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Thread: Political/Cultural Chit-Chat

  1. #361
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    As somebody pointed out last night, these kids all come from very wealthy families. They already had all the advantages in the world. Whether they go to USC or some place else isn't going to make an iota of difference in their lives
    Apparently the attraction to the parents, right or wrong, is the life-long networking and prestige benefits they think their kids will have from attending and getting a degree from a famous, prestigious university. Ross Douthat has written a lot about that.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  2. #362
    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    As somebody pointed out last night, these kids all come from very wealthy families. They already had all the advantages in the world. Whether they go to USC or some place else isn't going to make an iota of difference in their lives
    I teach this same concept to my kids...


  3. #363
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    That's my point.

    And uteopia, as an employer I've frequently sacrificed personally to keep people employed through hard times, allowed extra time off for illness of themselves or family members, done what is best for the customer at a cost to myself, etc.

    The truth is while there are always going to be bad actors, the vast majority of the economy is powered by small and medium-sized businesses who do just that and that is powered by capitalism too. In short, what I do is done by executives big and small all the time.

    And whether your like it or not, you and AOC are benefactors of capitalism. There is something strange about the most prosperous nation on earth at any time having people complain about what go them there on devices most people in the world don't have (globally we are the 1%).

    Meanwhile this prosperity forces corporations to be competitive with their employees with enhanced benefits like unlimited time off, meals, in house exercise facilities and daycare, paid maternity leave for both mothers and fathers, stock options, and even allotted time to do whatever they want.

    That is the reality of employment for many people today.

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    I don't doubt that many employers do what you do. I also don't doubt that I have benefitted from it. I'm suggesting that for many people, AOC's description of capitalism, correct or not, is what they see.

    What people see is that the 6 top executives from United Healthcare (my insurer) had compensation in 2017 ranging from a low of $7.5 million to a high of $18 million, while I pay $1k per month for coverage and many people cannot afford any health insurance. They also see IHC, my wife's former employer, cap nurses hourly rates over 10 years ago at $40 per hour, while significantly increasing the patient to nurse ratio (which adversely impacts the patient and employee), requiring nurses to work mandatory on-call shifts to cover shortages during certain time frames, automatically deducting 30 minutes for lunch from the paycheck whether the nurse actually takes the break or not, significantly increasing the employee cost for health insurance (provided by its own insurance company), etc. Because this is how IHC does it and IHC dominates healthcare in Utah, this is the status quo for all hospitals in the State. In fairness let me also take a shot at the legal profession, my former profession, which has priced justice beyond the means of most of us to afford.

    The irony in all of this is that Trump essentially won by appealing to a group of people who have been left behind by capitalism and telling them that he is somehow going to take them back to a time when they are not left behind. The other irony is that they continue to believe it.

  4. #364
    Quote Originally Posted by UTEopia View Post
    I don't doubt that many employers do what you do. I also don't doubt that I have benefitted from it. I'm suggesting that for many people, AOC's description of capitalism, correct or not, is what they see.
    Didn't someone say democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others? I feel like you can say something similar about capitalism. Rocker mentioned some good things, UTEopia mentioned some things on the ugly side. There is a lot of cutthroat ugliness all around. A lot of inequity, a lot of greed. Upward mobility is not easy. There are some regulations that are desirable, but there are also many that are just rent seeking. The only incentives towards environmental protection come, as Rocker described, from the good of the people. That's a slow and unreliable mechanism if climate change really is an imminent catastrophe.

  5. #365
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Radicalization & Degeneration

    By ROD DREHERMarch 15, 2019, 3:02 PM
    One of the biggest lies we hear whenever there is a mass terror attack, such as the one against New Zealand’s Muslims, is that the killing was “senseless.” It’s not without reason when ISIS does it, and it’s not without reason when people like Brenton Tarrant, the alleged NZ shooter, do it. The acts are evil, but not senseless; there is a rationale for what they do. To be clear: do NOT read me as saying Tarrant’s acts “made sense” in the general sense of the term; I’m speaking narrowly here, to mean that causation is at work. We need to know this so we can better combat things like this.

