Sunset of the Day
I recently read this: “But where in today’s politics is a robust, credible voice for optimism? Who’s pointing the way to a society of abundant opportunities for improvement? Not the right-veering Republicans, with their catalogue of resentments. And not the left-listing Democrats, with their litany of grievances. With less than a year before the presidential primaries begin, we have two parties of anger and no party of hope.”
I suggest that beautifully sums up today’s American political parties. The Republicans, led by Trump, have become the party of begrudgers to all except the wealthy. They have decided to go for “peace in our time” giving up legislative power to the president and embracing future enemies of the United States. The perils of the future they leave for the future. They turn a blind eye to the deficit they once abhorred as it climbs ever higher.
The Democrats led by no one have become the party of handouts. They, judging from their presidential candidates, are offering something for nothing as they outdo each other in proposing giving more free things to more people combing the country, if not the world, for people who have been injured by the American experiment.
I suppose a good example of this is Michael Moore. When told one of his ancestors was killed by native Americans during the King Philip War he shrugged. He said something to the effect “by what right did these white people come to this land and take it away from people who lived here.” He should have known it was through the old adage that might makes right was the right that they used for their conquests.
As part of the handout package the Democrats are now talking about making reparations to African-Americans for having instituted slavery in the country and continuing it with the Jim Crow laws for many years afterward. Some have suggested the reparations should extend to native-Americans, Asians, or even some in the LGBT persuasion for the suffering they encountered. One group no one seems to consider entitled to anything is the white Americans who are looked upon as the purveyors of all that is wrong.
I hope we all recognize that African-Americans and others have suffered grave wrongs at the hands of other Americans and even the American government. If reparations mean recognizing that such has occurred I have no problem with it. There is no doubt that blacks have gotten the short end of the stick.
When we recognize this we must keep in mind that it was not only those groups who didn’t receive a hearty handshake welcoming them to the United States. Those who immigrated here were never welcome as we’ve seen in the 1840s and 1850s with the nativist No Nothing party. The Irish, Germans, Italians, Eastern Europeans,and Jews, mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who came in the late 19th and early 20th century suffered greatly. The American streets were not lined with gold. They lived in slums, suffered with poverty and illness, froze in winters and smoldered in summer. There were no handouts to them, no food stamps or any income adjustments.
They are mostly blameless when it comes to slavery or appropriating the native-American lands. Are we to look at them to make reparations for things they had nothing to do with just because of the color of their skin? Or, do we omit them and just go after those who are descendants of the original settlers and perhaps those people who pushed the frontiers of early America to the west.
I can guarantee one thing: if the Democrats elect any candidate who is planning to talk about reparations they can kiss their chances for winning the presidency goodbye in 2020. There are too many Americans who took advantage of the free stuff America always offered: free schooling up through high school, free libraries, freedom to speak their minds as they saw fit, and freedom to seek whatever employment they wanted, who aren’t willing to start paying others who failed to take advantage of these freedoms.
Why does everyone act like the US doesn’t have a pot to piss in when it comes to funding large scale social improvements but no one bats an eye at unending trillion(s) dollar wars? Explain to me why it isn’t ok for the govt. to sponsor free healthcare/education? The country isn’t like a business….if the govt. gives money to citizens, that money isn’t gone, it is injected back into the economy.
The real “socialism” is the BS trickle down economics where rich people get tax cuts and we all get screwed.
Saw the Chieftains a couple nights, ago. Hadn’t seen them in thirty years. It’s their 57th anniversary. Great show.
Anybody seen “The Death of Stalin,” yet? Highly recommended.
Wa-llahi! Baleedin! As a thoughtful response to the burning cities of the sixties, a complex social engineering project began mid-decade. Based on education, particularly at the college level, this effort produced cadres of educated African Americans able to compete at all levels of society. It was a plan to foster an African American middle-class. As you can discover, while, lifting paper brain weights, that plan has had some success. The economic enfranchisement that has come of it gives African Americans a stake in the national life. That social engineering project was, and, is, reparations for the consistently bad hand dealt to the African-Americans before the victories of the civil rights movement.
