The authoritarians are already in power. Student antiwar demonstrations are being crushed by the police, border detentions are up, labor demonstrations have been crushed just a few short years ago and there is an active campaign to control media sources.
He did also break the rail strike, and then his NLRB kept working the issue after people weren’t paying attention, and got the rail workers the sick days they were asking for in the first place.
To me, it sounds like he wanted to avoid the disruption to the economy that the rail strike would have caused (which would have caused inflation which actually was sort of his fault, in contrast to the Covid and price-gouging inflation which is currently happening which people are blaming him for even though it isn’t his fault).
You can say, I guess, that he broke the rail strike because he hates workers, and then wasn’t paying attention when his NLRB got them the sick days after, and that he just didn’t bother to break all of the other strikes that were happening coincidentally before during and after that, including historic ones like UAW and the writer’s guild strike. Or maybe that he hates rail workers specifically but not the other kind. Or something. I don’t know.
Or were there labor demonstrations other than the rail strike that were crushed that I missed?
there is an active campaign to control media sources
lets just confine it to the rail strike: biden broke the rail strike. then he gave a small subset of the strikers demands to them through executive action. the result is reduced labor power and benefits that can be taken away again anytime the executive decides it’s in its interest.
the active campaign to control media sources includes the tiktok ban. no matter your opinion on the application itself, you can’t deny that the point of the ban is to remove it from the american media landscape.
Let’s not. I’m pretty sure that my argument was that if you don’t confine it to the rail strike, Biden’s overall record on labor is excellent, when you include the rail strike and then all the other union things he did.
Can I do this too? Let’s just confine it to the day he forgave six billion dollars of student loan debt. On that one day, his record was excellent. Therefore he’s great. See? Logic doesn’t work that way.
the active campaign to control media sources includes the tiktok ban. no matter your opinion on the application itself, you can’t deny that the point of the ban is to remove it from the american media landscape.
“Includes” the TikTok ban.
What else does it include? Any other media sources he’s actively campaigned to control? Or does removing the one that’s overt Chinese spyware mean that he hates independent “media” in the US, and just forgot about Mastodon, Twitter, Lemmy, and all the other sources where people can get anti-US news freely? (Or Fox News or Newsmax, which actually present an affirmative threat to his presidency and in an indirect way to his actual personal safety, and show some fairly legitimate reasons why someone could argue for shutting them down?)
In the same way he forgot to crush all those other unions when he was being super anti-union in that one very specific way that one time?
i think the administrations response to a labor action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is the best thing to examine because it shows how the administration responds to labor power that opposes its aims and threatens it.
we could examine a bunch of other stuff, but that would largely only show how the administration behaves on its own terms. while there’s an ocean of ink that could be spilled on that topic, i didn’t bring it up because it doesn’t matter for the purposes of answering the question of weather the administration is authoritarian.
if you wanna talk about that, youre welcome to, but i’m not gonna get embroiled in it. the administration was threatened by labor power and chose to suppress the strike then deliver a modicum of the demands through action it could control. the end result of that response is that the power of labor is reduced and labor and its supporters are compelled to align with the administration.
it’s a response that seems like a perfect solution politically if your alignment is already democrat, but if you would rather labor have real power to exercise on its own terms then it’s pretty clearly anti-worker.
the tiktok ban is the best example of media policy against that which is actively controlled by the united states government and power elite. For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals. if you want something a little bit more recent, look up stovepipeing, the intelligence apparatus’ method for creating media buy in for the iraq war.
i think the administrations response to a labor action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is the best thing to examine because it shows how the administration responds to labor power that opposes its aims and threatens it.
I disagree. I think the administration’s response to a union action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is probably going to be colored somewhat by their reaction to the infrastructure of the entire nation being threatened. It’s probably the least reasonable situation to take, and then extrapolate out to form the conclusion “and that’s why he just hates unions.”
Especially since, and I don’t know why this keeps being not notable to you, his administration kept working with the railroads after, until the workers got the sick days that were the whole thing they had decided to have the strike over.
the tiktok ban is the best example of media policy against that which is actively controlled by the united states government and power elite. For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals. if you want something a little bit more recent, look up stovepipeing, the intelligence apparatus’ method for creating media buy in for the iraq war.
Yes, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I was around for the Iraq War and the general media enthusiasm for it; I had arguments with family members about it because they were believing what they read in the papers. Not that it’s relevant, but as far as I can tell stovepiping was something totally different related to that war.
And, none of that is recent or in any way related to what Biden’s doing about US media right now.
I’m gonna take this as an indication that you have no other examples of media Biden wants to ban, even ones that are a lot more explicitly hostile to him than TikTok is, and just want to get condescending to maintain a posture of being the one who’s explaining to the one who doesn’t understand what’s really going on. Good luck with that! I don’t think it’s going well, but you can keep trying.
i never said biden hates unions. the things i said are written out in text and i haven’t made any edits to them. i don’t like doing inline quotations, but you use that style of response, so when you see me say that biden hates unions please quote it directly.
