Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

The selfish boomers are the personification and culmination of the several centuries long trend trend of eschewing national cohesion and distinctiveness in favor of pathetic globalist pie in the sky values that started with the glorious revolution.

You're back in earnest again?

The Industrial Age with its Enlightenment and economic values have indeed been replacing the militaristic conquest driven Agricultural Age values. You've got the values transition more or less in the right time frame. It's just that with modern weapons, the economic powers were able to defeat the militaristic powers fairly consistently. For much of the Industrial Age, the nations with the healthy economies were generally able to defeat the autocratic army centered cultures at their own game. The number of bullets and size of the bombs mattered. Then too, as the weapons became more powerful, the winning side didn't really win. Somewhere around the time when machine guns were first deployed, the deaths and destruction resulting from the war didn't make up for the treasure and blood expended.

But it doesn't seem you're able to learn from history.... There are reasons that the 'pathetic' values are winning and suppressing the old might is right approach. The Agricultural Age is gone and isn't apt to come back this side of a total economic collapse, and I mean total. War might be cost effective again if we go back to swords and lances.

It seems the Scalia thread has been shut down. I've nothing more to be said about Scalia, but a few words on Xymox's last entry.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

It seems that those who purport to lead have lost the ability to present a compelling, soulful, Whiggish vision.

All too true. The core problem is Reaganomics, trickle down voodoo. A belief has been pushed that government intervention is bad, that the government is so incompetent that any attempt at beneficial intervention is more apt to fail than help. Free markets are thought to work better than planned interventionist economies.

It isn't that there aren't Whigs anymore, or that they can't make their case. It's more that a large part of the population just doesn't believe in it. They've been sold a different vision. Human inability to objectively re-evaluate their way of understanding how the world works is a strong contributor. We might well continue to go slowly steadily down hill, and in a lot of people's minds it will be the fault of the Whigs.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

So now we have actual Nazis, Anarchists, National Bolsheviks, and the like, cropping up, especially in the case of economically frustrated Millies.

How much do you see these autocratic value systems proposed outside of political forums like this one? People who 'waste their time' venting extreme views tend to congregate at places like this. I sort of expect it here, but never see it in the 'real world'. But that might be me. The few Millenials I know have got their heads more or less above water. I've a nephew still living in a multiple generation household, and a niece who never got a chance to use her degree to her fullest. Yes, they are struggling. Yes, they are busy enough struggling that they're not active in the sort of politics that would change their struggles. Yes, it is a common thought that we'd all be better off uniting behind a common political scheme, but which scheme?

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

The fact that a complete jerk like Trump could actually be a thing bodes poorly.

Agreed. The attraction to autocratic (expletive deleted) politics isn't totally imaginary. I can respect the Trump followers a little bit more than the Nazis, Communists, etc...

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Some of the views being expressed on this forum may mean the eventual death of the USA and coming from me, a person who is not bought into Civil War 2 notions or the psyop from a Russian hater of the West (e.g. US will break up into multiple nations), that is saying a lot.

I think it's down to X to set forth a credible, normal American approach to our woes. I've had it up to here with all the sicko Nazi, Fascist, and / or Marxist bullshit some of the posters here are spewing.

Bernie seems to be trying. I don't trust Hillary. I kind of expect more of the same from her, but to some degree she talks the talk.

But I watch for spirals of rhetoric overflowing into spirals of violence. While there are "sicko Nazi, Fascist, and / or Marxist... posters", they clash with each other as much as they do with main liners. They reject the entirely rejection worthy establishment parties, but aren't close to uniting on a common extreme vision, the sort of vision that would get the spirals spiraling. I can respect and understand their rejection and hate of the stagnant main line values, but don't see anything they are pushing that has a potential to go anywhere. So many of them are clinging to old autocratic value systems that have failed spectacularly in the past. There is little there to build on or hope for.

Still, I wouldn't put it all on the Xers... or the Boomers... or the Millenials. One generation isn't going to make it right. While the generations may well have their strengths and weaknesses, the blame game and strife between the generations is doing no more good than the blame game and strife between the political schemes, be these schemes Republican, Democratic, Whig, Tory, Marxist, Fascist, Nazi or whatever. If you have a constructive suggestion or direction to push, push it by all means. I don't know that it's helpful to push it while waving a flag for your generation and suggesting failure and ineptitude by other generations. All generations, and all individuals, have both virtues and vices.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

I think I need to take a break from this space.

