#leftists of all ideologies coming together to not vote for biden

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Cop city too. Subsidising big oil as well. The imperialist project inside. Anti homeless laws. Lack of healthcare access to trans and GNC people. Disabled people dying due to lack of COVID policies. Historical high police brutality rates. Inhumane border law. Increased incarceration of Black people and prison slavery. Indigenous land destruction for environmentally suicidal extraction industry. Surveillance state and brutal censorship. If you want to see a fascist look at everyone who supported KOSA.

What do we expect from a guy who has been behind several segregationist policies and who wanted to wage war on Iraq before Bush Jr. did? The lies that are called state propaganda is at Bush Jr. levels already. The ones who think that we have a democracy left to save are deluding themselves, buried un white privilege and imperialist self righteousness. What will voting change if people pick between two mass murderers one being a genocide happy geriatric fascist who ignores every evil act he is deliberately committing against innocent people of all kinds and the other being an overt fascist who openly declares hatred and wages war on everything good?

Biden is not the only one to blame. Those who support him and bully other people into doing that because "Trump is worse" are also to blame. Their love for status quo is above any morality if they have it, and yet they blame people for having clear principles. At least the red fascists are coherent and less hypocritical about their hatred of others and desire to keep their privileges. Blue fascists are the worst hypocrites for pretending that fascism hasn't been unleashed upon us all. What they are implicitly saying is that "You all have to care about my comfort regardless of how much I ignore yours, and of course all the calls for decency."

Funny thing is that they think they are smart, when all they do is to attempt converting people into their own partisanship without any convincing arguments. The logic dictates that in a failing economy where the cost if living is not manageable, with highrocketing rents and betrayal about the promised increase in minimum wage; along with the government splurging on a genocidal campaign that 70 percent of population regards with contempt, then suppressing all the dissent through violence while trying to make believe with propaganda that everything is fine and nothing is going to change if you vote blue, you are going to fail. Spectacularly. That's how Hitler came to power. And we don't blame German left enough for not doing anything to improve the lives of people instead of sitting on their asses and violently subduing protests. The only difference is that we already have Hitler in power and the next election is framed as us having a choice between different flavours of Hitler. A third choice might not be able to stop us from getting a Hitler elected, but it will make a statement. "We don't want a Hitler governing us, we won't accept it and you're not alone.". It's a start if nothing. Whoever wins we lose anyway, and that might be a signal to self claimed progressives to become actually progressive.

As a side note, Trump making America a dictatorship type of fear mongering is a little unrealistic. There's a huge dislike among Republicans towards him that cannot be ignored and the over white supremacist demographic is shrinking at a fast rate. These racists will never be able to win over enough Black and Latine support to keep any white supremacist authoritarian regime going, and they won't be able to suppress riots if they erupt.

The curious question is whether the status quo loving white privilege deniers that are walking around as liberals will pick the imperialist side or the progressive side. Regardless, they will be ineffective in their support because they have this contempt going on with either side and a weird superiority complex with nothing solid to base it upon. My bet is that they will start blaming both sides for not picking their flavour of genocidal imperialism and that's why nobody is living like they lived(?) in the good(?) old days.

I am so sick and tired of seeing all these “I know biden is bad, I know biden has done some bad things but vote for biden because trump will destroy our democracy” posts bc a) clearly our democracy is a sham and b) STOP DEFENDING BIDEN, STOP DOWNPLAYING WHAT HE HAS DONE! you do not need to, nor should you, defend biden to any degree. you can say that we cannot let trump win without that other bullshit. biden is pure evil, he is scum. and part of what makes him so horrendous and disturbing is the charade he puts on like he’s the good guy and trump is the evil, the bad to his good. quite literally the only thing that he has going for him is that his opponent is somehow even worse than him. that his opponent has no pretense of even trying to act like he doesn’t want to fully be a dictator. stop fucking defending biden. stop fucking downplaying all the horrendous, despicable, evil things he has done and is continuing to do. he is fully funding and supporting and enabling a genocide. it helps no one.

and if/when biden loses, he only has himself to blame.

ideally we would all rally behind a third party candidate and the electoral college wouldn’t exist. ideally these wouldn’t be our “choices”. idfk what to do because trump cannot win but how can any of us in good conscience vote for biden’s evil, fascistic, decrepit ass ??

what makes biden so different from or better than trump? nothing!!

- he is unconditionally supporting netanyahu and his genocide of Palestinians

- democrats have done nothing to protect nor help us as roe v. wade was overturned, we still have student loan debt, the cost of living is unaffordable and the minimum wage remains unchanged, biden has increased police presence and funding for police (more so than in 2020, despite the eruption of BLM protests and the murder of George Floyd and his promise to George Floyd’s family that he wouldn’t let his murder become just another number, another hashtag), and so. much. more.

- biden is building off of trump’s policies - specifically and most recently, biden has just announced an executive order to deny asylum requests. the increase in police funding and the further militarization of police was also built off of trump’s policies

the u.s. is an evil sham of a country.

as ethel cain said …

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But is that your opinion or a fact? I guess the whole thing surrounding BLM and PragerU has me very confused since everyone else says some things about them and that they are not actually a university and then there's the fact that it's founder Dennis Prager said something that he thinks nothing wrong with indoctrinating children. Is that being taken out of context because every school's kind of does the same thing about schools teaching students to hate white people while being gay supposedly or is there some disagreement I'm not understanding?

it kind of feels like it's going to lead into that whoever I'm listening to are idiots and don't know what they are saying even though I can't just simply call everybody who thinks BLM and the civil Rights movements are somehow terrorist groups. It's like saying voting for DeSantis or Trump is better than Biden and everybody else is just fear-mongering about them even though I haven't been hearing good things about the Republican candidates and if we say something about Biden in the whole issue surrounding his son, honestly I'm starting to feel like the Hunter Biden stuff is too overhyped and I don't really think Joe Biden is involved in whatever dealing his son is involved as I'm not hearing anything major coming out of it and the Republicans are seemingly more focused on that then the sexual allegations against Biden or his whole deal with the classified documents which hasn't been brought up at often by either side. It's all Hunter this Hunter that and his father is involved in some crooked scheme needs to be impreached.

Let's go by parts.

My opinion is that Prager U uses of real and valid criticism of the organization calling itself BLM to attack people who are fighting against police brutality and racism, it is a fact the org BLM is a profit seeking with many of their CEOs having millions in their banks while not helping, the same way it's a fact that 94% of protest associatied or connected to BLM peaceful and the other 6% are still unfound on whether the violence and chaos was actually caused by protesters since there been multiple cases of confirmed infiltration by far-righters and cops.

I mean if the dude says "indoctrination bad" but then straight up says "actually indoctrination based" because it's for what he believes then ain't really much context that can save that lol most of the crying about "indoctrination" complaints are parents of highschoolers mad they can't obcessively control everything their child do and having a panic attack over the idea their kid won't be a carbon copy of them, I'm sure leftist parents do that as well but conservative ones actually demand their entire state to uphold that.

As a whole the Hunter Biden situation is just...pointless? Oh no, the son of a politician is a druggie and pays for prostitutes...and? Arrest the asshole or not for all I care, they are trying to claim that somehow this would have swayed peoples voting, It is republicans trying really hard to scrape the bottom of the barrel for reason to impeach Biden or attack his image, when as your self pointed out there enough to do just that, but again, since Trump also has allegations and shit.

Also I'm pretty sure the reason why Biden isn't being prosecuted and investigated for documents is because he actually did everything he should have done and the documents were literally a handful of documents in a safe, but on that I could be wrong, while Trumpie literally had boxes on top of fucking boxes in every corner of his damn home for some reason, together with multiple of the documents being classified, which as president at the time he could have just declassified them so it wouldn't be as much of a issue.

But if you want my advice as someone who used to be a anti-sjw? I didn't even stop being one at first because of how factually wrong the whole ideology was, is because almost every figure head I followed was becoming actual neo-Nazis, turning out to transphobic and homophobic while using gay and trans people as shields, constantly getting caught bold face lying(Blaire white) or just grifting as "apolitical" while having nothing but praises to the most extreme right wing lobotomites out here. Steven Crowder was having a 50 million contract and a extra 1 million whenever needed to just attack trans people 24/7, a lot of right wing content is unironically just corporate backed propaganda to regress society, the entire fox news teams was exposed for admitting they thought Trump and his supporters were loonies and that "election fraud" narrative is just bullshit they started talking because another right wing channel was syphoning their viewers whenever they said something like "Trump isn't a god and he made mistakes" in their lawsuit brought by Dominion.

I'm not saying you need to become luxury communism that believes in a 100 genders, but genuinely, the grift within the right is real, at least when leftists say some crazy shit, you have 90% they actually believe in what they are saying, while a right winger is probably just saying the shit to gain a chance of being employed by the likes of Prager.

If you want a really good channel to teach you some rhetoric and how to catch people saying shit without foundation I really recommend Mia's Rhetoric, she's not a bleeding heart leftist or anything, she's very progressive obviously but because of her knowledge in rhetoric she's really good at deconstructing arguments from fallacies to how people signage affects them, linking this video in specific to topical obviously.

[schooltrashers]

The 5 pics above contains proof and comparisons showing how similar the Left are to the KKK and Nazis. In fact both the KKK and Nazis are still left-wing, no matter how much this Anarchist Social Justice Incel wants to deny it in the 2 screenshots below. Everything he just said is false and I'll tell you why that is.

See unlike him, I can back up my claims with various sources. BLM/Antifa did kill innocent black people such as 8-year-old Secoreia Turner because she was at a CHOP zone where Rayshard Brooks died. Then of course they/them(Antifa/BLM) killed Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr who died at a CHOP zone in Seattle, Washington.

Let's not forget that during a riot they/them killed David Dorn, a retired black police officer who is married to a white woman. And we all know how angry racist white people with small dick energy hate interracial relationships. Yes Antifa/BLM are comprised of mostly angry white leftists with small dick energy.

So yes police should use deadly force against violent domestic terrorists who riot on the streets & murder innocent people. This is why I oppose anarchists groups like Antifa and BLM. Their evil actions and lack of moral values is what I oppose. The lies and deception of this anarchist clearly shows.

