George Floyd protests

[laklak]

That is a valid point. The reason cops want you to sit still with your hands on the wheel when they pull you over is they don't know if you're armed. It's why you don't get out of the car, don't make sudden moves, do what you're told, etc. There is nothing to be done about that, guns are here to stay. All those weapons, meant to secure our "freedoms", paradoxically limit them. However, given that cops have no duty to protect you and will likely be defunded (whatever that means) I think it's foolish not to be armed. It's about time to sell up and buy that farm in the mountains.

[Seabass]

No, the guy should never have gotten hold of the taser in the first place. I don't know what happened when he got shot, if he was running away or not, that part isn't on camera (apparently). It's a shitshow for sure, but that's policing in the U.S.of A. Sometimes, anyway, and this shit seems far more prevalent in big cities. Almost all of which are run by Democrats for years and years. Why should any black (or anyone, actually) vote these people back in when they've had literally decades to fix these problems? Atlanta has had black, Democratic mayors almost exclusively since the early 70s. WTF have they been doing for the last 40 years? Minneapolis for 70 years, SEVEN decades of "progressive" politics and it's still a shitshow. But bring this up in polite company and you get.....crickets. You can't blame the GOP, you can't blame Trump, it's got nothing to do with them. Not for the actions of the cops, not for the racism in the police forces, not for the militarization of the forces - none if it, it's on the cities themselves. The Feds are not in charge, it's the mayors and city councils. I refuse to believe that the last 40, 50, 60, 70 years of police brutality are because Trump "enables" white supremacists via fucking Twitter. That's absolute bullshit. And yet somehow, magically, voting for Biden is going to fix this? Jesus. The vapid stupidity of the vast majority of ground apes is fucking breath taking.

Of course the GOP is to blame. Republicans are the reason we have more guns than people in this country. Our cops have a much more dangerous and stressful job than cops in developed countries do.

Moreover, Republican voodoo economics has led to obscene wealth inequality like we haven't seen since the days of railroad tycoons. More poverty means more desperation and more crime.

There's only so much you can do at the state and local level.

You overplay your hand big time here, Seabass. You write as though the democrats had no hand in militarising the police, as if Democrat presidents were the heroes of the working class, as if there was not a gun for every US citizen before Trump even announced his intention to become POTUS... The list goes on.

I said nothing about police militarization. With or without the military hardware, our police go to work on a war footing because of all the guns in circulation. It's no wonder they have itchy trigger fingers when every day could be their last. It is the Republican party that opposes any and all reasonable gun control.

I made no mention of Trump.

My reply was made specifically with the bits I coloured green in mind. Both, gun ownership and wealth inequality have risen inexorable at least since the mid 1970s at much the same rate regardless of whether the Dems or the Repugs controlled congress/the presidency.

If the Dems try to pass gun laws which are then blocked by Republicans, you can't place equal blame on both sides. That's like equally blaming both a mugger and the muggee for the mugging.

And while it's true that much of the Democratic party are corporate asslickers, the Republicans are clearly far worse. Supply side belongs ENTIRELY to the Republicans.

Electoral shenanigans and foreign interference notwithstanding, Trump would not have won the presidency had the Dems not already been so much on the nose. If I were a voter in the US I would cast my vote in favour of the Democrats for one reason, and one reason only: They are the marginally preferable set of corrupt, self serving vermin and Wall Street shills. The best that can be said is that they are not fascist sympathisers, as overtly racist or as religious fundamentalist as the Republicans. Apart from that I can see little difference between them.

You say that as if it's not a huge difference...

Try parsing what I posted correctly. Hint: I listed three differences between the GOP and the Dems, then began the next sentence with "apart from that".

Be it as it may, the US voters evidently don't care so much about the listed differences as they do about the Dems' neoliberalism of the previous decades not having done much good for them. That is why enough of them backed the other horse to get it first past the post, at least technically. Hillary Clinton's series of well paid and unpublished speeches to the bankers evidently failed to inspire enough hope that she won't continue the neoliberal policies her husband became notorious for. Not enough anyway, to overcome the electoral college hurdle and other handicaps in the quadrennial steeplechase.

I parsed it just fine. When you say "The best that can be said...", you are damning with faint praise. If someone says "the best that can be said about my car is that it gets me from A to B", they are probably not driving a Ferrari.

As a biracial atheist who places a high value on science, the fact that the Dems are secular and pro-science and pro-diversity is no small thing to me. It's almost the whole ballgame, although, yes, it would be nice if they were more to the left on economic and other issues...

[Brian Peacock]

There's no distinction to be made between economic and social policy: The two things are inexorable - they follow each other as night follows day, they are yin and yang, two sides of the same coin. The Dems talk a good game in their attempts to distinguish themselves from their vile Republican foe, but the reality is that they're just as committed enablers of free market capitalism as the Republicans; which is to say they don't offer an alternative vision to the hegemonic paradigm of The Market, they just dress it up as being a more benign form of capitalism than the other lot. And yet, in the absence of that real, and much needed, alternative to free market capitalism the factors which drive both social and economic policy will continue to exert their pressure unbridled, and in so doing make a mockery of the idea that there's a real, meaningful choice to be made at election time.

This is how things are in a managed democracy.

[laklak]

Neolib, neocon, same fucking thing.

