'Post-Truth Politics' - Collapse in Information Integrity

[Lozza]

One minor point. I'm not a US citizen, so I can't affect any of these unfol --- unravelling events. I'm a horrified Canadian bystander, getting some of the ungawa splashed on me, with no power to affect that, either.

I apologize for the slur. :)

But you were puzzling me while I was thinking that you were American, as Americans don't have the view you have proffered. The incredibly pervasive propaganda machine in the USA has done its job effectively, so now knowing that you're Canadian makes perfect sense of your objective views of the US government. Otherwise I was starting to think, are you a reincarnation of Gore Vidal...lol

The fathead rival federal party is campaigning for the next election on rescinding the carbon tax altogether.
Plus ca change...

Only until they win, if they win office, then they'll back-flip and serve their corporate masters. They're just trying to get people like yourself on-side so that they can get into office. The game will change afterwards if and when they win office.

[Serpent]

[The fathead rival federal party is campaigning for the next election on rescinding the carbon tax altogether. ]

Only until they win, if they win office, then they'll back-flip and serve their corporate masters.

No, it's the other way around. The Liberals enacted carbon tax. Those guys are campaigning for even more oil, even less climate action.
What they regularly lie about is employment, health care and education - which they always promise not to hurt and invariably do, the minute they get into power. Then it's all got be rebuilt once they're out.

By fathead party I mean the ones who call themselves Conservative. Before the present faction bonked the real conservatives over the head and stole their name, that party was more or less sincerely conservative - pro-US, pro-business, pro-church, anti-labour, anti-immigrant, anti-welfare, anti-change - repugnant, but not entirely loathsome.
The new batch is proudly loathsome.
They get elected because enough of the people have learned to embrace loathing.

I used to vote solid NDP - labour, but they've drifted so far to the right, you can't tell them apart from the Liberals anymore. Well, they've had to, I guess, as all labour parties have: the working class has been disappeared: we're all middle class now, or wannabee.
S'what it say on the bumper-sticker; it must be true. Ish.

[Lozza]

[The fathead rival federal party is campaigning for the next election on rescinding the carbon tax altogether. ]

Only until they win, if they win office, then they'll back-flip and serve their corporate masters.

No, it's the other way around. The Liberals enacted carbon tax. Those guys are campaigning for even more oil, even less climate action.

My bad.

What they regularly lie about is employment, health care and education

Don't start me on that! Oops, too late! Our Conservative government in the late 1990's changed how inflation and employment figures are calculated. Inflation figures now EXCLUDE mortgages, rents, utilities, fuel and food staples except milk and bread. WTF is left except luxury items? So guess what? Inflation figures are low. With employment figures, "full-time" job was calculated as working a 38 hour week. Now the term has been changed to "permanent position" and working one day a month qualifies in the figures as permanent employment. So employment figures are high.

I hate politicians, but only passionately and with every fibre of my being.

By fathead party I mean the ones who call themselves Conservative. Before the present faction bonked the real conservatives over the head and stole their name, that party was more or less sincerely conservative - pro-US, pro-business, pro-church, anti-labour, anti-immigrant, anti-welfare, anti-change - repugnant, but not entirely loathsome.
The new batch is proudly loathsome.
They get elected because enough of the people have learned to embrace loathing.

I can see that you're as delighted as me. Here, the general mood of the public is that outside of the "true believers", we vote to avoid being fined, or merely vote the current party out because we're just sick of them and want someone else to grow sick of. Every now and then something happens whereby you find yourself saying, "well I'm glad they did that", but only out of surprise.

I used to vote solid NDP - labour, but they've drifted so far to the right, you can't tell them apart from the Liberals anymore. Well, they've had to, I guess, as all labour parties have: the working class has been disappeared: we're all middle class now, or wannabee.
S'what it say on the bumper-sticker; it must be true. Ish.

Yes, a little earlier in this thread in a conversation to someone else, I described the left wing using right wing policies and election promises, forcing the right wing to use left wing election policies to win office. Professional liars.

