Quantity has no bearing over the amount of noise a small group of anarchists and marxists can make, I can assure you. I have never been fond of the academic leftists and I have never appreciated the smug conservatives either as both appeal to methods of a peculiar kind that contributes unfavourably to rational progress. I was battered and beaten when studying graduate political science by marxists, conservatives and the academic leftists that tore my thesis design apart as I stood sandwiched between the tussle of the three attempting to convince me which method I should conform to. I ultimately dropped out mostly from the isolation I felt. The worst of the three, though, was the Marxist who constantly insulted and degraded 'me' when I opposed taking his suggested routes, even went so far as to ostracise me from conference funding and publically insulted me at graduate meetings. The academic leftists and conservatives are at least bearable. — TimeLine

I'm sorry you had such a wretched experience in graduate school.

I think there is a difference between "real-world" and "campus based" marxists. Real-world marxists are usually not academically oriented, usually tend the sacred fire of an old socialist organization (Communist Party-USA, Socialist Workers, Socialist Labor, socialist something or other...) These are the marxists I'm most familiar with. They are usually a pretty decent group of people--not terribly effective, though.

My information about campus-based marxists is mostly second-hand. The thing about campuses (as you know) is that there are snake pits in many departments, from business administration to dance. Get a bunch of ambitious, highly competitive people together to fight over limited resources and some marginal issues and a snake pit will form.

the question of whether the Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance was - though unconstitutional - wrong? — TimeLine

I am not a fan of 'bias-motivated" crime ordinances.

People have a right to certain things: equal access to public educational opportunities; access to employment for which they are qualified; equal access to a standard level of health care; access to equal public accommodations (transportation, restaurants, hotels, etc. entertainment), and so on. These rights can be readily upheld by straightforward law-enforcement.

"Bias motivation" is not necessarily clear from the start. Was I robbed and beaten at gun-point because I was gay, or was it because I looked like I might be worth robbing? Was the man shot because he was black, or because he seemed to behave in a dangerous manner? Was the woman raped because she was female, white, and alone, or was it because she was a communist, atheist, lesbian?

The crimes committed against these example-persons are bad enough. Frankly, I don't care whether I was robbed and beaten because I was gay, or because I looked like I might be worth robbing. I would deeply resent the beating and robbery, either way.

Comparatively, one can think that restricting hate speech is a type of affirmative action. What do you think? — TimeLine

I don't think of hate-speech-restrictions as affirmative action.

I would rather live in a society where it is permissible to say "I hate fags" than live in one where it is illegal to say "I hate fags". I want to be free to express my opinions, and if I am free to say what I think, others should be similarly free. We have limits on free speech at the extreme edge: We are not free to encourage everyone who hates fags to get together and actually target and kill any gay men they might know of, or suspect. The limit here is on conspiring to kill people, not on hating fags. We are not free to engage in conspiracies to commit crimes--even ones involving no bias at all -- like robbing a bank.

And how different are we from robots? — TheMadFool

I can't speak for you, but I am as different from a robot as a fish is from an iPhones.

Isn't that what IBM Watson is being used for now, having ruined Jeopardy?

It turns out the world’s smartest supercomputer is a pretty good doctor, too.

Five years after dominating geniuses in its debut on Jeopardy!, IBM’s Watson is still putting human intelligence to shame.

The artificial intelligence machine correctly diagnosed a 60-year-old woman’s rare form of leukemia within 10 minutes — a medical mystery that doctors had missed for months at the University of Tokyo.

I personally would prefer a smart retriever over a computer to keep me company in a Senior Citizens Storage Tower, but a robot doesn't shed hair, doesn't have to urinate 8 times a day, defecate once or twice a day, doesn't chew up shoes, etc. On the other hand, a robot wouldn't lick my feet, nuzzle me, couldn't look deeply into my eyes to assess the condition of my soul, or decide to rest on top of me with her sharp elbow digging into my ribs.

I think anarchists and marxist rioters are being labelled academic liberals. — TimeLine

Anarchists and marxist rioters on the one hand, and academic liberals on the other are quite distinct. For one, the number of the former are very small. The latter are far more numerous and whatever they might say, they are upwardly mobile professionals who aren't going to put their lifestyle at risk by throwing rocks through bank windows.

