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| | America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT | |
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goodnewsinc
Posts : 135 Points : 382 Reputation : 1 Join date : 2015-11-10
| 1Subject: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Mon Mar 14, 2016 4:01 pm | |
| America Has Always Been Great
America has ALWAYS BEEN GREAT and has never ceased to be great. “American exceptional-ism” is not because of politicians and political parties. Individual American citizens have been endowed by Creator-God with certain specific talents that have made human life all over the world so much better. Henry Ford envisioned the assembly line for efficient production applicable to more than the auto industry. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Then there are inventors like George Washington Carver and in the medical field pioneers in open-heart surgery and blood typing and blood-banking. Jonas Salk found a cure for polio. There are so many examples of talented Americans doing great things for humanity and the world. NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WERE POLITICIANS OR POLITICAL PARTY OPPERATIVES. No politician invented the telegraph. No political party invented the telephone. Who invented radio? Was it a politician or a political party? Donald Trump is duping brain-dead voters with political sleight-of-hand with his slogan. America has a great experimental system of representative democracy, because the great majority of American citizens ascribe to the US Constitution and they are governed by its tenets. Republicans today LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE crowing about their great love for “the Constitution”. But when elected they have marched in lock-step to defy its “separation of powers” by sabotaging the Executive Branch because Obama is “black”. Ted Cruz, a senator, meddled in House business interfering with John Boehner as he attempted to manage House business. He sabotaged speaker Boehner and now he wants you to make him POTUS! Their Tea Party wing vowed to “break the government” so it cannot function and do its business. They managed to shut down the government for a few days and caused the US to have a lowered credit rating. Obama cannot fill the judge seats as in his job description because of right-wing GOP intransigence and sabotage. If the American brand of representative democracy fails, it will be because the 1% who finance conservative seditionists and plant them in positions of political power. They have bought Congressmen to do their bidding to move us into a plutocracy/oligarchy very slowly over time. Stacking the Supreme Court with conservative justices has resulted in SCOTUS interference in the electoral process to overturn the will of the people to elect Bush over Gore. The founding fathers created a separation of powers to prevent such shenanigans, but the Court exceeded its mandate and authority. Now right-wing Congressmen boldly say they will not do their job to consider any appointments Obama might submit to fill court vacancies. This is treasonous, seditious, and unconstitutional behavior. It must be checked before it destroys the American system of government. Because of right wing SCOTUS decisions, “corporations are now people” and BIG business can buy elections through campaign financing.
We wonder how sane Germans allowed themselves to be seduced by a mad dictator named Hitler. Look in the mirror America! Observe your politics today. Anti- government madness must be stopped. Making scapegoats of minorities, despising immigrants while tolerating America’s home-grown terrorist group, the KKK, are seeds sown to our destruction. We do not need Hitler’s brown shirts! We have government separatists in the military and in our police departments that kill blacks and people of color without justification or provocation to further their dark agenda. Para-military groups can be found in almost every state as they prepare themselves to take on the US government.
There is a National Geographic Channel series called “American Genius”, which I am watching on NETFLIX. In it they compare and contrast the pairing of competitive accomplishments by certain men who made this nation great.
1. In computer science and computer operating systems it was Steve Jobs VS. Bill Gates 2. The invention of the airplane by the Wright brothers VS. Curtiss 3. The invention of televison by Farnsworth VS. Sarnoff (RCA) 4. In great newspaper publishing and editing it was Hearst VS. Pulitzer 5. Space technology dominance continues with “man on the moon” and flights to distant planets and photos of their atmosphere and terrain. 6. Tesla VS. Edison in the harnessing and use of electric power 7. Oppenheimer VS. Heisenburg in harnessing atomic power and the creation of nuclear weapons.
