IWETHEY v. 0.3.0 | TODO
1,095 registered users | 0 active users | 0 LpH | Statistics
Login | Create New User
IWETHEY Banner

Welcome to IWETHEY!

New Fiona Hill was brilliant.
I've been giving this a lot of thought and I think I'm finally beginning to understand what's going on here. That is, I believe I'm beginning to understand why the apparent bottom of Trump's support is 41%. Chairman Schiff said, in effect, that what Nixon did was nothing compared to what Trump has done. I concur completely. My father (a teacher himself) allowed me to skip school so that I could watch the Senate Watergate hearings because he said, "This is history and it is important." So, I remember well Watergate and the Republicans reaction to it. Schiff also pointed out that the difference between the impeachment investigations was not the difference between Trump and Nixon, but between the Congresses. I also agree with that. But, this raised a question in my mind. How is it that Republicans in Congress have simultaneously achieved a loyal following and a depth seen only in despotic states?

I think I know. In 1972 most Americans believed their government and economic system worked for them. The wealth of the nation was skewed, but nowhere near like it has become in the past forty years. The top 20% now owns over three times as much wealth as the 60% below them and that 60% of the population owns less wealth than the top 1% (source). One in five of us are doing all right economically and 1 in 100 of us are doing fantastically. What's clear is that the many benefits of automation and improved processes have not been shared as evenly as they had been pre-Reagan.

In addition to the financial devastation four out of five Americans has experienced in the past forty years, they've also seen that their governments (federal and state) have only exacerbated the pain they've experienced. Right-to-work laws have decimated unions (even in the birthplace of the UAW) and earned income is taxed at twice the rate (or more) of unearned income, the "cap" still exists on social security tax meaning that everyone making less than $130,000 per year pays a higher percentage of their income in Social Security taxes than do those making more than $130,000 per year. This is obviously unfair and adds to, rather than reduces the unfair wealth distribution inherent in our economic system. Absurdly, this has caused our politicians to view a household with an annual income of $250,000 as "middle class" (See Bernie's (!) and Hillary's discussions of the middle class during the 2016 campaign).

I believe this situation has caused a large percentage of that 60% that comprise our middle class to view both the economic system and the federal government as the economic system and government for the top 20% (in fairness, perhaps accurately). They do not care if it falls down because they do not feel properly represented by either. They actually delight in the fact that so many of us are horrified at what this president and his sychophantic cult (aka Republicans) are doing to the institutions the top fifth were raised to believe in and which have benefited them. They don't want things "to return to normal" because "normal" didn't benefit them. At least in the past forty years it hasn't.

That's my sense of where those MAGA hat wearing Neanderthals are today.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New The problem is everything you said is true
What's missing is there are other things that are *also* true:

Trump's domestic polices *are* hitting (some of) the top 20% -- while benefiting the top 1% immensely.

Trump's court appointments *are* rolling back civil rights protections that (relatively) disfavor the majority class -- while rolling back economic and environmental protections that benefit almost everyone at the expense of the 1%.

So yeah, they do delight in seeing the top 20%* squirm. They've been getting screwed so long they want to see someone else take it for a change.


* Actually the top 2-20%.
--

Drew
New Add-to both these incisive observations..
[Pity that homo-sap is so inexcusably incompetent at that 'Scale & Relativity' conundrum, innit?]

..the cumulative effects of the worsening of Education (or at very least: its effectiveness) ..as opens a Pandora's Box of rippling-down consequences which affect everyone extant--brung-up in our continuously declining [in prospects..] zeitgeist.

My 'Hope' is that: increasing %population--perhaps via the very competence! of the Testifiers: shall--At Last--take-in, mull/cogitate as best each can: just How utterly Amoral, Hypocritical [while smugly-Self-satisfied] has become the entire-Fucking-Repo mindset: begun perhaps by Ronnie-alone, thence fed by the basest of our constituents ... through today. Nov. 2020 shall verify/or not ... if such a dispersed awareness has occurred [??]



