Just because he calls politicians scumbags doesn’t mean he expects any better.
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That’s part of my confusion with the tone around here. We’re currently doing better than I thought we would be doing not super long ago. And I am objectively massively more optimistic than 90% of the population of this place. Which is weird.
I’m not an optimistic person by any stretch, and am almost always hands down the most negative person in almost any room I’m in… but many of the people here make me look like Shirley Temple dancing on the good ship lollypop.
There is no way to spin the month of January 2021 that isn’t a clear win for the good guys. If only because it’s been a complete disaster for the bad guys. Try to find some joy in that and hope that next month will keep the trend going.
Something something shitlib
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No one here really knows what the emotional state of the other posters is. I complain about Obama/Biden/Democratic Party policies, but that does not mean I’m some joyless blob.
Yeah, I’m glad things are going to go from Trump->Obama-lite. But that’s still not great. And I don’t like that most of the Democratic Party faithful are going to bury their heads in the sand and scold anyone who says that X number of detentions and Y deportations and Z people waiting W months in custody still sucks. Or the same thing with tear gas hoses spraying pocketchads.
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Like, what I notice here is that there is this weird dichotomy where you need to be either all in on “RAWR biden isn’t going to implement progressive policies” or all in on “wow we dodged some doomsday scenarios thank GOD”
I happen to feel both things. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
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What I notice here is that everyone thinks they are the only one capable of any kind of nuance. Same as everywhere.
eta: People are dumb, but not that dumb. People argue very badly on the internet and it’s really really really rarely really fair and in good faith.
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I’m like the least nuanced person here but there are clear battle lines being drawn in the forum ¯\(ツ)/¯
I really can’t relate to this at all. We had armed insurrectionists in the Capitol, followed by 150 or so elected members of Congress voting to invalidate an election they didn’t like. That is not a movement that disappears overnight. We have all but confirmed that nothing noteworthy will be passed for the next two years. The COVID/Vaccine situation is awful. There were some incremental wins that are like, trying to get us back to 2016 levels of badness - and that was still pretty fucking bad!
Some of it I’m sure is just a social dynamic and is going to happen with any group.
Dude that movement existed before 1/6. 1/6 was a disastrous misstep by that movement that gives this country some chance of actually dealing with it.
The COVID vaccine situation is amazing. I genuinely didn’t expect there to be a working vaccine of any sort until the middle of 2021, but they came up with one in under a year. The distribution was fucked up because Trump touched it and Trump fucks up everything he touches. Speaking as the forum logistics guy I’m telling you that the planet Earth’s ability to manufacture and distribute a vaccine is crazy, and that these things aren’t that hard to stand up. Trump couldn’t do it, but that’s absolutely not an indication that someone else can’t. In terms of hard logistics problems… I’ve seen harder and I’m not trying to save the human race.
We’re in a very different place than 2016. We are worse off in the physical world, but we’re also in a very different place politically. Donald Trump was our president for four years and the GOP fellated him the entire time while he used every tradition we have as toilet paper. They are exposed in a way they haven’t ever been exposed. This has a high probability to be an era ending set of political events.
Look it’s all awful. Obviously I agree. But you don’t have to worry about going back to 2016. The world of 2016 will never come back. Time moves forward and whatever comes next will be different.
Look at this another way. If you go back over the last hundred years and divide it into 20 year chunks in literally any arbitrary way you want you won’t find many periods that are similar to the one that came before it. I wouldn’t expect the next 20 to be anything like the last 20.
We won the election by like 80k votes, and Trump somehow massively increased his turnout from 2016. What could possibly make you think that this is an era ending set of events rather than another brief reprieve where we keep our heads above water and accomplish nothing before plunging deeper into the conservative hell world?
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I think we’re at a moment that has a lot of possible outcomes. Probably thousands of weird long tails would hold 65% of the equity if you combined them together.
What’s for sure is that it’s a very very very chaotic moment in history. It’s not just our politics, it’s the whole planet. Things are shifting.
