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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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Northern Ireland26223 Posts
On February 04 2025 09:51 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt? Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist? I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure. It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged. Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something? We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime. For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself. Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going. I think this is a fair point. I am blessed to live in a country with a coalition between socialists and social democrats ruling. One of the protests that preceded Occupy Wall street was the 15M movement in Spain. But whereas the Indignados went on to inspire (not form, Podemos' origins are more bourgeois than that, but its political ideas were essentially 100% aligned with the Indignados) a political party that went on to govern, I'm not sure the Occupy movement was more than a speedbump in the US. If there were ever a time to Occupy the Mall, that time is now, yet there doesn't seem to actually be any opposition to Trump at all. And yes, that *should* be the Democrats' job (or actually any congressman with even half a spine). But similarly it was the Democrats' job to hold those accountable for the subprime mortgage fiasco, and when that didn't happen, the protests were omnipresent. Yet they fizzled and are now nowhere to be seen. Compare that to the Gilettes Jaunes in France, and Macron is just your typical neoliberal stooge doing typical political overreach.
Yeah it’s interesting to consider. I’m unsure what the various factors are, although if I were to guess I think the US has a much more individualist culture and that’s somewhat reflected in its politics. The US’ preeminent status also features pretty heavily as well.
So I think this sees Europeans looking inwards on what problems are far more. Doesn’t always work or move in a productive direction mind.
The US, nah. If there is some concession of a collective problem, the answer is often just throwing its weight around to address it. This isn’t really something European nations can do to remotely the same degree.
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On February 04 2025 12:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 08:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? [quote] www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"? + Show Spoiler +It’s not a straightforward question, that’s the problem, and indeed why I didn’t give a binary answer to it for that reason.
I think you spend an inordinate amount of time pissing on the efforts of theoretical allies. I think you’ve got a hammer, and when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like the Dems. Who I shit on fucking frequently for the record.
I think expecting people to make principled stands that will potentially actively hurt their station in life against the Fascists is ridiculous when you give a pass on people having their wee protest against electoralism.
Is the Fascist threat real or not? Schrodinger’s Fascist goes both ways. I criticised the Democratic Party for it earlier, but they’re not the only entity here. Like fuck me, this irritates me, as a socialist myself. The fuck are you going to convince anyone who isn’t that way wired already? Being right has its own value, but you do have a bit of a point. Thing is, if anyone needs to understand the limited value of repeatedly pointing out that you're objectively right and the opposition to you is hypocritical and behaving foolishly, it's precisely the libs/Democrats that have made doing that to Trump/Republicans basically their entire politics (when they aren't shitting on people to their left). A lot of Republicans/MAGA are workers that have far more reasons to be theoretical allies with libs/Dem workers than either of them do with socialists (especially radical ones) or oligarchs. Once both Republicans/MAGAs and Democrats realize both their parties are scamming them, then they are primed to be socialists.
The popular idea is that libs/Dems aren't like Republicans/MAGAs in that way, the evidence suggests otherwise.
The point of the questions was to illustrate that you're unironically presenting the way to deal with the fascist threat as voting for people you yourself identified as fascists and a majority of Democrat voters identified as genocidal.
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On February 04 2025 07:59 KT_Elwood wrote:
The DOGE which was created out of thin air, led by a guy never cleared by congress used brute force and ressources from a foreign national billionaire with recent contacts to mosovow and china, cleared "Top secret" by Trump, to gain access to ALL fed employees data and take control the flow of federal money.
Openly threatening federal employees with instant termination if they speak or act up, sending out gag-orders to public relation offices of all federal agencies.
How is this legal?
It probably isn't. What are you going to do about it?
Turns out laws only do things when there is a system in place to enforce them. Especially laws that bind the government itself only work when there are courts powerful and independent enough to enforce them, and the government either choose or can be forced to listen.
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On February 04 2025 07:59 KT_Elwood wrote:
The DOGE which was created out of thin air, led by a guy never cleared by congress used brute force and ressources from a foreign national billionaire with recent contacts to mosovow and china, cleared "Top secret" by Trump, to gain access to ALL fed employees data and take control the flow of federal money.
Openly threatening federal employees with instant termination if they speak or act up, sending out gag-orders to public relation offices of all federal agencies.
How is this legal?
Did you know USAID was also created by executive order? The concept of "top secret" and document classifications is from executive orders?
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On February 04 2025 15:33 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 07:59 KT_Elwood wrote:
The DOGE which was created out of thin air, led by a guy never cleared by congress used brute force and ressources from a foreign national billionaire with recent contacts to mosovow and china, cleared "Top secret" by Trump, to gain access to ALL fed employees data and take control the flow of federal money.
Openly threatening federal employees with instant termination if they speak or act up, sending out gag-orders to public relation offices of all federal agencies.
How is this legal? Did you know USAID was also created by executive order? The concept of "top secret" and document classifications is from executive orders?
After it was mandated by the Congress, you clown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development
Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act on September 4, 1961, which reorganized U.S. foreign assistance programs and mandated the creation of an agency to administer economic aid. USAID was subsequently established by the executive order of President John F. Kennedy (...).
I guess they didn't mention that on Newsmax.
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I am glad that Elon now is using his impressionable junior grade engineers to dismantle the US Softpower in the world, to save tens of thousands of dollars spent on "gay shit" like a transgender musical in ireland.
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I have nothing but the deepest respect for president Selenskiy.
If there is a hoop to jump through to safe his country, he will, no matter how ridicoulous it is.
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On February 04 2025 04:32 Zambrah wrote:
Protests dont do shit in the US, we've seen that over the last few decades, I dont blame people for not wanting to go out and waste their time. Protests work when they can't be waited out or are targeted towards people who will listen to the protestors, Trump and the fascist brigade isnt that.
If people wanted to make their voices heard they should boot up GTA and toss some bricks through key houses windows and make life a nightmare for the powerful people of GTA whenever they can get away with it in GTA.
You severely underestimate the importance of visible disagreement.
First we have the public aspect, your average person defers a lot to appeals to the majority and appeals to authority.
They scroll through their feeds in their customized pocket of the internet and they don't see what you see here, they see plenty of agreement and think "well, everyone can't be stupid, they probably know what they're doing". They see authorities standing aside or enforcing Trump's illegal orders and DOGE's overstepping, and think "well, there must not be anything wrong with that".
Some small protests and individual acts of disobedience by civil servants are automatically dismissed as "they were paid" or "they were the ones that were stealing our money". A million people showing visible disagreement can't be dismissed like that. Sure, the ones in too deep will just assume they're brainwashed, but a lot of regular people will have to think about the contradiction between the agreement they see on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube comments and the passionate disagreement they see IRL with their own eyes.
Then we have the governing aspect, the point at which visible disagreement reaches critical mass dictates how far they can push. It's not even about overturning policies or reversing course, that's far too exigent of a bar for whether a protest works. Showing mass disagreement now vs showing mass disagreement only when opposition is purged or people are in cages yields two very different futures.
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Northern Ireland26223 Posts
On February 04 2025 12:28 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 12:02 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 08:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.
The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.
...Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.
Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted. www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:
[quote]
This is banana republic stuff. Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled. Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"? + Show Spoiler +It’s not a straightforward question, that’s the problem, and indeed why I didn’t give a binary answer to it for that reason.
I think you spend an inordinate amount of time pissing on the efforts of theoretical allies. I think you’ve got a hammer, and when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like the Dems. Who I shit on fucking frequently for the record.
I think expecting people to make principled stands that will potentially actively hurt their station in life against the Fascists is ridiculous when you give a pass on people having their wee protest against electoralism.
Is the Fascist threat real or not? Schrodinger’s Fascist goes both ways. I criticised the Democratic Party for it earlier, but they’re not the only entity here. Like fuck me, this irritates me, as a socialist myself. The fuck are you going to convince anyone who isn’t that way wired already? Being right has its own value, but you do have a bit of a point. Thing is, if anyone needs to understand the limited value of repeatedly pointing out that you're objectively right and the opposition to you is hypocritical and behaving foolishly, it's precisely the libs/Democrats that have made doing that to Trump/Republicans basically their entire politics (when they aren't shitting on people to their left). A lot of Republicans/MAGA are workers that have far more reasons to be theoretical allies with libs/Dems than either of them do with socialists (especially radical ones) or oligarchs. Once both Republicans/MAGAs and Democrats realize both their parties are scamming them, then they are primed to be socialists. The idea is that libs/Dems aren't like Republicans/MAGAs in that way, the evidence suggests otherwise. The point of the questions was to illustrate that you're unironically presenting the way to deal with the fascist threat as voting for people you yourself identified as fascists and a majority of Democrats identified as genocidal.
