News:

PD.Com: Pretention in a can.

Main Menu

Impotent Rant in F (for "futility") Minor

Started by tyrannosaurus vex, April 08, 2020, 07:40:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

tyrannosaurus vex

Donald Trump is not the problem.

He is an inevitable result of a society that overvalues profit and undervalues human lives. If Trump had never been born, we would have some other equally vile sack of excrement sitting in the Oval Office. He is symptomatic of our collective terror and ignorance around the pace of social change. Like God, if Trump did not exist, we would have to invent him.

In terms of the election this year, a vote against Trump is absolutely meaningless if it is also a vote *for* a return to the political and social status quo in which he arose. Any vote that is not essentially revolutionary will only serve to strengthen Trump's position -- specifically because it is the popular longing for a return to normalcy that created his presidency in the first place.

Voting for Biden is not a protest against Trump, it is a fear-based reactionary scramble for safety. As such, it is doomed from the start because all such scrambling only reinforces the political trajectory that has already culminated in Trump's election. Why would the country elect Biden, when we already have a president who embodies everything he stands for but without the cheap and frankly insulting veneer of faux civility?

Joe Biden opposes universal healthcare (he says everyone deserves "affordable" care, which is code for "healthcare should only exist as a side effect of making some asshole a billionaire"); he opposes network neutrality; he supports imperial wars; he supports propping up banana republics to secure resources; he opposes economic security for the working class (again, unless it makes a profit for someone). Personally he is a sex creep and he can barely string a sentence together better than Mango Mussolini can.

If you want to vote for Biden, please do it for the same reason I am doing it: so you can tell the useless liberals and centrists that you did play the game by their rules and we all still lost. Don't do it because you think there's any fundamental difference between Trump's outright fascism and the DNC's fascism-with-a-wink.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

The Wizard Joseph

You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

tyrannosaurus vex

Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on April 08, 2020, 08:22:23 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 08, 2020, 08:19:59 PM
What if I want bad things?

Then this is your year

You're fuck A right it is.  Except that this plague contains no zombies, and I would like a refund.
Molon Lube

Cramulus

yeah but there is a yuuge difference between Trump and Biden in terms of Supreme Court picks

not to mention dozens of other judicial appointees

middling environmental regulation is better than a fully captured EPA

Single Payer Heathcare for all > Obamacare > Trump fully dismantling and defunding Obamacare

etc etc etc

look, I'm not a fan of Biden, but I'm not buying the total equivalency between the two. A lot of this is letting the Perfect be the enemy of the Good.

Yes, Biden will probably lose, but can we recognize that's a self-fulfilling prophecy?


The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 08, 2020, 08:23:24 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on April 08, 2020, 08:22:23 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 08, 2020, 08:19:59 PM
What if I want bad things?

Then this is your year

You're fuck A right it is.  Except that this plague contains no zombies, and I would like a refund.

Infection bearing, fever delerious, well armed, and untreated people are practically rage zombies if you have enough of them. 
We'll see how things actually develop, but It's gonna get buck wild methinks.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cramulus on April 08, 2020, 08:24:42 PM
yeah but there is a yuuge difference between Trump and Biden in terms of Supreme Court picks

not to mention dozens of other judicial appointees

middling environmental regulation is better than a fully captured EPA

Single Payer Heathcare for all > Obamacare > Trump fully dismantling and defunding Obamacare

etc etc etc

look, I'm not a fan of Biden, but I'm not buying the total equivalency between the two. A lot of this is letting the Perfect be the enemy of the Good.

Yes, Biden will probably lose, but can we recognize that's a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Look, this isn't helping with the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Molon Lube

tyrannosaurus vex

Quote from: Cramulus on April 08, 2020, 08:24:42 PM
yeah but there is a yuuge difference between Trump and Biden in terms of Supreme Court picks

not to mention dozens of other judicial appointees

middling environmental regulation is better than a fully captured EPA

Single Payer Heathcare for all > Obamacare > Trump fully dismantling and defunding Obamacare

etc etc etc

look, I'm not a fan of Biden, but I'm not buying the total equivalency between the two. A lot of this is letting the Perfect be the enemy of the Good.

