He gets to balance the power of Congress. He can refuse to enforce their bullshit. But more importantly heās 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 āwork within the system set forth by our behind the scenes over lordsāā¦ We want someone whoās 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 āwe deserve better candidatesā - okay, yeah, obviously, but we wonāt get those until we make them. AOC, Bernie, there actually are several who are good, but apparently for some (whatever) reason they arenāt āviableā? Hence why Biden is there, instead of one of them.
(And you even ran - damn thatās impressive! To be absolutely clear, I am not calling you one of these āentitled thinkersā, 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 deservesā¦ or whatever?
There is also that phrase, attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that āPolitics is the art of the possible, the attainable ā the art of the next best.ā 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 heās 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 āboringā), 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 wonāt ever change is that in the next upcoming election, we still only get the two choices though - Biden vs. Trump:-(. Itās like: imagine a robber steals your wallet, and offers you either the cash or your ID cards back (apparently the credit cards arenāt on the table for negotiation), but what they want in return is for you to say āpleaseā - 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 appeasementā¦ 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 physicallyā¦ But in any way they can.
Which brings us to the fact that there are 3 choices in the upcoming electionā¦ Trump, Biden, stay home (or 3rd party, but thatās basically the same as staying home unfortunately)ā¦ If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote theyād be figuring out what it takes and doing itā¦ Instead theyāre just following their already shown to fail bullying strategyā¦ Itās really irritating to see them seemingly willfully losing to Trump rather than go against their corporate mastersā¦ Again
The reason Trump is so popular is because heās a protest vote. At least in the delusional minds of the maga crowd. He is certainly not a part of the oligarchy controlling the establishmentā¦ Heās his own oligarchy, and a dangerous one tooā¦ But his followers are very dumb and very brainwashed. All they see is that heās 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 protestā¦ 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 āwrongā - that is simply the nature of the game when talking about ācorrectnessā. e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, but 1.9 and 2.1 donāt āquiteā cut it, nor even 1.99 or 2.01, despite being so very, very close. Or letās use an even more hyperbolic example to illustrate: suppose I ask a liberal what the answer is to the question of āwhat is 1+1?ā, and the Democrats step in to say that āthe answer is +1,000ā (while ofc pocketing the other $998.00, b/c of corruption). Thatās way offā¦ but the answer that conservatives give is to kill your dog and fuck your mom, and then risk her life too b/c sheās 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 ābetterā? Are there alternatives? Is the answer given by the Democrats more ācorrectā, 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 theyād be figuring out what it takes and doing itā¦
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 āintern first, then real jobā, but āintern forever, b/c thatās 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 improvingā¦ 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 returnedā¦)ā. And HRCās response to ALL of that was, in short: āLife is good, letās keep it that way, shall we?:-P PokeMon-go-to-the-polls, woot (please believe that Iām 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?)ā.
On the other hand, the Gaza situation is just the icing on the cake: regardless of the actual genocide going on there, it wonāt fix our economy. The latter involves terribly boring steps, many of which Biden seems to be taking? But the media wonāt report them, and I wouldnāt understand them myself anyway soā¦ we are back to the āJust trust me bro - I got this! (also Iām 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 uhā¦ reasons, but itāll be good, this time, I promise, just vote for me and youāll see what we have planned later!)ā
Also, are we even arguing anymore? :-P I think we agree on pretty much everything. Oh I remember, thereās 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 āThe Dems needed toā¦ā and āIf Dems and Biden really wanted toā¦ā and āInstead theyāre justā¦ Itās really irritating toā, my question is: now what? So you donāt like it - I donāt either - but what are we going to do about it? Yeah, thatās what I thought - I have no clue either.:-( But Iāve 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 Republicanās āgrassrootsā orgs get tons of funding from the oligarchy, while any grassroots orgs on the left get noneā¦ Without funding I donāt know that thereās 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 Iāve moved as far away from the South as I could, bought a gun and ammo, and a couple weeks worth of emergency food. I donāt 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 theyāll start joining us and voting progressive. Like right now 50%ish of people own nothingā¦ What about when theyāve squeezed every drop out of 75%? 90%? At what point do the people in their golden bubbles start realizing theyāve been getting screwed all along too? Hopefully itās before millions die in the streets.
I too walked away from not one but two cushy jobs, to try to become āpart of the solutionā. 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 donāt 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 donāt 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. āFactsā 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 Iāve moved back to a large city environ - where sth like >90% of the people will vote Democrat, so my vote doesnāt 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, Iāve lost all faith in democracy - āweā 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 toā¦ āsurviveā, 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 āconvictionā 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 āeasyāā¦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 theyāll 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 thenā¦?