"Serious marxists" came to the conclusion a long time ago that when it comes to political violence, the state is much better at it than anybody else and taking on the police, national guard, or army is a good way to end up dead in the street.

And perhaps - being Australian - I am unable to ascertain the historical and certainly deep rooted influences that would enable people to burn crosses in front of an African-American families' home (R.A.V., Petitioner v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota) which is a clear symbol of hate, while criminalising some peculiar offences such as topless sunbathing and yet seems downright passionate about justifying obscene political messages by hiding behind the first amendment; for instance, in Ohio v. Wyant that confirmed the unconstitutionality of bias-related crimes. — TimeLine

The contradiction between not prosecuting cross-burners and arresting nude sun bathers arises from unrelated sources. The problem with the ordinance in the cross-burning case was that it was overly comprehensive, forbidding protected political speech:

Whoever places on public or private property, a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. [St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance]

It isn't relevant to the law, but the "cross burning" was an extremely inept performance by 1 teenager, not a dozen adult Ku Klux Klaners doing a "proper" cross burning.

Laws banning public nudity, nude sun bathing, recklessly exposed genitalia, and such have altogether different roots. One root is a common and long-standing squeamishness about sexual parts. This isn't unique to the US. Another root is the collective sense of propriety. It isn't proper for some people to remove all of their clothing in public where other people are not doing so. It's impolite. A third root is dislike of homosexuals who seem to be the most likely to remove their clothes or recklessly expose their genitalia in public to facilitate lewd, lascivious, polymorphously perverse sexual purposes. And what about INNOCENT CHILDREN observing adult sexual organs!

So, contradictions abound.

So, do you think the protests are an outcome of your legislative failures? — TimeLine

No, I don't think the recent political protests (such as in Berkeley, California) are the result of legislative failure.

People engage in protest activity for various reasons, some of them far from straight-forward. Generally, though, people become politically active around economic issues (directly or indirectly).

Tensions between groups in society, friction, rifts, upheavals, and so forth generally have economic causes. Blacks, gays, and women, for example, didn't/don't demonstrate because they aren't getting good press or because they aren't winning enough Oscars. They demonstrate because they feel they are getting the short end of the economic stick. Whites don't want blacks to move into their neighborhoods because their main piece of wealth -- their homes -- will be devalued, even if that is somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy. Workers don't like seeing too many immigrants who will be competing with them for jobs and wages. Poor blacks don't like seeing gentrification because it raises rents and/or taxes and reduces the stock of affordable housing in a given area. Nobody wants to see half-way houses for released felons in their neighborhoods, nobody wants a large garbage burner anywhere near them.

Sometimes people demonstrate on behalf of others, or engage in vicarious struggle, when they have no skin in the game. Such is the case when white, middle class and above, college students join Black Lives Matter demonstrations and "lay their lives on the line" [sic] along with their recently acquired black brothers and sisters. Frankly, I don't believe them. When they graduate from school and pursue whatever profession they choose, they are not going to continue showing up at BLM demos. They will be living in nice enclaves with their own kind -- which is only reasonable. If they move to the slums it won't be in solidarity, it will be as urban pioneers leading the gentrification charge.

A few decades back, in the early days of AIDS, some straight people suddenly wanted to identify with the suffering and oppression of gay men. My reaction at the time was "Go find you own oppression, damn it, and leave mine alone." Allies are one thing, parasites are something else.

The anarchists and marxists -- or whoever the hell they were -- who were rioting, throwing rocks at big windows, spray-painting walls, and so forth were going for a free ride on the free-speech bus. The rioters may have disliked the guys speaking at Berkeley, but their small rioting was pretty much guaranteed to have adverse consequences. ("Infantile adventurism" the old time communists called it.)

There is nothing inherently wrong with destruction of private property during a riot. BUT, it has to be for a good reason, and it has to contribute to a larger cause. Such is not usually the case. Riots are very blunt instruments; way too blunt. For instance... IF during an anti-war riot some property belonging to the manufacturer of cluster bombs or landmines was wrecked, as part of the action to end an illegal, unpopular, and possibly illegal war using landmines and cluster bombs, that would be fine. But wrecking the same property during a women's march against Trump would be absurd, stupid, and counterproductive.

I was writing in support of you when I said, "Makes perfectly good sense to me."

