View Single Post
  #282  
Old 08-25-2019, 08:10 PM
The Man's Avatar
The Man The Man is offline
Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
Posts: MVCMLVI
Default Re: Ultimate Cagefight MMXIX, Democratic Edition

Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
Tulsi Gabbard was flat-out lying about a lot of Harris' record
When Kamala Was a Top Cop
Quote:
Harris’s office didn’t merely fight to keep a man in prison after he’d demonstrated his innocence to the satisfaction of the Innocence Project, a judge, and an appeals court. After losing, it fought to keep the newly released man from being compensated for the decade that he spent wrongfully imprisoned.
For the record, I agree that there are serious concerns about Harris’ record as a prosecutor. That’s one of two major reasons she’s quite a way behind Warren in my candidate ranking.

I have, however, been quite impressed with her as a senator, and frankly, her record as a legislator, being more recent, seems a lot more relevant to evaluating what she would do as president. People change their views as new evidence emerges that policies that used to be fashionable are ineffective or destructive. Sanders voted for the justly reviled 1994 crime bill, as well as the 1996 crime bill that should be equally reviled. No one seriously thinks those votes are reflective of his current stances. I’m less concerned with what Kamala Harris believed 10 to 15 years ago than I am with what she believes now. Her current stances on criminal justice are mostly adequate.

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
...learn to use some fucking paragraph breaks once in a while.
Good advice!
Thanks!

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
No less a source than Noam Chomsky emphasizes again and again that it's necessary for radicals to engage with actually existing power structures in order to change them, rather than simply disengage from the system entirely.
Two key points: what Noam Chomsky is arguing and what Adam L. Silverman is arguing are two different things. Adam Silverman is specifically arguing that the Democrats must avail themselves of dark money, large donations, corporate donors to win. That's what you linked to. Here's Chomsky:
Quote:
The concentration of wealth and enhancement of corporate power translate automatically to decline of democracy. Research in academic political science has revealed that a large majority of voters are literally disenfranchised, in that their own representatives pay no attention to their wishes but listen to the voices of the donor class. It is furthermore well established that elections are pretty much bought: electability, hence policy, is predictable with remarkable precision from the single variable of campaign spending, both for the executive and Congress. ...>snip<...
It’s hard to see how some form of civil conflict can be avoided unless the Democrats reverse course sharply and become a political party that doesn’t simply abandon the working class to its bitter class enemy, as they have done for 40 years.
You can't suck at the corporate teat and reverse corporate capture of the party.
Sure you can. You accept their money and when they ask you for favours that go against the wish of your constituents, you tell them, “Fuck off. I was elected to serve the people, and what you are asking me to do is not in their interest. If you want to donate to my opponent next election, go right ahead.” And if we’ve gotten the necessary amount of control, you’ll be able to say, “You should know, however, that your money isn’t going to make as big of a difference next election.” The goal is to be able to say that. Again, to paraphrase Unruh: if you can’t tell your donors to eat shit, you don’t belong in politics.

Of course, this actually occurring depends on the president (or other elected official) having nerves of steel. This is, again, another argument for Warren.

I fully agree that there are numerous reasons the current electoral system needs to be completely dismantled, and Chomsky raises a number of valid concerns and critiques in your excerpted text. However, we are in a paradoxical position where if we do not size the levers of power, we may not be able to dismantle it in time to prevent a climate catastrophe. I mean, the Amazon is literally burning. Right now. There is no time to waste. The sooner we can remove anyone who would provide an obstacle to solving the crisis from power, the better.

And the Republican Party is, as we speak, also taking steps to dismantle American democracy. The more power they are able to seize, the more they will be able to rig future elections.

And to be clear: 2016 was absolutely rigged. I suspect we will eventually learn that Hillary Clinton was not only the legitimate winner of the popular vote but also the Electoral College. I’m by this point completely convinced that voters were strategically removed from the rolls in key states by outside actors – we already know the Russians accessed voter rolls in all 50 states. Authorities denied that they accessed anything, but they had previously denied that the Russians had accessed the rolls in all but (IIRC) two states, and before that they denied the Russians had accessed voter rolls at all, and on and on. The denials are worth less than the paper they’re printed on.

