You wouldn’t believe how popular this sentiment is on the right-wing/New Age side of the internet. It’s bullshit.
Regulation isn’t free. It costs money to compel for-profit companies to comply with the rules that benefit them in the long run, but cost in the short run. Conservatives don’t like that, and want to be free to ignore, for instance, conservation regulations (I know, it’s sad that conservatives don’t like conservation). Now the Supreme Court is getting into the act.
On New England fishing boats, cramming another person into a space that barely fits a half-dozen employees already is a big ask. But the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Commerce, requires that herring fisheries notify it before embarking on fishing trips, and on half of such trips, a federal inspector rides along. The inspector checks the crew’s compliance with federal rules about where they can fish, how many of which types of fish they can catch, and what kind of gear they can use in the process. The rule also requires that companies help foot the bill for its inspectors’ salaries—about $710 a day. Fishery owners say this reduces their annual returns by about 20 percent.
Last year, four fisheries challenging the rule asked the Supreme Court to put a stop to this practice. And last week, the Court granted certiorari in the case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The justices will hear oral argument sometime next fall.
You can trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing, right? Ha ha, no. The Supreme Court doesn’t believe in science.
The Supreme Court is one of the most scientifically illiterate bodies in government, but why don’t we let it take over federal regulation? That is the basic question behind Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, scheduled for argument next month at the Supreme Court, and it should scare you. To those only recently paying attention, the court’s disdain for the scientific consensus, as evidenced in cases like West Virginia v. EPA, may seem surprising. However, even before the installation of its conservative supermajority, the court had long viewed scientific evidence that runs contrary to its policy preferences with contempt.
Skepticism of an inconvenient scientific consensus is nothing new for the Supreme Court, particularly for the conservatives. In Stanford v. Kentucky, the 1989 case on the constitutionality of capital punishment for 16- and 17-year-olds, Justice William Brennan pointed out the conservative majority’s “evident but misplaced disdain” for scientific evidence, particularly that of the social sciences. In Lockhart v. McCree, Justice William Rehnquist took it upon himself to disregard 14 of 15 submitted peer-reviewed studies, stating that the only reliable study happened to be the one that supported his position, contrary to the scientific consensus. Chief Justice John Roberts has gone so far as to call certain fields “sociological gobbledygook.”
Conservatives’ dislike of science does not stop at social sciences, though. In recent years, conservative justices have made statements completely at odds with the scientific consensus, including saying that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and taking the position that a surface connection between navigable waters is necessary for pollution of wetlands to matter. There is a strong scientific consensus contrary to each of these contentions, but the conservative justices chose to disregard it in favor of their prior opinions.
This is what happens when you let theocrats pack the courts. The only laws they’ll accept are the ones they’ve invented for themselves. You may recall this notorious quote.
The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [The New York Times Magazine]
That’s the law of the land now.
In the end Nature wins.. & the cost of ignoring the actual tangible reality of the environment and climate.. Incalculably cruel and destructive for us all.
Even the SCOTUS “Justices” & super-rich..
This was during the Bush administration and about the war in Iraq.
And, how did that turn out anyway.
It was a failure that cost the USA $2 trillion and killed 4,500 American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis.
Two of those dead were my friends who were killed in Iraq.
The Bush administration ended up as a mistake we don’t even think about very often any more.
It doesn’t look like making up your own reality works.
It doesn’t work.
We saw this a lot with the last pandemic, Covid-19 virus.
There were two related types of reality deniers.
.1. The Covid-19 virus deniers who denied that the virus existed or that it caused serious and sometimes fatal illnesses.
Thousands of these at least, died in hospital ICUs, from blood clotting and lack of oxygen while still claiming that the virus didn’t exist.
.2. The closely related group with a large overlap, antivaxxers.
It’s estimated that 340,000 antivaxxers died from the Covid-19 virus who would otherwise have lived had they been vaccinated.
To this day, they are still dying from what is now a preventable disease.
The vaccines themselves were major achievements of modern science and saved an estimated 3.2 million lives in the USA.
Denying reality can cost anyone a lot.
It’s amusing that many of the antivaxxers claim the vaccines are part of a doomsday weapon and have microchips that will activate and kill everyone who were vaccinated.
The death activation day keeps getting pushed out as none of us are suddenly dropping dead.
