trump thread

[Ben]

hm

you're contradicting yourself? "we need the people who are already part of the system" vs "why trust big daddy government"

no no, what i mean is: the damage is done and we can do a post mortem on whats working and what isnt. the options arent "go with the system" and "elect the orange man", full stop- we can have 1) an outsider that 2) gets it and 3) isn't a snake oil salesman. bernie is halfway all three, for example. we need to value the people in the system because they are good case studies of what to do and not to do. once we understand, we can chuck em out.

my original point was more so about fracturing the dems specifically to have a progressive party of the more progressive folk- i really dont think that helps anybody.

oh, suddenly healthcare is important? I don't believe so, it's not a new issue. In fact the only reason why things like healrthcare, climate change etc are being - very reluctantly - being supported by a lot of dems is exactly that these people that you think are incompetent demagogues have brought it to the center stage and made them unavoidable. also unavoidable is that rather than look into these very popular policies, and employing those Very Competent Totally Not Demagogues to the fray about it, they would instead try go the (shudder) Orange Man Bad route

well, they are incompetent in that i wouldnt trust them to actually identify a solution but i do think the rhetoric has value. it's just not value in and of itself, and we can't just have rhetoric. a cake isn't a cake if it's just a pile of frosting

so, once someone is like "no really, let's tax the rich more" and that is a popular policy, the popularization-of-radical-ideas part wanes and we need competent folks to actual put out the specifics. im not an economist and i stray from judging these issues bc i know nothing but, people want to tax amazon because its a big meanie corporation. ok, sure- you want to tax their income? they have no income. if you bluster and scream about how capitalism is the big meanie and then point the wrong end of your pitchfork at the enemy, we don't make any progress. people need to learn when to shut up and let someone else handle it. the reason we're in many of these messes is because rich people can afford to make sure government goes easy on them. we can't just "ban guns" or "tax rich" or "clean earth". we've heard it, now let's actually talk about it eh

who freaking knew that a millionaire white man in the republican party - freaking President - would have the weight of the judicial sector to protect him???

well, to an extent. im a somewhat optimistic on this, there's definitely some damage here but i think the judicial branch probably has the most integrity of anyone in govt

(Also a hypothetical new party could still work with Pelosi. like it happens on every other country except america, different parties collaborate and draft joint policy when they align on certain issues)

right, i dont think i was clear but i think new party is good idea but chunking off the loudmouthed left-progressives into the "socialist party" is a death sentence for that wing of the democrats AND would look bad for the notion of having more parties. what i think would be a good idea (other than abolishing every notion of "bipartisan" for "nonpartisan" and stripping all codified notions of parties from the public space) would be to have, just like there is a "economic conservative democrat" caucus and a "super conservative republican" caucus and etc there should be something like a "progressive" caucus made up of folks from both parties that can ally on "big govt bad" or "gays are fine" when necessary. once ppl can unite on things across party lines, the party lines will start to erode. i think that does have to be done from the inside- other option is to elect a full-on independent. mite b possible, i dunno

three very clear cases have been made recently in this regard

the first is the very clear demonization of AOC's ideas as the product of immature, wishful thinking if not outright lying idealism. except that her crazy cooky ideas have a majority support in the electorate that put her in office.

yes and no, from the stats ive seen more taxes is majorly supported, i think anti-war is majorly supported, but she helped torpedo amazon coming to nyc which was incredibly popular and then either lied or grossly misunderstood the ramifications. which might be fine for a new young legislator except that she has a really hard time taking blame. which again, would be fine if you were a guy at the hot dog stand but she's a member of government.

what now? is the dem party shitting on the food that they are eating? well yes, but more to the point regardless of how competetent AOC is as a person she is merely a representation of an agregate of ideas that is holding the dems in power. so why on earth would both dems + a sizeable chunk of dem electorate constantly reproduce the same argument that the right makes about her?? "oh she's crazy! oof we'll never be so radical... oh shit over 70% americans actually agree with the spirit of what she says... quick, spin this to our advantage HEY GUYS DAE YEET ABOUT LOWER INSURANCE COSTS (also let's never challenge the status quo because the status quo makes us rich THAT'S RIGHT VOTE FOR ME I ~SUPPORT HEALTHCARE~ NOW" give me a break

i like the spirit of this rant but cant parse it

the second is Ilhan Omar being accused of antisemitism by the fucker backstabbers in her own party for gasp saying Israel is Israel and not the paradise on earth threatened by hordes of brown people that the media portrays it to be. again, they didn't skip a beat when it came to syphoning all the social capital that she brought as a hijab-wearing brown congresswoman (how progressive of us! look! we even have one of those!") but immediatly axe her when she acts on the politics that put her there

yes this was quite the hatchet job all around

and then they had the GALL of insulting my waifu for freaking saying what should be blindingly obvious to everyone at this point - look, Trump is a shithead but he didn't collude, and focusing on this instead of policy is increadibly irresponsible and damaging - and now she's being raked over the coals while being accused of (lol) being a putin puppet or a republican double agent (even though her policies are farther to the left than most primary candidates' but ok)

i think people are predisposed to not liking her. ive heard a good argument that the american left has always been the party/movement of self-criticism and reformation and that its gone into overdrive and now just uses that function to eat itself alive. this is a good case of it