US 2024 Presidential Election
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Well, undoubtedly someone's still mucking around with them, although they're probably well past peak insanity, and may well have morphed into some slightly less ridiculous form.
But holy shit, didn't some people make a fortune whilst the going was good? That artist - Beppo or something - didn't he have a $60-$70 million NFT sale? I mean, he's no-one I think the art world really gives a shit about, but he grabbed his 15 minutes perfectly and made more than most artists at his level would make in several lifetimes (that's their actual lifetime, plus a few after death when their works appreciate).
Oh, I'm not surprised that the lesser evil is evil, I just don't see a not evil alternative. System's rigged, clutching at straws is all that seems to be left.
EDIT: But we've been over this.
There's that, yes.
Last edited:
Rigged? To an extent. Maybe in a less conspiracy-ish way, the system is just incompatible with the world many voters want.
It is an incredibly troubling question: why doesn't the left do all that lefty sort of stuff like raise taxes? What if... it doesn't work? As we have witnessed in several ways, governments don't necessarily rule supreme in the way we imagine and they might pretend. Liz Truss was run out of office in a jiffy for offending against the markets, and even Donald Trump, leader of the world's dominant economy, chickened out abruptly when they spasmed with alarm at his policies.
Perhaps this is the essence of the world: under the constraints of the system as is currently, good decisions lead to unpopular outcomes. Sure, you can dramatically Brexit and enjoy a few years of fist-pumping jingoism, and then everyone realises that the country is £1000 a year per person worse off for it, and the passport queues for their favourite holiday destinations are a nightmare. The cost of bucking the system. Maybe it turns out all those dull, centrist technocrats are laboriously calculating a pretty good long-term trajectory on all manner of important metrics. We elect in someone radically different, they're going to do something amazing... and we'll suffer for it overall. At least for a while - until a new system can be rebuilt. Although we might find it's not the left that gets to build the new system.
Rigged is an overly emotive term, true.
In many places, a really lefty sort of government doesn't come to power. A somewhat left of centre one, perhaps, but that's not really the same.
Certainly, yes, though one imagines should a landslide victory occur, as happens occasionally, the winners can be a bit more risky with their popularity.
Okay, but why doesn't a really lefty sort of government come to power?
What if it is because... they kind of don't work? Like, maybe some of their ideas really just don't work well - suppresses the economy, and it turns out people won't tolerate lower growth. Maybe it is more systemic: if they try to do something, the financial markets lose confidence and crash their currency, or international investors take fright and undermine their growth and development.
Maybe part of the postwar period was realising that lefty governance is just suboptimal, or maybe something about the way the world worked changed to gradually make it harder for lefty governance to be successful. And so all the lefty parties moved towards the centre.
I'd say that it's because left wing parties tend to be less popular with voters. An ideology not working very well is no reason for it not to get voted in, lack of left wing parties in power does not mean that they'd not be able to function adequately if they were.
One might also mention that various important institutions are hostile to left wing parties getting power in their own or other countries, which could be stretched into being a reason they don't work, I guess.
I would think it varies country by country.
Spain has had a lot of somewhat recent leftwing governments. Germany always gets a coalition which is nearly always centrist. France never gets meaningful coalitions which means only a huge moderate left block has a chance. Belgium has so much issues with coalition finding that it takes forever to form governments and they are strange. Poland has had 22 gouvernments in the last 35 years and currently seems to flip between rightwing and centrist. Greece flips between moderare right and left but has had a stronger left one relatively recently before flipping right again. And so on.
It is really hard to generalize but conservative governments seem more common than left wing ones overall. But the individual differences are strong
Spain has had a lot of somewhat recent leftwing governments. Germany always gets a coalition which is nearly always centrist. France never gets meaningful coalitions which means only a huge moderate left block has a chance. Belgium has so much issues with coalition finding that it takes forever to form governments and they are strange. Poland has had 22 gouvernments in the last 35 years and currently seems to flip between rightwing and centrist. Greece flips between moderare right and left but has had a stronger left one relatively recently before flipping right again. And so on.