As we used to say, you can lead IDiots to data but you can’t make them think.
raven, lost a buddy in Iraq as well. Stupid rollover accident after the roadside gave way and command refused to allow evacuation by air.
Suffice it to say that the decision maker experienced a terminal halt in their career progression when the general found out. I honestly thought he was going to shoot that officer.
Oh, pro tip, don’t be in the room when the general is writing one of those letters home. Nobody is in a good mode when writing those to families.
@3. raven : Then there’s the impacts of Gobal Overheating making themselves ever more gruesomely, horrendously obvious. Happening now and getting ever worse and worse..
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
Intro (excerpt) :
On the positive side, those federal judges only hold their position for life.
When the peasants arrive with torches and pitchforks and dragging Mme Guillotine, the magistrates will not fare any better than the cleptocrats they serve.
The poor and the middle class object to being badly governed. The rich and the super-rich object to being governed at all.
Reality creators?! Theists believe in a Reality Creator, but claiming to be reality creators?
Someone’s thoughts on a different kind of magic.
From 1965, a time that wasn’t quite as dismal as today.
Do You Believe in Magic
Song by The Lovin’ Spoonful
Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart?
How the music can free her whenever it starts
And it’s magic if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul
But it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout a rock ‘n’ roll
If you believe in magic, don’t bother to choose
If it’s jug band music or rhythm and blues
Just go and listen, it’ll start with a smile
That won’t wipe off your face no matter how hard you try
Your feet start tapping, and you can’t seem to find
How you got there, so just blow your mind
If you believe in magic, come along with me
We’ll dance until morning ’til there’s just you and me
And maybe if the music is right
I’ll meet you tomorrow sorta late at night
And we’ll go dancing baby, then you’ll see
How the magic’s in the music, and the music’s in me
Yeah, do you believe in magic?
Yeah, believe in the magic of the young girl’s soul
Believe in the magic of a rock ‘n’ roll
Believe in the magic that can set you free
Ahh, talking ’bout the magic
Do you believe in magic?
(Do you believe like I believe?) Do you believe, believer?
(Do you believe like I believe?) Do you believe in magic?
(Do you believe like I believe?) Do you believe in magic?
yes yes! it is hubris and blasphemy for the conservative who allege faith in the christian god to say such crap let alone believe it. They do act on it however which is clear as it can be. If they truly believed in a god who created reality I would think they would be interested in understanding how the reality that the god made worked.
When I was a child I was sent to catholic school which focused on pride as the prime and first sin which made sense and still makes sense and brought to light the hypocrisy by contrast it is what drove me out of religion. It will destroy the current civilization if it is persisted in.
I think that infamous quote might have been misinterpreted. The way I read i, the anonymous aide is saying that while liberals think that research and studying the world will somehow solve its problems, the right, on the other hand, ACTS on their ideology and makes the world they way they want it.
Akira: You may be right — but I’m not sure one can trust reich-wing ideologues to understand the difference between the two interpretations.
the problem with that is reality does not give a shit what you believe it is. you can try to impose your will over reality if you want to but you will fail in the end.
True; but when you’re a really big and powerful country, a huge block of voters won’t be exposed to the reality, or the consequences of denying it; so they can keep on voting for denialist policies that make them feel good, and by the time they’re fully face-to-face with reality, it will be way too late to fix anything.
@10 pleasant memory brought up . Hadn’t thought about the song in decades.
As far a global warming denial or other science denial by fundies, a lot of Christians think that science denial is blasphemous as you’re lying about what God created. Anyway conservatives do have their own kind of bizarre reality that is based on ignorance and lies.
As others have pointed out, that quotation is from the Iraq war. We had a chance to put a stop to it, but instead Obama told us to “look forward, not backward” and refused to prosecute anybody for over a million dead and over $2 trillion from the US treasury. I won’t call him a traitorous imbecile because there are still people who seriously think he was a good person, but at this point it’s almost impossible not to think — we certainly would not have had Trump if George W. Bush had gone to prison for Iraq.
