I will be voting for Bernie Sanders

[Arlo1]

Btw NOT Voting doesn't show them a damn thing. It makes them happy because this way someone like trump or Hilary can get in.

Hillary or Trump get in either ways, because you also do not have the ability in this country to nominate a party's candidate.
( see also: what the leaders of the DNC did to Bernie, and what the leaders of the RNC did to Ron Paul )

I prefer to not send the signal that indicates i'm falling for this shit, and also, there are much better things to do with my time.

Yeah I watched that all unfold. And yeah I would not bother Voting when the choice is only Hillary of Trump.

 

[neptronix]

Even if presidential elections weren't shams, i still wouldn't show up to pick the lesser evil and get some of their blood on my hands. I think if Hillary won, it'd be worse because she'd get away with a lot of shit just because she's the first woman president. Just like Obama got away with things worse than his predecessor.

No thanks to getting behind any of these assholes IMHO. I already got cucked by Obama pretty bad when i went to his rallies and supported a man who was a bigger mass murderer than the one that preceded him.

 

[Arlo1]

I thought there was more than 2 options?

 

[neptronix]

I thought there was more than 2 options?

There are, but due to how the electoral college works, you can't get one elected.
Which is why we have had the same two parties in power for over 200 years.

Also, if you vote your conscience, you are often blamed for shifting the election to ( whoever someone thinks is the worst candidate ), under the assumption that you would have voted for asshole B.

So there is a negative stigma around voting for a third party in our fake elections. Yes, we're really that brainwashed!

 

[Arlo1]

frock the negative stigma and vote to the third party.

 

[billvon]

Also, if you vote your conscience, you are often blamed for shifting the election to ( whoever someone thinks is the worst candidate ), under the assumption that you would have voted for asshole B.

So there is a negative stigma around voting for a third party in our fake elections.

1) No more so than not voting and making it easier for the jerk to get elected.
2) You don't have to tell anyone how you voted if their reaction will bother you. If you prefer to not vote (or vote for candidate not-X) because you want to make that sort of statement that's fine - but keep in mind that you wanted to make that statement.

Overall, politicians getting elected because people were fooled is bad. Politicians getting elected because people couldn't be bothered to vote is worse.

 

[nicobie]

Overall, politicians getting elected because people were fooled is bad. Politicians getting elected because people couldn't be bothered to vote is worse.

yep

 

[The Toecutter]

Overall, politicians getting elected because people were fooled is bad. Politicians getting elected because people couldn't be bothered to vote is worse.

Politicians getting "elected" because they were pre-vetted before the people even got to vote(or for that matter, before there is any debate, as the Commission for Presidential Debates keeps 3rd parties out of the debate and is owned by the "two parties") is the actual case that exists in this society.

U.S. (s)elections have been a series of Hobson's choices through its existence. In 2016, both candidates had approval of only a small minority of Americans, yet it was going to be one or the other, and nothing else.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/03/us/elections/trump-and-clinton-favorability.html

The following chart illustrates nicely what has happened to U.S. politics thanks to the Democratic party shifting ever rightward, both parties shifting towards authoritarianism, and the Republicans going off into Bizarroland with Trump:

The top row is pretty much illustrates the state of U.S. politics in the 1950s. You had plenty of Democrats and Republicans supporting New Deal policies championed by FDR, and even some to the left of that thinking those policies weren't sufficient. Dwight D. Eisenhower was even critical of a military-industrial complex that had already run amuck, yet was nothing compared to what it is today. On the extreme right, there was Joseph McCarthy and his followers branding everyone as communists.

In the 60s, the Civil Rights movement took off and the counterculture became more prominent. Socialism and communism were talked about among Americans, and not necessarily in a negative context. People took to the streets and demanded to be heard, with the anti war marches, the civil rights marches, MLK Jr. showing the U.S. government's and peoples' mass hypocrisies for what they were. Disenfranchised blacks were even arming themselves, scaring the "upstanding", God-fearing, "proper" right-wing Caucasoid Christians into passing gun control laws. The civil rights act passed, people made marches on DC demanding an end to the wars, and Democracy was actually thriving, for perhaps the first time in the nation's history. The Deep State was not amused at the upheaval and the threat this posed to its power, and low and behold, all sorts of civil rights leaders, activists, politicians, and others that the Deep State cronies disagreed with wound up dead under questionable circumstances. 4 college kids were even murdered by the National Guard in 1970, and nothing ever happened to get justice for that.

America started sliding rightward again.

The 2nd row is a good indicator of where American politics were in the 1970s. "Left" now meant Jimmy Carter's brand of right-wing Neoliberalism. With Reagan's "morning in America", the rightward slide continued.

The 3rd row shows the state of U.S. politics by the 1990s. "Left" now meant Bill Clinton and his brand of neoliberalism, which actually bordered on fascism. He implemented more of Reagan's goals than Reagan did! NAFTA/WTO, increased penalties and incarceration of non-violent drug users combined with privatization of the nation's prison system, rammed through the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996 that resulted in today 6 corporations controlling 90% of the news and effectively homogenizing public political discourse, and if it weren't for him getting caught getting a BJ in the oval office by Ms. Lewinski, he may very well have succeeded at throwing everyone's Social Security into the hands of Wall Street gamblers and speculators which he fully intended to do.

