Fu*%face Von Clownstick

[Matias]

Biden has made zero progress, and has totally stopped trying to restore the Voting Rights Act, which was a central platform promise.

He has continued to allow the fossil fuel industry to continue their rape of what's left of our environment, expanding fracking operations on more federal lands.

He upheld title 42, a Trump era immigration policy, and only repealed it later once the attention had died down so that he could replace it with a different, similarly restrictive border policy.

His target of carbon neutrality by 2050 is useless, and pushes the target back an entire generation from the previous targets.

PPP Loan forgiveness to all the documented liars.

Not even taking any stand against the billionaires.

He keeps offering tokens, but I don't want spare change, I want real change

 

[Bucknut]

Just for my own grasp, what is it about Biden's administration do you not like?

For starters, we literally have no southern border. He will not enforce the law, perhaps for fear of being called racist. But the state of affairs as relates to immigration is unsustainable. A multi ethnic society is fine; a multicultural one is doomed.

His orders essentially from day one cancelling Keystone XL, discharging soldiers who refused to get the “vaccine” (that vaccinated against nothing), spending hundreds of billions on Ukraine which I care nothing about……

Honestly, it might be easier to just admit that I can’t think of a single thing that Biden and I agree on. Truly. Not a single issue. I hope I’m wrong about that. You likely feel the same about Trump. 50 years ago compromise was possible (and even common!) because both sides knew the other was working in good faith and wanted what was best for an America they both revered. This seems so quaint now.

 

[Shadowscape]

I find it interesting that one of you is up in arms about his lack of response to stopping fossil fuels, and the other is up in arms about him stopping the Keystone pipeline.

 

[Matias]

It's not in every oil company's interest for that pipeline to exist. But, it is in some of their interests. It's also becoming clear to these companies that it's in their interest to let petroleum prices go up/stay high. If it's a finite resource, the play is to stretch out the endgame for maximum profit.

 

[Shadowscape]

Just to be clear, I'm not a big Biden fan. I think that loan forgiveness thing is criminal at best. And there are other things I strongly disagree with him on. But I do believe he is far and away better than Donald Duck, who is a major liar, cheat and con man. A person who wants to let oil companies and coal companies rape the landscape for profit. A person who stance is there is no climate change, or any worry about climate change. And I won't get into his best buddies are the dictators of the world, and he wants to be like them.

 

[Matias]

To be clear, I'm an anarchist at the core, but that's another one of those continuums, with the highest ideal of anarchy requiring that every person do the actual best thing possible for every person all the time. A perfect world that doesn't require rules because everyone is doing the right thing of their own volition. But we don't even agree on what that is yet, and may never be able to, so that's an ideal we can only use as a guiding principle.

Similarly I believe in the fundamental tenets of communism and socialism, and feel that those represent another set of ideals that should serve as guiding principles, and that we should all have the aim of building a more cooperative society.

 

[Muggs]

At this level, it always comes down to a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

 

[Matias]

Like I said before, it's a system that is the sleepy Joe of systems worldwide. I dread having to live in the chaos of revolution, and hold hope that something will happen that will be shocking enough to snap folks out of our collective apathy, and that people will come together for the greater good out of a newly heightened and expanded sense of self preservation.

Or maybe I've absorbed too much sci-fi.

South Park gets it right a lot.

 

[Muggs]

Communism is equality enforced at the barrel of a gun. It has been tried. It ends in death and starvation.

 

[Matias]

Oh and let's not forget how Biden totally fucked over the railworkers union while they were trying to use their one and only bargaining tool.

 

[Matias]

Communism is equality enforced at the barrel of a gun. It has been tried. It ends in death and starvation.

It has not been tried in good faith. Despots have stolen countries by promising the moon and then mishandling the whole thing while succumbing to simple greed and lust for power.

 

[Shadowscape]

All superpowers crumble. All. The Roman Empire, The British Empire, The Turkish Empire, The Greek Empire, The Russian Empire. History has a way of repeating itself over and over and over. We think it won't happen to us, just like they thought it would not happen to them. But people are involved, and they have a way of twisting things about until their society begins to fail. Once that happens it snowballs. Our snowball is on the downhill side of the mountain, and I don't think there is going to be a way to stop it. The once U.S. Empire will join the rest of them, and some other nation will rise up and take our place. There are several waiting in the wings.

 

[Muggs]

Ah yes the old "well that wasn't *real* Communism" line. I went to university. It was all very detached from, how do you say it... reality.

 

[Matias]

I agree, and I have little hope for ever seeing the ideals lived up to, but they're nonetheless worthy of our continued pursuit and refinement. I am a realist too Patrick. You and I would find less to disagree about than you might be inclined to think.

 

[Matias]

I quit university because I couldn't justify the expense any longer.

 

[Muggs]

Matias I guarantee we agree on a great many things. I'm a recovering libertarian. It is a similarly utopian ideology that also doesn't work in real life. Yes, if everyone was just smart, kind, responsible, generous, honest, productive, and rational, among many other virtuous qualities, then we could all live in harmony without much centralized oversight.

I dropped out of university because it was out of touch and provided me with no direction in life.

 

[Matias]

I work to build foundations on which I hope some may build something better than we have now. I have no doubt that we're nowhere close to that ideal; it's a high one. But I am that monkey that will keep climbing to the highest branch. It's hardwired in. If I can't get there, I will leave a rope for the next kids to keep climbing higher.

 

[Bucknut]

It has not been tried in good faith. Despots have stolen countries by promising the moon and then mishandling the whole thing while succumbing to simple greed and lust for power.

You should study more history. Communism has failed and will fail every time it is tried. Forever. There is no debate, any more than we should debate whether the earth is flat.

The flaw of communism is baked into the cake: human nature. People are different; timid, brave, weak, strong, kind, wicked. The strong, wicked and greedy will always find a way to wrest power from the timid and weak. Always. Because, untethered to morality, they are willing to do things good people aren’t. Like kill tens of millions of their own citizens with impunity.

I’d recommend reading “The Gulag Archipelago” by the brilliant Solzhenitsyn or “The Black Book of Communism”.

 

[Matias]

You should study more history. Communism has failed and will fail every time it is tried. Forever. There is no debate, any more than we should debate whether the earth is flat.

The flaw of communism is baked into the cake: human nature. People are different; timid, brave, weak, strong, kind, wicked. The strong, wicked and greedy will always find a way to wrest power from the timid and weak. Always. Because, untethered to morality, they are willing to do things good people aren’t. Like kill tens of millions of their own citizens with impunity.

I’d recommend reading “The Gulag Archipelago” by the brilliant Solzhenitsyn or “The Black Book of Communism”.

You're not much of a "big picture" guy are you? If we were incapable of growing and maturing as a whole, we'd still be stuck having tribal wars and would have never reached the point at which we now find ourselves. Our story is one of continuing progress over millions of years. I will carry the torch now brother, and keep the fire burning. Every story starts somewhere.

 

[southsoundtree]

It has not been tried in good faith. Despots have stolen countries by promising the moon and then mishandling the whole thing while succumbing to simple greed and lust for power.

Sounds like humans.