The left uses critical thinking. They need to actually engage with information and verify it before choosing to adopt it. This takes time.
The right are scared children and adopt whatever their TV parent or religious politician tells them out of fear. This takes zero time.
“We actually demand answers and real transparency. It’s not that hard to deliver.”
The only way it’s hard to deliver if it’s completely made the fuck up. Would be great if they at least had this level of self awareness. At this point, my dog that thinks his reflection is another dog has more.
My dude. You are not grasping the point I’m making.
Both ACA and Dodd-Frank will unquestionably be gone in the next 3 years. Likely before the end of this one.
Sure. They aren’t yet. But you might as well be telling me the strengths and accomplishments of Dems for their work on Roe v Wade. Because likewise, ACA and Dodd Frank won’t matter once they’re gone.
Because neither went far enough when it was critical for our society that they did.
Dodd Frank’s few wins like the Madatory Reporting system (Cat) took 15 years, and a billion of our tax dollars to implement, and Trump 5 months to propose getting rid of.
ACA was already cut down last Trump admin with Trump adding denials for pre-existing conditions back into the mix.
And all because when the Dems controlled the house, senate, and presidency - and had a clear shot at an actual solution to the growing problem of Healthcare costs - they capitulated the idea of a public option to Lieberman for no reason at all:
The public option was initially proposed for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but was removed after the independent US senator for Connecticut Joe Lieberman threatened a filibuster.
The public option was later supported by… President Joe Biden. However, Joe Biden made no attempt to implement a public option in his four years as President.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option
Is the ACA great? Sure. Love it.
But it’s done absolutley nothing to curb the rising costs of Healthcare.
Instead, it has enflamed them by making medical insurance mandatory. This padded the bottom line of our predatory health insurance industry, and allowed them to slowly cook us for the decades to come. All so Trump could then make one change in the 2017 budget bill so insurance could then deny us coverage for existing conditions while pushing mandatory payments onto companies that could afford their needlessly rising costs.
Now Healthcare insurance CEO’s are getting shot, as the money the ACA forces companies to pay towards insurance isn’t actually going to our Healthcare - it goes towards funding AI to deny us coverage.
That’s what I mean by bandaid.
The ACA was a paper hat on problem that made it look a whole lot better, but actually just let it get worse. That hat can also be easily removed, turned upside down, and then used by the GOP to funnel salt into our countries wounds once they feel like it.
Because just you don’t determine policy.
Working together with everyone else in Arizona to elect Democrat Kristen Synema didn’t determine policy either.
That’s my point.
Our “representatives” do not, in fact, have to represent the will of the people that elected them. There is zero mechanisms forcing a Democrat to act like one, and millions of dollars in corporate fundraising incentives to act otherwise.
But instead of acknowledging this reality and pushing for their accountability, I should run for their office instead?
I’m ALL for a new political party. And I 💯% agree that me and others would make a hell of a difference in office as Democrats or otherwise. I completely agree with you there.
What I don’t agree with, is that fixing the Democratic party is my responsibility.
My responsibly is to fix America. Not the political party that always fails to stop the GOP from breaking it.
I’ve been voting Dem for decades, and all I’ve heard from them is that my fears about the future were unwarranted, despite us now all living in them.
Just as you are telling me now not to worry about the ACA and Dodd Frank. They will disappear, just like everything else the Dems have accomplished in my adult lifetime. Not because the GOP undid it, but because DEMS didn’t work hard enough to make sure it couldn’t be undone.
If you want me and others to help the Democratic party, you should acknowledge why that help is needed.
I’m aware of everything you mentioned. Here’s the point I’m making:
Both of those are now torn off bandaids too. Despite the decades of Democratic effort to put them in place.
With them gone, the problems of overpriced Healthcare and a corporate captured banking system are immediately a problem again. All because neither were designed to fix these issues to begin with. Just bandaid them up until the GOP could enevitably tear them off.
There’s quite a lot of policies the Dems have passed that make it look like they made progress. But all of it is temporary, non systemic changes that are simple to undo. So over decades, all their efforts are easily and eventually undone.
Their polices, at best, work on the small scale because Democratic leadership on the large scale doesn’t reflect their voting base. They reflect their corporate donors.