    I read Tarrant’s manifesto, which is easy to find online, though I’m not going to link to it here. It’s a chilling document, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s grounded in both paranoid, racist grievance, and legitimate, realistic concerns. Second, as with ISIS videos and propaganda, the Internet distributes this stuff worldwide; we may be certain that Tarrant’s manifesto will strike many resonant chords with murder-minded fanatical racists like himself.


    Though I don’t want to be part of spreading the manifesto, I do want to talk about a few parts of it, including parts you may not hear about in the media reporting. It’s important to talk about it. I will say here clearly that any reader who in any way attempts to justify this atrocity in New Zealand will NOT be posted. It was a despicable act, and if you pray, join me in praying for the souls of the murdered, and the families they left behind.


    That said, some comments on the manifesto (you can read a general NYT report on it here). I read it in the same vein as I read the bloodthirsty Islamist fanatic Sayyid Qutb’s work: as something that we have to understand, because it articulates quite clearly what we’re up against — and that it’s not mere psychotic raving:


    1. Tarrant identifies himself as an “ethno-nationalist eco-fascist.” He says he was first a communist, then an anarchist, then a libertarian, and finally an eco-fascist. He’s 28. This is not a stable person.
    2. He despises conservatives for having conserved nothing. “Conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it,” he writes. He adds, in all caps, “CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD.” He also despises France’s National Front, or whatever it’s called today. He calls them “milquetoast.” He praises the emergence of Trump as a sign of hope, but mocks Trump too. He says his idea leader is Oswald Mosley, the 20th century British fascist. Point is, the idea that Tarrant has any meaningful connection to the mainstream right is nonsense. The man is true radical.
    3. He says his aim is to accelerate history by frightening people and creating conflict. In particular, he wants to cause the US to move to take away people’s guns, and the Second Amendment supporters to respond to this violently.
    4. He wants the US to be balkanized into warring racial and regional factions, to destroy the ability of the US to project power around the world.
    5. He was radicalized by traveling in Europe and seeing immigrant crime, by seeing how many immigrants are present, and how the dispirited native populations are dying out. Overcome by emotion, he decided that he must do something about it.
    6. He said he chose the firearms for his attack specifically to incite an argument within the US, leading to the left attempting to confiscate guns, thereby starting a civil war.
    7. He says he is not a Nazi, but it’s hard to know what to make of his politics except to say that he is a national socialist obsessed with race, and hating capitalism. Plus, he loves the environment (“there is no traditionalism without environmentalism”).
    8. This was a brutal slap: “Above all, don’t be stale, placid, and boring. No one is inspired by Jeb Bush.”
    9. He praises the People’s Republic of China as his ideal state.


    Here’s the most important line in the manifesto, one that the rest of us had better have a good answer to, because this assertion, in some form, is going to be with us for the rest of our lives:

    RADICALIZATION IS THE RATIONAL RESPONSE TO DEGENERATION

    What is “degeneration”? According to the manifesto, it consists of:


    1. The decline in native European populations, and native European stock in the US, in terms of numbers relative to non-Europeans within those societies.
    2. Politics and policies within European countries (that is, countries with ethnic European majorities, including the US and Canada) that disempower native Europeans.
    3. Widespread drug use.
    4. The loss of worker rights and stability under the reign of globalist capitalism.
    5. Environmental degradation.
    6. The collapse of Christianity (which he seems to value only as a force ethnically binding Europeans)
    7. Rampant hedonism


    Here’s the chilling part: Everything Tarrant identifies as qualities of a disintegrating Western civilization is true. You may think that declining numbers of ethnic Europeans is a good thing, or something that has no particular moral meaning. But it really is happening. So are all the rest.


    In no way do I see “radicalization,” at least not remotely in the violent terms conceived of by this mass murdering scum, as the answer to the disintegration he identifies. There is never, ever any justification for what he did. But if we are going to figure out how to stop these things, we have to take seriously the roots of it — this, in the same way we have to recognize the roots of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in specific experiences of Arab Muslims in late modernity. In fact, what Tarrant did, and what the Islamist terrorists do, intersect insofar as they are responses to the profound displacement of peoples and traditions in the modern world.

