U.S. Politics

I wanna disclaim that I am NOT about all this “who is the REAL tough guy” shit, and that no one is obligated or required to be “tough”, but after a damn lifetime of watching shockingly weak men *insist* that they are oh so very strong and scary, I’m just fucking over it. It’s not even about MAGA specifically, although MAGA is certainly going for the world record of elevating absolute losers to positions of “power”.
 
I was offline for a few hours, saw someone say "I don't know about you, but I feel like a president who says his predecessor was replaced by clones is an impeachable moment," and I did not want to believe it, but... clones. Well, robotics and clones. Clone robots? I don't know. I think I'm just exhausted by how deeply unserious the people ruining the country are. In any normal society these guys would be drunks sitting at the end of the bar annoying the other patrons.
 
docsilence said:
I was offline for a few hours, saw someone say "I don't know about you, but I feel like a president who says his predecessor was replaced by clones is an impeachable moment," and I did not want to believe it, but... clones. Well, robotics and clones. Clone robots? I don't know. I think I'm just exhausted by how deeply unserious the people ruining the country are. In any normal society these guys would be drunks sitting at the end of the bar annoying the other patrons.
Click to expand...
That's not true at all.
They would've been kicked out of the bar a long time ago.
 
Damien said:
That's not true at all.
They would've been kicked out of the bar a long time ago.
Click to expand...
True.
One of my favorite activities as a bartender/bouncer was the "you have one more fucking shot" moment.
You can shut up, stay, and drink, or get the fuck out of my bar teeth first, your choice.
We don't have that option in politics, apparently.
 
docsilence said:
True.
One of my favorite activities as a bartender/bouncer was the "you have one more fucking shot" moment.
You can shut up, stay, and drink, or get the fuck out of my bar teeth first, your choice.
We don't have that option in politics, apparently.
Click to expand...
We absolutely do have that option in politics. People just gotta fuckin' use it.
 
Yep. Biden should've used the insurrection clause to clean house. Judges, congress, everything. He could've evicted them all from office. He could've used the resulting majorities to pass democratic reform. Extreme, yes. Less extreme than allowing an insurrectionist back into power so he can gut the federal government and deport millions? You tell me.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Yep. Biden should've used the insurrection clause to clean house. Judges, congress, everything. He could've evicted them all from office. He could've used the resulting majorities to pass democratic reform. Extreme, yes. Less extreme than allowing an insurrectionist back into power so he can gut the federal government and deport millions? You tell me.
Click to expand...
And here's where I tend to break from my Democrat/Liberal cousins; I think Biden is a piece of dog shit on the level, at least, of a George W., if not a Trump. Two huge things held Biden back from doing anything that would have been useful in the long-term rather than serving as a stop-gap for two Trump presidencies.

1.) Biden's absolute insistence, despite mountains and mountains and mountains of evidence, that we can 'work with' the political Right and find common ground and sanity. The fact that he spent four years clinging to this, more than anything else, told me that he is a fucking dementia patient living the past inside his own head, and not actually engaging with present day reality. This is an old man that thinks his grandson is actually his son because he has no idea when or where he is and isn't capable of processing it even if you explained it to him. It is fucking shameful. But not nearly as shameful as....

2.) He's a fucking liar. A pig shit scumbag liar. He said all along that he was only intending to serve as an interim president to get us to the next good candidate that could really move things forward and represent the interests of the country. I submit that he knew all along he wanted both terms and his actions prove it. He spent the entire 4 years trying to be as inoffensive as possible to the political Right, the donor class, etc etc. Nothing was more important to Biden than preserving his position as a middle-man 'reasonable Centrist' with FULL intent that he'd be able to sway some voters that way and maintain his position for another 4 years.
If he had entered his presidency with the -intent- to be there for 4 years, he could have essentially done anything he wanted knowing that short-term dip in popularity wouldn't matter, political retribution wouldn't matter, working with the other side later wouldn't matter. None of it would matter because he'd be gone and within 10 years or less he'd be dead anyway. To your point, he wouldn't have had to worry about the political ramifications of getting rid of corrupt politicians, federal actors, and civil servants. He could have thrown Trump in prison. He could have done SO MANY things that would have protected the future of the US.

Instead, he quite literally did fucking nothing for 4 years out of fear that he would make himself unelectable. He's a fucking coward, and a sniveling, conniving liar that's just as bad as any Republican for doing anything and everything to cling to power for the benefit of no one but himself and his immediate family.

Fuck him. I hope his cancer-death is long and painful.
 
I’m neither a Democrat nor a liberal (I guess “leftist” fits best, though that’s not exactly an accurate description from an American point of view), and I don’t want *anyone* to die from cancer, painfully or otherwise, but yeah, I’m no fan of Biden. Never wanted him to run in the first place, definitely didn’t want him taking the second shot before backing away either.

Too old, too far right, WAY too capitalist, too willing to ignore genocide, too hung up on working within our broken and intentionally-rigged systems. And way too big a crony of our extant political-class quagmire.
 