I could add to that those who pioneered the open-hearth and blast furnace processes in steel production. These men were American geniuses who made America great. They were not STUPID POLITICIANS like Donald Trump, who wants lift up himself by standing on their achievements. Don’t be fooled! AMERICA HAS ALWAYS BEEN GREAT and it has never ceased being great. |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 2Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Mon Mar 14, 2016 7:31 pm | |
| Most of what you said in the OP is true, but I still suspect that Donald Trump win the Republican nomination and that the 2016 elections will end up looking like something you'd expect in a banana republic, not a great nation like the USA. I have no idea who will actually end up in the White House and the two Houses of Congress, but I'm pretty sure the traditional two-party system is in the process of destroying itself. There's no way to predict at this point what it will be replaced with, or how long the process will take, so I'm not going to speculate what will happen before the 2018 and 2010 elections. A lot depends on economic and foreign policy matters that also can't be predicted. But in any case, I expect the country will come through the upheavals OK, because the positive factors you mentioned, but I definitely feel we're headed for "interesting times"... |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 3Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:27 pm | |
| Here's the reply I posted when Goodnewsinc started a thread with this same message on my "Elijah's School of the Spirit" Yuku Community http://theschoolofthespirit.yuku.com/Spiritrebel #2 03/14/16 19:23:18 re: "Jul777 wrote: Goodnews, I agree that we live in a wonderful country ... but in this wonderful country there are a lot things that need fixing. People are voting for a change, and the people will vote in who they think will be the best person for the job. Their voices are being heard and counted. It' s an exciting election." Yeah, it's going to be an exciting election, but it looks to me like there's going to be a major political upheaval in this country over the next few years no matter who gets elected President. The Republican Party seems to be in the process of destroying itself, and I have no idea what will end up replacing it. This isn't Donald Trump's fault. He didn't create the deep rift between a number of different factions within the GOP, he's just taking advantage of it to run as a right-wing populist. And it doesn't matter if he ends up in the White House or if the Democratic candidate wins: in either case, the two-party system that's existed in this country throughout most its history is probably broken beyond repair, and there's no way to predict what will replace it over the long term. |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 4Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:30 pm | |
| Here's the reply I posted when Goodnewsinc started a thread with this same message on my "No Holds Barred" Yuku Community http://noholdsbarreddiscussion.yuku.com/03/15/16 07:00 AM Goodnewsinc, re: "Henry Ford envisioned the assembly line for efficient production applicable to more than the auto industry. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Then there are inventors like George Washington Carver and in the medical field pioneers in open-heart surgery and blood typing and blood-banking. Jonas Salk found a cure for polio. There are so many examples of talented Americans doing great things for humanity and the world. NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WERE POLITICIANS OR POLITICAL PARTY OPPERATIVES. No politician invented the telegraph. No political party invented the telephone. Who invented radio? Was it a politician or a political party?" I'm agreement with almost everything you said in your OP article except the passage I just cited and the elabortations you made further on,but my exceptions to these contentions are fairly large ones. A large number of important scientific and technological breakthroughs in this country have been financed with government money, and the politicians have also used their power to regulate business activities to encourage some innovations but discourage others. And quite a few of the innovators had a lot of political influence from behind the scenes. For example, Henry Ford's motivations for creating some of the precursors of industrial automation were grounded more in his personal political philosophy than in just a desire to make money. Here's a quotation from his Wiki bio that gives an over-view: "Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace." He made a big deal out of trying to pay his employees well enough that they could afford to own one of the cars they built. And he tried to keep the prices of his cheapest automobiles low enough that very large numbers of working Americans could afford them. A large number of important inventions have been financed by the government, starting with modern pumping systems for both mine drainage and public water systems in the 1700's. In the 1800's, the development of the telegraph and telephone systems was financed and regulated mostly by government at every level from local up to federal, and so were the railroad industry and the replacement of sailing ships with steam ships. And this trend became more important in the Twentieth century. Most of the medical innovations you mentioned were made by people receiving government grants or working for public colleges and universities. The development of the radio and TV industries has been heavily regulated by laws throughout their existence, and so has the private aviation industry. The nuclear industry has always been completely dominated by the government and so has the space technology industry. And a lot of people aren't aware of this, but government regulation and financing have also always played a major role in the evolution of the computer industry and everything associatedwith it, such as the Internet. I worked in the field for many years, and watched this occur. Yes, a few individual entrepreneurs have made massive fortunes, but "Silicon Valley" is mostly the creation of local governments who deliberately made it easy for the computer industry to concentrate in one place rather than spread all over the country and as majority of new industries have done. |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 5Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:31 pm | |
