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[Frumple]

Ah, fair enough. Think I had you somewhat confused for someone else. S'what I get for trying to think when I'm half asleep.

[Neonivek]

Look the idea is that if it wasn't for environmental protection... the extra money the USA would generate would eliminate the need for environmental protection.

And isn't that true? Didn't we say that Solar power is so cheap, affordable, and effective that it can immediately take care of all our power needs?

So even environmental people agree with that assertion.

(Note: I am speaking facetiously)

[Frumple]

That's... not actually the idea, though. GOP mostly just denies there's a need for environmental protection to begin with. Not that an improved economy would eliminate the need.

Externalities isn't a term the party has much of a relationship with save derision, heh. And we've seen how it considers healthcare and worker rights and whatnot. Dead land and poisoned towns isn't a substantial concern for the party. Not anymore, anyway. There was a point conservation and land management was actually something conservatives/republicans somewhat aimed for, where workers actually got some support rather than empty words and practical sodomy. Ideological goal and all that. It's been a long time and a lot of donator investment since that was much of a thing for 'em, unfortunately.

Makes me realize I can't recall what happened to that lot, actually. Party change, corruption, age and dying? Pretty sure there was a point I remembered what had happened to 'em. Know there's some GOP voters that claim to be concerned about that sort of thing still around... but then they vote GOP, who haven't done much but screw that side of societal (government or otherwise) efforts for at least something approaching as long as I've been alive. Puts the claim to something of a lie...

[misko27]

Oh, that's okay then. I really hate politicians, almost as much as I hate other politicians.

truly a controversial statement (yes I know what thread I'm in). liking politicians competes with "fiscal liberal" and "reactionary" for top placement on the list of things no one describes themself as. Such a strong feeling though. You hate them? You hate them? Not just anger, indignity, outrage; but hate? When did you first come to hate?

It's funny, these people keep getting re-elected even though nobody likes them. I don't really get it.

Now here is where I make the controversial claim: other than the obvious "I hate every representative in Congress except my own" thing, they keep getting elected because the only thing America agrees on is that it hates Congress, and thus we keep electing politicians who only have that in common. But as it turns out, most of the people in office (who we hate for being manipulative, corrupt, evil, insane, whatever etc.) are in office because they are pretty darn good at hating each other. Giving the constituents what they want, as it were.

It's precisely because people have such a massive, raging hate boner for politicians that they elected someone who personifies literally everything they despise in politicians. It's precisely because people started to confuse the sin (corruption, lying, stalemating, bluster, scandal, obstruction, incompetence, neglect, decadence, opulence, etc.) with the sinner, and now hate the sinner more than the sin. So now the sin doesn't matter as much, as long as its decoupled from the hated sinner. It's now about whether you really hate politicians, and how many of them. Enter Donald Trump. Because coming in as an independent, he was hated by both parties; he hates politicians more than anyone; not the bad things politicians do, but politicians as a class. He hated the greatest number of politicians, and they hated him, and people thought "well if the politicians hate him he can't be that bad", because by making politicians and politics, itself, the object of scorn, anything politicians do becomes wrong. If one only hates the sin, then one recognizes when a politician does something decent; but when people come to hate the sinner they define the sinners as "one who does wrong", so of course they'd reject them! We've gotten to the point where we as a society forgive the sins, but not the sinners. That's why people have such cognitive dissonance when seeing polticians (especially ones we don't like; I bet you don't think of your favorite congressman as a politician) acting human freaks us out, because we associate being a politician with a lot of things (robotic, manipulate, lying, etc etc etc) but nothing positive. To be a politician is its own sin. And if you don't believe me, look at the election results: which party won? The Party of No. Which candidate won: Hillary Clinton, the politician, or Donald Trump, the celebrity?

And when the people who supported Trump come to hate him, will it be because he has done terrible things? Or because he has become just another politician?

[ChairmanPoo]

Such a strong feeling though. You hate them? You hate them? Not just anger, indignity, outrage; but hate? When did you first come to hate?

Anger leads to hate

[Max™]

I have damn good reason to despise my local congresscritter, while I'm glad ole' "fuck the Webb and internet privacy" Blackburn has fucked off further east due to redistricting, Kustoff is a Trump-loving "guns n' god n fuck the rest" shitbag.

[palsch]

Kansas Senate votes to approve ACA Medicaid expansion. It was passed by a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans over the opposition of more conservative Republicans.

This will still likely be vetoed by Brownback, but it's a sign that the universal opposition to the ACA - and forcing it to fail even at the expense of your own citizens - is crumbling after the AHCA failure. It will be interesting to see if other states take up the expansion now.



A look at Trumps climate executive order, AKA, bring back the emissions.

