Reply #17: you're right

[Lexingtonian]

Ideally societies have some great collective purpose that engages them to the point that people vs. wealth doesn't become a dilemma. And the truth is that in times of existential crisis, wealth is very rapidly taken and put to taking care of social needs. Our problem lies in the times where people have no greater purpose than accumulating wealth/power, and in the process come to identify themselves with their wealth/power. But it's one of those curious and somewhat inane things that historically societies ultimately destroy wealth that isn't being used in ways compatible with their collective needs/purposes.

Paternalism and all that...Daddy Knows Best is always a scam. Daddy Is Faking It is more like the reality. How could it be otherwise?

The Founding Fathers were perfectly aware that the government they were setting up was bound to err, bungle, and get filled with incompetents. They knew they were personally going to make up a lot of the people running it and had no illusions about each other. And most of them were in colonial legislatures before the Revolution- so they knew perfectly well what miserable and nasty and petty and corrupt business it really is in practice. So that's why they set out to make the system robust rather than perfect- to fit very imperfect people and bad situations. The Federalist Papers are full of that. In Philadelphia they spent a lot of time deciding the terms of office- too short and nothing can be accomplished, too long and screwy things don't get corrected. The Constitution is not an optimistic design. It assumes stupidity, failure, corruption, and morons fighting; and it assumes the Checks And Balances will be in use often. And it has endured, with a lot of maintenance work.

Henrik Hertzberg compared the Republican Party to the Communist Party of Stalin and Lenin back when he reviewed Blinded By The Right. Constant revisionism, all in the name of clinging to the advantages of power. So start off with your Repug with something where Theory is, well, Changing. Supply Side Economics is always a good one- David Stockman disavowing it in 1984 it is always hopelessly embarrassing to them. Divorce rates in the Bible Belt, crime rising during Republican Presidencies, their Chickenhawks, their China hypocrisy- oldies but goodies. Revisionism always means hypocrisy. But arguing about their pocketbooks is pretty difficult. When things are bad they often don't see it that way- if the people they don't like get a lot worse off than they are, that assures them that they are going to have that much more of an advantage when things improve. In the end they are really moral relativists of the worst kind.