7.21.2018

Over the last couple of weeks.

The D's

Broken
You can't compromise with the current American right. You have to defeat it. Anyone in Congress who doesn't understand that yet needs to retire and take up crossword puzzles. Since 1994 the Republicans have operated on the principle of "No compromises, oppose and obstruct at every opportunity using any tools available" because they realize (Democratic strategists, pay attention here) nobody gives a flying fuck about "optics" or bipartisanship – your party's base wants to see you win. Period. Don't lose politely – win. Get results. The GOP gets results. Democrats lose and sit around complaining that the GOP isn't playing nice and fair and how history will vindicate them.

Yep. R's play to win, fuck the rules. Ds don't. Establishment and Clinton Ds need to get the fuck out of the way.


Socialism

Democratic Socialism that is.
Socialism reveals that capitalism — a system which privileges markets over community — is not a natural truth, but a political choice to which there are alternatives. It shows that Jeff Bezos’s wealth cannot be understood as unrelated to the plight of Amazon’s workers, but is a consequence of their hardships. It reveals one man’s merit to be another woman’s wage theft, and challenges society to value humans outside of our ability to toil. It’s what sets up Ocasio-Cortez to talk about human dignity as non-negotiable. Where Nancy Pelosi quips, “we’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is,” socialism says that’s not good enough.

Life

Steve Randy Waldman on Authority


Trump Voters

This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson
Understood in those terms, the idea that Trumpism is “populist” seems misplaced. Populism is a belief in the right of ordinary people, rather than political insiders, to rule. Trumpism, by contrast, operates on the presumption that ordinary people aren’t going to get any chance to rule no matter what they do, so they might as well piss off the political insiders using the only tool left available to them: the vote.
This seems right on the money to me. Here in eastern Indiana Teabaggistan, many (most?) Trump voters I know see the system as corrupt, broken, and generally not helping the local people. No matter how they voted, the area economies continued to collapse, drug use soared, small towns emptied as the kids left for the big cities. The mid-west, small-town life was being destroyed before their eyes. Fox propaganda piped-in the message that it was all other peoples fault, the big city liberals, the media, DC and California, Hollywood, brown people, the people who wanted to take their guns away, etc. The people here believed it and basically voted a great big "Fuck You" to the system.

Oh, and it didn't help that the Ds decided to run the poster-child of the anti-gun liberal, media, DC and California, Hollywood, and brown people against Trump. It made the voters choice pretty easy really.


Books

Surround your kids with books. The Way You Read Books Says A Lot About Your Intelligence, Here’s Why


Class

On Class Separation - At one time the working class were in the same building or city as the management/owners/decision makers but with the growth of the global corporation, the workers are in some low-tax, rural backwater while the owners, often just a finance group, sip wine somewhere far-far-away.

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