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LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#104176: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:25:27 PM

On socalism,

Cold War culture fucked us bad. Like real bad.

It was much more about hating the commies, it was also people realizing they could destroy any idea of worker's rights and the ability for the poor to have anything.

Our hatred of socialism is a cultural meme that has been engineered by some pretty awful people.

Oh really when?
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#104177: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:26:54 PM

There's little reason to think Trump is going to get the nomination. He doesn't have establishment support, and if he DOES pull ahead and get the nomination, who knows what the establishment forces will do in support of him anyway.

JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#104178: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:32:05 PM

It ain't just the cold war. Individualism, property rights, and a deep distrust of government are fundamentals of American culture, to elect a Socialist would probably be the end of America as we know it. If I recall Marx himself said a Communist revolution would be impossible in America,but then again he said the same thing about Russia and we all know how that turned outtongue Why the fuck does Bernie have to call himself a socialist and not shut up about the Nordics. He could just as easily call himself a progressive, and site the Roosevelts and JFK as his inspirations. He does this from time to time, but not nearly enough.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#104179: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:33:58 PM

Bernie is all about protections for the working class. That resonates with Americans.

JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#104180: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:39:06 PM

[up] True, but it seems like he's protecting a working class that no longer exists, the American factory is gone, and it is never coming back, the wages are to low and to many of the jobs are taken by robots.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#104181: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:42:24 PM

Jack, you're going right into hyperbole again. First off, manufacturing is not entirely dead in America. (From what I understand it's been experiencing a resurgence.) Second, there's WHOLE FUCKLOAD MORE OF WORKING CLASS THAT AREN'T FACTORY WORKERS. LIKE TEACHERS AND RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES. Sander's and Clinton's defense of working class Americans doesn't begin and end solely with factory workers. Why the fuck would you even say that?

Third, he calls himself a socialist because that's the political philosophy he adheres to and endorses. Progressive can describe people who identify as socialist or democrats, and this just seems like petty nitpicking on your part.

Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#104182: Oct 31st 2015 at 4:45:13 PM

Since when does working class refer solely to factory workers? Most of the middle and lower class in the US would fall under that category.

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#104183: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:07:48 PM

re: Crimson Zephyr, it's like you read the first half of each paragraph I wrote, but not the rest.

The reason the Dirty Commie label never sticks to Obama is because it's patently untrue. That isn't the case for Sanders, who outright called himself a socialist. Now, my personal opinion is, "Who the fuck cares?" but for a lot of Americans, that's going to be an impassable hurdle.
Sanders is not a communist. Socialism is not communism any more than capitalism is fascism. That's why I said that calling Sanders a communist is only "slightly less inaccurate" than calling Clinton or Obama one.

For Bernie, the genie's out of the bottle. He's an out socialist, so every policy aim will be framed as being part of a Stalinist narrative of oppressing the people under the bootheel of the Party. With anyone else, you could have a line by line program of socialist policies, and people will agree, "Yeah! That's great!" but as soon as you start calling it socialist, it becomes poison.
...which is exactly why I said that Sanders would win if the Democratic campaign was successful in getting people to vote on the issues, instead of letting the Republican party dominate the tone of the election by framing the narrative in their terms.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#104184: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:08:38 PM

Classifying Bernie as a leftist or a socialist in the US never ceases to amaze me, everywhere else he'd be called right wing.

Inter arma enim silent leges
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#104185: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:11:55 PM

Classifying Bernie as a leftist or a socialist in the US never ceases to amaze me, everywhere else he'd be called right wing.

Oi. No. There is no standard by which Sanders would be right wing, except for a "only our comrades are true left!" standard.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
nightwyrm_zero Since: Apr, 2010
#104186: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:19:09 PM

Obama would be right wing. Sanders is center-left by world definitions.

PotatoesRock Since: Oct, 2012
#104187: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:19:46 PM

It ain't just the cold war. Individualism, property rights, and a deep distrust of government are fundamentals of American culture, to elect a Socialist would probably be the end of America as we know it.
Good.

