Humility? Is that possible with the new conservative movement? I remember good old Richard Nixon, he stepped down, apologized, and disappeared.

The “left” in the United States is much further right on the global median. The Democrats are barely a center-left party on the global political spectrum.

Traditionally, at least since the Reagan Coalition was formed, the Democrats have functioned as a Republican-regulation party, the safety valve of rightwing ideas. The Republicans have put all of their chips on the Reagan Coalition, which they know is a tent with limited accommodations for the non-white non-rightwing. Both of these strategies have weaknesses that we can see cracking open in real time.

The Democrats, by comparison, are a much bigger tent of a party, and regional pressures and interests make it much harder for them to break the mold. There are still Democrats that identify as “conservative,” if you can believe that, and a substantial amount of them, too. There used to be “liberal Republicans,” but that number has dwindled into near-zero %.

I’m not in any way forgiving these dissenting senators for destroying what little health care Americans have. If there were any time in history where any one senator could choose to go rogue and still get re-elected, it’s now.

I didn’t mean Trump was a black swan in a historical sense, that nobody could have predicted him. And yes, Trumps have nearly taken over before.

I meant it as a black swan in the sense that nobody could actually predict how such a takeover would change “the Overton window” the OP was talking about. Even though we’ve always known Trump-style rhetoric was simmering just below the surface-- as in whenever some conservative would make a half-assed argument about racism from the perspective that they actually cared, not out of any concern for race or the damage of racism, but as a kind of jokey game, self-referencing just how much they didn’t give a shit or think that it was an issue.

For example, when King County, Washington changed the inspiration for the county name to Martin Luther King. Originally it was named for William King, the VP under Franklin Pierce. Popular opinion has it that the latter King was probably in a gay relationship with James Buchanan, and conservatives launched a campaign against the name change, citing it was “homophobic” to do so, as if they actually gave a shit about MLK or homophobia. They no longer have to play these little games, it’s totally fine for a popular conservative to say more or less whatever the hell they feel like saying about race, gender, sexuality, science, religion.

And now, apparently, it’s suddenly okay to use the “socialist” word. It certainly wasn’t before Trump.

Overton Window

I like the concept of the Overton Window (thanks for teaching it to me). However, I don’t think anything quite fits in any predictable threshold of acceptable ideas right now. Trump is such a black swan, it’s almost like we’re defining the window in real time… If things weren’t so horrible, it would be an exciting time to be alive.

“It’s janky. It’s charming. It works. It’s Copyparty.” ®

“Barack Obama committed treason… That’s why I hired a bunch of prostitutes to talk shit about him while they pissed on a bed he slept in as Russia taped me…” - Donald Trump.

Yes, I know, I meant that you can’t blame the USPS for being required to function as a corporation.They are constantly targeted. If they were to not generate a profit, this would surely give more ammunition to the morons that think privatizing (more to the point, destroying their union) the USPS will make things better or more efficient. By necessity they have to make money where they can.

I brought up the old credit and savings service because it provided genuinely useful and helpful options for people, and it generated enough money for the post that they didn’t have to lean on such cheap tactics as soliciting junk mail. I don’t think the thousands of mail sorters are happy about it either; it’s demoralizing to sift through and dump garbage onto people for a living.

This is what they do now. Some counties and cities tax junk mail, this is very effective. When my city did this, it so affected the amount of paper being recycled that the city worried that people were no longer interested in the recycling program (they figured it out). You can’t blame the USPS for junk mail. They deliver, as fast as they can, and that’s it.

One thing that should be brought back to the post, and my president, Elizabeth Warren, agrees, is payday check loans. That used to be a USPS service, and it was very popular. The payday loans were always locked with interest no higher than inflation, so it wasn’t a disaster if you got one. In the 1940s. the USP Savings System held billions in receipts, and was so trusted that even the rich invested in it.

When banks returned to full health, the “government monopoly” was taken from the USPS and ended up in the hands of a bunch of predatory check cashing companies that you now see littering every struggling neighborhood in the USA, except in the few places they’re banned. Ironically, the 1980s destroyed the small town community bank (part of Reagan’s legacy was the S&L scandal), which were supposed to be replacing the USPS, and the extortionists proliferated. Major banks are now in the game, offering payday/salary loans with 200-300% introductory rates.

Blame this guy.

It goes without saying, the business of payday loans hits the poor hard. Interest can reach 1000% if payments are missed, it’s hell. In contrast, the USPSS helped establish credit for millions of working poor people in America. Even when it was judged “redundant” in the late 60s, over a million people still had an account with USPS. And nobody ever talks about it.

