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On November 12 2020 20:20 Zambrah wrote:
Theres no political will to do ANYTHING in the US aside from providing corporate welfare and making sure the rich can reap as much as humanly possible without causing a peasant uprising.
Americans need to CREATE the political will, holding our people accountable, holding ourselves accountable to holding politicians accountable. Americans are god awful at it though. Organizing is the only way forward, there is no trusting our politicians to carry forward on our behalf alone, we have to be doing the work and holding their feet to the fire. Its why we cant tolerate people like Joe Manchin imo, sure hes theoretically better than a Republican, but hes also going to fuck over any necessary legislation to get money out of politics, to reform finance, to improve education, to cut down on the military. We need to start primarying these people are letting them know if they want to keep their positions of influence and power they need to start making an effort for the constituents. It certainly won't work all of the time, it'll be a back and forth fight since the Republicans are the worse party and are also the party that is more intelligent and devious with power, its an uphill fight with the Democrats doing their best to make it harder, but I really think we need to primary any and all Democrats who can't commit to some basic pieces of fundamentally necessary policy.
Need a little more nuance than this in your strategy.
If you primary Manchin you lose that seat. Period. He's a conservative Democrat in one of the most Republican states in the country. You could easily argue that his conservatism is representing his constituents and that he is an example of the system working as intended.
The EC makes political strategies exponentially harder for progressives and creates significantly more political inertia in our system.
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I am not a political strategist.
I think the strategy of "promote community organization to educate and communicate with voters to create popularity of policy" is a good enough start, if anyone wanted the juicy details of what that might look like there are real world modern examples via Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Stacey Abrams, etc.
Make the policy popular. Talk to people. Convince them you genuinely want to improve their lives.
I acknowledged that obviously thats not some magic golden ticket, WV may be so conservative that theyll die before accepting help, but given they clearly aren't as strictly opposed to voting for a Democrat I think they're an example of a state that isn't going to have that baggage as opposed to a state like Alabama. Maybe they do just exclusively want Republican policy, maybe they're just conditioned to and haven't had alternatives sold to them. We shouldn't write them off as "eh, conservatives voting for a blue republican, good enough."
EDIT: I also accept this may cause Democrats to lose overall. Thats fine with me. They need the wake up call.
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On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already.
For people like me who don't know a lot about economic theory, they function essentially like a religion for the market. You coming up and saying that a particular theory is debunked means absolutely nothing to me. Some years ago all economists would have told us that austrian economics were "correct", now some will insist they are "debunked"... Those are not really interesting conversations, to me. People favor the economic theories that are consistent with their political goals.
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On November 12 2020 20:34 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 18:17 GreenHorizons wrote:Incrementalism doesn't mean you want something a little bit better than the worst, That is indeed not incrementalism, that's lesser evilism. it means that you don't believe you can fix the country magically, and that progress is a slow process that requires patience and compromises.
No one argues the country can be fixed magically or that it won't take time and compromise. EDIT: Should add that this: + Show Spoiler +On November 12 2020 16:10 TomatoBisque wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. The fact that you consider GH vs. the average user in that thread to be lefties criticizing each other and Democrats holding themselves accountable says a lot more about your understanding of politics in America than it does about the GOP's unwillingness to criticize themselves. For one, GH is almost certainly not registered as a Democrat nor identifies with the party. In fact, the fights he often gets in there are because he is trying to tell people the DNC is just as corrupt, evil, and racist as the Republicans just in more subtle ways or that the neoliberal policies the DNC (people Obama, Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer etc.) support are generally ineffective at best or have the opposite effect intended at worst. And for it he gets talked down to by people who don't want to hold their own people accountable or reconsider their own beliefs. If you turn on the news you see this all the time. Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party. The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate The reason the GOP is such a problem is that the media and politicians that isn't owned by the GOP constantly talks down to these people, calling them deplorable or stupid, and people like the average poster in this thread eats it up and just spits out hate. Our entire political discourse is designed on purpose to divide and pull people into camps so that nothing ever changes. That's not to say that in every right wing lunatic online there's secretly a good, decent person who just needs some love or whatever. Some people are just shitty, and someone with the time to constantly argue on the internet is more likely to have the resources to know better compared to some dude in rural Nebraska who is just bombarded with propaganda. But even then it's hard. I mean, when companies do shitty things to squeeze money out of you while turning around and talking about how they support LGBT and feminism and all that, and then some man with a 3 hour video essay comes along to tell you about how women and minorities are causing this it makes sense: after all, it's right there on the sticker of what these shitty companies are doing. So when a leftist comes along, who you've been conditioned to think of as bad your entire life because you live in America and socialism/communism are the spawn of Satan so you already distrust them, and starts trying to explain well actually, this corporation doesn't really care about these people, they are just using their imagery to make money and actually feminism or what have you is good and will help you (a person who isn't even part of the directly oppressed group), that starts to sound like a load of bullshit. It's really difficult to get people out of that cycle because people are stubborn. Speaking of that rural dude in Nebraska, Nevuk's post about groupthink is fairly spot on here. Socialist policies have huge support among the American populace (including Republicans) as long as they are not linked with the word socialism. This is why things like a $15 minimum wage can be passed in a state that goes for Trump, as well as legalizing medical marijuana in other states that went to him. On the flipside, Dems love the ACA even though it's at least inspired by the work of Conservative thinktanks. When given actual policies and an explanation of how it will improve their lives, people aren't as crablike as some people like to think. The problem is people in threads like these are often pretty far removed from things that actually matter and instead like to navelgaze or jerk off about how the other side is bad. Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 16:01 Artisreal wrote:On November 12 2020 09:30 LegalLord wrote:On November 12 2020 07:16 ChristianS wrote:So maybe my biggest hope for the new admin is ending shit like this: https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1320471320468008961?s=21One of Trump’s biggest expansions of executive power was in completely subjugating non-partisan administrative entities to partisan goals. It basically amounted to selective enforcement of laws passed by Congress in order to change policy without getting a new law passed, but the mechanism was essentially bureaucratic corruption masquerading as bureaucratic incompetence. Example: a series of fields for listing relatives, whether they are alive or deceased, and a blank for their current location. Location was left blank for deceased relatives; visa rejected. For a category of visa that is filled out 90% of the time by legal representation they still found grounds to reject a full 50% of applications for stuff like this. This type of “policy-setting” should be illegal, but I don’t know how you structure that law. For the moment, at least, I hope the Biden administration fixes all of this bullshit. It's not really a big political issue, but certainly a big issue in practice, that standard government functionality had large degrees of fuckery going on during the Trump admin. Just about every federal organization other than the military seemed like it had incompetent fools in charge during the administration, because that's who Trump appointed to lead up those orgs. Education, housing, infrastructure, immigration, the list goes on. I'm sure that Biden's appointees will be incrementally better. Even if he picks canines. ah, yes, incrementalism, my favorite political ideology maybe by 2050 when our planet is destroyed we'll have incrementally moved away from having fossil fuel lobbyists as secretary of energy was an excellent post. I especially liked this part Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party.