I disagree with the sentiment "my country, right or wrong" because I don't think the idea of "country above all else" deserves that kind of fealty. "Nations" and the elites that run them pursue various goals. Some of the goals are in the interest of the the nation as a whole: public health measures, sound currency, navigable rivers and ports, and so on. Some are not: failure to regulate commerce, for instance--banking, mining, slaughterhouses, and so on. A failure to monitor international affairs and defend the country against real enemies would be against the national interest. Engaging in corrupt financial dealings by members of the government (or anybody else, for that matter) is against the best interests of the country.

There are contradictions, of course. What I may think are improper national policies may be somebody else's idea of criminal acts (like revealing the existence of massive CIA spying on domestic communication). Inflation is very bad for some people, great for others. For whom should inflation be managed? Etc.

Being critical is one thing, but fighting injustice is another. You can be both loyal to your country and critical of it, if being critical of it is in the best interest of the country. But if the injustice stems from your country, then you can't both fight that injustice and be loyal to your country. — Sapientia

Makes perfectly good sense to me.

There are numerous examples of patriots raking their country over the coals, being scathingly critical. And there are situations where people acted treasonously against their country, in its best interests (the plots to kill Hitler, for example, or Germans who did what they could to contribute to Germany's defeat--most of them were executed).

Several Americans have performed acts many considered treasonous: Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers), Deep draft dodgers and deserters in the Vietnam War, and all sorts of people who become antibodies in a sick body politic.

I want to freeze your in-law in carbonite and use him to repeatedly bludgeon the intellects of this crowd — VagabondSpectre

Sure. Send somebody round to collect him.

Hear hear! Let's stop labeling absolutely everything fascist, or at least somehow make it distinguishable from anything "anti-progressive" in appearance. — VagabondSpectre

A question: Was the USSR a fascist regime?

It is is usually not labeled as fascist. It was, in someways, successfully multicultural. That is, Muslims and Christians were both suppressed. "Russians" weren't called the master race, but a lot of Ukrainians were treated very, very badly. Joseph Stalin killed a lot of people for political purposes (millions). Stalin was authoritarian (as was the entire Communist bureaucracy). What the Soviets were not was conservative, religiously oriented (as Spain and Italy were), and focused on one ethnic group.

All true.

But then, there are some fascists or crypto-fascists around. I'd label one of my brothers-in-law as one: he's extremely conservative; is a fan of the southern confederacy; he's pro-military (former submariner), doesn't like blacks, gays, or leftists; is rigid in his thinking; and so on. For crypto-fascists, it's the combination of traits that adds up to crypto-fascism--not an explicit political philosophy. He isn't an unpleasant person (as long as you don't tangle with him on politics, religion, and the like).

There are white-supremacists (or other supremacists) who are explicit in the political philosophy who are, clearly, fascists. Fortunately, at this point, they aren't all that common. Given an economic and social collapse, I'd expect a lot more actual fascists to form and emerge.

In Mark's view, fighting against what he perceives to be the dangerous sexism and racism of the "alt-right" and his political opponents is as justifiable as preventing a second holocaust. — VagabondSpectre

Well, one of the methods of the academic liberals (AcLibs) is to exaggerate. Construing a racist joke as tantamount to lynching, or a sexist joke as rape, and so on are exaggerations. Another method of the AcLibs is to reduce the colorful, nuanced world into black-and white, not even employing half-tones of gray. Black and white is of course much simpler than 1000 shades of gray.

True enough, many AcLibs have an authoritarian streak, though I haven't seen any signs lately exhorting the people to obey Noam Chomsky. Being somewhat authoritarian doesn't make them fascists. It does make them democratic trip hazards.

A third method of AcLibs is to employ terms that can only have vague meaning (like "micro-aggression") and then treat them (when convenient) as if they were precise.

Fascism is therefore inherently opposed to free-speech (that is, any speech critical of the fascists) because it is the first line of defense against the implementation of it's political agenda, and so it becomes the first casualty at their hands. — VagabondSpectre

Hate-speech codes, safe spaces, trigger-word warnings, and all that are not highly compatible with "free speech". The politically correct AcLibs are maybe more interested in free speech than your typical fascists, but truth be told, people of all stripes dislike hearing too many dissenting opinions. Mostly we think we are obviously correct in our views, and other people who disagree with us are either stupid, crooked, or both.

