(This was originally written as a reply to comment by Heart of the Rockies on Booman’s recent post “The DCCC’s Fingers on the Scales.”(<http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2018/4/26/12454/2855#55>)
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Heart of the Rockies wrote:
However, she isn’t the only promising candidate to have lost to Coffman. Several others have as well. I don’t understand why. This district has a lot of immigrants from Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc. Also quite a few Hispanics. Quite a bit of poverty. Perhaps they aren’t voting. Or aren’t able to vote.
And I responded.
Read on.
A lot of immigrants from Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc.? Also quite a few Hispanics? Quite a bit of poverty? Perhaps they aren’t voting? Or aren’t able to vote?
Ya think!!!???
There is no “perhaps” here, given the “not voting/unable to vote” idea combined with not being asked to vote or effectively organized by the DC-controlled Democratic Party.
Sigh…
I really do get tired of trying to bring this up, but the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties are still stuck somewhere in the ’50s/early’60s “white-middle-and-working-class-rules-the-electoral-scene” mindset that was in place when and where they grew up. On the contrary, we are rapidly heading towards…if we have not already arrived at…a “brownish” majority in this country.
The first party that:
A-Truly recognizes this fact at the top of their bureaucratic food chain
and
B-Manages to reach out to that burgeoning majority without totally alienating the “old” majority
will win national elections across the board.
Until then?
Same same.
Groundhog Day.
Over and over and over and over again.
The only change?
The two centrist parties will change places every few election cycles. One party will win and promise to “change” things. When they fail, the other party will win and run the same game. Like I said—over and over and over and over again. The names change at the top but the Permanent War Machine continues apace.
So it goes.
AG
P.S.
Heraclitus-“”Change is the only constant.”
Question from AG-“But what if that ‘change’ is only in outward appearance?”
Heraclitus (or possibly a stand-in)-“Eventually the Emperor’s revolving set of new clothes begin to tatter and fall off. Then…and only then…does real change begin.”
Q-Does Trump represent the tattered robes of this system as it has stood since the assassination years?
A-I believe so, myself. It’s quite plain to see. He is almost completely naked in his self-glory.
Q-But…who’s going to pick up the pieces?
A-Damned if I know.
Whoever wakes the fuck up enough to appeal to the real majority of this country. (Maybe “majorities” would be a better word.) Those people who…no matter what their ethnicities, economic situations, religions or genetically defined sexual preferences…want to be able to live and work here in peace.
I spend a lot of time in public places. It’s a given in NYC that people of all types generally coexist quite well on the streets and in stores, restaurants and public transportation etc. And it seems to me to be pretty much the same throughout the country. Yes, we have nutcases with guns shooting up various venues, but really…what are the chances of that happening in any Dunkin’ Donuts, Waffle House, diner or gas station/convenience store across the nation? Zilch, that’s what. Nada. Nearly nothing. Why? Because about 99.9% of the population just wants to be left the fuck alone to live as they want to live according to their culture and their talents.
That’s why.
And if that isn’t a “majority,” I don’t know what is.
At least (and I think it’s much higher) 25% of the population want to poke their noses into their neighbors’ lives and tell them what to do. What God to pray to. How to pray. What music to listen to. What to wear. What to eat. How to have sex or how not to have sex. Who to vote for. What kind of car to drive. Insatiable nosy Parkers and tin-horn gods. They can’t have pleasure unless someone else is miserable. And they can’t stand niggers, kikes, dagoes, polacks, ragheads, chinks, spics, micks, frogs, krauts … The list goes on and on.
You are right.
I exaggerated.
Hope springs eternal, I guess…
AG
I do agree with your main point. I just wanted to point out that you underestimate the number of really bad people out there.
I understand.
Sometimes I overstate…within and without.
My new motto.
AG
I am going to take this a little further, Voice.
I wrote:
And you replied:
Yes.
Indisputably so, except for perhaps the percentage.
No matter…1% or 49%, the simple fact is that those people also want to live according to their culture and their talents…no matter how meager those cultures and talents may appear to some others of us.
There is an old, (male, of course) sexist one-liner that goes like this:
There is a huge kernel of truth in this idea as it pertains to any and every human social/political/cultural conflict, of which there have uncountable numbers throughout human history.
It’s the “Can’t kill ’em” part that’s the kicker here, because every war that has ever happened…no matter that they have been almost all been totally economically based…has been propagated and popularized by the warmakers with the following idea:
Now…this whatever percentage of the population that wants to poke its noses into their neighbors’ lives and tell them what to do? Barring real war or some kind of cultural cleansing on a Hitlerian level, both of which are…post-WWII/post-nuclear weaponry…basically unthinkable? It’s the “Can’t live with ’em; can’t kill ’em” idea raised to a much higher level.