And if Not? well, each of us has extrapolated the n-possible Next-consequences, not one of which is anything but a coin flip between only two directions:

A) The most massive, intercollegial, cooperative application of everything we've learned yet about F=MA --> towards making-up-for Intentionally! thus Diabolically Lost Time ... ever imagineered.
B) Experiencing the most Shameful Failure to 'save one's Own Nest'--as no fiction writer would have dared to make-up and peddle.

..And most of us here shall be privileged to see how The Last Coin Flip Ever [???] came. out.
That is all. :-/ :-)
New largely concur
In addition to the financial devastation four out of five Americans has experienced in the past forty years, they've also seen that their governments (federal and state) have only exacerbated the pain they've experienced. Right-to-work laws have decimated* unions (even in the birthplace of the UAW) and earned income is taxed at twice the rate (or more) of unearned income, the "cap" still exists on social security tax meaning that everyone making less than $130,000 per year pays a higher percentage of their income in Social Security taxes than do those making more than $130,000 per year. This is obviously unfair and adds to, rather than reduces the unfair wealth distribution inherent in our economic system. Absurdly, this has caused our politicians to view a household with an annual income of $250,000 as "middle class" (See Bernie's (!) and Hillary's discussions of the middle class during the 2016 campaign).

I believe this situation has caused a large percentage of that 60% that comprise our middle class to view both the economic system and the federal government as the economic system and government for the top 20% (in fairness, perhaps accurately). They do not care if it falls down because they do not feel properly represented by either. They actually delight in the fact that so many of us are horrified at what this president and his sychophantic cult (aka Republicans) are doing to the institutions the top fifth were raised to believe in and which have benefited them. They don't want things "to return to normal" because "normal" didn't benefit them. At least in the past forty years it hasn’t.
“Things are going fine” is clearly unsustainable, which is unfortunately not a stance that the Democrats could plausibly have assumed three years ago: HRC kinda had to take the position that Obama had done more than simply stanch the bleeding. People were tired of hearing “America’s best days are yet to come,” when in their experience, depending on their ages, America’s best days were either manifestly behind it or, if yet ahead, had a long way to go before these even reached “tolerable.” And the pee-pul, or at least enough of them in the Rust Belt to tilt three states into madness, voted or abstained accordingly.

You’ve asserted times past that Clinton could not have won three years ago, which is manifestly untrue, and that Sanders would have prevailed in a walk, which is to say the least a dubious proposition, but let’s not take up old skirmishes. We are agreed, at least, that the collateral damage incurred over the past thirty-four months of heightened contradictions has been direr than many of us feared (over on the Book of Face, our old pal Lunsford is sunnily predicting Trump’s imminent downfall, with a broad, sunlit uplands to follow: “Once Hitler was defeated, the fever that had taken Germany immediately disappeared, and sanity returned overnight. Yes it looks bad, but moral depravity is self-limiting.” I noted that fever abatement in that instance required a pretty rigorous course of treatment administered by Doctors Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt).

Unlike Ross, I don’t see us coming out of this even if Trump shoots himself in his bunker a year from now. Germany was no bed of fucking roses in the first years after its defeat. Even with a President Sanders or Warren, even with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, we are still stuck with tens of millions of feral voters—I speak here not merely of the “economically anxious” but also of that substantial subset of these for whom Trump is the adored embodiment, bloated up to superhuman scale, of their own grotesque moral deformities—and a political party that has sped past flirtation with fascism and headlong into carnal embrace. These elements are not going away in our lifetimes. And of course, if Ginsberg should peg out and Thomas retire over the next year, you can be certain that McConnell will slot in a couple of thirtysomething Federalist Society hacks onto SCOTUS as a roadblock to any progressive policies that might be advanced over the course of the next several decades.

Whatever awaits us on the other side of Trump will be a society—and, in all likelihood, a world order—no one would have dreamed of a decade ago.

cordially,

*If only unions had been merely decimated, the toiling classes would be in markedly better shape today. Please note the the actual meaning of “decimate” is baked into the goddamn word.
New Nicely agglomerated; "These elements are not going away in our lifetimes."
[Thus ~spake Zaratustra, also too.]

