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Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

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Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#31

Post by NateEag »

js2 wrote: post #25
DubiousPusher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

> Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. He can't pass an infrastructure plan because anything of that scope requires persuasion and compromise across many competing interests, things I believe he's constitutionally incapable of. It's the same reason he never had a healthcare bill. If he can't strong arm a deal, he can't get it done at all. I think he actually used the bully…

To be effective, a US president needs to be a consensus-builder and compromise-broker.

I think Trump doesn't even know what those words mean.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#32

Post by ianai »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #24
ianai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really glad to see your comment and others pointing out what’s really happened and happening. I typically can’t get out a fifth of this in conversation before being told I’m wrong. Of course sources are dismissed outright. The one thing Democrats can do is dictate what republicans won’t back by taking it on themselves. There’s got to be a way to snap back go normalcy that way

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

Republicans have been getting death threats towards themselves and their families for even looking likely to disagree with the president for years now. They also had no problem passing huge tax cuts without funding and thus exploding the deficit. I think it’s imperative that the next president start by trying to stem the online propaganda and anything else contributing to those death threats. The US simply cannot tolerate death threats against its elected officials. They’ve affected our politics for years and progress may be impossible until the propaganda is halted.

Edit-On the original topic of getting the two sides to agree on things, I think the fundamental problem is the us/them dynamic between urban and rural communities. I further posit that a large government program to employ these two communities together would go a long way toward building a communal bridge between them. If people in rural America saw the rest of the country building things like high speed rail to make them less isolated they would see promise for better days in the future. Ie make it so that people can live in rural areas and take a train into work in a city in minutes. Property valuations will increase. Crime will decrease through frankly there being better options all around. (Though I still think a revamped drug scheduling system needs to address the source of crime.)

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#33

Post by ianai »

js2 wrote: post #25
DubiousPusher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

> Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. He can't pass an infrastructure plan because anything of that scope requires persuasion and compromise across many competing interests, things I believe he's constitutionally incapable of. It's the same reason he never had a healthcare bill. If he can't strong arm a deal, he can't get it done at all. I think he actually used the bully…

Don’t forget the wide reports of death threats towards republicans and democrats - anyone remotely open to pushing back gets death threats. And they’re credible. That clearly has kept progress from being made.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ianai wrote: post #32
DubiousPusher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

Republicans have been getting death threats towards themselves and their families for even looking likely to disagree with the president for years now. They also had no problem passing huge tax cuts without funding and thus exploding the deficit. I think it’s imperative that the next president start by trying to stem the online propaganda and anything else contributing to those death threats. The US simply cannot tol…

Re high speed rail: The problem is, there aren't enough people in the rural area. You wouldn't have a high-speed rail stop in every other town in rural Kansas - if you did, it wouldn't be high speed rail. You're not going to connect all the farmer's kids to Kansas City that way, still less to Chicago.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#35

Post by AnimalMuppet »

js2 wrote: post #12
pdonis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies But even if this is accepted for the sake of argument (I'm not sure it's entirely true, but let's assume it is), the left has not done what a sane political part…

Once the New Deal coalition fell apart after the Civil Rights Act passed and the GOP implemented the Southern Strategy and right-to-work laws destroyed unions, the Democrats lost unions as their base of financial support. They still held on in Congress for a while, but couldn't win the Presidency until the Third Way/neoliberal Democrats and groups like the Blue Dogs took charge of the party. At that point, the Democr…

> Bernie's support came from appealing to what used to be the base of the Democratic party: the working-class. But it's not enough voters in the raucous big-tent Democratic party to win a primary, and likely not the general election.

> Anyway, to your last point: the left is part of the Democratic party, but it doesn't have a strong-enough hand to play.

If those farther left types don't have enough support even to win the Democratic primary, how will they do in the actual race?

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#36

Post by DubiousPusher »

ianai wrote: post #32
DubiousPusher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

Republicans have been getting death threats towards themselves and their families for even looking likely to disagree with the president for years now. They also had no problem passing huge tax cuts without funding and thus exploding the deficit. I think it’s imperative that the next president start by trying to stem the online propaganda and anything else contributing to those death threats. The US simply cannot tol…

Except rural people aren't going to agree to that because it would mean an increase in taxes as well as massive amounts of state and federal intervention into their communities.

Edit: I do not buy that death threats have anything to do with the present stalemate. We are nowhere near a historic high water mark for pokticial violence in this country. The 1850s, turn of the century and 1960s were all very violent periods and the US government did not find itself paralyzed then.