I'd like to limit the use of the term fascism. Full disclosure: I like the all-purpose slur "fascist" or "crypto-fascist" as much as the next leftist. But as a matter of fact, "fascism" arose at a particular time and place, and has specific characteristics:

• An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
• Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant political views and practice.
• The term "Fascism" was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), and the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach. — dictionary definition

The fascist symbol--a "fasces": the axe in the middle of the bundle of rods. There is nothing "fascist" about the fasces: It's old, and appears on the wall behind the Speaker of the House of Representatives and was on some American coins (at least). It goes back to Roman times. "Fascism" was invented in the 20th century, in Italy.



There are right wingers, authoritarians, nationalists, intolerant leaders, and so on who, as objectionable as they might be, are NOT fascists because they are in favor of democracy, are not slavishly obedient, don't believe in the inherent superiority of one ethnic group, and so on. This is to say, not everything objectionable is fascist, and fascists might not be all that objectionable, at least over dinner and drinks.

VS, this is a very interesting topic, and I want to comment -- but I have places to go, people to see, and can't. I'll be back later today.

"I fell in love with my neighbors wife."

These things happen in the real world. Sometimes we act and sometimes we do not. The strange things that happen in life might be fun, upsetting, inconvenient, a lark, unthinkable, too stupid for words, the chance of a lifetime... all sorts of possibilities. One of the strange things that could happen has happened, and you have not acted on it. Almost certainly in this case, not acting is the better thing.

"Falling in love with the wrong person and not acting on it" doesn't mean that the whole thing will just disappear like the morning mists. Oh, no. We have all these emotions, ideas, fantasies, memories... and they haunt our waking hours. But this too happens in real life.

We just have to soldier on, doing what we think is right, or covering our losses when we do what we think is wrong. Deal with it as best you can.

transcendent |ˌtran(t)ˈsend(ə)nt|
adjective
beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience: the search for a transcendent level of knowledge.
• surpassing the ordinary; exceptional: the conductor was described as a “transcendent genius.”
• (of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe. Often contrasted with immanent.
• (in scholastic philosophy) higher than or not included in any of Aristotle's ten categories.

Substance, Quantity,
Quality, Relation,
Place, Time, Position,
State (or 'habitus'),
Action, Affection or Passion

• (in Kantian philosophy) not realizable in experience.

The root of 'transcend' means "to climb across". It doesn't seem like mortals could reach the other side without climbing across. God, presumably, can transcend time and place without climbing across anything.

So, for us it would seem necessary that we perform--transcend. We transcend the limitations of our understanding of God by engaging in fervent prayer, fasting, and meditation--all actions. For us, we can't be here, then there, without actually moving from here to there.

Some people are "transcendentalists--a movement of spiritually keyed up Unitarians influenced by the Romantic Movement. Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau come to mind as avatars of Transcendentalism.

Jesus TRANSCENDED death. Generally, people don't actually transcend much very often. Democrats had better TRANSCEND their current thinking, ways, and means. Trump TRANSCENDED the usual customs of the Republic Party. A yogi can TRANSCEND pain when walking on burning coals (supposedly).

Kant thought it was outside experience--which for us, I guess means we don't transcend and tell about it.

You don't even know for sure whether a divine being exists — Bitter Crank

True enough, I don't know for sure. Which is why I have come to the conclusion that talking about the divine is a waste of time. For believers worshipping, adoring, seeking some experience of the divine is eminently worth while. But talking about it is not. The object of our reasoning is unavailable for confirmation or denial.

I'm not trying to be unpleasant. I'm trying to suggest that you stick to what can be reasoned about, and keep your categories separate. Good and evil are opposites, and if the words are to mean anything in reasoned discourse, their usage has to be kept crisp and clean. Mucking about with "well, gee whiz, maybe evil is masquerading as good" and all that leaves you in a muddle.

Yes but I don't know whether this has a divine purpose or not. — TheMadFool

And I dare say that knowing whether evil had a divine purpose is way above your pay grade. You don't even know for sure whether a divine being exists.

Evil may serve a greater good - we don't know. — TheMadFool

This is just game playing. "Evil" has clear enough meanings, and so does good. Trying to confuse them is a waste of reasoning power.