I have no gun. If bad stuff happens, I will simply die. I donāt 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 arenāt 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 āexcess deathā statistics since we refused to officially count them, and some states did everything possible to mislead and deflect the numbers (even the āliberalā 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? weāll see I suppose).
Unfortunately the only real convictions the Dems seem to have is āprotect the rich at all costsāā¦ They have some social issues stuff quite a ways behind that, but clearly theyāre willing to let it slide rather than fight (ie roe v Wade)ā¦ They would definitely rather lose to Republicans, who at least have that same āprotect the richā conviction, than lose to progressives who would āeatā the rich insteadā¦ Even though they agree with progressives on the social issues
Weāve been dancing around it but I want to say explicitly: politicians are not āthe sameā 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. āClimate change is not happeningā is their way of saying āwell of course itās happening, but we choose to protect ThE eCoNoMy first and foremostā.
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 canāt regulate the stock market b/c āwonāt someone think of the old folks - what will happen to them!?ā, despite how they may get a fraction of 1% while billion- and now trillionaires take the rest. Itās like the rich use the elderly as a necromancer uses zombies - in a manner called āmeat shieldā 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 āleadersā 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 donāt even have subatomic particles and thus have zero mass) do it too I dunno, Iām just saying that itās 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 doesnāt 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 Bidenās efforts to improve things. Maybe heās worthy of that, or maybe not, but I would need to understand what heās doing first, before I want to judge him. I spent years breaking down Trumpās motivations btw, so I get what heās trying to do, but I have not done that for Biden. Itās 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 Americanās 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 thatās how you know it is working:-D. As for where to go forward from hereā¦ I donāt know, but even so I consider my new position to be a lot better than my previous one where I thought I knew but didnāt. To be clear, that is not me even attempting to hint at implying that liberalism is incorrect, but rather me saying that if we canāt make it happen in the real world, then of what use is it to be ācorrectā? 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 - itās 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.
So typically liberal=neo-liberal=establishment Demsā¦ Progressives=Bernie and the squadā¦ Just semantics
Iāve seen that video beforeā¦ Love everything he doesā¦ I wonder how AI and robots taking over all human labor over the next 20 years will effect this model. I guess itās sort of like discovering a resource that dwarfs the production capabilities of the people. So all the democracies slip into dictatorships? Maybe thatās what weāre seeing the prelude to?
He gets to balance the power of Congress. He can refuse to enforce their bullshit. But more importantly heās 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 āwork within the system set forth by our behind the scenes over lordsāā¦ We want someone whoās 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 āwe deserve better candidatesā - okay, yeah, obviously, but we wonāt get those until we make them. AOC, Bernie, there actually are several who are good, but apparently for some (whatever) reason they arenāt āviableā? Hence why Biden is there, instead of one of them.
(And you even ran - damn thatās impressive! To be absolutely clear, I am not calling you one of these āentitled thinkersā, 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 deservesā¦ or whatever?
There is also that phrase, attributed to Otto von Bismarck, that āPolitics is the art of the possible, the attainable ā the art of the next best.ā 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 heās 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 āboringā), 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 wonāt ever change is that in the next upcoming election, we still only get the two choices though - Biden vs. Trump:-(. Itās like: imagine a robber steals your wallet, and offers you either the cash or your ID cards back (apparently the credit cards arenāt on the table for negotiation), but what they want in return is for you to say āpleaseā - 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 appeasementā¦ 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 physicallyā¦ But in any way they can.
Which brings us to the fact that there are 3 choices in the upcoming electionā¦ Trump, Biden, stay home (or 3rd party, but thatās basically the same as staying home unfortunately)ā¦ If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote theyād be figuring out what it takes and doing itā¦ Instead theyāre just following their already shown to fail bullying strategyā¦ Itās really irritating to see them seemingly willfully losing to Trump rather than go against their corporate mastersā¦ Again
The reason Trump is so popular is because heās a protest vote. At least in the delusional minds of the maga crowd. He is certainly not a part of the oligarchy controlling the establishmentā¦ Heās his own oligarchy, and a dangerous one tooā¦ But his followers are very dumb and very brainwashed. All they see is that heās 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 protestā¦ 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 āwrongā - that is simply the nature of the game when talking about ācorrectnessā. e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, but 1.9 and 2.1 donāt āquiteā cut it, nor even 1.99 or 2.01, despite being so very, very close. Or letās use an even more hyperbolic example to illustrate: suppose I ask a liberal what the answer is to the question of āwhat is 1+1?ā, and the Democrats step in to say that āthe answer is +1,000ā (while ofc pocketing the other $998.00, b/c of corruption). Thatās way offā¦ but the answer that conservatives give is to kill your dog and fuck your mom, and then risk her life too b/c sheās 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 ābetterā? Are there alternatives? Is the answer given by the Democrats more ācorrectā, 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 āintern first, then real jobā, but āintern forever, b/c thatās 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 improvingā¦ 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 returnedā¦)ā. And HRCās response to ALL of that was, in short: āLife is good, letās keep it that way, shall we?:-P PokeMon-go-to-the-polls, woot (please believe that Iām 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?)ā.
