There has been for quite a while. And I really don't mind, not that it's any of my business who posts where. It's been very informative for me. Do you have a problem with me being mildly amused by it? Or is that just too much rage from a Bernie supporter?
This... The funny thing is I almost supported Bernie until I actually looked at his policies. Free College is far too expensive and wouldn't get passed anyway. Even if it did you would have red states who refused to fund it so what you would have is people paying higher taxes for services they aren't receiving, it would be a disaster. I would rather have many other democrats over Hilary but Bernie is not one of them.
Can't help but talk about Trump? How sweet. Trump loves you! <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rXj_yrEkFJI?rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He replied to a post of mine where he was speaking about Trump, I simply returned the reply. That's how an adult conversation works.
Sanders and Trump both are sellouts to the establishment if they don't get the nom and decide not to run as independents. You can't spin it any other way after all the fire-brand rhetoric they have issued over the past eight months. I would say this is especially true for Sanders since that has been his main theme - Citizens United, establishment this, establishment that.
I voted for Sanders in the primary. I encouraged people to go hear him speak at UH. He had to work hard to lose my support.
Yeah well he did not do enough to clarify his vision for how things could be fixed without adhering to establishment rules and politics. I'll give you that. My view is Americans aren't willing to lose what it takes to get better. They want the easy way out. For years, they've asked citizens of foreign countries to endure horrifying living standards for minuscule rewards, but when the tables are turned... no one wants a mini revolution. It's hard to blame them/you. Most Americans are struggling to even be where they are. They can't imagine even a temporary reduction in living standards as a result of confrontation with a corrupt congress. That's not a sign of American weakness, that's just a staple of human weakness - voluntarily reducing your standard of living, one of the hardest things for the human mind to execute. That's why I dedicate my time and part of my career to supporting Americans. Because where others have looked for the source of this crazy violence and aggression, they stopped at the top layer - the government. "Corrupt bastards, all of them" >> that's what everyone says after a cursory look. Me, I looked deeper until I saw a nation reeling, frightened, in fetal position. I found the victims of the same criminals who have victimized so many non-Americans. And it makes total sense - why would that powerful entity treat its own people any differently than others, except to the degree that it insures itself from an expensive repression of an uprising? It's literally the same people doing all the damage. Expensive healthcare. ****ty infrastructure. Bought and silenced journalism. Stagnant income with rising prices despite staggering work hours and skyrocketing productivity. Disappearing jobs with no reasonable plan to replace them. Insane wealth inequality. Oligopolies everywhere. Gender and racial discrimination. Depression and pharmaceutical drugs infesting people's lives. Veterans sent to illogical wars, come back mentally damaged and neglected. This is all pretty usual for a third world country, but for the most powerful and most wealthy country in the world? Something's up. Something big is up. It's not Americans who decided it has to be a revolution. Americans, like everyone else, want nothing more than peaceful evolution. But these officials and their employers have drawn the line in the sand. They don't even hide it anymore. They will bring the full force of cash, police brutality, media onslaught, psychological advisors, military tacticians, economic annihilation, congressional gridlock to this fight. So for me, you'll excuse me if my position is: Bernie is just a seed, Trump could have significant negative impact, and everyone else is meaningless. Bernie's not the solution. No one person is going to do this. He is not strong enough. But he is the first person with a legit chance in a long time to involve the public in a challenge to congress, instead of trying to do it for 6 months from under his desk like Obama did. I'll be damned if I support Hillary in any way given how objectively close her ties are to some of the main people who have made things the way they are. Definitely, vote for her over Trump because duh, but that's an afterthought. That's a temporary band aid and it's time to continue the work elsewhere immediately. So there is common ground here. At the very core of this thing: 1 in 5 Americans are on some kind of aid like food stamps in the richest country in the history of the world. The minimum living wage TODAY is $15/hr, and more than 1 in 4 Americans make less than $10. A long line of people like Hillary (give or take) have not fixed that. Can we talk about how we're going to fix that? Because you and me both know, it's just not going to be Hillary that fixes it. Hillary is no Obama, and Obama is no FDR and FDR isn't enough anymore. Everything FDR achieved was thought to be impossible, it was never going to pass congress. But he didn't play the game, and he won by bringing the threat of an unhappy, raging public to congress. Guess what? It worked, and you owe him so much. Obama barely reversed the damage his predecessor did and it's been that kind of stupid back and forth for decades now. One step forward, three steps back, one step forward. You guys need to run, this dance is over.
It's true that Americans don't want to lift themselves by lifting others up. There's some resentment in Obama's interviews over that to the point where he'd rather confer with industrialists and even bankers because he'd know where they stand and to what extent they'd commit. That doesn't mean he liked dealing with them as lobbyists and donors from which the word "establishment" has negative trappings and contexts. The irony is that the US has grown as an undisputed superpower since the great recession and the gains from Silly Valley (notably the big four of Amazon/Google/Apple/Elon Musk Inc) are set to explode. Despite the illusion of the US being able to fight two fronts have been shattered, there is no other rival power capable of deterring the US in its actions at this point in time. We talk about debt, but almost every major industrial nation has as high or higher ratio of debt to GDP. I was thinking about a topic for that discussion, how humanity is headed towards extinction unless we innovate the hell out of things or getting the hell outta dodge. But I doubt I'd be invited. Bill Gates needs space for his apocalypse seeds... #tinfoilhat
Very true, though our capitalist elite still treat ordinary Americans a bit better than they or their buds the elites in the third world treat their people. A left wing ex anthropology prof friend of mine argues like the conservative contented often do: "What is the big deal about the very poor in the US, as even they use more than their share of the earth's resources and are better off than folks at near starvation or those suffering from the permanent wars we imperialistically inflict in the world". My response is that it is in part the suffering and insecurity of the poor and downwardly mobile in our society that makes our country so selfish and unempathic to much of the suffering around the world, I think this is why you find most of Scandinavia creating less misery and being more generous around the world than we are,
It's the McHale rule of success...work harder. Not successful? Work harder. I have a hard time right now in seeing populist movements engaging in good works and sacrifices. There's an inherent taint in pop culture about ends justifying means and "getting yours". The willful destruction of the Republican Party and government, through Trump and teabag respectively, as some form of phyrric victory doesn't look good for half that movement, while Occupy didn't project a good image for the other. Lost in the media sensationalism is the quiet struggle and suffering of millions of Americans living paycheck by paycheck waiting for a decent leader to rally behind. There's a thin line between keeping your individual dignity against that pressure and joining the angry mob. Interesting times that if not improved could usher in another hitler....
Misplaced hope of an all powerful government that can fix all of our problems is what creates another hitler. There is no place on this planet where EVERY person has more opportunities than right here. There is a growing majority that believes we should destroy it and replace it with the government santa claus of our dreams. That santa claus will look a lot like hitler.
Absolutely. There is a difference being middle class in scandinavia vs being middle class in America. There is a difference in dignity, in psychological well being, in social trust, in community ties. If you're middle class in America, you still need to be away from your child when you give birth, for example. That's not the case at all in most 2nd and 1st world countries. Scandinavia has moved forward on paternity leave and Americans are still talking about paid leave and working hours. Money is not everything, and aiming for the most money is not necessarily what's best for a healthy society. I've had countless discussions with well travelled American expats who told me how LONG it took for them to see the crippling effects of promoting an individualistic, exceptionalist (is that a word?) culture. It's amazing because research shows America was far more collectivist, whereas today it is probably the most individualistic country on the planet. And it shows. The huge majority of people I've met that moved to the US came back because "you can't make a real f'ing friend in that country." No exaggeration, I know exactly 11 different people who came back for this reason. Money is not everything, and the more Americans are terrorized by their elites, the more that fear will project into foreign policy passivity and a segregationist domestic policy, and the more THAT will result in revenge from those at home and those abroad. I don't think that when the founders dreamed of an exceptional America that they anticipated the psychological and socio-political ramifications of a population superficially looking down on other populations. Most Americans are raised to subconsciously feel a disconnect with the rest of the world, and that isolation has made them ripe for abuse by the elites, and without a support structure. We always talk about how religion was used as a tool to hoard power. This is no different. If I wanted to capture a population I would first separate them from the world, and then I would separate each of them from each other. Tell them I discovered that, magically, if everyone acts selfish and greedy, the collective will be better off. No religion has been that cunning, this an evolved form of religion. That's why I always say - if you are still worried about religion, you are several decades too late. Political ideology has evolved far beyond religion in its ability to manipulate people. People forget, this version of America hasn't existed very long. It's only existed since the elites began their revenge on FDR's social movement. They had to accept those programs, but the plan to dismantle it and forever damage it began the next day in earnest.
Absolutely not true. I live in an unchecked middle eastern monarchy and the poorest citizens of this country have greater opportunities than the entire American middle class. Same can be said for scandinavia, western europe and Japan. Do you know how many Americans are homeless with psychological disorders? In which developed country does that happen? I agree with you, it SHOULD be by far the best with the money and education available, but it's far from the best. Opportunity is about so many more things than having an unlimited income ceiling.
I guess it depends on what kinds of opportunities you are talking about. If you are talking about opportunities to move upward in one's economic class, the U.S. is about 10th. It's easier to move up in places like Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, France, and Finland, than it is in the United States. Italy and the UK citizens were less likely to move up in their economic class from which they were born into. So the U.S. is above those, but other nations showed that children born lower had more opportunity to rise above the economic class they were born into, than the United States.
Sounds like you are in the right place. Is it possible that people in the United States are less likely to move up in their economic class because they are more satisfied with their current situation? People only move up if they are motivated to do so AND have opportunity. It has been my experience in life that the people who are motivated to move up and work hard to do it find a way to improve their situation here.
It's a little late to run as independents. They chose to go with the parties way back when and now they can't get on 50 ballots and run campaigns without those parties. If they're sell-outs, they sold out back when they joined their respective parties in the first place instead of forming their own. But, I wouldn't say they're sell-outs, I'd say they're insurgents or party-busters come to disrupt the parties from within.