A quite plausible suggestion. I've been coming and going forever, active for a few weeks then idle for a few weeks out of a similar logic and frustration.

Originally Posted by radind

I have not seen anything indicating any reversal in wealth accumulation for the 0.1%. Have you?

No, the rout in the economy continues. I doubt the change will be subtle if there is one. The .1% are more entrenched now than they were in the late-20s, so moving to some different paradigm means drastic action in the political sphere or a major war or depression. Personally, I would prefer the political solution this time.

No\\If there is no solution, this moves us into a world that is undefined. We have very limited need of labor, so unemployment, or more likely under-employment, can rise until the demand in the economy stalls completely. I'm not sure what happens then.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

No, the rout in the economy continues. I doubt the change will be subtle if there is one. The .1% are more entrenched now than they were in the late-20s, so moving to some different paradigm means drastic action in the political sphere or a major war or depression. Personally, I would prefer the political solution this time.

No\\If there is no solution, this moves us into a world that is undefined. We have very limited need of labor, so unemployment, or more likely under-employment, can rise until the demand in the economy stalls completely. I'm not sure what happens then.

-- try France around, say 1789

Originally Posted by marypoza

-- try France around, say 1789

The mood is right, or close at least. The only difference is the advance of technology that makes us all redundant. If we kill the king, that's still a huge problem.

Quinnnipiac national poll, conducted Feb. 10-15:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-e...ReleaseID=2324

Clinton 44%
Trump 43%

Cruz 46%
Clinton 43%

Rubio 48%
Clinton 41%

Bush 44%
Clinton 43%

Kasich 47%
Clinton 39%

Sanders 48%
Trump 42%

Sanders 49%
Cruz 39%

Sanders 47%
Rubio 41%

Sanders 49%
Bush 39%

Sanders 45%
Kasich 41%

Sanders 38%
Trump 38%
Bloomberg 12%

Sanders 39%
Cruz 33%
Bloomberg 14%

...A pattern seems to be emerging. Hillary Clinton offers a near-tie or a Kerry-like loss. Sanders offers a national margin similar to that of Obama in 2008 or 2012.

Originally Posted by B Butler

The Industrial Age with its Enlightenment and economic values have indeed been replacing the militaristic conquest driven Agricultural Age values. You've got the values transition more or less in the right time frame. It's just that with modern weapons, the economic powers were able to defeat the militaristic powers fairly consistently. For much of the Industrial Age, the nations with the healthy economies were generally able to defeat the autocratic army centered cultures at their own game. The number of bullets and size of the bombs mattered. Then too, as the weapons became more powerful, the winning side didn't really win. Somewhere around the time when machine guns were first deployed, the deaths and destruction resulting from the war didn't make up for the treasure and blood expended.

One may hope so, but the culture often supports the primitive drives. A century ago Dada, Italian futurism, and the music of Igor Stravinsky suggested that the refined rationalism of the late Victorian era was brittle. World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution would shatter Victorian assumptions.

The real danger to the Enlightenment is not militarism. Victorian-era foreign policy was mostly attempts to divide the world into colonial spheres of influence in which Western societies and Japan attempted to dominate the local economy and culture. With memories of Napoleonic wars and the Crimean fiasco intact the colonial powers generally avoided the protracted, internecine wars that had seemed much a thing of the past in 1913. We all know the sequel.

One can regret that the one desire of the Agricultural Age remains -- the desire of some to exploit workers to the fullest. The most profitable societies for plutocrats may have been the plantation-era South (the most successful agrarian order ever) and the Third Reich. Both were racist slave systems, and slavery is the purest system of exploitation that has ever existed. The most complete exploitation that I can imagine can fully ignore the concept of a consumer society. People are worked to the limits of their ability for the barest subsistence. Because they wear out by age 45 they need no old-age pensions. Children of such slaves or near-slaves need little education; indeed, any education would instill revolutionary attitudes among people who care more about the people that they are from instead of those who exploit the people that they have known as parents and siblings. Barracks-like accommodations can deny the luxury of individuality. Elite men can of course live like nobility even down to their chilly treatment of women.

