The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance
Attaching a poll ... Dems unfavorability rating increased from 45% to 57% during the Biden Administration.
I don't know. What do you feel like you have to offer the world ? What are you passionate about ? What skills do you have ?
Do you like children ? The world will always need teachers.
Some people like machines. There will be still be mechanized agriculture and roads needing snow to be plowed.
I can replace the steering on most vehicles, do alignments, brake repair, caliper servicing and replace most long black accessories ... water pump, valve train, and fuel system repair - although I haven't worked on anything carbureted in 15 years. I'll put an LS1 in all of your armored vehicles.
...but cars are gone right?
I can replace the springs or pins on most firearms and do basic trigger tuning and can make enough ammo to help keep your people from escaping.
You're going to need a lot of those things and people who can shoot. I am not big on children, and I will not need a boyfriend.
You have very valuable skills to offer. A big part of living more sustainably means taking great care of equipment and operating it competently.
You can teach those skills to young people too and encourage them to do their own creative projects.
I don't think cars would disappear. But in a community of a few hundred people, a pool of 10 EV's should do the trick to move people around as needed. There would be larger hubs that people might need to commute to for their work so some buses might come handy. There should be a lot of electrified public transit options as well to move around and between hubs.
I imagine there would be still be competitive athletics so a community buses to follow their local teams to competitions.
Fossil fuel use is not going to complete disappear overnight. We can't feed everyone without them and the objective is to avoid a Holocaust. But it has to go way down and that means eliminating everything that isn't necessary. Agricultural equipment maintenance will be a critical job that you can do.
We're in a situation where our collective desires have become malignant. We have to emphasize that our needs are more important than our desires.
To be recognized by your peers as having a skill which the community values is wonderful for the ego. It provides a sense of self-esteem in the community.
I don't see that as a prison. I see it as a gift.
Were I a leader, I wouldn't want to cast a dark shadow over the population. I want to life them up and celebrate their unique gifts. I want to amplify the wholesome part of ourselves, including our diets. I want to remove the legitimate reasons for people to be attracted to doom porn. I want people to be happy. I don't want them to be concerned about a dark future with food shortages and chaotic transition.
I want everyone to be fed and have housing available. I don't know what I might do about people who chose to live outside ..... I think I would let them if they didn't present a hazard to others.
It's the rich who have to adapt. The era of unlimited exploitation of Earth has to end. We're dependent upon and guests of the Earth, not the other way around. The bouncer is gonna come for us if we don't behave.
There will still be beer and wine. Definitely plenty of weed. The future will need some dj's too so we can get together with some good tunes, good food and dance the night away.
There will still be plenty of fun to be had after we decide to stop killing each other.
To be recognized by your peers as having a skill which the community values is wonderful for the ego. It provides a sense of self-esteem in the community. I don't see that as a prison. I see it as a gift. Were I a leader, I wouldn't want to cast a dark shadow over the population. I want to life them up and celebrate their unique gifts. I want to amplify the wholesome part of ou
I could sit in a room with a blank canvas and a half a dozen paints and practice some landscapes with the filberts until the sun went down. Same with reading. Sometimes, I'd get partially frustrated because I would need to take a break to eat something or go to the bathroom. I like that. I had that feeling briefly when I was a kid playing outside. But the world is anxiety induced clown show now.
I do think that most of the enjoyment in the world can be had with hobbies that cost very little. We search for the wrong things in life and are programmed to chase things that are terrible for us.
I could sit in a room with a blank canvas and a half a dozen paints and practice some landscapes with the filberts until the sun went down. Same with reading. Sometimes, I'd get partially frustrated because I would need to take a break to eat something or go to the bathroom. I like that. I had that feeling briefly when I was a kid playing outside. But the world is anxiety
I'd like to remove the triggers for anxiety.
The oligarchs don't want that. They don't want us common people having a conversation about the way we choose to allocate resources and revealing how piggish they are. They're having too much fun ego tripping as Bond villain characters on the global scene. The villains who promote polarization instead of unity.
Painting wouldn't be abandoned. Oil paints might have to be less common.
Public parks with decently maintained cabins for camping would be a nice feature. Communities could have a stash of camping gear for residents so that not everyone needs their own.
Dr. Seuss captured the essence of the environmental situation with The Lorax in 1971.
