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FlamingLiberal posted:After Trump got all of those judges he wanted confirmed? Mitch wants someone with an R besides their name who doesn't score as many own-goals. Mitch will carry water for him because Trump's His Team but he has every reason to hate Trump's guts
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Jun 13, 2022 22:03
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Lol if they get him on taxes and fundraising Trump has spent his entire life committing money crimes. I was expecting him to get dinged (civilly?) in NY but him getting in trouble for stealing many millions from coup sympathizers would be very funny.
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Jun 13, 2022 22:03
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:I think that's an extremely generous interpretation of Obama and his motives/actions. Obama built a "coalition" simply to get elected and once it served its purpose he purposefully destroyed it and spent all of his power doing either the absolute bare minimum (gay rights) or actively loving over the country in favor of capital (a thousand examples we're all familiar with). Obama riding into the presidency on a nearly unprecedented wave of political will and grassroots organizing and then immediately dismantling it in favor of shielding corporations from the consequences of their own actions is like a pitch-perfect example of the Democratic Party's role in U.S politics. GreyjoyBastard posted:Trump has spent his entire life committing money crimes. I was expecting him to get dinged (civilly?) in NY but him getting in trouble for stealing many millions from coup sympathizers would be very funny. If grifting was a punishable offence then like all of Congress would be in jail right now, he's probably fine.
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Jun 13, 2022 22:16
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Pretty sure Trump skates on the merits set by Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate; money is speech and speech is free.
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Jun 13, 2022 22:26
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Gerund posted:Pretty sure Trump skates on the merits set by Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate; money is speech and speech is free. Well, no, I think this might get weird: Not to be fair to Cruz, but he is raising money for his campaign, not to overthrow an election he lost. The situation would probably be quite a bit different, not to mention Trump has largely already made the money disappear through likely fraudulent means.
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Jun 13, 2022 22:31
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:I think that's an extremely generous interpretation of Obama and his motives/actions. Obama built a "coalition" simply to get elected and once it served its purpose he purposefully destroyed it and spent all of his power doing either the absolute bare minimum (gay rights) or actively loving over the country in favor of capital (a thousand examples we're all familiar with). I read this as "I have an extremely generous interpretation" and then thought "Well, that doesn't sound very generous." I don't have a lot to disagree with, he fooled a lot of people into thinking he was a transformative leftist candidate and we got a centrist who was playing chess with congress while his enemies kept playing checkers, to butcher the old saying.
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Jun 13, 2022 22:39
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Jaxyon posted:It sounds like you're upset that Cornel West won't code switch? I’m not upset. I also understand why he doesn’t. There are reasons to not. FLIPADELPHIA posted:. Obama isn’t leftist at all and never has been. I don't think "language" was an issue. Language was just a tool for him- he perfected the Clintonesque triangulation technique and wrung every winnable vote out of the electorate, then poo poo on the people who put him in power. Bolded is correct. Not bolded isn’t. Obama is a Christian Realist (and explicitly so, not by inference, he loves his Niebuhr). And Christian Realism has a relationship with Marxism, in so far as Niebuhr was a Marxists (armed and drilling !) who was turned off by Stalin. The two men also have a public disagreement and this very question I think is very much part of that disagreement (though that is only inferred). The left wants and needs to remain itself. But it also has to speak and make those outside of it come to its ideas. Apologia from the left is necessary or that cannot happen. Class consciousness must be in the contextual language of the class. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 22:42
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It seems to me that the failure of "the left" or any voting bloc that might support their policies plain and simple comes down to the fact that anyone with that mindset or advocating for those solutions just straight up has no loving money and lacks the support of anyone who does. Money is power and that's it. America is a winner take all system that rewards cut throat greed which seems to worship the ones that somehow rose to the top, whether by luck, inheritance or a con. So many members of our society equate wealth with intelligence and view acquiring more of it as an ends unto itself. Anyone with the power to fix any of this poo poo...why would they want to? If you have no money or aren't famous you're not even worth paying attention to. Please like and subscribe. The ones clamoring for more left leaning policies or candidates that can get behind that are the weak and the suffering. Doesn't matter if it's because they got sick or had too many kids. Should have worked harder and it sucks to be you so we get a President that likes to call people losers and people eat it up. All I've ever gotten for my trouble supporting any democrat is a lot of spam email and robocalls asking me for money they loving well know I don't have. There is no FDR or New Deal on our horizon. Why would anyone with the clout to make it happen even want the job in the first place when they can make more money robbing us all blind?
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Jun 13, 2022 23:21
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BiggerBoat posted:It seems to me that the failure of "the left" or any voting bloc that might support their policies plain and simple comes down to the fact that anyone with that mindset or advocating for those solutions just straight up has no loving money and lacks the support of anyone who does. Money is power and that's it. FDR was rich as poo poo. Old money rich. His uncle was president before he was rich.
