Cultural existential threat: Marxism and Moral Relativism

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

5 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

It doesn't appear that you tried to comprehend the argument.  I've had good discussions with several Lefties in this thread; you, not yet.   

 

Your post is essentially "I think black people, transgenders, and "terrorist marxism" are the downfall of our country." So you basically want to turn away people speaking up for black people and transgenders. The Israel-Palestenian thing I can grant but I think there is a lot of performance activism on both sides of that issue going on.

I mean you can't rationally have a conversation with someone who wants to lump black people and transgenders into an argument. And I know you will say "I didn't do that, reading comprehension, blah blah blah" Save it dude. I've seen enough of your views over the past 2-3 years. And when I've tried to have rational discussions with you over that time you turn it personal every time with your condescending act.  

Face it- you are a slightly smarter HT which just means you know more words to write your drivel. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

10 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

 

 

Good to see after all this time I've spent away I can come back and see you two clutching pearls as much as ever. jerry was presenting a dumb argument- I was just finishing his last few steps for him. But let him write more posts about moral relativism and cultural threats.

If you DID comprehend the argument you wouldn't have couched it as a single transgender person which, of course, you did.  So you either didn't comprehend it or you purposefully lied for to mislead and acted like a drama queen. 

So the two choices are you're as dumb as a box of rocks or you're a liar.  No middle ground here.  Which one do you prefer?

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

7 minutes ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

If you DID comprehend the argument you wouldn't have couched it as a single transgender person which, of course, you did.  So you either didn't comprehend it or you purposefully lied for to mislead and acted like a drama queen. 

So the two choices are you're as dumb as a box of rocks or you're a liar.  No middle ground here.  Which one do you prefer?

I was using it in a global/plural sense and not that it was literally one person you dolt. Looks like you have comprehension issues. 

And we know you are dumb as a box of rocks....but really that'd be unfair to the rocks.

[jerryskids 6,616]

6 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

 

Your post is essentially "I think black people, transgenders, and "terrorist marxism" are the downfall of our country." So you basically want to turn away people speaking up for black people and transgenders. The Israel-Palestenian thing I can grant but I think there is a lot of performance activism on both sides of that issue going on.

I mean you can't rationally have a conversation with someone who wants to lump black people and transgenders into an argument. And I know you will say "I didn't do that, reading comprehension, blah blah blah" Save it dude. I've seen enough of your views over the past 2-3 years. And when I've tried to have rational discussions with you over that time you turn it personal every time with your condescending act.  

Face it- you are a slightly smarter HT which just means you know more words to write your drivel. 

Yeah, that's my post.  I hope you don't use this same level of comprehensive dissection with your students.

If you had read the thread, you would see:

- I only mentioned BLM as an example of extending marxism into other areas, and never went back to it.

- I specifically stated transgenders in the context of safe spaces and sports.  I supported a fully transitioned male, who had his parts removed, being in a woman's bathroom.

- I opened up the discussion of what is moral absolutism, and who decides?  

 

Congrats, you have entered Worms territory of lack of nuance.  Maybe leapt past him.  

I don't know who pissed in your cheerios, but next time you take a bunch of time off and decide to leap into a discussion making no attempt to understand it, spare yourself the embarrassment and just sit it out.   

[Hardcore troubadour 15,081]

Weak men are actually the bigger problem.  Without them there would be far less mouthy women with issues.  

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

7 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

I was using it in a global/plural sense and not that it was literally one person you dolt. Looks like you have comprehension issues. 

And we know you are dumb as a box of rocks....but really that'd be unfair to the rocks.

Okay, so you choose that you ARE as dumb as a box of rocks.  Great - glad you made a choice!

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

14 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Yeah, that's my post.  I hope you don't use this same level of comprehensive dissection with your students.

If you had read the thread, you would see:

- I only mentioned BLM as an example of extending marxism into other areas, and never went back to it.