It’s a 1-2 punch as far as I consider it.
The Dems are still as ultimately deficient to my sensibilities if they win or if they lose, but with the former you don’t have the rather pesky problem of overt fascists running things for a bit.
Indeed, possibly more so as we’re somewhat apparently wired to judge incumbents much more harshly than what the party waiting in the winds is selling.
I dunno, personally I think it’s better both in the long and short term to not have a Fascist party running things for any period. It normalises those politics.
And they’re already very normalised already, as Kwark pointed out a few posts back.
Mitigate the worst, prepare for the best is my broad approach to such matters.
Maybe there’s a case that Fascism being on the doorstep, rather than looming in the distance is needed to give people a wake up call and a kick up the arse, but Trump getting in once should have been sufficient to have done that.
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Trump keeps saying he wants Canada to become "the 51st state". Canada is far too big to be a single state. What Trump really wants is Alberta and its oil. Alberta gets a raw deal from Ottawa as its primary concern is saving the environment. The USA can give Albertans the freedom they crave.
Alberta is either the most and 2nd most right wing province in Canada and a sure win for Republicans.
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On February 04 2025 23:53 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 12:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 12:02 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 08:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:On February 04 2025 02:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Trump purging the FBI seems like it could be a bad omen. Anyone keeping a running count of constitutional crises? [quote] www.nbcnews.com This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 03:47 Simberto wrote:
[quote]
Funnily enough, this is also exactly what people have warned about before Trump got elected. This is scary shit. You are currently seeing your democracy being dismantled.
Trump is systematically removing anyone who is not loyal from all key positions in the country. And we are less than a month in. At this rate, if he does another Januar 6th, there will not be anyone left to stop it. Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape. I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that! It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade. The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"? + Show Spoiler +It’s not a straightforward question, that’s the problem, and indeed why I didn’t give a binary answer to it for that reason.
I think you spend an inordinate amount of time pissing on the efforts of theoretical allies. I think you’ve got a hammer, and when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like the Dems. Who I shit on fucking frequently for the record.
I think expecting people to make principled stands that will potentially actively hurt their station in life against the Fascists is ridiculous when you give a pass on people having their wee protest against electoralism.
Is the Fascist threat real or not? Schrodinger’s Fascist goes both ways. I criticised the Democratic Party for it earlier, but they’re not the only entity here. Like fuck me, this irritates me, as a socialist myself. The fuck are you going to convince anyone who isn’t that way wired already? Being right has its own value, but you do have a bit of a point. Thing is, if anyone needs to understand the limited value of repeatedly pointing out that you're objectively right and the opposition to you is hypocritical and behaving foolishly, it's precisely the libs/Democrats that have made doing that to Trump/Republicans basically their entire politics (when they aren't shitting on people to their left). A lot of Republicans/MAGA are workers that have far more reasons to be theoretical allies with libs/Dems than either of them do with socialists (especially radical ones) or oligarchs. Once both Republicans/MAGAs and Democrats realize both their parties are scamming them, then they are primed to be socialists. The idea is that libs/Dems aren't like Republicans/MAGAs in that way, the evidence suggests otherwise. The point of the questions was to illustrate that you're unironically presenting the way to deal with the fascist threat as voting for people you yourself identified as fascists and a majority of Democrats identified as genocidal. + Show Spoiler +It’s a 1-2 punch as far as I consider it.
The Dems are still as ultimately deficient to my sensibilities if they win or if they lose, but with the former you don’t have the rather pesky problem of overt fascists running things for a bit.
Indeed, possibly more so as we’re somewhat apparently wired to judge incumbents much more harshly than what the party waiting in the winds is selling. I dunno, personally I think it’s better both in the long and short term to not have a Fascist party running things for any period. It normalises those politics. + Show Spoiler +And they’re already very normalised already, as Kwark pointed out a few posts back.
Mitigate the worst, prepare for the best is my broad approach to such matters.
