Why Won't They Listen?

[caleb1633 1,418]

In case you need a distraction from the HC search, here's a great article written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html

This article does a good job of explaining the psychology behind the political positions people take. It's always advantageous to understand where each side is coming from, as understanding such will assist in finding the truth, whether that be by moving towards agreement or being able to counter their point of view more effectively. As Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, once said, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

[johnnyAU 3,634]

2 hours ago, caleb1633 said:

In case you need a distraction from the HC search, here's a great article written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html

This article does a good job of explaining the psychology behind the political positions people take. It's always advantageous to understand where each side is coming from, as understanding such will assist in finding the truth, whether that be by moving towards agreement or being able to counter their point of view more effectively. As Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, once said, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

Haidt has some very interesting discussions, and certainly not just political ones.

[tomcat 569]

Sadly, NYT is not free....

[homersapien 11,392]

I read it (the book).   I came to accept that politics are a matter of biology a long time ago.

Another good one is "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science."  I accept the thesis,  but to be honest, I'll never truly "understand" it.  It's easier for me to understand religion, after all, the self-interest is plain there.

Heck, most Republicans apparently still believe Trump won the election.  Undoubtedly - and ironically - it's probably the same ones who think Biden is hell-bent on instituting communism.

 

 

[caleb1633 1,418]

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

I read it (the book).   I came to accept that politics are a matter of biology a long time ago.

Another good one is "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science."  I accept it, but to be honest, I'll never truly "understand" it.  It's easier for me to understand religion, after all the self-interest is plain there.

Heck, most Republicans apparently believe Trump won the election.  Undoubtedly - and ironically - it's probably the same ones who think Biden is hell-bent on instituting communism.

 

 

I haven't read The Righteous Mind. I'm about a quarter of the way through the Coddling of the American Mind right now, and it is excellent. 

There is reason to believe that Trump supporters are abandoning the Republican Party because they don't feel like the party supports their views. They see them as not being much different than the Democrats. It reminds me of many Bernie Sanders supporters who turned against the Democratic Party, feeling they were no different than Republicans. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with a two-party system, but the problem with ours is that we always have the same two parties, which creates a stagnant state in Washington, with neither party wanting to do anything that might compromise their power. Perhaps the good that the likes of Bernie Sanders and Trump have done is by the volatility they created. The artificial stability the two parties create only allows problems to brew under the surface before they blow up. I don't think Biden wants to install Communism, but I think some in his party do; whether that's blatant, or by trying to artificially stabilize the country through top-down engineering. I think they mean well, but don't understand the second steps, chains of consequences, and side effects that occur when you try to play with society as if though it's a game of chess. In the same way, the Republican Party tries to maintain stability by refusing to budge on anything, believing that deviating from the "formula" is dangerous. While I believe we should respect complex systems that have withstood the test of time, and shouldn't seek change simply for the sake of novelty; refusing to evolve and grow with society will eventually blow up in your face. Just ask Gus.

 

Edit: Perhaps stating that members of the DNC blatantly want Communism is not entirely accurate. I think a better way of putting it would be that many of the members are promoting ideals that are features of collectivism.

[1716AU 730]

20 hours ago, caleb1633 said:

Edit: Perhaps stating that members of the DNC blatantly want Communism is not entirely accurate. I think a better way of putting it would be that many of the members are promoting ideals that are features of collectivism.

I would really like to know just which member of the Democrat party wants Communism, for there are NONE as far as I can tell. But if you can identify one or a few, I would appreciate it.

I am much farther left than you, and anyone else on this board, and I a FAR from a communist, and definitely don't want communism. I prefer social democracy because I have experienced it.  It isn't perfect, but our system is far from perfect.

I respect your opinion, I just think that you're off base here.  

[AUFriction 1,179]

On 12/14/2020 at 2:20 PM, caleb1633 said:

In case you need a distraction from the HC search, here's a great article written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html

This article does a good job of explaining the psychology behind the political positions people take. It's always advantageous to understand where each side is coming from, as understanding such will assist in finding the truth, whether that be by moving towards agreement or being able to counter their point of view more effectively. As Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, once said, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

I honestly didn’t read it, but a big part of it is due to what we call confirmation bias. We are hardwired to protect our own opinions. We tend to seek out and recognize info that confirms our preconceived notions while ignoring things that disprove them.

[autigeremt 6,646]

On 12/15/2020 at 3:38 PM, homersapien said:

I read it (the book).   I came to accept that politics are a matter of biology a long time ago.

Another good one is "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science."  I accept it, but to be honest, I'll never truly "understand" it.  It's easier for me to understand religion, after all the self-interest is plain there.

