The People's Party on Biden's first 100 days.

Thought I'd share an email:

The First 100 Days: Obama Delivered Trump. We Must Break the Duopoly or Biden Will Deliver Something Much Worse
Detroit, May 7, 2021 — The first 100 days of a president’s term are historically their best chance to enact their agenda. In 1933, as he took office at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats convened a special session of Congress and ran the legislature like a New Deal printing press.

Pushed by widespread and fierce labor strikes, popular movements, and independent parties, FDR and Congress passed 76 new laws in their first 100 days — including the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority — programs that employed, housed, and fed tens of millions of people. Roosevelt reshaped the role of government in providing for the people.

Eighty years later, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris entered the White House in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the worst public health crisis since the Spanish Flu. They arrived backed by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, giving their party the power to pass anything. Last Friday marked the end of Biden and Harris’ first 100 days in office, and the scale and substance of their response is the antithesis of their Depression-Era predecessors.

The Democrats are repeating history in a different way though.

In 2009, Obama and Biden entered the White House in the middle of the Great Recession, which was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression at the time. Instead of using the crisis to enact structural change, they chose to preserve the economic and social status quo that had produced the crisis. Their actions pushed the country deeper into an increasingly authoritarian oligarchy.

Twelve years later, Biden returned to the White House, during the new-worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Once again, he was backed by Democratic majorities in Congress. And just like Obama, Biden has chosen to preserve the economic and social status quo. The result will be to push this country still further into authoritarian oligarchy. Biden’s first eight years produced Trump. His next four will produce something much worse.

It is a myth that the pandemic devastated America. Other rich countries faced the same virus without mass unemployment, mile-long breadlines, and a soaring death toll. Those governments gave their citizens a basic income or subsidized payroll at the companies that employ them, on top of the universal single-payer health care they already provided. Our government passed a multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailout and left working people to fend for themselves. Both parties were in on it, and the vote was nearly unanimous. The Democrats and Republicans exploited the greatest national crisis in generations to enrich their corporate donors.
A defining pattern has emerged in Biden’s governance. He promises popular progressive policies to much media fanfare, then quietly reneges while the corporate press turns a blind eye and falls silent. The result is an avalanche of revisionist propaganda and confusion that shields a reactionary administration and party.

For instance, the media discussion around Biden’s administration has largely ignored his enormous ability to enact progressive policies through executive action, which he refuses to do. It discounts the Democrats’ ability to repeal the Senate filibuster and pass legislation with a simple majority at any time, removing the Senate reconciliation process and parliamentarians as obstacles. And scarcely mentions the White House’s refusal to use its great influence to pressure the most corporate Congressional Democrats, like Sen. Manchin, into enacting progressive policies. The administration hides behind self-imposed barriers to justify its failure to enact progressive policies, a sleight of hand that the media conceals.

Then there are Biden’s policy choices. The following is an issue-by-issue analysis of his first 100 days.
Health Care — This country needs to guarantee health care to every man, woman, and child with a national improved Medicare for All, single-payer system. The president could declare a health emergency and use Section 1881A of the Social Security Act, passed as part of the ACA, to expand Medicare to every American through executive action, bypassing Congress entirely.

Instead, Biden and Harris promised to implement a public option and lower the age of Medicare to 60, policies that fail to cover the 92 million Americans who are uninsured or under-insured and save the 68,000 who die every year from a lack of insurance. But Biden and the Democrats didn’t even live up to these moderate pledges. Instead, they expanded COBRA subsidies, funneling tens of billions of dollars to health insurance corporations that are already making record profits as they jack up premiums and increasingly deny claims during a pandemic.

Minimum Wage — Wages have stagnated for decades despite huge increases in national productivity and wealth. The real value of the minimum wage has declined since 1968, when it was more than $10 an hour. If it had kept up with productivity since 1968 it would be $24 an hour today. Full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any state in the country. They would have to work 97 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom rental and 79 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom rental. The last time working people got a raise in the minimum wage was in 2007, under George Bush. No one should be too poor to live in the richest country on Earth. A $15 minimum wage would raise wages for more than 40 million Americans. Working people need a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation today.

Biden and the Democrats pledged that they would increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, and it has been in the party’s platform since 2016. But when they got their chance to pass it, the White House blamed a parliamentarian that the Democrats could overrule and refused to apply political pressure to keep it in the Covid relief bill, revealing their support as purely rhetorical.