No.

The so-called "problem of evil" is clear enough: Men and women are capable of behaving very, very badly AND they do. We do not like to think of our selves as so readily and thoroughly capable of evil, but we are. And we hate that.

I said earlier that we created god. We also created the devil. We off-loaded our goodness and badness onto god and the devil. It's a way of projecting our strengths and deficiencies on to external (nonexistent) beings.

WE are the problem of evil, and we are the problem of good, for that matter.

From an atheist POV, there is no "problem of evil". God, not existing, is not simultaneously all good and allowing evil to flourish. (There isn't any question that "evil" -- malevolent bad behavior -- exists. It exists, and in itself it is a big problem. Very good behavior exists too, and people are capable of being both very good and very bad.

That was one long survey to sit still for.

What was it that you wanted me to notice about Elizabeth Warren's items in the survey? It didn't seem all that remarkable. And 16% had not heard of Elizabeth Warren, but only 4% had not heard of William Howard Taft? What kind of group were they surveying?

I mean, really -- Taft, Hoover, Coolidge, and Wilson? Who, these days, has any opinions about these three -- except people who are hard-core American political history aficionados?

Of course it is hubris for believers to presume to understand the mind of god, but it really isn't all that much of a problem.

Let me come at this from an atheist point of view.

God didn't exist and it was necessary to invent him. God was conceived to be beyond our understanding. Perfect, all knowing, all powerful, ever present everywhere, just, loving and/or angry. We conceived of god as very different than us. We are imperfect, we know a little bit, we have a little power, we're very much stuck within time and space, and we are collectively an emotional mess.

We are only "made in the likeness of God" but we like to think of ourselves (sometimes) as "little less than a god".

The inscrutable god is our creation. We created god without a mind that could be known. We could, of course, revise our creation--but after a few thousand years of claiming otherwise, revising god's mind would devalue the franchise.

Believers, of course, don't think this way. Their god's mind is unknowable, but seems to be somewhat discernible with sustained effort. Believers can spot other believers gaming this mystery, especially when they don't agree:

The ambitious pastor testified before the congregation, "God is unknowable, but after long prayer, I have discerned that god definitely wants us to spend our money on a new church building. We could have helped many poor people with $3,000,000, but God wants us to do this. God knows what we really need."

Lock him up!

Who do you think will stand against Trump — Cavacava

I think it is too early to worry about that, because...

1) The mid-term elections are less than 2 years away, and the democrats need to worry about those. This is state level work, mostly, but the next 5 congressional elections will determine more about the future than the next presidential election (or it won't).

2) There are no obvious candidates today. Everybody you listed you thought was too old, too polarizing, or too liberal. I don't think Elizabeth Warren is too polarizing, and Michele Obama should definitely never run. (I'm opposed to multiples of Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas running for president.)

3) ONE person will rise to the top on the basis of their money, their personal charm, their dominance of the party, their ability to organize their multi-million-person constituency, and even a few good ideas, if they happen to have any, which they may not. It will probably be clear by 01-1-2019 who that person is--for both parties.

That said, there are certain things the party and the prospective candidate should and should not be:

They should not be focused on any of the issues belonging "the culture wars"; racial or gender equity in the professions--all the usual stuff Democrats talk about. They can afford to not put this stuff front and center. Instead they should be focused on the economic reality which 50% to 60% (give or take a decile) live with: Stagnant wages, a declining standard of living, insecurity in employment, no likelihood of a remotely satisfactory retirement from work, declining ability to obtain adequate health care, increasing debt, and so on. These economic and work-life issues supersede race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and such, as well as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, the glass ceiling in the executive suites, welcoming and celebrating immigrants, and so on.

Focus on the economy that the vast majority of people live and die in, not the economy of the upper middle class, lower upper class, and the rich--on up to the handful of persons who control 50% of the world's wealth.

As a Clinton once said, "It's the economy, stupid."

You can get it used for cheap from Amazon. I think you'd really enjoy it. — Mongrel

I got it for cheap (hard bound) from AbeBooks.com . AbeBooks is an ordering service for used book stores all over. Thanks for the recommendation. I saw a PBS American history program devoted to Long, but that was many years ago.

