A conservative plan forĀ Donald TrumpāsĀ potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40 prisoners on death row. The sectionās author, attorney Gene Hamilton, advised that Trump ādo everything possible to obtain finalityā on the current list of people until Congress forces them to stop. Hamilton is the vice president ofĀ America Legal First, a group of former Trump lawyers bent on attacking āwokeā companies, headed by Stephen Miller. Trumpās approach to theĀ death penaltyĀ stands in stark contrast to that of PresidentĀ Joe Biden, who has openly opposed theĀ death penalty, but doneĀ littleĀ to move forward legislation to reform or abolish the practice since entering office.
For those of you not in the know Project 2025 is Republicans plan to turn the USA into an authoritarian state.
Look, can we just collectively agree ā all of us who are left of center ā to work together and set our differences aside until after this election? Now really isnāt the time for us to be divided. We need to first curb stomp the fascists, so we donāt all get killed
I donāt disagreeā¦but the party-line Democrats have been telling progressives exactly that since the Clinton administration.
Again, to be clear: Iām happily voting Biden this November, but the Democratic party has become very good at doing just enough to keep their core loyal while also doing nowhere near enough to keep the country out of constant existential peril, effectively cultivating that crisis as a (pardon the pun) trump card that they then use to tell progressives āwhat you want is less important than the current crisis! Just go along with us in this election and we pinky swear to do more for your causes!ā.
They know if they move left theyāll be displaced by a combination of progressive candidates and centrists, so they have basically adopted the strategy of keeping the right just dangerous enough to be credible while keeping their left flank secured with a drip feed of snailās pace āprogressā.
Iām voting Biden, but not happily.
None of us really are.
Israel-Gaza conflict asideā¦what makes you unhappy about voting for him?
I have to admit that I wasnāt thrilled about voting for him in 2020, but I also have to admit that in the intervening years he has at the very least met my expectations in most areas, and shockingly, heās exceeded them in a few areas.
As I get older, Iāve learned from experience to temper my expectations in a president, and with those adjusted expectations, I am surprised to find myself feeling better about voting for Biden in 2024 than I did four years ago.
I can sum it up in one word: age.
Look, Iām no spring chicken. My age starts with a 4 now, and it seems the age gap between me and the age of the president hasnāt changed.
Iām just tired of geriatrics running the country.
Same here. I was not wild about him, and figured heād be even more right of center than Obama was. Turns out to not be the case on quite a few fronts.
Iām overall happy with Biden except for Afghanistan and Gaza. Given the cards he was dealt with, he seems to be doing an ok job.
Afghanistan was mostly Trump.
In what way? He established an agreement that the Taliban violated, thereby making it void.
This is what I was referring to mostly:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/u-s-review-of-chaotic-afghanistan-withdrawal-blames-trump
Taliban are the best government for Afghanistan, you know why? Because democracy failed, socialism failed, liberalism failed. Realistically, the Taliban are the ones who can run a government in that region. We know the US couldnāt.
I canāt really disagree with you. The issue is we have reached the actual point where the current crisis dwarfs all others. Maybe I was just younger then, but it didnāt feel like we had such existential threats in the Bush and Obama years. I remember people said that Romney winning would be the apocalypse, but itās laughable to say that wouldāve been the case in hindsight.
I think what we can take heart in is that weāve been seeing a gradual increase in progressiveness in the party. And not just a small constant increase, but a significantly growing one. There are a nontrivial number of Congressional members who are incredibly progressive, and theyāve shifted the mood of the party notably leftward. The Inflation Reduction Act was a historic level of climate spending, to the point that Europe felt pressured to pass similar legislation. And the IRA actually closed the corporate tax loophole too ā large corporations raking in billions in profits now have to pay a minimum 15%, even if they could previously loophole their way to $0.
I wish things were faster. Gaza in particular has highlighted to me just how frustrating it is for things to only improve at a snailās pace. And specifically with Gaza, I donāt think the progress is actually amounting to material changes.
We are seeing material changes in other areas though. Healthcare could be a hell of a lot better, but as someone who relied on Obamacare for a few years, things have actually improved for people. The important thing is that we donāt lose heart, and that we keep pushing for better. The US has a rich history of leftists persevering to accomplish womenās suffrage, civil rights, labor rights, and gay rights and equality. As long as we press forward, just like they did, weāll be successful. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice and good.
If we could just bury the fascists for good, we could start to make serious progress.
Left of center? You mean left from totally bonkers actual Fascistsā¦
Weāre gonna need a bigger tent
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Pretty much. This is going to keep cropping up until we deal a decisive loss to fascism. They need to be beaten by huge margins.
Huge accumulations of capital are incompatible with democratic governance.
Thatās the issue we are not willing to solve.
Fascists are simply people passionate about infinite capital accumulations. The fascists protect the billionaires by channelling the populist economic discontent toward all manner of scapegoat issues.
If you donāt like fascism you must work to outlaw, and make culturally unacceptable, extreme wealth accumulations.
https://www.philosophersbeard.org/2012/04/what-to-do-about-rich.html
More like 2004 part 6
They actually stole the 2000 election and have come full circle to screaming about the Dems stealing 2020, projection as per usual.
