Originally Posted by pbrower2a

1. Poverty was declining when the factories were hiring and paying well. The factory was the most reliable escape from poverty . But as America became more industrialized, the sorts of people who got factory jobs had to scrap for what was available -- like fast food, retailing, and domestic service. Work in those three and you will almost certainly end up poor.

2. With the exception of high mountains and just inland of the Pacific coast, anyone who lives south of Interstate 80 needs air conditioning. People die of heat stroke even farther north in the summer. It's telling that such big population growth as there has been in such places as Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina did not happen before air conditioning became the norm.

3. Cable TV? Lifeline cable TV has mandated low rates (subsidized by other subscribers). It's a pacifier for the poor. I figure that as a right-winger you would prefer that poor people watch mindless TV than that they go looting and rioting...

4. Before you say "cars" -- the middle class in New York City often has no cars, but poor people in rural New Mexico do.

5. Opportunity? I just found that the annual tuition for private colleges is about $45K a year. In-state tuition for a big state university is typically about $10K a year for some bargains but $35K for out-of-state students.

As usual your data is either obsolete or wrong. At best you are a real-life Archie Bunker.

People managed to live in those places without airconditioning befpore know.

People want cable TV. That's a fact.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

And Bernie can fuel that wave even (maybe especially) if he dosen't get the nomination. Bernie has young people's attention now. Most states have their state primaries between now and September. Only the remaining primaries have presidential primaries at the same time (and same ballots) as state primaries. All of those early presidential primaries are ways of separating high turnout presidential primaries from state primary elections so that those state races will have low turnout--which benefits party establishments.

The election of Bernie Sanders would bring in the oldest President in American history while putting an end to the recent gerontocracy. Such would be ironic in the extreme.

Bernie's plan all along may have been to build up attention and fund-raising he never have could have gotten otherwise by running for President--and now that he is a household word, support insurgent Democrats in primary elections where incumbents are not expecting high turnout. Bernie may have already stated to do this by keeping his organization and his funding separate from Democratic National Comittee and allowing his supporters to make issues of whether particularl superdelegates support him or Hillary. It's a good way to start targeting remaining "blue dog Clintonistas" in Congress for defeat (as well as state legislators of that ilk) in races which are poorly funded except for special interests who aren't used to having to seriously fund state primaries.

The rise of the Millennial generation in political life is an inevitability. Sure, I look at Barack Obama as showing an selection of masculine characteristics of both a Civic generation and an Idealist generation, as is commonplace among Adaptive generations -- but in his case the Civic traits are from a younger generation and the Idealist traits are from an older generation. He is definitely not an Adaptive; he still seems much like a sixty-something Reactive with much more in common with Truman, Eisenhower, or John Adams than with just about any Silent type. He is not John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, or Theodore Roosevelt redux. Run afoul of him and you may find consequences befitting your folly should he not forgive you out of pragmatic concerns. (The killing of anti-American terrorists suggests an adoption of techniques, if not motives, of gangsters like Capone. I recognized the killing of Osama bin Laden as having much in common with an underworld hit of which Al Capone would have been proud).

Is Obama a one-time type for his generation? No. There will be another like him in many respects at or soon after the end of the Crisis. Mellowed, sixty-something Reactives have their virtues as leaders.

And now if Trump dosen't get the nomination, there will be a lot of angry Trump supporters who may be authoritarian but are not doctrinaire conservatives looking for someone to take their mad out on too. And if Bernie plays his cards right and is active right up until November and can maintain his funding base to appeal to those voters, that could be Republican incumbents. Whether or not Bernie gets the nomination, he could put together a real wave election--that could leave Hillary, if she wins with a Congress that is Democratic but far to the left of her comfort zone.

Wrong about Trump voters. We do not need their cruelty and xenophobia. We do not need their superstition. We need people to become more savvy about political reality. We Democrats are better off seeking out the support of "Establishment" Republicans who have no use for right-wing, nativist demagoguery... people who have no tolerance for religious or ethnic bigotry. Jeb Bush has a wife born in Mexico. The "Establishment" Republicans need to return to their roots as the Party of Lincoln. For now we need see the Republican Party lose the Presidential race like Goldwater did in 1964 while it loses a wave election in both Houses of Congress.

