The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Exactly. This is one of the few points on which I actually agree with Marx : in order to achieve a perfect society, one must first create a less bad society. It's not a matter of 'excusing' the moral failings of past generations, but rather of acknowledging that the process has to start somewhere, and attempts to achieve instantaneous revolution usually end in disaster.

I am not sure if a perfect society is even a good goal to have. Humans are imperfect. What is perfect for the overwhelming majority may be absolute tyranny for others.

The other part about starting from somewhere I believe is apt.

Humans are imperfect, but should we just go on accepting a barbaric holdover from tribal society (taken to all sorts of extremes by global trade and racialism), like slavery, simply because "humans are flawed so why bother"?

Your argument ironically leads to a stationary society and the continued violations of the same principles and freedoms to uphold this dreadful institution, all because its removal was brought about a like temporary lapse in respect for same said principles.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Reminder again that one of the most loyal demographics in the rise of Hitler and the like were doctors, engineers, scientists, civil servants, businessmen etc.

The answer in short is that in America, Britain and most of the developed world the educated middle class are relatively content with their lives and see no reason to mess with a status quo that benefits them. In countries where the educated middle class are discontented (I.e. The middle class in Brazil, who feel that populism and corruption is having a detrimental effect on their quality of living) they are just as likely to fly into ideological extremes. Likewise certain elements of the educated classes are often very contemptuous of the status quo in developed countries - teachers, academics, doctors (who hilariously are stridently left in my country and stridently right in yours) and often swing in very ideological directions due to government policy.

And the relatively uneducated often are in the centre. Even in the context of modern America, you see large blocs like rural African Americans who are very loyal to the Clinton/Obama wing. That again is a calculation on their part - they feel that the perceived risk of a left swing would be more of a risk than a benefit, and so don't rock the boat. In fact the very uneducated are often a key part of large ideology-free centrist machines like Tammany Hall or the old German Centre Party.

And finally of course, one should be precise in our definitions if we are to make useful conclusions, and definitely avoid cross-contamination with other definitions.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It's amusing that jfern believes the 2004 election was rigged and yet dismisses the russian scandal as a kooky conspiracy theory

It's amazing that jfern has 40k+ posts on this forum and yet manages to be one of the most useless posters here

This belongs in the sulfur mine, not here.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Several observations:

1.  Florida's Turnpike was renamed the Ronald Reagan Turnpike while Reagan was still alive. 

2.  Reagan National Airport was name for Ronald Reagan in 1998, while he was still alive.

3.  MLK's name is on lots of thing, and naming a school after MLK is sort of a way of saying to black folks that we can't think of any other blacks worthy of this kind of honor. 

4.  Jefferson Davis had many admirable qualities, and I don't judge him by today's standards.  But Jefferson Davis did more to revive the idea of the "Lost Cause" than most of the folks whose statues are under siege today.  If you read James Swanson's Bloody Crimes (a book primarily about the hunt to capture John Wilkes Booth and Jefferson Davis), it tells of Davis's speaking tours and engagements in which he eulogized the Confederate Dead.  Indeed, "the Confederate Dead" became Davis's mission in later life.  There was an element of healing in this; families had lost members at young ages, and Davis's presentations, I am sure, helped many grieving family members come to believe that their loved ones died for something bigger than themselves.  But in doing so, Davis also, consciously and deliberately, sowed the seeds of separate Southern nationhood, speaking of how, someday, the South would rise again.  Davis was not a cruel taskmaster, but he was a slaveowner, and he was a racist.  Moreover, Davis was unrepentant on the issue of Southern slavery, even as that land of liberty, Russia, was abolishing serfdom around the time we were having a Civil War. 

5.  Folks have the right to choose their own heroes.  There are, in the telling of history, false narratives galore, but there is no logical reason why Mississippi blacks should want to honor Jefforson Davis that I can think of.  Predominantly white communities exercise local control over their street-naming, school-naming, etc.  It shouldn't be remarkable that black communities do the same thing.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

IceAge seriously deserves a Nobel Prize for fighting the good fight in this thread:

All of that is very true - Nazism is a very confused ideology but fundamentally its based on nationalism and racist politics which

And Western Conservatism is still an odd beast with conservatives all over the continent still being pretty different and that was even more the case in the 1920s and 1930s.  In Germany their conservatives were broadly anti-democracy and they were especially critical of the Weimar constitution, supportive of the imperial state and the monarchy, still incredibly bitter about the defeat of Germany in the war and seeked to Make Germany Great Again, highly militaristic and dominated by the Prussian elites who held significant amounts of political and economic power pre-war; and although they lost a lot of the former they retained the latter.  They also were incredibly anti-Communist and anti-Socialist and just saw the two as being the same thing.  They also were anti-semitic as well or at least willing to use anti-semitism in their election campaigns if they thought that they could get a few votes.  Although a few Conservatives (the DVP; who's effective leader Gustav Stresemann served as Chancellor for a few months in 1923 and Foreign Minister in a billion governments between then and his death in 1929; a very interesting man and someone who helped to bridge the divide between Germany and the former Entente nations) eventually decided to work within the system with the pro-Weimar parties and kicking the above stuff into the long grass, the majority of them, lead by the incredibly reactionary DNVP, always seeked to destroy the Weimar state and to bring back the institutions of the past.  In that regard them hooking up with the NSDAP, who they felt that they could control and eventually push out once the time is right despite the Nazis clearly being the most popular party, makes sense and the Nazis had much greater links with German conservatism than with the left.

British Conservatism was different in that they generally accepted change a lot more and always had a more liberal element to them meaning that they generally weren't ever that sympathetic with fascism - although maybe if we had lost the war things would have been a lot different.  The same is true for the Republican Party as well: they were never the reactionary party that Conservatives in chunks of Europe were, and that's important.  I think that this is especially the case after Reagan and Thatcher basically went full economic liberalism with the other Conservative parties tending to come along with them: indeed the biggest changes to life generally and especially politics and the economy since the immediate post-war years were caused by politicians that identified as Conservatives, suggesting that there is this odd reformist gene within Conservatism in those places.