All y'all are being suckered by the Illuminati Rothschild Syndicate.

[Brian Peacock]

With the Illuminati Rothschild Syndicate (IRS) actually being a Reptilian front of course.

[laklak]

People's Reptilian Liberation Front!

Splitter!

[Brian Peacock]

[Hermit]

Of course the GOP is to blame. Republicans are the reason we have more guns than people in this country. Our cops have a much more dangerous and stressful job than cops in developed countries do.

Moreover, Republican voodoo economics has led to obscene wealth inequality like we haven't seen since the days of railroad tycoons. More poverty means more desperation and more crime.

There's only so much you can do at the state and local level.

You overplay your hand big time here, Seabass. You write as though the democrats had no hand in militarising the police, as if Democrat presidents were the heroes of the working class, as if there was not a gun for every US citizen before Trump even announced his intention to become POTUS... The list goes on.

I said nothing about police militarization. With or without the military hardware, our police go to work on a war footing because of all the guns in circulation. It's no wonder they have itchy trigger fingers when every day could be their last. It is the Republican party that opposes any and all reasonable gun control.

I made no mention of Trump.

My reply was made specifically with the bits I coloured green in mind. Both, gun ownership and wealth inequality have risen inexorable at least since the mid 1970s at much the same rate regardless of whether the Dems or the Repugs controlled congress/the presidency.

If the Dems try to pass gun laws which are then blocked by Republicans, you can't place equal blame on both sides. That's like equally blaming both a mugger and the muggee for the mugging.

And while it's true that much of the Democratic party are corporate asslickers, the Republicans are clearly far worse. Supply side belongs ENTIRELY to the Republicans.

Electoral shenanigans and foreign interference notwithstanding, Trump would not have won the presidency had the Dems not already been so much on the nose. If I were a voter in the US I would cast my vote in favour of the Democrats for one reason, and one reason only: They are the marginally preferable set of corrupt, self serving vermin and Wall Street shills. The best that can be said is that they are not fascist sympathisers, as overtly racist or as religious fundamentalist as the Republicans. Apart from that I can see little difference between them.

You say that as if it's not a huge difference...

Try parsing what I posted correctly. Hint: I listed three differences between the GOP and the Dems, then began the next sentence with "apart from that".

Be it as it may, the US voters evidently don't care so much about the listed differences as they do about the Dems' neoliberalism of the previous decades not having done much good for them. That is why enough of them backed the other horse to get it first past the post, at least technically. Hillary Clinton's series of well paid and unpublished speeches to the bankers evidently failed to inspire enough hope that she won't continue the neoliberal policies her husband became notorious for. Not enough anyway, to overcome the electoral college hurdle and other handicaps in the quadrennial steeplechase.

I parsed it just fine. When you say "The best that can be said...", you are damning with faint praise. If someone says "the best that can be said about my car is that it gets me from A to B", they are probably not driving a Ferrari.

As a biracial atheist who places a high value on science, the fact that the Dems are secular and pro-science and pro-diversity is no small thing to me. It's almost the whole ballgame, although, yes, it would be nice if they were more to the left on economic and other issues...

I know what I meant with what I wrote. The facts that the Dems are not fascist sympathisers, as overtly racist or as religious fundamentalist as the Republicans is the best that can be said. Where it matters they failed consistently every time they controlled the US administration.

[JimC]

That graph would warm the cockles of the heart of any corporate player...

[Seabass]

One problem is the cold war ideology. Having the communist Soviet bloc as nemesis forced the US into an overdrive of capitalist ideology.

They didn't need forcing. They're a nation created and fashioned by the merchant class.

Are you saying the Cold War didn't shift the country to the right? Since FDR, each successive president has been to the right of his predecessor from the same party, with the possible exception of Clinton -> Obama.

[NineBerry]

I blame Ayn Rand. Only an atheist could fuck a society that hard.

[Brian Peacock]

One problem is the cold war ideology. Having the communist Soviet bloc as nemesis forced the US into an overdrive of capitalist ideology.

They didn't need forcing. They're a nation created and fashioned by the merchant class.

Are you saying the Cold War didn't shift the country to the right? Since FDR, each successive president has been to the right of his predecessor from the same party, with the possible exception of Clinton -> Obama.

Yeah, pretty much. It's US capitalism that's moved the US to the Right, not Russian or Chinese communism.

[pErvinalia]

Nearly unlimited lobbying and donations probably paid a fair part.

[Seabass]

One problem is the cold war ideology. Having the communist Soviet bloc as nemesis forced the US into an overdrive of capitalist ideology.

They didn't need forcing. They're a nation created and fashioned by the merchant class.

Are you saying the Cold War didn't shift the country to the right? Since FDR, each successive president has been to the right of his predecessor from the same party, with the possible exception of Clinton -> Obama.

Yeah, pretty much. It's US capitalism that's moved the US to the Right, not Russian or Chinese communism.

So the US's lurch to the right from the '40s to the '90s would have happened even without the Cold War and the Red Scare and McCarthyism?

Saying that US capitalism moved the US to the right seems like putting the cart before the horse. If US capitalism is the cause rather than the result, does that mean US capitalism led to FDR being elected four times? Did "US capitalism" not exist until after FDR?

[pErvinalia]

FDR is far right by Brian's metric..