I have a question, seriously: why are we looking to the President - the Chief Executive Officer - to define our policy? Isn’t he supposed to only implement the policies that have been enacted by Congress? Despite how Rs tried to portray Obama, and how Trump would act if given half a chance, the role of President isn’t identical to that of King - just how much leeway does he even have here? When tRump tried to insert himself in the opposite manner way back in the day, we impeached him - the President can propose but not define policy, right?
On that note, he did try to halt funding to Israel. Republicans in Congress overruled him. Ofc the reality is far more complex than what I am portraying here, b/c while he must enact existing policies, again he also should propose new ones too… which he isn’t doing much of. But how could we even tell the difference between Biden attempting to “work within the (existing) system”, set forth by our behind-the-scenes overlords and Congress + Supreme Court (heavy sidenote: with its current make-up, that Trump put into place), vs. him not really caring that much about the issue at all? Or really, at the end of the day, is there even a functional difference between them?
I don’t know. I truly don’t know. All I know is that while Biden may not be as liberal as people would have hoped, tRump is actively anti-liberal. And those are our two choices. :-( If we want better, perhaps we need to put forth some effort to make it happen. Like step up and actually run for office - and then dodge all the literal death threats + attempts that would result from conservatives for doing so. Otherwise, we get whatever they offer to us - they meaning those who will actually act rather than simply talk. Which remember, Biden is one of them, and he even has already made it to the short-list of the only two candidates who matter, which isn’t nothing!
He gets to balance the power of Congress. He can refuse to enforce their bullshit. But more importantly he’s the leader of the Democratic party. He has massive influence on the direction the party takes, and can put pressure on members who get out of line.
I think most people are done with people who try to “work within the system set forth by our behind the scenes over lords”… We want someone who’s going to call them on that crap constantly and fight against it with every move they make. Biden is clearly not doing that.
I actually got heavily involved with politics after Bernie. Including running for office in a very red district where I had no chance of winning (just happened to be where I was living). Turns out, the establishment would rather reject anyone left of them and lose to Republicans, than to move an inch to the left and anger their masters
Can he though? Well anyway, he definitely could do more, no question about that.
What bothers me is this entitled thinking, like “we deserve better candidates” - okay, yeah, obviously, but we won’t get those until we make them. AOC, Bernie, there actually are several who are good, but apparently for some (whatever) reason they aren’t “viable”? Hence why Biden is there, instead of one of them.
(And you even ran - damn that’s impressive! To be absolutely clear, I am not calling you one of these “entitled thinkers”, b/c you actually stood up and tried to DO SOMETHING about it, first-hand - kudos!)
Biden offers the good that can be done, rather than what should be - to use the Batman phrase, the politician that America needs, rather than the one it deserves… or whatever?
There is also that phrase, attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” Put another way, the whole thing is a matter of pragmatism, instead of idealism.
And in every other situation, Biden has been the pragmatist. Gas prices, unionization of railway workers, inflation, etc. So I wondered if he’s doing something similar here too, even if it looks like 10-D chess to us, and based on his other past successes (that the media refuses to highlight, b/c they are “boring”), I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But my knowledge on this matter, especially lately, is shaky, so I could definitely be wrong there - perhaps this issue truly is the dividing line. I need to stop talking about that until I read up on the matter some more.
Though one thing that won’t ever change is that in the next upcoming election, we still only get the two choices though - Biden vs. Trump:-(. It’s like: imagine a robber steals your wallet, and offers you either the cash or your ID cards back (apparently the credit cards aren’t on the table for negotiation), but what they want in return is for you to say “please” - what do you do? Take one, or the other, or just walk away and leave both behind? Fighting the US government does not seem an effective option. We can cry about it, maybe go away and train for decades (as Batman did:-P) with the thought of perhaps getting revenge, but in that moment, our choices are limited. As I understand it, that is pragmatism.
Unfortunately when faced with genocidal fascism, pragmatism looks an awful lot like appeasement… And after 40 years of appeasing the oligarchy while they slowly take away our rights, health, and wealth, I think people are almost ready to fight. Maybe not physically… But in any way they can.