Greedo: in the UK I'd be considered a Republican, in that in principle I'd favour abolishing the monarchy and becoming a Republic.  On that vein, Sinn Féin are a left-wing Republican party - some would say far left - because they support a united Ireland.  Now this isn't something that I'd be willing to die on a hill over and its not that core a belief but it is a part of how I think about things.  However I'm clearly very different from the American Republican Party despite the same term being appropriate to use, and the two ideologies are very different.  Just because two things have the same name, it doesn't mean that they are at all comparable.  Nazism originates from Völkisch nationalism; an incredibly bizarre strain of nationalism that opposed foreign ideas, individualism and materialism and supported the creation of a 'superior society' based on German blood and 'superior' German culture.  This is especially where the race politics emerged from; that's where the Master Race idea some from, the hatred of racial intermixing, and especially incredibly, intensely anti-semitic politics.  Indeed that's where the Nazi hatred of the Bolsheviks came from: a strong feeling that it was somehow a "Jewish" ideology, plus also totally incompatible with the divided, hierarchical society that the NSDAP wanted.  Your older Conservatives at the time were Monarchists who seeked the restoration of Willheim and the return of the old Reich but younger elements seeked an alternative: that it didn't matter who the leader was but that they needed a strong leader who could return Germany back to its pre-war glory and remove the "parasitic elements" - an ever expanding definition which would eventually include the Jews, Roma people, LGBT people, 'race mixers', the Disabled, Socialists, Communists, Trade Unionists and other political enemies, and later on the Slavs, at least those who they thought couldn't be Germanised.  They adopted the "socialist" label for one main reason: simply to cloak themselves and to appeal to working class people in order to get votes.  Their policies, while at times interventionist, could never be described as socialism.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

You should probably try to define conservatism and define what you mean by morally justifiable if you want to have this conversation.

Typically normative ethics is divided into three different schools of thought: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. A sort of "traditional values" based conservatism is more or less a watered down version of virtue ethics or deontology, though it doesn't fit well with a utilitarian system since it's evaluating ideas by some sort of intrinsic metric and utilitarianism is measuring them by outcome. A more free market style "conservatism" is going to match up a bit better with utilitarianism. But simply stumbling in to opine that conservatives value some undefined principles you see as arcane over an ill-defined set of outcomes you think important (i.e. "people's lives") says very little if anything about its moral justifiably.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It's not so much a matter of choosing an investigative tool, so much as noticing certain things instinctively. What I noticed with Jefferson--in opposition to Adams--when I read both of their biographies was the view of history. And this is important in a way that petty issues are not. Adam's philosophy was one of continuity. The radicals that he saw in the French Revolution in his mind wanted to burn all of history. History was the foundation upon which the modern world rested. Jefferson--in his more whimsical and radical moments--was more than willing to indulge in this character. The tree of liberty and so forth. This, I have felt for a while--and partially as a matter of luck, in that it is what I stumbled upon--is one of the philosophical dividing lines between conservatives and liberals (or worse) during the era. Patrick Henry found himself moving to the right by the mid-1790's as he saw the Revolution get out of hand. To put a more modern spin on the conservative/liberal divide, let us note that, upon Jefferson's victory in 1800, a Connecticut woman rushed over to her friend's house, clutching a Bible. "Hide this. They'll never suspect you. You're a Democrat!" There were those on the Federalist fringe who actually thought Jefferson would ban the Bible! Hell, it was the Federalists that even early marked themselves off as the nationalists of the two camps--the Jeffersonian view of the world wanted a world marked by agrarian free trade. The Hamiltonian model was one of national self-sufficiency and effective isolation.

Honestly, the most confusing time periods for demarcating the 'liberal/conservative' distinction between the two parties is, in my opinion, probably the second and third party systems. But the Federalist/Republican era, and the Gilded Age, onward help to draw lines pretty friggin' clearly.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It’s not all that consequential that people would download the maps before they were removed from the site.  Anyone fimiliar with the various election pages of Wikipedia would already know that the templates can be found in other parts of the worldwide web.  At the time, the removal of the maps was a symbolic gesture: a way to bring attention to the fact that I believed that this forum, which was formed with purely academic purposes in mind, had been compromised to the point where it was not worthy to hold the content for which it was intended.  

Given the rencent events regarding Naso’s temporary ban, I am considering being them back.  However, as the creator of these templates, I reserve my right to not bring them back either.

For what it's worth, I am not going to take into account your views regarding whether these templates should be on this forum. I'd happily load them up again if necessary, regardless of your opinion on that front.
The map-making community on Atlas should not have to pay for the fact Naso might still be posting on here. I am not willing to leave you in the position to call all the shots when you seem willing to take your templates away as hostages. There might be a situation where such a reaction might be justified, hypothetically. This ain't one of those.

Tim, I'm genuinely saddened and sorry that you feel that way.  However, I must disagree with you on several points.  First all, I don't believe that the reduction of the maps will deal a serious blow to the map making community.  As stated, the maps are already featured on several other outlets, including Election Maps Co. (a Facebook spin-off of this forum that most map nerds are already familiar with), which I believe feature all the templates and maps in their original color code as well as providing outlets for discussion, or even Wikipedia (although the colors are switched for Democrats and Republicans, most people here can adjust to blue=Dem, red=GOP as many of us are already familiar with the color scheme used in the rest of the United States).  The only point of not featuring them on the forum itself is due to the hostile nature of discourse which has made its way to the forum.

Speaking of discourse, many of the map makers here rarely post here anyways.  This is due to a combination of factors: one, many map makers (myself in particular) have covered so many maps that there are already so little left to contribute.  The second, and my most critical point, is that many posters who may offer much in the contribution of political geography may not post as often because they do not see this forum as the most desirable outlet for such contributions.  In my humble opinion, concern trolls, white nationalists, and people who intentionally post hackish material are a toxic element for which few people want to put up with.  Hell, even I avoid the forum due to the demoralizing nature of some discussions, and I've been posting here for almost a decade.  Think of how intimidated non-members and younger potential posters must feel wading through the often mean spirited, hate-filled discourse that occupies the various threads of this forum.  I believe that if the forum is going to survive and gain traction for new membership and discussion, we have to police harder to ensure a pleasant environment.

