08-07-2016, 01:13 AM
(08-01-2016, 06:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:I'm viewing the same world as you. I assume that we currently live in the same world. A highly adaptive and changing world that no one is capable of controlling because of all the freedoms and access to alternate forms of information and alternate avenues of opportunity that we have today. I hate to burst your bubble but if you come out of this election with less taxpayers and more liberal charity cases with more issues and problems that will require more financial resources in order to support and maintain, you lost as far as this election is concerned. What's diminishing within your ranks? Why is the workingman horse that the Democrats have been used to riding on for years diminishing? You have problems Bob, tens times more problems than the problem that exist on the right. You're living in echo chamber. This place is a very clear example of a liberal echo chamber. I get the impression that you don't stray very far from liberal echo chambers. A liberal place that echoes the notion that their values are the best even though they've been proven to be unable hold up against the strength and resilience mine. Drawing conclusions based on the Democratic past while ignoring the obvious differences that exist today. I consider myself fortunate to not be emotionally tied to one political party or one politic candidate.(08-01-2016, 03:34 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Trump has been talking about the fading and failure that we'll be experiencing as a nation in the future unless we make certain changes now. He's right. We all see the decline that's coming. Progressives view the decline as their opportunity to rise above and impose their values. If one is willing to ignore and support ignoring, one who is judging must assume that is your goal.
If one buys into the Reagan memes, that the government is so flawed and corrupt that all it does is failure, that low tax small government is the way to go, you can see how Trump's projections might seem meaningful and potentially accurate.
Those buying into the progressive ideas are echoing the New Deal notions that coming together from the common good is beneficial. They want a return to the rewarding policies of the 1950s and 1960s when the crisis values of working together for the common man made America great.
I see you locked into the Reagan Memes. Not surprising. They've been hammered home for decades now, and voting for tax cuts gives such an immediate return that it's tempting. Thus, you're going to stick with the Reagan Memes and project the future as if they were true.
But the Reagan Memes have been driven way way beyond the point of diminishing return. There can be governments that try to do too much, and governments that try to do to little, and we've been pushing way too far in the too little direction during this extended unravelling. Time to move back to the center. I expect that if we do start moving back to an effective engaged government, we will move too far. Any time a party takes control it will push it's memes to far and too long. While its a concern, it might take us a decade plus to reach that point. Believe it or not, I half expect to start pushing the Reagan memes myself many years in the future. Leave any party in power too long and they will take their ideas too far. If the S&H cycles or something like them continues, another unravelling will eventually come, and Reagan's time may return. For the moment, though, we have unravelled quite enough, thank you.
Meanwhile, Republican borrow and spend economics has been discredited. Bush 41's career died with 'It's the economy, stupid', and Bush 43 drove the economy into collapse. Republican Bush 43 neo-con serial unilateral preemptive nation building has been discredited as a foreign policy. The troops are home and won't be going abroad in numbers at any time soon. Nixon's southern strategy's success has been diminishing. With an ever more diverse electorate and increasing tolerance, playing the race card in Nixon's vicious hateful way has become a more desperate and risky ploy. Trump is giving it one more go. We'll see where it takes him. Obama Care has shown that big government projects can benefit the common man. The Republican projections that it would fail proved false. Obama Care has been a positive for Hillary.
If one has one's eyes open, recent history says a lot to suggest Trump is playing to a diminished remnant who are still clinging to the unravelling world view and values. That diminished remnant is still mighty. It is not to be ignored. It is, however, diminished and diminishing.
We look at the world through different lenses. To me it seems like you are living in an echo chamber. You can't see the blatantly obvious. I suspect you see me exactly the same way. This is human nature. It is easy to see what reaffirms one's values and hard to see reality when it conflicts with one's values. Thus, meaningful conversations between partisans on opposite extremes are rare to impossible. It seems easier for a human to pull out a gun and a bomb to fight for one's principles than it is to honestly reevaluate one's principles. Destruction is often embraced sooner than Truth.
In 2008 and 2012 on these forums, as the elections approached, the partisans on both sides got ever more partisan. Most were projecting victory for their own values and party and heaped scorn on the other guys. We seem to be falling into that rut again. In the last few months since the new forums opened I've gotten drawn into pushing the Blue partisan points. I'm not sure how necessary this is. There are enough Blue partisans about without one more. Still, I like to think I put a different if still left handed spin on things.
But I don't know how much more is left to be said this side of November. November will bring a reality check that even the most partisan can't ignore.