But then, if George W. Bush had gone to prison for Iraq, the Democratic Senators who — according to the then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee — had been specifically warned, two weeks before the vote, that every claim about Iraq made by the Bush administration was either provably false or completely unprovable either way, and then voted for the war anyway against the will of a majority of Democratic voters and sometimes a majority of their state population, those Senators would have had some major PR problems, and we couldn’t embarrass those lying warmongers Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, after all. Where would the Democrats be if Hillary’s ability to screw up everything she touches were to be compromised before she could run for President? To say nothing of the fact that Obama wanted to make sure there was no precedent that telling lies to start a war was a prosecutable offense — it would have made him have to back off on Libya, or all the drone-bombing he ordered.
To put it bluntly: this is not a problem confined to the religious right, or the Republican Party, or even the right wing in general (which de facto includes most of the establishment Democrats at this point). If Democrats are willing to support politicians who back up these people, then these people will run things. You want change? Replace all the current officeholders in the Democratic Party with people who actually have some principles, and then maybe this could be addressed. Instead, you have Biden in the Oval Office, the guy who declared the Covid emergency over when infection rates are higher than they were when lockdown was declared, and pretends that arming Israel has nothing to do with genocide. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Quelle surprise everything’s the Democratic party’s fault according to the Vicar of the Church of Perpetual Foot-shooting.
Which party put the last three SCOTUS “Justices” in place again?
Politics is the art of .. what again? Stubbornly insisting on principles that can’t get anything doen becuase nobody budges and so nothing can be compromised on to get something rather than nothing?
If we can’t get Trump impeached and jailed for Jan 6th what chance getting Bush impeached or jailed for the Iraq War?
Yes in order to progress we need a mother-may-I from the very people who are fucking up the world.
Isn’t democracy… great? 🙄
@ ^ Akira MacKenzie : Democracy needs a lot of reforms and improvements – especially in the USA.
Maybe, sometimes I think a revolution – but the problem is the results of those can also be really horrific and lead to the opposite of the ideal results.
Meanwhile we have the system we have and so have to make the best of it whilst trying to improve it somehow.
What’s the alternative and how will that work? How can we get that alternative successfully?
Honestly, while I also am real tired of Vicar’s constant “both sidism”, I don’t think he is always entirely wrong. The problem though is that the system, as it stands, with only two parties, and nothing to curtail complete control by those only two parties (such that any third party has zero effective chance of winning a presidency, or a significant number in any branch, is that we keep ending up in a race for, “My current party won’t listen to me! I need to run to the other party.” During the civil rights movement this saw a shift by those crowing “freedom” in terms of bigotry and privilege running to the right, where they could then also crow “god and tradition!”. As this backfired, disastrously, we have seen a shift the other direction, with everyone that can’t stand fascism, dominionism, and all other flavors of, “I just know I am right, and will ignore actual reality.”, among other trends among the new right, back to the Democrats. This creates mutually, if not outright hostile, contradictions – such as having generally socially conservative “libertarians” crowing about freedom and deregulation, at the same time other parts of the party are crying for more regulation to support conservation, clean water, etc. And its not the only case where the Democratic party is forced to try to represent itself with a candidate for president that at least “tries” on some level to pander to 50 different contradictory sub-groups, who, again, sometimes aggressively contradict each other’s understanding of how the world does, or should, work.
Now, will diversity is all well and good, it works best when each diverse group is able to bring things to the table, argue over whether or not their idea makes sense, and actually have to compromise, or in some cases be proven to just be plain wrong about their ideas. It is a disaster when you have to try to find someone to represent all of this contradiction for 4 years, with the result inevitably being, given its politicians we are dealing with, some centrist with not always coherent policy, that is deemed palatable purely because their own cognitive dissonance allows them to hold a few dozen self contradictory views, all at the same time, and thus can be convinced to side with every one of these contradictory factions, even to the point of doing one thing today that, say, supports the people, and tomorrow doing the exact opposite (like denying their is a problem with cops), while seeming oblivious to the fact that these things are mutually antagonistic. And, as Trump has had more and more of a melt down, and the Republicans have doubled down on support for his madness, we see more than more “jumping ship”, many of them voters, but some of them politicians. Most of them are “not” jumping to a third party, they are jumping, because its the only viable alternative they can see, to the Democrats.
Now.. do you imagine this is going to make Democratic policy “more coherent”, or less, as all the still very conservative, but not entirely crazy, people leap the fence to join the opposition? And, how wide does that, once again, grow the gap between the party’s various “sub-factions”?