I apply this simple rule...I care not for what ANY politician has to say, the only thing I'm interested in is what they put their signature to. That's the only thing that tells me what I want to know, it's just unfortunate that it's afterwards, not beforehand.

Mark Twain said it best..."If voting meant anything at all, they wouldn't let you do it."

[Serpent]

Our Conservative government in the late 1990's changed how inflation and employment figures are calculated.

90's? That's just past the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney Axis. They gave all their successors license to rewrite all the dictionaries, constitutions and contracts.

I hate politicians, but only passionately and with every fibre of my being.

I won't go full Hunter Thompson, but will admit that the last one I actually wanted to vote for died eight years ago.

Mark Twain said it best..."If voting meant anything at all, they wouldn't let you do it."

Lots of places - in purportedly democratic countries - they don't!

[Lozza]

Our Conservative government in the late 1990's changed how inflation and employment figures are calculated.

90's? That's just past the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney Axis. They gave all their successors license to rewrite all the dictionaries, constitutions and contracts.

Yep, but until about the turn of the millennium, Australia lagged behind the rest of the Western Economies in most areas.

I hate politicians, but only passionately and with every fibre of my being.

I won't go full Hunter Thompson, but will admit that the last one I actually wanted to vote for died eight years ago.

The only Prime Minister I would have voted for was fired just as I came of voting age, Gough Whitlam.

Mark Twain said it best..."If voting meant anything at all, they wouldn't let you do it."

Lots of places - in purportedly democratic countries - they don't!

Those countries are good examples of political labels meaning nothing. We don't live in democracies either, we live in what I would term "democratic aristocracies" since we vote for representatives of wealth instead of representatives of the people. Our illusion of democracy is no different or better than anyone else's, but we've had thriving industrialization and capitalism to drive our illusions of "democracy". As a collective, we conflate the two (democracy and capitalism) to be the same thing, and though they compliment each other, they are not the same thing, one being a political dogma, the other being an economic model. When politicians talk of "freedom", they are talking of the economic model, the freedom to conduct business any way they want to, especially in foreign nations, and the freedom to remain unaccountable as a politician. While when citizens talk of "freedom" they are referring to a political status. The disconnect is in the connotations of the language that's used ...and used selectively.

[Mossling]

I think that this is an interesting turn of events considering the present post-truth climate, where news organizations can get away with spinning and insinuating fact with apparent impunity:

Female journalist told she needs male chaperone to cover politician's campaign
The Guardian, 10 Jul 2019

Campbell and her editor agreed the request was “sexist” and an “unnecessary use” of newsroom resources and that she should do the story alone. But when she informed the campaign, they insisted she would not be allowed.

“He reiterated that the campaign couldn’t agree unless a male colleague was present – this despite my offering to wear a Mississippi Today press badge in plain view at all times. But Robison insisted that trackers are trying to get any footage that would make the candidate look bad,” she wrote.

Foster stood by his decision, saying he did so “out of respect” for his wife, Heather, with whom he is pictured multiple times on his campaign website.

He just didn't want the stress of being accused of having an affair - I guess it's fair enough.

When the facts don't matter then I suppose one just attempts to limit potential damages....

[Mossling]

The POTUS says there is a Mexican "invasion" on the southern US border, and lo and behold someone reacts to his words as if there really is an "invasion" occurring and starts shooting up a Walmart in El Paso - mentioning Trump's rhetoric in his manifesto.

You can spin incendiary racist terminology, but you can't spin a bunch of people shot up in a Walmart by a white supremacist citing the US president as a source of inspiration whilst using the same extremist terminology.

In my OP on this thread - almost 3 years ago, I mentioned "the panic caused by a radio play version of The War of the Worlds - reporting that the earth was being invaded by aliens" - and here we have a very possible case of exactly that kind of situation.

Back in 1938, it apparently resulted in the following:

In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program's news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.

Even then the broadcasted truth - by the newspapers, let alone the most important person in the United States, was taken very seriously it seems.

