Hardkill

Fair. That's why progressives and even many right-wing populists, like Saagar Enjeti, always like to cite back how FDR and LBJ were legendary presidents who helped to radically reform our country for the better. So did both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson too as progressive presidents in the early 1900s.

Yes, society today is definitely way more fair, socially, and we of course have far superior medicine, knowledge, and technology than we did back then. But what do you think about Chomsky's take on social democracy that did occur in the US during his time back then?

But America did have a social democracy during the mid 1900s that worked out great with FDR's New Deal, strong labor unions, and LBJ's Great Society. I'd say that social democracy was especially at its peak during the late 60s. Noam Chomsky talked about how there was much more solidarity in the country during his youth. He said in one interview: "Q. I read that when you were a child, you began working at a kiosk with an uncle, selling newspapers. Or that you helped him, at least. I would like to know, how did that mark you, how did that influence you? A. There is a good deal of irony, tragic irony, in that question. I grew up in the Depression. I was a child in the early 1930s. My family were immigrants, mostly unemployed, with really bitter suffering from the Depression, but there was an atmosphere of hope, aspiration and expectation, because of the labor movement. The labor movement was reviving. It had been crushed by force during the 1920s, but it was reviving. There were militant labor actions, there were political parties, radical political parties. There was debate, discussion, cultural activities. There was a sense of: “We can all get out of this together.” In fact, if you look at what happened in the 1930s, the effect in Europe was fascism, Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, other minor figures. That was Europe. The reaction to the Depression in the United States was social democracy. The New Deal, Roosevelt’s New Deal, pressed by labor activism, popular pressure, led to the modern era of social democracy, picked up by Europe after the Second World War. Now that was 90 years ago. Look at today, there are other crises today, very serious ones. Europe is holding on to some form of social democracy. The United States is leading the way to proto-fascism, the reverse of what happened in my childhood. " https://chomsky.info/20220125/

Yeah, that's truly comical. But Trump is truly skilled at dividing and destroying everything around him. He can easily divide and destroy the Republican Party if he wanted to.

I see... So, we are just going to have wait and see what will happen with 100% certainty with both the economy and who the GOP nominee will be in a year or two from now. There actually is also the possibility that the Republican party could end up tearing itself apart so much that Trump ends up officially splitting up the GOP in two conflicting parties, which would destroy the right-wing's chances of taking back the white and maybe lose more than that. Especially if Trump does happen to lose the GOP nomination. That's exactly how Teddy Roosevelt totally ruined the Republican's party chances of winning the presidency in 1912.

Yeah, I personally believe that too. What happens though if the economy enters into a recession next year or the year after, which unfortunately is what most economists, business elites, and investors have lately been forecasting?

There is also the concern amongst many people in America that Biden is already in his 80s and looks like a doddering old man. My dad who is the same age as Biden doesn't think that he would be able to handle another 6 years of being POTUS given how extremely taxing of a job it is, especially for such an old person. Do you think this could negatively affect Biden's electability?

Communism/Socialism failed because the people in charge became too greedy for power and money. The idea of Socialism, particularly with Communism, is to have no hierarchy and no class structures in a society. Furthermore, everything would be equally owned and equally shared by everyone within an entire society permanently. While humans can be compassionate and the human race as a whole has continuously evolved throughout history into better and better beings, they or we are still too selfish by nature to want to share absolutely everything, make absolutely everything and everyone equal (from a relative standpoint), and respect and trust every single person in a society. Plus, pure Communism/Socialism has never produced a strong competitive economy. China tried it before and it didn't end up working out so well for their economy in the long-run. That's why by the late 1970s/early 1980s, the country began to gradually become increasingly capitalistic. This trend towards a more capitalist society continued all the way through the 80s and actually began to accelerate after the early the 90s all the way into the new millennium. China is still mainly a Socialist country run by the CCP, but the country has been forced to become much more capitalistic, than it was approximately 40+ years ago in order to become a strong economy that is now becoming about as competitive as the US economy in its own way. To my knowledge there has been no known practical way to make Communism/Socialism work in a way that is not conducted or governed by an authoritarian regime. Theoretically, Democratic Socialist governments probably have a better shot of working than the authoritarian style Communism/Socialism did. However, I don't think that there are any experts out there on this matter who know for certain that this style of government would produce enough of a strong, competitive economy. Also, I am not sure if there would be enough people out there who would support the idea of having to share a lot more of what they own with many other people they don't know or are not close to. Plus, there would probably be a lot of people out there who may not like the idea of having anyone who doesn't have much business acumen or experience be involved in running or managing a company. That's why I believe that every society needs to eventually have some kind of social democracy, which is a very regulated form of capitalism that has every kind of social safety net needed for each individual person in a country or island.