Its still better than the alternative, but its not at all optimal, and it makes it that much harder to elect real progressives, instead of something increasingly like a pre-Reagan Republican. Heck, the very fact that such a person “is” more Democrat than even some Democrats today, never mind all Republicans, is imho, a real problem.
Vicar’s problem isn’t that he is entirely wrong, its in assuming that there is any way in hell of fixing this without clear changes in the way parties work in the US system. Case in point – its estimated by some that if disenfranchised voters jump ship from Biden in the next election, to vote “No labels”, and somehow Trump is allowed to run at all, the SOLE result of this will be to take votes from Biden, and that, if we can trust any of the polls right now (which we probably can’t, but still…), it will result in votes only being taken from Biden, and Trump winning reelection.
This is a terrifying prospect, but its the mess we have – a vote for a third party is unlikely to result in a third party candidate winning, and the current “front running” in one of the parties is a lunatic, who has already only avoided fascist acts the last time in office by being told no by other people, after ordering other to do something, and has promised to suspend the constitution, erase the legislature, rewrite the constitution, and place all power in the presidency – on day one in office. And.. there are people that might let him do this, or at least try to. All it takes is for him to succeed, even temporarily, and all the, “But, he is immune!”, idiots in the rest of the government failing to have him immediately arrested for it. How likely do you imagine that would be?
Third party, without significant changes in how things work, is disaster, no matter how screwed up the two major parties are at this point – or maybe “especially” given how screwed up they are.
O hai Vicar @17, I see your “only the Democrats have agency” bullshit is still going strong, you tedious wanker.
@ ^ Akira MacKenzie : Democracy needs a lot of reforms and improvements – especially in the USA.
Great. How long will that take? Will it be before climate change kills us all because the majority voted that they prefer spewing carbon into the atmosphere because car “go vroom-vroom?” How about before Musk, Thiel, and other millionaires/billionaires make slaves of all because the majority voted that capitalism is peachy keen because Aunt Sally’s made $20 profit this year selling cheap bric-a-brac on Etsy? (Next year, she COULD make $25.)
Democracy will never work because people are ignorant, greedy, and selfish–especially in the USA.
Unfortunately if enough people play your stupid game, the prize will be Trump returning to the White House.
Psychologically, Akira, you are a fascist, although I accept that you do not adhere to fascist ideology: you share the fascist contempt for people and the half-concealed wish for cataclysmic destruction. I don’t think this is sustainable, which is why you’re the only commenter here who it would not surprise me to learn had carried out a mass-shooting.
@ 26
That’s not fascism. That’s just objective truth. People lie and believe lies. People pollute. People rape. People make the same stupid decisions, over, and over, and over; never learning. Capitalism. Religion. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia/Transphobia. All these cancers exist because of people who refuse to be corrected and are allowed to spread their filth because “freedom.”
I fucking HATE other people. I don’t fucking trust them.
Because the American system is beyond fixing. The product of rich, white, genocidal, slave-owners, it’s is spoiled since it’s inception. It can’t be “fixed.” It can’t be reformed. It all has to go: Congress, SOCTUS, executive branch. It needs to be replaced with something better. Something socialist. Something atheist. Something good.
THE SYSTEM THAT EXIST NOW ISN”T SUSTAINABLE! WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE SO MUCH FOR THESE RIGHT-WING TRASH WHO WANT TO MAKE US SLAVES TO THE RICH, POISON OUR PLANET, AND SHOVE THEIR FILTHY GOD DOWN OUR THROATS??
Why can’t you see what I see?
I won’t dignify the mass shooter crack with a response.
Yes, it is. That you don’t recognise it is simply another symptom of your psychopathology.
As is that.
That can’t be done by hate, or haters.
It wasn’t a crack; it is a genuine concern.
Well, if mass shooters makes people ever so happy there was one at UNLV, apparently a 67 year old professor applied there and have since murdered some there. University police ended his rampage.
Shall we now talk about the relative merits of a thermonuclear war?
@Akira — I definitely know how it can feel, but the horrible people are, by and large, in the minority. The problem, on the whole, is not that people are irredeemably evil — it’s that most people are complacent. Granted, the impact of such is damn near indistinguishable, so frustration is very much warranted. We’re going to need revolutionary change for sure. If you have the time and energy (and I know quite well that neither of those is a given, believe me), even small amounts of volunteer work in your community could help with movement building — and we’re going to need a movement.