As younger individuals are the perfect target demographic to join in introduce new content, I think it's important to point out that many of these people are more likely to to non-white, or even immigrants who are attending college due to green card status or even DACA.  I go to school with numerous individuals who fit these traits, many of whom are working their asses off just to gain the skills necessary for employment.  They are not sub-par individuals.  In fact, I'd bet that they work infinitely harder to than those who post hateful content in the various boards on this forum, and could provide substantially more content in the span of a few weeks than posters like Naso has over the course of 15 years.  To go SJW, I believe people should not have to endure prejudice based on their nationality or the color of their skin, but by the content of their character (MLK).  By refusing to create a hate-filled environment, we dissuade those who have the most potential to contribute to the forum as a whole.  

This post is not refutation of my decision to possibly bring back removed content, but is an explanation for the actions which have already transpired.  Although I would prefer it that you would not bring back the maps, as an act of good faith I will not contest any maps which you link on this forum.  However, I believe we should use whatever practical (non-violent, verbally peaceful/passive resistance) if we are to encourage real change.  

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Can someone give a brief description of the democratic "situation" for whites in the Jim Crow South in various times and places?

There's been a lot of plain yes and no answers, but some detailed descriptions would be great. I know very little about the South and would like to know more

It depends a lot on the state.

In South Carolina for example, the hurdles to voting were so entrenched and steep, that turnout was mostly just limited to the die hard party machine hacks, after all why pay a poll tax and bother with all those tests just to vote in an effectively already decided election? One thing that I remember being mentioned in one of my college classes was that some states actually mandated the poll tax be prepaid, aka it was paid long before election day and if you missed it you couldn't vote that year. And the day it was due was set to coincide right before harvest time when farmers would be lowest on money. So basically all poor farmers of all races were disenfranchised. The election was about as democratic as one to the Soviet Politboro. This was also true in Mississippi and most of Georgia.

But other states were a bit more open or split by region. The Upper South states had Unionist Republican enclaves and while they disenfranchised most blacks, weren't quite as onerous in the limitations. Also true of Alabama to some extent. What those states often did is just threw in loopholes to the restrictions allowing most whites to qualify. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_Era#Educational_and_character_requirements

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Hence why Alabama came close to voting for Hoover in 1928. Compare that to South Carolina, which didn't have a sizable Catholic population obviously.

Meanwhile this is what South Carolina did:

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[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

BK.

What are you believing Ford on? Not any evidence, because there isn't any. What a joke.

There is Dr. Ford's statement.  Under oath.  This is evidence.

There is her polygraph, which she passed.  This is evidence.

There is the record of what she mentioned in therapy.  This is evidence.

There is the documentation of Dr. Ford's history of trauma-related symptoms that are consistent with the kind of trauma she describes.  That is evidence.

There is the fact that Dr. Ford's testimony is, in a real sense, a statement against her own self-interest, given that it was her desire to not publicly testify.  That is evidence.

There are new allegations against Kavanaugh.  This is evidence.

All of this, taken together, is insufficient for a new criminal charge to be filed.  However, all of this, taken together would be sufficient for a clinical social worker to be reviewed by the state agency that licenses them and the NASW to determine their fitness to practice.  It would trigger an Internal Affairs investigation if such an allegation were made against a Law Enforcement officer, or a Correctional Officer.  It would be cause for a teacher's license to be reviewed. 

The level of evidence brought against Kavanaugh does not rise to the level of Probable Cause, but it does, IMO, rise to the level of Reasonable Suspicion.  To say there's "NO" evidence, just is not true.  There is enough evidence for someone to conclude that Judge Kavanaugh ought not be elevated beyond hos present station, at a minimum.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Imagine if after the new Democratic House was sworn in, the Supreme Court stepped in and basically said that they were the new legislative House body and the House could just be ignored. And they later backed down after massive public outcry and let the House take control again, but then the Senate went ahead and voted on some bills stripping the House of most of its powers and abilities to pass legislation (obviously after abolishing the filibuster) and bypassed the House and just sent said bills to Trump's desk to sign (which the Supreme Court says was OK.) And if the House ever did anything they didn't like would just pass another bill bypassing the House stripping it of its power. And then when Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, etc. announced their campaigns, the Republicans in the Senate just went ahead and disqualified them as candidates. And as a result of that and any other remotely serious Democratic candidate being disqualified Trump's 2020 opponent ended up being that perennial candidate who's in federal prison for mail fraud and got almost 40% of the vote in West Virginia in 2012.

If what the Maduro-created National Assembly did (and frankly the Republican Senate has MORE democratic legitimacy than it does) is OK and his "re-election" was democratically legitimate, then all of the above is perfectly OK as well, as would be Trump's re-election in 2020 under those conditions.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Use of the socialist label is Republicans' fault. Once everything outside of a narrow set of policies (conveniently championed by those slinging the label in the first place) is "socialist", it becomes incredibly easy for people outside of those policies to pick up the label. Now you have (popular) candidates openly campaigning under a label that implies the end of capitalism. The GOP's response has been only to retreat further into Boomerism rather than attempting to defuse society's growing tensions.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I don't think I can self-identify as a Socialist/Marxist anymore. This has been a long time coming and is a result of numerous complex factors, but I can finally accept and publicly acknowledge this important change. Now, where to go from here...

Social democratic?

I can’t say that, at this time, I identify with any specific ideological orientation. However, I do still hold most of my practical political views (for example, I’m still a Sanders supporter).

I don't think I can self-identify as a Socialist/Marxist anymore. This has been a long time coming and is a result of numerous complex factors, but I can finally accept and publicly acknowledge this important change. Now, where to go from here...

What issues caused this split?

