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Post by jdredd on May 8, 2014 12:46:13 GMT -5
I have to confess...I am responsible for one of the biggest political tragedies of the last 40 years...the white working class going over to the GOP. Yes, it was my contempt towards all those beer drinking, big truck driving, sports obsessed goobers with their guns and bibles starting in 1968 that drove them into the arms of the Nixon/Reagan/Fox/Tea Party axis of evil. So now that those troglodytes have gone over to the conservative party (the GOP), I'm left here on the left with the gays, feminists, environmentalists, Teacher's Union members, and academics, not to mention young urban hipsters who share my bad attitudes, in the other conservative party (IMHO, the Dems). Fortunately, sad as it is, it will matter less and less as suburban and rural white males become a smaller and smaller demo in the next decade or so. Meanwhile, we have to put up with a probable 2010 style GOP surge in 2014, for all the good it will do working class Republicans, since the GOP is really all about billionaires and the interests of global financiers.
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Post by jdredd on May 21, 2014 13:11:05 GMT -5
Here's what I don't get...the GOP gets the vote of working class people who are religious, but the GOP's economic philosophy is based on Darwinism! Can someone explain that to me?
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Post by jdredd on May 27, 2014 0:19:09 GMT -5
Meanwhile...in UK politics, which seem to run in parallel with ours (Thatcher as Reagan, Blair as Clinton), a lot of the white working class of Britain has gone over to the crypto-fascist Independence party. And France is going that way too with the rise of the National Front. They are all against the European Union and are united in their hatred of Islam. Here the white working class is against their own government but is also anti-Islam, but here many of them belong to extremist Christian rches. Fukuyama claimed that the "victory" of the West over Communism was the "end of history". I guess he couldn't imagine the reawakening of fascism and religious fundamentalism. Who did? Well, the Left.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 4, 2014 22:48:11 GMT -5
www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21610180-rise-ronald-reagan-meant-far-more-victory-republicans-purpose-and"Reagan-bashing critiques often carried a whiff of that old Marxist standby, “false consciousness”—fancy talk by leftists who think workers are dupes, voting against their own class interests after falling for bosses’ lies. But Mr Perlstein is too rigorous a historian to paint Reagan’s success as mere trickery. Many millions of Americans were sick of hearing their country run down—and Reagan sensed this early. The liberal elites also had overreached. Mr Perlstein is hardly a conservative cheerleader. But he is scathing about the “unthinking arrogance” of left-wingers as they passed laws to reduce parental authority (a “last vestige of slavery”, a Senate hearing was told by one witness), patronised crime victims or sneered at the pious. The left’s timing was also off. Guilt-wracked judges and bureaucrats began reserving good jobs for women and minorities at a moment of sky-high unemployment."
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Post by jdredd on Nov 6, 2014 4:40:10 GMT -5
I guess the right-wing media did a good job convincing Joe Sixpack that it was the Big Bad Government who were responsible for their financial woes, and not the billionaire "job creators" (as in creating millions of jobs...in China), and so Joe voted just the way the billionaires wanted them to. Plus, of course, those evil Union Bosses needed to be taught a lesson. Nice job of bringing the country together, Fox. Screw you.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2014 8:47:05 GMT -5
I guess the right-wing media did a good job convincing Joe Sixpack that it was the Big Bad Government who were responsible for their financial woes, and not the billionaire "job creators" (as in creating millions of jobs...in China), and so Joe voted just the way the billionaires wanted them to. Plus, of course, those evil Union Bosses needed to be taught a lesson. Nice job of bringing the country together, Fox. Screw you. It was the the Big bad Govt caused it they spend money like a johns at a local Ho House! over regulation over taxations. Union Scums extorting businesses and workers! Yep big govt did caused the Financial woes! see freddy and fannie!
