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Corrupt Crooked Carnage (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 55 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I'm sorry to be that guy, but... this isn't unique to the current administration

These kinds of deals are the norm, in fact.

In 2016, both parties raised over $60 million each for their “host committees,” largely from corporate sources. In fact, corporate funding of the conventions has become so routine that the news this election cycle is that some corporations are withholding their support this election. A corporation not financially supporting political conventions is apparently a case of “man bites dog.”

The latest mechanisms for the laundering of public money into the private purse is novel only in so far as the mechanisms - cryptocurrency sales, shell company ownership transfers, presidential announcements as a means of market manipulation for insider trading. More traditional mechanisms - autobiography pre-orders, staff salaries to immediate family, privately financed "junkets" and overseas tours in luxury venues, straight up bags of cash changing hands - have been popular and continue to be commonly employed.

Sanders is right. This is crooked as shit. Just as crooked as when Henry Cuellar and Bob Menendez and Rod Blagojevich got caught with their hands in the till. Trump's out here raising the bar by volume. But he's doing it in a system that condones - seemly encourages - these corrupt practices.

If Democrats do manage to regain power at some point in the near future what are they going to do about this shit? Will they finally throw the book at these crooks? Or will we see a repeat of 2021 and 2009 and 1993?

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    If Democrats do manage to regain power at some point in the near future *what are they going to do about this shit?* Will they finally throw the book at these crooks? Or will we see a repeat of 2021 and 2009 and 1993?

    Unfortunately, both Newsom and Harris just basically announced their intent to run in ‘28. So expect a lot more of the same if they somehow manage a win despite clinging to incredibly unpopular pro-corporate neoliberal agendas.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Blech. So tired of these people. They haven't changed one iota, they still don't stand for helping the common man by doing any of the basics that need addressing like cost-of-living increases, rising costs on everything while wages stagnate, etc. They are fully playing the good cop to the Republicans bad cop, the way it's shaking out.

    Watching the way they're treating Mamdani, it's clear i don't want whatever it is they're cooking either. I really would love to see a 3rd party come to power by doing the most basic, almost laughably simple steps towards improving the lives of the common working voter, and just staying on task relentlessly. Not allowing the discussion to linger from what the real problems are (wage stagnation is an issue i think many working-class voters would get behind) and what they're going to do about them, while relentlessly pressing the others to make their cases about those same topics. I'm tired of the deflections and personal attacks, i want fucking substance

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    I really would love to see a 3rd party come to power by doing the most basic, almost laughably simple steps towards improving the lives of the common working voter, and just staying on task relentlessly.

    THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. YOU ARE ENCOURAGING THE WORST PEOPLE TO WIN BY CONTINUOUSLY PUSHING THIS POINT

    This is a winner takes all/first past the post system.

    It is impossible for so many reasons for your wish to come true.

    • The media and centralized social media is completely owned by right wing billionaires, making forming enough support for a new party to overtake an old one within any reasonable amount of time impossible.

    • Any side that breaks off into a new party with any level of success guarantees the other side wins for decades to come, and in this particular case, that other party is clearly fine breaking the law to stay in power, benefit their goals. You cannot afford to make this sacrifice, literally

    • The number of people sacrificed in this fruitless attempt, where it would be marginalized people sacrificed to idealism first, is completely unacceptable to any moral human being.

    The truth is that the real solution is one you don't like because its boring, unfun and will have you supporting people you vehemently hate because its the pragmatic thing to do.

    What you need, and the only path to anything resembling victory, is changing the Democratic party slowly from within, brick by brick, over a long stretch of time.

    "But they're fighting Mamdani, AOC, Bernie!!!". Yeah, they are. That shows they got their foot in the door and there is a chance at change.

    "But they're the same as XYZ". No, they're not. They're not openly trying to murder marginalized people. It is childish to be this enraged to the point you can't see nuance. They are absolutely center right neoliberals, but they are absolutely better than far right fascists.

    "But I don't like them". Yea, I don't either, but I don't like climate change, and yet it exists, and saudi arabia won't stop pumping gas, beef producers wont slow down producing beef, and billionaires won't stop dumping waste on use from private jets if we just ignore the slow boring solutions and just pretend that one day we'll wake up and tell the meanies to stop, and they'll stop.

    We literally cannot afford to be this naive. People are being seriously hurt over this.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    And this is why we need to vote more people like Trump! So the sheeple wake up to the corruption on both sides!! /s in case it wasn't obvious.

    I'm so fucking tired of people saying both sides are the same.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    And this is why we need to vote more people like Trump!

    Blue MAGA in a nutshell. We need our Trumps to beat their Trumps.

    Only problem is that our Trump is Andrew Cuomo and that fucker is all out of gas.

    I’m so fucking tired of people saying both sides are the same.

    I'm tired of politicians proving it.

    Can't have Hope without some real fucking Change.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    Have you ever thought Trump won because the other side was doing more or less of the same thing and face no consequences and someone thought wow I could do this bigger, faster, wrecklessly, openly and get off scott free?

    No? But, keep going champ. Your team is the "does similar things but not exactly the same" will work out great in the long run.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    This bothsiderism has got to stop.

