this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Well, and the corporate owned media with a hypercapitalist agenda, all the lobby organisations, the lack of proper public education for centuries, red-blue-whitewashed historytelling, the oppression of the black minority, a deeply flawed election system, the imprisonment crisis, and related the opiod crisis, gerrymandering, not enough unions, the fucked up healthcare situation itself...
Luckily, I live in Europe. I got free healthcare, free education, have okay workers rights and not so much rising facism than you gals and guys overseas.
What logic?
Well, i haven't nearly payed as much taxes as I received stuff for free from the community. I am from a lower class family, low income, psychological illness, etc. I got free healthcare my whole life, including about two month hospital time in total, 52 session of behavioral psychotherapy, all the vaccines, all the checkups, some MRT-scans, a fair amount of medication (some with a small fee). Then, i got free primary and secondary education. Then, I got 5 years at university for about 3000€ (but i got a ticket with which i could take any public transportation, which is good here). Additionally, because I'm from a poor family, the community payed me for studying. I got around 700€ a month, 350 as a gift, 350 as a 0% loan. Yes 0%. And then I had kids. While I was studying. My partner was also studying and getting free money because poor parents, and because we had small kids we got an extra 800€ every months just because we were students with small children. And 200€ for each child. Have i mentioned that I got 200€ for just being a my parents children from 18 til i was done with university? A few months on unemployment also.
So until now I've only payed back a fraction of what the community gave me in taxes. Regarding that these taxes also pay police, roads, parts of the punlic transportation, cultural stuff, and all the other shit a good country does. Only a fraction. Soon, i will have to start paying back the 0% student loan. But now I'm earning loads of money (in fact, we earn loads of money), our children can live free of financial fear in a fairly sizeable house in a nice neighbourhood woth lots of diverse and friendly people. When they want to go to university, they're parents aren't poor though, so we'll have to support them (we're even legally obliged, which is a good thing)
Probably i will pay back all the community did for me since I have to pay a fair amount of taxes. But what they leave me is enough for a luxorious lifestyle or a buying a house. Maybe even both.
We do have our problems here and there. But compared to the dystopia you have going on, I'm really really happy to not have to fuck with that.
Your former president is Donald Trump. That is objectivly already a dystopia.
And don't get me started on all the other shit.
He surely impacted the lives of those who died January 6. Or the woman who was shot in Calofornia yesterday over a pride flag. Your country is at the tipping point. Look at DeSantis in Florida talking Propaganda like Goebbels, allowing PragerU-videos in schools, preparing the hunt on trans-people. Look how Trumps prosecutors are attacked by Senators. Look how straightforward democracy and law enforcement ist labeled as "radically left". Look how they're calling to imprison Biden. This is serious 1932 Germany like shit.
The American Dream ™ is the biggest scam in the history of America. It's the land of opportunity for some. Ever since the change in corporate greed in the late 70s and early 80s (especially fucking Reaganomics), the wealth has been accumulating more and more among fewer and fewer and workers are being treated as resources instead of people. Pensions used to be much more common. Now the US (or at least one party and mich of another) has effectively convinced a large portion of the populace that literally trying to protect workers is evil. The lions share of profit used to go to actual workers with investors taking a cut off the top. Now the investors take most and barely pay workers. A vast majority of Americans are part of a system where they don't get to keep what they rightfully earned with their work. Instead poor people give a larger and larger portion of their work value to investors. It's fundamentally unsustainable and people keep believing they might be one of the people who have a chance to make it big (even though they're more likely to win the lottery than to make it on their own).
You can have socialist policies without being a socialist society. Our (UK) NHS is a socialist policy, free healthcare at the point of use. My country is decidedly not socialist!
Everyone knows what "free" means especially when they refer to it as socialist. Pointing out it's taxes is such a tired statement that folks who pretend to be smart like to pull out as a gotcha. You're not actually adding any value to the conversation by saying that. And yes, universal healthcare would absolutely be supported by the founding fathers. But virtually no one in one specific party votes in that direction and generally votes to go in the other. At least some of the other party try and fight for it.
I said free healthcare at the point of use, not free healthcare. And it's nothing like your US systems, I was personally charged £0 for my emergency appendictomy surgery, £0 for the ambulance ride, and £0 for the hospital stay.
Yeah yeah two parties bad we fuckin know but talk to us when both sides start hard shoving for the removal of human rights. Talk to us when Republicans stop gerrymandering voting maps because they know it's the only way they'll get elected.
It's not fucking both sides it's one side actively shitting all over the country while the other side gets blamed for it. Meanwhile half our citizens have been so dumbed down that they can't remember any Republican scandal longer than 5 god damn minutes.
bUt HeR eMaIlS!!
