Welcome to !usa@midwest.social, where you can share and converse about the different things happening all over/about the United States.
If you’re interested in participating, please subscribe.
Rules
Be respectful and civil. No racism/bigotry/hateful speech.
Post anything related to the United States.
Is ripping more or less severe than slamming someone?
“I think it’s time to tell the military-industrial complex they cannot get everything they want"
is he talking about active servicepeople because we've been there since forever
MIC is the private companies that supply/support the military and profit from it. Everything from fuel to uniforms to electrical wiring in the bases.
Of course not, active servicepeople are just another currency to the military-industrial complex.
Defund the police and military.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I think "Defund" is a bit drastic given the current state of the world, but it is possible that we don't need to maintain 11 aircraft carriers, in the same way that every small town Pennsylvania Police department doesn't need their very own armored personnel carrier. Moderation in all things.
"Don't defund them, just reduce the amount of funds they can spend aircradt carriers and remove the funds for armored vehicles."
Ya, basically. Particularly with the APCs, eliminate the military surplus purchase program that lets cops have war machines for pennies as long as they find a way to use them.
SPOILER
They ALWAYS will
I don't like cops either, but having ZERO law enforcement is the same thing as pure anarchy.
I'm saying that reducing funds is literally defunding
The problem is we maintain half of them forward deployed in roughly 3 areas at any one time.
But yeah that's why our military is so expensive. If it wasn't constantly forward deployed it would be much cheaper.
We really should be working with our allies to get their own military in the area. Mainly in Europe. If I'm being realistic, we probably will never leave Asia.
Defund is the only slogan that has had actual sticking power though. To have nuance on this topic and have it actually matter, you would have to create a new slogan on the same level. Otherwise you're just armchair politicking from the internet same as everyone else
Now, with that out of the way, defund is still a good slogan. The primary reason is if we defund the police then we can create something that is not called police that isn't beholden to all of the laws and regulations and the corrupt unions that perpetuate the current systemic problems
Defund as a slogan is about cutting past the red tape of reform and starting from scratch to build something systemically better
Who cares if it has sticking power if it’s produced no results? All that talk of reforming the police has completely evaporated, and that was before Trump was elected.
“Defund” was a terrible word to use and people need to stop using it. Frankly I thought it was already retired.
Protests don't work so we should stop protesting? That is honestly the most brain dead thing I've heard yet on the subject!
If you want to retire it, make something better like I already said. We can't retire it until there's something to replace it.
The problem is, regardless of what you actually mean by it in your heart, "Defund" SOUNDS extreme, and people don't listen to extremests. Getting rid of 100% of all law enforcement is an objectively, and verifiably, a terrible idea. They need to be curbed, and trained, and limited, and not be made to feel like they are all a combination of Rambo and Jesus in sunglasses. An ACAB mentality leaves no possibility for improvement, so why should they even try?
When did I ever say protests don’t work? What are you talking about? I am saying this specific term did not prove to be good. In fact, it was VERY useful for the right wing media machine to easily twist words and distract from the end goal.
There are other tactics and verbiage that should be used.
Then do it. Make it a bigger deal. But don't just sit there and decry what is actually working as a rallying slogan when you have nothing to contribute. When your slogan is a better slogan with a better message behind it, then I will switch my own tune to your ideas.
It isn’t working! That’s the fucking problem lmao
Billions for Ukraine? No debate, full send. Billions for Israel? No debate, full send. Billions for healthcare? Whoa whoa whoa, gotta balance that budget!
Edit: if you prefer, forget I said healthcare and substitute in anything else that would help the working class.
THE ISSUE IS NOT GIVING MORE MONEY TO HEALTHCARE.
Healthcare is our largest expense. The issue is the money going there, which can easily fund universal healthcare, doesn't go towards helping people, it goes towards a select number of people.
If my taxes went up $1000 a month I would still be saving money with universal healthcare
The point is it doesn't need to. We could easily fund it
Right. But either way it's an invalid argument. We don't need to raise taxes, but even if we did it's still worth it.
Extra spending on health care is not actually required (even though america could afford it). Americans spent more per capita on health care than anyone else already. American health spending is extremely inefficient, with parasites like for-profit insurance (whose profits and much of their revenue are literally just inefficiency in the system) embedded at every layer. The problem is that allowing it to get to this state means many of these bad actors will gladly spend hundreds of millions on politicians and ads to defend the billions they make, and American voters are easily confused.
If you call profits a bad thing too many times you get called a communist or whatever even though in this case it's objectively true. The shooting of that parasite CEO should have brought this into focus - that worthless person profited directly from making people's health care expenditures less efficient (and also from the corresponding human suffering in case anyone cares).
Health is not "spending money". It's an investment that leads to less sick workers. Healthy workers work faster and better, being more productive.
(That's the only way I see some bastards will understand the profit in public universal healthcare)
I agree with all of that. Almost wish I hadn't used healthcare as an example since there's plenty of other programs that suffer from low funding.
the US already allocates $1.5 trillion for direct healthcare spending
If you don't like healthcare as an example, choose anything else that helps the working class. I don't just mean adding new money either, but how eager they are to make cuts to existing programs.
Every single time someone brings up anything about cost and the government, ask them how much money the DoD loses every year. Every single time.
see the dod brings in money because of pineapples and crack