Yes, Biden will probably lose, but can we recognize that's a self-fulfilling prophecy?



I need to address my inability to get this idea across, to be honest. I am not saying Biden is morally or even functionally equivalent to Trump. As individual politicians with their own separate styles of speaking, thinking, and governing, they are oceans apart - as are the results, at least in the short term, that they will achieve. But that isn't my point.

What I'm saying is that Biden is part and parcel of a stagnant, obsolete status quo which inevitably leads to Trumpism. If Biden wins in 2020, well, that's great and all, but it just kicks the can down the road. Mainstream centrist liberalism is incapable of achieving fundamentally meaningful changes in American culture. An America led by Biden will continue to be one where corporate profits are structurally more important than human life, where foreign policy is one of projected coercion and managed instability in potential rivals, where access to healthcare, housing, food, and other necessities is predicated upon subservience to an economic system where people are "human capital".

It is this status quo which so disempowers and discards human beings that inexorably engenders discontent, xenophobia, and disregard for one another, and so leads directly to a groundswell of popular support for fascism. Electing Joe Biden only adds one more cycle into the wheel of misery. It does nothing to change the nature of the society that produced Trumpism. In that regard, Biden is equal to Trump. Because Biden is just step one in a process where Trump is step two or three. And every time we have someone like Trump rise to power, we manage to lose much, much more in the way of civil liberties and basic human decency than we can hope to make up for with an interval of relative sanity before the next wave of Fascism.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

The Wizard Joseph

You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

Cramulus

right, but unfortunately fundamental change is not on the ballot this year
right now, we're voting for damage control

I think there is a real danger in the logic that we're gonna lose Roe Vs Wade either now or later, so we might as well lose it now



Buddy of mine thinks we have to lose the supreme court in order to set the proper stage for a hypothetical progressive savior in 2024.

But you know how this song goes... the DNC will find a new Joe Biden in 2024 too



who knows though
maybe we can flip the senate and block supreme court nominees indefinitely


tyrannosaurus vex

I think the real issue is that "fundamental change" is never on the ballot. It will never be certified for any election, ever. And there will never be an election that takes place in the absence of an apparently urgent need to postpone such change because of some immediate crisis. That's my frustration, and the frustration of "accelerationists". That in this minute by minute war against looming calamity, there will never be moment where there isn't a "good reason" to back down and choose the safer path, even though the safer path always, always leads right back here.

It isn't simply that people want to throw up their hands and push us all off the cliff. It's that we are perpetually in the state of having just fallen off the cliff anyway and the idea that we can narrowly avert disaster is no more than the illusion that if we grasp for a twig just out of reach we might arrest our plummet. The argument is that we have already fallen and the responsible thing would be to face that fact and experience its ramifications so we can begin picking ourselves up, not scramble for the illusion of safety in the increasingly inhospitable status quo.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on April 08, 2020, 08:43:41 PM

What I'm saying is that Biden is part and parcel of a stagnant, obsolete status quo which inevitably leads to Trumpism. If Biden wins in 2020, well, that's great and all, but it just kicks the can down the road.

Oh, it's WAY worse than that.  This isn't stagnation.  This is what Cicero  was bitching about in 55 BCE, and you can't stop it.  Nobody can.  You are hearing the rattle of pebbles preceding the landslide that we are smack in the path of, and you better have as much fun as you can, Bubba, because it's going to be a VERY bumpy ride.

DANCE, PRIMATES!

DANCE WHILE THE LIGHTS GO OUT IN ROME!
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

I am also unconvinced that the accelerationists are any different than the MAGA freaks.  They both wish to cause harm to the very few humans I don't hate, and therefore I hate them and will cause them harm at any possible opportunity.  And I don't care why.
Molon Lube

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 08, 2020, 09:52:21 PM
I am also unconvinced that the accelerationists are any different than the MAGA freaks.  They both wish to cause harm to the very few humans I don't hate, and therefore I hate them and will cause them harm at any possible opportunity.  And I don't care why.

I don't know why but I was reminded of this and think you should see it. I think everyone should see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK_P89hoZsk

You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl