applegrove
applegrove's JournalYes but 1/3 of Germans watched another 1/3 of Germans kill the other
third in the 20s, 30s and 40s. Germans have more engineers, some of the smartest people in a country, per capita than anyone else in the world these days. Fully two thirds of Germans fell for their assigned roles in the war crimes of the Nazis. For sure most were threatened with violence. That is just one tool in the box of psychopaths. It was a cult of personality.
Actually psychopathy works on those who are smart. They say dazzleling
with details. Look at how long Democrats fought debt because the republicans came up with trickle down. It does not work on people who are bad at language and more visual than language based (unless the leader of the cult is a dyslexic and surrounded by psychopaths as dyslexics think in big pictures and paint pictures - a populist malevolent dyslexic like Trump). I read a book on the topic once and there was the description of a psychopath trying something on a policeman. The policeman said "Don't try that with me. That stuff only works on smart people and i'm not smart". Think about it. Those who live in a world of concrete visual thinking are not as vulnerable to flights of fancy as someone in the upper echelons of religious or political power, where psychopath are drawn to, and where following a faction or following religion, human fictions, is more important than the concrete. These days more people are attuned to human fictions as humans learn one or another from birth, even people who would normally be concrete, so a bigger portion of the population is vulnerable to psychopaths than in the days before the enlightenment. Humans are becoming more abstract. My grandmother grew up the daughter of a hard rock miner. Her stories were all about things that had happened in people's lives: inflection points. She had an advanced degree in nursing and read, but not philosophy in any way. She loved the community of her churches but did not talk about religion..she acted out her faith by walking the walk. She voted for the New Democratic Party until she died at 103. I learnt from her the concrete thinking and though i can be manipulated i was never fooled into going out with guys who had no business being interested in me, unfortunately in some cases, very fortunate in others. I have always been happiest alone. Democracies enable free thinking and dyslexics populists leaders - for good (Teddy Roosevelt) and for bad (Trump). Especially with a corrupted dyslexic leading and getting advice from Bannon and Roger Stone. Added to this good jobs taken away from white men and they start voting emotions rather than reason due to financial anxiety. It is the opposite of democracy, where incomes tended to rise, and makes them more vulnerable to appeals to white supremacy. In the past when people lived with financial anxiety they were yoked in some way, by class or by no democracy. Now it is the wild west with no western land available to white people to improve their lot. IMHO It depends on the psychopath. Are they appealing to the power and vanity of the elite? Or is it riches that might appeal to someone that has none. Are they stirring up scapegoating to those in distress because the world is changing? Everyone has a blind spot in the end because we have emotions.
Whitewashing. The Republican party and the people behind QAnon are
syncing up. They are talking. They've divided the spoils.
Krugman, I think, said big red states like Florida and Texas get their funds
from sales tax. NY and California from white collar income taxes. The states that rely on sales taxes are going to be in trouble as white collar jobs kept going from home during covid while sales tanked.
I add that it really will be the Feds funding infrastructure in those sales tax states. When Stephen Harper did stimulous spending during the financial crisis (canada did not have a subprime meltdown due to adequate banking regulations but was effected by the world wide recession, Harper a conservative knew keynesian spending was the cure as he talked trickle down but didn't want the economy to tank like the republicans did with Obama by demanding austerity). He put a federal government sign up announcing it was the federal government funding the infrastructure at every construction site so he would get the credit. I hope Biden does the same.
I bet the ones who conceived of spreading the anti vax meme to include MAGAs and Covid
had the idea that automation was going to make a lot of workers redundant so why not. 
I mean Trump pulled out of WHO during the pandemic. Who does that? Trump refused to sign up the USA in supporting COVAX too.
"SNIP.......
Wikipedia:
COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, abbreviated as COVAX, is a global initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and others. It is one of the three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, an initiative begun in April 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, and the government of France as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVAX aims to coordinate international resources to enable the equitable access of COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and COVID-19 vaccines.[1]
.....SNIP"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVAX
Business and Industry would know this. They do endless studies on
productivity. They must see a benefit in powerlessness... like not voting or something like that.
How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive
How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive
February 2, 20216:31 AM ET
GREG ROSALSKY at NPR Planet Money
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/02/02/961910289/how-poverty-makes-workers-less-productive
"SNIP.....
