Reasons to not vote Left or to vote Left

MorkandMindy said:

The common argument of socialism is bad [insert fallacy here] therefore we have to be a capitalist country, is pretty much like saying 'eating grass is bad therefore we should eat trees'.

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If the country wants arrogance or prefers obnoxious as an alternative, then so be it, but it simply shows that the voters have become arrogant or obnoxious themselves. So much for society as a whole.

MorkandMindy said:

There's a difficult to avoid form of arrogance

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And the obnoxiousness on the other side?

MorkandMindy said:

Reasons not to vote Left

This is always the big one in my experience: 'The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 proving that communism doesn't work.'

It wasn't communist. The aim of the dominant party in the USSR was to transform it into a communist Soviet state, but this aim was never achieved. There were no communist countries in the whole twentieth century though many Socialist ones.

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Shall we consider this to be a refutation of the absurd claim that we often read on these pages that Socialism is "just a government that has public schools, so there's nothing to fear?"

In fact, I think your message verifies the idea that the Socialist faction in Congress and elsewhere in society IS in step with the USSR and its satellites prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain. Would you agree?? And that Socialism in this country would mean Cuba and Venezuela, not public schools and a post office?

chevyontheriver said:

Four more years of the Devil that you know vs a Socialist America?

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Are people actually buying this "democrats are socialist" nonsense?

KCfromNC said:

Are people actually buying this "democrats are socialist" nonsense?

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The Democratic Socialists of America probably are.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - Working towards a better future for all.

KCfromNC said:

Are people actually buying this "democrats are socialist" nonsense?

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The current batch of Democrats sure are. You could argue that Bill Clinton was not a socialist, nor Democrats that went before him. But I think it's harder to maintain that the Democratic Party is not socialist this time around. Just ask Kamala.

MorkandMindy said:

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton were way off on the right, Bill signed the NAFTA agreement allowing among other things, for car companies in Michigan to move their assembly plants to Mexico, increasing car company profits for investors and to executives... you must know the story, and Hillary favored TPP and every war possible.

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I would not call Bill Clinton 'capitalist' per se, and would have to consider his dealings with Indonesia to maybe figure out what to call that.

I think the idea of what is right and what is left is seriously out of calibration.

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Yes. What we have now is a very impure capitalism, which could be called by many not very nice names. I wouldn't want a pure capitalism, something with zero safeguards. But we are not even close to that right now.

I mentioned Distributism as an economic model. I hear people say it's totally unworkable, and yet I think at least as an idea it should be better known. And yet we don't have a pure capitalism, and even if we get socialism that won't be pure either. So I promote here an economics that tends to put the ownership of the tools of production into the hands of artisans in a society of owners. It's kind of how I have shaped my own work. It is agrarian friendly and small business friendly.

A Boy Can Dream: Chesterton’s Distributist Economics & Wendell Berry’s Agrarian Ideal

MorkandMindy said:

I'm not suggesting the Democrats are necessarily a better choice or to the left of the Republicans, after all, Donald Trump was a Democrat and Hillary Clinton was a Republican. Both parties are Right Wing.

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You have undoubtedly seen the picture of Bill and Hillary and the Donald and Melania. All yucking it up. I'm not sure there is a sliver of difference between them. Well, Hillary and the Donald are on the outs now.

Both parties blame the other for the things they both do. Both favor big government, nearly everyone in Congress does what the lobbyists want.

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That's for sure. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

But there is a small chance that Biden can be pushed into doing some things that need to be done whereas I suspect Donald Trump will continue as he has been doing.

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I am a pessimist. I think if Trump wins he will muddle on, fix up the economy a bit, see through a vaccine, and be attacked for four more years group hate as polarizing increases to revolution. I think Biden wins he retires very quickly and we get Kamala and socialism. She will have to act fast because the majority she would start with would go away in two years, then even more partisanship. I think we get riots and looting and arson no matter who wins the election. In one case it's directed against the status quo all the way to the top, in the other maybe the federal government co-conspires in the upheaval.

What I think is that the environmental change I would like to see can't happen yet. I think we get either next to nothing or the Green New Deal, one extreme or the other. What I want is Amory Lovins' Soft Energy Path, and neither candidate seems likely to go that way. Soft energy path - Wikipedia

MorkandMindy said:

If we had more of a free market I'd go to a Cuban or Mexican Hospital here in the next city and get everything done for 1/5 the cost of these ludicrously expensive and not all that good American hospitals.

My children would go to school outside the US, actually they did, and the US would be priced out of the market on a lot more things, the balance of trade would get worse and the public would continue to be kept in the dark about everything.

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Medical care in the USA is crazier now than ever, and education is a mess, even moreso with Covid. Those things need to be solved, but as I am a pessimist I think they will get worse before getting better, if they ever get better.

chevyontheriver said:

The current batch of Democrats sure are.

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Then I'm sure you'll have no problem quoting their leaders demanding the government seize the means of production. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Albion said:

The Democratic Socialists of America probably are.

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Good for them. Relevance?

chevyontheriver said:

You could argue that Bill Clinton was not a socialist, nor Democrats that went before him. But I think it's harder to maintain that the Democratic Party is not socialist this time around.

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I dunno, the GOP is complaining Hunter Biden made too much money at his job rooting out corruption. Sounds like they're anti-capitalist to me.

MorkandMindy said:

In my experience a healthy dollop of socialism stabilizes a country and does a lot for the economy

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Two dollops and it's a world of hurt, as any Venezuelan could tell you.

"Left" involves a wide range of factors which support or challenge Christian views.