Pundits keep on being astonished that the former president repeats actions that are illegal, objectively harmful, inciting violence--- but I think the "logic" (such as it is) is that if it was not wrong then, then why should it be wrong now?
"I'll f-in do it again!"
Basically.
Repeating these actions and *again* not facing any justice serves to "prove" that is it permitted.
That is why the glacial pace and inaction of our justice system may well end this little experiment in democracy.
@futurebird
Bingo!
Nixon didn't go to prison.
Ford wasn't immediately impeached for pardoning Nixon.
Reagan didn't go to prison.
Bush I didn't go to prison.
Bush II didn't go to prison.
Each and every step along the way, Democrats, Republicans, and the mainstream media told us that it would be “too disruptive” to have the rule of law.
So we made Trump inevitable by declaring that Republican presidents are above the law.
I would say losing the republic would be “disruptive.”
CW: US politics
Very nicely put. We have a long line of Republican presidents who attempted to undermine democracy, up to and including collaborating with hostile foreign nations. None of them ever faced meaningful consequences. Trump was not only inevitable, he's not even the end point — the next Republican attempt to subvert or nullify elections will be even more blatant.
CW: US politics
@sphinx @tofugolem @futurebird the so-called other side is not better. Clinton had a bunch of scandals including money from China. Al Gore contested an election and tried to do selective recounts, until the Supreme Court shot him down. And the D party was responsible for a really big insurrection in the 19th century. I could go on.
The parties do not represent competing moral principles. They represent competing collections of interests. They are just rival gangs.
CW: US politics
@mike805 @sphinx @futurebird
Wait.
So you're telling me that a string of Republican presidents didn’t break the law because you believe the conspiracy theories from the official Republican propaganda safe-space?
Buwahahahahahahaha!
You’re just adorable.
First, if your response to an accusation is to accuse someone else of something else, you just confessed to the original accusation. Look up “tu quoque” fallacy sometime.
1/2
CW: US politics
@tofugolem @sphinx @futurebird actually I think the whole system, and all Republican and Democratic presidents, break the law every day.
Anyone who thinks there are good guys in American politics (outside of the occasional local politician who has not been through the filter yet) doesn't get it.
America is just the strong arm of a financial cartel. The British used to perform this function once, but now it is the USA. It is a criminal enterprise, not a government.
CW: US politics
@mike805 @sphinx @futurebird
Yes, yes. You’re trying to use the “but both sides” argument to defend the criminality of Republican presidents. We’ve heard this song before, and I already explained why the logic is completely flaccid.
But keep trying, little guy. Maybe if you repeat yourself often enough, you can turn bad logic into good logic, because that’s how truth works if you were raised in a household that didn’t teach you to value education.
CW: US politics
It would be wrong to put all of this on Republicans. I will give you that, but please don't make the rather lazy conclusion that there is no substantive difference between the results we see when each party has power.
It's easy to see both are sub-optimal but equally obvious they they are radically different and in one case there are signs that there is the desire to end the entire democratic experiment.
CW: US politics
@futurebird @tofugolem @mike805 @sphinx
I just don't agree with that phrasing, because the DNC isn't at all maintaining "the entire democratic experiment". That's rhetoric - it's spin. The outcomes speak for themselves: the government's agenda isn't driven by voter representation - it's dictated by donor representation. The donors get what they want, the voters don't, and being connected to the party means you can act with impunity. It's not the DNC's mission to change that
CW: US politics
@pleaseclap @futurebird @mike805 @sphinx
True, but at least the Democratic party is less fascist than Republicans. So there's that.
CW: US politics
@tofugolem @pleaseclap @futurebird @sphinx yes they are less Fascist. That's the good news.
The bad news is they are a lot more Bolshevik. And not just Bernie. It seems like half their talking points come from the Communist Manifesto.
Sometimes I think we are watching the run-up to the Spanish Civil War, or perhaps the Kampfzeit, repeating as farce (the first time being tragedy!)
Does it really have to be a choice between Communism and Fascism?
CW: US politics
So having strong unions is communism? Kinda watering down the meaning of that word I fear.
Likewise social democracy is a stop gap measure to preserve capitalism by addressing the areas where markets fail.
Communism is a totally different system.
