I gotta agree with cartoon Bernie on this one. Here in Utah the three big concerns of our upcoming legislative session are: how to ban more transgender people from public restrooms, how to prosecute women who may have had an abortion at anytime in the past, and how to ensure colleges and universities can no longer encourage diversity, equity, or inclusion under criminal penalty. I’m not joking, those are the main focuses of the upcoming session.
Never mind that homelessness is out of control, housing prices are through the roof, drug addiction is at an all time high, and the great Salt lake is now nothing but a mud puddle that will dry up in five years’ time.
More important to score political points with your witless white-ass cronies and mormon shit heads.
Yeah I feel like Republicans have been grooming Americans into slack jawed cultists with their war against, education, books, cultural diversity, etc. the government is a sad clown show
It’s so odd we have a march today (MLK day) for “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,” while last week our Utah Governor called “equity and diversity the most evil concepts mankind can indulge in.” And now Utah colleges are forbidden to allow any diversity in hiring.
Mormons also believe horses existed in North America prior to the Spanish bringing them over. All because a dude who wanted to marry his adopted daughter made some shit up about some golden plates.
The whole Mormon religion is as baseless and nonsensical as a Dr. Seuss story, only more silly. And it’s really just a big business, it rakes in money from idiots dumb enough to give up 10% of their income to a cult. I keep telling them, I’m willing to do it for less - all I ask if 5% of your income and you can TA DA suddenly have eternal salvation, and more underage kids to fuck than a weekend with Jeff Dahmer. (!)
You have good energy. Consider adding every other religion to your Dr. Seuss comparison. Religion has poisoned geopolitics for far too long.
I agree totally. I do consider all religion to be poison, or as Marx (I think) said, the opioid of the masses. But really, it’s no more or less terrible than any big business that strips people of their personal freedom and demands fealty and money in return.
Well, there were North American “horses,” they just all died out around 11,400 years ago, so well after the aboriginals got here, but a bit before the Spanish.
Sure and camels too
how to ensure colleges and universities can no longer encourage diversity, equity, or inclusion under criminal penalty
Just wanted to note, Oklahoma just passed a similar law (this link is to a news article, which includes a link to the bill itself).
One thing that’s crazy to me is when they go on about how much money universities are spending on these programs, when here in Oklahoma it’s 0.29% of all higher education spending and 0.11% of state expenditures on higher education.
Shit sucks right now, and I dunno where my home state is headed. It’s hard to tell if things will get better or worse in the long run.
Whatever the case, stay strong over there. o7
I’ll do my best - you hang tough out there also. I feel bad for people in Oklahoma who are stuck with the same type of right wing nutjobbery we have in Utah. The people are completely the opposite of what the legislature thinks they are. We have absolutely zero say in what goes on.
For example, we voted for fairer redistricting, but the legislature overrode it because it might have allowed a democrat into office.
Even though most of Utah’s population is not conservative, we have no voice at all in our government. A lot of is controlled by the mormon church.
Shit sucks indeed. But at least I can harrass and harangue them with letters and opinion pieces in the newspaper that call them out for the scumbags they really are. They hate that.
Seriously, what’s the point of government if not to HELP US. We didn’t invent government to make our lives more difficult. We invented it to keep our shit together. For us. As a property of its existence.
Only if you hold them accountable for what they do.
Seriously, what’s the point of government if not to HELP US.
We would get surprisingly far if we got to a place where the government didn’t actively hinder us.
Hinder us how?
Off the top of my head:
- removing school lunch programs
- removing women’s reproductive rights
- dragging feet on legalizing marijuana
- gerrymandering certain states/districts to keep one party in power
- politicians being bought by the highest corporate bidder
Those are all pretty big ways in which the government hinders the population at large.
how do I say this, but free school lunches are provided by the state, wanting less state is literally wanting no free school lunches, rights are also given by the state (the only inherent rights are natural rights, everything beyond might makes right is the state meddling in our lives)
No idea what your point is.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but they didn’t say they wanted less state. Just for the state to do less bad things/things that hinder its citizens. That doesn’t mean they must oppose school lunches, unless they also believe that school lunches fit into that category. You can argue whether or not they do, but ‘you don’t want the government to hinder us, but X is the government hindering us, therefore you must oppose X’ isn’t much of an argument on its own.
Apologies if I misunderstood your comment tho.
no they want less state because the ideology dictates that the state just does it worse, something that just isn’t born out by reality, case and point school lunches
I’m for small government so yes, I want less state. But school lunches is definitely one of the last things that should be cut. Since I’m fairly certain that in real world we’re never going to cut or fix the hundreds of things that are more wrong than publically funded school lunches, in practical terms I’m not advocating against them.
That said, just because school lunch is publically funded aka “free” does not necessarily make it good. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/healthier-school-lunches-may-have-curbed-childhood-obesity-new-study-finds/2023/06 – but again, that’s a detail problem that can be fixed (like it was here) without dropping that practice altogether.
