Election results discussion thread (and sadly the inevitable aftermath)

[Dirty Hipsters]

 

[Kwak]

and keep getting no-where as republicans keep trying to pass it again and again.



man did you forget 2017 already?


you need to stop skipping those pills man or get whatever Biden has been using

Tea Party protests - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Obama election spurs race threats, crimes

Police have documented a range of alleged hate crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack, since the election of Barack Obama.

www.nbcnews.com

Election Dispute Increases Risk Of Political Violence, Analysts Warn

Domestic terrorism analysts say that the drawn-out vote count and fiery rhetoric from the White House are inflaming tensions.

www.npr.org

What's your deranged point? That the rightwing are the only truly civilised political side unlike those nasty leftists? You can shove that bullshit back where you got it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Hey you guys, don't know if it's been mentioned before, but apparently the US constitution has a bunch of amendments, and the very first of those already prevents Sharia law from becoming a thing there, even if pro-Sharia Muslims are a big part of the population with lots of political power (I'm guessing they are, otherwise why is this even a question?).

I guess rightwingers aren't interested in the constitution or the amendments, otherwise they'd know this?

Anyhoo, off to read the 2nd amendment next, hopefully it will also be a sensible decision relevant to the modern age of...you what?!

 

[crimson5pheonix]

"It's really the left wing that's violent, right wingers aren't doing anything!"
Meanwhile, in another thread about right wingers selling guns to Hamas to start a civil war in America

 

[Trunkage]

I seem to remember some nutters trying to kidnap a governor. Geez were those guys Leftie too.

You're also going to have to show me how many storefronts are being destroyed righr now today due to these riots

 

[Iron]

Neither does anyone else, so what the fuck is your point? Just to spout random irrelevant bullshit with no ulterior motive?

It was important enough for you to respond to.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I seem to remember some nutters trying to kidnap a governor. Geez were those guys Leftie too.

Saw a pro-militia guy claim it was, yeah. Someone that's ex-military, teaches small units tactics and how to prepare your rightwing militia.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Tea Party protests - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Obama election spurs race threats, crimes

Police have documented a range of alleged hate crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack, since the election of Barack Obama.

www.nbcnews.com

Election Dispute Increases Risk Of Political Violence, Analysts Warn

Domestic terrorism analysts say that the drawn-out vote count and fiery rhetoric from the White House are inflaming tensions.

www.npr.org

What's your deranged point? That the rightwing are the only truly civilised political side unlike those nasty leftists? You can shove that bullshit back where you got it.

And yet most of the things you pointed out turned out peaceful lol.

I'm not saying it.

Seems like reality is though.

Hey you guys, don't know if it's been mentioned before, but apparently the US constitution has a bunch of amendments, and the very first of those already prevents Sharia law from becoming a thing there, even if pro-Sharia Muslims are a big part of the population with lots of political power (I'm guessing they are, otherwise why is this even a question?).

I guess rightwingers aren't interested in the constitution or the amendments, otherwise they'd know this?

Anyhoo, off to read the 2nd amendment next, hopefully it will also be a sensible decision relevant to the modern age of...you what?!

Only protects from the government doing it not private companies.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Trunkage]

Only protects from the government doing it not private companies.

I agree. I think the Sharia esque Christians who want to force you not have contraception is terrible and should be utterly banned

 

[Elijin]

And yet most of the things you pointed out turned out peaceful lol.

I'm not saying it.

Seems like reality is though.



Only protects from the government doing it not private companies.

Oh just shut up.

You keep talking about how private companies aren't restricted as they will make their own law, so why does it matter if there is a law which private companies are going to disregard?

"WE HAVE TO MAKE A LAW BECAUSE THE CORPORATE OVERLORDS ARE NOT CONTROLLED BY LAW"

Even in our dystopian future, why would the corporate overlords back a set of laws which which severely reduce the buying power and product lines for 52% of their buyers?

Shhhhh now.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

Don't remember if this has been posted yet or not:

 

[Agema]

Quite the enduring feat of propaganda, really.

It was true, though: Thatcher shattered Labour's grip on the working class in the UK. In the USA, the Democrats started gradually losing the working classes earlier, but Reagan cemented it, absolutely dominating the Democrats in that demographic by about 2:1. Neither Labour (UK) nor the Democrats (USA) have ever really recovered their vote shares with them.

That's the reality that the politicians of centre-left parties had to face in the 80s and 90s. And continue to face, such as the great left hope Jeremy Corbyn getting his party wiped out in what were, and theoretically should still be, Labour strongholds.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Oh just shut up.

I think the generally proper way to respond to that is

MAKE ME PUNK

You keep talking about how private companies aren't restricted as they will make their own law, so why does it matter if there is a law which private companies are going to disregard?

Ah but some laws do apply to private companies it's only generally the constitution relating to the government that doesn't

"WE HAVE TO MAKE A LAW BECAUSE THE CORPORATE OVERLORDS ARE NOT CONTROLLED BY LAW"

Actually they are. They're not controlled by the same laws government is.

Even in our dystopian future, why would the corporate overlords back a set of laws which which severely reduce the buying power and product lines for 52% of their buyers?

Shhhhh now.

Because they can?
Because some massive Oil Baron buys up the companies and decides he wants to have his views / will enforce (happened with Walmart to an extent with the contraceptives.)

 

[Iron]

It was true, though: Thatcher shattered Labour's grip on the working class in the UK. In the USA, the Democrats started gradually losing the working classes earlier, but Reagan cemented it, absolutely dominating the Democrats in that demographic by about 2:1. Neither Labour (UK) nor the Democrats (USA) have ever really recovered their vote shares with them.

