US Current Events November: D&D's Afghanistan

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Current Events November: D&D's Afghanistan

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Sanguinia posted:

Tweet thread says Gorsuch is one of the only two justices who is telegraphing taking Texas' side in both suits. Which is pretty wild considering his weirdo true-Libertarian ideology. Guess snuffing Federal power is the lesser Liberatarian evil than allowing a state to become a dictatorship with the power to strip one of it's citizen's federal rights no matter where in the country they go to exercise it by turning every fascist in america into a cop.

After the unhinged reaction to a pilot spouting off a right wing meme the other day, it�s difficult to see which Americans, if any, don�t want to be some kind of cop.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2021 17:34

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:47

selec: Sep 6, 2003

punishedkissinger posted:

"Im uncomfortable that this pilot just yelled 'gently caress Obama' over the intercom"

"oh so you wish you were a cop????"

There was quite a bit more than that going on both in this thread and on Twitter. They let this weirdo on CNN:

https://twitter.com/asharangappa_/status/1454617599854080003?s=21

# ¿ Nov 1, 2021 18:29

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Fucker posted:

Pretty good argument. Unless someone comes up with a better counter-argument, I'm gonna have to concur.

I don�t believe republicans when they lie about electoral outcomes, I�m not going to believe Democrats when they lie about them either.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 16:15

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Eric Cantonese posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1455622633077149696

A very good point by Bitecoffer. I don't know how you fight it though. I guess you just have t stick to your guns and not be scared?

�That�s dumb, I�m not going to address something that dumb.�

Answer the questions you wish they�d asked. Bully the press. Refuse the cede territory. Never apologize. Act like a leader, show clear priorities and sense of purpose.

�Critical race theory is just what they�re calling [least popular Republican policy right now]� then refuse to talk about it more.

selec fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 2, 2021

# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 21:19

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Harik posted:

yes! Also if insurance declines to pay (any significant medical event will have some bills rejected) you're just on the hook for all of it anyway.

the best healthcare system in the world.

Every American who isn�t independently wealthy lives in a system of medical precarity, and the one party that ostensibly claims to want to help this cannot get policies that have 70 to 80% approval among the public, an unheard of level of agreement in the US today, over the finish line.

I don�t see how one looks at that and thinks this is going to work out.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 22:44

selec: Sep 6, 2003

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

A central secret to understanding US elections is that voters as a group are not the actors, they are the acted-upon. If you can't grasp this you just turn into a weird Calvanist-but-for-civics, which is what the eternal dogfuckers who run these campaigns into the ground would prefer

There are a lot of very smart people who understand a lot of inside baseball about politics, but do not have a basic analysis of power relationships, and it makes for some really comical Rube Goldberg explanations of what we see, when �What do the rich people who run our political system prefer?� is sitting right there unexamined. It�s bananas! It�s cargo cult analysis. Be smarter than David Brooks: it doesn�t pay, but it feels alright.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 16:47

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Hellblazer187 posted:

What could have been done differently with schools? I mean, they kinda had to close with this pandemic. Yes that absolutely sucks for parents but what was the alternative? Just send thousands to their deaths?

Pay people with kids to stay home, or to go half time. This can�t happen under a system so tightly in the grip of capital, though. There are multiple fallback systems in place to prevent threats to the status quo from occurring.

It is better for capital that either thousands die, or that the response is so shoddy that people have even less faith in public institutions. It is absolutely unacceptable to capital to allow the government to ease the burden on parents significantly. That�s why neither party has many if any voices willing to speak to the reasons why both parents have to work outside the home now, why even if you do everything right your kid can get a lovely education and you go bankrupt because you got sick or hit by a truck. There�s no honest voices out there capable of countering the hegemonic message that You�re On Your Own

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 17:12

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Darkrenown posted:

"Hello, I don't care about diabetics dying because they can't afford drugs, or trans people being murdered. Wake me up when I can have some weed. Yes, I am the true leftist here"

That's quite the lovely view to have.