The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate I mean, you say that but on the other hand your standard line is that anything less than total revolution isn't enough. I can't remember the last time you suggested anything like incremental improvement or supported it in any way.
I support non-reformist reforms. Which are basically intended to address the underlying issues rather than stabilize the status quo.
+ Show Spoiler +Non-reformist reform, also referred to as abolitionist reform, anti-capitalist reform, revolutionary reform, structural reform and transformative reform, is a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands".
On the other hand, reformist reforms essentially maintain the status quo and do not threaten the existing structure. These have been described as reforms that rationalize or "fine-tune the status quo" by implementing modifications "from the top down", but that fail to address root causes of the issue.
As described by philosopher André Gorz, who coined the term non-reformist reform, non-reformist reforms in a capitalist system are anti-capitalist reforms, or reforms that do not base their validity and their right to exist "on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationale", but rather on human ones. en.wikipedia.org
Those take time and require compromises.
The urgency you notice on my part isn't political as much as it listening to the scientists. The science says we need revolutionary changes in industry, agriculture, transportation, housing, and beyond. Their necessity is rather indisputable imo, what's reasonable to disagree on is what theory/philosophies/goals should guide them/getting them.
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On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already.
Wegandi gets piled on because half of the time he posts nonsense and/or unsupported right wing talking points without the slightest hint of understanding or nuance.
I absolutely believe that its possible to be right wing without explicitly being a troll and actively trying to piss off people who aren't. For some reason most of the right wing posters here aren't able to achieve that. Many of them have a habit of posting weak arguments and refusing to engage with the substance of arguments raised in response to them.
In their less combative, less trolly moods there's been plenty of proper discussion and engagement with right wing posters. Even polite disagreement at times. There's a reason tons of the right wing posters got multiple thread bans and its not political bias on the side of the mods.
On November 12 2020 21:42 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 20:34 iamthedave wrote:On November 12 2020 18:17 GreenHorizons wrote:Incrementalism doesn't mean you want something a little bit better than the worst, That is indeed not incrementalism, that's lesser evilism. it means that you don't believe you can fix the country magically, and that progress is a slow process that requires patience and compromises.
No one argues the country can be fixed magically or that it won't take time and compromise. EDIT: Should add that this: + Show Spoiler +On November 12 2020 16:10 TomatoBisque wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. The fact that you consider GH vs. the average user in that thread to be lefties criticizing each other and Democrats holding themselves accountable says a lot more about your understanding of politics in America than it does about the GOP's unwillingness to criticize themselves. For one, GH is almost certainly not registered as a Democrat nor identifies with the party. In fact, the fights he often gets in there are because he is trying to tell people the DNC is just as corrupt, evil, and racist as the Republicans just in more subtle ways or that the neoliberal policies the DNC (people Obama, Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer etc.) support are generally ineffective at best or have the opposite effect intended at worst. And for it he gets talked down to by people who don't want to hold their own people accountable or reconsider their own beliefs. If you turn on the news you see this all the time. Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party. The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate The reason the GOP is such a problem is that the media and politicians that isn't owned by the GOP constantly talks down to these people, calling them deplorable or stupid, and people like the average poster in this thread eats it up and just spits out hate. Our entire political discourse is designed on purpose to divide and pull people into camps so that nothing ever changes. That's not to say that in every right wing lunatic online there's secretly a good, decent person who just needs some love or whatever. Some people are just shitty, and someone with the time to constantly argue on the internet is more likely to have the resources to know better compared to some dude in rural Nebraska who is just bombarded with propaganda. But even then it's hard. I mean, when companies do shitty things to squeeze money out of you while turning around and talking about how they support LGBT and feminism and all that, and then some man with a 3 hour video essay comes along to tell you about how women and minorities are causing this it makes sense: after all, it's right there on the sticker of what these shitty companies are doing. So when a leftist comes along, who you've been conditioned to think of as bad your entire life because you live in America and socialism/communism are the spawn of Satan so you already distrust them, and starts trying to explain well actually, this corporation doesn't really care about these people, they are just using their imagery to make money and actually feminism or what have you is good and will help you (a person who isn't even part of the directly oppressed group), that starts to sound like a load of bullshit. It's really difficult to get people out of that cycle because people are stubborn. Speaking of that rural dude in Nebraska, Nevuk's post about groupthink is fairly spot on here. Socialist policies have huge support among the American populace (including Republicans) as long as they are not linked with the word socialism. This is why things like a $15 minimum wage can be passed in a state that goes for Trump, as well as legalizing medical marijuana in other states that went to him. On the flipside, Dems love the ACA even though it's at least inspired by the work of Conservative thinktanks. When given actual policies and an explanation of how it will improve their lives, people aren't as crablike as some people like to think. The problem is people in threads like these are often pretty far removed from things that actually matter and instead like to navelgaze or jerk off about how the other side is bad. Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 16:01 Artisreal wrote:On November 12 2020 09:30 LegalLord wrote:On November 12 2020 07:16 ChristianS wrote:So maybe my biggest hope for the new admin is ending shit like this: https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1320471320468008961?s=21One of Trump’s biggest expansions of executive power was in completely subjugating non-partisan administrative entities to partisan goals. It basically amounted to selective enforcement of laws passed by Congress in order to change policy without getting a new law passed, but the mechanism was essentially bureaucratic corruption masquerading as bureaucratic incompetence. Example: a series of fields for listing relatives, whether they are alive or deceased, and a blank for their current location. Location was left blank for deceased relatives; visa rejected. For a category of visa that is filled out 90% of the time by legal representation they still found grounds to reject a full 50% of applications for stuff like this. This type of “policy-setting” should be illegal, but I don’t know how you structure that law. For the moment, at least, I hope the Biden administration fixes all of this bullshit. It's not really a big political issue, but certainly a big issue in practice, that standard government functionality had large degrees of fuckery going on during the Trump admin. Just about every federal organization other than the military seemed like it had incompetent fools in charge during the administration, because that's who Trump appointed to lead up those orgs. Education, housing, infrastructure, immigration, the list goes on. I'm sure that Biden's appointees will be incrementally better. Even if he picks canines. ah, yes, incrementalism, my favorite political ideology maybe by 2050 when our planet is destroyed we'll have incrementally moved away from having fossil fuel lobbyists as secretary of energy was an excellent post. I especially liked this part Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party.
