Red Mosquito

LoathedVermin72 wrote:If the Dems run fucking Joe Biden I swear to god...

... you’ll vote for him?

i'd fuck him

He may like that.

DemSocs working hard to re-elect Trump

tragabigzanda wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:DemSocs working hard to re-elect Trump

Dude. What did you think was the goal here? Implementing the ‘Nordic Model’?

If “things people write on signs at rallies” is how we are evaluating party platforms, then the Republican Party talking point set that won them a congressional majority was “hang in there Obama (picture of a noose),” “A village in Kenya is missing its idiot,” and “If a man can marry another man then legal marriage to dogs is next. No wonder Killary’s excited!”

McParadigm wrote:If “things people write on signs at rallies” is how we are evaluating party platforms, then the Republican Party talking point set that won them a congressional majority was “hang in there Obama (picture of a noose),” “A village in Kenya is missing its idiot,” and “If a man can marry another man then legal marriage to dogs is next. No wonder Killary’s excited!”

I mean, that sounds pretty accurate to where their platform is in 2018.

Amazing article that echoes my thoughts on the current political climate and where its going (to much darker places). This democrat/republican stuff is a relic.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-a ... m-populism

Populists and anti-humanists have entered into an ad hoc coalition in their fight against the liberal establishment. For now, at least, the people lovers and the people loathers have found common cause.

In the framework of overlaid populist and anti-humanist movements, many of the most baffling events of the past few years start to make sense. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” asked Donald Trump, channeling Noam Chomsky, of the disgraced Fox host Bill O’Reilly in 2016. While the alt-right adopted the style and attitudes of the left-wing counterculture, mainstream Democrats adopted slogans of 1950s Republicans and launched their own Cold War-style campaign against sweeping, sinister Russian subversion of domestic political institutions and the national fiber. Crosscurrents of populism and anti-humanism are running through evangelical support for Trump, progressive puritanism, liberals defending an FBI-led “resistance,” Sean Hannity’s crush on Julian Assange, Steve Bannon calling himself a “conservative Leninist,” as well as the resurgence of marginal strains of Stalinism, Maoism, Third Position fascism, National Bolshevism, and assorted political cults flickering throughout a social-media driven attention economy operating on the rubble of the liberal establishment’s journalism wing.

Listen to the modern prophets and you’ll hear that liberalism is dying, democracy is in crisis, and capitalism is ready to explode. “We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time,” Saul Bellow wrote in Herzog. Fifty-four years later and the doomsday sentimentalism the novel dismissed as “mere junk from fashionable magazines” is back in full bloom. And yet the fool’s bet is, in the long run, the only sure thing.

Attacks on liberal norms and liberal values correspond roughly to the populist and anti-humanist currents. Though it’s critical to distinguish between these modes, which have different goals and motivations, they are nearly inextricable at the moment. Both populism and anti-humanism erode traditional left-right political categories and the stable model of politics organized around centrist consensus. Each attacks the norms of the liberal establishment. And each participates in a counterestablishment style, its tone ranging from righteous to cynically vicious as the signal bounces around, growing more distorted with each relay between progressive radicals, neo-reactionaries, neo-left materialists, elite universities, talk radio hosts, and the White House.

Before 2016, liberalism had enjoyed more than a half-century as the shared meta-ideology of the American “political center.” The consensus encompassed a broad power-sharing arrangement between mainstream Democrats and Republicans, and between progressives, neoliberals, and neoconservatives, who competed with each other while excluding groups that violated certain core beliefs, mainly around market capitalism and the rights of individuals. The consensus enforced not only a stable left-right political paradigm but also a foundational liberal humanism that both parties broadly shared. As that center hollowed out it not only threw off the political balance, it threatened the underlying liberal humanist beliefs on which its ethical claims and legitimacy rested.

