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.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On February 06 2025 09:15 KwarK wrote: Eh, it's less white college educated liberals and more the DOJ censuring police forces for not following their own use of force manuals.
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I mean, think about that for a second. They banned working remotely, but will not pay people when they can't get to the office through no fault of their own.
On February 06 2025 09:47 Mohdoo wrote: If Biden thought the things he was saying about Trump were true, he massively failed as a president by not doing whatever is needed to prevent it.
We know intelligence agencies were aware of many calls between Musk and Putin. I am sure it goes much further than that based on what we have been told. Its very easy to view this entire Trump ordeal so far as treason. Musk having any amount of access to the treasury is an unbelievable tragedy.
Just think about all the things Biden said about Trump. Now consider all of those things are being shown to be true. He is doing all that and more. How in the world was it the responsible thing to do to just allow it?
Scared of "triggering a civil war"? As if "prevent civil war by just letting our existing government lose the civil war" is some better option? Once we were days away from Trump being sworn in, and all the evidence pointed to this happening, preventing Trump from being president appears to have been the by far "lesser evil".
At that point how exactly was he to stop it? His term and powers were expiring and SCOTUS was stacked. He could stage a coup but could he ensure military support for it? And what then? Martial law?
Biden dropped the ball when he didn't send Trump to Gitmo on Jan 21 2021. By a month ago it was way too late.
This, basically.
I remember being really, really concerned by Biden's magnamity in the early days. He came in like the last four years were just a fever dream, and all he had to do was talk kindly to the fascists and the country would wake up and move on. In reality, the aftermath of Jan 6th was the one tiny window where public outrage might have given him the power to lock Trump out for good.
After that opportunity had been squandered, yes, all Biden really had left was to get the guy assassinated while he was still in the background. Maybe slide some secret service IDs into the pocket of some other world leader and look away. I'm sure Macron would have had the couilles to save the world.
Days away from Trump's swearing in, though? There's nothing he could have done. The reps have spent 20 years building the backroom capital to refuse transfer of power and they still had to win an election to lock it all down. It's fantasy to pretend he could make that play at a time when the other guys control all the meaningful institutions and Trump had just won the popular vote.
It wouldn't be a civil war, it would just be Jan 6th take II, except the ex-president would actually get punished this time. Even if he'd gone full dark brandon and straight-up shot Trump during the handover, the crown would pass to Vance anyway and project 2025 would have had the clearest mandate in the world to start rounding up team blue.
It was far too late. He failed, and his hubris in posing as a bridge-builder while the nazis built a warship is one of the main reasons we're here today. If the west makes it through this, we'll look back on Joe Biden as the man who wasted the absolute last chance we had.
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I mean, think about that for a second. They banned working remotely, but will not pay people when they can't get to the office through no fault of their own.
The reason I asked micronesia is not just that he posted it but that as an actual government or government-ish employee, possibly living in DC which is far from Spain, he might have more perspective that I've missed. Otherwise the post seemed to be intimating the conclusion that you jumped to, which I didn't want to put words in his mouth. Problem is if you just look at the internet you can see it's above freezing in DC and raining. I personally believe the government should function even if it's raining, or even sleeting, and if someone can't make it to the government on a day when it's sleeting the government shouldn't go out of their way to accommodate that. They seemed to cite 2022 regulations when posting that.
On February 06 2025 05:56 RenSC2 wrote: There is a significant portion of Americans that want people to act lawfully, including the president. We don't celebrate when Trump does illegal things. We would not celebrate if Biden did illegal things, even if it was for things we wanted. We want the president to act legally, no matter what side he's on.
So yes, I'm glad that Biden respected the law, even if I would have liked to see him accomplish more. I think Trump's illegal actions should have been disqualifying (and he should currently be in jail), but not enough people agree with me on that one. Still, we're not an insignificant faction.