I hope bored is right, but I’m having a tough time not seeing the GOP as favorites for a clean sweep in 2024.
I didn’t say they were shifting in a good direction. There’s a really good chance this is the Chinese style authoritarianism unifies the world timeline. It’s extremely likely that democracy and the internet aren’t actually compatible.
Seriously guys our type of government did Brexit and Trump in the last five years. We are melting the fuck down.
There’s a very real chance that by the time the authoritarian technocrats come with their promise of just getting shit done we’ll all gratefully surrender our democracy. That’s what happens if what you guys are afraid of happens by the way. Either Democracy makes an incredible comeback or it bleeds out on the pavement right here. Either way this shit isn’t going to go on like this much longer.
Vaccine development was so quick because capital demanded it. If we had some disease killing only Africans I’m sure the vaccine development would be just as rapid nowadays… Oh wait
Capital is not going to let the GOP burn the country down to keep warm. They’d old yeller the entire form of government first. This is one of the few things I’m absolutely certain of.
Now whether the replacement government is better or worse… that’s an excellent question. I suspect it’ll be a culturally American version of the CCP. So probably much worse in some ways and much better than the Mitch McConnell era in others.
I think people tend to think that what they have is forever and get complacent. I don’t think there’s ever been a generation as complacent as American Boomers in human history. For us to have any chance Trump needs to have shaken them. They need to realize that they are doing CPR on our Democracy right now and if they don’t figure out how to right the ship it’s going to die.
Honestly guys maybe it deserves to die. It certainly hasn’t worked for anyone but the upper echelons of the ownership class in a very long time.
I want to be clear I think that if Trump had been reelected he would have eaten a military coup before the end of that second term. I think the entire system of government is gushing all over the ground right now. This is a combination of what the voters decide to do over the next couple of cycles and what the politicians decide to do over the next couple of cycles. The most obnxious thing about this situation is that this is not a mortal wound if it’s treated even half right. You’re not supposed to bleed out here. It’s political malpractice if you do.
And that more than anything would be a fitting end to the republican era of the United States empire. They always did the right thing after they had tried everything else until the internet.
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Clovis vs everybody!
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I absolutely don’t think this is as good as it gets. I think that things tend to take a long time coming and then arrive all at once a giant mess with a bang. We’re at a pretty likely moment for one of those. Right now we’re seeing whether the Democrats decide to resuscitate the Democracy or let it bleed out. Very consequential decision.
My take on Biden is that he sincerely tries on matters of racial inclusiveness and diversity. Does he understand every nuance about racial issues? Maybe not, but at least we can verify that he has a black friend. I’ve been surprised at how non-white male his Cabinet choices have been, especially since he has stressed reestablishing the norms of government, which suggests bringing a lot of experienced hands into his administration, which should bias his nominations towards old white males. Moving forward on the Tubman $20 as a symbolic gesture is typical.
One thing this suggests to me is that white male progressives are not going to be the vehicle for pushing Biden to the left. The progressive voices that I think Biden will listen to the most are those that can cast their key issues in terms of identity politics and appeal to Biden’s sense of racial (and gender) fairness. That doesn’t mean that Biden will be swayed on every issue, but those are the sorts of issues where there might be the best chance of moving the Biden administration to the left and that leaves political actors with a choice of whether it is better to lobby Biden on the issues which are the most important, for some set of priorities, or the issues where there is the greatest chance of success.
You’d be surprised. I have to deal with the same people every day. It’s different from cars/houses/furniture that way.
Biden is either going rid of or around the filibuster or he’s not. That and COVID are all that actually matters right now. The COVID stuff is going to be managed well from here on out because it’s just going to be run by the CDC people like it should have been from the beginning.
Most of the police reform stuff is a local issue that the President doesn’t have many fast ways to do anything about. I’m sure they’re fighting with ICE behind the scenes, which since it isn’t the Trump administration we aren’t going to hear as much about.