|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Feb 21, 2019 13:09:52 GMT -5
I would rate 'rising star' Dem Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez almost as low as might the Democrat whose district Amazon's HQ2 was going to be in. I would also say she is the tip if an inexperienced theories based mini-iceberg looking for excuses to go extreme too often. The restaurant harassers of America you might say. Wrong direction to match jingoistic chant for jingoistic chant, hate for hat, t-shirt for t-shirt. I don't like Trump why would I want the flipside of the same coin? I can't believe you are comparing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Trump. For example, what is the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez counterpart to Trump's racist birth-certificate conspiracy-theory nonsense? Or how about the counterpart to Trump slandering the Muslims of Jersey City with his fallacious assertion that thousands were celebrating the fall of the WTC on Sept. 11, 2001? Without some pretty good examples that I haven't hear about, this looks like a ridiculous false equivalence. She is like Trump to me only in her desire to get media attention with extreme positions and stunts. She is unlike him in scale, but that should go without saying really, we have never seen anyone close to the colossal totally dishonest mess Trump is in a Western democracy ever possibly. So it is the low bar for one side and high bar for the other as it seems like just one bad thing on the left gets inflated ridiculously and used to discredit everything else someone does properly. I don't know how they get that crap to work but it sure does, on around a third of people, which is way too many... now they are using this possible hoax attack on/by actor Jussie Smollett as 'proof' the left is crooked and the mainstream media are their tool. So you can't even eff-up with a restaurant chant attack stunt without actually feeding and helping enable the flip-side of the extremist coin they rightly dislike so much. If you are against dumb but possibly feel good reactionary extremes don't indulge in them yourself, or provoke further reaction? That's how I think, my considered opinion, open to evolving... the Michelle Obama 'go high' ideal. Ocasio-Cortez is, right now, more noise/hype over qualification and proven record. And it could be escalating in a way citing the vile racist birther garbage and WTC celebration claim that alone should have kept any sane adult from voting for or taking the word of the man on anything. But it's good to keep refreshing everyone's memories on these things as they are important... even if most of the time that 33% seem to keep their ears plugged singing to themselves about what a great speech 'their guy' made.  |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Feb 21, 2019 13:17:11 GMT -5
There are a third of Americans, give or take (plus Russia, Saudi Arabia, Chairman Kim) who apparently think there is not that much wrong with Trump as president (is doing good, protecting, fixing the world, helping that stock market,fighting for jobs for the common man, loving the fetuses, whatever) and they want him back after 2020. If they were open to facts, context and history it would be better, but they see a self-righteous Ocasio-Cortez crowing about driving off the evil Amazon corporation, yet making wild vague promises about job creation... and isn't that part very Trump-like to anyone besides me? Why not give the Democrat in whose district that HQ2 would've been have some equal time? She is not happy with loud newbie Ocasio-Cortez at all. And I am hoping I am not also a loud newbie.  |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Feb 21, 2019 13:28:05 GMT -5
We can debate three ways till next Tuesday about how important a college education is, but we can't ignore that for better or worse, it is now a requirement for many employers. I think you realize that the idea of "free college tuition" does not mean that everybody and his sister gets a full boat to Harvard, Stanford or MIT on yours and my dime. We're talking tuition to state colleges and community colleges. Not room and board, activities fees, etc., etc. The cost of tuition is almost minuscule compared to all the rest of the costs of "going away" to college.That's why colleges toss around free-tuition grants and scholarships so "generously." Guaranteed free tuition to state schools might mean a resurgence in the popularity of community colleges, which are falling by the wayside because they can't compete with the glamour of "going away" to a "good college" but can't cut their own costs enough to make themselves affordable for the low-income kids who desperately need them. and also for the middle-class kids who really don't know quite what they want to do, but get on the conveyor belt to keep up with the Joneses by incurring craploads of high-interest loans to go off to a four-year party with a hundred-grand cover charge. I think we can commit ourselves to a national self-improvement program that recognizes the fact that this ain't the 1950s anymore. The right to a free public education entails more in the 21st century than it did even 20 years ago, and, as with the expansion of medical care to all, is an idea rooted in pragmatism as much as in idealism. As for childcare, again, we're not talking nannies for every kid. Even if one parent would like to be a stay-at-home parent, the American economy of the 21st century simply does not make that a choice for the vast majority of people. You want a vibrant economy? You want a healthy populace? You want a truly educated populace? You want a change in the inequality of incomes? Then these are the kinds of steps we're going to have to take. And those who feel like the put-upon worker bees, perhaps, will