Joe Biden Love Thread

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by TheBig3

I didn't watch West Wing.

What's your solution?

Originally Posted by TheBig3

I don't know anything about crypto. But I'll buy some and give it to you if anyone here has a plan to do more than come up with insults.

You don't have a plan so you don't get to make that criticism. But maybe get into labor organizing to build some actual power so you don't have to pretend incrementalism qualifies as a plan.

[Lisnaholic]

Originally Posted by elphenor

voting for Democrats does matter ......

.....if you're concerned about gerrymandering, for instance, redistricting is done by the state legislature

so while you're considering whether to vote for Biden, old affluent folks are out stacking that **** in their favor at a local level

Yep, elph gets it, as does Trollheart when he talks about "the lesser of two evils".

On voting: this is your hard-won right in a democracy. IMO, everyone should vote, preferably for a party that honours election results. That way your voting rights are preserved, along with those of your children when they come of age. Or what will you tell your kids? " Yeah, we had democracy, but couldn't be bothered to keep it. Sorry, son."
Also, just because the President is not chosen on the basis of your vote alone doesn't invalidate its value. To me that attitude is a bit like this: your neighbour's truck needs a push to get it going: do you say,"Well, if I try to push it, it's not going to move, so I'm not going to push at all - even though I can see a bunch of neighbours have now come out to help" ?
(Last election, even that professed anarchist Occult Hawke decided to vote. Good for him, and where are you, OH? I worry that you are not here, letting off steam as a coping mechanism, like so many of us.)

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I guarantee you there are many more Democrats thankful that Manchin and Synema are willing to take the public relations hit. Many of them are being paid by the same interests and don't want to cross the corporations but are fine with pretending otherwise while there are just enough democrats holding up the vote.

Congratulations, Batlord! Your chipping away at my faith in the Dems has had its effect, especially after I watched a documentary about the Californian homeless crisis and came away with the clear conclusion: the Dems want to preserve the status quo.

The democrats don't need support. They need to be removed.

Even so, ftfy; "The democrats don't need support as it is at the moment. They need more support."

Originally Posted by TheBig3

The wisdom is this. This 50/50 deadlock only allows a sort of incrimental movement toward a set of twin apocalypses. And it's this minor movement that makes people:

1. Not vote - a la 2000, or 2020 with a "they're all corrupt!" mantra
2. Think that civic engagement doesn't matter
3. Question everything, even beyond government, to include vaccines, wind turbines, change in general

I'm tired of trying to save these morons from themselves. I want DeSantis in. Let him stack the court until only reform is realistic. Let him repeal every COVID public health measure. I'll hang inside another 6 months and let the next variant wipe out entire industries to the point that we're begging south america to send people. Let the Handmaids Tale party allow for bounty hunters to kill unwed women over 40 as spinster whores.

One of two outcomes occurs. The Country sinks, or the "I just wish politics wasn't so nasty" crowd has to make a choice. This country is beyond saving. And anti-vaxx freakshow doesn't deserve any protection. I want them to ship more Midwestern jobs overseas, and allow them to have bazookas, and classify birth control as a Class A substance.

If people didn't wake up when they made it illegal to give water to people waiting to vote

If people didn't wake up when we hit 800,000 COVID deaths

If people didn't wake up when the 5th review of the Arizona recount confirmed a Biden win

If people didn't wake up when yet another hurricane takes out Texas or Florida, then **** 'em. If the choice is give us liberty or give us death, I choose death.

I'm not understanding all your ideas, Big3, but I agree that your list of "If people didn't wake up..." is pretty damning. You also have a fine flourish of rhetoric in describing the America of DeSantis, but realistically, choosing death or DeSantis seems to me like bizarre, self-defeating, melodramatic choices. Much better to vote for the Dems; help push your neighbour's truck. Help push America to a slightly better place because, as TH says, it's the lesser of two evils.

[TheBig3]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

You don't have a plan so you don't get to make that criticism. But maybe get into labor organizing to build some actual power so you don't have to pretend incrementalism qualifies as a plan.

Oh a labor movement! Why didn't we think of that!

https://www.reuters.com/markets/comm...ll-2021-12-20/

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Bolded: if this isn't just you trolling (and you aren't known for that so I don't think it is) it comes across as monumentally selfish, man. You're pissed off so let everyone die? You'll stay inside while those around you pop off, and hope everything will be better when you come out? You may choose death but you're not entitled to choose it for everyone else. I have to say, I'm disappointed in you. I thought you had more moral fibre than that.

It's not.

The reason society is moving so far out of whack is that they've had it too easy for too long. The generation that built a Global Liberal Democracy survived the depression and World War 2. They knew what real threats were and they decided to never allow them to happen again. They marched to the polio vaccine lines.

This generation thinks that food and peace will always be there. There's no getting through to them. Have you talked to these morons? Look at these ****ing people - you try getting through to them.

Originally Posted by rubber soul

There have been third-party candidates in the past, most successfully, Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party in 1912. He didn't win but he did garner more votes and electoral votes than the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft. Others who ran haven't been as successful, but a few have been able to influence the election for the eventual winner (Wallace for Nixon, Nader for Bush).

We have plenty of various political parties in the US, but the Dems and GOP have had a lock on the populace (mostly by raising money) for well over a hundred years now. I think people really want a Centrist party since neither party is willing to nominate someone closer to the center (say what you will about Biden, but, trust me, he does swing left). Unfortunately, the major parties have always found a way to keep the other parties out.

Would be interesting to see a Manchin or even a Romney run as an independent. Don't think either could win, but they could possibly make some noise, much like Ross Perot did in 1992. (And, to a lesser extent, 1996).

TR as a Third Party Candidate is a bit misleading. He had been President before. That's not a good test-case for a third party run. He also gave us, as a result of his run, Wilson as President, and that was a fairly miserable administration.

As Gore Vidal said - There are only two parties in the US. Jefferson and Hamilton. The People vs. Institutions. And no matter how you slice it - that's the end result. This moronic idea that "we need to end the duopoly!" is said by people who only read half the book. To offer some olive branch here, Vidal also believes there's only one political party in the US - The Corporate Party in which Democrats and Republicans are just wings of this party.

It will always be People vs. Institutions. There is no other option. And Centrism, to this end is just the very American practice of dividing up power. Three branches of government. 50 states. 12 national banks. Market, market, market.

There is no 3rd party. There will be no third party. Have you ever looked at the Green Partys foreign policy? It's unhinged. The Libertarians in general aren't a serious group - they might as well be the Hogwarts party.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by TheBig3

Oh a labor movement! Why didn't we think of that!

https://www.reuters.com/markets/comm...ll-2021-12-20/

Yeah the labor movement has been decimated in this country and has little power. Building it back up again is going to take decades, but no amount of protest votes are going to make up for the working class' lack of organization.

If a bunch of Dem voters vote Republican or stay home the Democratic Party will just ignore the reasons why they lose elections and point to the bad things the Republicans are doing and/or might do and use that to fundraise while punching down on the left as the real reason why they lost. Come on, man, you know this.

It's not.

The reason society is moving so far out of whack is that they've had it too easy for too long. The generation that built a Global Liberal Democracy survived the depression and World War 2. They knew what real threats were and they decided to never allow them to happen again. They marched to the polio vaccine lines.

This generation thinks that food and peace will always be there. There's no getting through to them. Have you talked to these morons? Look at these ****ing people - you try getting through to them.

This is a right wing interpretation of history. "Hardship makes people hard and peace makes people soft."

It was the WW2 generation who made peace with the bosses and gave up their militancy and their workplace autonomy to get a social safety net and by the time the bosses started cutting pay and benefits and deindustrialization obliterated the blue collar middle class the workers had become too used to pensions and healthcare and conspicuous consumption to remember what it was like to fight Pinkertons in the streets.

They became what capitalism wanted them to be by the machinations of the US corporate oligarchy that gave them televisions to keep them docile.

The people aren't the source of the problem. Capitalism is.

As Gore Vidal said - There are only two parties in the US. Jefferson and Hamilton. The People vs. Institutions. And no matter how you slice it - that's the end result. This moronic idea that "we need to end the duopoly!" is said by people who only read half the book. To offer some olive branch here, Vidal also believes there's only one political party in the US - The Corporate Party in which Democrats and Republicans are just wings of this party.

It will always be People vs. Institutions. There is no other option. And Centrism, to this end is just the very American practice of dividing up power. Three branches of government. 50 states. 12 national banks. Market, market, market.

There is no 3rd party. There will be no third party. Have you ever looked at the Green Partys foreign policy? It's unhinged. The Libertarians in general aren't a serious group - they might as well be the Hogwarts party.

You know you started this whole series of rants attacking Biden and the Democratic Party but then immediately pivoted to screeds against the voters. If the voters have been made apathetic and nihilistic about the idea that the government, that exists now purely to facilitate capitalism, will ever do anything to help them then perhaps that's not the fault of the voters, slack-jawed though they may be. Perhaps it's the fault of the institution you claim is "vs." them and has worked long and hard to make sure they are apathetic and nihilistic and have no hope.

The Institution has won, and you can't fight back at them with the atrophied methods of civic engagement they've left you with. That would be like using the cap gun your parents gave you for Christmas to rob them at gunpoint.