The 4th row shows where we are today, in post 911 America. We're in Bizarro World. Obama governed every bit as right-wing as the right-wing extremist/fascist George W. Bush, yet was branded by the press as a "liberal" or a "left-wing moderate". Obama thinks it's ok for the U.S. government to execute native-born U.S. citizens without a trial or even a case against them, having signed the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA into law and with a drone strike murdering 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-alawki occurring under his watch. Human rights, from a functional standpoint, no longer exist in the U.S. in an age of warrantless industrial-scale mass surveillance, extrajudicial execution, and forever war.

A large number of Americans then wonder what has happened to their country and why it has become a hollowed out husk of its former self. As a result, a dim-witted right-wing extremist and fascist of a vulgarian is occupying the Whitehouse because enough desperate people seeking some kind of disruption to the status quo or wanting to make this country what it once was voted for him to convince the electoral college to overrule the popular vote again, and "socialism" is no longer a dirty word at the very same time as a candidate who calls himself a "socialist" is now the most popular politician in the country, and this is in a country where politicians are generally reviled. That self-proclaimed "socialist" fits somewhere between "the center" of the second from the top row of the above chart and "the center" of the top row of the chart, and today, he's painted as a left-wing extremist. The politicians moved ever rightward, but the American people didn't.

Had the DNC not rigged the primary against this "socialist", it is left in question whether the dim-witted vulgarian would even be in the White House at all. The DNC needs to own up to that, or we may have 4 more years of the vulgarian.

We're living in truly interesting times, and not in a good way.

 

[neptronix]

Overall, politicians getting elected because people were fooled is bad. Politicians getting elected because people couldn't be bothered to vote is worse.

Why would it matter whether people vote out of ignorance or don't bother to show up, when the popular vote has no bearing on the result?

You make it sound like elections work in some fashion other than how federal documents describe them.

 

[neptronix]

frock the negative stigma and vote to the third party.

If we had legitimate elections in the United States, i'd agree with you on that.

 

[neptronix]

Had the DNC not rigged the primary against this "socialist", it is left in question whether the dim-witted vulgarian would even be in the White House at all. The DNC needs to own up to that, or we may have 4 more years of the vulgarian.

I don't like the left or the right at all, and i find them equally dangerous to freedom and prosperity, but i would rather have someone who is obviously a psychopath than a psychopath that speaks well and manages to get away with more of the criminal activity they wish to perpetrate.

From a liberal perspective, the best thing you can get is a conservative that has opposition in his own party, and strong opposition from yours.

For example; Clinton, Bush, and Obama all had their own separate crusades against illegal immigrants, and got very little flak for it because of how they marketed it to the public. Trump marketed his crusade in a xenophobic way, and so far he has had less action taken against illegal immigration than the liberal presidents that preceded him as a result.

What concerns me is a president who can sweet talk their way through genuinely evil actions. Obama managed to do this, and got away with a lot of things Bush would have wanted to do, but couldn't because there was too much friction from the liberals.

 

[The Toecutter]

I don't like the left or the right at all, and i find them equally dangerous to freedom and prosperity, but i would rather have someone who is obviously a psychopath than a psychopath that speaks well and manages to get away with more of the criminal activity they wish to perpetrate.

From a liberal perspective, the best thing you can get is a conservative that has opposition in his own party, and strong opposition from yours.

For example; Clinton, Bush, and Obama all had their own separate crusades against illegal immigrants, and got very little flak for it because of how they marketed it to the public. Trump marketed his crusade in a xenophobic way, and so far he has had less action taken against illegal immigration than the liberal presidents that preceded him as a result.

What concerns me is a president who can sweet talk their way through genuinely evil actions. Obama managed to do this, and got away with a lot of things Bush would have wanted to do, but couldn't because there was too much friction from the liberals.

I'm in agreement with all of this. Our freedoms are being eroded from people claiming to possess all sorts of worldviews.

The self-proclaimed "liberals" in positions of power have been some of the worst butchers and tyrants of the lot.

Obama and Trump are very much alike as far as actual policies go. At least with Trump, the atrocities are out in the open and difficult to ignore. Whereas Obama was a fascist pretending to be a liberal or a moderate, Trump is openly a fascist and revels in it.

The cognitive dissonance from many common people who call themselves "liberal", "progressive", "moderate", ect is staggering. The unconstitutional wars still rage unabated, the unconstitutional surveillance state still expands, the poor still go without what they need, the migrant peoples are still persecuted in their home countries and unjustly reviled by many Americans while a blind eye is simultaneously turned toward the criminals gaming the taxpayer funds, the budget still remains an unbalanced mess, the planet continues its march toward ecocide, ect. All of these problems started long before Trump, and even though he is further exacerbating them, these same problems were made worse by Obama, and Bush Jr. before him.

You can vote for whatever pre-vetted candidate you like, but you can never truly vote for a change in policy.

