dagblog - Comments for "The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril"

artappraiser — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 10:10:39 +0000

In reply to The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

WAIT A SEC...Shouldn’t Libertarians Be Against Free Money? Not When Andrew Yang Is Peddling It

Some notable young dark web libertarians have warmed to a Democrat. But why not? His central idea really goes back to Milton Friedman.

@ DailyBeast.com, 04.26.19 11:03 PM ET

Matt & Bret Easton Ellis seem

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 11:23:53 +0000

In reply to Sure, because there's no

Matt & Bret Easton Ellis seem joined at the hip:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bret-easton-ellis-thinks-youre-ov...

Sure, because there's no

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:14:19 +0000

In reply to “I think we’d all be a lot

Sure, because there's no corruption at the local level.
Seems Matt "hasn't thought deeply about that" for a lot of things.
Yeah, democracy & policy issues is a pain to keep up with - except these are the ruling and controlling bodies of our society. If there's a President i can marginally trust, I know things will go well within say 20%. If there's one I don't trust, things can go badly to say 80%. So it's worth paying some attention at least for that race. The weakness there is that a blinkered Congress can destroy any efforts of a competent President (or a woke House can put a stop to some of the most egregious Presidential behavior), so voting only for President isn't enough.
And because of the electoral college (along with voter repression), much of our voting potential is weakened. At one point I had a choice to vote in 2 places (possibly 3) but *NONE* of them would have ever mattered for the presidential race as it's concluded before the voting starts. Sure, lowering the margin has some good effect, and some of the local races can go different than planned, but it's only 10 states or so that really matter for that all important "swing" vote (which made the Russian hackers' job much easier in 2016).

Should I care about AOC? well, not really - she was elected to represent some community in the Bronx, and she's presumably giving them what they want. Does it trample my rights or my policies? Not really, maybe a little bit, but as much or more positively as negatively.

The only significant crisis was with challenging Pelosi - and in this, AOC was reasnable - she pushed her agenda, she basically noted she wasn't elected to follow lots of "sit back and watch" niceities and traditions - but she also threw her lot in with the longstanding female in control. I keep thinking of this, during the government shutdown, or now with the new majority and Barr testifying - and how having some inexperienced dickhead take over could have left us very weakened at a time we need strength.

Sure, it'd be easy to just shut my eyes and let Trump do all his wicked bad boy stuff - I mean, I'm a white male citizen - how bad can it hurt? But I don't work on my own car anymore - that doesn't mean I'll take it to just any mechanic to fuck it up - I depend on that car, and even though I'm not telling the mechanic how to do his job, I will evaluate how well he does and switch repair shops as needed. And it's not like it really takes that much more time and effort to at least pick a few decent main representatives - i.e. not to the state of being a news junkie like you or me. Matt can go get stuffed. He's part of the problem. Just like this college-aged Hispanic girl I talked to before the election - she was just right to be a Hillary supporter - but she'd taken some of that disinfo to heart - "well, I just don't know" - so she either didn't vote or maybe voted Jill Stein, or something else. But she didn't take this assignment nearly as seriously as she would a class homework - she turned in a short essay without a real conclusion, without real research. That's an F. And if enough students of democracy don't do their not-so-tough homework diligently, it all falls apart. Then Matt gets his oligarch he thinks he's fine with.

And sure, we thought Facebook was fine too - no need to regulate. 2 years now of assurances from them, and we find their behavior for 6 or 8 years has been totally egregious - hardly this hands-off benign community with a few algorithms we'd dreamed - more a monster mosh-pit of vulture capitalism for hire, where the users *are* the product to a much more draconian extent than we'd ever thought. It's not like our intelligence agencies behaved that much better under Obama than Bush - but there was at least that bit of promise of more oversight, of protest and appeal. Under Trump, well, he's been gutting the professionals, so we're really getting Oligarch 2.0. Even if/when we get him out of office, there's no real idea what it takes to clean up the mess and broken regulatory and management structure he'll have left behind, with a great void as serious government workers have departed.

“I think we’d all be a lot

artappraiser — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 11:31:21 +0000

In reply to The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

“I think we’d all be a lot happier if we worried less about who was running for what office and let someone else make those decisions for us.”

-Matt
Age 32
Massachusetts https://t.co/Lub00ZAnhI
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) April 11, 2019

They flick the off switch to

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 07:52:55 +0000

In reply to The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

Flicking the off switch to all the screaming, but at the same time thinking of running for mayor:

Basically what happened with me. I'm done with all radicals https://t.co/cr5S6cUdko
— William Edmonson (@NeoLibertarian_) February 25, 2019

The Stones moved to France

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:43:24 +0000

In reply to oh I think about it often,

The Stones moved to France (where Wyman could be with his 14-year-old girls), and now Depardieu flees to Moscow. "It's the Time of the (Tax) Season for Loving" (what's your name, who's your daddy, is he rich like we?)

oh I think about it often,

artappraiser — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 00:40:45 +0000

In reply to I hope you do not think this

oh I think about it often, one of the things I'll never forget from the shock of it: the countercultural heroes of my naive radical teen years fleeing 95% tax rate as they got rich. Here's one 2015 story I found that's a reminder of the sort of things going on: HOW THE ROLLING STONES, ROD STEWART AND DAVID BOWIE RAN FROM THE TAXMAN. But you know what's really funny about that, the way I recall it: it would be like Mick Jagger saying I can't handle these taxes no mo, but then you'd read oops, in trouble for drugs in the U.S., and then start wandering, no place to call home. Another irony: John Lennon, once with Yoko, they stayed, became Americans, whatever the tax, called NY home--killed him....

I hope you do not think this

Richard Day — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:34:22 +0000

In reply to The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

I hope you do not think this thought trite....

But I recall when the Beetles discovered the British and US tax systems.

well it is a popular idea,

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:57:16 +0000

In reply to We should be winning these

well it is a *popular* non-partisan idea, is it not?

along those lines, this is fun:

LEFTIES: We're proposing this big idea to shift the Overton Window

ME: Actually, this is a pretty mainstream, center-left idea

LEFTIES: Shut up you neoliberal scum

ME: Wait, I thought you said you wanted to shift the Ov--

LEFTIES: HOW DARE YOU SAY OUR BIG IDEA IS CENTRIST
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) January 10, 2019

We should be winning these

Michael Maiello — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:42:35 +0000

In reply to The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

We should be winning these people over with legal pot!

dagblog - Comments for "The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril"

Matt & Bret Easton Ellis seem

Sure, because there's no

“I think we’d all be a lot

They flick the off switch to

The Stones moved to France

oh I think about it often,

I hope you do not think this

well it is a *popular* idea,

We should be winning these

well it is a popular idea,