The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate I mean, you say that but on the other hand your standard line is that anything less than total revolution isn't enough. I can't remember the last time you suggested anything like incremental improvement or supported it in any way. I support non-reformist reforms. Which are basically intended to address the underlying issues rather than stabilize the status quo. + Show Spoiler +Non-reformist reform, also referred to as abolitionist reform, anti-capitalist reform, revolutionary reform, structural reform and transformative reform, is a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands".
On the other hand, reformist reforms essentially maintain the status quo and do not threaten the existing structure. These have been described as reforms that rationalize or "fine-tune the status quo" by implementing modifications "from the top down", but that fail to address root causes of the issue.
As described by philosopher André Gorz, who coined the term non-reformist reform, non-reformist reforms in a capitalist system are anti-capitalist reforms, or reforms that do not base their validity and their right to exist "on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationale", but rather on human ones. en.wikipedia.orgThose take time and require compromises. The urgency you notice on my part isn't political as much as it listening to the scientists. The science says we need revolutionary changes in industry, agriculture, transportation, housing, and beyond. Their necessity is rather indisputable imo, what's reasonable to disagree on is what theory/philosophies/goals should guide them/getting them.
All fair, but you must be aware that the will - either public or political - isn't there for those sorts of massive reforms. There's certainly interest in certain sectors, and weirdly there's popular support for many of the ideas in isolation, but the second its attached to an actual person with an actual platform people don't vote for them at the presidential level.
AOC and 'The Group' seem to be the only hope for something like that to work within the Democratic Party, but who knows how long the legs are on that group of progressives? America is a right wing nation.
As a Brit, it's insane listening to Americans talk about Socialism, when the entire political spectrum consists of right wing and righter wing, and every election cycle it becomes even more right wing. I almost wish I could believe it was all some evil top-down conspiracy, but the fact is, these are the beliefs that get the votes.
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On November 12 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already. Wegandi gets piled on because half of the time he posts nonsense and/or unsupported right wing talking points without the slightest hint of understanding or nuance. I absolutely believe that its possible to be right wing without explicitly being a troll and actively trying to piss off people who aren't. For some reason most of the right wing posters here aren't able to achieve that. Many of them have a habit of posting weak arguments and refusing to engage with the substance of arguments raised in response to them. In their less combative, less trolly moods there's been plenty of proper discussion and engagement with right wing posters. Even polite disagreement at times. There's a reason tons of the right wing posters got multiple thread bans and its not political bias on the side of the mods.
It is absolutely possible. The boyfriend of a friend of my wife is active in the Austrian conservative party. I can (and have) talked about politics with him, and it has always been a pleasant experience, despite me being pretty far on the left/green side of the political spectrum. The reason for this is that we could agree on facts, and argue about the interpretation of those facts, or which values politics should prioritize.
The problem is that you really cannot be a supporter of Donald Trump and also have a sane debate. The two are mutually exclusive. You can be a conservative and have a sane debate. But some grounding in facts is necessary for that to work, and Trumpists are too far removed from consensus reality.
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BisuDagger manages to be completely reasonable while being conservative, I believe Flash may also classify himself as a conservative, either way theyre also completely reasonable. Sermokala is also a reasonable conservative imo.
I may disagree with Bisus fiscal conservatism, as an example, but he’s at least open to talking about it in a way that isn’t extremely obtuse, and he doesn’t assert contentious things as facts.
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On November 12 2020 21:14 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already. For people like me who don't know a lot about economic theory, they function essentially like a religion for the market. You coming up and saying that a particular theory is debunked means absolutely nothing to me. Some years ago all economists would have told us that austrian economics were "correct", now some will insist they are "debunked"... Those are not really interesting conversations, to me. People favor the economic theories that are consistent with their political goals.
Austrian economics were never "correct" within economist circles. Like a lot of heterodox economic theories, it is peddled by think tanks with a veneer of academic soundness, absorbed into politics discussions and assumed as serious. One of Krugman's earliest books, Peddling Prosperity (1994) is a great look into how this goes down, specifically with Regan's use of supply side economics and the appearance of academic seriousness given by Laffer and Mundel, but also looks into the phenomenom as a whole criticizing the at-the-time trade policy by the Clinton administration.
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On November 12 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already. Wegandi gets piled on because half of the time he posts nonsense and/or unsupported right wing talking points without the slightest hint of understanding or nuance. I absolutely believe that its possible to be right wing without explicitly being a troll and actively trying to piss off people who aren't. For some reason most of the right wing posters here aren't able to achieve that. Many of them have a habit of posting weak arguments and refusing to engage with the substance of arguments raised in response to them. In their less combative, less trolly moods there's been plenty of proper discussion and engagement with right wing posters. Even polite disagreement at times. There's a reason tons of the right wing posters got multiple thread bans and its not political bias on the side of the mods. On November 12 2020 21:42 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 20:34 iamthedave wrote:On November 12 2020 18:17 GreenHorizons wrote:Incrementalism doesn't mean you want something a little bit better than the worst, That is indeed not incrementalism, that's lesser evilism. it means that you don't believe you can fix the country magically, and that progress is a slow process that requires patience and compromises.
