Surly Megathread of destruction and doom. [BEWARE VERY DOOMY]

[52-80 19093]

When the APD beat up Antonio Buehler, everyone here roasted them for it.  Chief Acevedo might be a bigger public enemy here than is Bob Stoops.

When that white chick in Dallas accidentally shot up the black guy in his own apartment, everyone here roasted her for it.

When the Floyd video emerged, everyone here were outraged.

But suddenly, if an angroid bald WHITE manlet got shot because he was chasing down a kid and you dont mourn with his death, well apparently you're part of the 50% on the other side of the fence who are overnight racist cop-sympathizers.  That's apparently how this game works.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

22 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Do you mean we need to dismantle the news media and social media before we can try doing whatever it is that other countries do to be better at the problem than we are, or do you mean that other countries have already done those things, or do you mean that there is something special and different about other countries (or special and different about the US) that makes us uniquely unable to work on this problem?

I don't think we can do anything about it--our first amendment covers it. But I believe we've reached a tipping point in humility. I fear that there's no turning back.

Perhaps we could create new legislation where social media is responsible as a publisher, but that's a slippery slope.

[BabaYaga 15212]

30 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

When the APD beat up Antonio Buehler, everyone here roasted them for it.  Chief Acevedo might be a bigger public enemy here than is Bob Stoops.

When that white chick in Dallas accidentally shot up the black guy in his own apartment, everyone here roasted her for it.

When the Floyd video emerged, everyone here were outraged.

But suddenly, if an angroid bald WHITE manlet got shot because he was chasing down a kid and you dont mourn with his death, well apparently you're part of the 50% on the other side of the fence who are overnight racist cop-sympathizers.  That's apparently how this game works.

 

[Celery Man 20886]

13 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I don't think we can do anything about it--our first amendment covers it. But I believe we've reached a tipping point in humility. I fear that there's no turning back.

Perhaps we could create new legislation where social media is responsible as a publisher, but that's a slippery slope.

So you think the underlying problem for why America has a violence and mental illness problem unique from other countries is freedom of press, religion, assembly, speech, and protest?

[52-80 19093]

6 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

 

response bingo:

 

(1) if he was black, they wouldve shot him to death 5 minutes earlier

(2) police started it all by threatening to tazer him

(3) why didnt they calm him down by talking to him gently

[MillerEP 30339]

 

[bad_teammate 13132]

1 hour ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I think there is a LOT more mental illness in this country than we realize. People road raging/calling people racists/yelling at each other/anti-mask/destroying property/etc. are not healthy people. Media feeds this rage for views. Politicians exploit this rage for votes. Not sure how we get people to chill, but Facebook/Twitter/FoxNews/CNN need to go before any change can be made.

It's funny that "calling people racists" is on this list but "actually being racist" isn't.

1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

But suddenly, if an angroid bald WHITE manlet got shot because he was chasing down a kid and you dont mourn with his death, well apparently you're part of the 50% on the other side of the fence who are overnight racist cop-sympathizers.  That's apparently how this game works.

False victimhood. This is not how it went down at all.

1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

response bingo:

 

(1) if he was black, they wouldve shot him to death 5 minutes earlier

(2) police started it all by threatening to tazer him

(3) why didnt they calm him down by talking to him gently

Again, just fabricating nonsense out of thin air to be outraged about.

Pathetic stuff.

[Celery Man 20886]

still not sure what it is about America in particular that a lot of the posters here think makes us uniquely incapable of decreasing violence and mental illness

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

So you think the underlying problem for why America has a violence and mental illness problem unique from other countries is freedom of press, religion, assembly, speech, and protest?

No. I believe it is timing. We are at a tipping point in our country. The spread between the top and the bottom is WAAAAAY too big. The bottom have nothing to lose and the top have too much money to care. Our middle class is nonexistent compared to 50 years ago. 

[52-80 19093]

2 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

still not sure what it is about America in particular that a lot of the posters here think makes us uniquely incapable of decreasing violence and mental illness

just look at badteammate as an example.  how can anyone possibly fix that mental illness?