    We are no doubt going to see more Tarrants emerge from the masses of angry young white men radicalized by the world they live in, and from living online. Again, the emergence of the same kind of men from the stresses of Arab Muslim society is entirely predictable.


    The temptation many here will have in response to this obscene attack is to deny that it is based in any kind of reality. To do that, though, requires closing one’s eyes to actual conditions in the world. It would be like Russian aristocrats, circa 1900, telling themselves that the communist and anarchist revolutionaries committing acts of political murder have nothing to do with social, political, and economic changes roiling Europe and Russia of the era. That they are just inexplicable acts of savagery caused by the reading of revolutionary tracts.


    Ian Bogost has an interesting piece explaining why it is impossible to say for sure what Tarrant really meant in this manifesto, and what is sarcasm (e.g., he baited the black American right-wing commenter Candace Owens in his manifesto). Bogost points out that social media, though, is made for creating chaos.


    The world is undergoing unprecedented upheavals caused in part by technology, and certainly amplified by technology. This is only going to get more severe. We also live in a time in which masses of people have genuinely been uprooted from all sources of stability. The greatest task for political leaders, it seems to me, is to figure out how to keep society relatively stable during this long period of tumult. Encouraging identity politics and mass immigration, especially during a time of rising social instability, are suicidal for stable polities.


    It seems clear to me that it in no way requires one to endorse Tarrant’s vile crimes to recognize that like splitting the atom, the unwinding of Western civilization is going to release some extreme energies. It already is. It is simply bizarre to think that all Europeans are going to acquiesce gently in the overwhelming of their nations by immigrants in this century. Most will, I think, but it is reasonable to expect that more and more violent fanatics like Tarrant and his hero Anders Breivik will arise. I believe we should take Tarrant seriously when he says that what radicalized him most of all was traveling to Europe and seeing with his own eyes the withering away of the continent’s ancient peoples. His way of responding to it is demonic — but what he is responding to is real.
    Douglas Murray’s great and sober book The Strange Death Of Europe is the thing to read on this topic.


    One last point. In his manifesto, Tarrant says that it’s “laughable” to expect immigrants to the West to assimilate to a decadent, dying culture like ours. This brought to mind something I heard in New York last week. A man told me that two Romanian immigrant friends of his are thinking of returning to Romania to educate their children because they don’t want their kids infected with the decadence transmitted by the US education system. I don’t blame him at all. I think of Mark Bollobas’s decision to move to Hungary, the country from which his parents defected in the 1960s.

    Excerpt from something he wrote for this blog late last year:

    Like many children of immigrants, I was raised to know that I have to work harder, and be better everywhere than those who were “local” to get ahead. And it’s all true. But I was also raised in a Hungarian household. While my parents made every effort to assimilate, I was raised in a household that took pride in being Hungarian. I didn’t support Hungary in sports or anything tribal like that, but I was proud when Hungary did well. I appreciated the poetry, the folk music, the heritage, the history, and so forth. And every time I went back to Budapest, I felt so so comfortable. No one asks “where are you from?” because although I don’t sound like I am from here (I have a British accent in Hungarian), I am from here, and people recognize that.
    My decision to move back here to Hungary — I say that even though I wasn’t born here — has been reinforced by this fact: Hungary understands that holding on to its cultural identity is essential to its existence as a society we can understand.
    Culture changes over time, of course, but it normally does it slowly as we creep towards a more civilized future.
    England doesn’t feel more civilized — quite the opposite. It feels more feral. And the UK has just accepted its fate.

    And so, Tarrant’s line — radicalization is the rational response to degeneration — played out in a different way in Mark Bollobas’s life. He moved to his ancestral homeland, where he would be poorer in material ways, but richer in many other ways. In my case, I propose the Benedict Option, and live in consciously countercultural ways, trying to be more and more like this in the face of this increasingly repulsive culture. For his part, Brenton Tarrant became a fanatical racist, fascist, mass murderer. Radicalism takes many forms. We have to resist the berserker form, but resisting it cannot mean pretending that the society and culture we are creating is good and healthy and worth defending. It’s not. I mean, for God’s sake, just look. I see Tarrant as a manifestation of the same diabolism.