To the rest of you replying to Vicar and Akira — Vicar is correct in his assessment of the problem. He just is. That doesn’t mean we abandon all hope, or vote Republican, or for the robber baron scum calling themselves No Labels, obviously, though. Seriously, you’re responding like the least logical Republicans do whenever leftists criticize capitalism — you know, the whole “but what about Stalin and his eleventy billion people killed?!?!?!” That is not the only alternative. Quit pretending it is. I know Vicar can be cynical, defeatist, and accelerationist at times, but he’s not making any of those arguments now, nor is he even necessarily implying them.
@ Jemolk Yeah, I don’t agree with your mischaracterization of us all being “But what about Stalin….” I would say that a fair number of us recognize that we need something more equitable and that a more socialist society would be better. There is “always” the risk, when trying for this, that you get “strong man” leaders involved in the process, and the end result is not power to the people, but some utter madman declaring that the government itself is somehow, “The people”, this is just a variation of the idiocy that the US engaged in in recent decades of declaring corporations as people, not as having some, perhaps, limited rights to similar protected speech, which sort of makes some sense, in that all organizations should have the right to represent their interested, but rather that they are legally “people”, and as such they can ignore the will of real people inside them, in favor of using vastly greater power and money to literally trample the speech of the very people that work in them – by buying politicians, among other madness. Stalinism, and other variations on it is much the same thing – “We are declaring us, the government, as the people, therefor you pesky actual people no longer have to do anything, like make decisions for yourselves, have a say in the law, or any annoying rights, privileges, property, etc. that ‘we the people’ decide you don’t need.” We also recognize quite well that its the Republicans that are almost always harping about how X group or other, “Shouldn’t be allowed to use the money we give them for Y, or maybe even their own money either. Until they become rich, like me, they don’t deserve the right to make such choices for themselves!”, among other ideas that go straight back to Stalinist systems, where some elite idiots decide what everyone else “deserves”, based on how valuable the state thinks they are, and not what was “intended” by communism, which was that the freaking people themselves decide what their value is, and they own the places they work at – not the government.
That being said, knowing this, and avoiding accidentally falling into the traps created by nearly 100 years of propaganda that says that, “All socialism is on some level the government telling you what to do, and owning things while you don’t.”, is difficult – its probably not dissimilar to what ex-evangelicals go through, all the damn time (and heck, even I occasionally go through as someone who never really attended church), when, having become and atheist, someone starts spouting things about god and what god wants, and/or how something they are doing is wrong because of religion. You know its bullshit, you know they are wrong, the few moments you contemplate a world in which either their god exists, and really wants what they say, never mind that they might get the power to implement it is mortally terrifying, because you recognize the madness of the idea, but maybe you actually caught yourself sympathizing with some of their madness – because you grew up with that madness.
There is a certain paralysis in, “We have seen what the wrong people, put in charge of what should be good alternatives, have done to turn those alternatives into something far worse than what we are already dealing with. Do we really have a plan to avoid that happening to us?”, and knowing that, historically, even when someone seems to be semi-successful at it, there is always the fascist types, waiting in the wings, to point out what “isn’t” working, and suggest, “Ah, but if you just did this….”, and take us down the wrong version of those ideas, while society blindly dances to the piper. And, that is a legitimate fear, even if its often misplaced, and does leave people having no idea how to get to the right path, without stepping on a land mine.
So, cut people some slack.
@26. Akira MacKenzie :
Yes. Some People. Not ALL people but some.
Also some people tell the truth and work to uncover the truth. Some people work to clean up and remediate and stop pollution. Most people don’t rape & want rapists brought to justice and stopped from raping others. Some people don’t make the same stupid decisions, over, and over, and over; and do love learning & always try to become better people. Socialists. Secularists. anti-Racists. Feminists. Queer and trans activists. Civil Rights campaigners. All these exist because of people who are willing to be to be corrected and are allowed to spread their care, empathy and love and work to make things better for everyone because “freedom”, ethics, humanity and beliefs in compassion, science, humanism and more.
I agree with your last sentence. I agree with your second sentence. But I’m not sure that it can’t be fixed and I certainly think people need to start trying harder to actually fix it.
The second part of that – the idea that KG (& presumably others) care for “right wing trash” is a nion-sequiteur and doesn’;t add up to the first part.
Theres also anumber of reasons in terms of basic empathy, friends and family relations, the wish for all people to get and learn better. The fact that there’s more to any person than just their political views, etc..
@Kagehi That is in general a fair thing to ask. Here, though, my intent was primarily to ask you to extend that same respect, benefit of the doubt, and empathy to Vicar, Akira, and their arguments. This whole tangent started with Vicar harshly criticizing the Democrats and suggesting that they were complicit in the harm the Republicans cause, remember. And the immediate response implicitly assumed that this constituted an endorsement of voting for either the Republicans or the No Labels crowd, or of not voting at all. I know Vicar has taken that angle before, but it’s not inherently implied by “there’s no real fixing this system wholly from within” that we cannot attempt to prevent it from imploding into fascism completely before we have our other support systems at least semi-functional. It’s that presumption, that way of criticizing Vicar’s argument, that I was trying to compare to the “but stalin!!1!” response to criticisms of capitalism. The comparison somewhat applies even if that was where Vicar was going, incidentally, because at best, you’re missing the core of the argument in favor of tearing into the low-hanging fruit. Even assuming that presumption is correct, you could convince them, perhaps, that it is better to vote for Democrats, to maintain the current system in the short term, but you’re not going to manage it like this.
@ 29. Jemolk : I agree with what you wrote in respose to Akira MacKenzie.
However :
I really don’t think so & disagree. Vicar is right to point out some flaws and problems with the Democratic party & people but the way he blames everything on the Democratic party and some of their people esp former presidential nominees including ones that won the majority of votes above everything else? That’s just not accurate or fair and annoys me. Place the blame where its desereved – sure. But not where it’s not and don’t only blame one side when multiple sides incl third parties deserve a share of the blame for things that happened in the past.
Don’t blame Democrats for what Repugs choose to do. Don’t think everything is all the Democrats fault when they aren’t responsible for doing X and tried to stop X and don’t say all Democrats think and support X when there is a huge diversity of sometmes – often – conflicting view swithin the differnet democrats. That’s wghere Vicar gets it badly wrong I think.
@StevoR #33 I don’t think that’s either the only nor the proper way to read Vicar’s argument. The Democrats are partially to blame as well as the Republicans, but that the Republicans are awful has already been addressed here. Remember where he said that the problems are not limited to the Republicans or even the right wing? That acknowledges in its basic assumptions that the Republicans are culpable as well. It is saying that you are limiting your criticism too much and stopping applying it before it stops applying, not that you were wrong to criticize the people you were criticizing, and you should instead apply it only to the Dems.
How do you propose to accomplish that? Do you think the force of arms will be needed? What do you suggest be done with those who might disagree on just what constitutes something better or good? Maybe a benevolent leader or king could manage for a while to help us through the transition like a Cromwell who could acct like a kind of big brother to help and guide us.,
Could we devise a way in which we all could investigate by reasoning or argument what we should do. It would be very difficult if everyone spoke at once, there are millions here in the California where I am and many many more every where else, that would be very impractical to say the least. Maybe we could devise some system that could allow us to chose some smaller number of people to speak for the larger total number of people who would consult with the larger number to understand what their ideas are on how to proceed.
you know kind of re-invent the wheel so to speak
I am angry, frustrated, frightened and impatient but not so much so that I want “The One Ring” nor do I want anyone else to have it.
Yeah, kind of hope its not “force of arms”. Seriously, from a purely historical standpoint the only “revolutions” that have, ever, been successful to both a) replace an existing government, and b) with something better, have always been ones in which there was a clear plan, a founding document, and clear leaders with real intent to write something, on day one, that was actually better, before the first shot we ever fired by said revolutionaries. Every single one that has been purely a manifesto, with a no clear leader, or where a single leader rose from the ranks, and they went about trying to define what the F they wanted only after the fact, has 99.9% of the time ended up with someone like Trump in charge of the “new state” from the moment the enemies of this new state finally surrendered. As screwed up as the US system is, and its founding on, “Rich male people with land should get the vote, and only them.”, as much as its been modified since, it was a) still an improvement, and b) they where already freaking planning the whole thing, and what the “better” system would look like, while still trying to negotiate a solution that didn’t result in them revolting in the first place.