People need to start paying attention to the political process before it can spiral into something dangerous, like a sort of Torno in which Party A takes over in an election, goes on an anti-corruption campaign whose first focus is the repudiation of sentences for malfeasance of members of Party A by Party B and the prosecution and punishment of leading members of Party B, corrupt deals by members of Party A to entrench themselves in power and enrich themselves and their cronies, followed by mass disillusionment of party A with a landslide win for Party B that then takes much the same course as Party A; lather, rinse, and repeat. Government becomes little more than reversing what the previous leaders did while enriching those then in power. If that does not scare you, then consider how the last Torno ended in Spain: the rise of el Caudillo, Francisco Franco, who ended political pluralism in Spain once and for as long as he would live.

Yes, I see the Spanish Civil War as a possible analogue for this Crisis Era and will do so until events prove me wrong. The polarization is in place.

The "Blue Dog" Democrats are off the scene. They were largely in the South, and those would be improvements over what we have now. Is Tom Cotton an improvement over Mark Pryor? I thought otherwise. Politicians who say that they have no use for multiculturalism but no use for economic royalists are more likely allies of Democratic liberals on economics than are the semi-fascists who want a "Union of Christian and Corporate States" as the Koch brothers show that they want.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

People managed to live in those places without air conditioning before know.

Sure. But not in the numbers that we now have. The Sunbelt would not exist as it is without air conditioning. It would still be a plantation society; neither factory labor nor clerical work is done well in a sweltering environment. Planting and harvesting times were in relatively cool times in the South.

People want cable TV. That's a fact.

That they would do better for themselves with a reader device that gets them Paradise Lost, Candide, Faust, and The Brothers Karamazov instead of "Ultimate Fighting" should be evident. We could learn more from Shakespeare's plays than we can even from such benign fare as Bonanza, The Andy Griffith Show, and Home Improvement. Music? I consider the string quartets of Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich as the finest expression of 20th-century music. Sorry, Fab Four and Glenn Miller -- and they were very good.

But most of us do not care. People who would spend a month's pay to see a title bout in boxing but would never dream of getting even one Shakespeare play on video for the kids to learn from show how messed up this country is.

...If I were resetting Romeo and Juliet I would move it to the American West and have the Montagues and Capulets on opposite sides of the range wars. That's how relevant the bard can be. But what can you say of someone who thinks that much that is wrong with American conservatism comes from the demise of William F. Buckley?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I think it's not too much to have to pay barely-above slave wages to a worker, even if (s)he turns out to be inadequate and is fired.

There are sheltered workshops, residential settings for people of impaired intelligence who might be vulnerable to abuse and exploitation on the Outside. Its best that such people not have plenty of ready cash because they are easily scammed and robbed. I can travel about in Chicago because I know where the desirable places are, I know enough to not get drunk in a place that is not 'mine', and I know enough to not flash cash. Heck, I could probably travel about in Manhattan (where I never have been) with comparative safety because I would behave as I do in Chicago or Detroit there. But you don't want someone born and raised on a farm or in a small factory town with an IQ of 70 going around unsupervised in Chicago.

People who get $5000 an hour do so because they are in a position to extort it from their workers and their company. They do not earn that money, and their decisions do not result in a better life for their workers or their customers; only themselves. They alone ever see any of that assumed $10,000. Trickle down does not trickle; pain trickles up. Free market economics always fails.

It's more about power than about a free market. It's typically the result of a bureaucracy that operates on principles of command and control -- the market is to do things to the common man but for the Big Man.

The concentration of industry has caused much of our mess. America was a better place in many respects when small business was the norm, and vertically-integrated behemoths like Big Oil, Big Steel, utilities, and the auto industry were exceptions instead of the norm. We have giant corporations in just about everything.

Maybe we can't renounce technology as have the Old Order Amish -- but I notice some desirable features of their lives. Nobody is spectacularly rich. They have no bureaucracy populated by crass narcissists (can you think of anything more likely to serve narcissistic personalities than bureaucracies?). They have businesses, but as a rule small ones. They are below-average in education, and they have few white-collar jobs -- but they seem to be in good health (hard, but not destructively-hard work is good for a long lifespan). They take care of each other. So can we imitate some of the wholesome characteristics of people who suggest an old way of life?

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Turkey's documented smuggling of ISIS oil is support of ISIS. http://www.mintpressnews.com/mark-zu...ternet/212359/ . The Turks do not see eye to eye with the West when it comes to ISIS. Anymore than Prince Sihanouk saw eye to eye with the US on the North Vietnamese.

