“A more capable Trump” is basically George W. Bush. Absolutely massive corruption, the staffing of the entire federal government with incompetent political hacks, indefensible tax cuts for rich people, total hack federal judges galore, cruelty to minorities and poor people, zero intellectual curiosity. Trump is more obviously stupid (which is saying something) and more obviously self-interested, but its basically the same story all over again: a totally unqualified failson.
Random dumb question. My mother is watching a show called Border Patrol. Topic is self evident.
They show border agents destroying all kinds of personal equipment. If they don’t find anything does the owner get compensated?
More likely they get a bill.
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I feel like that article is saying a lot of the things @boredsocial has been saying for awhile. I’d like to hear his thoughts, hopefully he joins the discussion.
Overall I’d say the outlook is very depressing though and there are some hard truths in there.
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I read the article. I don’t really disagree with the guys conclusions tbh.
I think the outlook is only depressing if we continue to pretend that what we want to be true is more important than what is. If we adapt to reality our ability to influence it will go up by quite a bit.
Generally speaking I consider the first step in getting literally anything hard done is understanding what already is. It is not sufficient to say that something is bad or wrong, one must also fully understand why it is this way instead of some other way. Only by understanding what’s really going on can you even begin to find a solution to the problem that doesn’t do more harm than good.
This doesn’t have to be some long drawn out thing either and it’s extremely iterative. You just don’t get to say ‘that’s wrong/bad and we should change it’ without being able to go into great detail about causing it and what is causing that thing that is causing it.
I disagree with this. If GOP/FOX has taught us anything over the past few decades, it’s that hammering a simple message over and over again is better than wonky policy papers. Maybe the super- tuned-in and -interested will get around to reading the big papers at some point, but even they are going to be mobilized by a simple message repeated often.
I think the real problem is the path to victory leads to the left sinking to the level of the right. The reason a progressive TV/Radio station never takes off is because nobody wants to listen to someone reading whitepapers in dulcet tones. We need to use fear the same way the right does. Abortion isn’t about a woman’s right to choose; it’s about how thought police are going to plant listening devices in every women’s bathroom in the nation and if you even say the word “abortion” they’re going to come drag you away to a relearning center. We don’t need background checks because it makes perfect sense; we need background checks because the NRA is recruiting the mentally ill to shoot up hacky sack conventions–in fact, they’re actually creating mentally ill people, a la The Manchurian Candidate, to shoot up schools and churches!
Obviously that sucks as a solution, but if you’re not willing to do that, the alternative is a much longer-term program of much more subtle messaging and waiting for boomers to die.
I’m not advocating for wonky policy papers. I’m advocating for better policy papers with less intellectual laziness and that we actually consider solving some of the problems of poor white people (which is great because any program that helps poor anyone is going to disproportionately help minorities and lower inequality) in really significant ways instead of pushing social issues to the front.
The person being interviewed is right that we need to talk about more popular shit. We should be running on the most popular planks in our platform and trying to avoid the rest. Immigration should definitely not be front and center.
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Yea I took it to mean we should just pound healthcare all day long, get the other shit done when we are in power but campaign on healthcare and other Stuff like it.
Yeah pretty much. You find the thing that has the broadest possible support and hammer the fuck out of it. Run on legalizing weed and then actually legalize it. Run on stuff with 80%+ support basically.
I feel like those of us who live in red states are more open to this message. We realize that running on social issues is basically just writing off our whole state. There are, however, plenty of things that are broadly popular nation wide… and the GOP are against a whole bunch of them.
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yea and once you legalize weed or get UHC or something like it, then run on the GOP trying to take it away
The issue is that the most popular planks of a hypothetical Democratic platform aren’t actually on the Donkey agenda.
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It’s what they’ve been doing to us for a generation+. They make us fight on the issues where we are the absolute most controversial instead of from the high ground. We’ve been arguing about abortion for 30 years when we should have been talking about healthcare.
I can’t explain them at all to anyone.
And this is the reality that we have to embrace to advance. This exactly. We need to reform our parties priorities around popular shit that we can actually get done. Then we get the other stuff done in the middle of the night through legislative trickery. We bury it in spending bills. You know, like they do with corporate cheese.
What the hell is “sounding”?
What I am saying is that the party’s elected representatives do not actually want to get the popular shit done. The eDems just as much as the GOP do not want to talk about healthcare. The GOP because it’s a losing issue for them, and the eDems because they and their donors have no interest in UHC or M4A or any other name you want to call it.
A party beholden to capitalists is never going to solve the issues endemic to capitalism.
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If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
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I’m pretty sure I don’t want it. I just want to know what it is. Or actually maybe I’m better off not knowing.
Trade? Seems particularly relevant in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
You probably are but it’s putting a metal rod in your urethra to stretch it out