All I here from most revolutionaries on the subject of our broken system is the same madness you get from a Republican when talking about immigration reform, or anything else they don’t actually want to, or give a damn to, actual fix – “We need to break things, then after we will sit down and write something to replace it. We promise!” Except.. when replacing a body of law, like a constitution, you can’t just smash something to pieces, then “eventually get around to fixing it”. This won’t work. Its better to fight to patch the holes in the boat, rather than pretend you will just magically build another one, from the resulting wreckage, after it sinks, or you intentionally scuttle it. All this does is leave you chin deep in water, and prey to any ass who already built one to come along and go, “Wow! You’re awfully wet. You can get on my boat, but thing is, I have some rules…” And, desperate people, people you “made” desperate by smashing things to scrap, will leap to any hand that grants them safety, regardless of how much they might regret the choice later, after they realize just how scummy their new captain really is.
I really hate the existing system, but I don’t think throwing everyone under the bus as being all equally bad is going to get us any place, and yeah, the whole “The One Ring” thing too. But, there are plenty of people out there that would, and may even have plans to make, such a ring, and see the collapse of the system as the “way in” to becoming its owner – regardless of who “wins” in a revolution. This disturbs me far more than the slow, often painful, progress we actually have made, and the constant backsliding, towards fixing the shit wrong with our government in less radical ways.
My preferred solution is dual power — building post-capitalist support structures within capitalism. Food Not Bombs, mutual aid networks in general, stuff like that. Much the same sorts of community work that the Black Panthers were doing; the things that got J. Edgar Hoover to conclude that they were an enormous threat to existing powers. You’re right that we have to have something to offer before and during any prospective revolution if we want any hope of winning. You’re also right that nonviolence would be preferable, but I don’t think we’re going to be allowed that option.
I also don’t think reform is a real option anymore. Not with the climate crisis threatening to cause civilizational collapse all on its own. At this point, any reform we could win through simply patching up the current system and hoping will be too little too late. We need to be prepared to win a fight over who gets to rebuild civilization even if we don’t intend to detonate the current system ourselves. Not a pleasant thought, nor a desirable outcome, but we shouldn’t be pretending it can’t happen. It also doesn’t mean there’s no room for optimism. I still believe, in the face of everything, that most people are basically good, and that we can build a world based on community, compassion, trust, and mutual aid.
To be honest, I am not so sure reform is impossible, but its a flipping uphill battle. The problem, as I said, is that what ever the intent of the person running local might have been, once they try to move into the higher levels of government they have to, “play ball”, this means, from day one, compromising a lot of their ideals, just to “fit it”, and not have those already in there smack them down, run someone else against them, etc. However… we have seen many cases, and I do mean many, in which the Democrats actually did exactly that – running someone for office against someone else they deemed, “too radical to play ball properly”, and the radical won. People are tired of this crap, and they are working to change it, and it is getting changed, by electing better people, not yet the best, or even in some cases “adequate”, but definitely far better. The problem though is that in every single place in which people are not paying attention, not fighting back, or worse, are listening to media sources that lie to them constantly, they keep falling for the false promises of the con artists and/or “settling” for the “party choice”.
Its hard to see, because all progress right now is basically “we the people” on a bicycle, staring at a freaking hill we have to climb to get there, but more and more people are recognizing that “down” is the wrong path, and the hills are, barely, almost imperceptibly, and too slow for some people’s taste, but still barely, getting less steep.
And, yeah, part of that is all the shit you mentioned Jemolk, because even the corrupt politicians, once they allow themselves to realize that they can’t stop change, will invariably try to capitalize on it (and lose to people that actually give a crap, instead of only pretending, in the long term). But, we keep expecting a top down solution, but 100% of everything that is working is bottom up, and starts with “local” people getting fed up, doing what is necessary rebuild things for themselves, and yeah, eventually the politicians getting dragged along as a result. Its rather similar to how “reform” happens in the church. lol It never comes from “inside” the church, it is always in reaction to the need by the church to try to remain relevant at all, while the world changes in spite of their attempts to prevent it.
Detonating things, by contrast, just leaves holes for even worse rats to crawl into. It always does.