#and hungary has a shit healthcare system

[hiveswap]

I've just abt accepted that i'm gonna get cancer one day

[whitelotusherald]

Just some random thoughts, sorry for ranting about politics recently

You might say LGBTQ rights are NOT top priority in Hungary - yes we have more urgent problems and this is just a topic to make us forget how our cleptomaniac government steals everything

But

These are human rights

They mess with people's life, UNNECESSARILY shitting on them just for political profit

And that is unacceptable

(btw we shouldn't forget that while the current law prohibits propagating homosexuals & transition, they also passed a bill last year that makes it impossible to change your legal gender and name)

I'm glad they called out PM Orbán's actions during the recent EU Council meeting - too bad he won't listen to anyone

Orbán most probably does understand Luxembourg's PM who pointed out he didn't just become gay - he IS gay; gay content won't make you gay, trans representation won't make anyone want to go under surgery or hormone therapy, these just make one feel seen and... NORMAL

He understands but just... Doesn't give a shit because he NEVER backs down once he made up his mind (unless he can gain a profit from changing his mind...)

This regime has caused so much damage (Orbán's been in power since forever), stealing so much money from the EU while making an extremely toxic environment here, fucking up democracy step by step, further ruining the healthcare / educational system, and mess up whatever field politicians and their buddies show up at

I just can't imagine what happens if Orbán wins the next election as well - and he fucking will

[icedfairy]

So as we moving further into the political hellscape the bad takes are increasing, and so I want to do my part to help kill one of the most obviously wrong.  Specifically the “In Europe the Democrats would be right wing.”

This is something claimed a lot even by smart people, but if you sit down and think for a second it doesn’t really hold up for three big reasons.  Left/right is simplistic shit that doesn’t reflect politics outside of a single spectrum, Europe isn’t a single country, and it’s not as left as is likes to think.

So first is the obvious.  Left and Right is a huge oversimplification.  Even the farce that is the political compass uses a two axis system, and it’s a push poll that was designed to make the Lib Dems in England look cooler then they were.  Where do racist socialists fall?  How about free market minorities who don’t want to get fucked over by racists?  Hell, where do we put minorities who fight for their own rights, but frequently fall into bigoted tropes against other groups?  If one candidate wants to make college free, and another wants to make preK and daycare free, who’s “more left”?  This isn’t a Bioware RPG, and you can’t simplify shit down to a single statistic.

But hey you can simplify some shit.  Parties are inherently mixtures of ideas, so while playing the ‘who’s the best leftist game’ with individuals is bad, you can kinda do it with political groups.  So lets look at Europe.

Where does Europe fall politically?  That’s a good question.  Should we look at Hungary, where a fascist president is trying to solidify single party rule?  How about England, where the Tories have managed to beat Labour into irrelevancy?  That doesn’t seem all that left.  Meanwhile the Nordic countries are weaving back and forth in their democratic socialism.  And France and Germany are... well being themselves.  Europe is a pretty complex set of political truths.

And then let’s look into the countries themselves.  Sure France has a better healthcare system then America.  But ask the Muslim/Jewish kids who are given ham sandwiches for school lunch how they feel about France’s interesting approach to religious freedom.  And dear Lord the treatment of the Roma is disgusting.  Or talk to the Spanish or Italians about the 5th amendment.  See how “left” Europe is then.

“All politics are local.”  This here is the greatest truth.  And trying to smash the world (or Europe+America) onto a single left/right line is bad praxis.  Look at what the differences are between the choices you’ve got.  Because I assure you, they’re gonna be big, just maybe not in the areas you were originally looking.

[theculturedmarxist]

This is all a bunch of fucking nonsense.

>When democrats come to power, so long as they aren't allowed to spend the money they want, they can't improve the country.

They've given up on "improving the country." That's been out of vogue with the Democrats since Carter. Reagan cleaned their clocks and since then they've just been Republican Lites.

And, lol "so long as they aren't allowed." Even when the Republicans can't possibly stop them they bend over backwards to please them in the name of "bipartisanship."

>Biden is in a unique situation where he has spent more money than most previous democratic presidents, and the vast majority approve of the things they are getting for THEIR tax dollars.

Yeah, I'll bet. If the "vast majority approve" then why is Biden polling at basically the same numbers that Trump did?

>I am not saying that all of them are such, or that someone who isn't hell bent on creating Hungary or Russia in America, will win.

