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Post by coachdoc on Jul 24, 2024 10:13:24 GMT -5
I don’t always vote Democrat, but this year will vote anti Republican. The divide between is as vast as I’ve ever experienced. The last Republican candidate I would have voted for was Eisenhower. Good man. We need more like him.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 24, 2024 11:00:08 GMT -5
My father was close to being a yellow-dog Democrat who came to regret voting for "Mr. Eisenhower"* because it brought along "that sonofabitch Nixon." On the other hand, my maternal grandfather (son of a GOP bagman) told Dad that he had almost voted for Truman in 1948, but in the voting booth though of his old man looking down at him and pulled the Republican straight-ticket lever. Party loyalty and personal admiration are always duking it out.
* Dad was Navy, so "General" wasn't a significant title.
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Post by epaul on Jul 24, 2024 11:43:57 GMT -5
There are several Swing States. Pick a VP that can help with all of them.
The biggest help Harris needs is with young males. And not just white young males, all of them. And that help can come from an infusion of "manliness" into the ticket. Not an office manager or a new age sensitive, but a bald, tough, fighter pilot/ astronaut.
A St. Louis Cardinal hit a home run the other day and as he rounded third, he put one hand in the air and the other over his ear and shouted fight, fight, fight. His teammates followed suit. League-forced damage control ensued, "I was just honoring my Puerto Rican grandmother who lost an ear while fighting the Chinese!" said the ballplayer.
The explanations rang hollow. A bunch of young baseball players, over half of them Hispanic, were saluting Trump. And the Cardinals aren't an outlier, they are a typical ball team; it could have been any team in the league.
Granted, these young men are also millionaires, so there is the tax thing. But, there man were other non-millionaire young men in the stands and in front of the TV echoing the move in sympathy. The Democratic party has and is losing young white men and increasingly, young Hispanic men. And it does no useful good to smile at sweetly at yourself in the mirror call them young idiots or gap-toothed Trogs. One, they aren't, and two, they are voters. And the Democratic party has ask itself why and how it has lost them. And what it can do to get their fair share back.
Candidates like Mark Kelly or that North Carolina gov can help. But, no one knows the name of the North Carolina guy, so go with the bald fighter pilot/astronaut.
(and shove Harris as far to the right as you can get her to go)
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 24, 2024 12:11:13 GMT -5
As one who has spent the last 60 years in close proximity to mostly white young men, I can only hope that most of them stay the hell home come election day, because I suspect that the only kind of political theatre that will move them is the kind that the right has been producing for the last 30 years. Young jocks do indeed tend to be yahoo-ish, and I don't think that there's any even halfway-rational appeal that will punch through the fog of testosterone. USA, fuck yeah! And as manly as a bald ex-fighter-pilot former astronaut might be, he's still a pussy-whipped gun-control advocate. Now, Ted Nugent--there's a real guy's man.
It will be, um, interesting to examine the makeup of the crowd that shows up for the Trump-Vance Traveling Circus come Saturday at the Hockey Center.
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Post by billhammond on Jul 24, 2024 12:19:31 GMT -5
Saw my first yard sign for the prez campaign today. Hand-painted on plywood, it simply read:
KAMALA
'24
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 24, 2024 12:42:54 GMT -5
The more I read history, the more convinced I am that young men and testosterone are usually a problem. One of the many causes of WWI, I've read, was that there had been peace for a long time. A lot of young guys were bored. They wanted the opportunity to kick some ass and gain some glory. They got the opportunity and a lot of them went home in caskets. There was an element of the same kind of machismo at work when the Civil War began. A lot of young southern guys were sure that if it came to war they'd whip the yanks. No matter that the yanks had four times as much of almost everything.
We don't ever lose the genes that tug us towards violence but most of us get better at controlling them.
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Post by epaul on Jul 24, 2024 13:04:45 GMT -5
I'm seeing part of the problem the Democratic party has appealing to young white and Hispanic men. Write em off, yahoos and Trogs the lot. Maybe get them back when they turn 70.
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Post by Marshall on Jul 24, 2024 13:05:17 GMT -5
F**** You!
(Just kidding)
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 24, 2024 13:09:15 GMT -5
We don't ever lose the genes that tug us towards violence but most of us get better at controlling them. The trick is to live long enough to get that control--and then to connect with the social mechanisms that are built on control of the various bits of primate operating system that are appropriate to small groups of foragers and hunters but deadly when scaled up to anything bigger than a village. Sports teams--and their fandoms--are right on the edge of the tribal-warfare circuitry that is one of our species' pathologies. Just look at football hooliganism in Europe. |
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Post by billhammond on Jul 24, 2024 13:10:06 GMT -5
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Post by TKennedy on Jul 24, 2024 13:15:26 GMT -5
Young men don’t realize they didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
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Post by majorminor on Jul 24, 2024 13:20:52 GMT -5
Either way it's "DRILL BABY DRILL!!" |
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Post by millring on Jul 24, 2024 15:06:14 GMT -5
Wow. We are a bigotted bunch.
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 24, 2024 20:07:31 GMT -5
"I'm seeing part of the problem the Democratic party has appealing young white and Hispanic men. Write em off, yahoos and Trogs the lot."
I was one. I raised one.