Also, the idea that Harris is the frontrunner for 2028 is about the same as saying "Jeb!" was the frontrunner for 2016. Maybe true until the actual campaign starts, but almost guaranteed to change once it does. Maybe "Harris!" will try, but I'm not liking her chances. Someone like AOC would mop the floor with her in a primary and there's a half dozen boring candidates that would do better than Harris as well.
Definition 2a: having or likely to have influence or effect
Based off that definition I’m going to have to disagree. If the only way for your voting bloc to have an influence or effect is by voting your desired candidate in, and your voting bloc lost the vote so resoundingly that the new candidate feels confident in ignoring your concerns, then I fail to see how your voting bloc meets the definition of significant. It was in the past, but it’s not now.
Granted that could change if you increased your voting bloc, but at this point it would require effort, outreach, and political action. But given that the primary draw of said voting bloc is maintaining the status quo so that members don’t have to spend part of their lives dealing with being politically active, that’s probably not going to happen. Until it does, I’d say that voting bloc is indeed insignificant.
On February 06 2025 09:47 Mohdoo wrote: If Biden thought the things he was saying about Trump were true, he massively failed as a president by not doing whatever is needed to prevent it.
We know intelligence agencies were aware of many calls between Musk and Putin. I am sure it goes much further than that based on what we have been told. Its very easy to view this entire Trump ordeal so far as treason. Musk having any amount of access to the treasury is an unbelievable tragedy.
Just think about all the things Biden said about Trump. Now consider all of those things are being shown to be true. He is doing all that and more. How in the world was it the responsible thing to do to just allow it?
Scared of "triggering a civil war"? As if "prevent civil war by just letting our existing government lose the civil war" is some better option? Once we were days away from Trump being sworn in, and all the evidence pointed to this happening, preventing Trump from being president appears to have been the by far "lesser evil".
At that point how exactly was he to stop it? His term and powers were expiring and SCOTUS was stacked. He could stage a coup but could he ensure military support for it? And what then? Martial law?
Biden dropped the ball when he didn't send Trump to Gitmo on Jan 21 2021. By a month ago it was way too late.
I remember being really, really concerned by Biden's magnamity in the early days. He came in like the last four years were just a fever dream, and all he had to do was talk kindly to the fascists and the country would wake up and move on. In reality, the aftermath of Jan 6th was the one tiny window where public outrage might have given him the power to lock Trump out for good.
After that opportunity had been squandered, yes, all Biden really had left was to get the guy assassinated while he was still in the background. Maybe slide some secret service IDs into the pocket of some other world leader and look away. I'm sure Macron would have had the couilles to save the world.
Days away from Trump's swearing in, though? There's nothing he could have done.+ Show Spoiler +
The reps have spent 20 years building the backroom capital to refuse transfer of power and they still had to win an election to lock it all down. It's fantasy to pretend he could make that play at a time when the other guys control all the meaningful institutions and Trump had just won the popular vote.
It wouldn't be a civil war, it would just be Jan 6th take II, except the ex-president would actually get punished this time. Even if he'd gone full dark brandon and straight-up shot Trump during the handover, the crown would pass to Vance anyway and project 2025 would have had the clearest mandate in the world to start rounding up team blue.
It was far too late. He failed, and his hubris in posing as a bridge-builder while the nazis built a warship is one of the main reasons we're here today. If the west makes it through this, we'll look back on Joe Biden as the man who wasted the absolute last chance we had.
The point was that he had multiple chances from Jan 21st 2021, to him running in the primary, to the Musk and Supreme Court stuff, to the last second you guys are arguing was too late (and plenty more).
He had multiple chances, people pointed out he needed to act at the time. Libs/Dems/their ilk defended his failures as acceptable/preferable at every turn. Now they are trying to pretend "it was too late" to do anything else and all this was unavoidable. As if they didn't have people yelling at them at the top of their lungs to course correct at every turn while they blew them off with prejudice.