The anti-humanist critique of Enlightenment rationalism as inherently totalitarian fits quite well with the racial epistemology and authoritarianism of the alt-right. As a result, nominally antithetical political claims can sound indistinguishable—resting as they do on common philosophical sources... Both sides eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off of and legitimizing each other, while those of us searching for gray areas and common ground get devoured twice.”

And so, welcome to the new carnival of American life, in which a class of degenerate moralists on the alt-right claims the counterculture mantle to launch screeds against sexual immorality while clashing with a class of radical bureaucrats, supposedly representing the powerless, who enforce edicts about sexual behavior using the force of the state, brought to you by a new class of oligarchs who own the monopolistic digital platforms on which all of this excitement is processed and monetized.

A social order has evolved in which form betrays substance. A hard-won American ethos of tolerance and respect for the individual devolved into a progressive-plutocrat alliance that characterizes the worst of the neoliberal dispensation, and is loathed by much of the country. It produces a backlash.

Finally someone calls out Bernie for being a right wing nut job who doesn’t understand young people and socialism:

https://newrepublic.com/article/149378/ ... s-not-left

Bi_3 wrote:Finally someone calls out Bernie for being a right wing nut job who doesn’t understand young people and socialism:

https://newrepublic.com/article/149378/ ... s-not-left

Open borders plus a generous welfare state... this Democratic Socialism thing is going to be lit.

simple schoolboy wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:Finally someone calls out Bernie for being a right wing nut job who doesn’t understand young people and socialism:

https://newrepublic.com/article/149378/ ... s-not-left

Open borders plus a generous welfare state... this Democratic Socialism thing is going to be lit.

It’s pretty hard to overstate how much conservatives inadvertently worked to set the stage for this to occur.

I was just reading a paper on people’s perceptions of the word “socialism” over time. By weaponizing the word in response to every single democratic proposal, especially ones that later became incredibly popular like the ACA, they’ve effectively desensitized people to it. Young people have basically no negative response to the word at all, and even middle-age unaffiliated voters consistently misunderstand what it is and have increasingly neutral opinions of it. Socialism is now just seen as a meaningless political attack word.

Heh, If true, you'd think so-called progressives would learn from that and stop calling anyone who dares to disagree with them a racist sexist nazi bigot. It's already backfired spectacularly.

But I don't think it has much if anything to do with conservatives. Socialists have been calling themselves liberal for so long (and with no resistance from actual liberals) that no one knows the difference anymore. Add to that the fact that they have achieved power to amplify that message, and its no surprise that many young people view socialism and the left wing as synonymous. And without a Soviet menace around, it's more likely people won't see the negatives.

That and the fact that people love and will always love free shit, as long as you don't bore them with the details. With a pitch like that, the cancer will always spread.

McParadigm wrote:

simple schoolboy wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:Finally someone calls out Bernie for being a right wing nut job who doesn’t understand young people and socialism:

https://newrepublic.com/article/149378/ ... s-not-left

Open borders plus a generous welfare state... this Democratic Socialism thing is going to be lit.

It’s pretty hard to overstate how much conservatives inadvertently worked to set the stage for this to occur.

I was just reading a paper on people’s perceptions of the word “socialism” over time. By weaponizing the word in response to every single democratic proposal, especially ones that later became incredibly popular like the ACA, they’ve effectively desensitized people to it. Young people have basically no negative response to the word at all, and even middle-age unaffiliated voters consistently misunderstand what it is and have increasingly neutral opinions of it. Socialism is now just seen as a meaningless political attack word.

I listened to someone speak about this recently and her thought was more aligned with Burt's: the absence of a big "red" menace, the passing of time since the cold war, the removal of basic economics from high school classrooms, and the removing the Euro-centric nature of social studies has altered young people's perception of what Socialism did to humanity in the 20th century because they just dont learn about it anymore... mixing in the increasing progressive nature of educational colleges (gotta solve that achievement gap!) and you get a new perspective on what was once settle by a century of horrifying history. I recall someone here thought the only difference between capitalism and socialism was the tax rate.

you'd think so-called progressives would learn from that and stop calling anyone who dares to disagree with them a racist sexist nazi bigot. It's already backfired spectacularly.