7 didn’t want to raise Federal minimum wage for the first time in 2 decades? Kinda sounds like 7 Dems just voted like Republicans for no good reason to me. Which happens a lot. (Fetterman).
You’re okay with that for some reason. I’m not. I’d be pretty pissed that my only option for raising the federal minimum wage is to vote for a political party that turns around and votes in line with their opposition. The GOP having the majority does not absolve them of this behavior. If my vote matters, why didn’t it here? I voted for Sinema, so what should I have done differently to raise the federal minimum wage?
Kinda fucked there’s literally no path forward to do that because my vote isn’t as important as having enough Dems on the team. An amount that I can’t control with my single vote, and doesn’t even work well when it’s reached.
ACA could have had a universal Healthcare option. You know, an actual systemic fix to the massive problem with Healthcare costs? But It didn’t because once we had enough Dems to do that, they just chose to compromise with the GOP instead.
Because even with enough Dems, the policies they pass have to be bandaids. Their donors push them to build a solution out of paper, they sell it to you as brick, all so you’ll blame the GOP once they easily blow it down instead of ask why in the fuck was it so easy to blow down to begin with.
How about the Dems stop making paper policies? How about they treat the wound instead of applying another bandaid, and spending millions convincing you it won’t be torn off.
Show me a single policy of theirs from the last 20 years that hasn’t been made of tissue the GOP has now sneezed in.
Can you explain Krysten Sinema voting against raising the federal minimum wage? She’s a Democrat that campaigned on the promise of raising it, then didn’t when it came time to vote.
Which is very much my experience voting Dem for the last 20 years.
Not that the GOP is a better option. Far from. It. But Dems still clearly cast their votes in favor of whoever’s paying them, not their base. They’ll promise a better Healthcare option, better job security, better wages, even hold both the house and senate and still want to compromise with themselves.
All I’ve seen them do is put a bandaid on whatever the GOP broke, and promise for years to kiss it until it gets better.
Then act shocked that just adding more bandaids has lead to the wound underneath festering.
Healthcare reform? Bandaid. Minimum wage? Bandaid Public education? Bandaid. Cost of higher education? Bandaid. Job security? Bandaid. Retirement? Bandaid. 2008 Banking Crisis? Bandaid. (Took them 16 years to implement the CAT fraud detection system, just in time for Trump to yeet it) Housing costs? Bandaid. 36 trillion being added to the national debt in 25 years? Bandaid. Dozens of dead kids at Columbine? No bandaid at all! Now hundreds and hundreds of kids have been killed by guns in school over the DECADES that followed.
By all means name a single facet of American life that Democrats have managed to actually improve in the last 20 years, and I’ll point to our current president who just tore off all those bandaids and poured salt on the wound.
Dems have the same boss as the GOP, they’ve just convinced themselves they’re the good guys when they collect their corporate blood money.
Real answer: insurance salesman in the 90’s.
This was a slightly exagerated, but rather typical upper-upper-middle class house.
A friend of a friend’s dad had the same job, and a similar sized house. Guy had his own pinball room.
He also had a daughter that was in a secret relationship with my girlfriend (that they thought I didn’t know about.)
Scissor-box it out with your “friend” all you want, free pinball is free pinball.
If you Google:
“fiat currency debt spending”
Here is the first AI result: (bold emphasis is mine)
- Fiat currency is a government-issued currency not backed by a physical commodity (like gold) but by the issuing government’s credibility.
- Governments can issue debt (bonds) to finance spending, and this debt is typically denominated in the nation’s fiat currency.
- The ability to create and manage fiat currency gives governments flexibility in responding to economic needs and influencing monetary policy.
- However, excessive debt can lead to concerns about the government’s ability to repay, potentially eroding trust in the currency and leading to inflation or devaluation.
- Inflationary effects: Increased government spending, especially when financed by printing more fiat money, can lead to inflation if the money supply grows faster than the economy’s production of goods and services.
- Inflation risks: Excessive reliance on debt and monetization (printing money to finance debt) can lead to inflation or hyperinflation, eroding the currency’s purchasing power.
If you have a source stating anything close to what you’ve been saying instead, nows the time to use it. Otherwise, you are objectively wrong, and above is the proof.
