Rand Paul is educated but not smart. But he’s right here, and now there is nothing he or anyone can do about it. I do hope this is the beginning of the comeuppance the GOP so desperately, desperately needs.
I wish American Voters had memories longer than 4 years. But they don’t.
They got pissed at Bush and the Republicans in 2006 for the war and in 2008 for crashing the economy.
And 2 years later in 2010 they voted in a red wave not seen since reconstruction.
Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government and 4 years later they gave him another chance. If Trump shot a crowd of people on 5th avenue the kids of the victims would vote for him 4 years later.
There were massive voter suppression campaigns in both those election cycles. And it doesn’t help that the neo Liberals highjacked the democratic party, marginalizing labor. People are not motivated to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Democracy will not save us. People that won’t vote unless they fall in love can fall out of love much more easily.
Do vote, it’s low effort and it can make a marginal difference. Just make your plans assuming you party will lose and if they win they will disappoint.
Your treating this as if the same people are voting different ways. It’s usually much more along the lines of voters staying home one election and voting in another.
Edit - autocorrect got naughty!
Notice that’s their top concern. Not hurting Americans, not pissing off allies, not a recession, not handing off the title of World Superpower to China, but losing their jobs is their top concern.
not handing off the title of World Superpower to China
They put in the hours. Maybe they’ve fucking earned it. But if it makes you feel any better, most of the BRICS are rocketing upwards and positioned to match or eclipse the US by the end of the century. That’s just what happens when you implement modern industrial policies under a more egalitarian social system. Spreading the wealth engages more of the population in high value productive activities that benefit the national economy in the long run.
After you’ve built a broadly productive economic engine, the only thing holding you back is the size of your productive population. At that point, policies like universal health care and efficient mass transit really start paying dividends.
It’s not like they needed us to fumble in order to take the trophy, but all the same we didn’t need to just hand them the ball and walk away.
Sure is telling that his biggest worry is republicans losing power and not the sort of fucking depression that was the cause last time.
Of course that’s all he cares about. Fuck him, I hope he loses everything he holds dear.
We Lost the House and Senate for 60 Years.
I sure fucking hope so, you piece of shit.
Hopefully the republicans can go the way of the whigs, the democratic party can become the conservative party they so desperately want to be, and we can create an actual party on the left.
I’ve wanted this for ages. And it’s represented so well in Republicans having only one platform: “Oppose Democrats. If it makes a Democrat angry, do it.”
Cleanse - and I mean CLEANSE - the opposition party. No one here can claim the Democrats never have good ideas. And yet, we can definitely do better than them. A better party means having better ideas - not just “Stop them libruls”. Bernie just toured the States with a message of exactly what that would look like.
Republicans should be wiped out. Fools, monsters, and traitors. They’ve done incalculable damage to the world and all those who live here.
Every Republican that dies should be cause for celebration.
Maybe when the MAGA dorks try to convince us this is short term for long term gain; what they don’t realize is ousting the republican stranglehold on the country is the long term gain.
Look, I’m pissed too, I want them tf out of power and I want them to face consequences for what they’ve done. But celebrating the death of every Republican is more than a little extreme. The top dogs / those responsible? Sure. But let’s not go calling for the deaths of our countrymen - who are, tbh, blind fools who’ve been brainwashed by propaganda. That doesn’t make them worthy of death. I’d recommend avoiding turning the heat straight to 100 unless you want to watch our country walk an even darker path in coming years. If you’ve convinced yourself that’s the outcome you actually want - of civil war and all the other fucked up shit that tends to come with war - then you’re your own type of blind fool.
I’m sorry. My grandpa taught me the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. He was a smart dude
I wouldn’t disagree. But not every Republican is on board with or even aware of what’s happening. As someone who’s escaped a cult, it’s hard to see through a smoke screen of propaganda, misinformation and dogma when you’re surrounded by it. Getting us to fall into left vs right, black vs white etc camps and fight each other to the death is exactly what the rich elite (our actual enemies) want to happen. I’d recommend Andrew Callaghan’s film “Dear Kelly” for a first hand look at what this looks like in action; how an otherwise innocuous, well meaning citizen can be brainwashed by far right propaganda and how quickly they can lose touch with reality - as well as how they can be brought back from that brink.
