If Music Could Talk

I think this is a lot of why folks aren't on board with the "better economy" narrative:

I can't tell what the blue and red bars represent.

Spiff wrote:

Silent Majority wrote:

Spiff wrote:Oh ... and FUCK YOU, young people!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/e ... torate-old

How much had the Democrats really offered the youth or anyone at all over the last six years?

Oh, plenty. Health care reform, a growing economy, minimum wage increases, student loan reforms, to name a few.

But then the spineless Dems couldn't find it within themselves to actually tout these accomplishments because they were afraid that by doing so they would turn off the moderate voters they were courting.

And so I also say FUCK YOU to at all the Dems who ran away from President Obama and did nothing to motivate their base, which, as anyone with two brain cells knows IS CRITICAL TO WINNING MID-TERM ELECTIONS!

Which is more likely, that this is finally the generation where democracy falters because of... malaise? The crappiness of people? Or that Americans in general, with the young in particular, are completely disengaged from the process because of a flaw in the process itself?

Dr. Medulla wrote:I can't tell what the blue and red bars represent.

Oh, sorry, it's clipped off. Blue is bottom 90% of households and red is top 10%. The full article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/201 ... chart.html

Flex wrote:

Dr. Medulla wrote:I can't tell what the blue and red bars represent.

Oh, sorry, it's clipped off. Blue is bottom 90% of households and red is top 10%. The full article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/201 ... chart.html

That settles it: I'm going to sign up for that 10% group. They seem to have things figured out.

So, the US is into its fourth decade of seeing whether trickle-down economics works, refusing the obvious answer. Still, it took the Russians some seventy years to admit that state capitalism doesn't work, so there's time to wait.

Silent Majority wrote:

Spiff wrote:

Silent Majority wrote:

Spiff wrote:Oh ... and FUCK YOU, young people!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/e ... torate-old

How much had the Democrats really offered the youth or anyone at all over the last six years?

Oh, plenty. Health care reform, a growing economy, minimum wage increases, student loan reforms, to name a few.

But then the spineless Dems couldn't find it within themselves to actually tout these accomplishments because they were afraid that by doing so they would turn off the moderate voters they were courting.

And so I also say FUCK YOU to at all the Dems who ran away from President Obama and did nothing to motivate their base, which, as anyone with two brain cells knows IS CRITICAL TO WINNING MID-TERM ELECTIONS!

Which is more likely, that this is finally the generation where democracy falters because of... malaise? The crappiness of people? Or that Americans in general, with the young in particular, are completely disengaged from the process because of a flaw in the process itself?

The process is fucked up, yes, but not FUBAR. And the solution is to try to fix it, and voting is part of the way to fix it.

Never mind. I'm half asleep so there's no good coming out here.

Silent Majority wrote:

Spiff wrote:

Silent Majority wrote:

Spiff wrote:Oh ... and FUCK YOU, young people!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/e ... torate-old

How much had the Democrats really offered the youth or anyone at all over the last six years?

Oh, plenty. Health care reform, a growing economy, minimum wage increases, student loan reforms, to name a few.

But then the spineless Dems couldn't find it within themselves to actually tout these accomplishments because they were afraid that by doing so they would turn off the moderate voters they were courting.

And so I also say FUCK YOU to at all the Dems who ran away from President Obama and did nothing to motivate their base, which, as anyone with two brain cells knows IS CRITICAL TO WINNING MID-TERM ELECTIONS!

Which is more likely, that this is finally the generation where democracy falters because of... malaise? The crappiness of people? Or that Americans in general, with the young in particular, are completely disengaged from the process because of a flaw in the process itself?

It's the disengagement stage of whatever seven-step process we're in the middle of at realizing how fucked it is. It's tempting to just write it off as FUBAR, but the country went through this in the Gilded Age too and the pendulum swung back. This is the same thing...multiple decades of stagnation and cannibalizing the middle-class until people just wouldn't put up with that shit anymore. I don't buy this "end of Empire" thing. Empire sucks. Empire is murder. What was the standard of living for the working place at the absolute tippy-top of the British Empire? Not very good, eh, Vince and Morrissey? So why does anyone lament the loss of empire? It's a bug not a feature.

This is just history repeating itself cyclically. There'll be a lost generation or two, and that blows because everyone within +/- 10 years of me is in that swath of loss. But we're not special in that regard because The Jungle got written about the last generations that got lost by the 1% destroying it all, and millions of others got lost in the wars they started.

It's whatever stage people get pissed enough to snap where it starts getting "interesting", for lack of a better word. Ferguson, MO this summer. Just because that was racially motivated against the most dumped-upon minority in the country doesn't mean human nature isn't universal. Everyone has their limits. History has shown that. To the degree people are voting against their interests now and voting wrongheaded conviction over well-meaning (sorta) squishiness is just the early--and very confused--signs of fever breaking out. That fever always stokes the right wing id first. It trickles up the chain to the ego, then the superego. And eventually the left is going to start acting out. Then the middle. Nonlinear, messy, ugly, filled with a lot of signal-to-noise, thoroughly perverted for nefarious means...and not at all aligned with what you'd consider "rational" political ID. But act out nonetheless because people have limits, and act out in a way that haltingly points in the general direction of the problem. The last Gilded Age got rolled back. This one will too. And there'll be a next one because the corrupt class always has the resources to regroup.


But shit's gonna get broken, people gonna get real mad and destructive, and there will be casualties...real and figurative. Just like there was in the last Gilded Age. This isn't the beginning or the end...it's a natural cycle.

I wonder if some young people are just tired of voting against in every election.

eumaas wrote:I wonder if some young people are just tired of voting against in every election.

In all honesty, to paraphrase Jello Biafra, if the choice is essentially between two moose diarrhea salesmen, how rewarding is it to drag yourself to the polls to vote for the one who is less racist?

There is plenty of evidence, anecdotal and statistical, that suggests 20-somethings aren't all that apathetic—far less so than Xers were/are—which would indicate that they've given up on formal electoral politics (at least at the state and federal level) as meaningful participation. Rather than fret or grumble about Millennials, why isn't the conversation about the legitimacy about American government when such a small percentage of the population wants to validate that system thru election rituals?

Not to change the subject, but the final returns I needed are in and all my clients won. :shades:

Wolter wrote:

eumaas wrote:I wonder if some young people are just tired of voting against in every election.

In all honesty, to paraphrase Jello Biafra, if the choice is essentially between two moose diarrhea salesmen, how rewarding is it to drag yourself to the polls to vote for the one who is less racist?

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/201 ... evils.html

tepista wrote: