A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 93 of 725

All I was saying was that nobody has any power when it comes to doing anything against whatever the Government ultimately wants. There is no two party system. Only the illusion of one.

Second turned that into just another opportunity to talk about how much money he supposedly has and how much better he is than everybody else because of it. Second is Second's favorite subject.

Whateves...

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All I was saying was that nobody has any power when it comes to doing anything against whatever the Government ultimately wants. There is no two party system. Only the illusion of one.

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I guess it depends if we're intelligent or if we're mixed bacteria on a petri dish, on a mindless path to doom. If we're just mixed bacteria on a petri dish then some strains will temporarily overtake others and all will gobble up the food, excreting waste, until there's nothing left but a dead, waste-filled petri dish. But if we're intelligent we'll understand the problem, communicate the solution, use the power of numbers, and reverse what we're doing.

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So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All I was saying was that nobody has any power when it comes to doing anything against whatever the Government ultimately wants. There is no two party system. Only the illusion of one.

---

I guess it depends if we're intelligent or if we're mixed bacteria on a petri dish, on a mindless path to doom. If we're just mixed bacteria on a petri dish then some strains will temporarily overtake others and all will gobble up the food, excreting waste, until there's nothing left but a dead, waste-filled petri dish. But if we're intelligent we'll understand the problem, communicate the solution, use the power of numbers, and reverse what we're doing.

---

---

---

So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

---

I'm pretty sure the only reason we've never even accidentally been bumped into by any alien species is because none of them evolved to the point of any significant form of space travel before they sealed their own fate, or bad luck did it for them.

The ones that did, probably this:

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Your endorsement of Communism and your redistribution fantasies are not shared by as many as you imagine.

Thankfully, for America's sake.

How did kiki get sucked into this thread?

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My other fantasy is that Texas never joined the Union. Long live the Republic of Texas! Long live Sam Houston, our first President! I would much prefer a national holiday celebrating Houston's Birthday to Washington's Birthday.

The reason for that fantasy is that Texas is trapped within the 1788 Constitution by the whims of the Senators from the other 49 states. Do you realize how difficult it is to get 67 people out of 100 to all agree on something substantial? About the only time is when it's war, and even then the Senators prefer not to vote on that because they don't want the blame when the war goes badly. Let the President of the United States take the blame years and years after most Senators cheered for more war.

The U.S. Senators from Texas can be pretty cavalier about war since most of the dead soldiers will be coming from 49 other states. But if Texas was a nation going to war, all the dead would be Texans. The whole war is completely paid for and fought by Texans. That would certainly cool the Texas President's enthusiasm for war. It also explains why U.S. Presidents are very enthusiastic about wars where most of the casualties and costs will be paid by 49 other states, states where the President was not born. U.S. Presidents are more cautious when their own children fight the war the President started. There is an editorial about that by the son of President Eisenhower. www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28eisenhower.html

A short quote for those who need everything explained, but seldom click the links: As the time for my deployment to the Korean War approached, I discussed my intentions with my father, future President Eisenhower. We met at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, just after the Republican convention, and I explained my position. My father, as a professional officer himself, understood and accepted it. However, he had a firm condition: under no circumstances must I ever be captured. He would accept the risk of my being killed or wounded, but if the Chinese Communists or North Koreans ever took me prisoner, and threatened blackmail, he could be forced to resign the presidency. I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly. I would take my life before being captured.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All I was saying was that nobody has any power when it comes to doing anything against whatever the Government ultimately wants. There is no two party system. Only the illusion of one.

---

I guess it depends if we're intelligent or if we're mixed bacteria on a petri dish, on a mindless path to doom. If we're just mixed bacteria on a petri dish then some strains will temporarily overtake others and all will gobble up the food, excreting waste, until there's nothing left but a dead, waste-filled petri dish. But if we're intelligent we'll understand the problem, communicate the solution, use the power of numbers, and reverse what we're doing.

