What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[garbon]

I think it's condescending, and probably wrong to accuse people who disagree with you as voting against their interests.

I agree and I think it is wise to listen to what they say. Sometimes they have important critiques that should be heeded and change policies. Other times it is wacky culture war shit which there is really nothing that can be done about. Right wing culture warriors are going to hate you no matter how much your policies benefit them.

Yeah, like when my distant relation reported she had to vote for Trump because Hillary wanted to kill babies.

[Sheilbh]

I don't know why you choose to adopt a neo conservative view of the world when describing political motivations 

What?! How is that neo-con?

[Jacob]

I don't know why you choose to adopt a neo conservative view of the world when describing political motivations 

What?! How is that neo-con?

I too am curious

[Eddie Teach]

Just any old con, griping about "tax and spend" liberals.

[crazy canuck]

I don't know why you choose to adopt a neo conservative view of the world when describing political motivations 

What?! How is that neo-con?

Your mention of self congratulatory nobility of the self sacrificing middle class/rich for supporting greater public spending/increased taxation.  It was a dig at the fact you said you dislike it being cast that way, but you engage in it yourself.  The only way in which the middle class/rich can be viewed as in any way noble (or self perceived as noble) is through the neo con lens that they would normally be acting in their individual economic self interests above all else.  That view is wrong both as a matter of psychology (that is not how people make decisions) and as a matter of political theory (we are so much more than a bunch of individual actors).

We need a better way of analyzing that does not reference neo con fantasies of how individuals act (or in their view ought to act).

[Sheilbh]

Your mention of self congratulatory nobility of the self sacrificing middle class/rich for supporting greater public spending/increased taxation.  It was a dig at the fact you said you dislike it being cast that way, but you engage in it yourself. 

I dislike it being cast that way while failing to apply a similar analysis to working class/poor voters. As much as anything else that probably reflects discourse gate-keeping of who really has a voice in our society.

The only way in which the middle class/rich can be viewed as in any way noble (or self perceived as noble) is through the neo con lens that they would normally be acting in their individual economic self interests above all else.  That view is wrong both as a matter of psychology (that is not how people make decisions) and as a matter of political theory (we are so much more than a bunch of individual actors).

I don't think that's exclusively neo-con - if it is I think it may be a legacy of the old neo-cons being Marxists back in the 60s - because to my mind the idea that people will politically act in their material self-interest is a left tradition. As I say there's vast amounts of theory on the Marxist left (Gramsci, Althusser, Jameson on the role of ideology) to explain why people don't. One of the biggest questions on the left is why politics doesn't follow economic interest - why do the minority who owns things continue to accrue benefits and protections in a democratic system when they can be outvoted? That's because the left is, I think still, a predominately materialist analysis and position.

If anything I think traditionally conservatives have perhaps been better at identifying other things - insttitutions that people value, tradition, identity, security etc - that motivate people to vote.

[Razgovory]

Neocon is a foreign policy thing.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't think it's rocket science.  I think some people have internalized the belief that free money debases you, that an honorable person is dependent only on themselves.

Now I understand this self-image is undercut in a lot of cases by people deluding themselves that the free money they're receiving is somehow not free money, and it's only those guys over there (e.g. blacks and hispanics) who are getting truly free money, but the principle still stands.

We don't question this virtue when it applies to the son or daughter of a rich family who wants to do it by themselves.

[Jacob]

I don't think it's rocket science.  I think some people have internalized the belief that free money debases you, that an honorable person is dependent only on themselves.

Now I understand this self-image is undercut in a lot of cases by people deluding themselves that the free money they're receiving is somehow not free money, and it's only those guys over there (e.g. blacks and hispanics) who are getting truly free money, but the principle still stands.

We don't question this virtue when it applies to the son or daughter of a rich family who wants to do it by themselves.

Yeah, "standing on your own two feet" is pretty straightforward.

Most of the work - and most of the argument - goes into what that means, what is proper support, what is just "lack of interference", and what is mollycuddling.

[crazy canuck]

Your mention of self congratulatory nobility of the self sacrificing middle class/rich for supporting greater public spending/increased taxation.  It was a dig at the fact you said you dislike it being cast that way, but you engage in it yourself. 

I dislike it being cast that way while failing to apply a similar analysis to working class/poor voters. As much as anything else that probably reflects discourse gate-keeping of who really has a voice in our society.

The only way in which the middle class/rich can be viewed as in any way noble (or self perceived as noble) is through the neo con lens that they would normally be acting in their individual economic self interests above all else.  That view is wrong both as a matter of psychology (that is not how people make decisions) and as a matter of political theory (we are so much more than a bunch of individual actors).

