Rising fascism in the US

This is an interesting comment, did you think he was a Russian asset when he was exposing things given to him by Bradley Manning? Would that make Bradley Manning a Russian asset as well? Or was he only a Russian asset when he started exposing Hillary Clinton and the DNC?

Wow, what a sexist you are. Funny how you POS leftist play by your own rules, but expect others to do the same. Would you not make the same claim if ebeth or glitterbag were called stupid women?

Thanks for reviving this thread and posting a response after 171 days!

That’s considered a snappy comeback in Baldy’s circles. Remember, he’s at the top of his game right now.

Must be a function of search history. Threads on ostrich pornography show up in my feed all the time.

It’s a constant peril.

171 days? I was responding to something from a couple of weeks ago... is your maths ok?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/22/black-americans-joe-biden-democratic-party-relationship?fbclid=IwAR3UjyAHa88WVTrSnnu_eKeTtTeuTIeBOJUK27PBRSJABVx3jmagznVV79g

BLACK AMERICANS ARE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

I am very tired of Joe Biden. My vote for him was already hanging by a thread before his disastrous interview with Charlamagne tha God on Friday. Interrupting the Breakfast Club host’s explanation that black people needed assurances that our communities will benefit from his presidency, Biden asserted: “If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Again, I am very tired of Joe Biden. Not because I am a purist, or have inflexible ideological commitments of what it will take to remove Donald Trump from office. But rather because Biden’s condescension towards black communities is intolerable.

I want to believe that Biden’s condescension started after the respected senator James Clyburn called the former vice-president an “honorary black man” at a private dinner in March. But his mistreatment of black people, verbally and politically, is decades old, and is a reflection of the Democratic party in general.

Throughout Biden’s career, he has boasted about his ability to bridge partisan divides by sacrificing the needs of black people and poor people in the name of “compromise”. For the last 30 years, Biden has repeatedly talked about freezing, cutting, or raising the age for social security and other benefits – as much as $2tn one time. His response to concerns that these cuts would hurt the poor? “We’re going to do lots of hard things … we might as well do this.”

Social security is an important program for black people, especially as we age. Among African Americans receiving social security, 35% of elderly married couples and 58% of unmarried elderly persons relied on it for 90% or more of their income. The reliance is not due to laziness or spending habits – people of color and white people make similar choices and contributions to retirement – but due to racism, lack of workplace retirement plans and barriers to accessing high-paying jobs.

“They know where my heart is,” Biden has said, of black voters.

But do we?

Senator Kamala Harris was severely scrutinized for her treatment of poor black women as a prosecutor – yet Biden’s criminal justice record makes Harris look like Thurgood Marshall. Biden authored and successfully passed the $30bn 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Besides putting 100,000 additional police officers in the streets, the crime bill distributed funding for new prison construction, encouraged prosecutors to charge children as adults, and even added the death penalty for 28 new areas, including drug-related offenses. Pushing for further criminalization, then senator Biden argued that George HW Bush’s crime plan did not go far enough because it did not “include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, not enough prosecutors to convict them, not enough judges to sentence them, and not enough prison cells to put them away for a long time”. An older black generation fought through Jim Crow only for Biden to help make sure that their children and grandchildren lived through a new Jim Crow.

On the House floor, Biden compared his criminal justice approach to Richard Nixon’s law and order stance: “I would say, ‘Lock the SOBs up.’” Black people were arrested in droves following this bill, despite comparable drug use rates to white people; many are still sitting in prison today. Biden has since acknowledged flaws in the bill, but last summer he reiterated his support for the bill. The law spent $30bn but contributed to only a 1.3% decline in violent crime. He has yet to call for it to be repealed.

Today, some cities plan to expunge marijuana records and hope to pay reparations to black people formerly incarcerated for marijuana offenses. But Biden can’t seem to let go; he is inconsistent and ambivalent about marijuana legalization. He has argued it may be a gateway drug, a statement he has since dialed back. Of course, keeping marijuana illegal at the federal level does not mean that people will not use it, but rather that the extra police that he put on the street will send people of color to jail for using it. Ironically, the police were probably nowhere to be found when Biden’s friends George W Bush and Barack Obama used marijuana. If anything, the drug seems to be a gateway to the White House.