This country is a tinderbox waiting to explode with violence and civil strife, and our oversized government knows it and is preparing accordingly to hold onto its ill-gotten power.

 

[Arlo1]

frock the negative stigma and vote to the third party.

If we had legitimate elections in the United States, i'd agree with you on that.

Lets put this another way. What do you have to loose voting for the 3rd party? A lost vote if the system is rigged? Who cares, not to mention how things will crumble when people realize the system is rigged and the votes are not counted correctly.

The fall of America is not far ahead on this path!

 

[The Toecutter]

The fall of America is not far ahead on this path!

If Julian Assange's "Dead Man's Switch" is activated, the resulting dump of classified criminal activity committed by the U.S. and other governments and various transnational corporations could very well get the ball rolling on that...

Then again, a "Night of the Long Knives" in all of the world's various "first world Democracies" is probably in the near future as well, regardless whether or not the above comes to fruition.

 

[billvon]

Why would it matter whether people vote out of ignorance or don't bother to show up, when the popular vote has no bearing on the result?

You make it sound like elections work in some fashion other than how federal documents describe them.

The popular vote has a very direct bearing on the result. It would be impossible, for example, to have 90% of voters vote for candidate A and have candidate B elected instead. It is possible for 60% of voters to vote for candidate A and have candidate B elected, but that is the exception, not the rule.

The electoral college was instituted when the country was founded because the USA was founded as the United States of America, not as a federal government. The federal government was supposed to concern itself with a pretty narrow range of affairs - a top level court system to hear the most important cases that affected more than one state, mounting a common defense against enemies, things like that. It was not intended to be in charge. The states were supposed to do most of the work, since we were a group of states united for a common purpose.

So we have a system where we vote for electors within a state, and the state then votes for the president. That retains state power instead of federal power. Note that states can apportion electors however they want - including by popular vote. So it is up to the states, not the federal government, whether the states go all in for one candidate or do it proportionally.

It is also sad that so much attention is paid to the president and so little to local governmental officials. Nowadays almost everyone knows who the president is, but few know the mayor and governor of their towns and states. Yet the mayor has the most direct impact on their life, and the governor comes next. It is only due to our desire to have one leader that we focus on the president, rather than the officials who affect our lives much more than he does.

 

[neptronix]

Obama and Trump are very much alike as far as actual policies go. At least with Trump, the atrocities are out in the open and difficult to ignore. Whereas Obama was a fascist pretending to be a liberal or a moderate, Trump is openly a fascist and revels in it.

Yeah. I started doing a lot of reading after turning into a sucker for Obama and the only thing i can thank for is making me aware of what politics is, in reality.

Under Obama, we had immigration crackdowns ( the DREAM act being a pallative measure after the fact ), a huge expansion of the illegal torture camp he promised to abolish, most of the keystone pipeline built ( he only opposed the final piece ), a wholesale expansion of fracking ( something the liberals were freaking out about under Bush and suddenly got quieter about ), we got into twice as many wars as Bush was involved in, etc etc etc.

And we also saw more blacks being killed by police, crackdowns on liberal groups using military means and hardware ( occupy wall street ), secret kill lists, and other things that would have liberals rioting in the streets if the guy on the other team did it.

Now from a policy perspective, if you ignored what came out of the man's mouth, he'd appear to be about as right wing as George Bush.

The whole teams shit is ridiculous and proof that people are suckers for marketing or spinning things one way..

You can vote for whatever pre-vetted candidate you like, but you can never truly vote for a change in policy.

That's why voting at the federal level is an absolute joke. You can vote for a liberal and get a republican and there's no backing out. But it's worse than that, because you don't even have that choice. We live in an autocracy. And that's hard for people to accept, but it's the truth.

This country is a tinderbox waiting to explode with violence and civil strife, and our oversized government knows it and is preparing accordingly to hold onto its ill-gotten power.

It is unfortunately necessary that we have an event like that. The sad thing is that the divide and conquer shit will work. Our government and media are excellent at shifting the blame on the people, even though 99.999% of the decisions about public policy are made by the political elite.

I find the yellow vest protests pretty nice to see because it is made up of a lot of different political sects uniting. Now that is a really scary thing for government - when the divide and conquer does not work.

 

[neptronix]

Lets put this another way. What do you have to loose voting for the 3rd party? A lost vote if the system is rigged? Who cares, not to mention how things will crumble when people realize the system is rigged and the votes are not counted correctly.

You have approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour to lose, as well as your dignity, because you went to a voting booth in hopes of changing how society is managed, even though history shows us it is not effective. Many people also throw their vote in and think that they did their job of saying their piece... instead of doing things that *have* an impact. That's an even bigger mistake.

A lot of people visit voting booths but forget things like.. voting with their dollars.. voting with their feet.. voting with their actions.. being the change you wish to see in the world.. etc. En masse, these things can have larger effects than even a *real* democratic vote would.

The popular vote has a very direct bearing on the result. It would be impossible, for example, to have 90% of voters vote for candidate A and have candidate B elected instead. It is possible for 60% of voters to vote for candidate A and have candidate B elected, but that is the exception, not the rule.