That DOESN'T mean that the Turkish government supports this smuggling, or in fact according to the article it DOESN'T mean that it's Islamic State oil at all.

(learn to spell DOESN'T correctly please)

NATO became an offensive alliance when a) it started enlarging under Bill Clinton and b) it became a vehicle for intervening in nations from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. And now that NATO IS enlarged the way it is starting to crack is not along the old Iron Curtain lines but willy-nilly, country by country. Hungary is pro-Russian. Greece has a lot of pro-Russian sentiment. Ukraine (not a NATO member) is divided.
And Russia now has the perfect weapon to pressure eastern European nations (Poland and the Baltics and Finland). Refugees. Now that Turkey is stopping the refugee flow, Russia can allow refugees to transit Russia through Iran and the Caucasus to reach eastern European nations until they agree to end EU sanctions and not have US troops on their soil. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/wo...eled.html?_r=0 http://www.janes.com/article/58681/m...s-and-protests.

So, borders are closed; end of refugee problem with Russia.
NATO does not become an offensive alliance if it is enlarged. It just becomes larger. That's logic. Afghanistan intervention was a defensive response to 9-11. NATO helped the USA; that's exactly why we are obligated to help Europe if it wants more action against the IS. In Yugoslavia, it was a response to Serb aggression and genocide.

I do find these accounts credible. All of these "color revolutions" have had mixed elements within them. As has the Arab Spring, as we found out. And the more anti-democratic elements tend to be the best organized in these cases. https://libcom.org/news/neo-nazis-fa...raine-23012014 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion https://www.google.com/search?q=wolf...0Q7AkINg&dpr=1 . The Wolfsangel is the Ukrainian equivalent of the KKK logo.

Funny you should mention the 60s revolutions. The 60s are a good example of how revolutions finally bring out the authoritarians. Have you read "Roots of Radicalism" by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter (1982)? The 60s started out with liberal revolutionaries and by 1969, both in France and the US the Movement became dominated by doctrinaire Marxists. I suppose some of those Marxists mellowed out, like Tom Hayden and John Buttny (who went from heading an SDS chapter held a demonstration against SI Hayakawa that got a chair thrown at Hayakawa to being Mayor of Santa Barbara). But it took awhile and the Movement degenerated into revolutionary cults such as Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party and Lyndon LaRouche's Trotskyist National Comitteee of Labor Caucuses--before LaRouche went to the radical Right and became a complete fraud.

That's true. Revolutions usually don't work out in the short run. The new boss is the old boss. In the long run, revolutionary movements have largely succeeded. It's the cycle that counts the most. I would not ever describe Hayden as a Marxist. The Marxists within left-wing radical movements were a fringe that were also throwbacks to the earlier revolution. Essentially, the sixties was a new cycle, a new movement; the Greenpeace revolution.

Although I don't agree with mischaracterizing current revolutions in order to blame the USA for them. The USA is what we make it; it's not an entity that "can't be trusted" just because we the people have allowed it to do many wrong things in the past. It's up to we the people to keep our country on the right path. It's not a matter of trusting or not trusting the morality of the entity called the USA. It's a matter of we the people doing the right things.

I suppose you're right about that. Allowing torture is one thing. Advocating torture is a deliberate appeal to authoritarians who swear by physicial punishment. And the problem with legalizing torture is that it soon migrates like everything else in the War on Terror from the military and CIA back to the local police. Who already have too much leverage over criminal defendants because of mandatory minimum sentences and broken windows policing.

Correct.

The hang-up, as you put it is that we are convinced that things cannot be allowed to continue another 4 years in the same pattern. We have lost too much economic ground and too much of our freedom to where we can afford to lose any more of either one.

Then instead of piling on against those who policies have been blocked, pile on against those who have blocked them.

Well maybe. If Bernie, if he loses (or if he wins) can mobilize his army to support primary challengers in the upcoming state primaries which are usually deliberately kept separate from presidential primaries because party leaders ON BOTH SIDES want low voter turnout for state offices. Get rid of DLC Dems in congressional (and even some Senate) seats and Hillary would have a much rougher ride supporting business as usual.

I don't know how much can be done at this point, but I agree.