No one argues the country can be fixed magically or that it won't take time and compromise. EDIT: Should add that this: + Show Spoiler +On November 12 2020 16:10 TomatoBisque wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. The fact that you consider GH vs. the average user in that thread to be lefties criticizing each other and Democrats holding themselves accountable says a lot more about your understanding of politics in America than it does about the GOP's unwillingness to criticize themselves. For one, GH is almost certainly not registered as a Democrat nor identifies with the party. In fact, the fights he often gets in there are because he is trying to tell people the DNC is just as corrupt, evil, and racist as the Republicans just in more subtle ways or that the neoliberal policies the DNC (people Obama, Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer etc.) support are generally ineffective at best or have the opposite effect intended at worst. And for it he gets talked down to by people who don't want to hold their own people accountable or reconsider their own beliefs. If you turn on the news you see this all the time. Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party. The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate The reason the GOP is such a problem is that the media and politicians that isn't owned by the GOP constantly talks down to these people, calling them deplorable or stupid, and people like the average poster in this thread eats it up and just spits out hate. Our entire political discourse is designed on purpose to divide and pull people into camps so that nothing ever changes. That's not to say that in every right wing lunatic online there's secretly a good, decent person who just needs some love or whatever. Some people are just shitty, and someone with the time to constantly argue on the internet is more likely to have the resources to know better compared to some dude in rural Nebraska who is just bombarded with propaganda. But even then it's hard. I mean, when companies do shitty things to squeeze money out of you while turning around and talking about how they support LGBT and feminism and all that, and then some man with a 3 hour video essay comes along to tell you about how women and minorities are causing this it makes sense: after all, it's right there on the sticker of what these shitty companies are doing. So when a leftist comes along, who you've been conditioned to think of as bad your entire life because you live in America and socialism/communism are the spawn of Satan so you already distrust them, and starts trying to explain well actually, this corporation doesn't really care about these people, they are just using their imagery to make money and actually feminism or what have you is good and will help you (a person who isn't even part of the directly oppressed group), that starts to sound like a load of bullshit. It's really difficult to get people out of that cycle because people are stubborn. Speaking of that rural dude in Nebraska, Nevuk's post about groupthink is fairly spot on here. Socialist policies have huge support among the American populace (including Republicans) as long as they are not linked with the word socialism. This is why things like a $15 minimum wage can be passed in a state that goes for Trump, as well as legalizing medical marijuana in other states that went to him. On the flipside, Dems love the ACA even though it's at least inspired by the work of Conservative thinktanks. When given actual policies and an explanation of how it will improve their lives, people aren't as crablike as some people like to think. The problem is people in threads like these are often pretty far removed from things that actually matter and instead like to navelgaze or jerk off about how the other side is bad. Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 16:01 Artisreal wrote:On November 12 2020 09:30 LegalLord wrote:On November 12 2020 07:16 ChristianS wrote:So maybe my biggest hope for the new admin is ending shit like this: https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1320471320468008961?s=21One of Trump’s biggest expansions of executive power was in completely subjugating non-partisan administrative entities to partisan goals. It basically amounted to selective enforcement of laws passed by Congress in order to change policy without getting a new law passed, but the mechanism was essentially bureaucratic corruption masquerading as bureaucratic incompetence. Example: a series of fields for listing relatives, whether they are alive or deceased, and a blank for their current location. Location was left blank for deceased relatives; visa rejected. For a category of visa that is filled out 90% of the time by legal representation they still found grounds to reject a full 50% of applications for stuff like this. This type of “policy-setting” should be illegal, but I don’t know how you structure that law. For the moment, at least, I hope the Biden administration fixes all of this bullshit. It's not really a big political issue, but certainly a big issue in practice, that standard government functionality had large degrees of fuckery going on during the Trump admin. Just about every federal organization other than the military seemed like it had incompetent fools in charge during the administration, because that's who Trump appointed to lead up those orgs. Education, housing, infrastructure, immigration, the list goes on. I'm sure that Biden's appointees will be incrementally better. Even if he picks canines. ah, yes, incrementalism, my favorite political ideology maybe by 2050 when our planet is destroyed we'll have incrementally moved away from having fossil fuel lobbyists as secretary of energy was an excellent post. I especially liked this part Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party.
The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate I mean, you say that but on the other hand your standard line is that anything less than total revolution isn't enough. I can't remember the last time you suggested anything like incremental improvement or supported it in any way. I support non-reformist reforms. Which are basically intended to address the underlying issues rather than stabilize the status quo. + Show Spoiler +Non-reformist reform, also referred to as abolitionist reform, anti-capitalist reform, revolutionary reform, structural reform and transformative reform, is a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands".
On the other hand, reformist reforms essentially maintain the status quo and do not threaten the existing structure. These have been described as reforms that rationalize or "fine-tune the status quo" by implementing modifications "from the top down", but that fail to address root causes of the issue.
As described by philosopher André Gorz, who coined the term non-reformist reform, non-reformist reforms in a capitalist system are anti-capitalist reforms, or reforms that do not base their validity and their right to exist "on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationale", but rather on human ones. en.wikipedia.orgThose take time and require compromises. The urgency you notice on my part isn't political as much as it listening to the scientists. The science says we need revolutionary changes in industry, agriculture, transportation, housing, and beyond. Their necessity is rather indisputable imo, what's reasonable to disagree on is what theory/philosophies/goals should guide them/getting them. All fair, but you must be aware that the will - either public or political - isn't there for those sorts of massive reforms. There's certainly interest in certain sectors, and weirdly there's popular support for many of the ideas in isolation, but the second its attached to an actual person with an actual platform people don't vote for them at the presidential level. AOC and 'The Group' seem to be the only hope for something like that to work within the Democratic Party, but who knows how long the legs are on that group of progressives? America is a right wing nation. As a Brit, it's insane listening to Americans talk about Socialism, when the entire political spectrum consists of right wing and righter wing, and every election cycle it becomes even more right wing. I almost wish I could believe it was all some evil top-down conspiracy, but the fact is, these are the beliefs that get the votes.
All fair, but you must be aware that the will - either public or political - isn't there for those sorts of massive reforms. Acutely so. It's one reason I'm so fond of Freire. His contributions deal quite specifically with how to go about changing that through the most frequently suggested and universally agreed on sphere of influence to do so, education.
Another reason is that it isn't a top down solution we need politicians to sign into law. There is certainly legislation that would aid in its goals(non-reformist reforms), but fundamentally it is a bottom up participatory system.
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On November 12 2020 21:55 Sbrubbles wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 21:14 Nebuchad wrote:On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already. For people like me who don't know a lot about economic theory, they function essentially like a religion for the market. You coming up and saying that a particular theory is debunked means absolutely nothing to me. Some years ago all economists would have told us that austrian economics were "correct", now some will insist they are "debunked"... Those are not really interesting conversations, to me. People favor the economic theories that are consistent with their political goals. Austrian economics were never "correct" within economist circles. Like a lot of heterodox economic theories, it is peddled by think tanks with a veneer of academic soundness, absorbed into politics discussions and assumed as serious. One of Krugman's earliest books, Peddling Prosperity (1994) is a great look into how this goes down, specifically with Regan's use of supply side economics and the appearance of academic seriousness given by Laffer and Mundel, but also looks into the phenomenom as a whole criticizing the at-the-time trade policy by the Clinton administration.
Okay, excellent, thanks for the correction but I wasn't lying I don't care that much 
"Is the bible pro-abortion or not?" Here is a theory, here is another theory. Ultimately absolutely nobody is ever going to go "I wanted to be pro-choice but this excellent argument about the bible being pro-life caused me to reevaluate my values and become pro-life", that isn't a real thing.
Similarly there's nobody out there who really likes the idea of reducing income inequality but after an extensive study of all of the economic theories they unfortunately have to conclude that rightwing economics are correct.
Mostly people just start from their values and then favor the stuff that is appropriate. The arguments still exist, they just don't matter that much outside of the field.
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On November 12 2020 22:17 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 21:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2020 21:14 Nebuchad wrote:On November 12 2020 15:19 RvB wrote:On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. This thread is incredibly circle jerky really. It's not as bad as something like /r politics but it's still pretty bad. I've seen people here argue for MMT and the labour theory of value and nobody bats an eye. Wegandi posts some Austrian economics and half the thread piles on him. It's true that right posters in the thread don't call eachother out much but that's both because we're few in number and when they post they get piled on already. For people like me who don't know a lot about economic theory, they function essentially like a religion for the market. You coming up and saying that a particular theory is debunked means absolutely nothing to me. Some years ago all economists would have told us that austrian economics were "correct", now some will insist they are "debunked"... Those are not really interesting conversations, to me. People favor the economic theories that are consistent with their political goals. Austrian economics were never "correct" within economist circles. Like a lot of heterodox economic theories, it is peddled by think tanks with a veneer of academic soundness, absorbed into politics discussions and assumed as serious. One of Krugman's earliest books, Peddling Prosperity (1994) is a great look into how this goes down, specifically with Regan's use of supply side economics and the appearance of academic seriousness given by Laffer and Mundel, but also looks into the phenomenom as a whole criticizing the at-the-time trade policy by the Clinton administration. Okay, excellent, thanks for the correction but I wasn't lying I don't care that much "Is the bible pro-abortion or not?" Here is a theory, here is another theory. Ultimately absolutely nobody is ever going to go "I wanted to be pro-choice but this excellent argument about the bible being pro-life caused me to reevaluate my values and become pro-life", that isn't a real thing. Similarly there's nobody out there who really likes the idea of reducing income inequality but after an extensive study of all of the economic theories they unfortunately have to conclude that rightwing economics are correct. Mostly people just start from their values and then favor the stuff that is appropriate. The arguments still exist, they just don't matter that much outside of the field.
You might be on to something. You can, for example, point a right-wing horse at serious academic empirical evaluations of the effect of changes of minimum wage on employment that question conventional wisdom or at least show that the question has nuance and depends on local circumstances, but you can't make him drink.
Or something. Messy metaphor and all that.
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On November 12 2020 21:01 Zambrah wrote:
I am not a political strategist.
I think the strategy of "promote community organization to educate and communicate with voters to create popularity of policy" is a good enough start, if anyone wanted the juicy details of what that might look like there are real world modern examples via Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Stacey Abrams, etc.
Make the policy popular. Talk to people. Convince them you genuinely want to improve their lives.
I acknowledged that obviously thats not some magic golden ticket, WV may be so conservative that theyll die before accepting help, but given they clearly aren't as strictly opposed to voting for a Democrat I think they're an example of a state that isn't going to have that baggage as opposed to a state like Alabama. Maybe they do just exclusively want Republican policy, maybe they're just conditioned to and haven't had alternatives sold to them. We shouldn't write them off as "eh, conservatives voting for a blue republican, good enough."
EDIT: I also accept this may cause Democrats to lose overall. Thats fine with me. They need the wake up call.
I don't think political capital should be spent on trying to sell progressive policies. I think the electorate, as it is currently divided by the EC and electoral system, simply isn't amenable to a progressive message. Old people are too scared of "socialism", Republicans are too good at fear mongering, and that huge chunk of the country that is perfectly comfortable with everything awful about Trump has way too much influence relative to their actual numbers.
I think that the only long-term winning strategy is to try and change the system. Get rid of the EC and FPTP systems, switch the House to each state delegation being proportional representation based on a statewide vote total, add D.C. and PR as states, etc.
Any change within the current system will 1) be absurdly difficult, 2) will require shitty compromise to get through Congress, and 3) will be extremely vulnerable to being undone by a future Republican Congress.
