Keys to Democratic success
I wasn’t particularly surprised at the results of the recent election. They were predicted, although not every exact detail. Probably none of you were really surprised, either.
But on another level I continue to be surprised at how many people seem to think the direction in which the Democratic Party is going now is just peachy keen. And yet I also know that I shouldn’t be at all surprised, because some of the reasons for it are glaringly obvious.
The first reason states the positives of what the Democrats offer: they promise “free” stuff to people who really do need it or who feel they need it. That has obvious appeal to the people who get the stuff, and that appeal doesn’t need explaining. But the approach also has great attractiveness to many of the people who will pay for the stuff. What do they get out of it? The feeling of being good and generous people, concerned with the welfare of others—unlike those mean and uncaring Republicans who are not good people at all. The approach also appeals to academics and intellectuals because they think they’ll be the ones to design the welfare state with their superior knowledge.
The second reason states the negatives of what Democrats say Republicans offer: racism and bigotry. The left has successfully managed to brand the right, even the moderate right—in fact, any Republican, particularly in what the left likes to call “the age of Trump,” as though he’s a dictator—as racist. With the ever-expanding definition of racism these days, they can include as racist those laws that—for completely unintended reasons, even if applied even-handedly—happen to fall disproportionately on minorities. And they can include as racist any criticism of a minority person, however justified and however much evidence is presented. When everything’s a dog whistle, the air is thick with racism.
The actual consequences of a given policy in the real world, and the fact that most people in both parties want the common good and just have different ideas about methods to achieve it, has gotten lost. Now we have a titanic and Manichean battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
That’s also why it’s important to the left to brand all people on the right who happen to be members of a minority group as betrayers of their own race (and thus, in a sense, racists themselves) and/or as inauthentic members of their own race. A black Republican is, to the left, an oxymoron—or at least must be presented as one. Such a person is a living breathing refutation of the “Republicans are racists” message, and therefore are especially and uniquely dangerous to the left and must be redefined in a way that eliminates the contradiction.
I am a White Male, so I am by definition a Racist. And my White Wife is being denounced because she votes Republican. Not much either of us can do then. Very tiresome. As one much wiser than me repeatedly says “This Will Not End Well”. But for whom?
….and, the poster child for the new morph of Lefty-Liberals is the high minded, deeply deep, immensely intelligent, widely read amazing Ocasio Cortez…Questions, anyone???
Sorry… Oh…One other Question: Has anyone seen one of the above with a Sense of HUMOR..??!!**
**RHETORICAL F**king QUESTION**
One of the few downsides to a free and open society is that we are free to shoot ourselves in the head which is what we have been doing for the last 30 or more years and, as a free and open society, our cultural suicide prevention capabilities are limited.
A couple of comments on this.
1. The education system has been taken over by Marxists who teach indoctrination, not History or Literature. Jordan Peterson has warned that STEM is next and it has already begun.
2. The number of people who run small businesses has dropped substantially. One example I am very familiar with is doctors who have gone in 15 years from small business people to employees of large health care corporations that are vertically integrated. Ted Kennedy accused the US healthcare system of being “A Cottage Industry” and he was right. Doctors used to care about patients. They were customers and without them there would be no income. Now, they have become cost centers.
Here is what we have to look forward to.
Socialism is back in fashion because no one under 40 knows any history. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 27 years ago.
Ah, perceptions and semantic games. The left gave us our State-established religion “Pro-Choice”, political congruence (“=”), female chauvinism, selective-child, normalization of diversity or color judgments (e.g. racism, Jew… White privilege), social justice adventures, progressive anti-nativism, and sustainable monopolies and practices in lieu of reform. The American center is conservative (i.e. Constitutional, no diversity, no sexism, pro-native, no abortion rites). The American right is libertarian. The center of the bell curve is highly tolerant. The left favors politically congruent (i.e. profitable) milestones. The right will go along to get along with normalization.
NRO’s Corner has had a couple of posts about some coastal suburbs going blue because of the limitations on the SALT (state and local tax) deductions. It sounds like a lot of people don’t want to put their money where their mouths are.
In this Thanksgiving season, all I can say to New’s readers is “count your blessings.” And for those of you in Florida, re-count them.
The Tucker Carlson speech, I think I linked to, if not, here it is. has him pointing out that the Middle Class vanished about 2015 and they are what is driving the Trump phenomenon.
I would add that they are either small business people or skilled trades, mostly. The reason why both tend to be economic conservatives is that so many of them have experience signing the FRONT of paychecks.
I was one of the small businessmen doctors. For about 14 years, I practiced with a partner, then I left the group which had grown to five of us, and practiced alone for five more years. My employees got a pension plan and health insurance. I had to pay their salaries before I took one.
The college educated suburban voters, who are turning Democrat, are on salary. Many have good 401ks which depend on the stock market, which has benefitted greatly from Obama’s ZIRP. Bill Clinton was protected by the economy of the 90s and the crash came as he left office.
A lot of Republican voters are either on salaries or are wedded to the global economy or both. The guy who runs a 711 store isn’t.
