My dad used to say if the average person could make a living where they could buy a house, a car, a six pack of beer and have a decent vacation now and then they are content with that. Take that away and you have trouble.

Most people are content with the middle and it’s not just economic, it’s political and spiritual. The extremists on either side make the most noise, they get the most news coverage, one extreme yells at the other. It becomes a real freak show that frankly get’s more attention than it should. Pundits make a ton of money preaching to the choir and telling their audience what they want to hear.

Spiritually most people just want to be left alone and live in a society that is based on some common sense ethics. They don’t want to build a religious Zion. They don’t want to become a God or ascend to the higher dimensions. They don’t want the nihilism on the other side either. They don’t want to be social freaky Deeks. They just want to live a quality life.

The middle is simple but it’s also hard. It’s so hard to achieve. We want it but never seem to get there.

Then how do you explain the immense popularity of Nazism in 1933-1938? The fervent radicalism of the Great Leap Forward? The great popular sadness when Stalin died?

The answer is that your observation is true when things are stable: in normal times, people prefer the normal.

But in abnormal times, people opt for extremism because it promises solutions to extreme fears.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2022 02:24PM by Lot's Wife.

The fabled "middle" is actually right wing lite. Consult your overton window.

There's an important point in there: namely, that the middle shifts depending on the extremes.

Take Germany. From 1923 to 1929 Gustav Stresemann was the dominant German statesman; he was married to a Jew, he achieved peace with France and, with strong public support, he worked to integrate the country into a moderate and mutually cooperative Europe. He more or less defined centrist Germany and in his day there was no governmental discussion of disenfranchising Jews.

But he died in 1929 and then a variety of factors contributed to the ascent of Nazism in 1933, a force that for about nine years was supported by the vast majority of German citizens. Towards the end of that period the debate had shifted from general acceptance of Jews to how many of them to exterminate. "Liberals" favored appropriating all their wealth and kicking them out of the country. The "centrist position was somewhere between that and mass extermination.

The point is that "the middle," "the center," and "the reasonable" change with the public mood. There are times when compromise is the moral thing to do and times when it most definitely is not.

You may want to see a doctor about that.

Mormons do their level best not to leave people alone. You’re not safe from Mormons even after you are dead.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2022 03:41AM by Brother Of Jerry.

True.

Your post reminds me of something cauda said on her post about conflating need with want as seems to be the tendency these days. A contentment of the middle doesn't do much to explain how the last lottery got to over a billion dollars in only a couple of weeks. That was want, not need. Lust for a better life.

"Settled" may be a more apt description than contented. "Less is More" is possibly the greatest lie ever told.

Most people want it all but don't want to do the work to get there. (Which does explain the lottery.) They would, however, like their government to do that for them. Oddly the odds of that happening are slightly better than the lottery odds--but not by much. Not oddly--the odds of the Mormon church doing that for you are zip, nada, nil, and bupkis.

"Most people want it all but don't want to do the work to get there. They would, however, like their government to do that for them."

I don't agree, I think some people "want it all" and don't want to work for it. But in my life experience most people are willing and happy to work for fair compensation --- I don't think I've met anyone who has wanted their government to give them every thing. I've had the opportunity to work with hundreds of highly motivated people who took on projects to make the world a better place.

Most people I have met who receive government assistance are thankful, humble and trying to make their own way.

The worst people I have met have inherited money and property and are afraid that someone may get a piece of their "hard earned libertarian wealth."

I have spent a lot of time in Scandinavian countries that we hear from some are hell holes because of socialism. I've found the contrary to be true, and citizens in those countries are happy and proud that they don't have countries where people live in poverty, eat from garbage cans and die from treatable diseases.

I don't ~want~ the middle, I just recognize everyone needs to compromise.

If I had my way, I would pick some stuff from the extreme left and some things from the center right. Of course I know that the world would be scary and boring if everyone thought like me. I'm not so sure some people on the fringes would compromise one bit if given a choice.

It's probably more like a Bell curve. Most people want the middle, more or less, with some outliers on either end.

But the curve is not nailed down on some moral spectrum: it moves right and left depending on how people collectively feel.

That's how innocent women get burned as witches.

Show me a guilty woman who was burned as a witch.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2022 12:19PM by Dave the Atheist.

What I see is that the western world turned back the clock a bit the past decades. Land value, real estate and legal power is what people looking for. Food and water do not fill needs anymore. Family empires is the dream and not a progressive modern society that protects every subjects rights and freedoms.

Is there a society that represents the far right? A place like Harrington Town (polyanna), or Peyton place where taxes are low, no one gets entitlements, everyone carries their own weight, 1950s Eisenhower 1950s America maybe was closer to the dream?

As for the far left China, North Korea, much of latin America, Large chunks of Europe are all high tax big government, free health care, no freedom kind of places. There's lots of examples of the left.

America is definitely not on the right anymore, 83,000 new irs agents just got hired to Crack down on freedom.

Maca Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there a society that represents the far right?
> A place like Harrington Town (polyanna), or Peyton
> place where taxes are low, no one gets
> entitlements, everyone carries their own weight,
> 1950s Eisenhower 1950s America maybe was closer to
> the dream?

Someone please enlighten this silly man that Eisenhower raised the top marginal tax rate from 84% in 1950 to 91% from 1954 onwards and that it stayed there until Johnson cut it to 77% in 1964 and then to 70% in 1965 and that Nixon raised them back to 77% in 1969. It was clearly the Dems who favored lower taxes, not the Republicans.

Viewed another way, the federal share of GDP--meaning all taxes and other revenues--are higher today than in 1950. So once again, the 1950s were radically different than Maca imagines. It is in fact his idol, Donald Trump, who boasts the greatest deficits since World War Two. 2020's total of 15% of GDP was over 15 times the average of the Eisenhower years.


----------------------
> As for the far left China, North Korea, much of
> latin America, Large chunks of Europe are all high
> tax big government, free health care, no freedom
> kind of places. There's lots of examples of the
> left.

Idiocy. If you add the 2020 budget deficits and total US taxation to get total government spending over GDP, you get to northern European levels. What is the difference between Scandinavian and US government behavior given that the numbers are comparable? That the Northern Europeans insist on paying as they go rather than spending their kids' inheritances through national debt--and again, Trump set the record for fiscal irresponsibility.

That and the fact that Europe spends the money more efficiently and effectively than the United States.


--------------------
> America is definitely not on the right anymore,
> 83,000 new irs agents just got hired to Crack down
> on freedom.

If you define "right" as fiscally responsible, the Trump administration was far to the left of China. For China's revenues/GDP ratio runs at just over 8% whereas the United States's is 22-23% if you ignore the annual deficits and over 35% if you take them into account. Using Maca's standard, that makes China three times more "right" than the United States.


-----------------------
I realize this won't affect Macaroony's opinions, for think he does not.

Lagom

A swedish term for middle.