Bailout / Stimulus Discussion (Hints Missed & Shartz Fired)

The people out of work are the ones who need this money. The people without money are the ones who need money to stay in their homes. Not one of these people is going to think the president saved them. Right now, this story is home, not esoteric. If a person has received $600 from the federal government for these benefits, you can guarantee they are paying attention to every single thing about its return, especially if they are still out of work.

$1 trillion will be more than enough to do both the $600 and the eviction moratorium for well over 4 months. There are a lot of things in that bill that are esoterically related to COVID-19 or not at all. From my understanding, almost all of the places the Dems came down on costs weren’t on removing programs, they were on length of the programs. Those length reductions reduced the package by $1 trillion without changing anything materially if I am to believe the press reports.

Now that they’ve hooked the postal service into a different bill, they can remove this from their next version of the bill which was a huge place the GOP was balking. I know you know this, too. I am telling you, Nancy wants to cause a shutdown if she can get it because shutdowns ALWAYS hurt the GOP. She doesn’t give a s*** about the people anymore than Mitch does, sorry, though she’d like to help if she could (she can and she didn’t).

Let them eat cake!

There’s no reaonsing with you when you say stuff like this. I get it, you hate the electorate and think they are dumb to the point where you infantilize them to them to this level. One thing every American dumb or smart understands is that they have no money. The question they then start asking once inserted to the $600 bureaucracy is, ‘whose fault is it I don’t have money’. Then they see the GOP say, we tried to give them $600 but they wouldn’t take yes for an answer (bad faith lying/framing), but that’s what’s reported. Then the GOP says, we’ll give $300 while the Dems say that’s not enough. The GOP says, ‘we’re getting you $300’. The family says it’s not enough to pay my bills, but I’ll take every dime I can get right now just to survive, when’s it coming? The answer is maybe October and is just 4 weeks. Every day a person doesn’t have money, no matter whether it’s retroactive has an immediate impact on their lives. Turn that into a week, a month, two months, three months. Who gets the blame is the people who said it’s coming, but when it does (if it does), it’s not enough. If these people are taking the time to vote, they’ll know who’s effing them and I hate how some people here treat voters like they have no agency whatsoever in what’s going on in this country.

Let’s go back to the car dealer analogy. You’re now motivated to make the deal at $47k, just give us a little bit of a budge. The dealer then tells you, ‘I’ll sell it to you for $100k’. For a guy who is so good at pointing out bad faith you sure do recommend people do a lot of bad faith things to get the things you want you’ll never get. Negotiation is a blind spot for you. It’s not a zero sum game unless you have all the power and leverage or you’re an a-hole. The goal in a good faith negotiation is to find a place where neither side hates the outcome, not to make both sides love it. That never ever happens. Mnuchin absolutely understands this principle and Meadows absolutely does not understand it. Mnuchin doesn’t talk for the president anymore, Meadows does. This is why we are here.

You might have the most negative worldview of anyone on this site. You should sit back and think about what that means. You are the king of self-fulfilling prophecy of things happening you believe will happen because you believe they will happen. I haven’t seen you have one glass half-full moment in probably close to 3 years and there are lots of them available.

We have never ever ever been in a situation like what we’re in right now and you are still treating it like a known situation. People are pissed and if there’s one thing I know about this world, it’s that when you start effing with people’s money they get angry and activated (see overtime not showing up in paychecks, see bonuses disappearing, see payroll checks bouncing). It is always the GOP effing with your money and financial security. Violence is about to amp up because of this and you’ve already started seeing it very recently. We are on an insane powder keg right now and you still think politicking for a better future that may never come is the way to stop it instead of doing what’s right right now.

The Dems keep saying we have passed the bill and they refuse to negotiate or bring the bill to the floor. The GOP keeps saying the Dems won’t pass anything. One is the truth, one is a lie. You seem to think lying is the best message.

Congress, buddy. Again, stop doing that thing where you continuously ascribe your meaning to my words and tell me that’s what I’m saying or thinking.

ROFL, esoteric impeachments compared to actual human suffering and people dying that you just want to win a negotiation about. Nancy thinks everything you do about every single one of these issues. You are her. You say you want to impeach, but you don’t recommend doing it. You say you care about people, but you’re willing to do a shutdown. You say you’re for a lot of things, but your rhetoric always backs up the side you claim to be advocating against because of what you believe will happen.