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Post by jdredd on Nov 6, 2014 15:07:36 GMT -5
I guess the right-wing media did a good job convincing Joe Sixpack that it was the Big Bad Government who were responsible for their financial woes, and not the billionaire "job creators" (as in creating millions of jobs...in China), and so Joe voted just the way the billionaires wanted them to. Plus, of course, those evil Union Bosses needed to be taught a lesson. Nice job of bringing the country together, Fox. Screw you. It was the the Big bad Govt caused it they spend money like a johns at a local Ho House! over regulation over taxations. Union Scums extorting businesses and workers! Yep big govt did caused the Financial woes! see freddy and fannie! Well, that is one way of seeing it, but here's how I saw it: The big real estate developers were running out of qualified buyers so they pressured lenders to loosen their lending requirements. Then the big banks sold those worthless mortgages and derivatives to sucker investors. Voila! Economic meltdown.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 14, 2014 22:32:42 GMT -5
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/11/can-we-talk-heres-why-white-working-class-hates-democrats"But when the economy stagnates and life gets harder, people get meaner. That's just human nature. And the economy has been stagnating for the working class for well over a decade—and then practically collapsing ever since 2008. So who does the WWC take out its anger on? Largely, the answer is the poor. In particular, the undeserving poor. Liberals may hate this distinction, but it doesn't matter if we hate it. Lots of ordinary people make this distinction as a matter of simple common sense, and the WWC makes it more than any. That's because they're closer to it. For them, the poor aren't merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They're the folks next door who don't do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars. For a lot of members of the WWC, this is personal in a way it just isn't for the kind of people who read this blog." OK, maybe it wasn't my "contempt" for working class goobers that drove the White Working Class into the arms of the GOP, (though it may have helped), since their existing Gun-and-Bible values were what made me look down on them in the first place. It's their resentment of people on welfare according to this writer. Well, sorry, I guess they are lost for good because us lefties shouldn't change what we believe to pacify their resentment. Better the left is in permanent minority than we abandon the poor IMHO.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 20, 2014 1:59:52 GMT -5
Gosh, Obama legalizing several million "illegals" probably won't go over too well with the White Working Class, will it? Sadly, immigration policies are all about class warfare and the WWC seems to be on the wrong side of it.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 25, 2014 12:39:30 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/article/393377/forgotten-americans-victor-davis-hanson"In our vast nation of 320 million people, there are still millions of mostly middle-class voters, along with the proverbial white working class, who are ignored by Democrats. They feel desperately squeezed by the higher taxes necessary to fulfill the dreams of progressive elites. And they feel they are not on the receiving end of government entitlements the way the underclass is, while being a regular target of cheap progressive rhetoric, from “clingers” to “stupid.” But more importantly, the middle class resents wealthy progressives who lecture them about their supposed illiberality although they do not experience in their own lives the consequences of their ideology, whether that involves unchecked illegal immigration or job-killing regulations. Those who live in gated communities or mansions with heavy security talk down to those who don’t about their Neanderthal gun-owning. Wind and solar power seems to be supported by those who do not commute long distances in second-hand cars and who have enough money to care little about gas prices. If foreign nationals were swarming into the U.S. illegally from Europe to find jobs as journalists, government workers, and lawyers, the progressive elites might worry about their own employment and be less utopian about open borders." So in other words, it is the politics of resentment that drives working class Republicans to the polls, an accusation traditionally made against Democrats.