Heck, most Republicans apparently believe Trump won the election.  Undoubtedly - and ironically - it's probably the same ones who think Biden is hell-bent on instituting communism.

 

 

The Democrat Party left is very much interested in creating a socialist state that reflects more on communist ties than those of liberty. If you can't see that you are just as warped as those who you see as the other side. 

[DKW 86 7,429]

On 12/15/2020 at 8:37 PM, caleb1633 said:

I haven't read The Righteous Mind. I'm about a quarter of the way through the Coddling of the American Mind right now, and it is excellent. 

There is reason to believe that Trump supporters are abandoning the Republican Party because they don't feel like the party supports their views. They see them as not being much different than the Democrats. It reminds me of many Bernie Sanders supporters who turned against the Democratic Party, feeling they were no different than Republicans. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with a two-party system, but the problem with ours is that we always have the same two parties, which creates a stagnant state in Washington, with neither party wanting to do anything that might compromise their power. Perhaps the good that the likes of Bernie Sanders and Trump have done is by the volatility they created. The artificial stability the two parties create only allows problems to brew under the surface before they blow up. I don't think Biden wants to install Communism, but I think some in his party do; whether that's blatant, or by trying to artificially stabilize the country through top-down engineering. I think they mean well, but don't understand the second steps, chains of consequences, and side effects that occur when you try to play with society as if though it's a game of chess. In the same way, the Republican Party tries to maintain stability by refusing to budge on anything, believing that deviating from the "formula" is dangerous. While I believe we should respect complex systems that have withstood the test of time, and shouldn't seek change simply for the sake of novelty; refusing to evolve and grow with society will eventually blow up in your face. Just ask Gus.

 

Edit: Perhaps stating that members of the DNC blatantly want Communism is not entirely accurate. I think a better way of putting it would be that many of the members are promoting ideals that are features of collectivism.

You were reasonable. You Sir are going to see derision and facepalms for being so uncouth so as to be....reasonable. How dare you act like a grownup! 😉

[DKW 86 7,429]

13 hours ago, 1716AU said:

I would really like to know just which member of the Democrat party wants Communism, for there are NONE as far as I can tell. But if you can identify one or a few, I would appreciate it.

I am much farther left than you, and anyone else on this board, and I a FAR from a communist, and definitely don't want communism. I prefer social democracy because I have experienced it.  It isn't perfect, but our system is far from perfect.

I respect your opinion, I just think that you're off base here.  

Wow, almost a Fellow Traveller. We need a lot of work. I am not so much afraid of “communism.” That was real  back inthe 80s. It was defeated solidly as it should have been. I personally don’t see communism as a threat as much as confirmation biased partisanship. 
 

The Reps have Rushannity and now Trump. The Corp Dems are just as bad with their Corp News Media and slavish devotion to a party that long ago became Republican Lite.
 

The Middle Class has no one loyal to them anymore, except maybe the Progs. 

[caleb1633 1,418]

14 hours ago, 1716AU said:

I would really like to know just which member of the Democrat party wants Communism, for there are NONE as far as I can tell. But if you can identify one or a few, I would appreciate it.

I am much farther left than you, and anyone else on this board, and I a FAR from a communist, and definitely don't want communism. I prefer social democracy because I have experienced it.  It isn't perfect, but our system is far from perfect.

I respect your opinion, I just think that you're off base here.  

As I said in my edit, there are ideals being espoused by some of the more progressive members of the Democratic Party that are features of collectivism. Collectivism is more broad than Communism, which is a specific form of collectivism. Collectivism also includes Socialism and Marxism.

Marxism proposes if you destroy the existing conditions of "oppression" by transferring all the means of labor to the productive laborer, and thereby compelling every able-bodied individual to work for a living, the only basis for class rule and oppression would be removed (Marx, Engels and Lenin, 1975). Progressive proposals that have been presented in recent years reminiscent of this include a federal jobs guarantee and worker cooperatives, where workers own the shares of the company and businesses have workers on the board of the corporation instead of billionaires. This isn't unique to Marxism. Socialism advocates that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the workers who make the products, instead of groups of private owners. Marxism builds upon this concept by establishing a class warfare between what he called "the bourgeoisie and the proletariat." This is something mirrored in modern radical leftist rhetoric by villainizing the wealthy and acting as if though capitalism is a zero sum game where the worker is oppressed by the wealthy, who only have what they've obtained because they "stole" it from others.

The recent push for "equity" by making sure we "all end up in the same place" is reminiscent of the utopian ideals proposed in Communism, and can only be achieved by a forced redistribution, where the government chooses the winners and losers.