He does not give a shit about the victims I just mention or any truth that I posted in my previous post about "Anti-Extremism" where I condemn extremist groups and ideologies because anti-extremism is both ANTI-NAZI and ANTI-COMMIE. But he doesn't get that because he's a moron thinking his views are the "right one".

So rather than agree with me on anything I've said, he just says "you're a liar" and "you're a nazi". Even though both those things are untrue. See when it comes to the Left, they always lie and accuse you of something you're not. I prefer peace, I'm against murderers, I'm against riots, and I'm against liars.

As far as WWII goes, yes it was the conservatives who went into war and fought against Nazis. We're the ones who often join the military while the Democrats such as the KKK were the ones supporting the Nazis and terrorizing innocent black people in the U.S. like the cowards they are. Antifa & BLM are doing the same things now, that the KKK was doing back then. Also, the Republican Party was originally created to help black people, hence why they freed the slaves and fought for their rights.

The parties obviously never switched, the Democrats just switched their methods in order to deceive blacks into voting for them. The parties switching never happened, hence why Joe Biden and Robert Byrd(the KKK Grand Wizard) are pictured holding hands together. Here's a source that proves the parties never switching... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiprVX4os2Y

Furthermore, I've been anti-Nazi long before supporting Donald Trump in 2020. I use to be an anti-Trumper, believing in the lies told about Trump & his supporters. My past videos on YouTube are proof of that. Because you see, back in 2016 I didn't vote for either Trump or Hillary, I voted for Jill Stein. I've been against Nazis and extremists in general for so long, that I've made a video against MGTOW and FemiNAZIS (look at the thumbnail)... https://youtu.be/GZn5FK0deJ4

As well as calling out racists like Hulk Hogan and Mark Fuhrman for using the N-Word. Mark Fuhrman by the way is a Nazi and a corrupt cop. Here's the video proving what I just said. https://youtu.be/IsiDuyiYvK0

(This comment is directed to the Anarchist only). So before you make an ass of yourself by lying about me and making up shit, better make sure you got sources and proof to back up your claim ya Extremist Nazi Commie Scumbag.

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Beating The Heat Is Out Of Reach (IPCC, AP News) The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a shocker of a report Monday summarizing the latest authoritative scientific information about global warming. 234 scientists contributed to the 3,000-plus-page report. Global temperatures have already risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the 19th century, the highest in over 100,000 years. Further warming is already “locked in,” meaning even if emissions are drastically cut, some changes will be “irreversible” for centuries. Ice melt and sea-level rise are already accelerating, and wild weather events like heatwaves and storms are expected to worsen and become more frequent. Earth is warming so fast that by the 2030s, temperatures will probably exceed the Paris climate accord’s ideal goal of no more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. The report called it a “code red for humanity.”

Infrastructure bill approved in Senate (AP) With a robust vote after weeks of fits and starts, the Senate approved a $1 trillion infrastructure plan for states coast to coast on Tuesday, as a rare coalition of Democrats and Republicans joined together to overcome skeptics and deliver a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s agenda. “Today, we proved that democracy can still work,” Biden declared at the White House, noting that the 69-30 vote included even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The overwhelming tally provided fresh momentum for the first phase of Biden’s “Build Back Better” priorities, now heading to the House. A sizable number of lawmakers showed they were willing to set aside partisan pressures, at least for a moment, eager to send billions to their states for rebuilding roads, broadband internet, water pipes and the public works systems that underpin much of American life. The measure proposes nearly $550 billion in new spending over five years in addition to current federal authorizations for public works that will reach virtually every corner of the country. There’s money to rebuild roads and bridges, and also to shore up coastlines against climate change, protect public utility systems from cyberattacks and modernize the electric grid. Public transit gets a boost, as do airports and freight rail. Most lead drinking water pipes in America could be replaced.

COVID vaccines to be required for military under new US plan (AP) Members of the U.S. military will be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine beginning next month under a plan laid out by the Pentagon Monday and endorsed by President Joe Biden. In memos distributed to all troops, top Pentagon leaders said the vaccine is a necessary step to maintain military readiness. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the mid-September deadline could be accelerated if the vaccine receives final FDA approval or infection rates continue to rise. “I will seek the president’s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon” licensure by the Food and Drug Administration “whichever comes first,” Austin said in his memo, warning them to prepare for the requirement.

For first time, average pay for supermarket and restaurant workers tops $15 an hour (Washington Post) The U.S. labor market hit a new milestone recently: For the first time, average pay in restaurants and supermarkets climbed above $15 an hour. Wages have been rising rapidly as the economy reopens and businesses struggle to hire enough workers. Some of the biggest gains have gone to workers in some of the lowest-paying industries. Overall, nearly 80 percent of U.S. workers now earn at least $15 an hour, up from 60 percent in 2014. Job sites and recruiting firms say many job seekers won’t even consider jobs that pay less than $15 anymore. For years, low-paid workers fought to make at least that much. Now it has effectively become the new baseline. Economists caution that a higher average wage is not the same as a $15 minimum wage. Half of workers in these industries are still making below $15 an hour. Nonetheless, rising pay is still a game-changer for millions of workers.

Dry California tourist town to guests: ‘Please conserve’ (AP) Tourists flock by the thousands to the coastal town of Mendocino for its Victorian homes and cliff trails, but visitors this summer are also finding public portable toilets and signs on picket fences pleading: “Severe Drought. Please conserve water.” Hotels have closed their lobby bathrooms and residents have stopped watering their gardens in the foggy outpost about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of San Francisco after two years of little rain sapped many of the wells Mendocino depends on for potable water. Mendocino’s water woes were compounded in recent weeks when the city of Fort Bragg a few miles to the north—its main backup water supplier—informed officials that it, too, had a significant drop in its drinking water reserves after the Noyo River recorded its lowest flows in decades. “This is a real emergency,” said Ryan Rhoades, superintendent of the Mendocino City Community Services District, which helps manage the water in the town’s aquifer.

Nicaragua recalls four LatAm ambassadors in tit-for-tat move (Reuters) Nicaragua has recalled its ambassadors to Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Costa Rica for “consultations,” the government said on Monday, deepening the Central American country’s international isolation over its crackdowns on the opposition. Mexico, Argentina and Colombia recently recalled their ambassadors to protest against moves to clamp down on the opposition in Nicaragua, while Costa Rica a few weeks ago suspended the appointment of its ambassador to the country. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Ortega of taking new “undemocratic, authoritarian actions.” Blinken also singled out Ortega’s wife, Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, and said the two were seeking to hold on to power “at all costs” with a strategy of disqualifying potential opposition candidates. Nicaragua is due to hold presidential elections in November in which Ortega is seeking a fourth consecutive term.

Twelve Days In Office, and Crisis Swamps Peru’s Leftist President (Bloomberg) Peru’s new president is off to a rocky start, selecting contentious ministers, alienating allies and setting the stage for a brutal face-off with congress, all within days of taking office. A rural teacher and union activist, Pedro Castillo won the election after reassurances that he’s his own man, not beholden to his party’s Marxist ideology or chief. But when he named his cabinet—including a prime minister who’s under investigation for being an alleged apologist for terrorists—analysts, opposition figures and even some who’d backed him expressed alarm, so much so that the word “impeachment” was heard more than once. “His political capital went up in smoke in 24 hours,” said Rodolfo Rojas, a partner of the Lima-based Sequoia political advisory group. “If he doesn’t change course, there’s no future for him.” Impeachment isn’t imminent, Rojas said, but a clash with congress looks likely. And while Peru has made a habit of ousting presidents, it’s rare for such a discussion to take place within days of inauguration.

French wine production set for a 30-percent drop (Washington Post) A confluence of weather woes is hurting France’s wine harvest. First, there was severe frost in the spring, which laid the foundation for disaster by damaging 30 percent of the production. Then, torrential summer rains hit western Europe in July, leaving parts of Germany and Belgium ravaged by floods, and leading to fungal attacks on grapes and their leaves in France. All of this has set France up for a wine supply drop of 24 to 30 percent this year—the lowest output since 1970, France’s farm ministry said Friday. For champagne, harvest potential has been slashed in half, some producers warned. In Italy, the world’s largest wine producer, high temperatures in the south caused an early harvest, while heavy rains in the north caused a late harvest, according to farmers association Coldiretti. Output is estimated to fall by 5 to 10 percent.

'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response (AP) As Greece’s massive wildfires were being largely tamed Tuesday, the country’s civil protection chief defended the firefighting efforts, saying every resource was thrown into the battle against what he described as the fire service’s biggest-ever challenge. Nikos Hardalias said authorities “truly did what was humanly possible” against blazes that destroyed tens of thousands of hectares (acres) of forest and hundreds of homes, killed a volunteer firefighter and forced more than 60,000 people to flee. Two other firefighters were in intensive care with severe burns. “We handled an operationally unique situation, with 586 fires in eight days during the worst weather conditions we’ve seen in 40 years,” Hardalias told a news conference. “Never was there such a combination of adverse factors in the history of the fire service.” Greece had just experienced its worst heat wave since 1987, which left its forests tinder-dry. Other nearby nations such as Turkey and Italy also faced the same searing temperatures and quickly spreading fires.

Smoke from Siberia wildfires reaches north pole in historic first (Guardian) Smoke from raging forest fires in Siberia has reached the north pole for the first time in recorded history, as a Russian monitoring institute warned the blazes were worsening. Devastating wildfires have ripped across Siberia with increasing regularity over the past few years, which Russia’s weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and an underfunded forest service. One of Siberia’s hardest-hit regions this year has been Yakutia – Russia’s largest and coldest region that sits atop permafrost – which has had record high temperatures and drought. On Saturday, the US space agency Nasa said its satellite images showed wildfire smoke travelling “more than 3,000km (1,800 miles) from Yakutia to reach the north pole”, calling it “a first in recorded history”. It added that on 6 August most of Russia was covered in smoke. According to Russia’s forestry agency, this year’s fires have ravaged more than 14m hectares, making it the second-worst fire season since the turn of the century.

