Impeachment proceedings are going in an utterly predictable manner, with votes along pure party lines, minus a few democrat defectors, therefore it is dead on arrival in the Senate. Not sure what was accomplished, beyond more grandstanding that captures less and less of the national attention each time. I couldn't bring myself to care much about it, and from everything i'm hearing and reading it seems to be the general mood. Purely partisan exercises in futility for so long will do that.
I really hate to even say anything about this charade because he has done enough self pitying for himself to cover for all of the millions of people who voted for him. His twitter account has become the most cringe thing on the internet.
I used to laugh at his ridiculous "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" tweets before I realized...this is the person who called the media liars and fakers for years, accurately, but does basically nothing for the ordinary, powerless people who are hurt by media lies all the time. Then it's not funny and invokes more of a feeling of disgust. Also the idea that you can harass the President by publishing media stories or taking political action against him is hilarious and absurd.
It was partisan. The Republicans refused to do their jobs and protect American elections.
Patriotic Democrats did their job.
Will the Senate do their job or will they put party over country like House Republicans did? I guess we'll see whenever the Senate holds the trial. Whatever happens there, it's on them. The House did the right thing.
Power move by Nancy Pelosi (below). Let's see if she does not fold like she normally does. But hey credit where credit is due.
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Minutes after the House voted to impeach President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dropped a bombshell: She won’t send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she feels they’ll get a fair hearing on the other side of Capitol Hill.
“We have legislation approved by the Rules Committee that will enable us to decide how we will send over the articles of impeachment,” Pelosi announced in a Wednesday night press conference. “We cannot name [impeachment] managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side.”
The move could delay a Senate trial — and is a move by House Democratic leaders to try to leverage their power to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to make concessions on how the trial will be run.
McConnell has been explicit that his only goal is to help Trump and the GOP, declaring on Tuesday that he’s “not an impartial juror” shortly after saying he was coordinating directly with the White House on impeachment strategy.
READ: Trump Just Got Impeached While Holding a 'Merry Christmas' Rally
McConnell has refused Democrats’ demand to call witnesses in the Senate trial — a major departure from the bipartisan process embraced by the Senate during President Clinton’s impeachment trial. And he’s pushed to try to get through the impeachment trial as rapidly, with as little fanfare, as possible.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schif (D-Calif.) backed up his leader.
“The question is now whether Sen. McConnell will allow a fair trial in the Senate, whether the majority leader will allow a trial that involves witnesses and testimony and documents. A trial that should be fair to the president, yes, but should be fair to the American people,” he said.
When you take away the bread and circus this is what you are left with: "Show of hands: how do you feel, Democrats, about the Republican President? Yes or no?”
And the Dems said No.
The Republican Senate will, of course, go the other way, and this becomes another forgotten chapter in Orange Man Bad, the series.
Didn’t see that one coming. Groundbreaking stuff.
They even had a slim majority in public opinion for a time, but according to Gallup that's gone now too.
When you take away the bread and circus this is what you are left with: "Show of hands: how do you feel, Democrats, about the Republican President? Yes or no?”
And the Dems said No.
The Republican Senate will, of course, go the other way, and this becomes another forgotten chapter in Orange Man Bad, the series.
Didn’t see that one coming. Groundbreaking stuff.
They even had a slim majority in public opinion for a time, but according to Gallup that's gone now too.
Why did Republicans say no? They are the partisans. They have no facts, no case, just their feelings and their tribalism.
Dems did the right thing. Republicans did the PARTISAN thing.
Will the Senate do the wrong thing too? I don't know, probably? But that's their problem. Their burden is to explain why clear abuses of office, obstruction of Congress, and attacks on separations of power are a-ok. For this job they have no facts or witnesses or documents because all those things say the opposite of what they want,
No one can deny the testimony of that career officials gave under oath about Trump's corrupt scheme. No one can deny the call summary transcript/memo "do us a favor though" and talk to my personal attorney to do it.
When you take away the bread and circus this is what you are left with: "Show of hands: how do you feel, Democrats, about the Republican President? Yes or no?”
And the Dems said No.
That could well be how they would have voted on such a question, but that wasn't the question put to them. The actual question is whether it is appropriate for a President to use the power of the state to coerce another country to provide misleading information intended to influence a future Presidential election. Put in those terms the justification for the way the Democrats voted seems obvious to me without needing to consider any partisan allegiances.
Providing some form of neutral justification for the Republican votes is more difficult. Thus far the only arguments I've heard on that side are that no crime has been committed and, even if there had been, there's not enough evidence to convict. As I've said before I don't think whether a crime has been committed or not should be the sole criterion to determine fitness for office (whether that's the President or any other job). I think the motives are also suspect of those arguing that lack of evidence is evidence of innocence given that the President has specifically ordered witnesses not to testify and is withholding documents.
With all that in mind, Haidt identified five foundational moral impulses. As succinctly defined by Northwestern University’s McAdams, they are:
• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.
Haidt’s research reveals that liberals feel strongly about the first two dimensions—preventing harm and ensuring fairness—but often feel little, or even feel negatively, about the other three. Conservatives, on the other hand, are drawn to loyalty, authority and purity, which liberals tend to think of as backward or outdated. People on the right acknowledge the importance of harm prevention and fairness but not with quite the same energy or passion as those on the left.
This is entirely true. In my opinion, the whole article was a good breakdown of why liberals have such a hard time understanding conservatives and their fundamentally different moral viewpoint. It can come as a shock that there are many people in this world who care about more than merely what is the most fair and equal at all times. Some people love the way of life they were born into, and want to preserve it. That is absolutely legitimate, and nobody should have the power to tell a community that isn't theirs that they don't have a right to it. But in this day and age, cosmopolitan universalism will erase all resistance to their edicts, or any right to it. Just the way it is for now, the standard bearers of one moral philosophy hold all actual power in the country and so they will dictate how they will, and you will kiss the ring. Understanding is not needed and so won't happen.
I agree it was an interesting article and the 5 moral impulses seem reasonable as a way of understanding different attitudes. I haven't read the original writings, but from the article the impression given is that there are big differences between liberals and conservatives in the weight given to each of the impulses. My immediate reaction is that doesn't seem the best way to explain differences though. Rather than different weights being given, I think it would make more sense to say there are differences in the way the impulses are being applied.
To give examples, the article suggests that liberals pay little regard to the principles of loyalty, authority and purity. I think it may be truer to say that the levels or targets for those principles are different:
- for loyalty, everyone has multiple groups they identify with, but the strength of that identification will differ. Liberals will tend to identify more strongly with wider groupings (which is one of the drivers for different attitudes to things like immigration and international organisations).
