Republicans have such a fucking easy job.
Run on “Government doesn’t work! We need less of it!” and then once you have the job, do fucking nothing except obstruct, obstruct, obstruct to make sure jack shit gets done so you can turn around and say “See, the government doesn’t work, we need to get rid of it!”
And for the cost, they get to retire with nice government pensions and better healthcare than any of their voters will ever see.
I hate this fucking planet.
This is not just a partisan issue. As the article points out, its been like this for 30 years. The Dems failed to pass any meaningful legislation too.
It’s because it makes gobs of money that both parties are taking, and it also kind of projects US power to other countries since US tech is doing most of the data collection.
The only Dem I know who even bothers to talk about this stuff is our local senator Ron Wyden. Apart from that, most seem satisfied with the status quo.
Relax bidey-bro, this thread is about data privacy laws, not general stuff. The only relevant one I’m aware of is DMCA, which was in fact signed into law by Bill Clinton.
And for the cost, they get to retire with nice government pensions and better healthcare than any of their voters will ever see.
They get way more than just that if they are good little piggies for the ownership class. They get “advisory” positions and board membership that give massive salaries for doing fuck-all as they already did their “job” in government. Totes not a bribe of course, because technicallyyyyy…
Congress is an organ of the ruling class and always has been. When they (rarely) do something seemingly against ruling class interests, it is still a strategem to best keep the capitalism boat afloat (it tries to sink every 5-10 years).
Sure, Congress is corrupt, but it always has been. The system is working more or less as designed. And if you want to oppose this design, the system is also designed to fight you to the death. And funneling all of your capacity into sheepdog voting is how your masters tell you you should oppose them. So if you want to oppose this system, you must become informed as to how it functions and join up with like-minded individuals to develop actually effective means of resistance.
Such as?
Learning media criticism, history, political economy, and how past groups have organized takes a decent amount of time. Namely, socialist theory. So does unlearning the ideological falsehoods that cloud our ability to think and investigate. And so does recognizing what builds power, what actions are effective, what cooption looks like and how to counter it, etc. So I don’t recommend just doing one thing, but instead working from where you are to be closer to a stronger consciousness. I suppose the closest thing to a single recommendation I can give is humility and curiosity around all of the aforementioned topics and to give people grace IRL when you begin working with an organization.
If you are interested in reading recommendations and info about your thoughts on politics I’d be happy to think of something you might appreciate. Or if you feel like you’re ready for action and are in the US I can recommend some orgs that are reasonably good to “start” with (many stay in them and that is also fine!).
This is a whole lot of conspiracy bs with no sources provided. But it includes the usual keywords “the system”, “design”, and “ruling class” so you can get your upvotes from like-minded fellows in your bubble.
Have you considered that politics and economics is a little bit more complicated and a lot of gears make the machine? But “the elite pulling the strings” is much easier to understand and you conveniently get an enemy.
This is a whole lot of conspiracy bs with no sources provided.
It’s not a conspiracy, it’s out in the open. I don’t know what claims you would want sources for. Feel free to ask.
But it includes the usual keywords “the system”, “design”, and “ruling class” so you can get your upvotes from like-minded fellows in your bubble.
You might notice that this is a public community on a non-socialist instance. So, the opposite of what you are saying. Personally, I expected a mix of responses.
Have you considered that politics and economics is a little bit more complicated and a lot of gears make the machine?
Complexity vs. simplicity means nothing in this topic. What matters is identifying dominant powers and the mechanisms by which they function. Many of those mechanisms are somewhat complex, though not that complex that anyone can’t read about them and understand them if they actually want to.
Have you read any socialist theory?
But “the elite pulling the strings” is much easier to understand and you conveniently get an enemy.
Class conflict is actually something that emerges from base social interactions that constitute the primary economic system: how and why we work. The dominant class does have more realized power, by definition, but it is still subordinate to the mechanisms of the economic system itself.
For example, you cannot simply choose to be a nice business owner that pays everyone as much as they deserve. You will, eventually, get outcompeted by the business owners that will keep pay lower and profits higher. While small businesses are still commonly owned by petty tyrants, their loss to big box stores is an example of how a larger mass of profits can be leveraged to destroy the competition (initial low prices), then using monopoly status to earn even more profit by cutting wages and increasing prices.
The political class is just the functionaries of the state that serves the dominant class’s interests. You can call them elite because they personally get a bigger piece of the pie and have power on paper, but they are several rings lower on the hierarchy.
good luck with that… the bigger problem is that Americans are already demoralized to the point you cannot make the majority of them understand logic and reason, or science and proof for that matter, or they would already have this problem solved.
Boycott only works with niche products, you will never make a business stop using microsoft office.
Absolutely. I work for a company historically locked in Microsoft infrastructure. It’s taken me close to 7 years, but we’re finally finishing the migration of the in-house platform from Windows - only to kubernetes based and WEBGUI. Once that’s done, everyone gets to choose what they use (windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) and moving forward my boss agreed that all company laptops will be from System76.
So, yeah, 7 years, but I never quit. 2K+ employees.
They will take it seriously if their personal information becomes visible.
I’m 99% sure there are laws that specifically protect politicians from having their information exposed.