All in all, ensuring the worker owns the same share in the company as those who built it, guaranteeing jobs, and reshuffling the cards to ensure no one gets too far ahead all require a strong centralized government enforcing its will. Many on the far left seem to believe that capitalism has failed and that only through economic planning can our Republic avoid being consumed by the powerful. Many forms of planning, however, implicitly assume that a common set of values exists amongst everyone in society; otherwise it would be impossible to gain consensus on how resources are to be allocated. Without a shared set of values, the planners inevitably impose some set of values on society. In other words, government planners cannot accomplish their tasks without exerting control beyond the economic to the political realm.

I don't think the DNC is actively seeking the installation of a Communist state; however, these ideologies, among others, could lead to a "concept creep" in which the Societal equivalent of Iatrogenics leads to an oversized central government with far too much power, and leaving everyone who isn't one of the elites with none.

Now, please don't assume that I'm one of those perochial libertarians (I don't align myself with many of their views) who thinks that taxation is theft, the government should be all but non-existent, and everything should be privatized. I'm a huge fan of many left-leaning policies and programs, and think that many services are provided in a much more ideal manner when overseen by the government. I just know that history is riddled with examples of government interventions not only making a problem worse, but creating a million other problems because they didn't anticipate the unintended consequences. Intervention, especially at the federal level, should be tempered, calculated, and have a limited risk downside.

[caleb1633 1,418]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

You were reasonable. You Sir are going to see derision and facepalms for being so uncouth so as to be....reasonable. How dare you act like a grownup! 😉

ICHY facepalm inbound!

 

Update: 8 min later, ICHY throws me a dislike. I wonder if he/she ever posts anything or if they just go around disliking everyone's posts. Perhaps they're the party agnostic that @McLoofus was talking about 😂

[homersapien 11,392]

12 hours ago, autigeremt said:

The Democrat Party left is very much interested in creating a socialist state that reflects more on communist ties than those of liberty. If you can't see that you are just as warped as those who you see as the other side. 

You apparently don't understand what "communism" is, which makes you an excellent representative of the "other side". 

 

[1716AU 730]

3 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Wow, almost a Fellow Traveller. We need a lot of work. I am not so much afraid of “communism.” That was real  back inthe 80s. It was defeated solidly as it should have been. I personally don’t see communism as a threat as much as confirmation biased partisanship. 
 

The Reps have Rushannity and now Trump. The Corp Dems are just as bad with their Corp News Media and slavish devotion to a party that long ago became Republican Lite.
 

The Middle Class has no one loyal to them anymore, except maybe the Progs. 

 

28 minutes ago, homersapien said:

You apparently don't understand what "communism" is, which makes you an excellent representative of the "other side". 

 

Thanks Homer.  Americans have issues differentiating between communists and totalitarians. 

This country really has not changes since 45 while the rest of the civilized world has left us behind.

And even though most believe that the USA is the greatest country in the world, it really isn't. And why we can see that as an athletic issue with this university, I really am flabbergasted that we can't see it with the country.

 

 

[homersapien 11,392]

Here’s what Republicans and communists have in common.

By

Berry Craig

-

August 31, 2020

 

Give up? 

They both hate democratic socialism.

Republicans use “socialism” as a code word attack

Soon after Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, the Trump campaign sent out a fund-raising email declaring, “It’s REAL Americans vs. SOCIALISTS.”

Trump toady Matt Schlapp tweeted “It’s America v Socialism”.

Right on cue, speakers serially slammed socialism at the TNC, Trump National Convention. “Joe Biden would set American on a path of socialism and decline,” pandered Vice President Mike Pence in his renomination acceptance speech. “The election will decide whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny,” President Trump demagogued in his.

When Republicans diss Democrats as “socialists,” they want John and Jane Q Citizen to hear “communists.” That’s especially so with John and Jane Senior Citizen, who vote in droves and remember the cold war, the Berlin Wall, the Gulag, and menacing, missile-bristling Moscow May Day parades.

Let’s be clear: Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost his second, and likely last, bid as a Democratic presidential hopeful, is an unabashed democratic socialist. Neither Biden nor Harris is. Most Democrats — including almost every Kentucky Democrat — aren’t socialists either.

And, the Democratic Party isn’t a socialist party. More on that in a minute.

Meanwhile, the media mainly sticks to reporting the Republicans’ “socialist” charges and the Democrats’ disavowals.

