United States Politics Thread 46

[zompist]

CNN says that some (non-leadership) Republicans have started talking to Democrats about lowering the vote threshhold. The Dems could demand something in return, like raising the debt limit on time. This is a reasonable solution, which mean it won't happen.

Isn't the main problem with this solution that Hakeem Jeffries has the plurality, with 212 votes to McCarthy's (current) 201? If the Democrats could actually manage to get the Speakership, I'd say they should accept that gift as-is...

The idea they were talking about is not making a Dem speaker, it's Dems abstaining from the vote so McCarthy gets a majority. E.g. if no Democrats voted at all, McCarthy easily wins as he would no longer need 218 votes, but 112.

The problem is, this would require some sort of deal with the Democrats, and whatever that is, it would produce a much greater GOP revolt.

It's always possible that some magic concessions will be found to get all but 4 of the holdouts on board. But I think it's far more likely that we suddenly see the proposed Speaker being Scalise. Then maybe a vote for every single GOP member in alphabetical order.

[Raphael]

So, it's McCarthy and he's given the Far Right everything they wanted. Get ready for the worst global economic crisis ever when the USA defaults on its debts.

[alice]

Look on the bright side: at least The Truth About Hunter Biden's Laptop will Finally Be Revealed!

[Vardelm]

Look on the bright side: at least The Truth About Hunter Biden's Laptop will Finally Be Revealed!

And Fauci will be held accountable for his reign of biological terror!

[masako]

humor aside, this will likely be a whole chapter in a political science text book in about 5 years..."The Post-Trump 118th Congress and how they almost dismantled the United States from within"

[rotting bones]

Now, how on Earth do you get the idea that people care the slightest bit about their economic self-interest?

Maybe not "self-interest", technically, but caring about the economic interest of your community is very common when people receive education in critical thinking without identifying with the ruling class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu5znlyX9uY

We're just going through a period of reaction like the one that followed the failure of the French Revolution.

[Raphael]

I'm getting really sick of this stochastic terrorism.

[Travis B.]

Moving this to the US Politics thread as requested...

Note that liberal democracy and socialism are by no means incompatible; liberal democracy by no means necessitates capitalism. However, actual socialism (which requires democracy), as opposed to state capitalism, needs a general consensus to function, and cannot be simply imposed by the state. However, liberal democracy makes it possible for it to function within a politically pluralistic society.

Well, here we go back to that whole Capitalism thread - what is it exactly what we call Capitalism and what Socialism. I don't have the time right now to explain my views on this, so I'll just watch this discussion for now

My view of the matter is that socialism means social, i.e. worker, ownership and management of capital; big-C Communism, i.e. Marxism-Leninism and its offshoots, as opposed to little-c communism, e.g. anarcho-communism, is not socialist to me because it simply replaces the private capitalist with the state and the party while not actually changing the relationship between workers and capital. As such, to me socialism requires democratic control of workplaces, and more direct such democratic control is the better. Note that such democratic control can only be brought about through the will of the workers themselves, and cannot be simply imposed by the state, as that will inevitably lead to state capitalism; this is why I believe socialism can only be brought about from below and not from above. For this reason also I believe that some sort of democratic government, be it parliamentary government or workers' councils (as anarchists would be for, even though they would not use the word "government" to describe them), is needed, because it will reflect the will of the people and will serve to enable the people to bring about socialism themselves rather than simply impose the will of a party dictatorship, which can only result in state capitalism.

[Moose-tache]

What a total victory for Stalin that people talk about Marxism and Communism and state ownership in the same breath. Marx and Engels said that state stewardship was a reluctantly acceptable transition to Communism, but a state that simply owns things and makes no effort to create worker democracy would not strike Marx as mission accomplished.

The main reasons state control went from temporary compromise to permanent system are:
1) after two hundred years, we still haven't come up with a social mechanism to actually realize the bottom-up revolution of values necessary for a Communist utopia, and
2) the countries that tried communist/socialist policies decided they liked state control too much to let it go; this may be related to the fact that almost none of these countries had any tradition of functional democracy to begin with, so what did we expect? The nerds at the IWW probably assumed that being a Communist is an inocculation against authoritarianism, but now we know any country with any state activities needs a mechanism by which the public can hold it accountable.