Sick days were not the whole thing the rail unions had decided to strike over. biden broke the strike rather than bargain with the union. that represents much more clearly the administrations stance towards real labor power than anything else. when faced with a true threat, it chose to break the strike and give a fraction of the demands directly through executive action.
i was around for iraq 2 as well. good looking out on stovepiping, i haven’t been looking up everything ive written so errors like that where i mix up the sending of unvetted intelligence information directly to decision makers with whatever the name for the unique combination of exerting soft and hard power on media outlets, badjacketing oppositional viewpoints and sending professionally trained media teams to express carefully crafted messages are inevitable.
I choose to not meticulously source and check stuff because it both makes people i’m responding to get hostile and feel like theyre being attacked or accused of being ignorant and because i feel it’s better to treat people in text formats like this one as if you were speaking to them.
that last part is one of the reasons i don’t like to quote. this is a conversation, we’re just talking. no ones going to win and you will in no uncertain terms ever convince me to vote for biden.
why and how do you think the governments relationship to media has changed since the response to 9/11?
I never said there were more media sources that the administration wants to ban. i said there was an active campaign to control media sources including the tiktok ban. who was the politician who admitted that the tiktok ban was at least partially motivated by how much anti genocide sentiment was on it? like i said, this is all off the dome, water cooler style.
i’ve been trying to keep things civil and not resort to insulting you either directly or indirectly through implication. please do the same.
Okay, sure. You said “labor demonstrations have been crushed just a few short years ago.” That’s a huge stretch, since multiple labor demonstrations have been materially assisted by Biden’s revamped NLRB, and the one that was “crushed” was more complex than what you’re implying.
Here’s a story about some of the details of how the attendance policy specifically was the most proximate cause of the strike. Probably Wikipedia’s article is the clearest overview – in brief, negotiations broke down with workers getting wage increase but only 1 day of paid leave a year, as opposed to the 15 that they wanted. The law that broke the strike limited them to 1 day per year, which was kind of a “fuck you” to the unions.
Then, after that, the NLRB kept negotiations going with the railroads. E.g. as of March, they had 3-7 days per year. IDK, that’s not as good as I thought it was, so maybe there’s still an argument to be made that the workers got screwed.
Also, there are a ton of issues e.g. related to safety and wages. It’s not just sick days. But, the sick days were the immediate proximate disagreement that led to the strike.
I choose to not meticulously source and check stuff because it both makes people i’m responding to get hostile and feel like theyre being attacked or accused of being ignorant
I am the exact opposite. I think it’s important to have reasons for what you’re saying and demonstrate that there’s a reason and link to more information about it. I’m sometimes kinda condescending about it I guess but I think it’s important to refer to what the reality is, instead of just taking turns talking at each other about our different opinions.
that last part is one of the reasons i don’t like to quote
i’ve been trying to keep things civil and not resort to insulting you either directly or indirectly through implication. please do the same.
So this is just something about me: If someone starts saying things like “For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals” I get real offended, because I take that as that exact kind of accusing of being ignorant that you were talking about before. I think it’s more about me, so maybe I shouldn’t have reacted badly – but yeah, if we were talking face to face and you said something like that to me I would get irritated by it. That’s more why I got hostile with you. Like bro don’t tell me what to read or imply that I might be scared off by it. I’ve read it, yes. If we’re talking we can talk, and maybe I might be abrasive about some things and if so I apologize, but also don’t try to take this you-maybe-haven’t-heard-of-Noam-Chomsky tone with me. And in particular, don’t try to change the subject from “hey here’s my coherent argument for why banning TikTok is motivated by something other than censorship” by starting to imply that maybe I’m just clueless about the idea of US government interfering with media in general, and you need to help me by recommending some sources on it that I might not have heard of.
I never said there were more media sources that the administration wants to ban.
So it’s just Tiktok? Is it relevant to you that there are other much more anti-administration sources that they aren’t banning?
who was the politician who admitted that the tiktok ban was at least partially motivated by how much anti genocide sentiment was on it?
it’s not a stretch to say that labor demonstrations were crushed. multiple unions together composed the rail strike and their demonstrations were crushed by the administrations direct action.
if i were gonna encapsulate the demands of all the rail unions i’d basically say precision scheduled railroading was the cause of em, and it’s bad. there was definitely more than sick days to it.
it’s okay to meticulously source stuff and have a big wall of links ready to refute fake bullshit. that’s a certified tankie banger and i mean that with love and respect while soviet anthem - bass boosted trap remix (10 hours) plays.
just, you know, i gotta be on best behavior here at .world. and in this particular instance it’s not like the goal is to get people to read fucking history and critique of a black legend but instead to get liberals to realize that it’s okay not to vote for biden. because i genuinely believe that no one under 50 can look back at their adult life and say “yeah, this is good, actually, i’m happy with this, it should be biden, not literally any other candidate. the democrats are really my ally and i should lend them my support”. i mean, there’s the butigeegs (I can’t spell his name) of the world, but you know, like real people. anyway i’m not trying to convert people to anarchism or communism but just to meet people where they’re at with the message that “things are bad and they’re not gonna get better from one or the other ruling class party. reject their tickets and choose something else. organize in your communities and try to build resilliency”
I didn’t mean to take the tone that you hadn’t heard of chomsky, or to call you a lib, but instead to recommend something as a source and example that is generally respected and inoffensive. you’d be surprised how many people don’t know manufacturing consent or got taught it in the most tepid way possible, sometimes even with chomsky’s own walkbacks from the decades after 9/11.