Genocide Joe Biden should and will be remembered as the guy who willingly handed the US over to fascism (even if we somehow stop the Trump admin). While you guys probably won't be remembered, I'll remember you all encouraged him to do it, had multiple opportunities to pull your head out, and instead refused until you believed it was too late to matter if you did.
On February 06 2025 09:47 Mohdoo wrote: If Biden thought the things he was saying about Trump were true, he massively failed as a president by not doing whatever is needed to prevent it.
We know intelligence agencies were aware of many calls between Musk and Putin. I am sure it goes much further than that based on what we have been told. Its very easy to view this entire Trump ordeal so far as treason. Musk having any amount of access to the treasury is an unbelievable tragedy.
Just think about all the things Biden said about Trump. Now consider all of those things are being shown to be true. He is doing all that and more. How in the world was it the responsible thing to do to just allow it?
Scared of "triggering a civil war"? As if "prevent civil war by just letting our existing government lose the civil war" is some better option? Once we were days away from Trump being sworn in, and all the evidence pointed to this happening, preventing Trump from being president appears to have been the by far "lesser evil".
At that point how exactly was he to stop it? His term and powers were expiring and SCOTUS was stacked. He could stage a coup but could he ensure military support for it? And what then? Martial law?
Biden dropped the ball when he didn't send Trump to Gitmo on Jan 21 2021. By a month ago it was way too late.
This, basically.
I remember being really, really concerned by Biden's magnamity in the early days. He came in like the last four years were just a fever dream, and all he had to do was talk kindly to the fascists and the country would wake up and move on. In reality, the aftermath of Jan 6th was the one tiny window where public outrage might have given him the power to lock Trump out for good.
After that opportunity had been squandered, yes, all Biden really had left was to get the guy assassinated while he was still in the background. Maybe slide some secret service IDs into the pocket of some other world leader and look away. I'm sure Macron would have had the couilles to save the world.
Days away from Trump's swearing in, though? There's nothing he could have done. The reps have spent 20 years building the backroom capital to refuse transfer of power and they still had to win an election to lock it all down. It's fantasy to pretend he could make that play at a time when the other guys control all the meaningful institutions and Trump had just won the popular vote.
It wouldn't be a civil war, it would just be Jan 6th take II, except the ex-president would actually get punished this time. Even if he'd gone full dark brandon and straight-up shot Trump during the handover, the crown would pass to Vance anyway and project 2025 would have had the clearest mandate in the world to start rounding up team blue.
It was far too late. He failed, and his hubris in posing as a bridge-builder while the nazis built a warship is one of the main reasons we're here today. If the west makes it through this, we'll look back on Joe Biden as the man who wasted the absolute last chance we had.
I dunno how much I can actually blame Biden for that though.
1. His whole shtick and historic reputation basically was as that bridge building guy with everyman appeal. It’s always been his thing. 2. The idea was to leverage that to pull the centre types back. Not to build bridges over to the Fascists but waverers in their potential orbit. 3. This play was somewhat informed by 2016 where active hostility didn’t really work either. 4. The American electorate is well, the American electorate. 5. He’s fucking ancient, and I think his worldview is still coloured by memories of the days you could cut sensible bipartisan compromises across the aisle.
It obviously didn’t work, it’s a reasonable play within the confines that American politics broadly resides in, IMO.
Biden did exactly what he was stuck in for, in accordance to his historical record, or indeed his general personality and worldview.
On a party level, yeah sure that’s a bad call. You can’t really blame Joe Biden for being Joe Biden.
I’m also not seeing too many break points, and the second Trump wins the Presidential election with not just the electoral college, but the popular vote this time, the fuck do you do?
It’s a likely legitimate civil war or acceding to Fascism, I’m struggling to see some middle ground here. Both are pretty fucking shit. I just don’t see a juncture where you can take Trump off the table to avoid the latter, while also avoiding the former.
I think for many the calculus is simply that we’re not an innately Fascist country, we’ll maybe have a brief period of it and bounce out of it, I’ll take that scenario versus a ton of political violence. I think that is a wrong conception in certain ways myself, and a bit naive, but I do think it’s a very widely held notion.
