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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Again, both factors are relevant. Racial politics kept the New Deal from encompassing as broad a scope of economic equality as it could have, and the reactionary response to what policy changes were made gave rise to the anti-reforms of the 1970s that broke the steady cycle of real wage growth in the country.
I have opined in the past that maybe the reason why progressive, equality-focused reforms can't seem to take hold anywhere in the world is that they cause people to get complacent, allowing the people who have something to gain from inequality to seize power again. Regardless, it's no coincidence that the rise of the neoclassical economic paradigm in this nation came on the heels of the defection of the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party.
Those who would rule autocratically must first set people against each other, and the United States has a ready-made "Fight!" button in racial politics.
edited 22nd Aug '16 6:50:39 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"More or less. A pessimistic view of world political history since the dawn of agriculture is about rent-seekers doing what they do best and putting the rest of us in chains (though occasionally their moneymaking schemes yielded net public goods depending on the nature of the enterprise) until political pluralism developed.
The optimistic view is that pluralism is sticky. Much like the rent-seekers rarely lose their taste for power, so do "the people" (however broadly or narrowly enfranchised), so that once modern political pluralism started (England in the 1600s) it began to spread and is in no danger of going away completely, but it is definitely the case that the rent-seekers have more to gain from regressive policy than the masses have to lose from it: a 2% deceleration of wage growth is a lot, but on an individual level the pain is imperceptible, while the policy tradeoff could be a $200 billion payday for a handful of businesses in an oligopoly, they're going to fight a lot harder for that and the masses won't react until the pain becomes noticeable. Labor is as militant as it is because it is in their interest to be so (have to have a cause to continue to survive and draw member dues), but also because they know that somebody has to keep up the fight.
Adding to that, one of the most effective tools of conservatism is discrediting unions. It doesn't help that unions can themselves succumb to the trap of seeking to maintain the socioeconomic privileges of their members, which is a problem when that forms its own sort of identity politics and causes the unions to reject needed reforms. See, for example, police and teachers' unions.
edited 22nd Aug '16 7:09:17 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The GOP has come to embody the idea that straight, white, heterosexual, Christian men's way of life is under attack by women and minorities. That every group that isn't in the aforementioned description is a threat to "true American values". To that end, they have set themselves up as an existential threat to everyone else.
Democrats want a fair slice of the pie for everyone. Republicans want everyone else to starve to death so they'll stop whining about the pie. Trump's Republicans are eager to help them die out faster.
This is why many are paying more attention to this election cycle than they ever have before, why many Republicans are moving to the left in droves, and why there aren't many people defending Trump in this thread versus Hillary. Why even those of us who lean right tend to favor the Democrats these days. Because a lot of people here are acutely aware that a Donald Trump Presidency and the culture that he's already started to create in the United States would get a lot of Americans killed.
The GOP's favorite talking point is that Hillary Clinton got four Americans killed through negligence. Donald Trump is trying to get thousands, maybe even millions of Americans killed through malice.
edited 22nd Aug '16 8:06:16 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Never mind the deaths caused by inaction on climate change.
Krugman:
Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands, signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor anyone else has mentioned it. Heckuva job, Donnie!
But boorish, self-centered behavior is the least of it. By far the bigger issue is that even as Mr. Trump made a ham-handed (and cheapskate) effort to exploit Louisiana’s latest disaster for political gain, he continued to stake out a policy position that will make such disasters increasingly frequent.
Let’s back up for a minute and talk about the real meaning of the Louisiana floods.
In case you haven’t been keeping track, lately we’ve been setting global temperature records every month. Remember when climate deniers used to point to a temporary cooling after an unusually warm year in 1998 as “proof” that global warming had stopped? It was always a foolish, dishonest argument, but in any case we’ve now blown right through all past records.
And one consequence of a warmer planet is more evaporation, more moisture in the air, and hence more disastrous floods. As always, you can’t say that climate change caused any particular disaster. What you can say is that warming makes extreme weather events more likely, so that, for example, what used to be 500-year floods are now happening on an almost routine basis.
So a proliferation of disasters like the one in Louisiana is exactly what climate scientists have been warning us about.
What can be done? The bad news is that drastic action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases is long overdue. The good news is that the technological and economic basis for such action has never looked better. In particular, renewable energy — wind and solar — has become much cheaper in recent years, and progress in energy storage looks increasingly likely to resolve the problem of intermittency (The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.)