- for authority, I think almost everyone would agree that some form of social order is necessary, but there won't be agreement about the extent to which that order should be fixed. The Indian caste system is an example of an extremely rigid order, fixed for life which would be anathema to liberals. They would tend to wish for continuing opportunities to change your place in the social order (following the historic ideal of the 'American Dream').
- for purity, liberals give high regard to this impulse, but much of that concentrates on issues beyond the individual. Concerns over pollution and climate change etc tend to be more of a liberal pre-occupation for instance. Spirituality and mysticism, where separated from traditional religion, is also strongly associated with liberals (things like the hippie culture and Gaia hypothesis). The idea of 'my body is my temple' does also though have plenty of liberal associations.
Arguably, Liberalism has a long way to go before it should slow down. In the UK, labor got whalloped but they are starting from a place far left from here: much cheaper university, national healthcare, paid family leave, guaranteed vacation time and sick days. (Not to mention they screwed up their Brexit messaging which was the biggest issue in the election).
Anyway, if a candidate tried to implement all that here, all of which is totally normal in the UK, reactionaries here would lose their minds. But all that is stuff that should be done arguably. No matter what you do the Conservative machine will cry about it and attack anyone left of Ronald Reagan as a socialist evil communist.
On the other hand, the backlash against Trump is he's moving too quickly towards the extreme right with his actions such as attacking the press,
pushing for state sponsored news, religious indoctrination over science, pro-corporate and anti-working class, and a authoritarian police state.
Ronald Reagan couldn't even get a chair in a Republican primary in 2020. And he was astoundingly conservative. Policy-wise, Nixon seems like a communist in comparison to the modern GOP.
With all that in mind, Haidt identified five foundational moral impulses. As succinctly defined by Northwestern University’s McAdams, they are:
• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.
Haidt’s research reveals that liberals feel strongly about the first two dimensions—preventing harm and ensuring fairness—but often feel little, or even feel negatively, about the other three. Conservatives, on the other hand, are drawn to loyalty, authority and purity, which liberals tend to think of as backward or outdated. People on the right acknowledge the importance of harm prevention and fairness but not with quite the same energy or passion as those on the left.
This is entirely true. In my opinion, the whole article was a good breakdown of why liberals have such a hard time understanding conservatives and their fundamentally different moral viewpoint. It can come as a shock that there are many people in this world who care about more than merely what is the most fair and equal at all times. Some people love the way of life they were born into, and want to preserve it. That is absolutely legitimate, and nobody should have the power to tell a community that isn't theirs that they don't have a right to it. But in this day and age, cosmopolitan universalism will erase all resistance to their edicts, or any right to it. Just the way it is for now, the standard bearers of one moral philosophy hold all actual power in the country and so they will dictate how they will, and you will kiss the ring. Understanding is not needed and so won't happen.
I agree it was an interesting article and the 5 moral impulses seem reasonable as a way of understanding different attitudes. I haven't read the original writings, but from the article the impression given is that there are big differences between liberals and conservatives in the weight given to each of the impulses. My immediate reaction is that doesn't seem the best way to explain differences though. Rather than different weights being given, I think it would make more sense to say there are differences in the way the impulses are being applied.
To give examples, the article suggests that liberals pay little regard to the principles of loyalty, authority and purity. I think it may be truer to say that the levels or targets for those principles are different:
- for loyalty, everyone has multiple groups they identify with, but the strength of that identification will differ. Liberals will tend to identify more strongly with wider groupings (which is one of the drivers for different attitudes to things like immigration and international organisations).
- for authority, I think almost everyone would agree that some form of social order is necessary, but there won't be agreement about the extent to which that order should be fixed. The Indian caste system is an example of an extremely rigid order, fixed for life which would be anathema to liberals. They would tend to wish for continuing opportunities to change your place in the social order (following the historic ideal of the 'American Dream').
- for purity, liberals give high regard to this impulse, but much of that concentrates on issues beyond the individual. Concerns over pollution and climate change etc tend to be more of a liberal pre-occupation for instance. Spirituality and mysticism, where separated from traditional religion, is also strongly associated with liberals (things like the hippie culture and Gaia hypothesis). The idea of 'my body is my temple' does also though have plenty of liberal associations.
I'm certainly not going to say no liberals feel inclination towards the other three moral impulses, however I do think the researcher was right in that liberal attitudes today are often actively hostile to some of them. In group loyalty/preferences are a natural part of the attitudes of almost every culture and people on earth, it's even been studied in children and newborns, and has a pretty clear basis in evolution. White liberals are a unique phenomenon in this regard, having an *outgroup* bias instead of an ingroup bias. Virtually nobody else studied (in the U.S) holds this attitude. It's actually worth taking a look at all the findings, because it really is enlightening. As an example, both Hispanics and blacks hold racial views and thoughts on diversity that are more akin to conservative whites than liberal whites, and this applies elsewhere. A lot of the far left social stuff is actually driven by the white share of the democratic electorate and their uniquely radical moral views, that aren't really shared by anyone else in the country.
I do think quite a bit of the divisions of this country are going to remain based upon the in group loyalty impulse. Now that we are a nation with no coherent national identity or character, which will only get worse, there won't be any transcendent national identity that people will believe in, that they can be loyal to, that trumps the individual racial/sexual/political fault lines we make for ourselves. The kind of infighting we see now will probably get worse before it gets better, in my opinion, and few will be able to see the bigger picture.
On white liberals being 'totally different' mindset of accepting outgroups, that may be so but there are also millions of white liberals this is not a tiny minority of people.
On Hispanics and blacks holding views akin conservative whites, this may be true. I'd say it very much seems true. However, the obstacle is that conservative whites want nothing to do with these groups. They want these groups specifically excluded. That's a pretty big obstacle. These groups are welcome and accepted in the liberal group because white liberals are accepting of other groups.
So on the liberal side often priorities of these groups are not in sync. That's why liberal groups tend to be individuals with different agendas. They are the party of freedom; the melting pot - conservatives are the party of conformity.
What was our "national identity" before the country became more diverse?? Enslavement, genocide?? And African-Americans didn't come here, they were brought here. Google "The Middle Passage". What was our "coherent character" and what defined it?? And when did it go away?? My bet is it will fall somewhere on the timeline before minorities and women had rights. In fact, you'll be able to trace every cultural backlash to disenfranchised groups being given something they were entitled to from the beginning, and then the people who had those rights the entire time acting like they "lost" something.
How about we provide some actual examples of what the default "cultural indentity" of the United States is before we use it in a sentence?? But actually providing those examples and timelines would reveal what's truly behind them, so it's never done. Instead it's just used as a buzzword. There was never a shared cultural indentity except among those who were deemed more worthy than others, not just culturally but by THE LAW itself.
How have these people lost their "culture"?? Has their been a mass bulldozing of Christian churches that I missed?? Are they being forced to house down on their luck gay couples in their guest rooms?? What has been taken from them?? Because what this boils down to from a "grievance" standpoint is "Will and Grace" being on television and the existence of black and female super-hero movies.