I was a big Biden apologist. Since Trump won re-election, that's become an impossible position to take. Unfortunately for Biden, I think his entire legacy will be defined by his refusal to deal with Trump.

It's a shame, because excluding the way he handled Trump, he's easily the best president of my lifetime. He was a real supporter of the labor movement. He passed leftist, climate-oriented legislation. His economic policy was the best since FDR. He might still be the best president of my lifetime because it's not like any of the others dealt with the Republican Party, either.

I didn't want him to run in 2020. I was furious when the Democratic Party colluded to make him the nominee. I maintain that anyone would've beaten Trump in 2020. It was time to swing for the fences, not get conservative. I never considered that he could've burned the whole thing to the ground and left after four years, consequence-free for the Democratic Party. Probably because it's antithetical to Biden's DNA. Like most old Democrats, he's an institutionalist til the very end. Even when the institutions are crumbling around him.

Knowing the Democrats, Biden would've burned it to the ground, and they would've nominated Kamala in '24, anyway. Left her covered in the inescapable stink of it. I guess that wouldn't have mattered so much if the Republican nominee wasn't Trump or a groyper. (Seriously, if you hate Trump, just wait until you see what type of person the College Republicans have been cooking up for the last 15 years. There are a lot more Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gaetzs on the way.)
 
Unfortunately I think a lot of politicians, good, bad, great, mediocre, will all be judged by history by how they dealt with Trump, which is to say, poorly to not at all. But also, if we peel the onion of when someone should've stood up and stopped what was happening with the Republican party, we'll end up with a stinking empty hand, because that onion goes back 40 years. A lot of people will be judged harshly if we're still allowed to study history in a decade.

I took an online poll in 2020 when we had like 18 Democratic candidates running and Biden was in my bottom three (I fully admit to being a Liz Warren guy, but then again I have family who were working for CFPB before Musk dismantled it and I think that bureau is one of the unsung heroes of the last ten years). And Biden made some awful mistakes, mistakes that echo many of his predecessors. But I went to bed every night while he was in office sure we weren't going to drive the country into a Depression or have high school students kidnapped by government contractors in tacti-cool cosplay. I wish he bowed out after one term. I wish the Democrats ran a dick-swinging straight white guy with a service record to counter all the anti-woke BS, and I hate that I truly believe that a chunk of swing voters won't vote for someone brown or female in our lifetimes and we have to take that into consideration in every election.

My only hope is that none of the morons the Republican party is churning out have the cult of personality to carry on Trump's legacy. I hope Barron is an uncharismatic idiot like his brothers and isn't someone they can groom to be the next Nero. But I also think we're staring down the barrel of a population that is alternately meaner and/or easier to bamboozle so the next guy won't even need Trump's level of smarmy charisma to pull them in.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Unfortunately for Biden, I think his entire legacy will be defined by his refusal to deal with Trump.
Click to expand...
Yup. But I don't feel bad for him about it. Either he's actually a dementia patient, or he is a grown man that made choices with consequences. He chose to be a do-nothing for the greatest threat to American democracy in all of our lifetimes. He -deserves- to be remembered for that and literally nothing else.


TheSameIdiot said:
he's easily the best president of my lifetime.
Click to expand...
No denying, really. I mean, to be fair, that bar is so low that you need a back-hoe to find it. But it's true. And none of it will matter because everything he did has been undone. Because he didn't secure the future. Didn't even make a half-hearted attempt at it. Best president of our time and his presidency was utterly worthless. It's like he painted your new kitchen right before the wrecking ball showed up for the demo. He literally could have been the worst Democrat president in our lifetimes and the actual reality of this moment would be the same.


TheSameIdiot said:
Like most old Democrats, he's an institutionalist til the very end. Even when the institutions are crumbling around him.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. That's still a choice he made that he should be held entirely accountable for.



TheSameIdiot said:
Knowing the Democrats, Biden would've burned it to the ground, and they would've nominated Kamala in '24, anyway. Left her covered in the inescapable stink of it. I guess that wouldn't have mattered so much if the Republican nominee wasn't Trump or a groyper. (Seriously, if you hate Trump, just wait until you see what type of person the College Republicans have been cooking up for the last 15 years. There are a lot more Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gaetzs on the way.)
Click to expand...
If Biden had done his actual job - it probably wouldn't have mattered who the next nominee was as long as they were reasonably competent, because all of the insurrectionists would be in jail or dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. He had 4 entire years to reform the system with the literal, actual, -unilateral consequence-free power- that the Supreme Court claimed presidents have. The second that ruling came down it should have been game over for Republicans. And it wasn't because Biden is a simpering piece of shit greedy coward.


docsilence said:
But also, if we peel the onion of when someone should've stood up and stopped what was happening with the Republican party, we'll end up with a stinking empty hand, because that onion goes back 40 years.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. But when people use this as a defense for Biden, I get literally sick to my stomach with rage. No other president in our lifetimes presided over a country where the presumptive nominee for president from the other party was a known insurrectionist. We can blame Dems for allowing it to get that far, and we absolutely should. But the extant danger of the Republican party and Donald Trump himself, was NEVER clearer than during Biden's presidency. Nor was it ever -easier- to deal with, given their actual constant public crimes. Biden failed in a deeper, more obvious, and more awful way than any president before him. It's not fair to let him defray an ounce of that weight onto previous administrations.