I think that is what happened to Orange County, CA. Plus, it is now 30% foreign born, plus many second or third generation Vietnamese who have forgotten their grandparents’ experience with communism.
“Jordan Peterson has warned that STEM is next and it has already begun.”
Oh yes! For the moment, it’s well along in biology. Chem and Math not far behind. Rumblings occurring in physics and engineering. I hate to say it, but I think a lot has to do with those scientists trying to be in with the “cool” crowd. As the majority of faculty are humanities, social sciences, or arts, the sciences either go along, or put their head down in the lab and hope it all goes away. Of course, that’s not going to happen. The humanities people have already said that they want to change how we teach physics. 2 1/2 more weeks for me.
@ expat – usually I keep my temper, but I have at times just snipped at liberals “Spend your own charitable money and time at the same rate as conservatives and we’ll talk. Until then, you have no standing.”
The democrats believe that spending other peoples money is an act of charity. They love doing good at somebody else’s expense. As an example, in Washington DC they recently raised the minimum wage. The politicians were being generous with other peoples money. Remember Bernie Sanders campaigned and promising those college students free stuff and they were cheering.
For a break from all the depressing DimDem/librul/lefty screeching, let me point you to a rather upbeat statement of why and to whom we are properly grateful at Thanksgiving time. By Perry Metzger at Samizdata, it begins:
https://www.samizdata.net/2018/11/on-thanksgiving/
My wife and I are being very thankful for a number of things. We are back together after 25 years apart and living in a great house in Tucson which we could not afford in California. The kids and grandkids are all healthy. I am happy to be away from the traffic in LA and OC. I saw a view of the 405 traffic on TV a few minutes ago. It would be nice to be closer to them but we have kids all over the country and two in Canada.
No complaints here,
Not from a farming family, but it strikes me that one of the trends responsible for beginning the erosion of traditional values, and decadence we see all around us may have begun as far back as when the U.S.–which had, at it’s founding, been primarily an agricultural country (90% of the 1790 labor force was composed of farmers) full of small family farms–first slowly and then quickly, morphed into an industrial economy, and now, increasingly, into a service economy.
Coinciding with these major changes, small family farms and the number of farmers first proliferated (while the peak number of farms was 6,500,000 in 1920, by then farmers had declined as a percentage of the labor force, comprising just 27% of that 1920 labor force) and, then, began to decline.
By 1990 farmers comprised just 2.6% of the labor force, and comprise an even lower percentage today.
By 2017 there were only an estimated 2.04 million farms in the U.S., as small family farms were overtaken by larger and larger scale mechanized agricultural operations, which these small family farms just couldn’t compete with.
The 2012 Census of Agriculture found that more than 20%, almost 429,000 of those two million or so farms, had less than $1,000 in sales per year, and they farmed just 63 million acres, or 6.9% of the almost 915 million acres under cultivation.
By way of contrast, in recent years just 8% of farms, each usually consisting of thousands of acres, were farming 370,000 acres, over 40% of the total farm land under cultivation, and had annual sales of $500,000 to a million dollars or more.
This was not just an economic change, it was also a cultural and philosophical change, because it was out of the small family farm ethos that a lot of the main elements of American character and values emerged, and became part of our national character–things like a strong work ethic, frugality, honesty, careful planning, taking the long view, adaptability, “family values,” and strong faith.
As millions of small family farms have sharply declined–wasted away, we’ve had fewer and fewer of these small family farms to teach, emphasize, and actualize those traditional core values, and that has had to have had a major and harmful impact on the U.S.
See, for instance, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/FarmLandIn/FarmLandIn-02-16-2018.pdf
Make that…farming 370 million acres, over 40% of the total farmland under cultivation.
MikeK on November 21, 2018 at 2:21 pm at 2:21 pm said:
Totally coincidental, but I just finished reading this at your blog, after reading the Thanksgiving Skirmish post you linked earlier (as you say, very funny later, not so much at the time); about had a fit when I read this title —
http://abriefhistory.org/?page_id=4544
“Why I vote Democrat”
Julie near Chicago on November 21, 2018 at 5:54 pm at 5:54 pm said:
For a break from all the depressing DimDem/librul/lefty screeching, let me point you to a rather upbeat statement of why and to whom we are properly grateful at Thanksgiving time. By Perry Metzger at Samizdata,
* *
Excellent post – and also the comments about marxists and capitalists, which somehow generated an exchange on the Grenfell Tower fire, with Perry getting the final word.
Perry Metzger (New York, USA)
November 21, 2018 at 9:46 pm
Re: fires in state operated housing, I continue to find it amazing how frequently people blame the behavior of state organs operating frankly socialist infrastructure on “capitalism”.
Assistant Village Idiot on November 21, 2018 at 3:59 pm at 3:59 pm said:
@ expat – usually I keep my temper, but I have at times just snipped at liberals “Spend your own charitable money and time at the same rate as conservatives and we’ll talk. Until then, you have no standing.”
Indeed.
