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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Perian
You're missing the point. The issue is not that any of the things Sanders has done are unforgivable. The issue is that he's not the progressive, ultra-left, radical messiah he's been transformed into by his most ardent supporters. Sanders is, at the end of the day, an experienced, longtime politician, as prone to uncomfortable gaffes as any other, and with the same army of (small) skeletons in his closet that anyone who has been trying to get things done for thirty years is going to have. In this respect he is no different from Clinton or any other Establishment Democrat.
He is, however, treated differently from Clinton and the Establishment Democrats. The True Progressives (TM) who attached themselves to him spent most of this campaign season digging up every single shred of evidence they could that Clinton was a reactionary DINO. Most of the things they found? They were things that Sanders was guilty of as well. If it was Clinton who had made that nuclear waste shipment? If it was Clinton who made those Confederacy remarks? If it was Clinton who'd written that essay? The PUB would have spread it all over the Internet as evidence that $hillary was a corrupt tool of the corporate elites who secretly hated minorities. We know this, of course, because they did that any time something like that did come up. Yet whenever Sanders did something that would have set their hair on fire if she'd done it, they pretended it didn't happen. Case in point—the comment she made about "superpredators" getting widespread coverage in leftist circles, while Sanders calling the same people "sociopaths" was quietly swept under the rug.
Now here we are, the election is over, and people are still trying to act like Sanders is some sort of unique phenomena, an outsider come to reclaim the mantle of FDR or whatever phrase is getting pushed at any given time. And it's nonsense. Sanders is an establishment politician with all the baggage of any other establishment politician. He's towards the left on the American political spectrum, but so are Clinton and Obama, whom the diehards typically deride as sellouts or DINOs or whatever insulting term they are tossing around at this time. The conservative wing of the Democratic Party hasn't had any real power in a long time, yet the so-called radical left continues to act as if Blue Dogs are everywhere and the Sanders wing of the party is the only group of genuine leftists around. Which is palpably untrue. The Democrats under Obama, Clinton, etc, are about as hard left as they've ever been. There is next to no difference between the Establishment Democrats and Sanders' fans when it comes to actual policy.
Unfortunately the narrative in the campaign was "scrappy underdog Bernie Sanders takes on the Establishment" and that narrative has persisted, creating an image of Bernie The Revolutionary which isn't really accurate. They've tried to attach a persona to him that does not actually fit, and in doing so are creating divisions in the party that don't need to be there. Worse yet, while Sanders himself is a decent guy, we've now reached a point where simply endorsing him or identifying yourself as belonging to his wing of the party gets you exempt from the kind of scrutiny that is applied to "The Establishment" as a matter of course. See Tulsi Gabbard, who Hodor and I have spent the last several pages discussing for a case in point. If one of Clinton's boosters had turned out to be an Assad fangirl and was meeting with Trump? The Sanders camp would cry blue murder. Yet when one of Sanders' endorsers turns out to be an actual honest-to-God DINO? Nothing. I'd ask where the outrage is, but I already know the answer—the Saint Bernie narrative doesn't lend itself to one of his endorsers being a pretty terrible person, anymore than it lent itself to Sanders being criticized for the same sort of thing that his supporters would burn Clinton in effigy over.
Long story short—Sanders is a good guy, but he's nothing special in terms of his actual positions, or in terms of his supposed moral purity. And I think that until we acknowledge that we're going to continue to have a Democratic civil war which is more about image than it is about substance. Since again, Sanders and the Establishment are pretty much on the same page once you get down to actual brass tacks.
New post cause the last one was a wall of text:
I hope he does it. That should start a nice simmering feud. And I think we all know by now that the more time Trump has to waste on fighting with other celebrities the less time he has to spend ruining our lives.
edited 3rd Feb '17 7:28:24 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
@Ambar: I will freely admit that Sanders is no progressive Messiah, but he didn't let himself get cloistered up in the beltway bubble to the extent of most of his colleagues (in light of Trump's election, his stump speech about encroaching oligarchy is remarkably prescient, and based on what he said after the election he certainly realized that a Trump victory was well within the range of plausible outcomes), and while I wish he had a more nuanced view on international trade, he never really accepted the disastrous neoliberal economic consensus that did the bulk of the legwork getting us to this point.
If there's one thing that gives me a tiny kernel of optimism though, it's that a large number of establishment democrats seem to have been shocked out of that particular consensus by the outcome of the election. I can only hope their past hubris doesn't cost us too dearly.
edited 3rd Feb '17 7:58:22 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'd have to say that someone turning down a cabinet position because of business ties is a nice change. Unlike practically every single cabinet nominee so far, including Trump himself. I don't care what his defenders say, he's not actually divesting himself of squat. He's transferring everything to family members or trust funds, and guess what he'll be getting back once his term is up? Yeah, he's gonna have plenty of conflicts of interest still in play, whatever he says for public consumption.