Yeah, I put that clip up on his forum recently. I am totally with Professor Lichtman. He’s a brilliant US Historian who has always been on point.

Yeah! It's truly fascinating! If nuclear fusion energy does become a widely available and viable source of renewable energy that is safely used all around the world, then it will no doubt revolutionize the whole world. We would really be living in the future.

I am inclined to believe that. Although there have been some polls out there lately showing that a majority of GOP voters now prefer DeSantis over Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2024. “Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump,” said David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. GOP pollster, Frank Luntz, recently held a focus group of voters who had voted for Trump at least once during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. He said that they are getting tired of Trump and that "They still appreciate him, they still think he was a great president, that hasn't changed," Luntz said. "But they now look at him and they say, 'Why all this chaos?'" Do you buy that? Or do you think that the all of the Trump supporters and even the vast majority of regular Republican/conservative voters in the US don't really mean that and will probably come back home to Trump by 2024? Yeah, these progressives are really getting my nerves with their foolishness. They definitely have got to get over there Bernie or bust mentality.

Kyrsten Sinema has left the Democratic Party. She is a traitor and she was never a true Democrat. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/eps-the-meaning-of-independent-sinema#details

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-a9b795e8050de12319b82b5dd7118cd7 Yeah, it really looks like Twitter is really headed towards a major disaster.

Yeah, I would genuinely be very interested to hear your take on it. I think it might help me and others understand why centrists are the way they are, why they see extremism on either side as a mistake, and how they unite a community or country together. As much I wish that whole world had a lot more liberals, I really wish that there was a much larger percentage of centrists or moderates than there are in today's world.

Will you make a video on understanding the centrist mind?

Then, it sounds like she’s really planning on not being a senator after 2024, and probably wants to be some kind of lobbyist.

Yeah I just watched that. He mentioned how she not really going to change how she operates in the Senate, which means that Democrats will still have 51 senators in their caucus. Now Democrats in the Senate will have full control of all their committees and will have the power to unilaterally issue as many subpoenas as they want. He also said though that Sinema switched parties to try to improve her electability. How come Sanders, who is old enough to be her father, didn’t ever abandon his utopian ideals, even he has been a politician who has worked in Congress for most of his life? The other old timer liberals who’ve also worked in Washington for almost their whole lives like Schumer, Pelosi, Durbin, Hoyer, and many others like them in Congress who never abandoned their core values, even though they have also been corrupt to some extent.

Conservatives like her have always used the same kind of gaslighting throughout much of US history. The Southern Democrats in the 60s said similar things when they vehemently opposed all of those civil rights and voting rights legislation that ultimately ended Jim Crow. Strom Thurmond, who was at first a notable Democratic Senator from the South, said before he turned into a Republican, that the Democrats had "abandoned the people" and "repudiated the U.S. Constitution" and that all of these Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts allowed the federal government to greatly infringed upon states' rights.

You said before that she was never a true progressive or liberal and only pretended to be because she never had much intellectual honesty about herself. Her rhetoric was progressive and was a member of the Green Party around the year 2000. Do you think that she just simply got corrupted too much by the big money and corporate lobbying in politics?

Too bad for her and her constituents. People like her have no choice but to live with the fact that times have really changed.

Biden was originally a very centrist Democrat from Delaware in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Then by the early 2000s, he began to shift more and more to the left. He eventually became the first sitting vice-president to publicly announce his unequivocal support for gay marriage, which then prompted Obama to become the first sitting president to also publicly announce his unequivocal support for gay marriage. I also believe that some of it comes from Biden having always been fundamentally a liberal and a true Democrat along and I think that he has genuinely changed over time into a more compassionate and open-minded person than he was when he was Senator. Biden has become a center-left Democrat who has evolved into a more liberal politician than he ever was before. A lot of that probably has stemmed from a combination of his days in the Obama Administration, the Democratic party as a whole having kept shifting to the left since the early 2000s, and pressure from the growing faction of progressives.

