'Democratic Socialists'

[Baruch]

I don't like when she makes her face all manic like that.  Reminds me of my ex ;-(

Will she be famous for more than 15 minutes?  Can Trump become President?

[SGOS]

I don't like when she makes her face all manic like that.  Reminds me of my ex ;-(

Will she be famous for more than 15 minutes?  Can Trump become President?

This woman, who I know nothing about, will be immortalized by this thread.  I haven't watched her yet, because sad to say, I don't care what she has to say.  I'm getting so bored with politics, which today centers almost complete around people hating each other.  Hate is destructive.  Utube is destructive.  Twitter is for fools to express their hate. Politics is consumed by anger and viciousness.  We are on the wrong track and headed for a crash.

[Shiranu]

Identity politics. Where would we be without it?

Sorry pr but the guy whoms, literally, entire forum identity revolves around identity politics (Muslims, progressives, "Cultural Marxists") cant really cry foul when he gets called on it.

[Shiranu]

This woman, who I know nothing about, will be immortalized by this thread.  I haven't watched her yet, because sad to say, I don't care what she has to say.  I'm getting so bored with politics, which today centers almost complete around people hating each other.  Hate is destructive.  Utube is destructive.  Twitter is for fools to express their hate. Politics is consumed by anger and viciousness.  We are on the wrong track and headed for a crash.

I don't know how I feel about this; on the one hand, I do legitimately hate the ideology of pr, Munch, and the far-right.

On the other hand... I have plenty of people in the real world who are against stuff I support yet we get along perfectly civilly. I have met maybe seven or eight far-right idiots in the real world who I just did not like what they have to say and got legitimately pissed off at, and probably about two far-left people who made me feel the same.

I have never met anyone as hateful and toxic as those two in the real world, nor have I been exposed to much hateful or toxic stuff on Youtube or Twitter. I know they exist but I just don't feel like they are as big of deal as people make it out to be... it is really, really easy to ignore.

The only reason I am overly concerned about the far-right is that they have real world power... they have my countries' congress, my countries' president doing what they want, and they have dragged the "left" past center and into the right. If they had the same amount of power as the far-left (that is to say none) then I would give as much of a shit about them as I do something like Antifa... that is to say, absolutely no shits given unless they make the headlines, which has been all of about once or twice.


But that simply isn't the case; I have to be concerned about the far-right because literally every day of my life I live the consequences of letting them have too much power, and I know that those consequences could get much worse than they already are. We are literally one impeachment away from having a Christian Theocrat being president of the United States, for fuck's sake, and Trump wants to be more of a dictator than a president. We have state sanctioned kidnapping and abduction that sends those children to for-profit detention centres that bring in $700-a-day per kid in taxpayer money (in detention centres government officials like Betsy DeVos has stakes in). We have ballooning student debt and medical debt because the right-wing is more concerned about corporate welfare than it's people's welfare, and a raising gap between the working class and the upper class because they are more worried about giving the wealthy tax cuts and loopholes rather than giving the working class living wages or worker rights. We have politicians who want to revoke LGBT rights and politicians who want to deny my mother and my female friends of basic rights, equal treatment or access to health services because they don't have an inch of respect for women.

I see how it's easy to get very cynical of politics, but I think that's exactly what the far-right and the groups that promote this hatred and division want; tune out so they can have free reign to do whatever they want. And I do believe the far-right are just a bunch of puppets for the ultra-rich who have no loyalty to any politics other than the dollar sign, so when I remember that my distaste for them really is more pity than anything else.

[SGOS]

On the other hand... I have plenty of people in the real world who are against stuff I support yet we get along perfectly civilly. I have met maybe seven or eight far-right idiots in the real world who I just did not like what they have to say and got legitimately pissed off at, and probably about two far-left people who made me feel the same.

There a lots of decent people around, but they aren't represented in politics or the media.  Watch politics on television.  You are not going to see many normal thinking people like for example, the majority of this forum.  They aren't in the news, and they are not very interesting.  Among your acquaintances, you won't see many of them shown on TV either.  The ones that show up are the ones who can effectively fan the flames of controversy, because they are more interesting to watch, even if they aren't like average people.

