Democrats Vow to Block ‘Graham-Cassidy’

It isn't just getting rid of health care, it's also filled with tax cuts even America hasn't seen before, to the most affluent and powerful in the world.

You should fucking care, because this isn't just screwing Americans. It is making the affluent more successful, while at the same time workers without unions, long since they have become extinct in this country, you have your right to safety denied as well. For what you eat, what you drink, how you were born, and what your life may end up being.

This bill successfully champions the beginning of the second industrial revolution.

I don't vote at all. I just don't want this fucking bill passed. It's beyond nightmarish. It's everything you ever wanted feared would happen in the worst timeline in your own country and more. This bill would gut health care so hard, it would be worse than it was before Obamacare existed, as lack luster a middle finger that was. A petty sympathy.

It not only makes the affluent more powerful, it gets rid of the last workers right left here. The right to your own safety.

Cash money.

I don't care because I'm not American, and the average America is a tumourous individual spouting propaganda and ruining everything good in the world. We've got our shit together across the Atlantic, the only people to blame for America is America.

You don't seem to understand. The richest people in America, who I'm saying will acquire wealth from this the likes we've never actually seen, will have even more money to spend and influence.

Do you honestly fucking think America is its own island? No, this will effect you, and history as well.

If you think other nations won't follow in America's foot steps, you're incredibly naive. More wealth is such an attractive and tempting offer.

Fuck the working class when you don't like them right.

Are you the OP? Because it reads like propaganda. Why should I be against the potential Balkanisation of the US? I don't give a fuck if you feel that it would make corporations profit (spoilers: it won't).

America is getting marched towards the killing fields of history and is too inward looking to see it.

Yeah, actually. Fuck off with your fetishistic attitude towards the working class.

No.

So International Workers of the World, go fuck yourselves?

So you have the same baseless ideas as him?

Cry a bit more, but I don't think the GOP working class are in the IWW.

By screwing over the working class in America, you aren't actually defeating America. You're beating its working population further into the ground while the very people who made this Post Cold War world possible grow even more powerful, allow their families to grow even more powerful. Their future existence even more powerful.

By just shitting on people who don't know any better because they slashed education, slashed public works, all for the military, lied to them, and destroyed their worker's rights, completely demolished unions and fucked everything up.

You
Are
Not
Solving
Shit

You fail to see who the actual problem is. American workers have no power.

Where the fuck did I say this?

Baseless ideas like, maybe we shouldn't strip health care past a decaying corpse into a skeleton while giving enormous tax cuts to the people you should be focusing on. I think the only people fetishizing the working class in America is you, since you care more about their ill fortune then the fortune of those in power.

Tbh I didn't want sound like an assohole, but I 100% unironically agree with this post. Americans are kind of a lost cause. I mean this is the reaction when they take away your stuff, but for when your president talk about invading venezuela, destroying Nk, escalating iraq you don't even do a peaceful protest. Also your class cucker is just. I'm not against 100% of american people, it's just that you guys are like a sick dogs that bark and even if we were enemy a long time ago I just feel sad about you, every time we have to help you you guys try to beat our hand. While rightfully we should hope for at least a mild social democracy for the U.S. I doubt that we should do anything more than that. Still it's pretty fucking bad, and we should at least support them if it's really really bad, but we don't know yet. Problem is if the dems will use this in a near future to shill the next boring corrupt candidate, that's imho we should wait before supporting, protesting or something like that. We should hear what is this all about before judging

Europe, while classcucked, has the old flame is still burning inside. I know unironic 80 years old communists who are still ready to kick asses if given a chance

But you guys didn't give me a fucking answer. Is there an actual chance that this will pass? The last ones didn't pass and were pretty shameful. We don't know yet what's inside these. Is there an actual chance?