So we have to stem both these tides, and if that means a bit of hedging to less than savoury people, I think it’s an acceptable compromise - if we elect the sort of candidate who, in Unruh’s phrasing, “belong[s] up here.” If Elizabeth Warren receives super PAC money from, say, banks, she’s not going to suddenly turn around and do a 180° on predatory lending and her other critiques of the banking industry.

There is no legal reason that financial assistance from a particular source in an election compels you to return the favour later on. The problem is, of course, that most people don’t have the nerve that I suspect Warren has, and so for most of them large donations turn into little more than organised bribery. So that system needs to be dismantled. And if we have to take advantage of that system to dismantle it, I’m willing to go down that route, because the alternative is letting the planet burn.

Quote:
Second key point:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
... it's necessary for radicals to engage with actually existing power structures in order to change them, rather than simply disengage from the system entirely.
Disengaging from the system entirely is not a position anyone is taking in this conversation, nor the point of my previous post. Electoral politics are part of politics, and one can choose to not avail themselves of rich donors AND participate in electoral politics, despite the grave warnings of the rich donor class and Centrist Democrats and the army of people who make money off of this system.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a strong correlation between finances and the outcome of an election. The better funded candidate wins something like 80-95% of the time, depending on the election.

We are essentially rolling the dice here with the future of the planet. Current polling has Warren at something like 6-7% above the occupant of the WH in the popular vote, which gives me mild hope, but it needs to be a much larger margin. Perhaps with the inevitable recession we seem to be headed into as we speak, that margin will rise.

Warren (or whoever our nominee is – yes, even if it’s fucking Biden) has to crush Dump. Make him a stain on her shoe. She has to have coattails that bring in dozens of new House members and, most notably, at least four new Senators (because Doug Jones is probably doomed). Really, at least five if you want anything serious on climate, because Joe Manchin probably would be no help there; he’d end up being the Joe Lieberman of the Warren administration. (Lieberman, for those who may have forgotten, scuttled the public option from Obamacare after explicitly pledging not to in his re-election campaign.)

If we don’t retake the Senate, we’re fucked from a legislative standpoint. We’re fucked from a judicial appointment standpoint. There’s a reasonable chance that these two sources of gridlock would lead us to be fucked from a 2024 presidential election standpoint as well, because nothing would get done in the middle of a fucking recession.

You’re essentially arguing that we shouldn’t take advantage of a potential source of assistance in the middle of what is – yes, this is a cliché, but it once again happens to be completely true – the most important election of (at least most of) our lives so far. I’m not comfortable rolling the dice that way. The outcome of this election will essentially determine whether the last years of my life are a blighted hellscape.

Elizabeth Warren will not be compromised if she receives super PAC money. I doubt Sanders would be compromised either. There are a few other candidates who could go either way, but certainly seem less corruptible than any Republican.

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
If you were paying enough attention, perhaps you wouldn't be writing lengthy bad-faith attacks on people you are ostensibly allied with.
You say bad faith and straw man a lot, but I don't think you're using either term well.
Well, let’s review some of your statements in your previous post, shall we?

Quote:
Here's why you have to vote against your base's interests. So at the hardcore realism level, for sure. Tons of Americans wanted to pardon Lt. Calley in the Mai Lai Massacre and wrote the President demanding he be released; there are reasons to not just follow reactionary responses from the base- at that politician's own peril. But let's talk about how prosperous (and WHO is prosperous) California really is as a result, exactly. How the being a tool of rich donors has served Californians exceptionally well- so well that in the face of extinction we really ought to stick with this system, because it is obviously working... for the 1%.
And then another, much longer paragraph of similar bullshit. All of this is an absurd mischaracterisation of the post to which you are responding. I wrote: “I could think of worse models for our future than California.” This is far from implying that everything about California is sunshine and roses. The state is, however, a vast improvement over the current national system, even if no one can afford homes. But guess what? I can’t afford a home in Florida either, and I probably won’t for decades (though to be fair, I have a disability working against me as well). Home ownership amongst people in their twenties and thirties has declined nationwide, not just in California. So have marriage rates, for that matter, and even the amount of sex people are having – people literally can’t afford to get married, and sex becomes a lot riskier when an unintended pregnancy could derail your entire life plan (especially with abortion looking to become illegal in several states – thanks a lot, people who sat out 2016 or voted for Stein).

