"You need to create popular and effective policies and implement them. Leave the world of ideas. Ask yourself: will this policy make my community richer? safer? Will this policy cause an increase of jobs into the U. S.? Will this policy improve our military’s lethality? THOSE are the questions you should be asking."
Here's the thing: they've been asked these questions. They just always answer "Yes". They live in bubbles that lead them to honestly believe that their ideas are genuinely popular. They read only partisan outlets with partisan experts who endlessly assure them that their policies are effective (and if they weren't, it's only because those nasty conservatives are standing in the way and they need more money and power to finish the job). They see that all the rich people and businesses they admire support these policies, so conclude that these policies make them richer (I lost count how many times I've seen blind faith insistence that DEI is the key to recruit top talent, improve business decisions, and increase profits... despite them never having actually reviewed ANY research regarding those practices and their real world outcomes). Unlimited immigration and massive government spending are explicitly defended as increasing jobs in the US. Putting women into combat arms and trans in uniform are both claimed to be necessary to improve our military's lethality (despite every actual study strongly suggesting otherwise)... They believe it. Heck, I saw the claim that adding women to combat arms improves our military in a YouGov poll earlier today, despite another recent article discussing that the Army can't raise the fitness standard to what is actually necessary for combat readiness because too many female Soldiers wouldn't meet the higher standard.
They ask and answer the questions, but without any apparent need for evidence or debate. They treat their desired outcomes as self-evidently inevitable. Good intentions are taken as guarantee of good actions which must necessarily produce only good outcomes.
>First, a woman’s right to an abortion is one but many believe there should be some time limit put on its availability. So consider limiting it to the first trimester except to protect the health of the mother or when the fetus is not viable.
It needs to be longer for the under-18. Girls this age may have trouble figuring things out fast, and may be stuck in a backwards family with an exploitative boyfriend. In fact all three of these things usually go together. It is practically the retention of some girls into a quasi dominated state that would surprise a lot of people in this era.
There are certain progressive policies that will improve the lives of millions. There’s a reason that healthcare funding and abortion access were basically the only two popular policies in this last election. Abortion is now a state issue but let’s leave that aside.
Even with THIS policy, though, you find the trend I described. Progressives talk about abortion in terms of ‘patriarchy’ and feminism (an unpopular movement among about half of the women in the U.S.). They claim that Republicans want to ‘control women’s bodies.’ I’ve spoken to a LOT of people and almost none of them want to control women’s bodies. If they did there’s 100 laws that would be more effective for this. Pro-life people want to preserve gestating embryos and that is it. Most of them just have religious beliefs. Even with this policy you see arguments made based upon political abstraction and unpopular theories… and unfair characterizations of their opponents. When progressives stick to describing the actual effects of certain policies they often win but they just can’t help themselves. Ultimately they mostly don’t give a shit about those pregnant girls. They only care about their ideology.
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying about my comment, but I have these people on both sides of my family. The evangelical/baptist approach to things is punitive and controlling. Yeah they are all Republicans but they would go to whatever party restricts abortion and as a bonus doesn't "take their money". They don't have much of a social conscience and do think their church is where everyone should be getting their instructions for living.
These people aren't just my family. Because of my family's activities I happen to know of the wider group's activities. So for example a bunch of them spend time visiting congresspeople for prayer circles and for strategizing. But what's being strategized might be very meaningful and it might be symbolic--it's a victory to gloat over if the congressperson can read parts of the text of the bible out loud so that it becomes part of the congressional record.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying republicans don't want to control women's bodies.
These Religious Right want to control everyone's bodies. A young girl raised to never say no on fear of punishment having her entire life prospect destroyed because a pregnancy is "god's will" is not even remarkable enough to spend time on. Their aims are bigger.
Republicans who aren't in this group--well, I'm sure there are some but I don't know which they are, and caucusing is as caucusing does.
Biden was not smart enough or competent enough to resist caving to the far left wing of his party. He left the Democratic Party in shambles from which it may never recover.
If the remaining party leaders (whoever they might be) were smart (which they are not) they would look closely at at Trump’s many executive orders (EO’s) and maybe find a few popular ones that they could agree with and then use those along with the more popular positions that they currently endorse as the basis for a resurgence in 2026 and 2028.
