***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[plansb]

 

[RIP sleazyy]

 

[getback]

The irony in the alt-right being upset about being violated because they can't play on swing sets or get their bowl cuts is almost too much to handle.

 

[whywesteppin]

holy ****. this is why we need to see one's tax returns.

 

[boris]

kind of related but not really, I went to a chiropractor the other day to get my DOT physical. You need one every two years if you have a Cdl. I just went to this dude because it was by my house.

anyways I get in there and he doesn’t give me a physical, I pay him get my card and he then starts pushing fake pills on me. I told him I don’t want any and he starts screaming anti vaxer propaganda at me. It was wild in there. Never got in an altercation with a “doctor” until then.

this all reminds me of that. I swear the internet makes everyone dumber, all that fake “woke” stuff is getting old. Cut the joe rogan off.

My gf and I went to a chiropractor a few years ago. The fool was pretty good at cracking the regions of interest, but I swear it was cult like ****.

If you weren’t feeling well it was because you weren’t going to the chiropractor enough. If you were feeling well it because you saw the chiropractor.

Also if I remember correctly there are a lot of chiropractic schools that are still tied to the anti-vaccination movement.

 

[rexanglorum]

rexanglorum

I agree with most of this. But I'm confused by two things.

States and municipalities were absolutely pummeled by interest rates during the 1970s. Not unlike the debt crises of the Global South, local governments devoted increasing portions of expenditures to interest payments, payments redistributed to lenders on Wall Street (or, more generally, to bankers in major financial centers around the country and to bond- and note holders).

So what do you mean when you say that "What really happened in the 1970's is that the real rate of return on bonds and mortgages declined or put another way, households and municipalities paid less money to Wall Street." It does not follow that the declining rate of return is the same thing as households and municipalities paying less money to Wall Street.

I'm convinced by the narrative power of treating the 1970s as the moment when everything bad happened, and the political work that narrative does for consolidating neoliberal power.

But do you really want to claim that "the 1970's was the last decade that workers and ordinary consumers had equal footing with corporate power"? Are you more or less operating on the same 'narrative turf,' just from the opposite end, to see the 1970s as the last moments of some golden age, this despite the fact that black workers hardly ever had equal footing with corporate power? Aren't you really talking about the last hurrah of a particular segment of American workers and consumers--i.e. white workers and white consumers?

As far as interest rates were concerned, I should have added the qualifier "for fixed rate debt." So if you had an adjustable rate mortgage or you're city issuing new bonds, the inflation did not reduce the real rate that you had to pay.

For your second question, let me lay out my view of the last 80 years of so of history fro ma standpoint f labor, in general, and black labor, in particular.

I see it as there being three acts. Act one goes from about 1933 to 1968, the second act is from 1969 to 1980, the third act is from 1981 to now.

In the first act we have white workers getting a series of wins and concessions from capital.

In the third act, we have almost all workers losing to capital.

The second act, the middle act, the 1970's is perhaps the most interesting although terribly tragic.

It starts with black folks starting to get a piece of the pie, as it were. Between the civil rights movements in the 50's and 60's and the general power that labor enjoyed by workers (white workers enjoyed it to a greater degree but after decades of wins by labor, some of the benefits redounded to none white workers) we see very poor black people becoming not so poor and we see middle class black people getting home ownership for the first time. We also see a very robust and capable Federal government which was especially helpful for black people. We see welfare (which is objectively good despite decades of conservative demonization, we see public housing (not great housing but it reduced the power of the landlord class and in recent decades it has been demonized by conservatives), affirmative action (yet another thing demonized by conservatives but actually good), some degree of protection from environmental racism due to a strong EPA (demonized by conservatives) and the ability to sue made private sector actors through tort law (something demonized by conservatives).

In the mid 20th century, did workers have power over capital? no, but there was parity. Did working class blacks have the same access and power as working class whites? no, but in the 70's we see the gap closing.

The reactionary right able to use the growing parity that blacks enjoyed with whites to dismantle the parity that workers enjoyed against capital. The reactionary, libertarian, pro-business, right never was happy with the gains that white workers enjoyed at their expense but they went along with it. It would team up with the racist, reactionary cultural right. In the 1950's communism was conflated with "race mixing" and in the 1960's Goldwater combined white dislike of the civil rights movement with libertarian economics and created the blueprint for bringing together cultural and racial grievance with neoliberal economics. We must keep in mind that the 1964 nomination of Goldwater was no quite the inflection point that it is sometimes imagined to be.

