Sigh. What I was asking was what informs your opinion. I was pointing at the mountain of evidence and saying - what contravenes that? And then we have the rest of the post where you sort of don't have much evidence. At least evidence that says what you think it does.Little Raven wrote: ↑Tue Dec 21, 2021 1:32 amI'm not asking you to trust me. I'm just stating an opinion. You do you, man.Why should I trust that you are smarter than the actual experts who say it is happening right now?
This is not true. Normal doesn't mean the above. A glimpse into the type of anti-normal I think about here looks like the trajectory of the graph below.Little Raven wrote:I think you and I have different baselines of "normal." You seem to think there was some enlightened past where everyone in America got along and worked together for the common good of the country. Everyone was treated equally, every voice was listened to, and politics consisted of a wise electorate carefully picking candidates from a slate of enlightened statesmen.What indicators of a return to normal are there versus indicators that the dysfunction is progressing?
You keep saying this. What about our history looks anything like this moment? There simply isn't one. I'm not disagreeing with the concept but I frankly think that any reliance on past performance to model the present is a super dubious affair in this moment.The American history I know suggests no such thing has ever existed. We have been a bitterly divided nation barely holding things together for the vast bulk of our history. Our record of democracy is distinctly spotty. Our historical commitment to social justice is questionable. And for every Lincoln, we get any number of Boss Tweeds. But we're still here.
This bolsters my case. You are comparing 3 generals who talked about facts including more than 10% of the 1/6 rioters had service backgrounds, more that were cops, and pointing out at least one General publicly ignoring Presidential orders, and compared it to a bunch of generals pimping the big lie? First the two groups are not analogous or a reasonable comparison by any standard. Second they specifically called out these 124 generals referenced in the Politico piece. Third, as they argue persuasively (especially compared to completely irrelevant nonsense about MacArthur) the weight of this is actual real-world evidence for the problems I'm pointing at. The 'civil war' or splinter army scenario we face would be an insurgency. A hundred generals and potentially tens of thousands of service members would be a hell of a problem if an insurgency were to kick into action as those 3 generals were describing. As far as I know we've never had over a hundred generals saying the President is illegitimate with some prominent ones promising people that Trump would be re-installed. That's the problem. Again I ask, what is the evidence that we don't have a massive problem? Right now?LIttle Raven wrote:Retired generals are not necessarily authorities on...well, much of anything. And historically, we've had no shortage of retired generals who predicted or even actively caused trouble. We survived.So I post a link to an article about actual US general published in the Washington Post about these concerns and I'm supposed to take the above seriously? Come on.
Read the Forbes piece again. You just bolstered my case *again*.Little Raven wrote:No, it hasn't.You can try to handwave it away but the facts are that oligarchic power has solidly aligned behind the Republicans *right now*.
An election is a point in time decision. General support isn't undermined because they picked a Democrat over a Republican for one office. Especially considering the circumstances. I don't think they are part of the cult. I think they generally follow their interests. This is pretty easy to decompose. Would most top of these business leaders vote for a stable Republican leader if available? Since they are Republicans the answer is self evident; however their choice was Trump. They almost certainly feared his grift and the instability he represented. Also they got nearly all their big ticket policy goals accomplished. The question becomes what was there to fear in a Biden. Isn't Biden a staid centrist who has been a middle of road political figure and pretty reliable ally for wealth for decades? Yes. Was he running on a platform they probably weren't thrilled with? Yes but he wasn't talking about crazy tax hikes. Especially tax hikes that'd wash away what they got from the Trump WH. They knew what they were getting in Biden.Forbes wrote:The biggest takeaway: These billionaires are more likely to be Republican than the average American—but just about as likely to be voting for Joe Biden.
And as the Forbes piece details the ultra wealthy still tend to be Republicans at the end of the day. They still cheer the decades of policy achievements their class has won to get low individual tax rates, low corporate tax rates, etc. They control the vast majority of laws passed by Congress. I've cited it many times here but we have evidence that backs through lensing actual policy passed through Congress and other means that we are a corrupt oligarchy. From the abstract:
Anyone seriously want to argue that ain't true in these United States of America? All of that has influenced wealth inequality which adds more pressure to our system.Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
That study looked back from 2014. 2 years later Trump was elected and the oligarchs feasted. As a reference some of the authors published another study in 2011 that started that train and Krugman has a good summation of the issues that arise out of some of that pool of research.