- I specifically stated transgenders in the context of safe spaces and sports.  I supported a fully transitioned male, who had his parts removed, being in a woman's bathroom.

- I opened up the discussion of what is moral absolutism, and who decides?  

 

Congrats, you have entered Worms territory of lack of nuance.  Maybe leapt past him.  

I don't know who pissed in your cheerios, but next time you take a bunch of time off and decide to leap into a discussion making no attempt to understand it, spare yourself the embarrassment and just sit it out.   

 

So you used a bunch of red herrings, or canaries in a coal mine, to make a point? That's just being disingenuous.

 

Also, have anymore opinion pieces that you determine as "facts" or "data"? Maybe you should actually try to use your brain for some function as opposed to letting it be a paperweight that keeps your head on its shoulders. 

You wrote yet another post basically saying people being "woke" will kill America as if it's a new thought from you, or from anyone here on this heavily MAGA skewing board and then want to act like you are intellectually superior to anyone here. Can you write a new post about how Biden is the devil? No one has done that here. Or can you jump to the lib side and write something about Trump being the devil. I don't think anyone has made that argument yet in the past 10 minutes. 

 

[jerryskids 6,616]

6 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

 

So you used a bunch of red herrings, or canaries in a coal mine, to make a point? That's just being disingenuous.

 

Also, have anymore opinion pieces that you determine as "facts" or "data"? Maybe you should actually try to use your brain for some function as opposed to letting it be a paperweight that keeps your head on its shoulders. 

You wrote yet another post basically saying people being "woke" will kill America as if it's a new thought from you, or from anyone here on this heavily MAGA skewing board and then want to act like you are intellectually superior to anyone here. Can you write a new post about how Biden is the devil? No one has done that here. Or can you jump to the lib side and write something about Trump being the devil. I don't think anyone has made that argument yet in the past 10 minutes. 

 

A red herring attempts to deflect the discussion from the original topic.  I created the thread and original topic.  I hope logical fallacies are not part of your curriculum.

I presume the facts/data comment is some, also misinformed, interpretation of my exchange with BeachGuy, the bean counter who is allergic to data?  You might want to read some more before you align with him.  Or not, you two would probably get along quite well.

I wrote the post because I made an assertion in another thread that I thought cultural issues were an existential threat, and I was asked (challenged) to provide examples.  I have more examples coming in the future.  Feel free to sit them out; adults who understand nuance and can discuss complex issues are welcome though.

If you want to address my assertion about moral relativism, feel free to do so, and I will discuss with you as I have with other left-leaning people in this thread.  If not, I'm done responding to you.

[BeachGuy23 642]

18 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

 

So you used a bunch of red herrings, or canaries in a coal mine, to make a point? That's just being disingenuous.

 

Also, have anymore opinion pieces that you determine as "facts" or "data"? Maybe you should actually try to use your brain for some function as opposed to letting it be a paperweight that keeps your head on its shoulders. 

You wrote yet another post basically saying people being "woke" will kill America as if it's a new thought from you, or from anyone here on this heavily MAGA skewing board and then want to act like you are intellectually superior to anyone here. Can you write a new post about how Biden is the devil? No one has done that here. Or can you jump to the lib side and write something about Trump being the devil. I don't think anyone has made that argument yet in the past 10 minutes. 

 

If you want to watch Jerry spin himself in circles ask him to support his comment that Biden changed his stance on Israel due to the student protests.

You ain’t seen deflecting until you watch Jerry try to put opinions forward as data points.

It’s hysterical.

[jerryskids 6,616]

4 minutes ago, BeachGuy23 said:

If you want to watch Jerry spin himself in circles ask him to support his comment that Biden changed his stance on Israel due to the student protests.

You ain’t seen deflecting until you watch Jerry try to put opinions forward as data points.

It’s hysterical.

I supported it.  I provided a link with statements from political experts who agreed.  I never said it was an absolute fact; that was something you made up in BeachGuy World.  

