Presidential Goals
Presidential Goals
154 comments
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they all got more money for rich people. did any of them impose term limits, stop insider training, or impose any meaningful penalties for those that already have a lot of wealth? they got wealthier and so did all around.
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They literally didn't, though. Clinton obtained surplus by raising taxes and by removing several caps which benefitted the wealthy.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Bill_Clinton_administration
President Clinton oversaw a healthy economy during his tenure. The U.S. had strong economic growth (around 4% annually) and record job creation (22.7 million). He raised taxes on higher income taxpayers early in his first term and cut defense spending and welfare, which contributed to a rise in revenue and decline in spending relative to the size of the economy. These factors helped bring the United States federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998 to 2001
raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans.[5] It also imposed a new energy tax on all Americans and subjected about a quarter of those receiving Social Security payments to higher taxes on their benefits.
The 28% rate for capital gains was lowered to 20%. The 15% rate was lowered to 10%. In 1980, a tax credit was put into place based on the number of individuals under the age of 17 in a household. In 1998, it was $400 per child and in 1999, it was raised to $500. This Act removed from taxation profits on the sale of a house of up to $500,000 for individuals who are married, and $250,000 for single individuals. Educational savings and retirement funds were given tax relief. Some of the expiring tax provisions were extended for selected businesses.
Clinton signed the bipartisan Financial Services Modernization Act or GLBA in 1999.[41] It allowed banks, insurance companies and investment houses to merge and thus repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which had been in place since 1932. It also prevented further regulation of risky financial derivatives. His deregulation of finance (both tacit and overt through GLBA) was criticized as a contributing factor to the Great Recession.[citation needed] While he disputes that claim, he expressed regret and conceded that in hindsight he would have vetoed the bill, mainly because it excluded risky financial derivatives from regulation, not because it removed the long-standing Glass-Steagall barrier between investment and depository banking. In his view, even if he had vetoed the bill, the Congress would have overridden the veto, as it had nearly unanimous support.[2]
What Clinton did was disadvantage income against capital gains further, thus preventing more people from the middle class and upper middle class to become rich through work, while making it easier for rich people to become even richer. Add to that the deregulation of banks so more "too big to fail" casino players could play in a more deregulated casino which then needed to be bailed out a few years later. By slashing and taxing social security benefits he also made it so that less people could lift themselves out of poverty, which would not only lead to more poverty but also increase spending long term as people kept relying on insufficient benefits instead of getting the means to gain self sustainability and subsequently contribute more to taxes than they needed in temporary aid.
tldr: Clinton fucked the poor and middle class and benefited the rich. He just was more clever about it.
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And cutting the social safety net.
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Nope, they all deregulated, supported monopolies & tax loopholes.
... all while the core infrastructure (healthcare, transit systems, tax systems, education, housing, etc) withered away by design.
Not to mention the massive bail-outs via blank no-strings attached checks (if a gov has to give monies to a private company that usually means shareholders lose their value, but not in the USA, they just get free monies).
And ofc war profiteering (& constantly killing some of the poorest civilians on the planet).
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What about Sanders? How about Warren?
We need congressional primary attendance to break 15% before we get to complain about term limits. If you don’t show up when you have a say, then you are responsible for the career politicians.
We should be voting twice every two years, not once every four, for federal elections alone.
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This is not true. Trump's goal as president is to stay out of prison.
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Well there’s two rows missing. That would be Trump 2: get trumped
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That was goal 1, now goal 2 is excuting the biggest grifting world tour ever seen.
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I'd've rather that it'd never come but, at a certain point, it reaches a point where it is mesmerizing, in its scope and scale.
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That was his goal as a candidate. His goal now is to put everyone else in
prisonconcentration camps. -
Imagine how much he would snitch. He'll never be allowed to cop a deal or go to prison.
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Kennedy got to the the moon. (Posthumously)
Clinton eliminated the deficit.
Obama did not achieve universal health care.
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Congress wouldn’t let him. The President doesn’t write the laws and can only ask Congress to do so.
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He did give free or extremely cheap healthcare to tens of millions of americans and brought down proces nationwide by creating competition.
And if not for independent Joe Leiberman being the holdout for the 60 it took to pass any form of the bill he would have accomplished more.
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Kennedy got to the the moon. (Posthumously)
I think just a few parts of his skull made it to the moon.
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Rich people are richer than ever though, so at least the red party delivered.