[Celery Man 20886]

Just now, 52-80 said:

just look at badteammate as an example.  how can anyone possibly fix that mental illness?

you mentioned that the reason police kill so many people in this country is because we are more violent and have more guns than other countries. Lets set aside guns for a second, do you think there is a reason why America is more violent, and do you think there is a reason why we can't do anything about it (if that is what you believe), and what are those reasons?

[bad_teammate 13132]

2 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

still not sure what it is about America in particular that a lot of the posters here think makes us uniquely incapable of decreasing violence and mental illness

Are you sure you're not sure?

*thujone-picture-of-gump-tapping-sumlin-portrait*

1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

No. I believe it is timing. We are at a tipping point in our country. The spread between the top and the bottom is WAAAAAY too big. The bottom have nothing to lose and the top have too much money to care. Our middle class is nonexistent compared to 50 years ago. 

You make a good point, after all...

The history of all hitherto existing societyis the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

 

[Celery Man 20886]

3 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

No. I believe it is timing. We are at a tipping point in our country. The spread between the top and the bottom is WAAAAAY too big. The bottom have nothing to lose and the top have too much money to care. Our middle class is nonexistent compared to 50 years ago. 

If it was simply timing, it seems like it would be a new problem. Although I think the gap between the haves and the have nots is a fine enough reason to believe that this country suffers from more violence than others. Do you think we are unable to do anything, societally, to address the issue?

[52-80 19093]

25 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

 

pirouette 4/5

landing 1/5

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

Just now, Celery Man said:

If it was simply timing, it seems like it would be a new problem. Although I think the gap between the haves and the have nots is a fine enough reason to believe that this country suffers from more violence than others. Do you think we are unable to do anything, societally, to address the issue?

In order to change a problem, you have to agree that it is a problem. Most of the country is doing great and they don't see a need to fix it. Not saying that's right, just saying that's how it is.

[Celery Man 20886]

I think we can definitely agree that creating consensus around the existence of a problem is important to work towards a solution. Also moderately surprised to find that we agree that the enormous gap between haves and have nots is a huge contributor to not just economic woes, but also violence and other social problems.

[bad_teammate 13132]

It's impossible to ignore among honest men.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

Just now, Celery Man said:

I think we can definitely agree that creating consensus around the existence of a problem is important to work towards a solution. Also moderately surprised to find that we agree that the enormous gap between haves and have nots is a huge contributor to not just economic woes, but also violence and other social problems.

Yeah, well, don't believe what you read from Brisket. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to most topics (except personal/government finance, but that's an entire other topic). 

I'm afraid we don't have the stomach to fix this problem, because the top 1% (government/business) need the problem to exist. They NEED a downtrodden class for votes/low cost employees. 

[Celery Man 20886]

 

10 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I'm afraid we don't have the stomach to fix this problem, because the top 1% (government/business) need the problem to exist. They NEED a downtrodden class for votes/low cost employees. 

I think we might be beginning to have the stomach, but we'll see. I would also suggest that a variation on the same thing, or the way that have nots are allowed to play along in the game of having a downtrodden class, is the strictly hierarchical view of society, and particularly the idea that caring about or helping anyone different than you = hurting you. 

 

*edit to add*

It seems like a lot of the opposition to the idea of trying to help the people at the bottom, societally, is born out of a fear that if the people at the bottom come up (maybe even near to you, if you are also near the bottom), you have gone down.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Celery Man

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

14 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Most of the country is doing great and they don't see a need to fix it. Not saying that's right, just saying that's how it is.

how do you define 'doing great'?

[bad_teammate 13132]

8 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I'm pretty liberal when it comes to most topics (except personal/government finance

When you hate the problems but love their causes.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

4 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

particularly the idea that caring about or helping anyone different than you = hurting you. 

I think this goes right back to my point about social media/Fox/CNN.  They treat everything like a zero-sum game. That guy is doing good? He must be taking it from you! That guy is angry? He wants to steal from you!

[Celery Man 20886]

Just now, Cheeseweasel said:

I think this goes right back to my point about social media/Fox/CNN.  They treat everything like a zero-sum game. That guy is doing good? He must be taking it from you! That guy is angry? He wants to steal from you!

