Politics as usual using a 1930s model. Now its Fascist (right) against the Socialist (left).

[fromderinside]

Down and dirty but not yet down to the actual issue can evolutionary humans transcend their tribal nature to support human evolutionary success in earth.

Trump fires call to arms from the right: Painting Socialists as Villains, Trump Refreshes a Blueprint https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

“Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” the president said, adding, “Tonight, we resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Washington Time decries democrats call of republicans as Racist, Nazi, Sexist: Democrats label Republicans 'racist/bigoted/sexist' as political divide intensifies https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/13/democrats-label-republicans-racist-bigoted-sexist-/

Charges of racism, once rare in politics, have become commonplace under President Trump, with liberals routinely attacking the president for his stance against illegal immigration, and left and right attacking each other in an increasingly hostile atmosphere.

Regardless of your politics is this kind of rhetoric anything bu destructive to democracy. Share your views on atmosphere and consequences of this ''30s" bluster in a "20s" US economy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It is never helpful. Granted, when one's policies are questionably racist, noted racists in upper levels of administration (Bannon and Miller), and then said person makes racist or sexist like statements (shit hole countries, denigrating a Latino Judge, bleedin' out of her whatever)... for fucking sakes... it isn't a ridiculous charge to level. That isn't doing a 1930's thing... it is a reasonable observation.

 

[fromderinside]

That isn't doing a 1930's thing... it is a reasonable observation.

Really?

 German American Bund

Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939.^[21] Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize PresidentRoosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal"^{[dubious – discuss]} and denouncing what he believed to be Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers. The rally, which attracted 20,000 Nazi supporters, was the subject of the 2017 short documentary A Night at The Garden by Marshall Curry.^[22]

 American Communist Party

During the Great Depression, many Americans became disillusioned with capitalism and some found communist ideology appealing. Others were attracted by the visible activism of Communists on behalf of a wide range of social and economic causes, including the rights of African Americans, workers and the unemployed.^[11] The Communist Party played a significant role in the resurgence of organized labor in the 1930s.^[12] Still others, alarmed by the rise of the Falangists in Spain and the Nazis in Germany, admired the Soviet Union's early and staunch opposition to fascism. Party membership swelled from 7,500 at the start of the decade to 55,000 by its end

Fifth columns from both Nazi and Communist movements became active and militant during the thirties. I suspect the  Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in Chicago was probably aided by communists in union movements. for instance, and the KKK surged during the period accompanied by a spike in lynchings

.

Seems we need to remember history to avoid repeating it. Denial of similarities between conditions of twenties and now and of tribalism on the right and universalism on the left in the thirties and now are inescapable.

One can also point to the rise of both militarism and isolationism with income inequality as another strong thread between that period and this one.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Nazis aren't the only ones who think Socialism is bad. Nazis vs. Socialists is like the Crips vs. the Bloods, except that one side somehow managed to get good press.

 

[James Brown]

“Tonight, we resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

I'll remember this the next time I drive on an Interstate Freeway.

 

[untermensche]

Nazis aren't the only ones who think Socialism is bad. Nazis vs. Socialists is like the Crips vs. the Bloods, except that one side somehow managed to get good press.

Nazi is not an economic scheme.

Nazi Germany was mainly capitalist.

It was full of rich capitalist industrialists like Shindler.

It was capitalism with slave labor. That's not a problem in capitalism.

 

[Derec]

I'll remember this the next time I drive on an Interstate Freeway.

Why do people confuse existence of anything pubic with socialism? They are not the same thing!

 

[bilby]

I'll remember this the next time I drive on an Interstate Freeway.

Why do people confuse existence of anything pubic with socialism? They are not the same thing!

Because any time anyone suggests that something should be public, the right wing scream 'Socialism!!'.

If you keep abusing a word in the same way for long enough, it's meaning changes.

Socialism now means what you claim not to want it to mean. And the main driver of this change in meaning has been the right wing media, who (mis)label anything they don't like that involves government as 'socialism'.