It is really hard to generalize but conservative governments seem more common than left wing ones overall. But the individual differences are strong
We know that's not the reason, because catastrophically buffoonish not-working governments of the centrist and right-wing stripe get elected constantly.
And the few times that genuinely left-wing projects are undertaken in the capitalist west, they result in things like the NHS or the New Deal.
It's the latter. That shift specifically was the reliance on international markets, investment, and ultimately 'market confidence', which prioritises the performance of conglomerates over the wellbeing of a populace because the former guarantees returns. So left-wing policies are not 'suboptimal', and may in fact be both popular and potentially successful in improving wellbeing. But they're costly in the metrics that matter most to investors (and by extension, the governments desperate to attract them).
I mean...for a whacky and crazy experiment, maybe we should actually TRY to do any sort of lefty government instead of having Democrats hamstring the actual left and do everything in their power to fight Leftys (even if it means their "enemy" The Republicans get in office instead).
The Democrats love to PROMISE all the cool lefty shit and they get voted in because of it (and the times they spit in the face of the left and go right instead like Kamala "Let's have the most lethal military force in the world and I will be tougher on immigration than Trump" Harris, they lose). So let's have them actually keep some of those promises for once, just for a giggle, to see what happens. It can't be much worse than...*waves hands all around myself* where like half the fucking country is a missed paycheck away from being homeless on the streets...
Maybe. As you say, investor-centric metrics matter. But where centre and right-wing buffoons take power, should they fail the investor class, the investor class switch support. Post-Johnson, for the most part the UK business community decamped to support Labour. (Would they still have abandoned the Tories if Corbyn were in charge?) Also, despite the buffoonishness, one can make the point that under the hood, Trump's USA is serving most of the investor class okay: Trump pushed his luck on the tariffs, but when they pushed back he folded. Generally they're still making a fortune, so the rest of the turbulence isn't very important.
It literally can be worse than half the country being a missed paycheque away from being homeless on the streets: like mass unemployment where half the country don't have a next paycheque. Or the national debt spirals out of control and a potential default? A currency collapse, with mass inflation meaning everything's wildly more expensive - people unable to afford basic staples?
Again, take Brexit. Millions of Britons thought "It couldn't be worse, could it?" and voted leave to shake things up. And guess what: it is worse. Thinking it can't be much worse needs to be in the context of a whole world of examples out there: you could be an Argentina, or an Algeria, or an Angola. These are much, much worse.
If a lefty redesign of the nation causes even a modest downturn, it's all over at the next election and the left will be thrashed at the hustings. The only way the left are getting round that is if the population have actively bought into a revolution and costed the pain in. (And even then you might find when the pain bites people's patience runs out quickly: Maduro very quickly had to resort to undermining democracy when Chavismo starting encountering problems.) If the left try to be too radical, we can guarantee a titanic flood of money from rich individuals and corporations to drown them in negative PR even before they take power.
This is perhaps what I mean when I say the way the world works is not favourable to the left. The economic powers that be - business leaders, international finance - have all sorts of levers to ensure that lefty governments have very limited leeway to be lefty.
Why would you vote for objectively bad candidates? People that vote for either party is completely illogical.
The left needs more than good wishes, positive vibes, snappy social media posts and other pixie rainbows. Willing the hand grenade that lands at your feel to not go off won't stop it going off. Left-leaning policies need to rigorously theorised, scrutinised and even tested, not float on a cloud of internet posivity and moral superiority. If they're not practical, all they're going to do is make life shitter for a load of people they're supposed to help and make it even harder for the left to win the next election.
Then all we're going to do is get more Trump because clearly "Nothing will fundamentally change" has somehow not convinced people to keep voting Democrats.
If people don't feel like their needs are being met, they'll look elsewhere. While I think it's incredibly foolish to look to Trump for that answer, people are going to go to alternatives (or stop participating at all because why play a rigged game).
So yeah, I guess if you're fine with the direction the country is currently going in then you're right, we shouldn't even try to do Left Shit. But clearly the Centrist Schtick of "we can't do anything good cause it might be difficult" is failing miserably so maybe, just maybe, we could at least try to do something good instead. Just as a fun little experiment to see what would happen.
