Knickoftime wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TheGame wrote:At least he is consistent. Rather than avoid another political issue, Trump goes and pardons the former sheriff in Arizona. Trump is the trainwreck that won't stop until he destroys the republican party. The democrats need to get focused on a message directed at the economy (which the Democrats and Obama are responsible for improving from the disaster that was George Bush and the republicans). Democrats, stop focusing on race and civil rights and explain to people why democratic policies will create jobs and balance the budget. Cutting taxes is not the answer and the democrats need to do a better job explaining that. Clinton focused to much on what a bad person Trump was and not enough about how Obama's policies got us out of the worse depression since the Great depression.

This is a good example of what I find wrong with the narrative. The disastrous turn of events in the financial crisis want created by Bush alone. It's just played out when he was in the White House. Democrats did nothing to fix the economy other than agreeing to proposals set forth by Republican appointed people in various positions. I have asked you guys to provide specifics on how the economy was improved and I have heard zero. Dodd-Frank was a law being passed unless you can show me how it impacted the economy there's no case for it. Instead of repeating centrist talking points how about you come up with some real evidence of what the actually did to make anything better in the economy.

Lots of unpacking to do in the thread, so I'll try to stick to some of the major points. I think discourse is important so let me say as a preamble "instead of repeating centrist talking points" is a talking point.

That said, it's hard to have discussion like this given the limitations of the forum show when much time is spent back=and-forthing just finding a common reference point.

So in order to find common ground, can you identify a economic policy (contemporary, ideally) or two that improved the economy in the manner you're looking for, and how it did it?

I couldn't give you examples of other economies but this video will walk you through some examples where egalitarian models based on socialist principles had actually helped. A lot of people in this board will find this disturbing, it won't for their worldview. But you asked, and I found it - hope you like it. Please do listen to the whole thing.

I think there's been a misunderstanding here. I am by no means confused about what socialism is. Nor do I have any ideological opposition to it. Believe me, in an ideological vacuum, I'd probably make you look like Tucker Carlson.

But I recognize the United States of America is a different animal than anywhere else in the world and that has ever been ever.

If memory serves you outright rejected political pragmatism as a concern, you vote (or at least voted) ideologically, which is 100% you're right, but whether voting ideologically will take you farther away from achieving ideological goals is a legitimate question, even if you don't want to entertainment it.

This is purely your opinion, I am probably every bit as pragmatic as you are we just see things from very different perspectives. The party in power can stay in power just through gerrymandering and math. I don't think there's any chance of taking over the senate and the house unless the electoral college understands just how fukked up the republican thought process is. You have to turn right wing voters left or at least make them reconsider - these are practical needs not idealism. I think they are finding out first hand. The dumbasses own all three branches now and still can't pass a law. This IS the best possible outcome.

The problem is what practically divides the country politically is decreasingly idealogical and increasingly cultural. You just aren't moving farther to the left, winning back independents and making inroads on the right at the same time with the same personalities and the same tpolicies, particularly if the executive and legislative branches are divided. That's when you get seven purely symbolic bills appearing on the President's desk repealing the ACA.

What I read from this is the pure progressive agenda is misunderstood by conservatives, but once in action they'll be won over in a 4 year administration.

What I am trying to communicate has nothing to do with progressive agenda, I am completely aligned that trying to push that on the country as currently constructed would self implode. What I am saying is I want the rank and file republican voters (at least the ones that can still read and process information) to see the financial outcomes that follow when the policies they support play out in full. I don't need them to understand progressive agenda, I would be happy to see them acknowledge the failure of their own agenda. That and only that will move enough people to switch allegiance for more than one or two election cycles.

97% of Americans on both sides don't fundamentally understand why the 2008 implosion happened. The way people absorb "news" today means an entire voting block is never going to confront any harsh ideological realities, because they'll never actually be exposed to them, or believe it even if they are.

The idea that FOX News and Rush Limbaugh would during a financial crisis start "informing" their audience that it was their conservative ideology that was the culprit all along is frankly ludicrous.