Where I do think the Dems have sucked is in breaking convention, while not the law in recent times. I think there’s plenty they could have done here in recent epochs. The GOP in the same timeframe went from pissing over convention to just outright ignoring law lately, you have to respond to that shift in circumstance. Even if you merely shift to ignoring convention while respecting the law you’re still the party of law here.
And don’t read this as a particular defence of Biden, it’s more a ‘he’s Joe Biden, what do you expect?’ Or ‘it’s the Dems, what do you expect ?’
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I mean, think about that for a second. They banned working remotely, but will not pay people when they can't get to the office through no fault of their own.
The reason I asked micronesia is not just that he posted it but that as an actual government or government-ish employee, possibly living in DC which is far from Spain, he might have more perspective that I've missed. Otherwise the post seemed to be intimating the conclusion that you jumped to, which I didn't want to put words in his mouth. Problem is if you just look at the internet you can see it's above freezing in DC and raining. I personally believe the government should function even if it's raining, or even sleeting, and if someone can't make it to the government on a day when it's sleeting the government shouldn't go out of their way to accommodate that. They seemed to cite 2022 regulations when posting that.
Still a few months until I can move back to Spain, genuinely cannot wait!
I'm glad that you think that if an employee can't make it into the office because of weather conditions and they've been banned from working from home that the government should not accommodate that. It is clear where you stand on this issue.
I personally think that if you ban working from home, then you shouldn't be asking employees to work from home.
Point at the one company that sells eggs in the US. Cal-Maine.
New York CNN —
Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the United States, reported revenue doubled and profit surged 718% last quarter because of sharply higher egg prices.
Democrats need to shit on their corporate overlords and convey the message, that market consolidation and extreme wealth is a direct threat to capitalism, democracy and freedom. And then start Quoting GOP-Trustbusters and do what they've done.
New York CNN — Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the United States, reported revenue doubled and profit surged 718% last quarter because of sharply higher egg prices.
Democrats need to shit on their corporate overlords and convey the message, that market consolidation and extreme wealth is a direct threat to capitalism, democracy and freedom. And then start Quoting GOP-Trustbusters and do what they've done.
If they had any intention of doing that they would be rallying around Bernie and uplifting AOC. Bernie has been telling them this for decades and it is more obvious now than ever.
Democrats are either complicit or so impotent they might as well be.
On February 07 2025 02:04 KT_Elwood wrote: I think the democrats need more lower instincts.
If trump talks about the price of eggs.
Point at the one company that sells eggs in the US. Cal-Maine.
New York CNN — Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the United States, reported revenue doubled and profit surged 718% last quarter because of sharply higher egg prices.
Democrats need to shit on their corporate overlords and convey the message, that market consolidation and extreme wealth is a direct threat to capitalism, democracy and freedom. And then start Quoting GOP-Trustbusters and do what they've done.
If they had any intention of doing that they would be rallying around Bernie and uplifting AOC. Bernie has been telling them this for decades and it is more obvious now than ever.
Democrats are either complicit or so impotent they might as well be.
Didn’t you argue like, yesterday that Bernie and AOC were tarnished and discredited when other people suggested sticking them front and centre might help?
On February 06 2025 05:56 RenSC2 wrote: There is a significant portion of Americans that want people to act lawfully, including the president. We don't celebrate when Trump does illegal things. We would not celebrate if Biden did illegal things, even if it was for things we wanted. We want the president to act legally, no matter what side he's on.
So yes, I'm glad that Biden respected the law, even if I would have liked to see him accomplish more. I think Trump's illegal actions should have been disqualifying (and he should currently be in jail), but not enough people agree with me on that one. Still, we're not an insignificant faction.
