Are the Democrats back on track?

A lot of alt right media also makes clear there's a surge in white supremacy trying to get mainstream or become acceptable/justifiable again.

 

Do you think the surge is just because there's a white, male president again? I think it would have happened if many white male Republicans and possibly even a Democrat had become president. Trump with his lack of giving a shit about others makes it a lot easier, of course.

 

No. Not social justice. I mean ‘Social Justice’ as propogated by SJ Warriors. Taking property by force to redistribute it to so called marginalized groups defined by race, gender and other ‘identities’.

 

Well let’s all work to make sure it never does.

 

It's because Trump represents racism and sexism. The day he was elected, canada saw an explosion of white-supremacist activity. The town I was in had a confederate flag flying on main street. There was nazi and confederate imagery on numerous universities across canada. And attacks on Muslim communities. Their white-supremacist movement is a problem to this day.

The white-supremacist reactionary movement in the US is a hundred times worse than that. Their death toll is a lot higher too. All because Trump gave them a green light. Trump has direct ties to the alt-right.

 

I suspect that all the media coverage the liberal agenda (which I agree with!) is receiving is not because they agree with the policies but rather because it makes for a long period of much news.

 

Nudist

OK so you are not against social justice you are just against people that want social justice?

What do you mean by ‘taking property by force to redistribute’?

It seems to me that the political history of the 20th century (in the industrialised nations) has been to one degree or another about the curtailment of the adverse effects of 19th century exploitative capitalism (some call classical liberalism).

People in many nations fought for voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, and decent living wages. The result of that movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed. Many people saw their wages grow and in the period between the end of WWII and 1970 many in Europe and the US gain middle class status.

What neoliberals have been trying to do in the 21st century is dismantle that distributive system so that the money can be redistributed to the already wealthy. So the real term incomes of the middle and lower classes have in large part stagnated or fallen.

 

Should start a thread on "the myth of the leftist democratic party", or something along those lines.

Could add all sorts of great material: Judge Orders Obama to Release Detained Immigrant Children

 

Please do. Another political post...wonderful.

 

In the political section, yep.

 

Lorax

Have you started it yet?

 

No, I think the party has been completely derailed by a lurch to the left and a loss of perspective on matters of purism. I predict a Trump victory, by a larger margin than before. After that, the deluge!

 

Derailed by a lurch to the left?

Democrats have been leaning right the past couple of decades. We need a left leaning party. Progressive democrats are taking the party back to its roots

 

"matters of purism."Explain that.

 

Yeah. They’re on track for a thorough drubbing. It’s looking like ‘72 all over again. And unlike Nixon, our president has already run the gauntlet and survived.

 

That may have been just a practice run. Much will depend on what parties are in control of what houses of Congress. After that '72 election, there were cartoons of watergate rolling off Nixon's back like water off a duck's back, but look how it turned out!

 

This is certainly the issue. The crotchety wealthy conservatives have myopically embraced a 19th century system that was finally made irrelevant (in some nations) by unions, progressives, and the middle class. The resurrection of the 19th century system has led to a very unstable situation today....past movements to remedy such a state of affairs included the French and Russian revolutions, the Irish breakaway, and others. Are the wealthy incapable of learning from history?

 

They seem to be almost begging for some type of revolution.

 

Apparently not. I remember my first college political science class, where I was taught that FDR saved the U.S. from communist revolution by the New Deal, and that a major reason why the political system was so stable was because everybody was now middle class and there were no sharp class or ideological divisions in the country to fight over. That was then; this is now. I think the wealthy, if they're thinking ahead at all, are banking on their ability to exploit race and ethnicity to divert attention from class warfare. How long could a strategy like that be successful? We may find out, the hard way. Those who can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it; and those who do, are doomed to stand helplessly by while others repeat it.