I’d be curious to hear more about what you mean, here. Socialism is, to most people, a fairly abstract concept. In a 2016 survey, the word most commonly associated with it by Americans was “Obamacare.” Unsurprising, since nearly 2/3 of all mentions of socialism in serious discussion on television occurred on Fox News that year, and always as part of a criticism of Democrat policies. Then, right in the 90 day window when the repeal and replace effort was happening, when an insane number of people were waking up and going “Wait, the ACA *is* Obamacare? Oh no, I have that,” one of the most pronounced drops in negative responses to the term ‘socialism’ occurred. Such a marked event seems to support the idea that the use of the word as a political attack is what ultimately softened public perception.

The lesson seems to be, if you call everything your opponent does socialism, then every time someone decides they like a particular program or idea, the lesson you risk them taking away from it is “Socialism isn’t such a bad word after all.” Or, it starts to look to such a viewer like a form of crying wolf.

I’d go further and say that, beyond being eager for a long list of examples you might have of times when high profile Democrats/liberals called someone racist purely for disagreeing with them (particularly on issues where race was not inherently involved), race is an unavoidably huge part of the GOP’s optics right now. And the over-60 and under-35 crowd couldn’t be more extremely opposed on that subject.

The language, attitudes, dog whistles and panic button phrases that have been so perfectly crafted to nurture white working class voters read directly as racist to the majority of millennials. So, in fact, by engaging race in the manner that they do, conservatives probably add to the “socialism” desensitization. More than 67% of millennials describe the GOP as at least “somewhat racist.” So…when they see one party as racist, and that party keeps screaming that the other party is socialist (a word these individuals have heard repeatedly used to describe a policy that they view favorably, by the way), some of them must inevitably start to view socialism as in some way opposed to racism. Even your best case scenario is that they simply come to view it as the lesser of two evils. “An election between racism and socialism? How should I vote? Well, they said Obamacare is socialism and I don’t hate that…”

But I don't think it has much if anything to do with conservatives. Socialists have been calling themselves liberal for so long (and with no resistance from actual liberals) that no one knows the difference anymore.

The largest social democracy group in America has a membership of 26,000 right now…which is the biggest that it’s ever been. And before this year the majority of Democrat politicians who do favor socialistic policies were super careful not to use the word itself. It's hard to imagine a massive national change trend occurring because of a messaging system which by default requires you to be paying close attention.

I say again: nearly 2/3 of all mentions of socialism on TV for a one year period were from Fox News, who were advocating aggressively in favor of repealing what eventually became popular legislation.

If you want to see what’s causing a public desensitization to an idea or word, the first best place to look is exactly where the majority of public exposure to that idea or word is occurring.

And without a Soviet menace around, it's more likely people won't see the negatives.

100% agreed. In the same way that opposition to ethnic nationalism degrades due to the passage of time, the lack of actual fear or horror directed at a definitively socialist threat makes it impossible to maintain its perception as “the enemy.”

the removal of basic economics from high school classrooms, and the removing the Euro-centric nature of social studies

This is something else I’d be curious to see more information on, as someone who has done entirely too much research into curricula and educational practices throughout US history and does not directly see either described trend.

Some facts I do have regarding mathematics education over the last 70 years:
- From 1900 to 1950, basic arithmetic accounted for 85% of all math instruction in public schooling. Complex equations and financial literacy-related work represented less than 10% combined.

- By 1990 basic arithmetic was down to 64% of all instruction, but an additional 16% was comprised of a combination of more advanced arithmetic and geometry. There were also a few big pushes between 1960 and 1990 which had big immediate impacts, but ultimately vanished, like the ‘New Math’ effort.

