Grondoth posted:

It's an appeal to consistency. At this point, I don't know why anyone expects it to work. Reagan himself said "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not." How the gently caress do you talk about being a consistent and good faith actor when they venerate a dude who's famous for saying some complete weaselly bullshit like that?

Squizzle posted:

only 80s kids will remember this [brief video of ronald reagan in sequinned cowboy clothes w hat chaps and boots, crawling thru a viet nam jungle toward an unwary big bird, who is lecturing children in russian]

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

SKULL.GIF posted:

I swear monarchism is well and alive in the american population, I thought we purged all these goddamn idiots out

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

mastershakeman posted:

my presumably mainline Protestant pastor started talking in the sermon today about how Israel is an apartheid state backed by the USA and I snapped out of my stupor for a few seconds with a ! over my head before returning to my patrol route

WampaLord posted:

Someone post that "Chelsea 2024, Malia 2032, Sasha 2040" bumper sticker.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

SKULL.GIF posted:

I swear monarchism is well and alive in the american population, I thought we purged all these goddamn idiots out

so many people are pulling at the reins to leap forward and worship and venerate hereditary elites and invent justifications for why they're actually incredibly good and important that they have control over us

SKULL.GIF posted:

I swear monarchism is well and alive in the american population, I thought we purged all these goddamn idiots out

so many people are pulling at the reins to leap forward and worship and venerate hereditary elites and invent justifications for why they're actually incredibly good and important that they have control over us

really queer Christmas posted:

please don’t, it ruins my day

Shear Modulus posted:

seriously between them and the goddamn nazis its like everyone we went to war to kill has come back to gently caress up the country

Gio posted:

Nanomashoes posted:

first as tragedy, then as farce

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's essentially the same thing that happened to the Soviet Union, which was bureuacratic ossification. To reach a high place of power in the Soviet Union required building up like a Party CV if you will - if you weren't an original bolshevik or a hero of the Great Patriotic War then you had to build up your credit from an early age by joining the Young Pioneers, which was like the Soviet boy/girl scouts. Then once you were 14 or 15 you could apply to join the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League - and while the Komsomol in itself wasn't a powerful organization it did serve as a vetting mechanism to establish Party loyalty and indoctrination from a young age, which was considered a big requirement for bureaucratic position. General Secretary Andropov himself established his credentials by working as the First Secretary of the Karelian Komsomol during WW2.

So the end result of this formalistic process of vetting and bureaucratic climbing meant that, by the 1980s when all the old guard had died off, the Soviet Union was effectively ruled by a professional political class that had never known any life other than communism. And unlike the old guard communists who all came from peasant, proletarian, or military backgrounds, the Soviet political class didn't have any real ties to proletarian labor. What they did have though were perks, and while the perks of being a nomenklatura were a lot better than what the average prole could get - it was still nothing like being a rich capitalist class. So by the end of perestroika, while the Soviet masses were demanding the transformation of the Soviet economy into a more democratic worker-directed system, the nomenklatura were conspiring to dissolve the Soviet Union and privatize everything. And they got their chance when all the Soviet satellite republics started declaring their independence, which cleared the way for Yeltsin to supplant Gorbachev after resisting the August Coup and to dissolve the Soviet Union. It was also the old nomenklatura that profited the most from Russian privatization schemes, because they could exploit their special knowledge of the political economy to buy up all of the most productive and profitable industries before anybody else.

To become a politician in the United States requires a similar process of vetting and political climbing. You need to come from at least a middle class family which could finance your way through college, earn a law degree, become a lawyer, then become a lawmaker and eventually work your way up political offices to national politics. That's the career path Obama took, and every step of the way his academic and legal work was building up a case which vetted him for consideration as a presidential nominee. That's also why there was so much insistence that Hillary Clinton was the "most qualified presidential candidate ever," because she had so much political experience. Outside of this career path, you pretty much have to either be a popular military general, or an independently wealthy businessman who can buy their way into office.

That's basically what Trump did. He financed his own entry into the primaries, and then leveraged his charisma into outmaneuvering Hillary Clinton and the entire Republican field politically. Obama was similarly a 1 in a million force of charisma who came out of left field to throw off the Clinton political machine in 2008. Typical American politicians don't have those kind of qualities, because they've been institutionally distanced from the lives and concerns of regular people by their professional commitment to politics, and their indoctrination by elite institutions. That makes them easy to be overtaken suddenly by outside figures, the same way the Soviet Union was taken over by Yeltsin.

But there's also a fourth type of politician embodied by Joe Kennedy, which are the aristocratic dynasts of the capital elite. They come from families with old money, and they've been going to all the elite schools since the day they could talk - and these elite schools are first and foremost institutions which inculcate the ideology of power and rule. That's also why Joe Kennedy is such a void of charisma and a repulsive ghoul, because they have absolutely nothing in common with the national electorate, except in the rich districts they represent. And Joe Kennedy represents one of the oldest and wealthiest districts in the country. They are first and foremost driven by class interests, and any pretense to noblesse oblige was wiped out by the triumph of Neoliberalism.

e: sorry for all the , but a lot does have to be established to understand the historical process that causes a socially distant political class.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752

Frijolero posted:

I'll see your pasty NE virgin and raise you the absolute hunk Jeb Bush 2020.

SKULL.GIF posted:

hahah she got mad at the replies

https://twitter.com/JenAshleyWright/status/957747050329886720

Al! posted:

the divine right of kennedys

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

today’s succ tweet of the day is.....

https://twitter.com/jenashleywright/status/957698883517386752