Wounded Bear
Wounded Bear's JournalLot of truth in these posts about him favoring the 1%, but i think it's simpler than that...
The 2016 Presidential run looks like it could be another Repub bloodbath. They're scrambling to find someone, anyone with an R after their name to make it look like '16 might be competitive. If it ain't competitive, people won't watch their coverage. If people don't watch, ad revenue goes down and they lose money.
Perry's just the latest fool they've latched onto. Remember 2012. It seemed like every cycle in the primary season, the R's had a new 'front runner.' It was like they were testing to find someone who was competitive. In the end, the Pres race was pretty predictable.
Right now it's about future ratings IMHO. As of now, I have a feeling most people are in IDGAF mode about presidential politics, and ratings are sucking because of it. In the other thread it points out how Sunday morning talk shows are losing ratings and posits it's because of too many Repubs on the air. Possible, but maybe people are just getting tired of all the faux outrage and extremist bullshit.
No matter what they say...
Conservatives of the current stripe do not believe in individual rights. After all, individual rights allow people to make decisions, decisions which, in their minds, are better left to those in authority.
All governments, to a greater or lesser degree, are authoritarian. In "democratic" countries, it is supposedly the "people" who choose whom they allow to have authority in political matters. The US is rapidly losing this, and replacing our secular government with one based on religious dogma is not a proper goal. Conservatives who doubt that corporate America won't exploit this decision for profit are delusional, and one only has to look at one's local mega-chruches and the proliferation of televangelism on the airwaves to see how religion can be exploited for profit. The unholy alliance forged between religious fanatics and big corporate interests has been growing since Reagan and before. There are signs of rifts, but it's still there.
Some faith-based organizations realize, as shown by the piece linked in the OP, that if the government becomes religious-based and/or linked, that not all faiths will benefit. After all, believers tend to believe that they have the "answers" and often think that others will benefit if forced to follow them. Any knowledge of history whatsoever will support that truth.
America has never been a true democracy...
Just reading the Constitution will tell one that. We are a Republic, with some democratic ideas thrown in. A study of US History will reveal how the ebb and flow of politics has led to several sudden increases of "democratic ideals" alternating with periods of increasing plutocracy.
The Constitution itself has major protections for minority interests, and by that I don't mean races or cultural groups so much as monied interests and the political power of the states. The Founders were comprised of two main groups. There was the landed gentry of the South and the businessmen of the North, two groups so at odds on economics and social issues that the Civil War which occurred some 80 years later was nearly inevitable. The Southern 'gentlemen' preferred a return to a somewhat idealized, bucolic version of English lordship and landed privilege, based on slave labor. The Northern businessmen preferred the rough and tumble of commerce, with many of them having been engaged in what the British government considered smuggling. With few exceptions, the Founding Fathers were not enamored with democracy at all, and constructed a govenment that they thought would protect their interests.
The problem I have always had with the Tea Partiers in general is that by their actions, they have supported and furthered the very group that the original protesters fought against, that being the corporate/government proto-fascism that was British mercantilist policy. Note that the original Tea Party was performed against the East India Tea Company, which had a near stranglehold on Parliament of its day and controlled politics in Britain in ways that the Nazis of the mid 20th Century would be proud of. If any of them really knew their history, they would be ashamed. But of course shame is not really an emotion they waste a lot of time on. Unfortunately, their leaders know their history and are quite willing to exploit their ignorance to their own advantage.
Hatred of the Jews has a long standing history in Europe...
much of it stemming from the Middle Ages and not yet totally resolved. We thought that maybe the horrors of WWII would "cure" it, but apparently not. As was pointed out above, during times of economic stress people dredge up old hatreds as they look for someone to blame. Invariably, of course, they pick the wrong people to blame and hate.
Here in the US, we don't have as much blatant anti-semitism, since other groups are more obvious and easy to target. The Jews are at least sort of white and blend in. Our racists won't bother much with them until they get over their hatred of people with a skin color that makes them easier to spot.
People are tribal by nature, and it takes an effort to get over the fear of the "other" in whatever form that may take. Conservatives tend to be less interested in making that effort than liberals IMHO.
Interesting question re: Bergdahl exchange...
So, I was listening to Stephaine Miller this morning and a RWer got through on the phone. This guy insisted that the 5 Taliban folks who were traded in the exchange should not have been, and his logic seemed to be that since this wasn't a "war" because Congress didn't declare war, that they were not "prisoners of war" and weren't eligible for exchange because of that.
So, my question is: If those guys weren't POWs because we 'weren't at war,' doesn't that mean that Bergdahl also wasn't a POW?
I know they're trying to paint him as a traitor and/or deserter now, but hey, they seem to try to bend the argument in any way they want, to justify their hypocrisy.
Interesting thought experiment...
I think, though, that if this kind of separatism was allowed, the country would have splintered long ago. There is something to be said about forcing people to live with others that differ from them in social and political ways.
Here in the real state of Washington, we have our own "separatist" movement that isn't very strong, TBH. Western Washington is where the bulk of the population is concentrated, aligning with three of the largest cities, Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett, along with the capitol, Olympia. Eastern Washington, and large parts of South West Washington are largely "red" areas that vote Republican and follow the 'conservative values' crowd. There are always murmurs about the balance of power and partition, but nothing really meaningful has come of it. The same could be said of the California situation, I think, though the fact that they actually got a motion on the ballot in a few counties says that it could be bubbling into something.
The fact remains that forming a new state is almost impossible per the US Constitution, as it requires the agreement of the State and the Congress. The one time a state was partitioned, the state government at the time was a bit 'indisposed' as it were, being in active secessionist rebellion. IIRC there was a lawsuit after the fact, but it failed. 
On burning fossil fuels...
If you really think about it, 'modern' use of fossil fuels is really just the same old thing people have been doing for thousands of years, burning something to release the chemical energy it contains, while releasing all manner of toxic fumes and pollutants. From that perspective, we haven't improved much from when the first cave men ran over and grabbed the burning shards of a tree struck by lightning.
The technology of how we do the burning has changed, and the choice of fuels has changed, but really it's the same old shit. Most of the 'improvements' have been more for economic reasons, and thus have usually been the simplest and least expensive of changes, not the most efficient and certainly not the most creative.
We need to get on renewables, and quickly. Frankly, there is technology out there that would do most of that, but we don't for 'economic' reasons, which is to say, that the large powerful interests in fossil fuels won't let us do anything on a meaningful basis.
http://sutz12.blogspot.com/
I sometimes wonder if some of these initiatives are false flag efforts...
Proposing a min-wage that is too high will not pass muster any more than too low. People are not that stupid, and most recognize that there are limits to what can be done in a practical sense. This was one of those IMHO.
It's why I don't necessarily support the national movement to $15 dollars that has been in the news lately. I do support the $10 movement in Congress, and would like to see it as high as $12 within 5 years, but $15 is a bit much. Local efforts based on local conditions, I can see higher numbers being reasonable, but not nationally.
Initiatives like this can have a chilling effect when they fail. It's hard to get another more reasonable suggestion on the ballot once that occurs. It's like health care, where it seems we couldn't get anything even proposed more than once in a generation.
A simplified, but accurate description IMHO...
A corollary I've played with is the human body.
If you think of a society or a nation as a human body, then the economy, being the circulation and distribution of goods and services, is the circulatory system and money is the blood.
In times of stress, the body naturally directs and re-directs blood flow to compensate. Generally that means that vital organs are supplied at the expense of the extremities. Our current economic system is like having a one-way tourniquet on one area of the body, which gets bloated and oversupplied with blood and nutrients, while the rest of the organism slowly deteriorates and rots away.
It boils down to the basic idea of what an economy is and what it is supposed to "do." To the wealthy, the economy is their source of wealth and power. To the poor, it is a matter of survival.
The support of the Founding Fathers for true democracy...
is largely overstated in most history books. The American Revolution, like most revolutions, was initiated and operated by what we would consider to be the middle class these days. That's one reason the Constitution is set up like it is, to suppress the power of the democratic masses and prevent them, in their eyes, from voting themselves "rich."
I'm sure many of the FF would be appalled at the looming corporate power extant today. After all, they were quite cognizant that what they were really fighting, beyond the British Crown, was the East India Company, a model for the modern multi-national corporation subverting national government for their own profits. For many, it was a selfish decision. After all, the laws that triggered the Revolution were largely of the economic sanction types that boosted EIC profits and made life much harder for the local merchants, in effect stifling their avenues to more profits.
With the possible exception of Jefferson and Madison-who certainly had their differences-the idea of increasing or widening democracy was anathema to most of the FF. If you look at it closely, the Constitution is really just a stronger version of the Articles of Confederation, and was opposed by many of the same folks that would oppose it today. For all its beauty of composition, it is incredibly weak in many areas.
The use of racism and divide and conquer are SOP for governments, religious orders, hell for your Homeowners Association. Any entity interested in wresting and maintaining control over others' actions will be at least tempted to go there. Humans are naturally tribal in nature. We cooperate with our tribe and resist the other. The first order of business is to define what separates "us" from "them." Skin color is easy. Religious differences can be more difficult to point out, but it's still effective. The best defense, and their worst nightmare, is getting people to realize that "they" are more or less just like "us."
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Kent, WA
Member since: Thu Aug 27, 2009, 08:55 PM
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