#and his political agenda and policies were pretty good

[theology101]

Today’s my birthday, im working on getting a degree in politics and I have some empathy issues should I be concerned?

[spookyboywhump]

I can relate to the frustration, but assuming this is about politics, I don't think "lesser of two evils" is a deep moral statement people believe in on a philosophical level, but just a way to cope with begrudgingly voting for a party that's the obvious choice given the only realistic alternative. It's a roundabout way of signaling how bad the implied "greater evil" is, and it pops up every election season, only to die down, since it's rooted in pragmatism rather than some serious moral shit. When (progressive) people in the US vote, don't they do it with an understanding that at the end of the day they'll either have to live under a government led by the "war crimes and some welfare here and there" party or the "50x the war crimes and also we need to start killing as many trans people as possible" party? Even in terms of foreign policy alone, there is not a single thing on the republican agenda that wouldn't be like, at least ten times worse (unless someone's idea of "good" is just maximizing the amount of brown people that die). And domestically? Holy shit. I don't want to spiral down into a rant on how fucked the mind of an average conservative lawmaker is, but we both know that for some marginalized people democratic rule vs. republican rule is literally life vs. death.

Just to be clear I ain’t trying to start an argument or nothing this is just my opinion on shit going on in the world.

After seeing so many people say “I know he’s committing genocide and I don’t like it either but you HAVE to vote for Biden, you HAVE to vote for the lesser of two evils” I cannot take it anymore. After seeing people yell “four more years” over people protesting an actual genocide I cannot take it anymore. I am tired of Biden being treated like he can do no wrong, and any wrong he does do should be ignored simply because “Trump Worse™️”.

I have reached the point where I don’t give a shit who wins the presidency, I care about pretty much everything under that down to small local elections. It ain’t really that I’m one of those people who thinks voting Doesn’t Work, I think it can, I think people need to worry about more than just who becomes president though. I think both candidates are evil, and I want the people who represent me and my state to be there when they’re committing evil to speak out against it. I want smaller politicians who actually have to listen to the people voting for them to run in the best interests of those like me and I want them in power in whatever office they’re running for. I think people put all their effort into the presidential candidates and ignore other elections that can still make change, even just in their home town.

I personally however cannot put my support behind this bastard after watching all this. I am tired of watching people defend him, when he wants to bypass all this shit to send weapons to Israel it’s whatever, but when it comes to Roe v Wade being overturned, when it comes to states trying to criminalize transgender people existing at all, when it comes to kids in cages, suddenly he’s “doing his best” and he “doesn’t actually have that much power”. I find this to be a somewhat selfish take given the severity of things in Gaza and other places but all that money he’s sending to Israel could work fucking miracles for those vulnerable minority populations here. Everything I was told to fear would happen in 2016 has happened since 2020. Everything we were told would be fixed in 2020 was swept under the rug and any criticisms of it were met with “Oh, so you’d rather have Trump as president???”.

I’m a mixed Mexican transgender man. I live in Texas. I’m capable of bearing children. I am becoming more disabled by the day since October of 2023. And I don’t trust neither presidential candidate to protect me and those like me, I don’t trust neither one as far as I could throw them. I know people are gonna vote for Biden anyway, I can’t realistically tell people what to do and who to vote for, but I do think we have a responsibility to hold him accountable, we should speak up against war crimes, as long as he’s saying the US stands with Israel, we need to be shouting that we sure as fuck do not. We cannot continue to let this fear of trump hypothetically becoming president make us feel like we have to look the other way when this president is currently, actively helping to commit genocide.

[abigailspinach]

Until his campaign began to come undone this last summer, it was widely understood and accepted among Democrats that Joe Biden, to the surprise of many, was the most progressive Democratic president, with the most consequential progressive legislative agenda, in at least half a century. This was widely believed because it was unquestionably true. Because of a series of decisions by both Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden ended up governing with a trimmed down version of the legislative agenda of the progressive left. What counts here as “trimmed down” is obviously a pretty critical question. There was no Medicare for All. But on lots of policy and regulatory positions, the left’s agenda was Biden’s. This isn’t just me saying this. Ask Bernie Sanders, or at least ask him until a week ago. The point I’m making here really isn’t open to much debate.

There were two arguments for this agenda, a policy argument and a political argument. The policy argument is simply that it was good policy; I argued this at the time and still believe it. The second argument, the political one, was that these policies would build constituencies that would help win elections. Not elections as an end in themselves but win elections which would then make it possible to expand or entrench policies and win more elections going forward. In progressive left social media there was even a whole discourse about this during the Trump years: Don’t make it complicated. Find the people who need money and give them money. They’ll be glad you did and you’ll gain new political supporters.

I want to emphasize again that I’m not saying those policies were a mistake. I support them now as much as I did then. That’s a big reason why I wouldn’t assess Joe Biden’s historical legacy too soon, though it looks pretty broken and withered at the moment. But here’s the thing: the political argument, as near as I can tell, was a total flop. No one noticed. No one gave a fuck. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there’s little evidence that the recipients of those programs meaningfully connected the funds to political action in any way. There’s no evidence any of it had any meaningful impact in the 2022 or 2024 elections.

That’s a pretty big reality the Democratic political coalition has to grapple with.

This is why I was surprised and thought Bernie Sanders was really showing his worst side when he came right out of the gate after Harris’ defeat saying: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

I mean, wait a second, Bernie. What about everything in American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act? I know those weren’t exactly the bills a President Sanders would have passed. But they weren’t the ones Biden tried to pass either. The Inflation Reduction Act was a scaled back version of Build Back Better, which proved impossible to pass with the tight 50+1 majority in the Senate.

I guess a more generous interpretation of Sanders’ remark is that he was talking about the perception that Kamala Harris had distanced her campaign from Biden’s progressive agenda. But my real point here is that I don’t see how you can act like Joe Biden’s agenda was like Bill Clinton’s or even Barack Obama’s and come out of the gate acting like this was the predictable outcome of neoliberal policies. Biden’s legislative and governing agenda was ambitious and represented a decisive shift toward much more progressive policies and indeed toward pursuing a full employment economy as a policy goal. And politically how did it work? You can’t write all that off like it didn’t happen.

Now there are a few possible rejoinders to what I’m saying here. So let me bring them up. One is that key support coming out of the pandemic was temporary. And some of it actually sunsetted just as inflation was hitting the U.S. economy. So the cut off of some of those programs may have contributed to the public anger and discontent caused by the inflationary jolt of 2021 to 2023. Another possibility is that Democrats passed several good pieces of legislation but simply didn’t get the word out about them. We can look at this possibility in two ways. You could argue that messaging wasn’t well-executed in the framework of conventional political messaging. Or perhaps Democrats just need an entirely new way of approaching connecting the impact of their programs to public opinion and subsequent political choices. In this second case perhaps even the vocabulary of “messaging” sets us off on the wrong track.

I think that each of these counters is valid to a degree. But it doesn’t cut it to just say … “well, the Biden White House did a bad job of messaging. And that’s the answer.” The disconnect is too big.

[elysium-eternal]

Okay, but how was X relationship with the Gentle Judges? I know the Guardians didn't meet him but the Judges did so uuuuh I just wanna know, man

From the Megaman Fandom.com wiki:

After the Elf Wars, the Eight Gentle Judges gave the verdict to banish Dr. Weil and Omega.

Okay. So this happened 100 years ago, at the end of the Elf Wars. So the Gentle Judges DID meet Original X, if this is correct.

When X was secretly replaced with Copy X, they immediately became suspicious of his iron-fisted intolerance for Mavericks.

This tells me that they probably had a pretty good relationship with the original X, if they noticed Copy's stark differences right away. They likely spent lots of time together just discussing policy and laws. However, I wouldn't say it was pleasant. Maybe some of them were good acquaintances with X. Possible loose friendship.

Because Neo Arcadia was a human paradise, and there WAS OPEN SUPPORT among the humans for Weil's grand idea to literally mind control all reploids in order to prevent more disaster during the Elf Wars, AS A TOLERABLE SOLUTION to the constant wars... I would assume that the human council of Neo Arcadia made sure those Gentle Judges were not entirely obedient to X. They respected him, but a judge's place is to be fair and impartial, even in the face of a beloved hero.