More humorously though, who does this guy slam later in the article? Al Sharpton, of course.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 30, 2014 15:55:56 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/article/393648/who-boycotts-wal-mart-kevin-d-williamson"Ironically, the anti-Wal-Mart crusaders want to make life worse for people who are literally counting pennies as they shop for necessities. Study after study has shown that Wal-Mart has meaningfully reduced prices: 3.1 percent overall, by one estimate — with a whopping 9.1 percent cut to the price of groceries. That comes to about $2,300 a year per household, savings that accrue overwhelmingly to people of modest incomes, not to celebrity activists and Ivy League social-justice crusaders. Ultimately, these campaigns are exercises in tribal affiliation. The Rolex tribe, and those who aspire to be aligned with it, signal their status by sneering at the Timex tribe — or by condescending to it as they purport to act on its behalf, as though poor people were too stupid to know where to find the best deal on a can of beans. Or call it the Trader Joe’s tribe vs. the Wal-Mart tribe, the Prius tribe vs. the F-150 tribe." Kevin seems to be the head Cultural Warrior of the National Review, which of course requires you to be ultra-snarky (I should know). Go for it, Kevin.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 8, 2014 3:12:59 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/article/394137/landrieus-loss-end-epoch-kevin-d-williamson"In reality, the Republican party in the South was not the party of peckerwood-trash segregationists; the GOP made its first Southern inroads among relatively affluent, educated, suburban voters, i.e., basically the same people who were Republicans everywhere else in the country, and the Southern voters least interested in segregation. And that began in the 1920s, not the 1960s. But it really picked up during the New Deal, with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s support among Southern white voters diminishing as his Prussian-style command-and-control economic fantasies became more audacious." That being the case, Democrats should spare us their batty tales about Louisiana sending off the South’s last Democratic senator — a sanctimonious white lady if ever there was one — because white bigots are being inspired by a governor one generation away from Punjab, Haitian refugees representing Utah in the House, and this National Review cruise aficionado. From George Wallace’s infamous stand in the schoolhouse door to Barack Obama’s, embarrassing racial politics are the Democrats’ bread and butter. And what happened in the 1960s wasn’t the parties’ “changing places” on racism and civil rights; it was the Democrats’ — some of them, at least — joining the ranks of civilized human beings for the first time. It only took them a century." I only quoted the National Review's chief culture warrior because he used the word "peckerwood", one of my favorite words. But I also noted him describing the movement of Southern voters from Democrat to Republican as "joining the ranks of civilized human beings", which is amusing to me (but probably not anyone else) because I am reading a book on the Bolshevik Revolution in which Western diplomats in Petrograd in 1917 describe the Bolsheviks as "uncivilized". Some things never change.
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Post by jdredd on May 12, 2016 0:51:26 GMT -5
fortune.com/2016/05/12/bloomberg-republican-party/?iid=leftrail"Michael Bloomberg predicts the votes for Republicans and Donald Trump in November won’t come from top executives, but union members. In a wide ranging talk at the SALT hedge fund conference on Wednesday, the former Mayor of New York, and top executive at his eponymous media company, said that he thought the Republican Party in the past few years had turned against corporate America. “The Republican Party is no longer the party of business,” Bloomberg says." Ha-ha! You couldn't make this up, as the cliche goes.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 29, 2016 2:28:15 GMT -5
I was reading a book on America's adventure in Vietnam, and how the war was pretty much fought by the sons of working class Americans. Even when the college educated "elites" turned against the war, the working class continued to support it. This was one of the beginnings of the division that brought the working class into the GOP, which as I said before was a great tragedy. Of course now the War in Vietnam is a fading memory, though it is still of interest to me, as I came close to being cannon fodder in that conflict, and I still studying how that came to be. The big issue for the white working class now seems to be immigration, something that interests me not at all. Unless, of course, President Trump actually creates an "Deportation Force" as he called it to round up the estimated 11 million "illegals". Could be a great way to wake up the Hispanics to start voting, and maybe even radicalize them.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2016 8:27:48 GMT -5
I was reading a book on America's adventure in Vietnam, and how the war was pretty much fought by the sons of working class Americans. Even when the college educated "elites" turned against the war, the working class continued to support it. This was one of the beginnings of the division that brought the working class into the GOP, which as I said before was a great tragedy. Of course now the War in Vietnam is a fading memory, though it is still of interest to me, as I came close to being cannon fodder in that conflict, and I still studying how that came to be. The big issue for the white working class now seems to be immigration, something that interests me not at all. Unless, of course, President Trump actually creates an "Deportation Force" as he called it to round up the estimated 11 million "illegals". Could be a great way to wake up the Hispanics to start voting, and maybe even radicalize them. We and most of my Mexi peeps dont like Illegals as I said Try Again its not 11 mil its 30 plus mil!<<<<<<<< Could be a great way to wake up the Hispanics to start voting, and maybe even radicalize them.>>>>> That statement is pure bullshit! White Gringo liberals destroyed and brain washed my peeps! we will get even!
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