Nothing encapsulates this more than the recent backlash to the HBO series "Watchmen" (which is brilliant). Simply because it managed to bring the Tulsa Race Riot into the American consciousness. No one is EVER taught about this incident in school, yet it was an entire African-American community that was destroyed and slaughtered for daring to prosper. And it had been all but erased from history. The show had the temerity to use it as a launching point, and you could see the Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic scores go down by the minute afterwards.
With all that in mind, Haidt identified five foundational moral impulses. As succinctly defined by Northwestern University’s McAdams, they are:
• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.
Haidt’s research reveals that liberals feel strongly about the first two dimensions—preventing harm and ensuring fairness—but often feel little, or even feel negatively, about the other three. Conservatives, on the other hand, are drawn to loyalty, authority and purity, which liberals tend to think of as backward or outdated. People on the right acknowledge the importance of harm prevention and fairness but not with quite the same energy or passion as those on the left.
This is entirely true. In my opinion, the whole article was a good breakdown of why liberals have such a hard time understanding conservatives and their fundamentally different moral viewpoint. It can come as a shock that there are many people in this world who care about more than merely what is the most fair and equal at all times. Some people love the way of life they were born into, and want to preserve it. That is absolutely legitimate, and nobody should have the power to tell a community that isn't theirs that they don't have a right to it. But in this day and age, cosmopolitan universalism will erase all resistance to their edicts, or any right to it. Just the way it is for now, the standard bearers of one moral philosophy hold all actual power in the country and so they will dictate how they will, and you will kiss the ring. Understanding is not needed and so won't happen.
I agree it was an interesting article and the 5 moral impulses seem reasonable as a way of understanding different attitudes. I haven't read the original writings, but from the article the impression given is that there are big differences between liberals and conservatives in the weight given to each of the impulses. My immediate reaction is that doesn't seem the best way to explain differences though. Rather than different weights being given, I think it would make more sense to say there are differences in the way the impulses are being applied.
To give examples, the article suggests that liberals pay little regard to the principles of loyalty, authority and purity. I think it may be truer to say that the levels or targets for those principles are different:
- for loyalty, everyone has multiple groups they identify with, but the strength of that identification will differ. Liberals will tend to identify more strongly with wider groupings (which is one of the drivers for different attitudes to things like immigration and international organisations).
- for authority, I think almost everyone would agree that some form of social order is necessary, but there won't be agreement about the extent to which that order should be fixed. The Indian caste system is an example of an extremely rigid order, fixed for life which would be anathema to liberals. They would tend to wish for continuing opportunities to change your place in the social order (following the historic ideal of the 'American Dream').
- for purity, liberals give high regard to this impulse, but much of that concentrates on issues beyond the individual. Concerns over pollution and climate change etc tend to be more of a liberal pre-occupation for instance. Spirituality and mysticism, where separated from traditional religion, is also strongly associated with liberals (things like the hippie culture and Gaia hypothesis). The idea of 'my body is my temple' does also though have plenty of liberal associations.
I'm certainly not going to say no liberals feel inclination towards the other three moral impulses, however I do think the researcher was right in that liberal attitudes today are often actively hostile to some of them. In group loyalty/preferences are a natural part of the attitudes of almost every culture and people on earth, it's even been studied in children and newborns, and has a pretty clear basis in evolution. White liberals are a unique phenomenon in this regard, having an *outgroup* bias instead of an ingroup bias. Virtually nobody else studied (in the U.S) holds this attitude. It's actually worth taking a look at all the findings, because it really is enlightening. As an example, both Hispanics and blacks hold racial views and thoughts on diversity that are more akin to conservative whites than liberal whites, and this applies elsewhere. A lot of the far left social stuff is actually driven by the white share of the democratic electorate and their uniquely radical moral views, that aren't really shared by anyone else in the country.
I do think quite a bit of the divisions of this country are going to remain based upon the in group loyalty impulse. Now that we are a nation with no coherent national identity or character, which will only get worse, there won't be any transcendent national identity that people will believe in, that they can be loyal to, that trumps the individual racial/sexual/political fault lines we make for ourselves. The kind of infighting we see now will probably get worse before it gets better, in my opinion, and few will be able to see the bigger picture.
I agree it's interesting, but I don't think it demonstrates liberals as having an outgroup bias or lacking an impulse to feel loyalty at all. Rather I think the things that they are loyal to are slightly different. I think liberals are more likely to feel loyalty to an idealized view of the nation for instance - which in the US would include the idea that different groups would work harmoniously together to make the country better for everyone. Conservatives are more likely to feel loyalty to a historic position, rather than a shifting (and somewhat vague) ideal. That's only a tendency though and views of conservatives will certainly change over time - which is why most conservatives would now regard the Irish or Italians as an integral part of the US in a way that they certainly would not have done in the past.
I suspect it may anyway be a bit misleading to talk about the liberal or conservative point of view. That implies that whether someone is liberal or conservative affects their political views. I suspect it would be as true or truer to say that someone with particular political views would be categorized as liberal or conservative. Where this sort of moral framework may be useful is in helping people generally to accept that there are different ways of seeing the world and that those perspectives affect views about how to best improve the world. I think it must be the case that working together will be easier if other people are understood as different - rather than as inferior or as enemies.
The link Balrog posted posited that conservatives are for the status quo - the elites - the "gentry". Have been for thousands of years, even as technology and civilizations come and go. Their thinking is authoritarian and hierarchical. Their counter messaging and double think is well-funded and well entrenched. Certainly rings true to me that the powers that be would not want people working together to help each other up by their boot straps. Their power grows even greater as we are held back.
America has not had a true national identity since the early-1800s with mass immigration from Ireland. Later in that century, when Italians were flooding into Ellis Island, this country officially became a land of immigrants. Full-stop. Anyone who had any memory of it being anything else has been dead for 150 years. We put up a statue in a harbor in New York to signify it. Any other arguments are a fundamental misunderstanding of what the country has been for the past 200 years.
Of course, the argument you'll get is that THOSE immigrants were fine (mind you, they came in OVERWHELMING numbers with nothing more than a comb ran through their hair to check for lice). After all, they were part of "western" civilization. Tell that to the Irish and Italians in the first wave. They were treated the same way we treat immigrants with brown skin now. The KKK was MOSTLY focused on opposing racial integration, but a VERY close second was how much they hated Catholics, who they believed would swear fealty to the Pope. Kennedy's #1 obstacle in the 1960 election was his religion.
Our cuisine, our music, our entertainment, most of the things we enjoy. It would all be dog-shit without the melting pot we have now. I'll take the land where I can have Italian food on Wednesday and Indian food on Friday. I'll take the country that produced Robert Johnson and Fats Domino as well as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. That is the whole point. And frankly, I don't think modern conservatism understands this AT ALL, even though they are more than happy to enjoy what it has produced. Our only true moral high-ground and point of pride is in what we are SUPPOSED to be, what we are supposed to strive for.