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I would point out that, objectively, Clinton did achieve a budget surplus, and Kennedy's program eventually got us to the moon (though he, obviously, didn't live to see it). Say what you will about the ACA. No matter what standard you take, that's at least a 2/3rds success rate for the blue party by your measure.
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ACA was a huge success in the millions of additional people with healthcare. This saved lives. Lots of lives.
The possibility of Universal Healthcare was dropped: this was not a goal of ACA. Most of us expected a follow up to ACA that would do that, but too many people voted for politicians fighting against it. Despite ACA being overwhelmingly popular, it hurt Dems in elections and they really haven’t had an opportunity to do much since
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I would point out that, objectively, Clinton did achieve a budget surplus,
That's not even a worthwhile goal. The state can print money for whatever it wants. Clinton didn't change any of that. The state still wastes endless resources on the MIC, imperialism, etc. while many people lack basic human needs: food, shelter, healthcare, livable environment, etc.
Zero is a meaningless goal that changed absolutely nothing, especially long term.
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And the Americans are dumb enough to fall for the red lies every time they run.
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Nixon’s Southern Strategy
Winning elections for Republicans since 1968
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Maybe nobody actually gives a shit about "balanced budgets", imperialism in outer space, or sabotaged healthcare.
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fixed that for you
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Now that's an infographic
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Much better graphic. Maybe shit head will change the us for the better in the long run. The only way the us can move forward is when the r’s start experiencing the consequences of their own actions.. and it’s slowly happening.
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honorable goals
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"tHeY'rE tEh SaMe!!!!"
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in terms of their motives? absolutely. is -1 a better score than -5? yes. are they both in the negative? you better believe it. don't go slobbering all over clinton and obama's loafers just because there are worse people out there. they tried to enrich the wealthy and succeeded. only difference between the dems and the republicans up until the trump era was that the dems lied about being progressive to distract from their wealth transfer and the repubs committed a casual ongoing genocide to distract from theirs. but it worked- you are distracted. from clinton deregulating corporate oversight and obama kneecapping socialized health care on behalf of the insurance industry. were bush and reagan and bush junior more harmful? yeah of course, but let's not lionize their coworkers because they used a different disingenuous strategy to launder money for their corporate masters. in the present moment, of course, it's a bit different- the republicans are stoking the engine of an outright fascist coup and the dems are spoiling the only chance we have to stop it with weak appeals to "decorum" and "practicality".
so no, they're not exactly the same. one is jabba the hutt, and the other is the little shitgoblin cackling on his tail. neither will help you. get used to it.
edit: math
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More like "the lesser evil is still evil."
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Did bush actually have time for what's claimed here? He was mostly about removing rights from Americans in the face of a sham war. I don't think he actually had much focus on tax breaks for rich people...
Obama continued that ritual, removing even more rights from the American people under the guise of "safety". And Obama could have shoved Universal healthcare through but didn't - he watered it down in the name of "bipartisanship", but then ultimately nobody voted for the bill on the right anyways. If that were going to be the case, he should have just rammed through what the American people NEEDED; but he didn't -- because he wanted MORE MONEY FOR RICH PEOPLE (insurance companies)
Hell, Obama bombed more brown people than any president before him as well...let's not pretend he was an angel.
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The ACA wasn't "watered down in the name of bipartisanship". The public option was removed because that's the only way Joe Lieberman, the 60th vote in the Senate, would vote for it. And yes, what initially came out of committee was not as progressive as we wanted, but if Lieberman wasn't even going to vote for that, there was no way he was going to vote for M4A.
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Nah, the crash was well underway by the time Obama took office. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (the bailouts) was Bush Jr’s for example and Obama’s first action was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (The stimulus packages)
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No, Obama wasn’t in office. The election was in 2008, jr. was the president the entire year.
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Bush literally cut taxes in 2001 and 2003, after enterring office of president in 2001.
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https://www.cbpp.org/research/the-legacy-of-the-2001-and-2003-bush-tax-cuts
High-income taxpayers benefitted most from these tax cuts, with the top 1 percent of households receiving an average tax cut of over $570,000 between 2004-2012 (increasing their after-tax income by more than 5 percent each year). Despite promises from proponents of the tax cuts, evidence suggests that they did not improve economic growth or pay for themselves, but instead ballooned deficits and debt and contributed to a rise in income inequality.
Edit to add the chart - while technically the lowest fifth of earners saw a 1% cut in their taxes, the highest 1% saw a 6.7% cut.