[Lozza]

Nor can you spin that a lunatic quoting anyone at all isn't a lunatic. Lunatics often quote something that is meaningful to THEM and their distorted thinking. Anything from what the wife said, to Catcher in The Rye or lines from some heavy metal music. I'm not condoning Trump in any way, shape or form, but trying to lay blame on him for the actions of a lunatic is feable.

An important aspect of the War of The Worlds transmission is that those that caught the beginning didn't react adversely, but those that missed the introduction took the broadcast on "face value", so got anxious about what they were hearing. That's a very understandable reaction to the broadcast, but not the fault of the broadcaster that many missed the introduction.

So, in the same vane, sane people don't care what comes out of Trump's mouth for they know it's all rubbish, and saner people don't care what comes out of ANY politicians' mouth, as it too is all rubbish. The only thing worth paying any attention to is what documents they put their signature to. But blaming people for the actions of a lunatic is lame and only shows a lack of insight.

[Mossling]

Lunatics often quote something that is meaningful to THEM and their distorted thinking.

You could be talking about Trump here and his use of the words "Hispanic invasion," no?

sane people don't care what comes out of Trump's mouth for they know it's all rubbish, and saner people don't care what comes out of ANY politicians' mouth

A large proportion of people DID care about Trump's rhetoric during his campaigning, and thus they voted him in to power. Are they all insane? Or just racists and bigots, or are those people insane too in your book? Or perhaps they are just democratic voters with certain prejudices choosing one politician's rhetoric over another's?

blaming people for the actions of a lunatic is lame and only shows a lack of insight.

As Tony Blair said about responsibility for the illegal Iraq invasion - there is a chain of accountability in such situations - there is no one single person to blame. But hell, if the POTUS is the popular guy right now and he's bemoaning a Hispanic invasion, then what if someone gets a little more proactive and starts 'making a difference' one shot at a time?

It seems the choice of words is important in this respect. Angry people who tend to resort to violence to solve problems can easily be prompted into action by the words of such figures as Trump - they'll feel like a hero - a martyr - just doing what the majority of Americans want done.

Yes - there's a chain of accountability, but Trump's the most vociferous and powerful of all the links right now, and he just doesn't let up about it. There are already plenty of headlines in the papers linking him directly to this event.

His short-tempered incendiary untruthful posturing seems to be getting loony white supremacists all wound up and raring to go - it is obviously resonating with them.

[toucana]

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”.
Ian Fleming - ‘Goldfinger’ (Ch. 14 - Things That Go Thump In The Night’)

There have now been *three* mass-shootings in single week in USA: at Gilroy Garlic Festival California last Sunday, at a Walmart in El Paso Texas yesterday, and again last night near a bar in the downtown Oregon district of Dayton Ohio.

In each case it would appear that a white male shooter in military fatigues or body armour, armed with an AK-47 type weapon carried out a random shooting attack aimed at Hispanics after re-posting White Supremacist and neo-Nazi tracts on social media.

Donald Trump is quite deliberately stoking up racist hatred and violence in his Twitter feed and at his Nuremberg style MAGA rallies, mainly because it's one of the few political distraction cards he has left to play ahead of his impending impeachment.

To deny the obvious connection is simply to demonstrate the truth of another maxim:

‘There is no limit to a human being’s ability to rationalise and ignore the truth’

[TheVat]

In each case it would appear that a white male shooter in military fatigues or body armour, armed with an AK-47 type weapon carried out a random shooting attack aimed at Hispanics after re-posting White Supremacist and neo-Nazi tracts on social media.

Just fact checking here: do we know that much about the Dayton shooter yet?

[TheVat]

A large proportion of people DID care about Trump's rhetoric during his campaigning, and thus they voted him in to power.

More fact check. About 27% of registered voters actually cast a vote for Trump. Surveys indicate that the large proportion of non voters heavily favored Clinton. Basically, citizens declining to use their most important right in a democracy elected Donald Trump. I must remember to send some of them a thank you card. Clinton received slightly over 27%, which was 2.9 million popular votes. However, our electoral college gives greater clout to voters in red states with larger rural populations.