The simple answer is that I’ve always had my reservations about some of the essential philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. Marx’s critiques of capitalism were largely correct and he has been a positive force in world history for elaborating his criticisms of that socioeconomic system; however, he failed to articulate a fully developed alternative, many of his predictions failed to materialize as capitalism evolved in unexpected ways, and there are flaws with his historical materialism, such as its lack of falsifiability (for an allegedly scientific theory). In addition, his criticisms of the division of labor and specialization wherein he promised a Socialist future where such divisions are abolished, seems rather unrealistic. It has also proven unrealistic that the proletariat class could ever prioritize the interests of their class on a universal level; cultural identity, whether ethnic or national, has proven too strong in nearly every historical instance that this has been tested.

Again, I find Marx incredibly insightful and a necessary voice of criticism for a deeply flawed socioeconomic system (capitalism), but that his theories aren’t entirely accurate or reliable outside of a late 19th century Western European context. I don’t know where, exactly, my beliefs are going from here. I still very much align with Social Democrats (such as Sanders) on most common political issues (especially economics), I still prize egalitarianism, and I still loathe capitalism. But, I can’t accept the Marxist perspective anymore.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Vittorio, you may want to incorporate more modern works of analysis in your evidence. Going back to the late 1800s is not entirely applicable to the situation we have today. Including modern pieces supporting your argument, like in your first post here, would be more helpful in getting people to see your point.

If one is arguing about what Marxism is, it only makes sense to go back to the source material. Nobody in the intervening years since 1883 has improved on Marx (indeed, attempts to 'update' Marxism typically end up in Keynesian underconsumptionist pablum) and capitalism itself does not change structurally whether its predominant social manifestation is that of small burghers playing their wares or a 20th century Fordist plant producing automobiles or Internet developers selling code today. The M-C-M' formula holds good wherever the law of value operates.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to bring about modern “revisionist” theoreticians, I’m saying to apply the ideas of Marx into the modern era and experiences using scholarly work not of your own, like your opening post.

Also, while Marx laid the foundation for Marxism, there is still not yet an agreed upon endpoint on exactly how to organize society fully. You say that this is “positivism of the bourgeoisie”, but Marx was wrong in his original analysis I must say. What else to make of the two most successful revolutions based on the application happening in Feudal Russia and China, populated by peasants liberated from serfdom only a few generations ago. Or that the only “real” areas of revolutionary potential are in the now industrializing and/or neocolonial hotspots, a far cry from the revolutionary spark to begin in Industrial Europe or the US.

People will not overthrow the status quo unless they are desperate enough and are left with no other option. Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The main reason why Lenin was able to seize power and then keep it was that he was the only one with a consistent message and a consistent foreign policy, "end the damn war!" in a country that only ever had a history of political change coming through violent means.

That is why it was one of the most rural and religious countries on earth that became the first "Communist Country". In many other countries, they came to power because they were the only ones left on the field who was fighting fascism (one extreme provides a foil for the other).  

The problem with Marx and the problem that Vittorio thus shares, is a fundamental disconnect with where people are in reality. It is easy for a theorist to say market impulse and/or religion is fake and an empty construct. But millions of people like the ability to make rational choices for themselves and millions of people believe in various religious sects as a matter of faith. To deny that or ignore that, among the many other "operating factors" ignores substantial elements of the "human experience" and thus one cannot hope to predict a future outcome while discounting these "counter-forces".

This was the point I was trying to make when I talked about the emphasis on class to the exclusion of all other factors. Maybe he is using a different definition of class or maybe there is some impulse that bet encapsulates the impetus that would in a vacuum push towards a Communist outcome, but whether or not such is the case, it still fails to account for the very things Vittorio wrote off as not existing or irrelevant and it is those missing elements that stand in the way of the "natural transition".

Russia would have never become Communist were it not pushed the point where that was the only viable outcome. Agrarian socialist perhaps, more than likely some other kind of Revolution, but it was the war, starvation and despair that made Communism viable in a place Marx thought would be the least hospitable.

Desperation drives people to embrace extremes, and that is why as a Conservative I prefer to alleviate such desperation to prevent such extremes from rising to power and threatening the system. If only other conservatives approached things the same way, and weren't likewise blinded by their own agenda and alternative facts.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Thus far I have been fairly clear in my support for Andrew Yang, though my endorsement of him in this primary has been somewhat passive and I've tried not to evangelize much for him on here. This is partly because I don't want to come across as a die-hard Yanger who won't shut up about his preferred candidate, but also because it's a whole lot easier to cynically criticize other candidates from the sidelines instead of putting forth ideas and arguments of my own. To rectify this, I'd like to make a brief argument for Yang's candidacy and explain why I genuinely think he is the best man for the job. Any constructive responses are much appreciated.

The War on Normal People

I finished reading Yang's book over the break, and while it has not fully convinced me that UBI is the right course of action for America, I am now convinced that AI, robots, and automation will result in the mass layoffs and economic displacement that Yang is predicting. I am eating crow here. Remember, I am a libertarian who has in the past rolled his eyes at this argument, comparing it to the narrow-mindedness of Malthus and those who predicted "peak oil." Until this point, I have been very much inclined to let the market run its course, assuming that new jobs will be created to replace the ones being lost.

So what convinced me? Why is AI different from any other technological innovations in the past, none of which resulted in mass unemployment? It helps to think of it this way: AI is not most comparable to crop rotation, or to the assembly line, or to any other technological advancements that affected one industry at a time. AI is comparable to slave labor, in that it creates a massive "workforce" (robots and software programs) that will perform manual/repetitive labor for no wages and at very little cost to the owner. Furthermore, AI cannot waste the owner's time and money by sleeping, eating, using the bathroom, getting distracted, having children, or getting injured-- all things that happen to human beings. Computer programs never ask for time off, or for higher wages, or for basic rights and freedoms. They diligently do their work when told to, and they do it forever.

AI is inherently superior to human beings when it comes to repetitive, manual tasks that require very little creative thought. This is why it is affecting call center workers, factory workers, truck drivers, checkout cashiers, and salespeople the most. It will also affect legal clerks, human resources departments, administrative staff, diagnostic wards, radiologists, and certain types of journalist-- because while all of those jobs require a good degree of expertise, they are all inherently repetitive, which means a computer could be easily trained to do them. For a second, don't think of AI as a technological innovation. Think of it as a sudden injection of slave labor into an otherwise market-based economy. And now imagine that those slaves (being computer programs) are infinitely more efficient than their human counterparts.