That's the reality that the politicians of centre-left parties had to face in the 80s and 90s. And continue to face, such as the great left hope Jeremy Corbyn getting his party wiped out in what were, and theoretically should still be, Labour strongholds.

Is there any possibility, at all, that the abandonment of the labor movements were as a result of the policies and rhetoric coming from those movements? i.e. some personal responsibility for their own failure?

 

[Elijin]

Corporations can't pass laws. The government already has a law in place. At the point the corporations can pass laws independently of the government, then the government laws, up to and including this theoretical ban on sharia law, will be defunct and protect nothing.

Go be a boring grifter somewhere else, you're not clever.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Iron]

What would you suggest that that would be?

In a tug between two competing entities it is entirely possible for one of them to lose through no real fault of their own , because the other was simply better or got lucky. It is not necessarily the case of the loser making grand mistakes or being incompetent to the brink of self destruction.

But I'll humor your question, even if I feel it is the kind of implicitly laden question that the Right employs when it wants to go on a spiel about how socialism kills freedom and individual rights: The Left's problem in the late-70's and early-80's can largely be summed up as having made enough gains that a lot of people in the West were leading pretty comfortable lives. The social contract was such that the workers got an employer and would work for them until retirement in return for a decent wage, fair labor standards and regular vacations or time off. At this point even the working class was pretty content, it had disposable income, it could send its kids to higher education and could partake in previous upper class activities like vacations abroad or leisurely car driving during the weekends. Simply put: The working class was well on its way to getting comfortable middle class lives.

That position generally creates a cut off point where people are so well off that they stop worrying about losing their jobs, going into economic hardship or lacking basic safety gear in their line of work. Instead they start questioning things like why they pay so much taxes, why there's so much paperwork and government involvement when they just want to build a tool shed in the garden and why their sons have to spend a year or more with the military (in countries with conscription). At this point, the average worker starts thinking that liberal ideas about personal freedom, personal choice and government non-interference sounds pretty good (which it does, don't get me wrong).

So the workers are now more susceptible to liberal arguments about personal freedom. Combine that with how the Right was incredibly good at using every single economic problem from the oil crisis of -74 onwards as a way to explain why it was all really the fault of overbearing governments and international agreements and what was needed was a free market and less restrictions on proper Western companies. The result is a Right that appeals to a worker class that feels they've outgrown the labor movement and its constant focus on regulations and taxes, which naturally saps the labor movement of workers who instead feel that they want lower taxes and cheap gasoline.

The Left really can't do much about that, it is a natural case of voter drift as priorities change. The Left largely tried to counteract this shift in worker men by appealing to groups that previously had gone utterly unrepresented like LGBTQ, ethnic minorities and the liberal middle class, by shifting their rhetoric from labor issues to rights issues. It has won them new voter groups but they are not nearly as large as the huge voting bloc that are working class men. Could the left have done something different? I honestly doubt it, because the change in voter priorities meant that the core issues of the left were no longer seen as important (often considered "achieved", which we all know today isn't a thing in terms of labor rights or job safety). Had they tried to shift with the working men they would have ended up being centrists instead of left parties and would have betrayed the very core issues upon which the traditional left was built.

first of all, that's a good response, so thanks.
Your claim is that the left had essentially achieved its goals for the proletariat, found itself redundant and then reached out to smaller interest groups to prop up support for its existence. That is an interesting view of this issue.
The reason why I gave this question is that I think that 'the left' normally wouldn't take personal responsibility for its own failures as is a customary and ingrained part of its collective psyche (the same reason the reality of the failure of these systems in east Europe and elsewhere are explained by outside forces and not the ideology itself). Should I have used zeitgeist instead of collective psyche? Or is it even the wrong way to use that word. I'd imagine that there are certain truths they hold as dogma, which one of them is (following the collapse of the USSR) that the failure of socialism does not implicate the failure of the ideology itself.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Iron]

If I wanted to point to one distinct problem with the Left it is that it tends to want to think the best of people. It wants to believe that people who do the social journey to a higher income and social strata will remember what it was like and keep avenues open for others like them to use. I'd argue that historically those people that benefit from Leftist politics are also rather quick to abandon them and if not them, their children will (in Sweden the labor movement was so big and all encompassing that many kept voting social democrat simply because it was their identity to do so, their children didn't care nearly as much). Because for the average voter politics is not about grand ideologies or collective benefit, it is a simple analysis of what benefits me the most. If they think they can get the most out of tax cuts and deregulations that's what they'll vote for, even if it was vast tax funded social security systems and strict corporate regulation that allowed them to rise into comfort. The Left needs to figure out a way to retain voters even after they've achieved some success, because that's when voters tend to start looking at alternatives.

I also think we need to make a distinction between "Western" leftism and "Eastern" Leftism as it pertains to Europe and the existence of the USSR. Communism in the USSR is very distinct from the largely social democratic socialism that gained traction in Western Europe. As I pointed out in the other thread, I struggle to really see the USSR as actual socialism or communism as it was an oligarchy or dictatorship for pretty much all of its existence. I can see how my analysis of the left is only really viable for Western Europe (and to some degree the USA), because Eastern Europe and large parts of Asia were under the yoke of the USSR and its oppressive system. They have an entirely different political trajectory.

I think the separation is entirely arbitrary. I understand that the push for "social-democracy" is in essence a consequence of the communist purge in western Europe in the late-40s and early 50s. Some countries had considerable civil unrest because of the push from labor unions and paramilitary groups pushing for regime-change. A case-study would be Italy and its history with communist and fascist terrorism and political movements in the 60s and 70s . I think that the current separation you employ is a coping mechanism to distance your ideology from the sad history and legacy of the USSR and its proxies. It's also a necessary mechanism to legitimize left-wing groups in western Europe as a result of the cold war.