Per the federal documents that explain our election system, they state that the electoral college determines the result 100% of the time. And there are many instances where that has been the case.

The electoral college usually agrees with the American public, but there's been either 4 or 5 cases where they didn't, and those 4-5 incidences happened in the last 50 years.

There has never been a >50% differential in what the popular vote is versus what the electoral college vote is. Looking through past elections, i have seen up to a ~33% difference though.

The electoral college was instituted when the country was founded because the USA was founded as the United States of America, not as a federal government. The federal government was supposed to concern itself with a pretty narrow range of affairs - a top level court system to hear the most important cases that affected more than one state, mounting a common defense against enemies, things like that. It was not intended to be in charge. The states were supposed to do most of the work, since we were a group of states united for a common purpose.

Yes, that's how things were supposed to work, and should..

It is also sad that so much attention is paid to the president and so little to local governmental officials. Nowadays almost everyone knows who the president is, but few know the mayor and governor of their towns and states. Yet the mayor has the most direct impact on their life, and the governor comes next. It is only due to our desire to have one leader that we focus on the president, rather than the officials who affect our lives much more than he does.

How perfect is it for the powers that be that so many people can be convinced to chase their tail over what the president is up to, rather than put their emotional energy towards something more worthwhile? I swear, these people have managing the tax farm down to a science.

 

[The Toecutter]

It is also sad that so much attention is paid to the president and so little to local governmental officials. Nowadays almost everyone knows who the president is, but few know the mayor and governor of their towns and states. Yet the mayor has the most direct impact on their life, and the governor comes next. It is only due to our desire to have one leader that we focus on the president, rather than the officials who affect our lives much more than he does.

It may be true that the mayor has a more direct impact on someone's life than a President. However, as a result of an increasing concentration of political power held within the Executive branch of the U.S., and a greatly increased scope of the powers of the President of the United States over what the founders of the country and authors of the Constitution intended for said President to possess(power sometimes taken outside the bounds of the Constitution, such as what occurred under Abraham Lincoln, or given to the President via Congress or the Judicial Branch at various times in history), the size and scope of the impacts upon our lives resultant from the types of policies a mayor can implement is also far reduced than that of a President.

Everything in this country is backwards. Instead of the local government having the most power over you, the Federal government does. This also helps those in higher positions of power avoid accountability for their actions. Your local government has absolutely no control over whether or not the Federal government can imprison you for recreational use of "controlled substances" or what you pay in income taxes to the Federal government or whether the NSA wiretaps your phone calls and mails, while the President of the U.S. has a great deal of control over these sorts of things by comparison.

In aggregate, people don't pay much attention to local government because the sort of change they can make via local government is nowhere near as significant of a change to their lives as if there were a significant change in the Federal government and its policy. Unfortunately, people have almost no control over their Federal government in the grand scheme of things.

This dynamic also means that the Federal government is far more powerful than it should be. It's an out of control, unaccountable, over-funded bureaucracy that controls far more about our lives than the local and state governments do.

 

[billvon]

In aggregate, people don't pay much attention to local government because the sort of change they can make via local government is nowhere near as significant of a change to their lives as if there were a significant change in the Federal government and its policy. Unfortunately, people have almost no control over their Federal government in the grand scheme of things.

Nope.

How often your trash gets picked up - whether your roads have bike paths - how much open space is preserved in your community - all these things have a direct, immediate impact on your life. And since you are one vote in a thousand to a million (depending on where you live) you have a fair amount of control over who gets elected.

How many illegal aliens get into the US - whether the US impeaches Trump - what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says - matters not at all to your everyday life. And since your vote in presidential elections is just one of about 180 million, you have less power over it anyway.

 

[nicobie]

the Federal government is far more powerful than it should be. It's an out of control, unaccountable, over-funded bureaucracy that controls far more about our lives than the local and state governments do.

You don't know how much I wish that wasn't true.

 

[The Toecutter]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019...hes-getting-screwed-again-dnc-time-help-biden

President Trump on Saturday said over Twitter that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is "again working its magic in its quest to destroy Crazy Bernie Sanders," in favor of "Sleepy" Joe Biden. Trump then wrote "Here we go again Bernie, but this time please show a little more anger and indignation when you get screwed!"

...

The Orange Mussolini's trolling of the old curmudgeon is hilarious. This is one of those few but priceless instances of truth you will hear out of his lying mouth. I'm wondering if Bernie will let it be rigged against him a second time without putting up any protest, then fold and endorse the next right-wing authoritarian fascist candidate pretending to be a "centrist" or "moderate" because "we must defeat" the other right-wing authoritarian fascist candidate who doesn't pretend to be anything else and is somehow so much worse of a candidate for it.

Nope.

How often your trash gets picked up - whether your roads have bike paths - how much open space is preserved in your community - all these things have a direct, immediate impact on your life.

If these are the issues that have the biggest impact upon your life, you have a level of privilege that most people don't. Good for you.

