Civil Unrest next level or the beginning of the failure of our democracy

I’m not sure who you are responding to here. In case that is me, I may have miscommunicated something. Because I agree with your statement here, and would never argue against it…

Up thread a said a declared group can be evil, because their declared intention is evil. I also made the nuanced point that despite that its not a absolute. Gave some examples, that’s all accurate as well your first paragraphs point.

“I’m saying the Republican Party is all a con” on this point I disagree …in the sense that its intent is not a con. Its becoming a con because of a directed effort by the controlling authority. Not on principal, or declared purpose. Hope that distinction is clear…if that was meant for me,

Can you point to a time in the last 40 years when it wasn’t a con? ‘If you let us cut taxes for the wealthy the money will trickle down to you’ was a con. ‘We are conservatives, but we are compassionate and won’t screw you’ was a con. ‘I’ll save your coal or steel job’ was a con.

Well some people here were making that assertion, that absolutes in thinking is the same thinking the far right is using to say that liberals are out to destroy America. Its not accurate, its has a grain of truth in that there is evil actions in the GOP and that there are elements of the left (anarchist/elements of Anifta) that seek to radically change the existing US social norms. Neither is factually accurate, but also not without a grain of relevance either. Its narratives running amok and destabilizing the nation and communities, over inaccurate stories people create to tell each other.

This just seems like semantics, though. I think what you’re really saying is that the idea of “right-leaning politics” or “conservativism” is not a con. But if the controlling authority of the party is making (really, has made, past tense) it a con, and the rest of the party is going along with it, what’s the difference?

I guess you could argue that many well-meaning conservatives are being swept up with the insanity of the Republican Party as… unknowing bystanders, or something. But my ear hears that as “Not everyone in the party is evil! Some of them are just ignorant!”, which isn’t exactly a rousing defense of the party.

Exactly, if its getting co-opted that doesn’t mean the idea is invalid. I will disagree its already co-opted. That’s a narrative, its not the truth. The news is full of stories about is apparently going on unchallenged, and the right is in control, so they are allowing it. That sounds right, but the reality of that is far more complex.

I know some are embracing it Nunes is definitely one wearing the narrative like its his holy mission. I loathe him, but there are others I see trying to steer it back to a more moderate sane path. I think the 2018 elections will be the moment it clarifies who the party will be. A Trump cutout, or the party it used to be, or the party swept out of office because they didn’t take a more firm stand before. I’m curious what Nov will bring…

From my prespetive, it started to go south with the Tea party, good intentions, but the party of rigid no is not a party, its a party foul.

I know I’m late to the party (which exploded over my lunch!) but you will not have to pay back that debt. Quick question: when was the last time the U.S. debt had a zero balance? Answer: sometime in the 1840’s. Another: for how many of the last 175 years has the U.S. taken in more in taxes than it spent through expenditures? Answer: about 5. In other words, the debt has been growing pretty monotonically for the last 175 years. It existed when your great-great grandparents were alive, and they didn’t have to pay it back. The secret about government debt–particularly now that our currency is backed solely by government fiat–is that it never has to be paid back. When old bonds come due, we just issue new ones to cover the payment, and we can roll that debt on forever. Debt service can be an issue if it starts to become a large percentage of the economy, but it’s lower now, as a percentage of GDP, than it has been since 1973. The government has many levers it can use to increase or decrease the supply of money in the economy (and there are many ways that are out of the government’s control.) Two of the government’s important ways are fiscal spending (adds money to the economy) and taxation (removes money from the economy.) Debt is simply an arbitrary measure of the increase in the money supply due to fiscal spending over some length of time. And it’s quite possible the money supply increase is due mostly to population and productivity gains for the last couple of centuries.

This is a fantastic article that even though it is framed as a rebuttal to a piece in Politico (by Tim Alberta) summarizes exactly what’s wrong with the GOP today and how it’s not just about trump (trump is like the fascist cherry on top.)

Spoiler: It’s the donors.