[toucana]

The Dayton Ohio shooter has been named by media as Connor Betts a 24 y/o white male from Bellbrook Ohio.
According to witnesses he was armed with a .223 AR-15 rifle. Police have said there might have been hundreds of casualties if nearby officers hadn't shot him dead within moments as he tried to force his way into a bar.

[TheVat]

Yes, I got all that. But your post said....

In each case it would appear that a white male shooter...attack aimed at Hispanics after re-posting White Supremacist and neo-Nazi tracts on social media.

I don't disagree about the prevalence of white males with assault rifles. Rather I was trying to ascertain if the most recent shooter in Dayton had also, as you seemed to say, been aiming at Hispanics and posting WS tracts.

[Lozza]

Lunatics often quote something that is meaningful to THEM and their distorted thinking.

You could be talking about Trump here and his use of the words "Hispanic invasion," no?

sane people don't care what comes out of Trump's mouth for they know it's all rubbish, and saner people don't care what comes out of ANY politicians' mouth

A large proportion of people DID care about Trump's rhetoric during his campaigning, and thus they voted him in to power. Are they all insane? Or just racists and bigots, or are those people insane too in your book? Or perhaps they are just democratic voters with certain prejudices choosing one politician's rhetoric over another's?

blaming people for the actions of a lunatic is lame and only shows a lack of insight.

As Tony Blair said about responsibility for the illegal Iraq invasion - there is a chain of accountability in such situations - there is no one single person to blame. But hell, if the POTUS is the popular guy right now and he's bemoaning a Hispanic invasion, then what if someone gets a little more proactive and starts 'making a difference' one shot at a time?

It seems the choice of words is important in this respect. Angry people who tend to resort to violence to solve problems can easily be prompted into action by the words of such figures as Trump - they'll feel like a hero - a martyr - just doing what the majority of Americans want done.

Yes - there's a chain of accountability, but Trump's the most vociferous and powerful of all the links right now, and he just doesn't let up about it. There are already plenty of headlines in the papers linking him directly to this event.

His short-tempered incendiary untruthful posturing seems to be getting loony white supremacists all wound up and raring to go - it is obviously resonating with them.

So, let me get this straight...America...the murder capital and mass-murder capital of the world, and you want to attribute the actions of a lunatic to Trump. You're clutching at straws. America has a lot of issues to resolve before you even get to Trump. There's an old adage that an electorate deserves its leadership...I need say no more.

[toucana]

--> TheVat
The latest information on the Dayton shooting I have seen over here reads:

Authorities have found writings linked to Dayton, Ohio, shooting suspect Connor Betts that show he had an interest in killing people, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. A preliminary assessment of the writings, found during the execution of a search warrant, did not indicate any racial or political motive, the sources said. (CNN)

So conceivably he could just be some dude with a more catholic interest in killing absolutely anybody and everybody, like that mass shooter in Las Vegas two years ago. But somehow I doubt it.

[Mossling]

--> TheVat
The latest information on the Dayton shooting I have seen over here reads:

Authorities have found writings linked to Dayton, Ohio, shooting suspect Connor Betts that show he had an interest in killing people, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. A preliminary assessment of the writings, found during the execution of a search warrant, did not indicate any racial or political motive, the sources said. (CNN)

So conceivably he could just be some dude with a more catholic interest in killing absolutely anybody and everybody, like that mass shooter in Las Vegas two years ago. But somehow I doubt it.

I read that he shot his own sister along with the others, so I think this one was something else.

[Mossling]

So, let me get this straight...America...the murder capital and mass-murder capital of the world, and you want to attribute the actions of a lunatic to Trump. You're clutching at straws. America has a lot of issues to resolve before you even get to Trump. There's an old adage that an electorate deserves its leadership...I need say no more.

Well check this out:

Trump laughs after audience member suggests shooting migrants – video

He bemoans not being able to shoot the migrants "like other countries do."

What more do you need?

