Election 2020

[Stardog Champion]

I'm 40. My dad is 70. My girlfriend is 30.

He makes it sound like we'll be the Soviet States of America by the end of March. By the end of January if the Dems win the Georgia run off. On the other hand, I said "Yugoslavia" in front of my girlfriend once, and she looked at me like I was our cat making the noise right before it throws up a hairball. My high school students have mostly positive connotations when hearing "socialism" at this point. So at what point does the messaging from the right become counter-productive? Is it really just a matter of having a significant number of boomers die? And yes, I understand that there are other Republican voters besides boomers.

[4/5]

Also yeah it absolutely is hysteria within the context of this conversation, and 2020s American politics. My Venezuelan aunts and uncles are convinced Biden is going to literally install socialism. Their lived experience doesn't make them any less wrong.

Maybe wrong to think that a Biden victory = socialism in America, but right to fear socialism since they've seen first hand where socialism leads.

[4/5]

Also yeah it absolutely is hysteria within the context of this conversation, and 2020s American politics. My Venezuelan aunts and uncles are convinced Biden is going to literally install socialism. Their lived experience doesn't make them any less wrong.

Maybe wrong to think that a Biden victory = socialism in America, but right to fear socialism since they've seen first hand where socialism leads.

And yes, I know Bernie people don't want that kind of socialism, they want the good kind.

[Jorge]

Also yeah it absolutely is hysteria within the context of this conversation, and 2020s American politics. My Venezuelan aunts and uncles are convinced Biden is going to literally install socialism. Their lived experience doesn't make them any less wrong.

Maybe wrong to think that a Biden victory = socialism in America, but right to fear socialism since they've seen first hand where socialism leads.

Fearing that the US will ever be a socialist country like Cuba or Venezuela, and that this will be brought upon by Democrats like Biden, is exactly what I'm talking about. Their experience results in irrational fears, yes, but they remain disproportional to and incompatible with the reality of the situation, and thus what we are in this thread calling hysteria.

[4/5]

Also yeah it absolutely is hysteria within the context of this conversation, and 2020s American politics. My Venezuelan aunts and uncles are convinced Biden is going to literally install socialism. Their lived experience doesn't make them any less wrong.

Maybe wrong to think that a Biden victory = socialism in America, but right to fear socialism since they've seen first hand where socialism leads.

Fearing that the US will ever be a socialist country like Cuba or Venezuela, and that this will be brought upon by Democrats like Biden, is exactly what I'm talking about. Their experience results in irrational fears, yes, but they remain disproportional to and incompatible with the reality of the situation, and thus what we are in this thread calling hysteria.

Okay I'm with you there. I guess I'm more inclined to say that while it's absurd to think a vote for Obama or Biden is socialist anything, I understand where they're coming from and think it's rational even if disproportional or hysterical.

[Rob]

It's rational to be irrational.

[Rob]

Also yeah it absolutely is hysteria within the context of this conversation, and 2020s American politics. My Venezuelan aunts and uncles are convinced Biden is going to literally install socialism. Their lived experience doesn't make them any less wrong.

Maybe wrong to think that a Biden victory = socialism in America, but right to fear socialism since they've seen first hand where socialism leads.

This is the root, yes. But MY lived experience, as their child, is that they endured something awful in their childhood, and it scarred them. Totally understandable, but many have no real ability to talk about something like socialism objectively.

And it is my belief that Cubans and Venezuelans are obviously not the only ones to have seen socialism first hand. Everyone has, including Americans. Public school, public law enforcement/fire services... some things we do collectively, for the collective, via government. If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is. It can work when done democratically and balanced with markets & the private sector, sometimes as a joint venture, as we do here. It's never really been a "one or the other" situation.

[Bi_3]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-BB1aQvN8

Clyburn says "'defund the police' is killing our party"

Though a Democrat has won the presidency, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn warned his party is being destroyed by the "defund the police" movement that arose over the summer.


"'Defund the police' is killing our party, and we've got to stop it," the South Carolina kingmaker said in an interview with CBSN Monday. It was a topic he said he and the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis discussed.

"John Lewis and I were very concerned when these slogans came out about 'defund the police,'" he said. "We sat together on the House floor and talked about how that slogan... could undermine the BLM movement, just as 'burn, baby, burn' destroyed our movement back in the '60s."

"John would never yell, 'burn, baby, burn;" John would never say, 'defund the police,' as progressive as he was, and I'm just as progressive as anybody else," Clyburn said. He went on to say that "we just lost Joe Cunningham," a South Carolina Democratic House member who lost his reelection bid against Republican Nancy Mace. "And we lost him over 'defund the police.'"

"Burn, baby, burn" was a slogan that emerged during the 1965 Watts riots, chanted by Black people who set cars and buildings on fire. Clyburn said that John Lewis was removed as head of the civil rights group they had founded, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, by "burn, baby, burn" proponents.

He said they didn't want to see the same thing happen to Black Lives Matter, and he criticized the term "defund the police" for its lack of clarity.

"When I talked to my friends about this, and they say, 'that's not really what we mean,' and I say, 'Well, in this business, you've gotta say what you mean, and you gotta mean what you say, and if you have to explain what you mean, you are losing the argument."

Clyburn went on to say that the nation has always been racially divided. "What we need to do as a country is learn how to mitigate those factors," he told CBSN's Anne-Marie Greene and Vladimir Duthiers, adding that race will always be present. "Let's just embrace it and do what we can to get beyond it."

He also talked about the outcome of the presidential election. It's cyclical, he said. "Donald Trump got elected because people thought we had gone too far to the left."

Then the nation "moved too far to the right, and the voters decided to send it back to the left."

