Prelude to the Apocalypse

[trap15]

I do wonder if this is the first time I've ever seen someone talk about what they would do in power, and immediately set out to do it.

And talk about what they wouldn't and then do it anyways.

[system11]

I do wonder if this is the first time I've ever seen someone talk about what they would do in power, and immediately set out to do it.

And talk about what they wouldn't and then do it anyways.

He's going to do all the things, at random.

[Ed Oscuro]

I do wonder if this is the first time I've ever seen someone talk about what they would do in power, and immediately set out to do it.

And talk about what they wouldn't and then do it anyways.

He's going to do all the things, at random.

All the bad things.

Secondly, no, this isn't a "game" for me. My father contracted cancer when I was 20 years old. It bankrupted my parents. Do you know the names of one of the many poor people who're going to get reamed up the ass by Trump's policies? Peasant boy BryanM.

You don't have to prove anything to us. And you could've fooled me - inflicting self-indulgent posts on the forum left written as if the Joker himself was trolling the mainstream left. (Death Panels? You might even like them!) Coming from a self-described wall of text fan, insomniac, and shitposter, I hope you have wondered why you get these reactions.

I appreciate the posts like the Sanders-Klobuchar Amendment post; could you please make more like that and less like the others?

Make enemies out of everyone. Good strategy. Call everyone a retard. Especially people like me, who don't want anyone to have to go through the kind of shit I had to go through.

And you're not a uniqely suffering goddamn snowflake either. Anybody could quote these words back to you whenever you indulgently post slams against the people who voted (by a strong majority) for Hillary.

The fight isn't about who is the best leftist, it's more about finding somebody to the left of Trump, and with better approval ratings than a freezer burned can of squash.

There's also that whole business of combating lies, which you don't really help by stating that words like "facism" don't have a meaning anymore. Aren't you big on not swallowing a big bag of BS?

[system11]

There's also that whole business of combating lies, which you don't really help by stating that words like "facism" don't have a meaning anymore. Aren't you big on not swallowing a big bag of BS?

He's right on 'fascism' and 'fascist'. These words are now so constantly misused that the incorrect use is as common if not more so than the correct one.

End result is the default approach when seeing the word used, is to immediately assume it's another melting snowflake lashing out with nasty words at the nasty people who think differently to them. You can add 'rasist', 'bigot', 'xenophobe' and 'nazi' to the list of words rapidly having their meaning, impact and ability to identify removed through overuse and misuse. A lot of the people spewing them are actually more identified by the words than their chosen target.

[Ed Oscuro]

He's right on 'fascism' and 'fascist'. These words are now so constantly misused that the incorrect use is as common if not more so than the correct one.

That's not where the disagreement lies, and in any case why would anybody who knows better want to swallow that whole?

The fact remains that Trump clearly fits the mold of a classic fascist. He is operating in a democracy so this limits what he can do.

The point I'm trying to make with this is just to highlight - or maybe underline, I'm not sure if Durandal was being sarcastic - that things can get a lot worse and death camps don't have to be a part of that. Yet the farther we go down this path of blind nationalism and authoritarianism, it's clear we are putting our nations closer to classic fascism.

[quash]

Bernie clearly fit the mold of a classic socialist, and America was clearly headed towards socialism.

Funny how you can pass things off as conventional wisdom when they don't rock the boat and fit neatly into an agenda. Really makes you think.

[Ed Oscuro]

Bernie clearly fit the mold of a classic socialist, and America was clearly headed towards socialism.

You do realize that all you have done is changed some words? "Socialist" is hardly the same thing as "fascist," but I guess all you spanking fans need to learn that the hard way.

Oh, I remember now. That time evil socialist Sweden started a world war. Oh the brutality!

[quash]

You... aren't going to deny it? Dance around it? Obfuscate the obvious end goal of socialism so as to make it more palatable?

Color me impressed.

Oh, wait, you edited your post and did all of the above. Such a shame.

[Ed Oscuro]

This is what you read earlier, right?

Yes, and?

I still stand by that. Bernie himself said "we're going to tell the people what democratic socialism is." What Bernie meant appears to be social democracy (like horrible Sweden, or Germany) as all his proposed plans went that route, and the 2016 Democratic platform was close to that.

If you want to know what my personal preferences are, I'm for as much private enterprise and personal responsibility as possible, the death penalty for heinous crimes, concealed carry rules across the US, and so on. Libertarianism would be great, just like anarchy, if only we could be sure there weren't assholes like Trump to fuck things up.

