[quote=mdk]NOTABLY: cities run by leftists are also the ones falling apart and/or literally shooting themselves and/or burning themselves down while packed into a warehouse because they can't afford their own inflated rent and/or rioting about the damage in the city while damaging their city. Texas, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs.... they're doing just fine. Which of course begs the (admittedly pretty partisan) question, why the fuck would we listen to the other guy here? Ya know? I mean that's harsh, yeah, but.... come on now. The world's orange-est capitalist took power 100 days ago and the industry in these old manufacturing towns has been on a non-stop skyrocket ever since, slowing only when rumors began to swirl that he was't going to deregulate quite as much as people thought he might. Who left who behind again? The Rust Belt made their opinions on the matter quite clear, much to the chagrin of -- well, basically everybody else in the world. My own stated perspective aside, I'm taking their word for it.[/quote]

Iiiiii think there is a bit of selection bias going on here. I mean, for Salt Lake City and Colorado springs there are the obvious confounding factors; those cities are are tiny as fuck. My city had a troubled government under a conservative regime, and has started growing under a liberal one. I suspect any conversation of this sort is going to become a matter of throwing examples out. 

Also, short term growth in the market isn't really the problem. Republicans have always been great sprinters, they just can't run a long race to save their asses. Through deregulation, we are sowing the next recession, and if it is as bad as the last one, god help us all.

[quote]It just so happens that Capitalism is taking us there, and for the life of me I can't think of a reason we should stop. Shit man that's gonna be awesome.[/quote]

Industrialism certainly is. I'm of the opinion that any global economic system that was thoroughly industrialized would have achieved the same results. I base this on the fact that, rather than crumpling in the twenties as the conservative theory would require, the Soviet Union continued to grow and had to be outmaneuvered politically in order to collapse. If the Communists had politically outmaneuvered the US, we'd be talking (in Russian I suppose) about how capitalism didn't work.

The main fear now is that the capitalists, like the Senators of Rome or the Aristocrats of France, have so monopolized the economic structure of society that it is slowing us down. The greatest innovation of western civilization is civil participation, especially symbolized by democratic values. My fear is that democracy is being slowly stifled by the needs of capitalism, and the inevitable result will be stagnation. 

[quote]Dysfunctional is a strong word. For all we know, American politics is just boring (preposterous suggestion after last year, I know). Nonparticipation is only an issue if it's compulsory, and in the US it's only compulsory in the case of convicted felons. I'd hardly call that a crisis. In short: let's not spend too much effort trying to straighten the horns on a bull here. Maybe they SHOULD be curved.
[/quote]

Is it corrupt or is it not corrupt? You are waffling, sir. 

[quote]I'm jumbled a bit. Sounds like what you're saying is essentially that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. My meme-level response is that Communism doesn't equal liberty and AntiFa ain't patriots -- flesh that out in your mind, what I'm driving at is Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, et al agonized over the decision to go to war with England -- not out of cowardice or their inability to be effective, but out of wisdom. More frequently than the proponents of glorious revolution would care to admit, the goons running around cracking skulls are just that -- goons. [/quote]

AntiFa would be patriotic if they saw themselves as fighting for their countries freedoms or some shit like that. I think that their plan to go around popping tweakers at Trump rallies is politically useless, and they are largely puffing up their own importance and being melodramatic, but Samuel Adams was a puffed up fucker too. The American Revolution wasn't a matter of the wise old gods coming down to bless the country with their own perfection. That conflict had its brawlers, it's self-important nerds, its skull cracking goons, and all that fun shit. 

The Boston Tea Party is a good example. There was some blow back to that. I couldn't find it on the internet, but I recall reading a letter written by a loyalist during the Boston Tea Party to the effect of (paraphrasing from memory here) "We couldn't get a loyalist militia together last month, but after the Boston Tea Party, we can't find enough guns to arm all the people who want to join up." After all, the Boston Tea Party was a bunch of people disguising themselves (cowards) and vandalizing a privately owned ship which they had held at dock the last few days (or weeks) through terrorizing the captain and the port officials. The Tea Party was a galvanizing event, arguably one that was harmful to the American cause in the short term, but one that ended up becoming a positive in the long term only because Parliament overplayed their hand as a result and occupied Boston.

I suppose I can summarize my opinions on this thread in a statement; one of the dumbest things Marxists argue is that their philosophy will "End history", that they have the key to fixing every problem forever and always. I think the most alarming things coming from the capitalist apologist crowd nowadays is exactly that same thing. Capitalism has ended history. This is it. All of our current problems are not problems at all, but instead are the way things are supposed to be.