A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Cruelty Is the Point
It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
More at www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572
104/
Wow and Damn - so well written and so accurate. I am reminded of that quick video clip of Trump with Epstein at a party as they discussed women dancing. It was very buddy buddy, kids having a laugh at the expense of others. Of course that's not where those thoughts end. Reducing people to things for your amusement while feeling completely untouchable and unrepentant, that is got to be one heck of a power trip.
I am also reminded of another Atlantic writer that summarized a lot of Putin's behavior as "an immature sense of masculinity." You can see that in Trump supporters and political allies, so it's not hard to see why Trump and Putin get along so well.
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Medicare-for-all
Ezra Klein said:
If you really dig into what is happening in this debate there are two different views of what the constraint is on political change. One version is more or less the one that we are articulating here: public opinion constraint — people don’t like change and that dislike is catalyzed by campaigns run by insurance companies and Republicans.
But there’s the more left view that the public is led by elites. And the problem is really that it’s people like Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein making these arguments, saying that people have this small-c conservatism. If every elite was actually onboard Medicare-for-all, then people wouldn’t be afraid anymore. This side believes that public opinion is only a constraint insofar as it reflects where elite opinion already is. I’m curious how you parse that argument.
Paul Krugman said:
It’s hard to test. But polling says that a public buy-in to Medicare is very popular, but a replacement of private insurance that is not voluntary is not nearly as popular. How many people in all of that do you think are really taking their cues from me or you?
The international evidence is that it’s just very hard for to make radical changes in social programs. The shape of them tends to be fixed for a really long time. US Social Security is widely held up as a role model of doing it right because we got it right at a time when things were still pretty amorphous and uninformed. On the other hand, our health care system is a mess because of decisions we made around the same time that left us with bad stuff entrenched in the system.
So, I think the notion that this whole thing is extremely plastic — that if only the big shots would line up behind radical change, then the public would come around behind it as well — is a hell of a risky bet.
More at www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/26/21011830/paul-krugman-obam-climate-med
icare-robots-single-payer-andrew-yang
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump’s economic policy is basically a lefty one:
From trade to spending, from the Federal Reserve to paid parental leave, Trump has embraced policy changes that historically are more in line with the approach of Democrats — establishing a forceful role for government in setting the terms of the economy — than of Republicans.
….On trade, Trump has reached a “phase one” trade deal with China that reportedly includes promises to buy far more in U.S. exports. He has completed a revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada that some liberals are cheering for labor protections and pharmaceutical policies. Trump co-opted a demand from the left to urge the Fed to cut interest rates despite the relatively strong economy, a position the central bank ultimately adopted after seeing signs the economic expansion might waver.
The president has blown away traditional GOP concerns over the rising federal deficit, cutting bipartisan deals to expand government spending and even extend a new paid-leave benefit to the federal workforce. He unilaterally implemented a farm bailout that could prove more expensive than the auto bailout was a decade ago — a move that conservatives had criticized as wasting taxpayer dollars.
Not everything Trump has done is out of the lefty playbook. Progressives favor trade deals with stronger labor and environmental protections, for example, but they don’t generally favor massive trade wars that are mostly aimed at reducing trade deficits. At the same time, conservatives don’t favor massive trade wars either. For the most part, Trump’s trade policy is purely born out of his own id.
More at www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/12/donald-trump-is-a-keynesian/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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No matter how loud or organized they have been in the past couple of years, Democrats and progressives are still conforming to a historic pattern; they are more politically energized when they are obviously losing. Democrats are a movement of losers—a movement that has practically forgotten what winning means. The Democratic national leadership of the last thirty years has embodied this. The likes of Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer seem actually averse to defeating Republicans. Unlike their opponents, they don’t appear to think that the job of Team Blue is to take on the other side as forcefully as possible. On the contrary: to this day, they apparently believe that the very idea of a Team Blue is distasteful and that Democrats should, whenever possible, bolster the GOP’s standing as a good-faith party with goals and principles as valid as their own. Their core mission is to practice a ceremonial innocence about the unshakable virtue of American conservatism—and to do so even as the worst, full of passionate intensity, are cleaning their clocks.
Recall, for example, the 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court seat that had been held by Justice Scalia. A sixty-three-year-old centrist, Garland was the most elderly and GOP-friendly candidate that President Obama could have chosen. When the Republican Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, announced that it would block any nominee, Obama lamented that it “defies the Constitution, defies logic.” He added, “I understand the posture they’re taking right now. I get the politics of it, I’m sure they’re under enormous pressure from their base and their constituencies around this issue. I’ve talked to many of them, and I’ve told them I’m sympathetic.” As late as July 2018, Schumer, the Senate minority leader, advised President Trump to renominate Garland “as a way to unify the country.” After McConnell learned of Schumer’s advice, @TeamMitch (an official Twitter account of the senator) posted a GIF that showed Michael Jordan rocking with laughter. Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh.
When ordinary people are emptying their wallets, getting arrested, and putting their careers on hold to fight for the Democrats’ cause, the least they expect of the well-paid professional politicians they have worked to elect is that they will conduct themselves with equal determination and will side with them, not Republicans. Republican politicians, some Democratic officials seem not to grasp, are not guys in a bar with opinions different from your own. They are people who have chosen to devote their lives to undermining the core interests of your supporters and their families and communities. When Representative Peter King, a Republican from Long Island and a loud Trump fan, recently announced his retirement, he was lauded by Schumer for being “principled” and having “stood head & shoulders above everyone else.” If the Democratic Party is to remain viable, that kind of thing has to stop.
