US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

xpost this was also before wages stagnated for 4 decades

xxpost are you fucking larry appleton

pomenitul, i feel your anger. there's a lot of prerequisite steps before american goes into "general strike is a viable strategy" territory. historically we had multiple waves of extremely effective anti-left repressions (Red Scares, COINTELPRO) and our children get very little education in the history of labor organizing. the civil rights movement is pretty much the extent of our cultural knowledge of mass movements, and even that has been co-opted and sanitized, presented as sort of episodic moments of intense individual expressions sparked by powerful charismatic leaders as opposed to a sustained, centuries-long resistance undertaken by broad social groups in solidarity with one another. we teach kids that the first amendment protects the rights to assembly and speech, but we do not practice that. american youth are extremely isolated and segregated from one another, so opportunities to build solidarity are limited. we have an intensely individualistic culture where our fiercest political battles are over creating opportunities for individuals to succeed (i.e. affirmative action) and not creating a good life to preserve the dignity of all.

in short, americans don't know how to strike because no one is teaching them.

minimum wage went up by 35%, other salaries by 10%, a 4th week of paid vacation was added, company-specific union chapters were implemented

Thanks, didn't know these were negotiated to end the strike. Good to know. These do all seem like concrete labour issues so idk if this method would work wrt issues like terrible Supreme Court nominations, political corruption, or repressive immigration policy. (I do think there are present-day analogues to the more abstract things you list, e.g. BLM and MeToo.) xp

eat my ass pomenitul

O for a Democratic House paradise

Americans really don't risk stuff for the general good unless guns are involved

Though for real I do think our work based health care system is the most evil method of social control

OTM

Changing the subject to something more productive, I thought this was a reasonable series of predictions:

With Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation likely tomorrow, here a few thoughts on what this might mean for the next 5-10 years of Supreme Court action. (Thread.)

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) October 6, 2018

Of course, since the odds are actually pretty good, relatively speaking, I want to know how radically a future 6-3 conservative court might behave.

btw amendment-wise i'm willing to move from "abolish the senate" to "make the senate democratic" if it has more of a chance. scale the number of senators to state population, at least a LITTLE bit. paint it as just another step, following the 17th amendment, in *keeping* the sacred checks and balances (having one body that's elected less frequently and has more weighty enumerated responsibilities) while making it more democratic.

also: impeach the president

The fact of the matter is that Trump represents the democratic will of the American people at the moment; he really does stand for what the majority thinks is tolerable...

If we think representative democracy is how to solve some of our scariest problems, then we have to establish representative democracy and then defend it. The method of allowing the court to call the 2000 election has to be deemed illegitimate and prohibited from ever happening again. The district maps of 2010 have to be completely redrawn. The senate has to be elected by nationwide proportionality. The electoral college has to be disintegrated. The district and the occupied territories have to be enfranchised. These systemic issues are all directly linked to our current state of affairs and I see almost nobody actually working to address any of them.

Yeah. The idea that a general strike could ever happen in the USA at its current level of political organization and awareness is ludicrous. Riots can always happen when disorganized people are sufficiently angry, but general strikes require pre-existing organization and coordination. They don't happen spontaneously.

I think the middle class was better off too to where you could strike, be without income for a bit or even get fired, and have a fighting chance of still getting by, even after making those sacrifices.

A significant portion of my friends and family couldn't even bear to lose 2 days of income, much less lose their jobs over the strike. Some would literally be couch-hopping within 1-2 weeks. When your priority is food and shelter, it's hard to focus on much else.

Admittedly, I'm not in that position, and could do more...and need to start doing more.

Honestly, how can a May '68 event, which happened in a country (50 years ago, BTW) that's roughly both geographically​ and population-wise the size of a single above-average US state (like, say, Texas, New York, or California), even get off the blocks here today?

he said "the fact of the matter," a signal to skip to the next post

general strikes require pre-existing organization and coordination. They don't happen spontaneously

The general strike in May 1968 in France had no pre-existing organization, in fact the main unions opposed it.

My latina friend who has a lot of kids and a shitty husband and makes the most money in all of her family so she has most of the responsibility was lamenting that she wasn't doing more. And I told her that by all means she needs to do what she needs to do for her family first and foremost. This is a fight I am wholly telling white people, especially the men, that they need to get their shit together.

I understand where pomenitul is coming from (I'm Canadian) but it was presented pretty harshly and I do feel a lot of empathy for my neighbours and ilx posters from the US. It is easy to feel inundated as an outsider with the US politics threads-media coverage and also fear that it will fork up our country (which has a lot of its own problems tbf). Worst I can say about US is it feels like another planet to me, one that hasn't really changed but I hope things improve for you all and dmac otm as well.

