Wounded Bear
Wounded Bear's JournalIt's actually the Repubs worst nightmare....
They have been accusing Dems for years of "voting in lockstep" and being some kind of unified bloc of intolerance and party line fanatics, when it has been the Repubs that have been getting 90+% voting support among members on basically anything proposed.
Now they are fractured, with an ignorant, unqualified asshole running for Pres under their auspices (Trump is the face of their party now) and the Dems are finally, actually coming together on some issues that have sweeping support among the voting public. General gun safety legislation has been runnning above 60% approval around the country, with some proposals getting 80+% approval. If there is a shred of democracy left in this country, the repubs should be going down on this issue.
I've seen a lot of teacher bashing over the years...
I missed the post above, so I'll just assume it is more of the same old boring RW bashing of anything they deem as too "liberal."
Anyway, much of the bashing seems to fucus heavily on the teachers' unions, which somehow RWers don't equate to bashing their own childrens' teachers. The old "well I didn't say/mean that" excuse for generalizing in their hatred. But since Reagan, the RW disdain for anybody who works for a living has spread to professions that used to be somewhat immune to it, like teaching and medicine. No more.
The one question I've always asked, and have never gotten an answer to, is simple. How in the hell did we let conditions get so bad for teachers that they felt the need to unionize? For the most part, people who love their jobs (and face it, most teachers teach because they love helping kids), and are well-paid and have decent working conditions don't 'rock the boat' by forming unions and agitating in the work place. The RW budget-slashers never take any responsibiblity for what they do when they slash budgets and payrolls. IMHO, teachers have not been fighting for "more" as much as fighting back and trying to hang on to what they once had.
There is a reason...
that Freedom of the Press is delineated in the very first amendment, and early in that as well. It is one of the most important.
Trump is a bully, and the RW echo chamber has intimidated and brain-washed their minions to the point that they will take his side on this. Most of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights have been eroded over the years, will anybody stand up and fight for this one, one whose existence is supposed to help guarantee all of the others?
All too true...
I've been watching since Nixon, though I should admit that I didn't do politics much for a lot of that time period. So, in that respect, I guess I'm part of the problem.
Since Reagan, though, the Repubs have driven farther and farther to the right. With that, liberal Repubs (yes, there used to be some of those around) and what we would think of as 'moderates' gravitated to their only option, the Dems. Consequently, the Dems have drifted and been pulled farther and farther to the right themselves, to where a few cycles back (think Clinton's first term) they actually crossed over to being a center-right party on most issues instead of left or center-left.
To compound the problem, as Repbubs got farther to the right, they became more and more extremist, and less open to any forms of compromise. Dems have been reluctant to drop their belief in compromise. This was showcased in the Obama presidency, where the Repubs categorically avowed that their main goal was to block everything the President tried to do, which they did, including many proposals that were decidedly not progressive or liberal in their implementation, the ACA being a huge example of this. It was somehow a 'miracle' that it passed, but it was and is in essence, a RW, corporate based solution to a problem screaming for a progressive, liberal one.
We've gotten to the point where any suggestion of progressivity or liberalism triggers an automatic response of "oh we couldn't do that." There never seems to be any vigorous response of "Why not?" to that rather vacuous statement. The country does need a huge shot of progressivism and liberal action, and we can't seem to get it.
As to the thought behind the OP, IMNSHO the Right is to blame as primary instigators, but the left, such as it remains, has been complicit and enabling in the process.
Is anybody surprised?...
The whole party is based on authoritarianism. They think leadership is some combination of making uninformed decisions (remember the "decider?" that was a 
moment for the ages) and barking orders, largely based on the uninformed decisions they made. There is no loyalty out there to see, no real principles except to misguided bronze-age theocratic bullshit. No loyalty to superiors or to subordinates. It's all me-me-me Trump and a crop of assholes who wish they were Trump.
People claim they want a "strong leader" and then fall for the bullshit and end up with someone with the mentality of a playground bully. Don't see anybody on the Repub slate who shows the maturity of a loud-mouthed BMOC wannabe. Of the whole bunch, Kasich is the best at faking it, I guess, but he's no savior of anything.
If not for the real risk that one of these bozo's might actually be president come next January, this would be fun to watch.