I'm sure they disagreed all the time, much to poor X's disappointment. He had to have had a hand in picking them, though, because he was able to keep order by his reputation alone. I'm sure he pushed hard for some input power.

Just thinking of what poor X went through to try and establish peace the best way he knew how, with both sides shouting at him left and right to have their own agenda take precedence over the other's...

I can clearly imagine the kind of foul politics that played out in Neo Arcadia. Reason and tolerance broke down often because both sides were so tired of the fighting and each other. The world was in dire straights. Solutions needed to work.

One side abandoned the longer processes and started dipping their toes into authoritarianism.

How else would Weil have pulled off his Project Elpizo scheme? Everyone was tired, and any ability to remain measured and truly weigh both sides' concerns went out the window because everyone needed a solution. Fast.

They thought, "why can't we just...control them by force?"

Those are prime conditions for a revolt, or a populist upstart. Weil likely was that populist upstart, garnering favor because of his key role in researching Zero and the virus. He knew things. He saw things.

Since we find out that the Mother Elf could literally rewrite a reploid's DNA, that ability to control one side of the population with the flip of a switch is confirmed possible.

Further reason for me to believe that the Gentle Judges were not entirely on X's side. They had to earn EVERYONE'S trust, including the side who just wanted to go "beep boop I control u, no more fighting."

So I say X's relationship with the Gentle Judges was tenuous at best. Stressful, although not without mutual respect and an earnest desire to work together for the good of Neo Arcadia.

...although I still don't know how they could know what they know and still choose to serve Weil later on. That one is a mystery.

[collapsedsquid]

As for the second part of your question—how a Biden presidency would have gone—speculation is a little more difficult, but I’ll try my best. First things first, Democrats would have been near-certain to win the Senate with him leading the ticket, so he’d start his term by finally assembling a moderate-to-liberal Supreme Court majority. Past this point, the real x-factor is how the House went in 2016. If Democrats failed to take the chamber, which could have very well happened even with a large Biden victory, it’s unlikely that Biden’s first term would have been all that different from Obama’s presidency after the 2010 midterms. Republicans would be able to obstruct his domestic agenda at will, so most of his attention would have ended up going to court appointments and foreign policy. Perhaps a third consecutive Democratic victory may have led them to consider being more productive to look better to voters, but make no mistake: they still would have held the keys to the car. If Democrats won the House, though, things could have actually gotten real. The filibuster rules would have meant that, just like in his first term in real life, Biden’s ambitions would be limited to fiscal policies, with big social reforms being off the table. But we also know from Biden’s first term in real life that there’s quite a lot you can do with just fiscal policies. With no COVID (yet) and no Trump victory causing Democrats to re-evaluate their priorities, it’s certain that any proto-BBB plan for 2017 would have certainly been smaller than the bills Biden passed in our timeline. Something the size of the original BBB bill, or even the IRA, would not have been in the cards. Still, a big spending bill of any kind would have been excellent policy. The conditions of the economy in the 2010s—low interest rates coupled with low aggregate demand—were absolutely perfect for something like an infrastructure bill. That something like that was never passed was a big reason why it was such a lost decade economically. Biden-style spending could have rectified that, boosting the economy right as it was about to enter the famous goldilocks period it did under Trump. The post-recession recovery, although horrifically delayed, would have been finally completed during Biden’s first term. As for electoral politics under Biden, there’s a big difference in forecasting a 2018 under him and a 2020 under him. The former race is hard to map out. Given the state of the economy at the time, it’s pretty likely that Biden would have been popular by election day. Whether that would give his party a boost is a bit hard to tell. Biden has never been the kind of figure to absolutely dominate politics, so it’s likely that a 2018 under him would revolve more around a general sense of party fatigue and the need for checks and balances than his performance. How far the GOP would have gone with that is anyone’s guess. Maybe a Trump loss would have led the party’s establishment to reassert itself and clean up their brand to be more competitive than the party we’ve known since 2016. Maybe the party would have fallen into an outright civil war that guaranteed Democratic dominance. In any case, I doubt that 2018 would have been a truly massive wave for them even in the best-case scenario for the party. The public discontent that fueled their waves in 2010 and 2014 just wouldn’t have been there. They’d probably pick up some seats, but it wouldn’t be any kind of epochal sea change.

This excerpt from an ettingermentum piece about a counterfactual 2016 Biden presidential win I think really reflects how young he is, the Zoomers don't really remember Obama and how things were back then.

With Trump not being elected, there is no "populist wave" and the democrats would not have gone for a spending bill, there would be a good chunk of the democratic party continuing to strike some sort of inane "Grand Bargain." Now Biden is a different president than Obama, he was always less into the grand symbolic gesture West Wing shit than Obama, but the recent spending stuff is IMO a recent conversion as a result of Trump's election and covid. Without Trump there is no big Biden spending bill, even if Biden wanted something congressional democrats would not have gone for it.

I also think that if Biden is elected there is an economic downturn during his presidency. The end of the Trump presidency while strong was already weirdly fragile economically, there is a decent chance covid pre-empted a recession we were entering. With whatever stupid austerity shit the democrats get roped into and without the Trump tax cuts, Steve Mnuchin, and the euphoria of the small business owner over having a president who sticks it to the libs holding up the economy then I think the economy crashes sometime between 2016 and 2020. and that hurts him in elections.

(There is a point where I also do think that covid is not guaranteed to happen in 2020, not so much due to specific policies or prevention but due to just general changes, but I think that's not really a relevant/useful comparison)

[bopinion]

2024 / 27

Aperçu of the week

"Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe."

(George Washington)

Bad News of the Week

Viktor Orbán has always been the loose cannon of European politics. Optimists had hoped that when Hungary takes over the rotating EU presidency for the second half of 2024, he would act just as statesmanlike as his equally right-wing Italian predecessor Giorgia Meloni did. Far from it.

First, he founded the new right-wing alliance "Patriots for Europe" with like-minded parties. He also won over the Austrian FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria), whose chairman Herbert Kickl has a good chance of taking power in Vienna in the upcoming elections in the fall. Together with the Czech ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens), an axis is emerging here and others are showing interest. Their agenda is not surprising: rejection of migration, a stop to the "Green Deal", no support for Ukraine and a "dismantling of European integration" in favor of national sovereignty - in short, against Europe.

Orbán then made a "diplomatic visit" to the Kremlin. Officially to mediate. As the first EU head of government since the start of the Ukraine war. And above all, as many EU representatives hastened to point out, without a corresponding mandate from the European Union. He has always been close to Vladimir Putin and distant from European democracy. Apart from a few pretty photos for him, this action achieves nothing and tears a hole in European unity.

This is exactly what Orbán is trying to do: weaken the EU. To signal that a united Europe does not exist. It is fitting that the next stop on his "peace mission" is Beijing. Europe only has a chance in international competition - and I don't just mean economically, but also geopolitically - against the USA and China in particular if it presents a united front. The Hungarian power dwarf continues to play the wrecking ball, supranational responsibility or not. Thanks for nothing.

Good News of the Week

The German federal cabinet has finally put together its national budget for 2025. This was preceded by endless disputes in plain public. It was mainly the Liberals and the Greens who were beating each other over the head with red lines. And the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not dare to put his foot down - "policy competence" looks different. But now everyone apparently wanted to keep their promise to find a solution, i.e. a compromise, before the end of July.

According to Green Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck, who I believe is the most credible source in this context, the compromise is actually a good one. He calls it a package "for children, the climate and the economy". Benefits for children and families are to be increased. Funding for climate protection projects is not to be cut. The economy and the labor market are to be given a sustainable boost. And there should not even be (or have to be) a special fund outside the regular budget for further military and social support for Ukraine. How is this supposed to work if the debt brake is to remain in place at the same time?

The magic wand of this budget negotiation is apparently called "creative accounting". This makes it possible to use more leeway in the here and now by shifting and staggering the posting of individual items. As a father whose children will have to pay it all off one day, this still allows me to sleep reasonably soundly. The UK's national debt in relation to gross domestic product, for example, is 101%. The USA's is 122%, Italy's 137% and Japan's 252%. The figure for Germany is just 64%. Perhaps Habeck is right when he calls the result, which still has to be approved by the parliament, a "very, very good package".

