Donald Trump

[Rayvin 5188]

57 minutes ago, Monkeys Fist said:

25-60. 
 

No exceptions. 
 

Gives time to get youthful deftness out of the system, and gets rid of them before they turn mental/conservative. 
 

I’d consider a mandatory break of a few years too, if they’re a career politician, so that they get experience of actual work 

 

I'd support this wholeheartedly, though the US already has that minimum limit of 35 or something.

[Rayvin 5188]

6 hours ago, Renton said:

 

Cosying up to the Cheneys? Really? Other right wing ghouls? Liz Cheney's endorsement was an appeal to stop Trump whom she rightly sees as a threat to democracy. It was supposed to swing traditional republicans. It clearly didn't work but if this is the reason the "lefties" didn't vote for the sane candidate they can get fucked. The more I think about it, Harris had no chance in this election whatever she did. A large proportion of Gen Z turned out for Trump. They like this alpha male strong man bullshit.. Some overlook his  debasing morality and criminality, others actively like it. 

Do you honestly think a Bernie Sanders style swing to the left will work in the US, when Harris was thought to be a communist by half the electorate? I don't know what the solution is, in reality it will probably be Trump's own failures rather than anything the deomocrats can do at this stage. 

 

All we know at this point is the centrists can't win without the left, and vice versa. The question I suppose is whether the 10m or so people who walked away because she wasn't offering anything productive (left wing enough) outnumber the people who would walk away from her if she did.

 

In the end I've just had enough of cringing before the right like this, we should just die on our feet. We're dying either way.

[Renton 21404]

1 hour ago, Rayvin said:

 

All we know at this point is the centrists can't win without the left, and vice versa. The question I suppose is whether the 10m or so people who walked away because she wasn't offering anything productive (left wing enough) outnumber the people who would walk away from her if she did.

 

In the end I've just had enough of cringing before the right like this, we should just die on our feet. We're dying either way.

 

A lot of the usual political journalists make the point that nearly all incumbents have been wiped out this election round because of the energy crisis and cost of living crisis following covid. Basically whoever was left carrying the parcel has been voted out, including the Tories. 

I think this is too simplistic and all the data I've seen from the US indicates they were least affected and have recovered the best, but it could be too late I guess. Plus I know housing is a disaster everywhere, and it's easy to use that to fuel anti immigration etc. 

With the US though, you just cannot go very far left. They genuinely hate it. They would rather die than have fully socialised healthcare. You can't judge them by our standards. You can't offer them what they don't want and expect to win the election. 

[spongebob toonpants 3958]

1 hour ago, Renton said:

They would rather die than have fully socialised healthcare.

I don't think that's true. Obama got elected on the promise of socialised health care and ended up compromising so far that he ended up with Mitt Rodney's plan. 

The right tried to demonise it calling it Obamacare but people really didn't want to give it up it so it didn't work

Another example of Dems breaking their promises 

 

The "left" parties need some courage, and need to act when they get the chance. Labour has that chance now

[Renton 21404]

11 minutes ago, spongebob toonpants said:

I don't think that's true. Obama got elected on the promise of socialised health care and ended up compromising so far that he ended up with Mitt Rodney's plan. 

The right tried to demonise it calling it Obamacare but people really didn't want to give it up it so it didn't work

Another example of Dems breaking their promises 

 

The "left" parties need some courage, and need to act when they get the chance. Labour has that chance now

 

In an environment where Harris was called a communist - and this was widely believed - I think you're wrong. Maybe when Trump makes it so each insulin vial will have a $100 copay attached to them maybe they will change their mind. 

 

I was talking with a US colleague last night who has moved here as it happens. She's LGBT, as lefty as you can get for an American. Hates the concept of the NHS though it transpires, after a bad experience I think. She was pissing me off so I moved on to talk to someone else before I threw some facts at her. 

[Rayvin 5188]

2 hours ago, Renton said:

 

In an environment where Harris was called a communist - and this was widely believed - I think you're wrong. Maybe when Trump makes it so each insulin vial will have a $100 copay attached to them maybe they will change their mind. 

 

I was talking with a US colleague last night who has moved here as it happens. She's LGBT, as lefty as you can get for an American. Hates the concept of the NHS though it transpires, after a bad experience I think. She was pissing me off so I moved on to talk to someone else before I threw some facts at her. 

 

Harris being called a communist actually opens the door to further left policies coming in. What are they gonna do, start branding people super communists? Same as the UK, if we're all Marxists no matter what, we have absolutely nothing to lose. We threw the word 'fascist' around until it lost all meaning and they embraced themselves anyway. Why would it be any different for us?

 

Also I think that if we pushed the social left wing concepts less, and the economic ones more, we'd be doing better. I often feel like the moderate left placates us with social progress to avoid giving us economic progress, but the longer we go without it, the worse the situation gets.

[Renton 21404]

29 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

 

Harris being called a communist actually opens the door to further left policies coming in. What are they gonna do, start branding people super communists? Same as the UK, if we're all Marxists no matter what, we have absolutely nothing to lose. We threw the word 'fascist' around until it lost all meaning and they embraced themselves anyway. Why would it be any different for us?

 

Also I think that if we pushed the social left wing concepts less, and the economic ones more, we'd be doing better. I often feel like the moderate left placates us with social progress to avoid giving us economic progress, but the longer we go without it, the worse the situation gets.

 

Let's not get into false equivalence here. Trump is a fascist. Harris is not a communist. 

It's not even a fight of left against right anymore in America. It's now a fight of preserving democracy against autocracy. Trump has already torn down the normal rules of engagement. He will destroy every aspect of the state with 2025. People still don't seem to get it and underestimate what is going to happen. Free elections in 2028? I wouldn't count on it. 

Edited Saturday at 22:36 by Renton

[Rayvin 5188]

6 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

Let's not get into false equivalence here. Trump is a fascist. Harris is not a communist. 

It's not even a fight of left against right anymore in America. It's now a fight of preserving democracy against autocracy. Trump has already torn down the normal rules of engagement. He will destroy every aspect of the state with 2025. People still don't seem to get it and underestimate what is going to happen. Free elections in 2028? I wouldn't count on it. 

 

There will be free elections in 2028, the world hasn't gone that insane yet.

 

And I'm not trying to draw any sort of equivalence, I'm simply saying that if Harris is being called a communist now, what more can they say about someone on the left of her? Like that "insult" can't go further than it already has, so I don't see what we'd lose that we aren't already losing.

[Renton 21404]

16 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

 

There will be free elections in 2028, the world hasn't gone that insane yet.

 

And I'm not trying to draw any sort of equivalence, I'm simply saying that if Harris is being called a communist now, what more can they say about someone on the left of her? Like that "insult" can't go further than it already has, so I don't see what we'd lose that we aren't already losing.

 

I'm not sure about there being a free election personally. When you read about project 2025, where Trump will put his people in key places of the civil service, the judiciary, and move all power from the legislature to the executive, well, we'll see. 

 

It's not about the insult, Trump also called her a fascist which makes no sense. It's about the genuine perception of the populace. They either genuinely don't want socialist policies, or have been brain washed to such an extent they think they don't. 

Anyway, well see. I'm watching out for the Pharma regulations as its my field. If Trump really does put RFK in charge of the FDA, akin to putting Gary Glitter in charge of schools, I'm betting we won't be getting another election. 

[RobinRobin 11162]

7 hours ago, Monkeys Fist said:

25-60. 
 

No exceptions. 
 

Gives time to get youthful deftness out of the system, and gets rid of them before they turn mental/conservative. 
 

I’d consider a mandatory break of a few years too, if they’re a career politician, so that they get experience of actual work 

For obvious reasons I think 60 is too low but certainly 70.

[PaddockLad 17130]

This doesn’t sound as if he’s about to go into mental health decline tbh

 

 

[Alex 34938]

I mean, it’s not like they weren’t warned in advance. 
Somewhat ironic using Musk’s platform to complain about it as well. 

Edited Sunday at 11:49 by Alex

[Toonpack 9303]

38 minutes ago, PaddockLad said:

This doesn’t sound as if he’s about to go into mental health decline tbh

 

 

 

That looks like AI deepfake to me tbh. Not seen Trump talk that coherently ever.

 

Edit, I know it's his message, but I don't think that's actually him.

Edited Sunday at 10:11 by Toonpack

[Monkeys Fist 42149]

30 minutes ago, Alex said:

Somewhat ironic using Musk’s platform to complain about it as well. 

 

What’s happened to Trumps copycat version- Truth Social? 
 

I’m guessing that now he and Musk are blow-buddies it’s like Leaze’s message board where he chatted to himself and Wacky? 

