About the train wreck (election '24)
So, what a ridiculous election season this is / will probably continue to be! I'm still convinced that the current match-up is some kind of sick joke, including the fact that I might finally have an opinion in common with a left-gatekeeping, pseudo-liberal, snot-nosed establishment bootlicker like Bill Maher. He has finally come out and had the temerity to suggest that there might still be time to trade out Other Uncle Joe for a younger candidate. -SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT FOUR YEARS AGO, LIKE THE REST OF US ALREADY HAD, BILL, but better late than never. What Ol' Bill didn't think to mention, is who that younger candidate might be. It's a new thought for him, so I can forgive him for not having an answer to that, but I think I might.
Was watching Youtube, looking for some really boring instructables, and kept having poli-trainwrecks thrown my way. Mostly I ignore them, but happened to watch one with MTG insulting a young black Congresswoman from Texas. Said Congresswoman wasn't having it, stayed adult and professional whilst getting really LOUD right back at the Congresswoman from Georgia, the State with the highest rate of election fraud in the country. Part of this is that I'll sit still for anybody spanking Marge Trailerpark Greene in public, but the other reason I kept listening, was how focused the Congresswoman from Texas was, on treating her office like a bloody job, and not a playground.
Her name is Jasmine Crocket, representing Dallas, mostly, and I have yet to find an interview with her where she didn't strike me as an actual, dedicated public servant; an old-school one. She meets all the requirements, and as near as I can tell, has no skeletons in the closet, unlike the two fossils currently on offer. She actually had a nice comment or two about Biden's policies, insomuch as they had benefited people in her district by providing funds to clean up toxic sites. All I could think while watching interviews with her, was "Damn. An actual grownup!" -which I can't say about either of the drooler twins. Oh, and Texas "governor" Greg Abbott has threatened to arrest her when she returns to Texas, for helping a small group of Dems break quorum, so the Repubs can't pass a repressive, racist new voting bill.
So, I guess this is all leading up to this question, for the DNC. WHY can't you trade Other Uncle Joe out for somebody as sharp, rational, brave, and actually FOR the People, as Jasmine Crocket? Speaking only for myself, it would be swell to vote for someone running against Little Lord Trumpy-Pants, where I DIDN'T have to vomit beforehand. Thanks, Great Donkey! Thanks, so much!
Comments
Train wreck indeed
.
Nothing spells anti-democracy quite as well as the duopoly.
Thanks for chiming in!
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
I'm still planning
to vote for Stein, unless the dems parachute Herself in at the convention. In that case, I might actually hold my nose and vote for the repub candidate, just to try to keep Her away from the levers of power.
I want to see the dems get *crushed* this cycle. I'll want that even more if they choose to run Her.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good one.
My first thought was the Bernie Sanders phenomenon — his presence in the 2016 Democratic Primaries created a passion across the land. Millions of formerly indifferent voters emerged out of the apolitical wilderness in the US, and sparked to life. They began sending money to Bernie Sanders, enough to fund a run for the Presidency. Wherever Bernie Sanders held a political rally to share his vision and values, people travelled long distances in caravans to attend. I don't recall a popular candidate in any US election who spoke truthful courageous words to the people that triggered a political rapture in the People's hearts and minds. This was something unique and unexpected in American politics. During the time that Bernie campaigned in the 2016 primary, it felt like a dream. He made promises and described to people the way their lives should be; the rights they should have, and the way their government should behave. For a brief golden moment, we had a candidate worth voting for.
I took a closer look. This is what it looked like: Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign was notable for its focus on progressive policies and grassroots support. Here are some key promises and statements from his campaign speeches that reflect his platform:
Economic Inequality and Workers' Rights:
"The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time."
"We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty."
Health Care:
"Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman, and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need regardless of their income."
"We must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right. And we can do that through a Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system."
Education:
"We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially lower student debt. If Germany, Scandinavia, and many other countries can do it, so can we."
"In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, our young people should not be saddled with enormous student debt."
Social Justice:
"We must reform a broken criminal justice system that imprisons far too many people and does not give people the support they need to return to their communities."