The link Balrog posted posited that conservatives are for the status quo - the elites - the "gentry". Have been for thousands of years, even as technology and civilizations come and go. Their thinking is authoritarian and hierarchical. Their counter messaging and double think is well-funded and well entrenched. Certainly rings true to me that the powers that be would not want people working together to help each other up by their boot straps. Their power grows even greater as we are held back.
That is true, but conservatism has never been able to completely stop progress. I think there's an ebb and flow that inevitably moves to the left. The speed of the change is what I worry about and why I tend to lean to the right.
Also, the gentry aren't 'evil'. They have their place in society. There has to be some amount of capital that doesn't depend on labor. Throughout history the gentry have been patrons of the Arts, builders of libraries, museums & universities and formed numerous charitable organizations that have existed for centuries.
I would not call them evil either but when they treat things like a zero sum game, that's where we can run in to problems.
Because of the fundamental power imbalance between the conservative supported gentry and the little guys they often can and do tread on us little guys.
The best America, in my opinion, is one where the American dream is alive - where anyone can make it if you work hard etc.
But as the elites tip the scales more their way - like in the Gilded Age and today, when inequality skyrockets then there is no practical way for that dream to come true.
We are their pawns, servants, and playthings. More Republican tax cuts for the rich and a booming stock market aren't going to change things for us.
The real rich elites are a big club and you and I and people with less than maybe 100 million dollars are not in that club. 4 or 5 million dollars seems like a crazy lot of money but is nothing to billionaires, corporations, and think tanks actually running things. And when these elites abuse the system, as they are doing now, against us things can get bad. The conservative Citizens United ruling, allowing unlimited political cash and saying corporations are people, has totally corrupted the system and rigged things for the elites.
I would not call them evil either but when they treat things like a zero sum game, that's where we can run in to problems.
Because of the fundamental power imbalance between the conservative supported gentry and the little guys they often can and do tread on us little guys.
The best America, in my opinion, is one where the American dream is alive - where anyone can make it if you work hard etc.
But as the elites tip the scales more their way - like in the Gilded Age and today, when inequality skyrockets then there is no practical way for that dream to come true.
We are their pawns, servants, and playthings. More Republican tax cuts for the rich and a booming stock market aren't going to change things for us.
The real rich elites are a big club and you and I and people with less than maybe 100 million dollars are not in that club. 4 or 5 million dollars seems like a crazy lot of money but is nothing to billionaires, corporations, and think tanks actually running things. And when these elites abuse the system, as they are doing now, against us things can get bad. The conservative Citizens United ruling, allowing unlimited political cash and saying corporations are people, has totally corrupted the system and rigged things for the elites.
Why do so many rich people claim to be liberal then? Do you think they're legit, or do you think they'll panic and abandon ship if somebody like Bernie has a legit shot at power?
I would not call them evil either but when they treat things like a zero sum game, that's where we can run in to problems.
Because of the fundamental power imbalance between the conservative supported gentry and the little guys they often can and do tread on us little guys.
The best America, in my opinion, is one where the American dream is alive - where anyone can make it if you work hard etc.
But as the elites tip the scales more their way - like in the Gilded Age and today, when inequality skyrockets then there is no practical way for that dream to come true.
We are their pawns, servants, and playthings. More Republican tax cuts for the rich and a booming stock market aren't going to change things for us.
The real rich elites are a big club and you and I and people with less than maybe 100 million dollars are not in that club. 4 or 5 million dollars seems like a crazy lot of money but is nothing to billionaires, corporations, and think tanks actually running things. And when these elites abuse the system, as they are doing now, against us things can get bad. The conservative Citizens United ruling, allowing unlimited political cash and saying corporations are people, has totally corrupted the system and rigged things for the elites.
Why do so many rich people claim to be liberal then? Do you think they're legit, or do you think they'll panic and abandon ship if somebody like Bernie has a legit shot at power?
Most rich people who are liberal that we HEAR about are celebrities. And as far as I can tell that means supporting policies that would let them keep LESS money. I don't see what personal financial gain they get from supporting Democrats. But they are artistic types, so they sure as hell aren't going to support Republicans (minus you odd Jon Voight or Ted Nugent, and by god when conservatives get a celebrity on their side, despite how much they talk about hating them, they will trot them out at every opportunity).
But if you are talking about wealthy CORPORATE people, I think you'll find they are overwhelmingly conservative fiscally, if not socially. And they are coming for Bernie. That's why they donate all their money to Biden and Mayor Pete. And if push comes to shove, the true financial titans will sell out whatever social liberalism they have for their tax cuts any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I would not call them evil either but when they treat things like a zero sum game, that's where we can run in to problems.
Because of the fundamental power imbalance between the conservative supported gentry and the little guys they often can and do tread on us little guys.
The best America, in my opinion, is one where the American dream is alive - where anyone can make it if you work hard etc.
But as the elites tip the scales more their way - like in the Gilded Age and today, when inequality skyrockets then there is no practical way for that dream to come true.
We are their pawns, servants, and playthings. More Republican tax cuts for the rich and a booming stock market aren't going to change things for us.
The real rich elites are a big club and you and I and people with less than maybe 100 million dollars are not in that club. 4 or 5 million dollars seems like a crazy lot of money but is nothing to billionaires, corporations, and think tanks actually running things. And when these elites abuse the system, as they are doing now, against us things can get bad. The conservative Citizens United ruling, allowing unlimited political cash and saying corporations are people, has totally corrupted the system and rigged things for the elites.
Why do so many rich people claim to be liberal then? Do you think they're legit, or do you think they'll panic and abandon ship if somebody like Bernie has a legit shot at power?
They don't. Very few of the rich families are liberal. I posted a graph before. The vast majority the cabal of richest families fund conservatives such as our billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy Devos and her arms dealer brother Eric Prince. The Waltons, the Kochs, Sacklers and others - all fund conservative causes. Some fund both, a few fund liberals. Liberals funded by the elite tend to be weak because they are designed to be weak and not push for change that might affect their donors. That's another reason why the Democratic party overall tends to be pretty weak.
Here's a quick list of families: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2014/07/09/are-americas-richest-families-republicans-or-democrats/#cc959753e835
Maybe some of the individual rich guys say they're liberal possibly as a result of their location where they work and so forth. Not really. Mark Zuckerberg has pretty clearly come out as a Conservative with saying (among other things) that the Daily Caller can be fact checkers and meeting privately with Republicans and Trump personally several times. The liberals don't really have a whole lot of that on their side. Your article said, again and again, how the conservative side with it's goal of defending the elites/gentry are well funded and organized and there's really nothing like that on the left.