Student Loans — We need full student loan forgiveness to erase the $1.7 trillion in student debt held by more than 42 million Americans. Student debt prevents people from purchasing homes and cars and even getting married. Defaults on student debt are higher than for just about any other kind of debt. Forgiving all student debt would reduce the racial wealth gap between Black and White households from 12:1 to 5:1. No one should be burdened by decades of crushing debt to get an education in America. The federal government holds 92 percent of student loans and the president could wipe it away with executive action.

Instead, Biden promised to cancel $10,000 in student debt per person during his campaign. A moderate pledge that he won’t even use his executive authority to follow through on.

Survival Checks — Millions lost their jobs and incomes during the pandemic recession. We need a $2,000 per month basic income retroactive to the beginning of the pandemic.

Instead, Biden and Harris promised that a one-time $2,000 stimulus check would go out the door “immediately” if voters delivered the Senate to Democrats in Georgia. Once the votes were cast, Democrats retreated to $1,400 checks, delayed them to March, and means-tested them so that 17 million fewer Americans would see a boost. As Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out, in the end, Trump sent stimulus checks to more people than the Democrats. The Democrats also reduced federal unemployment benefits from $400 per week to $300 per week per Sen. Manchin’s demand.

Housing Crisis — More than half a million people are unhoused in America. Millions more are on the edge of homelessness, unable to afford their rent or mortgage and facing eviction once the eviction moratoriums expire. Housing is a human right. It is morally right and cheaper to house the unhoused than for society to care for them on the street. The government must guarantee housing for all.

Biden and the Democratic Party oppose housing as a human right. They kicked the can down the road by extending the eviction moratoriums without addressing the fact that millions can’t pay their rent or mortgage.

The Climate Crisis — Stronger and more frequent hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires, all fueled by global heating, have cost the U. S. over $2 trillion since 1980. Biden’s goal for net-zero carbon emissions is 2050, 20 years too late according to the world’s leading scientists who issued an alarming report through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2019. The world is on track for a catastrophic temperature rise beyond 3°C this century. Hundreds of millions of people could lose their homes and become refugees. Intensifying desertification and droughts threaten the crops that feed billions of people. We need a strong Green New Deal that creates millions of good-paying jobs and repairs and modernizes our crumbling infrastructure. We must leave our children a liveable world.

Instead, Biden has rejoined the Paris Accords, a small step that does not put the U.S. on track to avert catastrophic warming. His climate advisor is former Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, who was the 19th highest recipient of oil and gas money in the House, reflecting an administration dominated by lobbyists and advisors with corporate backgrounds. The Democrats can’t claim to be serious about zeroing out emissions by even mid-century when they pump billions of dollars into the most polluting oil, gas and coal projects around the world — and changed their party rules to accept money from fossil fuel corporations at the DNC. Biden can’t say he’s serious about climate when he supports fracking but not the Green New Deal, and when he hasn’t backed the National Climate Emergency bill. We have no time to waste and the public agrees. Polls show majority support for the Green New Deal and young people across the political spectrum rank climate as among their chief concerns.

Halting Deportations and Child Detention — As a nation of immigrants, we need a pathway to citizenship for the millions of hardworking undocumented immigrants in our country. We must pass the Dream Act and naturalize all undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. We must shut down inhumane border detention centers and cancel Trump’s wall. And we must end job-killing trade deals that prompt a global race to the bottom, and push desperate Latin Americans to leave their homes and migrate north.

The Biden Administration promised to end for-profit detention centers and the humanitarian crisis at the border, a legacy from the Obama years that expanded under Trump. Instead, a record 18,000 children are being held in Border Control facilities, more than Trump detained. Carrizo Springs in Texas, which came under fire under Trump for its deplorable conditions and lack of childcare licensing, has been re-opened and pandemic requirements removed. Biden promised zero deportations in his first 100 days. Instead, United We Dream reported that he has deported more than 300,000 people. This aligns with the Obama-Biden administration, which deported far more people than Trump. Biden pledged to cancel Trump’s border wall. Instead, he’s finishing it. The administration has also expelled over 1,300 Haitian migrants — including children, infants, and pregnant women — during a violent political crisis, even while DHS admits that they “may face harm” if they are forced back home.