And as for the other items in zargotext’s list, I pretty much agree with them too. But also excessive regulation, market distortions of every kind, poor educational systems, bureacracy.
If the context is USA, it’s an old country in modern terms. A lot of cruft has accumulated in 300 years and it’s not getting better. Ditto for many others.
…of, by and for The People. Greatest work of fiction ever written.
Eh, we DIDN’T invent government. Government invented itself to control and exploit us. They do so to the degree of our tolerance levels and the level to which we are manipulated.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I don’t think quoting a bunch of slave-owners and misogynists who did none of all that is proving the point you’re trying to make.
no, we did invent the government, or do you really think that for however bad this is, the literal warlord nobility that predates it was Superior?
Wasn’t JFKs speech supposed to be about not seeing a community only for what you get out of it?
Do you understand how offensive that concept is to a market capitalist?
They don’t even want to fund public schools, and they get a pre-literate workforce out of that.
“Whats in it for me” would be our national slogan, if it wasn’t already “fuck you whether or not I got mine.”
That might be what the speech meant in context, but the quote alone sounds like something Animal Farm’s Napoleon would say to Boxer.
American’s vote for the government and fund it with their taxes. To believe it’s a system with any other purpose than to serve it’s citizens is assenine.
Actually, citizens pay taxes to avoid going to jail or, in the olden days (perhaps soon to be reintroduced), to avoid being killed on the spot.
They vote because when you are locked in a room with no way out, you’ll push one of the buttons in front of you frantically - trying to figure out if, perhaps, they are pushed just like this, you’ll get out.
When you’re not paying taxes or voting, someone richer than Smaug from the Hobbit is cashing in on the rest of your life.
To call this a system that serves its citizens seems… I’m not sure what to call it. Naïve? Misguided? Uninformed?
better than what we had before the whole government thing, if you think this is bad, wait until the warlords come kill you, enslave your children and use your wife as a baby production machine
The warlords are also a government. However, the fact that warlords emerge when government fails shows that government is inevitable, so the best you can do is try to have a good one.
This is a bit of an old reply, but I thought I’d post something I stumbled upon here as it’s a response to your fear of warlords: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/111290743792188200
From the post (it’s quite extensive with plenty of references):
“Once people are free of state violence and hierarchy, how can they just stop some bad actor from taking over?”
The assumption is that people who are free from coercive hierarchies are powerless to act in their own self defense, alone or in cooperation with each other.
(The question is usually accompanied by some invocation of the dreaded “war lord” whom the questioner assumes will inevitably overrun a nonstate or non-hierarchical community.)
So, I thought I would take a crack at answering this as comprehensively as I can!>>
The assumption is that people who are free from coercive hierarchies are powerless to act in their own self defense, alone or in cooperation with each other.
That’s the problem. Acting alone is not an option since an organized force will always defeat a disorganized one, and “cooperation” would mean forming the same kinds of hierarchies and governments that we already have, except they won’t have the centuries of stress-testing our present democratic systems have undergone and will therefore fall to corruption and authoritarianism much more easily.
This is why anarchism is such a bankrupt ideology. At best it consists of people willing to burn the world down to institute a system that would be the same but worse.
Doesn’t seem like you read any of it, and it doesn’t seem like you are open to new ideas. So… In the status quo you remain then. Good luck!
Human organisation and leadership may be an inherent part of us. That is not government…
I find it funny the way people just accept that they are sheep and need someone to protect them from the big bad wolf. And, of course, enlist the big bad wolf to protect them.
I also find it hilarious when people pretend they alone are not the weak little sheep waiting on any more organized group to eat them.
I’m also sus of people who use the sheep/wolf/sheepdog analogy since it’s literally Nazi propaganda, as espoused by Nazis themselves…
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I don’t think you get the comic, or understood how my comment was responding to it.
Also, this is just really condescending. If you’re going to be on the left, you have to learn how to argue in a way that actually convinces people you’re ideas are better. This just makes you sounds like a jerk.
If they’re going to steal 30%+ of my income, I expect something more than a DC pedo party and constant war.
I keep telling people, I’ll do it for less. Give me just 5% of your income and I’ll be happy to fuck you over with inane laws and restrictions, plus I’ll let you believe you’re going to become a god in the afterlife and have a harem of however many underage kids you want to screw for eternity.
it’s supposed to be ironic ?
I think so.
That Kennedy quote has always been a puzzler.
Not in meaning, but why the hell it’s supposed to be some kind of American ideal to aspire to.
“Take what we give you and beg to serve” seems a more honest phrasing.
It’s more about helping your fellow man, not the government.
You rarely see any thing else from that speech. If they’d just show even the part right after the “ask not” part it would help.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
I do in fact demand better of my government.
Ok but also remember that Kennedy was demanding Americans accept responsibility for those less fortunate among us and that we invest in our future
Unironically yes.
