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I don't think the Republicans really honestly give a shit if more people blame them or not.
I also honestly don't think they intend to re-open the government anytime soon. Possibly ever.
They want Trump as a dictator, and they're basically getting what they want with this, likely eventually arguing that Trump has to make the decisions because congress "no longer works." They've always run on government not working and have spent the better part of fifty years working to make that a reality. Once the executive is the only branch of the government still functioning, they'll have what they want.
The longer it is shutdown, the more essential agencies that keep people accountable and keep the country actually running will be shut down as they funnel more money into ICE and the military, the more authority they can hand off to the Executive branch. They will keep the IRS at bare minimum, but now that they've given ICE carte blanche to access citizens' tax records, they will also use them to enforce tax code.
If people start rioting because of loss of services like SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, all the better for them so they can institute the Insurrection Act. Expect the Pinkertons (who still exist and will just go back to their old ways) and ICE or the military shooting striking workers to come back en vogue.
Also it's clear that they're preparing to either royally fuck with the next election or just cancel it entirely.
As much as I want to believe there is a way out of this, we may already be out of political and legal options to stop this madness.
I will be very unsurprised if they end up giving Blackwater a fucking enormous contract and then set them lose on the public. They have… shall we say, quite a track record in Iraq.
Yeah, the run up for ICE is too slow, and they're not coming out of the pipe willing to kill people. Blackwater and the various other mercenaries in the US (don't care what hairs you wanna split, they're mercenaries) absolutely are willing to massacre whoever so long as their paycheck cashes.
I shall serve the new Pacifica republic then o7
Cinema
A shutdown means that the government is insolvent, though. At some point, the funds will run dry without borrowing more. A default would likely send the US and world economy into a recession. Though could be that Trump will just bypass congress to borrow more money anyway.
All true. But, the Democrats have the same goal of neutering Congress and having a President-King. They just want to be the ones in charge. If they do regain the WH in 2028 or beyond, I bet they'll happily go on issuing executive orders and deploying the military domestically.
I dunno why we expected anything different. Congress has been neutering itself since at least WWII and the Executive has been getting away with overreach almost the entire history of the country. This is what we get.
Trump is a uniquely vile and soulless figure who tapped into a sufficiently large voter base, which is just what the Oligarchy needed to shed the last trappings of our "democracy".
I need to know whatever the fuck you are smoking, because it's clearly the strongest stuff I've heard of.
Comparing an electorate who values qualifications, competency, and a social safety net to a populist, hateful cult is quite the leap. Same goes for the representatives that they support.
There is no perfect candidate. Positive change will be iterative, not transformative. The peaceful transfer of power, deference to experts (republicans terminated the Chevron deference, but it was respected by all Democrat administrations) and other programs targeted to benefit the general public (ACA being the largest victory) were the hallmarks of Democrat policies. Did each of those administrations have flaws? Of course! That's not equitable to the times we are in, however.
Fuck off with this "both sides are poison" rhetoric. Your vote's power comes from your contribution to how iterations are performed, or in this case, stopping the bleeding cause by these Republican-inflicted wounds.
Alternatively, if you're an astroturfer being paid a dollar to post this, great job. Your boss should give you a raise, and a passerby should have the good decency to slash your tires before you head home from the office.
there obviously not being a perfect candidate does not mean we should vote for any of the two parties that have consistently done good for their owner class and their own pockets over the citizens
Real mindfuck for ya: I vote for Democrats and also criticize them - because I'm not a mindless fucking lemming.
if a tried food does not taste good the first time and sends you to the bathroom but you try it again thinking maybe hands were not washed or something but instead back on the toilet but afterwards go back again and again just to wind up with a sore hole and nothing to show for it
then why keep doing it? what are the supporting facts for continuing to vote straight blue or red?
are the voting machines even owned by the government or are they privately owned?
whole thing sounds more rigged than both sides
I don't really know what you're talking about, but yes, it is rigged, and having only two choices, both of whom are beholden to a few rich and powerful interests, is part of the rigging.