One's local government has no control over what one is forced to pay in Federal income taxes, whether one can be arrested by State/Federal government officials for harmless recreational drug use or possession, whether or not your employer pays you enough to live on, whether trade agreements are made to facilitate your jobs being shipped to low wage countries or automated out of existence, whether you are forced to pay for wars overseas and whether or not those wars are waged, whether your electronic records are truly kept private or whether they are subject to scrutiny at the whims of complete strangers to be used to your detriment without your knowledge or permission, whether you have to be subjected to invasive/predatory/unnecessary screening procedures to obtain any employment, whether your government is going to commit endless war crimes and create the conditions for blowback that lead to terrorism, what civil liberties are going to be given up on your behalf without your permission in the name of fighting said terrorism, whether or not you will have access to and/or be able to afford healthcare, ect. The list can go on for days.

And since you are one vote in a thousand to a million (depending on where you live) you have a fair amount of control over who gets elected.

Somewhat. I voted for a local Alderman that won by a single vote. In a national presidential election where the electoral college chooses your president, or where Federal bureaucrats in government agencies create policies without you having any input whatsoever(just note the FBI gathering drivers license photos and IDs for use in facial recognition software to identify anyone it points a camera at without their permission or knowledge, or the NSA wiretapping everyone, all without any public vote, all without any public debate, all without congressional approval), your vote has ZERO impact, and that's not a very high bar to exceed.

How many illegal aliens get into the US - whether the US impeaches Trump - what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says - matters not at all to your everyday life.

Actually, when companies hire those illegals at below minimum wage or use them as an excuse to drive wages down, or when housing costs are driven up by the changes in the supply/demand dynamic posed by them, and the use of government services from these people costs money the Federal government takes from the checks of everyone who works for a living, how many illegal aliens are present has a major and pronounced impact on one's everyday life.

You see, in this society, to do anything, you need these little green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes. If you do not have sufficient amounts of these little green pieces of paper or are able to take on debt, you are denied necessities of life such as food, water, shelter, healthcare, transportation, let alone the ability to better yourself through education, or even luxuries and entertainment to actually enjoy what life has to offer. MOST PEOPLE in the U.S. who work for a living can no longer afford the necessities without piling on debt, debt which they then never make enough money to repay. These same people have nothing to set aside for savings. There are also a ridiculous number of people who are jobless and want a job but cannot find work who the Federal government doesn't even count among the unemployed, literally 10s of millions of them; I'm one of them. I've been out of work for over a year, living off of savings, have looked for a job every day since moving home to care for my mother, and after hundreds of applications/resumes sent, I still have no job. I have college degrees in "practical"/"high demand" STEM fields, no arrest/criminal record, 800+ credit score, 9 years engineering experience with plenty of good references and no complaints about my work never having ended a job on bad terms, and after all of that, I've gotten only 1 in-person interview this entire time by an engineering firm in a supposedly "booming" economy, and still no job in my field. Out of desperation, over the last 6 months, I've even been applying to janitorial positions, cashier positions, grocery store shelf stocking positions, and other shitty menial labor jobs just so I don't go broke and end up living on the street again, and ...still no job. I spent my 20s paying off my student loans instead of having fun, and most people I graduated with will be stuck with them the rest of their lives because they had less scholarships than I did and/or chose to live a little and even started families or bought modest homes instead of focusing nearly all their efforts on their debt and they are chronically one missed paycheck, one medical emergency, or one accident away from losing it all.

Throw a few ten millions of illegal aliens in the mix and you've just made things difficult for the poorest people in this country as the value for unskilled labor drops to near zero, propped up only by the fact that there's a minimum wage(which has chronically been raised at periods well below the real, non-CPI inflation rate, to where it pays about 1/3 what it did 50 years ago). Throw in a few million legal H1B Visa applicants to drive wages of the "good paying" white collar and skilled jobs down and now you have offers of $12-15/hr given to applicants for jobs that have historically paid $30-40/hr. Back when I was still working as an engineer making $30/hr, two companies offered me insults of $12/hr and $15/hr respectively for the same work I was doing back in '16, so of course I didn't take it as I was making $30/hr at the time and still owed on my student loans. Odds are great they got an H1B to do the work for dirt cheap after telling the government they can't find a qualified engineer to take the job and that they need H1B visas issued, while plenty of qualified engineers willing and able to work sit at home unemployed because $12-15/hr doesn't even match the cost of living, let alone the cost of paying down student debt on top of that, or allowing anything on the side for recreation/hobbies.

One's local government has next to no control over this national dynamic.

Also, what a way for this society to "encourage" a young student to strive in school to work in a STEM field or other professional career, when one with enough sense will realize they are now better off dropping out of high school and selling dope, so long as they don't get caught or killed. To make matters worse, the illegal immigrants are cornering that market too.

But even with all of this said, the immigrants aren't the root cause of the problem, no matter how much worse they make the problem. Globalism is. Were these same immigrants allowed to prosper within their own countries, and had the U.S. not meddled in their nations' affairs and destroyed democratically elected leaders/governments only to prop up puppet dictatorships over the past century in order to keep these people poor so American big business could strip away their nations' resources, and had the U.S. not created the drug war that coupled with the rampant poverty the U.S. imposed upon these nations led to all of the gangs and cartels, they wouldn't even be immigrating here, legally or not.