Also I never said "data points", I said "data":

https://www.fftodayforums.com/forum/search/?&q="data points"&author=jerryskids&search_and_or=or

Just like I never said "facts," your original assertion.

A link is data to support my assertion.  It doesn't mean that it is an indisputable fact that Biden was influenced by college protests, because we would need to be inside his vacuous brain to truly know.

Seriously, you are so sloppy with language, you want us to believe that you skyrocketed through the ranks of a billion dollar company in a field which requires precision?  

[BeachGuy23 642]

3 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

I supported it.  I provided a link with statements from political experts who agreed.  I never said it was an absolute fact; that was something you made up in BeachGuy World.  

Also I never said "data points", I said "data":

https://www.fftodayforums.com/forum/search/?&q="data points"&author=jerryskids&search_and_or=or

Just like I never said "facts," your original assertion.

A link is data to support my assertion.  It doesn't mean that it is an indisputable fact that Biden was influenced by college protests, because we would need to be inside his vacuous brain to truly know.

Seriously, you are so sloppy with language, you want us to believe that you skyrocketed through the ranks of a billion dollar company in a field which requires precision?  

You put forth that as the reason. You didn’t qualify or offer any alternatives.   You just doubled down on your salesman dumb by posting opinions as data.

Take a lap salesman, you’ve been owned the last few days by me and it’s getting tiresome.

But by all means if you put forth a qualifier or alternate reason for Biden’s policy change feel feel to link or copy it here boyo.

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

Jesus, @jerryskids.  How many baby seals are you going to club in here? 

You've killed a whole pack of them already.   

What a bloodbath!!

[BeachGuy23 642]

Here are Jerry's first two posts on the subject about Biden changing his stance on Israel due to the student protestors. No mention of any qualifiers or any other potential influences to Biden's decision.  He then "justifies" his position based on "opinions of political experts (lol)" and calls them data.

He didn't back off the absolutes at all until I challenged him but he never offered any other potential influence.

Take a lap Jerry.

On 5/13/2024 at 4:54 PM, jerryskids said:

Your ability to, in the same post, both argue that Leftie support for something is just at the fringe extreme, then generalize 1/2 of the country into moron cultist, is quite impressive.

Biden's support of Israel is waning, if you haven't been living under a rock.  And it is driven by his perception that young voters and Islamic Dearborn want it.

 

On 5/13/2024 at 6:05 PM, jerryskids said:

https://www.newsweek.com/college-protesters-joe-biden-1898868#:~:text="Biden has been emphatic that,University College London%2C told Newsweek.

Once again, to no one's surprise, I bring data, and you bring feelz.

Honest question:  have you ever posted a link here to support your feelz posts?   

 

[jerryskids 6,616]

26 minutes ago, BeachGuy23 said:

Here are Jerry's first two posts on the subject about Biden changing his stance on Israel due to the student protestors. No mention of any qualifiers or any other potential influences to Biden's decision.  He then "justifies" his position based on "opinions of political experts (lol)" and calls them data.

He didn't back off the absolutes at all until I challenged him but he never offered any other potential influence.

Take a lap Jerry.

 

 

Thanks for confirming I never said it was absolute fact.  And when challenged by you, I provided a link with political experts who agreed.  Still doesn't make it a fact of course, but that's how discussion on a message board goes.  At least, how it goes with people with triple digit IQs.

How is that search for me saying "data points" going, finance guy?

[Ron_Artest 1,177]

1 hour ago, BeachGuy23 said:

Here are Jerry's first two posts on the subject about Biden changing his stance on Israel due to the student protestors. No mention of any qualifiers or any other potential influences to Biden's decision.  He then "justifies" his position based on "opinions of political experts (lol)" and calls them data.

He didn't back off the absolutes at all until I challenged him but he never offered any other potential influence.

Take a lap Jerry.

 

 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

The Boyosexual Power Twink Twins are in the house!

[Horseman 2,416]

It's like midget tag team wrestling with gutterboy and his alias now. 

[jerryskids 6,616]

16 minutes ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

The Boyosexual Power Twink Twins are in the house!

 

14 minutes ago, Horseman said:

It's like midget tag team wrestling with gutterboy and his alias now. 

I'm thinking that Gutter is just trolling.  He has a history of this, and I can't believe he has become so stupid as to align with a simp pseud like BeachGuy.  He's probably laughing at him more than any of us.   

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

10 hours ago, jerryskids said:

A red herring attempts to deflect the discussion from the original topic.  I created the thread and original topic.  I hope logical fallacies are not part of your curriculum.

I presume the facts/data comment is some, also misinformed, interpretation of my exchange with BeachGuy, the bean counter who is allergic to data?  You might want to read some more before you align with him.  Or not, you two would probably get along quite well.

I wrote the post because I made an assertion in another thread that I thought cultural issues were an existential threat, and I was asked (challenged) to provide examples.  I have more examples coming in the future.  Feel free to sit them out; adults who understand nuance and can discuss complex issues are welcome though.

If you want to address my assertion about moral relativism, feel free to do so, and I will discuss with you as I have with other left-leaning people in this thread.  If not, I'm done responding to you.

Went exactly where I said you would. Nice job seal. 

So being "woke"- or the BLM or an issue dealing with transgenderism poses a threat to our survival. Man I can't wait for more doom and gloom scenarios from you that you will then immediately try to walk back a few posts later. You aren't scared of these things, you just want to say assholish things without getting challenged. 

10 hours ago, BeachGuy23 said:

If you want to watch Jerry spin himself in circles ask him to support his comment that Biden changed his stance on Israel due to the student protests.

You ain’t seen deflecting until you watch Jerry try to put opinions forward as data points.

It’s hysterical.

Jerry is an idiot. He- and Eternal dummy also miss my larger point that this thread is the same argument people have here all the time

[jerryskids 6,616]

4 hours ago, Sean Mooney said:

Went exactly where I said you would. Nice job seal. 

So being "woke"- or the BLM or an issue dealing with transgenderism poses a threat to our survival. Man I can't wait for more doom and gloom scenarios from you that you will then immediately try to walk back a few posts later. You aren't scared of these things, you just want to say assholish things without getting challenged. 

Jerry is an idiot. He- and Eternal dummy also miss my larger point that this thread is the same argument people have here all the time

It's hilarious that, on the heels of a 7 page thread with mostly good, nuanced discussion, you read the OP and give a 3rd grade summary, then accuse me of missing the big picture. 

Class is in session, and you missed it.  If you want to go back and read the thread (which I'm confident you haven't), or re-read the OP, and you want to ask something new and interesting that hasn't been discussed, feel free.  But sorry, I have no response to "an issue with transgenderism poses a threat to our survival".  Read the thread.  Or don't, as I don't think you'll learn anything anyway.

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

OP: "Marxism is moving to other areas. Most notably racial marxism with BLM and sexual marxism with trans athletes. Now those won't kill the country but they are creating moral relativism which is an existential threat to the country and the tenets we were built on."

Response: "So you think black people fighting for equality in treatment and trans athletes fighting for acceptance are going to ruin us. That's hilarious."

Response to Response: "Whoa whoa whoa. I didn't say that. You didn't read the entire thread. you just took the first post that I typed with my own thoughts creating words and decided that is what I meant. What an idiot you are!!! if you'd have read the rest of the 7 pages with my drivel you'd see that I have moved away from some of that which means my first post was just hysterical BS to begin with." 