So basically, the vacant hole in our data sheet is a country with a long history of democracy and a social structure that facilitates community collaboration and control. In the US, the group that stands outthe most is probably Asian Americans, whose churches and mutual aid societies put the Paris Commune to shame. Black churches probably come a close second. Both of these groups have been resistent to state seizure and control, to which any literate Marxist would reply "Good." If something resembling true Communism ever comes to the US, it'll be piloted by people from those communities.

[Travis B.]

The nerds at the IWW probably assumed that being a Communist is an inocculation against authoritarianism, but now we know any country with any state activities needs a mechanism by which the public can hold it accountable.

Nah, the anarchists, which anarchosyndicalists are a variety of, were predicting that state socialism would result in horrors before the Russian Revolution even occurrred, even though initially when the Russian Revolution did occur some anarchists did give the Bolsheviks the benefit of the doubt, to only be quickly proven to be at least as bad as anarchists had already predicted state socialism to be.

[Moose-tache]

I was using the IWW as an example of revolutionary labor, not anarchists. But they do have anarchist ties, so they probably weren't the best example. Feel free to replace them with the SPA or something. Plenty of Socialists and Communists around the world were supportive of early Soviet efforts to nationalize production, because they didn't believe it would be permanent, or they didn't care because world worker consciousness was going to kick in any day now.

[Raphael]

So, how long until right-wingers start burning jeans? Or have they already started?

[Travis B.]

So, how long until right-wingers start burning jeans? Or have they already started?

Considering that jeans are extremely popular here in the US, and I haven't heard a thing about right-wingers today complaining about them... If anything, the only complaints about jeans I have heard are about distressed/destroyed jeans, and particularly about jeans that are sold as distressed/destroyed rather than being genuinely worn through actual use.

[Raphael]

So, how long until right-wingers start burning jeans? Or have they already started?

Considering that jeans are extremely popular here in the US, and I haven't heard a thing about right-wingers today complaining about them...

Some backstory:

US Republicans in the House of Representatives have recently started holding their staged "hearings" about how the Biden Administration (come on, my computer's spellcheck, Biden has been POTUS for two years and you still don't recognize his name?) is Teh Biggest Corrupt Crime Family Evah, and also about how it's totally corrupt that Twitter sometimes banned right-wingers before Rocket Man took over. Now, in those hearings, apparently some of the more hard-hitting and unfriendly questions that committee members asked the GOP-invited witnesses were asked by a freshman Democratic member named Dan Goldman. Goldman got elected to Congress last November after he had previously been one of the lawyers employed by the House who helped prepare and run the impeachment trial against Donald Trump.

And the thing is, Dan Goldman is also a member of the extended family that owns Levi Strauss & Co. ...

[bradrn]

So, how long until right-wingers start burning jeans? Or have they already started?

Considering that jeans are extremely popular here in the US, and I haven't heard a thing about right-wingers today complaining about them...

Some backstory:

Thank you!

[Moose-tache]

Imagine how much harder it would be for the GOP to accuse the Dems of being oligarchs if the Democratic Party would nominate candidates who are more like their actual voters. I would love to watch the Republicans try to accuse a mixed-race dental technician of being part of a global crime family. But no, we need the cadet branch of the Vanderbuilt family to save us from the conservatives...

[Raphael]

Pointless. Whenever there are individual Democrats who can't be easily painted as elitists, Republicans simply switch to the strategy of saying they're worthless because they're not part of the elite. See their reaction to AOC. If anti-oligarch sentiment would work as well as it should, Trump would never have happened.

[Raphael]

As for, "more like their actual voters", the guy in question represents the southern tip of Manhattan and the westernmost part of Brooklyn, so for all I know, he might well be like a lot of the voters there.

[Ares Land]

I tend to be with Moose-tache here. Conservatives will of course attack liberals in any way they can think of, but painting a big white cross on one's back is perhaps not the best strategy either.
Plus generally I think we could use a lot more dental technicians in politics.

[Raphael]

I tend to be with Moose-tache here. Conservatives will of course attack liberals in any way they can think of, but painting a big white cross on one's back is perhaps not the best strategy either.
Plus generally I think we could use a lot more dental technicians in politics.

Hm, looks like Goldman won his Democratic primary just barely (1306 votes ahead) against Taiwanese-American career politician's assistant/politician, and daughter of an engineer and a nurse, Yuh-Line Niou. Not quite a dental technician, but it might still have been better if she had won.