Personal happy moment of the week

Germany has been knocked out of the European Football Championship in its own country. Because "we" lost to Spain on Friday in the last minute and some say unjustifiably (increasing match domination, penalty not awarded, questionable timekeeping). Nevertheless, we had a great evening. Because we went to a small public viewing event at Strandbad Schliersee, a lakeside beach ground in the Alps. We were not yet familiar with this beautiful place, although we had walked past it many times. Wonderful ambience, great food, enthusiastic atmosphere, sunset included. Nice.

I couldn't care less...

...that France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered his resignation after the government camp lost the elections. Because this is merely a symbolic and traditional gesture. After all, President Emmanuel Macron can keep the cabinet in office in an acting capacity. Moreover, it will be days before the majority situation is clear. Either way, the bottom line is that the French people have denied the Rassemblement National a grip on power with a pleasingly high voter turnout. The whole of Europe has been lucky again...

It's fine with me...

...that after the appointment by King Charles III and the introduction of his ministers, the first official act of the new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was to stop the deportation of immigrants to Rwanda. In doing so, he is demonstrating exactly what I wanted him to do in his new post: Respect for the rule of law and respect for human rights.

As I write this...

...the world looks at Iran with a doubtful frown. In the presidential election, the moderate politician Massud Peseshkian actually won the run-off. On the one hand, this is pleasing, as he is seen as downright progressive for the Shia state. For example, he wants to revive the nuclear agreement in order to spare his country economic sanctions. Or wants to curb the brutal persecution of women by the moral guardians for hijab violations. Or seeks to take action against corruption. The only problem is that the president has little say in Iran. The head of state and most powerful man is the 85-year-old religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In this theocratic state, religion still determines how much freedom of movement politics has. We shall see.

Post Scriptum

For the second half of 2024, my symbolic thinker of the year Friedrich Nietzsche stares into the void. Since our society lacks any coherent recipe for the challenges of our time: the defense of democracy against extremist forces, the fight against the consequences of climate change, the preservation of prosperity and social security, the freedom of self-determination, and peace. Nietzsche wears a button with the eye of the Freemasons as a symbol of truth. As we all have to face these challenges with open eyes.

[treesah]

#i will preface this by saying this is a novel sorry for that. if op/prev thinks i'm annoying i'll delete the reblog #hi prev! saw your tags and i figured as a french person i'd give you my pov on your opinion #not to insult or clash your or anything but sincerely just to give a different perspective and discuss things #and this is my vision of things influenced by who i am so if someone sees something wrong - sorry + feel free to correct me

#first i don't know where you got those stats but it's not legal for the government to ask french citizens #which race they belong to or which religion they follow #since secularity/secularism + equality are pretty important here (though that's another debate) #so those numbers are from opt-in surveys that are probably not wrong or anything but like. #it's not a question on the census. and those are not stats people look up #or pay that much attention to (except the racists who whine about arabs i guess?)

#our vision of race is different let's just say. i'm not saying we're doing it right or anything but we're doing it differently #and even beyond that - france has a huge racism problem even right now #i personally don't know if 5% for 'non-white' is accurate or not but people do not act like it is #last presidential elections two of the people in the lead were marine le pen and éric zemmour #marine le pen being uuh a notorious racist who 'wants to send the arabs back home' and zemmour being that but worse #(since le pen is trying to clean up her party's image whereas zemmour went all in. thankfully he stopped talking after he lost)

#religion is generally not an issue.... except if you're visibly muslim #the debates around muslim women wearing head coverings is a staple of politics discussions #generally the racists say no because they're racist the republicans (who like the republic) say no in certain contexts because secularity #and a fair amount of left wingers will also say 'yes but x y z' because of feminism and women's liberation #note that i'm not saying which opinion i side with those are just observations

#so yeah we are actually pretty divided on the topics of race and religion #we're majority white and culturally christian (there's a lot of atheists in france) but there's still friction and divides #like our own fox news equivalent keeps talking about how 'the arabs & blacks should be sent home' and shit like that #our population IS smaller but 1) it's normal (we're the size of a state) and 2) it doesn't mean we don't have divides #i understand of course that all this is very french and you can't just know that if you're not from here/interested in the country #but i assure you we are also very distracted by other dividers :')) especially on race and religion

#it's just that we weren't built around a 'fuck the federal government' mindset and our social rights lasted longer #we've been seeing waves of privatising things of making life worse of things sucking #and then covid hit and it got worse and now the pensions reform (@moinsbienquekaworu)

---

This is really useful insight! I freely admit I have a very American view of race, so it’s always good to be reminded that not every country thinks about it or enacts policy about it the same way. I got those stats from the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Brookings Institution (a politically centrist and fairly credible Washington, DC think tank), so although I don’t think they’re trying to make a point for any explicit agenda, they are not official government demographic statistics.

It is clear that there are racial and religious divisions in France, and it wasn’t fair or accurate of me to minimize them. There are definitely other historical factors that contribute to the US’ hypercapitalistic, hyperindividualistic, and deeply divided mindset. I don’t think it’s so clearly about federal vs state/local government anymore, or idiots being deluded into thinking that they have anything in common with the wealthy ruling class despite the reality of their socioeconomic status (many college-educated, upper-middle class Americans like to pretend that they are not one prolonged period of unemployment or one chronic health condition away from financial ruin).

What I will say is that the US is much more diverse and much larger, both in terms of geography and population, than pretty much all the other Western democracies/republics, and because of that, it’s harder to organize and unify Americans than it is people in many other countries. I don’t feel like there is a very strong sense of shared American social norms, or an American culture outside of consumption (and even then it’s deeply segmented by race and socioeconomic status). A lot of Americans I know point to how life is better in places like Canada, France, Germany, and many Scandinavian countries, but it’s like comparing apples to oranges. We’re going to have a harder time building the kind of civil society that those countries have just by sheer size and demographics alone, not to mention all the other factors that apply.

It is nice to see that there is public support for protestors in France and I hope they achieve their aims, although now I doubt how much of that is truly representative of French viewpoints overall. I know that outside my own social circle, opinions on the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality in 2020 in the US were overwhelmingly negative, but only because I’m living inside the American media bubble. Not sure what international opinions on the actual events themselves or what they thought the American opinions about the events were.

His name is Cedric Liechti, afaik he's the "secretary general" of the energy workers's CGT of Paris. He pronounced this speech at the garbage workers picket line which blocks the entry of one of the garbage incinerators in Paris.

tweet and subtitles to the video by @TheCollierPerles

[evanvanness]

Making sense of Milei (for Americans)

"este loco habla como vos, creo que llega ser presidente" my wife told me about 4 years ago, predicting that he would be president. So perhaps I'm predisposed to like him if my wife thinks he talks like me. And what prescience on her part.

Tomorrow is the inauguration, what can we expect from his presidency?

Milei, shouting. There's a reason they call him "el Loco"

"He's the Argentine Trump"

This is a facile comparison, but some of it fits.

Milei had a bit of a populist message (though he was popular in the slums in a way that doesn't fit Trump.) He ran against corruption, particularly of elites (though comparing Argentine to American political corruption is magnitudes off). His rallies were Trump-esque and shockingly popular.

The way in which he's most like Trump is that he dictated the entire conversation, start-to-finish. Lots of bombast, lots of polemics, going on TV. They both say what they think and spoke more bluntly and less calculated than politicians. This came from before the presidential campaign, and it's what built his media profile.

What doesn't fit?

Milei is a true believer who cares about policy. Trump was mostly a lifetime Democrat who was trying to run for president; there's a few issues he cares about (eg, trade), everything else is negotiable.

Even the general nature of Milei's rallies were much more focused on ideology (Viva La Libertad Carajo or very roughly Let's Go Liberty) than the cult of personality of Make America Great Again ("but only I can do it!). Milei was quite popular among younger voters.

Trump's agenda largely reacted to whatever was on cable news, Milei has been planning around-the-clock since the election.

"Ok, so maybe he actually cares, so what?"

I suspect that Milei will actually attempt to close many federal government agencies. "No hay plata" (there's no money) because it's really true on a level most Americans probably can't understand.

