Just so that there is absolutely no misunderstanding - you are correct, I think Vance is a political opportunist who has conveniently played both sides in order to further his personal advancement. That is not a huge surprise in the political world.
And you are correct in assuming that I am not very happy with the direction that conservative politics have taken in the US over the past 40 years. It is increasingly inhumane. I say this as someone who has never taken a single day of unemployment or availed myself of any sort of government assistance ever. However, let the record show that I am also pretty damn disenchanted with the current "liberalism" that so many in this country are concerned about. It is about as liberal as mid 80's Reaganism, and falls far, far short of what I would desire if I was the emperor of the world. Yes, that's socialist talk. J. Edgar Hoover has been dead a while and I don't feel like the Cubans are going to invade tomorrow.
However, aside from the digs at Vance, I blame both sides of the aisle equally for the bootstrapping rhetoric that has dominated the American psyche and political discourse for the past century. A very wealthy man once told me; "it doesn't matter who's in office, this is the playbook - privatize the profits, socialize the risk." We have seen this play out time and time again in the US over the past half century, and also watched the gap between the wealthy and poor dramatically widen while the taxpaying citizen gets to help bail out banks and prop up a healthcare ponzi scheme that looks absolutely ludicrous from the outside, and the alarmist in me feels that we are not too far away from some new kind of corporate feudalism and neo-serfdom. Again, both parties are fully stained on this front as far as I am concerned.
I don't think anything is owed me, but I resent the fuck out of the fact that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has been turned into some reductive binary of "red team/blue team, your team sucks", and that more and more we cannot openly speak to political differences without it immediately turning into an angry shouting match.
Aaaaaand this is also why I generally try to rein it in and keep my jabs infrequent. Politics and religion, best kept inside the mouth most of the time. Sometimes it slips out. Apologies if it grated in this instance.
And I hear you on the e-bike!
Sept. 4, 2024, 11:58 a.m. - Mike Ferrentino
Just so that there is absolutely no misunderstanding - you are correct, I think Vance is a political opportunist who has conveniently played both sides in order to further his personal advancement. That is not a huge surprise in the political world. And you are correct in assuming that I am not very happy with the direction that conservative politics have taken in the US over the past 40 years. It is increasingly inhumane. I say this as someone who has never taken a single day of unemployment or availed myself of any sort of government assistance ever. However, let the record show that I am also pretty damn disenchanted with the current "liberalism" that so many in this country are concerned about. It is about as liberal as mid 80's Reaganism, and falls far, far short of what I would desire if I was the emperor of the world. Yes, that's socialist talk. J. Edgar Hoover has been dead a while and I don't feel like the Cubans are going to invade tomorrow. However, aside from the digs at Vance, I blame both sides of the aisle equally for the bootstrapping rhetoric that has dominated the American psyche and political discourse for the past century. A very wealthy man once told me; "it doesn't matter who's in office, this is the playbook - privatize the profits, socialize the risk." We have seen this play out time and time again in the US over the past half century, and also watched the gap between the wealthy and poor dramatically widen while the taxpaying citizen gets to help bail out banks and prop up a healthcare ponzi scheme that looks absolutely ludicrous from the outside, and the alarmist in me feels that we are not too far away from some new kind of corporate feudalism and neo-serfdom. Again, both parties are fully stained on this front as far as I am concerned. I don't think anything is owed me, but I resent the fuck out of the fact that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has been turned into some reductive binary of "red team/blue team, your team sucks", and that more and more we cannot openly speak to political differences without it immediately turning into an angry shouting match. Aaaaaand this is also why I generally try to rein it in and keep my jabs infrequent. Politics and religion, best kept inside the mouth most of the time. Sometimes it slips out. Apologies if it grated in this instance. And I hear you on the e-bike!