When the Republican Party took full control of the federal government in 2017, a drug overdose epidemic had just killed more Americans in a single year than the Vietnam War had claimed over its entire duration. Wage growth for working-class families was tepid, while the costs of housing, health care, and higher education were soaring. Every month, more than 10 million Americans were cutting back on basic nutrition to make rent; every year, tens of thousands were being forced into bankruptcy to cover medical costs. A trillion dollars of student debt had formed an anchor around the millennial generation’s neck, pinning ambitious college graduates down in their parents’ basements. The boomers were entering retirement as the birth rate was plummeting — and the market was giving working families every incentive to keep the latter in free fall. The racial wealth gap was becoming a chasm, while videos of police officers executing black men had become too ubiquitous to make headlines. Inequities in the distribution of income had grown so vast and consequential, the nation’s superrich enjoyed a life expectancy 15 years longer than its poor.

And it had been the hottest year in recorded history for three consecutive years.

Congressional Republicans surveyed this landscape — and concluded that the most pressing policy problems facing the United States in 2017 were that corporate profits (while historically high) were not historically high enough ; that taxes on the wealthy (while historically low) were not quite historically low enough ; and that (in the middle of a historic public health emergency) the federal government was spending far too much on basic medical care and addiction treatment for the poor.

Oh man, this is the one area where when I get the details my head hurts. I revert to thinking of the national debt as akin to my family debts, or a small business.

I know intellectually its not the same, and you make a great case, but it operates using principals utterly alien to me. A good narrative sounds good right about now… :)

it’s lower now, as a percentage of GDP, than it has been since 1973

Is this true? Some cursory searching doesn’t seem to indicate that it is true. E.g.

For the rest of your comment, while to some extent you are right, and that we could print money and rely on inflation to erase debts, that has plenty of downsides and risks of its own. It’s also an option that the Republican party and centrist groups would find utterly abhorrent and would never willingly take.

That is a lot of graves to shit on.

Well, Armando is all out of bubble gum…

The God Emperor’s Holy Dischargements are reserved for only the upper echelons of Evil, as was writ in the Before Times.

Don’t we still pay interest on it? And don’t we need to show some interest in pay off some of it, so that people will keep letting us borrow?

Also, this is only true as long as we are considering the money of choice for international deals, but what happens if people decide to use the Euro or some other currency.

Worse, it’s a fanatical viewpoint. As much as I totally love ArmandoPenblade, undisputed master of the cooking thread, I’m deeply uncomfortable with fanatical viewpoints. Taking all nuance out of a debate and just flatly declaring that there’s a simple metric, such as being a member of a religion or political party, for identifying evil people is the rhetoric that fanatics use to excuse atrocities.

Sometimes an issue is that clear, that black and white. This is one of those issues. When it’s this clear, viewpoints like Armando’s are not fanatical.

I’m sorry, I want to be clear to make sure we aren’t talking past each other. You are taking the stance that every single Republican affiliated American, from the top leadership down to little old ladies who cast a Trump vote because they recognized the name from TV, is wholly evil?

I think this eludes to my main concern with modern economics, is mostly historic trends and theory. You don’t have a concrete model you can independently replicate. Its based on a theory with historical success.

My main issue with a model like this is that it works, till it doesn’t. Like the triggers for the 2008 great recession, all these experts say this is a great model, the market is great, till its not.

For the sake of not ending up like Greece Id prefer to use a model that is proven true, replicateable 100% of the time :)

Or if you even believe they are not wholly evil, you are an imbecile unworthy of time or concern? Don’t forget that point.

I’m honestly not concerned about that bit. Believing that people who don’t see politics the same you do are stupid or ignorant is a time honored tradition.

I don’t read that as not seeing politics the same…but people you think are vile, shouldn’t be seen as human… and people who have compassion for them are worthless and imbeciles for wanting to see them as people…at least that’s how I read that as. Which reads as pretty fanatical, if taken in that context.