Do any of you know of examples when actual warfare between two classes has occurred as a direct result of increased taxation on the wealthy?
I’m curious what the GOP think this phrase can do for them? I can only guess that its design is to confuse the electorate much like the phrase ”death panels” during the Healthcare debate. Unfortunately, it’s always about marketing and rarely about solutions.
There’s a great line in the movie “The American President” when Kirk Douglas’ (President Shepherd) gives his big speech at the end and says… “We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson (GOP) isn’t the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only, making you afraid of it and telling you who is to blame for it. That ladies and gentleman, is how you win elections” –I for one, hope President Obama can do as effective of a job in calling out the “Bob Rumson’s” of the moment.
Here is the link to the speech from the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRVbWMvi7c
As an aside: At the end of the speech he references a bill to congress about cutting emissions to solve the “global warming crisis”. –This was 1995, can you believe we still have people in politics that refuse to believe it is occurring?
[edit] the actor is Michael Douglas, not Kirk Douglas
Consider - "actual" warfare in this day and age means "a bunch of kids I don't know go to a country I can't locate on a map and kill people I don't know the first thing about and occasionally show up on the news until Nancy Grace finds a white girl in trouble" to most people.
Actual warfare, meanwhile, has morphed to "UAV pilots in Nevada launch missile strikes in Pakistan against targets that are either Taliban or a Pashtun wedding party, depending on our intel."
Does "warfare" mean "death?" Well, how many people die from shoddy healthcare? Does that not count? If a rich person lobbies for a means test on social security that ends up killing 30 people because they ate melamine-enhanced Chinese catfood to stay alive, is he more or less culpable than the Air Force pilot who maneuvers a Predator into striking distance so a CIA operative can press the trigger?
I wrote this about two years ago when someone asked whether there was a fiscally-conservative but socially-liberal political party:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8d9zi/anyone_else...
The TL;DR is that the only way the Republican Party can operate for its wealthy benefactors is by convincing the proletariat to vote against its best interests, and that's all about semantics.
As to your aside, "climate skepticism" is the right's version of "vaccine skepticism." It is a deeply-held, irrational belief that is more emotionally investing than intellectually investing and as such, clever people irrationally cling to questionable data points in order to avoid the cognitive discomfort necessary to purge an entire regime of thought. After all, if Al Gore was right about Global Warming, he might be right about other things... and it's so much easier if Al Gore is 100% WRONG.
Politics does not occupy the same place in our brains as "right vs. wrong." It occupies the same place as "Raiders vs. Packers."
Well, thenewgreen, it's 2016 now. Obama's term is almost done. We are in a new election cycle. What are your thoughts on the subject today?
Interesting question. You are right, we have enough runway to take a look at the current landscape and see the effects of the "class warfare" rhetoric. It's interesting to me where we are at considering our recent past:
1. Financial collapse in 2008
3. Obama didn't do much to impact taxation
4. Welcome Bernie Sanders
I think you can see why Bernie is resonating so much. In a short amount of time we have seen a financial collapse, a failed promise and the same behaviors that led to the collapse occurring again. Bernie is inevitable. What's interesting is that "class warfare" is not a phrase being used by just the GOP, it's now used by the DEM's as well. They're saying it's class warfare to allow the wealthiest to disproportionately own so much and control so much. It's almost like the entire topic has been co-opted by the left. What #ows didn't have was a central figure, a leader that could help solidify their cause. Now, they have it in Bernie. I guess that's my ramblings on where I think we are at on the subject today.
Thanks for the question.
I wonder what would happen if Bernie wins and the Republican party decided to feel salty about it. Obama was a double dose of disappointment on so many fronts. A lot of that could be blamed on a stubborn and beligerent congress. If the President's Office is supposed to be the ultimate bully pulpit and it feels like we've gotten so little accomplished in the last 8 years, what would it feel like to have someone promise so much disappoint all over again?
I don't think anyone would argue that all of today's climate is the fault of man-made emissions. However overwhelming evidence indicates that man-made emissions (and other factors such as conversion of forests to grazing land) are contributing to an increase in oceanic acidity, and an overall increase in global temperature. I don't think it's fair to call people that communicate this evidence, or action based on it as 'global alarmists'.
I am a scientist by profession. I study cancer biology, but I have read many scientific publications on global climate change, usually in interdisciplinary journals such as Nature or Science. I'm interested in the science behind it, partially because I am interested in past global climates. I live in Michigan, which at one point used to be a warm sea, and at another was covered in glaciers. Global climate change fascinates me. (Did you know that Lake Superior is only 10,000 years old, but some of the rocks around it are 3.5 Billion years old!? It's like a rain puddle!) But, I don't care if global warming right now is real or not. I really don't. It simply is or it isn't.
However, if you look at the evidence, you can see that we have increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere while at the same time reducing some large carbon sinks. Carbon helps capture sunlight as heat. You can show that in a simple lab setup. We have abundant evidence from (many many independent sources now) that average global temperature is on the rise. What is more, a warmer atmosphere holds more water, which traps much more heat than CO2. Also, permafrost melt is increasing, and releasing an increasing amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas. Finally, massive deforestation has diminished a large carbon sink, and the ocean's CO2 level has been rising, which decreased its effectiveness as a CO2 sink. The data demonstrates an interesting picture. The earth's atmosphere is in a warming cycle, and CO2 emissions contribute to it.
I think that people often think of the atmosphere as vast. However, if you were to shrink the globe down to a bowling ball, Mt. Everest would have a height similar to a ridge of your fingerprint. Now, consider that at the top of Everest, you are getting outside of the breathable atmosphere. The atmosphere around the earth is a very thin film, one that has been demonstrably affected by life many times over in its history. (consider the Great Oxygenation Event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event) In fact the balance of CO2 and oxygen we have right now is a direct consequence of life on earth.
Anyway, it really doesn't matter one way or the other if you can find someone that disagrees with anthromorpholgic climate change. What only really matters is the data collected, and how that data can be best interpreted based on known phsyical properties. That is, if there is a contradiction between the data, your theory, and established physics, then something is wrong. Where we stand, we have an abundance of data that suggests that the least contradictory theory that can be constructed is: that we have increased the atmosphere's ability to capture heat from sunlight due to the gases our industry releases, and the removal of some atmospheric sinks for those gases. And in addition, there is evidence a positive feedback loop (such as permafrost melt, and methane release from a warmer ocean floor) that suggests the climate temperature rise could continue for some time. That's why the scientific community at large is onboard with taking action to reduce our contribution. I think it's important to note that today's global temperature is cooler than its historic mean. There's really no reason why we can't increase it.
Personally, I think it's sad that this issue has become a politicized debate in the US. It's very interesting stuff, and the consequences are something that we are able to see firsthand. I like to remember that Michigan is going to be covered in ice again someday. It's also probably going to be covered in ocean again too. The global climate doesn't have any long-term balance or natural state. It certainly doesn't owe us not to change. If we change the atmosphere, the climate changes too. It's just cause and effect.
btw, NASA has a pretty good overview of evidence that has been gathered, and changes that are occurring around the world due to the increase in temperature: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
I really urge you to check it out. Forget the debate about what we should or shouldn't do about it. (Personally, I don't think we can do much) It's just damn interesting in its own right.
The agenda of the right has always been hierarchy and Social Darwinism as means of conserving culture and values. They just can't say that since the left is so powerful these days.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/20#.TnltJAh5q9U.fac...