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
So what's your alternative solution? Revolution? Good luck with that.
See? Now that's how you start a straw man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
You probably won't get it to happen when people are as desperate as many of them currently are, anyway. People tend not to revolt when they're too worried about where their next meal is going to come from. Contrary to common belief, most revolutionaries tend to be from the middle and upper classes.
And that's how you finish a straw man, by rebutting an argument I never made.
Your post was full of a lot of completely irrelevant bullshit that had nothing to do with what I wrote. I thought I’d return the favour. There was nothing in your post that I could make out that suggested what your solution actually was.

Quote:
Armed struggle against the government- if that's what you mean by revolution- is not viable and suicidal. Not effective. See Chomsky on the subject.
I completely agree.

Quote:
What is effective is building mass movements around worker power, class war, and social justice that organize for general strike power and civil disobedience, and create enough social pressure on politicians to change policies.

That's how you counter the senate, filibuster, procedural folderol, and how you counter intractable and entrenched interests. See Chomsky on the subject here:
Quote:
the professor said that if young people and activists revived a strong labour movement, which could overcome racial conflict like it did in the 1930s, then the workers’ favour could be won back.
I completely agree with this and am rather puzzled that you’re saying any of it as though I would be hostile to these ideas. But your post was full of invective without any semblance of solutions that I could make out. If you had instead provided this sort of constructive dialogue in your first reply (and also not engaged in a few outright insults), I probably wouldn’t have ended it by telling you to fuck off.

I would, however, disagree with Chomsky on one small point for the purpose of this one election, assuming I’m reading him correctly: I would contend that to remove fascists, you take advantage of every possible (metaphorical) weapon you can. You have to. These people are literally building concentration camps. They are unapologetically engaging in overt antisemitism and attempting to strip the civil service of everyone who’s not a white supremacist. They are draining the institutional memory of valuable branches of government such as the EPA and the Department of the Interior that are necessary to combat climate change.

(I would also note that the interview linked in your post is from 2016 and would be interested to see what Chomsky is saying now that the concentration camps and other similar atrocities exist.)

The Republican Party is now essentially an overtly fascist party and an existential threat to the country and to people like me. It must be destroyed root and branch, the crops burned and the earth salted. Factio Republicana delenda est. Until it goes the way of the CPSU and the NSDAP, we have to use every means at our disposal to defeat them. And this holds true regardless of who’s nominated in what position. Biden would be at best a mediocre president, but mediocre would be a colossal improvement over the current existential threat to the planet we currently have.

I should add that I’ve read about half of Richard Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich – I had to return it to the library before I could complete it, but intend to finish someday when it reads less like a news report. The number of parallels to modern American society are alarming. They are not exact – history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. (Twain? I think that was Twain.) But they are there, and they are getting stronger seemingly every day.

I am a queer, autistic person of Jewish descent with an obviously Jewish appearance and obviously Jewish name. Naturally, I will be in a very bad position if the Fourth Reich somehow gets set up in this country, and the further we go into the Dump administration, the less implausible that sounds. I can pass as cis and may even be able to learn to consistently pass as neurotypical with the majority of people I encounter if I practise mirroring neurotypical body language enough, but it’d be a struggle. The Jewish part, however, is something I would be completely unable to hide without plastic surgery and a fake ID. This is an existential matter for me.

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
Without a revolution (which is not going to happen) or a second constitutional convention (which would not go well for us), we're stuck with the levers of power where they are in this shitty timeline we're in. Refusing to engage with them because we don't like them won't win us any elections.

We are essentially in an undeclared civil war. Our opponents certainly aren't going to stop taking every advantage they can. It would be fucking imbecilic for us to cede advantages because we don't feel ~comfortable~ taking them.
Just to be clear, the specific advantage you're talking about here, that would be foolish to ignore in your opinion, are large corporate donors, dark money, and large donations from elites whose interests are 100% against changing the status quo.
Yes. I don’t see why their donations compel whoever gets elected to do a goddamn thing that’s against our interests, however. There’s no law saying “Elizabeth Warren took money from the banks, so now she has to push for policies favourable to the banks.” That is what usually occurs, because people are generally corruptible. But there are a few who aren’t. Warren is fully free to take their money, then smile at them and tell them to fuck off when they ask her to maintain the current electoral system, financial regulations, or other problematic legislation. (She probably would use more gracious language than “fuck off”, because she’s a much better person than I am.)