Which brings us to the fact that there are 3 choices in the upcoming election… Trump, Biden, stay home (or 3rd party, but that’s basically the same as staying home unfortunately)… If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote they’d be figuring out what it takes and doing it… Instead they’re just following their already shown to fail bullying strategy… It’s really irritating to see them seemingly willfully losing to Trump rather than go against their corporate masters… Again
The reason Trump is so popular is because he’s a protest vote. At least in the delusional minds of the maga crowd. He is certainly not a part of the oligarchy controlling the establishment… He’s his own oligarchy, and a dangerous one too… But his followers are very dumb and very brainwashed. All they see is that he’s a way to fight against the establishment. The Dems needed to put up a protest candidate of their own. Utterly reject the establishment/oligarchy, and embrace the protest… Instead they once again doubled down on the most establishment candidate they could find.
Not in a useful way though. Conservatives fought, and therefore won the overturning of Roe v. Wade - they put in decades of effort to achieve that, and therefore did. They stood in solidarity, prior to Trump, and now the whole party is sliding QUICKLY and EXTREMELY Right-wards, to once again stand in solidarity at that new point.
In contrast, liberals tend to eat their own - case in point, look at what we all are doing to Biden right now (me too just to a lesser degree than some others).
And I am not even saying that is “wrong” - that is simply the nature of the game when talking about “correctness”. e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, but 1.9 and 2.1 don’t “quite” cut it, nor even 1.99 or 2.01, despite being so very, very close. Or let’s use an even more hyperbolic example to illustrate: suppose I ask a liberal what the answer is to the question of “what is 1+1?”, and the Democrats step in to say that “the answer is +1,000” (while ofc pocketing the other $998.00, b/c of corruption). That’s way off… but the answer that conservatives give is to kill your dog and fuck your mom, and then risk her life too b/c she’s not allowed to have an abortion even despite the rape (and then the Republicans pocket not only $998.00 but $1,999,999.00, just b/c they can). So which is “better”? Are there alternatives? Is the answer given by the Democrats more “correct”, despite being so very, VERY wrong? TLDR on this point: they are both wrong, but not equally so.
If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote they’d be figuring out what it takes and doing it…
Yup.
Instead they once again doubled down on the most establishment candidate they could find.
Yup.
The rich people - like HRC - are so disconnected from modern life, that they cannot conceive of what it is like to be a Millennial or a Gen-Z person, who looks forward to not just “intern first, then real job”, but “intern forever, b/c that’s just all there is these days, stable job=never, ability to own a home=never (or is it never? either way it certainly looks that way now and shows no signs of improving… literally ever, plus Social Security + Medicare are drying up and with that money have been already stolen from us, will literally never, ever, EVER be returned…)”. And HRC’s response to ALL of that was, in short: “Life is good, let’s keep it that way, shall we?:-P PokeMon-go-to-the-polls, woot (please believe that I’m just like you - one of the [insert your predefined categorization here] - and btw did you know I carry hot sauce in my purse at all times?)”.
On the other hand, the Gaza situation is just the icing on the cake: regardless of the actual genocide going on there, it won’t fix our economy. The latter involves terribly boring steps, many of which Biden seems to be taking? But the media won’t report them, and I wouldn’t understand them myself anyway so… we are back to the “Just trust me bro - I got this! (also I’m totally not a senile old man-puppet propped up on crack to give speeches while the real work is done behind-the-scenes, which we cannot talk about for uh… reasons, but it’ll be good, this time, I promise, just vote for me and you’ll see what we have planned later!)”
Also, are we even arguing anymore? :-P I think we agree on pretty much everything. Oh I remember, there’s one more detail got us started: the difference between what I am saying vs. you is that we are not being offered a primary with which to pick a different approach. So when you say things like “The Dems needed to…” and “If Dems and Biden really wanted to…” and “Instead they’re just… It’s really irritating to”, my question is: now what? So you don’t like it - I don’t either - but what are we going to do about it? Yeah, that’s what I thought - I have no clue either.:-( But I’ve been wrong before - e.g. I thought no way would Trump win - so now I am just trying to strain my eyes open as wide as I can make them, to learn from whatever happens.
Sadly the Republican’s “grassroots” orgs get tons of funding from the oligarchy, while any grassroots orgs on the left get none… Without funding I don’t know that there’s much we can do. Personally I worked my ass off in progressive politics for a few years after Bernie, but unfortunately eventually had to move on to something that can actually pay. Now I’ve moved as far away from the South as I could, bought a gun and ammo, and a couple weeks worth of emergency food. I don’t see any way out of this without it getting really bad. End stage capitalism is rough.