This should not be shocking but it's true that most filthy rich old white dudes and their families are conservatives. Your article described how the GOP's doublespeak has successfully pushed the "liberal elite" moniker onto liberals when it's not really a thing. But because there's no organized propaganda network on the left to push back and parrot each other's talking point this often repeated claim has become accepted as fact - when it's totally not true.
Most rich people who are liberal that we HEAR about are celebrities.
And as I explained, these guys aren't the elite, a few million dollars is nothing. The elite families and corporations that move America converse in the language of BILLIONS and hundreds of millions.
An investigation has concluded that Matt Shea, Washington State Republican lawmaker, took part in "domestic terrorism" against the United States and trained young people to fight a "holy war," according to report released Thursday. The report has been forwarded to federal prosecutors and the FBI. Presumably Bill Barr will get right on it.
Shea who wrote a manifesto called ''biblical basis for war″ condoning violence against gay marriage and abortion, was re-elected in 2018 with 58% of the vote.
The report conlcuded that:
"Investigators obtained evidence that Representative Shea planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States ... in three states outside the State of Washington over a three-year period to include 2014, 2015 and 2016."
Shea has also pursued creation of a 51st state in eastern Washington that would be called Liberty and run on biblical principles.
Shea was suspended from the state House Republican Caucus Thursday evening, advised by members of both parties to resign and will be removed from his committee assignments.
In a Facebook post on Thursday night, Shea refused to step down.
"Like we are seeing with our President this is a sham investigation meant to silence those of us who stand up against attempts to disarm and destroy our great country. I will not back down, I will not give in, I will not resign," he wrote.
Shea said he has been denied any opportunity to review and respond to the report, prepared by an outside investigator. But according to the report, Shea declined to be interviewed as part of the probe.
Bill Barr is too busy making sure every community in the country swears fealty to their local police if they want protection and rejecting the findings of his own Inspector General to get bogged down with something as mundane as domestic terrorism.
It's kind of astounding that someone can call for outright violence against groups of people and win an election with nearly 60% of the vote. It wasn't like his views were hidden from the public, according to the article he was very clear in his social media posts that he believed in violent revolution. He straight up said "I believe in violence to take our country back". If voters are that angry that they are willing to throw their lot in large numbers behind someone like that, something has to give at some point. There's an underlying resentment there that won't go away by just jailing this one bad actor; the voters put him there, for a reason. This is the kind of powder-keg you create when you enforce dictates on unwilling populations and communities, when you deny them their own freedom in their own households and neighborhoods. They will vote for anyone who promises to fight back, and the harsher the better. Voting in someone like that is one step away from rioting, imho. I don't believe anywhere you go in the western world 60% of people would support a person who believed in violence against anyone, unless they were very, very angry.
Again, I ask.....what are they being forced to do that would engender this kind of anger?? Because higher taxes are not the reason. You are speaking totally in the abstract here. Is it something tangible, or is it, as I suspect, watching others get rights they believed were reserved for their tribe alone??
If there is a policy or law that is SO intrusive as to require violence to remedy, let's talk about that policy. But if it's "culture", if it's being pissed aboutn what they see on CBS on Wednesday night.....I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these the people who say feelings don't matter??
Well, let's see, they elected a Christian extremist who believes in violence to reform the state to represent them and who has very strong sentiments on abortion and gay marriage. I think, without any further examination, we can come to a number of pretty reasonable conclusions as to what objections they may have, what they are angry about, and what things they are forced to accept that they otherwise wouldn't. I think a plausible theory based only on this information goes something like this: This has been a Christian region for a long time, many generations, and the community clearly has built a strong consensus around what they do and do not find acceptable in their community. They see federal power taking away more and more of their ability to live the way they want away from them, to force what they see as evil into their lives. Seeing no other alternative, they elect the man who promises to fight for them.
I don't care how right you think you are and how wrong you think they are. They don't care either. I don't believe you or anyone should be able to tell them how to set up their own towns and communities except in the extreme cases, examples being violations of due process rights in criminal courts.
State rights need to be taken seriously again. If someone wants to live in a Christian town that promotes only Christian values they should have a right to it, just like someone who wants to live in a gay-friendly town should have the right to it. People will eventually self-segregate to where they want to be. If they don't have the power to make decisions in their own communities no matter how strong a majority or consensus they simply aren't free.
Yeah, I remember reading that "biblical basis for war" thing when Shea came up in the news last year because of it. It made for CRAZY reading.
He's literally committed treason, well documented participation in several armed uprisings against the United States in an attempt to overthrow the same.
I expect wrist-slapping will commence in a couple weeks.
America has not had a true national identity since the early-1800s
This is just so patently false. You can see the national identity writ large even in old 40's and 50's Americana, or by listening to any of the politics or culture of the time. Hell, people felt like we were all "Americans first" even in the 90's and especially after 9/11. The American Identity can still be seen, even it's dying a quick death.
Well, let's see, they elected a Christian extremist who believes in violence to reform the state to represent them and who has very strong sentiments on abortion and gay marriage. I think, without any further examination, we can come to a number of pretty reasonable conclusions as to what objections they may have, what they are angry about, and what things they are forced to accept that they otherwise wouldn't. I think a plausible theory based only on this information goes something like this: This has been a Christian region for a long time, many generations, and the community clearly has built a strong consensus around what they do and do not find acceptable in their community. They see federal power taking away more and more of their ability to live the way they want away from them, to force what they see as evil into their lives. Seeing no other alternative, they elect the man who promises to fight for them.
I don't care how right you think you are and how wrong you think they are. They don't care either. I don't believe you or anyone should be able to tell them how to set up their own towns and communities except in the extreme cases, examples being violations of due process rights in criminal courts.
State rights need to be taken seriously again. If someone wants to live in a Christian town that promotes only Christian values they should have a right to it, just like someone who wants to live in a gay-friendly town should have the right to it. People will eventually self-segregate to where they want to be. If they don't have the power to make decisions in their own communities no matter how strong a majority or consensus they simply aren't free.
But they should be able to make gay people second-class citzens based on their religion. Something that has ZERO effect on their actual lives. None. I always knew the acceptance of gay marriage on the "new right" would be short lived, or was just a convenient talking point to begin with, but it's nice to have it confirmed.
What in the ever-loving hell does two men being married have to do with anyone's personal practice of their religion?? Has anyone ever come up with a SINGLE way this actually effects those who oppose it?? Even ONE?? You are saying nothing less than if gay people don't want to be second class citizens they should just suck it up and move. Christian enclaves where biblical law is the order of the day. But only with gay people. Rest assured these people still eat shellfish and wear sweaters made from two different clothes. These people know as much about the Bible as I do about quantam physics. I'll respect their position on Biblical principles the moment they start stoning their neighbors to death for breaking Old Testament law on a daily basis. Until then, it's simply a book that justifies their own insecurities.