I agree with you on that, but also in the opposite direction. I had just edited my above post to reflect that more, but I think that, just as there is a large angry group of people as you describe, there is a large angry group of people that is convinced that anything done to improve the lives of people less fortunate than them threatens their ability to find comfort in not being the lowest.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

18 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

It's impossible to ignore among honest men.

Honeychild, if you *believe it’s only men that have a problem with this form of dishonesty, then we need to talk. 

 

 

 

*I’m fairly certain that was/is not the case with respect to your views.

Added clarification.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Mrs Whiggins

[Poe It Up 126]

30 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

In order to change a problem, you have to agree that it is a problem. Most of the country is doing great and they don't see a need to fix it. Not saying that's right, just saying that's how it is.

This is the truth. Most people don't give two shits about some Exxon CEO's wealth, they care about their neighbor that's strutting about on their shiny, new lawnmower. In fact, I hear that son of a bitch starting it up right now. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Poe It Up
two

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

4 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

how do you define 'doing great'?

Aggy hasn't won a NC since 1939.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

4 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I agree with you on that, but also in the opposite direction. I had just edited my above post to reflect that more, but I think that, just as there is a large angry group of people as you describe, there is a large angry group of people that is convinced that anything done to improve the lives of people less fortunate than them threatens their ability to find comfort in not being the lowest.

No question. That's what's being preached to them. Zero-sum game.

[52-80 19093]

12 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

you mentioned that the reason police kill so many people in this country is because we are more violent and have more guns than other countries. Lets set aside guns for a second, do you think there is a reason why America is more violent, and do you think there is a reason why we can't do anything about it (if that is what you believe), and what are those reasons?

1. in terms of sampling, sheer number of people, english-centric internet, you have tons of these examples that make these incidents seem more prevalent than they actually are

2. the cause is myriad and complex, but as a generalization it is a lot more to due economics (=extreme inequality) than it is on race.

3. nobody can reinvent a country overnight, but in general i support higher taxes, raising basic support systems.  i.e. yes, be more socialist like europe. 

4. further decriminalization of drugs would be a biggie as well.

5. theres a big feedback loop of the the binary 2-party system, and the media feeding this frenzy of identity-politics frenzy, that is completely divisive.  exaggerating and conflating every single incident into White vs Black, if you're not with us you're against us, silence is violence, is exactly the kind of shit that will forever perpetuate this toxicity.

[Brisketexan 104613]

22 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

The spread between the top and the bottom is WAAAAAY too big. The bottom have nothing to lose and the top have too much money to care. Our middle class is nonexistent compared to 50 years ago. 

Your bolded statement in particular is spot-on.  And this creates tinder just waiting for a spark.  Interestingly, I just saw this piece on an income inequality study done by the Rand Corporation (not exactly hardcore Democrat Socialists of America-types): https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1#:~:text=A new analysis by the,in about %2450%2C000 a year.

Quote

Just how far has the working class been left behind by the winner-take-all economy? A new analysis by the RAND Corporation examines what rising inequality has cost Americans in lost income—and the results are stunning.

A full-time worker whose taxable income is at the median—with half the population making more and half making less—now pulls in about $50,000 a year. Yet had the fruits of the nation’s economic output been shared over the past 45 years as broadly as they were from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, that worker would instead be making $92,000 to $102,000.

.....

The findings, which land amid a global pandemic, help to illuminate the paradoxes of an economy in which so-called essential workers are struggling to make ends meet while the rich keep getting richer.

“We were shocked by the numbers,” says Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist who came up with the idea for the research along with David Rolf, founder of Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union and president of the Fair Work Center in Seattle. “It explains almost everything. It explains why people are so pissed off. It explains why they are so economically precarious.”

Notably, it isn’t just those in the middle who’ve been hit. RAND found that full-time, prime-age workers in the 25th percentile of the U.S. income distribution would be making $61,000 instead of $33,000 had everyone’s earnings from 1975 to 2018 expanded roughly in line with gross domestic product, as they did during the 1950s and ’60s.

