Zooey wrote:

Yeah, okay, but I think the first part of that sentence is important:

the Republican Party abandoned any semblance of normal politics beginning with their assaults….

I take it for granted Clinton and Obama sucked, but it was with the Contract on America that the Republican Party checked out of “reality,” and just started making shit up, and denying facts. Parties have always had spin. But Gingrich ushered in abnormal politics, and era in which it just no longer made any difference what the opposition said or did, it would be opposed, contradicted, undermined…you know.

I think the author is saying the logic and reason just went out the window in the Republican party at that time. He isn’t arguing POLICY, he’s arguing the APPROACH to policy. I think.

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Hmmmm. Well, i guess i just dont care about ‘approach’ to policy. I dont really care about how weaselly the ‘approach’ is. What i care about it is the neoliberal-neocon Policies of both corporate parties that are destroying poor people, destroying the biosphere, and murdering assorted brown people with drones. That stuff just dwarfs everything else we can complain about, imho.
And it just seems to me THAT is what singers should be singing about, protesters should be protesting about, and writers ouughta be writing about.

Yes, i’m a monomaniacal curmudgeon about this. I am.

w
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“…liberals and progressives belong to a centuries-long tradition with origins in the Enlightenment, they are unprepared to deal with the primitive thinking and irrationality that drives Donald Trump’s political movement and contemporary conservatism more generally. In reality, the Republican Party abandoned any semblance of normal politics beginning with their assaults on Bill Clinton in the 1990s. This long decline culminated with the Republican reaction to Barack Obama and now the rise of Trump.”

Well, this is going to break down along the usual faultlines on this board, but I just think that sounds like a liberal-democrat-view.

For me, Clinton and Obama are mass-murderers and destroyers-of-poor-people. Thats what they are to me. So, for that guy to write, the Republican ‘assault’ on Clinton and Obama was wrong, blah blah blah — just doesnt ring true. I think the Reps should have assaulted Clinton/Obama MORE, not less.

Now, sure, the Reps assaulted Clinton/Obama over the WRONG stuff, and sure the Reps made stuff up, and lied, and distorted and lied and distorted. Yes. But they damn well SHOULD have assaulted clinton/Obama. Over the ‘real’ stuff that Obama/Clinton did.

And thats what he should have written about.

wv

A fine article. I think most of us here, agree with the writer’s main ideas.

w
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Ozoneranger wrote:

In the past two years I pretty much lost interest in politics. My sole worry is the debt. I worry for my kids and grandkids.

Anyway, watching the ascendance of Donald Trump was both fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Got me back into the game, at least temporarily.Really, he knew how to apply the false premise of “every thing is collapsing” (it’s not, at least yet) to the simmering anger of the right being the targeted relentlessly with the left’s race cudgel to the denialism of many that the country is becoming less white. It was a brilliant performance by a master snake-oil salesman.

The kid in the coveralls bought it hook, line and sinker.

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Seems to me (shooting from the hip, here)the ‘system’ (whatever u wanna call it. i call it ‘corporotacracy’) gets-a-hold of americans the day they are born
and starts inculcating them, drenching them, drowning them in ‘education’ and all the various corporate-media-forms-of-propaganda and flag-waving and BECAUSE the system does that (NOT because ‘people are stupid’) we end up, at the end of the day, with ignorant “citizens” who
1) dont know shit about anything other than sports or entertainment or video-games, etc, OR,
2 they become democrats who dont know shit about how the democrat-party destroys the poor, OR,
3 they become republicans who dont even CARE about the poor cause they blame the poor for being poor.

Now, granted,there’s lots of other small sub-groups, but them there three groups is enough to keep the system going, keep the Duplicats and Replicants in bizness, and doom the biosphere.

Someday perhaps there will be a giant tomb-stone on the earth, that will be visible from deepspace. And it’ll say, Democrats and Republicans did this.

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zn wrote:

Are you sure you agree? Cause…when have you ever called this a recrudescence?

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Well, I always tend to be more analytical and discursive. Plus its all about Alliances to me. Not to mention Dialectical. Benighted, even.

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Did You Know?
Recrudescence derives from the Latin verb recrudescere, meaning “to become raw again” (used, for example, of wounds). Ultimately, it can be traced back to the Latin word for raw,” which is “crudus.” (If you suspect that “crude” is also derived from “crudus,” you are correct; another well-known descendant is “cruel.”) In its literal sense, “recrudescence” is a medical word denoting a renewed outbreak of a disease. In extended use, it most often describes the return of an undesirable condition, such as a war or a plague, or the return of an undesirable idea.

nittany ram wrote:

Trump just froze all EPA grants and their contract budget. Scientists there and at the Dept of Agriculture are also prohibited from communicating with the public (whose tax dollars fund their research) and the media. Trump thinks there’s an inherent bias in the results of the research. He views science as a leftist conspiracy.

This is an obvious attempt to bully the researchers and ultimately weaken those agencies. I think the EPA is going to be gutted and perhaps eliminated and the environmental regulations it overseas will be rolled back. He can’t eliminate it with an executive order due to the 1977 Reorganization Act. However, he can do it with cooperation from congress which he could get it due to the Republican majority.

Enjoy the clean air and water while you can, folks.

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Well that kind of thing might very well limit him to four
years. I dunno though.

wv

zn wrote:

But you did not indicate to me a real difference. Which probably just means you have to say more. All I got so far is that you use more provocative, street-slogan language and I always tend to be more analytical and discursive. I am not sure that that isn’t just 2 different ways of talking about the same thing. Either way it’s not an open discussion of similarities and differences, it’s just both of us talking about how I use words, and not about the issues themselves.

================
Well, i dont know how you can say there isn’t a ‘real difference.’

I said, “Obama is a mass-murderer”

And you replied:
“I think Obama continued some benighted pre-Obama policies both in the economy and in foreign policy. Of that there is no question.’

I mean, to me, you dont see him as a ‘mass murderer’ and i do. I mean there must be a reason why you dont see his drone strikes as ‘murder’. Or else you’d call them ‘murder’. So, i assume you see it differently.

BUT, the major point to me, is Big Deal. I may come across as ‘testy’ but honestly this group is my favorite group on the internet. Always will be. I know we agree on all kinds of core, fundamental stuff. I never question that. I think sometimes you think that is being questioned or threatened. Not from me. I dont give a shit if you see Obama differently than me or if as you say its just a different language we use, etc. It doesnt change how i feel about you or this group of goofballs.

I always, always trust the bonds we have built up on this board. It never enters my mind to worry about that or question it. We’ve been together since 98. Thats longer than any relationship Ive ever had.

So, have some toast. Lightly toasted. With tea.

w
v

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

Yeah, see we disagree. So i wasn’t wrong. I said you would ‘resist’ saying Obama was a mass-murderer. And you just did that.

I’ve never said that about anyone. Certainly it would apply to Nixon and Reagan. I just don’t use the term.

And see I talk about alliances, and you play gotcha.

No I mean alliances here. Cause…fighting all the time would end up making me lose interest.

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Ok, but i dont think of it as “gotcha”. I think of it as pointing out real differences. But i also dont think its a big deal. I never question our ‘alliances’ here. Its never an issue for me. Its a ‘given’ we have those fundamental alliances.

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