Most believe Clyburn played a pivotal role in Joe Biden's presidential fortunes. His endorsement came days before the South Carolina primary and galvanized Black voters to support Biden after he had suffered losses in the earliest primary states.

"I always knew I was gonna vote for Joe Biden," he told CBSN, noting that at Biden had lost in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada before the South Carolina primary. He pointed out that he had worked to ensure that people of color "would have a say-so in who our nominee would be," and his state has an electorate that is more diverse than that of Iowa or New Hampshire, both mostly White. Fifty-six percent of South Carolina's Democratic primary voters were Black this year, and most of them voted for Biden.

Clyburn also talked about how his endorsement came about, recalling that he was attending a funeral a few days before the South Carolina debate. "A lady called me to her side," he said, and she "told me she needed to know who I'd vote for. And when I told her, she snapped her head back, and she looked at me in such a way that I cannot explain, and then she said to me, 'I needed to hear that, and this community needs to hear from you.'"

"I thought about it all day," he continued, "and I made the decision that I was going to make my endorsement and do it in such a way that the community would hear from me."

[knee tunes]

Why in gods name have we already moved on from the Four Seasons Landscaping thing?

This is for you mcparadigm

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJH38fSW/

[4/5]

And it is my belief that Cubans and Venezuelans are obviously not the only ones to have seen socialism first hand. Everyone has, including Americans. Public school, public law enforcement/fire services... some things we do collectively, for the collective, via government. If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is. It can work when done democratically and balanced with markets & the private sector, sometimes as a joint venture, as we do here. It's never really been a "one or the other" situation.

It sounds like you and your parents and you and me tbh have different definitions of socialism. I go by the definition that socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Stuff like the government/the "people" owning the oil fields and the factories and the agriculture.

The things you describe are just public goods, things that "we" have decided benefit the public at large and therefore we will share the costs of providing through taxation and typically public administration. I think that defining those things as socialism is to make that term so broad as to lose all meaning. I understand that there are anarcho-capitalist arguments for the private provision off each of those services, but that's a pretty fringe position that isn't really part of the current public debate.

I think what most Bernie and AOC types have in mind when they say socialism is a vast expansion of the welfare state and safety net and a greatly increased role for government in regulating and restricting decisions of private citizens along with significantly higher taxes for people with middle and upper incomes. (I initially wrote 'economic decisions' but deleted 'economic' because I don't think that's a necessary modifier, all decisions are economic decisions.) What your parents have in mind when they hear that word obviously goes a lot further than that and what they picture probably isn't very compatible with a free society. I'm guessing they're not actively pining for the abolition of public schools, police, and fire stations.

Words have meaning and they evolve over time, but on this topic the best starting point is probably to start by defining terms so that you can have a conversation. (I can imagine that not working very well for you parents (and people with personally experiences) where they will reject anything with that word no matter what, but again it's hard for me to blame them. It isn't as if when socialists have sought power in other nations they pitched it as a destruction of liberty and free elections, etc., even if that's what eventually transpired.)

[Mickey]

Lot going on here that I don't want to step in but gonna go out on a limb and say that if nothing other than "lived experience" gives you discrete authority on political and economic systems then there's a lot of people whose "lived experience" under capitalism needs to be centered and treated as rational.

[4/5]

Lot going on here that I don't want to step in but gonna go out on a limb and say that if nothing other than "lived experience" gives you discrete authority on political and economic systems then there's a lot of people whose "lived experience" under capitalism needs to be centered and treated as rational.

It doesn't give them discrete authority, it makes their opposition to "socialism" understandable even if it turns out that most people using that word mean something different.

[dimejinky99]

So he’s building an even bigger wall around the White House?

What stage does the 25th kick in again?
Lotta people with a lot of dirt on their hands would do well to step in now.

[Mickey]

Lot going on here that I don't want to step in but gonna go out on a limb and say that if nothing other than "lived experience" gives you discrete authority on political and economic systems then there's a lot of people whose "lived experience" under capitalism needs to be centered and treated as rational.

It doesn't give them discrete authority, it makes their opposition to "socialism" understandable even if it turns out that most people using that word mean something different.

Sure (and I did not primarily have your posts in mind)--this is fair so long as similar opposition to "capitalism" is also seen as understandable.

[spike]

Why in gods name have we already moved on from the Four Seasons Landscaping thing?

This is for you mcparadigm

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJH38fSW/

The furries haven’t forgotten

[Norah]

you can get merch now

https://www.fstl1992.com/fstlmerch

[4/5]

Lot going on here that I don't want to step in but gonna go out on a limb and say that if nothing other than "lived experience" gives you discrete authority on political and economic systems then there's a lot of people whose "lived experience" under capitalism needs to be centered and treated as rational.

It doesn't give them discrete authority, it makes their opposition to "socialism" understandable even if it turns out that most people using that word mean something different.

Sure (and I did not primarily have your posts in mind)--this is fair so long as similar opposition to "capitalism" is also seen as understandable.

That's fair.

[Mickey]

And yet.

[doug rr]

[Rob]

Lot going on here that I don't want to step in but gonna go out on a limb and say that if nothing other than "lived experience" gives you discrete authority on political and economic systems then there's a lot of people whose "lived experience" under capitalism needs to be centered and treated as rational.

It doesn't give them discrete authority, it makes their opposition to "socialism" understandable even if it turns out that most people using that word mean something different.

Sure (and I did not primarily have your posts in mind)--this is fair so long as similar opposition to "capitalism" is also seen as understandable.

That's fair.

Why is it fair that socialism is “government ownership of production” but when the government in a capitalist country does it (like the public services above), it’s not really socialism? Are you defining socialism as Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union? Because they are, and many do. That would render the system unusable (in a political sense) forever despite being the counter to capitalism we currently have.