Workers in the 75th percentile would be at $126,000 instead of $81,000. Remarkably, even those in the 90th percentile would be better off than they are now if economic growth had been shared as it was in the post-war era. They’d be making $168,000 rather than $133,000.

Tally it all up, according to RAND, and the bottom 90% of American workers would be bringing home an additional $2.5 trillion in total annual income if economic gains were as equitably divided as they’d been in the past—leading Rolf to dub the phenomenon “the $2.5 trillion theft.”

14 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

In order to change a problem, you have to agree that it is a problem. Most of the country is doing great and they don't see a need to fix it. Not saying that's right, just saying that's how it is.

Three's some of that -- the American phenomenon of every person thinking that really, they're just a millionaire who is temporarily down on his luck, and I'll strike it rich tomorrow.  But there's a whole lot more of a feeling of "don't rock the boat, things will only get shittier," and "I don't have time to advocate for myself, I'm too busy working two jobs and trying to keep my family together.

Imagine where we'd be as a society if our median workers were making $92,000 a year instead of $50,000.  Imagine where we'd be if the poorest quarter were earning $61,000 instead of $33,000.

We are a rich country in terms of total wealth.  We are actually a relatively poor country in terms of how at least half of the people are doing.  Poverty and struggle are killers.  And yes, statistically, those fall harder on minorities (proportionately) than they do on white people.  Meaning that as a percentage, more minority families are in the shitter than white families. 

Where would we be if poor minority families earning $33k actually earned $61k?  In a lot better place.  Less crime, less desperation, less friction.  Crime and unrest are all creatures of friction -- inequality in terms of wealth, inequality in terms of POWER (that's what the police issue is all about -- power, wielded unequally and unfairly).  If you want peace, you have to reduce the volume of shit that pisses people off.  

You can argue about whether it makes sense or not, but everyone knows that if you have several kids who bust their asses and do their chores, and one gets 10 cookies while the rest get 1 cookie....the 1 cookie kids are going to end up pissed off.  And that psychology doesn't require that you reward anyone disproportionately -- someone who does work that's actually worth $500k should earn $500k -- but it also means that, by our historical measures - back when America was Great, if you want to grab a currently popular phrase -- that someone who does $61k worth of work, as reflected in our GDP, should earn $61k, not $33k.

MLK correctly observed that power, racism, and poverty are all woven together.  If we can improve the lot of our poor and middle class, we can relief the pressure created by those disparate dynamics a great deal. 

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Three's some of that -- the American phenomenon of every person thinking that really, they're just a millionaire who is temporarily down on his luck, and I'll strike it rich tomorrow.  But there's a whole lot more of a feeling of "don't rock the boat, things will only get shittier," and "I don't have time to advocate for myself, I'm too busy working two jobs and trying to keep my family together.

No question. For better or worse, that's the America Spirit. I know we've drifted way off topic here, and I apologize to the people who want Riot Porn, but I think this is one of the core issues that will determine the outcome of our country. For whatever reason, there is a segment of our society that has "called bullshit" on the American Dream. I understand it, but it's not a winning hand. The people who "make it" against all odds in this country are not pessimists. They believe in themselves and are not deterred by obstacles. 

[Brisketexan 104613]

2 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

No question. That's what's being preached to them. Zero-sum game.

Yes and no.  It's not a Zero-sum game, in that we've seen GDP grow -- there is more pie, overall.  The problem is that for the folks in the bottom 90% (per the Rand study), it HAS BEEN a zero sum game.  GDP grows, but their share of contributing to that has been taken by the top 10%.  There are more cookies (to go with my earlier analogy) -- instead of producing 11 cookies, 10 for the top earner and 1 for the bottom earner, we are producing 21 cookies.....but the top earner gets 20 now, and the bottom earner still gets just 1.  To the bottom earner, it's absolutely a zero sum game.  And that's a sign of a very broken system.

2 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

1. in terms of sampling, sheer number of people, english-centric internet, you have tons of these examples that make these incidents seem more prevalent than they actually are

2. the cause is myriad and complex, but as a generalization it is a lot more to due economics (=extreme inequality) than it is on race.

3. nobody can reinvent a country overnight, but in general i support higher taxes, raising basic support systems.  i.e. yes, be more socialist like europe. 