Maybe there’s a case that Fascism being on the doorstep, rather than looming in the distance is needed to give people a wake up call and a kick up the arse, but Trump getting in once should have been sufficient to have done that. But "not a fascist party" isn't Democrats by your own metrics. If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that
Democrats unanimously supported the Trump administration hire that immediately appointed this white nationalist to the State Department
Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department, multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN.
Beattie also has made a series of racially charged comments, writing in one tweet last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” He praised Dr. James Watson, the founder of modern genetics who later suggested Black people were less intelligent than White people, as the “greatest living American scientist.” Beattie repeatedly said Black lawmakers, policymakers, and groups need to “learn” their place and take “a knee to MAGA.”
I agree it's better not to vote for fascists and normalize their genocidal politics, but you're literally telling people to get "not a fascist party running things" by supporting and normalizing fascist (by your own metrics) and their genocidal politics (by the majority of Biden voters' metrics).
That's unreasonable.
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United States43350 Posts
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The plan for protecting people from an out of control Trump administration running roughshod over the law is in from Democrat leadership: Just wait until Republicans vote for Dems in a couple years
Hard to share Schumer's confidence that Trump supporters will be so shocked and enraged when they discover Trump *checks notes* makes mistakes that they will rush to vote for Democrats.
Democrats don't respect their supporters' intelligence, or dignity for that matter.
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United States43350 Posts
I don't think a commitment to taking power through elections is a fair criticism of a political party. If there is a need for a revolution then an establishment political party is not going to be the one leading the charge. "Go to the streets and tear it all down then build a new world in the ashes" is not a reasonable expectation from the Democrats.
It's like you're complaining about the lack of steaks at a vegan restaurant. It's just not what they're selling.
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Concerning the fentanyl crisis, has Trump said or done anything as to if or how they plan to address it domestically?
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On February 05 2025 01:14 KwarK wrote:
I don't think a commitment to taking power through elections is a fair criticism of a political party. If there is a need for a revolution then an establishment political party is not going to be the one leading the charge. "Go to the streets and tear it all down then build a new world in the ashes" is not a reasonable expectation from the Democrats.
It's like you're complaining about the lack of steaks at a vegan restaurant. It's just not what they're selling.
Of course I don't expect Democrats to have any functional solutions, but "watch Trump steamroll the constitution and hope Democrats win elections they aren't sure will happen" is worse than I would hope their supporters expected. But Democrat supporters will support basically anything (it was a theme of the 2024 election) so I can't say I'm surprised.
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United States43350 Posts
On February 05 2025 01:21 blomsterjohn wrote:
Concerning the fentanyl crisis, has Trump said or done anything as to if or how they plan to address it domestically?
He's said that just the amount of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border last year was enough to kill 10 million Americans so that presumably means he's recognizing the success of the Biden administration in saving 10 million American lives. That's something.
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Northern Ireland26223 Posts
On February 05 2025 00:37 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 23:53 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 12:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 12:02 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 08:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 08:45 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 06:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 05:56 WombaT wrote:On February 04 2025 05:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 03:24 maybenexttime wrote:
[quote]
This is banana republic stuff. Foreign policy via multinational corporations coming home. Don't think people appreciate what that means, so here's an example: In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001. Under a plea agreement, Chiquita Brands agreed to pay $25 million in restitution and damages to the families of victims of the AUC. The AUC had been paid to protect the company's interest in the region.[59]
In addition to monetary payments, Chiquita has also been accused of smuggling weapons (3,000 AK-47s) to the AUC and in assisting the AUC in smuggling drugs to Europe.[60] Chiquita Brands admitted that they paid AUC operatives to silence union organizers and intimidate farmers into selling only to Chiquita. In the plea agreement, the Colombian government let Chiquita Brands keep the names of U.S. Citizens who brokered this agreement with the AUC secret, in exchange for relief to 390 families.