Trump's basic message is: There's a Hispanic invasion and I wish we could shoot them.

Head of FBI C. Wray has also stated that since November last year, most domestic US terrorism has been White Supremacist - it's not just lunatic murderers, Lozza, there's broader political motivation.

[Mossling]

A large proportion of people DID care about Trump's rhetoric during his campaigning, and thus they voted him in to power.

More fact check. About 27% of registered voters actually cast a vote for Trump. Surveys indicate that the large proportion of non voters heavily favored Clinton. Basically, citizens declining to use their most important right in a democracy elected Donald Trump. I must remember to send some of them a thank you card. Clinton received slightly over 27%, which was 2.9 million popular votes. However, our electoral college gives greater clout to voters in red states with larger rural populations.

27% is still a large proportion in my books - especially in a relativistic sense, and it's still more than a quarter of the nation's registered voters.

[Serpent]

You can say: Only 27% of Americans voted for Trump, which almost sounds like, "nae sae bad" -
until you realize the full implication: take into account of what Trump is, what he represents, what he has been heard to say and seen to do, how he has used the office of the president -
then you're smacked across the face by:
A quarter of adult Americans approve of that.
Moreover, it's the quarter with with the most guns, the highest level of frustration, the least access to, or interest in, accurate or analytical information and the least emotional maturity.
And then you have to factor in that he has been actively, loudly, encouraging lawless behaviour; deliberately empowering lunatics to act out their lunacy, for the past five years.
That's not going to be an easy genie to coax back into its bottle.

[Mossling]

I think of this clip from before the 2016 election now and again and how it sums up Trump's post-truth hate-mongering rhetoric so well:



On the campaign trail "He's like a kid running for class President who's just walking around going '..and we're going to have TWO lunches...'"

"That's just saying shit..." - whether its actually true or not means nothing to the electorate that he's targeting. But it also seems that those 27% have their heads buried in the sand with regards to mental health and the fact that the impulsiveness that existed in the wild west is no longer acceptable.

Trump's reaction to El Paso is to say that it all just a mental health issue, but I think it's probably more about ignorance and tribalism than anything else - people getting all het up and war-minded, like they do for their favourite sports team, and then just jumping up off the sofa to 'kick some ass' and forgetting that they live in a developed cosmopolitan nation.

That's not lunacy in definition - it's just feeling energised and rallied by one's leader-in-chief. I assume a lot of Hitler's followers were rallied into immoral action in a similar way.

[Lomax]

Whenever people discuss what led to the groundswell for Trump, I'm always mindful of the evidence Natural ChemE shared on this forum back in March 2016. My more gracious fellow leftists argue we should try to understand pro-Trump sentiment; that economic hardship, geopolitical isolation, establishment corruption, stonewalling of debate around immigration, and authoritarian strains of "political correctness" need to be examined for their roles in the germinal. Sure, in the spirit of steelmanning, because there will be intelligent and sophisticated Trump voters out there, who have these legitimate concerns. Does it account for the broader movement? I am not so sure, and I'm not so sure Trump's alleged charisma does either. Note, in NCE's post, the unambiguous correlation between white grievance and Trump support. A large number of people appear sincerely to believe that whites have it harder than anybody, and that this must be redressed in a zero-sum calculation.

The other thing to note is that Mitt Romney got a greater share of the popular vote in 2012 (47.2%) than Donald Trump did in 2016 (46.1%). The Republican vote does not fluctuate as significantly as does the Democratic vote, and all that really changed between the two was the voter-distribution. We may be approaching this question from the wrong end of the spectrum. And that matters, because it matters what the Democratic Party does next.

[Serpent]

No intelligent, responsible voter could possibly have believed that Trump was competent to address the issues of their concern - or any issues at all. All through the campaign (1987-2019) it was perfectly clear from his every utterance that he didn't even comprehend the issues, let alone formulate policy: he was quite obviously playing to the lowest, commonest denominator. It was equally obvious that he had neither the motivation nor the ability to carry out those promises - except the ones about "getting even". He was quite public about that. And by now, it must be evident how readily he discards friends and allies when they appear to have become a liability. I'd bet he never paid the legal fees for those of his supporters who assaulted his detractors. So, what can he possibly be relied-on to accomplish?