i don’t know what sources you know and don’t know. i don’t know if you have a critique of manufacturing consent or what your perception of the governments’ relationship with mass media is. from manufacturing consent and the experience of the post 9/11 world its hard to imagine you having an understanding that doesn’t include broad implicit and explicit media consent for the power that underlies the two party state.
what are the anti administration media that isn’t getting banned? is any of it as outside the US political system (and i’m saying this with full awareness of how bytedance offered to route all US users through a datacenter in texas running oracle systems and what that implies in order to fend off trumps threat of a ban and how they then just started doing it in the hopes that it would be enough for the state department) and widespread as tiktok? I wouldn’t call fox or something like that in the same category as tiktok.
goddamnit you got me to look something up. just this once and for you, it was blinken and romney speaking for the mccain institute.
because your vote has meaning and value as more than either a winner and loser of political races. vote tallies determine funding, media and event access and even if that was it (it’s not!) there’s some level of dual party fascism where it would be better to spend your meaningful vote helping some third party you really believe in get an edge next time (or this time) rather than just picking which version of evil you’d rather have.
Do you really think you’re going to get a third of America to not only rally behind a candidate that isn’t the two-party front runners, but also rally behind the same candidate?
I’m worried about people refusing to vote Biden because he sucks and then the outspoken, proud fascist winning and stripping rights from myself and my friends, giving Israel even more support, halting support to Ukraine, and attempting to dismantle the little democratic power we have.
No, I don’t think that. I mean, I think it’s possible, but the effects of a big third party campaign are wide ranging.
If you want an unarguable example of a third party campaign changing the dialogue on a fundamental level even in the face of a loss, look at perot.
Not only was his campaign considered not to be a spoiler, but it rendered nafta dead in the water, just waiting for someone to drag it in to shore. There’s a reason no politician since then made it a priority and no media, political or popular support materialized to protect it instead of replacing outright.
If you’re worried about fascist Biden losing to fascist trump, have you considered what trump being declared the loser looks like? At what point do you stop saying “I was not Palestinian so I said nothing”?
If you truly feel fear, real existential fear, about Biden losing: stop worrying about voting. It can’t protect you and you’re looking at January 6 electric boogaloo no matter what.
Take concrete steps to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient, maintain your health and wellbeing, and avoid life altering disruption from whatever is gonna happen no matter who is declared the winner.
The '96 election was not an existential threat at the level of the '24 election.
At the margins we have voting for Biden or voting third party will do nothing but prop up Trump’s dedicated voter base. This is your impact. You can hate Biden and still vote for him if it means keeping Trump out of office.
I don’t subscribe to your belief of widespread violent revolt if Trump loses.
I say this a lot and it’s to keep people from wasting their time, not as some attempt to shout people down: I will never vote for Joe Biden again. You cannot convince me.
Again, that’s not to shout anyone down or be aggressive, but to firmly seat us in the context of an actual Biden voter (you) or a hypothetical Biden voter (someone else).
Usually when people talk about Perot, they mean ‘92. That’s the one where he was in all the debates and the one that brought nafta into the public eye in a big way. It’s the one that was initially called a spoiler for the republicans but later research proved was a nearly even draw from prospective and past voters of both parties.
Perot 92 is my favorite example of a third party run in our lifetimes because it shows how that external pressure can deeply change the two parties and was in no way “throwing one’s vote away”.
No matter if you stay with genocide Joe or decide to walk away from omelas with me, I urge you to reconsider your view that there will be no uprising if trump is declared the loser. If you believe he’s an existential threat, believe that January 6 was an attack on democracy, see project 2025 as a real threat, and recognize that the same base that will vote for trump cannot accept or trust the electoral system, it’s hard to reach the conclusion that nothing is gonna happen.
I don’t think anything’s gonna happen myself, but that’s because I don’t see trump as an existential threat, don’t think January 6 was a big deal, see project 2025 as the rights response to Covid laying the power of the administrative state bare and their plan to control it and generally recognize that the only way trust in the electoral system will ever be restored is through a trump victory in 2024 and a peaceful transition of power to the winner of 2028.
It feels easier to organize opposition if the people in the White House are just saying stupid shit about protesters instead of urging for sending in the National Guard so they can nuke Gaza without listening to the complaints.
That’s where I disagree- Voting third party or not voting at all enables fascists. Period. There is no ethical option in a single-vote system. There is only harm reduction.
Is that an extreme view? Yes. Is it wrong? Not when the Republican leader says he’ll be a dictator on day one. Our only option is to first make sure we don’t fall under a fascist dictator and THEN continue to fight. It’s not a problem that will be solved by voting, but voting HAS to be the first step.
How does voting third party (the only thing I’ve advocated with regard to voting)enable fascists?
I mean, we have the fascist sending 2000lb gbu jdams to aid a genocide and advocating crushing anti war opposition domestically or the fascist who everybody says will be worse. How does not picking a fascist aid the fascists? Should we strategically harm reduce by choosing regular Hitler over hypothetical 1000% ssj3 Hitler?
At what point does even our electoral action aim for what we want as opposed to what they want? Is there such a point?