The biggest change is that one party has been over run by a philosophy that the government simply cannot do things well or make them better. You cannot launch a ship when half the crew denies that it will float.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#37

Post by DubiousPusher »

js2 wrote: post #25
DubiousPusher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that would work. The Republican party, at least the powerful do seem to believe that government can do no right. Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. Whereas democrats seem willing to take just about anything (though this has stemmed a bit under Trump). In this case there is no middle as there is no place to compromise between "any" and "none".

> Even Donald Trump could not turn them toward fiscal stimulus nor infrastructure. He can't pass an infrastructure plan because anything of that scope requires persuasion and compromise across many competing interests, things I believe he's constitutionally incapable of. It's the same reason he never had a healthcare bill. If he can't strong arm a deal, he can't get it done at all. I think he actually used the bully…

I disagree. I think that Trump, freed of McConnell would have been for using a ton of debt to build things. Would he have insisted that a ton of that spending take place in states that votes for him? Absolutely. But he is not a deficit hawk.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#38

Post by PopsiclePete »

NateEag wrote: post #30
DubiousPusher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that second one is such an absurd point. I would be willing to bet money that more civil wars have followed the model of spiralling, multilateral chaotic violence than one like the U.S. which had clear sides geographically and politically as well as symmetrical structures.

I think he'd argue that "spiraling, multilateral violence" is not a civil war. I could be wrong. I think he's right, though, that mostly you need young men hopped up on testosterone for a conflict like a civil war to happen. I think if you're over twenty-five, you're unlikely to volunteer for things that are likely to kill you, and that actually forms strong backpressure against large-scale violence in the US.

Or maybe the definition of "Civil War" is more fluid than we think? I don't expect large-scale devastation and cities in ruins like in Syria, no.

But let's do some fun math. Roughly 70 million voted for Trump. Take away the housewives, the boomers, the Latinos in Florida and the less fanatical, more old-school Republicans that delivered Texas.

So let's say "only" a million are left out of the 70 and let's say that "only" a third of those - so 300k are willing to go to war for "their" President.

That's still huge trouble for this country. No, we won't be a failed state but a never-ending far-right insurgency that right-wing and foreign media constantly encourage and feed while the GOP publicly disavow is not something that we know how to deal with either.

The Left will be on the receiving end of it all by its very nature it will be reluctant to confront it beyond "let's talk about it".

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#39

Post by DubiousPusher »

NateEag wrote: post #30
DubiousPusher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that second one is such an absurd point. I would be willing to bet money that more civil wars have followed the model of spiralling, multilateral chaotic violence than one like the U.S. which had clear sides geographically and politically as well as symmetrical structures.

I think he'd argue that "spiraling, multilateral violence" is not a civil war. I could be wrong. I think he's right, though, that mostly you need young men hopped up on testosterone for a conflict like a civil war to happen. I think if you're over twenty-five, you're unlikely to volunteer for things that are likely to kill you, and that actually forms strong backpressure against large-scale violence in the US.

Yeah but you don't just get to decide what words mean to suit your argument. The Spanish civil war and Syria are perfect examples of something that is widely considered a civil war and were multilateral.

Most civil wars start as multilateral conflicts. But once groups start getting picked off, the others begin combining into larger structure to preserve themselves and increase their chances of having a stake in victory. Just because you can't see the lines now does not mean they can't emerge after the conflict begins.

I do think the point about age is relevant. It's well know that things like crime decrease significantly with age. We also don't have much historical precedent for the kind of aged populations post industrial countries have.

Re: Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

#40

Post by DubiousPusher »

PopsiclePete wrote: post #38
NateEag wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he'd argue that "spiraling, multilateral violence" is not a civil war. I could be wrong. I think he's right, though, that mostly you need young men hopped up on testosterone for a conflict like a civil war to happen. I think if you're over twenty-five, you're unlikely to volunteer for things that are likely to kill you, and that actually forms strong backpressure against large-scale violence in the US.

Or maybe the definition of "Civil War" is more fluid than we think? I don't expect large-scale devastation and cities in ruins like in Syria, no. But let's do some fun math. Roughly 70 million voted for Trump. Take away the housewives, the boomers, the Latinos in Florida and the less fanatical, more old-school Republicans that delivered Texas. So let's say "only" a million are left out of the 70 and let's say that "o…

> Or maybe the definition of "Civil War" is more fluid than we think?

Exactly this. Retroactively, we combine groups and intentions to simplify the narrative of most conflicts. With good reason, following the dizzying array of groups and actions involved in any conflict is impossible for all but the most determined and specialized scholars. The popular story has to be simplified.

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