Or to put it a different way, we face a clear and present danger, but we have the means and the knowledge to deal with that danger. The problem is politics — which brings us back to Mr. Trump and his party.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that when it comes to climate change, as with so many issues, Mr. Trump has gone deep down the rabbit hole, asserting not just that global warming is a hoax, but that it’s a hoax concocted by the Chinese to make America less competitive.
The thing is, he’s not alone in going down that rabbit hole. On other issues Republicans may try to claim that their presidential nominee doesn’t speak for the party that nominated him. We’re already hearing claims that Mr. Trump isn’t a true conservative, indeed that he’s really a liberal, or anyway that liberals are somehow responsible for his rise. (My favorite theory here, one that has quite a few advocates, is that I personally caused Trumpism by being nasty to Mitt Romney.)
But when it comes to denial of climate change and the deployment of bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away the evidence, Mr. Trump is squarely in the Republican mainstream. He may be talking nonsense, but anyone his party was likely to nominate would have been talking pretty much the same nonsense.
It’s interesting to ask why climate denial has become not just acceptable but essentially required within the G.O.P. Yes, the fossil-fuel sector is a big donor to the party. But the vehemence of the hostility to climate science seems disproportionate even so; bear in mind that, for example, at this point there are fewer than 60,000 coal miners, that is, less than 0.05 percent of the work force. What’s happening, I suspect, is that climate denial has become a sort of badge of right-wing identity, above and beyond the still-operative motive of rewarding donors.
In any case, this election is likely to be decisive for the climate, one way or another. President Obama has made some serious moves to address global warming, and there’s every reason to believe that Hillary Clinton would continue this push — using executive action if she faced a hostile Congress. Given the technological breakthroughs of the last few years, this push might just be enough to avert disaster. Donald Trump, on the other hand, would do everything in his power to trash the planet, with the enthusiastic support of his party. So which will it be? Stay tuned.
edited 22nd Aug '16 8:08:15 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Dumping it in a vat of bleach should work, I'd imagine.
I'm glad no Trumpster has called me, but if they were to try, I'd be terribly glad to give them what for over the phone.
Incidentally, I donated to the Red Cross relief effort in Louisiana, using my company's matching program. I encourage everyone else who can spare some money to do so.
They'll robo-call cell phones, even though it's illegal in most states. The hassle of reporting it to the authorities is too much for most people.
Edited to add: I love it when someone calls me and tries to sell me something and I tell them that I'm on the Do Not Call list and ask if they have a prior business relationship with me. They hang up so fast...
edited 22nd Aug '16 8:21:10 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Interestingly enough the Republicans can't even hold onto many Chirsitan voters, devote Catholics are going Democrat for the first time, many liberal Christian Churches will lean Democrat as well. The pie is getting so narrow that even many who logically should be part of the in group are getting forced out.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt was never very "logical" for mainstream Christian denominations to fall in with Republican doctrine. Given that Jesus preached charity and compassion, the idea that this would lead to rejecting sexual equality and worshipping the meritocratic pursuit of wealth seems bizarre. Given what we know of how this came to be, it's rather ironic that Marx called religion the "opiate of the masses" shortly before the reactionary conservatives began using it for exactly that. It's like they read his works and said, "Hey, that's a great idea! Thanks Karl!"
Of course, evangelical Christianity has been hard-right reactionary since its inception, but the emphasis on Calvinist doctrine is relatively recent — it was adopted as part of the backlash against the New Deal. Anti-abortion activism is even newer; it was fanned into flames by the reactionary movement of the seventies as part of the plan to pull Dixiecrats into the Republican fold.
edited 22nd Aug '16 8:30:48 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm of the opinion that for the Republic to survive long-term, the the Modern GOP must be destroyed, by ANY means necessary, at the Federal, State, and Local level. When your party is literally a threat to human civilization (climate change), it's time for you to fucking go.
New Survey coming this weekend!![]()
Man I wonder how some American Christians would react to the story of Jesus chasing the money lenders out of the temple with a whip.
edited 22nd Aug '16 8:34:16 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.” ~ CyranReally? I am going to need strong sources on that. They have developed an uncomfortable overlap (the KKK wasn't just a racist group, anti-Catholic sentiment was also a core aspect) but a causal relationship is implausible.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanNo, evangelical Christianity has been around since the country's founding — it was, in fact, imported by the very "pilgrims" that were among our first permanent colonists. These were folks who were exiled from Britain for religious extremism. Fundamentally, it's an apocalyptic cult (ironically, much like Daesh/ISIL) that believes that the Lord's Kingdom on Earth is coming Real Soon Now™ and it's their sacred duty to usher mankind to meet that time with hearts prepared to accept Jesus — by force if necessary.
