Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 385: Voting Rights Axed

(+) Yeah! (+)

That we are genuinely, utterly, completely fucked.

Are you really gonna try and dunk on progressives when Joe Biden said 2 weeks ago that he trusts Mitch McConnell and considers him a friend?

So youve learned nothing them. The mindset you had in 2016 has not changed and there is nothing that progressives can do or change about their strategy to succeed. Progressives are perfect and its only because of the system that you guys fail.

That just sounds so weirdly familiar. Its almost like thats exactly the mindset progressives have whenever they talk about ANYTHING the Democratic Party is doing.

On one hand, you say "I am on your side, I just disagree with your methods",

he's not even saying that, actually. he just said "you guys [i.e. progressives] fail."

apparently, progressives are the bad guys and liberals like hillary and biden truly make the world better!

apparently, progressives are the bad guys and liberals like hillary and biden truly make the world better!

Yup. You guys got me. Im [...] Hillary

Yup. You guys got me. Im completely defending Hillary and Biden as perfect and without flaws. Youre totally not acting like the kinds of progressive strawmen I would otherwise have to conjure up from the ether.

I mean we've known each other for the better part of two decades, everyone knows who everyone is at this point.

Maybe the thing that you don't realize is that the only things I want the left to learn - to be more hardline, to obstruct like the repubicans do - is probably not the same lessons you are talking about.

The truth, although inconvenient, is out country's circumstances are exactly why keeps so called progressives from winning. Special interests, and their money, exert a huge influence over this country and the common person - trying to merely survive, doesn't have the time to delve through the mire of decades of propaganda. It is far easier to have a pride month than it is to give people a living wage. It is why many powerful people choose that field to do battle. While that is being waged, the rich quietly get richer.

So we get stupid voters. But they aren't stupid through fault of their own really, the system is designed to make them stupid and keep them stupid.

In a world where we are more sheltered it is easier to make excuses for our country, but when you look abroad it is easier to see the shortcomings. Now of course we're like 20/200 or so overall, so that's not BAD or anything, but the rah rah we're the greatest has got some of us wanting to move up the rankings and many too stupid to understand that we're not the bestest.

The goal for centrists (including the Republicans who know what they're doing) is thus to marginally improve life for the people as that moves them away from wanting to make big changes to the system.

Lenin said the worse things are, the better they are for socialism, and he was right. Leftists are perpetually in a no win situation because improvements to the very things they care about - wages, employment, healthcare, safety nets - hurt their political position as people become richer and happier with the existing system. The goal for centrists (including the Republicans who know what they're doing) is thus to improve life for the people as that moves them away from wanting to make big changes to the system.

My view is that 2008-2016 was a once in a multiple generations opportunity for the left. The economy is much stronger now, and the desire for major change much lower. That is a good thing if you value the people's prosperity more than your political movement having power.

I dont know whats worse, the fact that the economy was strong as fuck from 2012-2019 and this is absolute nonsense, or that everything you just said is indistinguishable from Inviso.

perhaps you could post what your point is instead of contentless bullshit.

You had isolationism throughout the 20th century that only ended when the Japanese attacked us directly.

Youll notice I didnt include now in my stretch of time where I said things were good.

So you're saying that the economy is worse now than it was in 2012? If you really think that, I'm sorry, but you're really detached from reality. The key metric here is how hard it is for people to find a job. In 2012 it was really hard. Now it has gotten to the point where not only is almost everyone who wants a job employed doing something, but wages for low-income jobs are soaring. Moreover, the national savings rate since the start of the pandemic has been really high so people have a money cushion and feel comfortable.

And yes, the economy was already very strong in 2019 (although the savings rate hadn't surged yet then). We reached the lowest unemployment rate since 1969.

I don't know why you are arguing with me though. I am saying that different situations call for different strategies. That should be fairly obvious. If you want to use the same strategy for all situations, don't be surprised if you lose almost all the time.

???

Wage Growth compared to inflation is at an all time post minimum wage low. The economy is shit for more people than it is good, and it is mostly carried by the top.

But to be told for six years running "you have to outreach and this and that" it's like, it doesn't really solve the problem. The problem is our education system failing us (among other systems) and as long as that is true then no amount of outreach will matter.

???

The word you're looking for there is "racist" then, not isolationist. Especially if you're de facto accepting Monroe Doctrine, "our half of the globe" framing as compatible with isolationism and not the opposite of it.

But my ??? was more about how something can happen "throughout the 20th century" but also end in 1941

only really getting involved in WWII once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and gave us a reason to give a shit about events outside of our half of the globe

I find it odd to say the US didn't care about the world outside the Americas until Pearl Harbor when Hawaii obviously isn't in the Americas. Did the US just end up owning a bunch of Pacific islands by accident?

In that regard, it was very easy for America to consider an isolationist policy, because we didn't have to worry about encroachment as much from foreign powers, the way Asia and Europe did.

We were the ones doing the encroaching, my guy

I FULLY acknowledge that these moderate voters are infuriating for progressives, because Im considered a far-left radical to my moderate Democrat parents whenever I try to explain basic progressive concepts to them (eg. college tuition nowadays is exponentially higher than what they had to pay in their youth, there is a greater societal pressure to attend college nowadays in order to gain a job, and there are fewer available high-paying jobs because people retire much later).

my country has a vibrant, longstanding tradition of socialism that simply does not exist in the US, and never has. THAT'S the problem. if true socialism can even exist in the country at all, it's going to take a ton more to get there than "being more nice to lib dems."

Oh for fuck's sake. Okay. America specifically intervened in Central and South America, staging coups and installing pet dictators because America was able to do so to maintain their power and authority in the Western Hemisphere. We were able to do this SPECIFICALLY because we did not have any competing regional powers to fend off (either via conflict, or diplomatic alliances), allowing us the ability to run roughshod over our southern neighbors. Happy?

Secondly, you're using "a couple Republicans won really hard" as evidence of America being Conservative, which if you drill down to the actual elections doesn't even make sense. Carter was a good dude who was a terrible politician, and Mondale's campaign was like "what if Carter again but more shitlib".

America is pretty conservative. We have a large population that just doesn't have time to give a shit about anything and a large growing population that cares about conservative social issues rooted mostly in racism and religion(Religion being a disguise for the worst of capitalism in most cases).

Also our system is built to give those people a larger share of the voice than their proportional representation says they should have.

I think the most common type of American is probably Fiscally Liberal, Socially Conservative. Lots and lots of people want better healthcare and also think that gay people are icky. Sadly, the culture wars always matter more than the economic wars or the class wars or the wars wars.

Put simply, people want better things for themself but don't care about anyone else.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by fiscally liberal. A lot of Americans want better benefits but there's still plenty of ingrained financial conservativism from decades of propaganda and government self-sabotage. Put simply, people want better things but without substantially changing the status quo.

I find it odd to say the US didn't care about the world outside the Americas until Pearl Harbor when Hawaii obviously isn't in the Americas. Did the US just end up owning a bunch of Pacific islands by accident?