[scriver]

Make America's carbon footprint great again

[Rolepgeek]

I don't include republican voters in that sentiment. I've often contrasted Republicans from republicans. I am certainly frustrated with voters who vote against their own best interests and those of their country, but I am at least humble enough to recognize that if they had the advantages I have had, they wouldn't vote the way they do.

I save my ire for the representatives who manipulate the voting populous into a scared, ignorant, and hateful mass in order to attain illegitimate power, and for the fairly small number of people who gleefully support those representatives while knowing full well the consequences.

I've read a few pieces about that whole 'voting against their own best interests' shtick. And while sometimes it's true, as people are often less intelligent than we think, about as often it's not, and it's just people thinking they know better what someone else needs. A lot of the time, from what I know, it's people knowing what they want but not how to get there, but policy is difficult. It basically takes all of these other difficult sciences and theory-conglomerates and then tried to find how to optimize every variable simultaneously, by having the most popular people in different parts of the country argue back and forth and which ones are more important.

Plus, sometimes people just disagree, without one party being misinformed, and without either side being malicious.

That said, the current administration is really straining my 'give everyone the benefit of the doubt' philosophy. For the congresspeople, anyway. President&Co. lost it a while back. >.>

[Max™]

Are you wealthy?

If the answer isn't "bahahaha, as if you have to ask, oh that's great, let me call Tiff, she'll love this" then voting republican is in fact against your best interests. and has been since thaat old shitbag Reagan was zombie-shuffling around the oval office.

Americans like the lie that we're all 'one big break from being rich' so you can be nice and call them lied to, but informed the poor [R] voter ain't.

[PTTG??]

I don't include republican voters in that sentiment. I've often contrasted Republicans from republicans. I am certainly frustrated with voters who vote against their own best interests and those of their country, but I am at least humble enough to recognize that if they had the advantages I have had, they wouldn't vote the way they do.

I save my ire for the representatives who manipulate the voting populous into a scared, ignorant, and hateful mass in order to attain illegitimate power, and for the fairly small number of people who gleefully support those representatives while knowing full well the consequences.

I've read a few pieces about that whole 'voting against their own best interests' shtick. And while sometimes it's true, as people are often less intelligent than we think, about as often it's not, and it's just people thinking they know better what someone else needs. A lot of the time, from what I know, it's people knowing what they want but not how to get there, but policy is difficult. It basically takes all of these other difficult sciences and theory-conglomerates and then tried to find how to optimize every variable simultaneously, by having the most popular people in different parts of the country argue back and forth and which ones are more important.

Plus, sometimes people just disagree, without one party being misinformed, and without either side being malicious.

That said, the current administration is really straining my 'give everyone the benefit of the doubt' philosophy. For the congresspeople, anyway. President&Co. lost it a while back. >.>

Take a look at the stuff they're doing. I linked this earlier. Can you explain how the vast majority of republican voters are benefiting from this?

[Frumple]

... yeah, you're giving entirely too much credit to GOP policy, RP, especially as it relates to rural and/or impoverished areas where the effect is usually most noticeable. It's not a matter of thinking you know someone's needs better than they do, it's a matter of republican efforts working directly and persistently contrary to the needs said someone expresses, and them voting R regardless.

We're not talking high theory or some shit, we're talking GOP congresscritters voting to remove regulation that tries to stop industry from dumping waste a stone's throw from the local water sources. Trying to fuck healthcare access and quality for the poor in order to give the upper percentiles millions. That slashes infrastructure and education spending and leaves these areas even more crumbling and lacking a future than they already are. And on, and on, and on, all for promises that persistently don't manifest. "About as often it's not" is not even remotely an accurate assessment of the state of things out here. The last handful of decades have been astoundingly clear about that.

[Starver]

Do you think the Democrats are 'for' the working class? Their last candidate was heavily funded by Wall Street and Saudi Arabia.

As opposed to Wall Street and Russia..?


ETA: Let me be less glib about this.  All candidates need to be funded, and there are deep pockets in WS, funding whichever side they support, or funding the opponent of the one they don't support to counter the ones supporting them.

Meanwhile, the links between the House of Saud and Clinton (donations to the Clinton foundation - which, unlike the Trump Foundation, doesn't pay for personal costs like fines for breaking building codes or subscriptions to the Boy Scouts) are competently¹ separated from the campaign, with Trump having said various things then did other things and consistently seems to have casually accused Clinton of things he certainly knows he did himself.

The ties to Russia are not direct, but are far more unaccountable and inexplicable in their apparent innocence than anything identified in Clinton's camp, never mind the complexities of the Trump/China 'back-scratching' relationship which would still be news if it weren't for all the rest of the news...

¹ Or competently looking, certainly relative to the utter mess that is Trump's basic accountancy...

[Rolepgeek]

Are you wealthy?