    There are real people, marginalized people, who are being harmed tremendously by the current admin that absolutely would not be under a democratic admin.

    The corruption is worse than it has ever been with prosecuting political enemies and dissidents.

    This idea that you're doing anyone a service by pointing out that neither side is great is doing everyone a disservice by pretending they're anywhere near equivalent.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    This bothsiderism has got to stop.

    When politicians no longer respond to democratic systems, they earn public ire whether or not one is marginally better for some folks some of the time.

    The corruption is worse than it has ever been

    The violence is worse, because it's cheaper to hire one guy to beat up another guy right now than it is to pay them both off.

    This idea that you’re doing anyone a service by pointing out

    If you don't want to read my posts, block me. But this a hideous truth you don't want to face.

    We're not getting anything new. We're getting the same treatment we doled out to Muslims and homosexuals twenty years ago.

    We're getting what we voted for, Republicans and Democrats alike.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    marginally better

    This is not the case though. There are major differences we see every day.

    Trans people have their passports editted.

    Black and brown people are being disappeared off the streets based on racial profiling, without judicial warrants and who knows what is being done to them.

    Social programs such as medicaid that keep millions alive are being gutted

    I mean I could go on and on. Its not marginal, and to think its marginal is to live in a privileged bubble.

    The violence is worse

    The violence is also worse.

    If you don’t want to read my posts, block me. But this a hideous truth you don’t want to face.

    Neither being criticized nor being obnoxious make your comment any more or less true. The fact that its makes no sense is what determines that.

    We’re not getting anything new. We’re getting the same treatment we doled out to Muslims and homosexuals twenty years ago.

    How can you not realize that regressing 20 years, but for more people is notably worse?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Trans people have their passports editted.

    They only just got the right to corrected passports under Biden, and he was barely willing to enforce it. No prior liberal administration gave a shit about Trans people.

    Black and brown people are being disappeared off the streets based on racial profiling, without judicial warrants and who knows what is being done to them.

    Happening for literally centuries. FFS, look up the history of Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice. Both executed during the Obama Administration by local police. This, six and seven years respectively, after the "Obama Beer Summit" that was supposed to kick off something resembling a national reform effort.

    Social programs such as medicaid that keep millions alive are being gutted

    Under Nixon, under Carter, under Reagan, under Clinton... I'll spot you this. The PPACA was arguably the biggest reversal of the trend. But because liberals were more wedded to budget math than popular politics, they failed to expand the program into conservative states quickly. So now its that much easier for a Red President to yank it back from blue residents.

    Incidentally, what have California and New York and Massachusetts - states with enormous budgets and vast pools of skilled labor - done to close up the gap again? Neoliberal privatization of the New Deal has been half the math on these cuts going back to the Tip O'Neal era.

    I mean I could go on and on.

    And you'd still only tell half the story. This is "War on Terror" politics all over again. It's the Drug War. It's the Red Scare. Republicans kick off a national security hysteria. Democrats modernize it, so fewer middle class white people get caught in the dragnet. All the Coke You Can Snort for Ivy Leaguers like Clinton and Obama. 60 months in jail for Keith Jackson, because Bush Sr needed a photo-op.

    This isn't new. Operation Wetback, the 1968 police beating outside the Democratic National Convention, the shooting of antiwar protesters at Kent State, the assassination of Harvey Milk, the MOVE bombing, Iran-Contra, the Rodney King riots, The Brooks Brothers Riots that stole a Presidential Election, the opening of Guantanamo Bay and the Middle Eastern Black Sites after 9/11, Iraq War protests and arrests and beatings, Occupy Protests and the mass arrests and beatings, Ferguson and Baltimore, January 6th... none of this is new.

    Every one of them was facilitated or ignored by a host of liberal politicians. None of them were prosecuted. We got no Truth and Reconciliation Committees. We always and forever look "forward" as we walk backward into the abyss.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    They only just got the right to corrected passports under Biden, and he was barely willing to enforce it. No prior liberal administration gave a shit about Trans people.

    Ah yes, the ol "Slow progress is the same thing as active discrimination" routine. How lovely and nuanced.

    Not to mention this is happening without a senate majority and with a supreme court stacked against them.

    Happening for literally centuries. FFS, look up the history of Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice. Both executed during the Obama Administration by local police. This, six and seven years respectively, after the “Obama Beer Summit” that was supposed to kick off something resembling a national reform effort.

    Once again, you are in bad faith making false equivalences.

    This is happening at mass scale and a clear spike from the relatively occasional incidents of the past.

    It's like you literally just want things to get worse with this type of nuance lacking thinking.

    Look, I could go on typing specific nuances missed for everything you bring up but we'd be wading right past the point that you refuse to acknowledge; that there are clear differences between the parties. Those differences exist today, and they are massive and matter. A third party strategy is a strategy that would guarantee that any leftist policies were made impossible for generations. If anything, trying to spin up a fake republican third party would help your case more.

    Its just the math of a winner takes all/first past the post system. Whichever side splits, the people who were closest to it lose severely.