- Financial literacy education as an emphasis in math instruction increased during the 90’s and early 2000’s, in part as a result of a panicked response to research that demonstrated terrible financial literacy on the part of *baby boomers.* It is still at acknowledgeably low levels, but my point is that this does not appear to represent a trending **decrease** which could be viewed, as you stated, as a catalyst for some broad societal attitudinal change.

Regarding social studies curriculum, or history courses in K-12 education, 20th century world history still represents slightly greater than 20% of the total curriculum, which is only about 5% down from its highwater mark in the 1990’s (and would be higher in both cases, if you were to remove all the time spent in K-5 on topics like early American settlers and folk tales). National objectives for that particular part of the curriculum have not significantly changed in a way that reduces the Euro-centric content…unsurprising, as the Western world is the key actor at the heart of most of the entire century’s developments. Beyond that, there is an internal debate as to the extent of appropriate Western culture emphasis in k-12, but even as a discussion it doesn't seem to be doing much. The last paper I saw was a survey on teacher attitudes in 2017, in which the Social Studies teachers who favored a reduction in Euro-centric instruction were outnumbered more than 3 to 1.

It's interesting this conversation is happening, as this article was just released which speaks to some of these issues, and anecdotally it broadly tracks with what I have heard from those who consider themselves socialist: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/ ... t-network/. In a sense, the word socialism is being renegotiated and reconstituted in a way altogether separate from its historical lineage. Burt said the imaging had made it seem like socialism was synonymous with liberalism, but that's going in both directions:

Much has been made of how Sanders has pulled the Democratic mainstream to the left. Presumptive 2020 presidential candidates are racing to capture the Bernie vote by declaring their support for policies—single-payer health care, free college—that once seemed impossibly radical. But Robinson’s evolution on Sanders is representative of a complementary phenomenon that has received less notice: Sanders seems to have also pulled the far left closer to the mainstream. The American left of center is like a soft mattress, and Bernie is an anvil dropped in the middle: whichever side you’re lying on, gravity pulls you a little closer to him.

The article makes the point that many so-called socialists are really more gravitating towards a New Deal liberalism on steroids, which I've found to be fairly accurate, more likely to cite countries like Norway as positive role models (even though it's not a 'socialist' nation).

Now, in the immediate this could be a drag on Democrats due to having to overcome the 'S' word, but as time goes on and if these politicians achieve greater electoral success, it's going to become more difficult for conservatives to wield the kind of cudgels Bi_3 mentioned successfully.

Financial literacy and basic economics are not the same thing.

--- wrote:Financial literacy and basic economics are not the same thing.

I didn't mean to equate them, though in a way I guess I did. It’s the closest parallel I have, as I find no reference to economics in the collected national standards, 1950-1999 document I have.

McParadigm wrote:

--- wrote:Financial literacy and basic economics are not the same thing.

I did to mean to equate them, though in a way I guess I did. It’s the closest parallel I have, as I find no reference to economics in the collected national standards, 1950-1999 document I have.

I suppose this is part of the point. Outside of AP courses - which have actually been gradually expanding based on my (admittedly limited) understanding - there is no formal instruction on even the most basic economic concepts in secondary education. I care less about why this is than I do that too few are exposed to what is a useful way of evaluating the world. It imposes a kind of considered humility on anyone willing to indulge the lessons it has to offer, which is no less valuable in an age where 140 character epigrams pass for substantive arguments.

Thinking economically means thinking in terms of tradeoffs, not solutions. It means considering opportunity costs, constraints, and incentives in evaluating policies, history, and culture. Sound economic reasoning is apolitical. It is the antidote for wishful thinking, which is almost certainly why economics generally - and economists specifically - is so maligned beyond the bounds of like-minded initiates in other disciplines. It's never fun to be told things you don't want to hear.

I don’t disagree with any of that. My point was only that current state does not represent a downtrend in economics education, which might then be used to explain societal attitude changes over the last 10 years (as described by Bi_3).