    It’s more radical to work to build the kind of culture that is life-giving, and to create new forms within which it can be lived out, than to give your life over to murdering innocent men, women, and children. This is true whether you are an ISIS terrorist, or a white nationalist terrorist. Those devils bring nothing but pain and death. They are no solution.

    Finally, on the concept of degeneration, look at this old song by a French Canadian band. The song is called, of course, Dégénération. It’s about generational loss of spirit and culture:



    Some people who live through this turn into bloodthirsty maniacs, like Brenton Tarrant. There is a better way. There has to be. It’s not going to come through the Democratic or Republican parties, and it’s not going to come through the established institutions of the church or academia. Nor can you buy it on Amazon.com. The materials are there to make it ourselves, but it requires discipline and community. As I’ve said.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  6. #366
    Lots to unpack on that article, but one thing interesting that stood out to me was the murderers view that social media is designed to spread chaos.

    A trend I've been noticing among young people I associate with has been to do away with social media completely.

    Facebook has been dead to anyone under 28ish for a long time now, but I know a lot of people who are actively getting rid of twitter, Instagram and Snapchat off their phones.

    I don't know if that is just a local trend (I suspect it probably is) but the common thing they say is, "I realized it just wasn't helping my life and in many ways hurting it." None have expressed that they feel like they are missing anything.

    They still remain far more connected than any of us were at that age, they haven't given up their smart phones, but an interesting little trend that I wouldn't be surprised to see grow.

    So much of our connected world that was supposed to bind us together and enlighten us has done just the opposite. I remember a notion that if all he world was connected we'd really become one people.



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  7. #367
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    Lots to unpack on that article, but one thing interesting that stood out to me was the murderers view that social media is designed to spread chaos.

    A trend I've been noticing among young people I associate with has been to do away with social media completely.

    Facebook has been dead to anyone under 28ish for a long time now, but I know a lot of people who are actively getting rid of twitter, Instagram and Snapchat off their phones.

    I don't know if that is just a local trend (I suspect it probably is) but the common thing they say is, "I realized it just wasn't helping my life and in many ways hurting it." None have expressed that they feel like they are missing anything.

    They still remain far more connected than any of us were at that age, they haven't given up their smart phones, but an interesting little trend that I wouldn't be surprised to see grow.

    So much of our connected world that was supposed to bind us together and enlighten us has done just the opposite. I remember a notion that if all he world was connected we'd really become one people.
    Interesting. Those kids have pretty good insight into life already, it seems. Good for them.

    I think one of the biggest problems with social media is the anonymity. Even if your true name is available, as with Facebook, you’re not talking to somebody you know. Some years ago, in the early days of UF.net, I got crosswise with somebody online, and later found that we got along just fine when I finally met them in person.

    Rod Dreher is an interesting thinker. He’s a “crunchy con“ conservative, meaning he doesn’t toe the conservative line on every issue. I think he’s a serious Catholic, and has promoted what he calls the “Benedictine option,” which means that religious people should simply withdraw from a deeply secular society until things get better. I certainly don’t believe that, but he does have interesting things to say.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  8. #368
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    Lots to unpack on that article, but one thing interesting that stood out to me was the murderers view that social media is designed to spread chaos.
    Choosing not to have a smart phone and choosing not to have a Facebook account are two of the better choices I've ever made. Choosing to get my news from Twitter may not have been a great call, but at least I don't post.

  9. #369
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I think one of the biggest problems with social media is the anonymity. Even if your true name is available, as with Facebook, you’re not talking to somebody you know.
    Couldn't agree more. Many folks interact online in ways they never would in real life. That leads to self-segregation into echo chambers where views harden, and the "opposition" becomes the enemy. Distilled enough, radicalization occurs in a small number, who have the ability to have their views amplified, in real life.

  10. #370
    Quote Originally Posted by sancho View Post
    Didn't someone say democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others? I feel like you can say something similar about capitalism. Rocker mentioned some good things, UTEopia mentioned some things on the ugly side. There is a lot of cutthroat ugliness all around. A lot of inequity, a lot of greed. Upward mobility is not easy. There are some regulations that are desirable, but there are also many that are just rent seeking. The only incentives towards environmental protection come, as Rocker described, from the good of the people. That's a slow and unreliable mechanism if climate change really is an imminent catastrophe.
    Capitalism + Democracy requires regulation & programs to mitigate the extremes.

    An obscure, but topical case in point from this week: The Boeing 737 Max issue thought to be at the heart of the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashes involves an ancillary flight control system called MCAS - "Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System" - which is supposed to help avoid stalls (in addition to the standard "stick shaker" system on almost all jets that does the same thing).

    Disclaimer: I'm a (private) pilot and aviation junkie, so I've been digging into the news on this issue.

    There is some debate about why Boeing implemented the MCAS on the Max, but in the "self-certify" regime the FAA uses to certify new aircraft, Boeing didn't tell the FAA about the system at all. (They admit they didn't cover MCAS with the FAA, because they didn't think it was important for pilots to know about. The FAA had a "no comment" response.)

    By contrast, Brazil's aviation regulatory body inspected the Max and documented 60 operational changes, including the MCAS. Their regulators required an interactive course for pilots, where the FAA's section for "unique handling or performance characteristics" remarked none, "no specific flight characteristics". Airline pilots need no specific training for the Max, an attractive cost-saving feature of this new model.

    Between budget cuts and perhaps our built-in suspicion of government overreach, the self-certification program was launched to allow manufacturers to certify their own aircraft, but the DOT's Inspector General found the program to have serious deficiencies in three successive reports, including a lack of training for manufacturers to evaluate which technologies in new aircraft are critical. These problems went back to 2011, so it's not a "R" vs "D" issue.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-allows-jetmakers-to-self-certify-that-planes-meet-us-safety-requirements/2019/03/15/96d24d4a-46e6-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html

    Another example from the Max issue that suggests an erosion in the credibility of US federal aviation safety: Ethiopia sent the black boxes to France, who has developed an impressive reputation for sleuthing aviation accidents. (Lack of expertise in the understaffed NTSB? Debatable, in the aviation world they're known to pull it together impressively for airliner accidents. Maybe a perceived political bias - or pro-business indifference? - in the DOT/FAA/NTSB in the current era? That's the kind of corruption we expect from the 3rd world.)

    In the stormy sea of endless partisanship and ongoing political drama of 2019, I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get the full story from our government. Maybe these accidents and the omelette on Boeing's and America's face will prompt solid bi-partisan attention. We'll see.

  11. #371
    Looks like Jeb Bush has recovered from getting steam-rolled in the '16 primaries... or he feels obligated to speak up.

    "Our friends no longer believe they can trust the United States and our enemies, in many cases, feel emboldened by this approach," he added. "I think it defies the...bipartisan kind of consensus on foreign policy that has by-and-large kept America safe."
    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...ally-dangerous

  12. #372
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Political/Cultural Chit-Chat

    Interesting analysis in The NY Times. Makes sense to me, both intuitively and based on my anecdotal experience.

    Americans Are Divided by Their Views on Race, Not Race Itself

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/o...ica-trump.html
    Last edited by LA Ute; 03-18-2019 at 07:36 AM.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  13. #373
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Candidates Propose Changes To Fix Flaw In Constitution That Allows Republicans To Be Elected

    https://babylonbee.com/news/candidat...ign=benshapiro

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  14. #374

  15. #375
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    There’s plenty of food for thought here for people on both the right and the left:

    Capitalism Saved Sweden

    https://www.aier.org/article/capitalism-saved-sweden

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  16. #376
    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    That's awesome, I had to put it on UFN.

  17. #377
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    There’s plenty of food for thought here for people on both the right and the left:

    Capitalism Saved Sweden

    https://www.aier.org/article/capitalism-saved-sweden
    This should be required reading for everyone who proffers an opinion on "socialism".