    In this case, the neolibs are absolutely your allies vs the right wing fascists. Those are the facts.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Ah yes, the ol “Slow progress is the same thing as active discrimination” routine.

    Weimer Bidenism failed. They spent far more money and manpower inflating the national security state than entrenching civil rights for minorities.

    Not to mention this is happening without a senate majority

    What the fuck happened to the ERA? Dems gave up on that shit 40 years ago and never looked back. Clinton, Obama, and Biden all presided over legislative majorities. What did they do with them? More cops. More surveillance. More USAs who made a bigger deal out of people growing weed in their backyards than CEOs queuing up the next Business Plot.

    It’s like you literally just want things to get worse

    Quit pretending I'm some kind of Evil Genie who is making things worse by pointing out the historical failure of your liberal heroes.

    You want to go to bat for these hacks? Make a real defense of them. Quit whining because I won't lick the boots of the guy who is 10% less fascist.

    the neolibs are absolutely your allies

    Biden should have had every Senator and Executive Official involved in J6 cooling their heels in Gitmo. Instead he fucking handed them the keys to the kingdom four years after they tried to do a lynch mob on Congress.

    The neoliberals are joined at the hip with this administration. They came right out and said it the day after the '24 defeat. Lining up to announce on cable news how it was open season on Trans people, Migrants, and Muslims, in retaliation for dismal turnout.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Cut the shit eh?

    What is your realistic plan other than pointing fingers, pretending a magic revolution will save you, or pretending third parties do anything different than what I described?

    There is none. You are only fighting the only pragmatic way forward that there is.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    What is your realistic plan other than pointing fingers

    I'm just some powerless dipshit sitting on the sidelines, noting with increasing horror at the degree of fascism endemic in my own liberal base. I help my neighbors when I can. I help strangers when I find them. I volunteer my time and money to keep the homeless out of harm's way and to warn anyone nearby when I see some ICE thugs on the street.

    Beyond that, I'm doing what I can to survive in a nation that's increasingly intent on kidnapping and lynching people at random.

    There is none.

    Brother, what's your plan? Clap harder? Wave your little foam finger and throw on another layer of liberal merch?

    Or maybe you're hoping to get by as a kapo long enough to see the other side of the regime?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I’m just some powerless dipshit sitting on the sidelines, noting with increasing horror at the degree of fascism endemic in my own liberal base.

    You are worse than powerless. You are actively fighting for the fascists with this nonsense rhetoric that encourages voter apathy and encourages people to be idealistic rather than pragmatic.

    I help my neighbors when I can. I help strangers when I find them. I volunteer my time and money to keep the homeless out of harm’s way and to warn anyone nearby when I see some ICE thugs on the street.

    And yet this is all sweeping the rain if you continue to push for voter apathy or options that give fascists the win.

    Brother, what’s your plan? Clap harder? Wave your little foam finger and throw on another layer of liberal merch?

    Or maybe you’re hoping to get by as a kapo long enough to see the other side of the regime?

    I've stated what I think people should be doing and what I think they should have done before.

    If democracy survives, they need to, at the top of their lungs, support the democratic neoliberal party they hate so much, and continue to support it through decades of meritocracy until through primaries, local politics and more, they've shifted them right, as every single time they lose, that is an opportunity for the non progressives in the DNC to shift further right, something naive people online simply refuse to understand.

    People just don't like it because its unfun, boring, and takes a long time, but that is the only practical way in a broken, slow system where for the types of changes they want to happen, you literally need progressives to have control over the party, the house, the senate with a super majority and the presidency.

    Those are just the facts. Until then, your goals should be to keep the democrats in place to stop the house from being lit on fire.

    You don't have to like it, no one does. You just have to realize that that is factually how it is.

    Right now though? We're all fucked because you didn't do that before (and because a large portion of normal folks kept treating politics as if it were just this separate thing they could compartmentalize and ignore, thinking the trump admin round 2 somehow wouldn't be worse than 1). Right now, resistance is all you can do. Supporting the mayors, senators and governors who try to resist, protesting, protecting people from ICE through warning, scaring them off, etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I see why people have a problem with this. I get it.

    But we need to realize that all of our "elected officials" do this kind of pandering quid pro quo shit.

    The struggle isn't Democrat vs Republican. It never was.

    It's rich versus poor, and if you're not sure where you land, welcome to the poors. Additionally, "poor" in this context isn't even what most people would consider to be "poor" .... If you can't sit on your ass and make 6 figures per day, you're probably closer to poverty than you are to the people who run the country.

    What everyone needs to acknowledge is that it's us (poors) vs them. And we have the numbers. They turn us on eachother in the name of the Lord, or democracy, or freedom, or whatever the fuck... But not money. Let's never talk about the money. As long as they can keep us fighting amongst ourselves, then they will continue to win. Every day that goes by that we continue to allow these chucklefucks to stay in power and stroke eachothers dicks with the money from the public purse, is quite literally another day of labor they've stolen from us.

    We've been taken for all that we're worth. As long as we can still bleed out some money that they can take, they're going to keep squeezing.

    The argument isn't Republican vs Democrat or liberal vs conservative. It's us vs the 1%.

    The faster everyone accepts that, the faster we can fix this shit.

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