THE 2020 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

I've said many times that I am openly distrustful of the military and veterans. I am disdainful of veterans having control of our civilian apparatus. I'm not going to discriminate against a politician who is a veteran and expresses all the views that I agree with simply because of their status, I just don't think that person will exist for me to support.

I want to see the military-industrial complex almost completely dismantled and anyone who empathizes too much with the people who live in that world every day wouldn't have the guts to take away those peoples livelihoods with the goal of vastly improving our world. I think they're much more likely to miss the forest for the trees.

Still, this is all highly theoretical since this conversation is nowhere near here.

There's not much I agree with in that post other then it's basically a hypothetical right now.

Damn I have no idea how many pages this thread will hit by 2020 but Chrono’s top of page 2 post will be hard to beat.

You already topped it with the second post on page one. So did Reuben with the “circa 2008 Montana” post. My biggest problem with chrono’s post above is that it pigeonholes veterans as separate from the rest of the US civilian population. It’s also esposusing a worldview in which taking away the livelihoods of a huge chunk of the US population is a necessary means to an end and “no biggie.” If any attitude’s going to give staying power to a totally backwards, straight up evil GOP mentality in the 21st century, this could be the one.

Expanding... so, Chrono’s advocating for a large scale dismantling of the military industrial complex. Word. I’m an ideological ally here and I think this is definitely a thing that should be done. How to do it though? Thousands upon thousands of jobs and contracts just disappear. Maybe replace the war machine with compulsory service that extends far beyond military service and into big, country wide public works and infrastructure projects. Hypothetical but perhaps doable. But try making this political argument while cutting off the entire veteran population from political leadership? That’s a hop skip and a jump away from killing the tsar and his family and just taking ownership.

Writing this while driving, so apologies for half baked ideas and probably typos. I basically just want to get Chrono to vote for me in 2024.

Feel...the...BERN!!!

Who are the voters that are like, “Yes I want to vote for the Coffee Man”?

I'd be surprised to learn they exist at all.

Now excuse me I have a whole roll of Tums I need to eat.

Ned Braden wrote:Expanding... so, Chrono’s advocating for a large scale dismantling of the military industrial complex. Word. I’m an ideological ally here and I think this is definitely a thing that should be done. How to do it though? Thousands upon thousands of jobs and contracts just disappear. Maybe replace the war machine with compulsory service that extends far beyond military service and into big, country wide public works and infrastructure projects. Hypothetical but perhaps doable. But try making this political argument while cutting off the entire veteran population from political leadership? That’s a hop skip and a jump away from killing the tsar and his family and just taking ownership.

Same thing you do with the coal miners. Offer them an extensive job training program that transitions them into a new industry a la the Green New Deal. Certainly all the technical people/engineers/managers/logistical staff trained by the military could easily transition into other jobs. The military already transitions soldiers from combat roles to civilian roles, they could do that on a marge larger scale.

Again, the notion of the "pain" that people would feel having to transition jobs is a total broken window fallacy. They could all be doing jobs that do so much more for society than maintaining US hegemony and the military-industrial complex in perpetuity (so we can sell billions in arms to Saudi Arabia).

There's no real mystery in how to craft a large scale jobs retraining program. Theoretically that could be left to technocrats. However, there's zero political will on the Republican side (and barely any on the Democratic side) to have a government program that large. We can't even get a jobs package for small number of the coal miners in this country so coal-fired power plants don't kill us all. This kind of big, smart policy intervention is impossible because any big, smart policy intervention is impossible in our current political system.

Also, you're taking the veteran politician thing too far. I'm expressing my personal discomfort with it and my biased POV. I'm not suggesting that we make an election law to bar veterans from running. Voters can make that decision for themselves. I'm just not mincing any words when I say that, A) the military is the worst part of the US government, and B ) I think veterans are predisposed to show favor on military issues. I can have complicated views. I can be friends with a veteran, have strong views about veterans, and acknowledge that individuals are nuanced and not an assemblage of identities.

Ned Braden wrote:My biggest problem with chrono’s post above is that it pigeonholes veterans as separate from the rest of the US civilian population.

There's nothing I see more from veterans and military families that "no one understands their sacrifice" and they're cut from a different cloth than the rest of us.