Lockdowns In Manila (Guardian) The more aggressive Delta variant of COVID-19 has led to record case numbers in countries across Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam have reported record cases in recent weeks. The variant was detected in the Philippines in mid-July and has spread to 13 of 17 regions. On Friday, the national capital region of Manila, with a population of almost 14 million, was placed under strict lockdown until August 20 in an attempt to slow the spread. Only authorized people, including those buying food, traveling for medical reasons, or frontline workers are allowed to go outside. The day before the lockdown went into effect, thousands rushed to vaccination centers and waited for hours hoping to get a shot. Rumors had spread that unvaccinated people wouldn’t be allowed to claim government aid or go outside.

Taliban Capture Sixth Provincial Capital (Foreign Policy) The Taliban’s advance across Afghanistan continued on Monday with the capture of Aibak, the capital of Samangan province, marking the sixth provincial capital to fall to the group in less than a week. Monday’s seizure was hastened by the defection of Asif Azimi—a prominent warlord with ties to the now defunct Northern Alliance—a worrying sign of shifting allegiances due to a rapidly changing situation on the ground. As the fighting drags on, pressure is building on President Ashraf Ghani to get a handle on the situation or get out of the way. Reports in Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal paint a picture of an isolated leader whose best hope lies in rallying support from anti-Taliban groups ahead of an all-out civil war.

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Following things happened in Biden's term:

Loss of abortion rights,

Discarding of COVID measures,

The most strict border law ever passed,

Cop city being built,

Historical high rates of police brutality,

The rejection of peace process between Ukraine and Russia, therefore the escalation of war,

Trans people being outlawed in half of the country,

Indigenous land destruction due to extraction industry,

Massive oil subsidies,

Several censorship and surveillance laws being passed,

Several atrocities committed and supported in Latin America by coups and other violent measures,

Eugenicist measures against disabled people continuing as ever,

No increase to minimum wage while there's a historical spike in rents,

Condoning of worker abuse,

Breaking of strikes,

Child labour laws that makes it possible to have children work being passed everywhere,

Ongoing prison slavery,

And Palestinian genocide entailing a genocidal war against Yemen.

I didn't even count other foreign policy failures they are pushing in several parts of the world due to imperialist agenda.

If someone is incapable of stopping all of these fascist actions, he shouldn't be eligible as a better alternative. If someone is capable of stopping at least some of them but doesn't, he's no better than Trump.

And if someone is incapable of seeing this they are not eligible to give people advice on how to vote. If they see it but they don't seek alternative actions instead of voting for the blue fascist, they are a bullying hypocrite that deserves fascism upon them for they are perfectly cool with fascism when the consequences are inflicted upon other groups of people.

Would you rather have a president that enables a genocide? Or would you rather have a president that vilifies immigrants, promotes facism, dismantles the rights of women and minorities, emboldens white nationalists, worsens the wage gap, defunds vital services, AND enables a genocide?

It's an unfair and unreasonable question to ask. I know. Unfortunately those are our choices for president. It sucks, but it's a 2 party system. And until any change is made where a 3rd party vote is no longer equivalent to not voting at all, it's better to just vote blue for the presidential election. Not because Democrats are the "lesser evil", but because NOT having a Republican president will prevent further suffering of Americans and will lessen the risks of minorities' rights being threatened and revoked.

The president chooses the members of the supreme court who hold lifelong positions and whose legal decisions have decades-long ramifications. Trump picked 3 of the 11 current members who currently hold a Republican majority. It was that supreme court that overturned Roe V Wade and that decision is harming thousands of people today in multiple states.

Biden already nominated one SCOTUS, and in his next term he could appoint 1-2 more Democratic members who would work to protect rather than erode American rights.

The Trump administration was lethal for thousands of Americans for a multitude of reasons, including his failure to properly respond to and then proceeded to politicize the COVID-19 pandemic.

As awful as it sounds, as hard as it is to believe in the moment, ESPECIALLY with the atrocities Biden is perpetuating in Palestine right now, don't believe for a moment that this genocide would be even slightly less cruel under Trump. The difference is Trump's cruelties would extend to Americans as well— especially immigrants.

The point I'm making is the only ethical choice for this election is to vote for Biden, but at the same time that vote is not the same as condoning his actions. Don't let voting be the end all for political action, and I hope you understand why this choice is necessary in an unfair voting system. Please participate in your local elections, Call your representatives. Continue demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end of Israel's occupation over Palestine. And please keep helping Palestinians.

I think it's quite wild to say people domestically haven't been dying under Biden. Hundreds of thousands disabled people have died during the Biden presidency due to covid. I myself only got covid because people around my family stopped masking. Even some of my family members stopped masking because of the CDC thing. There have been countless other things that I'm too tired to list as well that directly contributed to the death of people.

I'm sorry I don't know why you sent this I'm not going to change my mind. I'm not voting for the man that killed people I know and lied to our faces about it.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

a post about the Democratic primary, which I did not enjoy writing

I haven’t talked about the Democratic primary here for a couple of reasons. I think that wrapping our minds about what Trump is doing in power – and what he and his backers did to get him that power – is a lot more important than any campaign tactic his eventual Democratic opponent can use, or even who the Democratic candidate is. I don’t even know who I’ll be voting for myself.

What I do know is that above all other issues, I’ll be voting on democratic values. That includes more conventional voting rights and election integrity issues that we’re used to discussing in American politics. It’s also about pounding the brakes on democratic backsliding at home, and giving institutional and moral support to people around the world who want the same. If we make enough progress on this issue, we can make enormous strides on other progressive priorities. If we don’t turn back this authoritarian tide, we will lose on everything else.  

And on my #1 issue, I’ve developed serious concerns about Senator Bernie Sanders.

This is a long post because it’s an attempt to articulate an uncomfortable pattern which requires a lot of context, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it, so let me assure you of a few things it’s not:

Concerns about Sanders seem to be collapsed into “is he as extreme and irrational a leftist as Trump is a right-winger” or “is he too kooky to win an election.” I’m not doing either of those. There is an argument out there that Sanders is too far to the left on policy. I’m … really not the person to do that argument justice. There’s an argument that, whether or not you like his policies, he would have a harder time winning a national election in a year that Democrats cannot afford any more disadvantages. I think this election really is going to be won or lost by the voters choosing to accept or reject Trumpistani autocracy, but it’s entirely responsible to consider that kind of thing. I have a substantive concern about Bernie Sanders, not because I oppose progressives but because I am a progressive, and I don’t pretend to have any insight into how it might affect his chances of winning a general election.

I don’t care a whole lot about what Senator Sanders feels in his heart or whatever. I tend to think this is more about being misguided than malicious, but that’s not make or break for the pattern I’m trying to describe.

I’m not trying to endorse someone else by process of elimination; like I said, I haven’t decided yet who I’m voting for myself.

I’m old enough to remember four years ago when only a few nerds had ever heard of superdelegates. Superdelegates, or unpledged delegates, are party activists and officials who get to vote at the convention along with the pledged delegates who are assigned in the state primary contests. They’re the backup plan put in place after the clusterfuck of 1968. We also got better at avoiding clusterfucks after 1968, so they weren’t an issue. Until 2016, when Sanders decided they were an issue for him because he was going to lose the old-fashioned way, and “superdelegates” were a convenient boogeyman he could use to turn progressives against the Democratic party. Then his campaign successfully talked itself into believing that this conspiracy theory about superdelegates going against the voters, so they started arguing that the superdelegates should take the nomination away from the winner and give it to him. This was always a pipe dream, but it did inspire Sanders supporters to dox a bunch of counterrevolutionary elected officials and progressive activists. Remember, he’s a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, so he’s talking all this shit as a superdelegate.

The sore losering only helped Donald Trump and his Russian backers, but it was delegitimizing enough that the Democratic National Committee felt pressured to revamp the presidential nomination process. Thus, a “unity” committee was formed to placate the feelings of those who were implacably infuriated that the person with the most votes had won the nomination. (The Republicans, whose party processes had allowed an unqualified, unstable, ideologically unreliable foreign asset to take over, made no such alterations.) The big concession on superdelegates is that they don’t vote on the first ballot. If someone wins a majority, then they win the nomination. If nobody gets a majority, then there’s a second vote where the pledged delegates are released and the superdelegates also get a say.

Presumably because pro-Sanders activists were so instrumental in drafting the new rules, they were all set to start gaming those rules before voting began. In early January, when it was assumed that former Vice President Biden would win more delegates than anyone else but come up short of a majority, groups supporting Sanders floated the idea that Warren’s delegates should be ready to join Sanders, or vice versa. The reasoning was that a vote for Warren or Sanders should be considered a vote for what they considered the relatively progressive wing of the Democratic party, and therefore pooling the two candidate’s votes together would represent the will of the electorate. Six weeks later, with Sanders having eked out a plurality in a few early states – more delegates than anyone else, but nowhere near a majority, and losing the popular vote – he’s out here warning that it would be very, very bad for everybody if the person who wins the plurality isn’t guaranteed to win the nomination. If 66% of voters split between two “establishment” candidates, well, that 34% who voted for the “anti-establishment” Sanders better get their way, or the party gets it!1

Sanders representatives also insisted states be allowed to keep holding undemocratic caucuses – until he was outplayed in the Iowa delegate count, at which point they realized the establishment $hills had been right about voter suppression being bad.

Look, real talk, small-d democracy is about trying to do what the voters want. If Sanders stays exactly where he is in the polls – winning a plurality of delegates with only about 1/3 of the voters – he will be getting a lot less support than he did in 2016. When he lost by a whopping 12-point margin, despite being propped up by the Kremlin, the Koch brothers, and thousands of years of patriarchy. If these trends hold (and they might not!) Democratic voters, who are the voters most likely to support his policies, do not want him. So – and I’m editorializing a little bit in this final assessment – spare me.