| And here is the reply I posted on my "Revolutionary Spiritualism" Yuku Community http://revolutionaryspiritualism.yuku.com/Spiritrebel, 03/15/16 12:20:28 After rereading goodnewsinc's message and the three replies I've posted so far, I've decided to make some more detailed comments on his excellent critique of the Republican Party's general polities over the last couple of decades. I completely agree that the Republicans have recently been sabotaging the systems of checks and balances that the Constitution was written to set up, and would like to add something he didn't specifically mention. Since I was a child in the late Forties and continuing up till about 1990, I remember that practically all of the laws passed by the US Congress had bipartisan support, because both the House and Senate always had a significant number of conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans, and centrists who tended to vote for moderation on all issues. However, since then, the Democratic delegations in Congress have remained about the same as they've always been, but the Republican delegations have shifted signiicantly to the right, which has created a permanent polarization that makes it ever increasingly difficult to pass legislation by compromise |
| | | regmelocco
Posts : 267 Points : 352 Reputation : 5 Join date : 2015-11-09
| 6Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Fri Mar 18, 2016 1:59 pm | |
| This is a great OP and deeper and deeper replies. Yes, I think the ship was turned back ... we wonder how long it will stay that way. Since the early eighties when I went to the US first time then for years and became a citizen. It is wise to remember the spirit of the times in terms of mood, music and so on. The neo-conservatives that dominate the Reps now were emerging in an era when the US made peace with China (they waited a few more years for Mao to kick the bucket and the Gang of Four episode then started exporting labor). That was in retrospect an important influence on the Friedman style of fundamentalist market economy to take root. Punk music had morphed into new wave, destruction and shadow as an archetype were explored more than ever. I met neo-Christians, neo-Shamans, neo-everything from the mid-eighties on... seemed that religion and non-scientific stuff was also enjoying a renaissance... Trump was a phenomenon for a while particularly in the area where he was active, on the East Coast. After the pot and LSD revolutions I was told that now cocaine was more interesting... (John Lennon summed it up well in a few words: it's a stupid drug)
I just sense a parallel between these various things and all that gave rise to modern Republican fanaticism. I know some folks who used to smoke weed and now go for this weird neomix.
The single idealist man that I dug up from my past that was a Republican in Reagan times and still I could have intelligent conversations is now an ardent conspiracy theorist and a Vladimir Putin sympathizer - I happened to stumble upon him in a left wing discussion portal last year.
I think basically these guys are still in a trance. Unlike traditional conservatives. But their favorite trances are different from mine. |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 7Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Fri Mar 18, 2016 6:45 pm | |
| reg, #6, re: "Yes, I think the ship was turned back ... we wonder how long it will stay that way. Since the early eighties when I went to the US first time then for years and became a citizen. It is wise to remember the spirit of the times in terms of mood, music and so on. The neo-conservatives that dominate the Reps now were emerging in an era when the US made peace with China (they waited a few more years for Mao to kick the bucket and the Gang of Four episode then started exporting labor). That was in retrospect an important influence of the Friedman style of fundamentalist market economy to take root. Punk music had morphed into new wave, destruction and shadow as an archetype were explored more than ever. I met neo-Christians, neo-Shamans, neo-everything from the mid-eighties on... seemed that religion and non-scientific stuff was also enjoying a renaissance..."
I've always blamed Ronald Reagan for putting both supply side economics and militaristic neocolonialism on the map, which IMO makes him the worst POTUS in history, by a wide margin. I hated him from the beginning, because I was a left-wing political activist in California when he made the statement "If they want a bloodbath, I'll give them a bloodbath". I remember my friends and I all looking at one another and saying, "Ouch! It's OUR BLOOD that he's talking about." However, by time Reagan became President in 1980, I was already sure that the type of spiritual and cultural revolution I'd been hoping for since the 60's was actually going to take place. And events since then have proven I was right.
re: "Trump was a phenomenon for a while particularly in the area where he was active, on the East Coast. After the pot and LSD revolutions I was told that now cocaine was more interesting... (John Lennon summed it up well in a few words: it's a stupid drug) I just sense a parallel between these various things and all that gave rise to modern Republican fanaticism. I know some folks who used to smoke weed and now go for this weird neomix. The single idealist man that I dug up from my past that was a Republican in Reagan times and still I could have intelligent conversations is now an ardent conspiracy theorist and a Vladimir Putin sympathizer - I happened to stumble upon him in a left wing discussion portal last year. I think basically these guys are still in a trance. Unlike traditional conservatives. But their favorite trances are different from mine."
I totally agree. I saw all this from the inside, not just in the hard core of the counterculture and occult communities where I've always lived, but also from inside the computer/telecommunications industry, where I worked from the Sixties till I became disabled in 1993.
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| | | regmelocco
Posts : 267 Points : 352 Reputation : 5 Join date : 2015-11-09
| 8Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Sat Mar 19, 2016 3:04 pm | |
| I was reading an interview with the political science professor Keith Poole (68) of the University of Georgia today. It was done in Hungarian so all I can do is sum up his points, I found no recent publications to cover the issue. He says election politics has never been so polarized in the US since he is watching presidential campaigns in the 1960's, and the key factor is Trump. He says that it is still unpredictable if the Republican Party would split. His assessment is that apart from the stats saying that more older and white people would support Trump, while more younger people support Sanders on the Democratic side, the roots of the discontent is that while the US recovered from the latest financial crisis, the resulting gains were mostly swallowed by a few percent of affluent people (1-2%) and generally people are fed up that the standards of living for working people have not increased since about thirty years...