In a slave economy (such as the American South in the early 1800s), wages are no longer competitive because the baseline wage is zero. Wealth becomes collected by those who own the slaves, while those who are neither slaves nor slave-owners find that their labor is borderline useless. They have no economic opportunity due to their lack of marketable skills, and as a result, generations of people find themselves unemployed, uneducated, and poor. This happened in the South-- it's a big reason for why the region is still so backwards today-- and it will happen in the era of AI too, because robots, computers, and machines will suddenly start to perform a vast majority of the economy's labor for a very, very low cost.

Identifying the Problem

The argument I just laid out is not Yang's; it occurred to me as I read his book. But by pointing to job loss as the root cause of our problems, Yang has touched on something that should be apparent to all of us. Wages have been stagnant for decades and four million jobs were lost in the Rust Belt just since 2000. Americans increasingly have very little in savings, and the "jobs" being created are ~90% gig economy jobs with no benefits, no job security, and no scheduling stability. It is difficult for the average person to understand the multinational forces at work here, so they've started to turn to two things-- socialism in the case of Bernie Sanders, and right-wing ethno-nationalism in the case of Donald Trump. This division has demonized entrepreneurs and immigrants, and more importantly, it has caused two halves of the country to hate one another for a perceived indifference to their problems.

Yang's argument that Trump is the symptom, not the disease, is in my mind 100% correct. Trump did not emerge in a vacuum, and defeating him in 2020 will not solve all the problems that got him elected in the first place. The country will remain just as divided as before and polarization will continue to accelerate, perhaps this time driven by the left. I hate Donald Trump and I want to see him lose, but even when I imagine the day after he leaves office, I am not optimistic. People still voted this man into power and they did that for a reason-- automation has torn apart their communities, Amazon has shuttered their local businesses, and in that vacuum they have turned to opioids, Fox News, and deranged cultist mentalities.

Due to a preponderance of evidence in its favor, I am forced to conclude that the automation boom is primarily responsible for Trump's election. It is the main reason for job loss in the swing states that cost Hillary Clinton the election, and without such a massive regional economic slump, I do not think that she would have lost. There are parts of this country that have never recovered from the Great Recession. This is because employers at the time, trying to cut costs, found ways to automate away jobs that have not returned since. Because of the Obama administration's inability to bring back these jobs-- and because Clinton was personally tied to policies like NAFTA-- she was unable to portray herself as a credible actor for economic change in the way that Trump was.

Because I find this causal mechanism believable (as anyone should), I am attracted to Yang on the basis that he is the only candidate who has identified the problem at hand. He understands the issue of automation better than any other candidate in the race, and because I believe that the economic disruption from automation is the biggest issue confronting us today, that makes him my candidate of choice. Correctly identifying the problem does not equate to fixing it, but none of the other candidates have taken even that basic first step. They are in a frenzy over Trump, impeachment, and a multitude of social issues that are of very little consequence. Meanwhile, Yang is concerned about those who have lost their jobs (who are now using drugs, committing suicide, going on disability pay, getting divorced, and dying early) as well as those who are about to lose their jobs (the Safeway clerk, the customer support worker, the truck driver, the radiologist). I don't have a ton of faith in Yang's ability to solve these problems given the dysfunctional nature of our politics, but he is going to try, and that is a step in the right direction.

Yang Himself

I have my reservations about Yang as a candidate, as I'm sure many of you also do. I cannot imagine him ordering troops into battle. His willingness to meme-ify himself, though endearing, worries me-- I'm afraid that people will not take him seriously and will therefore not take the issues he raises seriously either. He is going to have to reform his Silicon Valley/Tech Bro persona before I consider him ready for the gravitas of the office he seeks.

But he is visibly humble. He is funny. He has a Bill Clinton-esque ability to talk to 'regular people' in a way that never comes across as condescending. He is clearly intelligent and passionate about the issues he is championing. He has made his campaign about policies and issues, not a vanity project for himself. He has shown nothing but respect and kindness for his fellow candidates and has never engaged in personal attacks. His campaign is an attempt to unify the country-- not to pit himself against another candidate, or even to pit his party against the other party. He, more than any other candidate, has shown real empathy towards Trump supporters and has attempted to win them to his side.

That last point is important, and it is the number one reason why I support Andrew Yang. I constantly see posters on Atlas saying that Trump voters "Won't vote for a Democrat anyway, so why bother with them" (even though some of these people voted for Barack Obama-- twice). The argument here is that Democrats need to shore up their base to win in 2020 rather than reach across the aisle. And to some degree I get that-- I may be a libertarian, but I was raised as a Democrat, and I share the frustration of Democrats over the behavior of the GOP this past decade. It's indefensible. It's borderline criminal. Every Republican congressman and senator should be ashamed at what they've enabled. So I 100% understand the instinct to say "f**k you" when someone says "We need to be more understanding," "We need to reach out to Trump voters," or "Both sides do it." I get it.

But in addition to automation, I'm also concerned about the social fabric of America. Specifically polarization. The Roman Empire didn't fall just because a bunch of barbarians were at its gates-- it fell because the East and the West didn't share a language, a culture, a geographic region, an economic structure, a leader, or a common interest, and they spent their time fighting between each other instead of facing external threats. Rome killed itself through internal divisions. And when I see people in my own country calling for California to secede, or saying that Trump supporters are all inbred racists, or siding with Russia over their fellow countrymen, or calling America "unexceptional," or showing open disdain for the Constitution, I feel like I'm watching a train crash in slow motion. I would very much like to see this country knit itself back together before it's too late-- before it becomes a bloated bureaucratic dysfunctional wreck, or worse, before it blows apart.