Joe Biden, like so many other Democratic leaders of a certain age, possesses sensibilities, strategic instincts, and values shaped by decades of losing ground to the GOP. He asserts that, once Trump is gone, Republicans will have an “epiphany” and discover inner moral resources. You could call Biden and his ilk Charlie Brown Democrats. They believe, against all the available evidence, that Lucy van Pelt, from the GOP, will one day let them kick the football. This generation of whiffers views Republican dominance as natural and, ultimately, acceptable. That won’t cut it.
More at www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/19/no-more-nice-democrats/
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:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Cruelty Is the Point
It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
More at www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572
104/
Wow and Damn - so well written and so accurate. I am reminded of that quick video clip of Trump with Epstein at a party as they discussed women dancing. It was very buddy buddy, kids having a laugh at the expense of others. Of course that's not where those thoughts end. Reducing people to things for your amusement while feeling completely untouchable and unrepentant, that is got to be one heck of a power trip.
I am also reminded of another Atlantic writer that summarized a lot of Putin's behavior as "an immature sense of masculinity." You can see that in Trump supporters and political allies, so it's not hard to see why Trump and Putin get along so well.
Uh huh. That's completely one sided. lol
Watch any of the Antifa protests on the streets of Portland or the college campus riots and tell me who's enjoying the suffering of others. Hell, just look at Wishy's posts here. No need to leave your house.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You must not hang out with Trump lovers for hours, make that days, at a time like I do. (I am an undercover Democrat.) The conversations about killing queers, niggers, Mexskins and that fuckin' Nancy Pelosi I find highly entertaining. And please don't mention Jew Soros because then the talk gets really angry and crazy. (I'll start laughing at how out-of-their-minds crazy these Trump lovers are and that will ruin my cover.) But that is how East Texas Trump lovers are.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Uh huh. That's completely one sided. lol
Watch any of the Antifa protests on the streets of Portland or the college campus riots and tell me who's enjoying the suffering of others. Hell, just look at Wishy's posts here. No need to leave your house.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
"Poll: Almost a third of US voters think a second civil war is coming soon" June 2018
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/06/27/civil-war-l
ikely-voters-say-rasmussen-poll/740731002/
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:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You must not hang out with Trump lovers for hours, make that days, at a time like I do. (I am an undercover Democrat.) The conversations about killing queers, niggers, Mexskins and that fuckin' Nancy Pelosi I find highly entertaining. And please don't mention Jew Soros because then the talk gets really angry and crazy. (I'll start laughing at how out-of-their-minds crazy these Trump lovers are and that will ruin my cover.) But that is how East Texas Trump lovers are.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Uh huh. That's completely one sided. lol
Watch any of the Antifa protests on the streets of Portland or the college campus riots and tell me who's enjoying the suffering of others. Hell, just look at Wishy's posts here. No need to leave your house.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
"Poll: Almost a third of US voters think a second civil war is coming soon" June 2018
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/06/27/civil-war-l
ikely-voters-say-rasmussen-poll/740731002/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
OK. Sure.
When, exactly, are you an undercover Democrat?
Would it be when you are firing all of your non-Democrat employees for their political beliefs?
Nobody I know goes around talking about wishing death on other people, let alone committing the act themselves.
Honestly, the only two that I know who do that are right here in the RWED. It's you and Wishy.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:It is impossible to get to know a Trump lover well if you are reminding them that they are dishonest, lazy ignoramuses with far too many misunderstandings about simple things such as smoking causes cancer and drinking causes liver damage and adultery causes divorce and stealing from me will get them a felony conviction.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OK. Sure.
When, exactly, are you an undercover Democrat?
Would it be when you are firing all of your non-Democrat employees for their political beliefs?
Nobody I know goes around talking about wishing death on other people, let alone committing the act themselves.
Honestly, the only two that I know who do that are right here in the RWED. It's you and Wishy.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Maybe Trump lovers you know aren't as bad as the ones I know, the ones who believe that if they haven't been convicted they haven't done anything wrong, kind of like Dear Donald Trump.
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:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It is impossible to get to know a Trump lover well if you are reminding them that they are dishonest, lazy ignoramuses with far too many misunderstandings about simple things such as smoking causes cancer and drinking causes liver damage and adultery causes divorce and stealing from me will get them a felony conviction.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OK. Sure.
When, exactly, are you an undercover Democrat?
Would it be when you are firing all of your non-Democrat employees for their political beliefs?
Nobody I know goes around talking about wishing death on other people, let alone committing the act themselves.
Honestly, the only two that I know who do that are right here in the RWED. It's you and Wishy.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Maybe Trump lovers you know aren't as bad as the ones I know, the ones who believe that if they haven't been convicted they haven't done anything wrong, kind of like Dear Donald Trump.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
To be honest, I don't even know any Trump "lovers".
60+ Million people voted for him, and 60+ Million people are going to vote for him again. I seriously doubt there are a huge number of people who are in love with the guy though. I think the amount of people that go around wearing MAGA hats is pretty low too. I've actually never seen anyone wear one in real life.
I'm pretty sure on the flip side, there's not really any Democrats who are in "love" with any of the Democrat candidates either. Except maybe some Socialist lefties who are for Sanders and Tim Pool who's head over heels for Gabbard.
I'd imagine most people who vote for Trump are doing so because the alternative is just so amazingly awful.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Biden is an Idiot: Democratic contender Biden says he would consider a Republican running mate
Joe Biden, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said on Monday he would consider choosing a Republican running mate if he is the party’s nominee next year. “But I can’t think of one right now.” In the primary, I am not voting for fucking moron Biden. He can't even decide what side he is on ... D? Or R?
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-biden/democratic-contender-bid
en-says-he-would-consider-a-republican-running-mate-idUSKBN1YZ025
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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