And sure we've had periods where wealth inequality were an issue and it worked out. But again this isn't a one thing is going wrong problem. This is a many things are going wrong problem. The negative destabilizing societal pressures we are seeing are leading to instability in policy (except the policy that keeps the rich rich but no shock there) and increasing political violence. The weight of all these issues are overwhelming this system right now. Not in the far, far future. Right now. And I'm not even diving into the golden age of fraud stuff which indicates deep pools of corruption around this issue in Congress and the past WH. Heck there is evidence of corruption by the wealthy influencing the topic of the thread.
FWIW I have little faith that this polling looks anything like what the billionaires with actual influence think. I can't say for certain because we don't have a good poll of just billionaires. Though it is a problem the study above tackles by inference. It's hard to detect their direct influence but we have great circumstantial evidence that policy almost always breaks their way. And that policy is almost always conservative policy.Little Raven wrote:Billionaires, like Americans, are all over the place when it comes to politics. But it is true that the wealthy in America have a preferred political party.
The "wealthy" in the piece above are generally educated and professional people. They belong to a relatively small group with almost no influence beyond having a vote and tending to vote. But that's not too abnormal because everyone else below them in the wealth and income distribution have almost no influence either (based on the policy analysis above as one example). The thing is the larger group being less educated is much more manipulable. They are being overwhelmed with misinformation at all times. A well-known oligarch of a Conservative bent is notably involved there.
More interesting,the 400 or so families that Krugman mentioned in his piece who contribute the majority of campaign contributions have far, far, far more direct influence.
I'll finish by pointing that out you pretty much ignored the heart of the post to attack around the edges by focusing on first and last sections such as the word normal. (Yet still managed to help out my case in the end. Thanks!) I'd still love to see anything approaching a significant body of evidence indicating that things are not trending towards more dysfunction. It'd be a real relief but I'm still not seeing a whole lot of disagreeing on the merits and more disagreeing to disagree or just flawed reasoning.
malchior wrote:The difference is that I don't think we are disagreeing based on the merits. You handwave the trend that is happening right now and say it is far off in the far future? Why should I trust that you are smarter than the actual experts who say it is happening right now?
Let's examine some of the evidence our constitutional order is breaking down right now. We had a President who was openly breaking the law. An entire administration full of members breaking various laws. Experts talked about how he completely perverted the DOJ and undermined confidence in its independence. He also attacked every guardrail beating at the walls. They mostly contained him but still he was criming frequently. He then claimed a fair election was stolen and invited his entire party to join in delegitimizing an election. And they did and are still hammering on it to delegitimize the lawful President. Major GOP figures still won't acknowledge that Biden was legitimately elected. This all happened...this year. Oh and a little thing called the Capitol riot and its aftermath. Despite that several individual officials were the difference between his plans and a full blown constitutional crisis. We also had the indignity of generals calling foreign leaders to reassure them that we'd have continuity of leadership. Totally solid stuff.
On the outside we have forces that threaten our constitutional order indirectly. We have attacks on our critical infrastructure that have gone largely unanswered for years. We can't coordinate against them to protect ourselves. We had a pandemic which piled on more pressure on a failing system and let's be frank...things aren't going well there. We have national and international policy flapping in 4 year increments *right now*. Our partners are openly freaking out that Trump might return and are drawing up plans to figure out how they'll protect themselves if that happens. Even then, during the Afghanistan disaster, we reminded them that our broken internal politics have direct impacts on them. I'll stop there but I'm only scratching the surface.
Even if all that wasn't an indication of crisis then why isn't it a blatant warning sign? This isn't so much on disagreeing sharply as there is a mountain of evidence showing our system is breaking down in real time and you have feelings. Still I'll pick up one thread. You acknowledge that the system could fail in the way described but feel like it's far, far away. Let's get specific. Why is it far, far away and not now? What is the evidence of that? What indicators of a return to normal are there versus indicators that the dysfunction is progressing?