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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
We've been over this before, but the idea that "both sides are equally corrupt" is a cheap excuse to throw your hands up and abandon the political system, when that's exactly the problem that's keeping us from getting things done.
Also, the roles of the parties pre- and post-slavery have been remarkably consistent. You just have to look at it from the right perspective. Republicans stand up for the interests of business and wealth, while Democrats adopt a populist agenda. It happens that around the time of the Civil War, the big Northern industrial concerns wanted slavery abolished so they could have access to cheap labor and because they recognized it as an ultimately doomed economic system. Democrats, on the other hand, were all about the "will of the people", which meant that they were dominated by pro-slavery, pro-status quo interests.
What happened, of course, was that the late 19th century industrial boom started to have deleterious effects on quality of life, causing those same populist Democrats to stand up against the big business interests who were trying to turn the nation into an oligarchy run by industrialists. This became manifest in the New Deal, which very nearly didn't happen because of the still-entrenched racist views of Democratic voters. Populist anger against the wealthy for causing the Great Depression was too strong, though.
Come the 1960s and the Civil Rights era, those racist, Southern whites had finally had enough of the Democratic party and were lured across to the Republican fold, helped by the very public adoption of evangelical, Calvinist trappings by the elite, which were designed to suborn the Democrats' popular base by turning religion against them. It worked, spectacularly, but also set the stage for the collapse of the modern Republicans.
You see, the Republican elite — the "establishment" — was always founded on Serious Ideas: big thinkers who put on a show of being for "the good of all" but were really just trying to keep the wealthy in their proper place of power. But the defection of the Southern Democrats created a major schism in the party: these folks weren't interested in high-minded theories. They wanted blacks put in their place, God enshrined in government, and hated the trappings of "larnin'". The know-nothings began to tug away at Republican intellectualism, because they had to be pandered to in order to stay in power, which naturally resulted in the people in charge of the party becoming True Believers rather than cynics. And here we are today, with the True Believers, totally immune to logic and evidence, having a death grip on the party.
I challenge anyone to find an equivalent on the Democrats' side.
edited 26th Jul '15 9:13:19 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"True Believer equivalents on the Democratic side have been actively drummed out since the early 80s. The Neoliberal consensus put the third way in power, but the evidence of the third way not really working has shifted things back in a left-wing bent but without the crazies, who have long since been put out to pasture and will take a long time to work their way back into the party.
I'd like to point out that a party being corrupt and a party being extremist are two different things. Someone could easily believe that both parties are equally corrupt, and still favor the Democrats because they're less extreme. Or alternately, they could favor the Republicans because anti-government policies (supposedly) dilute the effect of political corruption.
I do think Democrats are less corrupt, although the gap between the two isn't nearly as wide as many liberals would like to claim it is. And I'd definitely have reservations about supporting the Democrats in the act of a total collapse of the Republicans, given that.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)Trump is still ahead in the Republic polls? If he's actually nominated, the Democrats better win.
I'm trying to ignore him, but it's so tempting to snark about him that I feel like I'm wasting self-control supply by resisting. Self control is limited supply.
As I have banned myself from popcorn, I'm preparing cups of tea over which I shall snort over while failing to not read about Trump's antics.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.Its not like the Dems are any better when you've got a self avowed socialist(happy now?
) the man who ran Baltimore and Maryland into the ground, and a lady who dodges the press and has been implacated in multiple scandals as well as having been part of the least transparent Administration in recent history.
Sanders is like the Democrat version of Rand Paul. Neither of those two should even get near the white house.
Given that, neither side seems very appealing to vote for.
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It was just a bit of jest. Conversation was getting way to serious.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:05:04 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.Bernie Sanders is a socialist, not a communist. In this context, it means the level of socialism you see in western Europe, not the USSR.
And if you think that that's "just as bad" then, well, I don't know what to tell you, other than that maybe a case should be made for why it's "just as bad" instead of just accepting it as fact.
Who are those? Because all I know of are the honest Socialist (which is a totally different thing from a Communist) and the former Secretary of State who's had Republicans throw several fabricated scandals at her over the years and who has recently been refusing to play the press' stupid games.
If you have any actual facts to back up your claims I'd be interest to here them.
Edit: Nope still not happy, maybe you shodul explain why being a Socialist is an inherently bad thing?
edited 26th Jul '15 10:52:27 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAlthough, I think this is a pretty good point of why the Cult of Centrism is so damaging. Because if you did nothing but watch the media, this is pretty much the viewpoint that you would get. Hillary is painted as scandal ridden, Bernie is painted alternately as "an actual contender for the nomination" or "a dirty communist" (depending on whether we're focusing on the horse-race or not), and so on.
It can be difficult for most people to read between the lines, especially because "Read between the lines!" is the same rallying cry the crazies spit out to get you to believe their conspiracy theories. And, frankly, discussing the actual facts behind the situation is way too time consuming for most people.
All that being said, the "we need an autocrat" line is a bit trollish, so I'm not sure how seriously to take things at this point.
edited 26th Jul '15 10:55:40 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
The reason why socialism works in a place like Sweden is because they don't have nearly 320 million fierecly independent Anericans to apply it to.
Also, some people find it humiliating to rely on the government for everything.
I know my parents did when my father got laid off in '05, they had to apply for food stamps and the whole free/reduced lunch thing for me and my little brother at school.
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right then lemme fix up the post.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:32:19 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.Again because the Right has done an incredible job of making it seem like a bad idea. I used to feel the exact same way when I lived off food stamps and had free lunch at school. Wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized that the whole pulling oneself up with your bootstraps thing is utter bullshit.
And there's literally no reason it couldn't work here. The costs scale with population, yes but so does tax income and ability to cover it.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:27:54 AM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?
If that is the case, there shouldn't be any poor or homeless people in America because surely the richest country on earth wouldn't have poverty.
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Poverty will always exsist regardless of how much money is thrown at it. I'm pretty sure that there are poor and homeless people even in Europe.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:42:43 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.You would think but the rich tend to do a very good job at hoarding their money. That's why we support socialism. There's no excuse for the amount of poverty we face as a nation.
edit: You see similar things with housing and food. America has enough to supply every single person with them but we don't because giving people handouts is seen as evil.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:39:46 AM by Kostya
See, part of the problem is that we have a culture that decides to make it embarrasing to live on government assistance. That's part of the problem. The fact that that culture exists is not indicative that having a certain level of government assistance is a bad thing.
In fact, the fact that your parents accepted the benefits despite that stigma shows that the benefits are worthwhile, outweighing the stigma attached to them.
So, not a very good argument against social programs.
Only because they had to. I'm pretty sure my father would've eaten his own heart out instead of applying but his kids came first. That's the only reason why as far as I'm aware.
To say its an elephant in the living room is like saying the Sahara is full of sand.
edited 26th Jul '15 11:47:58 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.

@Skycobra Quick check, out of the crazy nuts you listed for both sides, which side has many of them be influential and powerful figures with the party, instead of say minor nuts regulated to local influence and internet screaming?
Also "Democrats" don't do anything, you're taking a massive segment of the population and saying "they do this" based on little to no evidence, you know, the same way that the few fools who say "all republicans are racist" do.
And yeah you're aware that the political parties flipped sides on racism/slavery after Nixon and the Southern Strategy right?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran