Okay, okay, I know we’re kinda bantering, but can I just leap into the ongoing discussion of the need for a socially liberal, fiscally conservative party to say that I really fuckin’ hate the baseline assumption that progressives are money-wasting dreamers who need to be reined in before we bankrupt the world, as though that’s some absolute Gospel-fucking-fact?
I don’t know any progressive who wants to just spend money for the fuck of it. They want to spend money to make the world a better place. Presumably, if making the world a better place is the goal, then one might allow that said progressives would prefer the money get spent in reasonably effective, meaningful ways rather than just dumping it into bureaucratic waste sites on the sly every night at midnight.
There’s a bunch of shit horrifically wrong in the world right now, and for a variety of complicated and historically convoluted reasons, money is necessary to fix it, so yes, that entails a fair bit of spending. Maybe even European levels! But then again, Europe’s hardly sinking into the abyss here!
Well, except Britain. But then again, they did let their racists vote last year so I mean what else would you expect.
Well…l maybe if you didn’t call fiscally moderate progresses half-assed progresses you could help dispel this assumption of money wasting dreamers. I mean that’s kind of what you said.
Yeah… except it’s not as if that point of view doesn’t exist. You’re making fun of an actual real problem… like there are a group of progressives out there who really think there isn’t room for different points of views. It’s the same group that keeps saying they won’t for this Democrat because they’re basically a GOP.
I’m cool with ditching the idea that progressives are money-wasting dreamers if we could also drop the assumption that people who don’t think throwing money at problems is always the right answer, are heartless bastards. Some of them are of course, but it’s not a productive assumption.
Just a reminder: no politician in DC over the last two decades has ever used the phrase “fiscally conservative” to mean anything other than “wants to cut Social Security.”
Now you can certainly argue that “fiscally conservative” ought to mean something else than just that, and should actually include possibilities like cutting defense spending or increasing taxes on the wealthy.
But it doesn’t. In actual usage, “fiscally conservative” means “wants to cut Social Security.”
Sure, but you need to realize that there’s a flip side to that, which is that some portion of fiscal conservatives want to reduce government intervention also with the goal of making the world a better place.
The private sector can ultimately do a lot of good… The best thing you can do for someone is make sure he can find work. Good, stable employment is a solid goal, and economic prosperity comes from growth in the private sector, not public spending.
Well see this where the GOP and I depart pretty sharply. I think it’s important for business to be able to compete and make money and employ citizens, but it’s also important that our rivers not catch fire, that our kids don’t drink lead and we don’t fill the ocean with tiny silicon pearls of death… so the best thing we can do for someone is make sure we keep them alive and in relatively good health too.
Well sure, but those people live in a mythical fantasy land where businesses won’t kill us indiscriminately to earn an extra buck and pay off the cops to sweep it under the rug ;-)
As a reminder, my politics mostly stems from the conceptualization that people are murderous, hateful, ignorant animals in desperate need of being controlled and corralled to enable better, more fruitful, civilized behaviors. If people could be relied upon to be halfway decent to one another on a consistent, global basis, then shit yeah, tear down government and anarchy for all. But, well, a few million years of human and proto human history seem to indicate otherwise.
But the problem with starting at the assumption that people are hateful and murderous is that government will be comprised of murderers just like any for profit institution. Maybe they just hide it better?
Well that’s why you ensure a government comprised of glorious Philosopher Kings seizes control of the means of produ–ohhhh, you rascals nearly caught me!
… And another reminder: thanks to two decades of Newt and his descendants, Federal spending on anything other than defense, health care, and Social Security has already been cut substantially.
Pols from both parties often pretend all budget worries would go away if we just got rid of “waste.” For non-defense spending, we already did that part.
To give as serious of an answer as I’m capable of in my funky little mood this morning, people are capable of rising above their baser urges and being somewhere in the vicinity of good. I’d just guess that my relative estimates of “good” versus “horrifically bad” are noticeably less optimistic than most folks’.
Trump represents a failure of government only insofar as our system of government allows itself to be controlled by the worst sort of human detritus that makes up an alarming portion of our voter base. Mostly, Trump is due to a failure of people, which is what I’d predict as being inevitable anyway.
It’s probably worth making clear that I’m not entirely certain that unrestricted democracy is really compatible with the humanity I assume we’re dealing with here on Earth.
I’m not trying to hold your feet to the fire for a completely serious or fully thought out answer. Just looking to get a handle on your thought process.
So folks are mostly (95%?) hateful and awful but can improve. I guess you would say that people just have a whole hell of a lot more rising to do to get to a basically decent outcome. OK, that’s a valid starting point. And I should point out that I totally agree that business’ purpose is not justice, that’s the purview of government. There will always be a tug of war between their two interests but I don’t find that bad. That tension is necessary for innovation to be balanced with the general welfare. Hey look, google just invented a successful teleporter! But it has a 50% chance of turning you into a rutabaga! Well … maybe that’s not ready to go to market.
I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think people are evil. If I had to pick a word, I’d say people are complicated. Our actions and motivations have layers and don’t always make sense to us, let alone explainable to others. As an aside, that’s the main reason I couldn’t vote for someone like Perot, I mean besides the fact that he’s a doofus. I do not trust anyone who says the answers are simple. Nothing is easy. And when some people thought Trump was going to sweep in and change things, saying health care was going to be “so easy” well, it didn’t take a psychic to predict how things would turn out.
