Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/03/scientists-and-their-moral-du.html
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I guess the idea here, as in so many other stories grouped under the heading of “the resistance” is to keep the drama dial cranked up to eleven, for the next four years or until Trump is replaced by Pence, whichever comes first.
Can that level of drama be sustained? Time will tell.
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If you really think that this whole Administration and the reaction to it is just the pendulum swinging back and forth and business as usual, and not an active and personal threat to many people around the world based on the deeds, actions and promises done so far, then, I’m sorry to say this, you’re part of the danger by attempting to normalize it.
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I guess I’ll know for sure that’s true if someone dressed in black comes to set my house afire.
I don’t know what would be worse: That you think this is just another Republican presidential administration, or that you don’t care how grotesquely bizarre it is.
Considering that the man seems to be physically incapable of not doing damage, even if only to his own credibility, on a daily basis–I going with yes.
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Less a “pendulum” than a wrecking ball. By the time it swings back in the other direction our democratic institutions will be lying in rubble.
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And that’s the issue there: you can blow the threat off because you are not personally threatened by the actions of this Administration, and, indeed, support it to the point where you feel that the biggest threat to your own person is a radicalized reactionary response to the Administration that may or may not materialize. Why, exactly, do you feel that you would be targeted? Is it some deed that you’ve done, or belief that you hold? Because I know why I’m targeted by the supporters of the Administration, and it’s because of my ancestry.
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Oh, this oughta be good…
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Nah.
@lolipop_jones is a classic old-school trolley. He comes in to push buttons and then feel good about it. He’s not particularly interested in holding his beliefs out for any kind of serious scrutiny.
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Obvs; I just meant that whatever improbable bullshit it’s about serve up this time should be good for a very minuscule chuckle, for about half a second.
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I’ve always called it a ratchet instead of a pendulum, because it seems like it hasn’t swung back towards the left in decades. In fact the pendulum keeps swinging more and more to the right in defiance of basic physics. But you’re right; now it’s a wrecking ball.
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Well, I can understand how you might say that. I’ll give you a brief summary of what I believe, and if you want to scrutinize it go ahead. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I’m about to give the political threads a rest until things calm down a bit.
I posted this about six months ago on a very pro-Trump site, and got flamed for it a whole lot more than I ever got flamed on boingboing…
Trump’s “fiscal policy” leads me to conclude that he plans to secure the services of a magic dwarf who can spin straw into gold, for in no other way can he (a) cut taxes, (b) massively increase military spending, © leave entitlements untouched and (d) reduce the national debt, all of which he has promised.
Trump’s browbeating of American business owners who are doing the best they can by their shareholders in the light of this country’s burden of taxes and regulation is contemptible. In their shoes, I’d move my production line to a country that showed me it was wanted, and not bat an eyelash.
Trump shamelessly panders on the issue of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all of which shall assuredly crash and burn like a twenty-car NASCAR pileup someday soon unless taxes are raised and benefits cut. I speak as someone who is about five years from Social Security eligibility, and who would cheerfully take the estimated 25-30 percent reduction it would require to avoid raising the tax burden on my children and grandchildren.
Really, what America needs are leaders who will unflinchingly tell America it has been living on its seed corn for decades now, and that corresponding decades of what a great man called “blood, toil, tears and sweat” are demanded to put the books in balance again. We need thirty years of no vacations, no dinners out, darning the socks, and paying off the mortgage early.
Instead, we get Trumps, Clintons, and Sanders’, all of whom are only too ready to tell their followers that there is an easy, quick and painless road back to prosperity, and that foreign countries… um… oil companies… er …immigrants… …um …hedge fund managers… …well, at any rate, someone who is Not Us…will foot the bill for it all.
Yours for green eyeshades and red pencils, sir.
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Or that you pissed off the Dread Pirate Roberts.
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The problem is getting someone like that elected, and then reelected.
The electorate isn’t widely known for thinking decades down the road.
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FTFY.
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He’s happy because Herr Drumpf promised to fix our infrastructure… He thinks that the bridge that he lives under is goin’ to get spiffed up.
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While they benefit from a globally hegemonic economic and military system that’s provided mostly free of charge (the 35% corporate tax never seems to hit transnationals with both their understanding of and their lobbying for exemption in, the tax system). They move their production offshore while assuming a guaranteed market onshore and WTO and IMF (Washington) protection of their interests offshore.
The system of SS is nowhere near as problematic as its, mostly financial, critics claim. There are minor tax fixes that really aren’t all that painful that guarantee the system’s viability far beyond your life and mine, and our children’s. Medicare needs a reform of the profligate health (sickness?) care system. The costs and waste aren’t due to the government’s programs so much as what health care insurers, suppliers, and providers deem to be their rent-seeking cartel profligacy right to non-market profits.
Yeah, tighten the belts of people who can barely afford belts…what bullshit.
The monetary system we have existed under since 1971 (gold window closure) has been exploited for the benefit of a financial/corporate ruling class. All of the massive “public” debt that is so “destructive” has been used to make fortunes for a relative handful of people. The same, or actually far less federal debt could have/should have been issued and invested in the states, counties, and cities. The results would have been self sustaining and life style improving.
We seem to be able to afford low or no taxes for connected corporations, we seem to be able to afford outrageous military spending. Really, what we’ve spent in the 21st century is boggling. We seem to be able to afford lunatic levels of bailouts for favored industries. We seem to be able to afford non-negotiated prices for pharma products. We just can’t seem to afford anything that will maintain/improve the lives of working citizens.
It’s all been choices, ideologically and greed driven choices made by connected people for their own benefit and given legitimacy by a completely corrupted system of economic dogma.
This country is awash in money. Money provided by the Federal Reserve at nearly no cost to connected banks and financial insiders. Money borrowed from the Federal Reserve at ZERO cost and provided to the U.S. treasury for bond issuance that, due to the reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar denominated assets, has a virtually unlimited demand. And due to the massive U.S. dollar denominated and highly liquid pools of these dollar based assets, there is no chance of their disappearing anytime in our lifetimes. YET, fear mongers like yourself insist that the very same people, you know, working people, who have borne the brunt of these policies now have to look forward to a generation of suffering.
Well, good luck selling that one because more and more people will call bullshit on that and demand that money issued and spent must support the public good and not a continuation of NeoLiberal “two legs better than four legs”.
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If you think I’m in favor of that crap, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’d run interest rates back up to four percent in a heartbeat. What we need is
- a return to Glass-Steagall
- NO more too big to fail and
- NO more bailouts, which means
- NO more Dodd-Frank, which essentially enacted TBTF into law.
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Honest question: are you speaking metaphorically here? Because Americans already have a pretty impoverished notion of vacationing and for much longer than the past thirty years.
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