And that’s exactly why most politicians are exactly why they are because they believe they will not be held to account by people like you who want them to do the right thing while telling them it will never work. Who cares if it won’t work? Do it. Advocate for it in a positive manner without equivocation about its possibilities of success. That’s how things change. It’s called doing the right thing regardless of political outcome.

Dude, you think you’re negotiating with a person who got themselves into a bad situation. You’re negotiating with a serial killer who is going to kill the person, kill everyone in the room, and themselves because they don’t care. They know they’re caught and there is no way out. This is the GOP. Nancy thinks it’s more important to save the post office than actual people even though she’ll probably never get a Senate vote on that either. There are a lot of people in Congress right now who realize how badly she’s screwing the pooch. They tried to introduce a new smaller bill and she wouldn’t bring it to the floor in the couple of days after she just had to have that ballot bill related to the people who are broke, no longer have that home, and aren’t going to be able to vote possibly because they could be dead by the election. O wellz.

This Lucy football analogy is right up there with the Harlem Globetrotters analogy. You are being the change you want in the world by continuously using the rhetoric you use. You are not helping anyone with it and your thoughts on it (that are the same as the people you hate in leadership in Congress) are actually excessively destructive to the people you claim you want to help.

A message of ‘you will have a home in 6 months even though you are homeless now if you just let us win this negotiation’ is absolutely not a strategy anyone in this country will accept. You cannot relate to the people you are willing to let fail here which is why you have a problem with this ‘logic problem’ as you say. There is no logic in an emergency, or have you still not figured that out yet? Stop thinking about people as numbers, think of them as people. Be different.

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This is completely wrong, and also ignores who they will blame if they aren’t saved. Trump signed the checks and sent letters to everyone who got it via electronic transfer to make sure they knew they were TRUMPBUX!

It’s six months. Aug-Jan. That’s about $250B. There’s another $230B or so in SNAP, retraining, funding for utilities payments for people who are behind, and aid to disabled vets. There’s another $400B and change for $1200 stimulus checks and rebates for businesses. There’s another approx $380B to reimburse healthcare providers who lost revenue and are in danger of going out of business, and to cover COBRA premiums for people laid off during the pandemic, while also funding more testing and tracing. There’s $290B for PPP. There’s like $200B for emergency rental assistance and housing assistance. Then around $25B for the USPS.

So when you say $1T is enough, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I’ll save us a trip on the merry-go-round. You’re going to say we don’t need all of that, just the $600/wk, but the $600/wk starts going out to a lot more people with no PPP. We can spend that money on the PPP side or the unemployment side, but either way it’s going to be spent. So what are you suggesting? Willfully let healthcare providers go out of business, regular people have their utilities shut off, kids not get SNAP?

The fact of the matter is they should put the USPS funding in every must-pass bill because it must pass and it’s essential both to public health (reducing spread due to voting, mail-order medication) and to having a functional democracy and trying to fend off our burgeoning autocracy. You know why the GOP is balking, it’s because they want to tip the scales in the election, and you’re willingly giving them more EV for their authoritarian goals that will lead to immense amounts of suffering for a short-term band aid on a gutshot that’s gushing blood.

You want to feed them for 2.5 months then hope for some good faith from the GOP. I know there is no good faith coming, and if my choice is definitely let them starve in 2.5 months versus trying to save them for good, I’m going to try to save them for good.

Nah, that’s not even the point I’m making. The human brain struggles to comprehend massive numbers and doesn’t appreciate the significant difference between like $100M and $5T. Once numbers get to a certain level, they’re all just unfathomably big to most people. That doesn’t make them dumb, it’s just a limit in how our brains work.

This is mostly just making my point that Dems suck at messaging and the GOP is good at it. But as you lay out, if the GOP says Trump fixed it and the $300 is coming, and it never does, people will know who fucked them. The GOP knows this as well, they’re trying to bluff and hoping the Dems will cave and give them a short-term bill, or share the blame for the $300 not being enough.

Again, this is a political process. The goal is to save the people from as much suffering as possible, and to do so you have to outsmart McConnell and the GOP.

Sure, why not? Let’s go back to the stupid one that makes no sense.

Annnnd yet you blame the Dems.

First of all that’s bullshit, I’ve posted glass half full moments within the last few weeks including one like a day ago. Second of all, you’re currently arguing that the GOP might operate in good faith or we should assume they might or some such nonsense. You’re calling me negative for understanding that Trump and McConnell’s GOP is operating in bad faith. Like this is very basic common sense stuff just from observing the last 12 years of American politics.