Throw in the utterly-Despicable factor: full-frontal-Climate denial and--the children of the living are within this new, likely-Final State of the zeitgeist, I wot--this: as they express their grievances to Mom n'Pop: You. Bastards Did This to the entire fucking-Species+Planet; You. Bastards!

Everyone on the planet must harbor /and harbour their individual re-phrasings but, I am unanimous in projecting that: Never Again shall the worldwide masses "look-to" the Dis-[graced] US for any 'guidance' whatsoever. We be Rwanda-II, for the duration and the perpetual oily-Speak of our Pols (all along) shall next only confirm that,

We have sent-Selves "to Coventry" BIG-time; now we are Eritrea-too. Those who diligently resisted shall feel less-Shame, but shall be tarred-with-same-brush--maybe for that absence of MIllions marching? every fucking-week since The Menace starkly revealed the depths of HIs depravity, thence: only confounding bafflegab triumphed over our 330 Millions' effete Response-to-a Terminal Madness, as could not be missed by. anyone. sane.

tl;dr No group in history has ever Sucked to the degree we have just earned as a mass-lapel-pin (as should be mandatory, just like that Yellow Star thing) ..from a few years back.



As for the perpetually-$$$-obsessed, and still uncured: 'Sell Short'
..and maybe your winnings can buy the last island--with land 100-M above the sea--so your solar-stereo can play the same-old guitar remixes + sports
... on into the sunset.
WIn/win!
New In principle, there is much to admire about the US democratic system
Three branches of government, elected upper house, term limits, etc. etc.

However, there are two vast, suppurating sores that I believe go some way to erasing all these benefits:

1. The SCOTUS, specifically its selection and the lack of term limits. A politicised judiciary is, to use a term of art from the bowels of legal scholardom, bullshit.
2. The electoral college.

I pray that we over here never get sufficiently inspired to copy these two things, which were good ideas at the time. But then, so were leeches for everything.
New The SCOTUS lifetime appointment was supposed to insulate them from politics
In reality it just follows politics with a punctuated lag. It took a willingness from the Republicans to abandon all norms and pretense at fairness to make it what it is now.
--

Drew
New Re: "we are still stuck with tens of millions of feral voters"
That truly is the nub, isn't it? I'm tempted to argue that a Capitalist system inevitably marches right and abandons the proletariat giving rise to this very situation. But, whatever the reason, it cannot be argued that such now is not our plight. On this point, too, we find common ground. I do not believe the United States of America will recover from this appalling freak show for the reasons you cite. There was a time, not so long ago, that I would have found some solace in that for I would have expected a more genuinely fair and representative form of governance, predicated on equality, to rise from the ashes. However, having been subjected to the genuine American spirit of the masses over these past thirty-four months, I can find absolutely no reason for hope.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
     Parallel worlds - (rcareaga) - (14)
         I was in the capital during the last impeachment, was wrapped up in the house in process in the - (boxley) - (2)
             You asked this guy *during* the impeachment, and he said Clinton "wouldn't be impeached"? - (CRConrad) - (1)
                 he would not be found guilty and removed -NT - (boxley)
         Perhaps we've shared a common misoverestimation? - (Ashton)
         Fiona Hill was brilliant. - (mmoffitt) - (7)
             The problem is everything you said is true - (drook) - (1)
                 Add-to both these incisive observations.. - (Ashton)
             largely concur - (rcareaga) - (4)
                 Nicely agglomerated; "These elements are not going away in our lifetimes." - (Ashton)
                 In principle, there is much to admire about the US democratic system - (pwhysall) - (1)
                     The SCOTUS lifetime appointment was supposed to insulate them from politics - (drook)
                 Re: "we are still stuck with tens of millions of feral voters" - (mmoffitt)
         Not just parallel investigations - (scoenye) - (1)
             Talk about the need to recuse himself from that committee. - (a6l6e6x)

GAWD have these people never used SOFTWARE before!!!!!!!!!!
59 ms