Here is a good video that explains how mathematically, over time, if you give people only one vote, their options will become whittled down to two major parties who don’t represent anyone. It’s just what happens if you only have one vote per person. In these scenarios, third parties are destined to fail. That’s not hyperbole or exaggeration, it’s literally just how the math works. Ranked choice, or allowing multiple votes per person is one of the only ways to actually have representative representatives.
Should we strategically harm reduce by choosing regular Hitler over hypothetical 1000% ssj3 Hitler?
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY.
With ‘regular Hitler’, you still have a vote, and you still have a CHANCE to change to government. If you vote for ‘1000$ ssj3 Hitler’, you’re not only guaranteeing that you won’t have another vote, no say in changing the government, but you’re ALSO signing the death warrants for queer people, immigrants, and people of other religions. Trump wants to KILL POLITICAL RIVALS. He’s trying to ban objective reporting. He’s praising Hannibal Lecter! Yes, it’s a fucking awful situation to be in, but we also don’t have an alternative.
At what point does even our electoral action aim for what we want as opposed to what they want?
Like I said before, voting is the FIRST STEP. We do need a major overhaul of the election process, but that starts with states like Maine going for Ranked Choice voting. You have to start local and build your way up, this isn’t a problem that will be solved overnight with a single vote. It will START with a single vote, and once we actually get people who represent us in government, we’ll see actual progress.
so, none of that stuff happened during the first trump presidency but itll happen this time so there’s no point in voting outside the two party fascist duopoly until some hypothetical new electoral system is put in place (how? by voting it in? which of the two parties will welcome this significant change that completely restructures their hold on power?).
that’s a wild outlook.
at what point does even our electoral action on the most individual, atomized level need to aim for what we actually want instead of some deeply flawed and amoral compromise with one of the parties of fascists?
surely there must be a red line that both parties could cross that would make you abandon the dire calculus of strategic harm reduction and instead use your meager but meaningful vote to bring about the future you want, right?
Nope! As I’ve said before, voting is not an ethical choice in a single-vote system. That’s because it’s not the solution. Its the first step.
The real work starts afterwards with local government and getting involved in your community. I already told you how Maine is changing the way voting works there, and everyone can focus on changing their own states laws to continue the work.
Neither of the parties is going to want it, which is why it won’t just be on a nationwide ballot. We have to do it ourselves.
I swear to god, it’s like strategic voting doesn’t exist at all.
If you live in a deep blue or red state who’s basically guaranteed not to flip, with maybe extra considerations to which states tally their votes along which lines, because, as we know, states that tally their votes earlier in the process have a much higher sway, so, the DNC winning more overwhelmingly in those states, and especially if those states are swing states, has much more of an effect overall, then a protest vote to a candidate you agree with, in those circumstances, is pretty good.
It potentially shows the democratic party what you actually want, contests their claim of a mainstream, deep blue state, potentially in mass, and can give more legitimacy to those parties or those positions. Even better would probably be voting for a candidate like bernie, or someone internal to the DNC, in that scenario, since that’s more likely to give them a lot more media attention in the future and realistically someone like that has the best chance of winning.
The same principles as all this apply to local elections, just at a much smaller scale, with less media attention, and potentially less information on both sides, since people generally don’t give a fuck about understanding local elections even if they’re the ones being fucking elected. Just send out money and a bunch of lawn ornament signs explaining nothing, and then expect, probably not wrongly, that everyone will just vote for whatever candidate is a part of the party that they generally agree with, even if nobody has any fucking idea what anyone really stands for. Better off even if there’s no hint of an alternative being campaigned or even on the ballot despite everyone just telling people to run for local spots as though that’s really a possibility for most.
Instead, instead of paying attention to why votes are shifting, and how they might appeal to that voter block, the mainstream DNC strategy seems to be to just like demand that leftists have to come over to the democratic party’s side and then just accept all of their orders basically unquestioningly. To just pester them to vote more, and to vote harder, and to vote for the mainline DNC candidate, without any real conversations about how they might actually use their vote or why they might actually want to vote for their desired candidate. And of course that’s the fucking messaging, because that’s the messaging that allows them to get away with as little concessions to the left and the general population’s popular sentiments as possible. Bonus points if you’re always voting for damage prevention, too, because the urgency gives people a morally justifiable reason to just engage in relentless bullying tactics, rather than actually have a nuanced conversation about the ups and downs of a candidate and how they should use their vote, under what circumstances.
You can’t blame people for smelling something fishy in all that, being unable to articulate why or think through for what circumstances they might want to vote in, and then just kind of feel burnt out and cynical about the whole prospect and not really want to vote. It’s not exactly a hard strategy to see through when we’ve been seeing it for the last… 25, 30, 40 years maybe? I dunno, don’t remember those elections before I was born, but they’ve been pulling this shit since bush got into office.
The authoritarians are already in power. Student antiwar demonstrations are being crushed by the police, border detentions are up, labor demonstrations have been crushed just a few short years ago and there is an active campaign to control media sources.
Biden fired the guy who used to run the NLRB, and put in a bunch of actually pro-labor people, who gave lots of material support to all this union activity that coincidentally has been meeting with all sorts of success over the last couple of years.
He did also break the rail strike, and then his NLRB kept working the issue after people weren’t paying attention, and got the rail workers the sick days they were asking for in the first place.