America is a big country and the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. There are going to be good arguments for and against a lot of different ways to pick a presidential nominee, but a key part of doing it as fairly as possible is to choose the rules beforehand and then stick to them. Campaigns making the best case for their candidate isn’t a bad thing, and a politician being able to change their mind is a good thing. But Sanders whips his supporters up with sweeping claims about the legitimacy of the process – until the opposite claim looks like it might be advantageous to him, at which point his campaign completely reverses itself on whether or not the rules of the election are fair. This is not acceptable. We cannot be playing this game when we are trying to defend the legitimacy of democracy itself against the most powerful person in the world.

On its own, I’d find that frustrating. But once a frustration starts overlapping with a genuine national security issue, it stops being a frustration and starts being a serious concern.

Senator Sanders was informed a month before the Nevada caucuses that the Russian government was supporting his campaign. Again. We still don’t know what kind of support they were giving him, though it’s probably more or less what they were doing in 2016 – pushing propaganda and making it harder for people to have productive discussions about the primary. He didn’t say anything about it, except to obliquely reference Russian trolls when he was challenged on the debate stage about some of his supporters being abusive online. (We’ll come back to that one.)

When this story broke, as it clearly would, Sanders reacted by attacking the newspaper. He claimed that the briefing his campaign received was classified, which a) it is unlikely to have been properly classified, which he would’ve known if he’d tried to work out a way to go public and b) didn’t stop him from using some of that information to his advantage during a debate. His campaign went around crowing about these great victories where he squeaked out pluralities knowing that those victories were tainted by a foreign government helping him and/or sabotaging his competitors. (Meanwhile, these competitors were not even told that they were at risk.)

He responded similarly to the Russian support he received in 2016. He failed to educate his supporters about the seriousness of the attack as it was happening. When asked later, he begrudgingly admitted to having known about it, falsely claimed to have tried to alert the Clinton campaign, and attempted to deflect criticism by literally blaming the victim. Admitting that he lost despite benefiting from the criminal sabotage of his opponent, rather than because he was the victim of some nefarious party establishment conspiracy, would have damaged the story he tells voters and been a blow to his ego.

Because he chose to deflect rather than face the issue, he has never dealt with the ways that the ways that the Russian attack probably did poison his movement. Nobody else has really wanted to deal with it either, so I’ll stipulate that this is my opinion, but I think it makes sense.

There is a qualitative difference between what Sanders tries to communicate to people and what his supporters do in response. I do not believe that Sanders wanted his supporters to vote for Trump, stay home, or discourage others from voting in 2016. I do not believe he wanted progressive organizers to be inundated with death threats. I do not think he wants people like anti-racist filmmaker Ava DuVernay or Parkland parent Fred Guttenberg to be swarmed with abuse online. I sincerely believe that if you hooked Sanders up to a lie detector, he would say that’s bad stuff and he doesn’t want any of it, and I am not inclined to be overly generous to Senator Sanders.

And yet it keeps happening, and it can’t just be blamed on Russian bots. Real people physically showed up in Philadelphia to heckle speakers at the convention in 2016. Abusive phone calls to perceived establishment enemies of Sanders really do slow down after he explicitly says he doesn’t want people to do that – which means that he dissuaded real people, who started down that ugly path because they thought it was what he wanted. There is an observable mismatch between what is being said and what is being heard. Something is jamming the signal.

Jamming the signal, incidentally, requires exactly the kind of stuff that troll farms do best. Post “edgy” guillotine memes and see who bites. Flood brutal criticism of mainstream Democrats with applause. When ostensible leftists use their independent platforms to spread disinformation or even just nastiness, toss a few coins in their Patreon – they don’t have to know they’re working for you, they just have to learn that pushing the envelope is profitable. Shout down even mild criticism by spamming it with garbage, so that skeptics withdraw or become defensive, while supporters internalize the idea that abuse is an acceptable response to dissent. Work hard enough to desensitize a campaign to that kind of behavior, and you might even get it to put a bunch of spiteful trolls in charge.

This is a theory, but I think it is the most likely theory. I certainly think it’s more persuasive than the alternatives, which are “those intelligence and disinformation professionals have spent the last few years shouting into the void and having no discernible effects on target populations, and also, all these people who say they’ve been hit with the exact type of toxicity that disinformation effort seems designed to provoke are actually all hallucinating and/or lying because the unbelievers of The Establishment(TM) are all conspiring to take Bernie down” and “this Russia thing is a fake news Democrat deep state witch hunt.”

I’m not saying I think Bernie Sanders is a Russian asset. I’m saying that the Russians seem to think he’s an asset to them.

The Sanders campaign has a complicated problem on its hands, and I don’t know what they should do about it. But it isn’t enough for Sanders to say “I don’t care who Putin is supporting.” It is his job as a United States senator who swore an oath to protect and defend the constitution to care about who Putin is supporting. It is his job as a presidential candidate to care enough to ask why Putin is supporting him. Even if he doesn’t care morally, he has to care politically, because plenty of voters care, and if he can’t give us an explanation we’re going to start trying to figure it out for ourselves.

Which makes it time to stop ducking the ugly question: why is Senator Sanders useful to people who are against everything he stands for?

Maybe, as the press and the Bloomberg campaign seem to think, whoever’s designing this strategy thinks Sanders is the most likely to lose to Trump, so of course they prefer him over the stronger competition. I hope they’re right. It would certainly be comforting to think that Trump’s Russian backers think we’re going to have a free and fair election based on how voters feel about the nominees, because it would mean they’re not relying on their ability to hack state boards of elections. And it would be comforting because the other possibilities get pretty depressing. Unfortunately, the Kremlin whisperers putting out this comforting explanation were also quite certain that the Russian government was just trying to cause chaos and didn’t have a preferred candidate in 2016 (they did), the Russian government only supported Trump because they hated Hillary Clinton (she’s not running and they’re still at it), that the propaganda campaign couldn’t have had an impact (it did), that the Russian government would never have attacked actual voting infrastructure because norms or whatever (lol) …. the mind-readers turn out to be big on the wishful thinking, is what I’m saying here.

Maybe it’s just a narrow convergence of policy. Sanders was one of only a small handful of legislators who voted against the Magnitsky sanctions that the Russian government is desperate to overturn. He failed to support further sanctions on Russia for the 2016 election interference – again, interference which helped his campaign. He’s called for neutralizing NATO against Russian aggression by letting Russia join. From the Russian government’s perspective, that’s as good as destroying it like Trump has been trying to help them do. Maybe those things are enough. I think those are bad positions and he should have to explain them. But he seems less committed to those things than Trump, who’s spent three years failing to deliver.

If four years of the Trump show have taught us anything, it’s that you can’t just write off the tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff; you have to acknowledge it and explain why it’s unlikely. So yes, it is theoretically possible that Russian intelligence believes they have some leverage over Sanders, either to manipulate him or to kneecap him at a moment they think is most advantageous to Trump. That doesn’t mean Senator Sanders has done anything wrong. It just means that there’s a bit of footage from when he visited the Soviet Union back in the day, and they might think they can use it to make a damaging deep fake. Personally, I think that’s pretty unlikely to be the motive here, because the cost-benefit analysis seems pretty thin, but we’re just trying to take a clear-eyed inventory about what’s possible.

A few hours after the Post broke the news about the Russian efforts to help him, his official Twitter account posted this:

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

If you’ve been paying a bit of attention to Sanders you’re probably not too startled by that comment, which is exactly the problem. In a few short words, it boosts some of the most insidious narratives that pro-Trump propagandists have also been pushing over the past few years. It’s framed as a belligerent defiance of “party establishments” - AKA, those same American institutions that we know our adversaries want to destroy. It sets up a nihilistic false equivalence between the Democratic and Republican parties. In this little story, it’s Sanders up against shadowy forces and their conspiracy against him – he’s the real victim here, but also the center of the universe. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

This tweet may or may not have been in direct response to the Washington Post’s breaking the story about Russian intelligence helping his campaign again, but the timing sure looks like a great American newspaper was being lumped in with the big, spooky “establishment” trying to “stop” Sanders. (A week and a half later, he’s still sore at the Post about something.) That, too, would fit a disturbing pattern of Sanders world’s relationship with critical press, or even with criticism in general. While all this was going on, there was a Daily Beast story about the kind of alarming behavior that seems to keep happening in pro-Sanders circles. A low-level staffer was running a gross Twitter feed that reflected badly on the campaign. The campaign responded to the story by taking out the trash, but supporters responded to the story by swarming the reporter and sharing pictures of his home address. This wasn’t surprising. If you dip into Democratic-leaning podcasts or cable news shows, it’s really common to hear people preface any criticism of Sanders with a semi-jokey “don’t yell at me on Twitter, guys!” or respond to someone else’s criticism with a rueful “RIP your menchies [Twitter inbox].” Journalists and political commentators know to expect disproportionate retribution when they criticize the Dear Leader. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

Maybe you’re the kind of person who likes to give the benefit of the doubt. Couldn’t all that be  #ActuallyAboutEthicsInJournalism? I suppose a good test would be: what’s the response to negative feedback from a group of people, not just an individual who can be intimidated? And the answer is: conspiracy! Paid Protesters! Fake news, folks! That is not progressive, it is not healthy for our politics, and it’s exactly the kind of behavior that autocratic regimes around the world are always trying to normalize. Democrats, and all other small-d democrats, cannot start rewarding it.

That’s the context for this: Sanders has a long track record of defending authoritarian governments which call themselves socialist, communist, or otherwise leftist. Of course, authoritarian governments are more like gangster kleptocracies than “socialism” as Sanders sees it, but he just keeps rejecting opportunities to walk it back.

Too many progressive commentators with platforms have shrugged this off as some kooky Cold War thing that the media is blowing out of proportion, but it’s not just uptight Wall Street Journal opinion writers pushing back. A lot of Americans are Americans because their families ran for their lives from exactly these regimes. Five years of Latin American immigrants being Donald Trump’s favorite target, now we’re going to make people who fled Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela eat this shit sandwich? Mayor Pete Buttigieg was the first openly gay person running for the US presidency; was he supposed to add a bit in his stump speech about whether a dubious “literacy program” would help him in a concentration camp? The world is a complicated place where American leaders have to make hard decisions and don’t always get to work with nice people. That’s no excuse to be casual about rubbing salt in raw wounds.

