President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn’t begin for months, Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Extremism is born out of fear and desperation. And the number one driver of that is financial insecurity. I really wish he would say he was doing something about these fundamental issues: a liveable minimum wage, housing issues, education, and health care. He’s not wrong about these asshole insurrectionist Republicans, but pointing out that their thinking is anti-American and backwards doesn’t really get to the root of the issues.
Oh my god; someone still selling the ridiculous narrative that these white supremacist fascists are being white supremacist fascists because of “economic anxiety”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html
What they fear is losing the privileged status of white supremacy in America; what they’re desperate to stop is a more equal society. They didn’t march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” They’ve been telling us, loudly, for years what it’s all really about and people still want to believe it’s about economics as if there weren’t dozens of very well-off people arrested for trying to attack Congress on January 6th.
. They didn’t march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.”
Yeah, because they’re fucking stupid and they don’t know why they have poor pay, poor working conditions, and no upward mobility. They literally believe it’s a conspiracy by Them to keep the white man down. They’re dummies.
But that doesn’t actually mean economic factors aren’t the primary motivator. There’s still an underlying, material problem.
They’re no more stupid than leninists. Honestly both having roots being on the authoritarian end of the spectrum. They are an excellent mirror of each other. Having more in common than they are different realistically.
It’s really isn’t a problem of stupidity. More a problem of taking an ideology or way of thinking as the core of their personality. Combining that with an unwillingness to rationalize or change.
I consider myself more of a centrist. I think leninists and anarchists both have good ideas
It’s fine to recognize good ideas regardless of source, but politics is so much more than just ideas.
Centrism, especially at this point in time, may be the most dangerous political philosophy of all. After all, they will cast the decisive votes in 2024. The center of “democracy” and “no democracy” is “less democracy”.
Democratic Socialism isn’t less democracy and anarchism definitely isn’t less democracy so
In general I do not. Since realistically Libertarians, anarchists, etc share any of the good ideas leninists might have. Without embodying all the bad things leninists do. As long as were talking true libertarians, social-libertarians. And not the fash friendly, selfish neo-libertarians of privilege on the right.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. No matter the intentions behind it.
What absolute power? Power to the people my dude!
A party that’s socially suppresses the people does not represent the people. I say this about capitalism and leninism both. The party should only answer to the people. Not the other way round.
Like the farmers that under threat of the party. We’re forced to listen to the lunatic ramblings of Trofim Lysenko. Discarding what they knew would work to follow his unfounded recommendations. Exacerbating famines in Russia China Etc killing Millions. Committees and councils are absolutely bad about inaction. But inaction on genocide and torture I’ll take that any day.
But will he do anything to stop their extremism or reduce their numbers?
spoiler
No.
What exactly do you expect him to do?
I don’t expect anything from Joe “nothing will fundamentally change” Biden.
But what he could do is use his unparalleled ability to communicate with the public to rally antifascist and progressive forces into direct action against the MAGA movement. Rather than just waiting until the next game of voteball, a united front could stand up and break up the fascists before they became a problem in the first place.
You. mean the thing he literally did?
No? He told us to play voteball. That’s it.
Ah, you’re one of those people who think voting doesn’t change anything. Got it.
Well voting isn’t going to actually get rid of these people. They’ll still be here after the election no matter who wins.
Getting rid of them requires other action.
Oh, I see. You want to start murdering people. Go ahead and start. I’m sure the rest of us will be right behind you.
Oh, hey, how about that - didn’t expect to see an r/Iowa refugee over here. Welcome to the greener pastures that are generally just as painfully, unthinkingly liberal but far less cancerous.
😘
Do you expect the president to encourage vigilantism? That’s an… interesting line of thought.
I literally said I don’t expect him to do anything.
I’m just saying, there are options he won’t take.
Nobody wants to encourage vigilantism, so if thats the only option you can provide then you don’t have any options either.
The enemy is encouraging vigilantism and insurrection. Keep fighting with one hand tied behind your back, see what happens.
And I’m saying it’s a good thing he won’t take those options.
Sometimes there’s no choice.
That requires active engagement in one’s community beyond vote-shaming and whining on social media - you’re not going to see much of this from either party.
Actual community involvement is hard. let’s go joe, blue no matter who, if you don’t vote blue you enable fascists etc. is easy and still lets them feel good about doing something… even if it’s ultimately ineffective.
I think they especially hate people who vote third party or conscientiously abstain from electoralism because they know, deep down, that none of that shit really matters.
And if voting doesn’t really matter, they have to face the truth - they have done absolutely nothing at all