---

Who is this "we" in your sentence that begins "But if we're intelligent"? That "we" can't be 6ixStringJack, because he has turned himself into a peasant. He will not "reverse what we're doing." In China, that "we" was people like The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State by Fang Lizhi
www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/05/26/fang-lizhi-heritage-great-man/

Why did communism grow deep roots and survive in China, while it withered and died in Russia? This is one of the central questions of modern history. A plausible answer to the question is that communism in China resonated with the two-thousand-year-old Confucian tradition of the wise ruler governing a harmonious society of peaceful citizens, while communism in Russia was undermined by the Russian tradition of ruthless tsars like Ivan the Terrible ruling a lawless society of oligarchs and serfs. (If you are comparing, the American tradition is too much like the Russian and not at all like the Chinese tradition.)

This answer may be valid, but the recently published autobiography of Fang Lizhi suggests a different answer to the question. Fang’s book is the personal story of a scientist whose life was shaped by Chinese history. From the evidence provided by this book, I am led to believe that communism survived in China because the brutal reeducation of the elite, by exile to coal mines and villages and forced sharing of hardships with dirt-poor workers and peasants, was to some extent a genuine reeducation. A great many members of the elite endured a period of gross abuse and humiliation, so severe as to drive many of them to suicide. Fang — who died in 2012 — describes four of these personal tragedies that he remembered vividly when he wrote his book thirty years later. But the majority of the victims, like Fang, survived the physical and mental battering, and returned to pursue careers as leaders of society. They became a privileged and corrupt class, but had acquired some indelible firsthand knowledge of the real needs and desires of the Chinese people.

In Russia there was much talk of reeducation of the elite, but the reality was different. In Russia the purges killed large numbers of the elite and condemned others to long years of imprisonment in the gulag archipelago, but those who survived were not re-educated. The intellectuals who survived in Russia remained isolated from the realities of working-class existence. The working class in the minds of the rulers of Russia remained an intellectual abstraction, detached from contact with reality. (The American ruling class is detached from the reality of working-class existence. Why would American rulers do more than the minimum to get elected? Doing more would lower the income of the rulers, cause extra work for the rulers, and it would all be for the benefit of working-class people the rulers don't identify with, except on election day. And America has always been this way. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have taken better care of their slaves if slaves could vote, but the day after election the slaves have to return to the cotton fields while their owners return to the mansions. The owners refuse to live at the level of t

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Mick Mulvaney Tells It Like It Is
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/04/mick-mulvaney-tells-it-like-it-
is/


Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since November:

Since then, he has frozen all new investigations into crooked loans and slowed down existing inquiries by requiring employees to produce detailed justifications….But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve, a move that would give lawmakers — and those with access to them — more influence on the bureau’s actions. On Tuesday, he implored the financial services industry to help support the legislative changes he has requested.

He concluded the speech, which included an appeal to diminish the bureau’s power, by describing the two types of people he was most responsive to as a congressman— constituents and lobbyists who contributed to his campaign.

Please proceed, Mr. Mulvaney:

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

That seems bracingly clear. Most politicians don’t have either the arrogance or the cluelessness it would take to admit this in public, but Mulvaney does. Kudos.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Your endorsement of Communism and your redistribution fantasies are not shared by as many as you imagine.

Thankfully, for America's sake.

How did kiki get sucked into this thread?

---

My other fantasy is that Texas never joined the Union. Long live the Republic of Texas! Long live Sam Houston, our first President! I would much prefer a national holiday celebrating Houston's Birthday to Washington's Birthday.

The reason for that fantasy is that Texas is trapped within the 1788 Constitution by the whims of the Senators from the other 49 states. Do you realize how difficult it is to get 67 people out of 100 to all agree on something substantial? About the only time is when it's war, and even then the Senators prefer not to vote on that because they don't want the blame when the war goes badly. Let the President of the United States take the blame years and years after most Senators cheered for more war.