America has not had a true national identity since the early-1800s
This is just so patently false. You can see the national identity writ large even in old 40's and 50's Americana, or by listening to any of the politics or culture of the time. Hell, people felt like we were all "Americans first" even in the 90's and especially after 9/11. The American Identity can still be seen, even it's dying a quick death.
Exactly. Before Brown vs. Board, and before the Civil Rights Act. Now we're being honest. Yet I get the sinking feeling I'm like 15 minutes away from having to defend both of them against charges of destroying white culture.
Well, let's see, they elected a Christian extremist who believes in violence to reform the state to represent them and who has very strong sentiments on abortion and gay marriage. I think, without any further examination, we can come to a number of pretty reasonable conclusions as to what objections they may have, what they are angry about, and what things they are forced to accept that they otherwise wouldn't. I think a plausible theory based only on this information goes something like this: This has been a Christian region for a long time, many generations, and the community clearly has built a strong consensus around what they do and do not find acceptable in their community. They see federal power taking away more and more of their ability to live the way they want away from them, to force what they see as evil into their lives. Seeing no other alternative, they elect the man who promises to fight for them.
I don't care how right you think you are and how wrong you think they are. They don't care either. I don't believe you or anyone should be able to tell them how to set up their own towns and communities except in the extreme cases, examples being violations of due process rights in criminal courts.
State rights need to be taken seriously again. If someone wants to live in a Christian town that promotes only Christian values they should have a right to it, just like someone who wants to live in a gay-friendly town should have the right to it. People will eventually self-segregate to where they want to be. If they don't have the power to make decisions in their own communities no matter how strong a majority or consensus they simply aren't free.
I agree they aren't free, but I also don't think it's realistic to suggest they should be entirely free within the same country. I'm sure for instance that there are still plenty of people in the US who would like a return to slavery, but it's hard to imagine the rest of the country being willing to let that happen in any community 150+ years after the Civil War.
I'm not sure exactly where the balance should be struck about what is nationally determined and what left more locally, but I'm pretty sure there needs to be a balance.
Well, as I said, there are extreme cases where one should interfere, such as cases of due process violations and of course if they are enslaving people, so we are more or less in agreement. There does need to be a balance between states rights and federal power, I just think the pendulum has moved far too much in the direction of federal power.
The discussion also needs to be had about what powers the President does and doesn't have. War powers in particular should be in the hands of Congress and not the President, and don't get me started on surveillance.
Comments
I really hate to even say anything about this charade because he has done enough self pitying for himself to cover for all of the millions of people who voted for him. His twitter account has become the most cringe thing on the internet.
I used to laugh at his ridiculous "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" tweets before I realized...this is the person who called the media liars and fakers for years, accurately, but does basically nothing for the ordinary, powerless people who are hurt by media lies all the time. Then it's not funny and invokes more of a feeling of disgust. Also the idea that you can harass the President by publishing media stories or taking political action against him is hilarious and absurd.
Patriotic Democrats did their job.
Will the Senate do their job or will they put party over country like House Republicans did? I guess we'll see whenever the Senate holds the trial. Whatever happens there, it's on them. The House did the right thing.
Power move by Nancy Pelosi (below). Let's see if she does not fold like she normally does. But hey credit where credit is due.
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Minutes after the House voted to impeach President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dropped a bombshell: She won’t send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she feels they’ll get a fair hearing on the other side of Capitol Hill.
“We have legislation approved by the Rules Committee that will enable us to decide how we will send over the articles of impeachment,” Pelosi announced in a Wednesday night press conference. “We cannot name [impeachment] managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side.”
The move could delay a Senate trial — and is a move by House Democratic leaders to try to leverage their power to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to make concessions on how the trial will be run.
McConnell has been explicit that his only goal is to help Trump and the GOP, declaring on Tuesday that he’s “not an impartial juror” shortly after saying he was coordinating directly with the White House on impeachment strategy.
READ: Trump Just Got Impeached While Holding a 'Merry Christmas' Rally
McConnell has refused Democrats’ demand to call witnesses in the Senate trial — a major departure from the bipartisan process embraced by the Senate during President Clinton’s impeachment trial. And he’s pushed to try to get through the impeachment trial as rapidly, with as little fanfare, as possible.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schif (D-Calif.) backed up his leader.
“The question is now whether Sen. McConnell will allow a fair trial in the Senate, whether the majority leader will allow a trial that involves witnesses and testimony and documents. A trial that should be fair to the president, yes, but should be fair to the American people,” he said.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8z5w/nancy-pelosi-just-made-a-major-impeachment-power-play
And the Dems said No.
The Republican Senate will, of course, go the other way, and this becomes another forgotten chapter in Orange Man Bad, the series.
Didn’t see that one coming. Groundbreaking stuff.
They even had a slim majority in public opinion for a time, but according to Gallup that's gone now too.
Why did Republicans say no? They are the partisans. They have no facts, no case, just their feelings and their tribalism.
Dems did the right thing. Republicans did the PARTISAN thing.
Will the Senate do the wrong thing too? I don't know, probably? But that's their problem. Their burden is to explain why clear abuses of office, obstruction of Congress, and attacks on separations of power are a-ok. For this job they have no facts or witnesses or documents because all those things say the opposite of what they want,
No one can deny the testimony of that career officials gave under oath about Trump's corrupt scheme. No one can deny the call summary transcript/memo "do us a favor though" and talk to my personal attorney to do it.
That could well be how they would have voted on such a question, but that wasn't the question put to them. The actual question is whether it is appropriate for a President to use the power of the state to coerce another country to provide misleading information intended to influence a future Presidential election. Put in those terms the justification for the way the Democrats voted seems obvious to me without needing to consider any partisan allegiances.
Providing some form of neutral justification for the Republican votes is more difficult. Thus far the only arguments I've heard on that side are that no crime has been committed and, even if there had been, there's not enough evidence to convict. As I've said before I don't think whether a crime has been committed or not should be the sole criterion to determine fitness for office (whether that's the President or any other job). I think the motives are also suspect of those arguing that lack of evidence is evidence of innocence given that the President has specifically ordered witnesses not to testify and is withholding documents.
I agree it was an interesting article and the 5 moral impulses seem reasonable as a way of understanding different attitudes. I haven't read the original writings, but from the article the impression given is that there are big differences between liberals and conservatives in the weight given to each of the impulses. My immediate reaction is that doesn't seem the best way to explain differences though. Rather than different weights being given, I think it would make more sense to say there are differences in the way the impulses are being applied.