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On November 11 2020 12:10 GoTuNk! wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2020 11:36 Nevuk wrote:The person whose testimony was used as the justification for the latest fishing expedition from Barr has recanted under oath technically, penalty of perjury, admitting that they made it all up. Guy is still saying he didn't recant on youtube, even after signing an affadavit that he did (which was given to congress)... grifters gonna grift, I guess. Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud before results are certified, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.
But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tweeted late Tuesday that the “whistleblower completely RECANTED.”
[...]
The Postal Service inspector general’s office informed members of Congress in a briefing on Tuesday that Hopkins had recanted his allegations, according to a congressional aide. The investigators first interviewed Hopkins on Friday, the aide said.
Hopkins’s allegations, without his name, were first aired last week by Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is bias and corruption in the mainstream media. Hopkins agreed to attach his name to the allegations late last week. He was instantly celebrated by Trump supporters.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Saturday hailed Hopkins as “an American hero” on Twitter. A GoFundMe page created under Hopkins’s name had raised more than $136,000 by Tuesday evening, with donors praising him as a patriot and whistleblower. The fundraising page was removed by GoFundMe after this story was published Tuesday, a spokesman for the platform said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-fabricated-ballot-pennsylvania/2020/11/10/99269a7c-2364-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html https://saraacarter.com/usps-whistleblower-demands-washington-post-retract-story-saying-he-recanted-allegations-of-voter-fraud/Correction: WAPO claims he recanted. That person doesn't. If he did we will see the written recant, as we have the original affidavit.
Update on this. Not only did he recant, the people pushing his claim (project veritas) PENNED HIS COMPLAINT, according to the video that project veritas released themselves.
Original WaPo Article:
Hopkins also repeatedly expressed regret for signing the initial affidavit because it overstated what he knew and witnessed, according to the recording.
He told agents the affidavit was written by Project Veritas.
He said he was not fully aware of its contents because he was in “so much shock I wasn’t paying that much attention to what they were telling me.”
A spokesman for the group said in a statement emailed to The Post that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions.”
It is not clear if Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is liberal bias and corruption in the mainstream media and government, altered or edited the recording before releasing it Wednesday afternoon. The group, which had described the interview as a three-hour interrogation, said in the statement that a portion of the interview was not recorded.
[...]
Hopkins told investigators that he collected one ballot on his route on Nov. 5, and secretly wrote the date on the back of it in case a supervisor backdated the appropriate postmark. He said he had no direct knowledge of any directive to backdate ballots, nor did he witness anyone manipulate a ballot.
Hopkins insisted that he made the allegations in good faith because he believed a federal investigation into voter fraud was warranted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-hopkins-ballot-pennsylvania/2020/11/11/c9b70eda-2470-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html
Daily Beast Writeup , in case of paywall+ Show Spoiler +A postal worker whose allegation of ballot-tampering was at the center of Republican efforts to challenge the outcome of the presidential election has admitted to investigators that Project Veritas actually penned the affidavit laying out his claims. A two-hour audio recording
released by Project Veritas on Wednesday shows Richard Hopkins being interviewed by federal investigators over his claim, first publicized by Project Veritas, that he had overheard a postmaster instructing workers in Erie, Pennsylvania, to backdate mail-in votes to meet the Election Day deadline. The audio had been touted by the conservative group as proof that Hopkins was manipulated by investigators but still stood by his allegations, despite House Democrats saying earlier this week that the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General told them Hopkins admitted to fabricating the claims.
But instead, it captured him doing the very opposite, according to The Washington Post. When he was asked if he wanted to stick with his claim about ballot-tampering, Hopkins said, “At this point? No.” He said his allegation had stemmed from “assumptions” he made after overhearing tidbits of staffers’ conversations in the mail facility. Hopkins told investigators not only that his affidavit was written by Project Veritas but that he wasn’t even entirely sure of what the group had included in it because he was in “so much shock I wasn’t paying that much attention to what they were telling me.” A spokesman for Project Veritas acknowledged having a hand in the affidavit but insisted that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions,” according to the Post.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/usps-staffer-richard-hopkins-told-agents-project-veritas-penned-his-ballot-tampering-claim?ref=home
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as always anything and everything touched by Project Veritas is dogshit.
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On November 12 2020 20:34 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 18:17 GreenHorizons wrote:Incrementalism doesn't mean you want something a little bit better than the worst, That is indeed not incrementalism, that's lesser evilism. it means that you don't believe you can fix the country magically, and that progress is a slow process that requires patience and compromises.
No one argues the country can be fixed magically or that it won't take time and compromise. EDIT: Should add that this: + Show Spoiler +On November 12 2020 16:10 TomatoBisque wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 09:47 TheYango wrote:
The difference is that Democrats are constantly criticizing other Democrats for their bullshit. Democrats don't need Republicans to point out how crazy their crazies are because they're already doing it. Republicans are far more into "tacit compliance" than Democrats are.
You can honestly even see it in the USPMT, where the left-leaning posters are constantly arguing amongst themselves, while when a random right-wing loon pops into the thread, the conservative posters all silently let it slide rather than calling them out. You're responding to a post where GH criticizes Republicans while forgetting the fact that GH criticizes Democrats equally often.