But Communists really didn’t like democratic socialism 

Leaders of the old “Evil Empire” demonized democratic socialism with the same fervor as today’s Trumpian Republican faithful. What is ‘Democratic Socialism?’, a little paperback book published in Moscow in 1978, parrots the Communist Party line: 

• “But whatever its colouring, ‘democratic socialism’ is a weapon in the arsenal of the revisionist and bourgeoise ideologists.”
  • U.S. conservatives also like to rip as “revisionists” historians who dare also chronicle the warts and blemishes in our past.
• “‘Democratic socialism’, whatever its guise, is nothing more than a reformist and bourgeois alternative to existing socialism (meaning Soviet-style communism), which historically speaking is the only possible form of socialism.
  • Sanders would beg to differ. So, for instance, would the Austrian and French Socialist Parties, German and Swedish Social Democratic parties and the British, Irish, Norwegian and Dutch Labour parties.
• “For all the kaleidoscopic variation in the theoretical concepts and practical programmes which make appeal to ‘democratic socialism’ they all have one characteristic in common—a denial of scientific socialism and its basic ideas on the necessity for the radical, revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the whole system of capitalist social relations.”
  • Democratic socialists stand guilty as charged. They favor reform only by the ballot box, not by the bullet. They favor mixed public-private economies in which government operates certain industries deemed vital to the well-being of the whole country—such as health care, airlines, railroads, communications systems and utilities–and safeguards the rights of workers, consumers, and the environment against the greedy excesses inherent in unfettered capitalism.
• “The theoreticians of ‘democratic socialism’ lay great stress on trying to show that the communist parties pay insufficient attention to developing democratic institutions, whereas they advocate the unrestricted development of democracy. But in reality these concepts of unrestricted democracy are nothing more than empty, abstract theoretical postulations based on a false, supra-class understanding of the nature of democracy.”
  • In practice, democratic socialism has brought genuine democracy, security, and prosperity to millions of people, including citizens of most of our NATO allies.)

Republican red-baiting

Of course, right-wing red-baiting goes way back, even before the cold war, which, fortunately, ended with a whimper and not with a nuclear bang. Republican reactionaries called FDR a socialist; “I am a Christian and a Democrat,”  he responded. 

The Republicans resurrected the “socialist” slur against Barack Obama. The Fourth Estate mostly just reported the “are so” and “am not” skirmishing.

This old reporter decided to ask a real-deal socialist about Obama. So I phoned Brian Patrick Moore, the 2008 Socialist candidate for president. I asked him if he considered the Democrat a kindred spirit.

“Obama’s policies and actions during the entire four years of his presidency are based on his total embrace of capitalism and protecting America’s capitalistic economic system,” he harrumphed.

What, then, is democratic socialism?

The U.S. is the only industrial democracy that lacks a viable democratic socialist, social democratic, or labor party.

In terms of world politics, Biden, Harris and the Democrats are centrists firmly in the capitalist camp. The Trump GOP is way out on the right-wing fringes.

Calling the Democrats “socialists” only shows how far right the Trump GOP has tacked and continues to tack.

But millions of citizens of other democratic nations are proud to call themselves “socialists.” So was the American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who, like Sanders, came up short in presidential bids. (Debs ran five times as a Socialist.) “I am for socialism because I am for humanity. … Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization,” Debs famously said. 

“What is Socialism?” he asked. “Merely Christianity in action. It recognizes the equality in men.”

“Democracy and socialism go hand in hand,” says the Democratic Socialists of America website. (There’s a DSA chapter in Louisville.) “Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically – to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.” 

Here’s more: “Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect” – namely, “workers and consumers” and not “corporate executives who answer only to themselves and a few wealthy stockholders.”

Democratic socialists reject Stalinist-style, centrally-planned, state-run economies. The DSA website points out that “socialists have been among the harshest critics of authoritarian Communist states.” (And communist states have been among the most doctrinaire detractors of democratic socialism.) 

The website also notes that while the Soviet Union and other communist states labeled themselves “socialist,” they were not. They also falsely called their countries “democratic.” (Hitler and the Nazis deceptively styled themselves “National Socialists” while despising democratic socialism and crushing the staunchly anti-Nazi Social Democrats, murdering, torturing, and imprisoning them.)

Democratic socialism vs Trumpism

What probably rankles the Trumpians — and scares the bejeebers out of them — is the fact that more Americans, especially young folks, are giving democratic socialism a look and liking what they see – hence the rise of the Sanders movement.  

The old red-baiting and the lies that democratic socialism — or social democracy — is the same as Stalinism are falling on more and more deaf ears.

Communism is about gone. In Russia, Trump’s pal Putin, the ex-KGB guy, has replaced Marxism-Leninism with fascism – even after 27 million Russians died fighting Hitler and fascism.

And in America, Trumpism is looking more and more like Putinism. If we can turn back Trumpism in this election, perhaps we can begin the discussion about what sort of nation we really want to be. And that discussion should include democratic socialism.

 

https://forwardky.com/heres-what-republicans-and-communists-have-in-common/