Basically I have had it with the waiting game and incremental bull**** - we need more drastic change. For that change to be in the right direction (ok I really mean the left direction) - we need the GOP to show their own supporters how truly fukked up they are. My opinion.

It's interesting in theory, but fantastical in application.

And while this demonstration of the abject failure of conservative fiscal ideology is occurring, we'll have the abject failure of conservative social ideology to enjoy on top of it.

Politics aren't every REALLY the problem.

People are.

+1
And regular people get what they deserve.
They act like Trump - they get Trump.
They want reality show - they get reality show.
But some group of people who wrote and knew the script get all money and power.
And deservedly so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/08/29/why-are-so-many-white-men-so-angry/?utm_term=.496785667bfb

Why are so many white men so angry?

What emboldened white nationalists to brazenly march through a sleepy college town and then violently assault counterprotesters? That’s the question lingering in the minds of Americans two weeks after Charlottesville.

Although many forces came into play to produce these heartbreaking events, a crisis of white identity drove them. More than a half-century ago, minorities, women and immigrants began to challenge the economic, political and legal hierarchy that had favored white men for centuries. Their efforts produced a white backlash that burst into the open after Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

Donald Trump has tapped into this anger and manipulated it to his political advantage. The bond between President Trump and his white followers is not based on policy but on grievance. They both reject the cultural changes over the past half-century, and Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan signals his intent to unravel them. Last week in Phoenix, he extolled his overwhelmingly white audience as “honest, hard-working taxpaying … Americans who love our nation, obey our laws and care for our people.” He warned that the hated media was trying to “take away our history and our heritage,” fanning the flames of white discontent.

The past five decades have not been kind to the white, heterosexual men who made up the overwhelming majority of those who invaded Charlottesville and who support the white nationalist movement. Until the 1960s, white men sat unchallenged atop the United States’ cultural and economic pyramid. They did not have to compete against women or African Americans in the workplace, and they benefited from laws and customs that sustained their privileged position. They not only ruled the workplace, they dominated American politics and exercised virtually unchallenged power at home.

At the same time, a combination of unprecedented prosperity and a muscular labor movement provided well-paying jobs in large manufacturing plants with generous benefits. (There were, of course, many whites who lacked meaningful employment and battled poverty, but compared to other groups, white men clearly enjoyed advantages.)

And then their world exploded. African Americans, unwilling to accept the legacy of Jim Crow, confronted the white power structure in the South. With the help of liberal allies, they pushed Congress to pass two major pieces of civil rights legislation that outlawed legal discrimination. Feminists, inspired by these successes, challenged laws that confined them to traditional roles in the private sphere. They smashed the notion that women could not be lawyers, doctors and corporate leaders, and they made clear they were not content to be subservient housewives. They were later joined by the LGBT community that demanded equal treatment while questioning traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality.

One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Here’s how the city became the scene of violence. (Video: Elyse Samuels, Zoeann Murphy/Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post)
But by far the greatest threat to white male dominance has been immigration. The Immigration Act of 1965, which made “family unification” the centerpiece of the nation’s immigration policy, produced a dramatic increase in the number of people coming to the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, immigrants and their children born in the United States account for 55 percent of population growth since 1965. Immigrants made up 5 percent of the population in 1965; they make up 14 percent today.

This legislation also fundamentally altered immigration patterns. After 1965, the vast majority of new immigrants came from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Many whites view these immigrants as a threat to America’s “common culture” — a culture that white men created. From their perspective, instead of assimilating into the American culture, recent migrants have given rise to a new identity politics that celebrates cultural differences and rejects shared values.

Beginning in the 1960s, many white men perceived the changes wrought by the rights movements and increased immigration not as building a fairer, more diverse society and rectifying past wrongs, but as a direct assault on them and their values. In response, they mobilized in opposition to policies designed to promote diversity, from busing and affirmative action to bilingual education and gay rights. Grievance defined their targets. They fumed about companies and schools giving preference to less-qualified minorities in an effort to achieve greater diversity. And they’ve battled against liberal academics who want to erase them from the history books by stressing multiculturalism and celebrating the contribution of minorities while distorting and minimizing the achievements of white men.

Economic changes since the 1970s have compounded these concerns. The decline of manufacturing and the influence of labor unions meant that many working-class men have found their traditional pathway to a better life blocked. Over the past two decades, the information sector has made robots, not immigrants, a serious threat to factory workers — a distinction missed by Trump’s scapegoating of cheap labor in Mexico and “terrible” trade deals.

Education has always been a way for social and economic advancement in the United States, but that door is closing to all except the wealthy. In 1974, the average annual tuition at a four-year private college stood at a reasonable $2,000, which adjusted for inflation would equal a little over $10,000 in 2017. Today, however, tuition at a private university is roughly $31,000. Costs have similarly risen at public universities.

And then there is the festering issue of income inequality that threatens the very foundation of the American Dream. Between 1993 and 2016, incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent grew 94.5 percent, while the bottom 90 percent increased by only 14.3 percent. In 1965, a typical CEO’s salary was roughly 20 times that of a typical worker. By 2011, CEOs earned 383 times more than the average worker.

The key here is perceived disadvantage. These economic changes have affected virtually every demographic group in this country. In fact, other groups have suffered far greater real hardship than white men. But over the past few decades, white men have experienced the greatest psychological blow. They worked hard to realize the American Dream, only to be told that their success was the result of “white privilege.” They never felt privileged.

Even worse, they have confronted a shifting partisan landscape. While white workers were celebrated as the base of the New Deal coalition, since the 1970s, the modern Democratic Party has shifted its focus to identity politics and embraced the movements so loathed by white men. From their point of view, liberals have abandoned them, more interested in celebrating diversity and combating the economic struggles confronting minorities than in responding to their economic plight and protecting American values. Although they receive many benefits from government, they don’t see it that way. In their mind, their wages are declining and their jobs are disappearing, and yet Democrats want to take ever increasing amounts of their hard-earned money to support less deserving minorities.

White men believed the American culture they shaped and institutions they ran were fair and sound and drove our triumphs. They saw little reason to change a society that had served them so well. But now they find their value system under assault from all directions. They aren’t even sure what they can say without being branded racist or sexist, thanks to the reviled culture of political correctness. Many have responded to these challenges by embracing a toxic brew of resentment and victimization.

What unites the white working class, the sociologist Michael Kimmel has observed, is a sense of “aggrieved entitlement.” Polls show that more than any other demographic group, non-college educated whites feel abandoned by the government, fearful that their children’s lives will be worse than their own, resentful of immigrants and convinced that the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity will push them to the margins of society.

As the nation witnessed in Charlottesville, a handful of these angry white men have joined fringe movements that openly advocate violence and preach white supremacy. But they are a small minority. Millions more white men, however, feel the same anger, but refuse to be associated with extremist groups and retain some hope that the traditional parties — and the mainstream media — will acknowledge their grievances.

So how should the nation respond to their pleas?

We must unequivocally condemn the hate-filled rhetoric and violent tactics of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups. There can be no compromise or efforts to appease these groups. They must be crushed.

But we also need to address the underlying conditions that fuel white male resentment. That means having a balanced discussion about immigration that appreciates the many contribution that immigrants make to our nation while establishing clear, fair-minded limits on how many people can enter the United States. It means dramatically increased federal spending on infrastructure and on education to provide meaningful jobs now and the hope of better jobs in the future. It means rethinking government policy that contributes to income inequality. It also requires having difficult conversations with white men about their misperceptions about themselves.

There is a warning here for both parties. Democrats need to expand their concept of diversity to include white men and they need to stop dismissing them as racists. They should listen to the stories of people in economically decimated rural areas in Iowa and Wisconsin as well as traditionally Democratic cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco. At the same time, Republicans under Trump have become the party of cultural nostalgia. But all they offer are false promises and phony solutions that will do little to alleviate the underlying sources of white discontent. They need to take seriously the real challenges facing downwardly mobile whites and not just manipulate their fears to win election.

Until our political system finds a way to make angry white men less angry, our society will face more turmoil and violence.

newyorknewyork wrote:Great Article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/08/29/why-are-so-many-white-men-so-angry/?utm_term=.496785667bfb

Why are so many white men so angry?

What emboldened white nationalists to brazenly march through a sleepy college town and then violently assault counterprotesters? That’s the question lingering in the minds of Americans two weeks after Charlottesville.

Although many forces came into play to produce these heartbreaking events, a crisis of white identity drove them. More than a half-century ago, minorities, women and immigrants began to challenge the economic, political and legal hierarchy that had favored white men for centuries. Their efforts produced a white backlash that burst into the open after Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

Donald Trump has tapped into this anger and manipulated it to his political advantage. The bond between President Trump and his white followers is not based on policy but on grievance. They both reject the cultural changes over the past half-century, and Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan signals his intent to unravel them. Last week in Phoenix, he extolled his overwhelmingly white audience as “honest, hard-working taxpaying … Americans who love our nation, obey our laws and care for our people.” He warned that the hated media was trying to “take away our history and our heritage,” fanning the flames of white discontent.

The past five decades have not been kind to the white, heterosexual men who made up the overwhelming majority of those who invaded Charlottesville and who support the white nationalist movement. Until the 1960s, white men sat unchallenged atop the United States’ cultural and economic pyramid. They did not have to compete against women or African Americans in the workplace, and they benefited from laws and customs that sustained their privileged position. They not only ruled the workplace, they dominated American politics and exercised virtually unchallenged power at home.

At the same time, a combination of unprecedented prosperity and a muscular labor movement provided well-paying jobs in large manufacturing plants with generous benefits. (There were, of course, many whites who lacked meaningful employment and battled poverty, but compared to other groups, white men clearly enjoyed advantages.)

And then their world exploded. African Americans, unwilling to accept the legacy of Jim Crow, confronted the white power structure in the South. With the help of liberal allies, they pushed Congress to pass two major pieces of civil rights legislation that outlawed legal discrimination. Feminists, inspired by these successes, challenged laws that confined them to traditional roles in the private sphere. They smashed the notion that women could not be lawyers, doctors and corporate leaders, and they made clear they were not content to be subservient housewives. They were later joined by the LGBT community that demanded equal treatment while questioning traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality.

One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Here’s how the city became the scene of violence. (Video: Elyse Samuels, Zoeann Murphy/Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post)
But by far the greatest threat to white male dominance has been immigration. The Immigration Act of 1965, which made “family unification” the centerpiece of the nation’s immigration policy, produced a dramatic increase in the number of people coming to the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, immigrants and their children born in the United States account for 55 percent of population growth since 1965. Immigrants made up 5 percent of the population in 1965; they make up 14 percent today.

This legislation also fundamentally altered immigration patterns. After 1965, the vast majority of new immigrants came from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Many whites view these immigrants as a threat to America’s “common culture” — a culture that white men created. From their perspective, instead of assimilating into the American culture, recent migrants have given rise to a new identity politics that celebrates cultural differences and rejects shared values.

Beginning in the 1960s, many white men perceived the changes wrought by the rights movements and increased immigration not as building a fairer, more diverse society and rectifying past wrongs, but as a direct assault on them and their values. In response, they mobilized in opposition to policies designed to promote diversity, from busing and affirmative action to bilingual education and gay rights. Grievance defined their targets. They fumed about companies and schools giving preference to less-qualified minorities in an effort to achieve greater diversity. And they’ve battled against liberal academics who want to erase them from the history books by stressing multiculturalism and celebrating the contribution of minorities while distorting and minimizing the achievements of white men.

Economic changes since the 1970s have compounded these concerns. The decline of manufacturing and the influence of labor unions meant that many working-class men have found their traditional pathway to a better life blocked. Over the past two decades, the information sector has made robots, not immigrants, a serious threat to factory workers — a distinction missed by Trump’s scapegoating of cheap labor in Mexico and “terrible” trade deals.

Education has always been a way for social and economic advancement in the United States, but that door is closing to all except the wealthy. In 1974, the average annual tuition at a four-year private college stood at a reasonable $2,000, which adjusted for inflation would equal a little over $10,000 in 2017. Today, however, tuition at a private university is roughly $31,000. Costs have similarly risen at public universities.

And then there is the festering issue of income inequality that threatens the very foundation of the American Dream. Between 1993 and 2016, incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent grew 94.5 percent, while the bottom 90 percent increased by only 14.3 percent. In 1965, a typical CEO’s salary was roughly 20 times that of a typical worker. By 2011, CEOs earned 383 times more than the average worker.

The key here is perceived disadvantage. These economic changes have affected virtually every demographic group in this country. In fact, other groups have suffered far greater real hardship than white men. But over the past few decades, white men have experienced the greatest psychological blow. They worked hard to realize the American Dream, only to be told that their success was the result of “white privilege.” They never felt privileged.

Even worse, they have confronted a shifting partisan landscape. While white workers were celebrated as the base of the New Deal coalition, since the 1970s, the modern Democratic Party has shifted its focus to identity politics and embraced the movements so loathed by white men. From their point of view, liberals have abandoned them, more interested in celebrating diversity and combating the economic struggles confronting minorities than in responding to their economic plight and protecting American values. Although they receive many benefits from government, they don’t see it that way. In their mind, their wages are declining and their jobs are disappearing, and yet Democrats want to take ever increasing amounts of their hard-earned money to support less deserving minorities.

White men believed the American culture they shaped and institutions they ran were fair and sound and drove our triumphs. They saw little reason to change a society that had served them so well. But now they find their value system under assault from all directions. They aren’t even sure what they can say without being branded racist or sexist, thanks to the reviled culture of political correctness. Many have responded to these challenges by embracing a toxic brew of resentment and victimization.

What unites the white working class, the sociologist Michael Kimmel has observed, is a sense of “aggrieved entitlement.” Polls show that more than any other demographic group, non-college educated whites feel abandoned by the government, fearful that their children’s lives will be worse than their own, resentful of immigrants and convinced that the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity will push them to the margins of society.

As the nation witnessed in Charlottesville, a handful of these angry white men have joined fringe movements that openly advocate violence and preach white supremacy. But they are a small minority. Millions more white men, however, feel the same anger, but refuse to be associated with extremist groups and retain some hope that the traditional parties — and the mainstream media — will acknowledge their grievances.

So how should the nation respond to their pleas?

We must unequivocally condemn the hate-filled rhetoric and violent tactics of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups. There can be no compromise or efforts to appease these groups. They must be crushed.

But we also need to address the underlying conditions that fuel white male resentment. That means having a balanced discussion about immigration that appreciates the many contribution that immigrants make to our nation while establishing clear, fair-minded limits on how many people can enter the United States. It means dramatically increased federal spending on infrastructure and on education to provide meaningful jobs now and the hope of better jobs in the future. It means rethinking government policy that contributes to income inequality. It also requires having difficult conversations with white men about their misperceptions about themselves.

There is a warning here for both parties. Democrats need to expand their concept of diversity to include white men and they need to stop dismissing them as racists. They should listen to the stories of people in economically decimated rural areas in Iowa and Wisconsin as well as traditionally Democratic cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco. At the same time, Republicans under Trump have become the party of cultural nostalgia. But all they offer are false promises and phony solutions that will do little to alleviate the underlying sources of white discontent. They need to take seriously the real challenges facing downwardly mobile whites and not just manipulate their fears to win election.

Until our political system finds a way to make angry white men less angry, our society will face more turmoil and violence.

Unfortunately the social life is not linear. It acts and metronome.
Society is overreaching into one extreme just to swing back to another.
It takes hundreds of years and generations to reach the balance even if the country is mono-national and mono-cultural.
US is young, multinational, and multicultural union.
The people who this article author defined like "angry white males" are in the process of becoming a minority from being majority.
This is difficult process but it is inevitable.
The majority of this country will inevitability became people of mixed race, mixed national, mixed cultural and religious background.
This country is the seed of human race which will not be divided by race, nation, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.
We as a Human race must get there or self-distract and disappear.
We nave no other choice.

meloshouldgo wrote:South Korea- set to be Casualty # 1 of Trump's idiocy - As Briggs has demonstrated clearly people who suffer from paranoia will do extremely stupid things that includes wiping out millions of innocent people so they can "feel safe". And Briggs is by no means alone, in fact he helped elect someone with no compunctions whatsoever. He does understand very well that launching and sustaining multiple wars will guarantee a second term. The doddering dumbass would need a step ladder to look a snake in the eye - you can only sink so low.

There are only 2 possible ways this thing can go.
Keep status quo by letting China feed the North indefinitely or blast them out Serbian style.
Most likely with nuks already arrived in the North the second not even an option.
So Trump no-Trump North will continue to abuse and kill its own people for many years to come.
US is not in a driving seat. This like Melo NTC for the North. It is all up to them.
We just should let them expire.

djsunyc wrote:trump ending daca when NOBODY was asking for it. there is absolutely nothing positive anyone can say about him.

HE made a campaign promise to get rid of DACA, and the AG's of the republican states told him that he did not repeal Obama's order by September 5, 2017, they were going to sue him. That is why he is making the announcement. It is just one other example of the race-based promises he made to these angry white men to get elected that he is now stuck with. Unfortunately, this might be the best thing for us all, because if the Republicans cannot pass a replacement DACA, then the Republicans are going to loss alot of votes in 2018, and the Democrats might be able to retake the house and/or the senate. Once that happens, you can be assured that calls for Trumps impeachment will gain momentum.

arkrud wrote:

TheGame wrote:

djsunyc wrote:trump ending daca when NOBODY was asking for it. there is absolutely nothing positive anyone can say about him.

HE made a campaign promise to get rid of DACA, and the AG's of the republican states told him that he did not repeal Obama's order by September 5, 2017, they were going to sue him. That is why he is making the announcement. It is just one other example of the race-based promises he made to these angry white men to get elected that he is now stuck with. Unfortunately, this might be the best thing for us all, because if the Republicans cannot pass a replacement DACA, then the Republicans are going to loss alot of votes in 2018, and the Democrats might be able to retake the house and/or the senate. Once that happens, you can be assured that calls for Trumps impeachment will gain momentum.

Reps have no choice but come up with comparable replacement so I do not see any political issues for Trump from this going forward.
Every time he put himself in bad position he somehow manages to get away unharmed.
And every time this is happening because of the next overdue act of his opponents. They just cannot help themselves.

You would think they would be able to but they could not repeal Obamacare and if the hardliners make a fuss, they are going to need the democrats to pass it and the democrats may say no if the bill tries to impose tougher immigration laws. If it is a clean bill about DACA, the dems will help get it passed but if the republicans try to sneak other stuff in it, it could be a problem.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/905092514570534912

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/905092514570534912

So far experiment shows that nothing happened...
Exactly like you put the best people in this position.
Is it fantastic of what?

briggs talking about nuking other countries.

something happened.

Sometimes the word "paranoia" doesn't seem to do justice to the right wing mouthpieces. Here we have conspiracy theorist numero Uno. Hurricanes are fake news, bad media! Bad!! And to think he makes a living from the media. Then again if they could think.....

😃😃😃

BRIGGS wrote:

djsunyc wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/905092514570534912

So far experiment shows that nothing happened...
Exactly like you put the best people in this position.
Is it fantastic of what?

briggs talking about nuking other countries.

something happened.

If someone offers to punch you in the face--many times its best to walk away and let it broil over. When those threats increase and become more severe do you continue to walk away or do you stand up?