This is some prime concern trolling; it’s not like the primary dynamics were any healthier when Republicans were guaranteed a spot in every general election race–something that is essentially denied to any third parties in California politics. Sure the Democrats can screw things up by not thinning the field before the primary election, but that’s one of about 9000 ways the Democrats can screw up an election, and it’s not such a bad problem to have if it means you also get to pick between two Democratic women for your open Senate seat.
Also, this is the dude who just wrote that garbage article about how LA never really made it as a city because it lacks a well-defined upper class philanthropy circuit, I’ll take his analysis with a grain of salt for the time being.
“On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”
Douglas Adams - So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
I just thought this seemed appropriate to this topic.
Would have been polite to put an @ before my name so I was clued in that you were replying to me in a new thread. Just discovered this one. And yes, if it comes down to it, getting fucked slower is clearly the superior choice to getting fucked faster, as long as we’re speaking metaphorically of course. Voting for not getting fucked at all knowing you’ll get fucked harder because of that choice seems irrational to me.
The heart of this is the false equivalence that the mainstream Dems are every bit as bad as the GOP that was the core of the Sanders campaign. That rhetoric sure makes it difficult to back down, become part of the coalition and support the candidate like party members who lose at the conventions have always done. The other guy won, and is fucking us quite hard as a matter of fact. Lives will be ruined and lost. It really matters who’s “less bad”.
Sure. But it’s not enough just to vote for someone new. Obviously, voting for a buffoon like Trump is worse than voting for the same old, same old. As I recall, the GOP primary included several people who weren’t politicians, but weren’t as bad as Trump.
Sorry about that. I actually wasn’t thinking about it at all when I tacked that bit onto the front, it was just that I’d found myself writing for like 30 minutes and it seemed a bit big for a comment on a story
Just as an aside, I think mainstream Americans as a whole in terms of our politics are horrible people. We’re fine with using missiles to kill families and children overseas just because we’re too cowardly to actually pursue the wars we want so that our creature comforts from cheap gasoline to cheaper smart phones remain a reality. We Americans have a huge problem when it comes to acknowledging our parasitic and imperialist natures. Rather than saying that either party is any worse or better than the other on these issues I’m going to put the blame on the US citizen which both parties represent. As such I think blasting the Democrats for not toeing the line is silly so I think we’re in agreement there. But I still stand by saying that if fellow Americans are fine with blowing up babies so they can get cheap rare earth elements for their iPhones then they’re shitty people and don’t deserve any respect or love from anyone. And if fellow Americans aren’t willing to even try to break down this horrible system of slaughter then I really don’t have the patience to interact with them.
Sorry for the rant but I think that’s where Sanders was going with some of his campaign. I don’t think he did a good job of explaining it, though.
Now that you mention it, it would be a really refreshing change of pace to have a president who’s neither complicit in war crimes at the time of assuming office nor bragging about how many war crimes they’re going to commit once they’re in office, wouldn’t it?
I always get the feeling that because I disagree with third way liberalism people think I am a naive middle class kid who is just out of school, rather than a struggling liminal-working class woman in her mid thirties who became disabled 15 years ago and had read a lot of political work because I had a lot of time on my hands. Even then I remember being in my teens disagreeing with Tony Blair even before he was Prime Minister. I remember his claims that “Things Can Only Get Better” and this song being played all over the place.
Did things get better? That would depend on how rich you were before. The Charver subculture didn’t spread over Britain because they were doing well in society, It happened because they felt pushed to the side by a quasi-left wing party who didn’t care about them. The social side of things has been give and take, we’ll give you this freedom, but we will also take away another different one.
Still I was naive and thought that the government was there to help, up until 2003 when my life went to shit (I have talked enough about the details of this, no need to repeat them) and I had to go looking for help. I forget the amount of time I was told that there was nothing they could do to help me move away from violence. I eventually got out by going to a college in another city, but my health failed after the year of stress.
I have spent the last 20 years being ignored, abused and betrayed by those who claim to represent me. I have been accused of wanting to go back to the 70s, but I don’t, those politics didn’t work then and won’t work now, I want a new socialism. I have been accused of being a populist, but I want popular participation not populism.
So why am I caring about politics in another country? First, I am an internationalist, I see it as my duty to support allies in other countries which involves knowing how politics works there. Secondly, the USA has repeatedly interfered with the politics of my country, pushing it to the right, so I see it as fair that I get involved in the politics of the USA.
Businessman and Iraq veteran Joseph Kopser, a former Republican who is backed by national Democrats, was asked about his views on border security at the Ranchers and Landowners Association of Texas the second weekend of February.
“Border security on our Southern border and our Northern border is something we have to focus on,” he replied. He went on to advocate for fences and greater use of technology in the air and on the ground to detect threats on the border. Curiously, he cited his time in Iraq as justification.
“I want to secure our borders because when I spent my time in Iraq, when we were fighting Al Qaeda, the border between Iraq and Iran was not secure, and those fighters came over with Iran and that didn’t do us any good in that fight,” he said. “Nor do I want to allow anyone across our border without us knowing who they are.”
A member of the audience called out, “Are you sure you’re on the right ticket?”
He replied, “I’m on the American ticket.”
Anybody that has a problem with this is just complaining about “purity”, right?
Sounds fair to me. Speaking as an American citizen and voter.
The USA influences elections all over the world, both openly and covertly. And sometimes when we don’t get what we want, we’ll violently overthrow a fairly elected government, either openly or through funding of proxies. So it would be pretty transparent hypocrisy if we got all selfrighteous about foreigners trying to influence our politics.
If I was a citizen of one of those other countries and found that my President had colluded with the CIA to fix an election I’d be pretty pissed off too.
I don’t expect the Russian citizenry to be angry at Putin for meddling in our elections. I expect the AMERICAN citizenry to be angry that our leaders aren’t doing anything to stop it. It’s like The Manchurian Candidate came true, was exposed for all to see, and half the country just shrugged and said “better than letting the Democrats win.”
