Why do Biden and the Democrats in Congress want bipartisanship?

[Emerald]

31 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@Emerald you're just bullshitting. Dems don't have any sinister motives. 

None of them have sinister motives. They have self-interested motives.

They get money from the owners of corporations and industries to do the bidding of the owners of corporations and industries.

I recommend reading some Noam Chomsky to get an idea of how American Imperialism works. 

[Emerald]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Except it is not mere window dressing, and if Trumpism didn't reveal that you, I don't know what will.

Republicans are less morally developed.

Now, this does not mean that Dems are super morally developed. But they are more morally developed than Repubs.

It's not an illusion, their niceness just has it's limits and isn't as nice as you desire.

Again, these are all relative things. Just because they support the Military Industrial Complex does not make them less nice. You can do both.

You over-simply things.

This attitude of blame-everything-on-elites is foolish. As we saw with MAGA, the vulgar non-elites are worse than the elites.

If the elites will price gouge you on healthcare, the non-elites will dress like Vikings and rape your grandma for sport.

Elite vs non-elite is not the correct dichotomy. That's not the real issue. The fact is that non-elites are ignorant and they elect idiot politicians who reflect their own idiocy. And THEN those politicians of course exploit and sell them out. Because that's exactly what a non-elite would do if placed in such a position of power.

A non-elite is just an elite who hasn't achieved money and power yet. If you give a non-elite the opportunity to be an elite, he will take it and run with it.

First off, the point still stands that Dems aren't reaching across the aisle because they're more developed. That's simply not true... even if they are more developed. They're reaching across the aisle because it's good for their donors... and their donors give them money. Period. This is very simple to understand. So, that point still stands, regardless of how developed they are.

But to address what else you'd said...

As I'd said, the window-dressing and moral leadership of Trump DID matter as he was a demagogue and he brought out the worst in people here domestically. This is true. And this REALLY matters. That's why I was relieved when Biden won as it does put out a fire.

But I can also recognize how the natural outcome of the way the establishment protects corporate interests at the expense of the people and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few, leaves the populace vulnerable to demagogues who can come in and speak to the pain of the peasantry and say, "I see you're struggling, it's (fill in marginalized group's) fault. Elect me and I'll do something about them."

So in this way, the magicianship of politicians' moral leadership really matters.

But on other levels, who cares as to who's more developed or not, when they're both killing the same amount of people?

So, window dressing matters... but it isn't ALL that matters. You're neglecting the impacts of American Imperialism and how things are set up to benefit the very few at the expense of the vast majority. And many civilians in other countries have died in the American war machine just so the owners of the military industrial complex can continue to create more weapons for these forever wars and get access to the big pot of American tax dollars.

Also, you can't get cheap foreign labor if the country you're trying to extract that labor from has a thriving middle class. So, the war machine is maintained for this reason too.

And this is going to be the same whether it's Republicans or Democrats. 

While moral leadership is very important, you have to look beyond just the moral leadership role of politicians if you want to see the roots of corruption and actually fix things. 

 

[aurum]

I’ll add to this that the nature of systems also complicates this mess of why people do what they do.

Systems can make “good” people do “bad” things. 

For instance, all of us are using cell phones and / or computers right now. Which means that we are participating exploiting cheap labor in third world countries that create them.

Does this make us bad people? Or are our hands largely tied due to the more meta-level constraints of the systems?

Even if we try to not participate in exploitation, we find it almost impossible to some degree.

This is what systems do. They have a life of their own, so to speak.

So as much as we talk about people needing to “develop” their morality, I’d also like to see an emphasis on addressing the systems that create the rules of the game to begin with.

Corruption is an illusion. An illusion we may be experiencing, but an illusion nonetheless. It’s not who people really are.

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Emerald said:

First off, the point still stands that Dems aren't reaching across the aisle because they're more developed. That's simply not true... even if they are more developed. They're reaching across the aisle because it's good for their donors... and their donors give them money. Period. This is very simple to understand. So, that point still stands, regardless of how developed they are.

But to address what else you'd said...

As I'd said, the window-dressing and moral leadership of Trump DID matter as he was a demagogue and he brought out the worst in people here domestically. This is true. And this REALLY matters. That's why I was relieved when Biden won as it does put out a fire.