Mass Incarceration — President Bill Clinton presided over the biggest buildup of the for-profit prison industry in U.S. history. As a senator in the 1980s and ’90s, Biden spearheaded many of the racist laws that escalated the war on drugs and put thousands of largely Black and Brown people in those prisons, many of whom still languish there on trumped-up charges. Our country needs to end the war on drugs, end the militarization of police, enact community policing, legalize marijuana, and expunge the records of nonviolent marijuana offenders. We also need to restore felons voting rights.

Biden promised to use his vast pardon powers to reduce the current petition backlog of 14,000 prisoners and to take major steps toward reforming clemency. He has done neither. Instead, he’s arming local police with more military weaponry than Trump did. He is also refusing to legalize marijuana and end the drug war, keeping America the world’s largest incarcerator.

Endless War — The war budget consumes more than half of our national discretionary spending. We must end the wars, dismantle the global network of military bases, slash the military budget, and deploy those funds to defend the American people against the lethal and merciless enemies that have invaded our shores: poverty, hunger, and ill-health.

Instead, Biden bombed Syria and has kept the U.S. from reentering the Iran Nuclear Deal. He doubled down on Trump’s regime change campaign in Venezuela. He is propping up dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He claimed that he would end the war in Yemen but has continued to support it. He pledged to leave Afghanistan and then refused, delayed, and is increasingly privatizing the war with 18,000 Pentagon contractors in the country. Biden and the Democrats are maintaining America’s empire of hundreds of military bases worldwide and expanding its massive $700 billion military budget. He is pursuing the extradition of journalist and political prisoner Julian Assange and claiming the authority to arrest the publisher in any country regardless of jurisdiction, posing a grave threat to press freedoms.

In response to the most profound economic and health crises in generations, Biden and Harris have entrenched the status quo that made it so devastating. The Democrats have full control of government and are making cosmetic and temporary changes while millions are suffering to an unprecedented degree.

Biden is continuing his public relations presidency by announcing infrastructure and education bills that he knows won’t pass, especially while the Democrats preserve the filibuster with his approval. The administration pretends to stand with labor while refusing to investigate Amazon for unsafe working conditions during the pandemic. It is normalizing half of Trump’s corporate tax cuts, as Obama normalized the Bush tax cuts.

Biden will spend the rest of his term proposing progressive legislation while ensuring that it won’t pass, allowing him to shift the blame to Congress. He will continue to refuse to use his executive authority. Then, like Obama, Biden and the Democrats will lose their House majority in the midterms, or his Senate majority even earlier, and resume their favorite game of pretending that Republican obstructionism is the barrier to progress. Then they will decisively lose the presidency in 2024.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have said that without a fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party into a party for working people, a worse and more effective Trump will be elected in 2024. That is our future in three and a half years without a major new party to break the duopoly’s fall into authoritarian oligarchy — a major new party to challenge the corrupt establishment and bring in the record two out of every three Americans who want it.

In his first 100 days, Biden and the Democrats have shown that political parties funded by Wall Street can only deepen the crisis, as they have done for generations. It will take a new kind of party to enact the transformative new social contract that Americans are demanding. A party that refuses to accept authoritarian oligarchy as our fate. That refuses to accept that our children will grow up never knowing the freedoms that we did. A party that is fiercely independent of corporate money. Where representatives are accountable to the people instead of billionaires and corporate politicians. A party that guarantees every American a good-paying job, Medicare, housing, food, college, strong unions, expanded Social Security, a basic income, and a liveable climate. A party that guarantees freedom from war, militarized police, mass incarceration, and monopolies and trusts.

The People’s Party.

A new force is rising in America — driven by working people across every state who refuse to be told that their future has been decided for them — and it will transform this country.

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Comments

It is hard to disagree with the contents of the email.

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14 users have voted.

@humphrey
More dictatorial actions by Presidents bypassing Congress are not what we need. We need to remove Congressional corruption. We need to break the duopoly and have campaign finance reform.

WE NEED TO STOP "VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO"!

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5 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@humphrey @humphrey @humphrey @humphrey so bleak I stopped reading 1/2 way through.

This is a cheap shot. But it is sincere. We need to do more to fix our current reality, inch by inch and make that a focus.

The problem is clear. Most of us here understand Biden's shtick. We understand US Imperialism. We get that democracy is losing ground bit by bit. We see Empires crumbling. Losing bits and pieces of anything resembling democracy, and it is satisfying to rehash in horror what we see. I do it also. Frequently.

I will push on through to the end of this article and see if there is a hint of what we, individually, can do to change course of the sinking ship we are on.

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4 users have voted.

NYCVG

@NYCVG Battle of Blair got where we need to go.

'Thank you.

I look forward to seeing more of your work.

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NYCVG

PriceRip's picture

I need to re-read this a few times.

Thanks

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Pricknick's picture

Now make the video of what you just said.
Then watch it be banned on all major carriers.
Then comes the revolution. A whisper.
[video:https://youtu.be/Xv8FBjo1Y8I]

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick because I finish up my digital filmmaking curriculum in five weeks and making this into a video is what I have planned for summer.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...they will rise up and and align themselves with the only meaningful Party Movement they will ever see.

If they don't rise to the moment to support a Party that empowers them politically — that may just be the right answer.

Perhaps Americans are where they truly belong.

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15 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
PriceRip's picture

Perhaps Americans are where they truly belong.

@Pluto's Republic

is a sad, depressing, and perhaps too true thought.

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@PriceRip

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5 users have voted.

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic Jimmy Dore taught the world the value of leverage. The Fraud Squad squandered it.
People don't think in terms of leverage, they think in terms of size.
Explain leverage to them and they can see a third party doesn't have to overcome the monolithic Establishment to be viable.
We just need to elect enough to give us leverage.

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Pricknick's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

We just need to elect enough to give us leverage.

That leverage was squandered.
I trust none at this point. I and many others have been squat upon enough and need more than a soothsayer.
Revolution only will come. There is no savior other than ourselves.

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11 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick will change from within and holding a third party accountable.
The Dems roll on everytime the latest frauds get exposed.
The People's Party could not continue to exist if they didn't instantly and viciously expel any frauds from within.
The reality is a progressive third party HAS to walk the walk to remain viable.
The Dems don't.
So trust in that.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Pluto's Republic ...but what about the worthy minority???

That has long been a suspicion of mine: That most people aren't worth a damn...but a few are.

I have seen the good in the world; I have seen how wonderful life CAN be, and how the spark of value - indeed, GREATNESS - can be found anywhere, and is essentially random. No simple rubric ever devised for separating the wheat from the chaff has accomplished anything but more suffering, waste, and injustice.

That is why we need liberal democracy - not because most people deserve it, but to provide equality of opportunity for the few who do...and the present system screws us most of all.

It may be that there's no longer any hope to be had in any sort of "Mahayana" strategy (at least not in the near term).

"Reincarnation, coming back, a lot of folks are sure of it, they can come back, you come back as something. I don’t know, does it seem right to you that it would work? I mean, mathematically, it doesn’t seem to work, because originally on this earth we only had, well, let’s say six people. I know we had two, but it’s a controversial number. Let’s say at one time there were only, there were only six of us, about, six people, six souls. And those six people died, and those souls went back to the staging area, and new people were born and those six souls came back. We still only have six souls. Now, we have four billion people claiming to have souls. Where are all these extra souls coming from? Someone is printing up souls, and it lowers their value. The more souls there are, the less they’re worth, it would seem. Well, somebody’s got to think of this shit, you know?"
- George Carlin

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9 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat Everytime they turn on the tv or read on the internet about some latest thing some terrible person has done, I point out that was one person. Look at ALL THE PEOPLE WHO RUSHED TO THE RESCUE.
For every one of them, there are way, way more of us.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

...in the nineteenth century who concluded that there was a very limited amount of consciousness on this planet. They estimated that there was only enough consciousness to enlighten about ten percent of the living humans. Distribution was random, and most people who possessed the additional consciousness never really became aware of it. They were capable of deep reflection and perceived the entanglement of oneness. However, the gifted didn't know they were gifted, so they assumed that all humans felt the same profound connections between things that they did. Since no one ever discussed it — they didn't either.

In fact, only a small handful of the ten percent who possessed consciousness really did anything with it. Those who did use it to perfect the crafts and build on human knowledge and awareness — did so only because they were exposed to certain spiritual practices or intellectual endeavors — such as mathematics, architecture, astronomy, invention, chess, geometry, and music — where this sort of wokeness might resonate.

It's my opinion that the Industrial revolution and technology came to humans a thousand years too soon. Industry and its weaponized greed arrived before humans had matured spiritually. This is a very unfortunate accident. The destructive powers arrived before humans had put away their primitive religions and superstitions, and recognized their obligations to life and evolution.