The current America we have is shit. Bring on the new America.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#104188: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:26:57 PM

The entire notion that robots have taken the working class' jobs is silly. Manufacturing, sure, but the working class isn't just people in manufacturing, it's people in service industry positions.

And until AI is a lot more developed than it is now, robots aren't likely to supplant the working class there.

But, yeah, it'll happen eventually.

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#104189: Oct 31st 2015 at 5:59:08 PM

[up][up]there seems to be this idea in discourse of american politics (and in a lot of other places) that we should keep old things around, or defer to how people centuries ago would have done things simply because they're old.

which i just find baffling and, well...stupid. traditions and beliefs that are harmful to society need to be cast away. what america was "founded on" doesn't matter anymore. it needs to do what's best for its citizens, right now. which is to change.

Deadbeatloser22 from Disappeared by Space Magic (Great Old One) Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
#104190: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:03:23 PM

But that might mean changing or repealing the second amendment, and that's not allowed.

"Yup. That tasted purple."
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#104191: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:11:10 PM

[up][up] Change isn't always bad, but change purely for the sake of being different, or for the sake of expediency, can lead to something even worse. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody expected Nazi Germany either. Least of all the German people themselves.

edited 31st Oct '15 6:13:57 PM by pwiegle

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
probablyinsane Since: Oct, 2011 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#104192: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:16:09 PM

[up][up][up][up] Service is being threatened (now), significantly.

Even coders are not safe, the more intuitive programs become. I think there's an upheaval in progress in the webhosting biz since Google, Amazon, even Docker is out to cut out the middle with 1-click installs.

edited 31st Oct '15 6:16:57 PM by probablyinsane

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#104193: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:22:09 PM

Change isn't always bad, but change purely for the sake of being different, or for the sake of expediency, can lead to something even worse. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody expected Nazi Germany either. Least of all the German people themselves.

Nobody's talking about change for the sake of change.

Being hijacked by toxic christian evangelists, disenfranchisement and demonization of the poor, etc are things that need to change. it's not a question of instituting some sort of extremist regime.

pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#104194: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:29:13 PM

Okay, the feeling of disenfranchisement, I'll give you. But demonizing the poor? Only the 1%ers are doing that - and only among themselves. But that attitude isn't mainstream, not even close to mainstream. Nor are the hate-mongering Bible thumpers. In their own close-knit little exclusive cliques, they may pat each other on the back, but the vast silent majority ignores their idiocy.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#104195: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:31:33 PM

I think you're overly optimistic about the one percenters being the only ones demonizing the poor. The right in general is pretty good at painting pictures of the poor committing welfare fraud.

Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#104196: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:38:30 PM

[up][up]You need to pay more attention if you think only the 1% demonizes the poor.

JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#104197: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:39:47 PM

Unfortunately the demonization of the poor is not unique to the top 1 percent, or even Americans. I have heard to many friends gripe about how the homeless wouldn't "give them back the change", after giving them an overly large amount of money to buy a sandwich, or seen shop keepers all the way in Austria shoo away a begging old woman like she was some sort of Animal, to believe that that problem s rare.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
LogoP Party Crasher from the Land of Deep Blue Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: You can be my wingman any time
Party Crasher
#104198: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:41:31 PM

Aren't certain circles within GOP expressing opinion that poor people, more or less, are the way they are because they chose to be/their laziness?

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#104199: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:44:25 PM

Yes. It's part of the welfare queen myth. The poor are poor because they're too lazy to go out and get real jobs. They'd just prefer to sit on their ass and collect welfare.

JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#104200: Oct 31st 2015 at 6:46:34 PM

[up][up] Probably. What I generally find is that people divide the poor into two groups. The virtuous poor. These are guys who are just "down on their luck", and need to be helped. And then their are the unvirtuous poor, stupid bastard's who are ether to stupid,i.e mentality ill in most cases, or lazy to make it, and have thus given the rest of us the burden of caring for them.

edited 31st Oct '15 6:46:44 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

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