This is an editorial by Auron Macinture of the Blaze. Both parties quote misleading stats that mean shit to working folks.

The media have been covering for Joe Biden's disastrous presidency by running comically propagandistic headlines about the success of "Bidenomics." The average person may be struggling, but nothing can stop the American Politburo from publishing stories about new record harvests with the kind of fervor that would make a Soviet commissar blush.

While the media's shameless partisanship for the Biden administration makes their distortions more obvious, this denial about the true quality of life in the United States is hardly new. Both parties have prioritized the victory of their ideological preferences over the well-being of the American people. Narrative victory has become far more important to our ruling class than understanding the real condition of the average citizen.

In his essay "Chartism," Thomas Carlyle raised what he called the "Condition of England Question." Carlyle was watching as the Industrial Revolution radically transformed the lives of the working class in Brittain. He was particularly concerned with the ruling elite's new obsession with data collection and economic theories.

Carlyle referred to economics as the "dismal science" because it attempted to quantify everything about human experience and solve all of society's ills through statistical analysis. The human experience is incredibly complex, nested in a thick web of traditions and folkways that are not easily displayed on a spreadsheet. Carlyle warned that this focus on impersonal and cold measurements would allow economists to lie about the true condition of the people by manipulating data. The reign of quantity, data, and experts would not free people from governance but would instead make them subordinate to inhuman forces which would act in their own interests.

The current leftist push to portray America's tenuous economic position in a cheerful light only demonstrates the truth of Carlyle's concern. Spending has run rampant, inflation is out of control, and the only answer that Democrats have to offer is even more government programs and outrageous deficits. As evidence, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently boasted how the Inflation Reduction Act allowed for the planting of nearly $75 million in trees across New York. Democrats have no interest in how inflation impacts the average American; politicians only care about how the situation can be used to further their ideological goals, and they are more than happy to manipulate data to ensure that outcome. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman went so far as to claim that if you remove housing, cars, food, and energy, it appears that inflation has been largely defeated.

Yes, as long as you remove everything humans need to live, the average American is doing just fine!

While it is easy to focus on the absurdity of the current leftist regime, Republicans are just as guilty. For decades, conservative commentators told middle Americans whose jobs were being shipped overseas that economic conditions were improving because new and better jobs would arise from the creative destruction of the free market. Young families who could not afford to purchase a home due to skyrocketing residential prices were told to get an extra job and stop eating avocado toast. Young married couples who could not afford to have children due to prohibitive health care costs were told that everything was fine because flat-screen televisions from China were very cheap.

Free trade, mass immigration, and cheap money were supposed to allow the nation to innovate its way out of any problem. The party of family values did not seem to care if family formation was increasingly out of reach as long as the GDP line went up.

The Republican Party has been a cheerleader for corporations that worked hard to destroy American culture, push a woke agenda, and make the dream of raising a family on one income impossible. The conservative establishment might talk about the importance of the church or community, but it eagerly endorses the economic forces that regularly tear apart those same communities.

In its ideological push for small government at any price, the GOP forgot what made small government possible in the first place: a robust network of families and community organizations that provide mutual aid for those in need. The drive for a Beltway libertarian version of radical individualism was painted over with a thin coat of family values to disguise its destructive nature, but it was dismantling the very structures on which those values stood.

This obsession with economic ideology did not just damage the country socially but also materially. During the pandemic, many Americans were shocked to discover that the obsession with higher profit and cheaper products had moved production of critical medical supplies such as ventilators and antibiotics entirely offshore. In a time of crisis, the United States was totally depending on very same hostile nation that had fostered that crisis for essential supplies.

Any nation that was thinking about the well-being of its people would understand that having some degree of domestic production for those items is critical, no matter what the cost. But our leaders have learned nothing from this crisis, and little effort has been made to create any emergency production capacity for these essentials.