On the Democratic and Republican Leadership
The High Popalorum Speech

"The Democratic Party and the Republican Party were just like the old patent medicine drummer that used to come around our country. He had two bottles of medicine. He'd play a banjo and he'd sell two bottles of medicine.
One of those bottles of medicine was called High Popalorum and another one of those bottles of medicine was called Low Popahirum.
Finally somebody around there said is there any difference in these bottles of medicines? 'Oh,' he said, 'considerable. They're both good but they're different,' he said.
'That High Popalorum is made from the bark off the tree that we take from the top down. And that Low Popahirum is made from the bark that we take from the root up.'
And the only difference that I have found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership was that one of 'em was skinning you from the ankle up and the other from the ear down — when I got to Congress."

Do you think any of the other candidates in the 2016 campaign fit the description of 'demagogue'? — Wayfarer

I don't know. Sanders? No. Most of the Republican candidates? No, probably not. Cruz?

I'm not very familiar with Long. How did he "take over" the Louisiana Legislature? "Dictators" do a lot more than just attack people who disagree with them. Like, they dissolve (or shoot) the legislature. Did Long do that? They declare martial law and use the armed forces to execute their will. Did Long do that? They arrest and imprison their opponents without a real trial. Did Long do that? They ally themselves with the appropriately conservative clergy (Franco) or they just get rid of the uncooperative collared bunch (Hitler).

So, he fired relatives of people who disagreed with him. Were they political appointees serving at the "pleasure" of the executive? Or were they civil service?

Stalin is on par with Hitler, Mao, et al. Are you really grouping Huey The Kingfisher Long with that crowd? He was, after all, the governor of a hick state which was about as backwards as any in the south.

He was a populist who (correctly) thought that Roosevelt didn't intend to distribute much wealth. Should he have been something else? Populism has a bad name, of late.

What should cause more concern than a hothead screaming about the courts is a court that able to divine every contemporary moral principle from an 18th century document and impose that morality on a supposedly democratic body. — Hanover

What should cause more concern is a particular hothead appointing members to the court to divine contemporary moral principle from an 18th century document in the way preferred by said hotheaded devil and his running dog lackeys (or managers).

A fascinating case of it was Huey Long, the American Stalin. — Mongrel

What is Stalinesque about this?

Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), was ... a Democrat, he was an outspoken populist who denounced the wealthy and the banks and called for a "Share Our Wealth" program. As the political leader of the state, he commanded wide networks of supporters and was willing to take forceful action.

Long is best known for his Share Our Wealth plan, which he established in 1934 under the motto "Every Man a King". It proposed new wealth redistribution measures in the form of a net asset tax on corporations and individuals to curb the poverty and homelessness endemic nationwide during the Great Depression. To stimulate the economy, Long advocated federal spending on public works, schools and colleges, and old age pensions. He was an ardent critic of the policies of the Federal Reserve System.

He was very forceful, doing a full-court press on behalf of his policies. Bear in mind, though, that he had the "oil trust" (like Standard Oil") as a principle opponent, and they didn't play nice either.

Recall that 'protecting security' and 'ensuring national stability' is generally the first step that autocracies take in suspending constitutional protections. — Wayfarer

Trump has distinct tendencies toward demagoguery either as a matter of style or substance, or both. But... He didn't arrived at an 'unprepared' White House, however.

Executive power has been growing for decades at the expense of the legislative branch. The US has spent trillions of dollars and lost maybe 60-70,000 soldiers and killed millions of people, since 1960 on wars for which their was no congressional authorization (save financing). The executive branch has behaved either imperiously, deviously, or both under Johnson (Gulf of Tonkin incident) through Bush (Iraq's WMDs), to Trump.

The Via Demagogia was built before Trump decided to run for President. Had Hillary Clinton won, she also would have used the expansive presidential powers available to her. Would she have used them demagogically? Her style and substance do not seem to be so constituted.

Lets all hold hands — Wosret

Just hold hands? Nothing more? It might be the last thing we ever do. If it's The End, let's get naked and see what happens.

What do you mean, "There's no such thing as progress"? We have more ways than ever before to create messes that blow up in our faces. Once upon a time, it was nothing more complicated than finding a better way of fixing a stone axe to a stick before somebody grabbed the invention and sank the axe in the skull of the inventor. Had she not gotten greedy and grabby, she might also have had a blade attached to a handle. Murderess Cro-Magnon bitch.