Andrew Yang is not tribal in any sense. He rejects the politics of race and resentment. He rejects identity politics even when it seems to operate in his favor. He ignores the Republican-Democrat dichotomy and acknowledges that both sides are to blame for ignoring the effect that automation has had on the Midwest. His slogan-- "Not left, not right, but forward"-- is an open dismissal of polarization and almost a rejection of partisanship itself. Whenever he is afforded the opportunity for a personal attack, he neatly sidesteps it to remain focused on the issues he has raised. His explanation for America's current inequality involves no villainous immigrants, corporate fat cats, welfare leeches, or wealth hoarders; there is no villain in the narrative he paints, only rational actors whose goals have become misaligned. Warren and Sanders have spent this campaign on a crusade of class warfare, Trump has spent his presidency railing against minorities, and Biden has offered waffling platitudes and no real vision. I have lost my patience for them; ironically, compared to Yang's forward-thinking vision, they seem like sideshows and distractions. They are focused on the daily battles of tabloid politics. Andrew Yang is focused on the future.

Quick Word on UBI

I am still unconvinced on UBI as I am worried it will be inflationary. I am open to arguments for it, but even Yang seems a tad evasive when confronted with this problem. However, due to our dysfunctional congress, I am relatively certain that UBI will not pass in the way that Yang has proposed. What makes it through congress will probably look like one of three things (in decreasing order of likelihood):

1) A drastic tax cut for the lower classes; maybe even an elimination of the income tax for lower brackets of earners.
2) A negative income tax for lower earners.
3) A program to give truck drivers, retail workers, factory workers, and other people displaced by automation stock options in companies using AI and robots as part of their severance.

I support all three of these ideas and would be happy to see any of them implemented in the next four years. I think it is criminal that our government taxes people who are earning less than $25,000 a year. It is pointless and cruel and it needs to stop. If Yang can get this done, I will consider his presidency a step in the right direction. More importantly, I trust the man's judgement. I believe that if he became convinced that one of these ideas was better than UBI, he would not worry about being a "flip-flopper" and would change his policy proposals accordingly. Such are the benefits of not being an establishment politician.

If by some miracle UBI makes it through congress, it will have gone through unprecendented levels of economic scrutiny by various bureaus and committees. They will most likely have watered it down, but it will still amount to a large-scale wealth transfer away from major tech companies, primarily Amazon, Google, and Facebook. This is a good thing. Internet companies are inherently monopolistic because users want to be able to find everything they want on one platform, and don't want to have to use other sites once they've familiarized themselves with one. These companies are going to be bigger and wealthier than anything we've seen in human history, and it makes sense to tax them heavily. I'm a libertarian, not an anarcho-capitalist. Amazon needs to start paying taxes; otherwise it's going to continue siphoning money out of local businesses and retail stores. And Americans need money. When 40% of Americans can barely afford a sudden $400 expense, that should set off the alarm bells. Societies with extreme inequality gravitate towards dysfunction, extremist politics, and finally revolution. We've done the first two already. I hope to God we can avoid the third.

-------------------------

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

None of these posts are high-quality. Take it somewhere else, y'all.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

None of these posts are high-quality. Take it somewhere else, y'all.

The post by Mr. Reactionary I originally quoted was a high quality post.  Mr. Reactionary's post belonged here. nMr. Reactionary's post was a post worthy of this forum, and for you to post what you just did puts you in the same boat with whom you're criticizing.

Come, now, Fuzzy. This thread is not for debating the various merits of the posts archived here, which is obviously what I was getting at. Kindly dismount thy high horse.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

No, America was industrialized by men like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockerfeller. It was not land grant colleges that built the Erie Canal, or the steel mills of Pennsylvania. It was not internal subsidies (save for the selling off of land) that built the oil drills of Texas.

So does anyone else see the problem here? Just because "one" of the above listed policies didn't apply, doesn't refute the overall point. What I said was, we were industrialized under 1. Protectionism, 2. Internal Subsidies and 3. Land Grant Colleges. This is not in any way factually inaccurate, these policies existed at the time. Mistakingly drawing the lines connecting what policies benefited which development doesn't change that. Subsidies benefited railroads and thus benefited steel. Tariffs protected a range of industries from foreign competition (mainly from Britain during this period) and then of course the Land grant colleges are a more generalized impact, but education and importantly technical education were critical to the development and advancement of industry. We take this for granted in an era when computers and internet are what we think of as technology, but industrialization required a range of skills both in terms of college and non-college in origin, engineers, architects, a range of sciences, not to mention the vast growth in what we now call white collar jobs that these industries tend to create in law, finance, accounting, banking etc.

Yes entrepreneurship was important and I would be the first to point that out, but the idea that the 19th century was some kind of lassiez-faire paradise belies the reality that America was basically operating under a water down form of state capitalism for much of the second half of the 19th century and yet it was during this period that the American Economy surged past everyone else. Yes freedom and entrepreneurship were critical, but it wasn't freedom that built the Transcontinental or the Erie Canal. It was Gov't intervention (the latter being at the state level but same idea), operating under a framework of economic nationalism. The same vein of thought that Josh Hawley is operating under.

And what Josh Hawley calls for is not just protectionism. Protectionism is the governmental picking of winners and losers. It is shameful economic interference that harms consumers and businesses alike. But we have dealt with it before, and will deal with it again if it becomes an issue. Nay, the issue with Josh Hawley is that he calls for big government, and of the sort that only once in your listing of economic timeframes has ever appeared before. But now is not 1946. It is not 1947. We are not alone in the ruins of a post war world, with America alone as an economic superpower. We live in an increasingly globalized world, where Hawley's big government, just like Roosevelt's big government did with the second spike in 1938, will inevitably harm and burn our country like a chimp with a machine gun. And when they do, it remains to be seen if there is any last resistance. In the 60s, in the 70s, and the 80s, we were lucky enough to be saved by courageous conservatives, men and women like Barry Goldwater, Phyllis Schafly, and Ronald Reagan. But with partisanship and demographics today, who is to say that we can pull that off a second time? If the Manchurian Candidate wins, who is to say that we will be so lucky again? Who is to say that the values our great nation was founded upon, of the right to life, of the right to liberty, of the right to property, of the right to the pursuit of happiness, will survive?

