Trump is horrid, but he got even more votes the 2nd time around after years of media venom. Does that not suggest there is a serious disengagement of the electorate going on for some reason?
I do not agree that it is nihilism. I reserve that for the forces that are packing the Supreme Court, pulling down the statues, and laying in front of the fire truck to prevent it from getting to the car dealership that I just watched them torch LIVE on tv.
"Does that not suggest there is a serious disengagement of the electorate going on for some reason?"
I think you're getting to the meat of the point I was trying to make here.
Much of the public remains completely unmotivated to vote, and among motivated voters DJT got a narrow minority of the vote (according to official reports).
"Nothing will fundamentally change" doesn't seem to be an appealing advertising slogan for a lot of people. I'm kind of reminded of the ad campaign Domino's Pizza ran several years ago in which they openly admitted their pizza was shitty and promised to improve it.
The current administration does not even rise to the level of Domino's. Remember HRC's intendedly witty riposte to "MAGA": "America is already great"? Didn't play well with the many people in this country leading miserable, painful lives.
That was such an odious campaign. From the basket of deplorables, to the "we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of work". The Hillbots were but, but - listen to the whole statement she made, it's quoted out of context. I say bullshit, it was class dogwhistles with cya qualifiers tacked onto the end.
Bernie Sanders said it before, and Joe Biden said the same thing. Listen to Thomas Frank -
"Reminiscing about the 2016 Democratic effort, Biden recalled how Democratic strategists told him they intended to “give up on white working-class folks”. “Well, look what’s happened,” he continued."
"He recalled in the interview being told by a Hillary Clinton operative in 2016 that he “had to make a distinction between progressive values and working-class values”."
I blame Doris Matsui. She was the one who passed the letter around congress that all of the women signed urging Hillary to run. Which neutered any chance for Warren, for one.
And Obama too, who totally backed the wrong horse. I think Joe would have probably squeaked it.
But if either Clinton or Biden had won, it would have been business as usual and just delayed the inevitable election of Trump or someone similar.
Bernie might have gotten knocked out by the blob, but he got to make his mark.
Hillary became the evil she thought she grew up fighting when she hired Dick Morris to run Billy's campaign back in the 90's.
By 2016 she just looked like...well, the Emperor in Star Wars..."you fool, you thought you were strong enough to fight me? You are weak, Bernie Skywalker."
She showed her colors as "Second Vice President" in 93-94 when she tried to sell her healthcare plan by contemptuously spitting out how she was going to "get rid of all those pencil-pushers in the insurance industry" (spitting out those "p"s as if she were saying "profit"), as if A) those employed pencil pushers weren't taxpaying Americans (and voters) and B) there wasn't the insane implication in there that if only the GOVERNMENT was running our health care...there wouldn't be paper pushers? They'd all be doctors and nurses?? Has she ever SEEN a government agency,, bureau, department?? (of course she had, and they were all full of nice unionized Democratic voters)
Absolutely insane. And contemptuous of the cognitive abilities of her fellow Americans. What a pig.
Trollificus: too tiny of a point to be a criticism of your post, but Hillary-care did not mean the government would be "in your health care" as much as they were assuming the role of insurer.
There are few more fucked up private industry sectors as health care insurance. Possibly the re-insurance market.
And to get completely off-base, why the hell is medical care of my teeth a whole separate insurance?
I'm just not sure even the government would be worse...
Free market means I have eight trash trucks that come through my hood on trash day. How many more until it just makes sense to make it a utility?
I get that you're proposing that health insurance just *might* be the one area of endeavor that could be improved by being in government hands. My wife has had a career in medical insurance and I'm not sure she would disagree. We spend hours puzzling over management decisions that make things worse, procedures that are perfectly counterintuitive for a company that actually valued efficiency and other foible. The best company she worked for was Principal Financial's insurance sector and they bailed about 10 years ago, so you may be right.
Then again, my Dad was in Civil Service, Logistics and Military Procurement-adjacent, and he would never agree. Almost drove him mad, but then, he was kind of a straight arrow,.
[Apologies for the scattered nature of this half-baked post when yours was disciplined...]
Without actually saying the word corruption, you probably hit the nail on the head.