Both sides are accountable for some crazy shit, but they don't hold themselves accountable to an equal degree. The fact that you consider GH vs. the average user in that thread to be lefties criticizing each other and Democrats holding themselves accountable says a lot more about your understanding of politics in America than it does about the GOP's unwillingness to criticize themselves. For one, GH is almost certainly not registered as a Democrat nor identifies with the party. In fact, the fights he often gets in there are because he is trying to tell people the DNC is just as corrupt, evil, and racist as the Republicans just in more subtle ways or that the neoliberal policies the DNC (people Obama, Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer etc.) support are generally ineffective at best or have the opposite effect intended at worst. And for it he gets talked down to by people who don't want to hold their own people accountable or reconsider their own beliefs. If you turn on the news you see this all the time. Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party. The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate The reason the GOP is such a problem is that the media and politicians that isn't owned by the GOP constantly talks down to these people, calling them deplorable or stupid, and people like the average poster in this thread eats it up and just spits out hate. Our entire political discourse is designed on purpose to divide and pull people into camps so that nothing ever changes. That's not to say that in every right wing lunatic online there's secretly a good, decent person who just needs some love or whatever. Some people are just shitty, and someone with the time to constantly argue on the internet is more likely to have the resources to know better compared to some dude in rural Nebraska who is just bombarded with propaganda. But even then it's hard. I mean, when companies do shitty things to squeeze money out of you while turning around and talking about how they support LGBT and feminism and all that, and then some man with a 3 hour video essay comes along to tell you about how women and minorities are causing this it makes sense: after all, it's right there on the sticker of what these shitty companies are doing. So when a leftist comes along, who you've been conditioned to think of as bad your entire life because you live in America and socialism/communism are the spawn of Satan so you already distrust them, and starts trying to explain well actually, this corporation doesn't really care about these people, they are just using their imagery to make money and actually feminism or what have you is good and will help you (a person who isn't even part of the directly oppressed group), that starts to sound like a load of bullshit. It's really difficult to get people out of that cycle because people are stubborn. Speaking of that rural dude in Nebraska, Nevuk's post about groupthink is fairly spot on here. Socialist policies have huge support among the American populace (including Republicans) as long as they are not linked with the word socialism. This is why things like a $15 minimum wage can be passed in a state that goes for Trump, as well as legalizing medical marijuana in other states that went to him. On the flipside, Dems love the ACA even though it's at least inspired by the work of Conservative thinktanks. When given actual policies and an explanation of how it will improve their lives, people aren't as crablike as some people like to think. The problem is people in threads like these are often pretty far removed from things that actually matter and instead like to navelgaze or jerk off about how the other side is bad. Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 16:01 Artisreal wrote:On November 12 2020 09:30 LegalLord wrote:On November 12 2020 07:16 ChristianS wrote:So maybe my biggest hope for the new admin is ending shit like this: https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1320471320468008961?s=21One of Trump’s biggest expansions of executive power was in completely subjugating non-partisan administrative entities to partisan goals. It basically amounted to selective enforcement of laws passed by Congress in order to change policy without getting a new law passed, but the mechanism was essentially bureaucratic corruption masquerading as bureaucratic incompetence. Example: a series of fields for listing relatives, whether they are alive or deceased, and a blank for their current location. Location was left blank for deceased relatives; visa rejected. For a category of visa that is filled out 90% of the time by legal representation they still found grounds to reject a full 50% of applications for stuff like this. This type of “policy-setting” should be illegal, but I don’t know how you structure that law. For the moment, at least, I hope the Biden administration fixes all of this bullshit. It's not really a big political issue, but certainly a big issue in practice, that standard government functionality had large degrees of fuckery going on during the Trump admin. Just about every federal organization other than the military seemed like it had incompetent fools in charge during the administration, because that's who Trump appointed to lead up those orgs. Education, housing, infrastructure, immigration, the list goes on. I'm sure that Biden's appointees will be incrementally better. Even if he picks canines. ah, yes, incrementalism, my favorite political ideology maybe by 2050 when our planet is destroyed we'll have incrementally moved away from having fossil fuel lobbyists as secretary of energy was an excellent post. I especially liked this part Neoliberal pundits and politicians constantly downtalk progressives/leftists as crazy, divisive radicals. You can find dozens of examples of this in wake of the election, where the disastrous downballot results are somehow the fault of the evil socialists and people who want a Green New Deal. But most people here don't care about that, because they're unwilling to criticize their own party.
The reality is the DNC is a center-right wing party that exists to quash actual leftwing movements by co-opting their language and converting it into meaningless platitudes and feelgood speeches so that the wealthy people voting for them can feel like they're the resistance, fighting for something against the cartoonishly evil GOP without having to worry about all the injustices that continue to exist in the world that they perpetuate I mean, you say that but on the other hand your standard line is that anything less than total revolution isn't enough. I can't remember the last time you suggested anything like incremental improvement or supported it in any way.
If it is truly incremental improvement, that might be true. But too often the major party politicians (and their least self-aware supporters, often interested more so in comfort than improvement) call it incrementalism when they make half-hearted steps forward that have little staying power and indeed are quickly reversed by more spirited opposition from the other side. When the reality of alleged incrementalism is really lesser evilism, you have to push for more - nothing less than guillotines and seizure of private property. Some patience and some compromise can come in on the specific scope of that.
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On November 12 2020 23:36 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2020 12:10 GoTuNk! wrote:On November 11 2020 11:36 Nevuk wrote:The person whose testimony was used as the justification for the latest fishing expedition from Barr has recanted under oath technically, penalty of perjury, admitting that they made it all up. Guy is still saying he didn't recant on youtube, even after signing an affadavit that he did (which was given to congress)... grifters gonna grift, I guess. Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud before results are certified, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.
But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tweeted late Tuesday that the “whistleblower completely RECANTED.”
[...]
The Postal Service inspector general’s office informed members of Congress in a briefing on Tuesday that Hopkins had recanted his allegations, according to a congressional aide. The investigators first interviewed Hopkins on Friday, the aide said.
Hopkins’s allegations, without his name, were first aired last week by Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is bias and corruption in the mainstream media. Hopkins agreed to attach his name to the allegations late last week. He was instantly celebrated by Trump supporters.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Saturday hailed Hopkins as “an American hero” on Twitter. A GoFundMe page created under Hopkins’s name had raised more than $136,000 by Tuesday evening, with donors praising him as a patriot and whistleblower. The fundraising page was removed by GoFundMe after this story was published Tuesday, a spokesman for the platform said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-fabricated-ballot-pennsylvania/2020/11/10/99269a7c-2364-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html https://saraacarter.com/usps-whistleblower-demands-washington-post-retract-story-saying-he-recanted-allegations-of-voter-fraud/Correction: WAPO claims he recanted. That person doesn't. If he did we will see the written recant, as we have the original affidavit. Update on this. Not only did he recant, the people pushing his claim (project veritas) PENNED HIS COMPLAINT, according to the video that project veritas released themselves. Original WaPo Article: Show nested quote +Hopkins also repeatedly expressed regret for signing the initial affidavit because it overstated what he knew and witnessed, according to the recording.
He told agents the affidavit was written by Project Veritas.
He said he was not fully aware of its contents because he was in “so much shock I wasn’t paying that much attention to what they were telling me.”
A spokesman for the group said in a statement emailed to The Post that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions.”
It is not clear if Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is liberal bias and corruption in the mainstream media and government, altered or edited the recording before releasing it Wednesday afternoon. The group, which had described the interview as a three-hour interrogation, said in the statement that a portion of the interview was not recorded.
[...]
Hopkins told investigators that he collected one ballot on his route on Nov. 5, and secretly wrote the date on the back of it in case a supervisor backdated the appropriate postmark. He said he had no direct knowledge of any directive to backdate ballots, nor did he witness anyone manipulate a ballot.
Hopkins insisted that he made the allegations in good faith because he believed a federal investigation into voter fraud was warranted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-hopkins-ballot-pennsylvania/2020/11/11/c9b70eda-2470-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.htmlDaily Beast Writeup , in case of paywall + Show Spoiler +A postal worker whose allegation of ballot-tampering was at the center of Republican efforts to challenge the outcome of the presidential election has admitted to investigators that Project Veritas actually penned the affidavit laying out his claims. A two-hour audio recording
released by Project Veritas on Wednesday shows Richard Hopkins being interviewed by federal investigators over his claim, first publicized by Project Veritas, that he had overheard a postmaster instructing workers in Erie, Pennsylvania, to backdate mail-in votes to meet the Election Day deadline. The audio had been touted by the conservative group as proof that Hopkins was manipulated by investigators but still stood by his allegations, despite House Democrats saying earlier this week that the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General told them Hopkins admitted to fabricating the claims.
But instead, it captured him doing the very opposite, according to The Washington Post. When he was asked if he wanted to stick with his claim about ballot-tampering, Hopkins said, “At this point? No.” He said his allegation had stemmed from “assumptions” he made after overhearing tidbits of staffers’ conversations in the mail facility. Hopkins told investigators not only that his affidavit was written by Project Veritas but that he wasn’t even entirely sure of what the group had included in it because he was in “so much shock I wasn’t paying that much attention to what they were telling me.” A spokesman for Project Veritas acknowledged having a hand in the affidavit but insisted that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions,” according to the Post.
When will people learn that when project veritas says something, it is almost certain that the exact opposite is true?
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Thank fucking god this was a veritas thing. I was actually worried for a bit there.
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On November 12 2020 22:56 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2020 21:01 Zambrah wrote:
I am not a political strategist.
I think the strategy of "promote community organization to educate and communicate with voters to create popularity of policy" is a good enough start, if anyone wanted the juicy details of what that might look like there are real world modern examples via Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Stacey Abrams, etc.
Make the policy popular. Talk to people. Convince them you genuinely want to improve their lives.
I acknowledged that obviously thats not some magic golden ticket, WV may be so conservative that theyll die before accepting help, but given they clearly aren't as strictly opposed to voting for a Democrat I think they're an example of a state that isn't going to have that baggage as opposed to a state like Alabama. Maybe they do just exclusively want Republican policy, maybe they're just conditioned to and haven't had alternatives sold to them. We shouldn't write them off as "eh, conservatives voting for a blue republican, good enough."
EDIT: I also accept this may cause Democrats to lose overall. Thats fine with me. They need the wake up call. I don't think political capital should be spent on trying to sell progressive policies. I think the electorate, as it is currently divided by the EC and electoral system, simply isn't amenable to a progressive message. Old people are too scared of "socialism", Republicans are too good at fear mongering, and that huge chunk of the country that is perfectly comfortable with everything awful about Trump has way too much influence relative to their actual numbers. I think that the only long-term winning strategy is to try and change the system. Get rid of the EC and FPTP systems, switch the House to each state delegation being proportional representation based on a statewide vote total, add D.C. and PR as states, etc. Any change within the current system will 1) be absurdly difficult, 2) will require shitty compromise to get through Congress, and 3) will be extremely vulnerable to being undone by a future Republican Congress.
Giving up on the electorate is so fatalistic. We can build political capital by reaching out with grassroots organizations, political capital isnt some fixed virtual currency that you spend and then its gone. There is no reason to presume that Americans who find progressive policies popular are just some impossible hurdle to their implementation. They already generally support the policy, ie Florida passing the 15 dollar minimum wage. Republicans arent just good at fearmongering, Democrats are shit at handling it. They let Republicans dominate and frame their positions for them, Democrats should be out there talking to their constituents and dispelling Republican myths and lies, but instead they dick around throwing out useless TV ads and accomplishing nothing.
Change within this system will be very difficult yes, but I disagree that it requires shitty compromise, it only requires shitty compromise because Democrats MAKE THESE SHITTY COMPROMISES. Republicans dont have this issue, Republicans win, exert power, and dont compromise. This is not a de facto aspect of our political system this is a huge flaw with how Democrats handle Republicans. Democrats need to get the house, Senate, and presidency, stack the courts, and then they add PR and DC as states helping cement their power and preventing an easy undo from a Republican congress, from there we'll see a huge shift in politics in the US as the Republicans previous strategy dies out and they have to readjust to a landscape without easy Senate dominance. If Democrats have the balls to wield power we could reshape our political system to make it fairer, less money owned, less Republican bad faith obstructed. Or I guess we can excuse Democrats typical ineffectuality as due to abstract political capital that only ever seems to apply as an excuse to let Democrats routinely fail and then shrug it off without accepting real responsibility.
If we give up on the electorate than anything you want to get done wont work anyways, you might as well give up and join a proper headchopping revolution because you'll see no real change if you don't think the electorate will change.
We need to talk to people, inform them as best as possible, make sure that the Democrats who have garnered a reputation as Ivory Tower elites understand that progressive challengers are coming to drag them out of their tower kicking and screaming if need be if they don't shape the fuck up. Wield power or we'll start electing people that will wield power, be them Republican or Progressive.
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Assuming DC and PR do become states one day, and each get 2 senators, making the total 104, would those additional 4 senators likely be Democrats? Republicans? Split?
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EPT