If the answer isn't "bahahaha, as if you have to ask, oh that's great, let me call Tiff, she'll love this" then voting republican is in fact against your best interests. and has been since thaat old shitbag Reagan was zombie-shuffling around the oval office.

Americans like the lie that we're all 'one big break from being rich' so you can be nice and call them lied to, but informed the poor [R] voter ain't.

They probably aren't, and it's true that an educated populace makes for the best democracy. Doesn't mean they're stupid, and it doesn't mean telling them you know better will change their vote, and it doesn't even mean that actually informing them will change their vote, because they might want other things their local Republican party offers, more than what Democrats do.

I may have miscommunicated my beliefs. I'm not claiming the GOP isn't fucking shit up or fucking people over. I'm saying that you may not have as accurate a picture of what those people want as they themselves do. And often, people are better than we give credit for at wanting things that are good for them, in one way or another.

Like I said. Current administration is straining that. The last few months have been doing that. Last few decades, not as much.

Usually it's just significantly more gray than it's often presented. As far as I saw, that regulation has nothing to do with dumping waste and everything to do with whether or not you can even build there. Which is significantly different. While just setting up shop near a water source that will have coal residue in the air isn't good for the water, it is not dumping waste. Putting a massive hold on anything and everything EPA related, on the other hand, is terrible for everyone. This, current administration, I see as the awful shit everyone always says the GOP is. Before, they were significantly more restrained. If you wanna say it's only because of the Democrats, that's fine, but people vote based on past practices. They did not vote for this, specifically, knowing what it would entail. They voted for what happened previously, more or less knowing what it would entail. Those are different.

Oh, and I remember seeing something about how the Republicans appeal to the top 2% while the Dems appeal to the top 5%. Take that with a grain of salt as you will.

[EnigmaticHat]

Part of my frustration with Republican voters is that they want things that our politicians have no visible path to give them.  Not "voting against their interests" so much as "voting for politicians that will personally give them a pony."

What "small town America" wants, really, is for small town American not to die, and to turn back the clock to when we still had a bunch of manufacturing jobs.  But its like... globalism happened, its not easy to undo that.  Manufacturing jobs happen in developing countries because developing countries have low value currency and few employee protections.  The US isn't a developing nation, and our economy is very competitive for globalism because we produce things that you can't get anywhere else.  Advanced weapon systems, aerospace components, pharmaceutical research with an emphasis on terminal illness in the wealthy, software/hardware marketed to corporations.  And of course a lot of creative work, because yeah you can get movies and video games wherever you want, but if you want Michael Bay's Transformers or Left 4 Dead 2, you're getting it from us (or at least those who don't pirate it).

All of this keeps the dollar valuable, but it has the side effect that anyone who produces those things makes VASTLY more income than the rest of us.  Any old schmuck can stock shelves or fill in a pot hole, so they get paid the absolute bare minimum that companies are allowed to pay them.  For the economy to make sense, that minimum needs to be at least slightly comparable to what a competitive worker like an engineer makes.

The problem with "bringing manufacturing back" is that there's only two ways to do it.  You can force everything to be manufactured locally, for example with massive tarifs on China.  I don't know what would happen if we do this, but I haven't heard anyone seriously espousing it, so... I dunno.  Anyway, the main solution people suggest is removing employee protections and corporate taxation.  But the problem is that yeah you CAN work 60 hour weeks for 2 dollars an hour with no EPA or OSHA.  But if you do that in the USA economy where everything is already being marketed towards the non-1% upper class (the 20% or whatever) because they have so much money, you are effectively unemployed.

The thing is, yeah all the manufacturing jobs are in China and India and Mexico.  But life isn't better in those places.  Because believe it or not, a Chinese factory worker doesn't automatically get a car and a two story home and two kids.  And they don't necessarily have particularly great quality of life or expected lifespan.  As much as globalism is a bitch the fact that Hollywood and Silicon Valley and the defense industry and the pharmaceutical industry and advanced agriculture are here and not somewhere else gives us import buying power, and that means cheap shit for all of us.  On top of that, manufacturing is not a 0% unemployment button even in countries that have it, and its going to employ less and less people over time as automation gets cheaper.

Trying to save small town America by passing laws that hurt all Americans just doesn't make sense.  Its a fantasy.  We can't go back.  And it makes complete sense for Southern/Midwest voters to want it, but they're not going to get it.  And to be blunt its kinda funny that they keep voting in anti-welfare politicians because they're afraid of black people and illegal immigrants getting their free houses and cars from the government.  When the harsh reality is that welfare is going to be more and more of the small town economy as time goes on.  Eventually even if it takes 300 years coal and oil are going to go, and what's left?  Maintaining highways for other people to use?  Working in Walmart and then spending all your money there?