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Discussion (89 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Seems to me like they say one thing, do another, and all of us hold the bag at the end of it all.
Yup.
It's the same lie that the GOP cares about deficits and debt… except when they're in power and want to do tax cuts for the rich.
They're in power for themselves and their disregard for us is by design.
Who not only fights tooth and nail against healthcare improvements but actively took money from existing programs to fund a national police and detainment apparatus?
Which party produced the most meaningful (albeit not far enough) healthcare reform of the 21st century in the US?
Those examples in particular are quite rough to try and both sides.
From what I've seen, Republicans don't bother trying. Democrats try and get blocked by the GOP; not sure if they can 'try harder' or find ways around the blocking. Biden certainly tried on student loans and got shot down:
* https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-press-...
After trying to be bi-partisan with the ACA/Obamacare the Democrats just went forward with it
Obama got Obamacare done in the single 6-month window in this century when Democrats could pass legislation without Republicans blocking them. Biden tried to cancel student loans and was blocked in court because surprise, surprise, Republicans wouldn't allow it to go through Congress.
> The Democrats held the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2021 for two years
Read up on the Senate filibuster to understand why Republicans could block student loan cancellation (and anything else Democrats wanted) despite this.
In theory both parties are part of the same system and complicit and corrupt. In actual practice one party is much worse than the other. By a lot.
Republicans win elections by blocking anything that's good for ordinary Americans, and blaming Democrats for their lives getting worse as a result. Voters are too dumb and distracted to see the con.
That's a lie.
> Republicans advocate for fiscal responsibility -- never happens.
Happened under a Democrat.
> As a former staunch Republican, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that both parties have sold us out.
Ahhh, it makes sense now.
Keep in mind that the Senate de facto requires 60 votes to pass almost anything these days. In this millennium, Democrats held enough seats to overcome that for about two months, and there was no margin at all. Hence the lack of a public option: Joe Lieberman didn't want it, and without him the whole thing didn't pass.
https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/two-santas-str...
You're blaming Democrats for things they try to do and are blocked by Republicans...
This "both sides are bad" trope is such an obvious sign that you're either 1) a Republican but embarrassed to say so, or 2) a bad faith actor making a false equivalency.
For all of the actual criticisms that can be levied at them, Democrats aren't the ones throwing our institutions onto the scrap heap, alienating our allies, or cheering on autocracy.
For the overton window to produce actual left wing policy that you may agree with, fundamental long-term change is needed.
Past talking points are not indicative of future behavior.
https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/59403/1/Thomson_etal_AJPS_... for one quick to find example of the literature on this.
Most of the research on this was done before Trump entered office. Trump is a wildly unusual political leader, who is significantly more corrupt than other politicians, promises random things and then fails to deliver them, and generally breaks all of the rules that politicians follow- this is what his supporters describe as his "authenticity", that he "tells it like it is". The more people believe, incorrectly, that "all politicians are corrupt" and "no politicians deliver on their promises" the more likely they are to accept Trump- who again is an extreme outlier among American politicians.
Your cynicism actually ends up ruining the country and makes it more likely that we have bad government.
Academics like Zinn and Chomsky, popular music, movies, TV have been calling out the lies for decades.
Americans are that fucking dumb, I guess.
Just look at all the nonsense around tariffs. This was a huge thing with this admin, and people generally don't know what they are!
So basically, elites have to necessarily balance (and exploit) the biases of over-represented minorities with their own largely metropolitan beliefs.
All of this is made more ironic in that the moral structures of the Abrahamic religions, including Islam, are all influences on and in line with, traditional American values, which American elites don't follow (see Epstein) but Americans who don't live in cities largely do.
And I don't think de-prioritizing foreign investments is part of that policy.
They simply lie.
Do you think he means anything he says? Or that anything is about anything more than self-indulgence?
It's all talk, it's almost guaranteed to be the opposite of what he says. It seems to be more about deflection than anything else.
I further believe that future historians will look back on the past 300 or so years as being occupied by two very different Americas: a true America, founded in 1776, and some kind of oligarchic scam that still called itself America for the brand recognition but was in reality a completely different entity.
This wild and outrageous statement needs a serious source to backup the gigantic claim.
US uses dollars to buy oil from UAE.
UAE sends dollars back to Paramount shareholders in the US to "own" a piece Paramount.
Is it "foreign owned"? Do they really own anything? What are they really going to do with it? I don't know. I inhabit a world of nuance, I don't take rhetoric at face value, that's a waste of time.
> What are they really going to do with it?
The obvious thing would be to shift content away from "American" values and more towards whatever values the UAE leadership wants. Maybe the Baywatch reboot gets canned because they don't want to see bouncing boobies. Maybe stories critical of the UAE aren't aired on 60 minutes.
On the other hand they kept their promises of deporting and killing immigrants, and of getting rid of woke ideas like science and education.
The same is true of "fiscal responsibility." The GOP runs on this, but when they get into power they spend like drunks and run the deficit up. This has been true since Reagan, though Trump represents a huge escalation.
The same has been true with the whole "we're going to get rid of these DEI hires and be purely meritocratic." Okay, then why does the head of the FBI need to blow in a tube to start his car and why are a bunch of unqualified former pundits and podcasters in positions of high authority? Why is the head of the CDC a crackpot who can barely talk?
"A thing is what it does." Ignore rhetoric, look at results. BTW the same rule applies to rhetoric from the other side.
Because that rhetoric has ended, replaced with H1B-love, Israel-first, "immigration needs to rise actually, because a lot of toilets need to be cleaned" and "we don't have enough money to worry about the population, we need to make war" and the administration spends a large amount of time attacking the people who still use it?
Annoying that people don't keep up with this. "Same side" is some really simple thinking for a complex political environment.
Trump is just another neocon accumulating cash. In the 90s-00s, he worshiped Hillary Clinton; now he governs almost indistinguishably from a Clinton, a Blair or a Bush. With the only difference being that there's been a complete end to any restraints on Executive power through a bipartisan effort that still continues (see FISA renewal.) He can sell everything. Democrats were used to selling everything the old way, and pretending to be powerless. Turns out there's no reason to pretend to be powerless anymore.
The ideological MAGA types haven't changed at all. The only part of the electorate still on the Trump train are the same people who would have been Trump University students. With the addition of a bunch of newly silent lib Iran/Israel-first hawks. They also don't care about the foreign ownership of the media, or the media concentration that made it dangerous. They in fact actively support media concentration because it makes it easier to censor political opinions that they object to. The sex pest who is still ideological father of the Democratic Party was literally the person who repealed the laws that made it possible.
People voted for him anyway because the manosphere told them too.
Cable news is basically dead, but I think most of us missed the funeral. It used to be a relatively big deal decades ago, but those times are long since passed.
[1] - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
https://www.kff.org/state-health-policy-data/state-indicator...
The internet has killed institutions of journalism that have a reputation to protect. Billionaires did the rest of the job (RIP Washington Post). Pretty bad outcome. We are left random YouTubers, people with a Substack or podcast, etc. No fact-checking standards / departments. Will Propublica and PBS Newshour/Frontline be around in 10 years. Federal funding cuts already killed Weekend Newshour.