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That’s true. I was just trying to explain my view of the US system.
Broadly speaking, do think that if a country has two dominant neoliberal parties, like the US, this will inevitably happen.
Queer✨Anarchist Anti-fascist
That’s true. I was just trying to explain my view of the US system.
Broadly speaking, do think that if a country has two dominant neoliberal parties, like the US, this will inevitably happen.
In a two party system, populist movements grow when the opposition party is failing (or is perceived as failing) people. Alternatively, both parties can fail the people before one becomes populist.
The two party system has failed Americans. But now that the republicans have created a populist movement, the failure of democrats to properly serve many people causes them to be pulled by populism. It doesn’t help that the culture war lets absolue horseshit issues fly by without actual basis in reality, since that fuels the fire without actually having to do the hard discussions about policy.
The MAGA movement is a “third way” that formed because the paths forward shown by both democrats and republicans seemed to lead to nowhere for many people.
I don’t think this is a cancer, I think this is a horrendous feature of the design of a representative democracy under capitalism (at least, in the American sense)
Capitalism will crush people while trying to wring every bit of profit out of them, and in a capitalist democracy, the state supports capitalism.
Representative democracy leads to unaccountable representatives. They still need to get re-elected if they want to (or they could just serve capital and dip), but with all the dogmatism caused by political parties, the hierarchy of the parties protecting the politician, and the benefits of having corporate sugar daddies, especially media corporations, they can get away with enriching themselves at the expense of Americans, while still having decent odds at reelection.
Further, people in power, for whatever reason gave this tendency to build their power, usually at the expense of those without it. The state gives itself new powers and new toys at the expense of everyone else. Fear of terrorism gave us some of the most draconian laws on the books, such as the patriot act, which has not been repealed whenever there has been an opportunity to. The police got afraid of the people, and bought themselves guns, counterinsurgency training and tools from a foreign apartheid state, armored cars, and raises. The supreme court went from writing itself into existence to giving the president near legal immunity, rolling out the red carpet for the authoritarian state to become an even more authoritarian state.
When you mix these tendencies together, its no wonder why this state has failed. And while it hasn’t failed everyone, the nature of capitalism leads to a pretty large exploited class ripe for exploitation. And this populist movement is ready to take advantage of that, between those primed by culture war drivel, economic suffering, or seeing their demographic and/or class lose power in some way.
This populism isn’t a cancer on an ailing democracy.
It is a symptom of a failing democracy, unable to sustain itself from the structure of itself.
Bringing up imperialism is a good call, you’re absolutely right. Although I left it out in my comment, the techniques used abroad always come back home on Foucault’s imperial boomerang.
The technology we use on our borders will be used to oppress activists and protesters in the city. The techniques used to stomp on indigenous people abroad will stomp on our queers and PoC back at home. Old military equipment will be sold to the military we turn on our civilians: cops.
I’m very concerned. The US has been increasingly authoritarian for a long time. But I really hate how people are only seeing “oh shit that’s authoritarian now”
I mean, let’s be real, we live in a fucking authoritarian police state, and this isn’t something that suddenly happened with Trump or the SCOTUS, they are just showing some of the terminal symptoms. Our police force is above the law, mass surveillance is normal, corporate surveillance is a profitable business that doesn’t shirk from getting profit from the Govt, and our democratic system is feeling pretty autocratic.
The oppressive arms of the next authoritarian on the throne of the oval office have been set up over many decades, accelerating recently. But now that the throne has been polished, people are starting to notice.
This system is fucked.
edit: autocorrect fucked me
Dominos is outrageously expensive if you don’t shop the deals.
When I was in college, I’d get dominos with my roommates when they had the 20$ special, which would be about 30$ after tip and delivery. The special had 2 medium pizzas, garlic knots, cinnamon twists, and soda.