Besides the fact that each new generation is more progressive than the last one, honestly my only hope is that as AI starts taking their jobs, and the oligarchy keeps squeezing more and more out of an ever shrinking upper middle class, that eventually they’ll start joining us and voting progressive. Like right now 50%ish of people own nothing… What about when they’ve squeezed every drop out of 75%? 90%? At what point do the people in their golden bubbles start realizing they’ve been getting screwed all along too? Hopefully it’s before millions die in the streets.
I too walked away from not one but two cushy jobs, to try to become “part of the solution”. There are a lot of us who care, truly & deeply, and as you said willing to FIGHT! Sadly, I quickly discovered that I was a classic bleeding-heart liberal with more compassion than brains. I don’t know about you, but I at least was not a good leader, b/c while I meant well, I was going about things in an extremely naive manner. As most people do ofc, so I am not special in that regard at all. Though it did finally cause me to wake up and realize: the reason that we cannot save the world is that it does not WANT to be saved.
People are too comfortable, but then when things get bad, they don’t suddenly turn their lives around and become everything that they previously were not!? I have heard SO MANY stories of people whose mother, father, sister, brother, and literally all immediate family members plus many slightly beyond that died of covid, but the survivors still went to Trump rallies and hoped that he would save them. “Facts” were never what convinced these people to follow him, so still more facts that ran in contradiction to what they could plainly see with their very own eyes, and had a HUGE effect upon their lives, were not going to convince them to switch.
And now I’ve moved back to a large city environ - where sth like >90% of the people will vote Democrat, so my vote doesn’t count one bit, but despite knowing that, I am prioritizing myself right now, over the planet. Maybe after I pull myself together I will try again, though who wants to live in an area where doctors try their hardest to avoid? Anyway, I’ve lost all faith in democracy - “we” are not smart enough to lead ourselves, and therefore I am not even entirely certain that I am against oligarchy, communism, feudalism, etc. If democracy is to survive, then it needs to… “survive”, if you know what I mean? Like, disinformation is deadly to it, especially with such an uneducated populace as we have, so it either needs to adapt or else it will be discarded - no matter what we wish or hope for to the contrary.
Conservatives have “conviction” behind their beliefs - enough to make what they want come to pass at any rate - and while I am not advocating for conservative belief structures, I am saying that if it is to be opposed, then it must be met with equally strong convictions, on our side. Which especially with the majority population beliving this way, should be relatively “easy”…r-r-right? Except, even with a democratic majority, what got done? Wrt the Supreme Court, or gun control, or anything at all that you could name - what got done during that majority?!? Hence we lack convictions. Hence, unless that changes, we will continue to lose, every time.
Which is why, as you pointed out, there is actually hope on the way. As people continue to get worse off, maybe they’ll wake up? e.g. form unions. There was no hope until they were ready - b/c you can lead a horse to water but cannot force it to drink - but if they get ready then…?
I have no gun. If bad stuff happens, I will simply die. I don’t mind - there are far worse things:-D.
Millions will die. Possibly billions - not in the USA but I mean as a result of climate change, which is moving much faster than hoped. As usual, and like every movie ever, scientists were very gentle with their conservative estimations and only now are we getting higher precision bounds to realize that we aren’t all going to make it.
Oh right, also, millions have died already - more than all wars combined - as a result of the pandemic, though this had to be inferred from the “excess death” statistics since we refused to officially count them, and some states did everything possible to mislead and deflect the numbers (even the “liberal” NYC iirc due to the senior home incidents). As Trump proved over & over again, he was for rioting in the streets, but I have to hand it to Biden, b/c whether for good or ill in the long-run, he did manage to calm things down considerably, in offering hope (false? we’ll see I suppose).
Unfortunately the only real convictions the Dems seem to have is “protect the rich at all costs”… They have some social issues stuff quite a ways behind that, but clearly they’re willing to let it slide rather than fight (ie roe v Wade)… They would definitely rather lose to Republicans, who at least have that same ‘protect the rich’ conviction, than lose to progressives who would “eat” the rich instead… Even though they agree with progressives on the social issues
We’ve been dancing around it but I want to say explicitly: politicians are not “the same” as the people that they represent.
Conservatives for instance vote against and by and large act as if they believe that climate change is not happening, however Republican politicians - at the high end, i.e. federal even if not all the way down to every local area - know that it is happening, and it is merely a farce when they say that it is not. “Climate change is not happening” is their way of saying “well of course it’s happening, but we choose to protect ThE eCoNoMy first and foremost”.