This working population is one of the most reactionary on the planet, yet the more it's prodded by the government the more it goes towards the left. While I don't want American workers or especially comrades of this board to suffer, I fail to see how sticking a plaster over it will help anyone in the long run. Americans will not gain power by being handed crumbs, and they're close to reaching critical mass of outrage. I don't want them handed crumbs to stop their outrage. Healthcare could be the tipping point, and no, getting single payer healthcare at the slightly reduced benefit of big pharma isn't a socialist policy.

Fuck off nigger, you know exactly what was meant by it. I don't have to entertain your semantic faggotry.

Nice emotional garbage.

American workers who face the worst conditions in the Western world, are not the fucking problem.

The bills that pass that give them more powerful is, making corporations identified as actual human beings, is the fucking problem.

Blaming voters is liberal bullshit because most people don't fucking vote. Most working people don't vote.

The powerful are the problem and blaming workers for their slow decay of our rights is not solving shit. You're hyper focusing on people with no purpose or place. Instead of people with all purpose and place.

No it fucking doesn't. The world wealthy is fucking international. As we fucking speak they're working long term plans to destroy your working rights, destroy your education, destroy every liberal working class protection you take for granted, will all follow America, slowly and surely.

Just like it was here, it will take three decades, less or more. It's simply too tempting for them.

And there is nothing you can do to stop it, America is the first domino. It will be slow like it was here, and before you know it.

It's all gone.

You have no idea what these fucking think tanks in the government, the lobbyists, the fucking politicians, are evil. You are blaming the poor for their own slow decline. This didn't happen over night. It was three decades. Slow, and impossible to stop. Ideological war was made against working class needs. Slowly.

Now they want to take away our health, and you want me to just take a fucking bow?

Not an argument

??? I have no idea what you're talking about. I never said what you claim I said.

REMINDER THAT CHUCK SCHUMER AND DICK TURPIN DURBIN SUPPORTED SOPA-PIPA

I never blamed the voters nor the worker. Is just that imho isolating america as much as possible is a good thing.
That's just my opinion.
You didn't answer me. There's a chance it will pass? What's is this all about?

Nobody is saying they're good people. In fact they would benefit from this bill more than anyone. They just need the working class not to die en mass.

America isn't the first domino, it's the hand tipping the stack. Please knock off the double spacing, it makes imageboard users automatically hostile to you.

I agree completely, and I don't think you should bow (I even said I would have nothing against you voting for your self interests) but America is undergoing serious strife and I think it would be best for us if comrades like yourself massively capitalised on it. Your population is massively reactionary however, but they seem to react, even in red states, incredibly violently to the removal of the ACA.

I said the majority of the US working class was cucked to hell, you for some reason dragged up the IWW.

I would argue it wouldn't, because these powerful travel. The richest in the world have influence from Britain to France to Saudi Arabia to Mexico to Canada to the United States.

The more you have this acceleration notion of submissively roll over for these disgusting reforms will accomplish nothing.

It proves these people right. And slowlyt but surely they will make it to you. You won't notice because it will take a couple decades or more. That's the most sinister part of it. The restrictions take so long to make, that you don't notice each small change, by later times. You're old and you can't fight.

That is the danger of this bill. It gives them a symbolic win, that other nations are notimpossible to subvert. Look at France, look at Germany, look at fucking May.

You think the slow but sure destruction of all the public good, liberal as it may be, won't fucking happen? It will. America is a testing ground for what they can slowly get away with.

People in this thread not answering my question on how much this thing has a chance and what's the point of this makes me thing of hilldogs shills from reddit

Not that guy but IWW is the Industrial Workers of the World, not international.

Mine is not an accellerationist notion. When I say isolate, means kicking the fuck out people who have influence over our countries and at the same time avoiding an invasion of classcuks good for nothing that will probably shit up our continent. Is in the nature of the american after all, really

This has always been the logic, but each time its gotten worse. This isn't the early 20th century anymore, the police have weaponry that can't be fought. Violent struggle is all but impossible. Over those 30 to 40 years, we cooked like a frog in raising water. It wouldn't happen, it would unite the working class. It would help liberal movements to at least help pull is in the right direction. It was all lies, and we are growing less powerful to defend ourselves. Their plot is, now that the Cold War is over, is to bring the world back to the Industrial Revolution.