Followed by the fact Moodys just downgraded the US’s credit rating for the first time ever:
(And Clinton’s surplus is the crash you want to focus on? Really? Anything else maybe happen around that time in 2001 to cause that market issue instead? Maybe something in September you were never supposed to forget if you are an actual American?)
It makes no difference to you. To be very clear.
But it makes a hell of a difference to any country whose debt China is no longer buying.
Especially if that country has a budget always in the negative like the US.
How about we just check back here in a year to see how much one of us is wrong? Because I’m sure by then you’ll be caring a lot more about how little of our debt China is then buying.
No where in the last decade has the fed printed 30% of all Dollars in existence. Tell yourself whatever lullaby you want to hear to sleep at night, but the US and the Dollar is unquestionably fucked.
China is literally decreasing its purchase of US Treasury debt as we speak. So you should know as a proud defecit spending country, we actually need people to buy that debt so our system doesn’t collapse.
Every economic indicator is flashing red whether you’re paying attention to it or not. Denying these clear facts as hyberbole is just proof of how you were propaganda’d into letting everything become so completely cooked that you’re now in ignorant denial that it’s hot.
Thanks for proving my point.
Since 2020, 30-40% of all dollars that exist now were printed.
The inflation that’s happened since then is a result of more money being put into a system with the same amount of fixed goods (read Buffet & Friedman). It takes years for this adjustment to happen after printing, which is why inflation has been rising until 2025.
It took Zimbabwe 10 years to hit hyper inflation for example. We’re still in year 5.
But we’re doing the same as them: Printing more dollars.
So in a few years, this means everything will simply be worth 30-40% more here. No matter what Fox TV personality in a government position tells you.
Looking up data on how long we’ve been dealing with inflation now (4 years) and comparing that time frame to all the other times this countries inflation lasted this long (2008, 1929) reveals a pretty obvious result for what’s going to happen next.
Awkward as hell I have to point you to open a history book from the 30’s about a previous US administration run by robber barons who thought Tariffs would stop rampant inflation. It did for a bit (where we are now) but what happened next was the great depression.
I sincerely wish there was a way to place reminders in Lemmy so I can see how much your comment aged like milk by the end of 2025. Because it’s astounding to me how financially vulnerable you’re willing to be in the face of inescapable market forces that you simply ignore to believe whatever the TV tells you instead.
There is a literal historical record for everything happening now, that’s very likely going to keep predicting what happens next.
Inflation is artificially low because of Tariffs destroying demand (prices go down when people don’t buy things) the cause of our inflation (adding more money to the money supply) is still very much an active problem with no solution.
Enjoy the Trump Depression. It’s going to be the “greatest” one we’ve had yet.
Pretty sure it was unconstitutional for Zimbabwe’s fiat currency to do the same. But it did.
How high is Dollar inflation going to get now before people realize market forces don’t care about their political feelings?
Reddit had an AMA with a Bank Robber ten years ago that they’ve since deleted for corpo purity reasons 😂
Here’s the big points from it:
He eventually got caught because of the money he had, not because his face was on every security camera.
He recommends not doing this, as do I, as it’s just not worth it.
But just in case you wanted to know how it was done a decade ago, fuck Reddit, here’s the details they recently deleted.
In a two party system, if the choices are between cancer and fascism, then cancer is the only party that’s going to mention the other is fascist.
So it’s up to cancer to make it clear who the fascist is. Because the fascist is going to lie about it, as that’s what fascists do.
Yet they failed to convince 90 million people that the fascist was indeed going to be fascist.
You blame the 90 million.
I blame the only political party we have that’s actually responsible for making that clear.
Because it’s not the GOP. Or our media. They do the opposite.
So when it comes to what is and isn’t fascism in this country, the ONLY party that CAN be making it clear is the Democrats.
And they failed.
There was and still is a firehose of disinformation, and Dems just assumed that the majority of Americans would be smart enough to not fall for the fascists lies coming from it.
So they did little to counter act it. Because they assumed America wouldn’t fall for it.
Just like they did little to counter the effects and damage from Trumps first term. Biden just assumed Trump wouldn’t win again, so did little to nothing effective in those 4 years that would protect us against round 2.