Global capital wants cheap wages, and has hijacked the governments of various nations way from the people who live in those nations, including the U.S., to facilitate this. THAT is the problem. Hence this topic. Bernie Sanders, for his faults, has made some proposals that have grabbed the attention of many Americans BECAUSE of the suffering globalism has wrought upon them. Sanders is at least paying lip service to issues that effect your average working person that wasn't born with a silver spoon up their ass, and unlike Trump, he doesn't constantly blame immigrants for the country's woes, but sets the blame at the real root cause: all those greedy rich fux who think the whole productive output of the human race belongs exclusively to them.

Whether or not Mr. Sanders is an honest or sincere person at this point is in question. I personally have no faith in the man, but it is nice to have hope.

 

[Dauntless]

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/03/

Just got hold of it here at the library. (It's okay for you to know my location, it's just that when it demands that my phone tell it boggs down.)

Damn, the anti Bernie issue. Why Bernie fails, why Bernie's always fail, why Bernies kill so many.

Titles like 'The Ignorance that kills,' 'All the Benefits You'll Never see,' 'Socialized Medicine is Bad for Your health.' Damn, they're on this story. They even include the hundreds of millions dying in the 20th century.

I wish they told people the name of the party of Lenin and Stalin was '. . . .Social Democrat. . . .' but that was left out. Maybe Bernie would stop using, but then he'd probably go right on using it. . . .

 

[alpine44]

In the following article, they do make a compelling case that Socialism and Democracy are incompatible.

Socialism Is Not Democratic

The arguments presented in this article are hard to refute in light of the recorded history of Socialism on this planet.

How people who complain about over-reach of our federal government and dis-empowerment of the individual can seriously propose any form of Socialism as the cure is beyond me.

I grew up in Germany next to one of the colossal failures of Socialism/Communism formerly known as the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik = German Democratic Republic). The two systems of former East and West Germany started at the same time, at the same level of destruction after WWII, with a very similar if not identical pool of people. Almost like an ideal lab experiment for comparing the merits of two different economic and political systems.

About a decade after the Wall was built, we (in the West) had a joke in school about how to turn a banana into a compass. Go to the Berlin Wall, hold the banana up, and the end bitten off points to the East. Unfortunately, this was not just a joke. The "Democratic" state that promised equal wealth for all delivered privileges for very, very few and poverty for the rest. The right to vote where you wanted to live was terminated with a bullet or shrapnel from mines along the "antifascist bulwark" as the Eastern propaganda called the Wall. If you know a better example for adding insult to injury, please let me know.

"Never again" was the mantra I grew up to, referring to what Hitler's rise to power had done to Germany and the world. After the Berlin wall came down, the same mantra should be applied to that ill-fated idea of a superior system.

The idea of Socialism is generally favored by people who feel underprivileged in the current system. They seek a more just distribution of wealth and resources. They complain about greedy, rich people who have all the money and all the power.

If their desire for Socialism would materialize, these people would then complain about those who mooch more off the re-distribution system than they do. A change of the political system is never going to change a personal philosophy of self-victimization. There is no political prophet who will miraculously guide us into a happier future. But there is one person, one savior, who can turn our lives around. The best way to find this person is to stand in front of a mirror.

Stop whining, stop blaming, stop settling. Define your goals, develop a rational path towards these goals, and make a compelling value proposition to whoever you expect to fund your aspirations, be that a customer, an investor, or an employer. Companies owe you as little wage for your mere existence as a customers owes you payments, or an investors investments. If you are poorer than you think you should be, then you are the one who has to fix that. You have to convince others that you are worth more than they initially think.

If you can read this and feel compelled to argue with this, then you are not part of the small group that has to be taken care of by society because they lack the mental facilities to run your their own lives. I other word, unless you are a certified moron, you are the master of your destiny. For better or worse.

 

[neptronix]

Super powerful post!

The idea of Socialism is generally favored by people who feel underprivileged in the current system. They seek a more just distribution of wealth and resources. They complain about greedy, rich people who have all the money and all the power.

Yup, conversely, i have noticed that a lot of neo nazis feel the same way. They just think that in addition to having socialsm, there should be a racial element that favors the white. This group also consists of the economically disadvantaged.

I suppose i see the appeal to the idea, if you don't understand how to play the game of capitalism, don't understand responsibility, or you are a statist, meaning you think that the more aspects of our lives the government controls, the better.

Unfortunately our American system makes a lot of winners and losers. This polarizing system creates a lot of proto socialists. But coincidentally, our system is designed to be resistant to ideas like socialism. So a socialist, whether they be a 'democratic socialist', or a 'national socialist' is going to live a perpetually frustrated life.

But there are ways to be happy and prosperous in the United States even if you feel the system is evil or has the cards stacked against you. But people would rather complain than take action and change their lives.

