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Yeah, you're 100% right, and if you tried to say any of these ghouls are friends to leftists it would be just as ridiculous as saying Musk is. But you didn't, so bringing them up is a bit of a non-sequitur, isn't it? Nobody said Elon Musk was singlely and uniquely the most evil human being on earth, only that he wasn't a friend to leftism and an attempt to portray him as such is a pretty transparent attempt to rehabilitate his image that doesn't actually benefit the left in anyway. Any benefit that comes from Musk investing in electric cars doesn't hinge on leftists considering him a good person or an ally or whatever.
You gotta stop with the bad straw mans. I never said he was a friend to the left, I said that he easily could have been if he just kept his mouth shut and stayed out of the public's eye. I've been pointing out the hypocrisy from the left who obsesses over Musk, a guy who invests in genuinely useful things, while we have casino billionaires spending millions on Trump rallies that the average leftist never even heard of. He invests in technologies that ARE useful to the left and that's something that would be disingenuous to ignore. He's still a douche, but he's useful and far less awful than most of the other billionaires.

If Musk didn't have a social media presence we probably would just lump him in with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, maybe Warren Buffet. Instead Musk ruined it by talking, but that doesn't change the fact that the specific obsessive hatred of Musk is mostly media driven, and has very little to do with the quality of what he does especially compared to shit people like the guy known as "The King of Coal". Everyone knows Musk's name, why aren't you talking about Miriam Adelson, Low Tuck Kwong, or the Waltons? They've all done far less for humanity, and have done significantly more damage. Could it be, maybe, that you got caught up in the media blitz of a celebrity billionaire? Stop obsessing over him and maybe we'll stop hearing about him buying a tiny house or eating at mcdonalds or whatever every other day.

Ah yes, electoralism. It's just like praying; it works, except when it doesn't, and if it doesn't work it's because you didn't vote hard enough. Oh and you're also trusting some kind of supreme power to interpret and act upon your wishes.
Yeah voting works pretty well. If you don't think so go grab some friends and flaming whiskey bottles and see what you can accomplish. Probably not much, because the vast majority of people aren't blindly convinced that there is no other way out.

To highlight a single example among many, more than two-thirds of the U.S. population believes that climate change is a serious problem and the government isn't doing enough about it. Ignoring how that means an entire third of the population is politically and scientifically illiterate, does that not highlight a clear failure in the electoral system? Is the point of a representative democracy not to represent the will of the people? I'd genuinely be curious to hear how you reconcile this.
Biden was elected on promises of fighting climate change. After some negotiating he passed a 740 billion dollar package that tackled things such as the climate, deficit, and healthcare issues. It's paid for by increasing taxes on corporations, including a 15% minimum tax so places like Amazon can't get by paying 0% as well as closing some tax loopholes used by the wealthy and investments into the IRS to go after tax fraud. Included on the bill are financial incentives to build clean energy production, tax credits for wind and solar, tax breaks for buying electric vehicles, and was predicted to cut greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2030. If you want an EV, seems like it might be a good time to think about it.

Get like ten more Democrats in Congress to overpower the filibuster and maybe we might even get a livable Federal wage!

Once you do, maybe we can move on to the billions of dollars spent on propaganda and misinformation campaigns, or gerrymandering, or the electoral college, or all the other systems put in place to subvert democracy in this country and ensure that policy represents the will of the bourg- uh, rich people, not the will of the general population.
Well we just spent 740 billion doing some pretty good things so I'd like some citations here on what you're talking about. The Democrats have publicly opposed all those things you just said and often attempted to repeal or ban them (Biden's attempted voting law comes to mind) but get shot down by a few votes from Republicans.

So you know what, I'm going to say that voting does work and while US politics right now make the federal government relatively deadlocked the next few years look pretty promising.