"Our job is to end the disgrace of having more people in jail than any other country on earth. We must invest in jobs and education, not more jails and incarceration."
Environmental Issues:
"Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world."
"We need a massive federal jobs program to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of decent-paying jobs. And we need to move aggressively to renewable energy to save our planet for future generations."
Campaign Finance Reform:
"We need to overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections. Billionaires should not be able to buy elections."
"We need a political revolution which tells the billionaire class they cannot have it all."
::
Bernie Sanders speeches emphasized the need for systemic change and rallied against the influence of big money in politics, aiming to mobilize a large, diverse coalition of voters.
We are never going to see any of that. We have moved in the opposite direction, past the point of no return. The corrupt candidates we have now are the best we are going to get.
All we can do is wait to be asset-stripped. The American People have no awareness, whatsoever, about the situation they are in.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
The thing about Bernie’s run
was that the base had been wanting what Bernie was offering for decades and yet when it was offered to them they rejected it and supported Hillary whose campaign promises were 180 degrees from his. She actually laughed at MFA. Just unbelievable.
Then when he ran against Biden and offered the same they instead wanted Biden who had been fighting against those issues for decades, but they said that once he was elected they would push him left….they did put pressure on democrats to pass minimum wage increase and other things, but once they failed they just moved on to the next issue, failed, moved on….rinse and repeat and now they don’t even talk about it anymore. Bernie offered MFA… Biden promised to veto it if congress ever passed it. Go Brandon!!, And Biden isn’t even talking about issues. But he’s run out Bernie again in talk about MFA like a good little sheep dawg.
I see people occasionally bitching about our health care system and wanting a better one and I just laugh and think you bozos already rejected it.
Speaking of our health care system South Park nailed it.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Here's the thing:
I experienced Bernie's supporters as a completely different demographic — I didn't associate them with the Democratic Party. My view (at the time at DK) and my experience was that the Democrats(shitlibs) hated Bernie passionately from the very beginning. Very loud Bernie people were banned.
Bernie's supporters were not political people, they were unlikely to ne regular voters. They were disenfranchised. They would go for years and years without ever mentioning politics. They listened to no political propaganda. For example, they didn't consider Human Rights to be a political issue. Likewise, when they took care of their own health issues, they never considered that politics or government could be part of that. They lived in a world where people's rights were a moral and practical issue. They didn't think that politics had the right to weigh in on it.
At one time, I was the same way. Prior to 2000, I deliberately excluded politics from my world. I couldn't name one US congressman or senator. That whole political mess was completely irrelevant to my life. Happiest I've ever been.
For what's it's worth, I was helping a news outlet cover Trumps speeches in 2016. His fans were not loyal to the Republican Party either. They started as outsiders, too.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
This is true.
The 2016 Colorado caucuses had between 3 and 5 times the normal turnout, utterly overflowing many venues. The vast majority of those were first-timers, not the party faithful. And many of those were also last-timers, after the party decided to reverse the precinct outcomes at the county level and substitute Herself over all objections. When that happened, I walked out of my county convention with many of them, and never looked back.
Fuck the dems. Fuck them all to hellandgone. Let them parachute Her in again. They won’t have learned their lesson, because they think they own us.
Wrong. They are mistaken. Let them learn it again. And again. And again. They have finally figured out how to get me to hate them more than the rethugs- and I’m not alone.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I hear that, usefewersyllables; I hear that.
I'm personally caught in a giant dilemna. Yes, I want to see the Dems suffer, but not the rank-and-file, and it's hard to target the DNC exclusively. I voted for Stein in '16, but let's face it, she's not any kind of fighter, and the Greens seem functionally incapable of fielding one. -Which leaves the droolers.
I've believed that they both belong in prison for pretty much my entire adult life, and I hate what Biden has done to the Country, legislatively, but then Trump had to go and start calling for people with my political beliefs to be forced out of HIS country. My first ancestor on this continent fought in the Revolutionary War, and Trump's family came here from Germany and Scotland, less than three generations back, but he wants me and my fellow travelers out of HIS country. So, fuck that white boy, also. A non-psycho Republican could have had my vote this time, but apparently there aren't any. -Which was the whole point of me going -"What about this Crocket gal from Texas?" Just me venting a little positive wishful thinking, rather than waste my time hoping that the current crop of Duopoly "leadership" will wise up / grow up / step down and let competent people in / just fucking die, and stop tormenting us.