Civic Calvinism, right here in the thread!

I want Medicare for All, not just the people who agree with me. If you want to win elections instead of moral victories, pay attention to the material needs of the populace. Kwame Ture said something like �if a white man wants to lynch me, that�s his problem. If he has the power to, that�s mine.�

If you want to empower diabetics and trans people, give them loving Money

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 17:49

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Baronash posted:

My teacher friends had coworkers who are dead and buried because of in person schooling, but yeah, it's a real loving bummer your kid is a bit slow at times tables.

There�s nothing better for preserving the status quo than one worker getting mad at another for things the ruling class did to them both

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 18:32

selec: Sep 6, 2003

SourKraut posted:

Don't take this the wrong way, but you might want to take a break for a bit, just for mental health.

Edit: And I say that from a place of caring, not anything else.

Antinatalism is another form of Civic Calvinism. It is normal and OK to want to have kids. It is because of our lovely economic system that it is as difficult to afford to do that and that the future is as bleak as it is.

Kill the liberal in your brain, LionArcher

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 18:55

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

Hey folks I would like to plug again the new podcast series Offline, all about how the internet has poisoned our discourse both offline and on, and amplified the worst tendencies of humanity. This week's guest was Monica Lewinkski, who had a lot of real thoughtful things to say about it all.

I'm really digging the conversations, I think it's all extremely applicable to our lives.

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/offline/

lmao of course Jia Tolentino went on there; online didn�t let her get away with explaining away her parents crimes when she tried to write them off

https://www.wearyourvoicemag.com/jia-tolentino-parents-teachers-harmed/

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 21:15

selec: Sep 6, 2003

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Piggybacking on this: the Biden administration has been weaponizing public health laws to deport as many immigrants as possible. It had been ruled illegal, but the administration appealed that decision continued to fight for it in appeals and got a judge to overturn the ruling that they had to stop

That, to me, is what an administration exercising power looks like. They didn't spend endless time navel-gazing over legal memos, they just moved with alacrity to do something they wanted to do and bent the law to their will, and the justifications are all post hoc

In the end, rich people get what they want. The ruling class gets what it wants. It�s only the little people who have to fight the system, and keep losing until they maybe win some of what they wanted.

We�re not asking you to even win, we�re asking you to fight, and the reasons you won�t even fight sound like someone with no fight left in them desperately paging through the rule boom to get an excuse to not do their job.

The gently caress am I going to donate or phone bank for such a lazy, incompetent bunch of losers for? What�s the motivation for the base?

selec fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Nov 3, 2021

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 22:23

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Edmund Lava posted:

Absolutely loving baffling how useless these cretins are.

It�s harder for me to believe they�re dumb than they just oppose those measures. They didn�t want them to pass, and lo and behold they didn�t pass. If they�d wanted them to passed they�d have been any kind of proactive about it.

They�re not useless! They�re very useful to the people they actually serve, which by and large is not the people who give them the great majority of the votes they get.

They are doing their job just perfectly. It�s just that you�re not their boss.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 00:55

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Lib and let die posted:

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

Are you expecting at some point in the future that the democrats' party will welcome socialists with the same open arms it welcomes anti-abortion and pro-austerity conservatives like the Representative from RI I've had the unfortunate displeasure of sharing a holiday dinner table with for years?

Do you have some sort of frame of reference on when this, "causality" in which socialists become welcome into the democrats' party we can look to?

HAU is, like Fancy, another troll indistinguishable from actual posters. The gimmick is there is nothing the Dems can do they won�t defend, and it�s always a rosy future for them, despite what they do. It�s a toxic optimism thing, and it�s less funny for being indistinguishable from Twitter dems who tell you they want the party of Reagan back, because he was much nicer than Trump.

It�s weird but whatever

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 16:08

selec: Sep 6, 2003

VitalSigns posted:

Whoever made the post about how we've brought back a modern version of the divine right of kings really hit the nail on the head.