Yeah, I guess you missed the part where I said "revolutionary unionism". Popular support for unions hasn't been stronger in the US since the turn of the century, and that's despite decades of anti-union propaganda and legislation and neoliberal indoctrination. Also it really doesn't bother me what percentage of people have a favorable view of socialism; I can promise you that neither 57% nor even 36% of Americans can even accurately define socialism. Come to think of it, I'm still not convinced you can accurately define socialism.
Socialism as defined by Oxford is

"A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

I guarantee you when the vast majority of Americans talk about that they are almost always running off their own definition. In American politics usually it's to talk about Democratic Socialism. When Republicans mention it they usually just start yelling about Commies. Generally I'd take a guess that most of that 36% is closer to the Bernie Sanders style "higher wages with healthcare and maybe even less student debt". It's an unfortunate word that gets manipulated by both sides and is almost never used by its actual definition.

It turns out if you explain socialist (and even communist, Marxist, and anarchist) principles in terms that avoid using explicitly ideological language (like the b-word lol), most people tend to agree with it. I'm not above ditching the trappings of leftist language if it means getting leftist policy enacted and when I'm talking with random people in my day-to-day life I make an effort to avoid using said language. I have no such concerns here; this is an expressly political thread after all.

Oh and if you really don't like the term bourgeoisie you can just substitute it for like... "capital interests" or "CEOs and business owners" or... "rich people". Close enough that it still gets the point across even if you're the kind of flat-Earth tier evidence denier who doesn't believe in class struggle.
Probably because if you go as far as to "make some good points" it all gets shut down by "why did all the socialist nations fail" followed by "communism bad".

I'm not going to get into the back and forth here of economics because 1) I'm really lazy and 2) despite my posts I actually don't oppose a lot of what you said, I just think it's absolutely unrealistic to expect major support in the US for actual, legitimate Socialism. You aren't the first person to have tried. There's been an extreme minority of socialists in the US practically forever.

But yay for California. It would be nice if you could afford rent anywhere in the state working a full-time job at $15/hr, but steps in the right direction are nice, small as they may be.
Average 1 BR apt in California is around 1,000 per month, 1,200 if you get a 2BR with a roommate, much less if you 1BR with a significant other. Studio is even less. While this is far from "comfortable" it's something that could be done on 15 per hour and it's more or less in line with most US states. California is big and not all of it is "4k per month Los Angeles" expensive. Wages in the US are still too low, but don't laugh about this. It's great news for millions of people. However like in most areas "minimum wage" is a fantasy, jobs pay more. Google California McDonalds job openings. You're looking at 17-20 per hour.

Connecticut, Washington, and Mass also both have 15+ an hour min wage while 9 other states have 13+ an hour while 31 states have minimum wage laws higher than Federal. Why are you talking down on this, the point is if you can't do it Federally do it at the state level. There's almost nothing that doesn't violate Federal law that you can't just do yourself.

don't the leftist knows algorhythms will keep promoting musk content because of how much they are obsessed??
Yes that's literally exactly how mass media works.
 
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The guy should be every lefty's best friend but he's such a fucking douchebag
He should, on paper, be a leftist hero. But he also has made so many shitty statements and actions that the left hates him.
What makes all this weird is that Elon Musk could have easily been pretty much universally loved by the left. But he's such a raging douchebag
I'm sorry, you were saying something?
 
Yeah, he easily could have been. But he fucked it up due to social media posts.

Never said he was a leftists best friend. I think I clearly said otherwise.
Ah, my mistake, I didn't mean to strawman you so. I hereby amend any statement I made saying that you said he is a leftist's best friend to that you said he should be a leftist's best friend. You might notice that this changes absolutely nothing; it's still an attempt to whitewash all the horrific shit he's done that makes it so he very much should not be considered a friend by anyone who cares about the environment, workers, etc., etc.
 
Ah, my mistake, I didn't mean to strawman you so. I hereby amend any statement I made saying that you said he is a leftist's best friend to that you said he should be a leftist's best friend. You might notice that this changes absolutely nothing; it's still an attempt to whitewash all the horrific shit he's done that makes it so he very much should not be considered a friend by anyone who cares about the environment, workers, etc., etc.
Okay let me rephrase since you apparently have nothing useful to contribute to the conversation any more and have resorted to strawman attacks. If you're going to reply to this, actually say something instead of twisting my words.

