• FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    Not to say that Trump normally looks spry and youthful, of course, but that picture of him is the worst I can remember seeing him. I’m surprised they used it for an interview like this.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      4 months ago

      I was literally coming to the comments to say something similar. He’s the “You’re Fired!” guy how could anyone be surprised by this? He criticized the Biden administration for not firing people…

  • demesisx@infosec.pub
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    4 months ago

    It all goes back to money in politics. First-past-the-post and Citizens United absolutely fucked us. FPTP gave us a MAXIMUM of two parties (both are “private” organizations that literally have non-democratic bylaws for their primaries) and Citizens United made massive political bribes into a legal form of free speech.

    Edit: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent and nuanced comment below that corrects my hypothesis and details the concerted effort by capitalists and the World Bank since World War II to violently quash any and all leftist/socialist movements that they deemed a threat around the world.

    The cavernous power vacuum on the left caused by unchecked capitalism/corporatism (corporate personhood) caused all of the fiscal conservatives in the GOP to leave the circus and take over the DNC (look into the “Democratic Leadership Council” headed up by the Clintons and their right wing buddies). Now, we’re stuck with an extreme right wing vs. a bunch of old school Bob Dole right wingers like Chuck Schumer. As a leftist, it hurts so much to see the Overton window shift unnaturally toward fascism. We have “spirited” debate about things that wouldn’t even be a question in a society (equal rights for all people…like what the fuck. There’s only one answer that even remotely makes sense to non-sociopaths) that isn’t sick to the core with corruption. It hurts to be spat on and shamed by people that should be my allies (or in a different political party altogether) because I have the intellectual honesty to call out the DNC for their blatant corporatism. I always say: Obviously Trump is shit. It’s the power vacuum on the left that caused this shift toward radical right wing ideas becoming mainstream.

    Here’s a favorite graphic to show how badly FPTP polarizes the US government: FPTP disqualifies the US from being considered a demcoracy

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The cavernous power vacuum on the left caused by unchecked capitalism/corporatism (corporate personhood) caused all of the fiscal conservatives in the GOP to leave the circus and take over the DNC (look into the “Democratic Leadership Council” headed up by the Clintons and their right wing buddies).

      You can’t just leave that at the feet of the electoral system. The cavernous vacuum was the direct result of domestic intelligence, surveillance, and disinformation campaigns organized by the federal government to undermine any organization that threatened the white supremacist state structure dominant during the 60s and 70s. The Cold War wasn’t just something Americans fought abroad. It came in the form of political assassinations (Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and MLK). It came in the form of corporate strike breaking efforts on a national scale. It came in the form of paramilitary operations - the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia was a classic example, but SWAT raids and police harassment efforts stretching from California to Florida helped break down the nascent counter-culture organizations post-WW2, while the CIA-fueled crack epidemic and lead paint/gasoline fumes and other ecological catastrophes demolished the mental capacity of a generation.

      Left wing organizations and movements didn’t just vanish, they were systematically uprooted and destroyed. The modern fascist state and municipal governments we live under are the direct result of policies implemented generations ago. The electoral system is as much a victim of that violent manipulation as anything else.

      • demesisx@infosec.pub
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        4 months ago

        Thank you. I surely oversimplified it.

        You’ve hit the nail on the head as to why I prefer to keep my activism quasi anonymous. The long list of amazing activists who were right but still ended up dead…. The only one who survived (Kwame) left the country.

        Anecdote: At the beginning of this most recent uptick in the ongoing genocide of Palestine, I was pretty vocal and downright subversive with my language about Biden and his bloodthirstiness with regard to Gaza and was actually taken aside and expressly warned by a friend of mine in the MIC. I decided that my family was too important to me to keep up my activism. I’m sure I’m not alone in giving up and I’m sorry if I sort of glossed over the concerted effort by the that cadre of World Bank puppets working tirelessly to stifle any perceived threats to capitalism.

        Thank you for your comment.

    • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      Imagine celebrating the idea that you’ve had no personal growth or made no social progress in twenty years. And not that it needs to be pointed out but it’s also bullshit because the right have been marching fast towards fascism.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        The left only seems to be receding when the observer is hurtling rightwards.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I thought these were the years that elmo promised and failed to launch a rocket to Mars, let alone a cargo or manned mission to Mars.

  • Shellbeach@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    It reminds me of that homeglow commercial where a lady brags about firing her old cleaning lady after using the service. Tone deaf and cruel, it’s astonishing that someone was like “yeah, that’s gonna make us look good”.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Leadership is a useful tool in coordinating the efforts of large numbers of people, in order to efficiently gather information, develop best practices, and accurately evaluate the results of organizational efforts.

      • index@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        A whip is a useful tool to force people into coordination, in order to efficiently do stuff. You may want one along your leadership.

        • Norah - She/They
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          4 months ago

          Well done, you’ve indeed just described the role of Whip that a person can fulfil perfectly. And you’re right, you do often need those people alongside leadership. And no, the term doesn’t come from literally using a whip, though I suppose it does make for some rather evocative imagery. I do really love the term “lose the whip” to mean that someone is expelled from their own party.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          A whip is a useful tool to force people into coordination

          It’s an awful tool. It can’t convey complex ideas, doesn’t maintain a useful catalog of effective uses, and only works at a very limited range for a tiny number of subjects on a momentary time scale.

          I might suggest replacing your whip with a library. Libraries have been far more successful at organizing and commanding large numbers of people over long periods of time. The library was arguably the most effective tool of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Chinese Dynasts, and the Catholic Church in commanding populations by the tens of millions.

          Wielding a whip makes you a nuisance. Wielding a library makes you a God.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Are you pushing that ‘sovereign citizen’ nonsense?

          You may believe that you aren’t a part of the system, but the system is much bigger than you are and it has other ideas.