To me, it sounds like he wanted to avoid the disruption to the economy that the rail strike would have caused (which would have caused inflation which actually was sort of his fault, in contrast to the Covid and price-gouging inflation which is currently happening which people are blaming him for even though it isn’t his fault).
You can say, I guess, that he broke the rail strike because he hates workers, and then wasn’t paying attention when his NLRB got them the sick days after, and that he just didn’t bother to break all of the other strikes that were happening coincidentally before during and after that, including historic ones like UAW and the writer’s guild strike. Or maybe that he hates rail workers specifically but not the other kind. Or something. I don’t know.
Or were there labor demonstrations other than the rail strike that were crushed that I missed?
Can you tell me more about this?
lets just confine it to the rail strike: biden broke the rail strike. then he gave a small subset of the strikers demands to them through executive action. the result is reduced labor power and benefits that can be taken away again anytime the executive decides it’s in its interest.
the active campaign to control media sources includes the tiktok ban. no matter your opinion on the application itself, you can’t deny that the point of the ban is to remove it from the american media landscape.
Let’s not. I’m pretty sure that my argument was that if you don’t confine it to the rail strike, Biden’s overall record on labor is excellent, when you include the rail strike and then all the other union things he did.
Can I do this too? Let’s just confine it to the day he forgave six billion dollars of student loan debt. On that one day, his record was excellent. Therefore he’s great. See? Logic doesn’t work that way.
“Includes” the TikTok ban.
What else does it include? Any other media sources he’s actively campaigned to control? Or does removing the one that’s overt Chinese spyware mean that he hates independent “media” in the US, and just forgot about Mastodon, Twitter, Lemmy, and all the other sources where people can get anti-US news freely? (Or Fox News or Newsmax, which actually present an affirmative threat to his presidency and in an indirect way to his actual personal safety, and show some fairly legitimate reasons why someone could argue for shutting them down?)
In the same way he forgot to crush all those other unions when he was being super anti-union in that one very specific way that one time?
i think the administrations response to a labor action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is the best thing to examine because it shows how the administration responds to labor power that opposes its aims and threatens it.
we could examine a bunch of other stuff, but that would largely only show how the administration behaves on its own terms. while there’s an ocean of ink that could be spilled on that topic, i didn’t bring it up because it doesn’t matter for the purposes of answering the question of weather the administration is authoritarian.
if you wanna talk about that, youre welcome to, but i’m not gonna get embroiled in it. the administration was threatened by labor power and chose to suppress the strike then deliver a modicum of the demands through action it could control. the end result of that response is that the power of labor is reduced and labor and its supporters are compelled to align with the administration.
it’s a response that seems like a perfect solution politically if your alignment is already democrat, but if you would rather labor have real power to exercise on its own terms then it’s pretty clearly anti-worker.
the tiktok ban is the best example of media policy against that which is actively controlled by the united states government and power elite. For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals. if you want something a little bit more recent, look up stovepipeing, the intelligence apparatus’ method for creating media buy in for the iraq war.
I disagree. I think the administration’s response to a union action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is probably going to be colored somewhat by their reaction to the infrastructure of the entire nation being threatened. It’s probably the least reasonable situation to take, and then extrapolate out to form the conclusion “and that’s why he just hates unions.”
Especially since, and I don’t know why this keeps being not notable to you, his administration kept working with the railroads after, until the workers got the sick days that were the whole thing they had decided to have the strike over.
Yes, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I was around for the Iraq War and the general media enthusiasm for it; I had arguments with family members about it because they were believing what they read in the papers. Not that it’s relevant, but as far as I can tell stovepiping was something totally different related to that war.
And, none of that is recent or in any way related to what Biden’s doing about US media right now.
I’m gonna take this as an indication that you have no other examples of media Biden wants to ban, even ones that are a lot more explicitly hostile to him than TikTok is, and just want to get condescending to maintain a posture of being the one who’s explaining to the one who doesn’t understand what’s really going on. Good luck with that! I don’t think it’s going well, but you can keep trying.
i never said biden hates unions. the things i said are written out in text and i haven’t made any edits to them. i don’t like doing inline quotations, but you use that style of response, so when you see me say that biden hates unions please quote it directly.
Sick days were not the whole thing the rail unions had decided to strike over. biden broke the strike rather than bargain with the union. that represents much more clearly the administrations stance towards real labor power than anything else. when faced with a true threat, it chose to break the strike and give a fraction of the demands directly through executive action.
i was around for iraq 2 as well. good looking out on stovepiping, i haven’t been looking up everything ive written so errors like that where i mix up the sending of unvetted intelligence information directly to decision makers with whatever the name for the unique combination of exerting soft and hard power on media outlets, badjacketing oppositional viewpoints and sending professionally trained media teams to express carefully crafted messages are inevitable.
I choose to not meticulously source and check stuff because it both makes people i’m responding to get hostile and feel like theyre being attacked or accused of being ignorant and because i feel it’s better to treat people in text formats like this one as if you were speaking to them.
that last part is one of the reasons i don’t like to quote. this is a conversation, we’re just talking. no ones going to win and you will in no uncertain terms ever convince me to vote for biden.
why and how do you think the governments relationship to media has changed since the response to 9/11?
