Kyrsten Synema (D - Az) brings a cake into the Senate to downvote min. wage hike

[pbrower2a]

(04-17-2021, 08:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 04:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-16-2021, 05:08 PM)Einzige Wrote: It's time for working-class revolution.

First of all, once one successfully leads a working-class revolution one is no longer working-class. No matter how sympathetic one is to the worker one is no longer a worker once one leads a government, an army, or a business enterprise. Lenin and Mao were intellectuals -- not proles. Castro might have been a politician in the mainstream had he gotten to exercise the role of a legislator in the Cuban political system had Batista not negated an election... Castro ranm on something called the Orthodox Party of Cuba, which was hard to identify as a Communist Party. (Cuban Commies were typically known as the Popular Socialist Party, as the Communist Party was outlawed).

What good Castro did was typical of a Social Democrat. The bad -- the censorship, the repression, the confiscation of property -- was Communist. 

The real revolution is social change having nothing to do with a change in political affiliation. Yes, Donald Trump was an unmitigated disaster, someone that the Far Left might find useful for gutting democracy and debasing capitalism as Batista did. More significant is that as scarcity becomes surfeit, the necessity of deprivation as a means of control vanishes. Maintenance of deprivation as a control on workers may be possible on behalf of an arrogant and rapacious elite that demands and gets everything. An elite can operate that way in a time of super-prosperity only if it has absolute power that it has the will to abuse people. Such is of course reactionary in the extreme. 

What would such an elite be like? First, it would have the markers of sociopathy or extreme narcissism.  Sociopaths can thrive in business organizations so long as they see rules worth heeding for the sake of preserving the system from which they extract privilege and indulgence. The sociopaths who don't get away with it are the criminals who have little stake in the system but instead perverse desires and the desire to get more than one can get through one's talents with predatory behavior. Second, it would pass power down through inheritance in all but name because it could not tolerate competition by startup businesses that might outcompete them in price and service. Profit margins would margins can be kept high through monopoly that has a government in its thrall, willing to suppress new technologies and stifle competition. Third, it would keep wages artificially low and all costs of living freakishly high.

That isn't capitalism; it is socialism for the rich, or economic fascism.

A Communist system has Communists on top (1st tier Communists and a lead Communist) who make  all the decisions pertaining to the country and everyone living in the country. The Democratic Socialists (2nd tier Communists) making decisions pertaining to the basic needs of the people living in the country and its infrastructure which it passes up for approval. The socialists (3rd tier Communists aka Communist believers) or common citizens basically accept and follow orders and go along with what they're being told. Personally, I don't care whether one is a Communist, socialist or Fascist because the systems are similar and the beliefs associated and commonly held and shared are similar to each other as well. Now, if the group of you want to continue splitting hairs over bad terms with bad reputations associated with dictatorships that Real Americans have no interest in belonging to or living under whatsoever.

All dictatorial orders -- even Nazi Germany -- proclaim themselves the definitive democracies. The only undemocratic orders that do not claim to be democracies are old-fashioned monarchical despotisms like Saudi Arabia, of which there are far fewer than there were around 1900 (including China, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, Japan, Ethiopia, and Russia at the time). Consider that  a horrid system like that in North Korea might make the claim that because 100% or the people vote and all vote for the slate of the Korean Workers' Party (a Communist party) claims to be more democratic than the USA. 

(OK, you are probably one of those fools who believes that Donald Trump really won the Presidential election and was cheated due to voter fraud on a huge scale. I am satisfied that Trump lost by a margin consistent with the replacement of older voters about 5% more R than D dying off being replaced by voters about 20% more D than R replacing them. Trump has little youth or young-adult appeal, which demographic studies and polls show. Electoral results were consistent with that demographic shift imposed on 2016 results. People who think that Trump really won except for massive voter fraud live in a news and information bubble like yours. Donald Trump has stated that he loves "low-information voters", and he has done everything possible to keep his supporters as uninformed or even disinformed as possible. Contrary to a myth that you may hold dear, ignorance is not innocence; it is complicity).  

As for your arrogance of claiming to be a "real American"... America has no single dominant tradition.

This fellow



(Sitting Bull) had far more claim to be a real American than you do. His ancestors were in this country long before yours. 

Besides, what could be more American than this:



It is former beauty-pageant winner and current actress Vanessa Williams, whose ancestry suggests that she could only be an American. Oh, black people aren't real Americans? Their ancestors certainly earned it through their thralldom. She is also about 45% white according to her DNA.  (I would have expected  a higher "white" percentage based on her appearance, but what am I to know?)

The rules that determine citizenship in the USA are definitive, Classic X'er. That defines who can be President in accordance with the citizenship clause -- on which Barack Obama qualifies despite having a non-American father.  

I'd be leery of splitting Americans into those "more American" than others.  

Quote:The Democratic party is engaging in economic fascism and using racism right now. Do you have a problem with it right now or don't you have fucking clue or have care in the world as to what they're doing as usual. Guess what, we are the target right now.  You are the Democratic cream puff who voted for Biden to save you from them. You voted against  the one that they've told you and convinced you was them. You are the one who was easily manipulated and turned into a Trump hater by a snip it taken out of context that was used by the Left Wing media as means to keep people like you in the fold and turn off suburban women.

You ignore that no single tradition defines America. Many different traditions have validity in America, and if you do not recognize this, then you do not fully understand America. 

There is plenty to despise about Donald Trump: his marital infidelity, his bigotry against many identifiable groups (including the handicapped), his sleazy history as a businessman, his suspect loyalty to America when Russia offered him more, his disdain for old decencies that make democracy work in America... were it not for his wealth, his business practices would have gotten him a prison term if he were not wise enough to allow his dreams to match what is allowed to people. 

The more that I saw of the Trump administration and of the personality behind it the more I despised and dreaded it. You saw the stunt in which he had unidentifiable forces attacking protesters so that he could carry a Bible (that he neither heeds nor reads) in front of a church that he does not attend and show the most pitiable display of fake devotion that I have ever seen. I look at the personality cult and I see a dictator. I look at the vans in Portland and Seattle that had Trump banners and a US flag that took away protesters, which is how a secret police operates. I mocked that inchoate secret police as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" after the brutal secret of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. I do not mock the Haitian people who deserve far better than that. 

In the end we had a President who denied his manifest defeat and sought to set aside electoral results that he disliked -- with people willing to use force and violence. In the end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden had won the election and would become President on January 20, 2021. They needed say no more and needed explain nothing.



Joe Biden may not be one of those people who runs on a law-and-order stance, but that's not to say that he needs to.