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The two party system is cooked.
Nothing will get better till the two party system is a thing of the past.
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Gotta switch to proportional representation if you want to break up the two parties. I suggest Sequential Proportional Approval Voting for multi-winner elections, and pair it with regular Approval Voting for single-winner elections. Both can be implemented at every level in the US, and some places can do so by referendum. Lemme know if you're interested.
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We don't have a 2 party system.
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In theory you don't, in practice you do.
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Oops, all Heritage Foundation.
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Kennedy got to the moon by giving some Nazis a free pass for heavy participation in the Holocaust.
Clinton got to the White House by pushing for and signing the death warrant for a man who was executed with a mental age of 9 as a campaign stunt. Also a serial molester.
Obama became Pakistan’s No.1 Wedding crasher, had a personal kill list, reneged on his promise to close the US concentration camp in Cuba and bugged Merkel’s phone.
If these are the best examples someone can come up with, it rather illustrates how we got to this point. Those were the “good” ones.
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Kennedy got to the moon by giving some Nazis a free pass for heavy participation in the Holocaust.
Okay, so... you have scientists that know how to solve life-saving problems, but they used to work for the bad guys.
Do you execute them and society continues suffering.
Or do you offer them a chance at redemption.
Don't get me wrong, as hate nazis as much as everyone else. But I'm also a believer in restorative justice. Using their knowledge for the benefit of humankind is much more useful than just shooting them.
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Kennedy got to the moon by giving some Nazis a free pass for heavy participation in the Holocaust.
This is a bit of a stretch. Von Braun and co already got their free pass long before Kennedy became president.
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Yep. But they gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for... saying nukes are kind of bad?
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I think it was meant to be aspirational. Like he would have to earn it. Obviously it didn't work.
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Operation Paperclip was 1945
Kennedy assumed office in 1961.
If Clinton was willing to raise the taxes on the highest earners by 7% a few more times I'd let him fuck me in the ass and watch him fuck your wife, too.
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And ofc... Where's genocide joe?!?
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Missed a few.
Johnson: use war to win re-election
Nixon: fight hippies and commies
Ford: pardon Nixon
Carter: attain energy independence
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Weird cuz a lot of things Clinton did seem to be more money for rich people too
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That was always their secondary goal.
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Reducing the deficit by cutting things that benefit the working class coincides with money for rich people.
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Yes, it's why the clintons win primaries over progressives.
Neo-liberals are the scum of the earth.
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But but Donny gonna send us $5k by Febru-sprin-summer!
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Everyone will get their $5k in two weeks.
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Dems: More money for millionaires. Reps: More money for billionaires.
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Yeah let me ignore all the atrocities that blue presidents committed abroad, those don't count since its brown people
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I happen to be a fan of voting for what's best for the country I live in and the people I care about, then taking other countries into consideration after that.
Life isn't perfect. I strive for whatever is closest. And I'm smart enough to know voting 3rd party in a presidential election is dumb as fuck because no 3rd party is viable because none have done the work to become viable.
So I'll take the party that has a record of voting in favor of middle/lower class Americans over the party that only punishes average Americans and takes their rights away.
Pretty basic math.
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And I’m smart enough
Proceeds to justify how a "slow loss" is somehow a win.
You're part of the problem, and these problems won't get solved until you're as insignificant as 3rd party voters.
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I'm pretty sure they all overwhelmingly achieved the same goal for the rich, it's really very dishonest not counting Clinton at least at around the same level as Regan.
(Well, Kennedy had that car accident, so perhaps he didn't end his term fully.)
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Reagan dropped the highest individual rate from 50% to 28%
Clinton raised it to 35%, increased tax on gasoline and removed a lot of upper limits.
It's the fakest shit to say they're all on the same team.
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Yes.
My reasoning was that while those things changed over time/each president, the Clinton's financial deregulation has affected decades of economy til this day, arguably also including deficits under future president (after 2007 crisis especially), which is his supposed achievement.
wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Bill_Clinton_administration#Deregulation_of_banking
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It's not about the party or the POTUS, it's all about the oligarchs who are funding the parties and really make things happen. All of them were in debt to oligarchs and had to return the given money for the campaigns somehow. Don't be fooled, as long as the funding of political parties isn't reformed to prevent these oligarchs to grab everything there will not be much for the rest of us. Just enough to avoid revolt and riots as long as sustainable. Democracy in the USA is a mascarade.
