New Poll Recommends Eating the Billionaires

Doesn't matter now. He's rapidly destroying the regulatory infrastructure and sending his brown shirts out to sow fear and confusion. He is a fascist, the rest of the Republican party are his enablers, and things are going to get super mega shitty before they get better.

If they get better.

He’s rapidly destroying the regulatory infrastructure and sending his brown shirts out to sow fear and confusion.

It's literally the playbook from Bush's "Shock and Awe" campaign turned on US citizens (minus the indiscriminate bombing). It amounts to the same thing, though. It's a blitz, do so much so fast it sets everybody off balance and puts them in a state of shock.

Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight.

Project 2025 wants to shock people into obedience. The flurry of Executive Orders are part of this shock treatment, as are the deportations, and roadblocks suddenly thrown up in front of government agencies. They intend to shock us and cripple our ability to respond via governance.

EDIT: Turns out, Klein agrees.

Trump is a rolling shock machine, which a recipe for keeping us scattered and reactive to the latest shocking news. There will be moments when we need to react forcefully and meaningfully to protect one another.
- It’s literally the playbook from Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign turned on US citizens (minus the indiscriminate bombing).
  
  So far. I do not doubt that we are looking down the barrel of a return to the days when American citizens were bombed by their own government as they did in 1921 and 1985.
- His shock and awe may shock his violence prone brown headed Magas into pulling another 2nd amendment solution on him or his helpers - this time more successfully.
He is a fascist, the rest of the Republican party are his enablers

The rest of the Republican party are his sycophants and subordinates. It's the "moderate" Democrats who are his enablers, through inaction.
- The Republicans have the majority in both the House and Senate. To do something, you need power first.
- Honest question: What should they have done, given the makeup of the House and Senate?
We talkin' about President Elon or his dick sucker, Donald?

It's not gonna get better until the people start to stir shit. Remember that.

Actually, that's part of what he is aiming for. He wants mass protests so he can enact Martial Law. That was literally part of the plan on January 6th, 2020, to enact a State of Emergency. He's just looking for excuses to put the hammer down on American citizens.

Not to say that's a reason to not stir shit. They're looking for excuses to ramp up the violence anyway, even if you try to keep your head down. Keeping our heads down won't save us from it, so stir away.
- He was pretty keen on using violence against his opponents last time, and BLM still stressed resources to the point where enforcement had to have pretty limited objectives. I think people overestimate just how actually powerful the police (and by extension the military trying to support the police) are in the face of popular uprisings. Every state, even the US with its giant military and police state, relies on individual fear to prevent uprisings.
- That's weird, seeing as the playing field would be leveled a bit in that situation, and his rule would be threatened

The democrats know all these things and don’t care. they’re just as much in service to the billionaires as the republicans.

They'd rather lose to Republicans than cross their "donors."

The gravy train runs to both parties as long as they protect this sociopathic grift of an economy from the people it enslaves. The DNC would consider winning on a platform of ending oligarchy (which could only ever happen with a left wing populist that steals the party out from under them like Trump did to the GOP, solely to steal their grift machine in his case) a catastrophic defeat and national crisis on the level we wish they'd treat Trump like.

It's why leaders like Nancy Pelosi make it their mission to sabotage spoiler members (because both parties promote on the basis of being a good bribe getter and taker) like AOC. She spent weeks before Trump was inaugurated making calls to prevent AOC's committee leadership bid. There's the DNC's priorities.

Our whole captured government is a game of neoliberal/fascist-good cop/bad cop. Do you want to waste your life enriching sociopath would be pharoahs with affirmation ribbons or scapegoats? A con game we can't stop playing as we're exploited dry.
Liberals don't care. Socialists / progressives do care. Bernie and AOC have consistently fought to expand class consciousness and to fight against the growing wealth disparity
- The "liberals" you speak of are just conservatives larping as liberals
- Isn't AOC a Democrat?
- I’ll give Bernie a pass although he’s a milquetoast ineffectual social democrat. AOC is a fraud.
I generally avoid painting them all with a single brush like that.

Some absolutely are bought off like you describe. But an awful lot are not — the big problem we've had is that the contingent of the bought off Democrats plus the Republicans has been enough to block meaningful action, even when the Democrats have had a nominal majority.
- I’m tired of the excuse making for them. It’s like sitting at a table of 10 Nazis. Guess what? It’s 11 Nazis.
The last 3 elections have shown there are only two groups: Republicans and Republicans that get paid less.
- I feel like they get paid just as much only put on a fucking costume and pretend to be something they aren’t.
  