Hell, I don't even want them to try to do a Socialist Heaven. I just want Democrats to DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY WILL DO when they're not in power. Those whacky stances like not funding the border wall, not letting cops and ICE do whatever they want to do, M4A, etc. You know, shit that polls pretty high that they then immediately stop talking about as soon as they're back in power.
Last edited:
People like them have already given up hope and are part of the problems, if they go to people like trump or someone just as bad and worse. They're bitches you are too selfish to think about anyone other than but themselves and think they're the smartest ones on the planet. And everybody else is a mindless lamb or peon. When people like them are usually the thing they hate the most.
Which again only helps Trump by staying "neutral and beating the system". People who do that are usually only out for themselves or so.Cynical, they think nothing they do matters until it visibly affects them. Yet they'll still blame it on somebody else when said other else wasn't involved at all with their self inflicted misery or misfortune.
The people who voted for trump think they'll get more jobs or better jobs either.Got laid off or are in worse positions than they were before.No, different people who decided not to vote at all or think both sides are bad.
A reminderI'm not making any excuses from the democrats but once again, the arab americans and muslims are were first ones that get screwed over the moment Trump got in power again. All the ones in powerful positions in American congress were either kicked out or assigned to a useless job. If they didn't bend the knee or suck his dick 24/7.
The sad reality of US politics at the moment is that you have a two-party system, either a Democrat or a Republican wins in your elections.
Even if both front bad candidates, I would still vote for the one that is less bad over the other because my not-voting would only decrease the chances of the less bad candidate winning.
Although in an ideal world I wouldn't want either party to win, in reality either of the two will win, so it would be in my best interest to vote for the one that I believe to be less bad.
In a healthy democracy I would encourage people to vote on basis of their principles, but that's not really a luxury Americans have at this point in time.
Bari Weiss isn't just a mouthpiece automaton for fascism surrounded by a fake "library" TV set, she's also been proactively responsible for getting Palestinians assassinated by Israel in last couple of years. I don't know any words damning enough to accurately summarise her, plz invent more words, society. (It ain't a one person job!)
euromedmonitor.org
The full rest of article preceeding that above snippet to contextualise for those with more time;
Israeli Strike on Refaat al-Areer Apparently Deliberate
Israeli Strike on Refaat al-Areer Apparently Deliberate
Character assassination
As though killing him was not enough, trolls supporting Israel and its state ideology Zionism have been trying to assassinate his character as well, before and after his killing.
“For weeks since the start of this war, Refaat has been receiving numerous death threats and hateful messages from Israeli accounts on social media after prominent public figures singled him out for harassment and incitement,” Euro-Med said.
One such public figure was Bari Weiss.
Weiss singled out a tweet Refaat had written about a thoroughly debunked hoax that Palestinian militants had burned an Israeli baby alive in an oven on 7 October.
“Here is Refaat Alareer joking about whether or not an Israeli baby, burned alive in an oven, was cooked ‘with or without baking powder,’” Weiss wrote.
Refaat received death threats and hateful messages on social media afterwards.
“Many maniacal Israeli soldiers already bombing Gaza take these lies and smears seriously and they act upon them,” Refaat wrote at the time.
Zionist trolls are now using the same tactic to try and assassinate the character of Refaat, an internationally known academic who was loved and respected by generations of Palestinians and people around the world.
Targeting academia
Days before Refaat was murdered, Israel assassinated Dr. Sufyan Tayeh, the president of the Islamic University of Gaza where Refaat was a professor of English literature.
Israeli forces also planted explosives and bombed the medicine faculty at the Islamic University of Gaza this month as well.
The right-wing commentator Yinon Magal celebrated that attack by calling it a “Hanukkah gift” from a division of the Israeli military.
The fact that the building was not struck by warplanes but rather by soldiers planting bombs there in person, suggests that there was no “risk” to their lives and that they were not targeting Palestinian resistance inside the building.
One picture depicts an Israeli soldier posing next to the medical faculty building with a giant menorah outside as a sign of conquest.