Give me a fucking break with this xenophobic horse shit.

>This is an important thing to know and understand. Statistically, this is the last major election republicans can win in their current conservative mold.

I've written about this before. This is nothing but Democrat Party cope for the fact that they have absolutely nothing to offer most Americans and no strategies to win them over aside from

"We're not the Republicans, and if you don't want them to win you've got to vote for us."

"We'll just let the Republicans keep on winning until they run their states so far into the ground whoever's left has no CHOICE but to vote for us!"

"We'll just let these undesirables die out until all that's left are the ones who have to vote for us anyway because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc."

And the Republicans keep fucking making the Democrats look like a bunch of fools, because you can't beat something with nothing, and while the something the Republicans bring to the table is absolutely horrible, the Democrats bring absolutely fucking nothing to oppose them. They're the party of "We want everything that the Republicans want, too! But we'll pretend to be nicer about it."

>This is all great news if you want to see significant change in this country toward a more equitable and just society.

If that's what the DNC actually wanted then they would have supported Bernie Sanders instead of ratfucking him out of the nomination in favor of first Goldwater Girl Hillary and second Anti-Abortion Pro-Segregation Rapist Joe Biden. They'd have prosecuted the bankers and the financial sector responsible for the 08 financial crash instead of making them part of Obama's cabinet and then evicting millions of black people from their homes and organizing a sweeping national police crackdown on Occupy Wall Street. And, hey, most of all they would be pushing to make permanent the Child Tax Credits that lifted millions out of poverty, make guaranteed universal healthcare the law of the fucking land in the middle of a deadly global spanning pandemic instead of forcing people back to work and telling them that its fucking over, and they wouldn't be spending billions of dollars to fund a neo-Nazi government in a proxy war against Russia while inflation fucks millions of people at home.

>That is one reason why Russian and Hungarian "democracy," is such a popular concept in current conservative circles.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Is this more Russiagate brainworms bullshit?

>If you listen to Trump he plans to completely overhaul our system of government and place all power in his hands and those of his sycophantic yes men. He is telling people everyday that if he wins he is going to be a dictator and never leave. The thing is, the people who say they love our country the most are also the ones who are dearly praying that Trump takes power, as if they will benefit somehow. They won't, but most will see people they seem to hate for no real reason suffer, and that is often enough for many of these people.

First, you're out of your fucking mind. This is the exact same shit that Republicans were saying about Obama not too long ago. "He's going to make himself dictator! He's going to refuse to step down! He's going to use some emergency powers to give himself a third term!" Get a fucking grip.

Second, Trump got millions of more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 precisely because they benefited from him being in power. Those Jan 6 rioters didn't come out of fucking nowhere. They were petite bourgeois that made a lot of fucking money from Trump and his policies. That's why people keep voting for Trump in particular and Republicans in general: because when they do they get something out of it. Even if it takes 50 years, like with banning abortion.

>Republicans need Biden's last year and a half to be a failure. They need his policies to start to fizzle.

Biden hardly needs any help with that. Almost a million people dead from Covid and tens of millions more crippled by Long Covid. Nothing done about rampant environmental damage. Fomenting war with China and waging a losing war with Russia. Yeah, how's Student Debt cancellation working out? How's them abortion rights?

>The want a recession, and the best way to get that right now is to shorten the money supply.

Okay, even if that was true, so what? The money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve, which sets US monetary policy. There's currently an empty seat on the board of Governors, so if the Republicans are trying to fuck with the money supply, just appoint a Democrat to the board and that's no longer a fucking problem.

>Currently, national inflation is back to normal at about 3%. The unemployment rate for all groups is better than it has ever been. Corporate profits are exploding (as always seems to be the case).

The unemployment rate is so low because thanks to Biden's covid policies millions of people are now out of the labor pool. Corporate profits are also the major driver of inflation, along with wages, which the Fed wants to deal with by driving mass unemployment. Inflation is down to 3% because of covid-driven supply irregularities returning to normal, and the Fed wants to get that down even further by using mass unemployment to lower the standard of living.

Smialek doesn’t so much as mention this alternative approach. In a follow-up article (6/21/23) the day after the podcast, she instead focused on the question of how much interest rates will have to raise unemployment to bring inflation down to the 2% target. She ended the piece by quoting Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former Obama adviser, who asserted, “People have been so crazily premature to keep declaring victory on inflation.”