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Post by epaul on Jul 24, 2024 23:40:45 GMT -5
The more I read history, the more convinced I am that young men and testosterone are usually a problem. One of the many causes of WWI, I've read, was that there had been peace for a long time. A lot of young guys were bored. They wanted the opportunity to kick some ass and gain some glory. They got the opportunity and a lot of them went home in caskets. There was an element of the same kind of machismo at work when the Civil War began. A lot of young southern guys were sure that if it came to war they'd whip the yanks. No matter that the yanks had four times as much of almost everything. We don't ever lose the genes that tug us towards violence but most of us get better at controlling them. It wasn't bored, testosteronal-laden young men who led the nations of Europe into WWI. Don't know where that take comes from. Nor do I understand how bored young, testosteronal-laden young men get the credit for the plantation slave trade economy and the political anger and idiocy that led to the Civil War. Young men might be eager to go off to war, but it is the old farts running the world that create the sour bed the wars are birthed in. Don't see how it's the young men who are the problem in this deal. Young men die in wars but they sure the hell don't create them. It's not young testosterone, it's old greed. |
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 25, 2024 6:37:55 GMT -5
It wasn't any one thing in either case, epaul. That's the fallacy of a single cause. Millions of different people acted for many different reasons. They can't be crammed into anyone's grand theory. The idea that restive young men played a part in launching the Great War came from Barbara Tuchman, although she's not responsible for my summary of her observation.
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Post by millring on Jul 25, 2024 7:45:14 GMT -5
Both the church and the Democrat party are having trouble attracting young men.
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Post by millring on Jul 25, 2024 13:49:21 GMT -5
As one who has spent the last 60 years in close proximity to mostly white young men, I can only hope that most of them stay the hell home come election day, because I suspect that the only kind of political theatre that will move them is the kind that the right has been producing for the last 30 years. Young jocks do indeed tend to be yahoo-ish, and I don't think that there's any even halfway-rational appeal that will punch through the fog of testosterone. USA, fuck yeah! And as manly as a bald ex-fighter-pilot former astronaut might be, he's still a pussy-whipped gun-control advocate. Now, Ted Nugent-- there's a real guy's man. It will be, um, interesting to examine the makeup of the crowd that shows up for the Trump-Vance Traveling Circus come Saturday at the Hockey Center. I am reminded of this exchange a few years back on social media. This meme was making the rounds and of course it went "viral" with exactly the kind of folks who populate my corner of Facebook -- artists, Democrats.  And back then I responded (and I think it fits here as well with this current wave of mischaracterizing young "jocks". I was one. I know them. I wasn't one who cowered in the corner of the library consoling myself that I was the virtuous one by not participating in the world of open ideas, risking my dignity on the field of athletic endeavor, and mischaracterizing all of the "jocks" as animals less than human.): Part of me understands and even likes the sentiment expressed in this meme. Really, I do. I aspire to the pursuit of all those things the meme tells me “Study” will bring me. And I admire all those traits in other people. But there's also a certain irony in the meme. An unintended irony. An irony and an audacious presumption. And a bit of an elitist snobbery accidentally thrown in. I grew up an athlete with athletic heroes. And athletic friends. Good athletes, too. At no time did it occur to me or my friends that sports were an alternative to "education, wisdom, logic, thoughtfulness, kindness, and the ability to communicate”. In fact, I would opine that sports was the very most effective avenue for a young person to arrive at “logic, wisdom, and the ability to communicate”. Sports were the effective, “do or die” world of logic, wisdom, and the ability to communicate. And if you weren’t kind, you’d better be awfully, awfully good at sports or you weren’t going to get anywhere in the sports world. And three of my friends – now successful business men – acquired their education via their athletic prowess. Yes, real education. MBAs. PhDs, even. And, not to reverse the offense here, but it was those who couldn’t be kind, communicate effectively, and weren’t thoughtful – the socially unwilling – who were the very ones huddled away in their “study”. Additionally…. I can’t help but notice that the “study” pictured in the meme appears to be the den of a multi-million dollar home (or a Decorator/Fashion Magazine). The image smacks of "study" to exactly the same extent that (for instance) Pierce Brosnan affects "studious" by donning horn rimmed glasses. Which is to say, "not at all". So, maybe I misunderstood the meme. Which room in the photograph represents the self-indulgent materialism? My “study” is a corner of my pottery shop. No leather chairs. No leather bound books. And my window looks out on a hay field that’s next to a railroad track that’s next to the town’s biggest industry – an orthopedic manufacturer. Not a manicured lawn in sight. So, maybe what the meme is saying is that if I’d pursued the right kind of education, wisdom, thoughtfulness, kindness, and ability to communicate, then that multi-million dollar study could have been mine? I guess there’s logic in that. I'd suggest we discuss it over over a few beers....but that, of course, tips my hand as well. |
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Post by millring on Jul 25, 2024 13:55:49 GMT -5
(and you guys have the audacity to excoriate young white men who dare to question your dogma and dare to think Republican while you cheer Palestinian protesters wishing to push Jews into the sea and out of existence. Too rich for words.)
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Post by John B on Jul 25, 2024 14:15:31 GMT -5
(and you guys have the audacity to excoriate young white men who dare to question your dogma and dare to think Republican while you cheer Palestinian protesters wishing to push Jews into the sea and out of existence. Too rich for words.) I assume "you guys" is a rhetorical device, as we have yet to see anyone here cheer Palestinian protestors, especially those advocating the extermination of Jews. As far as I know. But then again, you were pretty comfortable characterizing me as a fascist the other day, or at least fascist-adjacent, so I am not sure where your word choices come from. And like it or not, I know you are very intelligent and choose your words carefully. |
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