To give examples, the article suggests that liberals pay little regard to the principles of loyalty, authority and purity. I think it may be truer to say that the levels or targets for those principles are different:
- for loyalty, everyone has multiple groups they identify with, but the strength of that identification will differ. Liberals will tend to identify more strongly with wider groupings (which is one of the drivers for different attitudes to things like immigration and international organisations).
- for authority, I think almost everyone would agree that some form of social order is necessary, but there won't be agreement about the extent to which that order should be fixed. The Indian caste system is an example of an extremely rigid order, fixed for life which would be anathema to liberals. They would tend to wish for continuing opportunities to change your place in the social order (following the historic ideal of the 'American Dream').
- for purity, liberals give high regard to this impulse, but much of that concentrates on issues beyond the individual. Concerns over pollution and climate change etc tend to be more of a liberal pre-occupation for instance. Spirituality and mysticism, where separated from traditional religion, is also strongly associated with liberals (things like the hippie culture and Gaia hypothesis). The idea of 'my body is my temple' does also though have plenty of liberal associations.
Anyway, if a candidate tried to implement all that here, all of which is totally normal in the UK, reactionaries here would lose their minds. But all that is stuff that should be done arguably. No matter what you do the Conservative machine will cry about it and attack anyone left of Ronald Reagan as a socialist evil communist.
On the other hand, the backlash against Trump is he's moving too quickly towards the extreme right with his actions such as attacking the press,
pushing for state sponsored news, religious indoctrination over science, pro-corporate and anti-working class, and a authoritarian police state.
I'm certainly not going to say no liberals feel inclination towards the other three moral impulses, however I do think the researcher was right in that liberal attitudes today are often actively hostile to some of them. In group loyalty/preferences are a natural part of the attitudes of almost every culture and people on earth, it's even been studied in children and newborns, and has a pretty clear basis in evolution. White liberals are a unique phenomenon in this regard, having an *outgroup* bias instead of an ingroup bias. Virtually nobody else studied (in the U.S) holds this attitude. It's actually worth taking a look at all the findings, because it really is enlightening. As an example, both Hispanics and blacks hold racial views and thoughts on diversity that are more akin to conservative whites than liberal whites, and this applies elsewhere. A lot of the far left social stuff is actually driven by the white share of the democratic electorate and their uniquely radical moral views, that aren't really shared by anyone else in the country.
I do think quite a bit of the divisions of this country are going to remain based upon the in group loyalty impulse. Now that we are a nation with no coherent national identity or character, which will only get worse, there won't be any transcendent national identity that people will believe in, that they can be loyal to, that trumps the individual racial/sexual/political fault lines we make for ourselves. The kind of infighting we see now will probably get worse before it gets better, in my opinion, and few will be able to see the bigger picture.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020
On white liberals being 'totally different' mindset of accepting outgroups, that may be so but there are also millions of white liberals this is not a tiny minority of people.
On Hispanics and blacks holding views akin conservative whites, this may be true. I'd say it very much seems true. However, the obstacle is that conservative whites want nothing to do with these groups. They want these groups specifically excluded. That's a pretty big obstacle. These groups are welcome and accepted in the liberal group because white liberals are accepting of other groups.
So on the liberal side often priorities of these groups are not in sync. That's why liberal groups tend to be individuals with different agendas. They are the party of freedom; the melting pot - conservatives are the party of conformity.
How about we provide some actual examples of what the default "cultural indentity" of the United States is before we use it in a sentence?? But actually providing those examples and timelines would reveal what's truly behind them, so it's never done. Instead it's just used as a buzzword. There was never a shared cultural indentity except among those who were deemed more worthy than others, not just culturally but by THE LAW itself.
How have these people lost their "culture"?? Has their been a mass bulldozing of Christian churches that I missed?? Are they being forced to house down on their luck gay couples in their guest rooms?? What has been taken from them?? Because what this boils down to from a "grievance" standpoint is "Will and Grace" being on television and the existence of black and female super-hero movies.
Nothing encapsulates this more than the recent backlash to the HBO series "Watchmen" (which is brilliant). Simply because it managed to bring the Tulsa Race Riot into the American consciousness. No one is EVER taught about this incident in school, yet it was an entire African-American community that was destroyed and slaughtered for daring to prosper. And it had been all but erased from history. The show had the temerity to use it as a launching point, and you could see the Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic scores go down by the minute afterwards.
I agree it's interesting, but I don't think it demonstrates liberals as having an outgroup bias or lacking an impulse to feel loyalty at all. Rather I think the things that they are loyal to are slightly different. I think liberals are more likely to feel loyalty to an idealized view of the nation for instance - which in the US would include the idea that different groups would work harmoniously together to make the country better for everyone. Conservatives are more likely to feel loyalty to a historic position, rather than a shifting (and somewhat vague) ideal. That's only a tendency though and views of conservatives will certainly change over time - which is why most conservatives would now regard the Irish or Italians as an integral part of the US in a way that they certainly would not have done in the past.
I suspect it may anyway be a bit misleading to talk about the liberal or conservative point of view. That implies that whether someone is liberal or conservative affects their political views. I suspect it would be as true or truer to say that someone with particular political views would be categorized as liberal or conservative. Where this sort of moral framework may be useful is in helping people generally to accept that there are different ways of seeing the world and that those perspectives affect views about how to best improve the world. I think it must be the case that working together will be easier if other people are understood as different - rather than as inferior or as enemies.
https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html
Of course, the argument you'll get is that THOSE immigrants were fine (mind you, they came in OVERWHELMING numbers with nothing more than a comb ran through their hair to check for lice). After all, they were part of "western" civilization. Tell that to the Irish and Italians in the first wave. They were treated the same way we treat immigrants with brown skin now. The KKK was MOSTLY focused on opposing racial integration, but a VERY close second was how much they hated Catholics, who they believed would swear fealty to the Pope. Kennedy's #1 obstacle in the 1960 election was his religion.
Our cuisine, our music, our entertainment, most of the things we enjoy. It would all be dog-shit without the melting pot we have now. I'll take the land where I can have Italian food on Wednesday and Indian food on Friday. I'll take the country that produced Robert Johnson and Fats Domino as well as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. That is the whole point. And frankly, I don't think modern conservatism understands this AT ALL, even though they are more than happy to enjoy what it has produced. Our only true moral high-ground and point of pride is in what we are SUPPOSED to be, what we are supposed to strive for.
That is true, but conservatism has never been able to completely stop progress. I think there's an ebb and flow that inevitably moves to the left. The speed of the change is what I worry about and why I tend to lean to the right.
Also, the gentry aren't 'evil'. They have their place in society. There has to be some amount of capital that doesn't depend on labor. Throughout history the gentry have been patrons of the Arts, builders of libraries, museums & universities and formed numerous charitable organizations that have existed for centuries.
Because of the fundamental power imbalance between the conservative supported gentry and the little guys they often can and do tread on us little guys.