On the other hand, the Gaza situation is just the icing on the cake: regardless of the actual genocide going on there, it wonāt fix our economy. The latter involves terribly boring steps, many of which Biden seems to be taking? But the media wonāt report them, and I wouldnāt understand them myself anyway soā¦ we are back to the āJust trust me bro - I got this! (also Iām 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 uhā¦ reasons, but itāll be good, this time, I promise, just vote for me and youāll see what we have planned later!)ā
Also, are we even arguing anymore? :-P I think we agree on pretty much everything. Oh I remember, thereās 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 āThe Dems needed toā¦ā and āIf Dems and Biden really wanted toā¦ā and āInstead theyāre justā¦ Itās really irritating toā, my question is: now what? So you donāt like it - I donāt either - but what are we going to do about it? Yeah, thatās what I thought - I have no clue either.:-( But Iāve 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 Republicanās āgrassrootsā orgs get tons of funding from the oligarchy, while any grassroots orgs on the left get noneā¦ Without funding I donāt know that thereās 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 Iāve moved as far away from the South as I could, bought a gun and ammo, and a couple weeks worth of emergency food. I donāt 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 theyāll start joining us and voting progressive. Like right now 50%ish of people own nothingā¦ What about when theyāve squeezed every drop out of 75%? 90%? At what point do the people in their golden bubbles start realizing theyāve been getting screwed all along too? Hopefully itās before millions die in the streets.
I too walked away from not one but two cushy jobs, to try to become āpart of the solutionā. 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 donāt 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 donāt 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. āFactsā 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 Iāve moved back to a large city environ - where sth like >90% of the people will vote Democrat, so my vote doesnāt 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, Iāve lost all faith in democracy - āweā 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 toā¦ āsurviveā, 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 āconvictionā 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 āeasyāā¦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 theyāll 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 thenā¦?
I have no gun. If bad stuff happens, I will simply die. I donāt 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 arenāt 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 āexcess deathā statistics since we refused to officially count them, and some states did everything possible to mislead and deflect the numbers (even the āliberalā 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? weāll see I suppose).
Unfortunately the only real convictions the Dems seem to have is āprotect the rich at all costsāā¦ They have some social issues stuff quite a ways behind that, but clearly theyāre willing to let it slide rather than fight (ie roe v Wade)ā¦ They would definitely rather lose to Republicans, who at least have that same āprotect the richā conviction, than lose to progressives who would āeatā the rich insteadā¦ Even though they agree with progressives on the social issues
Weāve been dancing around it but I want to say explicitly: politicians are not āthe sameā 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. āClimate change is not happeningā is their way of saying āwell of course itās happening, but we choose to protect ThE eCoNoMy first and foremostā.
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 canāt regulate the stock market b/c āwonāt someone think of the old folks - what will happen to them!?ā, despite how they may get a fraction of 1% while billion- and now trillionaires take the rest. Itās like the rich use the elderly as a necromancer uses zombies - in a manner called āmeat shieldā 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 āleadersā 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 donāt even have subatomic particles and thus have zero mass) do it too I dunno, Iām just saying that itās 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 doesnāt 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 Bidenās efforts to improve things. Maybe heās worthy of that, or maybe not, but I would need to understand what heās doing first, before I want to judge him. I spent years breaking down Trumpās motivations btw, so I get what heās trying to do, but I have not done that for Biden. Itās 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 Americanās 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 thatās how you know it is working:-D. As for where to go forward from hereā¦ I donāt know, but even so I consider my new position to be a lot better than my previous one where I thought I knew but didnāt. To be clear, that is not me even attempting to hint at implying that liberalism is incorrect, but rather me saying that if we canāt make it happen in the real world, then of what use is it to be ācorrectā? 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 - itās 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.
So typically liberal=neo-liberal=establishment Demsā¦ Progressives=Bernie and the squadā¦ Just semantics
Iāve seen that video beforeā¦ Love everything he doesā¦ I wonder how AI and robots taking over all human labor over the next 20 years will effect this model. I guess itās sort of like discovering a resource that dwarfs the production capabilities of the people. So all the democracies slip into dictatorships? Maybe thatās what weāre seeing the prelude to?