The outgoing government gave away the store attempting to win the election. This is unfortunately a tradition in Argentina, and sadly it also works pretty well. But the spending of the bankrupt, profligate Alberto/Kirchnerista government before the election was unprecedented for Argentina, and of a magnitude impossible for Americans to understand.

Trump inherited a good economic situation in 2017, while Milei is inheriting a disaster. Inflation is on the order of 100-200% annualized, though it's hard to quantify because the Kirchneristas have a long history of faking the stats.

My point here is that Milei is going to face an extraordinary amount of adversity. Most Argentines aren't libertarians (as he has self-proclaimed from the start) and there's even less of a libertarian history in Argentina than in the US. [Note: he often sounds like a relatively mainstream right-wing American libertarian who amps up the polemicism.] He's going to end all of the Kirchnerista media subsidies, meaning that the media is likely to be looking to pounce on anything. And the economic situation is horrific.

Again, with inflation over 100% Milei only won by about 11 points. A historic margin, but it points to the structural disadvantage that any non-Peronist faces. Basically in the absolute worst circumstances that you can imagine, they still got over 44% of the vote.

So the question is what he does when he inevitably becomes less popular than today. I suspect that he will double down on cutting government, and everyone is fine with cutting government until it's their sacred cow.

Update: Literally Cristina Kirchner at the inauguration

Mauricio Macri also managed to defeat the Kirchneristas in 2017, but it was a minor miracle that he managed to finish his term, and even he had to resort to short-termist moves that he could barely pretend he didn't know were suboptimal. Macri flat didn't have the votes.

Does Milei have the votes?

It sorta remains to be seen. Political parties are sometimes fluid in Argentina in a way that Americans can't understand. Macri and his PRO party lined up hard behind Milei in the runoff against the kirchneristas. So far PRO has been surprisingly behind Milei, to the extent that you can almost assume they'll vote in bloc while he's popular. But it's hard to believe that he will remain popular if he does all the things he needs to do. Votes will likely peel off as the poll numbers slide.

It's going to be fascinating to watch, ultimately I am not that sanguine about his chances for success (though largely he appears to be appointing competent people). Largely Milei will succeed based on how much of his agenda he can implement while managing expectations during difficult economic times. He's seemed cognizant of this, but it only gets tougher when you hold the reins.

[locustheologicus]

Bidenomics and the Economia de Francesco

President Biden has put forward a very basic economic plan. In many ways it is not groundbreaking, instead its pretty consistent with the economic platform of the Democratic party. Overall I considered it a moderate plan. I know the tendency is for conservatives to dismiss this plan outright, and liberals will probably accept it without any real reflection. This is what we can generally expect with the unreflective culture of partisan politics. But I suggest that this is not the approach we should have. Whether liberal or conservative we all should take into consideration what is being put forward and consider its merits especially as we are coming up on another election cycle.

As the CNN article below point out, conservatives continue to put forward an economic agenda based on the ideals of Reaganomics. President Biden is proposing different policy recommendations that is being dubbed Bidenomics and we should consider it. At the very least, we should have an open dialogue about our economic goals and how to best reach them. A partner for this conversation is the economic model put forward by the Catholic Church dubbed the Economia de Francesco. In this post I will evaluate the moral perspective of the Catholic model with Bidenomics. Here are CNN's highlights of the Bidenomics plan below.

In the above article it is suggested that funding the proposed plan will consist of rebuking one of the main tenants of Reagonomics, providing tax cuts for the wealthy. As the reporter tells us, "the president once again calls for ensuring the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes." According to economist Robert Reich, tax cuts to the wealthy is something we need to be concerned about. In the video below Mr. Reich goes into how this trickle-down policy has threatened the sustainability of social security for those of us who hope to collect it after 2033. Consider his analysis below.

This should concern us all. We cannot take for granted the economic security that our elders had. We also know that there is a global ecological crisis and our former economic model, with its antiquated energy and transportation infrastructure, continues to exacerbate this crisis. We need to reevaluate our economic values and policies based on these concerns, the concerns for financial and ecological sustainability. This is where the Economia de Francesco comes in. In 2020 Pope Francis put forward an initiative to bring young and creative economist and business people, throughout the world, to evaluate the global economic problems through the lens of Catholic social teaching and propose creative solutions. Since then, Pope Francis has an annual forum to continue this discussion. Below is a video from the 2022 forum and in this link you can find the speech he made for that gathering.

In the 2022 forum Pope Francis reflects on sustainability as the overarching value for a just and creative global economy. He emphasizes a holistic sense of sustainability that is attentive to the ecological issues and the concern for the poor and vulnerable. A sustainability that recognizes "that the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth are the same cry." The sustainable approach offered in the Economia de Francesco (EF) promotes three values for evaluating economic policies and decisions:

"You too will improve the economy if you look at things from the perspective of victims and the discarded. In order to have the eyes of the poor and victims, however, it is necessary to get to know them, to be their friends."

"Without dignified work and just remuneration, young people will not truly become adults and inequality will increase."

"In the crucial moments of history, those who left a good mark were able to do so because they translated ideals, desires and values into concrete actions... these men and women established schools and universities, banks, trade unions, associations and institutions."

Let's evaluate Bidenomics based on these proposed considerations. President Biden, like Pope Francis, rejects Reaganomics trickle down theory. Pope Francis declared on that early on in his papacy.

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. - Pope Francis EG: 54

Economist and members of the business community have also analyzed the failure of Reaganomics and market funndamentalist. I uploaded a talk by entrepreneur Nick Hanauer who argues that the engine of job creation is not something that comes from tax cuts to the wealthy but from a growing middle class consumer community. I suggest that the ideals of Reaganomics have indeed failed us.

So instead President Biden offers the following four point plan. Now keep in mind that like any and all Presidents, especially in an election cycle, he will use this opportunity to tout what he has done (to get the votes) along with what he plans to do. The way he writes his plan is to flesh out what he has accomplished during his first term. So far his plan is to continue the following four policies which he considers succesful.

Building More in America by Making Smart Public Investments: Rebuilding our infrastructure, including our roads and bridges, high-speed internet capacity, ports, and airports... Investing in key industries that are critical to our national security and economic security, like producing more semiconductors in America. And it is investing in accelerating the clean energy economy to help achieve our climate goals, working with our global partners.

Empowering and Educating Workers to Grow the Middle Class: Investing more in registered apprenticeships and career technical education programs than any previous Administration and continuing to fight for free universal pre-K and free community college. Making it easier to support workers right to join or form a union. The plan also recognizes that a strong labor market recovery has also led to better pay and working conditions.

Promoting Competition to Lower Costs and Help Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses Thrive: More competition means lower costs for consumers and higher wages for workers. By enforcing antitrust laws Bidenomics hopes to widen competition for small business. President Biden has signed legislation into law that will lower prescription drug costs for seniors and save taxpayers $160 billion over the next decade by giving Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.

Reducing the Deficit and Making the Wealthy and Big Corporations Pay Their Fair Share: Make smart investments in the American people while reducing the deficit by ensuring the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes, closing wasteful tax loopholes, and slashing wasteful spending on special interests.

The first point of Bidenomics speaks to EF's third value, making concrete actions. Investment in infrastructure is not pie in the sky theory. President Biden is hoping to develop a sustainable infrastructure and he is taking into consideration two things, environmental/economic sustainability and national security. He also sees this as part of the plan to develop work opportunities that touch on the second point. It is unclear how it takes into consideration the poor and vulnerable beyond promoting a culture of employment.

The second point very much touches on EF's second value. Being attentive to the workforce and empowering them to the new infrastructure that will make America economically competetive. It also touches on the third value with the emphasis on promoting unions and associations.

The third point highlighs the concern for sustaining small businesses and limiting the rising costs of consumer goods. As such, this point seems to address the first value, being attentive to those who are poor and vulnerable. Primarily we see how the plight of small businesses are being considered as well as seniors, the sick, and the uninsured as the administration looks into drug pricing and access to medicine and equipment like hearing aids.

The fourth point does not directly address the values (indirectly it does pay homage to the first value) but it does consider the principle of holistic sustainability. After repudiating the failed theory of Reaganomics, Biden's plan again lends supports for the third value by being practical on how they will approach sustainability for a plan that will support clean energy and the environment while considering the poor and vulnerable.

