Rules:
Also feel free to check out !leopardsatemyface@lemm.ee (also active).
Icon credit C. Brück on Wikimedia Commons.
“If they want people to work 80 hours a month, they’d need to bring in a lot more jobs,” he says.
Who is exactly is the “they” in this sentence?
If you want the government to provide you with employment opportunities and free healthcare, then you should consider not voting for the team that is privatizing every public (government) sector.
It's worse. They mean the 1%
Of the 200 counties with the highest proportion of voters reliant on public health insurance, a staggering 84pc voted for Trump in last year’s election.
Nowhere exemplifies this contradiction more than Knox County, where 72pc of people backed the Republican presidential candidate.
Here, 68pc of the population use some form of public health insurance, and of the 3,142 counties in America, it is one of the top 20 poorest
There’s stupid and then there’s USA stupid. A very special breed of moron because of how obvious it is that they’re fucked, how they have the money and resources to fix it, and how they refuse to do the right thing so hard that they actively shoot themselves in the feet, legs, arms, torsos, and just about everywhere to avoid even needing to consider thinking about helping other people.
Like, at least the right-wingers in better countries are living in the good world that more leftist policies have built. They’re dumb as hell but at least they’re not steeped in the thick shit of the right to the point where it should be too bad to ignore.
It's not like they haven't already tried it either. We've been doing the same policies since Reagan and they continue to fail and continue to be doubled down on. Hell, Kansas was touted as the example of what conservative policies could do under Brownback. They created their conservative utopia and it crashed hard. They couldn't even afford to keep their schools open for the full school year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
Conservatives looked at that massive failure and said they wanted more.
We've been doing the same policies since Reagan and they continue to fail and continue to be doubled down on.
You say "fail" as if they aren't working exactly as intended.
Depends on perspective. They failed for the 99% of us.
Well of course, but they're a roaring success for the people the instigators of the policies actually give a shit about.
Presumably not the people that the voters care about.
They’re dumb as hell but at least they’re not steeped in the thick shit of the right to the point where it should be too bad to ignore.
Propaganda works. If you believe any country is immune, you’re wrong. Heads up. CPAC is already in Canada, the UK and Poland. Murdoch sewers are everywhere.
I read an article once about a guy who grew up in a poor rural area in the US that changed my opinion a bit. He talked about how progressive and left leaning people want to help the poor and uneducated, but typically only in major city centers.
Poor people in major cities are seen as victims of society. Socioeconomic forces beyond their control have caused them to fall behind and they need help! Rap music is the voice of the oppressed! Poor people in rural towns are seen as hillbillies who should have paid more attention in science class instead of playing football and taking their cousin to prom. Country music is for hicks! Combine this with the stats that inner city poverty is mostly minorities and rural poverty is mostly white people and you get a sense as to how rural people can see progressive programs as "racist". It certainly doesn't help that this idea is beamed into their heads by billionaire funded propaganda like Fox News.
A tech company lays off 1,000 employees and there's rage, but a coal mine shuts down putting 1,000 people out of work and there's cheers. Biden telling rural Americans facing the loss of their livelihood "learn to program" is pretty rich coming from a wealthy successful man who likely doesn't know how to work a computer, let alone know how to program one. Republican politicians at least pretend to care about run down rural towns. And if they don't do that, at least they pledge to knock those smug city slickers down a few pegs! Send the Marines into LA!
Hopefully the US can fix its urban-rural divide. I have no idea how that would happen, but it seems to be a major hindrance to class consciousness.
You nailed it. I have yet to read anything that outlines Trump voters better than this:
Republican politicians at least pretend to care about run down rural towns.
They don’t, it’s just a safe audience since Fox News and talk radio brainwashed everyone.
I read an article once about a guy who grew up in a poor rural area in the US that changed my opinion a bit. He talked about how progressive and left leaning people want to help the poor and uneducated, but typically only in major city centers.
I think I know the article you're talking about (although I'm having a hard time finding it again), but I don't think that's quite what it said.
It's more like progressives are perceived by rural people as not wanting to help them, because the type of help they offer is assistance in moving or retraining or otherwise changing in order for their lives to improve. This is because the progressives understand (correctly) that the jobs that used to sustain the small towns are never coming back, regardless of how much the rural people want them to.
The writer then pointed out (also correctly) that this "elitist" approach was not effective in solving the problem.
Unfortunately, I don't remember what the author's conclusion/recommendation of a better strategy was.
The thing is that democrats are hardly leftist and their approach to economics is still pretty dogshit. When people say to shut down the coal mines anyone who gives a shit will also say that governments should help retrain people to do other jobs. Like, a shut down oil rig should be a great opportunity to retrain the workers there to do maitenance on a solar power farm.
The other problem I have with it all is that they’re fighting to have personal money and would rather keep something like a coal mine running and polluting than retrain. Instead of asking why they’re constantly being threatened by corporations and the lack of a safety net they’re actively defending the people who are hurting them. That takes a lot of my sympathy away.
And then there’s their fucking “towns” that are just super spread-out nightmares which they refuse to fix. They want their lives to be cheaper but they demand heavily car-centric infrastructure and attack anything that would actually make their lives easier and cheaper. And oh my god do they moan about the concept of having a neighbour within 100ft.
I’ve lived in a more rural place and I’ve lived in cities. People in cities generally want things that will legitimately make their lives better(but oh my god are there some people…), and they don’t often fight the people who are trying to help them. Rural North Americans are so fucking stupid and they get aggressive when they get scared, which is all the time because they’re huge fucking babies.
—
As for the tech company thing, a big reason is because the layoff are all to pad quarterly earnings. A coal mine shuts down because it’s an environmental disaster but Microsoft will layoff 10,000 people via video call from a private island Sting concert just so the executives can make more money. These things are not equivalent.
I have a hypothesis that many conservatives are reflexively opposed to change. So if you suggest putting in a bus lane, they'll fight you tooth and claw. But once you get it in, a couple years later, if someone suggests removing it those same people will fight tooth and claw to keep it.
In other words, sometimes they're stupid and don't have good reasons.
this idea is beamed into their heads by billionaire propaganda
There it is.
Americans will shoot anything
MAGA - Morons and Genuine Assholes
Why is The Telegraph using "pc" instead of "%"?
No idea. Honestly surprised they put an otherwise legible article together
Trillions over the long term.
And it will be long term. It's far easier to destroy than to build, or repair.
Big Billionaire Boondoggle
They shot themselves in the foot. And now they can't afford to get their foot treated.
The "more jobs" they are bringing is the reason they're deporting all the migrant workers.
Have fun being an indentured servant to a plantation owner & get "paid" via a discount on medical bills...
Oh no! Anyway...
_portrait.jpg){kind=link}