Am I misunderstanding, or are you advocating war as a job creation scheme?
12 Likes
The military-industrial complex: Too big to fail?
11 Likes
Semi-colons are, like others have said, best used when making a list where each item contains commas; which happen often while writing in accordance with common speech (people ramble).
3 Likes
My english/writing teacher would have such a field day with this oneā¦
To be fair, there is a point to be made there. You can make the same point about the coal industry, which got Clinton into trouble recent.
The history of capitalism is littered with broken bodies and communities as the economy shifts and changes around people in ways they have no control over. So, yes, dismantling the military-industrial complex will indeed mean job losses, so the goal should be for the government to do all they can to mitigate the violence done to peopleās lives as they do so.
Iād love to transition into a sustainable, morally upright economy and we need to do so, but dismantling things as they stand means subjecting people to more violence at the hands of the whims of the capitalist class. We need a revolution that is more revolutionary than the bourgeois one that Marx described.
12 Likes
Hell, Iāve worked in the defence industry (in the UK). Every company Iāve ever worked for has done defence work.
Itās obvious that itās used as a way of propping up employment in depressed areas, same as maintaining the US military at its current obscene size is (which I guess, creates a need to find something for them to do with the expensive toys, to justify the expense).
Itās justā¦ugh. You could just implement mincome instead and free up people to find something else to do, and massive expand, I dunno, science and space exploration funding as a way to continue all the investment into technical developments in a more productive way.
15 Likes
No argument there!
Precisely and this would be a state run solution to a free market problem, yeah? Right now, here in the US at least, and for a while, people have been subjected to changes in the economy with no real safety netā¦ and the only one that existed, as overhauled in the 90s in such a way to make it harder to make ends meet for the people who have no real options for work.
11 Likes
Did you see this recently?
As of Jan. 31, there were close to 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the latest numbers from the Defense Manpower Data Center, a body of the Department of Defense. That means that 0.4 percent of the American population is active military personnel.
and
7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives.
Those are crazy numbers.
4 Likes
There are plenty of things in that list that I donāt agree with either, but that doesnāt mean I donāt like the Democrats more than I dislike them.
And I really do like the Sanders message about a downticket revolution. A lot of the problems we have (especially with the ACA) can only be fixed by taking back Congress and governorships. But that can only happen by working with the party from the inside, not working against it. Thatās why this prolonged campaign battle is dangerous. We need to all come together under the same banner eventually, but itās impossible to do that without compromise.
The attacks I worry most about are calling the leadershipās integrity into question. Itās obvious Iām a big fan of Hillary, and I wish more people would be. You mentioned Wall Street. I think itās important to remember that the financial industry does play a very important role in this country. As the former Senator from New York itās known that Hillary understands that role and wonāt destroy it to satisfy calls for revenge. You can look up her voting record (http://www.ontheissues.org/Hillary_Clinton.htm), which to me looks like sheās consistently on the peopleās side when it comes to mortgages and bankruptcy but you should make your own call. You can also see on that page that sheās been a long time advocate for campaign finance reform; using PACs etc now is necessary because thatās how the current system works and the oppositionās going to use them. Other important Democrats are getting their integrity questioned now too; Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer are anything but conservative. (Yes, that semicolon was deliberate.)
Thanks for your edit, btw. I wasnāt putting that accusation on you, that was more addressed at the Reddit rabble rousers which Iāve been letting get to me way too often, and they do say it. I may not always sound like it but I do appreciate that most Sanders supporters are level headed.
2 Likes
O_o My Bad. That comma was meant to denote that I was addressing a different point in the list, not that the armyās too big of an industry to scale down. The second point is in reference to scaling down fracking and helping people transition out of the fossil fuel industry.
2 Likes
Have you seen the suggestions that Sandersā criticism of Frank is due to homophobia?
And that doesnāt even scratch the surface, if you count people who worked in the defense industry without being in the military.
Iād say that the military provides a secure job for many working class people who have few other options, which has been all volunteer since the 70s. [quote=ādaneel, post:68, topic:78851ā]
Those are crazy numbers.