4. further decriminalization of drugs would be a biggie as well.

5. theres a big feedback loop of the the binary 2-party system, and the media feeding this frenzy of identity-politics frenzy, that is completely divisive.  exaggerating and conflating every single incident into White vs Black, if you're not with us you're against us, silence is violence, is exactly the kind of shit that will forever perpetuate this toxicity.

Good post, and agreed on many of your points.  And the challenge with race is that it IS inextricably intertwined with class and poverty, by virtue of how our systems have functioned and been designed for centuries.  So, the "canary in the coal mine" for social fuckery was inevitably going to be minorities (again, they've been telling the rest of us about abusive cops for decades, only when confronted with stark video proof does the rest of society start to give their position some credence).  And the problem with that is that a sizable portion of society carries conscious and unconscious bias against those canaries -- we are less inclined to listen to them because it's just more minorities whining (and threatening our existing power structure, which has served the rest of us reasonably well for a long time).

So we can't ignore that the problems we're talking about fall hardest on minorities, and have racial and racist elements.  But because as a society, we're not mature enough to have an honest and complete discussion that includes racial issues, we just spin our wheels on the same old same old -- ignore or deny problems, fight back against any meaningful reform, and repeat the same mistakes so that things only get worse.  Race IS an issue.  It's not the ONLY issue.  Both things are true.  I wish like hell we were intelligent and mature enough to start a conversation based on those truths.

[Rougarou 594]

41 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Are you sure you're not sure?

*thujone-picture-of-gump-tapping-sumlin-portrait*

You make a good point, after all...

The history of all hitherto existing societyis the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

 

The history of humanity is a book written in blood. We’re all just animals in a pit

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

1 minute ago, Rougarou said:

The history of humanity is a book written in blood. We’re all just animals in a pit

Despite all our rage...

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes and no.  It's not a Zero-sum game, in that we've seen GDP grow -- there is more pie, overall.  The problem is that for the folks in the bottom 90% (per the Rand study), it HAS BEEN a zero sum game.  GDP grows, but their share of contributing to that has been taken by the top 10%.  There are more cookies (to go with my earlier analogy) -- instead of producing 11 cookies, 10 for the top earner and 1 for the bottom earner, we are producing 21 cookies.....but the top earner gets 20 now, and the bottom earner still gets just 1.  To the bottom earner, it's absolutely a zero sum game.  And that's a sign of a very broken system.

I'm not sure this will ever change in a Capitalist society. It's a feature, not a bug. Trickle down, you know...

[Brisketexan 104613]

3 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

No question. For better or worse, that's the America Spirit. I know we've drifted way off topic here, and I apologize to the people who want Riot Porn, but I think this is one of the core issues that will determine the outcome of our country. For whatever reason, there is a segment of our society that has "called bullshit" on the American Dream. I understand it, but it's not a winning hand. The people who "make it" against all odds in this country are not pessimists. They believe in themselves and are not deterred by obstacles. 

Yes and no.

To go with the metaphor of obstacles, for a person starting in the lower rungs, to pursue the American Dream and capture a pretty good version of it in 1970, you had to clear 5 3-foot hurdles.  Today, that same person has to clear 15 hurdles, and some of them are 5-feet tall.  Can it still be done?  Sure, some folks can do it.  But in 1970, say 75% of people could clear those obstacles.  Today, 30% can.  The 45% that's getting left out -- a 45% that would have been able to achieve the Dream in 1970, but aren't able to today -- is killing us all.

If you want to take it back to the topic, without commenting on whether they are good or bad, excused or not, riots are a symptom of a broken social order.  They are a gruesome symptom, and we respond to them immediately and viscerally (kind of like how we'd respond to our skin breaking out in giant, oozing sores -- we'd be cleaning them up, demanding all the ointments, etc.).  But when those sores are just a symptom of a deadly cancer festering inside of us.....it's really, really important that we acknowledge, diagnose, and treat that cancer.  Because even if we can reduce the festering sores today, they'll come back, and soon, as the cancer in us continues to grow.