What we've actually had is a bunch of people offshoring wealth - not just from the US but from around the world - with varying degrees of bipartisan support, for decades, while our industries spin their wheels on making flashy and useless gadgets. But, as far as I'm concerned, that is the kind of issue that government should poke at, but not dictate.

What's wrong with having one system for insurance? You know what insurance does, right? Insurance's purpose isn't to make money for private people. Yes, I know there are people who go "but I don't want to pay insurance for all those poor layabouts," well, guess what - I'd support sticks along with the carrots to ensure people pay more if they don't care about living healthy. Hell, everybody's insurance company is already doing the same. And for people who go "I don't need expensive insurance, I don't want to pay for the sick," well, you pays your money and you takes your chances. And if you don't pay into the system, you still may need it, and where does that leave everybody else? Getting as much of the profit motive out of that system as possible is the only thing that makes sense to me.

One reason that I call Trump a fascist more confidently than before is his asinine handling of jobs "wins" like "the Carrier deal." If the President goes around and claims every few hundred jobs "saved" as a personal victory, that is clearly an encroachment of government on the private sector. Bernie's vision of horrible socialism would be more about making sure that the workers were paid a fair wage and not exposed to intolerable working conditions.

To be clear, I don't think that a forceful President is necessarily a fascist. However Trump is becoming like the man people claimed Jimmy Carter was - unable to delegate authority meaningfully, or share the spotlight. Next thing we know he'll be claiming credit for the White House souffles.

[quash]

Socialism doesn't protect anyone from low wages or awful working conditions, otherwise Venezuela would have had the largest middle class in the world (nevermind the economic plight of the USSR, or the current working conditions in parts of China today).

You claim that you want government to play a minimal role in some affairs. Great. Yet you can't expect everyone to give their share without government intervention because otherwise you can't know if they're doing so.

With that, I've explained in the simplest terms possible why leftist libertarianism is a non-perspective. Can you guess why right wing authoritarianism is just as bad?

[Ed Oscuro]

Who said Venezuela is a good model for anything? Venezuela has a totally corrupt government; that wasn't caused by socialism. I think Venezuela under Chavez was more correctly a split shantytown / crony capitalist economy.

But let's reel things back in a bit. You know about the pendulum model, right? When things get out of whack one way, the theory goes, the clock's hand swings the other way and we have a correction - and maybe an over-correction.

So Russia and China, which were still isolated feudal societies with grossly overinflated national dynasties at the dawn of the 20th century, don't look like promising candidates for a socialist experiment. I'd say what we got in those countries was simply crony capitalism, for the most part. Maybe China is starting to improve there a bit, but the government allows no dissent.

So the tl;dr version of "democratic socialism" versus "social democracy" would be like this:

democratic socialism: Basically communist, the "people" own everything, except for the individual vote. A blatant lie in probably every country calling itself that.
social democracy: A democratic society with voting, and more government input on the economy - but you're still free to own things and your own companies. See the Nordic model.

The long and short of it is that a working social democracy is still basically the America you know, except you can tell your boss to shove it now and then. That's more like it!

Like I said, if we could just have lassiez-faire everything, that would be great - nobody likes somebody telling them what to do. But sometimes people who know better do have to say no - no, you can't have personal nukes; no, you can't have literally ALL the money. (And by "you," I don't mean you, Mr. under-the-employ-of-Uncle Sam!)

[quash]

By working for the government, I'm always winning, whether I'm in the red or the black. That's what central banking is designed for. It's a scam, but one I'm on the winning side of.

[BulletMagnet]

But sometimes people who know better do have to say no

This is one thing I've never been able to wrap my head around when it comes to the plutocratic right. On the one hand they claim to be meritocratic because they idolize the rich so much; anyone who's built a successful business (or inherited it and simply live off the interest without contributing a thing; they never bother to make that distinction for some reason) has been blessed by the infallible free market and is obviously smarter, harder-working and just plain better than the idiots toiling for a paycheck and/or begging for a handout, so we obviously ought to cater to their every desire and do everything they say.