If their desire for Socialism would materialize, these people would then complain about those who mooch more off the re-distribution system than they do. A change of the political system is never going to change a personal philosophy of self-victimization. There is no political prophet who will miraculously guide us into a happier future. But there is one person, one savior, who can turn our lives around. The best way to find this person is to stand in front of a mirror.

This is what happens in California. People vote for larger and larger government, then flee once they reach working age and are tired of paying for the perpetually larger government. Eventually they move to a lower cost of living conservative state. Some of them still keep the old ideals, and vote their way into the same problem, ruin that state, and then move on, like a cancer. Others who leave adapt to a new way of thinking and fit in just fine. I am a California escapee and fall into the latter category. In fact, i decided long ago to do the locals of this state a favor and not vote in local politics. Because what the locals voted for in the past made it an appealing place for me to live, and i don't want to screw with that design in any way.

 

[The Toecutter]

In the following article, they do make a compelling case that Socialism and Democracy are incompatible.

Socialism Is Not Democratic

The arguments presented in this article are hard to refute in light of the recorded history of Socialism on this planet.

How people who complain about over-reach of our federal government and dis-empowerment of the individual can seriously propose any form of Socialism as the cure is beyond me.

"Socialism" is an economic system, and "Democracy" is a political system. The two can co-exist, even if history shows that most of the time they don't co-exist. The same can be said for "Capitalism", which also has succumbed to various levels of authoritarianism(Pinochet's Chile, modern Singapore, Mexico, even the modern U.S. as examples of capitalistic nations where any notion of Democracy is dead from a functional standpoint, regardless of the illusion of one perpetuated by government/corporate propaganda).

Socialism takes many forms, arguably the most successful of which is the Nordic model, a sort of hybridization between Socialism and Capitalism. The nations that have also successfully adopted this or similar economic models have one thing in common: they are far less authoritarian than the other nations on Earth and the people tend to have a larger say when it comes to the policy of the state they live under, and also people tend to be more free to live their lives as they see fit than in the other places. They're not anarchist or libertarian utopias of course, as there are certain criterion that more authoritarian nations can claim to be more free with regard to(such as the U.S. with its right to bear arms not yet fully eviscerated but for the most part absent in these countries, and the fact that it is still almost unheard of to have the totalitarian "hate speech" laws in U.S. states that some of the Nordic model countries have adopted).

I grew up in Germany next to one of the colossal failures of Socialism/Communism formerly known as the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik = German Democratic Republic). The two systems of former East and West Germany started at the same time, at the same level of destruction after WWII, with a very similar if not identical pool of people. Almost like an ideal lab experiment for comparing the merits of two different economic and political systems.

About a decade after the Wall was built, we (in the West) had a joke in school about how to turn a banana into a compass. Go to the Berlin Wall, hold the banana up, and the end bitten off points to the East. Unfortunately, this was not just a joke. The "Democratic" state that promised equal wealth for all delivered privileges for very, very few and poverty for the rest. The right to vote where you wanted to live was terminated with a bullet or shrapnel from mines along the "antifascist bulwark" as the Eastern propaganda called the Wall. If you know a better example for adding insult to injury, please let me know.

"Never again" was the mantra I grew up to, referring to what Hitler's rise to power had done to Germany and the world. After the Berlin wall came down, the same mantra should be applied to that ill-fated idea of a superior system.

Western Germany also had socialistic tendencies, even if it may not have gone full retard like East Germany. East Germany was a democracy in name only, and as you pointed out, had many of the same problems more capitalistic nations were criticized for having, except those problems existed in greater abundance.

The stark difference between the two when it came to civil liberties and social freedoms also can't be ignored, and in my opinion, was possibly a larger driver of East Germany's misery than the economic system East Germany was under. All of the domestic spying, crackdown of dissent, and general totalitarianism that engulfed East Germany existed to keep the privileged privileged and the powerful in power, by rendering meaningful opposition nearly impossible.

China's social credit system today is a more comprehensive method of achieving the same goal.

The idea of Socialism is generally favored by people who feel underprivileged in the current system. They seek a more just distribution of wealth and resources. They complain about greedy, rich people who have all the money and all the power.

If their desire for Socialism would materialize, these people would then complain about those who mooch more off the re-distribution system than they do. A change of the political system is never going to change a personal philosophy of self-victimization. There is no political prophet who will miraculously guide us into a happier future. But there is one person, one savior, who can turn our lives around. The best way to find this person is to stand in front of a mirror.

Changing ones self is always possible. Oft times the problems a person experiences do not originate within the self, but by circumstances imposed upon that person by external variables out of their control, imposed upon them by people given more power over their lives than themselves due to economic disparities and the advantages a certain subset of people reap from these disparities. THAT is why socialism has appeal. Victimhood is real. Exploitation is real. When one acknowledges a system that has stacked the deck against them, it is not whining, but simply accepting the parasitic relationships that exist in society. Those in power skewing society towards their favored outcomes are doing so with a given goal in mind, and are usually getting their desired and predicted result.