Here's the reality: Americans love the military, cops, and law enforcement. Law enforcement and veterans have an outsized influence on American politics as it is. We need to throw giant, cold buckets of water on that shit and get them the heck out of there so we can have real reform in those areas.

All that being said, obviously Tammy Duckworth is better than Ben Sasse. Things are more complicated than one identity or experience.

chrondog wrote:Law enforcement and veterans have an outsized influence on American politics as it is. We need to throw giant, cold buckets of water on that shit and get them the heck out of there so we can have real reform in those areas.

What does this metaphor mean in practice? I find progressively minded people are always frustrated by groups that are better at organizing around common interests than they are and want to... (marginalize? fracture? disenfranchise? I don't know what action the metaphor is meant to imply)

I guess I don't wanna speak for Chrono here but I've certainly picked up on a thing, more from law enforcement than the military, that any criticism means a lack of support. And absolutely one hundred percent the idea that either law enforcement or the military are in anyway above criticism or even questioning needs fierce, immediate push back. But I don't think that should extend to a mistrust of individual officers or veterans, and I think any suggestion that it should is counterproductive.

techno raj wrote:

chrondog wrote:Law enforcement and veterans have an outsized influence on American politics as it is. We need to throw giant, cold buckets of water on that shit and get them the heck out of there so we can have real reform in those areas.

What does this metaphor mean in practice? I find progressively minded people are always frustrated by groups that are better at organizing around common interests than they are and want to... (marginalize? fracture? disenfranchise? I don't know what action the metaphor is meant to imply)

The action is any action you can take to achieve the goal of reforming our most violent institutions. I didn't outline a specific action because any action is good and it's about producing an ideological shift. The special interests of prison guards, law enforcement, and the military shouldn't be able to take our money to help their own at our expense. In my opinion, the way that we currently invest in those institutions don't improve our society, so more investment in them without radically rethinking their mission is pointless.

Don't engage in the thoughtless rhetoric and hero worship around law enforcement and the military for starters. Say that "it's incredibly patriotic to criticize police officers who use excessive force and right to call for their prosecution. To hold individuals accountable for injustice is not to despise police, but to believe that their profession should be protected from bad apples and its own excesses." Don't privilege law enforcement/military background as an elite credential for public service. Push back, push back, push back.

It's hilarious that you guys are obsessed with reading "disenfranchise" into my position when I explicitly said that was stupid. No one should be disenfranchised ever. This is an appeal to the body politic and your friends and neighbors. I'm not suggesting a public movement and accompanying "VETERANS R DUMB" march.

Further, I don't know if it's a function of "organizing around common interests" that part of the fabric of conservative culture in this country is reverence for power, force, and violence, and that voters will ideologically support those positions. I take the point that there is a ton of solidarity within those groups that is key to their organizing success (I would put that down to the rigid conformity and organization of military and paramilitary training rather than like, "grassroots organizing").

Duff... wrote:But I don't think that should extend to a mistrust of individual officers or veterans

This is literally what Black Lives Matters is lol. If you're not in a position of privilege, you can't trust any random police officer because it could mean the end of your life. Sure, it's a nice idea that we shouldn't prejudge someone because of their profession, but for communities that have a messed up relationship with police? 

Again, this idea can be complicated. A healthy skepticism or even mistrust of law enforcement doesn't mean you can't have a pleasant, positive experience with a police officer. You can, though, have a realistic understanding of the relationship between certain communities and police, and the culture of law enforcement, and be distrustful. In my view, anything else is irresponsible.

Can we agree the Democrats should never do this again?

chrondog wrote:I didn't outline a specific action because any action is good and it's about producing an ideological shift.

Given finite resources I think evaluating progressive strategies and choosing between them is an essential part of seriously advancing them.

It's hilarious that you guys are obsessed with reading "disenfranchise" into my position when I explicitly said that was stupid

I wasn't trying to read anything into your position. But fair enough I should have inferred that disenfranchise was off the list from your statement about running for office.

chrondog wrote:

Duff... wrote:But I don't think that should extend to a mistrust of individual officers or veterans

This is literally what Black Lives Matters is lol.

I would separate these two groups for purposes of this topic. As far as I know, BLM has no position on veterans. You might have issues with both but I think they would be distinct enough to warrant separate evaluation.

Pretty much just talking past each other here. But yes, this is all complicated and nuanced and I have to draw stuff right now so I'll spare myself and everyone else the megapost since it sure seems like our disagreement is a matter of degrees.