The human mind never became enlightened. Humans are simply too infantile to understand what they are — and what they are supposed to be doing. It's not all bad; and there is much good to appreciate. But the Leaders are evil, and the people always select the psychopaths to lead them. This structural flaw is too great to survive. Most scientists will tell you we will be extinct by 2400.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
PriceRip's picture

@Pluto's Republic , are a very good summery of the point of view of a good many individuals ...

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Pluto's Republic On what do you base this?

I have lived my whole life on the periphery of the scientific community; I have never heard anyone say this with anything like the certitude you imply, nor seen them act like this is so.

Also: "Wokeness?" Really???

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2 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

PriceRip's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

have not heard

Most scientists will tell you we will be extinct by 2400.

and that sounds reasonable in detail.

However, consider the following ...

In graduate school, for a summer at Los Alamos, and at various national conferences I would scientist talk of such things. But never with the chutzpah to mention a date. We are all aware that we hairless apes actually got to realizing the all classical physical (well at least standard model stuff) processes emerges from Q.M. processes before we were able to properly appreciate Q.M. , given that understanding Q.M. is not on the table.

We are all aware that we hairless apes started digging out carbon assets far before we were aware of the ramifications of our actions. We have been very aware of our predicament from before I was born.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@PriceRip ...if I could make sense of it. It was written...opaquely.

To the extent I can guess what you're saying (and I really don't like doing that for fear it will only deepen the canyon), it doesn't necessitate such a bleak prognosis...which, if you really believe it, ought to be steering you to FAR more desperate measures. Some of us are still waiting for the opportunity to have lives.

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1 user has voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

PriceRip's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

we have had this conversation for several decades. I misunderstood you to be suggesting this was a new thing, not considered until recently.

Sorry, for the confusion ...

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@PriceRip The Baby Boomers were the first generation to grow up in the shadow of The Bomb, and "Doomerism" has been a steady current in public thought ever since.

It's not useful, though; if one's truly given up, one should at least be a cheerful "sex/drugs/rock'n'roll"-type nihilist and not the Debbie-downer, crab-potter, or cult-flagellant so many seem to have become. Otherwise:

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1 user has voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@Pluto's Republic “Perhaps Americans are where they truly belong.”

You can’t push blame on the people who have been on the receiving end of decades of the breaking down of society and lessening of any power they might have had. I think too many people have been beaten down to the point where they don’t have the energy (emotionally or physically) to do the homework required to seek better. Too many people are just scraping by. They don’t have the luxury of being involved because that’s where their betters want them to be. And furthermore, they didn’t ask to be here.

And let’s also discuss the silencing of any POV not supporting TPTB. The system has been so overtaken by the rich, the MIC, etc. you really have to dig to get to the truth. Too many people have no idea where to start, or that they even should start. We all find our way differently and i really don’t think for anyone it’s like snapping on a light. It’s a journey and a winding one.

I’m probably not explaining myself well. I apologize for that. And if I misunderstood you, sorry for that too. It’s just that, I used to be of “the people get what they deserve” mindset and I think the Trump years turned me around on that. It’s hard to explain, but that’s just it. I think it’s a bit more complicated than all that. Hearing so many people say Trump voters were getting what they deserved caused me to question if that was really true. I just can’t feel like anyone deserves to be in poverty or a shitty environment or not have healthcare or whatever just because they don’t share my particular political clarity.

It could help that I’m past hoping electoral politics will change anything. Sure I’d like it very much if the People’s Party or whoever actually were able to do something. I’m just unsure how someone of good faith wins in a bad faith game.

Sorry for rambling. Maybe I need to take a break. Lol.

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15 users have voted.

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter

rambling in the fields of potential change is a great place
to express what we all (mostly) feel
keep up the good work

thanks

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

...with great care. I am very sympathetic to your position and to your concerns about the People. I've spent most of my involvement with these issues with an ambition to somehow rescue the people with the right information. Or to finding a way to be of service.

I think too many people have been beaten down to the point where they don’t have the energy (emotionally or physically) to do the homework required to seek better.

.
The people seemed more knowledgeable one hundred years ago, Yet life was even harder and information even more scarce. Upton Sinclair comes to mind.