These days, we have piles of pretty plutonium just waiting to be pinched and packed into either a nice clean complicated Paris-leveling bomb or a simple dirty NYC-metro-area-contaminating contraption. Either way, bad news all round. They recently discovered a can of Spam at the bottom of the Mariana Trench -- 10 km into the deep. We slobs dump trash everywhere.

unjust, punitive, unsafe, inhuman — unenlightened

The Quartetto Perfecta.

If capital punishment leads to more murder, and youth in asia leads to more suicides, what calamity will bitcoin lead to?

They need to mimic what the Republicans did, which started with gerrymandering their way to optimal Congressional districts. The Dems need to legally challenge the lopsided nature of many of these districts. — Cavacava

Right, well that fixing district boundaries only happens every 10 years, so it's a long-term strategy--and one the Democrats have not paid enough attention to. You have to be IN POWER when the census reports are available for redistricting. Then you can do things like slice off pieces of your opponents electorate and put them with your own overwhelming majority. The Republicans can also challenge boundaries in courts, and sometimes the courts end up drawing the boundaries.

The Republican's ability to marshal their members is, to my mind, their key to winning. — Cavacava

This IS important. The earlier Daley Democratic organization in Chicago ["Vote early and vote often"] was very good at delivering votes. This is done at the bottom, precinct level. A lot of places have no precinct level organization capable of doing any such thing.

Seizing and selling all the offender's earthly possessions doesn't cover it? Well, that's the part where you "enforce compensation" by shipping them to a labour camp where they toil indefinitely until it's all been paid for. It would probably feel like a punishment, but that's just happenstance and something which vengefully-minded people would be free to secretly take solace in. — zookeeper

You worm! You stole the Revolutionary Re-Education Plans for the wealthiest 5%. Some of them won't be shipped off to labor camps. They will become maids and grooms to the obnoxious riff raff we will house in their former estates. "The first will be last, and the last will be first."

The Dems need to move past their failures, not wallow in them. — Cavacava

Absolutely. But... can the leadership at the national level do that? It is as important for the Democrats (or any other party) to be active and vital at the state level too -- that's critical for staying in power. Ultimately, the states are where the political talent comes from (or first, in legislature districts, then congressional districts).

The only way to deal with Trump is to keep him (personally) and his policies in court continually over the next 4 years. — Cavacava

Court or jail, which ever comes first.

The Dems didn't lose the election, they won the popular vote by a margin wider than most historical presidential elections. — Cavacava

The electoral college has been in the Constitution since the getgo, and if you lose there, you lose the election, period. Whatever problems the electoral college solved, it creates the anomaly of popular vote winners who are not elected.

There are pieces of the Constitution which should be removed and parts that are missing, but the worst thing we could do (just guessing) is have a constitutional convention and rewrite it. Who knows what sort of horror show we would end up with.

Have you heard of George Soros? The top donors to the Democrats at the election were:

University of California $1,945,782 — tom

I'm surprised about your first item -- not that they supported a Democrat, but that they made a nearly 2 million dollar donation to anyone. I wouldn't think it would be in their charter to make political contributions to anyone.

The top 1% on Wall Street and wherever else they hang out financially support both political parties. Why is that? Because the two political parties are not highly dissimilar and the 1% has influence over whoever is in office.

The Democrats may regulate more than Republicans, but neither political party has the slightest interest in changing, challenging, or corralling the oligarchy.

the good old days, when everyone owned a home, had a job, a dog, and a clothesline. — Wayfarer

Clotheslines... natural, ecological, inexpensive, organic, hygienic, convenient, energy efficient, laborious...

The Past - the good old days — Wayfarer

But, as William Faulkner said, ""The past is never dead. ... Actually, it's not even past." We think, "Oh, that was back in the 1950s, or the 1920s, or the 11th century. It's passed and past. It's gone, we don't live there, we don't go there to visit.

But, not true.

And as Otto Bettmann described the past -- compare today's auto exhaust to the 100,000 horses in 1900 New York that dropped 1.3 billion pounds of solid manure a year on the streets and dressed it with 88 million gallons of urine, while all the wagon and cart wheels turned it to a rich brown slurry. In the winter, of course, it froze, and in the spring... it thawed.