When you have a captured market to the point that you can raise prices with no natural restraints except demand dropping and in this case demand dropping meaning bodies are hitting the floor, yea I think that is a good case for price controls. That is not a free market that is functionally a monopoly where the only countervailing natural force is letting people die in the streets. Sorry that is not a recipe for a stable society, nor trust in the free market and if you want to turn America Communist, there is no greater way to provoke that than letting the desperation fester and growth, which will create pressure points for inevitable action. As people get more desperate, they will eventually just elect people who will create an NHS system that dictates prices to the market and they either take it or leave it. Don't want that to occur? Then perhaps you should listen to people like me when we tell you this is to avert that inevitability.

Whenever conservatives rest on the laurels or innate goodness of things they think are unbreakable, they will be disappointed every time. Russia was the most religious country on earth in 1917, all it took was hunger and war weariness and the despair that both created to lead them to atheistic communism. Historical lesson: Hunger and war exhaustion will overcome any historical bonds including America's "love for freedom". You can just as easily throw in lack of health care with hunger because it operates the same way.

People need food to survive, and they need health care to survive as well. Especially if they are diabetic, or have some other disease that means they need ongoing health "maintenance" to survive. You cannot say to them they need to get a job to get healthcare meanwhile their ability to work is actively being degraded by their lack of access to health care. I have seen relatives lose their ability to work because they had to work with a degenerative condition, without treatment and this took them out of the workforce years earlier than and in one case led to an early death.

You cannot treat health care like any other "market place" because the decline in demand means that behind those numbers someone is dying, someone is being made unable to work and someone is being left without a father or a mother (what was all of that stuff about single parent homes leading to worse societal outcomes? It applies here to, those rules don't magically stop applying because a medical condition took them away as opposed to a father running off to get milk and never coming back).

Natural demand thus can never restrain prices and thus companies have what I call a "captured market" and can charge whatever they want. That is not a "free" market, that is a hostage situation, especially if they hold the patent and only they can make that medicine. As far as this is concerned, I think Hawley's position is both right and get this "MORE CONSERVATIVE" then the libertarian alternative, which just will turn more people to socialism out of desperation (political reactions tend to follow Newtonian laws of physics, at least equal and opposite reaction).

Conservatism is not about smaller government (that is only part of achieving a larger objective). It is about preserving stable institutions and stable families. To the extent government is in the way, that needs to change, but the to the extent that nothing short of gov't can alter a situation, like the hostage like environment in the health care market place, they should take action.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Part of the Lost Cause pro-Confederate revisionist history involved waging a propaganda war against Lincoln - after all, if you want to argue the Civil War wasn't about slavery, it's a bit inconvenient to acknowledge that the leader of the Union was waging war against slavery with good intentions. And so, a false narrative arose that Lincoln was actually indifferent to slavery and only used it as a political chip, which has been propped up by cherrypicked quotes which are either out of context (ie "if I could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave," where he was obviously lying if you're aware of his audience and actions), reflect views he held from before his presidency, or are outright fabrications (he wanted to deport slaves back to Africa). For some reason, large segments of the woke left have decided to serve as useful idiots for Confederate sympathizers and parrot this badhistory uncritically.

In fairness, this particular protest seems to be spurred by a reaction to Lincoln's indigenous policies, which, while hardly unique, are a much more fair criticism and I'm not going to defend them. So my point isn't super relevant here but it's a rant I've wanted to get off my chest and this was a good excuse to do it.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The author argues that religion can be good or bad.

Well, yes. Asking if "religion" is "good or bad" is like asking if politics is good or bad, or if art is good or bad.

I wasn't sure how to title this thread. Obviously the title asks a question that is a no brainer.
It is a false dichotomy.
I can easily change the title if someone comes up with a better one.

I generally share the "religious liberal" view of what tendencies constitute "bad religion", although since I'm a mostly-orthodox Catholic I'd put the cutoff point for unacceptable levels of conservatism on moral issues a bit to the right of where a UU would probably put it. One thing I'd warn against, though, is that a commitment to value pluralism or cultural relativism does indicate some degree of "tolerance for intolerance" because tolerance itself is not a universal value. I recently watched a DS9 episode where Jake has to learn to swallow his tongue about Nog being a sexist prick because sexism is so ingrained in Ferengi culture that Nog isn't personally responsible for it, and even though the subplot is uncomfortable to watch I think that's actually a great example of the limits of where tolerance, pluralism, etc. can take us. If we're not willing to swallow that bitter pill, we have to just admit (and I believe we should admit this) that we believe in our own substantive values at least a little more than we believe in tolerance.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I would tentatively suggest that you consider calming down, perhaps a little. It really cannot be healthy to get so angry about literary criticism.

WHO made a "conscious effort to avoid racist tropes?" Tolkien? PROVE it! Put up or shut up! Hell, the "Orcs" of the "East" could easily be perceived as (and have extensively been argued to be) racist stereotypes of Asians and "Orientals" far more offensive than anything Rowling has ever written.

As the tropes of fairy tale and fantasy are very old, the most frequent (by far) form of racism found within them is antisemitism. Tolkien viewed antisemitism as a particularly despicable prejudice and so, yes, took pains to make sure that there was no trace of it in his literary projects which is why you won't find any despite a lot of his source material. When he was asked by a German publishing house interested in The Hobbit whether he was Jewish (this was, of course, several years after the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws) he drafted a famously abusive response, though whether it was actually sent is not clear. Given that all of this is well known, I must admit that I am somewhat perplexed at your aggressively bemused tone.

On the general issue of Tolkien and 'race', I wrote a long post on the subject a few years ago at Nathan's request and it can be read here. It does not cover everything (at some point I should get round to writing an expanded version that does), but should function as a solid introduction to Tolkien's attitude towards 'race' as a concept and towards racial prejudice in general. On the specific issue of supposed hostility towards East Asians, it may be worth noting that Tolkien was genuinely outraged at the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believing it to be a wicked and Unchristian act, and was known to be fiercely critical of pre-war British and American imperialism in East Asia. One of his most thoroughly Edwardian features was a certain degree of Japanophilia in cultural matters: he owned a collection of ukiyo-e prints and his own art was heavily influenced by Japanese illustration.

