And yet, that’s at least the 3rd time this week on this forum that I’ve seen something start out a rationalization with that phrase.
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What’s fascinating is the implicit idea that regardless of past sentiment, we might in fact be in a time where it is totally cool to steal labor and starve people in order to leverage negotiations in Congress.
The thing is, for most of our history, it wasn’t even possible to shut the government down like this, it’s only something that came about in the mid 1970s. Maybe we should consider the fact that government shutdowns only really work in the favor of people who don’t think the government should be doing most of the stuff it does anyways.
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It’s never been “cool;” absolute power corrupts, absolutely. There is no “tends to” about it.
I don’t know what theoretical “we” you’re referring to, there; I have been considering that perhaps this is exactly what TPTB wanted from jump.
I put nothing past people drunk on unchecked power.
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As she herself has proved, many of her “esteemed” (read: fully bought and controlled by entrenched special interests) colleagues are the problem, and voters actually voting in support of their own interests are the solution.
It’s not so much that we need more of her, we need more voters to actually think about the issues and vote.
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“You refer to the prophecy of The One, who will bring balance to the Force. You believe it’s this boy girl?”
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My apologies for the deep and bitter sarcasm, but I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in purchasing.
I realize that the odds of more than 75% of the entire electorate actually thinking about the issues with the care and gravitas such things deserve are roughly the same as those of me living long enough to retire to a quaint little bookstore/teashop overlooking the southwest shore of Mare Serenitas. But hey, even foolish hopes are better than no hopes…
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she didn’t make that speech for the other congresspersons. That was for the citizens that voted for her and support her.
She knows how to use social media to good advantage
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We need more Progressive candidates AND we need voters to vote for them.
“If you build it, They will come”
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I think there is a good reason to criticize centrists in the united states. It’s because ideas like single-payer healthcare and 70% tax on the richest of the rich poll at 60%+ but they are to the left of the “left wing” party.
If the left wing position on climate change were capping emissions and the right wing position were a market-based carbon pricing approach then looking for a compromise, a synthesis or a third option might be nice. But when the left wing position is that is exists and the right wing position is that it doesn’t exist, looking for a "center’ is idiocy.
The American right wing made an intentional strategy of moving further and further to the right so that the center would follow them. If you know that the middle will win, then you ought to propose outlandish positions in order to pull the middle in your direction. It’s possible a lot of the extremism we see today is a result of mindless centrism.
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Because it hasn’t been mentioned here yet, AOC was a guest on a charity stream raising funds for a transgender charity.
AOC:
Trans rights are civil rights are human rights
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I concur with all of that. One of the issues we have seen is the extreme right keep pulling those from the left/center even more right. A moving goalpost as it were.
But ultimately what you are talking about is an issue with the House and Senate. They remain fixed to their party lines and they do need to find compromises to appease each side. But a POTUS represents all of us as a single entity. Which is why I would always say that position should help champion the compromises for the betterment of us all.
I agree that the system would work best members of congress represented their constituents and presidents represented all Americans. I’m just cautious about suggesting the way to do that is always or even usually to be in the center or find a compromise between two polarized points of view. I think “centrist” is criticism of Obama because he was too committed to being in the middle, sometimes seemingly for the sake of appearing to be in the middle.
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Daily reminder: the presidency is not the government. The president only needs to be as centrist as the rest of government will allow him to be.
Obama, for his part, enjoyed Democratic control of government for all of 9 months in 2009-2010, and his 60th vote in the Senate was the guy who lost his Democratic primary and ran as an independent. This ties into what AOC was saying, because the glib response to the reality of mixed government under Obama is usually ‘he should have been prepared to shut the government down if he didn’t get what he wanted from Congress, and use the Bully Pulpit to turn America against their Congresspeople’.
On legislation I actually think the democratic impulse to compromise showed it’s flaws with the ACA. They used process properly. Lots of debate, lots of consultation, many amendments including Republican amendments to the bill. In the end Republicans still use it as an example of democrats ramming something down their throat and use that as an excuse to completely refuse to involve any democrat opinions on anything they try to do.
I know most of Obama’s term the only bills congress sent him were just senseless streams of racist insults*, and I don’t blame him for having only the power he had. But the compromise on ACA should have taught “rational” people that there is no center to be sought between reality and hallucination.
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