don't know, Andrew Sullivan is an America-based British blogger for the Atlantic Magazine, and something of an independent rightwinger, in the centre-right Tory way that was popular in the UK political scene in the 90s and early 2000s.

But.

But, he's a Catholic.  He's highly educated, even something of an intellectual (by today's decayed standards).  He lives on the East Coast.  He's gay.  He admits to smoking pot in the past.  He's argued the Iraq War has been a mistake (IIRC).  He probably watches foreign language films and drinks French wine.  He's travelled to countries where English is not the primary language.  He refuses to submit to GOP Party discipline and will actually consider arguments by other people on their own merits, for the most part.

THEREFORE, by every cultural indicator, he's a Leftist and, to the likes of Palin, the enemy.

And once you understand that train of thought, most of US politics becomes very clear.

[Cain]

Or, to put it another way.  You said:

Totemically speaking, I still feel quite glad that we have President Obama as the figurehead/paper champ, eloquently expression nice sentiments, rather than John McCain yelling at people to stay off his lawn or whatever.

[...]

If I gotta get jacked up by the tax man for nothing good anyways, maybe I can at least get a tax man who won't say racist shit on TV?

Consider it this way.  Obama continues both the War on Terror, and the War on Drugs, and is deporting increasing numbers of Latino immigrants, far more than happened during the Bush years.  The War on Terror seems to disproportionally affect the lives of civilians in Arab and South Asian countries, in terms of them ending up dead for few good reasons.  Additionally, the US soldiers fighting those wars are at least in part made up of minorities who joined the military in order to get a good education and career where few other options were available, and so it may have a disproportionate impact on them as well.

The War on Drugs seems to end up in sending a lot of little fish into prison, while the Cartel leaders continue to ply their trade.  A lot of these little fish are again made up of ethnic minorities.

And again, when it comes to deporting immigrants, Latinos are overwhelmingly targeted for this.  In the past, and probably right now, people are being deported who actually do have the right to reside in the USA.

Is Obama personally racist?  I doubt it.  I doubt many, if any, of his Cabinet are racist in their personal views.  Yet their policies are having a massive, unfair impact on people who are not white (and, not incidentally, usually from the lowest socioeconomic levels of society).

But because Obama isn't walking around like a Klukker on the television, does that make it any better?  Most Democrats seem to think so, or at least have mastered the art of filtering out information which portrays the Boy Prince, uh, Dear Leader, in a negative light, regardless of the factual basis in which it resides.  Go onto almost any Democratic blog and say what I said here, and you will get one of three replies:

a) "go away Teabagger" (lolwut?  Cuz teabaggers are so concerned about racist policies, right?)
b) "go away you radical leftist/purity troll/butthurt Clinton supporter"
c) "but the Republicans are worse!  And besides, here is Rand Paul saying that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a mistake!"

See what I mean?  "Saying racist things" is a cultural signifier.  For instance, what if I told you that H. L. Mencken, the infamous American reporter and writer, was anti-Semitic?  If you were not already aware of this, you may find your position towards him becoming decidedly less sympathetic.  But, what if I told you now that despite his anti-Semitism, he nonetheless lobbied the government very hard to accept Jewish refugees from Europe in the years leading up to WWII?  Both of these facts about the man are true, by the way.

Of course it would be nice to live in a world where people did not say hateful things about other people based on skin colour, religion (within reason), gender or the like.  I wont dispute that.  But it really doesn't matter one way or the other when their policies are having such an effect on certain segments of the population, and not others, and those affected segments all seem to be minority groups within the country in question.  In politics, what people do and are capable of doing is more important than what they say.  But try telling that to a media intent on selling a narrative based around cultural resentment and proving the "other guys" are evil, full of hatred, eat puppies for breakfast (alive) and, most importantly, Have Wrong Values.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

If Democrats were serious, here's how the last 2 years would have played out:

Obama: REFORM TIME! HOLD YOUR PANTS BITCHES YOU ARE GOING DOWN LIKE MY MOM ON A BLACK DUDE!

Republicans: LOL! FILIBUSTER! NANANANANA!

Obama: OH NO! FILIBUSTER MANEUVER! MUST CHECK REALITY!

Republicans: WE WIN! WE WIN! HOORAY FOR CORRUPTION AND IGNORANCE!

Obama: HOLD ON NOW... WHAT IS THIS? MY POCKET CONSTITUTION SAYS MAJORITY VOTE! NO SUCH THING AS FILIBUSTER! LOL YOUR MANEUVER DOES NOT COMPUTE! I INVOKE VOX POPULI ON YOUR REDNECK BULLSHIT!

Republicans: *HEAD EXPLODE*

***

This, of course, will never happen. This is all the evidence you need.

[Triple Zero]

whether or not you can relate, Cain's analysis (not an opinion) is absolutely true.

It could very well be, it also pretty much supports my scenario.

Unless I misunderstand, he states that people outside of a certain economic situation will have 5% of their lives improved upon by 0.000000001% w/ a Democrat run government.