One initiative of Hillary's that does scare me though is her support for lawsuits against gun manufacturers. This is out of line with policy in a number of other areas that lead to social problems. Despite the fact that alcohol kills more people than guns, liquor companies are immune to product misuse suits--which bars and liquor stores are not--and neither are gun stores. Drive gun manufacturers out of business with lawsuits and we open the door wide to 3-d printed weapons and ammunition with no registered ballistics, now that that technology is spreading. Worse, it turns thousands of otherwise law abiding gun owners into criminals, as does effectively banning private sales of guns by requiring federal background checks. School shootings are horrific, but statistically rare, just as terrorist attacks are. Rarer than drug overdoses or alcohol related deaths with which they overlap. And authoritarians who make up a lot of the gun owning population are the least safe people in the country to attempt to start a moral panic "war on". Panic them and we may have ourselves a REAL 4T Crisis--the kind that came out of nowhere like Lexington and Concord and the Civil War. Until Hillary started it up again, Democrats had enough sense to dial the gun issue down.

As with most posters here, left and right, I disagree with you on enabling guns. Whatever possible to limit them should be done. Where not possible, compromise. Guns are not an answer for progress, unless we are getting ready for civil war or revolution. Then we need real weapons of war, and real organized "militias." I would prefer a peaceful USA break up, if that's where we're headed. Whoever wants to secede, let them secede.

Getting Assad out of power would not change the calculus that Syria is at least two countries at war with each other. If there is need of a two state solution for Israel Palestine (which I support on a Gaza only basis) surely after much greater bloodshed there is need of a two or three state solution for Syria and Iraq. The Alawites have to have their own country and probably the Druse too to prevent them from being massacred or driven out as refugees. Something by the way that the Russians, who see everything in terms of Chechnya and their own bitter history with Muslims find anathema.

Irrelevant. The only issue in Syria is that the Arab Spring needs to be completed, and the tyrant that responded to it with genocidal massacre needs to be desposed by any workable means. I have already explained why the Israel-Palestine two state solution is best at this point; not limited to Gaza.

Why would the Russians send ground troops to Syria when it is in their interests to have us send ground troops to Syria and Libya and get ourselves tied down there? If we can reach an agreement on other issues the Russians might change their minds. It might mean letting the Russians have the Balkans and Hungary and Greece. Roosevelt saw the need for letting the Russians have control of Eastern Europe. It was only after FDR died that anti-communist anti-New Dealers chose to oppose that deal, much as the Republicans are opposing the Iran nuclear deal.

All that is a non-starter. Russians have no justification for reconquering the Soviet Empire. Those states want to be western, not soviet. Let the Russians send ground troops into Syria if we agree to let them send them into Eastern Europe? No thanks. Russia is still an oligarchy that the people in those regions don't want conquering them. No, the Arab Spring Revolution is still on in all those places; still bringing forth the revolution of 1789. Old cycles of revolution continue until completed everywhere. In other words, all the world o'er it's so easy to see; people everywhere just want to be free. And they want equality (socialism) and fraternity (the greenpeace revolution) too. The cycles of Revolution is the world we live in. It cannot be stopped. The train of freedom may be long overdue, but look out cause it's comin' right on through.

Have you read the Atlantic article "The Obama Doctrine" yet? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ctrine/471525/

I agreed with Hillary that the USA should have supported the rebels. They were on their way to toppling the regime. Assad's support by Iran and Russia is a problem though. The path of negotiation we are on now is correct, although it has come much too late. Pressure needs to be applied by continuing to support the rebels. PUndits make much of Obama "violating his red line." But Obama was correct in asking congress for support, and it wasn't forthcoming. The Republicans blocked him, and now the pundits attack him because he was blocked. Typical distortion. Meanwhile, the threat was made, and it worked. Russians prevailed on Assad to remove his chemical weapons, and he did. The policy succeeded. So what's with the pundits and their obsession with Obama's red line? The pundits are stupid. I have a much, much, much better record of prediction than any of them. They have no credibility at all.

Also, you might want to pick up a copy of https://books.google.es/books/about/...f1jxNDoC&hl=es . This book is the best short explanation of Immanuel Wallerstein's theory of the world order cycle that I have seen. I sent a copy of the University of Denver master's thesis that Torbjorn Knudsen wrote on this subject to NH and NH liked it. It complements the Generational Cycle on the international system level. And right now you can order it cheap from Amazon. I may pick up a copy myself since it is updated from Knudsen's 1986 thesis.

