Meadmaker wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 3:26 am I've listened to "enemy" news for a very long time, and you are right about both sides. It's mind numbingly stupid. It's drivel. It's nonsense.
I tend to prefer Democratic nonsense to Republican nonsense. Democrats seem to me to be more nonsensical on more things, but those things mostly don't matter. Identity politics, basically.
The Republicans are overall more sensible to me, but where they are wrong, they are very, very, wrong. Supply side economics is my chief complaint.
Sadly, though, this is only half true. They promise less tax, and they usually deliver. Donald Trump really did cut my taxes, and he promises to do it again. I believe him.
They promise that less tax will mean less debt, which is dumb as hell. (As an aside, I have occasionally gone to the effort of reading actual widely cited journal articles written by PhDs and Nobel Prize candidates, and there's a whole lot of stupid in those articles trying to justify that less taxes actually will result in more revenue. It's wrapped up so thickly in pseudoscience that most people can't understand it, but it's dumb as hell.)
However, since they don't understand it, the average person "reasons" that if it means less taxes, it must be good.
And, sadly, the Democrats have mostly learned that arguing against it doesn't helo them get elected, so they' pretty much given up. It's going to fall apart, eventually. I have a feeling that will happen right at the time that I start depending on a combination of retirement savings and Social Security to live comfortably in my old age, which is basically starting now.
I think the degree of corruption is exaggerated, unless you mean just acting in the interests of constituents and/or donors. I think most politicians are basically lawful evil, or maybe even lawful neutral. They're mostly lawful, though.Both succeed equally at fulfilling the agenda of the war machine and the continued (acceleration) of environmental degradation and rampant, unregulated consumption.
Interesting last line.
Money, as free speech, can get laws upgraded for legal corruption. At the highest level, a supreme justice can be bought and it's all legal. (might sound racist if i name names). Anti-trust regulation got gone, from the looks of it...heading toward the RamJac future.
Off-shore tax havens; loop-holes for everything blatantly corrupt, which we may soon not recognize as the standards for sleeziness shrink. Shucks, stuff like "should congress be allowed to play the stock market?" with its obvious answer "No", but they can and do, even the 'good guys' like Nancy P. How can we do anything about it if it doesn't even qualify for outrage?