The researchers then monitored the workers' on-the-job performance, comparing them to a group of workers that didn't get paid upfront. The researchers find that the workers who were paid upfront were significantly more productive, making 6.2% more plates per hour. The biggest effect was seen with the poorest workers. Even more, the plates they made were less likely to be marred by mistakes, indicating they were more attentive on the job.
The authors conclude that giving workers cash upfront helped alleviate the mental burden of their financial problems and freed them to be more productive. It echoes findings from other studies on the psychological consequences of poverty, but it is novel because it looked at the effects of it at a real job rather than in a laboratory setting.
Given the emerging body of evidence that suggests the cognitive load of poverty hurts low-income folks' ability to escape their circumstances, the authors argue that policymakers should consider reshaping welfare programs with these psychological issues in mind. Giving poor people cash without conditions, for example, could do a lot to help them earn more cash on their own.
We've written before in the Planet Money newsletter about growing evidence that our welfare programs may not be up to the task. A study last year by the California Policy Lab found evidence that a huge percentage of poverty-stricken Californians are not getting the Earned Income Tax Credit because of the difficulty of filling out tax forms. Mullainathan and his colleagues' work is a reminder that policymakers should recognize the cognitive burden on many of those who live in poverty and make it easier for them to get assistance.
.....SNIP"
Where do you fall on the scale if falling for trickle down economics?
I was taught economics in University Nova Scotia and did not question the idea that we could not sustain too much debt. It was in all the news when i was in high school. I admired Chretien and Clinton's fights to tame that beast. I was never for tax cuts. Supply side was explained to me as aggregate supply curb being bent, not trickle down which i never believed. My older brother, at school in the United States, was given Ayn Rand to read and was a conservative for all of three weeks (he had not had a girlfriend yet which is pertinent to liking Ayn Rand). Within that window, he was brought to dinner by friends with Arthur Laffer who told of his napkin trick. My brother soon converted his friends to Liberalism. I was for negative income tax (basic income) and robust social programs always. As a canadian from a medical family i am for public health care always. My grandfather practiced socialized medicine in his rural community before it was law for 50 years. My grandmother ran the farm so that people would have options to help out instead of paying cash. Mostly they just left what was owed by the poor on the books and ignored it. My great grandfather was a Liberal politician in ottawa who introduced income tax to Parliament (Union Government). My dad was a Liberal fundraiser who held teas for wealthy Liberal ladies to get their support for the party in the 1970s. He was a Trucking Trade Association guy. When a Transportation of Dangerous Goods Law was being negotiated in Ottawa my dad supported the regulations at some point, breaking with his Truckers (who were influenced a great deal by the American Trucking Association). His truckers pulled the funding for his Association in anger. My dad put his own money into publishing a handbook on the new laws for Truckers and Management. He put his own money into payroll. The truckers needed that information and forgave him. Besides he was well informed because he took the bus to work from a senior civil service neighbourhood and talked to the senior civil servants on the bus about government plans and knew what was up before anyone outside of government. The propaganda on debt was heavy in Ottawa. So too in my high school our history teacher told us the US Civil War was not fought against slavery. Seems Canada was in GOP plans. My first election i voted for Conservative Brian Mulrooney as i was worried about debt. All subsequent elections I have voted for the Liberals or the NDP. I supported Buttigieg, Biden, Bernie, Biden this past election season. I'm with Krugman's thinking that there are factors, like people buying stuff that comes from overseas, that keep inflation way lower. That more debt can be sustained. And i think there is room to share that windfall, that went to the wealthy with tax breaks and a window to bring foreign profits home, with workers by aggressively promoting unions and minimum wage hikes. And a war on poverty. And infrastructure spending. Etc. And all the policy tools that are cutting edge and were ignored under Trump.
I just had a thought. Some Trumpers are former Democrats angry at losing good jobs
and neither party working to fix that. Many of these voted for Obama. What happens if there are bitter nomination races between Business Republicans and Trump Republicans, and the Trump Republican candidate loses? Will the former democratic voting bitter Trumpers split and vote for Union Joe Biden and the Democrats?
Never heard of this group. GOP internal war has moved to the videos. No mention
of Trump which is interesting. They are branding themselves as the integrity faction. Like Reagan didn't spread the trikle down lie. Or use the southern strategy. Or destroy unions. They are running in the space Biden occupies too. Democrats need to be on how the GOP is anti union and not for the middle class. They want to cleave it and their cutting of taxes on the rich while trying to stop social programs lkie the ACA prove it. Once cleaved their will will entrenched rich and many poor like Mexico. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Russia.
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1357119799705411584
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