Goldwater got destroyed and in 1968 through 1976, the GOP was still run by more moderate "country club" or "cloth coat" Republicans whose policy was to make controlled concessions to labor (which meant white labor) and concessions to minorities and women as well through the Title 9 and affirmative action and welfare programs. Also, in 1964, the rate of profit in the US was so high that there was enough to keep businesses relatively happy, to pay white workers a lot and there was enough to help black folks, somewhat.

The profitability crisis of the late 70's created a situation where there was less to go around. Business was going to keep it's share of the profits, pay white workers less and use gains enjoyed by black workers to stoke resentment among white voters. It obviously and tragically succeeded. It succeeded in large part because the GOP with Reagan and Gingrich and Atwater fused cultural resentment over black economic and legal gains (and economic and legal gains for women as well) with libertarian economics. The narrative was that a robust and well resourced Federal government coddled blacks and impoverished whites all while threatening their "liberty." The solution, they posited, was market discipline: dismantling unions, privatizing public goods, defunding departments in the federal government, ending affirmative action, tort "reform," voucherizing public housing, drug testing workers, raising deductibles and copays on insurance, raising the cap of interest rates for consumer credit, tuition and fees for public universities, all of it and more is a manifestation of the idea that workers have it too good (especially black workers) and they need discipline via the market and privatization.

So short version is that white workers won a bunch, black workers started to win some, conservatives fuse racial resentment with their preexisting economic project of privatization and deregulation and they succeeded. So the mid century and the 1970's in particular, give us a guide of what we should do, what we should not do and it underscores the importance of multi racial solidarity across the working class.

 

[mplsdunk]

My gf and I went to a chiropractor a few years ago. The fool was pretty good at cracking the regions of interest, but I swear it was cult like ****.

If you weren’t feeling well it was because you weren’t going to the chiropractor enough. If you were feeling well it because you saw the chiropractor.

Also if I remember correctly there are a lot of chiropractic schools that are still tied to the anti-vaccination movement.

that’s exactly how it was. Like I’m pretty open minded and don’t get freaked out easily. But I wasn’t digging this.

dude was soooo pushy it was making me get in fight or flight mode. I could just feel myself getting heated af. like who do you think I am? How stupid do you think I look?

I’ll never go to another one for anything.

 

[boris]

When I watched it live it sounded as if he was ignorant to the effectiveness re: disinfectants/UV and throwing out hypotheticals to the doctors on various possible methods of treatment.

The link posted today seems to show that he was talking about using it on the hands and asking sarcastic questions to reporters.

As he said yesterday, he isn't a doctor. And I think that people should rely on doctors for treatment methods. Not president Trump, or any other non-doctor.

It’s kinda crazy that you expressed more concern over people on NT calling Roy Moore a pedo than you have for the GOP’s words and actions that have resulted in people dying.

 

[willycheesesteak]

 

[boris]

that’s exactly how it was. Like I’m pretty open minded and don’t get freaked out easily. But I wasn’t digging this.

dude was soooo pushy it was making me get in fight or flight mode. I could just feel myself getting heated af. like who do you think I am? How stupid do you think I look?

I’ll never go to another one for anything.

Yeah, I feel you. I’ll stick to exercise to manage the pain. I tried to give it a chance but I don’t trust those fools anymore.

 

[plansb]

Chiropractors are quacks.

 

[jus3]

He just walked off

 

[mplsdunk]

He cracked my neck for free and that was cool but that was him trying to win me over. It was all down hill from there.

and yeah I just try and stay and shape and prevent the problems in the first place.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

ongoing thread

 

[willycheesesteak]

Love how you can hear one reporter yelling as he left "IS NOW THE TIME FOR SARCASM?" and he couldn't even turn around

 

[aepps20]

It’s kinda crazy that you expressed more concern over people on NT calling Roy Moore a pedo than you have for the GOP’s words and actions that have resulted in people dying.

#NOMORALCOMPASS

 

[Cashflow]

 

[willycheesesteak]

 

[rexanglorum]

I loved this movie when it came out, when I was a libertarian. I dislike it now that I'm a socialist.

It fit right in with the Daily Show Style approach to politics of 2006, it was used as touchstone during Trump's election and early presidency but I think that liberals, progressives and leftists need to stop acting like Idiocracy is any kind of thoughtful nor left leaning satire. It's neither left nor thoughtful, it's kind of funny though.

This video articulates those thoughts for me so I'd don't have to.

 

[AEA18]

 

[AEA18]

Spoiler

 

[whywesteppin]

Trump is a cancer, parasite, and virus, all in one.

 

[AEA18]

Spoiler

 

[Belgium]

It must've taken some time for the very stable genius' tremendous brain to process the potential effectiveness of injecting disinfectant.

 

[aepps20]

LIBS ARE OVER. YOU DON'T DESERVE DA LYSOL