The best America, in my opinion, is one where the American dream is alive - where anyone can make it if you work hard etc.
But as the elites tip the scales more their way - like in the Gilded Age and today, when inequality skyrockets then there is no practical way for that dream to come true.
We are their pawns, servants, and playthings. More Republican tax cuts for the rich and a booming stock market aren't going to change things for us.
The real rich elites are a big club and you and I and people with less than maybe 100 million dollars are not in that club. 4 or 5 million dollars seems like a crazy lot of money but is nothing to billionaires, corporations, and think tanks actually running things. And when these elites abuse the system, as they are doing now, against us things can get bad. The conservative Citizens United ruling, allowing unlimited political cash and saying corporations are people, has totally corrupted the system and rigged things for the elites.
Why do so many rich people claim to be liberal then? Do you think they're legit, or do you think they'll panic and abandon ship if somebody like Bernie has a legit shot at power?
Most rich people who are liberal that we HEAR about are celebrities. And as far as I can tell that means supporting policies that would let them keep LESS money. I don't see what personal financial gain they get from supporting Democrats. But they are artistic types, so they sure as hell aren't going to support Republicans (minus you odd Jon Voight or Ted Nugent, and by god when conservatives get a celebrity on their side, despite how much they talk about hating them, they will trot them out at every opportunity).
But if you are talking about wealthy CORPORATE people, I think you'll find they are overwhelmingly conservative fiscally, if not socially. And they are coming for Bernie. That's why they donate all their money to Biden and Mayor Pete. And if push comes to shove, the true financial titans will sell out whatever social liberalism they have for their tax cuts any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
They don't. Very few of the rich families are liberal. I posted a graph before. The vast majority the cabal of richest families fund conservatives such as our billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy Devos and her arms dealer brother Eric Prince. The Waltons, the Kochs, Sacklers and others - all fund conservative causes. Some fund both, a few fund liberals. Liberals funded by the elite tend to be weak because they are designed to be weak and not push for change that might affect their donors. That's another reason why the Democratic party overall tends to be pretty weak.
Here's a quick list of families: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2014/07/09/are-americas-richest-families-republicans-or-democrats/#cc959753e835
Maybe some of the individual rich guys say they're liberal possibly as a result of their location where they work and so forth. Not really. Mark Zuckerberg has pretty clearly come out as a Conservative with saying (among other things) that the Daily Caller can be fact checkers and meeting privately with Republicans and Trump personally several times. The liberals don't really have a whole lot of that on their side. Your article said, again and again, how the conservative side with it's goal of defending the elites/gentry are well funded and organized and there's really nothing like that on the left.
This should not be shocking but it's true that most filthy rich old white dudes and their families are conservatives. Your article described how the GOP's doublespeak has successfully pushed the "liberal elite" moniker onto liberals when it's not really a thing. But because there's no organized propaganda network on the left to push back and parrot each other's talking point this often repeated claim has become accepted as fact - when it's totally not true.
And as I explained, these guys aren't the elite, a few million dollars is nothing. The elite families and corporations that move America converse in the language of BILLIONS and hundreds of millions.
Shea who wrote a manifesto called ''biblical basis for war″ condoning violence against gay marriage and abortion, was re-elected in 2018 with 58% of the vote.
The report conlcuded that:
"Investigators obtained evidence that Representative Shea planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States ... in three states outside the State of Washington over a three-year period to include 2014, 2015 and 2016."
Shea has also pursued creation of a 51st state in eastern Washington that would be called Liberty and run on biblical principles.
Shea was suspended from the state House Republican Caucus Thursday evening, advised by members of both parties to resign and will be removed from his committee assignments.
In a Facebook post on Thursday night, Shea refused to step down.
"Like we are seeing with our President this is a sham investigation meant to silence those of us who stand up against attempts to disarm and destroy our great country. I will not back down, I will not give in, I will not resign," he wrote.
Shea said he has been denied any opportunity to review and respond to the report, prepared by an outside investigator. But according to the report, Shea declined to be interviewed as part of the probe.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matt-shea-washington-state-lawmaker-who-engaged-in-domestic-terrorism-refuses-to-resign/
If there is a policy or law that is SO intrusive as to require violence to remedy, let's talk about that policy. But if it's "culture", if it's being pissed aboutn what they see on CBS on Wednesday night.....I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these the people who say feelings don't matter??
I don't care how right you think you are and how wrong you think they are. They don't care either. I don't believe you or anyone should be able to tell them how to set up their own towns and communities except in the extreme cases, examples being violations of due process rights in criminal courts.
State rights need to be taken seriously again. If someone wants to live in a Christian town that promotes only Christian values they should have a right to it, just like someone who wants to live in a gay-friendly town should have the right to it. People will eventually self-segregate to where they want to be. If they don't have the power to make decisions in their own communities no matter how strong a majority or consensus they simply aren't free.
He's literally committed treason, well documented participation in several armed uprisings against the United States in an attempt to overthrow the same.
I expect wrist-slapping will commence in a couple weeks.
This is just so patently false. You can see the national identity writ large even in old 40's and 50's Americana, or by listening to any of the politics or culture of the time. Hell, people felt like we were all "Americans first" even in the 90's and especially after 9/11. The American Identity can still be seen, even it's dying a quick death.
But they should be able to make gay people second-class citzens based on their religion. Something that has ZERO effect on their actual lives. None. I always knew the acceptance of gay marriage on the "new right" would be short lived, or was just a convenient talking point to begin with, but it's nice to have it confirmed.
What in the ever-loving hell does two men being married have to do with anyone's personal practice of their religion?? Has anyone ever come up with a SINGLE way this actually effects those who oppose it?? Even ONE?? You are saying nothing less than if gay people don't want to be second class citizens they should just suck it up and move. Christian enclaves where biblical law is the order of the day. But only with gay people. Rest assured these people still eat shellfish and wear sweaters made from two different clothes. These people know as much about the Bible as I do about quantam physics. I'll respect their position on Biblical principles the moment they start stoning their neighbors to death for breaking Old Testament law on a daily basis. Until then, it's simply a book that justifies their own insecurities.
Exactly. Before Brown vs. Board, and before the Civil Rights Act. Now we're being honest. Yet I get the sinking feeling I'm like 15 minutes away from having to defend both of them against charges of destroying white culture.
I agree they aren't free, but I also don't think it's realistic to suggest they should be entirely free within the same country. I'm sure for instance that there are still plenty of people in the US who would like a return to slavery, but it's hard to imagine the rest of the country being willing to let that happen in any community 150+ years after the Civil War.
I'm not sure exactly where the balance should be struck about what is nationally determined and what left more locally, but I'm pretty sure there needs to be a balance.
The discussion also needs to be had about what powers the President does and doesn't have. War powers in particular should be in the hands of Congress and not the President, and don't get me started on surveillance.