There are a lot of things I agree with Oran on. My natural affinity is for the left, but in the last 10 years, find that I have very little in common with most of the left. I also feel like I have no impact on the debates, and that things like voting don't matter, as our elites are going to do, what they are going to do, and us little people don't even impact their actions. This is true on issue after issue.
The left drive me crazy, as they are all about "compassion" but support policies that benefit upper middle class members of the Media, Academic, Bureaucratic class, while constantly talking about how they are helping the poor. In fact, they are helping themselves while keeping the poor down.
Unions are meant to advocate for workers, but the most powerful unions represent upper middle class government workers, and serve to entrench their interests, while completely ignoring the needs of the people work in industry. If the conservatives can change the conversation to actually bring forward policies that really make the lives of the working class better, more power to them.
Thank you for a balanced, coherent conversation. What strikes as missing from the discussion is the hopelessness I see all around me. A leader should offer hope and most of what I'm hearing from candidates is petulance and vitriol uttered in ugly language. When I entered high school in '72 the world really wasn't any more stable; the Viet Nam war was still raging, the USSR under Brezhnev was as dangerous and unpredictable as under Stalin, there were riots in many American cities, and we had seen the recent assassinations of the four principle American civil rights leaders along with a couple of university students peacefully protesting and yet, young people were not killing themselves in anywhere near the numbers they are today and hardly anyone was homeless. Today there is an overwhelming fug of doom and pointlessness that prospective leaders seem unwilling or unqualified to address.
Thanks again for an interesting interview.
There are a lot of things I agree with Oran on. My natural affinity is for the left, but in the last 10 years, find that I have very little in common with most of the left. I also feel like I have no impact on the debates, and that things like voting don't matter, as our elites are going to do, what they are going to do, and us little people don't even impact their actions. This is true on issue after issue.
The left drive me crazy, as they are all about "compassion" but support policies that benefit upper middle class members of the Media, Academic, Bureaucratic class, while constantly talking about how they are helping the poor. In fact, they are helping themselves while keeping the poor down.
Unions are meant to advocate for workers, but the most powerful unions represent upper middle class government workers, and serve to entrench their interests, while completely ignoring the needs of the people work in industry. If the conservatives can change the conversation to actually bring forward policies that really make the lives of the working class better, more power to them.
Recently someone commented that unions went from economic justice to social justice. Guess which stance is not adversarial to the powerful?
Thank you for a balanced, coherent conversation. What strikes as missing from the discussion is the hopelessness I see all around me. A leader should offer hope and most of what I'm hearing from candidates is petulance and vitriol uttered in ugly language. When I entered high school in '72 the world really wasn't any more stable; the Viet Nam war was still raging, the USSR under Brezhnev was as dangerous and unpredictable as under Stalin, there were riots in many American cities, and we had seen the recent assassinations of the four principle American civil rights leaders along with a couple of university students peacefully protesting and yet, young people were not killing themselves in anywhere near the numbers they are today and hardly anyone was homeless. Today there is an overwhelming fug of doom and pointlessness that prospective leaders seem unwilling or unqualified to address.