A sufficiently widespread use of the equivocation fallacy has the ironic effect of causing a word to actually have two meanings, and of causing the two meanings of that word to become confused.

 

[untermensche]

I'll remember this the next time I drive on an Interstate Freeway.

Why do people confuse existence of anything pubic with socialism? They are not the same thing!

It is not capitalism.

Capitalism is individuals building roads and running those roads as they choose because they own them.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Nazis aren't the only ones who think Socialism is bad. Nazis vs. Socialists is like the Crips vs. the Bloods, except that one side somehow managed to get good press.

Nazi is not an economic scheme.

Nazi Germany was mainly capitalist.

We can add the economic system of the fascists to the list of economic systems you know nothing about; Keynesian economics, Monetarist economics, Supply Side economics, Demand Side economics, Socialism, Free Market Capitalist economics, and now Fascist economics.

Yes, they inherited having rich people from the preceding system.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'll remember this the next time I drive on an Interstate Freeway.

Why do people confuse existence of anything public with socialism? They are not the same thing!

Because any time anyone suggests that something should be public, the right wing scream 'Socialism!!'.

If you keep abusing a word in the same way for long enough, it's meaning changes.

Well, if it's something that works, then the left wing calls it "socialism". Just as the right wing wants people to associate an NHC with "socialism" in order to make it sound like the USSR, the left wing wants people to associate an NHC with "socialism" in order to make collective ownership of the means of production appealing. Each extreme has its own reasons to abuse the word; only moderates have an incentive to use it correctly.

A sufficiently widespread use of the equivocation fallacy has the ironic effect of causing a word to actually have two meanings, and of causing the two meanings of that word to become confused.

Bingo.

Why do people confuse existence of anything pubic with socialism? They are not the same thing!

It is not capitalism.

Capitalism is individuals building roads and running those roads as they choose because they own them.

A capitalist road is called a "driveway".

You can't have a long capitalist road, because you can't build a long road without eminent domain, because if you try to buy up all the land along a long line, most of the landowners in the path will figure out that it would be impractical for you to make a long wiggly road that twists around the land of everybody who holds out for too much money, so they'll figure if they hold out for a ridiculous price you'll pay it rather than have your whole project collapse, so they'll hold out for a ridiculous price, and your whole project will collapse. This does not make roads "socialist"; it simply makes roads government projects, the same as armies and searches for a sea route to India. Governments seized people's land to build roads thousands of years before capitalism or socialism were ever imagined.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

"Private xxxxx? That's not the way it is done now, so I can't imagine it being done any other way."

Wherein "xxxxx" is some service currently provided by the government whenever someone thinks it can be done privately. Saying "that's not the way we do it now so it can't be done that way" is a very conservative position.

 

[untermensche]

A capitalist road is called a "driveway".

You can't have a long capitalist road, because you can't build a long road without eminent domain, because if you try to buy up all the land along a long line, most of the landowners in the path will figure out that it would be impractical for you to make a long wiggly road that twists around the land of everybody who holds out for too much money, so they'll figure if they hold out for a ridiculous price you'll pay it rather than have your whole project collapse, so they'll hold out for a ridiculous price, and your whole project will collapse. This does not make roads "socialist"; it simply makes roads government projects, the same as armies and searches for a sea route to India. Governments seized people's land to build roads thousands of years before capitalism or socialism were ever imagined.

No.

A capitalist road is a bunch of little sections of road all privately owed and controlled.

It is a road with a toll every 100 feet.

What we can say for certain is public roads and highways have nothing to do with capitalism. They are anti-capitalist activity.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Private xxxxx? That's not the way it is done now, so I can't imagine it being done any other way."

Huh? That is the way it's done now. There are private roads all the heck over the place. I said capitalist roads. Private roads come about either by the government selling off a road built as a public road, or else by a private road builder making a deal with the government to take land by eminent domain and turn it over to him to build a road on it. Neither of these is a capitalistic act.

Wherein "xxxxx" is some service currently provided by the government whenever someone thinks it can be done privately. Saying "that's not the way we do it now so it can't be done that way" is a very conservative position.