The placard with the name of the building and the donor who helped build it is vandalized with the words “ours now” in English.
The full rest of article preceeding that above snippet to contextualise for those with more time;
Don't let any of the political or media class try to shuffle this out your memories, cos they will try relentlessly. and don't let them forget it neither. Nothing will improve if people refuse to remember and contend with their parts in all this.Refaat Alareer was assassinated by Israel
Tamara Nassar Rights and Accountability 9 December 2023
Dr. Refaat Alareer at the 2022 graduation ceremony of students at the Islamic University of Gaza. (Via Instagram)
Israel assassinated the writer and educator Dr. Refaat Alareer.
The Israeli airstrike that killed Refaat and several members of his family on 6 December was “apparently deliberate,” the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor concluded.
Refaat had worked closely with The Electronic Intifada and was among the most prominent opponents of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.
He was sheltering at his sister Asmaa’s apartment in the al-Daraj area of Gaza City. Around 6 PM on Wednesday, it was “surgically bombed out of the entire building where it’s located,” the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said, citing corroborated eyewitness testimony and family accounts.
Refaat was killed along with his brother Salah and one of his brother’s children, Muhammad. His sister Asmaa and three of her children – Alaa, Yahya and Muhammad – were also killed, in addition to one of their neighbors.
Other family members were also injured by the Israeli attack.
“The airstrike surgically targeted the apartment on the second floor where Refaat was in a three-story building, and not the entire building; indicating the apartment was the target and not possible collateral damage,” the Euro-Med group said.
Refaat had been displaced multiple times within the Gaza Strip after his home was attacked during the second week of Israel’s genocidal assault on the coastal enclave started on 7 October.
Days before he was killed, Refaat had moved with his wife and children to a school run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.
A close friend of Refaat told the human rights group that he may have been contacted by the Israeli army while at the school.
“He had received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located,” the group said, citing the close friend.
Israeli forces “were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops,” the group added.
While the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor says “the credibility of the threat itself is unclear,” it was definitely one of the reasons that prompted Refaat to relocate to his sister’s home, “believing it was more concealed than an open and overcrowded school where it would have been difficult to hide.”
The group concluded that Refaat was likely targeted by Israeli forces.
“Everything is intentional”
A recent investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call exposed how the Israeli army is using artificial intelligence to generate more targets to hit in Gaza.
Citing intelligence sources, the report said that “the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target.”
“Nothing happens by accident,” one source said.
“When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,” the source added.
“We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
The fact that the home of Refaat’s sister was the only apartment attacked in the building that evening contributes to the conclusion that he was deliberately targeted.
Bombed before
This wasn’t the first time Refaat was bombed since 7 October.
The Israeli army bombed the building where Refaat lived in Gaza City without any warning on 19 October. Two flats were completely destroyed and five others, including that of Refaat’s family, were severely damaged.
Refaat was hosting four displaced families at the time that his building was bombed. All his family’s guests were women and children.
Refaat’s home had a power generator, fuel for a couple of months and solar panels at the time.
“Since Israel’s attack began, we have helped countless numbers of people to pump water, charge their electronic devices and keep their freezers functional,” Refaat wrote in The Electronic Intifada on 22 October.
“I believe that is a reason why our building was hit.”
Others in Refaat’s extended family believed he was targeted specifically for speaking out.
“We do not know why the building was targeted. My mother-in-law insists it is because I talk to the media,” he wrote.
“My mom also raised the same concern.”
Refaat and his family were displaced since that day. They had taken shelter in a hospital and then a school.
The family at one point stayed at the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza City but had to evacuate as Israeli forces drew near.
He wrote an article for The Electronic Intifada exposing the lie that Hamas was operating out of the hospital.
Refaat and his family had been targeted by Israeli forces numerous times in the past, killing dozens of his relatives.
His first written contribution to The Electronic Intifada remembered his brother Mohammed, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in 2014.
“My brother will be martyr number 26 in my extended family,” Alareer wrote at the time.
Other members of Alareer’s family lived, died and were killed under the shadow of Israel’s brutal siege and consecutive assaults on the Gaza Strip.
Last edited: