I would add that the foundations of liberalism / conservatism are the same

(This is in American context and gets weaker as an analysis when one considers that 50% of people are less intelligent than the median.)

Both groups are founded on Love of Family, Love of State & Country, and the Necessity for Justice.
Both groups, not debased deplorable versions, both groups also have empathy.

People in both groups may add Love of God as they wish, of course, but that love binds the religious person and there must be no binding of people outside of that religion.

Where the two groups diverge is at the application of public funds to help people. Liberals more in favour than Conservatives of it, but both groups want some amount of help to flow from government revenues (taxes).

The divergence is based on moralism. Conservatives think that people who get stuff for free don't value it and strive less. Liberals think that it is rather immoral to not give people stuff that would help them, if it can be afforded.

The divergence can mostly be healed by convincing most people of the fact that helping some helps all. This includes things like infrastructure and protecting "The Commons" (the environment ).

I say that a nation / country / civilization is ideally judged by the level of its lowest classes and not by the splendour of its highest classes.

Nice ying-yang meme on Liberal/Conservative. Reminds me of

A liberal is a conservative who has been mugged.
A conservative is a liberal who has been arrested.

If my child is not a communist at age 18 I will think they have no heart.
If they are not a conservative at age 40 I will think they have no brain.

Conservativism is respectable. Take-no-prisoners maga connedservatives are utterly deplorable

Conservatives who willingly work with liberals, progressives, and Democrats -- together for the sake of the country -- are reasonable and how democracy functions. Joe Biden was able to reach across the aisle for decades and get things done.

maga lunatics are destructive and ultimately self-destructive but they hurt and damage a lot of good people in the process.

"Assumption is the mother of all fuckups". tRump does not fight fair & he has Putin's support

Biden has arrayed against him:

* Adverserial center-right media that loves controversy above all else except the profits that controversy generates

* tRump is proven to lie, cheat, steal, and crime his way through life

* christo-fascist dominionists who only care about power

* Foreign bad actors, chiefly Putin who is experienced and has an apparatus and network already in place bending public opinion. Also includes Chinese hackers, islamo-facist Iranians, and NorKs.

* A deranged base of angry sheep who stick with tRump no matter what he says or does because they have cast themselves and their dear leader as victims

* A fleet of black swans, one of which has partially revealed itself in the form of a leap in generative AI capabilities


DO NOT ASSUME this is a normal campaign with normal voters in a placid electoral landscape.

This is not a normal campaign. Voters are agitated and volatile. The electoral landscape is cratered and smoking and under bombardment.

Agree, we don't have much time left, before the election. But that's not the final say-so on tRump

It is extremely important that the main trials against tRump (2 Smith, 1 Willis) take place before the election. But it is not absolutely necessary.

Judge Chutkan gets it, as does the DC Appeals Court. Loose Cannon also gets it, but in her case she believes it is best to have her case delayed until after the election and believes that it is important.

Keeping tRump on his losing streak (lost 4 popular votes: 2016, 2018, 2020, pinked 2022) is crucial for democracy.

But even if the verdicts come after the election, they are also crucial. If tRump is convicted, then by A14s3 he is forbidden from taking the office. Which VP gets selected by the courts?

It seems that Smirnov may have shoes to drop on top of tRump.

Ultimately history is already not being kind to loser tRump: rated dead last. The hole he is in will only get deeper.

Garland hater ping

Yes, the pace of things is frustrating.
Yes, there are issues with Smirnov.

But if Garland is to be hated, then it would be consistent to hate Fani Willis. Garland was investigating, then appointed Smith, who charged tRump. Only after that Willis charged tRump. She did not require Smith to charge first; it just happened in that sequence.

Shouldn't haters be hating on Alvin Bragg? He charged first only by a few months, but that investigation started at least two years before Garland and Willis.

But if Garland is to be hated for being "slow", does that mean Willis was sleeping until waking up late in the game? No. There are things we wish had been done more quickly and things to dislike about Garland, but let's be consistent and steer a realistic course.

Let's realize that if Willis took her time to get it right, it also took Garland / Smith time to get their cases right.

Love the fetus, hate the child

Love the fetus because doing so advances the fortunes of rich people who like extreme conservatives.

Hate the child because it is not their extended family's child and not their friends' child. They think this because abortions are not visible. Very few people know when a woman has an abortion.

They moralize that unwanted pregnancies are a moral failing and the child should be punished with a lifetime of missed opportunities.

They don't think it through to realize that a lifetime of harsh conditions is worse than a pre-conscious termination is not terminating a conscious person, regardless of the rhetoric. It is another case of absolutism trumping the reality of shades of gray.

Yup. GOP will rip itself apart. TSF owns the rump GOP which will wither into nothingness in 30 years

A new center-right party will rise and will be in the wilderness for 15 years until it becomes a contender. Even then it might take a decade to get a House or Senate or Prez.

Timing is faster these days though, and politics abhors a power vacuum. Realistically I do not expect Democratic domination for 24 years. Watch out for an independent who might take the Presidency.

If I had more time now I'd look into the fall of the Whigs and the rise of the Republican Party, and also the rise of the Democratic Party.

It's not about reaching them. It's about ** us ** not using Hitler terminology

I stopped.

I realized, when tRump referred to "vermin" and "poisoning blood" the way Hitler did, that calling them maggots (magats) was the same kind of thing.

Now I just write "maga", lower case. I don't dignify the deplorables with capitals. Readers will silently add a 't' as they read if they are in the old habit.

My screenname is a fictional "rational libertarian"

Basically, he believes in a libertarian ideal, but is first and foremost a realist and pragmatist and thus happily co-exists with many other political stripes.

Libertarianism is a fantastic ideal, just as communism is a fantastic ideal. By "fantastic" I mean the "fantasy" sense of the word.

Libertarians imagine a world where everyone is focused on working hard to get ahead and everyone is cooperating to get stuff done because it is in their best interests; cooperating by being careful and responsible. Communists imagine a world where everyone works at their best ability and everyone gets what they need and the rest is spread around.

Both ideologies are imagining idealized human beings who are cooperative, work hard, never exploit anyone and jointly make life fair in somewhat different senses. Both will never be achieved because they are both unrealistic.

I value highly freedoms and rights, but I believe no right is in isolation. Rights are shared and not owned. Rights are frequently in conflict and have to be balanced. That means no pure form of social governance, no crystalline distillation into simplest principles will ever be sufficient or workable or desirable.

I believe that in the future, government will be reduced but never eliminated. The only way it will be reduced is when people learn to get along without shooting each other, bombing each other, exploiting each other, or being nasty to each other. To the extent that people the world over cooperate with each other responsibly and respectfully, ... to that extent government can be reduced. Though that is an idealistic dream, it is a dream worth having. "Imagine." But don't depend on it arriving next week.

For example, libertarians believe government should get out of things like welfare and providing health care. The libertarian fantasy is that everyone will be motivated to donate to charity and it will all work out. The reality is that the poor donate a much larger percentage of their income than rich people do, despite rich people having a much much greater percentage of disposable income to give out.

So I hold libertarianism as an unobtainable ideal that is worth moving towards by enlightening and educating the public, especially the rich fuckers who should know better but are very unenlightened. It seems that money and privilege are counterproductive for enlightenment. I also hold that it is a better ideal than marxism or communism.

My liberal progressive libertarianism is a far cry from Republican faux libertarianism and much closer to liberalism, progressivism, Democratic policies, and Canadian Liberal Party / New Democratic Party policies.

Thus I am comfortable here, and very glad to be accepted for what I post from time to time.