It certainly overlaps with racism, but more as a coincidence than anything embedded in original doctrine. (There are plenty of evangelical black congregations.) What happened was that there was a confluence of poor white evangelicals who were also racists, with preachers slinging white supremacy along with hellfire and damnation. You could go to church on Sunday mornings to pray for the salvation of the Earth and spend your Sunday nights burning crosses at black churches without any cognitive dissonance.
edited 22nd Aug '16 9:06:36 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In my mother's case, she's a Single-Issue Wonk - that issue being abortion. Seeing as she was adopted back in the '60s (prior to Roe v. Wade), I can pretty easily see why she holds that position, even if I don't agree with it, but it's led her to vote for George W. before, due to aforementioned stance.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Interesting article on what in my opinion is by far the biggest danger of Trump's campaign: The possibility that he won't concede defeat at the end of the day.
Whether he realizes it or not, his rhetoric is undermining the legitimacy of the democratic process.
edited 22nd Aug '16 9:14:21 AM by CaptainCapsase
Discussion of factual reality is not a circlejerk. But since you insist, Maddowblog's Monday Morning Campaign Roundup:
- Donald Trump’s first television ad of the general election focuses on immigrants and refugees, but according to a Politico report
, as recently as the middle of last week, Trump aides determined their first spot would be devoted to “an economic message.” It’s unclear exactly who changed the plan the next day.
- David Nierenberg, the former chairman of Mitt Romney’s national finance committee, is the latest Republican to throw his support
to Hillary Clinton.
- There’s some question
in Indiana as to whether or not former Sen. Evan Bayh (D), hoping to reclaim his old Senate seat, still has an active voter registration in the state.
- Evan McMullin, running a conservative independent presidential candidacy, as reportedly qualified
for the ballot in Iowa and Louisiana. He’s also slated to appear on the ballot in Colorado and Utah.
- On a related note, Green Party nominee Jill Stein tried to get on the presidential ballot in Georgia, but she appears to have come up short
.
- After complaining about a local story published in Naples, Florida congressional candidate Dan Bongino (R) “went on a screaming, profanity-laced tirade Sunday during a telephone call” with Politico yesterday
.
- For the first time since its launch in 1993, Wired magazine is making a presidential endorsement and will support Clinton. “For all the barbs aimed at Clinton … she is the only candidate who can assess the data, consult with the people who need to be heard, and make decisions that she can logically defend,” editor in chief Scott Dadich wrote
.
- Don’t be too surprised if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) faces a primary rival in 2018. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) expressed
some interest last week, and said he’s received encouragement from “a lot of people.”
Incidentally, that Trump ad casts eerie echoes of one done a few decades back in California that portrayed immigrants as ravaging hordes streaming across our borders and helped get Ronald Reagan elected governor.
Yes, the article makes the point that whether Trump could mount a successful challenge to the legitimacy of the election is not the issue; rather, it's that he's succeeding in damaging many voters' faith in the process itself.
edited 22nd Aug '16 9:18:24 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Fighter - it's a *little* more complicated than that. Puritianism died out well before the 1800s though it left its traces. Catholics and Quakers were also among the religious groups to flee Brittian for religious reasons (to Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively) and though the old Quaker society had some repressive aspects they were big in the abolitionist movement and their modern incarnation is pretty harmless.
I want to say that what we know as religious fundamentilists today were more directly descended from the stewpot of revivalist movements and branching sects that came in waves through the mid 17- to 1800s, Millerisim
being a major one. I'm working from a somewhat sketchy memory though.
I believe that you are basically correct; however, what's important is that early America formed a breeding ground for religious radicalism, as you had all these relatively isolated groups able to form mini-cults without much in the way of government interference.
It feels to me like yet another case of the urban-rural divide causing problems, as cities tend to be cosmopolitan and it's much harder to form closed epistemic systems when you're mixing with people of all different races, religions, and economic classes on a daily basis.
edited 22nd Aug '16 9:40:15 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And it should be noted this is not something they really touch on in schools. Greg Proops had a good stand-up routine about how pilgrims are presented in school curriculum vs. what really went down.

In the end, it always comes down to racial politics. The era of stark political polarization, with people so firmly split between "left" and "right" with an ever shrinking middle ground, began with Civil Rights in the sixties and seventies, and was fanned into flame by Ronald Reagan and later Fox News. There really is no comparable phenomenon on the left.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"