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Theodore Roosevelt: Be a badass mother fucker
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From the perspective of those who have a lot of money, what’s the problem with that? My wealthy friends always vote r because they want to pay less taxes. Thats their only motive. This selfishness needs to be manipulated.
Edit- thinking deeper. The problem is also that they’re not taking things seriously. They believe it’ll work out… by itself… in a little while. That’s not how problem solving works. This is how we got to the situation we are in today.
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Holy shit is there no middle path between "accept oligarchy" and "French Revolution"? It's the mid-21st century; surely we have figured out better solutions than this by now? The entire reason why one might think "bloody uprising" is the only solution - the fact that the masses are too apathetic and inattentive to come together over a more complicated message - is the exact reason why it's also a terrible idea, as it lends itself to subversion by ideologue and perverted towards nefarious ends. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", etc, and in the meantime the bloodthirsty mob slaughters not just the rich but then the usual scapegoat minority groups too, with the purges that follow such revolutions frequently turning anti-intellectual too. When you cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war, you have no control over what happens next nor any way to stop it until it's run its full course.
The best way to defeat the enemies of the common folk, IMO, is the "greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored". We should simply build the new system in defiance of the old system, or (when possible) subverting the old system to the new system's needs. For example: we need to start more Community Land Trusts, where renting is not simply paying somebody else's mortgage.
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My family is decently wealthy but comes from a pretty impoverished background (They moved to Canada from Sri Lanka during the civil war)
They're pretty centreist. Although in the last elections elections they voted Green (Provincial and Federal)
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To compare - many of my friends are immigrants too (from the former Soviet Union) and grew up poor in the states. And they don’t understand why others who had more opportunities than them weren’t able to “make it”. They view being poor a choice and they don’t want to subsidize people who made the “wrong” choice.
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I like former President Obama, but his ACA was half baked. It is not even close to the healthcare system in Germany and other EU members.
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Blame Republicans and a couple of Democrats. Yes, it was half-baked, but it was also almost defeated, and later almost repealed. The alternative of "nothing" is so much worse.
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The ACA was essentially the republican compromise that was offered to Clinton when he tried to get universal health care. He rejected it and was unable to get any meaningful change.
It shows how much we have moved to the right that the republican plan from 10 years earlier was barely able to be passed by Democrats.
I'll also point out that Clinton's big goal for his time in offices was universal health care not balancing the budget. He completely failed on that but did briefly balance the budget.
Still better than the republican goals.
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Do you know why though?
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Romneycare
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Hey that's not fair, he also campaigned on explicitly hurting a bunch of vulnerable people!
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Yeah, just skip over genocide joe. lmao.
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Do you think this is the last 6 presidents?
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If you can't trust a meme for your politics, who can you trust?
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I love how short-sighted this is. Like, I think there are more people that are on a higher level of understanding nowadays, but still the old game still remains. America is an imperialist empire and fascist are the useful idiots of empire. Neoliberalism is a right-wing ideology. Do you think a million dollars is a lot of money? Well I can tell you a billionaire uses that to wipe his ass. So when he donates it to charity, he's just trying to manage perception. So what I'm trying to say is that the Democrats are neoliberal and they are fascist and both the Democrats and the Republicans work together to keep the working class down. That's why we live the way we do today because things only continue to get worse. The rest of the world sees us as a right-wing country. The Democrats are controlled opposition. The bourgeois elections mean nothing to me or anybody with a fucking clue. The Democrats supported genocide in Gaza. Bernie Sanders and AOC are sheep dogs. They are not socialist, but they are there to defame socialist ideas. You can look this up online. It's called the ratchet effect. So no, this is a little too simple for me. This is like baby boo boo diaper information. It's a very immature analysis of the current state of things or what has happened in the past. End Wokeism no War but the Class War.
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Okay you're trying to make some good points but, maybe stop and rephrase that as a coherent thought?
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yeah #anybytes, try synthesizing your point.
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Disagree. There were lots of good points in that rambly mess.
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as others have said, try synthesizing your ideas. You have a good core argument, but its a little rambly, with some things that feel more buzz word then argument.
Try leading with your thesis, in this case "The democrats are controlled opposition that work with the Republicans to keep the working class down" and then follow up with your supporting comments and evidence. Alot of people wont read everything and just by the first half will judge what you say.
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Ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for blueberry muffins in iambic pentameter.
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LLMs write better than that.