The U.S. Senators from Texas can be pretty cavalier about war since most of the dead soldiers will be coming from 49 other states. But if Texas was a nation going to war, all the dead would be Texans. The whole war is completely paid for and fought by Texans. That would certainly cool the Texas President's enthusiasm for war. It also explains why U.S. Presidents are very enthusiastic about wars where most of the casualties and costs will be paid by 49 other states, states where the President was not born. U.S. Presidents are more cautious when their own children fight the war the President started. There is an editorial about that by the son of President Eisenhower. www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28eisenhower.html

A short quote for those who need everything explained, but seldom click the links: As the time for my deployment to the Korean War approached, I discussed my intentions with my father, future President Eisenhower. We met at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, just after the Republican convention, and I explained my position. My father, as a professional officer himself, understood and accepted it. However, he had a firm condition: under no circumstances must I ever be captured. He would accept the risk of my being killed or wounded, but if the Chinese Communists or North Koreans ever took me prisoner, and threatened blackmail, he could be forced to resign the presidency. I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly. I would take my life before being captured.

---

Golly, is this the delusion where President Eisenhower started the Korean War?
Your re-education shows impressive results.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1kiki:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
All I was saying was that nobody has any power when it comes to doing anything against whatever the Government ultimately wants. There is no two party system. Only the illusion of one.

---

I guess it depends if we're intelligent or if we're mixed bacteria on a petri dish, on a mindless path to doom. If we're just mixed bacteria on a petri dish then some strains will temporarily overtake others and all will gobble up the food, excreting waste, until there's nothing left but a dead, waste-filled petri dish. But if we're intelligent we'll understand the problem, communicate the solution, use the power of numbers, and reverse what we're doing.

---

Who is this "we" in your sentence that begins "But if we're intelligent"? That "we" can't be 6ixStringJack, because he has turned himself into a peasant. He will not "reverse what we're doing."

---

Second posts the above before posting the following story (emphasis on the underlined text):

Quote:

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In China, that "we" was people like The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State by Fang Lizhi
www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/05/26/fang-lizhi-heritage-great-man/

Why did communism grow deep roots and survive in China, while it withered and died in Russia? This is one of the central questions of modern history. A plausible answer to the question is that communism in China resonated with the two-thousand-year-old Confucian tradition of the wise ruler governing a harmonious society of peaceful citizens, while communism in Russia was undermined by the Russian tradition of ruthless tsars like Ivan the Terrible ruling a lawless society of oligarchs and serfs. (If you are comparing, the American tradition is too much like the Russian and not at all like the Chinese tradition.)

This answer may be valid, but the recently published autobiography of Fang Lizhi suggests a different answer to the question. Fang’s book is the personal story of a scientist whose life was shaped by Chinese history. From the evidence provided by this book, I am led to believe that communism survived in China because the brutal reeducation of the elite, by exile to coal mines and villages and forced sharing of hardships with dirt-poor workers and peasants, was to some extent a genuine reeducation. A great many members of the elite endured a period of gross abuse and humiliation, so severe as to drive many of them to suicide. Fang — who died in 2012 — describes four of these personal tragedies that he remembered vividly when he wrote his book thirty years later. But the majority of the victims, like Fang, survived the physical and mental battering, and returned to pursue careers as leaders of society. They became a privileged and corrupt class, but had acquired some indelible firsthand knowledge of the real needs and desires of the Chinese people.

In Russia there was much talk of reeducation of the elite, but the reality was different. In Russia the purges killed large numbers of the elite and condemned others to long years of imprisonment in the gulag archipelago, but those who survived were not re-educated. The intellectuals who survived in Russia remained isolated from the realities of working-class existence. The working class in the minds of the rulers of Russia remained an intellectual abstraction, detached from contact with reality. (The American ruling class is detached from the reality of working-class existence. Why would American rulers do more than the minimum to get elected? Doing more would lower the income of the rulers, cause extra work for the rulers, and it would all be for the benefit of working-class people the rulers don't identify with, except on election day. And America has always been this way. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have taken better care of their slaves if slaves cou

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