Because it’s a motherfucking known situation because we have seen how the GOP operates for the last 12 years. Every single time it’s in their own raw political self-interest. Every. Single. Time.

You need to read your own passage right here a few times. Let me simplify what you said:

  1. The GOP is fucking with people’s money, and they’re starting to figure it out and get really angry.

  2. The Dems should help the GOP alleviate this problem, thus preventing people from getting really angry at the GOP.

  3. The Dems should be willing to do this for a 2.5 month extension, even knowing that the GOP will never give another one.

How stupid can we be about this? I mean for fuck’s sake you just laid it out that you’re advocating for taking 2.5 months of relief in exchange for solving the GOP’s problem, knowing that there will be no further relief coming and we’ll have boosted their chances of winning in November.

Why did the GOP repeal the ACA like 80 times? Politicians talking is just bullshit to most people, it’s talking points and salesmanship. The House passing HEROES/CARES again and again will make headlines again and again, and that news will be read by more trustworthy people than politicians. That’s how you win this messaging war.

You’re goddamn right it is, when it’s backed with sleazy bullshit actions that make it look like the truth. This is not about how you and I interpret it, it’s about how someone who watches 15 minutes of news a night interprets it. Most of this country things Trump solved this with an executive order. Why the fuck wouldn’t they? The news basically said he did, it might not work, Dems say it wont, GOP says it will, the President of the United States says it will. Like tens of millions of people are going to be fucking SHOCKED when it doesn’t. As a result, Trump and the GOP have temporarily staved off political disaster with a massive bullshit bluff. As a result, they’re currently winning the messaging war.

Dems are just talking, they need to take symbolic action over and over again because that’s how you win the messaging war on this.

You were completely wrong then when you though there would be some good faith from the GOP, or that Dems would carry out their constitutional duty, or that the eDems were competent and/or acting in good faith, or some combination of the above. Now you’re completely wrong that there is a > 0% chance of the GOP acting in good faith if we cave. You assume the best of everyone, and accuse others of being negative for assuming that current and future behavior will be similar to past behavior.

No, I don’t like her at all and I constantly disagree with her strategy and rip her. She’s actually handling the negotiations here well, but her messaging is disastrous and we may lose as a result.

False.

Because it will save more lives and more suffering in the long run.

Lol dude what I believe will happen in this situation is blatantly obvious to everyone with a functioning brain who’s been following politics.

Like what you’re saying here is who cares if we capitulate and cause several months, if not years, of suffering to avoid 2.5 months of it now, as long as we try to do the right thing in the short term.

We have a choice. We can fight the serial killer now, knowing there will be a lot of carnage but that we’ll have a good chance to win and stop the carnage for a long time, or we can run away from the serial killer for 2.5 months, let them regroup, stock up on weapons, and then carry out a mass murder the likes of which is incomprehensible. It’s time to fight.

The negotiation is over keeping them from being homeless for way longer.

This is completely false.

We have a new contender for the dumbest thing ever written on this forum. The way you minimize damage in an emergency is through using logic to come up with the best strategy to mitigate disaster.

I’m advocating for the strategy that saves the highest number of people from the most amount of suffering. You’re just trying to avoid the suffering for as long as possible with no regard for the future. The Democratic Party and the Dem-controlled House are not a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, and they’re not frontline healthcare workers doing triage. They are not the people who are supposed to put their head down, ignore the big picture, and focus on doing everything they can in the next minute, hour, day, etc to help people in need. They are literally the people who are supposed to come up with the plans and strategies and policies that will minimize the suffering and help the most people. Their job is to use logic to minimize the amount of suffering.

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You know what, Cuse, you’re right about everything. You win, I will never ever doubt you again.

Cool, now just convince Pelosi to fix the messaging.

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This is a truly pathetic argument, man. There’s so much wrong with what you’re saying on a moral and logical level that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m sorry for not going into depth but I’m exasperated. Remember this?

This is completely unrelated.

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It’s the same logic, but with the death toll multiplied a hundred fold

This isn’t an issue of elitism, or claiming another side is elitist. This isn’t a choice to ignore a problem and let it get worse. This is refusing to accept a half measure that could very likely lead to no additional measure at all, because we recognize that combination as far more lethal than the alternative.