I don't think that's exclusively neo-con - if it is I think it may be a legacy of the old neo-cons being Marxists back in the 60s - because to my mind the idea that people will politically act in their material self-interest is a left tradition. As I say there's vast amounts of theory on the Marxist left (Gramsci, Althusser, Jameson on the role of ideology) to explain why people don't. One of the biggest questions on the left is why politics doesn't follow economic interest - why do the minority who owns things continue to accrue benefits and protections in a democratic system when they can be outvoted? That's because the left is, I think still, a predominately materialist analysis and position.

If anything I think traditionally conservatives have perhaps been better at identifying other things - insttitutions that people value, tradition, identity, security etc - that motivate people to vote.

A couple of comments.  First, you have made a shift from an individual based analysis - rich folks who are viewed or view themselves as noble because they support greater taxation/governmental spending and against their individual economic self interest to acting politically in their self interest.  Those are not the same thing (unless you are equating individual economic benefit with political self interest which is exactly the thing I say is wrong  )

Second Marx did not suggest groups act in their own self interest.  Marx thought that capitalism would inevitably collapse through historical forces.  It is hard to reconcile rational people acting in their own political interest (whatever that might be) with the same thinker who proposed that the people who would most benefit from communism were suffering from false consciousness.  The idea of class conflict being used as a tool to speed up the process can be blamed on others.

I agree that traditional conservatives are closer to identifying non monetary motivations for the decisions people make.  My criticism of reducing political judgments to what is economically perceived to be in an individual (or groups ) interest is similar in that it is far too narrow.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think it's rocket science.  I think some people have internalized the belief that free money debases you, that an honorable person is dependent only on themselves.

Now I understand this self-image is undercut in a lot of cases by people deluding themselves that the free money they're receiving is somehow not free money, and it's only those guys over there (e.g. blacks and hispanics) who are getting truly free money, but the principle still stands.

We don't question this virtue when it applies to the son or daughter of a rich family who wants to do it by themselves.

Nobody does it by themselves. Especially not someone who has been given all the benefits that go with growing up in a wealthy family.

[grumbler]

I don't think it's rocket science.  I think some people have internalized the belief that free money debases you, that an honorable person is dependent only on themselves.

Now I understand this self-image is undercut in a lot of cases by people deluding themselves that the free money they're receiving is somehow not free money, and it's only those guys over there (e.g. blacks and hispanics) who are getting truly free money, but the principle still stands.

We don't question this virtue when it applies to the son or daughter of a rich family who wants to do it by themselves.

It isn't the same "virtue" to say "I don't want any help" as it is to say "I don't want them to get any help."

[DGuller]

I don't think it's rocket science.  I think some people have internalized the belief that free money debases you, that an honorable person is dependent only on themselves.

Now I understand this self-image is undercut in a lot of cases by people deluding themselves that the free money they're receiving is somehow not free money, and it's only those guys over there (e.g. blacks and hispanics) who are getting truly free money, but the principle still stands.

We don't question this virtue when it applies to the son or daughter of a rich family who wants to do it by themselves.

It isn't the same "virtue" to say "I don't want any help" as it is to say "I don't want them to get any help."

Some people need a little help in realizing that they shouldn't want any help.

[OttoVonBismarck]

One thing that is fairly bad for America is we are good at hiding all the ways the government subsidizes middle class / upper middle class / wealthy people, but we put tremendous attention on anyone "getting a check" from the government. Many of the programs subsidizing those upper economic groups actually cost more than major "lower class" welfare systems like SNAP and TANF.

I do agree that "making your own way" in life is a virtue. But I also think "toxic individualism" is the end state of worshipping "rugged individualism" too much. If America ever really was exemplified by rugged individualism, the actual historical record of such people would be at odds with the sort of society we have today in which it's widely understood you should only care about yourself and your nuclear family. The people who colonized the Atlantic seaboard and their descendants who settled the interior did it without a tremendous amount of government help by modern standards--and because I know someone will jump on it, I'm familiar with the military involvement and various programs granting land etc to settlers; what I'm saying is when you trek many miles into mostly untamed country away from government institutions you do not have obtain the sort of day to day government help that is available to you in modern times. However these people didn't do it without a lot of societal help. The country wasn't settled by hermits, it was settled by larger groups of people that largely developed organic societies that covered a lot of mutual assistance needs that weren't available from a more organized state at the time.

This mindset of "make it or starve in a ditch" would not have been a moral norm in any of the early colonies or later interior settler communities (it did interestingly become a norm once large cities developed, which probably speaks a bit to something in which once we reach a certain point of settlement it becomes easy to tell people to fuck off and die.)

[Admiral Yi]

Just got my letter from Uncle Joe patting himself on the back for giving me $1,400.