11713

I used to think DeSantis was playing to be Trump’s VP candidate in 2024, but now I agree with others on this board that he’s overplaying his hand. It might be that he’s trying a shoot-the-moon strategy, where he goes for the Presidential nomination if Trump dies or goes to prison, but otherwise is shut out until 2028.

But as it is, he’s attracting way too much attention to himself for Trump to consider him. Trump demands sycophants, not people who could replace him.

11714

I’m thinking his pro-covid stance isn’t the positive that he thinks it is.

11715

So you really think working as farmer growing rice on couple of acres, owned by the state, to feed your family is dignity. Being able only to have protein once a month is dignity? There is dignity, in collecting the family’s shit for fertilizing and cooking? Or dignity in women having four or five kids in the hopes that two make it to adult

I think the billion who left the farms to work in these factories are better able to judge what is dignity than you or I.

11716

Ultimately, yes. But it was a Republican idea and they made it happen. Before Trump it was seen as a good thing in the GOP.

Personally, I’m more on the end of it being more of a net good, but tying our country’s ability to function so closely with an authoritarian shithole was still a bad idea. So I’m somewhere in the middle on it. It’s a national security issue in a lot of ways, but if some luxury good I enjoy is made in China, it doesn’t really matter.

But I’m also not on Twitter as an elected member of the party that made it happen and said it was a good thing right up until we ran and elected a crazy person who said the opposite.

The whole idea that we’d bring China into the fold and prosperity would make them more free didn’t really pan out. And now China can leverage our (and I include Europe here as well) dependence on them to do just about anything they want. But that was the concept the GOP presented.

11717

That makes no sense if you’re also worried about the scary “trade deficit”. Well, it makes no sense if you look at the increase in precarity, lower savings, indebtedness, suicide rate, renting as a service even for cheap entertainment, Other blaming, infrastructure decadence, oil dependance, frailty of supply chains and so forth; even in the neocon mindset, the loss of control of computer and network suppliers through loss of influence in the region is a security pickle.

11718

Frankly, most of that stuff has no effect on dignity either way. You’re just trying to make an equivalence between poverty and indignity. But dignity is wealth-agnostic. The poorest-of-the-poor can have it, the wealthiest on the planet can lack it entirely.

No, unfortunately, privation and the promise of prosperity are very common and powerful drivers in getting folks to willingly give up their dignity. It’s very understandable, but that doesn’t make it a good thing.

Yeah, but also in the Democratic party, generally, too, right?

I don’t know if there’s a better measure, but as an example, here is the senate vote to normalize trade relations with China, signed into law in October 2000. The senate was 55-45 in Republican hands. It passed 83 to 15. The Nay votes are 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. It was signed into law by Bill Clinton.

senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=2&vote=00251

11719

Where have I said anything about a scary trade deficit? I’m modestly concerned about the overall debt, don’t really care about trade deficit. Many of those are legitimate, although I have no idea what is infrastructure decadence? I think showing causal relationship between a globalized economy and say a higher suicide rate will be tough. Still, they pale compared to the benefits of higher life expectancy and living standards of the developing countries, and the higher standard of living folks in the developed country due to lower-priced goods.

I really struggle with how factory jobs in China are bad for Chinese workers, but losing these same factory jobs is bad for Americans. I don’t think factory jobs are particularly great, sure they pay more than retail, but are they really better,with more dignity? I have my doubts.

11720

This article filled me with schadenfreude today. I can’t wait for the hammer to fall.

11721

It took them a while, but that’s a long standing argument among the Democrats. Did they betray labor and the unions for political points? Probably. People like Bernie Sanders certainly think so. Bill Clinton folks? Probably not so much.

And Republicans playing the “strong on the economy” card was something forever. Much like the “strong on crime card”. They both worked really well, to the point that people still believe the economy thing even though it hasn’t really been the case since Reagan. You don’t want to be seen as weak on either of those things, so even Democrats are gun-ho about them. Harris is a good example of that. “Kamala Harris is a cop,” on the left (and much of the Libertarian right) didn’t come out of nowhere.