That of course must die. The one peril to such an order is that any enemy of such an order can be seen as a liberator. We will need to adapt to a world in which harsh need is no longer necessary. Quality will matter far more than sheer output except in raw materials and foodstuffs. The consumer economy cannot have the production of schlock as its basis. Such was the failure of Marxist-Leninist regimes whose output was (except for weaponry and relics of the pre-Marxist era) were too dowdy to fit the needs of world markets.

There are reasons that the 'pathetic' values are winning and suppressing the old might is right approach. The Agricultural Age is gone and isn't apt to come back this side of a total economic collapse, and I mean total. War might be cost effective again if we go back to swords and lances.

Agriculture-era wars, brutal as they may have been, did more to establish the reality of the order than to challenge it. Such agricultural surpluses as they were went into transforming plow-horses into cavalry horses and providing victuals for what in peacetime would have been idle farm laborers but in war were the infantry. War was one of the three Malthusian checks upon population growth (the others famine and pestilence). Destructive of people as war may have been, agricultural-age war never endangered the basis of the economy or its then-primitive infrastructure. Peasants would still be peasants on the same land even if the aristocratic masters would be the same. Lances and crossbows would never destroy the castles and markets. Even cannons were good for killing people more than for laying waste towns.

The most horrible weapon of the time was infectious agents that could be fired at defenders behind what looked like secure walls. Just wait for the plague to decimate the enemy, and conquest would be easy. Germ warfare is not so modern a concept as it is presented.

Naval artillery and especially aerial attack with incendiaries can transform the building materials into tinder, transforming shelter and comfort into hurricanes of fire. The wooden buildings of Japan (the safest structures for an earthquake-prone area) could become death-traps when the American Army Air Corps dropped thermite upon them. That's before I discuss the atomic weapons that can blast everything into smithereens.

Three-dimensional war has scared Modern Man. Maybe the difference this time is that we still have film clips of the horrors of World War II itself and the genocide that happened under its cover. I may have been born ten years after the end of the Second World War, but images of the destruction of the war and the Holocaust are in my memory. I see images of bodies stacked like cord-wood and I identify with the victims even if I am more closely related by ancestry to the perpetrators than to the victims. I look at images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and think that such could instead be Boston and Philadelphia.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The mood is right, or close at least. The only difference is the advance of technology that makes us all redundant. If we kill the king, that's still a huge problem.

The French revolutionaries at first had no problem with a docile King. It was when Louis XVI and his Austrian-born consort Marie Antoinette chose to flee to Austria (ally of the ancien régime, but hostile to the new, democratic French order) that things went sour. Then, and only then, began the climate of fear that culminated in the Terror.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The French revolutionaries at first had no problem with a docile King. It was when Louis XVI and his Austrian-born consort Marie Antoinette chose to flee to Austria (ally of the ancien régime, but hostile to the new, democratic French order) that things went sour. Then, and only then, began the climate of fear that culminated in the Terror.

Once the terror starts it is difficult to stop it.

Terror at the Dawn of Modern Europe


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...europe/389552/
… Even after the worst actual threats to the revolution passed, the radicals remained gripped by a panicked desire for security and revenge. So instead of the Terror waning in the spring of 1794, it accelerated as Robespierre and his allies turned on anyone who might still jeopardize their movement. Only when a large fraction of the remaining deputies in the National Convention started to fear for their own lives in the summer of 1794 did they finally rise up against Robespierre. Less organized but still violent civic strife, driven by the same sort of wild emotions as the Terror, continued for years.”…


… "But imagined terrors, as he and Tackett very usefully remind us, can have even more political potency than real ones. While early-19th-century Europe had its share of real revolutionary conspirators, the “directing committee” was as much a figment of the imagination as was the nest of spies and traitors that Robespierre claimed, toward the end of the Terror, to have discovered at the heart of the revolutionary National Convention. Both fantasies stand in a long line that stretches straight through to our own day.
There is nothing particularly unusual, then, about the fears of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants that have such a large place in the mind-set of American conservatives, or the Russian fears of fascism that Vladimir Putin exploited so successfully to generate support for his incursions into Ukraine. Such emotions are an integral part of modern political life, and tempting as it may be to dismiss them as irrational, hysterical, and not worthy of serious discussion, we cannot simply wish them away.”