And it starts with the denial of the rights of workers to their own health and safety. This bill is a catalyst. This nation, a testing ground.

You should worry, because with how powerful they are now, there is nothing stopping this slow decay from coming to a country near you. In your lifetime. You are looking at a window into the future of your life.

It's pretty clear from his capitalising the words that's what he meant.

Typical fucking burger. Literally handed the weaponry used to destroy all the gendarme styled police equipment and APCs they're handed, then fucking whines about the legality of using it as intended, while Euros make whatever they can in a shed to fight them.

We both agree in general principle, but getting rid of Health Care to unite the left will not work. We've been beaten down over so many years that we haven't noticed what was gone each successive generation. We're fucking lab rats for the rich and powerful to see what they can get away with on a global scale, and they should not be allowed to take away the last right the workers have.

For fucks sakes even now, with what pathetic protections we have. Women go bankrupt for even planning to have a family, because their job won't let them have maternity leave. People go bankrupt over medical bills every hour of every day. And this bill won't just take away that right from us, it won't just be a test to see the future of Europe, it will kill the working class. All included in this bill, are tax cuts we've never seen before.

If this doesn't bother you, if you think this isn't going to just happen in America, you're wrong. It will spread like a cancer everywhere it goes in the 21st century. And maybe I'm cynical enough to believe nobody would fight back, because that's what happened here.

The police in America are different then the police in Europe. They're actually allowed to carry military grade equipment, vehicles, apcs. Body armor. They're stocked full of what was only meant to be on a battlefield.

Yeah, nice try. I'm British.

It's worse than Britain.

Nigger how the fuck is a civil war killing thousands of people and causing the government to lose control of hundreds of miles of land while an independence movement detonates bombs all over the mainland worse than America?

It's similar, I would say America's police is far more armed militarily, recycled down from the branches. That may surprise you, but it's true. It just hasn't been used.

I have no doubts it will be used one day.

Almost any dumbass in America can get an automatic weapon. The majority of police are unstable idiots with no real experience beyond roughing up black kids over weed. The US is setting itself up for failure and violence is going to happen inevitably at some point in the future and it wont be a cakewalk for the government especially if it's going to be against the entire working class, many of whom are gun owners who have some level of anti-govt sentiment.

Pal, if you run around shooting officers with a shotgun over here you'll have the RAF and commandos dispatched quickly. The difference is merely an illusion. Take up arms in any country on your own and see how quickly you have every paid up man at arms descend upon you.

Jesus dude. Admit you guys are grade A pussies already and that you are not interested in revolution

Reminder that Bernie introduced a single payer plan a week ago and almost all the Democrats laughed it off. Hell, even a Republican senator as a joke offered to amend the new bill coming through to add an older single-payer healthcare plan that one of the Democrat senators came up with years ago and the guy who came up with it decried his own plan as a bad idea.

All I'm saying is I'm scared for my own future, and the future of everyone who has to bust their ass off just to make a fraction of a fraction of a fraction what other nations make. Expected to pay beyond what they're capable for just a broken arm.

Now imagine cancer.

This bill is designed for two things 1) Killing off the working class 2) Using their remains as less of an expense 3) Titanic tax cuts for the most powerful people on Earth. 4) See how much they can get away with before they start the beginnings of instituting policy in Europe and elsewhere. Returning the world to an Industrial Revolution state of affairs with highly equipped police. Hell, they may even be private security at that point.

This isn't some "haha Americans are dying". I know it's easy to see that, but a glimpse into the future.

I'm not going to debate the specifics, I'm just warning you that the working class people, having their rights raped from them over so many years without much attention; this bill is both a warning of things to come, and a class cleansing for proles who's demands grow to expensive.