Despite attempting to cut social programs and increasing mass incarceration, Biden claims to care about black families. But he doesn’t seem to know many. During the September 2019 Democratic debate he claimed that poor families should put on a record player so their children will know more words. Recently, during an interview with the New York Times editorial board, he argued that poor black parents feel ashamed because they cannot read and skip parent-teacher conferences. He was hoping to encourage them to be better parents. But his assertion is incorrect. Black and white parents have comparable participation rates overall and attend parent-teacher conferences at the exact same rates. In fact, black parents and poor parents are the most likely to check their children’s homework and meet with guidance counselors. Biden instead relied on stereotypes that black people are not involved in their children’s lives.

Harris forced Biden to confront his work with racist elected officials to stop integration efforts using school busing. That was not his only education mistake. Biden played a significant role in creating the student debt crisis, including making student loan discharge “nearly impossible”. This is devastating to black people, who disproportionately carry school debt. While the average school debt for black women with a bachelor’s degree is about $25,000, that level of education does not provide the same level of financial security for black women as it does other groups, including white people with less education (primarily because of sexism and racism).

Again and again, Biden’s relationship with black Americans, like the Democratic National Committee’s relationship, has been patronizing at best and actively harmful at worst.

Biden’s friendship with one black person does not mean that he’s a friend to black people

Some black people will support Biden because of his association with Barack Obama – even though Obama himself doesn’t seem especially excited about Biden becoming president. The Obama days feel distant yet warm compared to Donald Trump’s current presidency. But remember: Biden cycled millions of black people in and out of jail, voted for massive numbers of poor people to go to war in Iraq, threw Anita Hill under the bus to confirm a conservative justice to the US supreme court, and, under Obama’s administration, helped to deport millions of immigrants and bombed brown countries. When Biden was vice-president, black home ownership and wealth declined significantly, even as it rose for other races. Biden’s friendship with one black person does not mean that he’s a friend to black people.


The Democratic party holds black people in an abusive relationship but says you cannot leave because the other option is more abusive. That’s why I don’t believe that a vote against Biden solely means a vote for Trump. Perhaps it is a vote against being captured by the party that makes empty promises every four years when it is election time, and delivers nothing. Perhaps it is a vote against the crime bill, drones and deportations. Perhaps it is a vote against covert and overt racism.

Biden and others will rightfully argue that Trump is worse, and I agree. But what can Biden actually deliver? Will there be fewer drones if he’s president? Maybe not. Fewer deportations? Maybe not. Less money to police departments? No. Will fewer black people die from police? Unlikely. Will black people have healthcare? Unlikely. Will black wealth increase? Unlikely. Will Palestinian lives be safer? Unlikely. Commitments to preserving our climate? Doubtful. If black people have a hard time figuring out the differences between Trump and Biden, then that is Biden’s problem, not ours.

Joe Biden refuses to reckon with the harm that he has caused to people all over the world. His best line is that he is better than the other guy, and that is exactly how abusive relationships function. Black people – all people – deserve better than Biden and the Democratic party. And yes, we are still black.

Derecka Purnell is a social movement lawyer and writer based in Washington, DC. Guardian US columnist

Okay...I see what you mean.

So then people like you and Derecka Purnell should do your best to damage the candidacy of Joe Biden...to see that he does not win. It seems the only ethical thing for you to do.

Doing so will continue your previous help to elect Trump...this time to a second term.

No big deal, right?

The Republic should be able to survive it.

She's back at sliming the Dem party and Biden, is she? I can't imagine who'd have predicted such a thing.

Five years have passed...and still the same stuff.

I'd kinda hoped Trump's conduct during the last 1000 years (or has it been less)...would have tamped that down a bit.

But no!

She's on a mission.

That may be true, but the bottom line is that inflation happens because of a war between spending and saving. So when people spend more, it allows prices to go up whether the spending is higher because of white favoritism subsidizing white income or because predatory lenders and/or drug gangs entice certain black people into high risk illegal activities in order to have them as the fall guys for larger organized crime networks.



There is some truth, but there is also a broader context in which the death rate for black youths is sometimes higher on the street than it is in prison or in military service during war time. Some Democrats criticize 'prison slavery,' but do they also criticize how prisoners enslave each other in various ways? Corrections may not always work to correct people, but that is supposed to be the goal, just as the goal of education is supposed to be to educate people and not just put them to work for the sake of making money off them. The broader racism may be evident in unequal rates of imprisonment, etc. but we should question whether imprisoning less black people will automatically prevent them from being abused and exploited outside of prison, i.e. by gangs and organized crime. We should remember that the purpose of arresting criminals is to separate them from crime so that crime can't continue to use them.


The big question since about the 1960s is whether to just allow cannabis the way alcohol is allowed. The gateway drug is a valid argument, and more importantly a good excuse to intervene in addiction at a relatively low level before it progresses to the point of enslaving/killing people with their own out-of-control desire.


There's always the problem that if you focus on a problem to solve it, you risk people taking it as a demonization of the person/people you're talking about helping. Racism doesn't just cause people to forget that there are whites with the same problems as blacks, even at equal rates; but it also causes the feeling that if a problem is noted for blacks, it is automatically a comparison with whites. Technically, illiteracy is a different problem in different situations, but if you had a cousin who was illiterate, it wouldn't be sexist to think about helping her without simultaneously thinking about your uncle who is illiterate too and happens to be male. Maybe Biden's focus on black illiteracy was racist or maybe it was just an oversight because he forgot to compare black and white literacy rates at the statistical level. Do you really have to check how black and white statistics compare before talking about any problem?


The role of debt should be reduced and/or eliminated in the economy generally. It is supposed to give people a means of investing when they don't otherwise have the means, but it has become an abused source of revenue that exploits people by getting them to take on the burden of debt while causing inflation and inequalities by what the money does once it enters into circulation.


So what? Advertisements give you warm feelings, but it's just because they want to take more of your money. People need to understand how the economy is full of people trying to exploit others for money in any way they can get away with, and when the Democratic party whitewashes the economy by telling you they're going to regulate it and make it expand to work for you, that is also going to expand the power of the economy to use/abuse and exploit you.


This is not true only for blacks/racism, but the Democratic party generally tries to convince people that the only escape from abuse/exploitation of any kind is through them, and by doing so they deny the hope of people being able to freely pursue life, liberty, and happiness as per the constitution. So they basically paint discrimination and structural abuse as an inevitability in order to justify structural intervention, and the result is that people who accept and support them are submitting to structure and giving up hope on the hope of liberty among self-governing people resulting in a good life for all.


Try thinking about these problems from a perspective that doesn't see government as the cause. Government may do things that influence how these problems are caused and/or solved or worsened in various ways, but neither Biden nor Trump causes things that they don't cause. The question is what they have the power to do and what the people have the power to do that government can't ultimately make them do because people can't be forced to do the right thing.

I think it’s obvious that regular Americans are enslaved by a duopoly run by oligarchs. If you’d like to oppose this dystopia, #VoteGreen. We’ll build a party responsive to the people.

Easy as pie, too.

Green Party seats in Senate - 0
Green Party seats in House - 0
Governorships - 0
State Lower House seats - 0
Territorial governorships - 0
Territorial lower and upper seats - 0

So clearly this is a viable political party and all/any votes cast for them will change America.

If you wish to remove the sociopath from office, you can either vote Green or stick a pencil up your nose while standing on one foot and singing the Volga Boat Song. Same result in either case.

I don’t trust the Greens never have. The Nazis were the Green Party in 1930s Germany. I’m not kidding. In Look who’s Back, the satirical novel about Hitler coming back the Greens are the party he supports.

Roseanne Barr was the Green candidate a few years back. Now she supports Trump.

As Roland Barthes said, Fascism aestheticises politics. Socialism politicises Art.

The Greens are way more Fascist than Socialist no matter how they try to paint themselves.

There are ideas common among many Greens which I share. But of course there's an intersection between those ideas/values and the traditional Dem party (eg moving to renewable energy, protecting the environment and ecosystems) both of which are viciously opposed by the GOP.

In the modern circumstance, as you know, much of the "support" for the Green Parties in the US and elsewhere arises from bad faith actors in Russia sourced or aligned operations and GOP aligned sources as well - divide and conquer being the obvious strategy.

Americans either support the duopoly or oppose it. I’m opposing it.

False Dilemma
(also known as: all-or-nothing fallacy, false dichotomy*, the either-or fallacy, either-or reasoning, fallacy of false choice, fallacy of false alternatives, black-and-white thinking, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, bifurcation, excluded middle, no middle ground, polarization)

Description: When only two choices are presented yet more exist, or a spectrum of possible choices exists between two extremes. False dilemmas are usually characterized by “either this or that” language, but can also be characterized by omissions of choices. Another variety is the false trilemma, which is when three choices are presented when more exist.

Lash is just going back to her conaertive roots. I told you it would happen.