Da komrade. Your fuhmily veel get eextra bread for dis work against the ameerican pigs
For mother russia
democrats really got to you
can stop now those boots are wet as fuck
our minimum wage is frozen at $7.25, no universal healthcare, out of control police, environment is getting trashed, education is not being properly funded, and list goes on
More ad hominem with no actual retort to anything I said. Brilliant.
Lately I've been smoking Chomsky but I have sampled many of the finest intellectuals.
Also, I vote Democrat almost all the time because they are the lesser of two evils. And when I'm not voting Democrat, it's because I can afford to vote 3rd party, either because there are no Republicans in the race or because the Democrat is all-but-guaranteed to win. But I'm sure none of that will matter to you, as you're so quick to assume I'm just a troll. Right, anyone who says anything you disagree with is a troll? That seems to be the general consensus here.
Are you on crack?
"both-sides" crack
Both sides work for the Oligarchy. They do a nice good-cop/bad-cop routine, and the Republicans are definitely the bad cops. So I vote for Dems when it matters. And I vote for 3rd party when it won't cause harm (i.e. when Dems are guaranteed to win). I hope that helps clarify the type of crack that I'm on.
Meanwhile, you seem to be on the most potent crack of all - American propaganda. Try reading some Chomsky or Howard Zinn or just learning history beyond what you slept through in high school before making more dumb comments.
I am not even from the US. The only reason I follow US politics is because my country's politics love suckling the toes of the POTUS without fail no matter what they do or who is in charge.
What seems to be here is more you being radicalised. It can be for good reasons and I am not in your mind, but nobody is going to agree with you no matter who they are.
What's annoying and obnoxious is how many left-leaning people in the US rightfully denounce authoritarian, unconstitutional, and imperial behavior of the US government when a Republican is in office but then ignore the same behavior when a Democrat does it. And if I point this out I'm smeared as a troll or closet MAGA or just, as you have here, an obnoxious person. We will never even approach the ideals expressed in our founding documents until enough of our population wakes up to the fact that both parties are puppets of corporate forces that actively oppose democracy and only value the welfare of the general population to the extent that they can use us as labor and consumers.
By the way, not sure which country you're from but I'm sorry on behalf of America that we have subordinated your country to our imperial nonsense.
Ugh, the mindless ad hominem attacks of the willfully uninformed are so tiring.
This is completely untrue. Democrats LOVE to prove that they respect the peaceful transition of power so much, that it feels like they like to lose, just to prove what good losers they are, and show Republicans how it's done.
And Republicans be like: Fuck you, we're taking it, whether you like it or not.
IMO, the Democratic leadership is opposed to having a king, for a simple reason: deniable plausibility. By having many different yet anonymous fingers in the pie of power, elites get to set policy and make deals without suffering consequences.
This is opposite to the GOP style, which uses blatant aggression to simply break stuff and loot openly. The important critters of both parties suck, it is just that one steals things when you aren't looking, and won't break your nose.
I hope that if things are settled positively, that we get rid of First Past the Post voting. It is political inbreeding, and our parties have become Hapsburgs.
Political Hapsburgs, I like it.
I simply meant that Democrats also want power concentrated in the Executive branch. I wasn't referring to transfer of power.
Though, if prosecuting your political opponents after each transfer of power becomes normalized, just you watch the Dems embrace lifelong presidencies as well.
The Dems have never done ANYTHING that could be interpreted as "concentrating power in the Executive Branch."
Cite one source/example.
I used a search engine for like 30 seconds and found plenty of examples. I'll just link one that has a long list of both Dems and Reps throughout history exercising power that the Executive is not supposed to have: https://www.usconstitution.net/presidential-constitutional-violations/
In modern times (Post-WWII), not one president has attempted to consolidate power in the comprehensive way that MAGA is attempting. It is unprecedented, and it is disingenuous to equate occasional instances of political overreach with the systematic dismantling of our entire political and economic infrastructure.