Blame the victims all you like, but all the recommendations for self help will not change the underlying circumstances that create the victims or their perception of themselves as such. The increasing cries for socialism from tens of millions of people, misguided or otherwise, do not occur in a vacuum and generally do not occur without good reason. There is a cause and effect relationship at play that do involve factors outside the control of the individual people demanding a change in the economic system. Ignore them at your peril.

When a small elite get to horde the vast majority of society's wealth for themselves, that is an indicator of an economic system that fails to reward the rest of the population no matter how hard they work and no matter how much they try to improve or change themselves. When a small elite also have a disproportionate influence on public policy and the future of a nation, this is also an indicator of a political system that allows the few to control the collective futures of the many. Functionally, that is what is going on, as the empirical facts show.

https://journalistsresource.org/stu...oups-and-average-voters-on-american-politics/

Define your goals, develop a rational path towards these goals, and make a compelling value proposition to whoever you expect to fund your aspirations, be that a customer, an investor, or an employer.

I've done that many times, and got nowhere due to a lack of resources and/or getting screwed over by unplanned events totally outside of my control. My only choices are to keep trying or to quit. I still haven't given up on my goals, in spite of family members trying to convince me to do so. They have no goals of their own, based upon what I asked them, and some of them have similarly been beaten down so many times they just gave up on themselves, while others had no goals to begin with or a desire to do anything with themselves only to squander opportunity that the others never got.

Then again, it's kind of hard for someone to metaphorically pull themselves up by the bootstraps when their arms have been cut off and those who are born into privilege keep a boot on their chest because it is more profitable for them to do so.

Companies owe you as little wage for your mere existence as a customers owes you payments, or an investors investments.

If you are poorer than you think you should be, then you are the one who has to fix that. You have to convince others that you are worth more than they initially think.

All fine and good, except you're no longer allowed to live independent from said companies. Almost all the land and resources that nature has given humanity have been commodified and "owned" by a small group of privileged people who own said companies, and who are willing to use men with guns to restrict access, little different than the Lord of the manor refusing to let the serfs hunt on "his" land with his vassals assigned to enforce the edict.

At this point, there are plenty of motivated, intelligent, hard-working people that are being denied the right to exist because they don't have money, are kept away from having enough money to get what they need in exchange for their work, and are given few if any viable alternatives.

Most of the Earth has been rendered into a giant company store from which there is no escape, and the number of "winners" and "losers" is already determined in advance thanks to a small elite hoarding all the resources and controlling access to money, who are choosing who gets to have access to the resources, how much they get to have access to, and who doesn't get any.

Unlike the Federal Reserve Bank, the average person can't just create money out of thin air, either.

If you can read this and feel compelled to argue with this, then you are not part of the small group that has to be taken care of by society because they lack the mental facilities to run your their own lives. I other word, unless you are a certified moron, you are the master of your destiny. For better or worse.

"Master of your destiny"... What a cruel joke.

I suppose I could start robbing and killing people to get what I need/want? Then maybe that would be true, so long as I don't get caught up in a bloated legal system designed to control my destiny for me. Perhaps I could start selling dope, since I can't simply put a gun to someone's head and force them to hire me at a fair wage for honest work? Maybe I should just TAKE everything I need and want? You know, that actually WOULD give me some modicum of control over my destiny, more than I've ever had.

I'm much more a fan of the non-aggression principle, however. Because of that, if no employer hires me and I lack the monetary resources/tools to employ myself at a minimum of subsistence level, perhaps I'm just worthless and should go crawl into a gutter and die somewhere, as that is what today's Capitalist society would dictate? The inverted totalitarianism most of the Capitalist Western World is living under is actually a sort of opposite of that non-aggression principle, where those higher on the socio-economic hierarchy have the state use forms violence, whether direct or implied, upon those lower in the socio-economic hierarchy, in order to maintain their privileges and "property rights", and to keep those on the lower tiers of the socio-economic hierarchy from being able to support themselves by denying access to the land/resources that nature provided.

It is for that specific reason that more theoretically egalitarian economic and political systems have mass appeal. From a purely functional(and not theoretical) standpoint, people are enslaved under this "free" Capitalist system, and many of them know it and can perceive it. If one who isn't already independently wealthy and who doesn't have access to the means of production isn't able/willing/given an opportunity to make someone else money off of their hard work and limited time on this Earth, their right to even exist is in jeopardy, and they are completely subject to the terms and conditions of others who have access to the land/resources, no matter how unreasonable or degrading those terms and conditions are. At the same time, everyone is paradoxically told how they are "free" under this Capitalist system, while biological necessity and the resources needed to meet its non-negotiable dictates doesn't ever stop.

The notion that the whole productive output of the human race gets to go towards enriching a small group of billionaires definitely needs to be reconsidered. The civil strife, environmental degradation, desperation, and misery that will result from this not being addressed WILL destroy society otherwise. In fact, the level of division and discord in today's society is already prima facie evidence that society is beginning to unravel at least in part as a result of this, and given the size of the Earth's population, the degraded natural environment, and all of the life-destroying technologies and systems already in deployment that require constant upkeep to keep their consequences in check, it is questionable that humanity will even survive such an unraveling if taken to its logical conclusion, and no individual would be able to change that outcome all on their own.