The only reason I am overly concerned about the far-right is that they have real world power... they have my countries' congress, my countries' president doing what they want, and they have dragged the "left" past center and into the right. If they had the same amount of power as the far-left (that is to say none)...

There are no far left politicians, except in the minds of the right.  They are Democrats, and their agenda has little to do what interests most people.  They actually work for the wealthy just like the Republicans, so they have little incentive to follow through on the left leaning agendas they advertise, so things move to the right.  Democrats don't have as much power in congress.  They don't need it, because Republicans do what they want anyway.  They do want to hold their jobs, of course, so they may serve at the pleasure of the wealthy.  It's probably more rewarding than we imagine.

I have to be concerned about the far-right because literally every day of my life I live the consequences of letting them have too much power, and I know that those consequences could get much worse than they already are.

Democrats won't solve that.  They don't do much in congress other than occupy seats and rake in money for it.

I see how it's easy to get very cynical of politics, but I think that's exactly what the far-right and the groups that promote this hatred and division want;

The current cycle of hate did begin with conservatives, although this is just during my lifetime.  I'm sure there have been past cycles too, where I have no idea who started it.  Hate seems to be more effective and fruitful for the conservative party.  The left uses it too, but to less effect.  Their constituents don't buy into it so easily and seem less affected.  That's why no left wing news show has been as successful as FOX news.

At one time, I longed for a left media that would be a counterpoint to Rush Limbaugh.  Attempts were made, but none worked.  The left doesn't get as vengeful and vindictive by that kind of sales pitch.  I've come to think that the counterpoint to the ravings of the right is reason, but reason seldom achieves the visceral goal necessary to mobilize movements.

The last time the US mobilized in a bi-partisan way was organized by the extreme right wing and resulted in the invasion of Iraq for reasons that made no sense in retrospect, but the mobilizing spark was fear and anger.  It was mostly irrational.  The right is either better at generating this kind of response or has easier targets.

NPR is a reasoned response to right wing ravings, but it doesn't rile people, accept the right which has already been conditioned to respond to anything that way, including reason.  But NPR is not the counterpoint I once imagined because it doesn't counter hateful spite, with opposing hateful spite.  It is most assuredly the counterpoint to raving lunatics, but because it approaches subjects with more thought and doesn't rant, it doesn't seem like the opposite.

[Baruch]

Cuban Missile Crisis was real:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYVPx3x3oCg

The assassination of JFK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUZFsvCmJHE

What some people here have called out against Trump ;-(  Used to be when the President spoke, we were called fellow citizens, and when the President addressed the nation, people stopped what they were doing and listened carefully.  We didn't know then, as we do now, that Jackie was married to a sex maniac ... as we already knew with Hillary.

Democrat LBJ  1964 campaign TV ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k

If we don't go to Vietnam right now, the Republicans will kill us all.  The Soviets will kill us all.  Sound familiar?  The 1960s are being repeated now, because most people have forgotten or weren't alive then.  President Kennedy lied, about the "Russian Missile Gap" during the 1960 campaign (the US was ahead of the Soviet Union), and stuffed ballot boxes in Chicago to get elected.  Democrat LBJ gave us Vietnam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdMLD8b6wWY

Black lives do matter, but this is how it was done in 1965:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elgmMQbOfts

Assassination of MLK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbOV1xKFOmw

Assassination of Robert Kennedy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXCvJ92YQcU

The violence was bipartisan!  The D and R party were both right-wing back then.  Except for rhetorical BS.  Back then we called Democratic Socialists ... Fellow Travelers.

[Shiranu]

Democrats won't solve that.  They don't do much in congress other than occupy seats and rake in money for it.

Perhaps. But I do know the Democrat establishment "hates" Ocasio-Cortez and has spent alot of money trying to discredit her, as well as other progressive Democrats like Abdul el-Sayed in Michigan's gubernatorial race, Ben Jealous (youngest director of the NAACP and head of the US Human Rights Program at Amnesty International), Stacey Abrams of Georgia, Beto O'Rourke here in Texas who is running on a grassroot campaign yet raising more money than Ted Cruz's PAC-backed campaign... there are actual progressive candidates running on the Democratic platform trying to change it from within like Bernie did in 2016 and making good progress.