I never said there were more media sources that the administration wants to ban. i said there was an active campaign to control media sources including the tiktok ban. who was the politician who admitted that the tiktok ban was at least partially motivated by how much anti genocide sentiment was on it? like i said, this is all off the dome, water cooler style.
i’ve been trying to keep things civil and not resort to insulting you either directly or indirectly through implication. please do the same.
Okay, sure. You said “labor demonstrations have been crushed just a few short years ago.” That’s a huge stretch, since multiple labor demonstrations have been materially assisted by Biden’s revamped NLRB, and the one that was “crushed” was more complex than what you’re implying.
Here’s a story about some of the details of how the attendance policy specifically was the most proximate cause of the strike. Probably Wikipedia’s article is the clearest overview – in brief, negotiations broke down with workers getting wage increase but only 1 day of paid leave a year, as opposed to the 15 that they wanted. The law that broke the strike limited them to 1 day per year, which was kind of a “fuck you” to the unions.
Then, after that, the NLRB kept negotiations going with the railroads. E.g. as of March, they had 3-7 days per year. IDK, that’s not as good as I thought it was, so maybe there’s still an argument to be made that the workers got screwed.
Also, there are a ton of issues e.g. related to safety and wages. It’s not just sick days. But, the sick days were the immediate proximate disagreement that led to the strike.
I am the exact opposite. I think it’s important to have reasons for what you’re saying and demonstrate that there’s a reason and link to more information about it. I’m sometimes kinda condescending about it I guess but I think it’s important to refer to what the reality is, instead of just taking turns talking at each other about our different opinions.
So this is just something about me: If someone starts saying things like “For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals” I get real offended, because I take that as that exact kind of accusing of being ignorant that you were talking about before. I think it’s more about me, so maybe I shouldn’t have reacted badly – but yeah, if we were talking face to face and you said something like that to me I would get irritated by it. That’s more why I got hostile with you. Like bro don’t tell me what to read or imply that I might be scared off by it. I’ve read it, yes. If we’re talking we can talk, and maybe I might be abrasive about some things and if so I apologize, but also don’t try to take this you-maybe-haven’t-heard-of-Noam-Chomsky tone with me. And in particular, don’t try to change the subject from “hey here’s my coherent argument for why banning TikTok is motivated by something other than censorship” by starting to imply that maybe I’m just clueless about the idea of US government interfering with media in general, and you need to help me by recommending some sources on it that I might not have heard of.
So it’s just Tiktok? Is it relevant to you that there are other much more anti-administration sources that they aren’t banning?
When did this happen?
it’s not a stretch to say that labor demonstrations were crushed. multiple unions together composed the rail strike and their demonstrations were crushed by the administrations direct action.
if i were gonna encapsulate the demands of all the rail unions i’d basically say precision scheduled railroading was the cause of em, and it’s bad. there was definitely more than sick days to it.
it’s okay to meticulously source stuff and have a big wall of links ready to refute fake bullshit. that’s a certified tankie banger and i mean that with love and respect while soviet anthem - bass boosted trap remix (10 hours) plays.
just, you know, i gotta be on best behavior here at .world. and in this particular instance it’s not like the goal is to get people to read fucking history and critique of a black legend but instead to get liberals to realize that it’s okay not to vote for biden. because i genuinely believe that no one under 50 can look back at their adult life and say “yeah, this is good, actually, i’m happy with this, it should be biden, not literally any other candidate. the democrats are really my ally and i should lend them my support”. i mean, there’s the butigeegs (I can’t spell his name) of the world, but you know, like real people. anyway i’m not trying to convert people to anarchism or communism but just to meet people where they’re at with the message that “things are bad and they’re not gonna get better from one or the other ruling class party. reject their tickets and choose something else. organize in your communities and try to build resilliency”
I didn’t mean to take the tone that you hadn’t heard of chomsky, or to call you a lib, but instead to recommend something as a source and example that is generally respected and inoffensive. you’d be surprised how many people don’t know manufacturing consent or got taught it in the most tepid way possible, sometimes even with chomsky’s own walkbacks from the decades after 9/11.
i don’t know what sources you know and don’t know. i don’t know if you have a critique of manufacturing consent or what your perception of the governments’ relationship with mass media is. from manufacturing consent and the experience of the post 9/11 world its hard to imagine you having an understanding that doesn’t include broad implicit and explicit media consent for the power that underlies the two party state.
what are the anti administration media that isn’t getting banned? is any of it as outside the US political system (and i’m saying this with full awareness of how bytedance offered to route all US users through a datacenter in texas running oracle systems and what that implies in order to fend off trumps threat of a ban and how they then just started doing it in the hopes that it would be enough for the state department) and widespread as tiktok? I wouldn’t call fox or something like that in the same category as tiktok.
goddamnit you got me to look something up. just this once and for you, it was blinken and romney speaking for the mccain institute.
The opposing party has signaled that harassing and detaining protesters isn’t enough, they want them KILLED.
Is that just absent in your mind?
wow it sucks that we live in a fascist state. lets organize to oppose it instead of vote for the lesser of the two fascist ruling class parties.
WHY INSTEAD OF??