People are nuanced and groupthink is holding us back as a species. Hold the grand old party to task, and put on blast all those who have been profiting off of the suffering of others and leading the destruction of society. But don’t lower yourselves to their level and paint everyone on the other side of the fence the same shade, or miss the nuances of how these people are being manipulated, and by whom.
The manipulators are the problem. Not the manipulated.
I do agree they are sheep misled. But a penchant for being a Nazi does not a good citizen make.
This soft approach after the civil war is why we are here again.
This reminds me of the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht. In short: No, not so many of them are victims and puppets.
There are some cases where people are pulled out of cults by exposure to outside opinions. Anyone among the Republicans that has frequently had that exposure, on some level (for instance, hearing arguments from Democratic senators prior to votes) agrees with and wants the destruction.
Do you not think it’s a little hyperbolic to claim that every single member of the Republican party is a Nazi deserving of only death?
I mean, sure, it feels great to sound like a tough guy on the Internet, but you’re talking about tens of millions of Americans.
I 100% believe in what I said and so do the mass majority of Americans.
The mass majority of Americans absolutely do not believe in putting to death every Republican.
I said Nazis. You said republicans.
That’s a confession
Read up. The person you responded to was warning against celebrating the death of all Republicans. You responded with something about your grandfather taught you the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. YOU are the one that first equated Republicans with Nazis.
Also, I’m a leftist, you tool.
We don’t have to go door to door shooting everyone registered R. The leadership should definitely go up against the wall.
But every person that votes R is voting for climate disaster, unchecked pandemics, rolling back decades of medical science, violence against queer folks and other minorities, and other horrors.
They might not be a comically evil person who kicks puppies and steals candy from babies, but they’ve thrown what little power they have behind tremendous evil. When that stops, that’s a win.
I concede I could amend my previous statement that they don’t need to die. We can also celebrate them leaving the party and changing themselves so they’re not doing evil anymore.
Have you ever considered that this hostile attitude you show towards individuals is exactly what the system wants out of you?
What feels like resistance is actually just maintenance of the status quo. The elites have replaced class consciousness with culture war. Instead of hostility towards individuals who have been led to believe falsehoods through information warfare and weaponized insecurity, why not aim that hostility towards the systems in place that intentionally makes people afraid and angry?
If we wanted to get a little more psychoanalytical about it- this hatred of the individual who has been duped is pathological. It’s sort of like the Nazi and the Jew. The Nazi needs the idea of the Jew to maintain the Nazi world view. Certain excesses are only justified if you have an omnipresent internal enemy. By placing the Republican voter as the villain, you put yourself in the position of moral superiority.
By placing him down, you put yourself up. But really, I believe this may be subconscious projection. Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter. It’s hard to fix the cognitive dissonance of that position. All of us work, pay rent, pay taxes, buy products, post online, etc- we are tiny cogs that moves the machine forward.
So the elites have created an easy safety valve for that cognitive dissonance. Blame the others. Your life sucks? It’s illegal immigrants. Your life sucks? It’s Republicans. Your life sucks? It’s the gays. Your life sucks? It’s the Miami Cubans. And so on and so on.
Until the working class unites and redirects the hostility towards the pillars of power that keep us in line, there will never be any meaningful change in this country. This hostility you and other users show towards Republican voters is ironically supporting the very thing you claim to hate. We’re doomed to endlessly loop around a Möbius strip.
Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter
This is false
Your life sucks? It’s Republicans.
This is actually true. The ultra wealthy that keep us in this hellscape are republicans. They have much of the blame. But the low level people who keep voting for them also have some of the blame.
Blaming the queers (for example) is a total non-sequitur. They’re just living life. The republicans are dismantling the government, ending vaccination programs, and rolling back environmental protections. They are for real doing actual harm right now. It is not the same as the imaginary harms “the jews” do. People would make up stories about nefarious evils of jews, but meanwhile the republicans are right there on TV doing evil. There was a nazi salute. There was an insurrection. These are things that happened.
The working class republicans are class traitors. They should realize that our interests align, but they don’t, and they are actively doing harm.
If you have ideas on how to instill class consciousness in the kind of people who vote against their interests, let’s hear it.
Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter
This is false
I disagree. Pick a random Republican voter from this country and you’re very likely to grab someone from a red state. Let’s say Alabama. Their vote is as insignificant as a blue voter in California. So regardless of who you or who they voted for, their impact is nil.