The morality of what the king does is beyond question because God put him there so it doesn't matter whether you think the king is good or bad to oppose him means opposing God. Likewise it doesn't matter whether the parliamentarian is doing good or bad, right or wrong, because someone made a rule to give her veto power over democracy so criticizing it means opposing the concept of rules and order.

The bureaucratization of democracy. You can vote to change the names of individual politicians, but the real power is in the hands of unelected authoritarian bureaucrats who have been handed veto power over the elected government by tradition and who answer only to the 1%

Matt Christman has been exploring this theme in his historical podcasts as well as his chat streams and it�s pretty impressive how well the aphorism
�If voting changed anything [substantive] they�d make it illegal� described the situation we�re in. Any avenue of improving the lives of ordinary people has endless roadblocks that cannot be resolved thrown up in front of it. You cannot vote in any way that will make a difference in our society at the level that would change the power relationships or oppression dynamics that underpin it.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 16:35

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Darkrenown posted:

I don't agree that the actors are interchangeable, but it's pretty funny how much Trump flip-flopped:

It�s the ruling class, party affiliation is mostly aesthetic. The Clintons were at his wedding, that tells you all you need to know.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 17:34

selec: Sep 6, 2003

BougieBitch posted:

Here's a question I don't think anyone has meaningfully addressed - how would the benefits of federal student loan forgiveness be distributed? You might be surprised to learn that the spread is every bit as weighted as the SALT removal - but probably not! The group with the most student loan debt is D.C., and those people have 0 value for both the state and federal party, so from a "we should only support policies that get votes" that's a pretty bad start! Out of actual states, the three highest are Ohio (15%), Georgia (15%), and Mississippi (14.6%). The Mississippi votes are functionally useless - there's no state party to speak of and the EC vote isn't going to flip. Georgia is a swing state, so those numbers look good, Ohio USED to be a swing state, but lately has been pretty far out of reach (8% in 2020).

What about raw numbers? Well California and Texas obviously have the most borrowers due to their size, then NY, FL, PA, OH, GA, and IL. Of those, only PA, OH, and GA are of any electoral value. There's no real benefit to forgiving CA and NY loans electorally, but Pelosi and Schumer obviously aren't going to let a bill pass that excludes their states, so you have to get through the first $142.7B and 3.86M borrowers in CA and $91.9B among 2.41M in NY before you get started with the others.

Similarly, full forgiveness is much more beneficial to a small and elite population of graduate students than it is to undergrads - those drat lucky duckies! Since eliminating the SALT cap is problematic, we wouldn't want to do the same thing with forgiveness and create inter-class resentment that leads to the poor voting for the other guy.

So okay, $10K or $50K flat forgiveness. What do we do to give an equivalent amount to non-college people so they don't crab bucket? Well, we have the Pell grants for community college in the current bill, but most people who haven't gone to college yet probably aren't going to go back, so that's likely a non-starter. It fixes things in the future, but the average 45 year-old is probably not going to go to community college.

What about the other swing states? The closest races that went blue were AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, WI, while the only relevant ones that went red were FL and NC. Here's the debt numbers for them (using this source https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-state#west-virginia):

AZ: $30.7B across 866K borrowers (12.1%)
FL: $98.2B across 2.55M borrowers (11.8%)
GA: $67.2B across 1.61M borrowers (15%)
MI: $50.7B across 1.4M borrowers (13.9%)
NV: $11.5B across 340K borrowers (10.9%)
NC: $48B across 1.27M borrowers (12.1%)
PA: $63.9B across 1.78M borrowers (13.7%)
WI: $23.1B across 716M borrowers (12.1%)

So overall, it looks like the swings states are fairly representative of the country in terms of percentage that would directly benefit. Unfortunately, that means they have to deal with the average amount of opposition among the other 85%+ of the state! How does this issue poll among people that don't have student loan debt?