Despite calls from Colombian authorities and human rights organizations to extradite the U.S. citizens responsible for war crimes and aiding a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to grant the request, citing 'conflicts of law'. As with other high-profile cases involving wrongdoing by American companies abroad, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are very careful to hand over any American citizen to be tried under another country's legal system, so for the time being Chiquita Brands International avoided a catastrophic scandal, and instead walked away with a humiliating defeat in court and eight of its employees fired. en.wikipedia.orgAnd another: The US Supreme Court has ruled food giants Nestlé USA and Cargill can't be sued for child slavery ...On February 04 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
Indeed. 2016 was pretty shit already but this term has injected the steroids in basically all domains. It’s considerably worse, and quicker in taking shape.
I look forward to another 4 years of smug ‘centrist’ types just ignoring this and saying the real problem is the left is too mean in calling it out of course
If we only didn’t call the racism, or general idiocy for what it is then they’d not do that!
It’s not remotely subtle, or cleverly disguised.
If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that. Gurn all you want, you made your bed so stop fucking whinging about a spade being called a spade.
The " Pied piper" strategy may be the most catastrophic political play in modern US politics We applying this to Democrats voting for his cabinet? Whether a rhetorical question for the benefit of the thread, or an earnest one that you’ve forgotten my previously stated position on, the answer is simply yes? + Show Spoiler +As I mentioned Schrödinger’s socialist a few pages back, so too do the Dems employ Schrodinger’s Fascist and have very liberally done so in recent times, especially post 2016
So dangerous that you should subsume all your principles to keep out the greater evil, but apparently not dangerous enough to refuse to confirn cabinet appointments. Or do much of much really.
A lot of shite is posted in this page so keeping track gets tricky, but I’ve always agreed with that contention, and have gone to bat on it multiple times.
Granted my contempt for the Democrats isn’t quite at your level, albeit pretty damn high.
There aren’t really any positive reads of recent Democrat strategy like.
The absolute best is ‘we don’t really think Trump is a Fascist but we thought it was a good electoral strategy’. Which isn’t great but does beat ‘we think Trump is a Fascist but if we wins an election we won’t do shit’. Or ‘Wait, Trump has Fascist tendencies? Really?!’
There’s also the issue of electoralism as a more general approach, and that approach within specific contexts.
It’s that level more hopeless in the US context than elsewhere. And it’s still frequently deficient elsewhere, but to much less pronounced degrees. A bit of both in that it raises the question of: How many fascist/enablers do you need in your party to be a party of fascists? But also, does it matter how many it takes if it is already everyone? How long is a piece of string? + Show Spoiler +
Is the metric being successful in preventing the onset of Fascism or just the moral purity of the attempt?
Is not wanting to trigger a complete further breakdown of political structures and precipitate a quite likely very destructive civil conflict in the name of anti-Fascism summat that makes you a Fascist?
I mean at a fundamental brass tacks level, sure.
It’s not like Trump’s brown shirts were going around beating folks intending to vote against him, or the whole shebang was rigged.
Folks coulda, I dunno. Voted or something?
We’d still be in that state of electoralism not delivering, and pondering what to do there but having staved off a previously covert but now much more mask off, overtly fascist regime.
For all the many failures of centrist politics to allay the encroachment of Fascists in recent times, the left has been even more ineffectual. Infuriatingly so if you’re so-inclined, as I am myself.
Even if it’s correct, ‘I don’t believe in electoralism so won’t do the lowest effort form of political engagement, but other folks are failing us by not being more politically engaged’ is up there with the most irritating, alienating messaging going.
That was a lot, but none of it seemed to answer the pretty straightforward questions. Maybe that was a reluctant/frustrated "yes Democrats are a party of fascists, but also, people should have voted for those fascists"? + Show Spoiler +It’s not a straightforward question, that’s the problem, and indeed why I didn’t give a binary answer to it for that reason.
I think you spend an inordinate amount of time pissing on the efforts of theoretical allies. I think you’ve got a hammer, and when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like the Dems. Who I shit on fucking frequently for the record.
I think expecting people to make principled stands that will potentially actively hurt their station in life against the Fascists is ridiculous when you give a pass on people having their wee protest against electoralism.