We used to be. We honest to God used to be. Think Tanks have destroyed our potential, coming up with ways that turn out over every decade to manipulate the public. You won't be so confident once the slow decline of workers rights reaches your continent. It won't be a blink of an eye, it will be insidious and slow.

For fuck's sake. You have an abundance of weaponry and "muh free speech" - more than the Europeans that have been fighting with police for decades, yet you still make up excuses. We had a fucking civil war with less and you're complaining about ????

Are you tugging my cock? The UK has been completely assaulted with thinktanks and we still managed to coup one of the Big Two FPTP political parties. We're still purging them to this day.

Do you think talking does shit? I told you people have been brainwashed for decades now, and beyond that their working class needs destroyed, for what little time we had them. And these think tanks come up with ways to manipulate into a positive to a population beaten down who just want to live.

If you haven't noticed, the past few years we've been escalating violence with the police. Though I'm sure you'll find a way to criticize Americans for not doing enough still. Or doing it the wrong way.

Maybe, just maybe, IT ISN'T THE FAULT OF THE WORKING FUCKING CLASS.

That's what I just said. Slowly but surely they will remove the collective rights as workers. You cannot imagine it being worse then it is, but it will be worse.

I've already had no healthcare under the Democrats for over a decade.

...

This "But what do I have to lose argument?" is such crap. Not only does this bill span far grander than just health care, it gives you even less than the Democrats threw you a bone for. If you have cancer under this bill, you will have even less of a way to afford treatment then you did with this shit we have. This bill is both a death sentence and a slap on the ass for everyone who ruined the working rights of Americans.

And that happened once again, because they slashed education for years, slashed public works for years, they're privatizing everything. Just slowly. It's speeding up now, but don't for an instant assume they don't have plans elsewhere.

I never said that. I said that the people and lobbyists supporting you are looking at every nation of yours with enviable eyes. Look no farther than who the Prime Ministers are in Germany, France, Britain. They're all shifting to an American way of life. This is not the fault of "Euros" you're claiming I'm saying. It's the powerful. I'm saying America is a testing ground for what the world will turn into.

To say it's only the American bougie at fault isn't accurate, they're all on the same god damn team. Setting plans within plans for maximizing fucking profit. And they're going to slowly transform your nation into something you never thought it could be in the next 50 years. Just like this nation, history will repeat itself.

My only hope is people will wake up and get violent. Most people in the US don't like the government but most won't identify with revolutionary thought

Spoilers: Being British, the plan backfires massively and results in people fighting with the police in the street (pre-Corbyn), and leads to people seemingly collaborating in the events being harassed and ostracised, with the liberal party being hijacked by commies (post-Corbyn).
The key to the scenario is reforming your liberal party to the point that the membership runs the show.

...

You don't understand. America once had the same vigor, in fact it had one of the most violent labor histories in the world. It didn't stop out of laziness.

It stopped because these changes became liberal, became gradual. Became not well reported on. And before you know it, now corporations are considered legally people with first amendment rights. I would say this occurred after the civil rights movement, they became more aggressive. Planning long term, but more aggressive. Putting working people against each other, saying organizing was splitting the work force, costing business money. And it was all you heard.

I'm saying you may be violent now, but these people have patience, they're cunning. And they're not stopping their exploitation of the working class to this degree in just America. Other nations will slowly transform the same way we did.

I'm just as bemused as you are. But it's not like there's any escape from Capitalism. No matter who you are, where you live, and how good of a student you are, capitalism will slowly grind all bones into dust

I agree, but you sound like the British public in 2010, by the time it was 2017 you had a MSM completely discredited, the ruling party routed, a grassroots movement knocking on the doors of the halls of power, a potential insurrection happening nearby the capital due to their policies, all historic grievances being consolidated under "capital", and a socialist running the opposition. Your main goal should be opening up the dems to entryism.

