52 Comments
Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I learned (finally?) from 2011-17 to expect little from any Democratic administration given that the federal political class has been fully captured (or corrupted). At least the Dems give us crumbs occasionally while the GOP just keeps taking away. And then there's Moscow Mitch. And the voters who keep electing Republicans despite a record going back to Tricky Dick.

But as I'm sure as Chomsky and Davis surely intimated, first step to get rid of Trump. And as I keep saying, the first step is to get the GOP out of control, then work on purging the DNC, turn it into an actual opposition party. That's the sequence; everything else is bullshit, that is, doomed and a waste of energy. While one's purging, the GOP would be making the nation yet shittier.

As for Crenshaw, if I had the power, I'd require all references to him to read Porn Star Ringer Dan Crenshaw. Talk about whiny wet ass pussies... Crenshaw.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

The Bruenigs and Matt Taibbi have joined Greenwald in the “so far Left they’ve actually landed on the Right” camp. I’ve got no beef with class-based political analysis per se, except when people are nuts enough to still be buying that Trump’s supporters are populists rather than over-entitled white nationalists. “Never mind that silly racism business, that’s just their hurt feelings talking, what they REALLY want is healthcare!” Come the fuck on.

I don’t know who ever believed we wouldn’t have to hold Biden’s feet to the fire and push him left. Every progressive I know realized that was the deal.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Every time someone mischaracterizes Republicans as caring about anything other than clinging to power and shoving money up to the 0.1 percent, a monitor should pop up and smack them with a rubber chicken. This would make watching MSNBC enjoyable, finally.

And these progwhine articles like “Biden’s Picks Keep Getting Worse”... worse than the scumbags Trump plucked from the depths of America’s fetid cesspools? Biden would have to stoop way lower than even Rahm to come close to the evil that dominated the executive branch the past four years. Maybe we should wait until even one cabinet member or agency head has to resign because of ethical corruption before we start equating the Biden and Trump administrations.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Democrat gets elected President. This is how the world works from that moment:

Rightwingers: He's an out-of-control communist Leftist Stalinist who is worse than Pol Pot and Hitler and will absolutely confiscate your guns while outlawing private property and closing all businesses!

Lefties: Oh, goddamnit! He's not far enough Left for me! Why hasn't he already instituted Universal Basic Income?!?! Why hasn't he already mandated Single Payer? Look at his cabinet picks! Someone who knows something about the military to lead the military?!?!?! JFC, what's next? Someone who speaks French to be the ambassador to France?!?!? ZOMG! We are soooooo sold out!

Media: Some say President Democrat is an ultra-extreme Leftist who will impose Socialism on America. But others say he is just a communist dupe. The reality is that he needs to adopt Republican policies, and he should appoint Republicans to fill all his key cabinet positions. Also, he needs to reach across the aisle by repudiating AOC, Pelosi, and Schumer.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I reckon it’s folly to ask “just whom might Glennwald think worthy to be in a cabinet post?”

Begging, of course, the question “What Democrat might he find acceptable, as if it mattered?”

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I'll wait to see what happens in the Georgia runoff elections (although I have little hope there), but should Democrats pull them off, I'll be left thinking about this:

"I think they were, rather, facing an existential dilemma and making a sensible, non-the-worse-the-better choice."

I know that *we* all know it was an existential dilemma (and still is), but there's no indication that Democratic leadership actually knows that---or cares. I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, I also didn't expect Biden to be progressive in any real way, and I know that online leftists are going to roll their eyes at every move he makes while the right calls cuts to social security that they approve of "socialism," but is it too much to ask for even the slightest recognition that the same old usual shit is what led us to this existential crossroads, and that repeating that behavior is almost certain to lead us back there?

At which point we'll be told we have to vote for the Democrat for the same reasons, again, and again, and again...

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"Fellows it may be a little early to give up on the Biden Administration".

I sort of understand why conservatives do what they do because progressives penchant for white-anting and smearing their own party, even before Joe takes up the cudgels for real, encourages, nay begs for right wing mockery and derision.

And don't worry, we do it here in Australia as well. A few years back we had a great Prime Minister, won the election with a monster majority, within 2 1/2 years his own party stabbed him in the back. A couple of years later, his replacement, having been monstered by the Press and the Opposition, was herself garrotted by her compatriots and Kev the former PM reinstated to try to avoid a cataclysm at the polls.