Jerry- I'm glad you woke up the other day and decided to bless us with whatever nonsense you heard from Prager U or whatever other think tank you stumbled upon that preys on low intelligence adults like you. Here is a simple fact for you (and a real fact- not some opinion piece you are trying to masquerade as "data" or "facts" or whatever other word you want to throw at it. Transgender people comprise 1.6% of the population according to the Pew Research Center. Since 2010 there have been 40 transgender athletes that have competed in sports at a collegiate level. So trans athletes were competing in women sports before it became a major political issue. So sorry- no, I don't see something that affects a minor subset of a subset of human beings as being anywhere on the track of being an existential threat- and Yes I'm speaking solely to your trans athlete fear mongering. And the next time you want to put fear mongering idiocy into the world. Be prepared to get called on it and get pushed back on for it. 

[BeachGuy23 642]

17 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

OP: "Marxism is moving to other areas. Most notably racial marxism with BLM and sexual marxism with trans athletes. Now those won't kill the country but they are creating moral relativism which is an existential threat to the country and the tenets we were built on."

Response: "So you think black people fighting for equality in treatment and trans athletes fighting for acceptance are going to ruin us. That's hilarious."

Response to Response: "Whoa whoa whoa. I didn't say that. You didn't read the entire thread. you just took the first post that I typed with my own thoughts creating words and decided that is what I meant. What an idiot you are!!! if you'd have read the rest of the 7 pages with my drivel you'd see that I have moved away from some of that which means my first post was just hysterical BS to begin with." 

Jerry- I'm glad you woke up the other day and decided to bless us with whatever nonsense you heard from Prager U or whatever other think tank you stumbled upon that preys on low intelligence adults like you. Here is a simple fact for you (and a real fact- not some opinion piece you are trying to masquerade as "data" or "facts" or whatever other word you want to throw at it. Transgender people comprise 1.6% of the population according to the Pew Research Center. Since 2010 there have been 40 transgender athletes that have competed in sports at a collegiate level. So trans athletes were competing in women sports before it became a major political issue. So sorry- no, I don't see something that affects a minor subset of a subset of human beings as being anywhere on the track of being an existential threat- and Yes I'm speaking solely to your trans athlete fear mongering. And the next time you want to put fear mongering idiocy into the world. Be prepared to get called on it and get pushed back on for it. 

Way to many facts and not enough feelz for the moron MAGAtards who infest this cesspool. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

1 hour ago, Sean Mooney said:

OP: "Marxism is moving to other areas. Most notably racial marxism with BLM and sexual marxism with trans athletes. Now those won't kill the country but they are creating moral relativism which is an existential threat to the country and the tenets we were built on."

Response: "So you think black people fighting for equality in treatment and trans athletes fighting for acceptance are going to ruin us. That's hilarious."

Response to Response: "Whoa whoa whoa. I didn't say that. You didn't read the entire thread. you just took the first post that I typed with my own thoughts creating words and decided that is what I meant. What an idiot you are!!! if you'd have read the rest of the 7 pages with my drivel you'd see that I have moved away from some of that which means my first post was just hysterical BS to begin with." 

Jerry- I'm glad you woke up the other day and decided to bless us with whatever nonsense you heard from Prager U or whatever other think tank you stumbled upon that preys on low intelligence adults like you. Here is a simple fact for you (and a real fact- not some opinion piece you are trying to masquerade as "data" or "facts" or whatever other word you want to throw at it. Transgender people comprise 1.6% of the population according to the Pew Research Center. Since 2010 there have been 40 transgender athletes that have competed in sports at a collegiate level. So trans athletes were competing in women sports before it became a major political issue. So sorry- no, I don't see something that affects a minor subset of a subset of human beings as being anywhere on the track of being an existential threat- and Yes I'm speaking solely to your trans athlete fear mongering. And the next time you want to put fear mongering idiocy into the world. Be prepared to get called on it and get pushed back on for it. 

You're trying so hard to change the argument by misinterpreting what he said to troll or play some kind of "gotcha" game.

You lost, Looney Mooney.  Just accept the "L" and move on.  You ain't gonna' win this fight. 