    Seriously, the term has been weaponized for so long in America that I think maybe 1% of the public knows what they're talking about. Ted Kennedy wasn't a socialist. He just wasn't. Unless Sanders is calling for the government to take permanent ownership of Boeing or any other corporation, he's not a socialist, either. Social Democrat? Sure.

    I think AOC and others are taking on the problem directly and trying to negate the weaponization, like how Obama late in his presidency turned the pejorative "Obamacare" into a positive as the public became familiar with the popular provisions of the ACA. "Obamacare - I kind of like the name."

    There's only one socialist economy on Earth: Cuba (and even they are dabbling in small amounts of private property)

  18. #378
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    This should be required reading for everyone who proffers an opinion on "socialism".

    Seriously, the term has been weaponized for so long in America that I think maybe 1% of the public knows what they're talking about. Ted Kennedy wasn't a socialist. He just wasn't. Unless Sanders is calling for the government to take permanent ownership of Boeing or any other corporation, he's not a socialist, either. Social Democrat? Sure.

    I think AOC and others are taking on the problem directly and trying to negate the weaponization, like how Obama late in his presidency turned the pejorative "Obamacare" into a positive as the public became familiar with the popular provisions of the ACA. "Obamacare - I kind of like the name."

    There's only one socialist economy on Earth: Cuba (and even they are dabbling in small amounts of private property)
    I think you are probably a Cuban agent. You can't fool me -- I once met W. Cleon Skousen!


    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  19. #379
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I think you are probably a Cuban agent. You can't fool me -- I once met W. Cleon Skousen!

    lol, nice.

    Cleon Skousen: there's a name I haven't heard in forever. After the USSR dissolved, didn't the Birchers become some kind of constitutional studies organization? I have a buddy who has a relative in that group. They were pushing getting the US out of the United Nations.

  20. #380
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    He formed something called the Freeman Institute. They weren’t Birchers. I would call them Skousenites. It was a mixture of apocryphal Mormonism and far right-wing theories.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  21. #381
    I grew up down the street from W. Cleon. Went to elementary school with his kids. The diffrence between him and the Birchers is that I am not sure that most Burichers think God talks directly to them. Maybe they do.

  22. #382
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    This is from last July. I think it's now time to say "Never."

    President Michael Avenatti? Never say never!


    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  23. #383
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    This is from last July. I think it's now time to say "Never."

    President Michael Avenatti? Never say never!
    He seemed like the type who could make a fatal mistake. Fortunately, he did.

  24. #384
    This has been a rough stretch for the media these past few months...

    The most recent and most obvious is their handling of the Mueller report and what they were certain would be in it.

    Then there was the Jussie Smollett scam that they all ran with.

    And before that the Covington catholic school boy confrontation.

    I don't see any serious introspection by the media in that regard but the age of information has really become the age of disinformation with the people who are supposed to maintain that integrity failing badly.

    We REALLY need them to reprioritize and step up.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  25. #385
    Interesting opinion piece in the D-News: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/...right-now.html

    San Antonio's airport decided *not* to have a Chick-Fil-A franchise to be in the airport, based in part on perceived anti-LGBTQ bias. The D-News argues CFA serves everyone, and the political donations of the company / owners is about religious freedom.

    Buffalo, NY apparently decided today to also not invite CFA to their airport, for similar reasons. Recently it's been revealed that CFA contributed to organizations hostile to LGBTQ causes, as recently as 2017.

    Based on the widespread movement to have Roe-v-Wade overturned, why *shouldn't* the LGBTQ community think the CFA management seek to spearhead/support a reversal of their hard-won civil rights, including gay marriage & anti-discrimination / hate crimes laws that include their classes?

  26. #386
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    Interesting opinion piece in the D-News: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/...right-now.html

    San Antonio's airport decided *not* to have a Chick-Fil-A franchise to be in the airport, based in part on perceived anti-LGBTQ bias. The D-News argues CFA serves everyone, and the political donations of the company / owners is about religious freedom.

    Buffalo, NY apparently decided today to also not invite CFA to their airport, for similar reasons. Recently it's been revealed that CFA contributed to organizations hostile to LGBTQ causes, as recently as 2017.

    Based on the widespread movement to have Roe-v-Wade overturned, why *shouldn't* the LGBTQ community think the CFA management seek to spearhead/support a reversal of their hard-won civil rights, including gay marriage & anti-discrimination / hate crimes laws that include their classes?
    In the Southwest terminal at LAX there are over a dozen fast food restaurants. The lines at Chik-Fil-A are longest by a factor of 2 or 3. People are voting with their feet. I could be wrong, but I think the company's senior management/owners have in the past donated to pro-traditional marriage causes. I don't think the company's charitable foundation does that.

    https://thechickenwire.chick-fil-a.c...ritable-giving

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  27. #387
    The donations — $1,653,416 to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, and $150,000 to the Salvation Army — actually represent a slight increase from the previous year. The foundation’s funding comes almost entirely from the corporate treasury and shares leadership with the company.
    https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-...-62ca15281f17/

    It's been a 5 quick years since Obergfell, and social perceptions change quickly. (By comparison, Bob Jones University weathered through the storm of social pressure on interracial marriage until 2000, 23 years after Loving V Virginia, but they were holdouts.)

    According to the article, CFA's corporate policies don't include protections for LGBTQ, part of a rapidly dwindling demographic of companies who lean "traditional".

  28. #388
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-...-62ca15281f17/

    It's been a 5 quick years since Obergfell, and social perceptions change quickly. (By comparison, Bob Jones University weathered through the storm of social pressure on interracial marriage until 2000, 23 years after Loving V Virginia, but they were holdouts.)

    According to the article, CFA's corporate policies don't include protections for LGBTQ, part of a rapidly dwindling demographic of companies who lean "traditional".
    I don't know. I am not going to take on the defense of Chik-Fil-A. I simply buy food there once in a while when I am at LAX and am starving. I can say that their customer service is unlike anything I've ever seen anywhere else. Whatever their internal policies say, they have to respect LGBT rights in CA, and probably in many other states. Also, I'd be careful about Think Progress as a source. They're the liberal counterpart to The Blaze.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  29. #389
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-...-62ca15281f17/

    It's been a 5 quick years since Obergfell, and social perceptions change quickly. (By comparison, Bob Jones University weathered through the storm of social pressure on interracial marriage until 2000, 23 years after Loving V Virginia, but they were holdouts.)

    According to the article, CFA's corporate policies don't include protections for LGBTQ, part of a rapidly dwindling demographic of companies who lean "traditional".
    The Salvation Army is an anti-LGBTQ group? First of all it is a volunteer organization and religious movement; secondly their whole mission is to help the impoverished. As they say it, "...to meet human needs in [Jesus] name without discrimination."

    I'm sorry, but I get tired of this sort of thuggery and that is what it is. I'm not saying they (the Salvation Army) should discriminate, but to look at all the GOOD the Salvation Army does and to try and go and defund it because of wording of some policy is ignorance and intolerance in and of itself. If we can't allow people to reach across the gulf and recognize the good in an organization despite their differences, then there really is no hope left for this country. Hate and intolerance doesn't defeat hate and intolerance.

    And the reverse is true and I'd say the same thing about the Salvation Army if their mission was to help the impoverished, IN PARTICULAR those in the LGBT community. I'd be equally disturbed by groups who would go and attempt to intimidate individuals and organizations that supported that type of group.

    If any of these people leading this charge don't have any poor behavior, habits or ideologies will they please step up and show us all the way?

  30. #390
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    But as Mueller was supposedly about to indict Trump, a divisive, hard-left agenda was almost imperceptibly floated to the public: the Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, abortion redefined as permissible infanticide, open borders, packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices, the abolition of the Electoral College and ICE, free college tuition, the elimination of student debt, Medicare for all, a wealth tax, a 70 percent top marginal income tax rate, a 16-year-old voting age, voting rights for ex-felons, and on and on.
    https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanso...ressive-unity/

    I wonder if the Dems will try to move other, more centrist policy proposals to front of their agenda.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

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