The post headline is very dramatic but it just implies executing death row inmates not every American in existence.
If you are participating in the two party system, youāre either supporting or enabling fascism.
The far left calls anyone right of far left- fascistsā¦ so no, they have no intention to work together. Theyāre so far left that theyāve completely circled around into right wing lunacy.
Ah yes, theyāre so intense about fighting capitalist oppression theyāve circled around toā¦ checks notes defending police brutality and advocating for the further privatisation of every public good and dismantling all worker protections.
The difference between āeat the richā and āfeed the richā is really just one syllable, right? Almost negligible.
(Also, no, they donāt call everyone fascist. They just donāt think being liberal is enough for change, when the āliberalsā of the US have a history of complaining about the things they donāt stop the regressives from doing. Thereās a difference between calling people ānaive and spinelessā and āactively pursuing oppressionā.)
I will say that there is a marked and growing distain for mixed liberal ideologies. There is a lot of this idea that every socialist needs to be some kind of pure strain to count or take basically the Marxist definition as the only viable one. It kind of ignores a couple of centuries of Socialist thought. A lot of people basically think āmeans of productionā means nothing less than everyone working in a co-op and discounts a lot of past socialist wins as ānot socialismā. Itās an important thing to remember about Marx, the world he lived in was very different. Damn near everything at the time was privatized. Water, sanitation, post, fire service, public health and public health regulatory bodiesā¦ None of that existed under the perview of Government auspice. Socialist strains more to the legacy of Robert Owens, Daniel De Leon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and other ethical socialists have had significant wins. Some places took it further than others but the one thing that was allowed to happen in a lot of places was complacency. The 1980ās and 90ās created a liberal fervor that has continued to walk back a lot of significant wins made by the Socialist movements of the early 1900ās and the civil rights movementsā¦ But because a lot of the functions of Socialist wins have become the air we breathe people do not associate them with socialism anymore. The issue with peaceful integration is that private gains are always incentivized so complacency cannot be afforded.
It seems weirdly controversial but Non-Marxist socialists exist. Marx was one very popular voice in a sea of people with somewhat related but sometimes contradictory ideas. Some philosophers have been retro-branded as proto-socialists because they existed before Marx who just coined the term. Looking at his contemporaries thereās good reason why he became popular. A lot of what was out there was much drier, committed to peaceful reform. It didnāt tap into peopleās anger or emotion in the same way. Right now we deal with a lot of that issue on the left. It is an old struggle. People who are bombastically angry and turning around and biting people for not being āenoughā of something. Not fitting a narrow definition. Half my issue with Communist parties I have looked at joining is they arenāt great at being collaborative. Increasingly I have found the argument around ācentrismā to stop meaning āpeople who support the basic status quoā which it seemed to have evolved to being interpretable as for a minuteā¦ To a more worrying definition about anyone willing to work across any ideological lines set down by the one guy people bothered to read.
This use of ācentrismā as though itās a plotable point on a map seems to me a worrying fiction. The post moves to create division and self satisfaction where none need exist.
You buy into pretty much the same propaganda, and are equally as dangerous to democracyā¦ so-
Yeah. Youāre pretty much the same where it actually matters. The rest of it is irrelevant.
Dangerous to democracy? Whereād you get that idea? Iām not the one trying to install an authoritarian plutocracy.
Iām a staunch believer in educated democracy, but that requires education in the first place. Education regressives have been undermining forever, because it would inform the people of their actual democratic power.
Which would be? What, in your opinion, actually matters?
My priority is a sustainable and enjoyable future. One where you can grow old without worrying about our pension or affording medical care. One where you no longer pay a cut of your work to a person just becaude theyāre rich already. One where you can do the job you love without worrying about how well it pays or whether youāll get fired.
The Liberals keep bartering for compromise instead of progress, gradually ceding ground to the Conservatives. The spoiler effect means an actually progressive third party has no chance and risks handing power to the regressives by splitting the vote. Because all the Liberals have to do is ābe less badā, you get the choice between right-of-center and far right. This isnāt democracy, itās slowly dismantling it.
Iāll take the Liberals, because theyāre āless badā, but itās not a solution. Itās buying time in the hope that we can actually fix the underlying issues.
I disagree. Iāve met plenty of people who are far left and are all in on working together to stop Trump. Donāt be swayed by the terminally online, vocal āleftistsā. We donāt know if theyāre even genuine people, and theyāre assuredly the minority.
I donāt want to be judged based on a false stereotype, and I donāt think we should judge them on a false stereotype either. The far left is antithetical to Trump.
Iād love to believe that is the case, and Iāve no reason to not believe you, but unfortunately- the online representation of the far left is the vocal one. And there are a lot of them. This situation gets helped when you and the ones you represent join the rest of us in standing them down.
Iāve never seen any leftist vs. leftist conversation. And it would go a long way in warming the waters regarding public opinion.
No they havenāt, and youāre likely just one of them new Russian AI disinformation bots anyway
Oh the irony. In your defense of your little group being attacked, you cast aspersions at me in the exact same manner.
Basicallyā¦. āNo Iām not! YOU are!ā
And you wonder why it seems everyone thinks youāre a joke here.