Note that it is no accident that old retirees subsist nowadays on the tiny trickle from the stock market that keeps them going - so you can’t regulate the stock market b/c “won’t someone think of the old folks - what will happen to them!?”, despite how they may get a fraction of 1% while billion- and now trillionaires take the rest. It’s like the rich use the elderly as a necromancer uses zombies - in a manner called “meat shield” in gaming terminology; but it happens irl too, e.g. Hamas hid behind school-children in an identical fashion. Anyway, in return, the elderly vote to keep tHe EcOnoMy first and foremost in their minds, thus sacrificing their children to become slaves, while taking care of themselves first & foremost.
And in like manner, Democrats != liberals, with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders and AOC, who ofc will never be allowed to become President or gain positions of real authority and power over the ones who hold true power.
The principle itself is not even a bad thing necessarily - ideally, leaders should be MORE responsible than the average citizen that they represent, not less. But since we have so many people working from behind the scenes manipulating things unseen, politicians are not our “leaders” these days, not truly, and instead have made themselves useful puppets that dance at the behest of their masters. Btw, this happens in literally every group that has ever existed, not even limited to human social ones, e.g. it happens in single-celled bacteria and even single-molecule proteins called prions such as those that cause mad cow disease, and probably photons (bundles of pure energy that don’t even have subatomic particles and thus have zero mass) do it too I dunno, I’m just saying that it’s a natural law of the universe, at all scales.
An extremely insightful video that I cannot recommend highly enough is the CGP Grey Rules for Rulers - that channel has excellent other resources too like a fantastic explanation of ranked-choice voting. Ngl, that video messed me up - I used to really want to change things, then I watched it and realize how difficult that task is to make happen. Now I am much less outspoken than I used to be, b/c I have sent myself back to school, while questioning everything that I once believed. We cannot fight the very laws of the UNIVERSE!! Which doesn’t mean that liberalism has no chance, but it does significantly narrow the scope of solutions that might actually be viable enough to work.
Which is what gives me pause to lash out with instant hate against Biden’s efforts to improve things. Maybe he’s worthy of that, or maybe not, but I would need to understand what he’s doing first, before I want to judge him. I spent years breaking down Trump’s motivations btw, so I get what he’s trying to do, but I have not done that for Biden. It’s exhausting:-(. I wish there were people I could trust that I could just follow, but who would that be - Bernie Sanders? He is an idealist, and while that works for his seat from Maine, it would not work on the global scale, with him as the Commander in Chief. As Obama said about him, he is a prophet in the wilderness, not a king who can make the hard choices.
Anyway the forces involved are just so incredibly complex - what has worked since American’s founding seems unlikely to work in the future, as the implications of globalization and automation settle in. e.g. the likes of Jeff Bezos and the Military-Industrial Complex use the American government in both an offensive capacity to increase their own profits abroad, while simultaneously as an aforementioned meat-shield to hide behind it whenever they feel scared that some other trillionaire such as Putin might come for their wealth. And keep in mind, We The People were okay with that, b/c it helped us too to have things like Google, Amazon, and weapons that we could use to defend ourselves & our allies, and offensively destroy our enemies or threaten them to not attacking in the first place, or regardless of military entirely we could also bully them in economic matters. Just like how people in Florida are okay with their leaders antics b/c it works for them, so too the American people are okay with the antics of our own leaders - or at least we were until about the late 70s. And now, we talk as if we are not okay with them, but we act as if we are, more or less.
So Rules for Rulers - check it out, and I hope that it messes you up as much as it did me, b/c that’s how you know it is working:-D. As for where to go forward from here… I don’t know, but even so I consider my new position to be a lot better than my previous one where I thought I knew but didn’t. To be clear, that is not me even attempting to hint at implying that liberalism is incorrect, but rather me saying that if we can’t make it happen in the real world, then of what use is it to be “correct”? Before we can move forward, we need to find a viable path first. Like standing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, wanting to go westward - it’s not impossible, but it is going to be rough going, and we might not all make it, and either way we need to be prepared for whatever lies ahead.