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Jun 13, 2022 23:30
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Oracle posted:FDR was rich as poo poo. Old money rich. His uncle was president before he was rich. And FDR is the president the Dems explicitly do not want to emulate. FDR was a mistake that Dems want to ensure never happens again.
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Jun 14, 2022 00:27
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CommieGIR posted:Well, no, I think this might get weird: Not to be fair to Cruz, but he is raising money for his campaign, not to overthrow an election he lost. The situation would probably be quite a bit different, not to mention Trump has largely already made the money disappear through likely fraudulent means. The Cruz case was specifically about money given to a campaign after the election. I find it very hard to believe that Trump is going to get into a significant amount of trouble in order to maintain the tissue paper thin ethical barrier between giving a campaign money after the candidate has already won which will be immediately put directly into that candidate-elect's pocket, and this stuff.
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Jun 14, 2022 02:20
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You have to remember the context FDR was operating in. There had been pretty regular anarchist bombings. Violent labor unrest was a regular occurrence. The Soviet Union had been created only a few years previously and was an example of how the workers could overthrow and murder the poo poo out of their rulers. A lot of the people in charge were genuinely afraid that if something wasn't done, there could be a revolution. Compare that to now. The American people are completely pacified, they react to their constant immiseration with perfect acceptance. The ruling class has nothing to fear.
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Jun 14, 2022 02:25
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Gripweed posted:The Cruz case was specifically about money given to a campaign after the election. I find it very hard to believe that Trump is going to get into a significant amount of trouble in order to maintain the tissue paper thin ethical barrier between giving a campaign money after the candidate has already won which will be immediately put directly into that candidate-elect's pocket, and this stuff. Yes but it didn't go to his campaign. And Trump has not fared well in court. Reminder that he actually has the worst track record in court of any modern president. If taken to court I cannot imagine the chucklefucks that represent him since aligning with him as a lawyer has basically turned into a good way to end your career or be testifying to Congress about him. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 14, 2022 |
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Jun 14, 2022 02:30
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Gripweed posted:You have to remember the context FDR was operating in. There had been pretty regular anarchist bombings. Violent labor unrest was a regular occurrence. The Soviet Union had been created only a few years previously and was an example of how the workers could overthrow and murder the poo poo out of their rulers. A lot of the people in charge were genuinely afraid that if something wasn't done, there could be a revolution. I wouldn't say they're pacified exactly, but class consciousness has successfully been all-but-obliterated in the working class so people direct their anger at the unjust system at each-other instead of the ruling class. e: Reading union newletters from the time is a hoot though. Just extremely open contempt for bosses and direct threats against their property if they continue to treat workers poorly. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jun 14, 2022 |
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Jun 14, 2022 02:35
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So is the idea that Trump would be charged for lying to his donors?
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Jun 14, 2022 02:37
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CommieGIR posted:Yes but it didn't go to his campaign. He may not have fared well but I wouldn't say he's ever been really punished either. Embarassed, sure, but that's the limit of actual consequences for the rich unless they REALLY piss off someone richer than them. e: or run an international pedo vacation getaway and have gathered such an incredible amount of blackmail that you cannot be allowed to live, but epstein is a outlier
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Jun 14, 2022 02:39
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Scamming people for a quarter of a billion dollars is an astronomical amount of money to scam from small donors in just a few months. The act itself is definitely fraud under federal law. The problem is that the committee says this is the result of the financial investigator and forensic accountants they hired and Trump's campaign lawyer confirmed part of it, but they haven't released the actual evidence yet. It is possible for Trump to claim that he didn't handle the money directly. Seems incredibly unlikely, but they would have to decide to prosecute him and have some kind of evidence that he knew the endeavor was fraudulent. Whoever officially ran the finances is exposed to a ton of liability - civil and criminal. But, since we don't know exactly what the investigators and forensic accountants found, we don't know for sure if this is something they can connect directly to Trump. It is very possible for a federal DA to see that this isn't a slam dunk case and not want to charge a former President for something "small" like fraud without a slam dunk case. His campaign staff and lawyer who ran the (non-existent) committee are in trouble unless they have something to prove they weren't the ones behind it. Raising a quarter of a billion dollars from several million small donors for a committee that never existed and spent less than 5% of the money on anything even related to legal defense costs is both incredibly impressive and kind of sad for that many people to get scammed out of so much money by someone who is ostensibly a billionaire - even if they were donating to something terrible and were probably bad people and rubes instead of just rubes.
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Jun 14, 2022 03:48
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Scamming people for a quarter of a billion dollars is an astronomical amount of money to scam from small donors in just a few months. The act itself is definitely fraud under federal law. the trump campaign generated more credit card chargebacks and refunds in 2020 than anything else in the country. Something like 1 in 5 of their transactions were charged back, largely because they were signing people up for recurring donations with either no notice or some near-invisible fine print. There were, like, a million stories of old people who couldn't afford it getting hit for huge recurring charges and being basically ruined by it https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donations.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommyb...sh=301b404d58a3
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Jun 14, 2022 04:22
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I hope this is the timeline where Donnie fucks himself and current regressive fundraising machines by getting blacklisted from all the major transaction processing companies.
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Jun 14, 2022 04:29
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Bar Ran Dun posted:There is a clear blueprint for organizing leftist movements in the US from the civil rights movement, religion. I don't really think this is the case - like Gumball Gumption pointed out, a lot of leftist organizing in real life does involve religious groups. Like basically all leftist organizing in the Muslim community deals with religious groups. The problem is that "organizing leftist movements through religion" doesn't get past the problem of being frozen out of power, because Religious leftism is anathema to the Democrats for the same reason that other forms of leftism are: We're moral absolutists and moral absolutism has no place in a centrist party because it's an impediment to triangulation.
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Jun 14, 2022 05:25
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Mormon Star Wars posted:We're moral absolutists and moral absolutism has no place in a centrist party because it's an impediment to triangulation. Are you arguing for an Islamic theocracy in the US? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 14, 2022 05:51
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Are you arguing for an Islamic theocracy in the US? What????
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Jun 14, 2022 06:00
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Less cynically (but also more cynically), moral absolutism tends to ruin people and societies and most generations can think back to a major war or two that was started by a moral absolutist who decided, “Hey, this time we got it right.” I don’t think castigating a political party for not treating every issue as a inerrantly holy mission is a major own when most people do live with moral ambiguity.
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Jun 14, 2022 06:11
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Why I lose hope? This sort of stuff: https://twitter.com/ryanobles/status/1536495438303485952
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Jun 14, 2022 06:11
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yronic heroism posted:Less cynically (but also more cynically), moral absolutism tends to ruin people and societies and most generations can think back to a major war or two that was started by a moral absolutist who decided, “Hey, this time we got it right.” I don’t think castigating a political party for not treating every issue as a inerrantly holy mission is a major own when most people do live with moral ambiguity. Such as?
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Jun 14, 2022 06:16
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yronic heroism posted:Less cynically (but also more cynically), moral absolutism tends to ruin people and societies and most generations can think back to a major war or two that was started by a moral absolutist who decided, “Hey, this time we got it right.” You're going to have to give me a couple examples here, help me figure out where you're coming from?
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Jun 14, 2022 06:26
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yronic heroism posted:Less cynically (but also more cynically), moral absolutism tends to ruin people and societies and most generations can think back to a major war or two that was started by a moral absolutist who decided, “Hey, this time we got it right.” I don’t think castigating a political party for not treating every issue as a inerrantly holy mission is a major own when most people do live with moral ambiguity. I mean, that's fair - Although I would gladly castigate them in many contexts, I meant for that post to be a bit more objective. 1. No matter what your opinion is on moral absolutism (clearly, I'm in favor of it, and other people, like yourself, are wary of it for reasonable reasons), it's clearly contradictory to the entire idea of triangulation. Moral absolutism brooks very few compromises, and for triangulation to work, you have to be willing to compromise on almost everything. Building a leftist movement through religion doesn't resolve that contradiction, because tying leftist ideals to religion will make people less likely to compromise as they incorporate it into their absolute morality, not more. This leads to the situation that Gumball describes - if you activate religious people in a leftist way, it's easier for them to deal with local issues like housing because they won't have to make the compromises people have to make for national politics. 2. This is similar to the situation with other leftists. How much of the arguments in real life and in this very thread are based on the permissibility of compromise? If leftists are frozen out because they don't want to compromise, adding even more people who won't compromise is cool (welcome to the club) but also doesn't actually change the situation.
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Jun 14, 2022 06:27
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yronic heroism posted:Less cynically (but also more cynically), moral absolutism tends to ruin people and societies and most generations can think back to a major war or two that was started by a moral absolutist who decided, “Hey, this time we got it right.” I don’t think castigating a political party for not treating every issue as a inerrantly holy mission is a major own when most people do live with moral ambiguity. Well this risk isn’t even limited to only absolutism. It’s the risk of any idealism. And imagining a society that doesn’t materially exist but ought to be always carries that risk. All moral ideas are only real in so far as we (living in moral ambiguity ) inhabit them. The risk is that as people lose their support from their origin myths as those myths are broken, romantic alternatives will be presented by the fascists. Having something to be for, ultimately concerned with, faith is necessary. Otherwise you know random lady loses her church and ends up setting up tents for racist nationalists and Margie Taylor Greene in her yard.