Either stop making excuses for MAGA traitors, or admit that you are a traitor yourself.
Not once have I made excuses for MAGA. And I explicitly said that Republicans are worse than Dems and that Trump is uniquely bad (maybe in a different sub-thread from this one - it's hard to tell with all the ignorant hate that came my way in this post). But you clearly have no interest in responding to what I actually say - you only want to attack the caricature of me that you've built in your head.
So I'll offer you an ultimatum analogous to the one you offered me: stop pretending that only one party in America is fascist or admit that you're a fascist yourself.
And your evidence for this claim comes from where?
Roughly the same location as where their head is stored
Why don't you try doing research instead of insulting people who say things that make you feel uncomfortable?
These are just a few examples off the top of my head. There are plenty more. Its an issue the duopoly agrees on.
I mean, all of those, even Obama's actions are a very very far cry from indiscriminately kidnapping people off the street,and flagrantly boasting about abusing their power while sending AI animations of themselves wearing a crown. They didn't destroy government infrastructure which Obama set up, leading to COVID 19 becoming pandemic, and then willfully sabotage attempts to contain it. For that alone he should be in a very deep dark prison cell, or the Hague.
I agree that we are in very dark times, and likely the darkest we have been in the history of our country, or at least since the Civil War.
But we seem to so quickly forget Operation Wetback, committed under a Republican (but back when Republicans could still plausibly relate to Lincoln and Democrats will ruled the Jim Crow south) and Japanese Internment, committed under FDR, everyone's favorite progressive Democrat. We forget how Truman prosecuted the Korean war without a declaration from Congress, while both parties in Congress failed to assert their power to stop him.
To be clear, I'm not picking on Democrats because I think they're the same as Republicans. The Democratic base is much more compassionate, which forces the politicians in the party to be so as well. I'm picking on Democrats because I fear that if we do escape from this Trumpian nightmare without addressing the Oligarchic Duopoly, we will at best have a very temporary reprieve from techno-fascist dystopia. Certainly not the world of compassion, courage, and curiosity that I want to see.
And I agree that Trump is a war criminal and domestic terrorist. That just doesn't make what was happening before him OK. And it doesn't absolve his predecessors of their responsibility for helping erode our Constitutional framework.
The Oligarchy is scared of what's coming: climate change, AI, the loss of American unipolarity in the world. They don't think they can maintain their status and privilege while continuing to give us the modicum of liberty and societal openness we have enjoyed here in The West (at the expense of much of the rest of the world) for the past 80 years. So they need to clamp down, and the base of the Republican party was always going to be their vehicle to do that. Because people who will support a fascist are going to be in the Republican tent by and large. But the parties themselves are both owned by the same Oligarchy. Just look at the top donors to R and D candidates for the highest federal offices. There's a lot of overlap between them. And while there are some Dems (and even some Reps) in Congress and more at the state and local level who genuinely want to do right by their constituents, the core of each party are soulless, unprincipled sociopaths who just want power and have chosen one team or the other to get it.
By the way, thank you for not attacking me personally and instead engaging in the content of my comment. It is rare and refreshing.
EDIT: Punctuation
lol you're ridiculous.
You're tragically uninformed.
I thought Lemmy was the place for actual leftists to find other informed people to talk to. Apparently its just more thoroughly propagandized morons based on the response to my post.
For the record, I almost always vote Democrat and have never voted for a Republican. And I made it clear to anyone who actually read my comment that I think Trump is uniquely dangerous and awful. But I'm sure none of that will matter to any of you puppets.
You sure are out here winning hearts and changing minds with that attitude.
Given that the responses I got to my original comment were mostly devoid of actual counter-arguments and were mainly just attacks on my character, I have scant evidence that there are any minds here for me to change.