A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 146 of 725
So, since there seems to be a GREAT DEAL of "misunderstanding" of my POV... and I've been accused of being a "Russian troll"(!), a communist, a white supremacist, a Nazi, a racist, and god-knows what other stand-ins you all insert in place of my actual POV, I'm going to explain, once again, my opinion, how I came to it, and why I think it's the complete opposite of what you think.
A little history is in order.
I have been told by people who know a lot more than I do that Marx said that the only way that socialism would come about would be when the whole world was just one giant corporation. That "the workers" would be made interchangeable by the elite: no longer divided by nation, religion, or custom; they would then recognize their common identity and rise up against the transnational elite and unify the world in one big happy family of empowered fraternal workers.
BUT, in order to reach that glorious stage of development, we would have to pass through a time of a global, monopolistic corporatocracy.
Well, when faced with THAT kind of scenario, I choose nationalism. Maybe I'm a "reactionary" trying to dive back into the past, which is what any true Marxist would call me, but I simply cannot abide the thought of everyone in the whole world under the transnational elite's thumb. ("Young Rissa" paints a picture of what that might look like.)
So, I'm not a "communist" or a "marxist"; you can forget calling me THAT and making it stick.
I DO think that our national borders should MEAN SOMETHING. We have a democratic system of government (a republic, actually) over which we have SOME control, which is empowered to make decisions at the national level. A nation can't implement policies on trade, jobs, war, currency, and economic security if money, goods, information and people pass freely across our national boundaries; OR if it has handed off those decisions to some international entity. So the idea of enforcing our immigration laws is not because of racism, it's a question of economic security.
So you can forget calling me a "racist".
I also advocate for responsibility and authority to be delegated to the lowest level possible: The people who make decisions and solve problems should be the ones who are most impacted by them. So you can forget about calling me an authoritarian. I guess I might be an anti-authoritarian.
So you can forget about calling me a "Nazi".
I don't think that devolving everything to "market forces" works either. I DO think that banks - if nothing else - should operate on the basis of total reserves. I also think that people, corporations, and our government should not operate on such high levels of indebtedness. I also think that we should be manufacturing everything that we can, HERE, and that our balance of trade should be close to neutral. (If you import an lot, you're dependent on other nations continuing to accept your currency; if you export a lot you're dependent on your foreign markets not drying up.) In other words, I think the government's proper role is to have a broad economic and financial policy,
So I'm sure not a Libertarian.
I also believe that we should NOT be sticking our nose into everyone else's business, militarily. I believe that I've made that point clear several dozen times.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Signym, you are a windy blowhard. Trump has the same problem as you have -- he hates the WTO. But Trump does not have the power to withdraw from the WTO.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And a good thing, too! There is nothing "democratic" about the WTO, or other "free trade" deals, or the BIS and it's coterie of central banks, or the Troika and its administration of the EU currency, or the various western military alliances.
As we're finding out today, though, this might actually be a pretty prescient story about how democracies and the international (or interplanetary) order they've created fall apart. - SECOND
“He’s [threatened to withdraw] 100 times. It would totally [screw] us as a country,” said a source who’s discussed the subject with Trump. The source added that Trump has frequently told advisers, “We always get fucked by them [the WTO]. I don’t know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States.”
But the U.S. law implementing the WTO agreements states quite plainly that withdrawal from the WTO requires an act of Congress.
Too bad for Signym and Trump. None of your rants matter even slightly since Congress is not going to withdraw from the WTO. It’s just another story about all the weird stuff idiot Trump (and ignorant Signym) rant about. Someone should make a list.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/donald-trump-is-not-going-to-wi
thdraw-from-the-wto/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:So, speaking of weird rants, how about the one where you think that Americans are too dumb to have the vote on important matters?
Too bad for Signym and Trump. None of your rants matter even slightly since Congress is not going to withdraw from the WTO. It’s just another story about all the weird stuff idiot Trump (and ignorant Signym) rant about. Someone should make a list.- SECOND
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Too bad for Signym and Trump. None of your rants matter even slightly since Congress is not going to withdraw from the WTO. It’s just another story about all the weird stuff idiot Trump (and ignorant Signym) rant about. Someone should make a list.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/donald-trump-is-not-going-to-wi
thdraw-from-the-wto/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly]
We've tried keeping a list SECOND. Problem is we'd have to put every one of sigs posts on the list to have a complete one.
T
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Quote:FIFY
Too bad for SECOND and THUGR. None of your rants matter even slightly since Trump didn't collude with Russia. It’s just another story about all the stuff that Trump supposedly did. Someone should make a list.- THUGR
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:FIFY means "Fixed It For You". Changing a few words or issuing a few Presidential orders then declaring you fixed a problem does not actually fix the problem, but it is favorite technique of Trump for stalling, instead of repairing government. There is a book for all those people who imagine that if only their party wins a few elections, then the new President and Congress will fix the system in a few years of work. It won't be that quick and simple:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
FIFY
Tailspin - The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fail
The decline and fall of the United States has inspired a 21st-century cottage industry of books devoted to how things went off course. They range from the journalistic (“The Unwinding”) to the sociological (“Our Kids”) to the economic (Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century”) to the political (“Winner-Take-All Politics”). We are living in a golden age of authors telling Americans that we no longer live in a golden age.
“Tailspin” distinguishes itself within the America Gone Wrong genre. It comes to life when it focuses on the legal shifts and stalemates that ushered in the country’s current predicament, examining how these changes rippled across the rest of society. The rise of executive compensation practices linked to stock prices encouraged executives to prioritize short-term profits over long-term investments. A series of Supreme Court cases, ending with Citizens United, enabled corporate speech to play a powerful role in national politics. The growth of super PACs and lobbyists in Washington guarantees that any piece of appropriate regulation will be watered down — first in Congress and then in the implementation stage. The federal government’s approach to fraudulent financial firms has shifted from the criminal prosecution of executives to the levying of fines. All of the book’s chapters on the law crackle with energy.
“Tailspin” describes a slow-motion process of perverse meritocracy in which, as one law professor says, “the elites have become so skilled and so hardworking that they are able to protect each other better than ever before.”
“Tailspin” distinguishes itself by the number of times the phrase “unintended consequences” appears in the book. Many of the legal and regulatory changes have counter-intuitive beginnings. Who helped spearhead the growth of the commercial speech movement? The consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who sued the Commonwealth of Virginia to allow pharmacies to advertise drug prices. “Talk about boomerangs,” Nader said in 2017. “That case was the biggest boomerang of all time.”
“Tailspin” blames the tortoise-like pace of government rule-writing on due process run amok. Laws like the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act mandated citizen feedback to new regulations, but interest groups have weaponized due process to guarantee gridlock.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/books/review/steven-brill-tailspin.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Republicans almost always play hardball, while Democrats vacillate between episodes of hardball and periods in which they hope unilateral concessions will restore old-time governance norms. Both sides have been willing to change the rules in somewhat arbitrary ways to speed confirmations of presidential appointees when they control the White House and slow them when they do not, but Republicans have played the game much more consistently and much more aggressively.
Consider, for example, the hardball saga of the “Blue Slip Rule”:
1) Up through 1994 or so there was a tradition in the United States Senate that a judicial nomination could not be brought to the floor unless the nominee received at least one “blue slip” — i.e., favorable recommendation — from a home-state senator.
2) Then in 1995, Republicans won control of the Senate and changed the principle to require two blue slips to advance a judicial nominee, which made it easier to block Bill Clinton’s appointees.
3) In 2001, George W. Bush became president, so they changed the rule back to one blue slip. Jim Jeffords’s defection then gave Democrats control of the Senate, so they moved back to two blue slips to make it easier to block his judges.
