The Cover Contest Weekly Winners ThreadSo much winning!!
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis
“It’s your party and you can cry if you want to.” - Captain Europe
With the benefit of hindsight, it's a mistake to try and attribute the rise of the Nazis to Germany losing WWI, because there have been plenty of countries that have lost wars and not turned to genocidal totalitarianism, and of course both Italy and Japan saw the rise of similar political movements even though they had been on the winning side of the war. The people who make up Trump's base are clearly aggrieved now even though they haven't actually suffered in any meaningful way. They've constructed this whole identity around being these hypermasculine warriors fighting the good fight against some nebulously defined evil, and not only has this glorious battle failed to materialize, but any rational assessment of the situation would reveal that these "proud patriots" and "freedom lovers" were the real totalitarian oppressors all along, and this is not something that their brains are equipped to process.
I think Putin's Russia resembles the trump administration more than Nazi Germany with their conservative government with strong Christian beliefs that has made it illegal to talk bad about Russian and has suppressed of the LGBT community. Not to mention the fact that Putin has been in power for what, 2 decades? Something that trump has viewed in a positive way.
And, I'd say, unlike Nazi Germany, which was unpopular amongst most neighbors in Europe but was still feared due to the threat of war as it was a war economy first and foremost, Putin's Russia is incredibly popular amongst a good portion of the global landscape thanks to Putin's cult of personality and a relatively large chunk of the world still having conservative values.
This will sound crazy... but I don't think Adolf Hitler was very charismatic. He mainly got to power by giving extreme solutions to basic problems any society deals with in a country that was brutalized by punishments brought down as a result of losing the Great War, and tapped in to centuries old xenophobia and bigotry to give inspiration to Germany. Ergo, it was his philosophy that was popular not so much him.
... why do I feel so dirty?
Last edited by GindyPosts; 11-30-2020 at 05:02 PM.
Trump retweeted a tweet that says, "why bother voting for Republicans?"
Maybe Trump doesn't see himself as a Republican anymore.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
I have never stated that everyone struggling to pay off student debt is irresponsible.
That doesn't mean it's a good idea for the federal government to spend over a trillion dollars to eradicate student debt for the responsible and irresponsible alike.
I've been pretty clear not to attribute every success or failure in life to one's moral character, including in the post to which you're responding.
I understand that many debts will never be repaid in full. However, making it too easy to default reduces the incentives for lenders to provide money for people who need it, or means that people who need money are going to have no choice but to borrow at exorbitant rates, because it is now their task to subsidize a larger percentage of defaulters. This will be especially true if education costs continue to price, as people figure that they won't have to pay the full price.
There's a false dichotomy between career paths that offer safer paychecks and those that offer the possibility of a big splash. There are some majors where a big splash isn't really an option, or at least no more likely than in a major that helps people get a steady paycheck. There are also other ways to incentivize people to take risks that are in the aggregate worthwhile.
My point on most of us believing that there is a higher standard of right and wrong than senators is because most people on this board do not trust the moral judgment of Mitch McConnell's Senate.
The Congress and the President would have the legal authority to pass a massive college debt forgiveness program. They're probably not going to get the votes. If the President is on board, the matter isn't settled because the legal authority of the executive branch is limited.
The Secretary of Education has some authority to cancel debt, although it's limited by statute, generally applying to situations of fraud, school closure or total and permanent disability. We can also bet that Biden's nominee for the office will be asked his or her position on how far they can go, and how far they should go.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfri...h=6cc71e587db3
Biden's plan is to call for Congress to pass a bill forgiving ten thousand dollars in debt. That will spark some debate about ways to resolve the problem, but is a still different question than total cancellation.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Your comment supposes that Trump *ever* saw himself as part of something larger than himself. That's not how narcissists work.
Any political affiliation (remember, he was Dem once) are simply a least resistance channel through which to achieve his goals. If Marxist dogma would smooth his path, he'd be all about The Collective Good For The Proletariat.
Trump is opportunistic in the worst sense of the word. He is a virus seeking protein.
I assume that you are referring to arts or humanities majors, because of course conservatives would be so short sighted to assume that there is absolutely no value in learning skills that aren't directly employable straight out of college, and that if we just raised an entire society of accountants and programmers our culture wouldn't suffer at all. But you really only have to look at the wide disparity in cultural output between the left and right to see the problem with that line of reasoning. It's not so much that conservatives are inherently incapable of producing anything of artistic value, it's just that they're pretty much all told from a young age that pursuing these dreams is a waste of time and that they should focus on being self-sufficient as quickly as possible. And then they turn around and complain that their views aren't adequately represented in movies and shows, and their only recourse is to hastily slap together some truly awful tripe that not even the most diehard of true believers can sit through.
That more or less sums it up. I would add one point, though. I think sometimes conservatives are intentionally ham-fisted in that hastily slapped together tripe. They often seem to have a vested interest in discrediting the art of comedy as a means of speaking truth to power. For instance, in 2007, FOX tried out a conservative answer to the Daily Show. It was called the Half-Hour News Hour, and it was horrible, not because it was conservative, but because the jokes were forced instead of coming organically from the raw material.
Watching television is not an activity.
Conservatives can be funny, they're just very hard to find. For example, Schwartzneggar, Kelsey Grammar and Sam Riami is rumored to be conservative. Dennis Miller was funny once upon a time, before 9/11 broke him. But you're right that many conservatives fail to get why comedy is funny, they like punching down and are more prone to stepping on third rails.
He never did, he gave way more money to the Democratic party for years, and his kids were registered in New York under Democrat when it came to voting. The only reason he ran as a Republican was because he was so pissed at President Obama for the "dis" he pretty much refused to run as a person under the same banner as him, so he went Republican. He probably has no real political affiliation, only to himself and his own ego. My guess was that if President Obama didn't run as a Democrat he would have primaried as a Dem.
Whatever the case, if it gets the idiots in Georgia to not go vote and suppress themselves allowing for us to get the two Georgia seats, I would be more than happy if he keeps peddling his dumb ideas until it fractures the party and screws over Mitch the turtle.