HarthorneWingo wrote:Pointgod wrote:HarthorneWingo wrote:And therein lies the problem for Americans who need bold help now. This is what the neoliberals want. They have us salivating for any crumbs of normalcy that we will be pacified by the same ol' diluted half-measure policies that have been the emblematic of the Party since LBJ. Wasn't Dubya a "compassionate conservative"?
Anybody who falls for okey doke again, please.
Obama was going to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember? How'd that work out?"May I have please some more, sir."
"More? You want MORE??? How dare you!"
Ummm maybe it’s because these things can’t be fixed by snapping your fingers and need to take into account the long term effects. How well did Trump do ending wars when he had a Republican controlled House and Senate? Progress is incremental and the immediate focus needs to be getting rid of the Party that’s actively blocking progress and trying to roll things back.
We’ve been in these wars for 20 years. We aren’t accomplishing anything there. Breaking News: Bin Ladin is dead. What am I missing?
Trump never wanted to end the wars. Please.
my thoughts on the "it takes time" vs. "demand better now" conversation
For one, it can't be denied that the current status quo is extreme. The things we are experiencing (do I need to list them all?) are not normal. To change things in this system it can take time. but we can't ignore in that time there will be a lot of preventable deaths. easy to say these things take time but harder to tell that to someone who lost a family member to a preventable illness or someone who had their village bombed. in addition to that, any reforms made in this time can be immediately rolled back or removed by the gop, starting us back at square one. We saw this over the past 4 years. So the question people may begin to ask themselves is "how much time do we have left before it's too late?" and alternatively "how many more?"
the incremental progress I have witnessed over the past couple decades is the incremental erosion of privacy and rights and the incremental rise of a fascist regime and police state and the incremental expansion of income inequality and funneling of wealth to the top 1%. I am not seeing the incremental progress or reasons to be hopeful about the future with the continuation of business as usual; the benefits of doing things the way we have been doing them are not readily apparent. Things are not better or even trending in that direction. They weren't for most people before Trump either. That's why he's in power. The system created the conditions and environment that could allow such a corrupt demagogue to preside over us and I have little doubt that someone much worse than him is coming down the pipeline if we stay the course. Any sigh of relief you have in November should be quickly replaced with concern about what comes next. No going back to brunch this time. The people who put Trump there aren't going to disappear.
For those who are not content with kicking the can down the road for an indeterminate amount of time, who are thoroughly disgusted to their core with this reality we are experiencing and can't live with it another day, we are staring down a contradiction. We can also take the "time" route and wait another 10-15 years for the demographics to change enough to where we MAYBE have the numbers to topple the status quo via electoral means(if the elections aren't obviously rigged with more voter suppression than ever thought possible). by then climate change may already be irreversible and we will be in a complete hellscape somehow even worse than we are experiencing today
The only other option we will have is to stay in the streets day in and day out in protest and to grind the entire system to a halt. no matter who wins this election I anticipate the entire decade of the 2020s to be one of mass sustained protest movements and uprisings as people's lives depend on it. Which is why the oligarchy is already having to ramp up the authority of militarized secret police in response. Good timing for them, because we now see that millions are about to be evicted and foreclosed starting next month, combined with record unemployment and loss of health care tied to that employment which will certainly result in massive medical bankruptcies(an abhorrent concept that should not exist). If we're being honest with ourselves I don't expect this type of militarized police suppression to be much different under Biden either, after seeing how occupy wall street, standing rock, ferguson and baltimore protests were handled under obama. Maybe slightly toned down rhetoric by Biden (obama did call the protesters thugs) but ultimately still pretty brutal. My big question is that under a dem president, will dems still side with protesters and acknowledge these types of federal crackdowns on peaceful protesters are tactics akin to fascism? Or are most just appalled now because it's Trump behind the wheel and not their guy? I hope it's the former, because I'm worried about how bad it will get if there is mostly bipartisan support for the roundups.
so let us vote and plan for the long game, but it's becoming apparent it may also take a bit more persuading than that if we want to secure a habitable planet and a future for humanity that isn't a nightmare. If we can't rely on our politicians to take principled stands on anything clearly it's going to be up to us. To replace them with those who will or take matters into our own hands
