Comment by notabot@lemm.ee on Democrats: You have to vote for democrats to stop Trump from round up people and shipping them to concentration camps for slave labor.

Also Democrats: Ve shall round up und eradicate ze undesirables from society!!! Ve shall put zem into ze camps and ve shall enslave them to benefit ze superior class!!!

https://fxtwitter.com/lastreetcare/status/1806869510483476829

packing the courts is explicitly something Biden has said he will not do, so, lol

Yeah, he’s definitely not playing smart there, although he has said that the next president will likely be able to appoint two new members to the supreme court, which sounds like a hint that he wants to swing the balance. I know he’s again expanding the court, which would be the easy short term fix, and that sort of makes sense as it makes it easier for the next guy to do it too, or at least reduces the resistance to it.

If you pack the court, the point is to then ram through laws that strengthen your position so that it’s harder for the other side to feasibly challenge it, to pack the court in the other direction. You can’t change things without exerting power, and the court is a tool of authority. You gotta use and abuse that.

That’s fair, but ‘harder for the other side to feasibly challenge it’ doesn’t mean impossible, and so it’ll inevitably get pushed back the other way at some point, and then you’re the other side in that equation. Yes, the Democrats should be much more willing to exert power when they have it, and much more willing to entrench that power when they can. It seems to be a weakness in most mainstream left wing (left compared to the parties they stand against, not necessarily actual left), they always seem to squabble amongst themselves and refuse the easy wins in front of them.

Well, yes, the opposition might successfully wrest power back, and pack the court back in their direction. But where does that end up? Right to where we are now. There’s nothing lost by trying. The court is already reactionary. We might as well try to change something.

If you’re talking about increasing the number on the supreme court, then you get into a crazy level of one-upsmanship. Each president adds more justices until it becomes entirely unmanageable, with dozens of them, all appointed for life, doing their own thing. Replacing justices who haven’t upheld the highest standards of behaviour, or have, for instance, blatantly taken bribes, should absolutely happen. Hopefully you put in people who don’t fall to those sorts of behaviours, so the opposite party can’t easily replace them.

Yes, that’s certainly the case, but the Dems do seem to also provide some level of friction to the Republicans cranking the wheel right. The question is whether to remove that friction and give the Republicans more leverage, or to increase it, knowing that it probably wont turn much back, but might stop things getting worse so quickly in the hope that next time around enough (as in an electorally significant number of) people are angry enough that they actually push the Dems for what they want at the beginning of the term, not right at the end.

in the hope that next time around enough (as in an electorally significant number of) people are angry enough that they actually push the Dems

You are demonstrating that you do not understand the most basic point of the analogy.

next time around enough (as in an electorally significant number of) people are angry enough that they actually push the Dems for what they want at the beginning of the term, not right at the end.

This is your thesis throughout this thread so please give examples of when the Democratic party have done inverted their position on a policy they didn’t support at the election, on the basis that people lobbied for the change only immediately after the election.

It’s not that he’s “not playing smart,” JUST FUCKING THINK! IF he has an option, and he CHOOSES to not use that option, he MUST SUPPORT the current state of things!

FUCKING

THINK

PAST

THE

PROPAGANDA

It depends on which version of ‘pack the courts’ you mean. Increasing the numbers just leads to an arms race that achieves little beyond a brief window where the presidents side has more justices, before the next president just increases the number again to swing it their way. Alternatively, telling all the ageing justices of your persuasion to get out while you can replace them with younger people makes more sense, and he and all previous Dem presidents absolutely should have done so, and not doing so is not smart. I’m not sure it’s so much them supporting the current state as thinking their opponents will play fair, which is even more colossally stupid.

I hope that at no point have I suggested the Democrats or Biden are a good choice, just that they’re a less immediately terrible choice than the Republicans and trump. The Felon has made it clear that he will enthusiastically support and extend all the worst positions the Dems have taken and also want to be a dictator. Neither is a good choice, but one is worse.

They do not think their opponents play fair. They are FULLY AWARE of it. They exist to manufacture consent for right wing policies, suppress leftist populist movements, and provide a pressure relief outlet for popular sentiment.

Maybe my position isn’t quite as cynical as yours. I don’t think they exists just to do as you say above, rather they are just rather ineffective and bicker publicly far more than their opponents, leading to much the same outcome. Yes, they need to sort themselves out and start acting in the best interests of the country. The only way they’ll do that is if they have a clear and consistent message from a large enough proportion of the electorate to make it worth their while. Were it pretty much anyone except trump, I’d say making an example of Biden would make sense, but considering reality I don’t think that’s wise.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

That assumes competence on the part of all participants, which I don’t believe to be the case. Incompetence gives the same outcome, but can, theoretically, be fixed.

What are you going to do if the next republican just packs the court anyway?They can just do that you know.

They can, and will certainly try. The best way to stop that is to ensure the Republicans don’t get that power.

So Biden should pack the courts with justices that will declare an election in Trump’s favor invalid?

I suspect that civil war lies that way. Winning the election would probably be a better approach. Neither Biden nor trump have many years left, and I suspect neither will contest the next election. Once trump is no longer running the republican show I think/hope there is a chance that the cult of personality around him will fall apart and they’ll be able to drift back towards a sane position over time, which should make things a little safer.

Violence from the right toward the left is already happening. All that’s needed for a civil war is shooting back.

The next election WILL NEVER BE BETTER. That is pure wishful thinking.

How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

-Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

It has been like this since well before either of us were alive, and it will be this way until climate change kills us all unless we stop believing the grand lie of electoralism and realize that politics happens more than once every four years.

Violence from the right toward the left is already happening. All that’s needed for a civil war is shooting back.

Yes, that’s true, and it’s not just the left but minorities of all kinds too. I would rather find a way of walking back from that brink, rather than deliberately pushing the country over it.

It has been like this since well before either of us were alive, and it will be this way until climate change kills us all unless we stop believing the grand lie of electoralism and realize that politics happens more than once every four years.

If by that you mean that the electorate need to be engaged with politics more than every four years, then yes, absolutely. That’s why I keep saying people should be in contact with their representatives regularly, so they know your name and what you stand for. That should be happening in large groups ideally as it becomes hard to ignore when the numbers start putting you at risk of losing the next election.

Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.

No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank

Dunk posts in general go in the_dunk_tank, not here

Don’t post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from the_dunk_tank

Democrats: You have to vote for democrats to stop Trump from round up people and shipping them to concentration camps for slave labor.(hexbear.net)

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