Wanderthread

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 5:39am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 6:08am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 6:12am

…and if the DNC had backed Swearengin instead of Manchin, Manchin would be gone.

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 7:24am

https://twitter.com/msmcmullande/status/1008960487063805952?s=21

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 8:25am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 9:07am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 9:45am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:04am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:07am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:25am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:45am

Ocasio-Cortez continuing to shred the fake left:

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:46am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:49am

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 10:57am

emo_pinata · June 19, 2018, 11:28am

Americans not voting is a huge chunk of he problem and is absolutely one of the reasons white supremacy is as influential as it is.

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 11:33am

Circular causality. White supremacy and hyper-capitalism are the reasons why the working class doesn’t vote.

The roots go all the way back to Madison.

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.

James Madison, Statement (1787-06-26) as quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates

Or see here:

QUESTION: Do you see much evidence of a revolutionary spirit in the America of the 1990s?

CHOMSKY: You didn’t find evidence of it in the America of the 1790s. The Revolutionary War was an important event. But it was in the first place, to a significant extent, a civil war, as most revolutionary wars are. And it was a war of independence, as opposed to a revolution against the social structure. The social structure didn’t really change significantly. There were problems right after the war was done. For example, Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and so on were challenging the social structure, and there were efforts on the part of radical farmers to take seriously the meaning of the words in the revolutionary pamphlets, but that was pretty well quieted down.

If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison – who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian – makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it.

QUESTION: Isn’t that erection of barriers to democracy woven through the entire history of the United States?

CHOMSKY: It goes back to the writing of the Constitution. They were pretty explicit. Madison saw a “danger” in democracy that was quite real and he responded to it. In fact, the“problem” was noticed a long time earlier. It’s clear in Aristotle’s “Politics,” the sort of founding book of political theory – which is a very careful and thoughtful analysis of the notion of democracy. Aristotle recognizes that, for him, that democracy had to be a welfare state; it had to use public revenues to ensure lasting prosperity for all and to ensure equality. That goes right through the Enlightenment. Madison recognized that, if the overwhelming majority is poor, and if the democracy is a functioning one, then they’ll use their electoral power to serve their own interest rather than the common good of all. Aristotle’s solution was, “OK, eliminate poverty.” Madison faced the same problem but his solution was the opposite: “Eliminate democracy.”

emo_pinata · June 19, 2018, 11:38am

So what? If working class people that have not been the direct target of voting obstruction are unwilling to in convenience themselves once a year or so to fight back against the elites they vocally complain about, then they are hopeless.

The rich are always going to want the majority of poor people to not have power, and they simply have never had to work very hard in the United States.

EDIT

And even going back to Madison’s wishes, most people that are not voting are not voting out of apathy - and that apathy is largely from not wanting to take a side and insult someone. It is the radical centrist position.

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 12:05pm

I’ll write a proper answer to this later, but for now…did you hear Ocasio-Cortez on the Katie Halper Show? She had some interesting things to say about voter suppression in New York.

Ocasio-Cortez starts at about 30 minutes in, voter suppression stuff starts at 1:09:20. It’s directly on-topic for this.

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 12:28pm

Wanderfound · June 19, 2018, 12:37pm