Elon Musk invests money in technologies and services typically championed by the left. A decade ago most Elon Musk posts, even on reddit, were typically positive. People liked him. He had a cameo in Iron Man lol.

Unfortunately for Musk he made a social media presence out of himself, and as it turns out he has a way with words when it comes to saying stupid things and making people mad. So now his public perception is more negative. Had he simply avoided posting on social media he'd probably just become seen like Bill Gates or something. A tech billionaire that gets by because they're much more useful than the average rich person. He isn't hated because he invests in EVs, space travel, or internet, he's hated because he fucked himself on social media.

Objectively Musk's billionaire contributions are good, as far as billionaires go. Is he a hero? No. Is he the Coal King or a Casino Trumper? Definitely not. Ask an average leftist who their least favorite billionaire is (besides Trump lol) and they will probably say Musk, Bezos, maybe that Facebook lizard. Not Miriam Adelson, because they probably don't even know her name.

If you had a Death Note and could write the name of one billionaire who would you pick? I'll make a wild assumption and guess a fair number would pick Musk, and completely skip over the Captain Planet supervillains who fly right under the radar.
 

BIG ASHLEY

ashley
is a Community Contributor
Unfortunately for Musk he made a social media presence out of himself, and as it turns out he has a way with words when it comes to saying stupid things and making people mad. So now his public perception is more negative. Had he simply avoided posting on social media he'd probably just become seen like Bill Gates or something. A tech billionaire that gets by because they're much more useful than the average rich person. He isn't hated because he invests in EVs, space travel, or internet, he's hated because he fucked himself on social media.
musk's dogshit attempts to be funny on twitter aren't the only reason people dislike him -- indeed, perhaps not even the main reason. (he is very unfunny though.) also factoring in are various other points, many alluded to by user: divine retribution above (e.g. exploitation of workers, ungodly wealth, le funny apartheid emerald mine)
 
Okay let me rephrase since you apparently have nothing useful to contribute to the conversation any more and have resorted to strawman attacks.

Elon Musk invests money in technologies and services typically championed by the left. A decade ago most Elon Musk posts, even on reddit, were typically positive. People liked him. He had a cameo in Iron Man lol.

Unfortunately for Musk he made a social media presence out of himself, and as it turns out he has a way with words when it comes to saying stupid things and making people mad. So now his public perception is more negative. Had he simply avoided posting on social media he'd probably just become seen like Bill Gates or something. A tech billionaire that gets by because they're much more useful than the average rich person. He isn't hated because he invests in EVs, space travel, or internet, he's hated because he fucked himself on social media.

Yeah I already fucking addressed this but you chose to ignore it and tunnel vision in on the fact that I said "is a friend" instead of "should be a friend", despite the two sentiments being completely interchangeable in this context. But please tell me more about how I'm strawmanning you. Just to re-iterate, in case maybe you scrolled through my post, saw the big scary Marxist b-word, and didn't read anything else, what I said was...

I mean, you're not entirely wrong that the more the guy talks the more leftists are reminded of what a ghoul he is and he'd probably fare better if he shut his fucking mouth, but you keep calling him a douchebag and, evidently, thinking that you're making reasonable criticisms of him in the eyes of the left. Well, uh, you aren't. I don't speak for the entirety of the left but I don't know a single person who hates Musk because he's just a rude person or whatever. Mostly they hate him because, as I've said a few times now already, he's an openly conservative crypto-pushing tech bro billionaire who busts unions, treats his workers like garbage, and built his "success" on daddy's apartheid emerald mine money.

If you want to reduce all that to "he's a douchebag", that's 100% an attempt to whitewash him, and a particularly weaselly one that would theoretically give you the cover you need to say "well I don't support him, I think he's a douchebag lol", at least if it wasn't so obvious what you're doing that you could tell from space. Centrists do this shit all the time when they talk about someone they know they can't come out and openly support but they want to try and rehabilitate the image of. I've heard them make similar arguments about actual Nazis like Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. If instead of "they're open neo-Nazis" or "he's a billionaire neo-con scammer who hates worker's rights and benefits from apartheid" you say "they're douchebags" or whatever, it makes them a lot more palatable to the average person. After all I'm a douchebag. Why should it bother me if they are too? Well, it turns out the criticisms of them go a bit deeper than "they're meanie poo-poo-heads" and to try and gloss over those more pointed criticisms with a completely meaningless one is, by definition, whitewashing. It's just a form of whitewashing that has a little bit of plausible deniability.

I don't really know if you're doing this intentionally or not but given pretty much everything else you've posted it would hardly be a stretch.
You can file "saying stupid things on social media" under "being a douchebag"; they're effectively the same thing for the purposes of this discussion, and focusing on them and trying to pretend like they're the reason why leftists aren't on board the Musk train (and not the union busting, labor violations, emerald mines, pushing conservative talking points, etc., etc.) is either delusional or dishonest. You're glossing over harsher criticisms with a frankly irrelevant criticism; this is whitewashing.

I feel like you interacted with a few Twitter radlibs or something and came to the conclusion that they were representative of the entirety of the online left. I don't understand how else someone arrives at a position this far removed from reality. To set the record straight; Musk has never been popular amongst leftists, neither have any of the other vultures you mentioned, and it has nothing to do with bad social media presence or them being douchebags or whatever. Musk being a vocal sociopolitical figure now definitely increases how much people are talking about him, but are you, like, surprised by that? Do you really think if it wasn't for that fact he'd be an ally of the left? Do you want to address any of the other reasons why people don't like him (union busting, labor violations, emerald mines, blah, blah, blah)?

Also there's a certain irony in saying this...
I've been pointing out the hypocrisy from the left who obsesses over Musk, a guy who invests in genuinely useful things, while we have casino billionaires spending millions on Trump rallies that the average leftist never even heard of.
... when we lefties actually have a word that encompasses pretty much all of those people. We use it quite a lot. It begins with a B.
 
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Yeah I already fucking addressed this but you chose to ignore it and tunnel vision in on the fact that I said "is a friend" instead of "should be a friend", despite the two sentiments being completely interchangeable in this context. But please tell me more about how I'm strawmanning you. Just to re-iterate, in case maybe you scrolled through my post, saw the big scary Marxist b-word, and didn't read anything else, what I said was...
When I say "this is what I mean when I say (thing)"

And you say "no you meant this!" even after I repeatedly clarify otherwise

It means you are making a strawman argument. When you take a comment or concept and distort it to an extreme even in the face of that person claiming you mean otherwise, it is a strawman.

Do you really think if it wasn't for that fact he'd be an ally of the left?
Probably yeah. At least tolerated. Steve Jobs used Chinese sweat shops, Bill Gates violated anti-trust laws and was close friends with Epstein. People still love them both probably because they were smart enough to not spent time shit posting on Twitter. Even Jeff Bezos seems to get off easier and he has done virtually nothing of use besides save me a trip to Walmart. If Elon Musk played the social media game a little better we'd probably just think of him as the EV + space guy and he'd have reasonable approval levels just like he did in the earlier 2010s. All Elon Musk had to do was just "not say dumb stuff on the internet" but alas, he did. A lot.
 

Garrett

Banned deucer.
I've had the opportunity to work in many educational settings over the years, and I think we've finally reached the threshold of "the destruction of school element by element need not be hidden anymore." Originally, it held flat at having school lunch programs where companies could and did randomly change standards of what was a serving size, what foods were vegetables (of which french fries counted), and also gerrymandering-style budget allocations. In New Jersey, every few years there will be at least several counties where school boards determine new school zoning to promote... I don't know. It's not busing issues. It's not a locality resolution. What it does and is understood behind the scenes to accomplish is secure higher school funding sometimes and, more often than not, ensure that students that are risk-factors to test scores and graduation rates be forced elsewhere. Sometimes this is coupled with the creation of private/independent school issue. My old high school a couple years ago was forced to take on over a 20% increase in grade size because of zoning changes. I was informed that even if they had enough seats, the school lacked the general room for them in classrooms.