All that to say that these are good points for now. I think this is a basic plan. Eventually, we may hope for a more robust policy like the post WWII Keynesian economic model. When that time comes we will need a more thorough economic plan that will enbrace social values like the tenants of the Economia de Francesco. But for now we have a decision between the conservative theories of Reaganomics and come pratical solutions that will certainly be more attentive to the middle class and the social and environmental crisis that we face. This is what Bidenomics proposes. It is not a perfect solution, but it's the choice we have for the moment.

For those of us who believe in the values of Catholic social teaching the economic choice seems to be fairly clear. I think its fair to say that part of Pope Francis' reason for promoting these Economia de Francesco forums is because he has no faith in market fundamentalism or the alleged economic rewards of Reaganomics.

Incidently, I do want to point out that there are a few Catholic theologians who argue that Catholic social teaching (CST) supports neo-liberal capitalism and market fundamentalism. But as I have already argued in a seperate post, such a perspective is biased to one or two principles of CST and is woefully inconsistent with the overall spirit of our Catholic social tradition.

[mariacallous]

A standoff over the debt ceiling. Aid to Ukraine on the chopping block. And impeachment proceedings against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – or perhaps even president Joe Biden himself.

With polls indicating they have a good shot of winning a majority in the House of Representatives in the 8 November midterms, top Republican lawmakers have in recent weeks offered a preview what they might do with their resurgent power, and made clear they have their sights set on key aspects of the Biden administration’s policies at home and abroad.

Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the chamber, this week signaled in an interview with Punchbowl News that if Congress is going to approve an increase in the amount the federal government can borrow – as it’s expected to need to by sometime next year – Republicans are going to want an agreement to cut spending in return.

“You can’t just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt,” said McCarthy, who is likely to be elevated to speaker of the house in a Republican led-chamber. “And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior.”

Asked if he might demand that Social Security and Medicare, the two massive federal retirement and healthcare benefit programs that are nearing insolvency, be reformed as part of debt ceiling negotiations, McCarthy replied that he would not “predetermine” anything.

But the California lawmaker warned that members of his caucus were starting to question the money Washington was sending to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s invasion. “Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check,” he told Punchbowl.

Then there’s the question of if Republicans will choose to exercise the House’s powers of impeachment – as they did against Bill Clinton in 1998, and as Democrats did to Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021.

The prime target appears to be Mayorkas, whom Republicans have pilloried amid an uptick in arrivals of migrants at the United States’ border with Mexico. Yet another target could be Biden himself – as Jim Banks, chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, which crafts policy for the party, suggested on Thursday.

Political realities may pose an obstacle to McCarthy and his allies’ ability to see their plans through. High inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings have given them momentum to retake the House, but their chances of winning a majority in the Senate are seen as a toss-up. Even if they did win that chamber, they’re unlikely to have the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Biden, Mayorkas, or whomever else they intend to impeach – or even the numbers to overcome Democratic filibusters of any legislation they try to pass.

Matt Grossman, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, questioned the GOP’s willingness to legislate. The party’s plans, as outlined in the Commitment to America McCarthy unveiled last month, appear thin in comparison to similar platforms rolled out in 1994 and 2010, when Republicans again took back Congress’ lower chamber from Democratic majorities.

“There’s a longstanding asymmetry between the parties. Republicans legitimately want government to do less,” he said.

“They’re doing pretty well electorally without necessarily needing a policy agenda, and they’re tied to, kind of, defending the Trump administration or attacking the Biden administration. There’s not much of a felt need for a lot of policy.”

There are also signs of division within the party over how the GOP should use its new majority. In his interview with Punchbowl, McCarthy said he was against “impeachment for political purposes” and focused instead on addressing crime, border security and economic issues, all familiar themes for Republicans running this year.

The split was even more pronounced when it came to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence called in a speech at influential conservative group the Heritage Foundation for Republicans to continue to support the country, saying “there can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to” Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The day after, the foundation’s president Kevin Roberts put out a statement saying: “Heritage will vigorously oppose Washington’s big spenders who attempt to pass another Ukrainian aid package lacking debate, a clear strategy, targeted funding and spending offsets.”

Democrats are assured control of Congress until the end of the year, and have taken note of the apparent erosion of will to support Kyiv. NBC News reports they may push for another big military aid infusion in a year-end spending bill, intended to keep the Ukrainians armed for months to come.

It seems clear that Republicans will eventually coalesce behind a strategy to strong-arm the Biden administration for some purpose, but Grossman predicted the likely result would be similar to the 2013 government shutdown, when then president Barack Obama and the Democrats refused the GOP’s demands to dismantle his signature health care law.

“With McCarthy it just seems like he is a go along,” he said. “He’s going to be a go-along speaker and that’s going to be the case with a pretty fractious caucus.”

[qqueenofhades]

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all). 

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

[lord-squiggletits]

Do you think there's an element that's important to Megatron that gets neglected a lot? Either by fanon or some Canon writers, whichever continuity you prefer, etc.

Also, if I'm bothering you, don't be afraid to say so. I figured a couple conversation starters about a thing you like would be appreciated.

Once upon a time I would've been chomping at the bit to list all the things I don't like about fanon Megatron, but tbh I don't feel like I've read "enough" fanfic and fanon takes about him to be able to paint the whole Megatron fanbase with a wide brush. I mean, I could, but I don't want to generalize too much and erase the variety of opinions people probably have about him, right? And the thing is that per AO3 statistics, the vast, VAST majority of fanfics in general are just one-shots that aren't meant to be super in-depth explorations of canon, and lord knows that Megatron is such a weighty character that it would take an entire novel-length story to "get him right." So take everything I say below with a healthy heaping of salt.

I guess one thing that I don't like about IDW1 Megatron's portrayal in fanon is that a lot of his fans pretty much water down his flaws. People kind of write him as if he's an unadulterated hero who had no bad policies whatsoever-- and before someone gets on about me about "you're saying fighting oppression with violence is bad???", I'm talking about the multiple other really bad practices Megatron had with his leadership and the ways he treated the Decepticons like:

Forcing people to get reformatted in order to suit his strategic agendas and experimenting on people's alt modes to try and forcibly create combiners. Anti-functionism who?

Wanting to create an empire with himself as the sole head of state which is antithetical to the whole idea of freedom

Not allowing any religious worship whatsoever within the Decepticons (even a "cult with only one member" was hunted down by the DJD, and per Tarn's words Megatron only wants himself to be worshipped)

The entire fucking existence of the DJD in general

The first thing he did upon taking control of Iacon (Autocracy) being to round up, imprison, and execute political dissidents

Creating a "might makes right" culture in the Decepticons that leads to a lot of power grabbing, unnecessary brutality, and infighting

The technoism and colonization of organics that no one wants to talk about when they try to say "the Autobots are just as bad as the Decepticons" (no they are not lmao)

Completely leaving behind the Decepticons languishing in ghettos and faced with constant discrimination in favor of fucking off on a quest to find the Knights of Cybertron for the sake of his personal "legacy" as if the Decepticons weren't literally the most important legacy his entire life was formed around

I guess I don't blame IDW Megatron fans for acting as if Megatron is the best option Cybertron ever had and he was write about anything, because JRO literally writes Megatron as the best thing Cybertron ever had and the whole universe isn't much better off without him than it is with him, but I think that says less about JRO and more about fandom's inability to comprehend nuance-- the morally gray character has to either be stanned and "he did nothing wrong"-ified or he has to be a complete bastard with no redeemable qualities whatsoever. I'd rather hang around with Megatron fans than Megatron haters, but tbh the whitewashing of Megatron's personality is so annoying sometimes and I say that BECAUSE I like Megatron a good amount.

Especially when people bash IDW OP for doing things that were much less worse than what Megatron did ahaha I've literally stopped going into OP's tags and reading MegOP fic and generally engaging with the fandom because I'm so tired of IDW OP bashing coming up without warning/prompting and bland/generic OP fanfic characterizations from Megatron stans who seem perfectly fine with everything Megatron did.