Also, the idea that Harris is the frontrunner for 2028 is about the same as saying "Jeb!" was the frontrunner for 2016. Maybe true until the actual campaign starts, but almost guaranteed to change once it does. Maybe "Harris!" will try, but I'm not liking her chances. Someone like AOC would mop the floor with her in a primary and there's a half dozen boring candidates that would do better than Harris as well.
Definition 2a: having or likely to have influence or effect
Based off that definition I’m going to have to disagree. If the only way for your voting bloc to have an influence or effect is by voting your desired candidate in, and your voting bloc lost the vote so resoundingly that the new candidate feels confident in ignoring your concerns, then I fail to see how your voting bloc meets the definition of significant. It was in the past, but it’s not now.
Granted that could change if you increased your voting bloc, but at this point it would require effort, outreach, and political action. But given that the primary draw of said voting bloc is maintaining the status quo so that members don’t have to spend part of their lives dealing with being politically active, that’s probably not going to happen. Until it does, I’d say that voting bloc is indeed insignificant.
It's a fair criticism. I don't have actual numbers. I'm sure a poll would say that a majority would want the president to act legally, but real votes don't line up with that thesis. And yes, the current administration seems to not care at all about legality. So maybe I'm just biased by my own opinion that presidents should act legally and maybe we're actually a really small faction.
Having said that, I believe a lot of people were turned off by Biden's illegal student loan forgiveness plan. His attempt to purchase votes with money that wasn't his to forgive was pretty fucking shady. It was also notoriously stupid as the youth vote is the most fickle vote of all and it also got slapped down by the courts so all he did was tease people with it. I can see a lot of people looking at Biden's illegal action and comparing it to Trump's first term and thinking "6 of one, half a dozen of the other" and staying home or voting based on something else. It's hard to calculate how much impact the "presidents should follow the law" faction actually has and how many chose a 3rd party or simply stayed home because Biden wasn't perfect.
For the record, I compared the small crimes of Biden to the large crimes of Trump and came to an easy conclusion for Biden. However, put Biden against a Republican that actually believes in the law and I might vote Republican for President for the first time in my life. Or if they're both bad enough about breaking the law, I could vote 3rd party (I don't criticize others for this, I only criticize for not voting at all).
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I mean, think about that for a second. They banned working remotely, but will not pay people when they can't get to the office through no fault of their own.
The reason I asked micronesia is not just that he posted it but that as an actual government or government-ish employee, possibly living in DC which is far from Spain, he might have more perspective that I've missed. Otherwise the post seemed to be intimating the conclusion that you jumped to, which I didn't want to put words in his mouth. Problem is if you just look at the internet you can see it's above freezing in DC and raining. I personally believe the government should function even if it's raining, or even sleeting, and if someone can't make it to the government on a day when it's sleeting the government shouldn't go out of their way to accommodate that. They seemed to cite 2022 regulations when posting that.
Maybe don’t switch to getting rid of working remotely on a dime then?
Maybe have some kinda graduated, evidence-based plan for such a thing?
I dunno, call me crazy on this. Maybe you have workers who live fucking aeons away, which worked for both parties when remote work was de rigeur?
I don’t know that, I do know if my previous employer suddenly mandated going back to the office, quite a few would be leaving, and if they couldn’t easily find alternatively employment they’d be selling houses and relocating so as to not commute 3 hours each direction in a day.
The government seemed to run OK on remote work so rather than get rid of that and complain about it not working in the rain, why not just avoid the question entirely?
This policy entirely exists to make conditions worse for public employees, in the hope they fuck off to the private sector so you can make the cuts you want to the public sector. And also to placate segments of the populace who hate the idea of remote working out of base jealousy.
That’s basically it. If it was something else, some earnest attempt to improve efficiency there’d be a big review showing the need for it, that we could all read. There’d be a transitional plan in place.
On February 07 2025 02:04 KT_Elwood wrote: I think the democrats need more lower instincts.
If trump talks about the price of eggs.
Point at the one company that sells eggs in the US. Cal-Maine.
New York CNN — Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the United States, reported revenue doubled and profit surged 718% last quarter because of sharply higher egg prices.