And WHERE is Rowling's apparent unconscious invoking of racist tropes? The Goblins are bankers, therefore they must be Jews??? If that's it, it says FAR more about YOU than HER!!!

This is circular logic. You are not (presumably) ten years old and should therefore be capable of better. But fine: Rowling's Goblins are strange, hook-nosed creatures who control all the money in the (Wizarding) world, speak a strange unintelligible language, hold grudges, keep themselves to themselves, delight in obtuse legalism and are merciless in pursuit of debtors.

I wasn't the one who brought him up as an absurd whataboutism but OK. Really nothing strange about it either, considering the clear implication of your claim (and the only way it even is relevant at all) was that Tolkien was and/or would be somehow more "woke" than Rowling, which is blatantly nonsense. If he wasn't or wouldn't be, there is ZERO reason to even bring him up! But if you're gonna point to him as an example of a righteous fantasy writer in contrast to the evil bigoted Rowling, you have a STEEP hill to climb to PROVE your claims! The fact that he died when she was eight years old shouldn't be relevant if you are going to compare them on the same level. You can't have it both ways by giving Tolkien the benefit of the doubt because he was from a different era or something (as if Catholics with his exact same views aren't widespread today, or there is any reason at all to think he would think any differently today) but roasting Rowling for not conforming to all your woke orthodoxy today. Her views are in any case FAR less removed from that orthodoxy now than Tolkien's were from the liberal/progressive orthodoxy even of his own day!

My woke orthodoxy? I'm not sure if it's possible to respond to that with anything short of laughter. Leaving that aside, you have missed the point again. J.R.R. Tolkien has been dead for almost fifty years and was an old man when Rowling - who is not a young woman - was a child. It is frankly quite bizarre to ascribe to him views on hot-button issues that would have been as alien to him as anyone else born in the 19th century and to make suggestions as to how he would have behaved online. You have also failed to understand why I referenced him (and another notable writer of fantasy: Alan Garner, who I can only presume that you have never actually heard of) in my short post about Rowling's tendency to use tropes and stock characters without much in the way of critical thinking or even basic curiosity. My point is other writers have been aware of the issue in question and have found ways of dealing with it and that therefore ignorance will not do as an excuse, especially as one of those authors was a moderately conservative Roman Catholic writing in 1937.

And also, I'm not doing anything to justify her behavior. I don't think she did anything that NEEDS to be justified. She did nothing wrong at all.

Jolly good.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension, AND you really love to jerk yourself off over using a lot of big words that amount to nothing of substance! Therefore, I will be extremely clear so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation: You have FAILED to even PROVE your basic assumption that there even IS an inherent "conflation of the fairytale Goblin with the Jewish people," let ALONE one that was adopted by Rowling, consciously or unconsciously. You have also FAILED to PROVE your assertion that Tolkien was so great at "disentangling" this; do you REALLY want to stand by the claim that his portrayal of "goblins" as bloodthirsty, mindless, greedy Orcs was so much more enlightened than Rowling's portrayal of them as much more intelligent and nuanced beings?

The only way this conversation even makes sense in the first place is if we assume that any time a fantasy writer references "goblins," a Jewish association is unavoidable. In that case, the evidence shows that if anything, Tolkien's portrayal of them was far worse. If the idea is supposed to be that ackshually, no he wasn't trying to reference Jews at all with his goblins BUT somehow Rowling was with hers, that's a massive reach that you have utterly FAILED to PROVE in the slightest.

That the fairytale Goblin has often been conflated with the Jewish people in an inherently antisemitic manner - that the fairytale Goblin has often been used as an allusion or, even worse, an allegory for Jews - is such a universally accepted point that I need to provide evidence for the claim no more than I would that the Sun appears in the sky during hours of daylight. It is also so obvious that a failure to spot it raises a few questions.

As for Tolkiens Goblins and Tolkiens Orcs, yes, they are horrible creatures. As are Garner's Svart alfar. They are also monsters. And in fact that is all they are, which is, in fact, the whole issue here. There is no problem in a fantasy monster being written as such. Where we run into difficulty is when the fantasy monster is not wholly a fantasy monster, but is a monstrous caricature of real people.

It's obvious that you are just taking the opportunity to smugly wax poetic about how this old far right son of British imperialism was OBVIOUSLY far SMARTER than and SUPERIOR to this self-made liberal billionaire woman. Because that's not classist or sexist at all!

That is a very strange and not at all accurate description of Tolkien. I presume that you are aware that he was born in South Africa and that he was a conservative Roman Catholic and have allowed your imagination to run riot? He was born in the Orange Free State (an independent country at the time: this was before the British conquered it during the Second Boer War) because his father had a post at a bank there. His mother took him back to England when he was a toddler because she worried that the climate was dangerous for the health of her children and because she found the entrenched and pervasive racism of the place distressing. He grew up in Birmingham and felt deeply rooted there and in the wider West Midlands and nowhere else. His sense of morality was founded largely on memories of his mother and, consequentially, he was a life-long opponent of Empire and Imperialism, a trait that was easily his most radical political view and which was to form an important element in both his fiction and his academic work. His politics were idiosyncratic, and cannot be described as 'far right' without absurdity: although a conservative man in many respects, he was a lot closer to anarchism than fascism.

I think that accusations of 'classism' against me are almost as amusing as the earlier nonsense about me adhering to some sort of 'woke orthodoxy'. Hilarious stuff. Incidentally (and to the extent that we can compare the social structures of the Late Victoria and Postwar eras), Tolkien social background had more in common with Rowling's than you seem to assume. Theoretically a little higher up the tree, but a member of a still unpopular minority group and poorer for a time, in that special way brought about by the sort of downwards social mobility that did not exist when Rowling was growing up.

I think I shall largely ignore the rest of your post, though I will note again that I am not actually accusing Rowling of personal antisemitism, merely of unthinkingly incorporating old antisemitic tropes into her work. I'm quite sure that if she realised she would not have done so. The point is that she did not, and that this is characteristic of her approach to writing in a broader sense. She uses, in a very postmodern manner, elements from all over the place because they fit particular niches in her stories without giving serious consideration to where those elements might have been before and what they might mean.