I have a question, seriously: why are we looking to the President - the Chief Executive Officer - to define our policy? Isn’t he supposed to only implement the policies that have been enacted by Congress? Despite how Rs tried to portray Obama, and how Trump would act if given half a chance, the role of President isn’t identical to that of King - just how much leeway does he even have here? When tRump tried to insert himself in the opposite manner way back in the day, we impeached him - the President can propose but not define policy, right?
On that note, he did try to halt funding to Israel. Republicans in Congress overruled him. Ofc the reality is far more complex than what I am portraying here, b/c while he must enact existing policies, again he also should propose new ones too… which he isn’t doing much of. But how could we even tell the difference between Biden attempting to “work within the (existing) system”, set forth by our behind-the-scenes overlords and Congress + Supreme Court (heavy sidenote: with its current make-up, that Trump put into place), vs. him not really caring that much about the issue at all? Or really, at the end of the day, is there even a functional difference between them?
I don’t know. I truly don’t know. All I know is that while Biden may not be as liberal as people would have hoped, tRump is actively anti-liberal. And those are our two choices. :-( If we want better, perhaps we need to put forth some effort to make it happen. Like step up and actually run for office - and then dodge all the literal death threats + attempts that would result from conservatives for doing so. Otherwise, we get whatever they offer to us - they meaning those who will actually act rather than simply talk. Which remember, Biden is one of them, and he even has already made it to the short-list of the only two candidates who matter, which isn’t nothing!
He also called the ICC warrant against Israeli leaders outrageous and is stonewalling every attempt by the UN to intervene against Israel.
I don’t think he gets a pass on this
Thanks, that’s helpful.:-)
He may still be trying to work the issue from the inside, but indeed there’s a line there, somewhere.
We still only get the two choices though:-(.
If he is then he’s completely ineffective
Biden has been deliberately bypassing Congress to send Israel weapons: https://lemmy.today/comment/8531642
He gets to balance the power of Congress. He can refuse to enforce their bullshit. But more importantly he’s the leader of the Democratic party. He has massive influence on the direction the party takes, and can put pressure on members who get out of line.
I think most people are done with people who try to “work within the system set forth by our behind the scenes over lords”… We want someone who’s going to call them on that crap constantly and fight against it with every move they make. Biden is clearly not doing that.
I actually got heavily involved with politics after Bernie. Including running for office in a very red district where I had no chance of winning (just happened to be where I was living). Turns out, the establishment would rather reject anyone left of them and lose to Republicans, than to move an inch to the left and anger their masters
Can he though? Well anyway, he definitely could do more, no question about that.
What bothers me is this entitled thinking, like “we deserve better candidates” - okay, yeah, obviously, but we won’t get those until we make them. AOC, Bernie, there actually are several who are good, but apparently for some (whatever) reason they aren’t “viable”? Hence why Biden is there, instead of one of them.
(And you even ran - damn that’s impressive! To be absolutely clear, I am not calling you one of these “entitled thinkers”, b/c you actually stood up and tried to DO SOMETHING about it, first-hand - kudos!)
Biden offers the good that can be done, rather than what should be - to use the Batman phrase, the politician that America needs, rather than the one it deserves… or whatever?
There is also that phrase, attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” Put another way, the whole thing is a matter of pragmatism, instead of idealism.
And in every other situation, Biden has been the pragmatist. Gas prices, unionization of railway workers, inflation, etc. So I wondered if he’s doing something similar here too, even if it looks like 10-D chess to us, and based on his other past successes (that the media refuses to highlight, b/c they are “boring”), I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But my knowledge on this matter, especially lately, is shaky, so I could definitely be wrong there - perhaps this issue truly is the dividing line. I need to stop talking about that until I read up on the matter some more.
Though one thing that won’t ever change is that in the next upcoming election, we still only get the two choices though - Biden vs. Trump:-(. It’s like: imagine a robber steals your wallet, and offers you either the cash or your ID cards back (apparently the credit cards aren’t on the table for negotiation), but what they want in return is for you to say “please” - what do you do? Take one, or the other, or just walk away and leave both behind? Fighting the US government does not seem an effective option. We can cry about it, maybe go away and train for decades (as Batman did:-P) with the thought of perhaps getting revenge, but in that moment, our choices are limited. As I understand it, that is pragmatism.
Unfortunately when faced with genocidal fascism, pragmatism looks an awful lot like appeasement… And after 40 years of appeasing the oligarchy while they slowly take away our rights, health, and wealth, I think people are almost ready to fight. Maybe not physically… But in any way they can.