Democrats need to shit on their corporate overlords and convey the message, that market consolidation and extreme wealth is a direct threat to capitalism, democracy and freedom. And then start Quoting GOP-Trustbusters and do what they've done.
If they had any intention of doing that they would be rallying around Bernie and uplifting AOC. Bernie has been telling them this for decades and it is more obvious now than ever.
Democrats are either complicit or so impotent they might as well be.
Didn’t you argue like, yesterday that Bernie and AOC were tarnished and discredited when other people suggested sticking them front and centre might help?
Yes. They did everything Democrats demanded of them and prostrated themselves to the party. They did this instead of sticking with the grassroots supporters that elevated Bernie into an international household name and gave AOC her seat over a deeply entrenched Democrat fundraiser. That lost them a lot of their credibility/gravitas with those grassroots supporters, more each time they did it.
That said, it doesn't change my position that regardless of that, they are still the best the party has. The party's refusal to recognize and run with that is demonstrative of their hopelessness as anything more than a horde of energy vampires for people that could otherwise be doing anything else more helpful to accomplishing their political ambitions and generally help in staving off the rising tide of fascism.
I think tomorrow morning is going to be spicy in DC.
edit: For posterity, it says (due to predicted ice/sleet/etc):
Applies to: Thursday, February 6, 2025 Status: Open With Option for Unscheduled Leave or Unscheduled Telework
What do you mean by this in more detail, what's the spice? Is Thursday's weather supposed to be so bad that everyone is snowed in, but the only options are unpaid leave/remote work?
I mean, think about that for a second. They banned working remotely, but will not pay people when they can't get to the office through no fault of their own.
The reason I asked micronesia is not just that he posted it but that as an actual government or government-ish employee, possibly living in DC which is far from Spain, he might have more perspective that I've missed. Otherwise the post seemed to be intimating the conclusion that you jumped to, which I didn't want to put words in his mouth. Problem is if you just look at the internet you can see it's above freezing in DC and raining. I personally believe the government should function even if it's raining, or even sleeting, and if someone can't make it to the government on a day when it's sleeting the government shouldn't go out of their way to accommodate that. They seemed to cite 2022 regulations when posting that.
DC is a shit show when it snows even one inch, and sleet is worse. the metro [DCs subway system] closes down and the roads are like a scene from Mad Max. it doesn’t make sense to me that you want the government to function when weather is bad but also argue (albeit limitedly so far) for the limitation to telework.
i vividly remember the days before i had my own car, having to uber to work because the metro was closed. it was clear the gent had very little experience driving in the snow. i literally feared for my life. horrible experience. ** not a federal employee
certainly if traveling into the district is sufficiently difficult on a given day, the best way to have the government remain functional is to allow them to telework. the alternative of course is that people simply aren’t working. this isn’t functional.
todays weather doesn’t really change the sleet in the forecast. DC isn’t a city built for bad weather conditions.
to be clear; not working was the status quo prior to covid. they would implement liberal leave policies (freedom to take unscheduled time off,) instead of the current policy. it seems you and i explicitly agree that we prefer a functional government, but it also seem obvious on its face to me teleworking is preferable to taking time off to accomplish that.
i will say the OPM has always (well going back at least to when i moved there over 10 years ago) erred STRONGLY on the side of calling it a liberal leave day. my employer was much less forgiving. our policy was we could have a casual dress day if OPM phoned it in. about 50% of the time they’d send us home early in the name of safety. though my employer was not as deep downtown( read: easier to get to.) of course, as a person who exists for more than just generating profit for my corporate overlord, my company could’ve been more forgiving. there’s a magic space between the two that could be called reasonable.
it doesn’t make sense to me that you want the government to function when weather is bad
They don't. That is the point. They want government to be as shitty as possible, so they can justify reducing it ever further, so nothing stands between them and their Techbro moneyfeudalism where the superrich rule as nobility, and everyone else eats shit.