I haven’t spent the past three years angry that Donald Trump fluffs up dictators because I’m looking for excuses to hate Donald Trump. Really, I’m good there. I’m angry about it because democracies are good and dictatorships are bad. When the American president is clear on that point, it really can make the lift just a little bit lighter for activists and freedom fighters and oppressed people doing the hard work of citizenship all over the world; when the American president fails to speak that truth, their work gets a little bit harder. I think their work is hard enough already.

You know that cliché about “Mussolini made the trains run on time”? It’s fascist propaganda. “Sure he locked up dissidents and inspired Hitler, but Infrastructure Week was a real success!” And he fucking didn’t even, because of course he didn’t, he was busy murdering everyone who could burst his narcissistic bubble. The Italian fascist regime polished up a few tourist-friendly routes and boasted to privileged visitors about how the trains were running on time. Then those visitors would go home with an innocuous sound bite to sanitize a brutal regime. Look, Prince Mohammad is letting women drive [and imprisoning the activists who made that a winning issue for him]! Sure, Putin is a heavy-handed old KGB guy, but he’s cracking down on corruption [as an excuse to imprison critics]. I’m not defending Castro, but hey, literacy program. Look, I’ve been to the Soviet Union, the bread lines didn’t look too bad on my guided tour!

Maybe the big money donors behind this Russian intelligence super PAC think Sanders will be susceptible to manipulation by their authoritarian regime because he keeps saying that he’s susceptible to manipulation by authoritarian regimes.

When someone seeking the United States presidency says that? Believe them.

I’m not saying Sanders is an aspiring dictator like Trump. I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s not my concern. A lot of politics is made up of civic habits. If we validate these tactics, we make bad habits that soften us up for a smart, focused Trump to come along in four or eight years. We can’t afford leadership that doesn’t understand, on a gut level, why those bad habits are dangerous.2

I’m not saying he’s the only flawed candidate on this issue, but he troubles me more than any candidate with even a slim path to the nomination. Representative Tulsi Gabbard is an exponentially more dangerous character – or at least she would be, if she somehow pulled ahead of “none of the above.” I have serious issues with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg; I’m less concerned about those issues because people can criticize Bloomberg without anyone mocking them for having been raped.

Because I think democracy is the most important issue on the ballot, I’m not going to mislead you with false equivalence. Sanders would not be as bad on Trump on these issues. He would not be stacking the courts with right-wing judges who are overtly hostile to voting rights, he doesn’t stand to rake in cash by cozying up to autocratic regimes, and an administration which pays lip service to democratic values is preferable to an administration which is overtly hostile to them. A vote to reduce harm can be cast with a clear conscience. It’s still the primary, though, so we have the chance to cast a general election vote for real improvement rather than damage control.

If I haven’t convinced you of anything, fair enough. If I have convinced you that this pattern is serious enough to consider as you’re voting in this primary … this isn’t one of those posts where I try to wrap up with a concrete suggestion about something you can do, for obvious reasons. I have a suggestion about voting tactically, though. Primary delegates are awarded proportionately to every candidate who makes it over what’s called a viability threshold. Basically, a candidate who gets 15% of the vote wins something like 15% of the state’s delegates, while a candidate who gets 14% gets zero. A vote for someone with 3% support is a vote for whoever wins the state, whether you like that person or not. Check FiveThirtyEight to see which candidates are polling above 15% (preferably above 20% to get outside the margin of error) and then choose your favorite of those candidates.

1A good argument for this particular system is that it gives candidates two chances to prove that they can build a coalition, because that is something Democratic presidents need to do. You can win an outright majority going into the convention, which requires satisfying a lot of diverse groups of people. If nobody can do that, then the convention gives you another shot to show you can win people over. If you have a plurality then you have a head start. If you can’t get from a plurality to a majority, you probably shouldn’t be nominated, because you would be a shitty president.

2The topic of this post is democracy, not politics, so I don’t want to go too far into it, but I do want to shoot down the bullshit counterargument: “oh, blah blah, knife to a gun fight, Democrats are wimpy little girly-men who always play by the rules, Republicans are big strong daddies who understand power, blah blah.” Guys? Guys. You’re not going to out-shitpost the Republicans; they have unlimited money flowing into sophisticated propaganda machines. You’re not going to out-bully the fascists as a means to an end; bullying is the end for them and they have a lot more practice at it than we do. You don’t get into a pissing match with a drunk. IDGAF about sinking to their level, it’s about refusing to fight on their turf. We’re not going to win their game on their terms.

[skypalacearchitect]

On Monday, a pipe bomb, most likely hand-delivered, was discovered in the mailbox of philanthropist George Soros's New York suburban home. The culprit was unknown, but it was just the start. Yesterday, as CNN anchors were reporting live on explosive devices addressed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, a fire alarm went off in the background. The anchors hurried off the air as the CNN offices in New York City were evacuated due to a suspicious package.

Soon reports came that more suspicious packages were also sent to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), former FBI director John Brennan, and former attorney general Eric Holder. The return address on the package to Holder, as it was for others, was for former DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fl.). And because the delivery address on the Holder package was incorrect, it was sent to Wasserman Schultz's Florida office, prompting an evacuation. Police later intercepted similar packages addressed to Former Vice President Joe Biden and outspoken Trump critic Robert De Niro; the San Diego building housing Sen. Kamala Harris's (D-Calif.) headquarters was also evacuated because of suspicious packages. Altogether, there were three evacuations and 11 bomb scares in the span of a couple days. We don't yet know who sent the explosive devices or what his or her motivations were, but we do know who the intended victims are and their connection to one another is no mystery.

The targets—predominantly the former and current Democratic leadership—were the very same ones at which Trump has aimed his vitriol since his political debut in 2008: Obama, the subject of the racist birther conspiracy theory, and Soros, the subject of an anti-Semitic one; Waters denigrated as having "extraordinarily low IQ"; "loudmouth partisan hack" Brennan; "enemy of the people" CNN; and Wasserman Schultz, whom he accused of "corruption." Even in light of botched explosives, there was no sign that Trump supporters would abate in their parroting of this invective bombast. On the very same day an explosive device was sent to Clinton, the MAGA mob at a Mosinee, Wisconsin rally howled "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!" Nevermind that the original offense—Clinton's potentially exposing sensitive information via e-mail—was the one Trump was guilty of, as reported that day in The New York Times, by making calls on smartphones, despite aides warning that they were not secure from Chinese spying.

As soon as reports on the bombs came out, the white knights of false equivalency galloped to the scene, brandishing swords of both-siderism. Former Vice President Joe Biden, offered vague and meaningless pablum: "This country has to come together. This division, this hatred, this ugliness has to end." Chuck Schumer took a step further, implicating liberals: "Make no mistake: Despicable acts of violence and harassment are being carried out by radicals across the political spectrum—not just by one side." Meghan McCain equated the explosive devices with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell getting heckled at restaurants. The National Review's David French asked if "there was any momentum for toning things down,"citing this week's bomb scares, as well a recent ricin threat to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). "We are still blessed with relative political peace. But we shouldn't fool ourselves. That can change," French later wrote. "The late Sixties and early Seventies saw a surge of political violence on a scale that would shock the conscience of Americans today."

Herein was the issue: flattening political discourse to nothingness, as if the civil rights activists struggling for voting rights and white supremacists agitating to suppress them were on equal sides of the same coin. In the '60s and '70s, as today, it was fringe activists, like the Weather Underground, who engaged in political violence on the left, while on the right, the political violence, including police beatings and mob murders of non-violent civil rights activists, was openly sanctioned by establishment political figures. Sure, a former Bernie Sanders volunteer, as Press Secretary Sarah Sanders cited in defense of Trump, shot up a GOP baseball game, but Bernie, unlike Trump, doesn't offer incitements of violence as a regular feature of his speeches. There are, of course, loonies and extremists of all political stripes, but only the leaders of one political party have consistently encouraged extrajudicial violence, viciously attacked the free press, and advocated for the imprisonment of political opponents: the GOP.

Trump has led the way, explicitly promoting violence and assailing the press. He has repeatedly struck an offensive on facts and reporting, sliming the media as "fake news," "dishonest," and "a real problem in this country," attacking CNN, in particular, as the "enemy of the people." At his rallies, journalists have become a punching bag, with hecklers screaming insults and obscenities in their faces. There is simply nothing bearing any resemblance to this attack on the First Amendment, nevermind an equivalence, coming from the Democratic leadership. This morning, unsurprisingly reversing on his brief call for unity, Trump tweeted out a victim-blaming and threatening assessment of the attempted bombings: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!"

For many years now, Trump has condoned extrajudicial violence in no uncertain terms. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for murderous dictators, particularly those who dispose of adversarial journalists. Last week, at a Montana rally, he praised Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), who assaulted a reporter last spring, as "my kind of guy" specifically because he had "body-slammed a reporter." Gianforte was never censured by his Republican colleagues for physically attacking a journalist. By contrast, Democratic leaders, like Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and former Obama advisor David Axelrod have gone out of their way to scold liberal protest—the nonviolent exercise of free speech—at restaurants.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump leaned heavily on violent fantasy, urging supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to "knock the crap out of" protestors, promising to pay their legal fees; telling a Las Vegas crowd "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you" of another protestor; and directing security at a winter Vermont rally to confiscate protestors' coats before kicking them out. The crowd ate it up. Trump security choked a Time photographer in Virginia rally. And in North Carolina, a Trump supporter punched a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally, and another protester was beaten by a mob in Alabama. Of the latter attack, Trump complained on Fox News that the protester "was so obnoxious and so loud" that "maybe he should have been roughed up."

While Trump has unequivocally called for actual violence, his administration has lashed out at non-violent political protest, like a 26-seat farm-to-table restaurant refusing service to Press Secretary Sanders, denouncing, along with the pearl-clutching political class, so-called "leftist mobs" for exercising political speech. After Rep. Waters encouraged progressives to confront "anybody from that Cabinet" in public to "push back" on the policy of family separation at the border, Trump twisted it into an us-versus-them attack, issuing a warning: "she has just called for harm to supporters…of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max." Of Kavanaugh's critics, he said "these people are evil." While the president cares little for policy, wavering back and forth on issues, one of the few consistencies in his political ideology is that it is premised on the debasement and dehumanization of the other.