BuT hUnTeR bIdEn!!
bUt TrUmPs DiCk Is So TaStEy!!!
I'm not from USA, but from the outside in, it's pretty obvious what Biden can, and can't do. You have to take his achievements (which there are many of, unfortunately the dems don't seem to be very good at trumpeting their actual good works) with the pinch of salt that they haven't had the control in the senate they need to enact the policies they like. Enough people vote for 3rd party or feel fatigued / despondant like you, that they didn't get the actual control of senate, and lost the house in midterms.
Whether it's slow walking (or blocking) appointments, fake dems like Sinema, dems that have to be stupid-capitalist to maintain power (Manchin), they've just not had the numbers.
You have a point that Clinton was pretty good, and was probably the first showing of the Republicans becoming obstructionist and never relenting since.
The Democratic Party has control of the Senate in name alone. Sinema and Manchin do not toe the line and have effectively threatened to even switch parties if they aren't taken seriously. The "control" the Democrats have had in the past four years of any branch has been teetering on the edge of a pin. They basically had enough to just stop harmful Republican policies that would have been passed instead. The one thing Republicans do better than Democrats is to simply back each other up no matter how corrupt one of them might be. Trump probably could have shot a person in broad daylight in the middle of fifth avenue and Republicans would ensure that nothing happened.
I think you're missing the point of how a political party operates. The members of the party should support their own platform and the leader of their party. You'll never not have parties. That's just basic game theory. You need cooperation on main points. Even your own responses about Democrats indicates whether you pretend to not think that way, you actually do. Otherwise you're not internally consistent with your logic. Though that wouldn't surprise me based on your unabashedly childish responses so far.
This is such a childish and naive statement. No matter what system is put in place, the president alone can't make a radical difference in a positive direction, only shitty ones.
Yeah, Reagan really did a great job letting AIDS kill all those people because he hated the gays.
Oh, and kickstarting the modern homeless crisis by closing all the countries mental health facilities without another solution in the wings.
What? We have multiple examples of massive growth in treating and stopping the spread of AIDS/HIV?
The Reagan administration literally acted like it was a joke that no one should care about because it only affected gay people. This was during a period of time where people preached that the disease was God punishing sinners. You can rewrite history all you want, but Reagan killed people by minimizing the seriousness of the disease and minimizing the gay community at the same time, essentially saying "It's okay if we let the queers die."
Fauci was not the one on the news cracking jokes about it and making fun of the gay men it was affecting. The entire administration didn't take it seriously.
Wow, shocker. In a period of history where queerness was regularly met with violence for being queer, straight people in positions of power were making crude assumptions about the queer community. I'm pretty sure the discrimination came first, and that's where assumptions, even from scientists who are fallible human beings like anyone else, came from. I mean hell, this was barely 30 years after Alan Turing, a fucking war hero was chemically castrated for being gay. Doctors signed off on that, too.
It doesn't mean it wasn't an issue that traveled through the entire administration. You can dump it all on Fauci's feet if you want, but it was painfully obviously much bigger than that, with the dominant straight community pretending it wasn't an issue, or an issue to be joked about since they didn't think it would affect them.
That's a take I'll agree with. Still don't agree Reagan was a good President, though.
Yeah, we have different feelings on that. A much older man taking advantage of a younger woman when he is in a professional position of power over her is skeevy as fuck, no matter how you slice it. The Republicans were full of shit and just trying to discredit him, but the fact of the matter is he is a scummy old pervert philanderer. Honestly, a lot of my personal issues with Hillary Clinton center around her not divorcing his ass and having a great political career without him. She should have, I would have a lot more respect for her today if she had. She covered for his creepy ass in public.
That isn't to say that other President's didn't do similar things and just didn't have them publicized, but those were wrong, too.
Also, I will say that Bill Clinton at least admits when he fucked up.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-we-blew-it-on-global-food/
Sorry I gotta run for work, don't have time to say much other than "Yeah, the impeachment was total bullshit." I think it makes Clinton trashy person, not that it impacted how he ran the country. It was a grift, but that's all they've ever got.
Also might want to read this over, too.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/monica-lewinsky-in-the-age-of-metoo
My quality of life improved dramatically when I moved away from Republican led areas and into Democrat-led areas.
Ergo, you are wrong.
I moved to California, so, almost another country.
But I was speaking more of the state and local governments, which have more of an impact in my direct life.
However I think anyone who was able to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition would probably say a Democrat president has directly helped their quality of life, possibly in that they would have no life at all without that Democrat president. Just for one example at the federal level.
Ftfy. Nothing stops anyone from voting for it right now. There's only one side even remotely fighting for it. It's just ignorance, laziness, and hate that keep it from happening.