"Nothing is going to get better, it's not,
Unless some like you cares a whole awful lot"
Between you and I formula72 ...... you're not the one who cares a lot. Take a good look in the mirror and that person you see ...... doesn't care. That's your cross to bear. Not mine.
You're amazingly both self-righteous and self-important.
You have no clue what formula72 does or does not do to make the world a better place.
Just because someone doesn't agree with your scheme doesn't mean that person doesn't care.
I would encourage YOU to look in that mirror as well.
You're amazingly both self-righteous and self-important.
You have no clue what formula72 does or does not do to make the world a better place.
Just because someone doesn't agree with your scheme doesn't mean that person doesn't care.
I would encourage YOU to look in that mirror as well.
I'm not representing myself as important ...... I'm representing children and their future as important.
I am representing myself as intelligent enough to understand significant man made threats to those children's future. I'm not the discover of those threats, merely someone curious enough to read peer reviewed research from the climatologists and scientists who have conducted the primary research.
Formula72 provided a brief summary of some valuable skills he had to offer. I have no reason to suspect that he was lying and I shared my interpretation of the value of those skills. Your accusation that I pretend to know what he actually does is a non sequitur. I never intimated that I knew what he does.
Do you think he was lying ? Do you disagree with my interpretation of the value of those skills ?
You're right, someone who doesn't agree with my scheme doesn't mean that they don't care. It just means that they are ignorant of information freely available in the public domain. The evidence that they care is missing if they can't be bothered. That doesn't mean that there isn't evidence. Please feel free to share the evidence that you care geezerchess ...... about something more than trying to put me down.
I could sit in a room with a blank canvas and a half a dozen paints and practice some landscapes with the filberts until the sun went down. Same with reading. Sometimes, I'd get partially frustrated because I would need to take a break to eat something or go to the bathroom. I like that. I had that feeling briefly when I was a kid playing outside. But the world is anxiety
Yeah, hobbies are mostly golf and guitar. Pretty low resource drain. Compared to modern standards, middle class utopia from the 50s is our current poverty line. Kids were happy playing with basically nothing and spending a Saturday fishing was living the good life.
That was Marx's basic idea with commune-ism. "From each... to each..." isnt the means to communism, its what happens when the means of production are sufficient to supply our needs without much human input or toil. As with kids, we'll come up with stuff to do for others like starting a painting class,, etc, just not for compensation.
But from childhood on we're taught more and more to compete. Survival of the fittest, tribalism and all that, which is just normal when resources are scarce. As nut nut was saying, we basically need to learn how to abandon all the attributes that got us here.
What I'm attempting to do geezerchess is take a very straightforward issue and unpack it.
The issue is a current society built around the liberty to pollute the shared environment. To me, that is a transparently fatal flaw.
I am trying to explain why it is fatal and offer an alternative which is not fatal.
There is no suggestion anywhere that I am important. But I do suggest that I am intelligent enough to diagnose something which seems pretty straightforward. That doesn't make me a genius. It seems to be rather low hanging fruit.
If the fact that I offer my perspective bothers you ..... maybe it's because it shines a light on your perception of yourself and your lack of perspective ?
I am offering a perspective. What are you offering ?
I'd like to remove the triggers for anxiety.
The oligarchs don't want that. They don't want us common people having a conversation about the way we choose to allocate resources and revealing how piggish they are.
"And if I'm elected I promise to significantly reduce consumer consumption and modern living standards for everyone!"
Maybe that would have worked in the 60s but that's hardly appealing to the modern far left. They want money from the rich to increase their consumption and living standard, not reduce it.
How about a change of pace. The Dems choice to be led in the Senate by a man who is way under water with the public.
If the party wanted to be popular, they would choose Bernie to lead them.
"And if I'm elected I promise to significantly reduce consumer consumption and modern living standards for everyone!"
Maybe that would have worked in the 60s but that's hardly appealing to the modern far left. They want money from the rich to increase their consumption and living standard, not reduce it.
Modern living standards include at least 5 grams of plastic per human brain, a figure that has nearly doubled over the last 8 years and keep on doubling going forward.
That's a living standard that I'm not ashamed to try and reduce !!!
Not all modern living standards are good John.
Here's another modern living standard which I would reduce..... official homelessness increased 18% last year.