South Carolina Primary averages of polls Feb 17-19, compared to my last post:

Trump 33.2 (-1.8)
Cruz 17.5 (+.2)
Rubio 17.2 (+2.2)
Bush 11 (-.3)
Kasich 10 (+1.4)
Carson 6.5 (+1.2)

Clinton 58
Sanders 31

Nevada caucus polling has had Clinton and Sanders tied, but Clinton is up 5 in the latest poll.

Those polls showing Republicans ahead of Clinton are disturbing. Although some polls show Sanders ahead of them, others show him behind. All seem to show Sanders is the stronger candidate, contrary to Establishment expectations, and supporting the astrological ones. I expect Clinton would get a boost if she's nominated, but I could only hope she retains it.

The people need to understand just how destructive Republicans are. They need to be defeated at every opportunity. Our future depends on this, and perhaps only this. Muddling through in the face of such ignorance and greed in power as Republican politicians represent, will be very difficult at best.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...europe/389552/

… Even after the worst actual threats to the revolution passed, the radicals remained gripped by a panicked desire for security and revenge. So instead of the Terror waning in the spring of 1794, it accelerated as Robespierre and his allies turned on anyone who might still jeopardize their movement. Only when a large fraction of the remaining deputies in the National Convention started to fear for their own lives in the summer of 1794 did they finally rise up against Robespierre. Less organized but still violent civic strife, driven by the same sort of wild emotions as the Terror, continued for years.”…


… "But imagined terrors, as he and Tackett very usefully remind us, can have even more political potency than real ones. While early-19th-century Europe had its share of real revolutionary conspirators, the “directing committee” was as much a figment of the imagination as was the nest of spies and traitors that Robespierre claimed, toward the end of the Terror, to have discovered at the heart of the revolutionary National Convention. Both fantasies stand in a long line that stretches straight through to our own day.

There is nothing particularly unusual, then, about the fears of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants that have such a large place in the mind-set of American conservatives, or the Russian fears of fascism that Vladimir Putin exploited so successfully to generate support for his incursions into Ukraine. Such emotions are an integral part of modern political life, and tempting as it may be to dismiss them as irrational, hysterical, and not worthy of serious discussion, we cannot simply wish them away.”

Fear has always forth about the worst in human behavior, whether by revolutionaries or reactionaries. It causes people to cast off their usual decencies and become brutes.

Of course there are objects of legitimate fear -- like a flimsy latch beyond whose door to which it was attached are four hostile 80-poind dogs. If the latch held I was going to be safe.

Originally Posted by B Butler

The core problem is Reaganomics, trickle down voodoo. A belief has been pushed that government intervention is bad, that the government is so incompetent that any attempt at beneficial intervention is more apt to fail than help. Free markets are thought to work better than planned interventionist economies.

Government intervention saved America from reverting to a pre-industrial norm in 1933, and it prevented a replay of the Great Depression in 2009. Free markets can go bad. First, the concept of a 'free market' implies that those who have the assets and hold the job openings have an inherent right to exploit their positions of strength against workers. Second, a 'free market' in a dubious commodity (slave trading was purer a market activity as just about anything today) is suspect because of the commodity. Third, free markets are capable of serving the worst tendencies in human nature even if such ultimately wrecks the economy -- think of financial bubbles that appeal to the nearly-universal desire for easy money from speculation that requires practically no effort or care.

It isn't that there aren't Whigs anymore, or that they can't make their case. It's more that a large part of the population just doesn't believe in it. They've been sold a different vision. Human inability to objectively re-evaluate their way of understanding how the world works is a strong contributor. We might well continue to go slowly steadily down hill, and in a lot of people's minds it will be the fault of the Whigs.

The polarization of American economics practically ensures that there can be no Whig-like moderates. The voluntarist notion that the stronger that one desires something, the more surely one can get it, remains a commonplace misconception.

One part of Reaganomics, supply-side economics, held that production created its own demand. In fact, schlock production must always be sold for much less than its intended value. A market can check the production of stuff that nobody wants. To be sure, workers want stuff, but they don't want schlock.

A huge divide exists on what constitutes 'objective reality'. People can believe some incredibly-crazy things. The loudest and most abrasive get our attention and establish themselves as the definitive spokespeople for their cause. But they are the loudest and most abrasive, and to keep their credibility among their followers they must go even further into off-the-wall expressions of their beliefs.

How much do you see these autocratic value systems proposed outside of political forums like this one? People who 'waste their time' venting extreme views tend to congregate at places like this. I sort of expect it here, but never see it in the 'real world'. But that might be me. The few Millennials I know have got their heads more or less above water. I've a nephew still living in a multiple generation household, and a niece who never got a chance to use her degree to her fullest. Yes, they are struggling. Yes, they are busy enough struggling that they're not active in the sort of politics that would change their struggles. Yes, it is a common thought that we'd all be better off uniting behind a common political scheme, but which scheme?

A lot. The extremists here do not come out of nowhere. People are raised to be authoritarians, and some people rebel against wishy-washy moderation. There are bigots, and they love to express their sordid beliefs as if they were pushing a noble cause.

If you want to see really nasty rhetoric, then go to a sports forum. You would think that Yankee and Red Sox fans were at war.

The attraction to autocratic (expletive deleted) politics isn't totally imaginary. I can respect the Trump followers a little bit more than the Nazis, Communists, etc...

Authoritarian families are commonplace; authoritarian businesses are the norm; authoritarian politics fits both.

Bernie seems to be trying. I don't trust Hillary. I kind of expect more of the same from her, but to some degree she talks the talk.

The revival of the Gilded ethos may have run its course. It has demanded much from so many and delivered little to the same many. Bernie Sanders is its antithesis, so much as is possible in America.

But I watch for spirals of rhetoric overflowing into spirals of violence. While there are "sicko Nazi, Fascist, and / or Marxist... posters", they clash with each other as much as they do with main liners. They reject the entirely rejection worthy establishment parties, but aren't close to uniting on a common extreme vision, the sort of vision that would get the spirals spiraling. I can respect and understand their rejection and hate of the stagnant main line values, but don't see anything they are pushing that has a potential to go anywhere. So many of them are clinging to old autocratic value systems that have failed spectacularly in the past. There is little there to build on or hope for.

Marxist, fascist, and neo-Nazi types will not get their way this time. When Donald Trump threatens to send back all illegal aliens, liberals often recognizes that such deportations will break up families unless the birthright-citizen children are obliged to return too. The mainstream needs to recover some credibility and a constituency if we are to have mainstream politics. Maybe the mainstream of the 2030s will need to re-establish itself anew. Crisis Eras usually end with a freezing of the reality at its end in politics and economics.

today's average of final SC polls:
Trump 29.6
Rubio 19
Cruz 19
Bush 11
Kasich 8
Carson 6.3

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

South Carolina Primary averages of polls Feb 17-19, compared to my last post:

Trump 33.2 (-1.8)
Cruz 17.5 (+.2)
Rubio 17.2 (+2.2)
Bush 11 (-.3)
Kasich 10 (+1.4)
Carson 6.5 (+1.2)

Clinton 58
Sanders 31

Nevada caucus polling has had Clinton and Sanders tied, but Clinton is up 5 in the latest poll.

There are rumors from Nevada saying that a bunch of pro-Clinton unionized casino workers were allowed to vote in the caucus without registering.

Also, the Clinton-supporting Latina activist Dolores Huerta LIED about Sanders supporters chanting "English only!" at the caucus preventing her from translating into Spanish, the reality was that people wanted a politically neutral translator rather than one of Clinton's creatures.

I'm getting increasingly disgusted by the Clinton campaign.

Originally Posted by Odin

I'm getting increasingly disgusted by the Clinton campaign.

And the mainstream media is proclaiming "Clinton wins Nevada!" without mentioning how close things were today.