Duff... wrote:Pretty much just talking past each other here...our disagreement is a matter of degrees.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Left

Love you guys

Ain't it the truth.

<3

Duff... wrote:If you can't see a clear fucking obvious difference between Obama and Trump jesus fucking christ.

If Booker gets the nomination, he's going to be president, or Trump is. It's that simple. Fight like hell for your principles and your nominee and then whatever happens back the nominee. Or you might as well wear a MAGA hat.

No one let me stop you from talking about podcasts, I'm out.

I'm uncomfortable with how this argument ended up I am going to respond to it in the more appropriate thread.

My calculus would probably change if my vote in every Presidential election wasn't made entirely useless by the electoral college (I vote in Illinois), but as the system currently exists I would definitely not support Booker as the nominee, but I would cast a ballot and probably support other Democratic nominees down ticket where my vote is more decisive and impactful. And I'm not making that decision to maintain my ideological purity and I don't like virtue signaling either.

I think that while socialism has seemingly entered the political mainstream, that is largely a media phenomenon. The Economist running a cover story on 'millennial socialism' is not really that significant. The reality is that socialists still lack a mass political base in the United States and that doesn't really seem to be changing anytime soon. Union membership in both the public and private sectors are continuing to decline and although there have been high-profile cases of effective strike action (and I am optimistic about the necessary changes in strategy in the aftermath of the seemingly disaster Janus Supreme Court decision) these are only drops in the bucket. And it is definitely still the case that the vast majority of self-identified socialists/leftists are privileged, upper-middle class, (often white, male) post-grads who will never experience the everyday struggles of poverty in America.

But it's also the case that we really only have 12 years left to seriously confront the issue of carbon emissions before the crippling effects of global warming become mostly irreversible... There really are no signs that engineers are on the brink of creating carbon vacuums, so it's also unlikely that technological innovation is going to be the solution to this existential crisis. So unless there is a candidate who not only supports the Green New Deal as a concept, but is also advocating for the creation of an exploratory policy commission and is willing to stake their limited political capital to use State resources and investment to begin radically transforming our current mode of energy production, distribution, and consumption, I just can't really understand why I would support them.

So yes, I do understand the difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama. But when it comes to advocating for real change to the political economy of this country so as ensure that future generations have a habitable planet, they are both coming up very, very short. And of course, no single candidate is able to effect this change by themselves. This is all going to require mass political movements from within civil society, which are still only in their nascent stage (the Sunrise Movement). But in the current absence of this and given the state of it all, please allow me to cast my goddamn protest ballot, because it is one of the few tools at my disposal that allows me to say, in a very small and ineffectual way, that I'm not okay with things as they currently are and not willing to vest more political power into maintaining the current status quo.

I am genuinely looking forward to the primaries because it doesn't seem like there is an anointed candidate (yet) and it appears as though the Party as a whole is responding to activist pressure and opening themselves up to bigger, bolder, and newer ideas.

All of my political energy is behind a single-payer, public, Medicare-for-All system and the Green New Deal. On the latter, this is a really good article explaining what must be done politically before legislative action is taken. I think the following quote is a pretty good summary:

But a grand coalition for the GND will take more than simple red-green arithmetic, proclaiming that union militancy + wind power = eco-socialism. We must be more rigorous in identifying the campaigns, ideas, and projects that will win over unions suspicious of anything green after years of environmental scapegoating for job losses; mobilize the vast majority of non-union workers; and, connect to community- and issue-based campaigns around housing precarity, racial justice, gender equality, indigenous sovereignty, and more — and do it all fast.

In short: dammit Bernie, why can’t you just go away and be old in peace?

In longer: I’m pushing for literally any candidate other than Trump, and it is my sincere hope that chop-em-down campaigning strategies and cults of personality don’t divide the democratic opposition too much (honestly, biggest reason I’m knee-jerkily anti Bernie). As far as I’m concerned, there is A LOT of overlap with the stated policy of every democratic candidate thus far to announce. Also, for what it’s worth, none of them are enemies of time tested American grand strategy and shared values. So, I guess you could say, at this point I’m rooting for civility above all. And also, for Trump to lose and go to jail.

Ned Braden wrote:(honestly, biggest reason I’m knee-jerkily anti Bernie).

Are we just going to ignore this blatant anti-Semitism then?