Republican style capitalism and living without safety nets.

How do you like it now? New home sales are down and foreclosures are rising. Not until it hit the home front was it going to sink in. Not until old friends from their churches had to put the "Going out of Business" sign in their mom and pop stores; and "For Sale" signs on their homes were they ever going to believe that living without safety nets, WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA. All that money they thought they were saving by not paying taxes, and cutting back on other people's social services, is now geometrically coming back and hitting them in the backside.

How do you like it now?

with a population of about 15,000. I read in the paper a couple of days ago that a factory here was going to shut down and move to India. About 2,000 people will lose their jobs. We have already lost all our textile mills and chemical plants. We no longer have any industrial jobs.

I wonder if all those people who will and have lost their jobs are glad they voted for the bushes?

Because the loss of those factories can be directly attributed to the policies of the current regime. I wonder if these people realize it?

McCain keeps saying the answer is to retrain displaced workers. What in the fuck job are they going to retrain for? Seems to me the only real job opportunity is in the health care industry. Health care workers have job security because the policies of this Administration are making people sick.

resources - particularly the land that they don't even own.

http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/selfish-class-logic.html

This is an excellent read on this very subject in comparison with Rome just before the fall.

Your moderate southerner isn't in favor of, say, junking the minimum wage, food stamps, section VIII housing, getting rid of workplace safety standards, environmental standards, Medicaid, etc. Why? Because maybe somebody in his family depends on them for survival, given the high level of poverty in rural places where I live in Mississippi, but at the same time, the Repubs are effective in peeling them away over gay marriage and other wedge issues and with the "socialism" label.

They would probably vote for a party that was left wing like FDR but also socially conservative like the Dems were back in the 1930s/1940s, but then there's the "socialism" label again, so the analogy isn't a perfect one. In the 1930s/1940s, people had not yet been conditioned as a result of the Cold War, which did not yet exist.

because Rush and the rest tell them that's who is at fault. :eyes:

Propaganda is very effective(understatement). My mother just told me she won't vote for Obama because he is Muslim. I had already told her that this was a rumor generated on the internets to turn the Christian voter against him. She says "His middle name is Muslim." She IS 87 years old.

since my R-stepfather is Muslim and will probably vote for whatever stooge the Rs put up. "They are better for business."
Har.

this is Reagan's "trickle down" economics finally being brought to its full fruition...almost 30 years of unfettered corporatist greed reaching it's pinnacle.....:(

This is a good thread topic, but I think it deserves some real thought. Sometimes the problem is not just a "stupid" stereotype/enemy, that we can all fight and be superior to; sometimes, the problem is the typical way that everybody thinks.


There are two problems here, I think, one endemic and one recent: the situation that always exists is the one where a lot of progress has been made, people get used to it, time passes, and they totally forget or a new generation comes along, and they just think the improved condition is "natural" or because we are a "good people" or "modern," and they no longer even attribute it to the right thing, and so when somebody says, "Can't you spend your own money better than the Government?" (since they don't know where anything goes in a budget), or "Why are feminists such male-haters?" (since they know nothing about the great struggle against organized bigotry and legislated discrimination that other people fought, and how anything used to be), then these things can sound "convincing," because they actually have no background of knowledge, and have never even thought about it before. They have no internal guide or sensor correcting them with previous understanding. Also, when extremists first start ripping up the regulations, protections, agencies that once covered these concerns, etc., there isn't an immediate collapse of the system--everything still seems to be "fine," for years maybe. Then, when an overwhelming amount of the former protection has been destroyed, then you really get the disastrous affect; too late You can't get people to understand, and stop it early, because there is always this delayed effect to the collapse. Making it worse is when people use this "panic/horror" approach to "alarm" people--it is always annoying, regardless, and does not convince or inform.

This is especially hard to warn against, when the way they use to undercut unions or deregulate an industry, is just to change the technology it uses to such an extent, that it is no longer considered the "same" entity or situation. One example is the way cell phones, their billing, etc., are so completely different from the old land-line telephones--deregulated--yet most DUers who have them, only think about getting a "fun/new toy", as advertised. It never occurs to them how the change will affect all regulations, nor would anyone know how to stop it. Take the example of old broadcast TV/radio FCC regulations from the 1930s and so on, and how they are claimed not to even apply to cable. Who could have guessed that the switch to cable meant that they would seize the opportunity to kill all societal protections--and on what grounds?

The other problem is the 1990s Clinton/"D"LC corporate lobbyist approach. The worst of the outsourcing and loss of manufacturing jobs and whole plants here in the Midwest, occured here, and began the total slide to economic depression where we are now. We had severe recessions under Reagan, but the actual removal of our workplace began under the law-changes of Clinton, Inc. The thing that was so exasperating, and impossible to fight (besides the fact that they had all the power and money, which meant they were going to win, anyway), was the way they used "impossible to answer" slogans and attacks, the beginning of the mind-fuck sin of "framing." "The era of Big Government is over," "lazy/overpaid/corrupt unions," "the old ways don't work anymore," "New Democrat," "let's be more bi-partisan," etc., etc., etc. They ran right over us like a steamroller, flipping media-savvy slogans and snide remarks, the whole time, and this passed for "debate" or "proof." How do you "answer" the "argument"--"Old"? It is the same as the Obama "Past vs. Future" meaningless shit. All I know is, "Old Equals Bad," when you are actually attacking the very people who invented the only poverty programs that have ever worked in this country!

Well, this message was all over the place, but I think the issue is vitally important, and much harder to solve. It will NOT be solved by simpleminded "framing", but by explaining like adults, as if people deserved it.