Sanders IMHO is not saying anything very radical, I can identify with most of his program, though he identifies as a Socialist. He simply wants to bring people closer to whatever is natural in Western Europe.
However, Europe itself is split these days. Hungary is a bad example, we are Putin's puppet in the EU with a robber baron style of governing. In Poland, a similar system threatens though they are decidedly very wary of Russia's new direction for traditional reasons. The Supreme Court of Poland brought a verdict that the restriction of the powers of the Supreme Court by the new rightist government is unconstitutional...
The Western EU countries, Britain foremost, are seeking all sorts of legal ways and means to restrict the rights of citizens of former East Block countries to move or take jobs there, plus there is a constant wariness on the recent refugee flux. All this fundamentally questions the tenability of the post-war model of Western European welfare capitalism which was influenced by the practical results of the reforms that can be tied to Roosevelt in the US.
I still wonder if the winner of the polarized political struggle will be Hillary Clinton. My relatives think that it's so bad that if she is elected they will leave the US. (Frankly, I think they won't, it's just a wild exaggeration.) I on the other hand would think twice about wanting to resettle there if Trump goes to the White House.
Many people say that despite Roosevelt's reforms, economically the US would never have gotten to the relative comfort of the 1950's without winning the war. (The funny thing is that the Soviets won it too... but postwar Soviet reality was a nightmare to most.) |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 9Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:44 am | |
| reg, #8, re: I was reading an interview with the political science professor Keith Poole (68) of the University of Georgia today. It was done in Hungarian so all I can do is sum up his points, I found no recent publications to cover the issue. He says election politics has never been so polarized in the US since he is watching presidential campaigns in the 1960's, and the key factor is Trump. He says that it is still unpredictable if the Republican Party would split. His assessment is that apart from the stats saying that more older and white people would support Trump, while more younger people support Sanders on the Democratic side, the roots of the discontent is that while the US recovered from the latest financial crisis, the resulting gains were mostly swallowed by a few percent of affluent people (1-2%) and generally people are fed up that the standards of living for working people have not increased since about thirty years..."
I agree with everything Professor Poole said in the interview, but he didn't touch on the issue that I'm most interested in: WHY has Donald Trump become the key factor in the 2016 election campaign? Especially, why are so many Americans supporting him even though he's obviously nothing more than a comic actor playing the role of a right-wing populist politician? And why haven't the ultra-conservative and moderate wings of the Republic wings made a serious effort to stop him from winning the Republican nomination? My slant on the first question is that Trump doesn't really have either a personal or ideological "following" as such things are usually defined. This is because he deliberately projects a complex, self-contradictory of himself in both areas, so he can appeal to a very wide range of people who are dis-satisfied with the political and economic status quo. The answer to the second question is just as simple: the factions within the Republican Party simply have never been organized enough to do so.
re: "Sanders IMHO is not saying anything very radical, I can identify with most of his program, though he identifies as a Socialist. He simply wants to bring people closer to whatever is natural in Western Europe."
This how I've always viewed Sanders myself, which is why I've posted over and over that while I'm in closer ideological agreement with him than with any other well-known Democratic official, my primary vote will go to Clinton or whoever else runs against him, assuming he's still even in the race when the California Primary occurs on June 7th.
However, Europe itself is split these days. Hungary is a bad example, we are Putin's puppet in the EU with a robber baron style of governing. In Poland, a similar system threatens though they are decidedly very wary of Russia's new direction for traditional reasons. The Supreme Court of Poland brought a verdict that the restriction of the powers of the Supreme Court by the new rightist government is unconstitutional... The Western EU countries, Britain foremost, are seeking all sorts of legal ways and means to restrict the rights of citizens of former East Block countries to move or take jobs there, plus there is a constant wariness on the recent refugee flux. All this fundamentally questions the tenability of the post-war model of Western European welfare capitalism which was influenced by the practical results of the reforms that can be tied to Roosevelt in the US."
I agree with everything you just said, and my guess is that the EU will be following rather than leading as the radical restructuring of Western civilization that's now underway continues to unfold. The primary reason is that the EU throughout its existance has steadfastly refused to become a world-class military power in terms of troops, high-tech conventional weapons, or nuclear weapons.
re: "I still wonder if the winner of the polarized political struggle will be Hillary Clinton. My relatives think that it's so bad that if she is elected they will leave the US. (Frankly, I think they won't, it's just a wild exaggeration.) I on the other hand would think twice about wanting to resettle there if Trump goes to the White House."