[/quote]
Of course, you can compare that to countries with compulsory service, say Israel or Egypt.
4 Likes
Yeah, but it sounds more like Sandersās criticism is from a bruised ego after Frank called him out on being too stubborn to work with. Honestly I havenāt dug too deep on this one because being born and raised in MAās 4th I already know anyone who doesnāt like Barney is objectively wrong.
1 Like
Iām not sure I agree with this. Iāve got serious problems with the current Democratic leadership and the behaviors of the Democratic party in general over the past couple of decades. While theyāve been a bit of a foil for the Republicans theyāre not that much better (Iām not saying theyāre the same, just that theyāre part of the same small subset of the population thatās not very good at governance or ethics).
I honestly think that we need to stir things up, and I believe that the party platform and priorities need to be really sorted out.
We can use the āwarā thing as an example. You mentioned the economic benefit, but we get a greater economic benefit in any community if people are making something that is useful (Infrastructure, etc.) than more things that explode or make other things explode. Weāre NOT under any sort of threat and our military has minimal value and is being used to create chaos for us.
Almost every enemy we have overseas is one we created, and the Democrats have been part of that too.
So again, Iām not really a fan of the big kumbaya moment unless it actually results in positive change.
If the Democratic party doesnāt change their platform and priorities then theyāre the enemy of our enemy, not our friend.
16 Likes
My point was that the democrats have been instrumental in building the world we live in today and have consistently moved away from the mid-century liberal consensus - this isnāt a Clinton specific problem, but a democratic problem, as I see it. The center has shifted, and youāre right that getting in more progressives downticket is the key solution for this problem. But not putting pressure on the party itself will mean that they continue down that road. I honestly think we canāt keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome and I do believe that Clinton represents the middle of the road establishment at this point. itās hard to see how right she is because the actually right is so far out that she looks like a lefty by comparison. I donāt think she is.
I do believe that capitalism, as it exists in its modern neo-liberal form, is a major part of the problem, including the activities of wall street, which is consistently championed over the rights of working people. And they wonder why they are hemorrhaging the working classes from the party.
I didnāt think you were calling me out, so no hard feelings there. 
The reddit rabble rousers are probably not even the vast minority of Sanderās backers, Iād guess. At least some of them are just ass holes who want to watch the world burn and some of those will vote for Trump because reasons. But yeah, they arenāt representative, but the media makes them out as such and thatās a huge problem.
7 Likes
I wasnāt intending to bring up the military as an employer but I do agree with a lot of the points that it spawned. What I mean to say by āāno warā isnāt viableā is that like it or not the US has an extremely important role in international peacekeeping. Our allies donāt have militaries anywhere near the size of ours because theyāre already allied with the most powerful military. Iād agree that we should transition to sharing the workload and offloading resources to international groups, but we have too many outstanding commitments to suddenly become isolationist.
This brings us full circle. Thatās the attitude of people that should be joining the Democratic party to push it back to the left. Stick around and keep putting pressure on us.
1 Like
Thatās only technically true and has been very much a self fulfilling prophecy Most of the situations of international peacekeeping weāve participated in have been situations weāve largely triggered ourselves.
Additionally, a major issue with having a standing military (one brought up by Eisenhower when he predicted the Military-Industrial complex) is that if you have it, thereās an incentive to use it.
We could chop our military in half and the entire planet would be better off. And we could use all that extra money and resources to invite refugees to join us here (theyāre excellent citizens!), and weād be able to house them and feed them with the resources weāre not wasting. That kills three birds with one stone and doesnāt create more enemies to fight.
Thatās a properly progressive, humanist attitude. Thatās what I need in anybody Iād consider voting for, because thatās the sort of thought process that doesnāt create a ton of unnecessary suffering.
18 Likes
Hell, Sanders is to the right of Dwight fucking Eisenhower, but these days heās considered a Socialist.
15 Likes
Agreed. It would be silly for Sanders to stop before California has a chance to vote.
12 Likes
