6 ms·

If it's not a team sport for you, you fooled me. I'm engaging with you because you are hyper-partisan. There was no realignment. Who owned the slaves? Who wa

If it's not a team sport for you, you fooled me. I'm engaging with you because you are hyper-partisan. There was no realignment. Who owned the slaves? Who was responsible for Jim Crow and the KKK? Which party set up the Great Society which destroyed the black family? Which party controls the teacher's unions and the public schools? The Democratic party. 100%. Those are just facts. We can't fix this until we quit the partisanship. We need to fix the public school system. You'll remember the teacher's union official, who, when asked when he was going to start thinking about the kids, replied, "When they are old enough to vote." EDIT: Please read at least the introduction to the "Dixiecrat" splinter party page for history[0]. (Wikipedia isn't known for having a conservative slant on things.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

dc-programmer 4y ago
It’s not. I don’t care about the blue team. If a yellow team popped up tomorrow that actually cared about the well-being of the public and not corporate interests I would vote for them instead. Your history conveniently stops at around 1970 and leaves our figures like Jerry Falwell and Nixon’s southern strategy. The partisanship is not being driven by rhetoric - it’s being driven by tens of millions of people being left behind by neoliberalism with zero attempt at mitigating the harm done. If people felt like the current system worked for them then they wouldn’t adopt extreme views. But sure let’s keep on liberalizing and consolidating economic and political power. It’s worked out great the last 4 decades. Edit because you edited: wanted to drive home point I can barely stand the democrats. In a sane country they would be the center right party
- wrycoder 4y ago
  (I made an edit on my previous) You know, if that yellow team popped up, I'd likely be right in line behind you. Both the Democratic party and the Republicans drifted to the left over the last fifty years. And then the Democrats reached around and embraced the elite that a century ago was on the right. Now, the Fortune 500 C-suite and virtually all the richest counties in the US uniformly vote for the Democratic party. And that party is a strange conglomerate of the lower class, for which they trade votes for handouts (while destroying their culture) and the elite (comprising the tech corporations, the Beltway, the Hedgies, the media and academia), which trades political favors for donations. I think I'm with you on neo-liberalism and the excessive consolidation of economic and political power. The Democratic and Republican parties, the tech corporations, the media, and academia form the block benefiting from this consolidation. What to do? Tearing it all down isn't a good idea - history shows that. The kind of people who tear things down are the last people you want in charge of the new order. But, if we could flex the system over the next fifty years, what should we do?
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    Yes I’d co-sign the core of what your saying here. It’s pretty alarming actually. And social issues are being used as a wedge/relief valve/distraction to avoid bringing too much attention to where things are materially going. I do believe that many economic issues are deeply related to some social issues and that’s where we might disagree. I’m not too optimistic for team yellow though. We need good-faith experts to lead us through these times (and social trust) but the last few years have been as disastrous if not not more for wonks as the financial crisis. Between Fauci and J Powell it’s not looking too good
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      In the course of this, I read [0]. The whole thing is shocking, really. If you come up with something, ping me in a thread. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Rec...
      - dc-programmer 4y ago
        I first read about the more disturbing (i.e. waved over in school) details of reconstruction a few years ago in Grant’s biography (really good btw as was Chernow’s Hamilton). One of the most shocking events was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1... and also the New Orleans massacre. The klan would violently put down attempts by black peoples to assert themselves politically and would kill the Republicans who helped them in the process.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        Thank you. I found it on libbyapp.com. I loved Whitman's epigraph at the beginning! It's a mystery to me why the blacks switched to voting Democratic. I can only think that the history they learned in school was falsified, and then they were convinced that the Democratic party was responsible for giving them their civil rights.
maxerickson 4y ago
"The Dixiecrats' presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican in 1964" The national parties didn't meaningfully realign, that's probably true, but the racists did.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out. Also while re-align is probably an incorrect word, there definitely has been an essential transformation of both parties. The new deal coalition and Clinton’s third way have little in common.
the_only_law 4y ago
You keep talking about American political parties that OP never one mentioned.

dc-programmer 4y ago

It’s not. I don’t care about the blue team. If a yellow team popped up tomorrow that actually cared about the well-being of the public and not corporate interests I would vote for them instead. Your history conveniently stops at around 1970 and leaves our figures like Jerry Falwell and Nixon’s southern strategy. The partisanship is not being driven by rhetoric - it’s being driven by tens of millions of people being left behind by neoliberalism with zero attempt at mitigating the harm done. If people felt like the current system worked for them then they wouldn’t adopt extreme views. But sure let’s keep on liberalizing and consolidating economic and political power. It’s worked out great the last 4 decades. Edit because you edited: wanted to drive home point I can barely stand the democrats. In a sane country they would be the center right party

wrycoder 4y ago
(I made an edit on my previous) You know, if that yellow team popped up, I'd likely be right in line behind you. Both the Democratic party and the Republicans drifted to the left over the last fifty years. And then the Democrats reached around and embraced the elite that a century ago was on the right. Now, the Fortune 500 C-suite and virtually all the richest counties in the US uniformly vote for the Democratic party. And that party is a strange conglomerate of the lower class, for which they trade votes for handouts (while destroying their culture) and the elite (comprising the tech corporations, the Beltway, the Hedgies, the media and academia), which trades political favors for donations. I think I'm with you on neo-liberalism and the excessive consolidation of economic and political power. The Democratic and Republican parties, the tech corporations, the media, and academia form the block benefiting from this consolidation. What to do? Tearing it all down isn't a good idea - history shows that. The kind of people who tear things down are the last people you want in charge of the new order. But, if we could flex the system over the next fifty years, what should we do?
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  Yes I’d co-sign the core of what your saying here. It’s pretty alarming actually. And social issues are being used as a wedge/relief valve/distraction to avoid bringing too much attention to where things are materially going. I do believe that many economic issues are deeply related to some social issues and that’s where we might disagree. I’m not too optimistic for team yellow though. We need good-faith experts to lead us through these times (and social trust) but the last few years have been as disastrous if not not more for wonks as the financial crisis. Between Fauci and J Powell it’s not looking too good
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    In the course of this, I read [0]. The whole thing is shocking, really. If you come up with something, ping me in a thread. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Rec...
    - dc-programmer 4y ago
      I first read about the more disturbing (i.e. waved over in school) details of reconstruction a few years ago in Grant’s biography (really good btw as was Chernow’s Hamilton). One of the most shocking events was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1... and also the New Orleans massacre. The klan would violently put down attempts by black peoples to assert themselves politically and would kill the Republicans who helped them in the process.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        Thank you. I found it on libbyapp.com. I loved Whitman's epigraph at the beginning! It's a mystery to me why the blacks switched to voting Democratic. I can only think that the history they learned in school was falsified, and then they were convinced that the Democratic party was responsible for giving them their civil rights.

maxerickson 4y ago

"The Dixiecrats' presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican in 1964" The national parties didn't meaningfully realign, that's probably true, but the racists did.

dc-programmer 4y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. Also while re-align is probably an incorrect word, there definitely has been an essential transformation of both parties. The new deal coalition and Clinton’s third way have little in common.

the_only_law 4y ago

You keep talking about American political parties that OP never one mentioned.