But when we talk about complicity we’re not simply talking about voting. We’re talking about participation in the system. For example, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in the last few months you have drank a Coca Cola beverage. I don’t mean just their cola, but any of the myriad of drinks they provide. Whether it’s Sprite or Dasani or what have you.
You have contributed to the bottom line of a company that hires death squads to kill labor leaders (this is has been proven in court).
That’s just one infinitesimally small example out of an infinite number of actions you and everyone else have taken that perpetuates the system of exploitation we live. We are the chosen people that get to live in relative opulence while billions around the world struggle to survive.
So I’ll say it again. You are just as complicit. There is just as much blood on your hands as that Republican voter and yet you choose not to see it because it’s easier to maintain the delusion of moral superiority. Why? Again- reducing cognitive dissonance.
The ultra wealthy that keep us in this hellscape are republicans. They have much of the blame.
Here you get closer to the truth. It’s the ultra wealthy that ultimately decide what happens in this country. I’d go so far as to say they have all of the blame. Why? Because they are the only ones that actually have any autonomy. The research has been done before- American public opinion has zero impact on policy.
No matter who you vote for; over the long term the same policies will be enacted regardless.
If you have ideas on how to instill class consciousness in the kind of people who vote against their interests, let’s hear it.
The first step is to get rid of this atmosphere of hostility. You blame someone for the country collapsing, they get defensive and blame you for the country collapsing. We’re in the post-truth era so it doesn’t matter what is true or what is false. People believe what they do based on vibes. This isn’t an accident but intentional.
It is not the same as the imaginary harms “the jews” do. People would make up stories about nefarious evils of jews, but meanwhile the republicans are right there on TV doing evil. There was a nazi salute. There was an insurrection. These are things that happened.
I think we need to make a distinction here.
What we are seeing in the last few months of this administration is not the traditional Republican party. Trump has hijacked the Republican party much like Hitler hijacked the Nazi party. There is no more Republican party- it’s the Trump party.
The question instead that we need to ask is how was this allowed to happen?
The answer is that wealthy people thought it was in their interests. Simple as that. It’s why for example when you had the Trump inauguration the top tech CEOs all came to bend the knee and sat in the front row. The capitalist system has decided that having Trump at the helm is the most profitable outcome.
Trump worked hard to get to this point- he had to defeat the Republican establishment party. The Mitt Romneys and the George Bushes and the Mitch McConnels. Wealthy powerful people who wanted the status quo to continue indefinitely.
I think one key thing you are missing here is that the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans in creating Trump. Bill Clinton for example amplified Reagan’s economic policies that accelerated our descent into brutal neoliberal capitalism. As we descend further down, people become increasingly insecure.
People who are scared for the financial future vote for dictators. This has happened before and it will happen again. I believe fascism is like a herpes outbreak. It’ll never go away, but your immune system keeps in check most of the time. The issue is that our immune system is weakened and now it has a breakout.
I disagree. Pick a random Republican voter from this country and you’re very likely to grab someone from a red state. Let’s say Alabama. Their vote is as insignificant as a blue voter in California. So regardless of who you or who they voted for, their impact is nil.
They vote in local elections, which are not insignificant, and have real impacts. You have like school board elections decided by a few dozen votes. The conservatives win and start banning books and doing low grade hate crimes against queer people.
You have contributed to the bottom line of a company that hires death squads to kill labor leaders (this is has been proven in court).
We all know there’s no way to be a wholly good person under capitalism. We’re both writing this on hardware that is likely metaphorically soaked in blood. That doesn’t mean that any amount of blood is equal to any other amount of blood.
No matter who you vote for; over the long term the same policies will be enacted regardless.
I don’t think this is necessarily the case. We had a new deal. Trusts were broken up. It is possible to make changes. It’s an uphill battle because of many factors, including the republicans pulling as hard as they can in the opposite direction. The republicans (or more broadly, conservatives and reactionaries. or even more broadly, the ownership class and their useful idiots) are the problem.
The first step is to get rid of this atmosphere of hostility. You blame someone for the country collapsing, they get defensive and blame you for the country collapsing. We’re in the post-truth era so it doesn’t matter what is true or what is false. People believe what they do based on vibes. This isn’t an accident but intentional.