I can dream, can't I?
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
I understand.
Where the dems finally crossed the Rubicon for me, as a party, is that there isn't a single high-level voice calling for the US Government to back away from the precipice of nuclear war. They're all gung-ho for war, in any and every form.
I understand that all they've ever done is lie about the things they claim to support, as they incessantly pander for votes. They don't give a shit about reproductive rights, or the unions, or MFA. They never have. They just want the votes from the people who value those things. So, they lie. They lie like dogs.
But to my way of thinking, they *should* give a shit about not vaporizing us all. That seems important to me, somehow. You'd think that "not getting dead" would be a positive value, one for which they might actually advocate.
I guess that makes me a single-issue voter, then. I actually care a lot about continuing to live. But I've always known that I was destined to die by violence, so I guess that the violence that our country is about to unthinkingly unleash on the world will be how it happens.
For that, I cannot and will not forgive. I don't dream, anymore- I nightmare. But your mileage may vary.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I hear that, too, usefewersyllables-
It's the finality of it that gets to me. I know I have to die, though hopefully not for a few years yet, but the idea that we are ruled by people that apparently are OK with turning this planet into another lifeless rock, spinning through a limitless void, THAT gets to me. I used to have nightmares, in my childhood, about nuclear war. When the Soviet Union broke up, I stopped having them, but now they're back. -Except the roles are reversed. WE put medium-range launchers in Eastern Ukraine, 5 minutes from Moscow, and then refused to talk about it when the Russians wanted to talk. Two weeks later, Russian forces attack Ukraine. (FOR NO REASON, they told us!) The toxic irony just keeps coming; This is Putin's Cuban Missile Crisis, except he gets to play the role of JFK, while Biden gets to be a lobotomized version of Kruschev; a version that won't back down.
Until Trump turned up the Domestic Threat Level, I would have been content to let it rot, also. In my more paranoid moments, I suspect that the Duopoly hand-picked these two losers for the purpose of keeping the FEAR going.
Of course it will do no good, probably, but I have considered trying to set up a nationwide election boycott. Like, hold a nationwide street party; meet your neighbors, talk to others who are disgusted with the process. I think we just might outnumber the people who vote, and maybe withhold the stamp of legitimacy to this fucked-up, so-called "Democratic Republic". We could call it "No Choice Tuesday -- Nationwide Street Party and Election Boycott"...
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
That's a good idea
.
.
'Block the crooked parties' block party. Of course the Dept. of White House security will be
working with Diebold to bring fake voting to new levels of incredulity ..
or write in Zelensky (D) and Netentahoo (R) and see if if those creeps do better.
Running on an absurdity platform may not get the MSM coverage?
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Yup.
I’ve felt the searing heat of 1000 suns. Many times a week, in fact, since watching “Duck and Cover” the first time in grade school in the early 60s. Yes, I’m old. I’ve felt it melt my face, and my back, and my hands and arms and the soles of my feet and the top of my head. To conquer my fear, I’ve studied it, this denouement. It drove my choice of colleges, my major, my career, my songwriting, my art. It has, frankly, dominated my life. It got better during perestroika and glasnost. Temporarily. No more.
I understand it. I understand it, altogether too well. And my understanding is colored primarily by the AVOIDABILITY of it. The complete, abject, unutterable STUPIDITY of ending up this way, when anyone with an IQ anywhere above room temperature can say, with certainty, “That’s probably not a good idea….”.
Oppenheimer was right. We are become death, the destroyer of worlds. We are subject to the egos of imbeciles, and they will end us.
That is indeed pretty final, to my way of thinking. Our precious pseudo-democracy has served us up this roadkill banquet, hot from the sunlight and loaded with salmonella, botulism, and meaningless promises. Sorry if that causes any inconvenience…
Twice bitten, permanently shy.