I'm not representing myself as important ...... I'm representing children and their future as important. I am representing myself as intelligent enough to understand significant man made threats to those children's future. I'm not the discover of those threats, merely someone curious enough to read peer reviewed research from the climatologists and scientists who have conducted
Okay, let's roll the tape:
[QUOTE=Nut Nut]
Dr. Seuss captured the essence of the environmental situation with The Lorax in 1971.
"Nothing is going to get better, it's not,
Unless some like you cares a whole awful lot"
Between you and I formula72 ...... you're not the one who cares a lot. Take a good look in the mirror and that person you see ...... doesn't care. That's your cross to bear. Not mine.
[/quote]
Strikes me as rather accusatory: He looks in the mirror and sees someone who doesn't care???
Saying things like "You're not the one who cares a lot" is certainly coming across as self-righteous in my opinion.
Modern living standards include way more than plastic water bottles. Hardly anyone in society wants to live the way you want them to or more would be pushing for it. It's not like the Amish et al are secrets.
And I agree it would be in our best interests - economically, environmentally, mentally - to get rid of competitive consumerism. But that mindset can't just be erased, it needs to be replaced with some other orientation. That's why politics or economics arent the primary cause of the fix.
Historically the way humans have dealt with their own shortcomings of this scale is to invent or reinvent a religion. So rather than the specifics, it will be a wholesale change in orientation towards a quasi religious sort of naturalistic pantheisism.
Hardly anyone in society wants to live the way you want them to or more would be pushing for it. .
I'm aware John.
It's not too dissimilar from the situation when it becomes bedtime for a 6 year old. If the child doesn't want to go to bed, it's the parent's responsibility to establish boundaries.
Just like a 6 year old child doesn't concern themself with the need for a good night's sleep, hardly anyone concerns themselves with the parameters for a habitable planet. That ignorance leads to a lack of appreciation for the value of the alternative I'm suggesting.
History anyone in the UK wanted to confront Hitler and the Nazis during the 1930's as Churchill was suggesting. He was on the periphery with policy that people didn't want ..... but his perspective won out when the threat reached a critical mass.
In my opinion, the path I am suggesting is pretty much inevitable. Nature holds the nuts. We can tank for a while. We can put all of chips in and lose. Or we can do the smart thing and fold.
Nature doesn't give a damn what we want and at the end what we want most is to live. It's just a matter of how much time needs to expire before reality sinks in.
With the recent billion $$ fraud case under Tim Walz leadership are his chances of a Presidential Candidate gone?
With the recent billion $$ fraud case under Tim Walz leadership are his chances of a Presidential Candidate gone?
His chances were never all that compelling to begin with. Not very charismatic or inspirational. No signature policy that meets the moment. And now he has a track record of being on a losing ticket.
It's just a matter of time before the neolibs fade into oblivion. They still control the DNC and the primary process so maybe another cycle they keep the populists suppressed.
The progressives are rising. Mamdani broke the ice in NYC. AOC might be on the ballot to replace Schumer in 2028 at the same time the presidential election is coming. The grifter Trump isn't going to make much headway with affordability issues so the Dem candidate will be having a tailwind.
But next cycle there will be a competitive primary for Democrats and the progressives are going to rally around someone. The problem is that there is no alpha progressive that really stands out at the moment.
Three years until the next POTUS election. A lot will happen between now and then.
I'd like to remove the triggers for anxiety. The oligarchs don't want that. They don't want us common people having a conversation about the way we choose to allocate resources and revealing how piggish they are. They're having too much fun ego tripping as Bond villain characters on the global scene. The villains who promote polarization instead of unity. Painting wouldn't be a
The issue that supersedes all of these "well intentioned" suggestions is the scale here.
The military is optional and is funded enormously in part by corporations, folks join voluntarily, and many can't handle the strict rules, the work and so on. Scaling that for 8 billion people isn't comparable.
The forced labor is another issue because there are too many jobs that others rely on different ways and those jobs need rewards to get filled - arguing that they'd be helping out humanity just isn't realistic. You'd need millions of slaves, full stop.
It’s fine to argue that these huge structural changes must happen to prevent the disasters that you predict but implementing them would require a level of organization and enforcement far beyond what even the entire U.S. military could supply. And even with that, you’d still need a population in the billions to obey your commands. That's going to require an enormous apparatus of enforcement and weaponry.