I've worked part-time as an online tutor for K-12 students in some of the statistically poorest, least educated places this country has, and it's heartbreaking how bad it has been and how much worse it is projected to be. I don't mean to overplay the "12th grade student has no idea how to use y = mx + b" aspect, as high school dropout rates exist and I can't say that every student failed by the education system has been a diligent student. I can, however, tell you most have been failed by an unfavorable combination of their seemingly unconquerable upbringing, face-off with mass simplification of educational students and requirements (which has spawned terrible standardized tests such as the modern NY Regents and PARCC assessments), and teachers too poorly compensated and treated to escape their own part of the educational hellfire.

If they can keep people dumb, they'll have to work in mega-corporations at the warehouse or chain or facility. That's how it is in some minds.

Here's a tangent you all should be aware of. Many of you may be aware that teacher shortages are as high as in the low hundreds in particular counties. It has gotten so awful that the number of leave replacement openings many school systems have will rival retirement-based openings by a high factor. I have been contacted by a NY school "circuit" recruitment agency (basically, they're the chain equivalent of a school system with equivalent standards and quality, or lack thereof) over 200 times in the past 4.5 years or so. It has not improved since the pandemic. The particular circuit I'm talking about, which I'll leave unnamed, is known for removing teachers within a month of the school year over the dumbest excuses. Hating the administration and you're gone. Many students will simply... not have a teacher in that subject for the year in that scenario.


I'll probably continue ranting in a couple days, but for now, please enjoy Mike Huckabee explain to you why you need a free propaganda gift. Education is very wholesome in America, smile! These are commercials that air on FOX.
 
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Chou Toshio

Over9000
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“They will try to call us children, they will try to label us as unserious— what kind of serious adult, would allow a child to go hungry. The problem is not that the system is complicated, the problem is that it is corrupt.”— Merriam Williamson 2024

It’s on! Let’s gooooooooo

note: I have no illusions that the Democratic primary will be at all democratic, but even if she can’t win there’s a lot this campaign can accomplish. We can use it to Build Biden Back Better

Caveat: I am a fan of Biden’s now. I like Joe. I LOVE Merriam. I’ve continued following her since the last election and she has clearly grown so much, and become so much clearer, wiser, substantive, serious.

Putting aside experience/connections/etc for a moment, just looking at her as a speaker, I honestly think she’s a potentially much more potent campaigner than Bernie 2016 or 2020. She’s less afraid to say it as it is (straight up calling change of South Carolina’s position in the calendar as rigging the election), and in my opinion more empathetic, kind hearted, and wise. Maybe not compared to the Bernie of this moment since he’s also grown— but compared to the Bernie of either of his runs? I honestly find her communication more inspiring.

I also like that A) She’s not connected to the Party Establishment like Bernie was, BUT B) She is solidly positioning herself as a member of the Democrats. Never an independent, a 3rd partier, a Socialist of any flavor— just a straight up old school FDR Democrat who sees the NeoLibs as usurpers in a party she and the working class rightfully should own. Those qualities are going to make her potentially much more potent than Bernie in my opinion.

Biden will have to answer to why he isn’t doing what FDR would have done. And he’s not going to hold a candle to her if they have to be Mano-a-Mano on a debate stage.

It’s a question of whether she can get enough buzz/attention to make the DNC look stupid and Biden cowardly without debates. Personally, from the starting size of her audience and from her battle-tested experience in 2020— I think she’s going to make it hard to ignore her; especially with New Hampshire DNC pissed and open to platforming her, and how unlike any career politician she has no responsibility to anything but the Campain trail.

Super long shot, don’t expect her to win, but if they underestimate her, if there are no other Biden Challengers, and if they fail to take her seriously…it could become VERY interesting, very quickly.

I hope we at least get an even more progressive 2024 Biden admin. 10000% back her in the primary.
 
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Biden will have to answer to why he isn’t doing what FDR would have done.
FDR was president for 4 consecutive terms (only death was able to stop him). The senate and house were overwhelmingly (75%+) Democratic and a Supreme Court that was Democrat dominated. He also benefitted from the US unity caused by WW2 with upwards of 85%+ approval after Pearl Harbor.

Biden has been president barely over 2 years, does not have a unified Congress, does not have a filibuster-proof majority, and has a very unfriendly Republican dominated supreme court. Even things like the US budget, which can not be filibustered, has found issues from "moderates" like Joe Manchin.

Don't get me wrong, Biden is far from perfect. But given the current political climate there would be very little difference having Bernie Sanders or whoever else in the White House. It's just really hard to get legislation passed right now regardless of who the president is.
 
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Biden will support policies identical to the conservative party and libs will cry that it's just because he doesn't have an unified congress guys. Surely when he does he'll become a true leftist
I think the problem with this is that by no reasonable definition is Biden a true leftist anyways. He's a neoliberal, of course he's going to support neoliberal bullshit just like the conservatives do. I'm not really sold on Williamson (her takes on nuclear energy and her weird penchant for neopaganism are big turn offs for me) but the idea is that having a more openly progressive opposition will force Biden to be more progressive with his own policies to compete. There are problems with this too, though. Biden being the incumbent president gives him a lot of political inertia that Williamson would need a ton of popular support to counteract, so the chances of Biden being pushed all that far to the left if Williamson runs against him are... dubious.

Another problem is that we run the risk of creating another Bernie-or-bust situation and letting the increasingly fascistic Republican party walk away with the presidency because we were too busy arguing about whether the soulless neoliberal hack who supports LGBTQ+ people and some mild progressive reforms but still strike busts is as bad as the soulless neoliberal hack who wants to execute Mexicans and ban public expressions of transgenderism. Electoralism is fucking useless for getting meaningful social or economic change but it matters somewhat in protecting vulnerable demographics from the vultures who want to prey on them, and besides that Biden's foreign policy hasn't actually been all that bad in my opinion. At least he toned his enthusiasm for drone strikes down a little bit since he was VP.
 
and besides that Biden's foreign policy hasn't actually been all that bad in my opinion.
It feels more like he's just locked target with China to an unhealthy degree. The rollback to trade policies for US hegemony is still stuck in my head as "oh we're just saying the quiet part outloud"

I wouldn't care if people just admitted they were voting biden because they think trump is worse. I think the average american is extremely letalergic politics wise and believing just voting will do anything is a fools errand, but that's another topic.

I'm more annoyed at the pretty delusional treatment that biden gets from libs for doing the bare minimum (and not even that sometimes) and then trying to excuse his uselessness or contradictory policies lol. Then again I have many criticism of us libs in general so, not an original complaint
 
It feels more like he's just locked target with China to an unhealthy degree. The rollback to trade policies for US hegemony is still stuck in my head as "oh we're just saying the quiet part outloud"
This falls largely under the purview of "neoliberal politician doing neoliberal things", though. It's not exactly like Trump or DeSantis would try to thaw out relations with China or do anything that could be perceived as jeopardizing US economic hegemony. Don't get me wrong, Biden is very, very far from being my ideal candidate, but if 2016 taught us anything it should be that we need to consider who the opposition is.
 
This falls largely under the purview of "neoliberal politician doing neoliberal things", though. It's not exactly like Trump or DeSantis would try to thaw out relations with China or do anything that could be perceived as jeopardizing US economic hegemony. Don't get me wrong, Biden is very, very far from being my ideal candidate, but if 2016 taught us anything it should be that we need to consider who the opposition is.
Sure, its standard neolib bs and trump is worse, but I still think it's worth discussing and criticizing, especially how it'll affect both countries. The whole "lesser evil" still implies that it's an evil and all that.
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
Recently during the shorter-than-expected break I was taking from Smogon, I had reminded myself of an American politics take that I wanted your opinions on. I guess I just wanna see how hot this take really is, I suppose.

As an American myself, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to look at how each state is approaching politics. Provided this is more prevalent in some states, such as the DeSantis-led Florida for example, I genuinely believe our country’s political spectrum is shifting heavily towards infighting between states; so much so that I honestly don’t think the “United” portion of “The United States of America” is warranted anymore. We feel less like a united country now than we have in a long, long time, and if I was an outside viewer who was mistakenly told that we were actually 50 separate countries… I would probably believe them.
 