feel less so if they and their children will derive benefits from programs like these. Nobody likes to feel like the little red hen, I get it. We all do. But frankly, many of the arguments raised in opposition to these kinds of proposals -- and not just the ravings of the "It's going to be just like Venezuela!" crowd -- sound as if they were first spoken by Ebenezer ("Are there no workhouses?") Scrooge and the social Darwinist robber barons. Nobody's trying to print tickets for the gravy train but the Republicans. You'd think it would be a conservative principal that in order to reap in the future you have to invest now... and I see nothing evil with investing in people or infrastructure, creating opportunist isn't cheap... the GI bill that sent WWII vets to college reaped all kinds of provable benefits, and the bus system gave mobility for someone in one part of a city to accept a job in another area, PBS turned all kinds of people on to history, reading, music careers... all more essential than pinching pennies so a piece of paper looks good, but anyway, Reagan more than tripled the U.S. national debt and I have run across so many staunch pro-Republicans over the years who didn't know this it's been an education (they often don't even seem to know their own self interest)... all he did was encourage thousand dollar coffee pots for some office desk soldiers who had to spend it all or next year they'd get cut back (should've listened to Eisenhower who knew from the inside of the military-industrial complex). Anyway, I am a socialist Canuckistanian as Pat Buchanan put it, and who Condoleeza Rice would 'never forgive' for not going into Iraq Part II, so I'm really part foreign observer, but I find they/we often have useful third perspectives. If you had to contract out running your country to a third option, Canada might be a smart choice. I plan to always keep my citizenship anyway. Bon chance!  |
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 21, 2019 13:40:55 GMT -5
This is perilously close to the "welfare queen" argument that was B.S. when Reagan made it and is even more B.S. now. There are over 23,000 active-duty military families that are on food assistance. 20% of households receiving food assistance have one veteran in the household. I can't find a good number, but a significant number of teachers are on food stamps...and I suspect it would be a lot more if they weren't embarrassed to be on them. Anecdotally, a friend of my wife's (and the mother of my middle son's best friend) spent a significant number of years on food assistance. She and her husband had five kids before he started using drugs and screwing around on her (he had a good job in the mines in Utah). So she left him, with five kids in school. She went to school and got a teaching degree. So she was on assistance when she was in school. Then when she started teaching she still made so little money that she was on food assistance until her two oldest children graduated. I'm simply much happier to have my tax money go to help teachers, soldiers and veterans than more corporate welfare and so that Bestsy DeVos can buy another super yacht while trying to destroy our education system. Not sure what I wrote is in conflict with your post. Your anecdote is exactly the type of situation I was referring to, where someone finds themself in desperate circumstances FOR A SEASON of their lives but eventually moves beyond that and becomes self-sufficient, either again or for the first time. As for her making too little money, I'd rather my tax dollars go to paying better salaries for teachers and soldiers rathet than giving them food assistance, but that's a whole different discussion. I'm not a monster, but I have no interest in providing childcare and college and all of the other promised freebies while also having to pay for them myself because I make "too much" to qualify. There's a reason I got the education I did and took out the loans (which I paid back, instead of expecting forgiveness) and why I get up at 5 AM every day to put in the hours and do the job I do, and it's so I can take care of my family, save for retirement, and eventually not have to do this grind every day, but somehow I'm the bad guy in this discussion. I don't think you're a monster at all. I was responding to what I perceived as you saying that there are a large number of people who are milking the system and just don't want to work. And while there are people who are like that, they are a very small minority of the people on assistance. And it has become increasingly hard for that to happen. My wife works for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, albeit in Child Protection, but the assistance people are in the same office. "Welfare Fraud" is rare. Food Stamp abuse is even more rare. It's one thing to say that people should just work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and all the other neat conservative talking points. It's another to actually look at what it takes for people to do that. For example the "childcare freebie". It's all well and good to say "Don't have kids if you can't afford them." It's also meaningless. We don't want to pay for preventative medical care that would help alleviate unwanted/unplanned pregnancies. We don't want people actually educated as to how to prevent them. But it's just magically supposed to happen. So then the choice is between staying home with the kids or finding childcare so you can work or go to school. Well, since the invisible hand of the market tells us that childcare is going to cost money the option, if you can't afford childcare is to not go to work or to school. But then you're a deadbeat. Or you can have less than reputable people watch the children...and then you end up in the legal system for not taking