I totally disagree with your relative and completely agree with you. IMO, If Hillary becomes President, it's almost certain that her Administration will just be an extension of the Obama Administration, which has actually done a pretty good job. But if Trump is elected, it's very probable that the economy will rapidly be falling apart and the biggest race riots since the Sixties will be occurring even before he takes office. And I expect that much worse things would happen on the international level...
re: "Many people say that despite Roosevelt's reforms, economically the US would never have gotten to the relative comfort of the 1950's without winning the war. (The funny thing is that the Soviets won it too... but postwar Soviet reality was a nightmare to most.)"
I tend to agree with you, but it's hard for me to envision an alternate history scenario in which the USA didn't get involved in WW2. However, there are lots of things Truman could have done differently after he became President: he didn't really have to nuke Japan and could have kept our nuclear capabilities secret until we had enough A and H bombs to totally conquor and rule both the USSR and China. That would have REALLY altered the course of history, though I won't try to speculate about what the world would be like today if it had happened.
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| | | goodnewsinc
Posts : 135 Points : 382 Reputation : 1 Join date : 2015-11-10
| 10Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:33 am | |
| I am aware that Native Americans disagree about the greatness of America and I can agree with their perspective. However ALL PEOPLE who are citizens of this country constitute "we the people". The greatness of the USA as a WHOLE and as a destination for immigrants is inscribed on "The Statue of Liberty". You can say the French wrote that, but what is written is our aspiration to greatness that they recognized. I say, "Thank you", to the amazing French people of that day! Here is how I amended my previous post:
It just occurred to me that there were a few politicians (presidents) who helped make America great. Among these are Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt (national parks and reserves), FDR got us out of the Great Depression); Eisenhower (the highway system), JFK (challenge to walk on the moon); LBJ (civil rights, voter rights). They helped America achieve "a more perfect union" and become "a shining beacon" in the family of nations. I do not mean to slight them. So I am posting this addendum today. There is a reason why the USA is the desired destination in the minds of many immigrants the world over despite our unresolved social problems. |
| | | Realityrebel Admin
Posts : 1051 Points : 1199 Reputation : 20 Join date : 2015-11-05
| 11Subject: Re: America NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT Sun Mar 20, 2016 12:09 pm | |
| goodnewsinc, #10, re: "I am aware that Native Americans disagree about the greatness of America and I can agree with their perspective. However ALL PEOPLE who are citizens of this country constitute 'we the people'. The greatness of the USA as a WHOLE and as a destination for immigrants is inscribed on 'The Statue of Liberty'. You can say the French wrote that, but what is written is our aspiration to greatness that they recognized. I say, 'Thank you', to the amazing French people of that day!"
My own belief on this is that the main reason the USA became a great nation was that, until the last few decades, our government has always had less control over private individuals and organizations than has been the case in most other countries. However, I don't agree with the modern conservatives who think that reducing the size and power of the present federal government would solve the problem. This is because there is an economic elite that can easily buy political power on the state and local level, as well owning the big banks and other institutions that control the commercial and consumer credit that finances just about all business activity.
re: "Here is how I amended my previous post: 'It just occurred to me that there were a few politicians (presidents) who helped make America great. Among these are Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt (national parks and reserves), FDR got us out of the Great Depression); Eisenhower (the highway system), JFK (challenge to walk on the moon); LBJ (civil rights, voter rights). They helped America achieve "a more perfect union" and become "a shining beacon" in the family of nations. I do not mean to slight them. So I am posting this addendum today. There is a reason why the USA is the desired destination in the minds of many immigrants the world over despite our unresolved social problems."
I agree that the Presidents you mentioned all had a positive influence that contributed to America's greatness, but it mostly consisted of supporting powerful business or human right organizations that were already trying to do the good things you mentioned but were being held back by the government. For example, Lincoln didn't free the slaves, he just acknowledged that they had already been freed after many years of hard work by private abolishonist movements and a long, massively bloody civil war. Teddy Roosevelt created the national parks because big corporatios wanted to buy the land and make money running commercial parks, and there were already envionmentalist groups that wanted to buy the land and either hold it in reserve or open it to public recreational use at minimum cost. FDR's real reason for creating the New Deal was in his own words, "to save capitalism", because there was a realistic movement towards socialism in the country at the time. And the other Presidents on you list were also acting mostly because private movements were forcing them to.
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