  But thank you for your sane comment in a world of complete fucking insanity and denial about what’s really going on.
Controlled opposition.

But still better than whatever is happening now. I can't imagine a Nazi salute at Kamala's inauguration.
- True, liberals are the lesser evil compared to neocons and fascists.
  
  But the top 100 richest billionaires grew their wealth by 63% under Biden so liberalism still inevitably leads to extreme wealth disparities that erode democracy until neo-feudalistic oligarchy is all that will remain
The democrats know all these things and don’t care.

Kevin Phillips, the Republican architect of the "Southern Strategy, has a vastly different view. He essentially said, in his book, "American Dynasty", that Republicans think of the working class as dirt to be used however they royally please, while Democrats at least acknowledged that the working class enabled them to be where they are and supported them.
BYTW, Kevin Phillips, who is very politically knowledgeable, is now extremely disillusioned with Republicans and generally hates both parties.
- Maybe that was true in 2004 when it was published but it is no longer true. Both see the working class as dirt.
Republican reich vs republican lite.
Fortunately there's other parties
- As it stands, third-party will never win in the US.
- That I voted for despite the fact they’ll never get an ounce of power
Careful, you will call the centrist fairies to tell you how you are the problem.
- Fairies? Hope that’s not a dog whistle for queers because you’re speaking to one.
  
  But yeah, the ~~centrists~~ fascists haven’t learned a goddamn thing as usual.

AP has a new poll out which asked whether people think it’s a good or bad thing that the President “relies on billionaires for advice about government policy.” When I first saw the results of this poll as “good” coming in at “+12” I thought they meant ‘net’ 12% and I thought, ‘eeeesh, the honeymoon phase is more intense than I thought!’ But no, 12%: as in, 12% of the public think it’s a good thing. 60% think it’s not. That’s US adults. The only outliers are Republicans, 20% of whom think this is a good thing. But even that is pretty feeble. To put it simply, these are terrible numbers.

In a strange way, this is reassuring. I've said a lot of times the most frustrating thing about all of this isn't that the conservatives are too stupid to see the forest for the trees. No, they see a lot of the same shit we do, but their dedication to hierarchy is what undoes them every time. They could technically agree with me about an issue, but I'm not a person they consider an Authority Figure, and the only people they do respect as Authority Figures are, to put it fucking mildly, abusive bullies.

It's also that misinformation has succeeded. What I assume is due to primarily a lack of quality education, but they seem incapable of understanding nuance. So they see that, say, the New York Times may not be trustworthy when discussing certain issues, just like I do. However, unlike myself, instead of reading it anyway with a skeptical eye while also digesting other sources about the same issue, they instead write off all mainstream media sources and then believe crazy shit online. They don't know who to trust anymore, so they trust the most wild charlatans that exist. That's not their fault, to be fair, our mainstream media has been failing us for decades. I worked in local news during the Iraq War and I remember how much the media juiced the war for the Bush Administration while asking few questions and the NYT even sat on the NSA wiretapping story for over a year to help Bush.

They're not wrong to not entirely trust legacy media, but they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In the end, they also see how letting the most obscenely wealthy run the show isn't such a hot idea. Which is strangely reassuring, as I said. They know something stinks, but they lack the education and tools to properly identify it, as well as their inability to break out from hierarchical thinking.

Very well put, great insight.
I mean if polling were votes...

If you jumped into Lemmy in the last 4 years and read nothing else, you'd be ABSOLUTELY sure that Biden/Kamala would win the election.

"the poll margin error is 3.9%"

LMAO 🤣

People, if polling were votes, we wouldn't even have this discussion

As it stands, the stun-lock advances right along

Don’t eat shit.

Mulch the rich.

Until enough maga cultist become casualties of Trump’s fascist state nothing will change.

It takes more than that — people just resort to conspiracy theories. What the mind-changing process actually looks like:

distancing from ideological community

desire to seek out new information

and solidifying experiences of gradual or epiphanic realization
- It's so sad that cult deprogramming works so much like cult programming, just in reverse. The cult isolates you inside the cult community, and the only way to break it is to isolate a person from the cult community. It's not really the same thing, because once they're separated from the cult they should otherwise be allowed to freely associate with anyone, but it operates on the same principles.

I'm sure the feckless controlled opposition party will jump right on this, just you wait

To shreds you say?