Trump would like a new version of NAFTA to be created, 'maybe with an extra F, for fair'
.
Fair for America only; Mexico and Canada (and any other country) can suck it and stay poor.
I saw a report suggesting pence may end up doing the vice presidential job of tie breaker unless someone flips on either side. Which is essentially the same as confirming her.
I've begun to wonder lately if the best tic against Trump is consistent mockery. Not just not taking him seriously but going full on I Shall Taunt You and taking pot shots at him. He's so thin skinned and immature it'd be easy to provoke Lord Dampnut into doing something stupid. Keep that kind of pressure on him and he'll dig his own grave.
A little aside - I think I'll go with that as a Take That! against Trump in my books.
Namely, one of the bad guys - Antonius Lucidius aka Malevolent - essentially trolls the shit out of Trump.
- he deliberately puts his organization up in Mexico, and when Trump sends federal troops against him - in a pretty bad diplomatic incident - Malevolent's Umbral Horde Carta manages to scrape a win together despite being outnumbered 3 to 1, saying how incompetent Trump was at getting orders in. Carta - considered to be terrorists - then forces Trump to negotiate with them for the return of POW's.
- They sabotage The Wall, blowing holes in it with mundane bombs and supplies, as if saying, in this Urban Fantasy / Scifi Universe, that Trump's wall ain't even worth their magic.
- He manages to raid a shipment of luxury goods ordered by Trump's kids, and makes a video of him burning the luxuries, punctuating the video by crushing a 10000 dollar rolex.
This gets Der Failure so angry that he proceeds to ignore the other groups - much to his detriment.
Should I add anything?
![]()
You say that as if it matters. Lord Dampnut cares not for facts.
edited 4th Feb '17 5:31:02 AM by sgamer82
Probably late in reporting this, but, since I dont feel like reading the 20 pages since my last post:
Trump slams judge's halt of travel ban
- they are going to appeal.
The method to President Trump's madness
: "What looks like chaos is at least in part a strategy to remind voters that they're getting what they asked for — a real shakeup in Washington."
Just to reiterate what's happened in just the last two weeks: "...He’s ordered a ban on refugees, halted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and fired the acting attorney general, a holdover from the Obama administration, when she refused to defend the order. He approved a counterterrorism raid in Yemen that saw one Navy SEAL killed. He’s floated an evidence-free conspiracy theory that millions of people voted illegally — only against him. He has obsessed about the size of his inauguration audience to staff, on Twitter and to world leaders. He signed a federal hiring freeze, demanded two regulations be undone for every new one issued and withdrew from a multilateral Asian trade deal other allies have agreed to. And he engineered a prime-time television event to roll out his nominee for the Supreme Court."
Now, admit it, if anyone had predicted all that three weeks ago, they would have been laughed out of town, right?
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.![]()
Don't forget that 3 more were injured, a helicopter scuttled, and at least a dozen civilian non-combatants (including women and children) killed.
RE: Tulsi Gabbard on Syria
The inherent problem with that hot mess is that it's pretty much full-on Evil Versus Evil mode right now. My proof? Back around Thanksgiving, the rebels in Aleppo launched a chlorine gas attack on an elementary school, killing a handful and hospitalizing around 20 (allegedly - I can't find any decent links that give the full story anymore). Later that same day, the Syrian government bombed the hospital those victims were taken to
. In a situation like that, which side are the civilians supposed to take? Because I'm pretty sure that, after years of experiencing that shit, I might be inclined to just say "Whatever, just end the war already!"
edited 4th Feb '17 7:00:32 AM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
This is why I roll my eyes at those who call Syrian refugees cowards for not staying home and fighting for their country. What side do you want to them take? Assad, who has murdered more Syrians than every other faction put together? ISIS, who are...fucking ISIS. The Kurds, who aren't that big on the ethnic groups that make up the majority of Syria's population? The smattering of other rebels, who a mixture of AQ style groups, doomed defenders, and other radicals who only look good because they are fighting one of the world's worst tyrants since the Yugoslav Wars ended?
Seriously, there are no good options, I don't blame anyone who runs like hell from that dumpster fire.
edited 4th Feb '17 7:38:55 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

But Arnie's parents did not loan him a million $$, since they did not have such a thing (or its monetary equivalent back in the day in Austria). They were actually poor, unlike others.
edited 3rd Feb '17 5:11:41 PM by Julep