Reality Check - Page 2 - Politics and Economics

Thanks for that. One thing stood out.

But THIS time is different. What they believe is never what they aimed for. It was usually about 15-20 percent of their ambitions because of rules, norms, ethics and laws. If those things were bent by either party, it would maybe gain another 5%. The constraints and institutions always held though. There was this invisible rubber wall to stop things from getting completely untenable.

Then Donald Trump came along. He broke the rubber wall. Things haven't been the same since. The floodgates opened and they all realized (from Trump) how many more goals they could achieve if they pushed harder; much harder. By ignoring a bunch of rules, norms, ethics and laws, the consequences would be less than the rewards.

Meanwhile, Trump has his own ambitions. While putting everyone around him in extremely uncomfortable positions and egging them on, he also decided to increase his power, to unlock more potential. So he steps up his attack on institutions, and erodes democracy from all angles, Putin-style.

This is all frustrating enough, but there are other Russian techniques used to bring down democratic systems. Namely, INFORMATION WARFARE. The attack on truth is what's gotten to me. Are we past the point of no return? If not, how close are we? If Mueller loses, we are ****ed pretty hard. So what do we do, just wait and hope?

Educating the masses isn't working because nobody is willing to see the truth. Protesting isn't working because it's being easily brushed off by them and more protesters on the left are being arrested. And checks and balances are failing more rapidly than ever before.

The despair + clouded truth is torture. Maybe because I'm fighting hard, refusing to let myself normalize all of this. But I question if it's worth the aggravation.

**** man.

Well we've now seen a successful fascist coup and you have seen him consolidating power over the last few months. The fascists have gained control of all three branches of government. Notice that this didn't just start with Trump--the GOP was stealing elections with Voter ID laws long before Trump came along. They were stealing the Supreme Court before Trump became President. Trump has given them a license to go "full fascist" though. He is the President that will not enforce Civil Rights in any way, will not enforce election integrity in any way, will not only steal Supreme Court seats but also threaten journalists, declare war on billions of Muslims openly, and lie to your face more openly and brazenly than any of his GOP brethren that came before him. They realized when he became President that this was their chance to gain full control of the country, and now they've done it. There is no more rule of law, there is no more constitution. According to history the next part is very very bad.

06-30-2017 , 06:41 AM

#27

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Also, to get to the bigger picture a bit, over the last 40 years Democrats let the Republicans kill organized labor until it was completely dead in the ground. They wanted more corporate power over their own party and to get pesky labor out of the way. Well, this is the result. You have a "progressive" party that stands for absolutely nothing and thinks it is ENTITLED to being elected just because they support the civil rights laws of the 1960's. They don't want to do anything new, they certainly don't want to give labor any rights, they certainly don't want new civil rights laws. They just want to hold power and collect their paychecks and commission their ****ing Simpsons-Bowles studies.

If any meaningful leftist apparatus ever comes out of all of this, you can damn well believe the Republicans and Democrats will join forces and work to crush it and keep their establishment order in power. They have far more in common with each other than they do with The People.

06-30-2017 , 06:53 AM

#28

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPHoya View Post
[The GOP] grasp[s] the concept [of people suffering without health insurance]. The concept is literally irrelevant to not only the entire GOP but also to the entire executive branch. Because the process of SCOTUS capture is complete, and gerrymandering has crippled the electoral college to the point of disproportionate representation serving as a Constitutional norm, and local electioneering has rendered the GOP majority legitimately permanent by operation of law, there is no correction forthcoming.

Concepts like "harm" and "rights" are anachronisms.

If a decision benefits the plutocrats in favor of the GOP's social platform - anti-minority, anti-female, anti-civil-rights, openly racist, openly sexist, anti-rule-of-law, anti-separation-of-church-and-state, anti-gay, nationalistic, isolationist, anti-intellectual, anti-voting, anti-democratic-principles, anti-human-rights - then that decision has not done "harm." Doesn't matter who suffers, because the people suffering are not qualified to experience a type of "harm" that has political, social or economic relevance to this worldview. We are nearing the point where such "suffering of the other" will not even have legal relevance.

Similarly, it is the right of conservative white christian nationalist males not to have to tolerate the exercise of "rights" by anyone in any other group. That is what a "right" is in America - a white male person not having to live in a country where other people do things he doesn't like. Any other exercise of a purported "right" by any other category of individual is in fact an infringement upon the "right" of the conservative white christian nationalist male to dictate what everyone else may and may not say or do or earn or benefit from.

I 100% agree and this post should be required reading for The Resistance.

06-30-2017 , 07:37 AM

#29

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

The bit about Democrats *intentionally* ceding the labor fight to Republicans is a bit of a conspiracy theory on my part. I don't have any hard evidence to really prove this.

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