All praise to ukhtis Ihlan, Tlaib, and AOC. All power to the dialectic!
No one should want to live in a police state, but resisting tyranny gives some people a reason for living.
FSF :
May they tyrannize the hell out of you then if it keeps you going !!!!
*The ” Moderated ” comment that Matt has now historically cinsigned to …. Gee , I wonder what it was … Is innocuous. To get Matt off the spot and because our canny lad wants me to lecture a bit about … Meta-Language Mata-Mata … So, Shoots : A Gloria …
Meta-Language accounts leave it to the Reader’s head to imagine what the Real story is ; they are an amazing imaginative and together imagining space where the Reader learns just how smart the Author knows they are . It is Am… COLLABORATION .
Briefly on this kerfuffle : I will render it in a way that it would just be censorship in sovietsky to not allow :
Otto Wambier had one life : there are many lives in Seoul .
There was word play on Soul and Seoul in original .
Matt is displaying a real regard for Catholic Verities regarding distinguishing Lives and Souls .
And I Applaud Matt for it .
The Human Calculus remains the same however ; thus some Trump Showmanship and roguish affection is seen more as KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR KIM JONGS EVEN CLOSER .
Matt : We can leave that Top Line unexplained .
Otto Wambier utterly tragic, but how many more Souls hath Seoul .
Will it extend to the black tribes that sold them into slavery?
I’m a man without a party. An unapologetic social Democrat in the mold of Hubert Humphrey et al. If the far left continues its capture of the Democratic Party, forget about the presidency for the forseeable future. (How about a 3% turnout in Detroit? Think that will get these Sant Claus candidates t0 1600?)
Hutch:
Is 3% an improvement?
See the turnout during the Milligan election. Probably less. My point is there does not seem to be any of the standard bearers for labor, civil rights (along with civil responsibilities), general social justice, economic development that is shared by all (A rising tide lifts all boats) etc. If you go back to the fifties and sixties and look at the distribution of the tax burden you would see the stark facts
Prior to Reagan’s ballooning deficits, the burden was shared. No more. NC touts this prosperity and ignores the disparity when considering the gains of labor. Does he think the market and labor gains are equal? When Trump forgives 158 mill for GM or Ford–who does he think makes up the difference?
It would have been better, had Michael Moore’s ancestor been killed by native Americans before he had any progeny.
It would be an odd thing indeed for the descendants of Russian serfs and Irish tenant farmers to pay the “reparations” to descendants of black slaves and their masters.
If it’s extended to native Americans, does Liz Warren get any? What degree of racial purity is required?
Brian:
I’m sort of hoping that even a tiny drop of blood, for example like the amount Elizabeth Warren has of her Native American blood, makes one eligible for reparations. I keep in mind that some in my family are called “black Irish” so I may trace my ancestry back through Spain to some of the Moors who conquered that country. Haven’t done any DNA testing yet to see if that is the case but will after we learn who is going to get what from the taxpayers.
I friggin’ KNEW we were related !!!!!!!!!!!
The Trump folks aren’t resentful or begrudgers. They cheer when the unemployment rate for Blacks and Latinos hit all time record lows. They want all Americans to prosper not just the politically connected types in DC. Trump’s policies are working and so are the American people. Peace and Prosperity is being produced. Happy Days are here again.
NC:
Yes, happy days except for the Otto Warmbier family, and the Khashoggi family, and those Brits who Putin poisoned.
Matt:
Be less lyrical about these serious matters please .
Both political parties on the wrong path full of both avarice and envy!
OC:
Serious deployment of words for maximum effect; Brevity is the Soul of O’Crudelaich .
( Praise like that just observe as due not respond )
Sláinte
I have no problem with cash reparations to African-American descendants of slaves from Africa.
As long as they also get the bill for everything received since 1865, or even only the bill for all the specific racial federal and state programs since Lyndon Johnson.