What the Democratic Party needs to do is agree on a coherent platform - one that addresses all those issues - choose a candidate who can articulate that platform intelligibly and convincingly, and support that candidate.
They need to stop flattering the voters and tell the truth - especially the unpleasant truths. The people already know what's wrong; you just to identify the correct reason it's wrong, instead of blaming random victims.
Like: We have too much debt because we have failed to curb the "financial industry". We have corruption, because we've knuckled under lobbies and campaign contributors. We have mass shootings because we've neglected the nation's mental health and let the NRA set our national priorities. We have far too many people in prison, because we've allowed the justice system to be corrupted. We have high unemployment, economic hardship, crumbling infrastructure, poor heath-care and trailing education, because we have put the interest of elites ahead of the people.
As politicians, we have consistently let you down. We have consistently broken our oaths of office.
We have to stop wasting our nation's substance on astronomical corporate profits and disposable military ordnance, and start investing in our people. Before America can be great, it first has to stop bleeding.
Put your assault weapons on that pile over there, then get your universal health card and your UBI payment over here.
Then we'll see how to proceed.

What they need is what they never have: solidarity of conviction.

[Forest_Dump]

IMHO the real problem is the inability and unwillingness to compromise. It seems clear to me that there is increasing polarization and both extremes are unwilling to meet in the middle. In the last election, a lot of Saunders supporters didn't appear willing to support Hillary and so you got Trump. Now a lot on the more left fringe seem to have their hearts set on another relatively extreme candidate that won't appeal to more moderate voters in th middle. Frankly I fear that the table is slowly being set for four more years of Trump. I definitely hope not but I am not sure the Dems have learned from the last election. (And truth be told, although my natural inclinations definitely lean much more to the left, I am not even sure there is a candidate as good as Clinton in the mix.)

[Lomax]

IMHO the real problem is the inability and unwillingness to compromise. It seems clear to me that there is increasing polarization and both extremes are unwilling to meet in the middle. In the last election, a lot of Saunders supporters didn't appear willing to support Hillary and so you got Trump.

There's a circularity in this argument. Consider the following:

In the last election, a lot of Clinton supporters didn't appear willing to support Sanders and so you got Trump.

What's the difference?

If Sanders is too extreme then I expect the Democrats need to look elsewhere. Which is to say, there are many people who cannot be brought to vote for Clinton, who is an extremely suspicious figure. There may be centrists who can at least bring in the Left after the primaries are over - Obama is surely evidence.

[TheVat]

There is some possibility that moderates will be willing to swing Left a little ways, if someone can articulate a credible national healthcare policy that won't send the deficit into the stratosphere and have an option for those who wish to keep private health insurance. It's not that Americans shy from moving Leftward, it's more that they need a Left that is pragmatic. That's the lesson it's so hard for some Demos to learn. "Politics is the art of the possible."

And that pragmatism, if carefully crafted, should be easier to sell, given that the GOP has renounced its former fiscal conservatism and blown a giant hole in the budget. For many Independents, the fiscal conservatism was the one thing Republicans did that actually made some sense and would get some of them to swing right. With that fiscal restraint completely annihilated by Trump (and really, eroded heavily starting back with Reagan), the only thing left to hold them is the cult of personality. And that seems to be showing some cracks.

We have some fairly pragmatic candidates, like Booker or Buttigieg or Bullock (who won the governorship of a strongly Red state, quite a feat). Could one of those Killer B's move up in the pack? Too soon to tell.

[Serpent]

What middle?
What compromise? Between which of two extreme choices?
Obama's health-care plan was a compromise that didn't seem to satisfy anybody (except that 20 million who never had insurance before) It's nowhere near good enough. But where is the corresponding Republican proposal? How do find a middle?
What's the compromise on bombing Iran? Not sanctions - that's one solution that consistently fails. Obama's agreement was a pretty good compromise --- that's been discarded.
What's the compromise on immigration? Only cage 50% of the children? Give the prisoners water from a tap instead of the toilet?
What's the compromise on gun control? Corporate tax evasion? Capital punishment? Industrial pollution?