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Jun 14, 2022 06:28
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:And FDR is the president the Dems explicitly do not want to emulate. FDR was a mistake that Dems want to ensure never happens again. For the sake of clarity, what specifically about FDR do the Dems want to avoid having in a president, and how do you know this?
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Jun 14, 2022 06:36
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Koos Group posted:For the sake of clarity, what specifically about FDR do the Dems want to avoid having in a president, and how do you know this? probably worth further answering how does biden openly and repeatedly invoking fdr aspirationally fit into that assertion
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Jun 14, 2022 06:42
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Such as? Keep in mind I’m not limiting this to Wars started by the US. World War II - started by Nazi moral absolutism US involvement in Vietnam - started/escalated by absolutist justifications (anti-communism) Iraq War - this should be obvious for anyone old enough to remember the Bush years War in Ukraine - in this scenario I’d say Putin is cynically claiming an absolutist justification and capitalizing on any in his domestic audience who buy it
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Jun 14, 2022 06:53
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Herstory Begins Now posted:probably worth further answering how does biden openly and repeatedly invoking fdr aspirationally fit into that assertion Has he proposed anything with the transformative power and scale of the New Deal and shown a willingness to do what's necessary to get it passed, or has he just said a bunch of stuff about liking FDR? Because talk is cheap
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Jun 14, 2022 06:54
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yronic heroism posted:Keep in mind I’m not limiting this to Wars started by the US. I still have no idea what you, personally, actually mean when you say moral absolutism. What exactly does "Nazi moral absolutism" mean to you and how did it start world war 2?
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Jun 14, 2022 06:56
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yronic heroism posted:Keep in mind I’m not limiting this to Wars started by the US. I'm not sure what I expected you to say, but I gotta admit it wasn't that you'd just list a bunch of straightforward wars of imperial expansion. Zero of these have anything to do with moral absolutism. That is a bizarre claim to make
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Jun 14, 2022 07:13
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There is one matter on which the modern Democratic party (or at least its leadership) would differ with FDR of course, which was his attempt to reform the SCOTUS to gain more sympathetic justices.
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Jun 14, 2022 07:15
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some plague rats posted:I still have no idea what you, personally, actually mean when you say moral absolutism. What exactly does "Nazi moral absolutism" mean to you and how did it start world war 2? Moral absolutism means what it says on the tin. I’d call someone who starts a war of conquest to claim glory and resources for the “deserving” absolutist. There are clear moral claims being made that, while repugnant to us, are how a 1930s German racist would justify invading Poland, for example. But that’s only an illustration of the definition, not an attempt to derail. It’s one that applies in a lot of contexts and no, I’m not claiming all moral absolutists are equally bad.
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Jun 14, 2022 07:19
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yronic heroism posted:Moral absolutism means what it says on the tin. I’d call someone who starts a war of conquest to claim glory and resources for the “deserving” absolutist. There are clear moral claims being made that, while repugnant to us, are how a 1930s German racist would justify invading Poland, for example. How do you categorize the Winter War?
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Jun 14, 2022 07:21
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:I'm not sure what I expected you to say, but I gotta admit it wasn't that you'd just list a bunch of straightforward wars of imperial expansion. Zero of these have anything to do with moral absolutism. That is a bizarre claim to make Sure they do. It boils down to the aggressor claiming so much moral superiority that, gee-whiz the only correct course is to crush someone else and impose that vision.
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Jun 14, 2022 07:22
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yronic heroism posted:Moral absolutism means what it says on the tin. I’d call someone who starts a war of conquest to claim glory and resources for the “deserving” absolutist. There are clear moral claims being made that, while repugnant to us, are how a 1930s German racist would justify invading Poland, for example. Okay so I think the problem here is one of communication, in that you're using a definition of moral absolutism that absolutely no one else apart from you subscribes to. You also seem to have some very odd opinions about the causes of imperial conflicts in the last century, which is not really what this thread is about, but I mean: yronic heroism posted:Sure they do. It boils down to the aggressor claiming so much moral superiority that, gee-whiz the only correct course is to crush someone else and impose that vision. What? This is an absolutely child-like explanation of how empires come into conflict
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Jun 14, 2022 07:27
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yronic heroism posted:Sure they do. It boils down to the aggressor claiming so much moral superiority that, gee-whiz the only correct course is to crush someone else and impose that vision. No, it doesn't. That is nonsense lol Germany wanted to expand its empire. The US wants to expand its empire. Russia wants to expand its empire. They were wars to take other people's poo poo. Wanting someone's poo poo isn't a moral principle It really just seems like you said something you thought sounded wise and now you're trying to reason backwards into making it true, but it is not. It is like... comically not
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Jun 14, 2022 07:32
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