Good bye, John Ellis Bush; JEBBIE boy
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...ampaign-219564

Republican Primary

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 190,446 33.0% 38
Marco Rubio 128,703 22.3 -
Ted Cruz 125,173 21.7 -
Jeb Bush 46,784 8.1 -
John Kasich 45,416 7.9 -
Ben Carson 39,763 6.9 -
576,285 votes, 82% reporting (1,844 of 2,239 precincts)

Winner called by A.P.
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/201...south-carolina

Originally Posted by Earl and Mooch

And the mainstream media is proclaiming "Clinton wins Nevada!" without mentioning how close things were today.

Democratic Caucus

Republican caucus is on February 23.

CANDIDATES VOTE* PCT. DELEGATES
Hillary Clinton 5,640 52.5% 19
Bernie Sanders 5,088 47.4 14
Other 7 0.1 -
10,735 votes, 88% reporting (1,506 of 1,714 precincts)

*Vote totals for the Nevada Democratic Party are county convention delegates won.
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/primaries/nevada

Remember "Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart"?

Well this morning I'm singing, "Hello Donald Trump - Goodbye Social Darwinism!"

With his service break in heavily evangelical South Carolina, The Donald either cannot be stopped from winning the Republican nomination, or they will have to do so dirty by him that he will definitely run as an independent (and the Reform Party, who was just turned down by Jim Webb, would be more than happy to embrace Trump as their nominee in that case).

By contrast, Hillary merely held serve in Nevada - so that battle goes on.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

By contrast, Hillary merely held serve in Nevada - so that battle goes on.

And she didn't hold serve convincingly. Those two are running very close to one another. That battle is no where near over.

Originally Posted by Odin

There are rumors from Nevada saying that a bunch of pro-Clinton unionized casino workers were allowed to vote in the caucus without registering.

Also, the Clinton-supporting Latina activist Dolores Huerta LIED about Sanders supporters chanting "English only!" at the caucus preventing her from translating into Spanish, the reality was that people wanted a politically neutral translator rather than one of Clinton's creatures.

I'm getting increasingly disgusted by the Clinton campaign.

But the most powerful Nevada-based union, the Culinary Union - who I can't stand because they're blocking mixed martial arts from getting sanctioned in New York State - remained neutral.

Sanders and Clinton are tied on the delegate count and the corporate-owned idiots on the "news" are declaring the Sanders campaign dead. Could their bias be any more transparent? Jesus Christ...

If I was in my Dr. Demento phase - where I was when I was like 21 - I'd be hoping that Comrade Sanders does defeat Hillary - just so I could have the pleasure of watching him finish third in the general election, behind Michael Bloomberg as well as the GOP nominee, or even fourth if the latter is not Donald Trump and Trump, too, runs as an independent.

Originally Posted by Odin

Sanders and Clinton are tied on the delegate count and the corporate-owned idiots on the "news" are declaring the Sanders campaign dead. Could their bias be any more transparent? Jesus Christ...

Yes, it could be a mass conspiracy by all those media types that have expressed so much love for Hillary over the years.

Or, it could simply be people who get paid by looking like they know something, and in this case know something about how delegates are gained by the candidates in each state - hint: it varies, a lot. And if you know how it varies, and match that with polling, you might be able to make some projections that might show limited potential for certain candidates once certain events take place.

If you want to look like you actually know something, I suggest reading some of this -

http://cookpolitical.com/story/9258

And maybe looking up this name -

"Jeffery Berman"

- he was Obama's '08 delegate strategist. Guess who hired him for 2016.

Maybe one thing that will be clear by this Summer is whether or not you are going to be as embarrassing to Progressives as Clinton's PUMAs became in 2008.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Yes, it could be a mass conspiracy by all those media types that have expressed so much love for Hillary over the years.

Or, it could simply be people who get paid by looking like they know something, and in this case know something about how delegates are gained by the candidates in each state - hint: it varies, a lot. And if you know how it varies, and match that with polling, you might be able to make some projections that might show limited potential for certain candidates once certain events take place.

Mainstream journalists make their living off cliché because such is what their audiences want. Like their audiences, mainstream journalists are shocked when reality no longer fits cliché.