So what’s currently in their bag that people don’t hate and what can be done with them to make them more salable to a majority.
First, a woman’s right to an abortion is one but many believe there should be some time limit put on its availability. So consider limiting it to the first trimester except to protect the health of the mother or when the fetus is not viable.
Second, most people are worried about climate change but the intermittent renewable energy sources located far from load centers Democrats are currently pushing will never provide reliable energy. The best answer is nuclear power plants located at existing coal fired plant locations that already have cooling and distribution infrastructure and are located near where electricity is needed. We also should be leading an international effort to develop geoengineering solutions to the problem because we will never reduce carbon emissions in time to stave off disaster.
Third, most people support vaccinations when their development is transparent and their use is voluntary. Use that approach to offset the current anti-vaccine rhetoric of the Republicans.
Back to Trump’s executive orders. There are three worth considering supporting.
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
His second acceptable EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, and spaces, and even more diabolical the mutilation of innocent children in pursuit of the impossible.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
Would these actions help the Democrats recover? Who knows but absent change there is no hope for them.
I'm torn on the Nazi thing. I agree with you that he was trolling but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a Nazi salute he was trolling with. That said, I'm not attached at all to that stupid fight people are having. Your observation that it's symbolic conflicts that all of the democratic voters obsess over because professional class white people accrue symbolic capital for theri status games. Once I realized this, everything made sense. It's not about the correctness of their ideas to improve society as you observed; it's about having the beliefs that make them feel like good people and can accrue them social capital. The feasibility of the ideas matter not. And that's a feature, not a bug. It's why we never have conversations about how the policies they championed have failed. They won't even claim them once they know they're unpopular and I have yet to hear a good argument addressing the fact that people of color are the ones who are turned off by them.
If you're Hitler, using Nazi symbology to motivate your troops while invading the world is a bad thing.
If you're not Hitler, using Nazi symbology to provoke your lame-brained enemies into paroxysms of impotent and misdirected rage is just good craic, as the the Irish say.
"You need to create popular and effective policies and implement them. Leave the world of ideas. Ask yourself: will this policy make my community richer? safer? Will this policy cause an increase of jobs into the U. S.? Will this policy improve our military’s lethality? THOSE are the questions you should be asking."
Here's the thing: they've been asked these questions. They just always answer "Yes". They live in bubbles that lead them to honestly believe that their ideas are genuinely popular. They read only partisan outlets with partisan experts who endlessly assure them that their policies are effective (and if they weren't, it's only because those nasty conservatives are standing in the way and they need more money and power to finish the job). They see that all the rich people and businesses they admire support these policies, so conclude that these policies make them richer (I lost count how many times I've seen blind faith insistence that DEI is the key to recruit top talent, improve business decisions, and increase profits... despite them never having actually reviewed ANY research regarding those practices and their real world outcomes). Unlimited immigration and massive government spending are explicitly defended as increasing jobs in the US. Putting women into combat arms and trans in uniform are both claimed to be necessary to improve our military's lethality (despite every actual study strongly suggesting otherwise)... They believe it. Heck, I saw the claim that adding women to combat arms improves our military in a YouGov poll earlier today, despite another recent article discussing that the Army can't raise the fitness standard to what is actually necessary for combat readiness because too many female Soldiers wouldn't meet the higher standard.
They ask and answer the questions, but without any apparent need for evidence or debate. They treat their desired outcomes as self-evidently inevitable. Good intentions are taken as guarantee of good actions which must necessarily produce only good outcomes.
>First, a woman’s right to an abortion is one but many believe there should be some time limit put on its availability. So consider limiting it to the first trimester except to protect the health of the mother or when the fetus is not viable.
It needs to be longer for the under-18. Girls this age may have trouble figuring things out fast, and may be stuck in a backwards family with an exploitative boyfriend. In fact all three of these things usually go together. It is practically the retention of some girls into a quasi dominated state that would surprise a lot of people in this era.
There are certain progressive policies that will improve the lives of millions. There’s a reason that healthcare funding and abortion access were basically the only two popular policies in this last election. Abortion is now a state issue but let’s leave that aside.