On February 06 2025 02:33 Sadist wrote: I think the left side of the aisle has had bad slogans for a while when you take into account the average american audience.
Black Lives Matter is not too bad but you have to know who you are speaking too. Black Lives Matter can be interpreted multiple ways , generally by bad faith actors, but it leaves you open to criticism. As mentioned before Black Lives Matter Too addresses nearly all of the bad faith criticism and shows that there is a presumption already that all lives matter, just that black folks deserve equal rights and treatment as human beings.
A terrible slogan was Defund the Police. This is not because the actual ideas behind it were bad but because the average american isnt going to read up on them and "Defund" had already been branded before with Defund Planned Parenthood years prior. Defund Planned Parenthood to the average person meant get rid of it. The distinction between eliminating federal funding or eliminating it all together was irrelevant. People who wanted to end federal funding and those who wanted it gone entirely could align under one tent. It could mean whatever you want it to mean Defund the Police was very easily assumed to mean "get rid of the police" by the average person which sounds like a dumb idea. Of course we need police. Sadly the Defund the Police people didnt want to get rid of them, just reallocate some resources to different departments for different types of calls who were better equipped to handle them but the average american doesnt know this. A better slogan would have been "Reform the Police" because it can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean and then if you win your election you can still do what you want.
Its why Make America Great Again has been such a powerful slogan for people on the right and unengaged voters. It can mean whatever they want it to mean. Of course to people in the know the actual origin of America First or the policy implications behind it are horrifying but to the average american they wont know that. Who doesnt want America to be great? Whatever someone believes makes America great they can attribute to the slogan since it doesnt say anything. Why do you think there are people with shocked Pikachu faces when their friends and family get deported? "I thought you were talking about the other illegals! You know the bad ones!"
We gotta get better at Slogans on the left.
The problem is not that defund the police gets conflated with "get rid of the police." The problem is they don't want to defund the police either. Only 19% of black people want less police presence in their area. You're unfairly blaming the slogan instead of the idea itself. Immediately jumping to "people just don't understand what defund the police means" instead of considering the possibility that they want equal or more police presence shows an out of touchness that the left is going to have to overcome if they want to win elections again. I think this video sums up the conversation of the last couple pages:
Of course the left will be out of touch, if they’re continually misrepresented all the better.
A central pillar of ‘Defund the Police’ was, always was, and still is that there are areas where the police aren’t an optimal or even desirable port of call, and to move funding to those who are.
Police, especially of the American variety shouldn’t be the main point of contact for dealing with homeless folks, those with addiction issues and those with severe mental health problems, to pick 3 areas. But they often are. Indeed, their inability to deal with some of those individuals is not the fault of the police necessarily either. A hammer is not faulty because it’s not especially good as a screwdriver.
The only pillar? No. But the ‘fuck it let’s not police the streets or prosecute petty criminals’ line of thinking did exist sure, but was always a minority line of thinking.
Which you should know if you spent even a modicum of the energy you spend defending people on the right against various charges (sometimes reasonably tbf), on listening to people on the left and giving them a reasonable shake.
The slogan also didn’t help IMO.
Somewhat fair. We all do our share here of framing “the other side” by their most fringe elements. BLM and Defund were about many things but you can’t deny the significant anti-police element that just want cops off the streets. There’s also plenty of prosecutors that ran on, implemented, and were eventually ousted for their soft-on-crime restorative justice policies to keep people out of jail.
If I went to a BLM protest and counted the “All Cops Are Bastards” signs and you went to a MAGA rally and counted the swastikas I think I would outnumber you 100 to 1. But the perception here seems to be MAGA is Nazism and BLM is just some impotent apolitical movement with no agenda outside of getting people to acknowledge black people shouldn’t be murdered. Like I said, it doesn’t pass the sniff test for most Americans and people should consider the possibility that their perceptions are wrong instead of everyone else is just a racist or misogynist.