[Celery Man 20886]

10 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

1. in terms of sampling, sheer number of people, english-centric internet, you have tons of these examples that make these incidents seem more prevalent than they actually are

2. the cause is myriad and complex, but as a generalization it is a lot more to due economics (=extreme inequality) than it is on race.

3. nobody can reinvent a country overnight, but in general i support higher taxes, raising basic support systems.  i.e. yes, be more socialist like europe. 

4. further decriminalization of drugs would be a biggie as well.

5. theres a big feedback loop of the the binary 2-party system, and the media feeding this frenzy of identity-politics frenzy, that is completely divisive.  exaggerating and conflating every single incident into White vs Black, if you're not with us you're against us, silence is violence, is exactly the kind of shit that will forever perpetuate this toxicity.

I'll stop ragging on you with that question, but in the interest of "hey this is all of our country maybe one day we can hold hands and alternate between kumbaya and nugent or whatever", would you consider that a lot of the people who you disagree with vociferously (and likewise in reverse) on this thread believe the very things you listed above just as you do? Obviously there's a difference when we get to item #5. But like, all of this "hey fuck your mother you inbred piece of shit" "oh why don't you crawl back to your safe space you incel pussy" etc stuff is POTENTIALLY MOSTLY over that section of disagreement (addressing issues as they pertain to race specifically in the context of these other important problems we all agree on). And just to be clear - your response as well as Cheeseweasel is different (sounding a lot like what I know many of the people in the other echo chamber think) than what I would expect, so this is something I am considering as well.

Thank you for responding, hook'em, etc.

[Rougarou 594]

Wow, imagine waking up and shit posting a Gilfoyle quote and then reading 50 awesome posts unexpectedly. Kudos to Celery for facilitating an actual conversation here.

 

[Brisketexan 104613]

2 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I'm not sure this will ever change in a Capitalist society. It's a feature, not a bug. Trickle down, you know...

Other Western democracies, that have reaped the benefit of capitalist systems, have managed to strike a better balance.  No system is perfect, nobody is perfectly in balance, but we could sure learn a lot from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, etc.  Some of them do some things better than others.  GREAT.  Let's steal the best ideas from each of them.

But trickle down is clearly the biggest lie of the last generation.  The tide rose.  90% of the boats were left behind to founder.

[Celery Man 20886]

17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

Three's some of that -- the American phenomenon of every person thinking that really, they're just a millionaire who is temporarily down on his luck, and I'll strike it rich tomorrow. 

I was in Germany on a project about a year back and one of guys over there was picking my brain about what the deal with America is. Explaining the above was the lightbulb moment for him.

There is a beautiful upside to that attitude, but it is also a tool for manipulation.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes and no.

To go with the metaphor of obstacles, for a person starting in the lower rungs, to pursue the American Dream and capture a pretty good version of it in 1970, you had to clear 5 3-foot hurdles.  Today, that same person has to clear 15 hurdles, and some of them are 5-feet tall.  Can it still be done?  Sure, some folks can do it.  But in 1970, say 75% of people could clear those obstacles.  Today, 30% can.  The 45% that's getting left out -- a 45% that would have been able to achieve the Dream in 1970, but aren't able to today -- is killing us all.

Yeah, that's the point I was making earlier about how the spread between the top and the bottom is problematic for our future. 

5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If you want to take it back to the topic, without commenting on whether they are good or bad, excused or not, riots are a symptom of a broken social order.

I believe that SOME of that is true. The BLM marches were a good start for a national discussion, but I think they have been hijacked by anarchists that are trust fund white kids who want to smash things because they are angry at The Man. 

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

3 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I was in Germany on a project about a year back and one of guys over there was picking my brain about what the deal with America is. Explaining the above was the lightbulb moment for him.

There is a beautiful upside to that attitude, but it is also a tool for manipulation.

It's so hard to explain to someone who doesn't live in the US. The upside is HUGE. The downside is catastrophic. It will be interesting to see how this experiment finishes.

[Brisketexan 104613]

1 minute ago, Celery Man said:

I was in Germany on a project about a year back and one of guys over there was picking my brain about what the deal with America is. Explaining the above was the lightbulb moment for him.