Because maintaining the USPS is a federal obligation as stated in the fucking Constitution. Anyone that doesn’t understand this hates America and has AIDS.

It was a superficial judgment based on the appearance which they consciously chose to represent themselves with. They could be a number of other political ideologies, but it was a lazy lean on the customs of people I know and have known.

Genocide is the intentional, orchestrated elimination of a people based upon their ethnic identity or genetic makeup. If Israel wanted what the nazis wanted, or actually, let’s use a more recent and much older example: What the Turks wanted to happen to the Kurds, there would be no “ceasefires,” no “accords,” no “settlements.” Because if it were actually genocide, Palestinians would not be able to name their children with Palestinian names, they would have no division of land to live on, they would not be permitted to call themselves Palestinians, and, most importantly, they’d all be dead.

The use of the word “genocide” in this issue reinforces my belief that there is a subtle uninterrogated form of anti-Semitism that revolves around this issue. It feeds the current attacks on Jewish students at liberal arts schools in the United States. The word is chosen consciously to compare “what happened to them (the Jews)” with what “they are now doing (to Palestinians).” It is equivocation, and dishonest, and weird.

Weirder still, where are the protests concerning ethnocides and genocides of, say, the Uyghurs? There are one million of them currently residing in concentration camps without being accused of anything (as if it mattered). They are not permitted to grow their beards or express their culture freely. There is a network of cameras across China that can recognize people based upon their ethnic characteristics, which are used to oppress the various minority groups that have not been thoroughly Sinicized.

I sometimes feel like the political ideologies of my country are influenced mainly by determining what you aren’t. As I said, hatred of Israel in the 1960s was a KKK thing. Overall the Left appreciated their liberal policies (they are the only nation in the Middle East/N. African region that permits a Pride Parade, even still) and saw Palestine as fueled by the petroleum monarchs and a horribly backwards form of religion. I read somewhat recently of a Conservative Party minister railing about the injustices of the Chinese against the Uyghurs, ostensibly as part of a wider anti-China platform.

I do not trust in the majority of progressive interest in the Israel-Palestine issue. I think there’s only one solution, which is a one state solution. I am blown away that people on my side of the spectrum consider this “monsterish.”

Do you believe in martyrdom? I mean… What do you think “mothers, daughters, all are martyrs” is supposed to accomplish, other than cosplaying the noble partisan.

I do not trust the anti-Israel sympathies, or should I say “Pro-Palestine” sympathies, of most people who are not directly involved in these places. They do not seem genuine to me. I’m sorry if that makes me sound like a monster. I’ve read Finkelstein and plenty of Chomsky, too. I think Norm is a monster for telling Israelis they should leave, and I think he is making things far worse for Palestinians. There is something very self-serving about the majority of Israeli sentiment I sense from my own political side of the aisle.

I doubt this will be a popular opinion here, and I don’t think there’s much to be gained from having to explain why I feel this way.

Fuck all these people straight to hell. I’m for either stripping Trump states of statehood, turning them into commonwealths where they can pay for their own social security and medical coverage (because right now, the vast majority of them don’t), or going back to 1870 and sending in the Union cavalry to fucking keep them the fuck out of politics, allowing black people and immigrants to vote, etc. What horrible people. Fuck you and your grandmother too.

I’ve always felt that the new Left’s obsession with Israel veils a great deal of unprocessed anti-Semitism, twisted in knots over the rules of identity and when it’s “okay” to have one. In the 60s and up until pretty recently, it was the KKK and John Birch Society that hated Israel. Leftists, like Noam Chomsky, were defenders of Israel.

At its core is the idea that “Jews aren’t victims anymore, but they’re allowed to contribute to the culture and express their identity as former victims of persecution, and that’s wrong.” Muddled up in this belief is all kinds of unpleasantness. Jewish people get to have their cake an eat it too, right? So it’s better to take the side of a population that has been so brutalized and manipulated that they actually believe in martyrdom.

I saw an anti-Israel march in my city not long ago. All these white “anarchist” kids were yelling “Mothers, daughters, all are martyrs!” I see little difference between them and neonazi skinhead punks.

The American left is engaged in a slow and unconscious suicide. Meanwhile, conservatives are fucking evil as fuck.

I’ll take a Trotsky over a Stalin any day. Besides, this is Hollywood shit. The gov of California is a relatively blanched position. It’s a showpony job by design. Newsom has power here because everyone that has power in Sacramento and in the county system supports him. Everybody fucking despises Trump except the neonazis at this point.

Trump sort of sounds like vomit getting caught in your throat after a burp, the Musk is what comes out when you finally hurl.