I'm not saying "you're not allowed to enjoy your problematic fave unless you write a disclaimer about how bad he is," I'm just saying that fandom interpretations of Megatron rarely feel as interesting or fleshed out as the actual, real canon version of him, and sometimes people write about Megatron in a way that feels like it comes at the cost of other characters who are also cool and full of nuance.

[ms-demeanor]

Hi, can I get some clarification? At one point does lusting for a person/feeling lust for someone become objectification?

Objectification is treating a person like an object, like a *thing* instead of a person.

(for the purposes of this post I am primarily going to be talking about sexual objectification though parents treating their children like objects is DEFINITELY a thing)

I would argue that objectification happens when you disregard a person’s autonomy (not that you overrule or deny he fact that they HAVE autonomy, but like it doesn’t even occur to you that your choices should be considered because they’re not real enough to you in that moment for it to matter).

Having a crush on your friend or thinking that the cashier at a store is sexy isn’t objectifying them. Resenting your friend for not returning your crush or taking a photo of a sexy cashier to share on social media is objectifying them. Arguably just thinking about someone while masturbating is, to an extent, objectifying them. But imagining the sexy cashier taking you out on a nice picnic date and showering you with presents and buying you a pony is objectifying them too.

I’ve got a hot take here: Objectification isn’t inherently bad.

There’s a person at my gym who has some fucking THIGHS. Every time they’re at the gym they’re on the stair machine for a minimum of thirty minutes. I’m pretty sure they can’t wear jeans because I can’t *imagine* the kinds of jeans that would fit over this person’s quads. Every time I’m at my gym and this person is working out their thighs it’s a little bonus perk for my gym visit. In fact it’s kind of an incentive: if I go to the gym maybe I’m gonna get to see THIGHS and that’ll be cool.

This person is an object to me. At a conscious level I know that they are a real person with their own thoughts and desires and agenda and whatever but that’s not what they are to me. What they are to me is Damn! Thighs!

And that’s not a problem.

However if I *follow* them around the gym to look at their thighs, or if I stare obviously and move so that I’m working out behind them, or if I follow them out so I know what their car looks like so I can make sure to go into the gym if I see them in the lot THAT is a problem. And if they introduce themselves to me and I don’t remember their name or their interests and all I ever want to talk about is how hot their thighs are then THAT is a BIG problem. And if they were my coworker and I ignored their achievements and didn’t listen to their requests because their needs were less important to me than hot thighs and anyway if you spend so much time looking good you’re probably an idiot who doesn’t really work but just gets a paycheck because the boss likes looking at you and your work doesn’t matter THEN that is a VERY VERY BIG problem.

You are allowed to lust after and objectify people so long as it doesn’t impact the actual real world and that actual real person.

Chris Evans is an object to me. He’s pretty. I like looking at him. He doesn’t have any idea that I exist so me seeing him as just a pretty dude and ignoring everything else about him doesn’t matter. And I cannot tell you how much I DO NOT want to personally humanize Chris Evans as a celebrity and form a parasocial relationship with him where I know about his dog and his siblings and look at pictures of his family at the holidays. I’m much more comfortable experiencing Chris Evans as an object than as a person, thanks, and I’m pretty sure that for most celebrities that’s how they want most of the world to interact with them. But if I were to meet him and objectify him by presenting him with sexual fanart of him or if I were to have an interview with him about his political website and only asked him questions about his workout routine THEN it would be a problem for me to objectify him and I would be doing so in a way that was directly harmful to him.

Also. In terms of nonsexual objectification:

I keep hearing random liberals say that Biden needs to nominate a woman of color as his running mate.

I hear it over and over but I’m not hearing names, just “Joe Biden needs to nominate a Latina” “Joe Biden won’t win if he doesn’t run with a Woman of Color on the ticket.”

Over and over. But no names. No policy. Almost as if people are seeing this possible running mate like some kind of talisman or token or object or fetish (in the original “magical object’ sense, not the sexual sense) instead of a theoretical politician with experience and ideas of her own.

Hm. Gross.

And yes it is COMPLETELY possible to objectify men and we as a society do it A LOT and I kind of have the objectification of men as commodities in the popular music industry as a special interest that I’ve done a lot of reading and research and writing about.

Objectification is a thing that people do. It is arguably a *necessary* thing that we do in our society, where we’re aware of so many hundreds or thousands of people that we can’t actually individually treat them like humans (and we can’t even meaningfully conceive of MILLIONS or BILLIONS of people).

So let’s look at George of the Jungle (because that’s what we’ve been talking about today)

The ladies looking wistfully at George as he plays with the horses: these characters are objectifying the character of George but it is likely harmless because he doesn’t even seem to notice that they’re ogling him.

Ursula’s roommate/friend staring at George naked: this character is objectifying George and it *could* be harmful to his character because it will change their interactions and the way she views him and the dynamic between him.

The advertising for the film focusing on a shirtless character slammed into a tree: Not objectifying George.

Tumblr focusing on gifs of George/Brendan Fraser without his shirt: Objectifying the character/actor, harmless (though if you approached the actor on the street and said “Oh my god, I am so hot for your ass in that one scene where you’re wearing the bowl” that would be harmful)

People focusing on Brendan Fraser’s weight gain and lamenting that he’s no longer sexy: Objectifying the actor, potentially harmful to the actor (because people frequently tag the actors in criticism like this) and definitely bodyshaming in a way that can be harmful to the people who encounter the criticisms.

Fans expecting actors to maintain a particular level of fitness outside of a film: objectifying the actor, harmful.

Studios expecting actors to perform complicated stunts without adequate preparation or safety precautions: Objectifying the actor, harmful.

Studios and audiences expecting actors to be dangerously dehydrated so that they appear extremely muscular or extremely fit when filming; Objectifying the actor, harmful.

A film executive expecting an actor to perform sexual acts for them or to tolerate sexual touching because they’ve cast the actor for a part: Objectifying the actor, harmful. 

So it’s interesting that while the actor Brendan Fraser was likely objectified in the process of making this film (especially considering that, yeah, there was probably some unhealthy dieting and some dehydration to look as lean and muscular as he did in some scenes) the film as a whole does not objectify the character of George.

Anyway.

Shit’s complicated and there’s not a clear dividing line but it’s okay to think of people as objects sometimes because that’s honestly a thing that we have to do to get through the day without keeling over from overextended empathy but it’s not cool to *treat* people like objects and media that treats people like objects frequently models behavior that people normalize even if they don’t intentionally emulate it so it’s worthwhile to have discussions about the objectification of characters in media.

There we go.

Easy, right?

[foreverlogical]

In his continuing quest to remain president despite having lost this month’s election, President Donald Trump has been trying to wrest electoral votes away from Joe Biden in states that Biden won. Among the most aggressive tactics that the President might use is a direct appeal to the Republican-controlled legislatures of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to hand him those state’s electoral votes.

On Thursday, the post-election narrative seemed to edge further down that path, as the Republican leaders of Michigan’s two legislative chambers—Senator Mike Shirkey and Representative Lee Chatfield—agreed to take a meeting with the President in Washington tomorrow. Until that point Shirkey and Chatfield were signaling that they didn’t intend to second-guess Michigan’s voters, who chose Biden by more than 150,000 votes. But by taking the White House meeting, they indicated their possible openness to changing their minds.

Politically, it’s possible that they see taking the meeting as a smart move, showing unhappy Michigan Republicans that they’re on the president’s side.

But as a matter of statesmanship—and, legally, for their own sakes—they’d be smarter to cancel it.

The scheduled meeting threatens two kinds of danger. At the largest level, it threatens the system of democratic presidential elections: If state officials start claiming the right to overturn elections because of vague claims about “fraud,” our democratic system will be unworkable. But in a more specific and immediate way, it threatens the two Michigan legislators, personally, with the risk of criminal investigation.

The danger to democratic elections is well-understood. The Constitution authorizes state legislatures to decide how states choose presidential electors. For more than a century, every state legislature has chosen to do it by popular election. According to one school of thought, though, a state legislature could choose to set aside a popular vote if it doesn’t like the result and choose different electors instead. This is a pretty undemocratic idea, as well as one that misreads the history of election law: the National Review recently described it as “completely insane.” (State legislatures have the power to change the system for choosing electors in future elections, but not to reject an already-conducted election just because they don’t like the result.) Nonetheless, the President is pushing for it. By so far refusing to go along with Trump, Republican state legislators have been standing up for the idea that fair, democratic elections are more important than any individual president. If Shirkey and Chatfield are reconsidering that view, they are playing with the possibility of throwing out the results of a free and fair election. That’s not something that the system comes back from easily.