Which brings us to the fact that there are 3 choices in the upcoming election… Trump, Biden, stay home (or 3rd party, but that’s basically the same as staying home unfortunately)… If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote they’d be figuring out what it takes and doing it… Instead they’re just following their already shown to fail bullying strategy… It’s really irritating to see them seemingly willfully losing to Trump rather than go against their corporate masters… Again
The reason Trump is so popular is because he’s a protest vote. At least in the delusional minds of the maga crowd. He is certainly not a part of the oligarchy controlling the establishment… He’s his own oligarchy, and a dangerous one too… But his followers are very dumb and very brainwashed. All they see is that he’s a way to fight against the establishment. The Dems needed to put up a protest candidate of their own. Utterly reject the establishment/oligarchy, and embrace the protest… Instead they once again doubled down on the most establishment candidate they could find.
Not in a useful way though. Conservatives fought, and therefore won the overturning of Roe v. Wade - they put in decades of effort to achieve that, and therefore did. They stood in solidarity, prior to Trump, and now the whole party is sliding QUICKLY and EXTREMELY Right-wards, to once again stand in solidarity at that new point.
In contrast, liberals tend to eat their own - case in point, look at what we all are doing to Biden right now (me too just to a lesser degree than some others).
And I am not even saying that is “wrong” - that is simply the nature of the game when talking about “correctness”. e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, but 1.9 and 2.1 don’t “quite” cut it, nor even 1.99 or 2.01, despite being so very, very close. Or let’s use an even more hyperbolic example to illustrate: suppose I ask a liberal what the answer is to the question of “what is 1+1?”, and the Democrats step in to say that “the answer is +1,000” (while ofc pocketing the other $998.00, b/c of corruption). That’s way off… but the answer that conservatives give is to kill your dog and fuck your mom, and then risk her life too b/c she’s not allowed to have an abortion even despite the rape (and then the Republicans pocket not only $998.00 but $1,999,999.00, just b/c they can). So which is “better”? Are there alternatives? Is the answer given by the Democrats more “correct”, despite being so very, VERY wrong? TLDR on this point: they are both wrong, but not equally so.
Yup.
Yup.
The rich people - like HRC - are so disconnected from modern life, that they cannot conceive of what it is like to be a Millennial or a Gen-Z person, who looks forward to not just “intern first, then real job”, but “intern forever, b/c that’s just all there is these days, stable job=never, ability to own a home=never (or is it never? either way it certainly looks that way now and shows no signs of improving… literally ever, plus Social Security + Medicare are drying up and with that money have been already stolen from us, will literally never, ever, EVER be returned…)”. And HRC’s response to ALL of that was, in short: “Life is good, let’s keep it that way, shall we?:-P PokeMon-go-to-the-polls, woot (please believe that I’m just like you - one of the [insert your predefined categorization here] - and btw did you know I carry hot sauce in my purse at all times?)”.
On the other hand, the Gaza situation is just the icing on the cake: regardless of the actual genocide going on there, it won’t fix our economy. The latter involves terribly boring steps, many of which Biden seems to be taking? But the media won’t report them, and I wouldn’t understand them myself anyway so… we are back to the “Just trust me bro - I got this! (also I’m totally not a senile old man-puppet propped up on crack to give speeches while the real work is done behind-the-scenes, which we cannot talk about for uh… reasons, but it’ll be good, this time, I promise, just vote for me and you’ll see what we have planned later!)”
Also, are we even arguing anymore? :-P I think we agree on pretty much everything. Oh I remember, there’s one more detail got us started: the difference between what I am saying vs. you is that we are not being offered a primary with which to pick a different approach. So when you say things like “The Dems needed to…” and “If Dems and Biden really wanted to…” and “Instead they’re just… It’s really irritating to”, my question is: now what? So you don’t like it - I don’t either - but what are we going to do about it? Yeah, that’s what I thought - I have no clue either.:-( But I’ve been wrong before - e.g. I thought no way would Trump win - so now I am just trying to strain my eyes open as wide as I can make them, to learn from whatever happens.
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
Sadly the Republican’s “grassroots” orgs get tons of funding from the oligarchy, while any grassroots orgs on the left get none… Without funding I don’t know that there’s much we can do. Personally I worked my ass off in progressive politics for a few years after Bernie, but unfortunately eventually had to move on to something that can actually pay. Now I’ve moved as far away from the South as I could, bought a gun and ammo, and a couple weeks worth of emergency food. I don’t see any way out of this without it getting really bad. End stage capitalism is rough.