He did, sort of, but lost and (understandably) retired. If he had have hired a skywriter to paint "Shove it up your arse" above Parliament House, IMHO he would have been perfectly justified.

During this whole period, having campaigned and voted for K Rudd, I spent most of my time bleeding from the eyes with frustration.

So, I wish you had have been around to put things in perspective then Roy but better late than never, eh?

Ta mate.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Unrelated to the main subject of Roy’s post, but every time I read the name Thomas Chatterton G. K. Chesterton William Schwenck Gilbert Carlos Williams (or whatever it is), I want to punch my computer screen.

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As someone who's been part of the ''Joe Biden is a fink'' contingent since at least the early '90s, I resent all these johnny-come-lately assholes trying to jump on the bandwagon.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Priorities. Rather than pushing for meaningless radical appointments and pronouncements, progressives and radicals should focus on annihilating the GOP from top to bottom and discrediting all their propaganda mouthpieces. Win the senate leading up to Jan. 6 in Georgia. This is no time to turn or rest. The enemy is still alive and kicking. Pursue and destroy!

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

This is where national level politics now is: "it could be worse". Since Reagan declared war on the federal government for trying to do at least some basic things for most of the people, national politics have become steadily more dysfunctional. There's no question that this is a result of Republican sabotage and outright treason.

But the counter story, at least over the last 10 years is that state and local governments in some of the blue parts of this country and in blue pockets of the red states have become more pluralistic and more progressive. Biden will need to be constantly pushed to do the right thing and he will need to constantly call out the Republicans for their perfidy and sabotage with the hope that enough people will be fed up with them to gradually elect a Congress that actually works. I am modestly hopeful.

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Mitch McConnell runs a protection racket for corporate power and his own, where people suffering from poverty, coronavirus, ruthless capitalism, or really anything, are the threatened targets of his vicious extortion. He's the progenitor of "cruelty is the point" politics, and he loves every minute of it. I hope I outlive him just so I can piss on his memory (I'd say "grave" but I ain't gettin' anywhere near Kentucky).

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Dec 9, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Me? I figure the next 4 years are the "Weimar Republic" phase of America. Nothing will get done to improve anything in any great manner. The country is ungovernable and nothing will change that. The USA is a fascist leaning shithole - 74 million Americans lapped up Trump like he was a muddy puddle in the middle of a vast desert. Which he is. Meanwhile...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/06/a-warning-on-climate-and-the-risk-of-societal-collapse

And no one in politics is even seriously confronting the issue.

When civilizations collapse, they collapse into barbarism, warlordism, fascism, and totalitarianism. We ain't no exception. Strap in motherfuckers, it's gonna be a hell of a ride.

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I find it interesting that a country which overwhelmingly rejected George McGovern, at a time in history when Boomers were ostensibly into progressive ideas, would all of a sudden vote for Bernie or another hard left candidate, at a time when Boomers are most definitely NOT into progressive ideas. I find it annoying that I have to mute lefties on Facebook and Twitter because they are upset that Democrats nominated (and elected) Biden, a left of center old man, because we live in a country where over 74 million people voted for Donald Trump, a grifter in the grand American tradition of hucksters and hustlers. Trump, a guy who's signature achievements are signing a tax cut bill for billionaires and stuffing the federal court with folks who would make teenage victims of incestuous rape bring those pregnancies to term (and probably throw them in prison for seducing their grandpas), nearly won re-election, and we're going to stamp our feet and gnash our teeth because we didn't get the ghost of Eugene Debs?

Furthermore, I'm seeing rubes like Gaetz, Hawley and Rubio tweeting about "corporatists" and "warmongers" in the cabinet which is basically indistinguishable from left-wing Twitter's rants, and I see historical dumb asses like Jonah Goldberg and Megan McArdle writing stuff I kind of agree with? What the fuck is even happening anymore? At this point, if Ted Cruz took a shit in a diaper and wore it on his head to "own the libs," it wouldn't even be shocking.

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Breunig: "I think there are a lot of Republicans who see a deadlocked Congress as a time to make a point which is look, there are (so) many things that Americans need..."

Like Roy, I did a double-take at this. The idea that Republicans give what I call "a fuck" about what Americans need, is to laff. Maybe she just mis-spoke. Too bad Katy Tur didn't jump in and call for clarification.

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Liz and Matt Bruenig are horrible people who exist for the sole reason of providing material for this Twitterer: https://twitter.com/WayBruenig

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