The condition of the American people is not a cold statistic that can be derived from data. The nation is vast; it contains many different regions, cultures, and traditions that can only truly be understood by living in them. America's gross domestic product or the price of consumer electronics does not tell the story of how people live their day-to-day lives. Man cannot live on affordable flat-screen televisions alone. The Biden administration has been shamelessly rearranging economic indicators in the hope of papering over deep societal problems, but it is far from the first. It is much easier to abstract people into easily manipulatable data points than to actually walk their communities and understand their problems.

Americans are facing a crisis of meaning. The elderly move across the country to die alone in nursing homes. Career strivers suddenly reach middle age and find they have nothing beyond a soulless corporate job to bring purpose to their lives. Young people search for real communities of belonging but find only digital simulations of what was once a central part of human life. Stock values can increase all they like, but none of these problems will ever be solved by robust economic development.

Our modern minds have been trained to trust the quantifiable. We have been trained to believe that the opinions of experts and the authority of data hold priority over all other forms of knowledge. But if we are to solve the social and spiritual problems our nation now faces, we must learn to view our countrymen as humans, not boxes on a spreadsheet. To understand the condition of America, leaders must view the United States as a people with organic needs and ways of being, not as an economic zone which can be optimized through social engineering. Until our rulers see the nation as a people, not a temporary staging area for their pet economic ideologies, they will never be able to truly address what ails the country.

This article remids me that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Unfortunately, this country is fucked. America's ONLY hope would be to put a theocratic dictator such as myself in charge. I promise to kill A LOT of people. Its gonna be ugly. Many of these people you're gonna be pissed about. I'm doing it anyway and killing anyone that gets in the way.

But hey, it isnt all bad. For starters, I'm giving everyone thats come here illegally in the last 20 years the opportunity to GTFO or, you guessed it, I'm killing em. All the murderers in prison, they're dying too....and more!!  Now you might ask, how the fuck am I doing this? Well, you're gonna help! Thats right, all able bodied men of 20+ are gonna participate. IDGAF if you're Amish or Quaker either, YOU WILL help take out the trash or YOU'RE gonna GTFO of "America".

We're going back on the gold standard and eventually, all non gold backed dollars are going away.California is gonna get RAPED! for its gold deposits no matter the enviro costs. Anyone that protests gets a public execution at the hands of the people.

All coal fired powerplants, no matter how polluting, will run again. I'll have all them Sierra assclowns hunted down and burned to death in a coal fired blast furnace too.

Steel mills will dot America again too. Every single form of machining and founding will take place in America no matter the environmental costs.

You wount even be able to buy a fucking pair of toenail clippers made in China.

Everyone will be STRONGLY coerced to go to a Judeo-Christian church. even Jews. Indian Reservations and nations will cease to exist. You'll either be American or GTFO! But FIRST, we will chain all the doors on every single kweerdo loving church WITH the congregation inside and we will burn them fuckers ALIVE!!!!!

Sprinkled in amongst these actions will be the extermination of all these assholes who fancy themselves as witches and warlocks. We'll chain them to a Prius and toss em in a lake and if they float, SHOOT EM!

But hey, who are we kidding. People would much rather sit around and watch the faggits, drug addicts, gangs, and other assorted shitbags turn ALL of America into Gotham City!!!!

Lokmar for emperor.

Quote from: Herman on September 21, 2023, 12:14:02 AMLokmar for emperor.

You'll have a job in the dictatorship for sure!!!!

A third party signed up 15,000 voters in Arizona. Democrats worry that's enough for a Biden spoiler



More than 15,000 people in Arizona have registered to join a new political party floating a possible bipartisan "unity ticket" against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

While that's less than the population of each of the state's 40 largest cities, it's still a number big enough to tip the presidential election in a critical swing state. And that is alarming people trying to stop Trump from winning the White House again.

The very existence of the No Labels group is fanning Democratic anxiety about Trump's chances against an incumbent president facing questions about his age and record. While it hasn't committed to running candidates for president and vice president, No Labels has already secured ballot access in Arizona and 10 other states. Its organizers say they are on track to reach 20 states by the end of this year and all 50 states by Election Day.

"If they have someone on the ballot who is designed to bring the country together, that clearly draws votes away from Joe Biden and does not draw votes away from Donald Trump," said Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist in Arizona.