I came to the realization long ago...
that Repubs, and Conservatives in general don't respect work. Not really. They like to claim the white collar jobs in finance and stock market offices are true "work" when in fact they are more gambling than working. They certainly have no respect for people who work for someone else. In their minds, anybody who really counts should be running their own business, or making their living day trading stocks or something, anything that is "entrepreneurial" in their minds.
Of course, most wealthy people in America, like anywhere else in the world earned their wealth the old fashioned way, they inherited it. At worst, most of them started out on second or third base, to call up an old canard. And to finish the line, they think they hit a homer, that is they did all the work. Pres Obama's line about "they didn't do that" was understood by anybody who knows how the hard working people of the world get along. Only someone of privilege stoking their ego thinks they got where they are completely on their own efforts, with no assistance from any outside source. At best they'll thank God, instead of the public institutions which made their accumulation of wealth possible.
Working class, to them, means lower class, and don't deserve anything extra, meaning anything more than someone in the owner/CEO class is willing to pay them.
Thanks for the link. 
When I went in the Corps...
it actually was the first time I had direct interaction with black people, and certainly the first time I saw black people in positions of authority. Not a lot officers, but many NCOs and senior NCOs held positions in the units I was assigned to.
Nobody was black or white, we were all green. It wasn't as simple as that, of course, but we worked at it. It was the time when I started working on my own latent racism, which was surprisingly stronger than I imagined. One good thing, it's kind of hard to act out racially against someone who can bring charges on you. 
That was back in the 1970s, and I like to think I'm better now, but you know what, it slips out once in a while. All that shit I learned in my younger years is still in there. I'm just better than I used to be at suppressing it.
I'm proud to have voted for Obama twice and against Reagan twice. I guess life has a certain balance to it.
If you really think that the Democratic Party has gone "too far left"....
there's not much we can do for you around here. I kind of understand what you're saying, and I'm not in total disagreement, but I don't think there are that many "authoritarian socialists" around here. That would be more akin to communism.
Bernie isn't really that far to the left, and the only thing he is trying to 'socialize' IIRC is medical delivery. I don't want to get lost in a semantic battle about the definitions, but just because you think your friends want to follow "The Shining Path" doesn't mean that represents the beliefs of most Bernie-bots.
It's just that the Republican lite, DLC line of the Democratic Party is getting old to a lot of us, and no longer represents many of the values we think the Dem party should be about.
The Party has not gone too far left, that's propaganda from the RW echo chamber, worthy of Fox News or hate radio, not of a discussion around here.
Make no mistake, I'll take Hillary over any Repub, but she's my fall back, not as bad as the Republican position.
Kurds have wanted their own country for many years...
I hear they've softened their stance, in favor of a enhanced federal status in Iraq, but still.
Obviously, the Russians don't really give a shit about that, but are using it as leverage against the Turks, because of long standing issues there.
The whole region has issues that stem from before WWI and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, not to mention the whole Sunni-Shia thing going back to the 7th Century. It's a clusterfuck, and our going in and trying to seize/"open up" the oil resources have not helped. For all of his brutality-a probably largely because of it-Saddam's Iraq was the most secular, stable country in the region. Toppling him released a lot of regional power brokers trying to be the next BMOC.
Thanks, Bush/Cheney. I hope this whole fucking war period is named after them in perpetuity. The Bush/Cheney War. So much more accurate than the Second Middle Eastern War, don't you think?
True justice, and thus true justice reform is not race based...
However, given the history of the US, it is understandable that many blacks are skeptical about talk of economic reforms that do not directly address their issues. So often in the past, reforms have benefited whites and others, but not blacks. That's just a historical fact. We won't get past that using the conservative based "it's not really happening because we already fixed all that" thought virus.
I do know that MLKjr was a strong proponent of economic reforms, too. He knew that if ALL people at the bottom of the economic ladder were helped, blacks would be helped too, if we ensure that they are not excluded.
The M$M will ignore economic justice issues as they are not as sexy as racial conflicts and don't fit their Chicago school, supply-side narrative. In truth, there is no conflict. Helping black poor people will help all poor people. Helping all poor people will help black poor people. They are entwined.
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Kent, WA
Member since: Thu Aug 27, 2009, 08:55 PM
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