Bat Guano

This reminds me of several conversations I had in Sweden on a trip there a few years ago. They don't have socialism; everybody took pains to clarify that their system is one of universal benefits, meaning everybody gets the same benefits from the government, paid for by a progressive tax system, as opposed to a to-each-according-to-his-needs, as in socialism. And capitalism is flourishing. The example one person gave is that everybody can afford a decent, basic pair of shoes. If you want better shoes, you can work and save until you can afford them. But the point isn't about the better shoes or car or whatever; it's that nobody goes without the basics of a decent life. Even the poor have dignity and self-respect. And there is still an incentive to work; almost everybody does, but they are not slaves to their jobs, meaning they don't live in fear that their children will starve if they get fired. This has all kinds of benefits. Much lower economic inequality than the US, for starters, which takes out a lot of the resentment that politicians play on. Greater entrepreneurialism, because people with an idea for a business feel freer to quit their jobs and pursue their dream (and this is actually borne out in the statistics; Sweden has more startups than the US). And there's the thing that certain quarters over here scoff at, but may be the most important one of all: happiness. People are actually happy when they have a sense of dignity and agency over their own lives. Who would have guessed?

Seems to me the intended audience is the NRA and the takeaway is, "See, we really didn't do anything of substance so please don't primary me!"

I've done it. Sometimes I DVR Tucker while watching something else and watch a few minutes of it later. It's rage-inducing; the lies are so transparent that it's hard to believe anybody falls for them, but you know they do, hook, line and sinker. I can usually only make it through a few minutes of the opening monologue; never actually watched the whole show.

Texas politicians are unresponsive to their constituents. Cool story bro: I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn and there was a protest down the street from his house. Bunch of local residents speechifying and holding signs. A couple of reporters were there, and the city council member for the district showed up. What were they protesting? The city was proposing to reclassify three parking spaces. I couldn't imagine a politician in most cities in Texas responding to a protest over such a hyperlocal issue; and, as a result, I couldn't imagine a protest in any city in Texas over such a 'small' issue - because they know it would be futile. Why waste your time? It's only three parking spaces, and your making noise ain't gonna change shit anyway. I don't know what became of the parking spaces, but at least the residents made their voices heard. Democracy in action. Doesn't exist here, in any practical sense; the pols know they can get away with ignoring certain segments of their constituency, in fact mocking them on social media.

I'm watching 'This Old House.' In case anyone's interested.

Don't you get a bit of cognitive dissonance from the two graphs - the one you responded to and the one you presented? How can the effective rate of the 1 percent and above have fallen, and yet their share of the tax burden goes up? It's because of the old dodge by the right-wingers of conflating all taxes into Federal income taxes. Not the same thing, as you note - state and local, property and sales tax, all that adds up. Sales taxes in particular have risen over the time periods shown, and they are very regressive. Add to that that the delta between the 1 and even more so the .1 percent, and everybody else, has grown exponentially, which means that while their share of the federal income tax may have gone up, it's still way down from where it would have been if the top rates had stayed where they were in the 1950s. And federal dollars are where, by and large, infrastructure spending comes from. Sure, spending on SS and medicare has gone up, and that is paid for mostly by the middle class and below because of the income caps, and is a separate issue because they have their own dedicated revenue streams. So conflating all taxes with Federal income taxes is misleading, and, to get back to the discussion, federal dollars available for infrastructure spending have been declining. And yes, it's because of tax policy, though it's not quite as simple as "rich people pay most of the taxes."

So the effective rate fell for the top 1 percent and above, according to that graph. Which means it had to have gone up for everybody else. Correct?

This is a pretty good introduction to the technique.

You fuckers have been seeded. Where is workswithseed now, I ask you? He got you arguing among yourselves about a stupid topic and now he's nowhere to be found. Mission accomplished. You always take the bait, don't you? The original topic is more interesting. Carville is a political pro, which means in essence he's a marketing guy. He cares less about the principles he's selling than selling them and winning races, and he's damn good at it. He can read the room. There was actually a time when I seriously considered voting for Trump. It was early on, a week or two after he came down the escalator; he was talking about how he'd been making donations to politicians for decades, and always getting something out of it. He promised to put an end to it. That appealed to me, deep in my gut. This was before I realized that he doesn't utter a single sentence fragment without at least three or four lies in it. Of course it didn't take long to figure out he was lying about that, but soon after that his 'promise' evolved into the 'drain the swamp' bullshit. Trump never actually came up with that; it was a line put in one of his speeches by someone, he tried it out at a rally, and it got a good response, so he kept it in. Same as the 'build the wall' stuff; that was just another throwaway line that caught fire at a rally. Trump is a moron, but he knows how to sell shit; stuff that is popular stays in, whether he agrees with it or even knows what the hell he is saying. Carville works the same way, without the lying; he doesn't have to lie, because the policies his chosen party advocate for are inherently popular, but he knows what gets people fired up. That's all he's really saying; it's pure messaging and marketing. Push the 15/hour wage, the right to vote, and all the other popular stuff. Make snappy slogans and sell those ideas; it's easy because people already like them. You don't have to ignore the stuff that is easily caricatured by the other side, but just keep pushing the popular stuff. It's not fucking rocket surgery.

This is very good. Just one small change to make it more better. It's the little things....

Not so sure about this. I remember thinking along these lines 6 years ago when a clownish fake billionaire game show host threw a red MAGA trucker hat in the ring. What's the worst that can happen, I thought. He has no chance of winning, I thought. It'll be entertaining as hell, I thought....

In the immortal words of Kurt Cobain, "acting stupid is contagious."

You know... I thought that for a long time. He's too smart to actually believe the shit he's saying, I thought; he's just cashing in on the rubes. But lately I'm starting to think he really believes his schtick. Maybe I overestimated his intelligence.

At the risk of derailing this productive discussion, I'll take a crack at answering the OP's original question. With a real answer. How do we gain tolerance for views we disagree with? More exposure to those ideas. Here's an exercise that might help: for every opinion piece you read that you agree with, seek out one on the other side - preferably an intelligent one, not a crazy off-the-rails purely partisan hack job. Read it. And I mean REALLY read it, with an open mind, trying to suss out the facts of the issue, understand what the author is really trying to say. In particular, don't automatically take a kneejerk critical stance to the one that is on the opposite side of the one you agree with; read it with the same open-mindedness that you read the first one with. See if it changes your mind. If not, that's fine; but do the same thing again. Read both sides. Do it every day for a month; seriously, it won't hurt you. You might learn something; at the very least, it should create some tolerance for the other side in your own mind. Isn't that what this thread is asking?

As satisfying as this would be, I worry that it's not going to work. Stupid people don't realize they're stupid; in fact they're quite resistant to the idea. And of course they blame the 'elites' for constantly telling them they're stupid and racist and and lazy and making them feel bad. And Fox News and the other even worse outlets tell them they're smart and the best part of the country, and that the weak, parasitic elites are looking down on them and giving their jobs to the brown people, and someone like Trump comes along and ... you know the rest. So it's essential to point out their stupidity, but it's counterproductive at the same time. We find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think this is it.