But I can also recognize how the natural outcome of the way the establishment protects corporate interests at the expense of the people and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few, leaves the populace vulnerable to demagogues who can come in and speak to the pain of the peasantry and say, "I see you're struggling, it's (fill in marginalized group's) fault. Elect me and I'll do something about them."

So in this way, the magicianship of politicians' moral leadership really matters.

But on other levels, who cares as to who's more developed or not, when they're both killing the same amount of people?

So, window dressing matters... but it isn't ALL that matters. You're neglecting the impacts of American Imperialism and how things are set up to benefit the very few at the expense of the vast majority. And many civilians in other countries have died in the American war machine just so the owners of the military industrial complex can continue to create more weapons for these forever wars and get access to the big pot of American tax dollars.

Also, you can't get cheap foreign labor if the country you're trying to extract that labor from has a thriving middle class. So, the war machine is maintained for this reason too.

And this is going to be the same whether it's Republicans or Democrats. 

While moral leadership is very important, you have to look beyond just the moral leadership role of politicians if you want to see the roots of corruption and actually fix things. 

 

Well then our country could very well be headed for another disaster in the foreseeable future. I am freaking out now that the US will end electing another right-wing populist like Trump, but someone supposedly smarter like Tucker Carlson (whom has been said a possible frontrunner for the 2024 election), if Biden and the Dems let our country down during these next 4 years.

 

 

[Preety_India]

@Emerald  I agree with Leo though. I don't see any self interest on the part of the Democrats. 

They are doing Considerably better than conservatives and it seems like it's driven more by the strive to bring people together rather than satisfying donors. 

 

[Emerald]

24 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Well then our country could very well be headed for another disaster in the foreseeable future. I am freaking out now that the US will end electing another right-wing populist like Trump, but someone supposedly smarter like Tucker Carlson (whom has been said a possible frontrunner for the 2024 election), if Biden and the Dems let our country down during these next 4 years.

I think it's a very strong possibility that another more competent version of Donald Trump will come along.

The establishment benefits too much from being able to strong arm those who are wanting a more progressive politician or who want to vote third party into choosing between the "lesser of two evils" establishment canditate.

So, now that they see that they can run "Neofascist corporatist vs Neoliberal corporatist" and get a ton of people falling in line, they may continue to do worse and worse intonations of that split.

It might be a Tucker Carlson... but he wouldn't be the worst. It could really devolve into being some Richard Spencer kind of character.  

[Willie]

29 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

someone supposedly smarter like Tucker Carlson

..........really?

[Preety_India]

Tucker Carlson will never stand a chance 

His rhetoric is too negative. Trump on the other hand had a certain toxic charm about him where he would coddle people and act like a protector to weak gullible people. 

Tucker doesn't have that. He has a repulsive personality 

His illusions of grandeur of becoming the next president will come back like a door hitting in his face. 

 

[Emerald]

17 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@Emerald  I agree with Leo though. I don't see any self interest on the part of the Democrats. 

They are doing Considerably better than conservatives and it seems like it's driven more by the strive to bring people together rather than satisfying donors. 

 

Leo didn't say that the Democrats weren't self-interested. And I don't think he would say that.

If he knows anything about American politics at all, he knows that most of these politicians are getting donations (essentially legal bribes) from huge corporations and industries... and even certain special interest groups in other countries like Israel. 

He just said they were more developed. And that's true on the Spiral Dynamics level of their moral leadership. And moral leadership, is basically about the way that they address the nation and present themselves and give speeches. What they encourage in the populace. So, on the level of moral leadership, Spiral Dynamics differences are evident. 

But at a certain point, level of development on the Spiral doesn't matter as much... the outcome matters. 

And Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump all continued the offensive regime change wars and toppled so many foreign governments. And they support these wars because they were all getting donations to their Super PACs by lobbyists who work for the Military Industrial Complex.

And both Democrats and Republicans are in the pockets of their donors... as is anyone who gets bribes from people. There's an automatic conflict of interest when there are bribes as, of course, those billionaire donors want things from those politicians in exchange for their financial support. And you can go online and look up which politicians are taking money from which industries and corporations. It's public record.

So, both are HIGHLY motivated to please these donors so that they can continue to get their financial kickbacks and support with financing any future campaigns. 