It’s not an issue of whether or not the government will work for the advantage ofone group of people - it WILL work for the advantage of one group of people. It can’t help but. It can’t do literally everything - it has to pick and choose specific things. And each of those specific things will, if it provides benefit at all, only provide that benefit for some.
So the issue is merely who is going to benefit.
And the only way for we the people to benefit, as opposed to a handful of wealthy and powerful fuckwads benefitting, is if we the people demand that we’re the ones who benefit - if we insist, “No - fuck you - this is our government spending our tax revenue and it’s fucking well going to spend it on us!”
Governments who do not fear their people have no reason to maintain a culture of obeying their wishes.
You can demand it, but when your election options are all determined by insiders and you further contribute by treating 3rd parties like laughing stock, you’ve got nothing but some weak whatever’s left of a second amendment to hold over them.
That’s crazy talk. You’d have to have some crazy government where you only get to vote every couple of years for one of only two candidates where the only reason to vote for one of them would be to not vote for the other guy for something like that to happen.
Bernie’s not a socialist.
elabtorate?
Soc dem at best.
First of all, social democrat doesn’t mean “watered down socialist”. It means a socialist who favors a democratic electoral structure.
Second, these aren’t tiers. If soc dem was somehow “less socialist” than “socialist” (it isn’t, see above), it would still not be “worse”, just a different set of values.
The term “social democracy” is very deceiving nowadays since it does not pertain anymore to the roots of the ideology which has changed quite drastically in the last century.
The original premise was that socialism could be achieved through reform and not revolution (hence it parted ways with the Marxist position). That is, the State’s institutions were suitable enough to “eventually” or “some day” lead to a socialist mode of production, and so cooperation with the state and, by extension, the bourgeoisie were incremental for socialism. This is why socdem parties were firm believers that change comes from the parliamentary electoral structure (Esson, 2022). I am not going to argue why this is problematic—Marx and Engels have said enough regarding this.
However, social democracy as we know it in the modern age is vastly different from what it used to be. The ideology in the 70’s has become attached to the Third Way and socdem parties throughout the world gradually adopted neoliberal policies, pressured by electoral competition. And the Scandinavian countries, home of social democracy, are an exemplary case to this. Just compare their parties’ agenda before and after WW2 and you will see what I am talking about.
To refer to “social democracy” as anything less than capitalism would be factually fallacious.
Social Democrat (which I think is what Bernie is closest to) is not socialist, it is the variant of capitalism used in many European countries (not limited to) like the Scandinavian countries. Democratic socialist is socialist
Edit: they sound similar but are really not
Not quite true. SocDem means a Social Democrat, ie a Capitalist in favor of strong social safety nets. Social Democrats are not Socialists, and the Nordic Countries are perfect examples of Social Democracies. They have high Unionization, generous social safety nets, and rely on Capitalism as their mode of production.
You’re confusing Social Democrats with Democratic Socialists. Democratic Socialists are generally Socialists who favor liberal democracy over Democratic Centralism, Anarchism, Direct Democracy, Soviet Democracy, or any other form of Democracy. Think America, but when Workers own the Means of Production. They also tend to be more in favor of reform over revolution, though not necessarily.
I agree that there aren’t tiers of Socialism, either Workers own the Means of Production or they don’t, but I had to correct the bit on Social Democracy.
You linked to an AI-generated site which just regurgitates real information, and even so does not in any way contradict what I said, as if this was a dunk
Socdem is like “socialism without science fiction and murdering people”. So a lot more ethical, quite a lot more practical, but also doesn’t quite get nearly everything done socialists typically would like to get done.
I’ve always found him rightwing compared to some of the Canadian politicians. But yea. That’s our world.
“The cost of compromise.” It’s telling * and sad that we consider rw pols “left.”
*edited
His personal belief, or his political position?
elect nerds to public office… nerds work hard and balance books…
Bold of you to assume there’s no socio- or psychopaths among nerds. Just look at the tech industry C-suite.
Do you have a point, or did you just want to disagree with someone?
My point was: There’s plenty of nerds who can be(come) just as corrupt or selfish as any politician. They also don’t necessarily work harder.
I would like some more tech literacy in politics though.
i talk about balancing books and you jump straight to psychopathy… shows where your mind is and how low your expectations are… i’ll bet you vote for Republicans who talk a bunch of shit and do nothing but steal…
Dude, wtf, no? I’m not even American.
I’ve just seen plenty of stories about nerds who seem like “good guys” only to see them turn out to be selfish assholes the moment they become successful and start making big money. Especially with tech start-ups.
Although I gotta say, I’d love more nerds in office. The way most (boomer) politicians talk about technology is cringe and often completely without understanding.
Was the personal attack necessary btw? Yeesh…
Ask not what you can do for you country; we will be the ones asking the questions here. Your country will tell you what to do and either you will obey or there will be consequences, because the revolution was a lie and you are a fool.
Sounds like capitalism with extra steps…
How’s that JFK quote end, Steve Kelley?
Based