No doubt; but "that's not the way we do it now so it can't be done that way" was not the argument I made. Care to address the actual argument? Can you propose any approach to acquiring the land for a long road that would overcome the holdout problem but that wouldn't use coercion?

A capitalist road is called a "driveway".

No.

A capitalist road is a bunch of little sections of road all privately owed and controlled.

It is a road with a toll every 100 feet.

Um, can you exhibit such a beast?

What we can say for certain is public roads and highways have nothing to do with capitalism. They are anti-capitalist activity.

No more than law courts and national defense are anti-capitalist activity. Capitalists benefit greatly from public roads and law courts and national defense, just like everybody else does. They have nothing to do with capitalism only in the same sense and for the same reason that fire and hand-axes and a solar calendar have nothing to do with capitalism -- these are all parts of the technological and social substrate that predate modern economic systems and that modern economic systems grew on top of. For either capitalists or socialists to claim them as their own is ridiculous -- it's on a par with religions claiming to have invented morality. They're the common inheritance of all mankind.

 

[untermensche]

No.

A capitalist road is a bunch of little sections of road all privately owed and controlled.

It is a road with a toll every 100 feet.

Um, can you exhibit such a beast?

It is unworkable like so much about capitalism.

Capitalism only ever survives with massive and constant government support.

It is not a self sustaining system.

Right now it is surviving because it has abandoned the middle class over the last few decades for cheaper workers in China.

Something that would not happen in a system without dictatorial power systems and dictators.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

A capitalist road is a bunch of little sections of road all privately owed and controlled.

It is a road with a toll every 100 feet.

I've seen toll roads in action. It isn't a toll booth every 100 feet. I wonder where you get your "facts" from ... probably the same place dung beetles get their groceries.

 

[untermensche]

You have not seen any capitalist roads.

Capitalism (the private sector) is a terrible system to use to get roads.

That is why in the US the government is used.

 

[Bomb#20]

Right now it is surviving because it has abandoned the middle class over the last few decades for cheaper workers in China.

Something that would not happen in a system without dictatorial power systems and dictators.

A Californian wouldn't ever buy anything from a Chinese guy if she could instead get it from a Nebraskan for double the price, unless some dictator was ordering her to go with the cheaper option?

Help me out here -- where did so many of you leftists get your massive hostility toward Chinese workers? In the old days socialism was internationalist.

 

[untermensche]

If a company was owned and run by workers they would not move it to China and put the workers out of a job.

If there was a democratic system in place as opposed to a dictatorial system the flight of US jobs to China never would have started. China wouldn't be making much.

 

[Bomb#20]

If a company was owned and run by workers they would not move it to China and put the workers out of a job.

If there was a democratic system in place as opposed to a dictatorial system the flight of US jobs to China never would have started. China wouldn't be making much.

And a billion near-starving Chinese workers would be a good thing?

But you're wrong -- if there had been a democratic system in place as opposed to our existing non-dictatorial system, the flight of US jobs to China would have gone on in much the same way, if a bit slower. If a company was owned and run by workers they would not move it to China and put the workers out of a job, true; but they would charge more than a Chinese company, they wouldn't grow and hire more workers, there'd be a lot of unemployment in the U.S., and a bunch of those unemployed Americans would start their own co-op: an import/export co-op specializing in bringing cheap Chinese goods to the U.S. and undercutting that company owned and run by American workers who wouldn't move it to China and put themselves out of a job.

Moreover, some other company also owned and run by American workers, needing to grow their income by adding a complimentary product to their lineup, would compare the costs of building it themselves, or buying American, or buying Chinese, and would choose to buy Chinese and resell at a profit, thereby maintaining all their own jobs but refraining from creating new ones for a totally different set of American workers.

The only ways the flight of US jobs to China would have been prevented is by (a) our government having enforced a "Buy American" dictate upon the American people, or (b) Mao having been succeeded by an equally destructive "Dear Leader"-type who'd have carried on Mao's anti-capitalism policies stopping China from becoming good at making stuff.