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You take some flour, and some room temp eggs
Room temperature butter is the best
And some warm milk, you stage it with the rest
Vanilla, sugar, and baking soda
If you forget your berries, you are fucked
Iambic pentameter is shit. Salt.Get all of these items into a big bowl
Mix it or whatever, I am not your boss
Batter should be consistency of sludgeHeat your oven to the maximum temp
Pour your batter directly in oven
Leave your house, tell neighbors you broke your toe
Return to home, act surprised it is ash
Get insurance check, use to buy muffinsPrep time: 30-45 minutes
Cook time: 2 months if insurance is fastSure, I did a bad job. But in my defense, I put more effort into this than I should have and wasted everyone's time. Especially mine.
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Here's some unsolicited advice: you'd probably get your point across better if you found a way of expressing yourself with less perceived hate, less name-calling, and less labeling - don't dilute your passion, but speak to the reality and to the solutions that aren't being put on the table. Speak to people's silent struggle and find a way to not be polarizing.
Instead of calling out the US as being imperialistic, shed light to the real effects of US imperialism (e.g. US reliance on supply chains that revolve around slavery or child slavery, third-world exploitation, effects of US regime change etc.) and complicity on both sides.
Instead of calling Democrats fascists, explain that they don't have any power or energy to fight fascism, authoritarianism, oligarchy, imperialism (effectively making them complicit). They have no plan and no solutions.
Instead of calling elections bourgeois, explain that political teams and this tug of war game is a pointless exercise and gets literally nothing done — e.g. speak to election/voting reform, the dissolution of team politics and political parties that take money from non-small donors, term limits, and speak to concepts like direct democracy. Bernie Sanders and AOC aren't socialist or anything close to it in practice, but they also aren't necessarily operating in complete bad faith.
I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but your points can be more eloquently expressed. Reduce the terminology, Democrats are powerless even if they shift their tune, they are always going to answer to capital, they aren't interested in addressing critical problems (e.g. modern slavery, the fresh water crisis, the housing crisis, the health care crisis, the economy, deregulation of corporations etc.), and they aren't interested in solutions. They have no power, even when they have had power (e.g. under Obama).
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Globally speaking, $1 million is still a lot of money.
You can live comfortably for the rest of your life while raising a family off of $1 million.
It's more money than the vast majority of people will accumulate throughout their entire lives.
Anyone who has a million dollars in wealth does not need more.
We still should be taking from the billionaires and redistributing their wealth to those who need it.
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Let's make this meme more accurate, shall we?
- Kennedy: Imperialism, use the presidency to get laid
- Johnson: Imperialism and expansion of social safety net
- Nixon: Imperialism and a one-party state (But oddly gave us the EPA)
- Reagan: Make the rich wealthier, destroy unions, kill the gays
- Bush: Imperialism, making the rich wealthier and destroying unions
- Clinton: Imperialism, increase corporate power under the guise of 'free trade', suppress the gays
- Bush II: Imperialism, make the rich wealthier, eliminate the right to privacy, militarize the cops
- Obama: Imperialism, make the rich wealthier, make health care more expensive, militarize the cops
- Trump: Imperialism (though oddly less so), make the rich wealthier, militarize the cops
- Biden: Imperialism, make the rich wealthier, militarize the cops, ignore food becoming cost-prohibitive
- Trump II: Destroy everything, make the rich even wealthier, especially himself
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You're missing "brazen, bold-faced racketeering and sedition, stuff the judiciary" under trump 1. Also, saying that Obama's "goal" was to make healthcare more expensive smells like bullshit. Let's see some sources on that. Flawed and imperialistic though he may be, Obama put a good faith effort into taking the first step toward a socialized healthcare system, and was completely hamstrung by obstructionism. Finally, you need to put "subvert soviet imperialism, fuck over puerto rico, and engage in international scientific dick-sizing contests" under Kennedy. Other than that, and the fact that you skipped a few presidents in there (like "Carter: Try (and fail) to balance being a good human being with being the head of a jingoistic imperialist nation in the middle of a dick-sizing game of Connect4 where the countries of the world are the playing field and refusal to play could mean nuclear annihilation"), no further notes.
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Oh, you're right. Let's fix that.
- Carter: Imperialism, general failure.
I will give Carter this much, though. He definitely had the best post-presidency.
Also, no. For all his pretty speeches, Obama didn't make a good-faith effort to do anything except expand the war machine both internationally and domestically, make rich people wealthier, and expand the power of the presidency. (Hell, remember the 'Kill List'?)
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