11722

One would hope that this might embroil Florida’s two distinguished senators, but since Marco Rubio was never made into a real boy and Rick Scott is a ghoul whose only interest is feeding on the corpses of Medicare patients I don’t see either of them being involved in a sex scandal.

11723

I don’t usually like when it feels like people are just shitting on a parade, but I have to say that I suspect he’ll be pardoned by a Republican president in 2025.

11724

China isn’t colonial India (or Brazil, or…), they were forced open too late and too wise to accept exporting low value goods for high value goods, so, yeah, they are one and the same; especially with an unfettered capitalist class who couldn’t be less patriotic if it tried.
This isn’t to say no, or even a small, globalization would be better; that ship sailed centuries ago. But there’s still strategic sectors, even in the US it’s unthinkable to depend on buying whatever foreign food, medication, planes,… anyone wants to sell, or even allow foreign power company ownership (AFAIK). Even being far from central planning, there’s no reason we (not US centric we) couldn’t each keep supporting doing things we did well, instead of expecting China to pinky swear not to do what every successful country did and ignore IP law, protectionism and all that, and our lazy, greedy masters to profit of it while they could.

Really? Lack of maintenance everywhere, from rail, to pipes, to electrical wiring, to bridges, to hospitals, to schools… and all their networked and exploitable control (as in, being attacked and ransonwared right now) whether in the Texas powergrid or the German bridges over the Rhine. You can even go further and look at how many experts who know the infrastructure inside and out have already left, as there’s no glory, respect, decent pay, or space for initiative in public service. It’ll be hell to build back much of anything, assuming we ever find the money in the cushions.

FTFY, globalization being this is a choice; yes, it’s unlikely anyone can prove it, but precarity, debt and being an accident away from being being destitute is a bit stressful, I think. I mentioned it because there was a big spike a while ago in middle-aged men with no easily attributable cause.

I wasn’t the one who mentioned it, but not all the jobs are the same, and there aren’t exactly the same work conditions in both places. Or the same environment impact. Plus, they allowed some class solidarity (that could be quite intersectional) that just died. But, really, it depends. There and here, people moved because they were force to one way or the other, for good and bad.
There just isn’t a good/bad dichotomy on most things anymore, there’s a lot of decision points that can go different ways. I didn’t mean to imply it’s all horrible; it clearly isn’t, but the free-for-all is also holding us back, and it doesn’t have to. Or we can wait for them to buy more privatized monopolies, I’m sure it’ll work out great in teaching them a lesson.

11725

Not to mention the local environmental destruction in the places manufacturing has been offshored to. Without those pesky regulations factories have put all kinds of stuff into the air and water. When it was happening here, in Britain and the European continent, at least it was principally for regional/national consumption. All that transpacific shipping (using some of the dirtiest fuel available, and dumping garbage along the route) is not particularly great for the oceans.

There are definitely downsides to the upsides.

11726

I swear I’ve typed this before. Trump isn’t an A player - in the business world, A players surround themselves with other A players because they aren’t afraid of them. Trump is a C player and only surrounds himself with people of grade D and below.

To your point, I’m not sure what he’ll do with DeathSantis. As much as I despise him, I also realize he’s smart and crafty & isn’t like Trump at all.

11727

It may not be guaranteed, but it’s surely easier to find some dignity when you aren’t starving.

11728

They seem to share being sociopaths*, but point taken.

*Then again, who in the GOP isn’t?

11729

You don’t find dignity, you have it and can only lose it.

11730

The GOP is trying to implement newspeak from Orwell’s 1984.

11731

I can only imagine that that list is some kind of joke. Equity? Multiculturalism? Social Emotional Learning? What the fuck?

11732

They’re snowflakes, plain and simple.