Recently during the shorter-than-expected break I was taking from Smogon, I had reminded myself of an American politics take that I wanted your opinions on. I guess I just wanna see how hot this take really is, I suppose.

As an American myself, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to look at how each state is approaching politics. Provided this is more prevalent in some states, such as the DeSantis-led Florida for example, I genuinely believe our country’s political spectrum is shifting heavily towards infighting between states; so much so that I honestly don’t think the “United” portion of “The United States of America” is warranted anymore. We feel less like a united country now than we have in a long, long time, and if I was an outside viewer who was mistakenly told that we were actually 50 separate countries… I would probably believe them.
This is a pretty cold take, to be honest, but the reasons why are... complicated, to say the least. In my eyes, the nutshell version is that, for a lot of people, the status quo just isn't working. The US has some serious skeletons in its closet, and while we might have been able to ignore them 50, 40, 30, even 20 years ago, awareness of progressive issues such as systemic racism, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ+ people and the prejudices they face has only been on the rise. This increase of awareness does not come without backlash, however. Entrenched power, the people who benefit from the blood, labor, and suffering of BIPOC that this country was built on, and who feel that their values are threatened by LGBTQ+ people and the empowerment of women, will fight tooth and nail to keep the Overton window far to the right and cover up or delegitimize the systemic issues faced by vulnerable groups. Hence the "culture wars" and backlash to "woke politics", a nice nebulous term that basically means literally anything vaguely progressive or that the person using it doesn't agree with. This isn't really anything new, to be honest, but the increasing awareness of these issues forces existing political divides further and further apart and makes them harder and harder for the average mostly apolitical person to ignore.

I've experienced this myself; I used to be a wishy-washy politically incompetent centrist (like certain other people I've interacted with on this site) who thought the status quo was more or less alright and we needed to compromise and reach across the isle, and that both sides of the American political spectrum would somehow balance each other out. My mother is a neoliberal who cares more about the charisma of a political figure than their policies, and both my father and my stepfather were heavily conservative-leaning. I understood very little about systemic racism or LGB people. I was taught that racism ended with Martin Luther King and that colorblindness is a virtue, that LGB people are a bit weird or maybe even mentally ill but should still be accepted. Transgenderism and gender non-conformity weren't even issues I was aware of at all.

The more I learned about this country's history and the experiences of marginalized people within it, the more I realized that mindset is a lie, a facade we construct so we don't have to confront the fact that the lives we live and the country we live in were built on an immense amount of suffering and injustice, and that suffering and injustice and the worldviews that enabled it never really went away. I went from seeing conservative mind-sets as maybe a bit misguided, maybe a bit old-fashioned, maybe a bit selfish, but ultimately well-meaning to realizing their primary purpose is to protect a status quo of prejudice, suffering, and exploitation. No communist professor or radical think-tank radicalized me to this position (reading Marx and Kropotkin helped though), it's simply the unavoidable conclusion one has no choice but to accept when you learn about systemic issues.

This is compounded by economic issues. The wealth gap increases, food insecurity increases, inflation and housing prices outpace wages, and worker's rights are undermined more and more year by year. People are suffering economically as well, and this makes them ripe targets for grifters who will give them a scapegoat to all their problems. It's not actually the bourg- er, rich billionaire assholes- sitting jealously like Tolkienian dragons on enough stagnant wealth to eliminate world hunger overnight, paying more for propaganda and lobbying that will allow them to exploit more people hard and harder than they do wages, that are the reason why the economy is in the state it's in. No, it's illegal immigrants, or China, or communist agitators, or the Jews. Or maybe the economy really isn't all that bad after all and the things I mentioned as well as the many other problems I didn't just... don't exist. For many people, it's easier to believe that than accept the fact that the problem might be systemic and require systemic change to fix.

So yeah, the TL:DR version is this country's got problems, those problems are becoming harder and harder to ignore, and that fact exacerbates existing political divides, making them harder and harder to ignore as well.
 