4) The two slip rule, critically, remained in effect as long as Democrats controlled the Senate even once Barack Obama took over as president — with Democrats choosing to uphold a senatorial courtesy over partisan advantage.
5) Republicans gained control of the Senate in 2015 and, of course, not only kept the two slip rule in place but basically stopped confirming judges altogether — up to and including holding a Supreme Court seat vacant.
6) When Trump took office, he filled the Supreme Court vacancy with Neil Gorsuch and the GOP swiftly went back to a one blue slip standard, until this May when they broke the seal on confirming judges who had zero blue slips.
These shenanigans have profoundly shaped the federal judiciary over the past quarter-century, a period of time during which the courts also handed an election to Bush, dismantled much of federal campaign finance legislation and the Voting Rights Act, and acted to make it virtually impossible to successfully prosecute political corruption cases and a wide array of other white collar crimes to boot.
And it’s not just the judiciary. More at www.vox.com/2018/7/3/17379766/trump-norms-democracy
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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cross-posted
SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).
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Democracy Dies in the Blinding Light of Day
Despite being one of America’s founding statesmen and its president, John Adams was quite skeptical of democracy. “Democracy never lasts long,” Adams reflected in an 1814 letter. “It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”
The United States that existed when Adams wrote the letter was not very worthy of being described as a democracy in any case. Millions of slaves were denied the most basic human rights, while women were denied any meaningful participation in civic life. Not until the civil rights movement and women’s suffrage in the 20th century could the United States start to be considered a full-fledged democracy, despite the country’s founding under the false flag of democracy in 1776. American democracy, in any meaningful sense of the term, is then less than a century old.
Recent events suggest that, even now, American democracy may be starting to enter a decrepit late-middle age. While many people assume that our current political turbulence is an aberration, long-term trends suggest that undemocratic illiberalism may one day become the norm in the United States and elsewhere. Technological change, decaying institutions, and populist demagoguery may well make genuine democracy effectively impossible, validating Adams’s prediction that a democratic system could never really endure.
A new book by Cambridge University professor David Runciman, provocatively titled “How Democracy Ends,” charts a number of trends in the United States and Europe that he believes foretell the approaching end of democracy as we know it. Our dysfunctional democratic systems have proven incapable of responding to problems.
Yet the end of democracy does not mean a return to any recognizable, pre-democratic past. Unlike many other gloomy predictions of democracy giving way to something like 1930s European fascism, Runciman argues that the unique nature of our modern societies means that, if the end comes, it will happen in a much more subtle way. Rather than a military coup d’état or the unilateral annulment of a vote by a strongman, in the West, democracy is more likely to simply fracture and fizzle out over time. As our political institutions become less and less able to deliver meaningful results and the speed of technological change continues to warp and remake society, democracy could effectively die while continuing to appear alive for years to come.
Referring to this as “zombie democracy,” Runciman goes on to describe a state of affairs in which “the people are simply watching a performance in which their role is to give or withhold applause at the appropriate moments.” Rather than an expression of civic life, politics instead becomes “an elaborate show, needing ever more characterful performers to hold the public’s attention.”
“If you look 40 years ahead, we are going to continue having elections. The elections will still have lots of sound and fury and talk of change, but the technology and structures of modern life will mean that the change that can be accomplished by voting will be very limited,” Runciman writes. “The system that exists may not be either democratic or authoritarian, but rather a kind of ‘half-life’ democracy that could continue existing for a long time.”
Runciman cites a number of gradual “coups” that could kill or cripple a democracy without us clearly noticing what’s taken place. Among the more subtle types of power grabs available in mature democracies is executive aggrandizement by a sitting government, whereby elected leaders, once in power, begin to attack democratic institutions like the press and civil society groups, bullying them into submission and slowly hollowing out democracy from the inside. Another possible tactic is strategic election manipulation, whereby elections are never outright tampered with to the degree that they can be described as “stolen,” but are creatively manipulated just enough that they are never truly free and fair either.
Do these methods o
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