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/a-third-party-signed-up-15-000-voters-in-arizona-democrats-worry-thats-enough-for-a-biden-spoiler

Quote from: Oliver the Second on September 22, 2023, 08:01:21 PMA third party signed up 15,000 voters in Arizona. Democrats worry that's enough for a Biden spoiler



More than 15,000 people in Arizona have registered to join a new political party floating a possible bipartisan "unity ticket" against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

While that's less than the population of each of the state's 40 largest cities, it's still a number big enough to tip the presidential election in a critical swing state. And that is alarming people trying to stop Trump from winning the White House again.

The very existence of the No Labels group is fanning Democratic anxiety about Trump's chances against an incumbent president facing questions about his age and record. While it hasn't committed to running candidates for president and vice president, No Labels has already secured ballot access in Arizona and 10 other states. Its organizers say they are on track to reach 20 states by the end of this year and all 50 states by Election Day.

"If they have someone on the ballot who is designed to bring the country together, that clearly draws votes away from Joe Biden and does not draw votes away from Donald Trump," said Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist in Arizona.

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/a-third-party-signed-up-15-000-voters-in-arizona-democrats-worry-thats-enough-for-a-biden-spoiler

Joe Manchin is being floated as a possible candidate for the No Labels Party.

Quote from: Oliver the Second on September 22, 2023, 08:01:21 PM

Watery tarts lobbing scimitars at people is no basis for establishing a government!

Democrats are a lot more full of it. They now label everyone to the right of Ken Buck or a cup of tepid water is a terrorist insurrectionist murdering slaughterer who murders and kills and brutally destroys everything everywhere and hates the children and something something mass-horror-terror-killing-death-blood something.

RFK Jr. noted in a post on X that his dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party ramped up amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that Democrats exhibited more of a willingness than Republicans to pursue policies such as lockdowns and mandates.

"Like many of you, my disaffection with the Democratic Party accelerated during Covid, when it showed itself even more willing than the Republicans to suspend free speech, lock us down, surveil us, and force mandates down our throats," Kennedy tweeted.

Far too many Republicans campaign one way and then once they become lawmakers, they vote the same way Dems do.

The House of Representatives recently voted for an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702, which allows the warrantless surveillance of American citizens in certain cases.

However, this wasn't just a Democrat effort.

147 Republicans voted for the extension, along with a majority of the Democrats.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is in shock, saying the vote "just threw away the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution."

73 Republicans and 45 Democrats voted against the extension.

Speaker Mike Johnson sold out on border control.

Quote from: Brent on April 18, 2024, 02:53:27 PMSpeaker Mike Johnson sold out on border control.

Wasn't MTG already starting the process of ousting him over Ukraine funding or something like that?

Maybe he figured he didn't have anything to lose at that point.

Quote from: Garraty_47 on April 18, 2024, 04:06:31 PMWasn't MTG already starting the process of ousting him over Ukraine funding or something like that?

Maybe he figured he didn't have anything to lose at that point.

So what? If he doesn't believe in stopping illegal immigration, just admit it.

Anti progressives need their own all-of-the-above strategy, but only for fuels proven to work and that don't rely on subsidies and mandates to survive.
Liberal Republicans like Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon are allowing our beautiful rural landscapes to be colonized by dystopian environmental hazards such as solar panels, wind turbines, and carbon pipelines. These projects destroy our property and freedom under the guise of saving the environment.

Imagine Norman Rockwell's America now overrun by anti-environment wind turbines and solar panels. Much of that part of America is under Republican stewardship. Globalists need vast amounts of land to promote their "transition" to unworkable energy projects. GOP governors willingly offer their land for these projects to create temporary jobs built on government lies, mandates, subsidies, and misallocation of resources that would never succeed in a free market.

What both parties lack is a pragmatic centrist outlook.  They are too enslaved to their respective extremes and incapable of trying to find common ground.  Immigration reform is one way to help the country, but the Dems and Reps would rather use it as a wedge issue and not get anything done about it.