Pomenitul you blab a lot of shit on the canadian politics thread too

Go for a walk

^^^^

I don't recall saying anything unusually controversial in the Canadian politics thread, though. Refresh my memory?

It’s a pile-on bro, just put on your helmet and wait for it to end.

I do strongly disagree with the idea that trump is a true democratic representative of ordinary america though.

Fair enough (x2).

it’s not even up for discussion. he lost the popular vote.

I don't recall saying anything unusually controversial in the Canadian politics thread, though

I don't recall this either fwiw.

how about everyone turn their smugness levels down to 1 and back off a little

it’s not even up for discussion. he lost the popular vote.

If the popular vote were the only thing that mattered, Americans may have voted differently (for better or worse). Anyhow, only 40% 'strongly disapprove' of Trump at the moment. Disapproval is higher, of course, but my anger is such right now that I don't think it enough, especially in light of Kavanaugh's imminent confirmation.

If the popular vote were the only thing that mattered, Americans may have voted differently (for better or worse).

Don't people also vote based on their electoral college?

Nearly everyone I encounter everyday in America not only hates trump but is obsessed with hating him.

Maybe this is a “bubble” but at the very least he is bitterly divisive. No sort of bland consensus figure that reflects pre-existing sentiment.

Don't people also vote based on their electoral college?

If the popular vote were the only thing that mattered, Americans may have voted differently (for better or worse).

Anyhow, only 40% 'strongly disapprove' of Trump at the moment. Disapproval is higher, of course

fwiw, this makes him measurably the least popular president in modern history, esp. as these numbers have been consistently awful through his entire presidency, territory that most other presidents have only dipped into at occasional low points, or slid into on the way to defeat in their bids for a second term. it's fair to be disappointed that these numbers are not even higher, and it does say some sad things about the state of the american polity, but it's rather different than him being a measure of what the majority of americans want.

If the popular vote were the only thing that mattered, Americans may have voted differently (for better or worse).

well sure, but that's a hypothetical universe - shouldn't what happened in this universe count for at least some kind of data point?

switching to a popular vote system would certainly change campaign strategy and the types of people that get nominated but i don't know how that would affect the ideological breakdown of the population

that's a hypothetical universe - shouldn't what happened in this universe count for at least some kind of data point?

Oh, it most certainly does. It's just not quite the 'gotcha' moment some assume it to be.

We gotcha though

That’s where you’re wrong

pomenitul is a Canadian dairy farmer and I claim my five

The general strike in May 1968 in France had no pre-existing organization

The level of political organization and awareness in France is an order of magnitude higher in France than in the USA. The fact that strong unions existed is more to the point than whether the leadership opposed the strike. If the rank and file didn't oppose it, the leadership would be impotent to stop them. Also, France had successful general strikes before 1968, which laid the groundwork. The USA has never gone on general strike.

I mean there's no way some idiot racist faux populist shithead trainwreck of a human being could get any popular support in progessive Canada

https://m.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2149824/canadas-trump-doug-ford-populist-brother-crack

veg otm

this is OT but i have to confess that my eyes have been reading it as "pomentiful" for god knows how long. like pomegranate + plentiful.

I like it.

elsewhere on the intertubez, not news but a nice reminder of what's what here in the US of MAGA ~

1. The issue whether Kavanaugh told the truth is crucial here, irrespective of one's opinion of the testimony (or claims) against him. It's pretty clear he did not tell the truth, yet the party of "morality" and "honor" will put him on the court. The quality of the testimony or proof presented by others is totally irrelevant to this question; Kavanaugh's testimony had more holes than swiss cheese, the Mets' infield, and the Giants' offensive line, combined.

2. The defense of Kavanaugh's demeanor and temperament only confirms the overall affirmative action program that still exists for the privileged. Simply stated, a high school dropout who has never held a steady job or had a break, wrongly accused of crime, behaves that way in court and he's held in contempt and doing jail time for behaving exactly the way Kavanaugh did.

But Kavanaugh is "wrongly accused" therefore had the right to hold his questioners in absolute contempt. And accordingly he's going on the Supreme Court where he'll pass on the contumacious behavior of his lessers,

and, of course,

get on with the business of ending "affirmative action."

pomenitul is a Canadian dairy farmer and I claim my five

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Saturday, October 6, 2018 9:30 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he's not canadian, but he sure as hell gives off the same smugness you see in a lot of canadians that talk shit about america. the typical canadian knows jack shit about america because they are fed news reports by canadian news agencies that repost/reword news articles from major american news outlets, which are already far disconnected from the regular american

he's not canadian

Um, what do you mean by this?

most of the canadians i know IRL know more about US politics than the average american

^ yep.

xp

i'm talking about canadians who live in canada obviously