politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
(1) trillionaires (such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk) bought out the media - "prime time news" no longer exists, as it used to, now instead we have advertising segments meant to increase profitz
(2) the christians do not care - as evidenced by the fact that they already know. They just used him to accomplish their ends, of restricting abortion and whatever. Authoritarians just don't think in terms like right or wrong, and rather what am I told to feel about this or that?
(3) also, yes they are THAT MUCH against the LGBTQIA+ "agenda" (of living life free from outside interference) that they could have watched the event happen live, heard her screams, and still vote for Trump. Some would still vote that way even if he had done it personally to them. It is an entirely different mindset, and we would do well to listen to it, rather than be surprised a few months from now (as we were before in 2016).
(4) if you want to understand it moar better-er, the best teacher I've seen is The Alt Right Playbook, by Innuendo Studios - I recommend starting at the beginning and going all the way through it, but the most relevant one to this discussion I think is this one.
TLDR: they know, they don't care in the slightest - truly.
I love the Alt-Right Playbook series. It's so well done, but definitely not something I'd expect any Republican voter to understand, yet alone watch.
It is not meant for, nor aimed at, them. Rather it is to help liberals become woken up to the fact that conservatives aren't merely temporarily displaced liberals themselves, who simply need a slight course correction and then they'll be eternally grateful for being shown to be wrong (as we would in reverse), but rather how they think fundamentally, foundationally, in an entirely different manner.
And everything gets filtered by that worldview. Hence, even someone who was personally raped by Trump himself may still vote for him, believing not in "him" but in how he can be strategically useful to their cause of returning America to a state that never existed for us where an emperor can do whatever he wants, and somehow that's what will make us great (again?). Just like how Russia is "great" and "strong" now - you know, in spite of literally all of the evidence to the contrary.
But lest my message get lost here: Innuendo Studios isn't poking fun of conservatives for ignoring literally all of the facts that contradict their worldview and instead believing in their fantasical magical wonderland - rather, it helps liberals realize that we are the ones who are ignoring literally all of the facts that contradict our worldview and instead believing in our fantasical magical wonderland, e.g. where Bernie Sanders had some kind of a ghost of a chance at winning despite bucking the system of powerful elites, or that Hillary would win so easily that she didn't even need to bother campaigning in the Midwestern states (beyond bringing hot sauce in her purse), or that people are so scared of Trump that Biden is a shoe-in despite not having earned people's votes or being able to finish a sentence. We will receive our rude awakening, once again, and as always we will blame not enough people for voting or whatever tidbit lies easily within reach - anything rather than own up to the fact that irl reality is hard, and might involve some actual effort to understand, both others, and most especially ourselves.
You know that little boy near the end of Sixth Sense whispering "I see dead people, walking around like regular people - they don't know they're dead!"? Imagine instead that he said "we are the same, conservatives and liberals - other-group-person=bad but same-group-person=good, ignoring any inconvenient facts to the contrary". This is why we're fucked up the ass, and so easily led like sheep by the billionaires - bc we refuse to learn, from either failures or success, and instead merely tell stories to convince ourselves of the rightness of our respective causes, since we enjoy those calm stories more than the harshness and complexity of reality.
It doesn't help that the same billionaires have spent decades dumbing down education and making higher education prohibitively expensive. All while cramming every single wedge issues under the sun into the national narrative to further entrench this tribal mentality. I know all of what you say is true, but it seems all but impossible to combat at this point.
It's so hard to have any motivation to carry on in this world given a portion of it is fine with all manner of atrocities so long as "their guy" is "winning." Why try to make anything better -- be it more just, equal, enjoyable for all -- when a good portion of the country (possibly the world) is so hell-bent on making it worse because they dislike a small subset of some insignificant problem?
Yesterday was the 4th. I just don't know why anyone celebrated at all. What's there to celebrate at this point when some will sell out their future, and the future of their own, for a "red hat?"
It does help though... it helps them. And that's an important distinction that we would do well to recognize.
When a lion wants to eat you, b/c it is hungry or maybe it just wants to fatally bat you around for fun, it is not the lion's job to not eat you - it is our job to not allow it to do so, or at least make our best attempt.
I am also not certain that this fight can be "won". It most certainly can/will not if we do not even try.
Even so, there is value in learning things. Whatever comes after America will be rough, and it behooves us to wake the fuck up and face that rather than go back to sleep.
More to the point, it is more fun to live life awake and facing forward, than to have to constantly anticipate bad things that are inevitably coming but we have no idea when or how or what precisely it will look like. Maybe it won't even be all that bad? But we'll only know that if we look at it with our eyes.
But back to the fun aspect: why be Sisyphus, constantly struggling against things that we have no control over, when we can focus our attention on the things we can control? We cannot control "them" - we never will be able to control "them" - so why worry about it? That seems counterproductive. Instead, focus on what we can control, and the motivation returns. There is no spoon. No, seriously, there isn't: we could only ever control ourselves, that's it and that's all that was ever possible, anywhere, at any time.
Another neat thing: when the USA broke away from England, it spawned an entire rash of similar actions in other colonies that gave the middle finger to the English kings, and other nations likewise ditched their own kings of their respective colonial empires as well (e.g. France). We inspired the entire fucking world. As Rome did before us. Even after we fall, nobody is taking that legacy away - it will live on for thousands of years when all of us have long since died, of causes natural and/or otherwise.
Moreover, they have updated to Democracy 2.0, while we remained mired in our 1.0 version, and really having downgraded even from that by allowing devolution into a 2-party system that brought us to this point. Maybe after a time we can import some of those newer democratic systems back in, if fascism replaces democracy and then democracy replaces that fascism, and we can have a bright shiny Democracy 3.0 then. Though one thing is for certain: Democracy 1.0 has already failed - not will fail in some future sense, but already. Either that or we can at least not be blamed overmuch for thinking thus, given how fatally we seem to be wounded lately.
Focus on what you can control. There is no spoon - only ourselves.
I have to upvote Innuendo Studios.
It boils down to this: To the GOP the idea that a LGBT person might molest a child is more important than the reality that Trump actually has.
No need to hyperbolic with the use of trillionaires there.
Billionaires, 0.1%, ultra wealthy or any other term would have sufficed.
Thank you for the correction - it is Amazon that has 2 trillion and Tesla 1 trillion, but Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk themselves each have only ~0.2 trillion, so billionaires not trillionaires indeed. My words would carry more weight if I were more careful slinging them around:-).
Ya, it's Amazon that's 2T. Tesla is currently 785b after its latest delivery report, but did make it into the 1T club at its peak.