Let's look at some cross-tabs. Here's the first poll I found that seems relevant: https://www.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/docs/2021-03/GCNP%20Methodology%2003-31-21_1.pdf (Grinnell College March 2021)

Who wants full forgiveness more than average? Biden voters, Dem voters, under 35s, non-white voters, income below $50K, urban voters. Who doesn't want forgiveness? Trump voters, Rep voters, men, age 35-54, age 55+ (although seniors are softer evidently), whites, those with college degrees, income $50K+ (esp $100K+), suburban voters. There's a middle option in this poll that might confound, "forgive loans only for those in need" - this is the most popular option, and since "in need" is pretty vague, it might be hard to draw conclusions. You could maybe suppose that this option is the "don't feel strongly one way or the other" category, but let's see if there is another poll to go off of.

Here's a Harris poll from Feb: https://theharrispoll.com/student-loan-debt-forgiveness/

This one is actually more helpful - it has cross-tabs based on whether the respondent has debt (either their own or as a cosigner). Unsurprising, the number that do not support forgiveness is much higher among those with no loans! 62.8% without loans also don't support forgiveness. Why? Well, most people who have paid off all their loans still support forgiveness (pretty close to 50-50, no explicit crosstab), but those who have never had loans (approx 45%) strongly oppose forgiving them (around 73.6%)! Those with a high school education or less make up about half of this group, and their overall support for forgiveness is 35.5% for/64.5% against. The "some college" group is also a fairly large portion, and their overall support is almost 50/50 overall. In terms of income level, the policy is most opposed by those making the least, with less than 50K being about 45% for vs 55% against.

That seems at odds with the first set of results, but actually it just proves the overall point of "people want things that benefit them". When the pitch is "a flat amount or full amount of forgiveness", most of the squishy folks in the $50K and below group go against the policy - the first poll is split 34/44/17, but the second poll shows that the 44 mostly goes hard against it when it isn't means-tested. On the flip side, the folks with $100K plus incomes are the reverse - the first poll has the split at 17/36/44, but when you mention universal forgiveness the majority of the "for those who need it" pick to do it. Could it be that these splitters think the cost is too high? Some of them, but it isn't nearly as predictive as you'd think! 41% of the people who oppose forgiveness think it would be more likely to help than hurt the economy if $50K was forgiven per borrower, so their reason for opposing the policy can't be solely due to some predicted global harm. They either believe that the economy could get better while making things worse for them, or that there are other problems with the policy that outweigh it being economically positive.

Maybe you don't need to consider these other folks in the equation though - surely giving people things will get them to turn out! It's possible - there are more people who support forgiveness than oppose it in the somewhat/very important row of the "How important is it that a politician you vote for align with your views" question. This mostly tracks with expected propensity for the no college and low income groups who make up a fair portion of the population.

All of those factors look pretty good, but the factor that looks AWFUL is the proportion of white voters for or against. The policy is 42.4% for and 57.6% against among white voters. This is partially because non-white students are more likely to have to take out loans or be unable to pay them off of course, so it may not really be its own variable overall, but it's hard to say that with any real certainty. Hispanic respondents are around 53.4/46.6, and AA respondents are about 57.9/42.1 What does that mean for the states we were hoping to swing?

AZ: 60.4% white, 4.7% black, 30.7% Hispanic
FL: 57.7% white, 15.1% black, 26.5% Hispanic
GA: 51.9% white, 31% black, 10.5% Hispanic
MI: 73.9% white, 13.7% black, 5.6% Hispanic
NV: 51.2% white, 9.8% black, 28.7% Hispanic
NC: 62.2% white, 20.5% black, 10.7% Hispanic
PA: 75% white, 10.9% black, 8.1% Hispanic
WI: 80.4% white, 6.4% black, 7.6% Hispanic

So MI, PA, WI are much whiter than the national average (61.6%) and NV and GA are much less white. Additionally, AZ is much less black than the average (12.4%) and GA and NC are much more. The Hispanic population of AZ, FL, and NV might be a tiebreaker, but the margins don't necessarily make up for the lack of a black population in AZ.