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

1 hour ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

You're trying so hard to change the argument by misinterpreting what he said to troll or play some kind of "gotcha" game.

You lost, Looney Mooney.  Just accept the "L" and move on.  You ain't gonna' win this fight. 

Go back to your padded cell and yell at the walls freakshow

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

40 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

Go back to your padded cell and yell at the walls freakshow

You lost.  Accept it. No need to lash out at others like a hysterical teenage girl.

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

32 minutes ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

You lost.  Accept it. No need to lash out at others like a hysterical teenage girl.

There is no "win" or "lose"......there is someone trying to reconfigure what they made in their original post here about. I notice you aren't trying to dispute anything I said specifically- you are just saying "Take the L"....which is spoken like a true dope. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

3 hours ago, Sean Mooney said:

There is no "win" or "lose"......there is someone trying to reconfigure what they made in their original post here about. I notice you aren't trying to dispute anything I said specifically- you are just saying "Take the L"....which is spoken like a true dope. 

Again, no need to lash out at others for pointing you to the truth.  You teenage girls need to get hold of your hysteria.

No need to "dispute" anything with you because jerry already did all of the work making you look foolish.  Sorry, just take the loss.  You continuing to drag this out only makes you look even more pathetic.

I'm telling you this as a friend.

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

4 hours ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

Again, no need to lash out at others for pointing you to the truth.  You teenage girls need to get hold of your hysteria.

No need to "dispute" anything with you because jerry already did all of the work making you look foolish.  Sorry, just take the loss.  You continuing to drag this out only makes you look even more pathetic.

I'm telling you this as a friend.

Jesus you are sad. You are not even involved in this. It's me and jerry. You are trying to score points by accepting jerry's idiotic comment in response to me making fun of his initial idiotic comment. Seriously man- go get some rest. You need it. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

56 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

Jesus you are sad. You are not even involved in this. It's me and jerry. You are trying to score points by accepting jerry's idiotic comment in response to me making fun of his initial idiotic comment. Seriously man- go get some rest. You need it. 

Again, no need to lash out like a teenage girl. 

Just take the loss and be done with it and move on. You got called out, appropriately, and it is what it is.  Accept your curb stomping like a man.

You do know what a man is, right?

[Hardcore troubadour 15,081]

9 hours ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

Again, no need to lash out like a teenage girl. 

Just take the loss and be done with it and move on. You got called out, appropriately, and it is what it is.  Accept your curb stomping like a man.

You do know what a man is, right?

He knows what a man is, but if the curriculum says different , he will go with the curriculum.  It’s how they do. Weak men are letting the whole place go to shitt. 

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

9 hours ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

Again, no need to lash out like a teenage girl. 

Just take the loss and be done with it and move on. You got called out, appropriately, and it is what it is.  Accept your curb stomping like a man.

You do know what a man is, right?

Again- no response to the content of what I said- just attacks and trying to score points.

 

[BeachGuy23 642]

29 minutes ago, Sean Mooney said:

Again- no response to the content of what I said- just attacks and trying to score points.

 

He's really not worth aruging with.  I don't care about the childish, moronic, cultist insults but he brings ZERO else to the table.

I wonder why Jerry never asks him links to his post with "data" from opinion pieces?

[Sean Mooney 1,955]

21 minutes ago, BeachGuy23 said:

He's really not worth aruging with.  I don't care about the childish, moronic, cultist insults be he brings ZERO else to the table.

I wonder why Jerry never asks him links to his post with "data" from opinion pieces?

It's funny to just see how far he will go down this road trying to score points based off what other people say. It's obvious he isn't smart enough to even attempt to score his own points. 

[lickin_starfish 1,906]

If you score enough points, does Soros let you pick something from the prize cabinet?

[SaintsInDome2006 439]

America’s leading Marxist is here to tell us what we do & do not need.

[SaintsInDome2006 439]

The leader of the nation has declared foreign films a national security threat & has taken measures ti ensures Americans watch fewer of them.