adequate care of the children. The college "freebie" is, at least in part, because the cost of education has increased (depending on location) at 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation since the early 1980s. Why? Because state legislatures and the federal government have decided that education isn't a priority, while tax breaks for corporations and the rich are a priority. As a result funding for education has plummeted, costs have skyrocketed well beyond inflation and we have a student loan situation that is rapidly becoming an actual crisis. Student loan debt has increased 157 percent in the last decade while auto loan debt has risen by only about 50 percent. The days when you could work part-time and go to school are long gone. When my son went to school at Boise State (not an expensive college) it would take a minimum-wage job of 50 hours per week to pay for tuition and room and board. By any reasonable measure education is as important to the nation as the infrastructure (which has also been neglected). An educated population is an investment in the nation and the future. Education directly correlates to higher wages, increased tax payment and lower risk for criminal behavior. Unfortunately we have neglected and underfunded education for so many decades that seemingly radical solutions look increasingly reasonable. I'm more than willing to spend my tax dollars on education that will generate tangible benefits for both people and society than on multi-billion dollar weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn't want or need, tax cuts for people who make more money per minute than the average American does in a year or the increasing militarization of our police forces. I don't think you're a monster. I think you're a caring individual who has a view of how the world works based on the era that you grew up in and on your personal circumstances. I simply don't think that those experiences are necessarily reflective of the way the world currently works or works outside your sphere. And that's not meant as an insult at all. We all have blinders based on our experiences. I absolutely do. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 21, 2019 14:00:59 GMT -5
... now they are using this possible hoax attack on/by actor Jussie Smollett as 'proof' the left is crooked and the mainstream media are their tool. We'll have to agree to disagree that there is any meaningful comparison between Ocasio-Cortez and Trump. Something like 80% of her media coverage is when she responds to yet another stupid childish transparent attack from the conservatives. But you are right on about a lot of things, especially about Jussie Smollett. It's weird how some guy I never heard of before has suddenly come to represent "THE LEFT," and because he may have engineered the attack on himself, the only possible conclusion is that TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! HA HA LEFTIES! |
|
|
|
Post by impulse on Feb 21, 2019 14:04:27 GMT -5
Not sure what I wrote is in conflict with your post. Your anecdote is exactly the type of situation I was referring to, where someone finds themself in desperate circumstances FOR A SEASON of their lives but eventually moves beyond that and becomes self-sufficient, either again or for the first time. As for her making too little money, I'd rather my tax dollars go to paying better salaries for teachers and soldiers rathet than giving them food assistance, but that's a whole different discussion. I'm not a monster, but I have no interest in providing childcare and college and all of the other promised freebies while also having to pay for them myself because I make "too much" to qualify. There's a reason I got the education I did and took out the loans (which I paid back, instead of expecting forgiveness) and why I get up at 5 AM every day to put in the hours and do the job I do, and it's so I can take care of my family, save for retirement, and eventually not have to do this grind every day, but somehow I'm the bad guy in this discussion. I don't think you're a monster at all. I was responding to what I perceived as you saying that there are a large number of people who are milking the system and just don't want to work. And while there are people who are like that, they are a very small minority of the people on assistance. And it has become increasingly hard for that to happen. My wife works for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, albeit in Child Protection, but the assistance people are in the same office. "Welfare Fraud" is rare. Food Stamp abuse is even more rare. It's one thing to say that people should just work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and all the other neat conservative talking points. It's another to actually look at what it takes for people to do that. For example the "childcare freebie". It's all well and good to say "Don't have kids if you can't afford them." It's also meaningless. We don't want to pay for preventative medical care that would help alleviate unwanted/unplanned pregnancies. We don't want people actually educated as to how to prevent them. But it's just magically supposed to happen. So then the choice is between staying home with the kids or finding childcare so you can work or go to school. Well, since the invisible hand of the market tells us that childcare is going to cost money the option, if you can't afford childcare is to not go to work or to school. But then you're a deadbeat. Or you can have less than reputable people watch the children...and then you end up in the legal system for not taking adequate care of the children. The college "freebie" is, at least in part, because the cost of education has increased (depending on location) at 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation since the early 1980s. Why? Because state legislatures and the federal government have decided that education isn't a priority, while tax breaks for corporations and the rich are a priority. As a result funding for education has plummeted, costs have skyrocketed well beyond inflation and we have a student loan situation that is rapidly becoming an actual crisis. Student loan debt has increased 157 percent in the last decade while auto loan debt has risen by only about 50 percent. The days when you could work part-time and go to school are long gone. When my son went to school at Boise State (not an expensive college) it would take a minimum-wage job of 50 hours per week to pay for tuition and room and board. By any reasonable measure education is as important to the nation as the infrastructure (which has also been neglected). An educated population is an investment in the nation and the future. Education directly correlates to higher wages, increased tax payment and lower risk for criminal behavior. Unfortunately we have neglected and underfunded education for so many decades that seemingly radical solutions look increasingly reasonable. I'm more than willing to spend my tax dollars on education that will generate tangible benefits for both people and society than on multi-billion dollar weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn't want or need, tax cuts for people who make more money per minute than the average American does in a year or the increasing militarization of our police forces. I don't think you're a monster. I think you're a caring individual who has a view of how the world works based on the era that you grew up in and on your personal circumstances. I simply don't think that those experiences are necessarily reflective of the way the world currently works or works outside your sphere. And that's not meant as an insult at all. We all have blinders based on our experiences. I absolutely do. Extremely well said and far better articulated than my fumbling attempts at explaining where I'm coming from. You am talk good. |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 21, 2019 14:13:56 GMT -5
Not sure what I wrote is in conflict with your post. Your anecdote is exactly the type of situation I was referring to, where someone finds themself in desperate circumstances FOR A SEASON of their lives but eventually moves beyond that and becomes self-sufficient, either again or for the first time. As for her making too little money, I'd rather my tax dollars go to paying better salaries for teachers and soldiers rathet than giving them food assistance, but that's a whole different discussion. I'm not a monster, but I have no interest in providing childcare and college and all of the other promised freebies while also having to pay for them myself because I make "too much" to qualify. There's a reason I got the education I did and took out the loans (which I paid back, instead of expecting forgiveness) and why I get up at 5 AM every day to put in the hours and do the job I do, and it's so I can take care of my family, save for retirement, and eventually not have to do this grind every day, but somehow I'm the bad guy in this discussion. I don't think you're a monster at all. I was responding to what I perceived as you saying that there are a large number of people who are milking the system and just don't want to work. And while there are people who are like that, they are a very small minority of the people on assistance. And it has become increasingly hard for that to happen. My wife works for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, albeit in Child Protection, but the assistance people are in the same office. "Welfare Fraud" is rare. Food Stamp abuse is even more rare. It's one thing to say that people should just work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and all the other neat conservative talking points. It's another to actually look at what it takes for people to do that. For example the "childcare freebie". It's all well and good to say "Don't have kids if you can't afford them." It's also meaningless. We don't want to pay for preventative medical care that would help alleviate unwanted/unplanned pregnancies. We don't want people actually educated as to how to prevent them. But it's just magically supposed to happen. So then the choice is between staying home with the kids or finding childcare so you can work or go to school. Well, since the invisible hand of the market tells us that childcare is going to cost money the option, if you can't afford childcare is to not go to work or to school. But then you're a deadbeat. Or you can have less than reputable people watch the children...and then you end up in the legal system for not taking adequate care of the children. The college "freebie" is, at least in part, because the cost of education has increased (depending on location) at 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation since the early 1980s. Why? Because state legislatures and the federal government have decided that education isn't a priority, while tax breaks for corporations and the rich are a priority. As a result funding for education has plummeted, costs have skyrocketed well beyond inflation and we have a student loan situation that is rapidly becoming an actual crisis. Student loan debt has increased 157 percent in the last decade while auto loan debt has risen by only about 50 percent. The days when you could work part-time and go to school are long gone. When my son went to school at Boise State (not an expensive college) it would take a minimum-wage job of 50 hours per week to pay for tuition and room and board. By any reasonable measure education is as important to the nation as the infrastructure (which has also been neglected). An educated population is an investment in the nation and the future. Education directly correlates to higher wages, increased tax payment and lower risk for criminal behavior. Unfortunately we have neglected and underfunded education for so many decades that seemingly radical solutions look increasingly reasonable. I'm more than willing to spend my tax dollars on education that will generate tangible benefits for both people and society than on multi-billion dollar weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn't want or need, tax cuts for people who make more money per minute than the average American does in a year or the increasing militarization of our police forces. I don't think you're a monster. I think you're a caring individual who has a view of how the world works based on the era that you grew up in and on your personal circumstances. I simply don't think that those experiences are necessarily reflective of the way the world currently works or works outside your sphere. And that's not meant as an insult at all. We all have blinders based on our experiences. I absolutely do. Nailed it. Again. Man, if I need a lawyer, you're my first call. |
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 21, 2019 15:07:41 GMT -5
Certain people in the political arena are working hard to equate socialism with Cuba or the USSR rather than with Sweden or Denmark. The problem is not socialism, it’s totalitarianism. On the flip side, a lot of the people in the U.S. waxing poetic about Sweden or Denmark fail to mention that they are very capitalist countries with far fewer regulations on their markets. They don't have that much money to throw around toward social programs without cutting back somewhere. Social democracies are however not hostile to capitalism; in fact, countries like Norway even have the gall to be oil-exploiting social democracies! (Oil! The progressive horror!) Norway is also rich as Uncle Scrooge McDuck, but is socially very leftie. Capitalism has a capital virtue (pun unintended): it can create wealth by using imaginary money. All the money that banks lend so we can build businesses and develop the economy is not just money that people put in their hands: it is money that is owed them, with interest. It is a very clever and very efficient system that bets on the future rather than just rely on the past. It would be foolish to get rid of it. Social democracies don't have a problem with capitalism. They just don't let unbridled capitalism call all the shots to maximize the profits of the few over the welfare of the many. Just a little redistribution, thanks to taxation and basic social services (like education and healthcare for all) makes for happier and more peaceful societies. It's not that capitalism is evil, but it is amoral; its function is to maximize profits, not make people's lives better. Money makes a good servant but is a bad master, as the saying goes. |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 21, 2019 15:12:11 GMT -5
New (and some old) dirty, NSFC* words:
socialism
social justice
redistribution
diversity
regulation
welfare
"for all"
changing demographics
climate
climate change
change
*Not Safe For Conservatives
|
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 21, 2019 15:39:58 GMT -5
On the flip side, a lot of the people in the U.S. waxing poetic about Sweden or Denmark fail to mention that they are very capitalist countries with far fewer regulations on their markets. They don't have that much money to throw around toward social programs without cutting back somewhere. Social democracies are however not hostile to capitalism; in fact, countries like Norway even have the gall to be oil-exploiting social democracies! (Oil! The progressive horror!) Norway is also rich as Uncle Scrooge McDuck, but is socially very leftie. Capitalism has a capital virtue (pun unintended): it can create wealth by using imaginary money. All the money that banks lend so we can build businesses and develop the economy is not just money that people put in their hands: it is money that is owed them, with interest. It is a very clever and very efficient system that bets on the future rather than just rely on the past. It would be foolish to get rid of it. Social democracies don't have a problem with capitalism. They just don't let unbridled capitalism call all the shots to maximize the profits of the few over the welfare of the many. Just a little redistribution, thanks to taxation and basic social services (like education and healthcare for all) makes for happier and more peaceful societies. It's not that capitalism is evil, but it is amoral; its function is to maximize profits, not make people's lives better. Money makes a good servant but is a bad master, as the saying goes. Let's add another bugaboo of mine (not that you said this RR, but your post is an easy jumping off point)...somewhere along the way, Americans (or at least a whole passel of them) decided that America is a "capitalist" country and that this is somehow mandated by or enshrined in the Constitution. And I know I'm probably pointing out the obvious to most of the people hereabouts but...it's nice to vent now and then. First capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. So there is nothing sacrosanct about capitalism as opposed any other economic system. Second, there is nothing about capitalism in the Constitution. America did not start out as a capitalist society. Given that capitalism, as we know it, developed in the U.K. around 1830 it would have been very difficult for it to be in the document largely drafted in 1788-89. And no...Mercantilism was not modern capitalism. I'll end my rant now. |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Feb 21, 2019 15:40:11 GMT -5