You can do two things, and one of the things you suggest is EXACTLY what the fascists want. This is not an either/or. You can do both.
because your vote has meaning and value as more than either a winner and loser of political races. vote tallies determine funding, media and event access and even if that was it (it’s not!) there’s some level of dual party fascism where it would be better to spend your meaningful vote helping some third party you really believe in get an edge next time (or this time) rather than just picking which version of evil you’d rather have.
You still seem to be under the impression that if Trump wins, there will BE a ‘next time’.
What do you think is gonna happen if trump is declared the loser?
Encouraging people not to vote for Biden is the most effective way to help Trump win. No amount of mental gymnastics changes this fact.
running any other candidate is the most effective way to prevent a trump win. there are no mental gymnastics here.
instead of exchanging pithy remarks, why not talk about what youre worried about? do you think trump will accept being declared the loser?
not according to people who are much smarter and better informed than you.
come on, you must be able to articulate your argument clearly without saying “a wizard said so!”
I could, but you don’t care about educating yourself, and I would prefer to not waste my time.
suffice to say: you’re not as smart as you think you are. significantly less.
Don’t do it for me, you’ll never change my mind. Do it for all the people reading along.
Do you really think you’re going to get a third of America to not only rally behind a candidate that isn’t the two-party front runners, but also rally behind the same candidate?
I’m worried about people refusing to vote Biden because he sucks and then the outspoken, proud fascist winning and stripping rights from myself and my friends, giving Israel even more support, halting support to Ukraine, and attempting to dismantle the little democratic power we have.
No, I don’t think that. I mean, I think it’s possible, but the effects of a big third party campaign are wide ranging.
If you want an unarguable example of a third party campaign changing the dialogue on a fundamental level even in the face of a loss, look at perot.
Not only was his campaign considered not to be a spoiler, but it rendered nafta dead in the water, just waiting for someone to drag it in to shore. There’s a reason no politician since then made it a priority and no media, political or popular support materialized to protect it instead of replacing outright.
If you’re worried about fascist Biden losing to fascist trump, have you considered what trump being declared the loser looks like? At what point do you stop saying “I was not Palestinian so I said nothing”?
If you truly feel fear, real existential fear, about Biden losing: stop worrying about voting. It can’t protect you and you’re looking at January 6 electric boogaloo no matter what.
Take concrete steps to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient, maintain your health and wellbeing, and avoid life altering disruption from whatever is gonna happen no matter who is declared the winner.
The '96 election was not an existential threat at the level of the '24 election.
At the margins we have voting for Biden or voting third party will do nothing but prop up Trump’s dedicated voter base. This is your impact. You can hate Biden and still vote for him if it means keeping Trump out of office.
I don’t subscribe to your belief of widespread violent revolt if Trump loses.
I say this a lot and it’s to keep people from wasting their time, not as some attempt to shout people down: I will never vote for Joe Biden again. You cannot convince me.
Again, that’s not to shout anyone down or be aggressive, but to firmly seat us in the context of an actual Biden voter (you) or a hypothetical Biden voter (someone else).
Usually when people talk about Perot, they mean ‘92. That’s the one where he was in all the debates and the one that brought nafta into the public eye in a big way. It’s the one that was initially called a spoiler for the republicans but later research proved was a nearly even draw from prospective and past voters of both parties.
Perot 92 is my favorite example of a third party run in our lifetimes because it shows how that external pressure can deeply change the two parties and was in no way “throwing one’s vote away”.
No matter if you stay with genocide Joe or decide to walk away from omelas with me, I urge you to reconsider your view that there will be no uprising if trump is declared the loser. If you believe he’s an existential threat, believe that January 6 was an attack on democracy, see project 2025 as a real threat, and recognize that the same base that will vote for trump cannot accept or trust the electoral system, it’s hard to reach the conclusion that nothing is gonna happen.
I don’t think anything’s gonna happen myself, but that’s because I don’t see trump as an existential threat, don’t think January 6 was a big deal, see project 2025 as the rights response to Covid laying the power of the administrative state bare and their plan to control it and generally recognize that the only way trust in the electoral system will ever be restored is through a trump victory in 2024 and a peaceful transition of power to the winner of 2028.
It feels easier to organize opposition if the people in the White House are just saying stupid shit about protesters instead of urging for sending in the National Guard so they can nuke Gaza without listening to the complaints.
A fascist state that allows dissent?!
So your response is to roll over and give them ULTIMATE power?
These are reasons to protest, fight, and get engaged in local politics, not to fucking give in to the fascists.
I didn’t say roll over and give power to the fascist state. I said that we already have authoritarians in power. we do.
I agree especially with that last part. that’s why i never, not even once suggested giving in to fascists.
That’s where I disagree- Voting third party or not voting at all enables fascists. Period. There is no ethical option in a single-vote system. There is only harm reduction.
Is that an extreme view? Yes. Is it wrong? Not when the Republican leader says he’ll be a dictator on day one. Our only option is to first make sure we don’t fall under a fascist dictator and THEN continue to fight. It’s not a problem that will be solved by voting, but voting HAS to be the first step.
How does voting third party (the only thing I’ve advocated with regard to voting)enable fascists?
