spottybrowncow wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:38 pm
Bob Butler wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:05 pm
I would agree that we have used the prison system to lock up minor drug users too much.
There, I suspected it might happen someday - I agree with Bob on something!
Now, let me correct one of his earlier statements:
"The Democrats run big cities because the Republicans
do not share the goals of the voters."
The red/blue small town/big city divide is very real. People in big cities live in a very artificial environment, made possible only by the actions of many people far away, and the use of massive amounts of energy for transporting things. It's similar to aqueducts making ancient Rome possible, and why cities grow on rivers and and railroad lines. In that environment, getting along with everyone and putting up with anything is a survival strategy. Many intellectual things of value are produced in big cities, but many in that environment also come to believe that they are "better" and "enlightened." Like most everyone, they see only a small part of the reality which allows them to exist.
What? You don’t agree that prejudice and the ghetto mindset exist? That would be a big gap in your knowledge. You can’t pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.
Big cities create many industries. Detroit made cars. Minneapolis brewed beer. New York City had a garment district among other things. Big cities also have universities and museums, although there are rural ones also. Big cities often run governments. Big cities also support things like road repair, infrastructure maintenance, restaurants and the other things needed to keep a large number of people living close together going.
The problem is some are more central to the big functions than others. The supposedly important people can make large financial contributions to politicians. The supposedly ordinary people vote. One distinction is who the parties choose to chase and why.
I would add rural people don’t see the urban problems as much as the other way around. Rural folks need the city produced products as much as the urban folk need the products of agriculture. If some participating in the industry, governments, museums see themselves as performing higher functions, are proud to throw the real or imagined weight around, have more money to give to politicians for favors, well, yes, it happens. You are not going to stop it short of going to direct vote computer networked democracy, and we don’t have the security for that yet.
But that still leaves the Republicans serving the people who think themselves important, and the Democrats working for the more common people.
But the other two big problems now are prejudice existing more in rural areas, as well as religious folks who try to impose their religious and moral opinions on others.
That is the broad structure. If you decide any or all of the above is incorrect, that you disagree with me totally, we cannot agree on how to fix a structure if we can’t agree that the structure exists.
If you do disagree, what do you disagree with?