Aesop, I’m glad you also liked Perry M.’s posting. Yes, I could’ve strangled “pete,” who brought up the Grenfell fire, blaming it (by implication at least) on the self-interest that produced the abundance of the West. And I was glad to see P.M.’s takedown.
.
Assistant village idiot: I too like your response to the libruls who propose to use somebody else’s money to support their own preferred recipients. And then try to guilt-trip those of us who don’t approve of “redistribution.” as ordered by them & Gov.
.
MikeK, it sounds as though you are in clover, so to speak — does clover grow in Arizona? A very happy Thanksgiving to you, your wife, and all your far-flung kids, their kids, and other friends and family.
Most people like to be among the “cool kids”, those on the inside. There is always a “them”. The Dems, who used to be racist against blacks, as well as anti-communist (when white male workers were Dems), are strongly “anti-racist”, in words.
But few hire blacks at greater rates than they hire whites; tho few Dems are hiring many folks at all, directly. Small business owners are seldom Dems, and big business owners hire … others to have an HR department do the hiring, increasingly more influenced by PC considerations.
Who are the “cool ones”? NOT the Republicans! This is mostly defined by the University, who have said it’s wrong to discriminate; except it’s OK if it is secret discrimination against pro-life folk, public Christians, supporters of smaller gov’t, supporters of Free Speech, supporters of Due Process; in other words, Reps. Today it’s OK to discriminate against Reps… Universities need to be defunded by Federal tax breaks (Harvard is a huge rich tax advantaged hedge fund, with a College), and Federal Loans.
This is politically difficult until there are better on-line / alternative Universities, with test credentials in lieu of University prestige. This should be the first cultural point of change for conservatives and Reps. Then the tax defunding of the current anti-American Universities.
In parallel, Reps in states need to get state-based voucher programs going for K-12. Too much ed is now indoctrination.
Finally, the truth matters, and Reps have more truth than the Dems. Thus, even we who support Trump over Crooked Clinton, need to call out Trump when he’s being false — altho it’s ok to mention, constantly, that his exaggerations are not the same as lies, especially when there is no official count (how many invalid ballots were cast? There is no official number, but it could be 1,000 to 1,000,000 in any big state.)
Also the Dems, like the commies, do get one economic thing more correct than most Reps — everybody who is willing to work should be able to get a job. Perhaps not a middle class job, but some job where they can feed themselves. The new calls for a misguided Universal Basic Income are part of this, and probably should be countered by making it easier to hire people thru changing laws and policies to reward those who do hire people. Maybe even Guaranteed Jobs (which I now support), altho that’s a Big Gov’t program.
Despite evidence and history, many voters, often most, like the “certainty” of Big Gov’t promises, more than the uncertainty of a Free Market, even if the market in practice is so much better than Big Gov’t in practice.
This X is a problem. The Gov’t should do something to fix X.
Here’s a Policy to fix X.
Therefore we must support that Policy.
This very strong logic is simple and clear enough for many folks to understand and support, especially when they are told Other People’s Money will be used in the Policy. And even if X gets worse, instead of better, due to the results of the Policy.
“We need to Do Something” is the purpose of Dem outrage, and it will always be somewhat or strongly effective.
Aesop, did you read that post ?
Snow, the family farm was the small business before 1920. My ancestors, back to 1800 in New York State, were all farmers. One thing about farming in those days was that it was healthy. My great grandparents on my father’s side has 12 children who all grew up and with one exception lived to old age. The same for my grandparents who had 10 and all lived to old age but one who died at 55.
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on the Florida election. Apparently, 100,000 black mothers who support vouchers and charters voted for DeSantis. That’s why he got more votes than Scott. There is a fight going on in Arizona over vouchers. The teachers are, of course, up in arms over charters and vouchers. Their arguments are examples of economic illiteracy but they managed to defeat an increase in charters in AZ.
MikeK, I just read your “Why I Vote Democrat,” and I too about had a fit. LOL :>))!!
Thankfully, I had already put down my coffee. Else I suppose the keyboard wouldn’t have survived.
Have an excellent Thanksgiving!
News Flash:
Mark Steyn, sitting in for Rush today, said that the Archbishop of Canterbury declared this week that God is now “Gender Neutral”!!!
Questions?
I really don’t see what Archie’s proclamation has to do with anything. The only thing that need concern us is the proper pronoun to use when discussing the Great Frog. I have been importuning It/She/He-He/It/She for years (when the fit takes me) to advise us on this highly salient matter, but so far She/He/It-He/She/It has remained mum.
MikeK on November 22, 2018 at 8:14 am at 8:14 am said:
Aesop, did you read that post ?
* * *
Laughed all the way through it.
Browns get free stuff from Dems. Free stuff isn’t just welfare and sinecures, its also cultural power and squating rights (they literally use violence to retain control of large tracks of our most valuable urban real estate).
What can Reps offer without becoming more leftist than Dems? Nothing.
Brown people are acting rationally. It’s the whites that are crazy in thinking it wouldn’t turn out that way.