Gimpy wrote:I was going to before I forgot to vote

Soren wrote:

Gimpy wrote:I was going to before I forgot to vote

the fucking intern I hired to PM people didn't follow through. How is internet door to door going to work if no one is willing to put boots on the..err..keyboard?

Soren wrote:

Gimpy wrote:I was going to before I forgot to vote

the fucking intern I hired to PM people didn't follow through. How is internet door to door going to work if no one is willing to put boots on the..err..keyboard?

JUburton wrote:

pacino wrote:more elitist #$!&@ from the National Review
what a turd of a publication.

so reverse racism does exist! just not from where you'd 'expect' it.

Soren wrote:In srs news. Those National Review articles are amazing, they remind me of the "Project SCUM" scandal. It's such naked revulsion towards a group of people who have been the base of the GOP strategy for basically my entire life; breath taking stuff lately.

What happens to the conservative elite if the angry rabble they've successfully steered for so long goes rogue?

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

JFLNYC wrote:

Soren wrote:In srs news. Those National Review articles are amazing, they remind me of the "Project SCUM" scandal. It's such naked revulsion towards a group of people who have been the base of the GOP strategy for basically my entire life; breath taking stuff lately.

What happens to the conservative elite if the angry rabble they've successfully steered for so long goes rogue?

We've officially reached the point of "Let them eat cake."

Every generation (including ours) likes to think it's progressed beyond previous generations. And while there have been incredible technological advances over the centuries, the fact is that intellectually and emotionally we're pretty much the same humans we were a couple thousand years ago. That's why things seem to go in cycles and we see history repeating itself over and over.

In terms of the economic system attached to each government, there's an unwritten compact between the governors and the governed; the haves and have nots. Capitalism (at least in its present form) is no different in that regard. The compact is this: We the capitalists will provide the money and take the profits and, in exchange, we'll provide jobs for the have nots.

But, just as it was with the monarchies of old (and other systems), there's a fine line. As long as there are enough jobs, those jobs pay well enough and provide sufficient security, the working classes are satisfied. But when there aren't enough jobs, when those jobs don't pay a living wage and when job security disappears, the working class -- subconsciously or consciously -- start to think: "Hey, this arrangement isn't working working out too well for us."

We've seen it over and over in history. The haves, whether they're kings or pharaohs or czars or plutocrats, depend upon a permanent underclass of workers upon whose labor wealth is created. When the powers that be start believing that all the wealth is created by them, when they begin to forget the symbiotic relationship they have with the working class, when they begin to forget their responsibilities for providing good, decent-paying, secure jobs and start treating the underclass of workers as fungible commodities, then the unrest among the masses inevitably follows. At its worst -- which we've seen more and more of the past several years -- the haves begin to resent the working, underclass for having the temerity to want anything beyond the crumbs the capitalists care to distribute.

That's the "let them eat cake" moment, the Mr. Potter "lazy rabble" moment, the "blame the victim" moment and, I would argue, the moment exemplified by that NR article:

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

Any thinking person knows that quote is wrong. There have been tectonic economic shifts which have occurred over the past few decades: The death of successful, local businesses which keep a community's wealth within the community in favor of national and multinational business which -- even if they provide jobs -- take the wealth out of the community and distribute it among investors in other parts of the country and the world; a global economy fueled by faster national and international shipping and modern telecommunications which allows jobs to be relocated to wherever in the world provides the cheapest labor; the ultra-redistribution of wealth from among the many to the very few.

The workers aren't responsible for those shifts. Even if those shifts were/are inevitable, the working class has no power to change them. And even if future generations of workers can adjust, current workers -- especially older ones -- do not have the skills, education and, frankly, the capital to adjust adequately. So of course they feel disenfranchised and powerless because they are!

So the angry, disenfranchised working class finds a way to push back. If they're lucky, they find leaders like our Founding Fathers who find an intelligent, progressive way to throw off the yoke of oppression. But much more often they band together and storm the Bastille or worse, a charismatic strongman arises who promises the oppressed that, if they'll only follow him, he'll lead them back to the promised land.

That strongman inevitably finds a way to come to power by offering simplistic solutions and by defining scapegoats that allow "us" to unite against "them." In Nazi Germany the problem was the Jews and Communists, for Trump it's the Latinos, the Muslims and the establishment itself.

As others have noted, as hateful as Trump may be, he's not the cause of the problem, he's a symptom. But, don't underestimate the damage a leader such as Trump, who is in the wrong place at the right time, can do. The backlash of the underclass may have been inevitable but Trump is fanning the flames, pitting people against people. All of us were very lucky that when the time was right for the American Revolution, enlightened, intelligent leaders stepped forward who, rather than finding scapegoats and pitting people against people, believed in the commonweal and the basic human rights of all people.

Trump is not that guy and we choose him to manage this "revolution" at our peril.