So, what must be understood is that, if it looks like Democrats are less motivated by self-interest and pleasing their donors, then it is only because that's the face that they're presenting to their constituency. Many people in their base are Green on the spiral... and wouldn't vote for them if they really looked at what they're actually in favor of.

 

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Emerald said:

But on other levels, who cares as to who's more developed or not, when they're both killing the same amount of people?

They aren't tho. Repubs killed tens of thousands of people needlessly with their handling of covid, and other things.

[The Don]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

They aren't tho. Repubs killed tens of thousands of people needlessly with their handling of covid, and other things.

@Leo Gura, how about people like Governor Andrew Cuomo, forcing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes?

Do you know anything about his horrific measures in response to COVID?

Our elderly were the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and Governor Cuomo did it anyway. It was inhumane.

How about the other left-wing governors who did the exact same thing and had to change their trajectory when they finally realized their blunders?

I don't believe the Republicans were the ones who killed tens of thousands of people needlessly with "their handling of COVID-19".

[Leo Gura]

@The Don Talking to you is pointless about such things because you are an ideologue.

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Emerald said:

Many people in their base are Green on the spiral

Unfortunately this isn't true. As we see with 70 million people voting for Trump.

If American citizens were more developed and educated, many government problems would go away. But therein lies the whole problem. How do you develop people who refuse to develop themselves?

People are not educated enough to vote on policy or substance.

[Joel3102]

4 hours ago, Emerald said:

And Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump all continued the offensive regime change wars and toppled so many foreign governments. And they support these wars because they were all getting donations to their Super PACs by lobbyists who work for the Military Industrial Complex.

And both Democrats and Republicans are in the pockets of their donors... as is anyone who gets bribes from people. There's an automatic conflict of interest when there are bribes as, of course, those billionaire donors want things from those politicians in exchange for their financial support. And you can go online and look up which politicians are taking money from which industries and corporations. It's public record.

 

 

On the issue of war in particular, Democrats are still pretty bad (albeit better than Republicans). Both parties support US hegemony around the world and meddling in other countries affairs. Obama even killed way more people via drone strikes than Bush. Hillary Clinton supported the overthrow of Gaddafi which fucked Libya even harder. Both parties are bought out by the Israeli lobby and don't do SHIT to stop the Israeli's from expanding settlements in the Westbank and stealing their land. Yes the Republicans are worse, but both sides should be called out. Unfortunately, the average voter doesn't give a fuck about foreign policy. 

[Hardkill]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@The Don Talking to you is pointless about such things because you are an ideologue.

Actually, despite the fact that Cuomo did a great job, after April of last year, with controlling the virus cases in his state, what Cuomo did with the nursing home situation was one of problems that has been legitimately criticized by political commentators including some progressives. 

[Joel3102]

@Hardkill Yeah to not be able to admit fuck ups on either side is the ideological thing to do

[Hardkill]

5 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

On the issue of war in particular, Democrats are still pretty bad (albeit better than Republicans). Both parties support US hegemony around the world and meddling in other countries affairs. Obama even killed way more people via drone strikes than Bush. Hillary Clinton supported the overthrow of Gaddafi which fucked Libya even harder. Both parties are bought out by the Israeli lobby and don't do SHIT to stop the Israeli's from expanding settlements in the Westbank and stealing their land. Yes the Republicans are worse, but both sides should be called out. Unfortunately, the average voter doesn't give a fuck about foreign policy. 

Trump killed exponentially more people in the Middle East via drone strikes during his 4 years as president than Obama did during his 8 years as president.

[Joel3102]

@Hardkill I know that. The meta point is that drone strikes are going up regardless of the president. Don't get me wrong though, Trump is horrendous on foreign affairs 

[Preety_India]

Trump has collectively killed more people 

The comparison to Obama is simply ridiculous. 

 

[Emerald]

12 hours ago, Joel3102 said:

On the issue of war in particular, Democrats are still pretty bad (albeit better than Republicans). Both parties support US hegemony around the world and meddling in other countries affairs. Obama even killed way more people via drone strikes than Bush. Hillary Clinton supported the overthrow of Gaddafi which fucked Libya even harder. Both parties are bought out by the Israeli lobby and don't do SHIT to stop the Israeli's from expanding settlements in the Westbank and stealing their land. Yes the Republicans are worse, but both sides should be called out. Unfortunately, the average voter doesn't give a fuck about foreign policy. 

Exactly