I mean, we have the fascist sending 2000lb gbu jdams to aid a genocide and advocating crushing anti war opposition domestically or the fascist who everybody says will be worse. How does not picking a fascist aid the fascists? Should we strategically harm reduce by choosing regular Hitler over hypothetical 1000% ssj3 Hitler?
At what point does even our electoral action aim for what we want as opposed to what they want? Is there such a point?
Here is a good video that explains how mathematically, over time, if you give people only one vote, their options will become whittled down to two major parties who don’t represent anyone. It’s just what happens if you only have one vote per person. In these scenarios, third parties are destined to fail. That’s not hyperbole or exaggeration, it’s literally just how the math works. Ranked choice, or allowing multiple votes per person is one of the only ways to actually have representative representatives.
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY.
With ‘regular Hitler’, you still have a vote, and you still have a CHANCE to change to government. If you vote for ‘1000$ ssj3 Hitler’, you’re not only guaranteeing that you won’t have another vote, no say in changing the government, but you’re ALSO signing the death warrants for queer people, immigrants, and people of other religions. Trump wants to KILL POLITICAL RIVALS. He’s trying to ban objective reporting. He’s praising Hannibal Lecter! Yes, it’s a fucking awful situation to be in, but we also don’t have an alternative.
Like I said before, voting is the FIRST STEP. We do need a major overhaul of the election process, but that starts with states like Maine going for Ranked Choice voting. You have to start local and build your way up, this isn’t a problem that will be solved overnight with a single vote. It will START with a single vote, and once we actually get people who represent us in government, we’ll see actual progress.
so, none of that stuff happened during the first trump presidency but itll happen this time so there’s no point in voting outside the two party fascist duopoly until some hypothetical new electoral system is put in place (how? by voting it in? which of the two parties will welcome this significant change that completely restructures their hold on power?).
that’s a wild outlook.
at what point does even our electoral action on the most individual, atomized level need to aim for what we actually want instead of some deeply flawed and amoral compromise with one of the parties of fascists?
surely there must be a red line that both parties could cross that would make you abandon the dire calculus of strategic harm reduction and instead use your meager but meaningful vote to bring about the future you want, right?
Nope! As I’ve said before, voting is not an ethical choice in a single-vote system. That’s because it’s not the solution. Its the first step.
The real work starts afterwards with local government and getting involved in your community. I already told you how Maine is changing the way voting works there, and everyone can focus on changing their own states laws to continue the work.
Neither of the parties is going to want it, which is why it won’t just be on a nationwide ballot. We have to do it ourselves.
so there’s nothing the two parties could both be doing that would make you say “damn, i should not support either of these groups in any way”?
Removed by mod
that nominative determinism is brutal.
Oof, you’re one to talk
I mean let’s not be so hyperbolic here, he obviously doesn’t have the hair for that
Also yes.
I swear to god, it’s like strategic voting doesn’t exist at all.
If you live in a deep blue or red state who’s basically guaranteed not to flip, with maybe extra considerations to which states tally their votes along which lines, because, as we know, states that tally their votes earlier in the process have a much higher sway, so, the DNC winning more overwhelmingly in those states, and especially if those states are swing states, has much more of an effect overall, then a protest vote to a candidate you agree with, in those circumstances, is pretty good.
It potentially shows the democratic party what you actually want, contests their claim of a mainstream, deep blue state, potentially in mass, and can give more legitimacy to those parties or those positions. Even better would probably be voting for a candidate like bernie, or someone internal to the DNC, in that scenario, since that’s more likely to give them a lot more media attention in the future and realistically someone like that has the best chance of winning.
The same principles as all this apply to local elections, just at a much smaller scale, with less media attention, and potentially less information on both sides, since people generally don’t give a fuck about understanding local elections even if they’re the ones being fucking elected. Just send out money and a bunch of lawn ornament signs explaining nothing, and then expect, probably not wrongly, that everyone will just vote for whatever candidate is a part of the party that they generally agree with, even if nobody has any fucking idea what anyone really stands for. Better off even if there’s no hint of an alternative being campaigned or even on the ballot despite everyone just telling people to run for local spots as though that’s really a possibility for most.
Instead, instead of paying attention to why votes are shifting, and how they might appeal to that voter block, the mainstream DNC strategy seems to be to just like demand that leftists have to come over to the democratic party’s side and then just accept all of their orders basically unquestioningly. To just pester them to vote more, and to vote harder, and to vote for the mainline DNC candidate, without any real conversations about how they might actually use their vote or why they might actually want to vote for their desired candidate. And of course that’s the fucking messaging, because that’s the messaging that allows them to get away with as little concessions to the left and the general population’s popular sentiments as possible. Bonus points if you’re always voting for damage prevention, too, because the urgency gives people a morally justifiable reason to just engage in relentless bullying tactics, rather than actually have a nuanced conversation about the ups and downs of a candidate and how they should use their vote, under what circumstances.
You can’t blame people for smelling something fishy in all that, being unable to articulate why or think through for what circumstances they might want to vote in, and then just kind of feel burnt out and cynical about the whole prospect and not really want to vote. It’s not exactly a hard strategy to see through when we’ve been seeing it for the last… 25, 30, 40 years maybe? I dunno, don’t remember those elections before I was born, but they’ve been pulling this shit since bush got into office.
The authoritarians are in power in Russia and China.
Good work lmao