After I moved back home, I learned my local dominos doesn’t always have that deal. I’d get something similar to what you got and I’d be upset that I got less food for a bit more…
Now what really pisses me off is the high end neopolitan place near me is cheaper on their dinner special days, where you can get 2 personal pizzas that taste so good I’d accept it as proof that god is real for about 25$ including tips and gas money.
I run two APs, and a Unifi server running on a thin client linux server.
I have the U7, and the U6 extender that goes in a wall outlet
I have a few of their small poe powered ethernet switches, they’re great since I have a poe switch as a backbone I can put it near a group of devices in a room, like consoles, raspberry PIs, etc, and just not have to worry about much setup or powering yet another tiny device.
Highly recommend unifi devices
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I wish they’d do that for me. I’m a pasty white guy who is a spice fiend. I fucking love spicy food, and I have some sauces I regularly use that have Scorpion Peppers, Carolina Reapers, and Ghost Peppers.
Thai food is great, but when I go to thai restaraunts, they see me order the spicy option, I swear to god they give me a quarter of the spice that they’d give someone who doesn’t boil in sunlight.
That’s nice to know.
I’ve been replacing eggs with applesauce when making muffins for the past 15 years, and I love it. My friend is allergic to eggs, so he is able to eat them too!
Ahhh, prison labor, the one exception to the 13th amendment.
I know!
Like, jesus fucking christ, you are making it legal to fucking plow down protestors, ignoring their right to live, much less their first amendment rights to protest.
I fucking hate desantis and I wish him a very unpleasant rest of his life. I might not believe in heaven or hell, but I hope he never gets the pleasure of seeing his god face to face.
And when we weren’t drone striking the shit out of them, we were giving Turkey the weapons needed to fight them on the ground, for some reason
Great, I wasn’t sure whether I’d see fascists “counter protesting,” a fascist plowing a car through the crowd, or police brutality/repression, and now I gotta add foreign terror to my threat modeling?
Fuck man, these were supposed to be my normal protesting experiences
Bad take
Acting like biden is powerless in this when he has gone around congress to fund israel is willfully ignoring the truth.
Calling people foreign agents is also just shit brained. Rather than arguing a point, it just says “hey, u are (maybe) not American, we can ignore you”. Or just saying “Hey, ignore this guy, because I said he’s not American.” Plus, it holds less water when america has constantly interfered in so many other countries. Imagine saying a palestinian shouldn’t have a say in american politics when america has stances on Palestinian politics.
Small town justice doesn’t really sound like justice to me. In fact, it sounds like quite the opposite.
I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.
Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.
Yep.
If we travel back in time a little bit you will find obvious examples, such as the police working directly with the klan (specifically the 2nd klan) and instances of sherrifs deputizing people to allow them to carry out extreme violence against bipoc
Yeah, but the relationship isn’t simply one way.
The apparatus of the state often includes corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, or the IMF/World Bank, or Elbit Systems, or Blackwater, or the Pinkertons.
The state also enshrines the rights of corporations and maintains the capitalistic and/or colonialistic relationships corporations have with people, and protects them from everyone else.
In return, the govt gets a small amount of taxes, and a surprisingly high degree of legitimacy if the line goes up.
You don’t need to be downtrodden to feel like a party is failing you. Considering life is getting harder for so many lower and middle class people, a lot of people are feeling worse than they did 10-15 years ago. This is where people have been failed by both parties.
I mentioned that there are people who are feeling like they are losing their position in society. Some people are simply bigoted and are upset at seeing minorities get visibility, some are upset that christianity is less prevalent among Americans. I don’t think either of these reasons is valid, though, fuck the old hierarchies.
The issues faced by Americans in the rural south are completely different than the ones faced by Americans on the east or west coasts. We basically live in separate worlds. Republicans failed them, but to think the democrats didn’t is silly. For example, a lot of people live in rural areas, where the police would take an hour to get there if someone was being attacked by someone or some animal. Guns are a bit more necessary in places like this than they are in a big city.
Granted, I think the media’s lies is the biggest cause of the populism. And holy shit does right wing media spew lies at an incredible rate.