With our campaign finance laws, that's unfortunately an impossibility.

Yeah, this is where terror comes into play. Sorry bucko.

Do you think what think tanks do is magic? It's propaganda, something that isn't lost to the left, especially in this day and age when so many people are rejecting MSM. As many leftists as possible should be capitalizing on the unpopularity of a repeal. If it's stopped it should be presented as an example of what the collective anger of workers can do, completely avoiding the idea of bourgeois electoral politics mattering - focusing entirely on the effectiveness of anger. If anything I think leftists should be supporting free healthcare as much as possible.

Also, talking does work. You just have to know how to be personable and communicate with people. I have a conservative co-worker who now understands core concepts of socialism over what the media pumped into him over the years just because I knew how to talk to him. Pretty much all of my co-workers know I'm a socialist and are interested in talking about politics with me. Even before I opened up to them, someone mentioned unionizing as the company we work for has been worsening our work conditions. That got people to get a sense of class consciousness, our company even made certain employees watch an anti-union presentation, which we all later made fun of. Talking is underrated and I feel like so many leftists have completely lost contact with their own real life communities, sinking into worthless armchair pessimism.

Seriously though, Euroland is fucked and Britain is a cruel joke. Politics is irrelevant - if Corbyn can win an actual majority he'll be cucked hard by the harsh reality that socdem is no longer possible, and it's not just those mean bureaucrats in Brussels that are the problem. The only thing to do is watch helplessly as what you have is taken away from you bit by bit, or wait for something unexpected to happen and the whole system to collapse. The poors can riot in the street all they like, but if you think immiserating the poors is going to accelerate shit you're sorely mistaken. The poors are already shit upon. You need professional class allies who are somehow going to keep their jobs after they side against Porky in order to be in positions to fuck the system, once they are released to the hounds they just become like any other fucked poor.

Here's the real joke - Corbyn and Momentum and his followers aren't really socdem, they're just using it as a guise to get rid of all the corrupt fucks that have strangled the country to death. If the Establishment start trying to cause a civil war with them, they'll shoot back with a fury that makes the IRA look like kindergarten bullies.
The "Trots" line started as a joke, but the media alienated so many people on a massive scale that they've now become socialists.

ron paul and mccain don't like it so as long as they get one other no everyone will be fine.

no, if the wealthy elites start a civil war retarded conservatives will use it as another example of "socialism will always fail".
see: Venezuela.

The "Establishment" is something of a myth. Ruling cliques in politics come and go, and high-level bureaucrats don't work alone. There's a much bigger machine fueled by professional-class bureaucrats, teachers, computer programmers, you name it, who have been convinced that they deserve their status and they're not willing to give it up for an uncertain future. The poors best hope is to be co-opted by this middle, the middle seizes power and creates a "meritocracy" which is really just the perpetuation of their own belief in their supremacy, minus the superfluous Porky. Afterwards the poors get gulaged or forced to work in sweatshops so they're "put in their place". All for the sake of fucking status. It's ingrained into too many people with too much influence. I saw the change while I was growing up - older teachers could be (but weren't always) fairly cool and some of them even dared speak of socialism, but the younger teachers were almost all pure ideologues, with the rare "bad" teacher who was just crazy and unfit for the job.

You can't even contemplate revolution that ends well until you shatter the meritocracy, and that's a big hill to climb if you can't even get rid of the superfluous Porky.

No.

If push comes to shove, it won't be peaceful. The way I see it the revolution you're all telling me to avoid ends up with me and a bunch of friends clad in overalls, gas masks, helmets, and strapped to the nines. We'll get attacked by those with vested interests in the streets, lynched, and set on fire and so on. But we'll be the ones in charge, and looking at the way things are going, there won't be a way to stop us. Tomorrow belongs to us.

the amount of times this has country been saved by the absolute dumbest shills is pretty odd

Rand is a bitch who will fall in line.

The rotating villains are Collins, Murkowski, and McCain. The former two are almost certain nos because they like being elected. McCain flinching last time was a fluke; if they're serious about a repeal (and I don't think that they really are because even they realize what a clusterfuck it would be), they'll make sure McCain is on board and justify it with muh military (plus his buttbuddy Graham wrote the damn thing so bonus points).

The bourgeoisie hid behind the aristocracy after 1848, the meritocracy hides behind the bourgeoisie in modern society. The ideology runs too deep - you won't get what you want unless the meritocracy decides (or needs to) dump Porky, or Porky fucks up big time, and then they will be the ones in the drivers' seat.

The ability to rebel for a "pure" revolution just isn't there, the numbers don't add up even if you look at it optimistically. The future isn't glorious socialism unless something drastic changes, the future is the Party from Nineteen-Eighty-Four except actually competent.

This sounds like some serious utopianism mixed with nihilism. I'll take my chances with the heavy weaponry and popular support friend.

...

Good luck, then. You'll need a shit ton of it.

Me, I'm shit now and I'll be shit after the revolution if I'm lucky enough to not be gulag'd for malingering of being eugenically unsound. It's not a matter of choice - meritocrats can never be my comrades regardless of what I do.

Maybe I'm wrong and enough people will see the meritocratic-eugenic ideology as the crock of shit that it is, but the numbers don't look too good. So many socialists expect robots to do everything and act as if manual labor still won't be a thing, when there will still need to be a large farming population and large population to transport goods, who won't be able to split the labor as elegantly as an idealist would like. Then you'll have the technocratic class who has to put in a lot more work to keep the system running by necessity, and they're going to whine and gripe about what they "deserve" and blame those ungrateful proles that they've been trained to look down on and spit upon not because of money, but because of a kind of social hierarchy that transcends Capital.

Also something something Lenin vanguard party. Lenin figured out that you need a fucking vanguard even in a place as shit as Tsarist Russia.

...

If we half to talk about Burger politions can’t we talk about ones who aren’t extremely repulsive.

I'm not really worried about a lack of guns. There's plenty out there and I could get one myself if I really wanted to. Let's also assume the police can't get paid any more and some decide to rebel because men with swords don't starve right. Some of the grunts rebel too. The Marines probably don't, those guys are fucking brainwashed unless you get a fucking Gomer Pyle. So you have some muscle. The question is, what are you going to do with it?

I'm looking at who has the power to shape the potential future of a Porky-free society, and it's not the poors and the downtrodden. Even if they're allowed to be in the vanguard, they wouldn't know what to do with power once they got it except mumble some vague platitudes about workplace democracy and talk about how they're not going to be impoverished peons any more. In any revolution there are going to be ambitious opportunists, and the poors and the downtrodden don't want opportunism - they want to break their chains and right what went wrong.

Enter the meritocrat-eugenist. This is a foul ideology I have seen grow and grow since I've been born, never losing steam and never being seriously questioned in the academy, in the mainstream (beyond pathetic, whiny defenses from insecure people), and even the home isn't safe due to how wide the ideology spreads and how it is inculcated through educational and media institutions through deliberate propaganda. I have yet to see anything in over 30 years to suggest that these people are going to accept anything that challenges their assumptions, their desired muh privileges, their want for power.

When the revolution does happen, I'll be at least 40 years old with no education and not much of a work history. There's not much of an in for people like me in any vanguard party. What do YOU think would happen to me when shit hits the fan? If I'm not killed by porky or fascists, I'm probably not going to be judged kindly. If I'm lucky I'm just put to work in some undesirable job, "where I belong".