It seems pro-capitalistic arguments often seem to magically wipe away the scourge of corruption yet focus on it almost singularly when arguing against government involvement.
Re=reading a book about fascism (Anatomy of Fascism-Paxton) that describes a process where early fascists had incredibly high social ideals for the time (women suffrage, social security, entering into no international treaties guaranteeing to come to some other country's aid, etc.) but the fact that most decisions of government are incredibly mundane so ripe for small-level corruption which ends up corrupting the movement from within...almost like an inherent bug in the system.
Without saying it directly, the argument seems to be if you don't have firm principles, your movement will end up being corrupted.
Kind of like the Mpls. protests last summer...if you don;t stay vigilant and self-police, the narrative WILL be coopted and all the goodwill you may have had starts smelling a lot like evil.
My comment reflects what I remember from nightly newscasts. We live in the St. Louis media market and have had the opportunity to watch days and nights of protesting, live. The night the St. Louis grand jury returned a no true bill against the officer investigated for the shooting of Michael Brown (Nov. 24, 2014), the latter's stepfather admonished protesters to "burn the bitch down." Among other destruction, local news helicopter coverage showed a person lighting cars on fire at a dealer; no one arrested him and it was deemed too dangerous for the fire department to respond to it and many other fires due to reports of gunfire. A CNN report from that time says airspace was actually closed by the FAA over Ferguson for awhile due to guns fired in the air. (I hadn't remembered that). On May 31, 2020 , George Floyd protesters looted then burned down a 7-11 in downtown St.Louis. A Post-Dispatch reporter tweeted that the fire chief "said protesters blocked fire trucks from responding . . . a few laid down in the street, rolled trash cans in the way . . ."
Trump is horrid, but he got even more votes the 2nd time around after years of media venom. Does that not suggest there is a serious disengagement of the electorate going on for some reason?
I do not agree that it is nihilism. I reserve that for the forces that are packing the Supreme Court, pulling down the statues, and laying in front of the fire truck to prevent it from getting to the car dealership that I just watched them torch LIVE on tv.
"Does that not suggest there is a serious disengagement of the electorate going on for some reason?"
I think you're getting to the meat of the point I was trying to make here.
Much of the public remains completely unmotivated to vote, and among motivated voters DJT got a narrow minority of the vote (according to official reports).
"Nothing will fundamentally change" doesn't seem to be an appealing advertising slogan for a lot of people. I'm kind of reminded of the ad campaign Domino's Pizza ran several years ago in which they openly admitted their pizza was shitty and promised to improve it.
The current administration does not even rise to the level of Domino's. Remember HRC's intendedly witty riposte to "MAGA": "America is already great"? Didn't play well with the many people in this country leading miserable, painful lives.
That was such an odious campaign. From the basket of deplorables, to the "we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of work". The Hillbots were but, but - listen to the whole statement she made, it's quoted out of context. I say bullshit, it was class dogwhistles with cya qualifiers tacked onto the end.
Bernie Sanders said it before, and Joe Biden said the same thing. Listen to Thomas Frank -
"Reminiscing about the 2016 Democratic effort, Biden recalled how Democratic strategists told him they intended to “give up on white working-class folks”. “Well, look what’s happened,” he continued."
"He recalled in the interview being told by a Hillary Clinton operative in 2016 that he “had to make a distinction between progressive values and working-class values”."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/22/joe-biden-mystique-election-democrats
Meanwhile Donald Trump was flying into flyover country to talk to the proles while Clinton was in Malibu and the Vinyard.
As recently as 2016 Biden still occasionally appeared to be compos mentis. The Dems may have made a strategic error in running her instead of him.
Oh well. We got what we got. No use crying over spilt milk, etc.
I blame Doris Matsui. She was the one who passed the letter around congress that all of the women signed urging Hillary to run. Which neutered any chance for Warren, for one.
And Obama too, who totally backed the wrong horse. I think Joe would have probably squeaked it.
But if either Clinton or Biden had won, it would have been business as usual and just delayed the inevitable election of Trump or someone similar.
Bernie might have gotten knocked out by the blob, but he got to make his mark.
Hillary became the evil she thought she grew up fighting when she hired Dick Morris to run Billy's campaign back in the 90's.
By 2016 she just looked like...well, the Emperor in Star Wars..."you fool, you thought you were strong enough to fight me? You are weak, Bernie Skywalker."
