trump thread

[grue]

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. 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

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

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)

look, it's just, the democratic party is a broken mess. maybe the republicans are the same but I don't care about those. the dems absorb the very little and shy leftism that exists in america, take their votes and use them to grind away with bland status quo policy that helps noone. and sure, yeah, I know you americans love your traditions but just because the same thing happened in the 19th century it doesn't mean it's not a good idea now

[grue]

heck, some of them are independents that run for dem primaries so it's not like they're party boys yet, they just play the party boy game

[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

[grue]

I may be wrong on this but I was under the impression that AOC was a part of the "no amazon in NYC" movement before she got elected

and we could go into that specific issue because I don't think it's linear that people were happy about Amazon coming in - local people that is - mostly because rent was already skyrocketing on the speculation of gentrification; but again, I'm not too knowledgeable on the specifics and it's distracting from t+he main point

me saying that I "want" a new party was more out of frustration than the practicality of it, because I'm now convinced the DemP functions (willing or unwillingly) as a dampener of bold ideas. I'm not out to get good people that do good government work, my take is more that those people will do good work insofar as they are able to, and the "spirit" of party politics nowadays seems to be to just shell out rhetoric and stop good work from being done.

I know I still have a bit of an anarchist bone in me but ultimately I respect people that do serious work, government or not. but I don't see party people as "workers" in that regard - for me the task of a politician is very clear, and that is to either represent a majority sentiment or to convince people about this brand new policy they're peddling. grunt work is for their staff.

as for the justice branch, look, it's just bullshit that your DAs and AGs and whatever else are elected rather than rising into that position out of merit. I'm sure many of them will act with seriousness and independently from whatever the executive or legislative branch want them to do, but some others don't. it's unbelievable that the President gets to nominate the person who may or may not indict them on a crime. it's, like, a major loophole, one that would have you scratching at the head if you read it on a fiction novel, yet it's real. and the dems benefitted from it too

[grue]

also wow that bit about healthcare is a mess lmao

I'm essentially saying that the current move on dems to support "healthcare" is a sleazy way to divert attention from the "universal" bit on "universal healthcare" and yet again not mess with the status quo while doing flashy things that seem like they're messing with the status quo

[Ben]

my point about the amazon in nyc thing is (and here's where it's important to point out that we both know the same 2% of this issue, you know 2% that i dont know, and i MAY know 3% that you dont know, so a-ha i have checkmated you my friend with my superior total 5%) that she co-opted the strength of her progressive "rhetoric" to gloss over the nuance in her constituency. if she has sat down with the figures she would have had to face being in the wrong

it seems much of the amazon hate came from folks (not just her) in local govt demonizing amazon and saying that the $3B in credits the city was giving them should go to other places, but they totally misunderstood that that $3B didn't actually exist and was just a reserve set of amazon money that amazon could keep. that is, if amazon showed up and made $10B and had to pay back half of that to the city, they'd only have to pay back $2B total. it was just a theoretical incentive and the true net effect (in this strict sense) was that they lost the opportunity to collect the $2B (ive pulled the $10B, half, and $2B numbers conveniently out of my ass)

so, im a liberal progressive and i yell about popular things (no war! clean energy! more gays! high taxes! woo!) and it gets people excited such that i start to think that i know what's best for everyone even when that ends up not being true. in fact, in my effort to protect the disenfranchised of my constituency, i ignore that 70-80% of black/latino folk in NYC are totally in favor of the amazon deal and that it's favorited 60-35 or so in total

but if i backflip on this and say "ok ok so capitalism bad, big company bad, naughty men should die, but this ones popular so let's go" then i lose my progressive cred. if i try to push forward with getting amazon out, i at least have to justify it objectively because its against the people's wishes, right? well, she's notoriously bad at that and just spread this $3B loss garbage that doesnt make any sense

[fat lesbian]

anyone think it’s time to admit that the electoral system is built in ways that make threatening capitalism impossible through participation in it though?

also Ben “the people are in favor of a highly exploitative business” means very little when there’s no other real options. is that a choice you make or a choice you’re railroaded into accepting? it shouldn’t change your opinion on Amazon and whether or not it’s allowed to function how it does, it should move you to work harder to dismantle capitalism and mitigate its effects in the meantime. you don’t have to roll over. i don’t like AOC because she does precious little BUT roll over, and ilhan omar is unfortunately going down that road too. recently explicitly supported American exceptionalism

[fat lesbian]

also the report was a pathetic excuse for the complicit and cowardly dem party to pretend they put up a fight when in reality they’ve done nothing to significantly challenge anything that trump has done. American politics is the same specter it’s always been just with the added factor of the growing influence of social media and the internet on every day life

[Ben]

i am completely agnostic/ignorant to whether the amazon move is or would be a good one and even if it would have given nyc billions of dollars of revenue i have no clue whether the net effect would be good or not

if her opinion had been in your vein- "i can see why you might support this, but it isnt your only option and im here to help grant you another, better one" then id forgive going against the wishes of the people. that aint what happened, she pretended people agreed with her then lied about why it was virtuous and it doesnt take a cynic to say its because she needs the cred

edit: also uncertain what you mean by "report"

[fat lesbian]

mueller report, im shocked people bought the whole investigation thing and really went along with it for that long.

[grue]

look there's a petty part of me that I learned to accept and that part of me was kinda looking forward to see the red hat youtube manlets fucken shamed to oblivion over supporting a president that ended up in jail

and I understand that drive bc being online and not being mad takes a lot of patience and charisma and willpower which most of us can't afford to have specially knowing that bieng online is a form of escapism and release

so I get that people would have that gotcha! haha feeling but the fact that millionaires like maddow milked that conspiracy theory cash cow and are now going "well I'm sure Barr is lying bc there's no way I'm wrong!!" it's fucking slimy af; these people have a responsibility that me and you don't have

as for the amazon thing yeah idk I understand that AOC was lying with the whole "giving money to amazon that we can invest in blablabla" thing but it's also not technically true that the amazon tax breaks only exist in this virtual scenario where amazon is making money; this is NYC and in order for amazon to have workers it needs to syphon them off someplace else. the argument would make sense if they were occupying a desert in the middle of nowhere and then yeah, it's nothing but net gain; but they're taking over the local workforce and diverting it to themselves which in turn is happening under a tax break that other businesses weren't having. so you can say that virtually this is money that would otherwise come in in the form of taxes; though im sure it's not dollar-per-dollar comparable

[fat lesbian]

it’s absolutely their responsibility for duping people as well. american liberals are as morally and ethically bankrupt as american conservatives. it wouldn’t make sense for the nicer face of fascism to attack the meaner face too intensely though and it’s still wild so many people went along with it

[K-Man]

my goodness look at all these walls of words

[K-Man]

but are they enough to keep the mexicans out ??????

[grue]

it's the juice that keeps on juicing

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/special-c...d775e038b4