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,928]

On 5/4/2025 at 1:04 PM, SaintsInDome2006 said:

America’s leading Marxist is here to tell us what we do & do not need.

The gaslighting and lying is STRONG with you.  Do you ever stop?  What happened to you?

[SaintsInDome2006 439]

Trump Is a Socialist

The president thinks the U.S. is one big Macy’s—with him in charge.

 

Quote

 

Donald Trump does not know the first thing about how a factory operates, of course, and neither do most of the private-equity dorks and middling media figures with which he has stocked his administration, a veritable museum of minor Fox News figures. But he has been inside Macy’s, and even had a product-licensing deal with the department store once upon a time—ghastly shirts and ties with a predictable Gordon Gekko meets Liberace aesthetic. 

And so Trump’s version of quasi-monarchical Leninism is no surprise. It’s not one big factory: It’s one big Macy’s, with him leading the parade. 

We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

… 

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works. 

 

 

Donald Trump is a socialist. 

When I write “socialist,” I do not use the word the way most right-leaning commentators use it, meaning: “bad.” If you want to get a feel for exactly how insipid and repetitious the contemporary online right is, do a search for “cackling socialist”—you don’t even need to include “Kamala Harris.” You’ll be hip-deep in stupid in two clicks. 

The thing about socialism is, it stays socialism—whether you like socialism or dislike it. It is a word that means something, and what it means isn’t every dumb thing you don’t like up to and including publicly funded sex-change operations for currently incarcerated illegal-immigrant felons. 

Socialism doesn’t mean high taxes or an expensive welfare state. You don’t need socialism to have a portfolio of social-welfare programs. Japan has an extensive social-welfare apparatus, and it is far from socialist. Singapore is super-capitalist, and it offers my favorite kind of welfare: direct money payments to poor people. Even the big-spending Scandinavians have long abandoned the experiments in socialism that wrecked their economies in the postwar decades: In the high-tax European countries that so many of our progressive friends profess to admire, the trend for a generation has been away from state enterprise and central planning and toward privatization, trade, and investment. American progressives say they envy European health care systems they generally know nothing about; their European counterparts sincerely envy an American entrepreneurial ecosystem that they understand all too well but remain unable to replicate. It’s a funny old world. 

Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies—those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things. Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done—a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc. 

V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view, it is worth keeping in mind, was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19^th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management” associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor. 

Karl Marx was right about one thing: The means of production really do shape the intellectual landscape in profound ways, and the advent of standardized, interchangeable, mass-produced industrial parts made by power machinery—machines making other machines, an innovation that owes much to Samuel Colt—suggested a parallel vision of social organization: rational, standardized, uniform, efficient, subject to constant refinement and improvement under the benevolent gaze of engineers and scientists and professional managers. We Americans still talk about society that way, e.g., as though the job of schools were not to educate human beings but to “produce workers” or, better still, “produce workers custom-trained for employers’ needs.” 

The push toward cartels and monopolies in the age of the so-called robber barons was not exclusively rooted in self-interest—there also was a sincere belief that this was the way to make production more efficient, by eliminating wasteful duplication of work and products, “destructive competition,” and “overproduction,” sentiments that one can still hear today when Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump complain that American children have too many toys and school supplies or too many choices of deodorant. (I have been to Sanders and Trump campaign events, and I can attest that the splendiferous overproduction of deodorant is not a pressing American problem.) Lenin did not dream up the idea of society as “one big factory” on his own—American capitalists got there before him, swerving, as they still do, far outside of their lanes. 

Donald Trump does not know the first thing about how a factory operates, of course, and neither do most of the private-equity dorks and middling media figures with which he has stocked his administration, a veritable museum of minor Fox News figures. But he has been inside Macy’s, and even had a product-licensing deal with the department store once upon a time—ghastly shirts and ties with a predictable Gordon Gekko meets Liberace aesthetic. 

