God Has Abandoned Us: U.S. Politics November 2023

table, if you have like a ruling royal family ready to go for America that will free us from this unpleasant franchise, go ahead and set it up

DJP otm

(well, the other alternative is political violence, as we've also seen)

the only movement that gets people's attention involves buildings being set on fire/rioting and we've seen, unfortunately, how precious people get about property damage over human lives when that happens.

xpost

Looking forward to the army occupying our cities on and the executive order ending birthright citizenship on Inauguration Day 2025!

That was not a poke at anyone in particular our votes won’t matter lol

ya the best thing about trump II is nobody can go "i didn't think he'd eat MY face!"

maybe it'll just be "ay america has always been eating faces really, this is fine."

Apart from the selfish reason of not wanting to deprive friends, my nieces, and godson of my estimable company, I don't want my enemies to think they've won by forcing suicide.

I detest cheap sentiment

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/15/political-violence-civil-war-q-a-00127350

"Right now we’re at an interesting moment politically in the United States where there isn’t a lot of accountability for anything right now. We’re in a climate where it’s unclear what people can and can’t do or what they can and can’t get away with. Some of the behavior we’re seeing, there’s an assumption that people will get away with it because all kinds of people are getting away with all kinds of things right now politically."

Being held at gunpoint and being told that no matter what choice you make will lead to slaughter and that not making a choice will also lead to slaughter isn’t the best fucking thing in the world, and defense of it will always strike me as pathetic

no one's defending anything, it's just a reality. if you choose to say "to me personally it makes no difference which of these two bad choices wins," that is indeed an expression of your privilege. it's demonstrably true in this country that however marginal -- indeed, pathetic! -- the difference in quality of life for people who, e.g., need government assistance to feed themselves or their families, will be under Democratic control than under Republican, it's still a measurable "if you're getting welfare, you better hope for a Democratic House & Senate. The other guys actively want to take your benefits; the Democrats will concede more than they should, much more, and make deals that are bad to preserve things they should be actively fighting for, and it sucks; and, again, if, for you, there's no difference between "people who want to eliminate your welfare check and people who will let the other guys take too big a bite of it" doesn't seem like a difference, that's an expression of privilege.

isn't envisioning every marginalised, impoverished, endangered voter as a hostage to the largesse of the Dems another form of privilege?

no, it isn't, and it has nothing to do with "largesse." it's really a very simple question, everything else is parlor games: one of two parties will have power; which will do less harm? nobody's going to overthrow the government this week, or next month, or next year, or in the next five years, unless it's the fascists. pointing out that your choices are "bad" and "worse" and that you should of course vote for bad, it's honestly a no-brainer, isn't privilege at all, it's math.

and that's how good cop/bad cop politics thrives, as long as the good cops can point to their mandate

― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Thursday, November 16, 2023 10:24 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

true but I don't think letting the bad cops win ever led to there being better cops. like some people seem to hold on to this idea that if we let Trump win and the country tank as a result we'll wind up with a Dem candidate that's actually good and revolutionary, when we've seen that who you actually get is Joe Biden

nobody here, afaik, is arguing "the Democrats are secretly good."

I actually have! well, somewhat. I think Biden has actually done a lot of good things that he isn't getting credit for, because the Dems really really do not know how to sell themselves. in fact up until this Israel/genocide shit I was convinced he was the best President of my lifetime, in fact he probably still is sadly

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_D5cvPWcAAcPxA.jpg

The tweet that included this screenshot reads:

>>I’m genuinely not joking that Biden should make this part of the campaign. Cut an ad: [Biden voiceover] “we’re bringing jobs and diplomacy back to the United States, but that’s not all we’re bringing…”, cut to a panda doing roly-poly stuff. Feels like a layup.

Everyone does love pandas, they are adorable.

Saw a guy sum up the state of affairs like this:

If you're on the right, shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the shared hatreds that make you part of the tribe.

If you're on the center-left, shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the above-it-all independence that earns the admiration of peers.

If you're on the left, shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the moral & ideological purity that are the price of membership.

If you're in the media, shitting on Dems is how you fight off accusations of bias & establish your "objectivity."

There is no faction in US politics -- barely even elected Dems! -- for whom praising Dems is socially advantageous. There's no approbation waiting, no reputational boost, for anyone. It is, from almost every vantage point, uncool. (Just try it on Twitter to see for yourself.)

Thus we get today's information environment, which responds to a transition from four years of violent irrational madness & mass death to three years of relative scandal-free sanity & economic recovery with ... unrelenting, top-to-bottom negativity.

No faction -- far as I can tell, not a single individual -- wants to reckon with their role & responsibility in this state of affairs, so I guess we're just going to talk ourselves into outright fascism and it's gonna be no one's fault.

My point is that a reluctant, strategic vote for the lesser evil isn't registered as reluctant or strategic but is used as evidence by that lesser evil that they in fact that enjoy support and therefore their policies are correct and justified

I guess my concession to this politics of despair is to not dictate to people who are more at risk than I am how they should vote, but there is a long game even in the theatre of electoral politics and arguments about some pragmatic election-by-election "vote for the least worst option" necessity are based on ignoring the longer term

And I don't see any evidence that voting least worst had done anything except encourage the alleged left/liberal parties to move further and further right over the last 50+ years

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023

Which is currently the highest of any industrialized economy.. but yeah, voters 'trust' the GOP more when it comes to shepherding the economy, that's the ticket

I think Biden has actually done a lot of good things that he isn't getting credit for, because the Dems really really do not know how to sell themselves. in fact up until this Israel/genocide shit I was convinced he was the best President of my lifetime, in fact he probably still is sadly

My sense is that it's exactly because these good things are not hyped that the administration is able to sneak these good things by (for a failure in being lowkey, Biden's apparently very good FCC pick was bullied into withdrawing) which also tracks with their handling of Israel which is impossible to do in a lowkey way (unless they're secretly working behind the scenes to undermine Bibi while publicly maintaining full-throated support, but that smacks of 5D-Chessism).

many xposts No one is holding anyone at gunpoint and telling them to vote. You may receive some tut-tutting on a politics thread if you live in a swing state and want to keep your hands clean but that's about it.

I think people should vote or not vote as they see fit, but in the bizarro landscape of our electoral system I will say that I think there are basically two kinds of voting: mostly symbolic and mostly pragmatic. One is about signaling personal beliefs, the other is about actual programmatic results.

If you do not live in a swing state — which I would define as at minimum any state where the perceived or expected gap between the GOP and Democrats is less than 5 points, and maybe even 8-10 points — then I think it literally doesn't matter how you vote or don't vote. In California or New York or South Carolina or Idaho, all votes fall into the "mostly symbolic" category. Because while it's theoretically possible that if enough people voted third-party or didn't vote in those states they could end up with surprise winners, in practice that's not really going to happen. So symbolize away!

If you're in any kind of competitive state and considering sitting it out or voting third-party, then you are moving away from symbolic into pragmatic territory. That vote for a third party, or refusal to vote at all, carries the weight of real potential consequence — it could help make the difference in the outcome. As a mostly pragmatic and rarely symbolic voter myself, I don't care too much how people vote in noncompetitive states. But people in competitive states I hope would really think through the practical consequences of their votes, rather than just their symbolism.

isn't envisioning every marginalised, impoverished, endangered voter as a hostage to the largesse of the Dems another form of privilege?

― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague)

I'm a gay man in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The only ones who hold us hostage are DeSantis, the Florida legislature, and the national GOP, who want to kill me and the queer people in worse economical positions than me.

and frogbs otm. I've allowed myself only a couple of arguments with GOP relatives since early 2022, and every time they wanna play a gotcha moment -- expecting a stuttering defensive Dem -- I rattle off every good thing Biden's done; they're especially gobsmacked when I say, "He's nominated the federal judges I want: those who don't treat the Constitution as a tombstone erected in 1787." So used are they to FOX/OAN talking points that they're thunderstruck when they see positive defenses of liberalism.

re: the 'mostly symbolic' vote in non-swing states... they still add to the vote total. Trump was denied a majority in 2016, again in 2020, and I think this matters as we continue to do absolutely nothing about the vagaries of the Electoral College

This bizness about Better Presidential Candidates amuses me. The best presidential candidate of my lifetime, Barack Obama, did shit for congressional and local races, whereas the most risible hack, i.e. Joe Biden, has signed more meaningful legislation than any prez of my lifetime.

re: the 'mostly symbolic' vote in non-swing states... they still add to the vote total.

I mean, I agree with you. I can make a whole case about the importance of minority-party voting in red states. But I wouldn't waste a bunch of time trying to persuade a fellow Tennessean of it, vs. trying to persuade someone in Arizona or Georgia or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.

There was a WaPo article about voter revolt in Nebraska, a red state that is proving increasingly unresponsive to even ostensibly conservative constituents:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/15/nebraska-ballot-initiative-paid-sick-leave/

Which is to demonstrate, GOTV/education/canvassing can sometimes still make a difference, even if the party in charge is predetermined.

So used are they to FOX/OAN talking points that they're thunderstruck when they see positive defenses of liberalism.

well yeah it's the same thing as "wokeness" like they spend so much time trying to figure out what things have gone woke and basically no time trying to figure out why that's a bad thing. they just assume everyone thinks the same as them. but if you actually ask point blank "why is it bad to have a black Little Mermaid" they just stammer and talk about "history"

it seems pretty obvious to me that there are epiphenomena associated with voting in a non-swing state that still makes it essential to do it

Just to while away the time...multi-xps:

Consider for a second the moral assumptions inherent to a political philosophy that insists on voting for genocidaires rather than making genocidaires accountable to their victims.

This bit of rhetorical binary thinking appears to treat the two named alternatives as somehow equivalent in scope and moral suasion. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Salaita is implying that simply not voting for the genocidaire serves as a morally effective means of "making them accountable", that is an absurdity.