She showed her colors as "Second Vice President" in 93-94 when she tried to sell her healthcare plan by contemptuously spitting out how she was going to "get rid of all those pencil-pushers in the insurance industry" (spitting out those "p"s as if she were saying "profit"), as if A) those employed pencil pushers weren't taxpaying Americans (and voters) and B) there wasn't the insane implication in there that if only the GOVERNMENT was running our health care...there wouldn't be paper pushers? They'd all be doctors and nurses?? Has she ever SEEN a government agency,, bureau, department?? (of course she had, and they were all full of nice unionized Democratic voters)
Absolutely insane. And contemptuous of the cognitive abilities of her fellow Americans. What a pig.
Trollificus: too tiny of a point to be a criticism of your post, but Hillary-care did not mean the government would be "in your health care" as much as they were assuming the role of insurer.
There are few more fucked up private industry sectors as health care insurance. Possibly the re-insurance market.
And to get completely off-base, why the hell is medical care of my teeth a whole separate insurance?
I'm just not sure even the government would be worse...
Free market means I have eight trash trucks that come through my hood on trash day. How many more until it just makes sense to make it a utility?
Mea culpa, I really am asking as I do not know.
I get that you're proposing that health insurance just *might* be the one area of endeavor that could be improved by being in government hands. My wife has had a career in medical insurance and I'm not sure she would disagree. We spend hours puzzling over management decisions that make things worse, procedures that are perfectly counterintuitive for a company that actually valued efficiency and other foible. The best company she worked for was Principal Financial's insurance sector and they bailed about 10 years ago, so you may be right.
Then again, my Dad was in Civil Service, Logistics and Military Procurement-adjacent, and he would never agree. Almost drove him mad, but then, he was kind of a straight arrow,.
[Apologies for the scattered nature of this half-baked post when yours was disciplined...]
Without actually saying the word corruption, you probably hit the nail on the head.
It seems pro-capitalistic arguments often seem to magically wipe away the scourge of corruption yet focus on it almost singularly when arguing against government involvement.
Re=reading a book about fascism (Anatomy of Fascism-Paxton) that describes a process where early fascists had incredibly high social ideals for the time (women suffrage, social security, entering into no international treaties guaranteeing to come to some other country's aid, etc.) but the fact that most decisions of government are incredibly mundane so ripe for small-level corruption which ends up corrupting the movement from within...almost like an inherent bug in the system.
Without saying it directly, the argument seems to be if you don't have firm principles, your movement will end up being corrupted.
Kind of like the Mpls. protests last summer...if you don;t stay vigilant and self-police, the narrative WILL be coopted and all the goodwill you may have had starts smelling a lot like evil.
GK - invite- 1st Fri (7th) Phoenix Art Mus
FREE - 3 - 7...RL in AIR FORCE hat & matching neck Gator...
(High on Ripple - Shit E'tin grin)
Can't make it, man, but thanks.
Consider the Desert Door open
Was an awesome show.
Even included a married couple - cellist and violinist who are members of the Phoenix Symphony - 45 minute recital- FREE
Link to this story, please?
Which story?
The one regarding someone laying down in front of a fire truck to prevent it from traveling to a car dealership fire. Thanks!
My comment reflects what I remember from nightly newscasts. We live in the St. Louis media market and have had the opportunity to watch days and nights of protesting, live. The night the St. Louis grand jury returned a no true bill against the officer investigated for the shooting of Michael Brown (Nov. 24, 2014), the latter's stepfather admonished protesters to "burn the bitch down." Among other destruction, local news helicopter coverage showed a person lighting cars on fire at a dealer; no one arrested him and it was deemed too dangerous for the fire department to respond to it and many other fires due to reports of gunfire. A CNN report from that time says airspace was actually closed by the FAA over Ferguson for awhile due to guns fired in the air. (I hadn't remembered that). On May 31, 2020 , George Floyd protesters looted then burned down a 7-11 in downtown St.Louis. A Post-Dispatch reporter tweeted that the fire chief "said protesters blocked fire trucks from responding . . . a few laid down in the street, rolled trash cans in the way . . ."
I see. That helps me get my head around it. Appreciate the exposition. :-)