OK; it might be worth a look. Myself I have corresponded this to the outer-planet cycles, and predicted well in advance the coming in the early 1990s of the "new world order" because Uranus-Neptune conjunctions are always times when it is reshuffled. The early 1990s were an unprecedented example; more new nations were founded under the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the early 1990s than at any other time in history. We now live in the New World Order than emerged at that time, and will continue to do so for many decades to come.

Here's my take on Uranus-Neptune cycles:
http://philosopherswheel.com/culturalshifts.html

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The election of Bernie Sanders would bring in the oldest President in American history while putting an end to the recent gerontocracy. Such would be ironic in the extreme.



The rise of the Millennial generation in political life is an inevitability. Sure, I look at Barack Obama as showing an selection of masculine characteristics of both a Civic generation and an Idealist generation, as is commonplace among Adaptive generations -- but in his case the Civic traits are from a younger generation and the Idealist traits are from an older generation. He is definitely not an Adaptive; he still seems much like a sixty-something Reactive with much more in common with Truman, Eisenhower, or John Adams than with just about any Silent type. He is not John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, or Theodore Roosevelt redux. Run afoul of him and you may find consequences befitting your folly should he not forgive you out of pragmatic concerns. (The killing of anti-American terrorists suggests an adoption of techniques, if not motives, of gangsters like Capone. I recognized the killing of Osama bin Laden as having much in common with an underworld hit of which Al Capone would have been proud).

Is Obama a one-time type for his generation? No. There will be another like him in many respects at or soon after the end of the Crisis. Mellowed, sixty-something Reactives have their virtues as leaders.



Wrong about Trump voters. We do not need their cruelty and xenophobia. We do not need their superstition. We need people to become more savvy about political reality. We Democrats are better off seeking out the support of "Establishment" Republicans who have no use for right-wing, nativist demagoguery... people who have no tolerance for religious or ethnic bigotry. Jeb Bush has a wife born in Mexico. The "Establishment" Republicans need to return to their roots as the Party of Lincoln. For now we need see the Republican Party lose the Presidential race like Goldwater did in 1964 while it loses a wave election in both Houses of Congress.

People need to start paying attention to the political process before it can spiral into something dangerous, like a sort of Torno in which Party A takes over in an election, goes on an anti-corruption campaign whose first focus is the repudiation of sentences for malfeasance of members of Party A by Party B and the prosecution and punishment of leading members of Party B, corrupt deals by members of Party A to entrench themselves in power and enrich themselves and their cronies, followed by mass disillusionment of party A with a landslide win for Party B that then takes much the same course as Party A; lather, rinse, and repeat. Government becomes little more than reversing what the previous leaders did while enriching those then in power. If that does not scare you, then consider how the last Torno ended in Spain: the rise of el Caudillo, Francisco Franco, who ended political pluralism in Spain once and for as long as he would live.

Yes, I see the Spanish Civil War as a possible analogue for this Crisis Era and will do so until events prove me wrong. The polarization is in place.

The "Blue Dog" Democrats are off the scene. They were largely in the South, and those would be improvements over what we have now. Is Tom Cotton an improvement over Mark Pryor? I thought otherwise. Politicians who say that they have no use for multiculturalism but no use for economic royalists are more likely allies of Democratic liberals on economics than are the semi-fascists who want a "Union of Christian and Corporate States" as the Koch brothers show that they want.

You may be overlooking the long term trend of the decline of Christianity. The emerging trend, in my opinion, is toward a form of religion or non-religion where secular humanism becomes the dominant worldview in the USA.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Sure. But not in the numbers that we now have. The Sunbelt would not exist as it is without air conditioning. It would still be a plantation society; neither factory labor nor clerical work is done well in a sweltering environment. Planting and harvesting times were in relatively cool times in the South.

You have that right. Without air conditioning, there would be a run for the hills or the beach.

Originally Posted by radind

You may be overlooking the long term trend of the decline of Christianity. The emerging trend, in my opinion, is toward a form of religion or non-religion where secular humanism becomes the dominant worldview in the USA.

In my opinion, it has already been the dominant religion for some time. It has been gaining ground throughout modern history, going back to the 17th century, but it fully emerged in the mid-19th century and became the common sense worldview in the 20th, even as the science it was based on moved beyond it. Rupert Sheldrake aptly describes it as the predominant default worldview among educated people today, although it is out-of-date.