Those percentages seem perhaps a bit pessimistic to me. As does the Hitler/Stalin Comparison. And by no objective standard will I get well or truly fucked!

I understand most people do not have much optimism left, I don't blame them, but nor do I have any reason to join them.

I still think despite the well calculated emotional appeals to the contrary, poor - middle class people should generally vote for democrats.

But, you do realize that your country has a Democrat Party President, RIGHT NOW and has had for the past two years, right?

And look what he's doing! Ordering assassinations of US citizens and ruining any chance of universal healthcare* you ever got, putting a kill-switch on the Internet and I don't know what else.

Are you trying to argue that, whoops bad luck, this particular Democrat seems to be broken, but HONEST all (ok, most) of the OTHER ONES are the ones you REALLY WANT so just keep on voting for them, because chances are we ought to be getting a Good One any time soon, now.

Sorry if I don't believe that. I don't call that having a lack of optimism. I call that re-enacting Treehouse of Horror VII part 4.



(* take it from the real first-world countries: it's pretty good. actually improves your freedom more than in whatever sense people argue it lessens it. plus, it's healthy for you)

[Bobby Campbell]

Are you trying to argue that, whoops bad luck, this particular Democrat seems to be broken, but HONEST all (ok, most) of the OTHER ONES are the ones you REALLY WANT so just keep on voting for them, because chances are we ought to be getting a Good One any time soon, now.

Hey Triple Zero!

Further on through the thread from the post you responded to I already got convinced of my faulty political perspective! But thanks for your input also.

I'll admit perhaps to some further ignorance, but I do indeed still much prefer President Obama to the other realistic alternatives.

I can't say I give a fuck about al-Alwaki one way or the other, I'd rather assassinations not take place in general, but I assume that they will anyways, I also wish ponies could fly! At least now maybe it won't matter if the guy who snipes him is gay or not. (It's progress not perfection)

Whatever the backdoor realities, the surface spectacle indicates a shit ton of democrats will lose their jobs because they got the United States at least a step closer to a more civilized form of health care. (well time still needs to tell on that one...but) This cutting both ways stuff doesn't sit right with me! Half the people think they did something terrible because they gave us some, the other half think they did something terrible because they didn't give us enough.

and talk to your fellow Europeans first about shutting down the internet!

Better reasons exist for taking Obama and the democrats to task than what you stated, and thus your basic point still stands. But who would you have me vote for instead?

I mean I get it, anti-incumbency no matter what, right?

Not me, lesser of 2 evils please. EVEN IF! only 0.0000000000000001% less evil AND only from my limited point of view AND if it doesn't really change anything.

Aspire to the light, that's the best anyone can do.

ALSO! BTW The last 2 years have been BY FAR the best of my life. Now I don't credit Obama for that, I work my fucking ass off, I make what I need to happen goddamn fucking happen. So really all this "everything's terrible" bullshit don't touch me...I'm American dreaming all up in this bitch!

I want things to get better for everyone else too.


I guess we can at least all agree that politics will not facilitate that.

[Triple Zero]

Hey Triple Zero!

SUP BOBBLES!

Further on through the thread from the post you responded to I already got convinced of my faulty political perspective! But thanks for your input also.

Is true, I wrote too fast (plus Vex gave way more compelling stories about what Obama did bad), but I also jumped on the possibility to quote Simpsons

and talk to your fellow Europeans first about shutting down the internet!

I am!

Well, if voting Pirate Party and supporting Bits of Freedom (Dutch version of EFF basically) is good enough

Better reasons exist for taking Obama and the democrats to task than what you stated, and thus your basic point still stands. But who would you have me vote for instead?

it's just, maybe better to frame it as "why not to vote Republican" rather than "why to vote Democrat", IMO.

Aspire to the light, that's the best anyone can do.

Look at what it done for the bananas. They got all bent.

[Bobby Campbell]

it's just, maybe better to frame it as "why not to vote Republican" rather than "why to vote Democrat", IMO.

That was my original idea! Basically I wanted to take a rare try at a political cartoon that was a take on amusement park ride ride signs, y'know, "You must be this rich to vote Republican" and so I started this thread to see if the idea would hold water, and alas it will not. No one who votes Republican will not do so because of any reason that I have, hell those are the reasons they DO vote Republican!

You're wasting your time, Trip.  Bobby has decided that the Democrats are the lesser of two evils, as opposed to a different flavour of evil, and that he for some reason must vote and that he must somehow use the mighty power of his single vote to help influence national level politics in that less evil direction.

I haven't decided anything, just working things out, thinking out loud, playing around w/ ideas. I can see why you would think I've such simplistic and idiotic notions on the matter, that's more or less how I've presented myself here, but there is a bit more nuance behind it. Or not, fuck it, who cares!?

At least notice that I closed that post w/

"I want things to get better for everyone else too.

I guess we can at least all agree that politics will not facilitate that."