There is a beautiful upside to that attitude, but it is also a tool for manipulation.

Yep.

Again, we have bought too much into the "every man is a Superman," John Galt, "lone man against the wilderness" myth, and it's breaking us.  The myth has its place it has fueled and can fuel great achievement.  But we have gone so far into the myth that to even admit that "you didn't build that by yourself" is seen as evil heresy.  Why?  I have achieved a lot in my life -- I'm smart, and I have worked very hard.  But I have ALSO had the advantages of being born into a stable society, of being able to attend a state university for cheap to get a great education, to work with a court system that is built on rules and laws instead of transitory power of certain officials, etc.  It's not wrong to acknowledge that we're all in this together.  That's not incompatible with "and everyone should strive for excellence."  But we've cast those as mutually exclusive concepts.  

And it's killing us economically, politically, ethically, emotionally, and morally.  We are way out of balance.

[Brisketexan 104613]

3 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I believe that SOME of that is true. The BLM marches were a good start for a national discussion, but I think they have been hijacked by anarchists that are trust fund white kids who want to smash things because they are angry at The Man. 

Don't disagree.  But to those white kids (not all trust fund, but maybe from higher economic strata than you'd expect), what's the emotional motivation?  Maybe it sounds spoiled to us, but even that class is looking at a promise that was made -- access to the American Dream, you can do better than your parents -- that's being utterly broken.  The kids of even upper middle class families are going to have to go into massive debt to get the same degree and earning power that their parents got for 1/4 the cost.

There are a shitload of angry Americans from all strata except the very top, and they all have something to be angry about.  Again, not justifying the means of expressing it, but even those relatively well-off white kids aren't just pissed because dad didn't love them (Okay, sure....some are - there's someone in every crowd).  They are pissed about actual broken systems that are failing everyone except the top few percent in some way.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

They are pissed about actual broken systems that are failing everyone except the top few percent in some way.

And that's where we see things differently. I think that the system benefits the vast majority of our society. I agree that it favors the top and shits on the bottom, but I think the middle gets more benefit than any alternative system available. 

[Brisketexan 104613]

5 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

And that's where we see things differently. I think that the system benefits the vast majority of our society. I agree that it favors the top and shits on the bottom, but I think the middle gets more benefit than any alternative system available. 

Well, I mean, that's kinda demonstrably not true.  Our prior system -- see 1945-75 -- did much better for the middle.  Germany's system does much better for the middle.  The Rand Corporation study really shows that in black and white.  For a long time, a rise in GDP benefited all in relatively equal proportion, including the middle.  After 1975, it has fallen way out of proportion.

It's actually one of the ironies I see in the hollow cheers of "Make America Great Again."  We all look back at the same period of 1945-75 as our "Great" era, but we are utterly unwilling to implement many of the measures that made it great for everyone: higher taxes, greater investments in infrastructure, greater public funding of education including higher education, stronger worker rights and means for enforcing them, etc. It makes no sense.  Well, it makes no RATIONAL sense -- it makes perfect sense when you look at the emotions and psychological manipulation in play.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

This is surreal. I've wandered into a policy discussion and it's not the Cloak Room.

[workswithseed 2036]

34 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Despite all our rage...

We're still fat, and want some cake.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Our prior system -- see 1945-75 -- did much better for the middle

It wasn't the system that changed this. It was that we moved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. We outsourced our labor to China/India/Japan and got cheap rubber dog shit in return. 

Then we created massive entitlement programs to cover our shitty bet. 

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

1 minute ago, workswithseed said:

We're still fat, and want some cake.

Well, yeah. Who doesn't like cake!!!

[52-80 19093]

31 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I'll stop ragging on you with that question, but in the interest of "hey this is all of our country maybe one day we can hold hands and alternate between kumbaya and nugent or whatever", would you consider that a lot of the people who you disagree with vociferously (and likewise in reverse) on this thread believe the very things you listed above just as you do?

They can believe in some of it, to some degree, but if by and large their calling card is that everything is first and foremost a race issue, and excoriate everyone who doesn't believe the same, that alienation does nothing to help the cause.  The intolerant extremism has never worked before , why should it work now?