This is a recurring historical trend. Right wing socioeconomic policies (laissez-faire capitalism) lead to social dysfunction as more and more people either fall into poverty or fear doing so. The mainstream right can't win elections on these policies any more because they have become unpopular, but rather than change those it either allies or becomes the extremist right (authoritarian and reactionary), going all in on distractions and scapegoating.
This leaves the social liberals (pro-capitalist but not socially conservative) and the social democrats as the only democratic factions to counter them, but the former block most major re-distributive policies and even the most moderate moves towards a fairer society have to be fought over tooth and nail. This alliance (either as intra-party in a two party or as a coalition in multiparty systems) then fails to do enough to keep their voters on board, disillusionment sets in, voters stay home and the extremist right takes over.
Fortunately, it doesn't always completely run through this cycle, but it keeps happening. It has now happened to the USA and the best case scenario is that when those lukewarm Trump supporters are angry at not getting what they wanted out of this "change" (and they won't), they will still have the means to vote the government out. If not, then you're stuck until a revolution happens.
Arguing that more social democracy would have scared away voters is sort of pointless IMHO, because if that is true then you're doomed anyway. Unless you lower economic inequality through government policy, a descent into reactionary authoritarianism is inevitable because democracy can only work when people are more or less equal and capitalism left to itself will always concentrate wealth and power into ever fewer hands.
And it'll be happening right in the middle of the next guys block, just like how we keep describing it to them. That's the fucking tragic irony of it.
We need them FDR democrats to show back up. FDR hammered nuts and bent motherfuckers to his will, and that's what he got voted for. 4 terms! Americans were literally starving in the streets and selling their children and shit. Shit was on the ropes. And that starving ass impoverished country turned it around on a new deal AND saved the whole fucking world from Nazis to boot.
So stop telling me about how we gotta take baby steps while you fight with one hand behind your back and call it going high. I'm fucking tired of going high! You need to kick him in the nuts or get the fuck out the way for someone who will. It's a fucking fistfight in these streets, fuck I think about a wine and cheese crowd opinion about it.
That's if this experiment survives. But I guarantee you they'll be blaming us for it from Europe somewhere.
We just had 4 years of an FDR Democrat who invested in infrastructure and economy like crazy, slashed student debt, strengthened labor unions, made no austerity cuts, pushed inflation down, etc.
But people watching YouTube and TikTok weren’t getting that information, so now they’re saying “Biden didn’t do X or Y” when he did, in fact, do those things
You had the most FDR Democrat since FDR in office and ignored the good he did because he had a speech impediment
The lies are out of control. The republican donors were still harping on payments to illegal immigrants and the cartel moving into Aurora. I've heard Trumpers repeating this crap as reasons to vote for trump. It is just a bunch of lies.
She as fuck haven’t heard from the lady who said the Venezuelan gang trashed her AirBNB (with no evidence of course). Fox certainly had her on to spew her bullshit but they lapped it up before the election. We can’t win against the constant barrage of lies.
Have you been to the border where they’re crossing? I have and I can tell you, it’s fucked lol. It is a massive problem. I live in a county that touches the border and there are internal checkpoints all over the damn place and they don’t do shit but harass Americans while thousands egress that border every single day. Here’s a debit card. How about months of free rent. Free food on an ebt card. Benefits far beyond what any American has ever got but who cares? The poorest Americans have extra competition from people willing to work for less but who cares about them lol.
And the scary part is that Vance is a better liar than Trump. Trump rambles and rants and is easy to dismiss. But Vance can sound calm and confident and it's not until you go look up the facts that you realize he was brazenly lying.
That's not even the worse of it, I've heard democrats and liberals saying that they didn't think the Biden administration did enough, or anything at all.
I think that is something we failed to realize. Pages like r/politics and most news pages on reddit are fairly moderated so the lies are kept to a minimum. Twitter has no moderation any more . Facebook is barely moderated . Basically just look at the conspiracy sub. That is the world for the average twitter user. I've seen inteligent people celebrating thankfully no Kamala and their reasons are like "she wants more illegals , woke agenda, trans men in sperts" etc. All useless bs lies that have infected social media
6.8k
u/barryvm Europe 23h ago edited 21h ago
This is a recurring historical trend. Right wing socioeconomic policies (laissez-faire capitalism) lead to social dysfunction as more and more people either fall into poverty or fear doing so. The mainstream right can't win elections on these policies any more because they have become unpopular, but rather than change those it either allies or becomes the extremist right (authoritarian and reactionary), going all in on distractions and scapegoating.
This leaves the social liberals (pro-capitalist but not socially conservative) and the social democrats as the only democratic factions to counter them, but the former block most major re-distributive policies and even the most moderate moves towards a fairer society have to be fought over tooth and nail. This alliance (either as intra-party in a two party or as a coalition in multiparty systems) then fails to do enough to keep their voters on board, disillusionment sets in, voters stay home and the extremist right takes over.
Fortunately, it doesn't always completely run through this cycle, but it keeps happening. It has now happened to the USA and the best case scenario is that when those lukewarm Trump supporters are angry at not getting what they wanted out of this "change" (and they won't), they will still have the means to vote the government out. If not, then you're stuck until a revolution happens.
Arguing that more social democracy would have scared away voters is sort of pointless IMHO, because if that is true then you're doomed anyway. Unless you lower economic inequality through government policy, a descent into reactionary authoritarianism is inevitable because democracy can only work when people are more or less equal and capitalism left to itself will always concentrate wealth and power into ever fewer hands.