They've used the welfare cheats stuff up here successfully to win elections. I always am amazed by how comparative pennies to the obviously needy are so begrudged sometimes, it's pretty ludicrous, but they will think nothing of millions for a sports arena where people get injured far more than get healthy, and at least in ice hockey a lot of the players have tended to come from higher income families (hockey gear and transportation can cost a lot). We even have so-called public golf courses that are subsidized and have lower fees, talk about luxuries. Then there are the hugely expensive search and rescue helicopters for every twit who hikes off into the forest and skis or climbs and then gets in trouble, but no money for music or art in schools and class sized nearing forty kids. Anyway, it's all relative, but there are a lot of people who enjoy a lot of entitlements that never think about them, nor the opportunities they have that someone else might spend years just getting to the first door to try. It's amazing how many people have careers and jobs they got into because of family or friend of the same general class. The old born of third base and think they hit a triple thing. How they get the working class to relate to billionaires and their concerns over even their own is an amazing trick mostly played on themselves by the working class. Be like and learn from the top, know your own self-interest (Ayn Rand said too also). People vote against their own interests so much it is stunning, usually manipulated into some us vs. them thing (while the biggest rats are taking most of the cheese). Oh wait, I must "hate the rich". That's always a good one like the trickle down economics and simplistic regulations kill jobs laff-fests.   If you're not laughing you might be crying. Drain the swamp by giving power to lifelong conmen... yeeeowtch.  "Land of opportunity" sounds like a noble goal to me, not sure about sheer capitalism or growth economy, those two can trap, not empower. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 22, 2019 13:01:13 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Feb 22, 2019 14:56:25 GMT -5
I just see more polarization, more extremes... I have people ignoring me at some of the few other places I contribute to on the internet for not being left enough, and others whom I might wish would ignore me bully me on the pro-Trump side (and we're talking about outside political areas where we are talking tv or music or comics, they can't separate, I am 'siding with the enemy' somehow... and I don't want to call them the right, they aren't even that, except in the most stupid way possible). I am really sad after over two years of this, over three really from Trump announcing... I am not going to ever be for anything extreme and fighting with an enemy, and I don't like to be maneuvered into being reactionary.
Can't it be left to enable moderate voices? I feel shut up around militant 'you're either this or that' judgements. I don't keep track if I can help it of who is this label or that label, I don't want to think that way like it's always a simple us vs. them thing. I hope for people to be originals, I'm not part of a revolution or war, more like a would-be UN peacekeeper but seeing others outside the two polarizations shot at. You have to have minimum two parties, though I'm all for third parties and independents too. I've seen too much to truly believe in any politician, it's almost amusing to me there are people willing to do so whether it's Bernie Sanders or jeez, I don't even know what they have with the other party... Jeff Flake a bit before he left? Jeb Bush? Marco Rubio? Not much. I guess I am liking Cory Booker, but a true believer I could never be. Bill Bradley looked much better to me than the supposed chark and vision of Bill Clinton, also Michael Dukakis. There are a lot of western Democrats I think spend on some very stupid things bent on social engineering and their supposed superior moral values so I know not to trust some of them in charge of things completely (though next to religious lunatics or outright criminals even the most flawed Dem is preferable but what a crappy choice to make).
If you are going to pee on both barbecues I suppose one can expect to be punished... I'll just keep droning on at least partly about moderation and basics when and where I can. Give me boring, functional, no celebrity or personality, no grand visions for their legacy, experience, worked their way up, unattached to niche communities. I should go and collect plastic trash from the shore and try and tune out more it's a long election process you have down there, and the ramping up of bases seems to be starting in more earnest again. No chance to stick a knife in anywhere should be missed even if this makes things worse each cycle. Can anyplace be anything more ultimately than right or left dominated without simply banning politics? At a music forum that has a no politics rule I see people snipe covertly and reporting each others posts, and I even had a post about Devo removed when someone said they wore orange energy domes and I responded, "what no plastic yellow hair?" Devo had purple JFK hair for one album in the '80s. Anyway, it's eroding me slightly but is really causing some stress to others who tell me privately. This leads to the people who don't vote any more thing too I'm sure, the drop outs, not interested in politics, but so much of the negative stuff is not politics it's more like junior high cliqueish team sport stuff.
Thanks for the space to express here though, I do value it as so much else has been either more radicalized or just closed off to it!
Edited late to clean up a handful of awful typos.
|
|
|
|
Post by Jesse on Feb 23, 2019 21:21:51 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by impulse on Feb 26, 2019 13:20:32 GMT -5
|
|