So, in the 20th century, people may have given lip service to the traditional religious doctrines, but they didn't really believe them. In the 1970s, the fundamentalist movement came along (or expanded) to get people to really believe in them again, literally and more strictly than ever before, both in the USA and in the Muslim world--- which, while ostensibly becoming its enemy, is really its mirror image. Meanwhile, since the sixties, the younger generations, many boomers and especially millennials today, have continued to increasingly reject or just ignore the old religious traditions. This is the basis of our red-blue cultural divide today.

Also in the late sixties and in the seventies (the recent Awakening), the new age world view emerged and expanded its sway, especially among boomers. This is the dominant worldview of the future, and is rooted in the spiritual and scientific movements of the earlier awakening periods in the modern world, and in the mystical worldviews of even earlier times. In the New Age and New Thought or romantic/transcendentalist worldview, the sacred is not in a separate realm in heaven, and the world itself is not secular or human-dominated. All is divine, God is everywhere, and each individual being or soul expresses the divine as a macrocosm or hologram of the whole.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

In my opinion, it has already been the dominant religion for some time. It has been gaining ground throughout modern history, going back to the 17th century, but it fully emerged in the mid-19th century and became the common sense worldview in the 20th, even as the science it was based on moved beyond it. Rupert Sheldrake aptly describes it as the predominant default worldview among educated people today, although it is out-of-date.

So, in the 20th century, people may have given lip service to the traditional religious doctrines, but they didn't really believe them. In the 1970s, the fundamentalist movement came along (or expanded) to get people to really believe in them again, literally and more strictly than ever before, both in the USA and in the Muslim world--- which, while ostensibly becoming its enemy, is really its mirror image. Meanwhile, since the sixties, the younger generations, many boomers and especially millennials today, have continued to increasingly reject or just ignore the old religious traditions. This is the basis of our red-blue cultural divide today.

Also in the late sixties and in the seventies (the recent Awakening), the new age world view emerged and expanded its sway, especially among boomers. This is the dominant worldview of the future, and is rooted in the spiritual and scientific movements of the earlier awakening periods in the modern world, and in the mystical worldviews of even earlier times. In the New Age and New Thought or romantic/transcendentalist worldview, the sacred is not in a separate realm in heaven, and the world itself is not secular or human-dominated. All is divine, God is everywhere, and each individual being or soul expresses the divine as a macrocosm or hologram of the whole.

I agree with your assessment in general. This is why I fail to understand the continued focus on Christianity as the problem when Christianity is no longer the real dominant religion. It seems to me that many are fighting old wars after the wars are over.

I don't know if this is the basis of our red-blue cultural divide today, but it is definitely a factor.

Originally Posted by radind

I agree with your assessment in general. This is why I fail to understand the continued focus on Christianity as the problem when Christianity is no longer the real dominant religion. It seems to me that many are fighting old wars after the wars are over.

I don't know if this is the basis of our red-blue cultural divide today, but it is definitely a factor.

Arguably, secular humanism dominates or is the core of Blue culture, while Christianity still dominates or is the core of Red culture. Underlying the problem is a deep down gut feel in both regions that their particular perspective ought to be dominant. Thus you get rural folk saying stuff like "The US was formed as a Christian Country". (Not necessarily true, but they'll say it and firmly believe it.) At the same time, Blue folk will not be pleased to see folks trying to use the government to enforce religious doctrines.

Trump continues to flail.

Meanwhile the Democrats fight a good fight. Lots of good issues are front and center. Hopefully whether the DLCers or quasi-Socialists win the big prize this Summer, people will get together around the candidate.

No such hope for the RNC. Best case scenario is a 70 - 30 split (e.g. 30% of the party exits for parts unknown), worst case a complete crack up.

Originally Posted by radind

I agree with your assessment in general. This is why I fail to understand the continued focus on Christianity as the problem when Christianity is no longer the real dominant religion. It seems to me that many are fighting old wars after the wars are over.

Perhaps many of us on the blue side are beating a dead horse. On the other hand, fundamentalism has had pervasive influence in many red states and counties. I'm sure many of us know a lot of these fundamentalists, although maybe you don't know too many yourself. It seems to be declining now by comparison to the 3T era; politicians and other leaders are framing the issues more often today in economic and political terms. Trump's popularity is an example of this, as well as that of Bernie Sanders. In 2004 Karl Rowe theorized that all the Republicans needed was the Christian Right's votes to win, and he succeeded. It probably doesn't work today though.