As I said, a lot of that stuff came later.
I have a very different response to someone saying ‘the legislative response to BLM sucks’ way down the line to ‘I hate BLM cos x’ on like day 2 of the movement. Or I have a different response negative opinions on a BLM rally turning into looting, than I do to like Colin Kapernick doing his thing
The former is my own opinion as I said at the time, last post and ie. I think laissez faire policies on crime are awful policies if they’re not combined with an extension of wider social policy to fix certain problems.
Many things do pass the American sniff test. Donald Trump. Country music, American cheese, James Corden. Doesn’t mean it’s a great barometer.
To me the problem is as simple as this. You being unable to recognise it when you’re surrounded by absolute, obvious racists in a cause, and the failure of others to recognise that not every critique of BLM comes from a place of giant racism.
To me it’s not even really a compromise with you, it’s not a deal, it’s just reality. It’s not a ‘ok agree to disagree, let’s meet in the middle.’ Some of your critiques, valid good-faith ones. But a lot of the invective, even including ones using your valid arguments, came from pretty damn racist people, for racist reasons.
I’m quite good at spotting em.
RE MAGA, it’s not Nazism, on these hallowed pages anyway. I know it’s quite different elsewhere. It is Fascism though, sorry fam. I don’t make the rules there.
By want of comparison, let’s take like BLM organisers and protestors, and IDK people who stuck up a BLM profile pic or something. With MAGA you’ve got people storming the Capitol, through to moderate Republicans.
That’s probably roughly equivalent right?
What difference there is, one is a protest group that rose to prominence around a few issues, one is a base of a political party that has the potential to have an impact in almost any area of life.
I can say at whatever point I choose ‘aight BLM I’m out, I supported the cause to this point but x is too extreme’. I somewhat sever that link there and then.
Unless I, as a hypothetical Republican don’t vote I can’t extricate myself from association in quite the same way.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to Kaepernick since I do think he was penalized for his speech which is something I don’t love. But the guy also compared the NFL draft to a slave auction before begging NFL teams to… let him be a slave again…? Comparing multi-million earning NFL to slaves is the type of jumping the shark that turns people off the message entirely.
Returning to the original digression, the argument was that BLM is an a political movement with no goals outside of getting people to acknowledge Black Lives Matter and therefore people that don’t support it are racists. There are plenty of racists that don’t support BLM but that doesn’t make the first sentence true. You can see opinion polls where the support of BLM changes over time, are people randomly deciding to become more or less racist or is it something else?
Dems can keep calling people racist for not supporting BLM, transphobes for not allowing biologically males to dominate women’s sports, xenophobes for not allowing open borders, etc. but it’s not going to help win any elections.
On February 07 2025 05:46 BlackJack wrote: I’m somewhat sympathetic to Kaepernick since I do think he was penalized for his speech which is something I don’t love. But the guy also compared the NFL draft to a slave auction before begging NFL teams to… let him be a slave again…? Comparing multi-million earning NFL to slaves is the type of jumping the shark that turns people off the message entirely.
Returning to the original digression, the argument was that BLM is an a political movement with no goals outside of getting people to acknowledge Black Lives Matter and therefore people that don’t support it are racists. There are plenty of racists that don’t support BLM but that doesn’t make the first sentence true. You can see opinion polls where the support of BLM changes over time, are people randomly deciding to become more or less racist or is it something else?
Dems can keep calling people racist for not supporting BLM, transphobes for not allowing biologically males to dominate women’s sports, xenophobes for not allowing open borders, etc. but it’s not going to help win any elections.
Bringing it up at all is such a stupid thing in the first place, they shouldn't even bother responding to it. Pass the laws and be done with it. It should be up to the states whether they want to allow trans people to participate in whatever sport they're trying to compete in. The only thing the feds need to do is make sure that those people aren't being erased from existence by bigots. The same thing happened during the civil rights movement. All they want is fair treatment and protection under the law. Sports is a luxury, not a right.