If you don't like the idea of a free market and schools and government health care, fine, but calling it communism is an old anti-union tactic and nothing more.
🇳🇱
CW: US politics
Self organizing unions are great. But when you have the democrats pushing for "right to work" laws where people are **forced** into unions against their will then yea, its stsrting to creep a bit too close to communism.
CW: US politics
Actually your right. I misunderstood the meaning of rigbt to work laws and after reading on it now i was mistaken.
CW: US politics
@freemo @futurebird that was not an accident. The term is supposed to be confusing.
CW: US politics
Well to rephrase the democrats **oppose** right tonwork acts, which would allow workers to have the freedom to decide if they want to join a union or not, as opposed to being forced to joining a union against their will.
CW: US politics
"allow workers to have the freedom to decide if they want to join a union or not"
IDK this isn't what they seem to really do. Have you ever seen some of the things that happen when you try to "choose" to start a union in a company that isn't fully unionized?
Can you see some of the natural conflicts that might arise? (Such as getting fired for joining the union.)
It is, as always, another corporate propaganda piece, and a staggeringly effective one at that. In my experience, the only pressure there is to join a union is because, without it, the corporate thumb will continue to push down until I'm just a tiny little squished blob. That vaunted 'pressure' to join comes from the investor class, which wants us to conform to its every dehumanizing whim and then gets shocked and appalled when we finally say 'no!'.
@theogrin @futurebird @freemo can you FEEL the panic of the investor class, with COVID and work-from-home and quiet quitting and the general resistance of a lot of people building?
This is the American equivalent of the Asian "lying down flat" movement.
The very Noble, self-perpetuating myth of the investor class being somehow above the rest of us is crumbling like a block of blue cheese, albeit as slowly as any social progress moves. You can read the panic in every Financial Times article about how moving back to the office is utterly essential.
(Once read an article that said long commutes are a good thing, and my eyes rolled right out of my skull, out of the apartment, and briefly joined an prog-rock band.)
As an investor class i am also probablh one of the biggest pushers of work from home and think offices for many jobs are outdated and pointless.
I think your confusing a broken media with investors, many of us dont think like that.
I think its hard to classify all of us investors into one bucket. There are of course many who focus on short term gains, and for many investors thst may cost them their support in the long run. But i think youll find investors and the rich are so monolithic and do t fit the stereo type of the oil tycoon archtype as much as youd imagine
@freemo
(Snipping others from this reply thread.)
I'll grant you that it's entirely too easy to put everyone into one bucket. By the standards of today, I lucked into a set of IRAs, so I'm technically in there too.
For clarity, I refer primarily to the variety of investor and shareholder who prefers an eternal, money-now growth rather than a comfortable blue chip investment, and whose decisions ultimately lead to the company's cratering and dissolution. Though long-termers are also a prob.
There is no shortage of investors who cause harm... if we narrow the criteria down then surely there are tons of bad apples. I just felt its important to note there are a great many investors out there who care about all the stakeholders and are doing their best to do whats right for everyone.
@freemo
I hate the bad apple metaphor. Bad apples should be excised, otherwise they spoil the whole barrel.
Good investors are all over the place, people who are morally and fiscally responsible, and who care*.
But the system as designed actively incentivizes bad actors, and those are the ones who seem to hold the most weight.
Though I'm of the opinion that we're back to a patronage system, which is its own can of worms.
@theogrin yea well sadly in most things in life the people who dont have morals the shackle them down will likely have the most to gain... less rules to slow ya down.
@freemo
A rule, if not acted upon when (not if) it is violated, is no rule at all.
A part of what needs to be done here is for bad actors to stop being allowed to convince others that lax rules are better for them. We just saw what happened with SVB and the like.
But to bring it back to the original topic: positing that healthy workers provide more benefit to companies than ill ones, unions exist in part for the benefit of precluding said bad actors from causing harm to everyone.
@theogrin unions have tons of benefits, as i said i stro gly support the existance of unions... im just against scenarios where people are forced into one specific union rather than having the right to choose how and if to unionize.
@freemo
How is that much different from a bloc on a board of directors and shareholders employing voting fiat to take the company in a direction which a minority rightly sees as functionally bankrupt? (Squeenix, I'm looking at you here.)
More principally, paying one's union dues typically also involves being provided with a voting share on how it acts. The Writers' Guild of America had to poll their members to see how they would move.
Unions as a monolithic bloc is ANOTHER propaganda bit.
@theogrin the difference is that there are protections in what an investor or a board can dictate, they are very limited... investors can not directly tell a board how to vote. Likewise a board can not tell a ceo how to operate the company with regard to day to day business. Thry are limited to only being allowed to decide on certain types of things, like allocating shares and other things.
A union however has a lot more power, for example calling strikes.
@freemo
Investors have withdrawal options, CEOs can make changes which are generally detrimental, and a board can, if nothing else, say, "Nope, you're not the CEO anymore."
A strike is functionally the same power.
@theogrin the difference is that a board can just fire a ceo, they have limitations i when and how, ceos have a level of autonomy. Just as a board has a certain level of autonomy against thrbinvestors that ellect them.
@freemo
So here's my point.
What's wrong with giving workers that autonomy?
They certainly don't have it otherwise: a plurality of employed Americans desperately need their jobs for the basic human life which should be afforded by any civilized nation.
Unions have to collectivize in order to carry any weight, whatsoever. They have to present a united front. They cannot be a dozen disparate groups, because a dozen ants can't do anything against a boot.
@freemo
In order for unions to work, they have to be a threat.
Except when you give people the option to join, presuming its a good union that serves their interests well, then thry will. So its a moot point. The only time unions become in effective and loose their power is when thry stop serving everyone and only try to serve the majority at thr expense of the minority. In which case they deserve to loose their power.
@freemo
Every union gives people the option to opt out. Sometimes it's just unchecking a box (or, conversely, checking it). They lose the benefits of the union, of course. Legal support, voting rights, and so on, but that's the game.
As for those which try to throw certain members under the bus, well, I have a lot of things to say about the concept of appeasement, and I've already said a lot of them.
@theogrin certainly not every union... it is very very common to have jobs where their avreement requires them to hire union workers and ghere is no option to jire nonunion
@freemo
You're right, and I'm sorry: I shouldn't use concrete states here. Some (very VERY rare) companies do need that as a contractual agreement, and I'm not sure that's ethically sound.
(Though the entire company collectivizing against a wrongful / constructive dismissal sounds nice.)
A vast majority of unionized workers sounds good, though, because that's a bargaining group. They get to influence the company's actions too, as they're the ones propping up the company like freakin' Atlas.
@theogrin as long as the unions are opt out they have my complete support. And yes i do know a vreat many unions are opt out so im all for most of these arrangements.
@freemo
Then on that, at least, we're in full agreement. By the way, I'd not be opposed to some manner of debate in future, either.
Though I would also note that the propaganda against unions by the corporate crowd should be stopped. There are troubles with any generalized system, and unions are no exception, but that's more a case-by-case basis than a general issue with the idea, and unions are very much a big 'employees should also have power' idea, which still needs to be actualized.
@freemo @mike805 @futurebird
To further expand, the short term profit to which I refer is less a financial one here, but a metaphorical -- the idea of micromanagement and the sunk cost of office spaces frequently lead companies to prioritize those things, doubling down when they should instead discard, in a vain attempt at recouping what they've invested in. Never happening, of course, but you can only lead a horse to the watering hole.
I suspect your thinking more about the old-money type investors or even just boomer investors in general. They tend to be old fashioned and stuck in their ways which is more the issue than anything else. Many of the younger investors, really almost anyone under 50, is going to have much more modern kind of thinking in my expierence.
@freemo
(Snipping reply-tos)
Many of the younger investors are falling victim to the same follies as the old, though, and in droves. Crypto was them trying to reinvent the wheel, and you've seen how that went. A lot are trying to figure out how to fix the office, a paradigm which ignores how the very idea of the office might not actually be that good after all.
@freemo @mike805 @futurebird
There is that, and I'm glad you're on the WFH side, but a great deal of what I've seen implies that a plurality of investors are chasing a short-term profit over long-term goals, particularly in venture capital. The long tail is, to stretch a metaphor, being stomped on.
And okay, in the interest of fairness, the aforementioned article about commutes was written by a real estate developer, an opinion piece which was nearly universally derided.