Read more

[horizonsstandstill]

Sorry to bust these liberals little world but even Nixon era had better leftist policies and inflation control than Biden era. The guy didn't increase wages as promised while letting corporates make rampant increase in prices for no reason. Very leftist. Also very leftist of him to subsidise big oil when ten percent of Americans are living on food stamps. So very leftist of him to pass immigration law too. Quite leftist of him to let the rents spike where landlords are downright taking away everything working class have. Extremely leftist of him to prioritise economy over people dying from COVID 19. Totally leftist of him to have the healthcare system crumbling and inaccessible to poor.

By the way Biden is very right in political science wise. And that immigration law is very much far right. Living in denial land while bragging about moral superiority must be fun.

The biggest labor union in Washington state endorsed voting “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic presidential primary next month, citing concerns about President Joe Biden’s political strength and his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

this is a good start, but unfortunately:

“Currently, many voters, and UFCW 3000 executive board, feel that the best path to have the best nominee, and to defeat Trump, is to vote ‘uncommitted,’” the union said in the statement. “The hope is that this will strengthen the Democratic party’s ultimate nominee to defeat Trump in the General Election in November.” “We need a nominee who can run and beat Trump to protect workers across this country and around the world,” the statement continued. The union made it clear that it will support Democrats in the fall, vowing it will be “sending staff, members, and resources to any swing state across the nation to support the Democratic nominee to win and defeat Trump.”

not far enough. the correct move would be to cut off support for the democratic party entirely, and, indeed, for the labor movement as a whole to stop getting roped into electoral political theater at all, and to work on building political power outside the electoral system. neither republican nor democrat politicians care about working class people, nor do they care about the people of palestine, and if we want to build worker power and stop genocide, we're going to have to think outside the ballot box.

[dailynewswebsite]

Five reasons Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election will not lead to civil war

Professional-Trump supporters, together with Infowars host Alex Jones, maintain a 'Cease The Steal' protest Wednesday in Atlanta as Georgia's recount nears the tip. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Photos

Some Individuals worry that the deep political divisions within the nation and President Donald Trump’s dedication to problem the outcomes of the election will trigger civil struggle.

Those that object to Trump’s ways argue that he behaves like an autocrat. Delegitimizing sources of knowledge that resist his narrative, demonizing political opponents, supporting political violence and utilizing courts as political instruments are all hallmarks of dictators.

A lot because the South rejected President Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election with armed rebel, will President Trump’s many supporters try and violently overthrow a Biden-led authorities?

I’m a political scientist who research public opinion and American politics. I consider the USA won’t erupt in open rebel. Listed here are 5 causes.

A Georgia state trooper separates Biden supporters from Trump supporters at a ‘Cease the Steal’ rally Wednesday exterior the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Photos

1. The American political system stays secure, if harassed.

Because the lawfully elected president of the USA, President Trump should observe sure guidelines and legal guidelines. This rule of legislation has continued even whereas he challenges the election. The courts are shortly dispatching judicial challenges as meritless and recounts are continuing legally and usually. Regardless of the current invitation of Michigan GOP legislators to the White Home, state legislatures haven’t signaled any need to upend the electoral course of. Whereas outcomes could frustrate the president, the authorized course of is being honored.

In distinction, earlier than the Civil Battle, interpretation of the Structure grew to become contentious, states argued that the Union was useless and politicians fought in open fight within the Senate. Army officers resigned their commissions to help revolution. The present American political system has averted such systematic battle.

In fact, governments might be shaken by the desire of their residents. Whereas President Trump’s supporters are vocal, they’re organized round a cult of persona reasonably than any organizational construction. This limits their capacity to overthrow programs of energy. In contrast with organizations that resisted the Vietnam Battle or Revolutionary Battle, they lack self-discipline and hierarchy. In addition they lack provides and materials to fight entrenched resistance, and may hardly be seen as harmful to army and federal legislation enforcement, which as of Jan. 20 will report back to Joe Biden.

2. Trump’s most vocal supporters get pleasure from little help from the highly effective.

The South rebelled with the complete help of politicians, the plantation class and the small landholders. Almost everybody embraced rebel.

Presently, nonetheless, Wall Avenue doesn’t embrace Trumpism and has nothing to achieve from rebel. Whereas many Fox Information commentators have lined allegations of voter fraud – claims which have usually been debunked – the channel is hardly calling for violent revolution. President Trump truly finds them too average.

Many distinguished Republicans are in search of to fulfill Trump supporters whereas additionally quietly backing a transition of energy. Company America has not signaled any curiosity in coming into the fray. Highly effective communications platforms are resisting streams of misinformation.

The highly effective don’t help revolution.

Textual content on this Civil Battle-era envelope is from Jefferson Davis: ‘Slave states, as soon as extra let me repeat, that the one method of preserving our slave property, or what we prize greater than life, our Liberty, is by a union with one another.’ G. W. Falen/The New York Historic Society/Getty Photos

3. The geography of pro-Trump help doesn’t favor rebel.

In 1861, though the border states have been closely divided, the Confederacy was unified in rebel. Anti-war sentiment within the North was usually sporadic and principally anti-draft reasonably than pro-Southern.

In brief, the North and South have been comparatively unified, fairly adversarial, and ideologically polarized. Within the South, this made arming and making ready for revolt simple. It additionally made the rebel troublesome to quell.

The Structure of the Accomplice States of America earlier than the U.S. Civil Battle, circa March 1861. Photograph by Kean Assortment/Archive Pictures/Getty Photos

The geography of these strenuously contesting the election is much much less uniform. Blue metropolitan areas dot the map all through the nation. Demonstrators don’t characterize the views of all Republicans. And even in a deep-red state like North Dakota, virtually 32% of voting residents selected Biden. This geographical diffusion of ideology makes organized rebel extraordinarily troublesome.

4. The army is loyal to the workplace, not the person.

When governments are overthrown, not less than some parts of the army should be supportive. Within the U.S. Civil Battle, each commanders and troopers joined the rebel.

This appears implausible within the modern United States. Trump’s mismanagement and disrespect towards enlisted troopers and the generals have been notable, and he retains firing extremely popular commanders and changing them with political surrogates. Privately, many generals are looking forward to his presidency to finish, and most are unlikely to execute any illegal orders. Some have even criticized his politicization of the army.

Actually, the president can dismiss officers and appointees he believes are personally disloyal to him, reminiscent of former Secretary of Protection Mike Esper and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company Director Christopher Krebs. But the army at massive has not demonstrated unwavering loyalty to Trump, and seems to stay loyal to the workplace and rule of legislation.

In extending elevated safety to Joe Biden, the Secret Service has demonstrated this too.

Among the many army figures who’ve rebuked President Trump is retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, proper, who resigned as Trump’s protection secretary. Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photos

5. Current civil dysfunction is, comparatively talking, tame.

Lastly, the social upheaval of the current day must be positioned in historic perspective. In contrast with the 1860s, and even the 1960s, civil dysfunction is tame at greatest.

Protests have been principally orderly. Whereas there was some violence at current demonstrations in Washington and leftist-led disturbances on the West Coast, the violence is much much less dramatic or widespread than in earlier durations. Think about, for example, violence on the 1968 Democratic Conference, the 1970 shootings at Kent State, or John Brown’s bloody raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. If issues have been going to crumble, metropolis halls and statehouses could be occupied, Nationwide Guardsmen would throw down their weapons and be part of a revolution and violence would escalate past management. We merely will not be there.

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No doubt, the president’s makes an attempt to undermine religion within the integrity of the election are harmful to democracy. Authorized processes to make sure that each authorized vote is counted will proceed. And, surely, Trump and his surrogates will proceed to concentrate on small particulars, broad generalizations and debunked theories to forged widespread doubt on the legitimacy of a potential President Biden. They may attempt to delay vote certification, nullify state outcomes and push the election to the Home, the place the president would win.

That is their proper in a democracy. But, for the second, the system seems poised to carry collectively. The months forward will probably be turbulent, however civil struggle is unlikely.

Alexander Cohen doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/five-reasons-trumps-challenge-of-the-2020-election-will-not-lead-to-civil-war/ via https://growthnews.in

[geopolicraticus]

The Grill Pill

To the red pill, the blue pill, the black pill, and the white pill, inter alia, we may now add the grill pill. This was brought to my attention by a video from The Distributist (a right-of-center “trad” Catholic—i.e., the kind of person who probably would be identified as the extreme far right by the legacy media), in “The ‘Grill Pill,’ ‘Franklin’s Corollary,’ and the path from left to right.” The Distributist credits the “grill pill” to Matt Christman’s personal seeking after meaning in the wake of the end of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Christman is one of the founders of Chapo Trap House, the bastion of the dirtbag left and a podcast that has brought him considerable fame and fortune (Influence Watch says that Chapo Trap House was grossing $120,000 per month through Patreon).

I enjoyed The Distributist’s concise and articulate description of Matt Christman’s response to the end of the Bernie Sander’s campaign. The Distributist references Love and Solidarity, Matt Christman’s Best Rant, which is a good example of an apparently saddened and on-the-verge-of-tears Matt Christman speaking confessionally of his ideals, but this particular video does not actually mention the “grill pill.” As I do not have the desire to watch all of Christman’s videos, I’m going to take The Distributist at his word, and assume that he is giving an accurate account of the “grill pill.” The idea of the grill pill is sufficiently interesting that, even if I had been misled, it is still worth commenting on.  

What is the grill pill? It is the simple idea that, disappointed by the political failure of the Bernie Sanders campaign, leftists and others can still find solidarity, community, and fellowship sharing good food among friends—grilling steaks in the backyard like an oblivious Boomer. A sizeable contingent of Bernie Bros invested a sizeable amount of emotion and energy into the Bernie Sanders campaign, only to find themselves shut out—for the second time—by the institutional Democratic party, which rapidly closed ranks behind an establishment candidate that seemed to offer neither hope nor consolation for Sanders supporters. Of course, many Sanders supporters will hold their nose and vote for Biden in the spirit of “Vote Blue No Matter Who,” but some will not. This distasteful state-of-affairs requires some kind of cope, and one possible cope is the grill pill.