I won't rule anyone out just because they are a Democrat, because many "Democrats" are fighting not just the Republicans but the Dem. establishment as well. Ocasio-Cortez is one of those who's message is a sharp turn from party line and is resonating amongst the working class.

Alexandria is one of only 8 politicians who has refused to take PAC money, and is the only one elected on that platform... and I think that in itself shows that she is serious about her ideals. She has essentially said her vote is not for sell, and moderates on both sides of the isle are giving her respect for that.

I just don't buy that there isn't movement from the actual left in the United States. Progressives have had to latch themselves onto the Democratic party because you have to be one of the two to win, but now that they have done so they get ignored as being "establishment"... even if they have never held office or are running completely contrary to the establishment platform. It's a lose/lose situation if we stay cynical about politics.

But I will agree with you that conservatism is more effective at utilizing hate and fear, and I would say looking at history this is the case not just in your and mine generation but through history as a whole. For every "progressive" hate movement (the French revolution, the Communist revolution, etc.) you have multiple conservative hate movements. That's just the nature of regressive vs progressive ideology.

[Baruch]

This is how we were indoctrinated in the 1950s ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBokz2-XNc

And it was partly true.  And prior to WW II, there was a flourishing Left in the US, called Progressives, and Labor Unions ... stemming from the abuses of Victorian industrialism and expansionist imperialism.  We still have abusive business practices and expansionist imperialism.

I actually wished for Bernie to do well against Hillary.  I actually wished for a decent Republican candidate to run against Bernie in the general election.  We got neither.  The plutocrats whistle, the DNC and RNC dance.  They have all seen the Zapruder film.

Real hippies didn't preach hate however, they weren't even politically involved, because they saw it as pointless.

[SGOS]

Used to be when the President spoke, we were called fellow citizens, and when the President addressed the nation, people stopped what they were doing and listened carefully.  We didn't know then, as we do now, that Jackie was married to a sex maniac ... as we already knew with Hillary.

Sex in politics was only useful before Trump came along.  It's obvious today that few people really care about a politician's sex life, and that's how it should be.  What politician fucks what bimbo has no effect on my life, but when he fucks me over, that has an effect.  Except with Trump, where we are talking about sexual assault, which fucks others as well.  That's a bit different than fucking a bimbo. At least we might hope some Republicans will stop harping on Democrats having sex... or maybe not... probably not Baruch.  The right has a oddly hypocritical approach to sex.

[pr126]

I don't like when she makes her face all manic like that.  Reminds me of my ex ;-(

Will she be famous for more than 15 minutes?  Can Trump become President?

I think what she needs is a speechwriter and a teleprompter. 

[Baruch]

Sex in politics was only useful before Trump came along.  It's obvious today that few people really care about a politician's sex life, and that's how it should be.  What politician fucks what bimbo has no effect on my life, but when he fucks me over, that has an effect.  Except with Trump, where we are talking about sexual assault, which fucks others as well.  That's a bit different than fucking a bimbo. At least we might hope some Republicans will stop harping on Democrats having sex... or maybe not... probably not Baruch.  The right has a oddly hypocritical approach to sex.

I don't care for politicians at all, even if they are celibate.  But naturally bestiality fans will vote for e bestiality candidate etc.

Yes, the Right likes monogamy and straight relationships.  Trump isn't Right, he is Maverick.

[Baruch]

I think what she needs is a speechwriter and a teleprompter.

Obama is available ;-)

[pr126]

Obama is available ;-)

Good choice. But he can only read, not write.

[Baruch]

Good choice. But he can only read, not write.

Obama will fit in well, in Futurama, next to the disembodied head of Nixon.  Talking heads have much to talk about.

[Cavebear]

Only if you are Putin's poodle.

I seriously doubt that Angela Merklel is Putin's poodle.  We already have HIM right here in the US.