Besides the fact that each new generation is more progressive than the last one, honestly my only hope is that as AI starts taking their jobs, and the oligarchy keeps squeezing more and more out of an ever shrinking upper middle class, that eventually they’ll start joining us and voting progressive. Like right now 50%ish of people own nothing… What about when they’ve squeezed every drop out of 75%? 90%? At what point do the people in their golden bubbles start realizing they’ve been getting screwed all along too? Hopefully it’s before millions die in the streets.
I too walked away from not one but two cushy jobs, to try to become “part of the solution”. There are a lot of us who care, truly & deeply, and as you said willing to FIGHT! Sadly, I quickly discovered that I was a classic bleeding-heart liberal with more compassion than brains. I don’t know about you, but I at least was not a good leader, b/c while I meant well, I was going about things in an extremely naive manner. As most people do ofc, so I am not special in that regard at all. Though it did finally cause me to wake up and realize: the reason that we cannot save the world is that it does not WANT to be saved.
People are too comfortable, but then when things get bad, they don’t suddenly turn their lives around and become everything that they previously were not!? I have heard SO MANY stories of people whose mother, father, sister, brother, and literally all immediate family members plus many slightly beyond that died of covid, but the survivors still went to Trump rallies and hoped that he would save them. “Facts” were never what convinced these people to follow him, so still more facts that ran in contradiction to what they could plainly see with their very own eyes, and had a HUGE effect upon their lives, were not going to convince them to switch.
And now I’ve moved back to a large city environ - where sth like >90% of the people will vote Democrat, so my vote doesn’t count one bit, but despite knowing that, I am prioritizing myself right now, over the planet. Maybe after I pull myself together I will try again, though who wants to live in an area where doctors try their hardest to avoid? Anyway, I’ve lost all faith in democracy - “we” are not smart enough to lead ourselves, and therefore I am not even entirely certain that I am against oligarchy, communism, feudalism, etc. If democracy is to survive, then it needs to… “survive”, if you know what I mean? Like, disinformation is deadly to it, especially with such an uneducated populace as we have, so it either needs to adapt or else it will be discarded - no matter what we wish or hope for to the contrary.
Conservatives have “conviction” behind their beliefs - enough to make what they want come to pass at any rate - and while I am not advocating for conservative belief structures, I am saying that if it is to be opposed, then it must be met with equally strong convictions, on our side. Which especially with the majority population beliving this way, should be relatively “easy”…r-r-right? Except, even with a democratic majority, what got done? Wrt the Supreme Court, or gun control, or anything at all that you could name - what got done during that majority?!? Hence we lack convictions. Hence, unless that changes, we will continue to lose, every time.
Which is why, as you pointed out, there is actually hope on the way. As people continue to get worse off, maybe they’ll wake up? e.g. form unions. There was no hope until they were ready - b/c you can lead a horse to water but cannot force it to drink - but if they get ready then…?
I have no gun. If bad stuff happens, I will simply die. I don’t mind - there are far worse things:-D.
Millions will die. Possibly billions - not in the USA but I mean as a result of climate change, which is moving much faster than hoped. As usual, and like every movie ever, scientists were very gentle with their conservative estimations and only now are we getting higher precision bounds to realize that we aren’t all going to make it.
Oh right, also, millions have died already - more than all wars combined - as a result of the pandemic, though this had to be inferred from the “excess death” statistics since we refused to officially count them, and some states did everything possible to mislead and deflect the numbers (even the “liberal” NYC iirc due to the senior home incidents). As Trump proved over & over again, he was for rioting in the streets, but I have to hand it to Biden, b/c whether for good or ill in the long-run, he did manage to calm things down considerably, in offering hope (false? we’ll see I suppose).
Unfortunately the only real convictions the Dems seem to have is “protect the rich at all costs”… They have some social issues stuff quite a ways behind that, but clearly they’re willing to let it slide rather than fight (ie roe v Wade)… They would definitely rather lose to Republicans, who at least have that same ‘protect the rich’ conviction, than lose to progressives who would “eat” the rich instead… Even though they agree with progressives on the social issues
We’ve been dancing around it but I want to say explicitly: politicians are not “the same” as the people that they represent.