If Salaita is implying that each of us is morally responsible for making genocidaires accountable to their victims through some other means, then what other means is he suggesting? afaics his major conclusion is implied where he says "how can we conceive of a decent existence in a society that only allows for mechanical participation?" By which I take him to say that a "decent" (iow, morally acceptable) existence requires our recreating society. This is what every idealist has told us for millennia.

OK. If it is within each of our power to recreate society then why hasn't Salaita done this already? According to him it is a personal moral imperative. Ofc, this is an absurd question because the implication that each of us is individually morally responsible for recreating society is as much of an absurdity as the idea that simply not-voting-for-genocidaires will make them accountable to their victims.

But I notice another fallacy hiding in his rhetorical question, "how can we conceive of a decent existence in a society that only allows for mechanical participation?" It's the "only". Given his impassioned plea, I must presume that Salaita is doing as much as he understands to be possible to him to recreate society in the image he desires. He is speaking up, telling truth as he sees it, urging and inciting others to follow his vision, calling genocidaires to account, and probably other activities as well. Which he is currently allowed to do.

In a nation that is actively advancing toward more virulent forms of fascist oppression than we've experienced in many decades, where the police state will be more widely and violently applied to all forms of dissent, it seems better to do whatever we can to preserve at least the imperfect freedoms we currently 'enjoy', which allows us to speak up, tell truth as we see it, urge and incite others to follow our vision, call genocidaires to account, and pursue other activities as well. Even if it includes voting for the guy whose major virtue consists of not openly embracing white supremacists and calling for concentration camps for dissenters.

But I wouldn't waste a bunch of time trying to persuade a fellow Tennessean of it

I lived for Georgia in 30 years and never imagined we'd have a single viable Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, much less 2 sitting Democratic senators, this soon. In 2016 our Senate candidate was Jim Barksdale who is a complete nobody and was clearly a sign that the national party did not give a rat's ass about Georgia. By 2020 things were completely different.

Now I'm in Tennessee and of course I'm aware of the overwhelmingly bleak state of the citizenry's politics, but what happened in the suburbs of Atlanta could potentially happen in Nashville in the next few decades.

One of the things making the GOP more and more apocalyptic is the prospect of Texas becoming a swing state.

Are there any urban areas where the GOP's star is waxing instead of waning? Maybe Oklahoma City?

their strategy to deal with that is to disenfranchise voters in the larger cities (see Texas Senate Bill 1750, letting the GOP take over elections in Harris County... spoiler: that's where Democratic stronghold Houston is and they're going to make it as difficult as possible to vote there)

xxxp When I moved to Georgia in 1996, Democrats still held most state offices and controlled the legislature. The state's Senate delegation was split. By the early 2000s, it had gone completely Republican. Now, things have started to change, although the state is so gerrymandered it will be difficult for the Dems to retake control. It will be interesting to see what the legislature's response will be to the recent loss in court finding that the last redistricting was at least in part racially motivated.

that kind of stuff backfires a lot I feel, I mean the GOP did a lot of this shit in the runup to 2020 and it turns out "they're trying to take away your right to vote" actually brings people out

Are there any urban areas where the GOP's star is waxing instead of waning? Maybe Oklahoma City?

In a sense, maybe like Los Angeles? Seattle? At least compared to where they might've been 10-15 years ago?

Miami-Dade.

“A jury has convicted the man charged with breaking into the home of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and striking her 83-year-old husband in the head with a hammer in an act of political violence fueled by hard-right delusions.

David DePape, a Canadian citizen who was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of the attack, was found guilty by a jury in federal court Thursday of assault and kidnapping charges that could send him to prison for decades.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/16/conviction-in-conspiracy-fueled-attack-on-paul-pelosi-00127648

yeah, I don't think having DePape on the stand was such a great idea, but I don't really care that much

Why was that in a federal court?

because he was attempting to attack a member of congress, I assume

meanwhile members of congress are attacking eqach other

The GOP’s star isn’t waxing in Seattle, mainstream Dems are the GOP here. Even the Nextdoor Nazis are democrats.

Lord Alfred and f. Hazel bringing wisdom.

I am a huge nerd and a horserace addict and an inside-the-Beltway creature, so feel free to disregard my opinion. But actually think those epiphenomena are meaningful.

The vote totals for losing candidates in noncompetitive races (or in noncompetitive states) can and do matter, in terms of measuring the viability of, and support for, losing points of view. They affect who runs. Who gets donations. How popular and unpopular various positions are.

When people say "eh, I'm in New York (or Mississippi), my vote doesn't matter," they deprive us of data on what may - eventually- matter in those places.

remember that election where you traded votes via the interwebs, and then got lectured that you broke the law, and you were like yah, right

fwiw, i posted the Salaita essay because i agree with it. i still agree with it. that doesn't mean that i think everyone has to make the same personal choices that i do, and frankly, being lectured or "reasoned with" about it doesn't really change what i see as facts. i'm used to being an outlier here in my political persuasion, that's fine.

"used to" also sometimes comes a little bit off as "pretty god damned proud of it" fwiw