As soon as you take one step too far outside of pure profit motive, however, suddenly this meritocracy completely ceases to exist: all those people in academia, people who have distinguished themselves in their knowledge of the sciences, of history, of economics, of any subject area which might be useful to study when deciding which direction to take society in, any advice they might give is meddling by obnoxious eggheads who don't deserve the ear of the public, let alone its indulgence, because nobody gets to tell me what to do. Somehow the years upon years of work they've put in just plain doesn't count; hell, if anything it seems to count negatively, since they all insist that the "common sense" of plain, uneducated "regular" people (y'know, the morons who can't keep up with the industrialists and should shut up and stay out of the way) is worth more than the experience of every scholar on the planet...unless the American Enterprise Institute or Heritage Foundation has picked them up, anyway. That particular distinction never made a lick of sense to me, but whatever, toss it on the damn pile.

I suggest a new poll: "Are Republicans going to impeach Trump within his first year?"

Even if you put aside the whole "every last one of them is willing to watch the world burn as long as they get another tax cut" thing, it's not going to happen, because doing so would be admitting that they were wrong on something, and just like their champion they never admit they were wrong on anything - double down, dissemble, deny reality, but never actually change your outlook, no matter how horrifically you screwed up. That's why we're still cutting taxes for rich people to increase revenue, and if they still won't come clean on that, no way in hell they'll ever admit what a disaster of a President they gave us. They'll just keep whipping up the crowds with "yeah, screw those libruls, right? And the media too yeeeaaahhhh" as every advance made by working people of the last century is sacrificed at the altar of plutocracy.

I mean, Jesus, look at the current "debate" over Trump and his staff's repeated invocation of obvious, provable falsehoods: Can you really say he's "lying" if he actually believes them? I mean, come the fuck on. Guess what, folks: if he isn't knowingly lying to your face when he says something manifestly ridiculous, he's out of his fucking mind - take your pick, the appropriate response is pretty much the same, but you're not going to do it either way, because you're just having too much damn fun, functioning democracy be damned.

[BryanM]

This is one thing I've never been able to wrap my head around when it comes to the plutocratic right.

You're completely right about all this doublethink crap - it's a complete mess that only someone with a paycheck telling them to believe it, could believe.

The TV propaganda has penetrated into the masses, but I wonder how strongly so, really.

The Trump impeachment thing will go up if it ever trends as a possibility in the news. I'm sure it'd fizzle out if it ever happened - Bill Clinton's penis massage thing never had a possibility of kicking him out of office. I seriously doubt Trump would cross any redlines on policy that'd end his reign.

You can add 'rasist', 'bigot', 'xenophobe' and 'nazi' to the list of words rapidly having their meaning, impact and ability to identify removed through overuse and misuse.

And I guess I'm a nazi sympathizer because I don't think personality arguments get anywhere, or don't feel great about crushing the extreme (though sometimes very vocal) minority opinion here completely into the dust every single time they say anything I disagree with.

13 years I spent bible thumping democratic socialism in the worst cesspools of the internet, because I don't believe preaching to the choir is very useful - If you agree, there's nothing to learn, nothing to teach.

So many racists, bigots, xenophobes, and nazis I've crossed. The stuff posted here? So mild. So mild. Whenever I came across a post saying that black people have a "gibs me dat" mentality followed by a picture of baby birds in the nest with their mouths open for a meal - massive fury. Desire to kick a chair and tell that person to "drink bleach and die". Instead - I put them on the ignore list and move on. Ignore lists are really helpful things.

They want confrontations on stupid shit. They don't want confrontations on things that matter. I post against the shithead, it amplifies his voice and becomes a miserable personality war between two people that no one else cares about or likes watching. The opinion that politics is miserable depressing bullshit that only garbage people care about intensifies - Where we have an election where a clown beats a grumpy grandma with 26% to 27.1% of the vote.

"Black people are human beings" is a fight that we've won in the court of public opinion, and anyone who doesn't agree with that can't be moved on that issue on the internet in the blink of an eye. This is the internet.

You can't have social justice without economic justice - It's hard to bend someone's culture. It's easy to argue that billionaires don't need more tax breaks.

The ocean of patience this required really makes me envy guys like Sanders. The man isn't normal - he's an abnormal freak.

It's hard to bend someone's culture.

I really want to stress how this is impossible to do with an adult you're not living day to day in real life with, and even then it's an egotistical and massive undertaking.

This kind of stuff is developed in childhood. Sesame Street has done more to end racism than everyone on this forum collectively.

which you don't really help by stating that words like "facism" don't have a meaning anymore.

If you think Trump is a For Real Fascist and not an asshole republican narcissist: You should be fleeing the country, helping other people flee the country, and seeking refugee status.

The forceful implementation of a one party government, and the associated political violence that comes with that, are critical features to make that word mean anything. Even absent that, the man's not principled enough to be painted with any specific ideology beyond "greedy asshole billionaire narcissist".

[Jonathan Ingram]

Socialism doesn't protect anyone from low wages or awful working conditions, otherwise Venezuela would have had the largest middle class in the world (nevermind the economic plight of the USSR, or the current working conditions in parts of China today).

How about you back up your argument with empirical data and provide a few graphs showing how the transition to free-market capitalism improved the economic plight of the Soviet Union and by extension the well-being of the working class. Today marks the 30th anniversary since the January plenum of the CPSU legalized private property and the right to inherit property, so now is as good a time as ever to report on the progress and brag about the successes.

social democracy: A democratic society with voting, and more government input on the economy - but you're still free to own things and your own companies. See the Nordic model.

I initially wanted to string a quick critique of "Nordic socialism"(or rather the shambles left of it) on my own, but a lazy ass that I am, I think I'll refer to this article instead: Bernie Sanders and the “Scandinavian model”.

[ED-057]

Digging holes and filling them in again (ie. busy work) vs. hand outs (or basic income)

Which is better? Which is less hated by people, including both those who are and are not the direct beneficiaries of such programs?

What if a politically-connected and devious billionaire decided one day to found a bunch of new banks, thus "creating" enough jobs to put unemployed people back to work, with the knowledge and intention that these banks may not perform any useful function for society and would need a regular infusion of free money from the fed (kind of like normal banks)? It would be a make-work program. But would anyone notice?

What if we build more factories to produce overpriced junk food that makes people fat, and then nextdoor we build factories that produce diet pills and exercise equipment. Totally legit, right?

Or instead of doing all of that, would it be better to just tell workers "sorry, we don't need you today, but here's your paycheck anyway?"

[quash]

There's no way in hell you don't know that "National Socialism" has almost nothing in common with "actual" Socialism, let alone Democratic Socialism, no matter where on the spectrum you care to look (once again, flashing red light number one: the stated endgame is the domination over - and/or eradication of - an inferior rabble by a superior minority); nor could you possibly be ignorant of the fact that the name was merely a cynical Hitler-initiated redubbing of the nutso-right German Workers' Party to broaden its surface appeal. The Nazis were Fascists, not Socialists.

I was reminded of this while doing some light reading.

Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge and when we finally united, there was only one big question: How should we actually baptize ourselves? A party? A bad name! Notorious, discredited in the mouth of everyone, and hundreds told us, “Why have you called yourselves a party? When I hear that word I go mad.”

You heard it here first: Hitler was the first SJW. Darth Vader is Luke's father and Dumbledore dies.

[BryanM]

Digging holes and filling them in again (ie. busy work) vs. hand outs (or basic income)

Which is better? Which is less hated by people, including both those who are and are not the direct beneficiaries of such programs?

Or instead of doing all of that, would it be better to just tell workers "sorry, we don't need you today, but here's your paycheck anyway?"

We already have a ton of make-work programs, such as a large amount of the military. That's what the F-35 was designed to do - put a large amount of money into the pockets of wealthy people under the pretense of creating jobs in ~45 states. (From the standpoint of basic sane engineering - what sense does it make to cut all the necessary lego blocks in 45 different places hundreds of miles apart from each other?)

But since this is a long-term utopian hypothetical, I do have a baked answer for this: it depends what our goals are.

If the goal is just to reduce poverty, homelessness, crap nourishment, and crime: universal social security.

If the goal is to have people go outside and meet people: paying people for hobbyist activities is better make-work than filling empty holes. The social needs of the human animal would be better served being somewhere they want to be with people who want to be there too, instead of putting dirt in a hole with a bunch of randos.

If the goal is both, then both.

What's really shocking is that the public opinion in the United States isn't strongly universally opposed to universal social security. 61% of republicans rate it 5/10 or above, 86% of democrats rate it 5/10 or above.

Of course, this is probably only because it isn't discussed anywhere in this country. It's an opinion that's pure and untainted, unmoved by the corporate media and the knee-jerk WWE oppose-everything, everyone-is-our-enemy nature of our current politics. I'm sure it'd drop to 40% to 45% like a rock when people put thought into it (or more accurately, have their thoughts moved on it).

[Mischief Maker]

Has it really only been a week?

I think it's worth re-watching part of this video and realize that the Trump voter X-Ray specs, the ones that allowed Trump voters to know when he was being serious and when the shit coming out of his mouth was "just rhetoric," actually work in reverse.

[quash]

Same typical bullshit from the usual suspects. zzzz

As much as I still have my doubts about the wall happening, I was right about initiating a trade war with Mexico and curbing remittances via taxation, which is a big part of what's been needed to be done for some time now.

[CIT]

I don't understand what your problem with socialism is, quash, since you voted for the America's very first peronist President.

Let's recap Trump:

- claims to be the hero of the "forgotten" working class
- wants to isolate the country from free trade, to "save" jobs that make no economic sense to exist, thereby ruining competitiveness in the long run and causing import prices to skyrocket
- wants to "create" new jobs by making the government borrow billions it can never repay and sinking the money into inefficient, corrupt public works projects
- wants to subsidize failing sectors of the economy (heavy industry, etc) that are failing for a very good reason, by communitizing costs, at the expense of depriving real real growth areas (tech, R&D) of its necessary immigrant workforce
- wants a corporatist government to meddle at will in the economy, opening the door to cronyism

Want a preview how this populist nonsense is gonna work out? Look no further than Argentina.

[quash]

Between "free trade", "necessary immigrant workforce", and somehow conveniently forgetting one of the most embarrassing episodes of government propping up a failing industry in recent memory, I don't even know where to begin!

Moreover, I don't doubt that the so-called Scandinavian model can work for some time, but it certainly can't work in the US, and that's mainly for one reason. Anyone care to take a guess?

[Mischief Maker]

quash, I would love to hear your James Bond psi-ops explanation for the climate scientist gag order!

For the record, blocking the TPP was a legitimately good action that would have never happened under Hillary.

Nor would all these horrible things, either. Hence lesser evil.

There's a reason Thom Hartmann called voting Jill Stein and "weathering the storm" for four years an act of white privilege. Still feeling vindicated by your Trump vote, supergrafx77?

[quash]

quash, I would love to hear your James Bond psi-ops explanation for the climate scientist gag order!

This one's easy.

1) He wants to piss you off. Yes, you. If you browse the internet or watch TV, this was aimed directly at you.

2) He wants to make his administration's stance on the issue official before releasing any further research.

For the record, blocking the TPP was a legitimately good action that would have never happened under Hillary.

Bryan was my favorite broken clock, but you're gaining on him fast. Even Ed is somewhat redeeming himself.

Hopefully Soros decides all the money he's pumping into manufactured outrage isn't worth it sooner rather than later, and we can all start to see that Trump isn't that crazy a president, historically speaking.

[Durandal]

quash, I would love to hear your James Bond psi-ops explanation for the climate scientist gag order!

That appeared to be routine as far as presidential transitions are concerned, where policies are first reviewed before they're detailed on the site. Dunno if it's been lifted yet, haven't seen any reports on that.

In other news, Trump proclaims the day of his inauguration as a National Day of Patriotic Devotion.

[BryanM]

Here's a repost of an old Honest Gil performance.

To take a break from how much we all hate each other. (Which is a good thing - democracy is supposed to be messy. If it isn't a mess, it isn't democracy. It's a plutocracy by false manufactured consensus.)

I think Gil has a point, and that this is the most important thing in all of politics.

[Mischief Maker]

This says it all:

Spoiler

[BryanM]

I've been writing letters to Obama begging them to get rid of Deborah and replace her with someone who tries to actually win. For what was it, five or six years? Guess he was too busy collecting donations/bribes for his own reelection campaign and library instead.

You remember that whole "we the people" website Obama set up, that you could petition the white house directly and it'd force them to provide a written response to the demand if you got 100,000 signatures? "Get a new DNC chair" never made it, always fizzled out at 30 to 40k whenever it'd gather any steam. This was something he could have snapped his fingers at any point and change it. Unlike some other successful petitions that actually did get a response: such as Texas seceding from the union or building a death star.

[CIT]

I don't even know where to begin

Then how about you put your little brain to work for a while and figure it out?

[BulletMagnet]

quash, I would love to hear your James Bond psi-ops explanation for the climate scientist gag order!

Forget that shit, I want to know 1) Why Trump voters aren't saying "...wait, what?" en masse in response to Kellyanne's "alternative facts" doublespeak, and 2) Why he gets to nominate a Supreme Court justice at all. And feel free to throw in another round of "they cannot believe what they're finding", and why that whopper doesn't bother you either.

By the by, Trumpskis, get some new material; I knew that link would be Solyndra as soon as I saw it.