[Sixstrings]

The US is a shithole, rotting in its own suburban waste. Many many many 3rd-world countries are much better. Travel to Europe to see how civilized people live. And it is not the fault of the poor minorities. It is the fault of white-flight, policies that gutted unions and blue-collar work.

Well yeah, I agree with you Pstarr.

It's actually never "the fault of" the working class. What causes all dysfunction? Crime, drugs, families breaking up, disease, out of wedlock children.. what is the root of all that.. it's not having a living wage job, bottom line.

And then it's a town or city full of people that are too poor, well of course everything goes to sh*t when it's like that. That's been the same way all through history, whether we're talking about ancient Rome and the plebs rioting when the rich were getting too rich, or victorian London, or starving Russians under the Tsar, or gilded ages in our own American history, as opposed to periods when we had less wealth disparity.

Trade problems are at the root of it all. Jobs all offshored. Wages frozen, 20 years ago, yet things cost twice as much. There's a new article out, saying that in 10 years robots -- it's not a joke, it's real -- will take 30% of domestic jobs in the US. If you're offshoring jobs, if you've got open door immigration taking jobs, if you've got automation and robots taking jobs too.. that all adds up to a lot of human beings without a job. Or low wage pay, below a poverty line, for the same work that used to pay twice as much 30 years ago. (adjusted for inflation)

Of course society falls apart with that set of circumstances, when they won't even raise the minimum wage. Of course the "plebs" will riot. So really, we'll see what happens, but this country will either go a little bit more socialist and we can still have billionaires but maybe a bit fewer of them, or, we can have rule by the 1% and .1%, and police state, and they'll just call the Army out into the streets to put the plebs down.

[Sixstrings]

On CNN right now. People in the city still defying the 10pm curfew. Businesses are complaining that a city wide curfew is disrupting commerce. Police and the National Guard say, that for everyone's safety the curfew must continue and that safety is more important than business.

I don't get you six. You seem to be a republican and then you talk the truth?

I'm a cultural Republican, previously life-long Republican, that had to admit some facts that couldn't be ignored anymore. And so I had a latter-life conversion.

I get by okay personally, but to be frank with you -- if I were more well off then sure, I'd still be a Republican.

I'm not all that unusual, Pstarr. Obama won because x number of swing voters and x number of actual Republicans voted for him. Including me, it's people like me that elected him, he got the swing vote, he got some Republican votes.

The more poor some Republicans get, the more of them will actually start voting liberal. It's just math. Can't argue with math. Can't argue with what one sees right in front of them, their own town getting poorer every year, drugs on the rise, crime up, social dysfunction everywhere. I'm sorry but the answer isn't to go to church or something -- folk need their jobs to pay them more, that's the answer.

And the working class matters, too. No -- not everyone can work for the government. Not everyone can be a wall street banker. Not everyone can develop apps for the iphone -- none of those are mass employment fields. The whole point of programming and IT is that one person can eliminate the need for labor of thousands and millions of other people.

[Sixstrings]

Hey Six. I was a life-long liberal/progressive. And now I am not. So it goes.

Okay and now I'm confused. I thought you just said my Sanders Gospel was the truth?

I think you and me are alike, I'm the type that if liberals fail for too long then I do actually swing back over to Republican.

At the end of the day, if there can't be change, then yeah there does need to be law and order and if I have to be poor then I'll just do that but I also want to make it safe driving down to the piggly wiggly and not have to drive through a bunch of gangsters.

So see -- in troubled times, it's always this way. Republicans will use right wing populism to get the vote of people like me, and then liberals may use left wing populism. At the end of the day -- WAGES NEED TO GO UP PEOPLE, THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE, ENOUGH OF IT, IT'S INSANE, I DON'T WORK FOR MINIMUM WAGE BUT THIS JUST ISN'T RIGHT IT HASN'T GONE UP IN 20 YEARS BUT INFLATION HAS DOUBLED.

It's just not normal, or right. Being conservative is about keeping things going like they always have been. Well, minimum wage used to be raised every five years or so and it kept up with inflation and then at some point they just stopped doing that.

Call me a left wing Republican, or socialist, or whatever I don't know but we've got too many poor people in this country and too many billionaires and it's a fixable problem. And the answer is not to just go to church.