But I've noticed that — even after the long Russian Hoax — the People's instincts are still inadequate. They can't discern when the government is lying to them. (One doesn't need to know a thing about geopolitics to spot government lies.) I don't think the People deserve the terrible consequences (which diminishes their wellbeing and their futures) when they get bamboozled into another war, simply because they cannot discern a typical false flag. This deficit manifests in various ways, but the lack of progress and evolution suggests to me that we are dealing with a brain injury caused by extreme and excessive propaganda.

The People's eager embrace of the China smears, lies, and malicious misinformation is a very dangerous vulnerability that is going to hurt us badly. I know there is little I can do to correct it, even though I possess the critical data that can neutralize the lunatic set-up being constructed by the psychopaths at the State Department. When it gets down to that, then I must blame myself. Ed Snowden and Julian Assange found the truth — and they risked their lives and found a way to empower us with that knowledge. I hope we're worth it.

Thanks for such a considered response.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic radio and tv propaganda 100 yrs ago. Just newspapers (Randolph Hurst)

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PriceRip's picture

comment, @Pluto's Republic , "... we are dealing with a brain injury caused by extreme and excessive propaganda."

Reminded me of a something I read a few years ago:

According to the New York University Medical Center, chronic stress resulting from emotional abuse or any other kind of trauma releases cortisol, a stress hormone which can damage and affect the growth of the hippocampus, the main area of the brain associated with learning and memory.

Literal brain damage from stress ...

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Despite the lack of antibiotics, I'd jump in a TARDIS and head a hundred years back in a heartbeat, if I could take my loved ones with me.

Far better to live in 1921 than in 2021, at least for a white person; even a black person would, I think, have to weigh their choice of which year to live in carefully. It's not as easy a choice as it looks.

And it's not, primarily, about informing people (though that is an important secondary concern). The wound is emotional, and spiritual. The thinking is damaged by the shock and awe.

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4 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal The Subsaharan-descended were hardly the only people at a much greater disadvantage back then.

In hindsight, it looks to me like the halcyon of civilization so far was a period it sounds like nobody appreciated enough at the time: The 1970s, when people had the best net balance of rights, freedoms, economy, accountability, peace, wealth distribution, science/technology, arts/entertainment, morals, opportunity, and positive forward vision that we have ever seen to date.

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6 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@Pluto's Republic about the people being better informed 100 years ago. Just read a newspaper from the period. The propaganda was just as thick, if not worse. Hell, even the targets, Russia, China, were the same. I am not an expert on these things, but from what I do know, people’s opinions were absolutely shaped by what people like Hearst and others wanted them to think. Sure, people like Sinclair did great work, but I’d argue he was more of an exception than the rule.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Creosote.'s picture

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic
and even plants much more closely at the speed and closeness that this demands before the steam engine, which was not alive and did not need to be cared for in the same way, only "run." Human and animal deaths were close to hand, now perhaps escape was possible. The change came with an addiction to convenience and speed. If you look at old photos, you see that horses were everywhere in people's lives before WWI. Then they vanish.

Now the person who built the M-monopoly has bought vast acres of land in eastern Washington State, very likely those scoured of all upper layers of soil by a series of immense prehistoric floods when vast interior midwestern lakes flooded toward the Columbia -- the "scablands."

The papers ran this as a mystery story for a few days then dropped it as if it were someone's dull hobby. My guess: very convenient area for immense solar installations, and a monopoly on power readily sold to Washington and far beyond.

Have any of you come to a similar perspective?

Finally, on arriving here way late, my thanks to Pluto's Republic and all of you for being here

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earthling1's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter @Dr. John Carpenter
Infinite growth on a finite planet, and 2400 becomes more believable.
Personally, I'm leaning towards 2100. But that's just me.
On edit; this response was not meant for you Dr.

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4 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

PriceRip's picture

@earthling1 ,

has better odds than picking a date for a foreseeable catastrophic event.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

Fantastic rundown. My only complaint is the implicit assumption that Trump was worse than Obama's predecessor - who isn't even mentioned! #NeverForgetNeverForgive

Were it not for the pandemic, Trump would've almost certainly beaten Biden handily (or who knows? Without the pandemic ruining his "people-on-people" campaign strategy, we might actually have gotten Bernie!) - and we may well have ultimately been better off for it.

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10 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Pluto's Republic's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

After Biden, reactionary populism is going to come roaring back.

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3 users have voted.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
PriceRip's picture

@Pluto's Republic

          Will it be a beer hall putsch leading up to (???) or a Storming of the Bastille leading up to (???) ?

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2 users have voted.