• AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They don’t. Congress with the President could but won’t.

      I’ve no illusions friend. Neither the Republicans nor the Neoliberals aka 90+ percent of Office holding Democrats have the slightest interest in helping anyone, only taking bribes and reinforcing their party’s power.

      This nation is over. Reaganomics saw to that and Citizens United dashed the last of the faintest of rational hopes for self-repair. This is just leftover momentum. This labor camp we call the US will eventually collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but until then, we suffer generationally with zero recourse.

      No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock. This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.

      • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, both parties are cancelling school lunches for impoverished children, reverting environmental regulations, overturning Roe v Wade, forcing women to become baby incubators, cutting social safety nets. Yes, they are both the same…

        • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The Neoliberals that coopted the former Republican opposition party helped Reagan and Clinton destroy the social safetynet. Neoliberal Clinton championed destroying the social safetynet, partnering with Nute Gingrich to do it, around the same time neoliberal biden championed draconian sentencing reform to feed for profit prisons.

          Modern Democrats are better than Republicans, but if you want to look for politicians that don’t work against you? Look to the non-neoliberal Democrats that the Neoliberals revile more than their supposed opposition party. There’s about a dozen of them between both Chambers. Most democrats are nice on social issues, but defend this rigged market capitalist hellscape lockstep with republicans.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Clinton at the time was the furthest left that the US as a whole would elect. The third way stuck because it actually worked.

            I’m not going to make a snarky comment about how others should’ve put in more work, because I honestly don’t think it would’ve mattered (and it’d be rude). Leftism just wasn’t going to win by any viable margin. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone – when the electorate won’t go further, you have to meet them where they are. I’d love it if Sanders would’ve been elected in the 90s instead of Clinton, but that just wasn’t possible.

            • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The fact remains there has been no attempt on the nation’s part in living memory to actually run the nation by left wing policies. It hasn’t been attempted and yet it is treated in the zeitgeist as if it was repeatedly and was an utter failure. I Consider FDR to be the last remotely progressive President we have attempted.

              So when people reduce acknowledging both of our major parties to be varying degrees of economically right wing, center-right(D) to fascist® these days as ‘both parties are the same’ it reeks of bad faith. We can acknowledge both of our parties work against their people economically while not being absolutely interchangeable. It’s just an intential tactic to muddy the waters because some prefer to play team sports, which is exactly the distraction it’s meant and pushed to be.

              And you’re right, our people currently have the government they deserve, because they won’t entertain one that works for them and protects them from the capitalist’s whims, that would be evil buzzwords they never bothered to understand or something.

              • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I think there’s still important differences economically even when considering them both to be center right. There’s a strong push for higher taxes on the wealthy and a higher minimum wage among Democrats – the only reason we didn’t see a minimum wage increase is because 1 Democrat opposed it vs the 49 other senators. And while our system still needs work, it doesn’t mean there haven’t been significant changes.

                There’s a brilliant provision in the Inflation Reduction Act for instance that ends the corporate tax loophole for the largest corporations. A company above a certain size that makes very high revenue (>1 bil iirc) is required to pay at least 20% in taxes. They can’t loophole their way to $0. The big corporations are going to have to pay actual taxes now.

                I’m not going to pretend that Democrats are perfect, but I do think there’s a messaging problem and a tendency to let good works speak for themselves – which doesn’t work. If you remember the rail worker strike that Congress and Biden stopped, that actually wasn’t the end of it. Union leaders have said that the administration continued to work behind the scenes with the unions to pressure the rail companies, and because of that, they’ve gotten the sick days they were demanding.

                I would need to do a lot of research to say more about if leftism ever had a serious shake in the US or not, I’ll admit. My assumption is that it was rejected, given the progressivism of the New Deal era didn’t persist. But I do need to do more reading.

      • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I hear you, and mostly agree with some of what you say. Though I take issue with the right families, those being the ones benefitting from the power. What I will point out is the gilded age, and how bad it was back then. Many of the same issues we have today, corruption, bribery, the net worth of the robber barons adjusted for inflation was probably about double the net worth of our current crop of scumbag billionaire villains.

        I don’t subscribe to the hopelessness, and I do believe we can end this second gilded age. I just don’t see the ability to do that with either political party’s leadership. We have to reject them both equally while recognizing exactly the issues you’re pointing out with regards to the power structure and inequality. That is essentially what happened when we ended the first gilded age.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        This nation is over.

        IMO it’s better to phrase it as, “The economic system has already collapsed for the majority of Americans, and it’s getting worse. What will happen next?” Because it’s not like people will magically disappear overnight, it’s not like life is terrible for everyone all the time, and some things have improved over the last few decades.

        Some people want to say “If we don’t do X, the world will end.” or “We didn’t do X, and it all went to hell, and we’re permanently doomed.” Most of the time, though, end-of-the-world stances are oversimplifications.

      • FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock.

        That’s an interesting sentence right there. What does that even mean, the “right” families? Are you seriously expecting the people who created the problem to now help solve it?

        This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.

        No, of course you aren’t. But by God, let’s also not ask for help from the “wrong” families…

        • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I meant internally right. Goes to the right country clubs. Is on the right museum boards. Is in the little owner’s club that starts with having a 9 figure net worth at absolute minimum.

          That’s what I meant by “right” it was a mocking term for the self-protecting, self-elevating wealth class made up of a few thousand of the right families that lord over all of us and believe they are where ultimate authority belongs, and have used their great wealth to secure generationally. This is their system, by their design, and they will continue to use their vast power to defend it.

          • FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today
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            1 year ago

            Ah yes, if only one of those country club going billionaires would decide to use their power to try and come help us…

            Yeah, I think I’m just gonna let you stew and simmer on that one.

            • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’ve belabored the point that they won’t, have no reason to, literally created such conditions to begin with, and actively defend against any change to it.

              Do you have some sort of a point? If so speak it.

              • FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today
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                1 year ago

                I do, but if I said it outright I would just be accused of a lack of empathy and intelligence, plus a whole lot of other things far worse than that, so I won’t.

                So if you didn’t get my broad hint, I’m not going to be upset, and if you do, like I said, perhaps take my advice to stew and simmer over it before posting a response in affect.