Just like Hillary assumed Trump just wouldn’t win the first time, so did little to counter his messaging.
Ignoring Trump, and assuming America knows better, is literally how the Democrats got Trump elected both times.
America clearly doesn’t know better. America is NOT as smart as Democrats have continually assumed the last decade.
All Democrats have to do is talk at a 5th grade level to America, but that would require treating Trump like an actual threat instead of a joke.
They failed in everyway to treat Trump like the fascist threat he was, so those 90 million fell for the fascists bullshit instead.
So Democrats definitley get the blame for not being able to convince 90 million that a fascist lying conman was indeed a fascist lying conman. It wasn’t hard, they just didn’t care to try the way they should, (talking simply) as the assumed they didn’t need to (for the 3rd time).
Would they have been better than the fascists? Absolutely. But they clearly care more about their BS perceived norms than beating fascism. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a fascist in office again.
They learned nothing from the first time, then sat on their hands for the second, and just assumed people knew not to vote Trump. It’s honestly embarrassing that they failed such an easy task by simply being too arrogant to counter any of Trumps campaigns with equally simple messaging TWICE.
All Dems had to do was talk like Trump, and some of those 90 million would have listened.
I mean. Not many. At least in the entertainment industry. This fuck gets 250 mil a year, and pulls movies from distribution to save 40 mil instead of take a pay cut. He’s single handedly fucked Hollywood into the ground so hard, that large American studios are likely never going to recover.
Warner Brothers has already been fed into the wood chipper for parts, and not much is left. They literally sold the rights to their own theme music (As time goes by 1962) in an accidental bulk sale of their own properties. This idiot sold so much of what made Warner Bros, he now has the company paying someone else to use their own jingle.
That GQ article didn’t go hard enough, and was pulled because billionaires have thin skin from the complete lack of skills their money has insulated them from developing.
It did.
Do you feel those 90 million were supposed to vote Dem?
If so, by what mechanism?
Certainly not magic. Certainly not out of some obligation to the DNC or Democrat leaders those 90 million clearly don’t have.
The responsibility to move those 90 million towards a vote for a Democrat were the Democrats themselves.
Yet in their failure to do so, they now blame those 90 million voters for not listening to them. Instead of the very clear fact those 90 million are just too poorly educated to understand what Democrats are even saying.
Those 90 million choosing not to vote quite literally proves my point that Democrats blame others for their mistakes, instead of learning from them.
Dems want to believe this country is in a condition where they don’t need to talk at a 5th grade level to get through to the majority of people. But the sad truth is that Trump talking like that won him two elections.
Don’t blame those 90 million just because they voted for an idiot. Blame the Dems for not being able to dumb their policies down enough for the majority of this country to understand that they have a better option.
They will continue to lose elections until they do.
Democracy just died a death by 1000 cuts. Dems just have yet to realize it, let alone the fact they were the ones that stood by while it happened.
It was a godawful campaign for one single reason:
It was outdated.
Even worse.
It was outdated the first time they ran it for Hillary on 2016.
By outdated, I simply mean they marketed Kamala to themselves. Just like the marketed Hillary to themselves.
They took the platform and policy messages of each of those candidates, and made them appear “smart, effective, and knowledgeable.”
Since 2016, there are simply not enough educated Americans in this country who can understand that messaging.
The one thing Kamala and Clinton failed to do?
Dumb their message down. Way way down. To the lowest of the lowest denominator.
Both their campaigns refused to even TRY to do that. So they came off to the majority of Americans as arrogant, and unwilling to explain their positions in simple terms, so everyone picked the conman. (As that’s what poorly educated people do).
The one critical flaw in every Democratic campaign is that they assume the majority of Americans are educated enough to understand their policy plans.
They aren’t.
55% of this country literally can’t understand what Kamala or Clinton are saying.
They don’t know how policies work. They don’t know how compromise works. And worst of all, they don’t know how their own government works.
Dems assume the majority of Americans know these things by default. They don’t, so all their campaign messages based on these assumptions get completely lost on anyone but themselves.
Until Democrats understand just how little of this country knows how it functions, they will not be able to communicate their policies effectively. They need to be willing to speak simply, and reduce their policies to 5 word talking points they can blast at every event until it’s burned into the minds of everyone listening.