What's the takeaway for federal elections then? Student loan forgiveness probably boosts GA, NV, and NC at the expense of MI, PA, WI, and AZ if we look just at race/ethnicity. The clearest winner for the policy is GA, which has both a high amount of debt and a strong non-white voting base (these two things are obviously linked by the racial disparity in wealth as well).

So why not done? Biden is ignoring it because it is a risky play for PA, AZ, and WI in exchange for locking GA in. NC might flip one way from this, but MI could flip the other if so. He's hoping for a working-class coalition that can win the rust belt reliably, and this policy doesn't serve them as well as focusing on kid-havers.

The Senate will probably not pass it because it's the easiest wedge issue ever - it's the distillation of the education grievance that is a mainstay of Republican tactics (whether it be CRT, race-based admissions, trans bathrooms, or some other nonsense), and it would take removing the filibuster or finding more taxes to raise, which has already been a hassle for the current reconciliation bill

All that triangulation to just be able to accomplish nothing anyway. Seems silly to do that much math when he�s not going to do it one way or the other because 1. He�s ideologically opposed to decreasing the suffering of young people and 2. He can�t control his own party.

There�s nothing he can do, and as important, not much he wants to do. We picked the worst possible person for the moment, and now we get to live with it.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 18:01

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

For me its more like "Things are very hosed, but I cannot *not* try. Giving up is worse than trying and failing."

What trying and caring looks like can be a choice though. Wife and I have gotten pretty much entirely disenchanted with the Dems, but we do a lot locally which helps. So we don�t pin our hopes on anything good happening nationally or statewide, but we do DSA stuff, volunteer as escorts at the womens clinic, and keep our friends and loved ones close.

It feels like this is a realistic strategy that preserves mental health, provides healthy outlets, and does not make us dependent, materially or emotionally, on help that won�t be coming.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 18:19

selec: Sep 6, 2003

A big flaming stink posted:

https://twitter.com/LavenderNRed/status/1455990165642649600

uh, does anyone know why the gently caress we're doing this????

Because there�s probably some worries about land reform or some other pro-working class policy. It�s so transparent.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 18:47

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

Was just starting to read this article, seems like it has something to do with it.

Nicaraguan exiles see vote as step on Ortega�s road to dictatorship
Many Nicaraguans, including the ruling couple�s estranged daughter, see unhappy parallels with the fight against Somoza half a century ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/nicaraguan-exiles-election-daniel-ortega-dictatorship-rosario-murillo

Never trust expats to tell you what�s going on inside a country you can just send a reporter to.

OMG these czarists told us Stalin eats babies!!!

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 19:06

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Main Paineframe posted:

Well, I typed it into Google search instead of Twitter search, and Reuters says that the Nicaraguan government has arrested "dozens of opposition politicians", including several "presidential hopefuls". Sure, I only did a whopping ten seconds of research into the subject, but that's ten more seconds than you or any of these posters bothered to put into it:

Our allies do poo poo like this all the time. As long as KSA is a vital strategic partner, absolutely none of this is sincere or anything I can be convinced to care about in the least. If you defend these actions on a basis that is naive of the reasons they�ve been undertaken, that�s just being a rube for power. You�re smarter than that, right? At least defend the empire on its own terms, or accept that you refuse to see it as it truly is.

They aren�t sanctioning them because of what they�ve done, they�re sanctioning them for doing it as leftists. It�s the money!

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 19:16

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

I agree that we treat KSA with kid gloves because of the money, absolutely, and our ongoing relationship with KSA and MBS is disgusting and shameful.

I don't agree that Ortega is a leftist. Nothing about a dictatorship, rounding up all your opponents and putting them in prison, and trying to start a hereditary executive is leftist or should be defended by people who call themselves leftist.