docsilence said:
But I went to bed every night while he was in office sure we weren't going to drive the country into a Depression or have high school students kidnapped by government contractors in tacti-cool cosplay.
Click to expand...
I'm not Cassandra over here. But I went to bed every night fully aware that Biden was doing nothing to stop those things from happening in a couple of years' time. I was not comforted by Biden's presidency on any day, for any moment. Because he was clearly, visibly, doing nothing over the entire 4 years about the looming authoritarian danger we ALL saw coming. Every morning I woke up to a new commitment by Biden to make sure Donald Trump gets to play King. We all saw the misery and abject suffering that was right over the horizon. I don't know how anyone slept well with Biden in office, watching him do nothing to prevent any of it.


docsilence said:
and I hate that I truly believe that a chunk of swing voters won't vote for someone brown or female in our lifetimes and we have to take that into consideration in every election.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree. I think the fact that we couldn't elect a white woman with a beloved (mostly) former president husband that oversaw the greatest economy in many of our lifetimes should have probably told us we weren't ready for a female president at all (let alone a non-white one) and running a female candidate right now - specifically one that doesn't already have massive support - is virtue-signalling political suicide.
Is it WRONG that it's like this? Absolutely. But we can't slam our heads against a wall and insist we're just going to do it anyway just to prove we're not sexist like 'them.' Especially when we don't even have a non-white/female candidate we can run that anyone gives a flying fuck about. If it were fucking Beyonce? Sure - run her. She'd probably win because America is a cesspit of fucking idiots. I honestly can't think of a single woman in politics beyond AOC that would even have a chance at winning a presidential election. And even AOC is a bit of a long shot.
 
Damien said:
Is it WRONG that it's like this? Absolutely. But we can't slam our heads against a wall and insist we're just going to do it anyway just to prove we're not sexist like 'them.'
Click to expand...
I definitely don’t disagree with this.

That said: the way forward is not clear to to me, because that is the line of reasoning that gets me dealing with “reasonable Democrats” who want a “nuanced conversation” about, say, trans rights, as a doorway to “well maybe we should be less ‘woke’ so we can win!” And I just can’t accept that. That feels like a pathway to BOTH parties openly shitting on human rights and the law and having an ongoing swagger-and-penis-size contest, which only the vilest of candidates will ‘win’, regardless of party.

But I’m also the guy who still can’t fathom what passes for “charisma” in Trump, either. I get that other people respond to it, it I just can’t see it.

I’m so fucking tired of treating despicable shitheads like viable individuals who should be allowed in society.
 
AceofKnaves said:
But I’m also the guy who still can’t fathom what passes for “charisma” in Trump, either. I get that other people respond to it, it I just can’t see it.
Click to expand...

Every time he opens his mouth I lose more respect for humanity in general, because he's a charisma black hole and yet we've got grown men generating sexed-up AI art of him riding tanks into battle with a gun in one hand and a flag in the other. I keep thinking that I figured when we inevitably fell to fascism, that leader would at least have a shred of classic charisma, some oratory skill, good looks, physically fit. This guy's a fucking puddle scrapped off the grease trap of the McDonalds time forgot, and yet people worship the ground he walks on. It tells me I'll never truly understand humanity.

Damien said:
I honestly can't think of a single woman in politics beyond AOC that would even have a chance at winning a presidential election. And even AOC is a bit of a long shot.
Click to expand...
I think AOC is a fucking powerhouse. I love the work she does. I think she's brilliant. I live in TERROR the Democrats run her in 2028. I live in Massachusetts. I think Seth Moulton is a fucking moron. But he's a white straight veteran who went to Harvard, from a money town, who speaks privileged white guy and I keep thinking just run the stuffed suit and try to get the train back on the tracks before we're an unfixable hole in the ground. And I hate that I feel that way every time I see Democrats get breathless over someone who doesn't look like a Trump voter, because I want to live in a world where AOC (or anyone else who isn't a six foot tall straight white man - can't forget that a lot of folks won't vote for Mayor Pete either) stands a fair chance at being elected. I also hate that one side is so consistent that it feels impossible for the other to move the needle toward equality even a little bit without it being a risk to everyone.

Damien said:
He -deserves- to be remembered for that and literally nothing else.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree. I just can't help pulling that eternal thread, going Biden failed to act, but Obama should've done more to get his choice of Supreme Court Justice in place, but Hanging Chads, but two pointless wars in the desert, but Carter let Reagan get the better of him, and in the end I just realize we've been tumbling toward a fall literally my entire life. Everyone deserves to be remembered for how they failed us. (And everyone who betrayed us should be remembered for it as well. And we're gonna have to fight like hell to make sure history actually exists when we're all dead and gone.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top