They see themselves better than that though, so will never act the way they need to if they actually want to gain voters instead of lose them.
Dems simply got so used to being smart, they forgot that’s not always a good thing. Especially in situations where they’re trying to convince a room full of idiots that the room is on fire. Those idiots will die trying to figure out what the smart people mean by “inflammable” as they unknowingly stand in front of and block all the exits.
(inflammable can actually mean “ready to burst into flame” but has a different meaning now because of the effects of stupid people using language over time. I used it to make a point about stupid people driving the future. Dems should take note.)
If Democrats can be counted on for something: It’s that they always make the worst decisions at the worst time, then learn nothing from it.
2000: Florida recount? Nah. It’s cool Supreme Court. Let’s have Bush around for 9-11 instead.
2001: Fuck yeah endless wars. Approved. It’s cool to lie about weapons of mass destruction too.
2002: Shame about that Patriot Act. Would be awful if that allowed all your meta data to be collected so you can be targeted for propaganda on every platform in the future.
2004: Shame about No Child Left Behind. Hope your kids don’t grow up stupid enough to think Trump would make a good president.
2008: Fuck yeah Obama! Get that HOPE ready! For Dems to have full control of every branch of the government! Only to use it to compromise with Republicans to remove the public option from national Healthcare. Hope that doesn’t create a spiral of misery for Americans culminating in them assassinating an insurance CEO!
I’m stopping here. But only because I don’t want to keep typing about Citizens United, minimum wage, and literally the slow death of everything Democrats claim to have been protecting.
Well said! Dems are an embarrassment mostly because they have a long history of fucking up at the worst possible time and then learning absolutley nothing from it.
Everyone had the same 4 years David Plouff. If you feel you needed more time, you’re admitting to being worse than everyone else who didn’t. And considering one of those people is a reality TV felon who can’t read, you must really suck at your job.
No offense, but have you considered that Democrats aren’t left?
Because compared to the rest of the world and political spectrum, they are not “left.”
So you are absolutley correct that:
Both the GOP and DEMS have the same corporate blindspots. Both think they’re critical thinkers, but will defend their party as the “correct” one rather than admit that the system has completely failed to keep money away from influencing every outcome.
We have a congress and senate stacked with millionaires doing the bidding of the billionaires that pay for their campaigns instead of the people that vote for them.
The only difference between the GOP and the DNC, is that the DNC wants a slow decent into a corporate dystopia instead of a fast one that kills people unnecessarily.
Actual “left” policies requires the following discourse that is impossible for the DNC to have honestly:
All of these things have become “too socialist” for a DEM to even bring up, and you’ll justify that as them “aiming for moderates” instead of thinking critically about how every facet of our society is now corporate controlled and the reason actual “left” socialist policy isn’t talked about is simply because Facebook, Google, and X own the spaces those conversations happen. Instead of actual discourse, and cooperating on collective measures, corporations make sure the algorithms they control make America too afraid and angry of overexagerated BS to not think critically about the failure of their society to move forward in two decades despite the massive wealth concentrating at the top of it.
DEMS love having a bad guy to point to. So do the GOP. Yet that finger is always pointed at the other party instead of the Billionaires that have used their unspent “Trickle Down” Reagonomic tax breaks to make society worse instead of better, because problems like unaffordable Healthcare are incredibly more profitable than a publically funded one.
Yet I’ll bet you want to blame the GOP for that too. Not Senator Lieberman, an Independent, who got rid of the public option in Obamacare by simply threatening a filibuster that the Dems immediately capitulated to despite already having enough votes without him.
If you want to think critically, you’re going to have to start by not pointing fingers at the GOP when the DEMS consistently capitulate on our most beneficial legislation to favor their coporate donors.
Actual critical thinking is almost impossible in America, as it requires accepting that the system we live in doesn’t work, and insisting on using it the way we’re “supposed to” has lead to massive wealth disparity and the loss of freedoms to corporate interests.
It’s certainly not hard to see when the greatest threat to United Health and costly health insurance in the last 15 years has come from an assassin instead of our elected officials. Show me a DEM explaining Luigi Mangionis actions instead of chastising him for it.