Actually, writing this post has me feeling increasingly convinced that Elizabeth Warren must be elected with as many Democratic Representatives and Senators as possible, and preferably as many recaptured state legislatures as possible as well.

I fully agree with you on the need for pressure from the bottom up. Workers need to organise more. Since I’m an amateur video game developer myself, I’ve been following with some interest how video game developers, who have been subjected to utterly grueling schedules for decades, are starting to unionise. This is a welcome development, and I’d love to see similar trends in other fields.

But people unionising isn’t going to take Mitch McConnell out of power, and he is arguably an even bigger roadblock than the occupant of the White House. What will take McConnell out of power is defeating him in the Kentucky Senate race next year, and/or defeating at least four incumbent Republican Senators (again, Jones is probably doomed) and taking the presidency (or defeating at least five incumbent Republican Senators and somehow failing to take the Presidency, which would be the final sign that the writers had completely lost the plot).

We must put pressure on the system from every angle we can without burning ourselves out. This means from both the bottom and, where possible, from the top. I do not dispute the importance of labour organising, and it will eventually (hopefully) build Democratic strength throughout the country.

But that’s a long-term strategy. We need to optimise our short-term tactics as well. Right now, the patient is haemorrhaging blood at an alarming rate. We need to get into the position so we can simply tie a tourniquet. Moscow Mitch is blocking that. Moscow Mitch needs to be flipped over on his back. (Obligatory Blade Runner “you’re not helping; why is that?” quote here.)

It’s a dice roll whether we’ll be able to remove Dump and Moscow Mitch. Right now, our odds are decent, but 2020’s election is going to have a major part in determining the quality of the rest of my life. I’m not comfortable with us having a 70% chance if we can up that to an 80% chance, 90% chance, or more.

You’re seemingly attributing some sort of almost supernatural powers to campaign donations here. There is an implied tit for tat by American political tradition, but a politician doesn’t have to honour it. A particularly honourable politician won’t honour if it’s not in the interests of their constituents to do so. This means that if you have an honourable enough politician, it is probably safe for them to get campaign donations from large donors – particularly if the candidate’s intention is to completely overhaul the campaign finance system as we know it to begin with. Which is one of Warren’s intentions.

This goes back to my reasoning for listing her in #1: she’s the only one I’m aware of who’s come flat out, unequivocally, and said the filibuster just needs to fucking go. Some others such as Sanders have hedged a bit and said maybe it’s worth looking at. Warren, however, clearly realises what a roadblock to progress it is. She has a plan for that.

Which, now that I’ve written all this, makes this entire discussion seem rather superfluous: she’s probably already thought about all these issues more than either of us have.

Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
In short, fuck off until you're actually willing to engage with what I write.
I like your passion.
Thanks! At least your second reply didn’t leave me wanting to tell you to fuck off. I will, however, tell davidm, whom I still have on ignore, to fuck off. :wave:

Also, I apologise if this got repetitive; I didn’t sleep much last night, so my short-term memory is questionable.

…also, too, given how long this reply got, I probably won’t have time to do another point-by-point response if future replies are of comparable length; sorry in advance. I think I spent about an hour and a half composing this thing, and I intended to spend about twenty minutes. Oops.

…one final addendum, and I can’t think where to put this, but it seems relevant to the above discussion: I want to say a few words in favour of earmarks and pork-barrel projects. They were a drop in the bucket of our spending and probably did a fair amount to help avoid gridlock. Removing them seems to have been one of those seeming good governance reforms that hasn’t worked as intended. Maybe we should bring them back. I’m not sure how much it would help with today’s GOP, who refuse to compromise on anything anyway, but it might have at least a mild effect, which would be something!
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith

last.fm · my music · Marathon Expanded Universe
Reply With Quote
 
Page generated in 0.42472 seconds with 11 queries