I don’t know how many times it needs to be said, but the GOP doesn’t want an extension to mid November so they can see how things are going and do another one if needed. They know the extension boosts their electoral chances, and they know they don’t want to extend it for any other reasons, so they’re trying to get through the election without getting absolutely obliterated and then they will shut any additional aid down after that.

Caving here is accepting that if Trump wins or the GOP holds the Senate, there will be no additional help coming for like 2 years, if ever. It’s also boosting the odds of both of those electoral outcomes. And for what? To kick the crisis down the road 2.5 months and then fight for the same people for the same thing, but from an even weaker position.

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It IS a choice to ignore a problem and let it get worse. The ONLY path to victory involves both taking the GOP for all they’re worth now (ideally Democrats would have taken the $1T a month ago) AND beating them across the board in November. These people are homicidal maniacs who do not care if you live or die. They’re genuinely banking on being able to sow paranoia, confusion, and fear while blaming China for the virus and the Democrats for inaction. It’s Malthusian nightmare ideology stapled to a fiscal stinginess that knows no moral or ethical bounds or restraint, piloted by some of the dumbest, most selfish, most paranoid, and most psychologically deviant people alive. The GOP extending relief to November is a lot better than getting $0 now and $0 later (the most likely outcome by far, even if Biden wins, and possibly even if Biden wins and Democrats control both chambers of Congress (as I said earlier)).

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First if all, if Biden wins and Dems control both chambers the chances of stimulus and aid once he is sworn in are 100%.

The thing you have to remember is no matter what, there will be no aid from 11/15 to inauguration in late January if Dems cave.

The question is are you willing to give the GOP more electoral equity in exchange for 2.5 months of relief before about 2.25 months without? And if they win any branch, the relief is done for good.

Giving them that electoral equity for a temporary respite is just a massive mistake, and when the good guys make massive mistakes, the people suffer.

In the past in these spots I’ve been adamant that the Dems had to cave because of the immediate human cost. I was wrong. I was a fucking idiot. It’s exactly what they did each time, and it’s led us here - to the worst hostage taking we’ve seen.

Also nobody seems to be considering that if the shit hits the fan on 9/1, the GOP may actually cave before the election. If their polling craters, they’ll be desperate and may actually pass a reasonable extension through late January.

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Notice that, even by your own logic, this is not a likely scenario. Moreover, the chances of relief are far from 100%. Centrist Democrats and Biden especially would be happy to use a vaccine or treatment released in the interim as an excuse to avoid providing relief. An even better scenario for capital, and the most likely outcome, is for Biden to win and Congress to remain divided, allowing him to blame the GOP for obstructing relief while doing nothing. Meanwhile, economically comfortable liberals will cheer for the restoration of sanity and write think-pieces dunking on anti-vaxxers.

But even if they do pass some relief that’s rolled out in… let’s be generous and say February 2021, by that point it will be massively too late–more than 200,000 people will have died in the U.S. alone–and totally inadequate, since the centrists you’re cheerleading for won’t do anything like what Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, AOC, and the few other sane people left recognize is really needed, since they’ll refuse to fund relief by raising taxes. The real price tag here, just to cover the period since the CARES Act money ran out, is closer to the $6T-$7T range. You really think Biden’s willing to raise taxes enough to fund that?

This is just not in touch with reality. Biden will have major pressure to turn the economy around, and even with a vaccine or treatment we’ll need massive amounts of stimulus. This will define his presidency.

Further he’s more centrist then we would like but you’re making him out to be like Paul Ryan or something. That’s absurd.

We’ll be way past 200K dead, and there will be massive economic suffering. But that’s happening regardless, unless the GOP caves. We’re not making it from Nov 15 to Jan 21 or whatever it is with no additional help and avoiding economic carnage.

There are things Biden can do in the transition to try to improve the situation a bit and grease the skids, but the real point is that there will be mass suffering unless the GOP caves. By handling the situation in the best way possible we can have a great likelihood of a Biden administration and sufficient aid going forward. By caving, we take on a huge risk of no help at all after November 15.

I’m not cheerleading for centrists. I voted for Bernie twice, donated to Bernie, and have donated to numerous AOC/Bernie endorsed primary challengers.

Nope, no chance. Dunno what to tell you. We get Trump or Biden, Bernie isn’t walking through that door. Passing a 2.5 month extension of 400-600/wk UI increases the chances of Trump and no additional aid. Holding out for at least an extension through January and making it retroactive remains the only play.

I don’t like it, it sucks, but that’s the reality.