And so Trump’s version of quasi-monarchical Leninism is no surprise. It’s not one big factory: It’s one big Macy’s, with him leading the parade. 

We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

… 

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works. 

If you ask the president what the U.S. balance of trade with Eritrea should be (and if you then explain to him that, unlike “Nambia,” Eritrea is a country), he’ll give you a dumb answer, of course. But the problem won’t be that the answer goes off in one direction or another but that he—and people like him—think there is an answer, and that it is the job of the president of the executive branch of the federal government to provide one and act on it—that the president can somehow determine this “according to the statistics and according to everything else.” 

It’s the “according to everything else” that gets you, of course. Never mind a big department store—take a simple grocery store, which typically has something like 40,000 to 50,000 unique products. If you want to determine what the “correct” price of each product should be, even within a fairly narrow range, and how much product “should” be stocked relative to current inventory, again within a fairly narrow range, throw in a few other important variables, and then consider all of the possible permutations, you end up with a number of possible distributions expressed by a number that has about 200,000 digits. If you took one second to consider each possibility—because you, a responsible central planner, are considering every option!—it would take more time to run the numbers for a single suburban grocery store than has passed since the Big Bang: All the time in the world, literally, wouldn’t be enough. 

Trump can’t put names to faces for half of the people who work directly for him and invents imaginary countries from time to time. But, somehow, he knows what imported bananas from country X absolutely should cost relative to those from country Y—because neither a sparrow nor a drop of rain in Ecuador falls without his knowledge. 

Yeah. 

Donald Trump’s vision of the economy is classic socialism. And if you want to say that what it really is is classic nationalism, fair enough: As Jonah Goldberg observes, at the level of practical economics nationalism and socialism are the same thing: nationalized industries are socialized industries, socialized industries are nationalized industries, nationalized medicine is socialized medicine, etc. Bernie Sanders thinks and speaks as a nationalist, as do left-wing writers at places such as Dissent magazine—see J.W. Mason’s “A Cautious Case for Economic Nationalism.” Barack Obama’s economic views were explicitly nationalist. Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to “scientific” principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity. 

It’s as though somebody rewrote The Road to Serfdom as a third-tier Monty Python skit:

“These policies are going to make it more expensive to buy Christmas presents for my kids.” 

“Well, maybe your kids don’t need so many presents.”

“But wasn’t your plan supposed to make us all rich?”

“It will. Think of all the money you’ll save when you can’t afford to buy ANYTHING!”

The same people who used to laugh at the Russians and their five-year plans for wheat production now prostrate themselves before the Committee of One, confident in the knowledge that Comrade Trump knows where the Hallmark Channel should be filming its next Christmas-themed rom-com and what percentage of the subcomponents for the flux capacitors should be manufactured in Canada. But, no, we didn’t elect the cackling socialist. Trump, to my knowledge, doesn’t cackle. But he is economically more in Lenin’s camp than in Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s and Ronald Reagan’s. He already imagines himself as a kind of royal figure—any guess who the serfs are going to be when we get to the end of this road?

[SaintsInDome2006 439]

On 5/13/2024 at 5:01 PM, TheNewGirl said:

You realize that when the govt/taxes takes over healthcare then they are the ones who decide what/when you get treatment for things, right?  

 They decide to approve you for things like x-rays, dialysis and chemo.  They truly decide if someone is actually worth the treatments available, someone is worth saving. 

Are you willing to know that "allocating funding" means letting someone's mother die? 

 

Quote

He and other economists said that Trump’s description of that 10% rate as the minimum tax level for all coming trade agreements effectively makes the United States a high-tariff country and will be a continuing drag on the economy.

“That is largely in line with my fears,” said Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama White House and now a professor at Harvard University. “Best case is emerge from Trump with a 12% average tariff rate on world. That is back to the 1940s and on par with Iran and Venezuela.”

Link

So when the government takes over trade, what happens?