You�re basically describing Cuba, one of the only leftist states able to successfully resist US imperialism. And it�s not like we don�t do all those things too. We jail political protesters all the time, we throw the Donzigers of our society to the wolves or chase them out of the country. And the only parties going have both been dominated by political family dynasties within living memory. It�s laughably naive or myopic to think those accusations aren�t just accusations of running an an efficient state that is amorally pursuing its goals.

Our poo poo stinks too, and we don�t have any moral high ground to tell people we spend billions of dollars trying to undermine and assassinate they have to follow our rules. They already are following our rules, buddy! We approve of all those things if our allies do them so like it or not they are living up to our miserable, lovely violent oppressive standard, and yet you can act like we�re above it or in a place to judge. Sad, and preventative of more clear discernment IMO.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 19:28

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Abner Assington posted:

Not a teacher, but same. The brain drain in this country would be loving intense if the whole "If you don't like it, you can leave" mentality were as easy to realize as they think.

Close with two teachers, one quit last year, one is at the end of this year, neither had a plan for after besides �be much happier�.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 20:45

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Eric Cantonese posted:

It always gets so mean when people start second guessing people's spending decisions. It's one of the worst parts about any piece exploring a family's budget limitations.

Sometimes scorn is deserved, but people really don't hold back if it's a stranger even if they don't realize the full scope of what they don't know.

People don�t want to accidentally extend sympathy to someone who isn�t going to Civic Heaven because then (???) would happen and we don�t want that.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 21:07

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Herstory Begins Now posted:

ortega and the sandinistas have been in power multiple times and ortega personally for ~15 of the last 20 years. it's not really the same as the standard 'a leftist gain some power, regime change them!' foreign policy

How long has the house of Saud been in power? Oh I guess that�s not really a factor then.

It really is just economic warfare and the desire to insist there�s some good reason the US is interfering in an upcoming election on a scale that dwarfs whatever Russia did in �16 is hilarious. Scraping the bottom of the barrel to defend the empire is not a good look! You can just say it�s lovely and not our business rather than doing unpaid unwitting Raytheon internships in front of all of us.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 21:25

selec: Sep 6, 2003

HonorableTB posted:

I live in Seattle where we get both the super late sunrise and super early sunsets at the same time and it makes our daylight hours hilariously short. 1000 years of darkness upon us as we declare SAD is a baby back bitch and activate hard mode looking like goofy going "I'll fukken do it again" as we drop to 6 hours of daylight on the solstice

People always say you can�t judge the past by modern standards but I know my rear end in a top hat ancestors weren�t snow leopards or nothing and they still planted us in Iowa. They were dumb for that.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 21:35

selec: Sep 6, 2003

I gotta be honest I hope a party that can convince people to rationalize not helping those in need in public for free loses. Hope it eats poo poo and those people have to own it.

Because the party is not making things better, by their own explanations it cannot in the current state, so what is the point of it? It�s not a bulwark against anything.

I won�t vote Republican, but I simply cannot be made to care for excuse makers, number grubbers and middle class comfort masquerading as confidence that the catastrophic medical debt will never come for you: honestly, I hope it does, it�s going to come for somebody in this country, may as well be the people who want to tell us why nothing good can happen, because if it did, we wouldn�t get the opportunity for nothing good to happen in the future.

Stop voting, make money, make a pact/cadre agreement with your friends, and do not expect good things from the collective will of the people; it has been effectively stymied.

There is a bright future possible for this land (not country; not nation), but it is only likely after a wrenching bottleneck, one which attitudes of governance minded number grubbers will not get us through.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2021 15:56

selec: Sep 6, 2003

My best friend for about 35 years now was a high school art teacher. He�s also painted an album cover for a major You Would Know Them rock band in the last decade, and now supports himself as an artist, meagerly. He quit his union education job with insurance to live on less money with no insurance because the state absolutely poo poo all over educators during the pandemic, and so now he�s resigned himself to never paying off his student loans, which at age 45 are still in the mid 5 figures, and just makes enough payments on the mortgage lien his dad dying uninsured left him with to not be homeless.

I don�t know many better human beings, and the idea that he doesn�t deserve or it�s not electorally feasible to help him enrages me. I have committed myself to never letting him fall too far, but the state has utterly abandoned him.

And he�s just one of the several left-behind men and women I know, all of whom demographically should be loyal democrats, and most of whom are now just no longer voting because it will change nothing about their lives to do so.

That these lives do not matter to the state or to the party is depraved.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2021 16:48

selec: Sep 6, 2003

My new theory is that Havana Syndrome is a loyalty test for think tankers, natsec reporters and lanyards. Rather than an indefensible war in Iraq promoted by transparent liars they�re forced to defend if they want to keep getting a paycheck, they�ve decided to haze this generation of lickspittles and sort out the ones that won�t fall in line by inventing a transparently, comedically fake explanation for �raided the minibar� but unless you go along with it you�ll be kicked out of the Blob and the job security that goes along with it.

JK I think

# ¿ Nov 5, 2021 19:20

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Ghost Leviathan posted:

There is no conspiracy, there's been open war for a century.

Marxism isn�t a conspiracy theory, it�s a lens that accurately describes the world. Money is power, and if you want to know why things are how they are, just find out who makes money off it being that way. It�s all done out in the open. It�s also, once you really internalize it, a source of comfort and even humor.

Believing it can�t just be about the money drives all kinds of insane behaviors like toxic optimism and wishcasting and weird sexism and all kinds of just odd behavior from ostensibly rational adults trying to account for the behavior of democratic politicians. So the loyalists manifest reactions that anybody on the outside can see as obvious defense mechanisms rather than ideologically arrived-at conclusions. You can either wail and moan (which I still fall into the old habit of occasionally) or establish a similar comedy category for blinkered liberals the way we all have one for insane right wing conspiracy theorists. It�s funny to laugh at lanyards and HR types having their annual �but I thought I voted for the good guys� meltie once you recognize the insane levels of denial and self-delusion it takes to get them to a place where the cracks and pings come fast and wide.

Marxist analysis is self-care for living in a declining empire.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2021 18:46

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Vorik posted:

You think roads, bridges, high speed internet, etc will only benefit republicans?

It�s like bragging that you pay your rent, or don�t beat your kids. You don�t get cookies for doing the least.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2021 19:18

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

Well yeah, it's so much more than "run a troop".

It's more like don't tell people that they are bad and the country they love is bad. Don't scold people and condescend to them.

Can you show me the political ads that do this, or even explain where you think the average voter runs into these ideas? Because I don�t think by and large that had any effect whatsoever

# ¿ Nov 8, 2021 23:31

selec: Sep 6, 2003

How are u posted:

Its what those voters in Virginia were saying. Leon quoted it all a page or two ago.

But where do you think they�re exposed to those messages? They don�t read C-SPAM, so It�s just right wing bullshit they see on Facebook. There is nothing to be done about it, at least by candidates and campaigns, is there? Here�s a set of factual realities I think that obviate this entire conversation:

1. You can�t stop leftists from making these statements/claims in public, but because of the general marginalization of left voices it�s extremely unlikely your average suburban voter hears it directly from the source. It�s dangerous if they do, anyways, because that voter might end up agreeing with them.

2. The way voters ARE exposed to these ideas is as demonized extractions that find the most inflammatory statements, remove context and spread them. I mean, you�re a Democrat, you�ve seen this done to Ilhan Omar several times the last few years. They don�t want you to watch the whole speech, they just want you to get mad about the little bit they pulled out. The people pulling this poo poo are really good at doing that kind of selective editing and framing.

3. Even if Dems or leftists policed their speech to the Nth degree, it doesn�t take a crypto Muslim Kenyan communist to tell you they�ll make up whatever they want regardless.