Conservatives for instance vote against and by and large act as if they believe that climate change is not happening, however Republican politicians - at the high end, i.e. federal even if not all the way down to every local area - know that it is happening, and it is merely a farce when they say that it is not. “Climate change is not happening” is their way of saying “well of course it’s happening, but we choose to protect ThE eCoNoMy first and foremost”.
Note that it is no accident that old retirees subsist nowadays on the tiny trickle from the stock market that keeps them going - so you can’t regulate the stock market b/c “won’t someone think of the old folks - what will happen to them!?”, despite how they may get a fraction of 1% while billion- and now trillionaires take the rest. It’s like the rich use the elderly as a necromancer uses zombies - in a manner called “meat shield” in gaming terminology; but it happens irl too, e.g. Hamas hid behind school-children in an identical fashion. Anyway, in return, the elderly vote to keep tHe EcOnoMy first and foremost in their minds, thus sacrificing their children to become slaves, while taking care of themselves first & foremost.
And in like manner, Democrats != liberals, with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders and AOC, who ofc will never be allowed to become President or gain positions of real authority and power over the ones who hold true power.
The principle itself is not even a bad thing necessarily - ideally, leaders should be MORE responsible than the average citizen that they represent, not less. But since we have so many people working from behind the scenes manipulating things unseen, politicians are not our “leaders” these days, not truly, and instead have made themselves useful puppets that dance at the behest of their masters. Btw, this happens in literally every group that has ever existed, not even limited to human social ones, e.g. it happens in single-celled bacteria and even single-molecule proteins called prions such as those that cause mad cow disease, and probably photons (bundles of pure energy that don’t even have subatomic particles and thus have zero mass) do it too I dunno, I’m just saying that it’s a natural law of the universe, at all scales.
An extremely insightful video that I cannot recommend highly enough is the CGP Grey Rules for Rulers - that channel has excellent other resources too like a fantastic explanation of ranked-choice voting. Ngl, that video messed me up - I used to really want to change things, then I watched it and realize how difficult that task is to make happen. Now I am much less outspoken than I used to be, b/c I have sent myself back to school, while questioning everything that I once believed. We cannot fight the very laws of the UNIVERSE!! Which doesn’t mean that liberalism has no chance, but it does significantly narrow the scope of solutions that might actually be viable enough to work.
Which is what gives me pause to lash out with instant hate against Biden’s efforts to improve things. Maybe he’s worthy of that, or maybe not, but I would need to understand what he’s doing first, before I want to judge him. I spent years breaking down Trump’s motivations btw, so I get what he’s trying to do, but I have not done that for Biden. It’s exhausting:-(. I wish there were people I could trust that I could just follow, but who would that be - Bernie Sanders? He is an idealist, and while that works for his seat from Maine, it would not work on the global scale, with him as the Commander in Chief. As Obama said about him, he is a prophet in the wilderness, not a king who can make the hard choices.
Anyway the forces involved are just so incredibly complex - what has worked since American’s founding seems unlikely to work in the future, as the implications of globalization and automation settle in. e.g. the likes of Jeff Bezos and the Military-Industrial Complex use the American government in both an offensive capacity to increase their own profits abroad, while simultaneously as an aforementioned meat-shield to hide behind it whenever they feel scared that some other trillionaire such as Putin might come for their wealth. And keep in mind, We The People were okay with that, b/c it helped us too to have things like Google, Amazon, and weapons that we could use to defend ourselves & our allies, and offensively destroy our enemies or threaten them to not attacking in the first place, or regardless of military entirely we could also bully them in economic matters. Just like how people in Florida are okay with their leaders antics b/c it works for them, so too the American people are okay with the antics of our own leaders - or at least we were until about the late 70s. And now, we talk as if we are not okay with them, but we act as if we are, more or less.
So Rules for Rulers - check it out, and I hope that it messes you up as much as it did me, b/c that’s how you know it is working:-D. As for where to go forward from here… I don’t know, but even so I consider my new position to be a lot better than my previous one where I thought I knew but didn’t. To be clear, that is not me even attempting to hint at implying that liberalism is incorrect, but rather me saying that if we can’t make it happen in the real world, then of what use is it to be “correct”? Before we can move forward, we need to find a viable path first. Like standing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, wanting to go westward - it’s not impossible, but it is going to be rough going, and we might not all make it, and either way we need to be prepared for whatever lies ahead.