It's going to require one hell of an iron fist before we get to sit around and play guitar, happily because you'd have to kill, possibly billions, or create the largest prison camps outside of these variable dorm rooms that you suggested.
The issue that supersedes all of these "well intentioned" suggestions is the scale here.The military is optional and is funded enormously in part by corporations, folks join voluntarily, and many can't handle the strict rules, the work and so on. Scaling that for 8 billion people isn't comparable. The forced labor is another issue because there are too many jobs that others rel
I think you're completely distorting the strictness. It's all in your mind.
People who work at McDonalds have strict rules. There's not a big difference between cooking for a customer or cooking for your neighbors. People who drive for Amazon have strict rules. The only difference is that you're working for your fellow citizens instead of working for corporate profit. Work would be more chill when you can't get fired.
It's not going to take a lot of enforcement and weaponry to keep people in line. All you have to do is have control of the energy infrastructure. It's not like people can pop up a neighborhood oil refinery. The enforcement is going to be peer pressure at the community level. Being a deadbeat who doesn't contribute is a good way to get shunned.
What you fail to acknowledge is that we are already effectively an organized military but instead of working for generals and colonels, we take orders from capitalist masters. People like Musk and Bezos are the capitalist generals who exploit the freedom to pollute. In order to survive in the current system today, you must participate in that exploitation.
I think you're completely distorting the strictness. It's all in your mind. People who work at McDonalds have strict rules. There's not a big difference between cooking for a customer or cooking for your neighbors. People who drive for Amazon have strict rules. The only difference is that you're working for your fellow citizens instead of working for corporate profit. Work woul
People at Mickey Ds or construction workers or anyone else gets paid. And they still get fired, quit, punch their boss, steal and so on. What are the enforceable consequences for the entire world not wanting to work a job for free? You'd have to jail them or kill them. But more importantly, you'd have to have the means to do it.
Because we literally just had an argument here yesterday about how we should be paying people more for their work. Now we are going to go the other way and everyone's going to be cool with it?
The ability to understand the big picture is multi-disciplinary.
If you don't have a decent grasp of science and history, it's difficult to zoom out and put our situation in context. 99.9% of all species which have ever existed have gone extinct and we're destined to join them at some point no matter how good a job of adapting we do.
It's all a matter of timing and whether we choose to go extinct in the near term. Survival doesn't adhere to the smartest or the strongest ..... it adheres to those that can adapt. The patterns of previous mass extinctions are available for us to study as are the parallels to what is happening on Earth now. Radical changes in the distribution of planetary chemistry are the pattern. If you don't understand what it means to change the ocean pH from 8.20 to 8.05 then you're not in a position to be able to make an intelligent evaluation.
Ego has its pro's and cons. Confidence in our resourcefulness keeps us open minded to solutions. But it's an Achilles Heel when we reach a point at which we consider ourselves invulnerable and lose the edge which causes us to ignore threats.
The Earth has been incredibly stable during many thousands of years of the development of human civilization. A great example of that is sea levels which have been almost perfect steady for 4,000 years. Like less than a foot of variance. But that stability is abnormal. In the 15,000 years preceding that, sea levels rose 400 feet.
We're leaving an era of stability and trading it for an era of significant variance. Apparently, that's not something people can easily wrap their heads around.
Capitalism has served us well, but it always had an implied expiration date and its collapsing at this moment.
I'm providing a perspective that you won't get from news outlets owned and controlled by rich people ..... which is basically all of the news outlets in the USA. It's not because I'm wrong .... it's because the people who own those outlets don't want you to know the truth. They're afraid. They're over their heads.
People at Mickey Ds or construction workers or anyone else gets paid. And they still get fired, quit, punch their boss, steal and so on. What are the enforceable consequences for the entire world not wanting to work a job for free? You'd have to jail them or kill them. But more importantly, you'd have to have the means to do it. Because we literally just had an argument her
How did humans survive for 250,000 years without money ? How does every other species function without money ?
It's part of our nature to play team ball and fit into a community hierarchy. If you're a deadbeat who doesn't contribute, you'll be shunned. And shunning has traditionally been really shitty for survival outlook.
People will receive everything that they need that they can buy with money today as part of the social contract. In return, they will be asked to make a contribution.
There will still be positive reinforcement. There are lots of perks that can be offered to people who make make contributions.