Even with THIS policy, though, you find the trend I described. Progressives talk about abortion in terms of ‘patriarchy’ and feminism (an unpopular movement among about half of the women in the U.S.). They claim that Republicans want to ‘control women’s bodies.’ I’ve spoken to a LOT of people and almost none of them want to control women’s bodies. If they did there’s 100 laws that would be more effective for this. Pro-life people want to preserve gestating embryos and that is it. Most of them just have religious beliefs. Even with this policy you see arguments made based upon political abstraction and unpopular theories… and unfair characterizations of their opponents. When progressives stick to describing the actual effects of certain policies they often win but they just can’t help themselves. Ultimately they mostly don’t give a shit about those pregnant girls. They only care about their ideology.
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying about my comment, but I have these people on both sides of my family. The evangelical/baptist approach to things is punitive and controlling. Yeah they are all Republicans but they would go to whatever party restricts abortion and as a bonus doesn't "take their money". They don't have much of a social conscience and do think their church is where everyone should be getting their instructions for living.
These people aren't just my family. Because of my family's activities I happen to know of the wider group's activities. So for example a bunch of them spend time visiting congresspeople for prayer circles and for strategizing. But what's being strategized might be very meaningful and it might be symbolic--it's a victory to gloat over if the congressperson can read parts of the text of the bible out loud so that it becomes part of the congressional record.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying republicans don't want to control women's bodies.
These Religious Right want to control everyone's bodies. A young girl raised to never say no on fear of punishment having her entire life prospect destroyed because a pregnancy is "god's will" is not even remarkable enough to spend time on. Their aims are bigger.
Republicans who aren't in this group--well, I'm sure there are some but I don't know which they are, and caucusing is as caucusing does.
Biden was not smart enough or competent enough to resist caving to the far left wing of his party. He left the Democratic Party in shambles from which it may never recover.
If the remaining party leaders (whoever they might be) were smart (which they are not) they would look closely at at Trump’s many executive orders (EO’s) and maybe find a few popular ones that they could agree with and then use those along with the more popular positions that they currently endorse as the basis for a resurgence in 2026 and 2028.
So what’s currently in their bag that people don’t hate and what can be done with them to make them more salable to a majority.
First, a woman’s right to an abortion is one but many believe there should be some time limit put on its availability. So consider limiting it to the first trimester except to protect the health of the mother or when the fetus is not viable.
Second, most people are worried about climate change but the intermittent renewable energy sources located far from load centers Democrats are currently pushing will never provide reliable energy. The best answer is nuclear power plants located at existing coal fired plant locations that already have cooling and distribution infrastructure and are located near where electricity is needed. We also should be leading an international effort to develop geoengineering solutions to the problem because we will never reduce carbon emissions in time to stave off disaster.
Third, most people support vaccinations when their development is transparent and their use is voluntary. Use that approach to offset the current anti-vaccine rhetoric of the Republicans.
Back to Trump’s executive orders. There are three worth considering supporting.
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
His second acceptable EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, and spaces, and even more diabolical the mutilation of innocent children in pursuit of the impossible.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
Would these actions help the Democrats recover? Who knows but absent change there is no hope for them.
Always like your stuff, Dave, but this comment belongs in your personal hall of fame. Cheers.
"He left the Democratic Party in shambles from which it may never recover."
One can only hope.
Anyone who has been to Baltimore knows why…its a sad place.
I'm torn on the Nazi thing. I agree with you that he was trolling but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a Nazi salute he was trolling with. That said, I'm not attached at all to that stupid fight people are having. Your observation that it's symbolic conflicts that all of the democratic voters obsess over because professional class white people accrue symbolic capital for theri status games. Once I realized this, everything made sense. It's not about the correctness of their ideas to improve society as you observed; it's about having the beliefs that make them feel like good people and can accrue them social capital. The feasibility of the ideas matter not. And that's a feature, not a bug. It's why we never have conversations about how the policies they championed have failed. They won't even claim them once they know they're unpopular and I have yet to hear a good argument addressing the fact that people of color are the ones who are turned off by them.
If you're Hitler, using Nazi symbology to motivate your troops while invading the world is a bad thing.
If you're not Hitler, using Nazi symbology to provoke your lame-brained enemies into paroxysms of impotent and misdirected rage is just good craic, as the the Irish say.