[Renton 21404]

50 minutes ago, Monkeys Fist said:

 

What’s happened to Trumps copycat version- Truth Social? 
 

I’m guessing that now he and Musk are blow-buddies it’s like Leaze’s message board where he chatted to himself and Wacky? 

 

No doubt Musk will buy it for its "market value" of $50 billion... 

[PaddockLad 17130]

1 hour ago, Toonpack said:

 

That looks like AI deepfake to me tbh. Not seen Trump talk that coherently ever.

 

Edit, I know it's his message, but I don't think that's actually him.

That crossed my mind but lots were retweeting it. I am fake news, but it is the news 😑

[Toonpack 9303]

43 minutes ago, PaddockLad said:

That crossed my mind but lots were retweeting it. I am fake news, but it is the news 😑

 

The message is indeed the news, and 100% where he's headed, but the delivery mechanism is suspect to me.

[spongebob toonpants 3958]

Excerpt from an interesting articl3

 

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/exit-right/

 

Quote

In our century, American politics has been blown open by the reverberating crises of neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. They have rebounded on our society and politics in four major forms: imperial blowback and endless warfare; deindustrialization and the hollowing out of American society; the rise of an engorged, predatory, and increasingly insane billionaire class, obsessed with eugenics and immortality; and the climate crisis, now a source of regular natural disasters and swelling refugee flows. At each juncture, the Democrats have attempted restoration: to manage the crisis, carry out the bailout, stitch things back together, and try to get back to normal. It is the form of this orientation, as much as substantive questions of culture, race, and gender, that seems to me the fundamental reason the Democrats are often experienced as a force of inhibition rather than empowerment by so many voters. And it is against this politics of containment that Trump’s obscenity comes to feel like a liberation for so many.

 

…

 

[The Democratic leadership] is engaged in a backward-looking project. Only through restorationism can the party balance its competing commitments to social and economic justice and capitalist growth. It seeks to recapture a lost past in which these goals accommodated each other, and it suppresses any positive vision of the future that might require deciding internal tensions. Just consider the way that Biden and Harris both have championed reforms that everyone knows cannot be accomplished without abolition of the filibuster and reform of the federal court system, which they are both hesitant to contemplate, occasionally entertaining narrowly tailored, self-limited reforms. Such an effort, if undertaken more generally, would necessitate a wider critique of American society and the undemocratic institutions that define it—a critique at odds with an image of an America that is “already great.” Despite their various discrete policy goals, Democrats thus prove unable to tell a clear story about what those goals mean, how they fit together, and how we might get there

 

 

[Gemmill 44539]

At least Kari Lake lost.

 

Twitter is losing people in droves to Bluesky btw. AOC is now over there too. 

 

Time to delete your twitter accounts. 

[Howmanheyman 32847]

3 hours ago, Gemmill said:

At least Kari Lake lost.

 

Twitter is losing people in droves to Bluesky btw. AOC is now over there too. 

 

Time to delete your twitter accounts. 

 

Just did mine earlier.

[Gemmill 44539]

Literally no point being on there as more and more journalists, politicians, normal people, leave and go somewhere else. 

 

The idea that anyone needs to stay on there to "save humanity", forget it. Firstly most people don't have a big enough following, and secondly, even if you did, the algorithm is literally designed to drown you out and promote the site's owners' views. Whether that's by real people or bot farms, your views will be invisible to most people on there. 

 

 

[Renton 21404]

33 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

Literally no point being on there as more and more journalists, politicians, normal people, leave and go somewhere else. 

 

The idea that anyone needs to stay on there to "save humanity", forget it. Firstly most people don't have a big enough following, and secondly, even if you did, the algorithm is literally designed to drown you out and promote the site's owners' views. Whether that's by real people or bot farms, your views will be invisible to most people on there. 

 

 

 

I joined up to Bluesky yesterday, I may actively use it. I don't see much point in deleting my twitter account though. I've literally never posted on it, but find it useful to post news, opinion, and funnies from it on here. 

[wykikitoon 19986]

Is Bluesky like Twaitter then?

[Gemmill 44539]

Just now, wykikitoon said:

Is Bluesky like Twaitter then?

 

It's almost identical but it's decentralised so there isn't one dickhead at the top deciding who gets promoted in replies, based on what goes on in his demented South African head. 

[Gemmill 44539]

20 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

 I don't see much point in deleting my twitter account though. 

 

To fart in Musk's face and show him who the boss is.