In fact, the Democratic party has been a story of ignominious "compromise". They're not heard among the hubbub. The moment for sober, steady common sense has passed. (It had been in hiding since 1972, was finally exiled in 1996) Choose another lukewarm moderate? You can't fight fire with a curtain. You need a great big uncompromising, committed bucket of cold water.

[Lomax]

We're wandering away from the realms of philosophy here, so I won't keep you long Vat: how much are Americans expecting Sanders's healthcare policy (of which I don't know the details) to cost? The NHS costs the UK £129bn, which is about £2,000 per person per year, and a strong majority of us support its continued existence. I wonder if this is because we are less pragmatic, or merely because our sensibilities (at least with respect to public services) are more left-leaning to begin with.

[Forest_Dump]

I suppose one of the odd things is I never really "got" what the percieved problem with Clinton was supposed to be. In many ways, as a somewhat left of center Canadian, I am more inclined to like Sanders but I think he is/was a bit too much of a seismic shift for the US and would have been even more disruptive than Trump is. Clinton is/was more pragmatic and conservative and, for whatever her faults were, was more likely to serve more people across the spectrum. Sure I think Obama was great but politically the US seems to be a bit of a pendulum that requires some time to adjust to swings in one direction. Now the swings are becoming increasingly radical and threaten to topple the whole structure to the benefit of none. There is definitely far too much and too extreme alt-right sentiment with an unwillingness to address that and too extreme a swing towards the alt-left will not do anything but produce increasing stress. I for one have long predicted the US will go the way of the USSR but I do not think this would be a desired result. Far too much potential for increased violence, economic chaos and harm for too many people, etc. Like I said, someone more pragmatic politically, etc., towards the middle to heal the cracks that are becoming increasingly apparant.

[Serpent]

We're wandering away from the realms of philosophy here, so I won't keep you long Vat: how much are Americans expecting Sanders's healthcare policy (of which I don't know the details) to cost? The NHS costs the UK £129bn, which is about £2,000 per person per year, and a strong majority of us support its continued existence. I wonder if this is because we are less pragmatic, or merely because our sensibilities (at least with respect to public services) are more left-leaning to begin with.

The "cost" of anything is dependent on valuation. In a money-centered culture, the value of things is assessed in units of currency, which means the value of any particular thing is arbitrary. How many dollars is an hour of a doctor's time worth? Depends on the doctor's rank, placement, specialty, country and sometimes gender. How many dollars is an x-ray machine worth? Depends on how much mark-up the distributor dares add to the markup the manufacturer has decided it can get away with. How much does a hospital cost to build? Depends on whether the builder is hiring a lot of undocumented migrants and how big a kick-back he had to pay for the contract.

When you count up the comprehensive cost of health care, you have to factor in all the private enterprise that goes into public facilities and services, plus what patients pay for all the private facilities and services.
When you count up the cost of national health insurance, - this is the operative concept that conservatives gloss over or flat-about misrepresent. Nobody's offering people anything for free: they're merely getting health insurance that doesn't leave them destitute if they get ill. You need to compare it to what people are paying for private health insurance, plus what governments are paying for medicare programs. If the government can't come to favourable terms with the private sector for hospital-building and doctor's fees, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, power and equipment, then it has to eke out the insurance premiums it charges from taxes it collects. On the other hand, it also becomes a prolific employer and contributor to the nation's productivity.
As a stand-alone figure, it can sound alarming; we need to contemplate it in perspective. This is not a brand new from-scratch expenditure: it's a redirection of resources; streamlining for less waste and more efficient functioning.
Just like UBI is a redirection of resources that are scattered among a dozen social assistance programs. I mention that, because every single place where a basic income scheme was tried, medical costs went down.