I don't know if this is the basis of our red-blue cultural divide today, but it is definitely a factor.

Yes, the cultural as well as the political divide has several major elements in it.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Trump continues to flail.

Meanwhile the Democrats fight a good fight. Lots of good issues are front and center. Hopefully whether the DLCers or quasi-Socialists win the big prize this Summer, people will get together around the candidate.

No such hope for the RNC. Best case scenario is a 70 - 30 split (e.g. 30% of the party exits for parts unknown), worst case a complete crack up.

Which would be the best case scenario for the country Go Trump

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Indonesian Riyals? Did you mean Rupiahs?

India needs to lop off a few 0's and issue a new currency.

Egads! I'd pay just to not be married to any Clinton supporter(regardless of how she looked).

Yeah, you'd end up with Billy Boy's temper and Hillary's dissembling.

Hey, man. Get with the program. We just want 'free stuff'(however worthless it is),
and that 'free stuff' has to be paid for by the 'Greedy Rich'^TM, 'cuz, well, just 'cuz.


Prince

That's old fashioned. Just have the Fed press the <CTRL> P button, man.

Originally Posted by radind

You may be overlooking the long term trend of the decline of Christianity. The emerging trend, in my opinion, is toward a form of religion or non-religion where secular humanism becomes the dominant worldview in the USA.

Even religious people often hold humanistic beliefs incompatible with religious fundamentalism of any kind. We are going to see people decide that cruel deeds are not Christian... or Jewish... or Islamic... or whatever.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Arguably, secular humanism dominates or is the core of Blue culture, while Christianity still dominates or is the core of Red culture. Underlying the problem is a deep down gut feel in both regions that their particular perspective ought to be dominant. Thus you get rural folk saying stuff like "The US was formed as a Christian Country". (Not necessarily true, but they'll say it and firmly believe it.) At the same time, Blue folk will not be pleased to see folks trying to use the government to enforce religious doctrines.

That depends on how you define Christianity. My opinion is that this starts with a Biblical worldview. With this approach there are still differences, but not as much as many assume.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Even religious people often hold humanistic beliefs incompatible with religious fundamentalism of any kind. We are going to see people decide that cruel deeds are not Christian... or Jewish... or Islamic... or whatever.

And I think we see professing Christians without a real Biblical worldview. The same type of effect noted by Bonhoeffer in Germany in the 1930's.

Originally Posted by radind

And I think we see professing Christians without a real Biblical worldview. The same type of effect noted by Bonhoeffer in Germany in the 1930's.

At the least they have come to reject the availability of cheap grace.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

People managed to live in those places without airconditioning befpore know.

People want cable TV. That's a fact.

You sound like just another sadistic right-wing monster who think anyone who has anything more than a rickety shack isn't poor.

Originally Posted by radind

And I think we see professing Christians without a real Biblical worldview. The same type of effect noted by Bonhoeffer in Germany in the 1930's.

Very true. The Red flavor of Christianity is quite different from my perspective on what Christianity ought to be.

Still, they are able to perceive themselves somehow as holy and are ready to impose their tainted holiness on secular folk. I don't doubt their intensity and wouldn't underestimate their twisted double think version of sincerity.

True believers. Ugh.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Egads! I'd pay just to not be married to any Clinton supporter(regardless of how she looked).

You can stay single while you're using one as a wife.

Originally Posted by Odin

You sound like just another sadistic right-wing monster who think anyone who has anything more than a rickety shack isn't poor.

Decrease the surplus population!

It didn't occur to me until recently that the South has risen again because of air-conditioning. But maybe all poor people should live like they did in 1900 and pick cotton for a dollar a bale. And should be grateful because it's a JOOOOBBBBB.

And Odin, don't you DARE bring up the Obamaphones that started under Bush II!

/s

I am so tired of this. This US is the wealthiest country in the world and we treat poor people like they have a disease. It is so wearying.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

...
Egads! I'd pay just to not be married to any Clinton supporter(regardless of how she looked).

I really don't think you have to worry about that.

You should worry more about winding up bent over in one of Classic's whips n' chains dungeons.

Originally Posted by Odin

You sound like just another sadistic right-wing monster who think anyone who has anything more than a rickety shack isn't poor.

Poverty is a money thing. When you have not only the necessitieds of life, but luxuries, you are not poor. Grow up.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/11/...-deal-with-it/