What to do, what to do?
And here we run smack-dab into the root of Libertarian theory, which…cleansed of its racist, culturalist and sexist add-ons…goes something like this:
Which end of this spectrum do you think would be the most successful one? Would rule at the very least on an economic level if not eventually on a cultural one?
My own bet?
The smart end.
Will this ever happen?
Maybe it already has, worldwide.
Maybe…very broadly and certainly not in any way “pefectly”…perfection being unattainable to humans as a whole according to the wisest among us for eons…this is the true history of “history.”
A slow…often halting, sometimes stumbling, sometimes even regressing but overall consistently moving forward…progress towards real intelligence!!!
Let us pray that it is so.
Later…
AG
P.S. A word to all the knee-jerkers out there who see the word “libertarian” and immediately begin to froth at the mouth…froth on. You’ll have your state someday, too.
Probably Alabama.
Or maybe…if you’re lucky…Arkansas.
Weather is better in Alabama.
Just wanted to say that I based the 25% on a recent poll that said 26% of the electorate were “very satisfied” or “very pleased” or something like that with Donald Trump.
That’s only (R)’s. Make your own estimate of (D)’s that are rotten people. Maybe together they are a majority. I’ll be charitable for old times sake and guesstimate their number at 10% of the total. Add together 25% + 10% + 47% (so bummed out by BOTH parties that they don’t vote)and you get 82% That means 18% of the electorate are decent people caught in groundhog day. (The 47% are probably decent too)
Polls lie.
I base my own guesstimates on the people with whom I daily interact. Not necessarily my friends or close associates, just those that hold doors for each other, let others sit on public transportation, are considerate, careful drivers and walkers and…generally speaking…simply do not go out of their way to act like assholes.
Some percentage of these well-mannered folks have prejudices that…say you and I…do not share. So it goes. I also do not like certain kinds of people …hustlers, mostly (A very broad term in my own lexicon.)…and I go well out of my way not to serve them or be in any way in contact with them if at all possible. My inner self would jail most of them in a heartbeat…a form of segregation, bet on it…if I had the power to do so. And I quite possibly would be wrong in doing so, guilty as they might be. Fairly well-functioning societies are very precariously balanced systems…a socially ecologic wonder, one might say…and just as in the ecology of the world (As Duke Ellington answered when asked why he allowed so many bad actors to play in his wonderful bands.):
This is a profound social statement by a transcendent genius who not only wrote masses of music that will stand the test of time, but also almost singlehandedly maintained ensembles capable of playing that music on the highest levels for well over 50 years, most of the time living in a society that considered him and his musicians to be second-class citizens because of their race.
He was libertarian in this concept. So are ecologic environmental studies. As long as you pull your weight and do not massively contribute to the destruction of whatever system in which you find yourself, you are OK. Wolves and lions are OK, and so are most lambs, ticks, mosquitoes, rodents, etc., etc, etc. My son is a high-level environmental biologist specializing in ticks and tick-borne diseases. He and his associates could end the Lyme disease problem with one insecticide that (theoretically) killed only the ticks that carry it, but they fear that to do so would so destabilize the environments in which it was used that eventual overall environmental collapse would soon follow.
So…you or I disagree with the so-called “moral” stances of some percentages of the population, and…bet on this as well…they disagree with our own beliefs. As I have often said here, you cannot legislate morality. You also cannot argue with it, most of the time. Not successfully, anyway. You need to have your good little people and your bad little people….at least up to a certain point.
Where is that point?
Ahhh…there’s the rub!
Some sort of revolution?
The very word tells you what will happen.
From the Russian revolt against the aristocracy to full-grown Stalinism in what…15 years, more or less? From the French revolution to Napoleon Bonaparte is about he same amount of time?
UH oh!!!
What to do; what to do?
Damned if I know.
Survive, mostly.
Survive while acting on your own moral principles, and may the best morality win.
Human evolution at its slow work, as far as I am concerned.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Later…
AG
Your comment reminded me of the song “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder.
P.S. IMO you’re correct about not being able to legislate morality. Maybe that’s why religion is a necessary component of a society. However, when it’s mixed with politics its purpose becomes diluted. I’ll make a prediction: that deadly combination is going to end and sooner due to the effects of Pres. Trump and the right-wing nuts.
You write:
Let us pray that is is so.
Thanks…
AG