A key difference is they are incorrect. But as you say, we’re in post-truth and facts don’t matter anymore to a lot of people.
This isn’t a serious policy summit because we’re just two dorks on lemmy. In real life you’d have to spend a lot of time massaging people’s emotions so they come a little closer to reality. In my internet-tough-guy persona I just want to shoot every red-hat in the head. I know it’s not that effective, but I’m an emotional sack of meat like everyone else.
And again, they may feel the same way and want to just shoot the queers dead, except that wouldn’t solve any problems. It’s not the queers (or the jews or the blacks) that are voting to remove child labor laws, to remove environmental protections, to keep wages low and prices high. The animosity might be similar but they are wrong.
The answer is that wealthy people thought it was in their interests. Simple as that. It’s why for example when you had the Trump inauguration the top tech CEOs all came to bend the knee and sat in the front row. The capitalist system has decided that having Trump at the helm is the most profitable outcome.
The right wing will always chose fascism and profits over anything else. Given a choice between paying a little more for labor or burning the entire country down, most of the ownership class would burn the country down. They’re not good people. I’m pretty sure that was a key factor in fascism’s rise in ww2- the wealthy class backed fascism because they didn’t want to pay more wages to unions.
I knew a guy that worked for in a smallish factory, and the owner verbatim said “I’ll burn this place down before I let you all unionize.”
Personally, I think they should have broken into that guy’s house at night and murdered him, but I understand not wanting to throw your life away on a class war skirmish that likely won’t make a difference.
I think one key thing you are missing here is that the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans in creating Trump. Bill Clinton for example amplified Reagan’s economic policies that accelerated our descent into brutal neoliberal capitalism. As we descend further down, people become increasingly insecure.
I said elsewhere that it’s like squares and rectangles. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. All republicans are a problem, but not all democrats are a problem. Some are. That doesn’t mean they’re good. Maybe we want stars. Neither of them are stars.
People who are scared for the financial future vote for dictators. This has happened before and it will happen again. I believe fascism is like a herpes outbreak. It’ll never go away, but your immune system keeps in check most of the time. The issue is that our immune system is weakened and now it has a breakout.
It’s funny because that’s such a self destructive behavior. It’s like someone having an itchy outbreak of some kind, and then they scratch and scratch and scratch until it bleeds and it gets infected. What’s the political equivalent of cones for people’s hands so they can’t scratch?
What does he expect. Libertarianism is basically enacting the policies that led to the great depression. Trump is reacting in the way that made it worse, but you are the kerosene to his spark. Expect great depression when you get what you want.
I hope he is right. We could do a lot of good if we kept them out of office.
GOP should be banned from American politics. They have repeatedly violated the constitution at this point and are clearly compromised.
Completely agreed, but I’m pretty sure we’ll need new leadership for the Democratic party if we want them to make this happen
Look if you don’t want to vote for bears you should have chosen to be born someplace smarter
What’s really happened is we’ve had our global dominance thrown away. We took the lead because of WW1 and WW2. It’s not because we’re great. It’s not because we manifested our destiny to become the leader of the world. It’s because factories in Europe were bombed to smithereens. That’s what allowed the U.S to achieve financial dominance. Now we’re in the fall.
Their plan is to not have fair elections anymore.
Fingers crossed
Not happening. There won’t be another legit election.
Wiping out the Republicans? I don’t see a downside with that.
It will happen with the current administration. Red states are the most reliant on government “handouts”. Conservative voters are predominantly the least educated, least informed, and most economcially vulnerable people. They will be the most affected by trumps tariffs. They will be the most affected by his billionaire tax breaks. They will be the most affected by his cuts to social programs. I hate to see my fellow Americans fall on hard times, but despite all the history, expert opinions, and direct evidence that Trump is going to fuck them over, they keep voting for him. It’s going to be hard, but I’m not giving my conservative neighbors and family any direct support for the next 4 years. Thoughts and “prayers” are all that they will get from me. Let them suckle from the shriveled teat of their spray-tanned steer this time.
Man if only he could like vote to get rid of them or something. too bad he’s literally powerless and can’t do a thing to stop this. /s
He did vote against the Canadian tariffs actually. It’ll pass anyway though.
Rand Paul deserves to be wiped out with the rest of them.