I actually met a young Sanders supporter recently and had an interestingly long political conversation with this young man. Being as isolated as I am, I very rarely have an opportunity to talk to young people, so it was an eye-opening experience for me to speak directly to a Sanders supporter, obviously disappointed by what had happened, but hesitant to say so explicitly to me, as I was someone he didn’t know, and he had no idea how I would respond, whether or not I would be sympathetic to him and his political position, and so on. 

As it happened, I was at a cookout with this young man, so it would have been the perfect time to discuss the grill pill, but I had then only recently heard the idea, and I hadn’t yet fully digested it. So we kept to pretty conventional terms of discussing the coming election. My interlocutor was no wild-eyed Antifa supporter hoping for the revolution, but a hard-working young man starting his own business and very much wanting to make a positive contribution to the world. I was impressed by his sincerity and his knowledge; in some ways, he reminded me of my younger self of, say, thirty years ago (except for being much more successful than I ever was). 

This brief encounter with a young Sanders supporter really drove home to me a political point that I have often heard, but always been skeptical of: that political parties should make an active effort to bring young people into the fold. This is usually an appeal for youthful energy (which is a valid observation), but also always comes with the implication that young people have a unique contribution to bring due to their perspective on the world and events. Talking to this young man, I could immediately see that an idealistic, hard-working, sincere, and politically-engaged individual like him is exactly what the institutional Democratic Party needs to transform itself from the inside-out to once again become a viable institution. An energetic, solutions-oriented, idealist does not see barriers to progress as a reason to quit or to complain, but as an opportunity to engage and to find a workable way around the barrier — even when, if not especially when, those barriers are being erected by his political allies. It is the sympathetic critic who looks for achieving the same end by more palatable means.

Talking to this young man, I did not seek to challenge his ideas or ideals; mostly I just wanted to hear his perspective, so I kept talking in order to keep him talking, so that I could the more deeply penetrate into an ideological community with which I have virtually nothing in common. Also, it was a friendly cookout, so no place for antagonism or confrontation. And this is, in a sense, definitive of the grill pill. When people gather for the weekend for good times with friends, there is an unspoken rule that, if you have been invited into this group, you don’t insist on your own political or ideological ideals to the point of souring the occasion. Everyone implicitly agrees to keep things as light as possible, as is consistent with the occasion, and if there is someone present who is an unknown, or even a rival, it is part of the social contract of such events that any disagreements be kept friendly, and impasses be broken by a joke that relieves any tension. I’m sure it doesn’t always go like this on a cookout, but ideally this is the case (in so far as my imperfect understanding of social events extends).

In such a context, one does not seek to score ideological points off others, but only to understand, and exchanges are more-or-less kept to the level of “banter,” perhaps friendly rivalry at best. No doubt, if the group that comes together is thoroughly ideological in orientation, the banter takes on a more openly political character, as everyone present can then engage in the ritualistic condemnation of common enemies, and the ritualistic praise of common ideals (which is what toasts among friends are all about). 

All of this is very conventional, even, one could say, bourgeois, so why should anyone care about seeking a cope among like-minded friends, and perhaps inviting over a few individuals to join with edgy or indefinable political views? The “grill pill,” such as it is, is potentially powerful because it calls into question a fundamental idea of recent political engagement, and that is the idea that “the personal is the political.” This slogan isn’t necessarily as prominent as other political slogans of our time, but it has done an enormous amount of mischief. If folks can take the grill pill and just enjoy a simple meal with friends that isn’t any kind of political statement, they have broken with the idea that the personal is the political. With the grill pill, the personal is just the personal, and nothing more. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and it should be allowed to remain just a cigar.

Insisting that the personal is always also political has encouraged an angry and resentful outlook on the world in which every personal difficulty is to be interpreted as a direct consequence of larger structural forces that grind down helpless individuals like grain being ground to flour in a mill. The common metaphor of contemporary mass society as rendering the individual as a mere cog in an enormous machine that the individual is powerless to change contributes to a perception of pointless suffering. The potent mixture of cultivated anger and learned helplessness is uniquely conducive to a social atmosphere that poisons even the smallest enjoyments in life, sucking out any genuine feeling from events and reducing them to a political calculation.

While the grill pill could be interpreted in a reactionary sense, it could also be interpreted as the rebellion of the individual against a faceless and unfeeling social context that robs the joy from life and prevents us to enjoying even the most trivial enjoyments that life has to offer, which are also the most authentic enjoyments that life has to offer. When we politicize the authenticity of the small and simple events of life, we render ourselves incapable of appreciating what is most human.  

In small groups, mostly composed of individuals whom we know personally, it is possible to experience authentic reciprocity and gratitude for the smallest and simplest things of life, which latter I sometimes refer to as the substance of life, because it is the small things like sharing a meal, enjoying an evening together, and having a good conversation that ultimately constitute the substance from which a life is constructed. In such small groups, we can enjoy doing small things for others, and they can enjoy whatever small favors we do for them. That is how life is supposed to be. In small ways, life can approach the ideal as long as we don’t aim for too much. Basically, just a few people treating each other decently is about all we can hope for.

In this way the grill pill represents the attainable ideal.

[turkiyeecom]

7 winners and 8 losers of the first 2020 DNC presidential debate lineup - Vox.com

The Democratic Party has the lineups for its first 2020 presidential debate ready — two nights, 10 candidates each night — and before anyone takes the stage, we already have a few winners and some losers. The debates are the formal introduction of the 2020 candidates to a national TV audience. It’s the first time they’ll appear together at the same place, answer the same questions, and confront one another about their differences and why their vision for the Democratic Party’s future is the best path to beating Donald Trump. But it’s not like the eventual Democratic nominee is going to be determined by whether Candidate X stood at a podium next to Candidate Y or Candidate Z on a balmy summer night in Miami seven months before anybody starts voting. Don’t take this too seriously. First, the news. The Democratic debates will be spread out over two nights. The first night, Wednesday, June 26, will start at 9 pm ET and the candidates on stage will be: Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Rep. John Delaney, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Tim Ryan, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. The lineup for the following night, June 27, also starting at 9 pm ET, will be: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet, author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. The Democratic National Committee drew the names by lottery, rather than opt for a hierarchical approach based on polling or fundraising as Republicans did with their huge presidential field in 2016. The random outcome gives some candidates reason to be happy; others might find themselves a little annoyed. Here are semi-serious winners and losers. Loser: Elizabeth Warren Warren has had a series of very good moments during 2020 forums and town halls so far. What she really wanted was an opportunity to be on the same stage as Joe Biden.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame Dinner Scott Olson/Getty Images Not only is Biden the dominant frontrunner in the race, but she has some serious policy disagreements with him — notably over the 2005 bankruptcy bill Biden shepherded through Congress, and that Warren vehemently opposed back when she was a bankruptcy law professor (its passage inspired her to get into politics). Now, chance is rerouting her to a debate stage filled with mostly lower-tier candidates including John Delaney, Tim Ryan, and Bill de Blasio — plus fellow Sens. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar. Sure, there will still be plenty of ways for Warren to distinguish herself. But in the end, any top-five 2020 candidate who is not Biden wanted to share a debate stage with Biden — hoping for a big moment to knock him off his pedestal. Warren has been climbing in polls over the past month, and is now solidly in the top three with Biden and Bernie Sanders. The fact that Sanders — Warren’s main competition for progressive voters — will get that chance at the first debate and she won’t, must sting. Sanders will be able to own the populist, left-of-Biden lane without Warren muscling into the territory. Furthermore, she won’t even get a chance to face off against Sanders. It may be inconvenient, but she likely has a chance to face off against Biden in the near future, building anticipation for that showdown. Winner: Elizabeth Warren Still, there’s a simple argument to made that Warren’s debate placement is Actually Good: She’s the biggest name on the first night, when excitement will be at its highest. Warren will clearly enter the first debate of the campaign season as the star of her respective stage. She’s a solid third in national polls and has a distinct brand as the policy candidate, with more than a dozen proposals and counting. The candidates that come closest to her on the stage are O’Rourke, Booker, and Klobuchar, and they’re all lagging far behind Warren in the polls. Not to mention, sitting back and letting Sanders and Biden duke it out — while taking copious notes to prepare for the second DNC debate — is a nice bonus for a candidate who seems to have strong momentum behind her. Winner: Bernie Sanders Sanders is one of many self-proclaimed progressives in the 2020 Democratic primary, but the Vermont senator has been deliberate about crafting a campaign message that mainly attacks the moderates. Lucky for him, he’s going to be on stage with quite a few of them. That includes the current polling frontrunner and the candidate Sanders is chasing: Joe Biden.

Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images This debate will play straight into Sanders’s biggest campaign message so far: There’s no time for centrism, no time for incremental change. Sanders’s campaign started using the catchphrase #NoMiddleGround after a Reuters report quoted a Biden campaign adviser calling for “middle ground” on climate policy. The campaign has called out Colorado’s former Gov. John Hickenlooper for his centrism too; Hickenlooper gave a speech decrying Sanders’s brand of democratic socialism after the Vermont senator delivered remarks defending the ideology this week. Sanders now gets to go up against Biden, Hickenlooper and others like Bennet in one night. (Then again, Bennet’s probably a winner in this scenario too. His fundraising campaign to get him on the debate stage was so he could argue against Medicare-for-all. Who better to argue about that with than the biggest single-payer champion of them all, Sanders.) Sanders and Warren won’t be on stage together, which means he doesn’t have to differentiate himself from the other most prominent progressive quite yet. Instead, he will get the chance to show just how stark the ideological divide is in the field. Unsurprisingly, the Sanders campaign said it was “happy” with the roster. “This is a terrific lineup because there will be a real debate over the key set of choices in this Democratic primary,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager told Vox in a statement. Winners: Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), calls for Senate Judiciary conformation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, during a news conference news conference in front of the US Supreme Court, jointed by Senate colleagues. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is second from left. Mark Wilson/Getty Images If you look at the Iowa polls, these three candidates are registering some support — 3 percent on average for Klobuchar, 3.5 percent for Booker, 4.5 percent for O’Rourke — so they have established themselves as a small cut above the other also-rans. But they are still waiting for a breakout moment if their campaigns are to have any hope of living long after the first state on the primary calendar. The second night is already overloaded with star power: Biden, Sanders, and Harris are all better-known among Democratic voters than this trio, according to Morning Consult. With this lineup, they will still get to take the stage with a top-tier candidate rising in the polls — Warren — but they will be at less risk of being drowned out by Sanders and Biden sparring. Booker, O’Rourke, and Klobuchar still need to introduce themselves to the 20-30 percent of Democratic voters who say they have never heard of these three. They should benefit from being the biggest names on stage for the first debate night, at least outside of Warren. Losers: Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper Both of these Colorado centrists are running against the Democratic Party’s leftward drift — which could make it hard for either of them to distinguish themselves when they are on the same stage. They are two over-50 white guys with similar ideology, from the same state. There’s opportunity for both of them in taking on Bernie Sanders. They want to offer an alternative to his leftist vision for the party. But they also have to share the stage with each other. Winner (with strong loser potential): Kirsten Gillibrand It’s a mixed bag for Gillibrand, who will be onstage alongside a bevy of frontrunners even as her own campaign has struggled to make a dent in the polls. But we choose to focus on the good news here for the New York senator.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Given how high-profile these debates will be, this could be just the opportunity she needs to demonstrate that her candidacy should be considered at the same level as a Biden, Harris or Sanders. Before jumping in the race, Gillibrand was seen as a leading contender alongside a number of her colleagues, though her campaign has floundered since its debut earlier this year. The DNC debates could be her best chance to change the narrative around her “failure to launch,” especially since she got a slot on the more star-driven of the two nights. On the other hand, it could be tough for Gillibrand to secure a breakout moment given the top-tier candidates she’ll be competing with for much-needed screen time and attention (in theory, every candidate would only get about 12 minutes of airtime each, not accounting for commercials). Losers: Steve Bullock, Wayne Messam, Mike Gravel, and Seth Moulton These four — Montana Gov. Bullock, Miramar, Florida, Mayor Messam, former Sen. Gravel and current Rep. Seth Moulton — got cut from the debates. In such a crowded field, if you can’t even get on stage, that’s a tough blow. Winner: Andrew Yang Yang wanted just one thing: to be on the debate stage with Joe Biden so people would Google to find out who he is. He got his wish. Loser: Indecisive voters Lots of choices, folks. Lots of choices. Read More Read the full article

[triviallytrue]

I might inadvertently make you feel straw manned I’m just riffing on my internal model of someone who’s politics are like yours, feel free to disavow what I’m projecting onto you.

I would say it seems like a pretty accurate representation, but I’ve added my notes to the parts that I disagree with. Apologies, this got very long.

I think this is interesting. I think its fundamentally wrongheaded to think of political systems in terms of “I’m right, I may or may not be popular, let’s get the system that makes me more likely to win regardless” because it’s a symmetric weapon. People with values alien to yours can think that way too.

I have a lot to say on this. First, it’s worth remembering that there is more than one way to be popular: there’s approval and there’s enthusiasm (and probably more, but let’s consider those as the only two for the sake of a working model).

All popularity is context-dependent, but approval is especially context-dependent. I voted for Joe Biden despite strongly disliking many of his policies because the alternative was Donald Trump. I approve of Joe Biden, but I could not be less enthusiastic about him. On the flip side, I was enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders, and I suspect I would have been enthusiastic about him even if he was running against someone significantly further left in the general than Trump.

All of which is to say, if you select for approval alone, it’s easy to get locked into bad outcomes because they’re slightly less bad than what you’ve come to perceive as the norm. This doesn’t mean selecting for enthusiasm alone is a good idea, but I think ranked choice voting strikes a nice balance.

Second, on a more meta level, thinking about political systems in a way that prioritizes stability over getting your way is also a reflection of your ideology and values. It’s at least partially a function of how acceptable you find the status quo.

I also think it sometimes (though not always) produces very bad outcomes. The canonical example is the 19th century political fight over slavery, where the Whig party cared more about preserving consensus than actually fighting for abolition, resulting in a prolonged political fight and a series of increasingly hacked-together compromises that all ultimately failed to prevent a civil war.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, I think a general policy of “let’s not rock the boat too much” can be a dangerous and counterproductive one.

2. But on the opposite hand what if moderation creates a directionless society, that the degree to which it’s better to be going in some direction outweighs the extend to which which direction matters?

The principled leftist response to this is “which direction is all that matters”. I have complex feelings on that, but I’ll let it stand for now.

My inner-triviallytrue (my model of their politics) would say something like “it is asymmetrical, it’s ok for my team to win with reckless abandon because our approach maximizes the welfare of everyone and their (say white trads) approach doesnt”, but I would caution people who think like that to remember decision- or game-theoretically that the other side thinks that too.

Well, yeah. That’s politics! Everyone thinks they’re right, the difference is that I’m actually right.

Okay, jokes aside: I think there’s plenty of worth in the outside view and not getting too locked into any one ideological lane. My own politics are some weird blend of social democratic, communist, and anarchist principles, since I believe almost every tendency on the left gets some things right (sorry maoists and primitivists, you guys just suck) and every tendency on the left gets some things wrong.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some things that I’m very high confidence on (universal healthcare produces better outcomes than the privatized shit the US has now, for ex). At a certain point you have to identify things you are confident on and actually fight for them, otherwise you don’t really have principles to speak of.

And there really is a risk to being too generous to your opposition:

Noncosmopolitan trads are alien to me but I think there are altruists among them who are like “no I swear trump’s muslim ban leads to the best outcome for the most people”, one suburban asshole I know who literally boycotted going to restaurants and tourist traps in sanctuary cities told me “if their males over the age of 16 are coming here they’re not starting revolutions, increasing lock-in of bad regimes” which is a tangent but an example of a consideration that was alien to me as an open borders shill but nevertheless seemed rooted in an interest for best international outcomes.

There are approximately a million issues with this logic; to list one, several of the existing bad regimes are products of revolutions. I could spend all day picking through why that take is wrong, but I think you and I agree on that. What you seem to be highlighting is that the person in question seemed to be altruistically motivated with an interest in best international outcomes.

So what?

Not to go all “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” but everyone believes that on some level. The conversion therapy assholes believe they’re saving the gays from eternal damnation! And if hell was real and the Christian god was real and he actually condemned people to eternal suffering because they were gay, as an EA you would be forced to prioritize ways to make people stop being gay! Or find a way to kill god, but like, theoretically here, we can assume that’s not very tractable. Of course, all of this is complete nonsense.

My point being: I would like to believe that leftists have good intentions and rightists are all assholes, but I can acknowledge that’s probably not true, and also somewhat irrelevant to my politics. The intentions don’t really matter! The outcomes matter. And I believe leftist policies lead to better outcomes, so I advocate for them.

Can tt or others bite the bullet that moving in some direction and not being a featureless/directionless blob is good even if it means white christian trads and nationalists or maybe billionaires take things in their directions? This is ultimately the question I want to ask.

Obligatory “I wouldn’t be advocating for this if I thought it would help the other guys.” The white christian trads and nationalists and billionaires seem like they’re doing just fine taking turns riding the GOP horse to wherever they want, meanwhile leftists seem to spend half the time fending off jabs from the democratic party leadership.

I can go into more depth about why I think ranked choice will help the left more than the right, but this post is long enough already.

Not attacking you tt just engaging. I might inadvertently make you feel straw manned I'm just riffing on my internal model of someone who's politics are like yours, feel free to disavow what I'm projecting onto you.

Not long ago @triviallytrue claimed that approval voting seems to favor moderates, i think also that ranked choice voting allows for further left or further right actions/candidates to win. They further claimed that this is a point against approval voting, because they believe that better candidates are not too moderate.

I think this is interesting. I think its fundamentally wrongheaded to think of political systems in terms of "I'm right, I may or may not be popular, let's get the system that makes me more likely to win regardless" because it's a symmetric weapon. People with values alien to yours can think that way too.

But when the question is "what properties of a social choice function are desirable?", there are a number of considerations (thinking thru on my own not based on any literature):

1. Moderates winning all the time is virtuous of the function because that's like a true average of the extremes and aggregation is the point

2. But on the opposite hand what if moderation creates a directionless society, that the degree to which it's better to be going in some direction outweighs the extend to which which direction matters?

I think 2. brings up something important! Intuitively on dating apps if you optimize for everyone you become a featureless blob and miss selecting for the person you're really meant to be with; triplebyte wrote that the job hunt shares this feature, they encourage you to discriminate and exclude when you write about what sort of company you're looking for. So does it follow that societies oughtn't optimize for being a featureless, directionless blob? Does it follow that it's ok to piss off people who lose formal elections more than the minimum amount necessary? Moreover, what social choice function design principles are implied here?

My inner-triviallytrue (my model of their politics) would say something like "it is asymmetrical, it's ok for my team to win with reckless abandon because our approach maximizes the welfare of everyone and their (say white trads) approach doesnt", but I would caution people who think like that to remember decision- or game-theoretically that the other side thinks that too. Noncosmopolitan trads are alien to me but I think there are altruists among them who are like "no I swear trump's muslim ban leads to the best outcome for the most people", one suburban asshole I know who literally boycotted going to restaurants and tourist traps in sanctuary cities told me "if their males over the age of 16 are coming here they're not starting revolutions, increasing lock-in of bad regimes" which is a tangent but an example of a consideration that was alien to me as an open borders shill but nevertheless seemed rooted in an interest for best international outcomes. Where was I going with this. Well, one point I wanted to make is how dangerous it is to say "we're right we just have to win" because that's what every minority-rule idiocy and atrocity said! A little outside view here is good!

Yeah idk. Social choice functions are hard. What do yall think about point 2 above? Can tt or others bite the bullet that moving in some direction and not being a featureless/directionless blob is good even if it means white christian trads and nationalists or maybe billionaires take things in their directions? This is ultimately the question I want to ask.