Just two paragraphs earlier, Furman had suggested that unemployment (the Fed’s favorite tool for lowering incomes and slowing price increases) might need to reach 10% to tame inflation. Whether it would be irresponsible to throw something like 10 million people out of work so that a loaf of bread costs $2.55 next year rather than $2.60 was not questioned.

So, thanks Biden!

>That doesn't mean they won't keep trying to make up made up scandals and convince their low information voters that some form of corruption exists.

You can't possibly be this naive. Joe Biden being a rapist isn't a "made up scandal." The story of Hunter Biden's laptop and the fact that it ties him and his father directly to a corrupt influence peddling operation, or the fact that the FBI collaborated with executives at Twitter to squash information about it, aren't "made up scandals." Joe Biden and the entire Democrat party are absolutely corrupt and Republican voters are right to believe so.

>After all, most are willing to believe whatever they are told right now even if there isn't proof simply because they are told to hate the opposition.

Yeah, unlike you, right buddy?

Let me explain why conservatives are determined to cut spending, right now. It isn't for some glorified reason like making sure the government is solvent. That has never been the goal of republican demands for budget cuts. After all, they only demand such cuts when the opposition is in power. The reason is very simple. When democrats come to power, so long as they aren't allowed to spend the money they want, they can't improve the country. This makes it look like the administration is inept or unwilling to work for the people, and therefore Republicans are often re-elected. At which point they balloon the budget so that when they are removed from power because they really never do anything for anyone but themselves and their rich donors, they can start the whole process over.

Biden is in a unique situation where he has spent more money than most previous democratic presidents, and the vast majority approve of the things they are getting for THEIR tax dollars. Republicans can't keep letting this happen or they know they won't win the next election, and for them winning in 2024 is absolutely critical. Too many people think things are rolling along just like normal, but that isn't the case. The republican leaders with the best chance of winning their primaries are reactionaries and agree with Trump's authoritarian direction. I am not saying that all of them are such, or that someone who isn't hell bent on creating Hungary or Russia in America, will win. However, at this point it doesn't look like republicans are going to return to normalcy.

This is an important thing to know and understand. Statistically, this is the last major election republicans can win in their current conservative mold. Their base, Boomers and Gen X, are dying out much faster than they should be because of republican culture war bullshit and the policies that are everywhere in republican areas. They have the worst healthcare and longevity in the country. Contrary to what is usual in Americans, Millennials aren't becoming more conservative as they get older. At least not yet. And now that Gen z are old enough to vote, they are overwhelmingly against republican policies in general. Right now, these two generations of voters outnumber all others, and could technically change the way our government runs for decades to come.

This is all great news if you want to see significant change in this country toward a more equitable and just society. It isn't great if you see your power slipping away and threatened in the near future. That is one reason why Russian and Hungarian "democracy," is such a popular concept in current conservative circles. If you are unaware, the system of government conservatives are drooling over isn't democracy at all, but kleptocracy, plutocracy, and fascism rolled into the hands of a dictatorial strongman. It has the appearance of democracy, as the people can vote. However, those votes really don't matter as the strongman and his party dictate everything.

Republicans understand that they have a limited time to remain viable. If you listen to Trump he plans to completely overhaul our system of government and place all power in his hands and those of his sycophantic yes men. He is telling people everyday that if he wins he is going to be a dictator and never leave. The thing is, the people who say they love our country the most are also the ones who are dearly praying that Trump takes power, as if they will benefit somehow. They won't, but most will see people they seem to hate for no real reason suffer, and that is often enough for many of these people.

Republicans need Biden's last year and a half to be a failure. They need his policies to start to fizzle. The want a recession, and the best way to get that right now is to shorten the money supply. Currently, national inflation is back to normal at about 3%. The unemployment rate for all groups is better than it has ever been. Corporate profits are exploding (as always seems to be the case). This is all bad news for republicans because these sorts of things usually determine whether a president is likely to be re-elected. If republicans can't cut the budget and cause an economic retraction, they are left with their only option which is to tie some form of scandal around the president's neck. So far that hasn't worked as well as they imagined it would because there just isn't really anything there. That doesn't mean they won't keep trying to make up made up scandals and convince their low information voters that some form of corruption exists. After all, most are willing to believe whatever they are told right now even if there isn't proof simply because they are told to hate the opposition.