The scheduled White House meeting also poses another kind of danger—one hanging specifically over the two Michiganders whose minds Trump seeks to change. Consider: Why, exactly, does President Trump want to see these two men in person, in his office? It isn’t to offer evidence that Michigan’s election was tainted and should therefore be nullified. If he had any such evidence, his lawyers would have presented it in court, rather than abandoning their Michigan lawsuitas they did today. It’s also unlikely that Trump is planning to persuade the Michiganders through subtle legal arguments about their constitutional role. Subtle argument isn’t really Trump’s way of doing things.

The president is a dealmaker, and it’s far more likely that his agenda is transactional. When considering a course of action, he doesn’t think about principles; he thinks about what’s in it for whom. So it makes sense to think that he is inviting Shirkey and Chatfield for a private meeting to offer them something. If they help throw the election to him, he can offer a lot. Give me Michigan’s electoral votes, he might say, and I’ll give you a cabinet post or make you Ambassador to Spain. President Trump is also not above offering cash: Give me the votes, and I’ll see to it that lots of money flows to places where you want it—to your state, or to you personally. (That would be an outrageous allegation to have made about Barack Obama or George W. Bush. But the president who paid illicit cash to Stormy Daniels to protect his first presidential run shouldn’t be presumed to scruple at paying more illicit cash to protect his second one.)

The danger for Shirkey and Chatfield, then, is that they are being visibly invited to a meeting where the likely agenda involves the felony of attempting to bribe a public official.

Under Michigan law, any member of the legislature who “corruptly” accepts a promise of some beneficial act in return for exercising his authority in a certain way is “forever disqualified to hold any public office” and “shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than 10 years[.]”

To be sure, there’s lots of horse-trading in politics that doesn’t amount to bribery. There’s nothing legally wrong with “You vote for my turnpike project, and I’ll vote for your dam.” But the prospect before Shirkey and Chatfield isn’t legislative logrolling, with representatives negotiating policy or even pork-barrel spending. It’s the prospect of a promise to deliver something of value to the officeholder personally. In other words, we aren’t talking about Trump’s saying “Here’s what’s in it for your constituents.” The prospect, in a one-on-one meeting with this president, is Trump’s saying “Here’s what’s in it for you.”

Shirkey and Chatfield are already on record—admirably—as being against a legislative intervention to ignore the popular vote and reallocate Michigan’s electors. If they take a meeting with a man who desperately wants them to change their minds, and who has no scruples about what kind of leverage he might use to get it, and then they do change their minds and try to send Michigan’s electors to Trump, the possibility that they were bribed will be screamingly obvious.

To be sure, it might not be true: Maybe Shirkey and Chatfield fear Trump’s supporters in the next election so much that they’d change their minds without a direct bribe on the table. But the bribery possibility is strong enough that a responsible prosecutor might feel compelled to pursue it. And the relevant prosecutor—Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel—is a straight-shooting Democrat who does not pal around with Shirkey and Chatfield. If she thought the facts justified an investigation, Shirkey and Chatfield would be investigated.

If the risk of prosecution were federal, the two men might figure they had little to worry about: President Trump, in his second term, would tell the Justice Department to lay off. But the president can’t stop a state prosecution, and he can’t pardon a state crime. Nor would the president’s conversations with Shirkey and Chatfield be shielded from investigation by any sort of executive privilege: Shirkey and Chatfield are not members of the president’s federal policymaking team. So if the Michigan attorney general decided to proceed, Shirkey and Chatfield would be looking—in the best-case scenario—at the pain and disrepute of subpoenas and a criminal investigation. In a less-good-case scenario for them, they’d be looking at the loss of their office and their liberty.

The point here is not that Shirkey and Chatfield are shady characters who might be involved in bribery. Let’s assume that they are honorable and upstanding public servants. But one thing that people who try to stay clean know is that it’s unwise to put yourself in a situation where it will look like you’ve broken the law—or, worse yet, where you might be induced to do so. “Lead us not into temptation” is well known as a religious precept: it’s also excellent legal advice.

The Trump Administration is nearing its end. Any other president who got these results on Election Day would have conceded gracefully and now be cooperating in a peaceful transfer of power—giving his successor’s team the information it needed so that from the stroke of noon on January 20, it could begin protecting American national security, fighting the Covid pandemic, and so forth. President Trump is choosing to block all of that constructive work so that he can avoid admitting that the other guy won. He is doing a fair amount of damage on his way out. That damage is hurting the country in general, and it will also hurt specific people.

A drowning man grabs at anything, and a strong drowning man brings other people down with him. To this point, Republican legislators in Michigan—and in other states where Trump might try to tip the scales, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—have wisely kept their distance. That’s good for them, personally, and it’s also good for democracy. If they’re smart, and the country is lucky, that’s how things will stay.

VISIT WEBSITE

[96thdayofrage]

Going into the 2020 elections, Democrats had high hopes that Joe Biden would win the presidential contest by enough of a margin to ensure solid Democratic majorities in Congress. That was a pretty big deal: After all, in a period of interconnected public-health and economic crises, having one of our two highly polarized parties in a position to get legislation through Congress provided a much better prospect for effective governance than the bipartisanship everyone supports in principle but no one (least of all today’s Republicans) actually practices.

As it happens, Democrats did manage to pull off a trifecta (just as Republicans did in 2016), but by the narrowest possible margins. That outcome, alongside the existence of the Senate filibuster, has forced President Biden to pursue the cramped and complicated budget reconciliation process to enact his initial agenda, with all the perverse implications that come with it (e.g., exclusion of a $15 minimum wage by the Senate parliamentarian). And hanging over every decision Democrats make is the historical probability that they will lose one or both houses of Congress in the 2022 midterms.

If it feels like we’ve lived in this sort of gridlock for a good while, it’s because we have, as Lee Drutman observes at FiveThirtyEight:

[T]he period we find ourselves in now is unique in that the national partisan balance of power is extremely close (with control of national government up for grabs in almost every cycle), even as most states and most voters are either solidly Democratic or Republican. What’s more, the national outcome often hinges on just a few swing states and districts. This period is also unique in the extent to which America is divided. Hatred toward the other party drives our politics. This produces a deeply polarizing and highly destructive form of partisan trench warfare that threatens to erode the very legitimacy of American democracy.

There was a moment, after the 2008 elections, when prophecies abounded that America might support an enduring Democratic majority on the wings of a new “Obama coalition” that would just get larger as younger cadres of citizens began voting. The 2010 midterm disaster for Democrats dashed those hopes, which were briefly revived after 2018, at least so long as it appeared Biden was going to crush Trump in a landslide. No such luck.

As Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter reminds us, today’s volatility is relatively new:

Democrats controlled the House for 40 straight years from 1954 until 1994. Democratic control of the Senate lasted uninterrupted for 25 years—from 1955 to 1980. From 1952 until 1988, Republicans won 7 of 10 presidential elections. This is the era in which many of my peers (and those who mentored me) were raised …

Today, most of those who work in politics don’t know of a time when control of the House, Senate and/or White House wasn’t up for grabs.

Drutman compares the current era to another period of gridlock and polarization: the late 19th-century Gilded Age. From 1876 until 1896, “at least one institution [House, Senate or the White House] changed partisan hands in eight out of 10 elections.” As is happening now, voter turnout was very high with virtually every election having big consequences for partisans. And political contests were intense and even bitter, particularly in the few swing states (typically New York and Indiana) that determined election outcomes more often than not. That sounds familiar, too. Even one of the Gilded Age’s great anomalies — the nonsequential presidencies of Grover Cleveland — is back in the news lately, as defeated President Donald Trump is talking about a 2024 comeback, with even Republicans who don’t like the idea (such as Mitch McConnell and Brian Kemp) quickly saying they will support him if he is, as seems likely should he actually run, the party nominee.

But there is one aspect of today’s polarized gridlock that is unlike that of the Gilded Age, as Drutman notes: In the late 1800s, “the two parties didn’t actually stand for all that much — a stark contrast from today’s politics, where the major parties have distinct policies on a host of national issues.”

The Gilded Age began when sharp partisan differences over the consequences of the Civil War (e.g., whether to impose Black political and economic rights, not just freedom from slavery, on a former Confederacy where white terrorism challenged any sort of equality) had been resolved by the Compromise of 1877, in which Republicans abandoned Reconstruction in order to secure the presidency for Rutherford B. Hayes, who favored an end to Reconstruction in any event. After that fateful bipartisan deal, partisan differences mostly involved tariff policies and patronage until the era ended with the emergence of a Populist movement that realigned both parties and eventually led to a long period of Republican dominance.

Today’s polarized gridlock is arguably more like that of the 1850s, in which the fundamental differences over slavery policy and a hundred related issues created close elections but an overall atmosphere of great turbulence, eventually leading, of course, to an insurrection and a bloody military conflict.

The 1850s precedent illustrates one way out of the current quandary: no, not necessarily a civil war, but a realignment of the major parties that shakes up allegiances and perhaps creates a new and more stable majority (like the one that Republicans enjoyed for a while when secession and then Reconstruction took much of the white rebel South out of the picture).

Today’s Republicans are thought by some as likely to rupture decisively over the “conservative populist” white-nationalist producerism represented by Trump, though my guess is that the GOP Establishment will either surrender to a Trump-led purge of dissenters or co-opt the MAGA movement the way they co-opted the Tea Party movement earlier. Meanwhile, some Democratic “populists” think it’s long past time to conduct a purge of “Wall Street Democrats” of their own, aimed in part at a party realignment that might bring back white working-class voters to the Donkey banner.

More likely than a realignment is some crucial partisan victory on issues that directly affect the partisan balance, most notably voting rights, where very obviously the two parties (Republicans mostly operating at the state level and Democrats at the national level) are moving in opposite directions in ways that could significantly affect the size and shape of the electorate in the near future. And there is always the possibility that objective reality will bust up a gridlocked system, as the Great Depression brought the post–Gilded Age Republican majority to a crashing end when the GOP proved unable to manage the crisis.

If, despite all these possibilities, today’s political environment continues, then we can look forward to more high-stakes elections with disputed outcomes, less consistent governance, and the kind of fury that makes bipartisanship even less likely than big differences on major issues already does. America needs a good landslide or two, and if either party (or in theory, a new party) can produce that breakthrough, it could be in power for a good long time.

[cannoli-reader]

Is becoming disabled sufficient for redemption?

In Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and FIre, there is in each a character who becomes disabled.  In each case, the character is more or less an antagonist to the main characters, but after the disability, finds themselves opposed to some bad guys, so they aren’t necessarily enemies of the good guys, as well as really lacking the ability to do the kind of harm they could at the outset, and so they become more sympathetic.  But fans go nuts for these characters, they rave about them, and root for them. And I’m like, okay, but still the same people they were before.  Still working for the wrong side with the wrong agenda.  Am I missing something here?

In Martin’s aSoI&F, Jaime Lannister goes from being the premier knight in the realm, at least in martial prowess and looks, wealth and social position - you know, the important things in life - to abruptly having his hand chopped off for shits and giggles by a band of sadistic criminals. And he does some nice stuff for Brienne of Tarth, who was trying to protect him and who was a much better knight than he if you count stupid nonsense, like obeying her superiors, keeping her vows, protecting the innocent, striving against all odds to complete her missions. And now, according to the fandom, He Is Redeemed.  

In the books, Jaime has turned against his father and sister, he slew an evil king and he stood up for Brienne, and encouraged and nurtured her knightly ambitions.  But Jaime has a lot of motivations to oppose these people, beside doing the right thing.  How much was outrage that the king was unfit and destructive to the greater good and a violent sadist and a moral impetus to save lives, and how much was family loyalty after his father took up arms against the king, how much was payback for the insults and slights and humiliations the king had heaped on his immediate family and Jaime in particular.  How much of his slaying of the king’s sycophantic co-conspirator Hallyne was due to outrage over the planned atrocity, and how much due to Hallyne being raised above his birth station, after actual nobles were cast down?  

Even stipulating the best possible motives, that young “hero” became the man who tried to murder a child for his own convenience, who lacked the moral character to stand up to his own father and tell the truth to his brother.  He fought a war over his family pride, indifferent to the war crimes his father committed, and likely a participant. His own incompetence deprived him of the ability to really tarnish his record as a battle commander. 

Critical to Jaime’s alleged redemption is his loss of a hand, which struck at the heart of his self-image and sense of worth.  Which is all very plausible as a start to his developing sympathy for others, but equally plausible is the fact that he can no longer treat people like crap with impunity and fight his way out of the consequences. Further eroding his invincibility is the death of his father, whose over the top brutality toward anyone who looked cross-eyed at his kin also made people think twice about calling Jaime out. 

He turns on Cersei, but not because his sufferings have wised him up, rather because when he finally makes a demand of their relationship, he is denied, because she is increasingly put off by his failure to live up to her own image of him and because he learns of her infidelity. 

This is not say Jaime isn’t actually coming to grips with his actions and attitudes in the context of his family relationships, and not liking what he sees, that he isn’t trying to do better at some aspects of his job, but in spite of all that, he’s still on the wrong side.  He’s realizing what a horrible family he is a part of, but he resents the hostility of the family’s victims, like the Tullys, without considering how he is furthering Tywin’s policies and even profiting from them. He is contemptuous toward his family’s allies, from the Freys, to Sybell to Jonos Bracken, and yet follows through with their rewards, elevating them at the expense of people who clearly come across as more sympathetic in the narration, if not Jaime’s stream of consciousness. 

He punishes criminals and deserters he encounters, but this is in the same book where Brienne’s plot is giving us the other side of the story with the excellent Broken Men speech from Septon Meribald, so the justice of Goldenhand feels a bit hollow, not to mention classist, considering the difference between how knights and nobles who do far worse than these stragglers are (not) punished.  He notably does not punish the men who were in service to Gregor Clegane, his father’s main thug, despite their crimes to date, including forcing cannibalism on their prisoners. 

Even Jaime’s efforts at ethical behavior are falling short. He advises his subordinate Kingsguard not to commit petty acts of violence on the orders of a juvenile king, but as an alternative to such orders, he says to check with himself or Cersei.  But Jaime heads off into the field, leaving only Cersei in authority, and the readers know she prizes blind obedience in retainers over the moral formation of her children. 

And that sort of half-assery carries over to Jaime’s occasional stabs at honor. As mentioned above, Jaime is lucky that the promise he gave Catelyn is beyond his keeping upon his return to court, because he never has to act on it.  His gesture with Brienne, while personally appealing to her, is relatively toothless. The odds of her achieving her objective alone are slim.  The warrant he provides her is barely enough to induce the non-interference of his allies, and further condemns her in the eyes of his enemies. And that is pretty much the sum of the resources he devotes to the fulfillment of his oath.  It is likely the paucity of his efforts in the eyes of most Westerosi nobles (he is one of only two people legitimately impressed with Brienne’s qualities, the other being dead), as his own pride, that prevents him from telling the Blackfish about his efforts when Brynden calls him on it.  And while the gift of a Valyrian steel sword is not to be despised, for Jaime the sword represents what he can’t have anymore and the difference between his and Tywin’s desires. He refers to it as a ‘mocking gift’ when sent the sword by Tywin. His giving it away, especially to a woman, is about as strong of a rejection of his father as he can make, without actually confronting him again. 

Jaime might be redeemed yet, but what sufferings and inconveniences have been imposed upon him have not been the result of his choices or attempts to make things right.  He actually does very little to make amends for his actions, to make things right with his victims or to rectify the great political injustices his family has committed on the realm. Instead, as of the last book published, he is still perpetuating the deprivation of his father’s victims. His positive efforts to bring peace and minimize the bloodshed and death are beneficial to him and to his family. But even if you’re merely toting up his good deeds, without relating them to his crimes, I don’t see any act of generosity or heroism that matches murdering three men in the street for the offense of their employer, or participating in war crimes or pushing a seven year old out a window.

Jaime Lannister is an interesting character but he’s still a really bad person.