Is the Fascist threat real or not? Schrodinger’s Fascist goes both ways. I criticised the Democratic Party for it earlier, but they’re not the only entity here. Like fuck me, this irritates me, as a socialist myself. The fuck are you going to convince anyone who isn’t that way wired already? Being right has its own value, but you do have a bit of a point. Thing is, if anyone needs to understand the limited value of repeatedly pointing out that you're objectively right and the opposition to you is hypocritical and behaving foolishly, it's precisely the libs/Democrats that have made doing that to Trump/Republicans basically their entire politics (when they aren't shitting on people to their left). A lot of Republicans/MAGA are workers that have far more reasons to be theoretical allies with libs/Dems than either of them do with socialists (especially radical ones) or oligarchs. Once both Republicans/MAGAs and Democrats realize both their parties are scamming them, then they are primed to be socialists. The idea is that libs/Dems aren't like Republicans/MAGAs in that way, the evidence suggests otherwise. The point of the questions was to illustrate that you're unironically presenting the way to deal with the fascist threat as voting for people you yourself identified as fascists and a majority of Democrats identified as genocidal. + Show Spoiler +It’s a 1-2 punch as far as I consider it.
The Dems are still as ultimately deficient to my sensibilities if they win or if they lose, but with the former you don’t have the rather pesky problem of overt fascists running things for a bit.
Indeed, possibly more so as we’re somewhat apparently wired to judge incumbents much more harshly than what the party waiting in the winds is selling. I dunno, personally I think it’s better both in the long and short term to not have a Fascist party running things for any period. It normalises those politics. + Show Spoiler +And they’re already very normalised already, as Kwark pointed out a few posts back.
Mitigate the worst, prepare for the best is my broad approach to such matters.
Maybe there’s a case that Fascism being on the doorstep, rather than looming in the distance is needed to give people a wake up call and a kick up the arse, but Trump getting in once should have been sufficient to have done that. But "not a fascist party" isn't Democrats by your own metrics. Show nested quote + If you’re down with this administration you’re either a Fascist or a happy Fascist enabler, and it’s as simple as that Democrats unanimously supported the Trump administration hire that immediately appointed this white nationalist to the State Department Show nested quote +Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department, multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN.
Beattie also has made a series of racially charged comments, writing in one tweet last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” He praised Dr. James Watson, the founder of modern genetics who later suggested Black people were less intelligent than White people, as the “greatest living American scientist.” Beattie repeatedly said Black lawmakers, policymakers, and groups need to “learn” their place and take “a knee to MAGA.”
I agree it's better not to vote for fascists and normalize their genocidal politics, but you're literally telling people to get "not a fascist party running things" by supporting and normalizing fascist (by your own metrics) and their genocidal politics (by the majority of Biden voters' metrics). That's unreasonable.
No, I’m saying if one correctly identifies that the Dems aren’t going to be a particularly effective bulwark against Fascism, then one should try to avoid them being put in that position in the first place.
They won’t be effective in stopping it, but equally they’re not seeking to enact it.
Ya get the Dems in the spotlight, and you still get to make the same correct structural critiques, and seek to organise and illuminate, only without Fascists running the show.
And ultimately voting is easy. I think it’s ultimately ineffectual and we need a more involved electorate, and grass roots organisation and all that good stuff. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive things.
The latter becomes a difficult sell in that it’s hard and requires effort, if one doesn’t do the easy shit it’s considerably more difficult to then drag folks to do the hard stuff.
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United States43350 Posts
On February 05 2025 01:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 01:14 KwarK wrote:
I don't think a commitment to taking power through elections is a fair criticism of a political party. If there is a need for a revolution then an establishment political party is not going to be the one leading the charge. "Go to the streets and tear it all down then build a new world in the ashes" is not a reasonable expectation from the Democrats.
It's like you're complaining about the lack of steaks at a vegan restaurant. It's just not what they're selling. Of course I don't expect Democrats to have any functional solutions, but "watch Trump steamroll the constitution and hope Democrats win elections they aren't sure will happen" is worse than I would hope their supporters expected. But Democrat supporters will support basically anything (it was a theme of the 2024 election) so I can't say I'm surprised.
A political party committed to democracy is not going to advocate for antidemocratic solutions. They're always going to say that the solution to the other party having power is voting for them instead next time. They're never going to say that there's a third option where you line them all up against the wall and shoot them because they're going to be against the wall too.
It's just not a reasonable expectation and you should be capable of understanding that. I'm not saying that there isn't a need for a revolution, I'm saying that expecting agreement on that need for revolution from the establishment and complaining when you don't get it is idiotic.
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