Deal from strength. Do not police your edges, figure out how to get them to vote for you lol.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 00:17

selec: Sep 6, 2003

The Business section of the newspaper should also be accompanied by a Labor section, that included statistics like average household savings by quartile, average wage growth or loss, measures of the uninsured, measures of the people who are insured but can�t use it, percentage of people with no paid leave, information on new social programs or how to sign up for existing ones. Reporting on labor conditions at specific employers to help workers choose the best options, union drive info, and stats on the ratio of C suite pay at local companies compared to average worker pay there.

Basically information that is useful to people who don�t own stocks. You know you�d be doing it right when local businesses threaten to pull advertising over it.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 17:50

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Judakel posted:

Fun fact: the guy he chased down said he would vote for him if he could.

A rich tapestry! Fetterman is seen as a threat considering the way the Khive people descend on mentions of him.

I think he�d be a good candidate, no idea on how he�d govern, but he�s impossible to call a wimp or managerial lanyard type.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 18:53

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Mendrian posted:

The issue is that simply having money is irrelevant. The world requires more robust indecies of medical, fiscal, and emotional wellbeing to calculate that kind of thing.

If I have more money now than I have ever had at the end of a month, but my debt is higher and my bills are higher and I don't see a growth in wages on the horizon and rent keeps ticking up, that feels like it sucks. People scared of drowning are watching the tide roll in, they aren't excited about finding a rock to stand on.

This exactly.

I am making more than I or anybody in my parents or grandparent groups ever made, but am keenly aware that one bad illness or accident could put us out in the streets.

Precarity exists for nearly every person in this country and, while I don�t expect your sympathy, I understand the feeling that the economy is going great but I feel it sucks, even though I�m doing ok. For me, that vibe comes from 1. Knowing it�s work or die in this country and 2. A lot of people I know are much worse off than I and stuck in jobs they hate in hopes of avoiding precarity.

I cannot overstate the level of general psychosocial health that would be improved across the entire nation if we decoupled medical care from money and jobs. I think it would be an astonishing change in how this society feels. The vibes are all hosed.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 21:31

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Peter Daou Zen posted:

These people think Mayor Pete is somebody to aspire to. A dead eyed, career climbing psychopath who has no original thoughts or feelings of his own and just mimics president Obama. Is there anybody in the Democratic Party that has even a shred of personality?

Yes, but he yells and reminded some of the commentariat of their abusive fathers, and also I guess told a woman she�d never be president, which led to her coming in third in her own state primary. Nobody who has that much power to move reality should ever be president.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2021 17:17

selec: Sep 6, 2003

DarkCrawler posted:

https://www.newsweek.com/stacey-abrams-pac-wipes-out-212-million-medical-debt-108000-people-5-states-1643189

Whatever this is, Democrats should do it more. It seems to be legal to spend political contributions however you want, wherever they come from, so can people netting tens of millions in ad money maybe put a few million aside and do something about bad things instead of another ad telling people how bad things are.

I would love it if they ran a fake candidate in an unwinnable race to gather up all the lib money that goes to empty flightsuits like McGrath and then did this with it.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2021 17:27

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Neurolimal posted:

Most american leftists have been successfully cowed away towards actual methods of change, making such uneccessary and potentially destabilizing. You do see it happen when they inch towards rioting, but otherwise why bother?

Anyways:
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1459208302030581761?s=20

Think we can call it. Jayapal and the CPC so obviously got rolled.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2021 18:25

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:47

selec: Sep 6, 2003

IPlayVideoGames posted:

I�ve never heard the term �anomie� before. Thank you. That�s interesting.

I would say anomie (or as Marxists might term it alienation) is the primary cause; tons of people simmer constantly in the same primordial grievance pits that occasionally pop out a shooter; the ideology excuses it, but the alienation is the foot on the gas pedal. We have a generation or two of (especially male) young people we are doing a terrible job of initiating into our society, and the response to having no place or use in a society can turn into destructive impulses.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2021 18:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Current Events November: D&D's Afghanistan

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