I am all for centrism and centrist to center-left Democrats. In fact, I think that center to center-left Democrats are still the best Democrats overall because they are generally the most electable, most pragmatic, and probably the smartest liberal politicians we have in the country. I also know that we need to keep electing more and more of these Democrats into Congress, into governships, into state legislatures, into attorney general positions, etc. in order to effectively make serious progress for our country. But why did Sinema run as more of a progressive or liberal before she became a senator and then turn into more of a moderate conservative like Manchin? I still don't get why Mark Kelly is more to the left than she is.

She's already in serious danger of being unelected according to the polls and many pundits. Also, she may not be acting as a slave of the voters, but what about the fact that she has been acting much more of a servant of the rich and corporate donors that she secretly has been working for for years? It's not just progressives like those on TYT and Secular Talk or what have you who have spoken out on this. Even Sanders, Warren, AOC, Khanna and other progressive politicians in power have constantly spoken out about how Sinema has indeed been legally coerced by the rich and corporate donors into not voting for higher taxes on them. She probably has also been legally coerced by the wealthy and corporate lobbyists into not voting for eliminating or weakening the filibuster, which absolutely needs to happen for the greater good of our country. You even said last year the very same thing about Manchin even though he understandably has been a very right-wing Democrat from a very conservative state all of his life: So, how is that aspect really been any different with Sinema? I understand that political leaders are supposed to be smarter and have a better understanding of governance than the average the voter, but does that mean that politicians aren't ever obligated to vote for any of the policies that they run on during each their campaigns? Does it also mean that they don't ever have to deliver on any of the promises they make as a politician? Oh yeah, one more thing. How about the fact that she once said on her Twitter feed long ago that it's conscionable that the federal minimum wage isn't $15, then she deleted that statement from her account as if she never put out that statement, followed by turning her back on that idea or view by unabashedly thumbing down the idea of passing the $15 minimum wage provision via the budget reconciliation process last year when Congress was passing the ARP stimulus?

Still doesn't explain why Senator Kelly was noticeably more to the left and less difficult to work with in DC than she was. Even Senator Tester who comes from Montana, which is a red state is even more to the left than she is and he has turned out to be a much more reliable Democratic voter in the Senate than she is. He even supported making permanent filibuster changes and a filibuster carveout for those voting rights bills and abortion rights bills that didn't get passed. Sinema, on the other hand, has always been one of the only two Democrats in the Senate along with Manchin who have been against eliminating or even making any changes to the filibuster. Why is she really against changing or eliminating the filibuster when she doesn't even come from a conservative state like West Virginia? Furthermore, have you seen her poll numbers? She has actually become very unpopular for over a year now with both Republicans and Democrats in Arizona. She's likely to be primaried or lose re-election if she runs again. Even James Carville said in a vox article earlier this year, "I can’t explain it, and no one else can. The only explanation people have given is that she wants to be the next John McCain. But she’s not going to win a primary against Rep. Ruben Gallego, I’ll tell you that damn much. And I will personally volunteer to help him fundraise because I think we can keep that seat if he runs." https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/09/kyrsten-sinema-approval-rating-equally-unpopular-everyone.html https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22893113/james-carville-joe-manchin-biden-democratic-party Btw, how come Manchin who is the most conservative Dem in Congress and comes from a deep red state was for raising taxes on the rich and corporations, but Sinema wasn't for it at all? In fact, why was she the only Democrat in the Senate who did not support raising taxes on the rich and corporations? Also, why are Senators Ossoff and Warnock a lot more to the left than she is even they too are from another purple state? What about Senator Baldwin who's actually a real progressive representing Wisconsin, which is arguably an even more purple state than Arizona is? How about Senator Brown who's another real progressive from Ohio, which has become more of a red state since 2016?

Yeah, I agree! People in Arizona weren't doing that to Mark Kelly because they perceived him to be someone who definitely represented the values and political beliefs of most people in Arizona.