I also don’t think we need a $6-7T bill, not all at once anyway. Maybe if the pandemic continues well into 2021. A big bill with $2K/mo UBI would lead to a quicker recovery, but we know that’s not happening. Something in the $2-4T range will help a lot and is probably what we’ll see on Day 1 of a Biden presidency.

Well, let’s hope you’re right.

I mean if I’m wrong we’re 110% fucked regardless and we are drawing stone dead.

I can’t fathom people who simultaneously argue that we’ve all gotta pump up Biden because trump winning is the end of everything and we’ve got to give trump a huge win right before the election because people are suffering. Is 3 fewer months of admittedly horrendous suffering worth the end of democracy itself?

I think people are working from the flawed assumption that America is still a functional country rather than a failed state with no infrastructure. That fact that people will suffer and die is devastating but it needs to be an international effort to save them. America has no capacity to adequately take care of 40+% of its population. No institutions, infrastructure or concerted political will exists to do it.

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I think the second paragraph is a bit overstated, if only in the context that we are not and should not be the focus of an international relief effort - there are many places in far more dire of a situation. To a large extent, our situation is also self-inflicted as a country due to decades of arrogant apathy, while it feels like it to a lot of people, this didn’t happen overnight.

As for your last sentence, we’ll see. Obama had the will to try to take care of more people, but strategically handled it poorly - especially with the ACA. It took him years to realize he was up against a 100% obstructionist party with zero good faith. Once he did, he went into DGAF Obama mode and was so much more effective.

Much of the establishment in the Democratic Party wants slow incremental change, but we’re also slowly but surely seeing the political will to remove them. Go through a list of House Dems in 2017 who were progressive and good, then 2019 - you’ll see more. Then add the ones who won primaries in slam dunk districts this year, and notice that AOC, Tlaib and Omar didn’t just fend off their highly funded challenges, they crushed. In maybe 2-3 more cycles, there will be a large progressive caucus that has a ton of power within the party.

The problem is we hit this crisis that is like a massive stress test of:

  • Our democracy
  • Our healthcare system
  • Our ability to unify as a society

Those are all weak points in America. Our strong point is our economic might and our wealth, but they’re concentrated at the top and we need a functional democracy to fix them and the other issues.

This is why HR1 and additional measures to safeguard our democracy are essential (I’ll call it HR1+). First of all, we can’t get other stuff done on income inequality, police reform, healthcare, etc without having a functional system.

Second of all, we’re so divided largely because the GOP gets to pump insane rhetoric at working class white people to trick them into voting for billionaires’ financial interests. They can lie about anything and they are not held accountable because our democracy is fraying and has been for a while.

If we make voting easier and turnout goes from 50-60% to 60-70%, and there is no suppression or gerrymandering, suddenly the GOP is getting walked election after election. Georgia goes blue, North Carolina is blue, Texas goes blue, Arizona is strong blue, etc.

In this environment, the GOP is not a viable party as constructed and will have to make contact with reality to become viable again, or fail all together - which will lead to a split in the Democratic Party wherein the establishment becomes the right wing party and the progressives become the left wing party.

At this point we will have two sensible parties - most of us will disagree with the right wing party on things like healthcare, but I would posit that most of us could consider voting for either party based on the integrity of the candidate and the most important issues - especially once healthcare is fixed and we have reformed the criminal justice system.

The crazy thing is, we aren’t that far away from this outcome. It’s just that the variance is insanely high. It’s almost impossible to guess whether the GOP shifts or dissolves in such a scenario, but a Democratic sweep this year that results in HR1+ being passed will lead to that type of outcome within 4-6 years. However, a Trump win is the end of American democracy.

A Biden presidency with a GOP Senate leaves us still battling it out, and the outcome will depend upon the strategies both sides use. Getting HR1+ passed would lead to that outcome, though.

Circling back to the crisis at hand, the tragedy is that the party didn’t stop negotiating with hostage takers and bring this to a head a few years ago - maybe as early as 2009. Like what happens if Obama plays hardball on the ACA and says that the GOP can either drop the filibuster and let it pass with a public option 59-41 or Dems will nuke the filibuster and pass straight up single payer? Not only do we get a big policy win in that scenario, we don’t let the fight drag on until the midterm and there’s time for another major fight. What if we had done HR1+ there? Many of us were already talking about it - maybe on different terms but with the same broad goals. Even if it didn’t play out that way, what if we held the line on past hostage taking? Who knows how it would have played out?

Now the stakes are higher and the collateral damage is higher. But I still believe whole heartedly that refusing to cave does minimize suffering and death.

It’s like we have 8bb left in a cash game freezeout where we can run it twice or do business, and our opponent has moved all in and turned over his hand by mistake - 32o. Our first card is a Q, we don’t even need to look at the second one. It’s obvious what we have to do here. It’s possible that if we call, our opponent will offer to do business and give us like 90% of our equity in the pot so we can turn a profit AND keep our risk of ruin down, or offer to run it twice, but we don’t know until we call. All we do know is that we cannot fold.

Some people here looked at the second card, saw it was a 5 and want to fold because the chart says we call Q7o+. Like, my dudes, we can see their hand and we’re a 2 to 1 favorite and we only have 8bb left. Folding is a catastrophic mistake - even though he’s clearly jamming any two, AKo is only 65% against any two… only 77+ is as good as this Q5o vs 32o matchup. We can’t get blinded out. Sucks that we have 8bb, but that’s because we’ve been overfolding. We can’t keep overfolding.

We can’t play scared. We can be scared, we all are as we should be. I’m horrified by what’s coming, I’m absurdly depressed about the suffering that’s coming, but we have to fight our instincts to just try to push it down the road a few months and hope for a miracle. We have to take our best shot at minimizing suffering and death. This is it.

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I fucking dare the bad poker analogy bot to show his face.

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Cuse is right, the other side is wrong. It isn’t particularly close. Passing a mini-bill now is hugely negative EV both from a suffering perspective and an electoral perspective.

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Maybe you’ve missed it, but there is zero chance of a mini-bill anymore, because they pushed it into an area where that is now impossible (intentionally at a massive as of yet unknown human cost). We are going to get a lot in the CR or there will be practically nothing or something similar but longer than what people were proposing in the skinny bill. The most likely thing to happen is, you guessed it, what was being proposed to go into any kind of skinny bill but for a longer term. If that happens, what will you think of the calculus that led to that then, especially if it makes no difference to anyone’s election prospects?

Cuse is absolutely not right from a moral perspective, but we’ve already all had this dance before. His side is looking at this like an actuary or thinks it’s looking at this like an actuary who cares about the humans, and maybe mosdef should weigh in what he would do in this situation as an actuary. I’d imagine he’s probably more on the Cuse side for this. Bean Counters are notorious for not caring about or ignoring the human cost of various decisions and you’re all looking at this like Bean Counters, to me.

Go find people on the street (not your liberal friends who ‘want’ to sacrifice for a greater good) who are currently being affected by this and tell them your thoughts about it. Pay attention to facial expressions as you lay out why you think not making any kind of deal at the beginning of August was good long term. You live in Oklahoma and should be able to get a really good idea about the real effects of this by talking even to your least well off/most liberal friends if you know any that have been affected by this. We’re in Ivory Tower land (no one that we know of on the site with any immediate terrible effects due to nothing coming) with the way people are treating this here, and I don’t like it at all.

As long as you’re all willing to admit that you care more about the political long term impacts of this over human life because you ‘think’ it will save more lives in the long term without knowing that for even remotely certain, we’re good. You all keep refusing to admit that it is what’s driving you. I’m telling you to think of the moralistic side of this as at least as a major consideration and keep being hit back with EV, don’t give points, they’ll never do this, etc. These are all political calculations that are destroying actual lives (not our conversations obviously, but they are certainly going on on Capitol Hill) and if you’re not weighing any of that extremely seriously there’s a major moral problem going on. Digging in and doubling down exacerbates all of these ideas.

Again, if these calculations are how you feel, great at least that’s being honest. I firmly disagree that the human aspect is driving any of this discussion on the Cuse side because too many words have been written arguing the opposite of the human side of it.

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I can’t emphasize enough that, as a socialist, I legitimately do not care if Biden loses. He deserves to lose, quite frankly. America is already not a democracy, and I don’t just mean that in some technical gotcha “it’s a Republic” sense; I mean that, substantively, its electoral procedures are not genuinely democratic. Three months of unspeakable death and horrendous suffering for the sake of boosting Biden’s electoral chances a bit is not worth it, no. There will be no international effort to help us and you know it. It’s of course not at all shocking to me to see people who (correctly) ridiculed the idea of sacrificing grandma for the stock market now urge sacrificing grandma for Joe 303030330303030303030330

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