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I think the idea that social and political disunity in the US is due primarily due to how bad all the social issues are right now is not very well considered. Everyone thinks they are living in the worst time, that the issues affecting them are truly grand and bigger in scale than issues affecting in other times. That's not to say the issues aren't important or contentious, but social issues are often merely a symptoms of an even greater issue.

I think that social and political unrest we see right now are tied to the United States' changing role in the world. We left WW2 the undisputed wealthiest country on Earth, and then after the fall of the USSR we rather unilaterally dominated the world political order. With the failure of the War on Terror and the rise of China and the EU economically and politically, the U.S. is much less powerful than it was 30 years ago. The crux of it is economic - if people feel like they aren't as prosperous as they used to be, it leads to unrest. You see populism rising on both the left and the right as people search for easy answers to why they feel like it's getting worse.

I think the second main reason we are politically divided is social media, the internet, and news propaganda. One can take their choice between watching biased news channels (the old evil), or forming one's own little echo chamber of social media news outlets (the new one). People love rage porn, and it's incredibly easy to expose yourself to nothing but that. I would also argue that journalistic standards even at established publications have gone down the toilet. NYT is probably the only nationally popular publication left that doesn't solely put out drivel on a constant basis. This factor certainly is second to economic and political anxiety, but it just makes a bad issue worse.

I went from seeing conservative mind-sets as maybe a bit misguided, maybe a bit old-fashioned, maybe a bit selfish, but ultimately well-meaning to realizing their primary purpose is to protect a status quo of prejudice, suffering, and exploitation.
I think this is at best, close-minded. This is actually an attitude that contributes heavily to polarization - the idea that I am right, and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong, and they are just malicious, moronic puppets and puppetmasters. If Americans recognized that people who disagree with them might just hold different values, and that's ok, we would be far more united as a country.

Of course, when you point that out, you'll get the standard "but my opponents are fascists", "my opponents are brainwashed by <insert evil leaders here>, or just plain old "I am good and those who disagree are evil, no questions." It's easy to hate and misunderstand people who think differently from you rather than just trying to be intellectually tolerant. Both the right and the left love engaging in this kind of populist demonization of people on the other side.
 
I think this is at best, close-minded. This is actually an attitude that contributes heavily to polarization - the idea that I am right, and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong, and they are just malicious, moronic puppets and puppetmasters. If Americans recognized that people who disagree with them might just hold different values, and that's ok, we would be far more united as a country.

Of course, when you point that out, you'll get the standard "but my opponents are fascists", "my opponents are brainwashed by <insert evil leaders here>, or just plain old "I am good and those who disagree are evil, no questions." It's easy to hate and misunderstand people who think differently from you rather than just trying to be intellectually tolerant. Both the right and the left love engaging in this kind of populist demonization of people on the other side.
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Chou Toshio

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FDR was president for 4 consecutive terms (only death was able to stop him). The senate and house were overwhelmingly (75%+) Democratic and a Supreme Court that was Democrat dominated. He also benefitted from the US unity caused by WW2 with upwards of 85%+ approval after Pearl Harbor.

Biden has been president barely over 2 years, does not have a unified Congress, does not have a filibuster-proof majority, and has a very unfriendly Republican dominated supreme court. Even things like the US budget, which can not be filibustered, has found issues from "moderates" like Joe Manchin.

Don't get me wrong, Biden is far from perfect. But given the current political climate there would be very little difference having Bernie Sanders or whoever else in the White House. It's just really hard to get legislation passed right now regardless of who the president is.
Aware, but it’s not like FDR had a mandate to do whatever he wanted when he first got there. He moved to win that mandate.

And NOTHING is stopping Biden from pushing an agenda and talking. Just talking. Like literally he has a 24/7 available pulpit to address the nation with live cameras right? There’s a lot of campaign issues I never hear talk about these days. If Merriam gets them both talking about those issues again— good?

BUILD BIDEN BACK BETTER
(Unless everyone sleeps on her and she sweeps)
 
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