Now think what will have to happen if you want to keep agriculture and transportation running, for a start. You need lots of dull, manual labor for that, and you won't see college graduates doing that for the most part. They "deserve" better. Maybe you can get rid of some of that labor with automation, less production, and better planning, but you still need a lot. And even though everyone ought to have the ability to succeed, there are going to be some unfortunates who are put "where they belong" out of some sense of necessity. And then, because these aren't super happy fun jobs, there will be pressure to make sure the people stay "where they belong". Maybe you can offer some vouchers, but you and I both know it's not just about the stuff. You can only bribe peons with promises of more stuff for so long and up to a certain point before the stuff is superfluous. It becomes a matter of status - people are coerced or manipulated to stay "where they belong" in order to maintain any semblance of order. It's the same in capitalism, feudalism, slavery, whatever, even though we're supposedly trying to move beyond that. Eventually you get to a point where you haven't abolished class, you've just set a different metric and have one class ruling over another, whether their methods are tame or cruel. But eventually, all hierarchical societies must resort to crueler methods to keep people in their places, and no matter what you may think there is no getting away from dull manual labor or shitty tasks.

Now, this is not an intractable problem, and a properly oriented plan would eliminate the worst marks of this meritocracy and keep it to an appropriate minimum. But I've seen what the millennial generation really believes, what they were raised to believe. I know that once that generation is entering positions of power, whatever system we have, we're fucked. It's up to the rare few outliers who are willing to go to the extreme steps necessary to stamp out eugenism once and for all, that would need to seize power. And even if those people were able to drive or manipulate action in their favor, you'd need to sever a lot of heads - and I mean a lot, like more heads than Mao's death count just to get started with the most intractable.

Good. Every dead AmeriKKKan is a victory for the world and all working peoples.

I don't even care any more

Will this overshadow single-payer? Is that the point?

The point is to fuck the ass of Americans, like everything Congress does. There is no higher sophistry at work.

Hillary is an evil cunt but she's right. Single payer will never, ever happen because socdem policies simply can't work. The middle-income tax base they relied upon has dried up and there is much grousing from the well-salaried professionals about "useless eaters" receiving any sort of welfare. The rich sure as hell won't pay a wealth tax or anything that attacks their money bins.

In theory Porky can print infinite fiat money and fund it that way, but it's dangerous to tap that well for a mandatory expense like expanding the social security act because of hyperinflation possibilities, and of course Porky would only offer such a concession under immense pressure which the American people can't generate.

Your meritocracy is just fascism with a technocratic face, and isn't seperate to capitalism. The idea that a bunch of technocrats will keep fascistic control over America is honestly hilarious. Nobody likes technocrats. Americans are either moving further right or further left, but not towards the direction of impersonal technocracy.

How are the meritocrats going to rally the support from America's massive, decentralized, majority conservative army. How are they going to appeal to the all the armed militias spread across the US. Do you think they're just going to say "we're smarter than you, we stand for nothing but ourselves, listen to us or die" and all of those people are going to just listen? Can you even explain why you think something like the meritocrats would even exist seperate to bourgeois interests? They both want to save capital. This meritocracy would be delusional to rid themselves of face of the bourgeois, they're irrevocably attached to them. Once America collapses, your meritocrats will most likely be subservient towards the capitalist military.

And lets not get into how this meritocracy would keep control as climate change inevitably causes massive destabalization. If they're the same sort of genius professionals who absolutely knew Hillary Clinton could never lose, I'm sure they can't make mistakes though.

If they abolish the money-form and do away with the hallmarks of capitalism, then it isn't capitalism. Fascism is a quite naked defense of capitalist practices. I'm not talking about anything fascist. A more appropriate term would be "scientific dictatorship".

Hillary Clinton is certainly not the vanguard of the meritocratic revolution. She's just an ordinary corrupt politician with blatant issues, who surrounds herself with sycophants. She tried to pretend she was meritorious and talk about her record, etc., but everyone with a lick of sense knew what she really was and that she ran the most incompetent campaign I've ever seen in my life.

The meritocrats are definitely a class distinct from the proletariat, albeit a class that has not fully formed its power and identity. They are also distinct from capitalists in that they do not own the means of production themselves, and are at present courtiers to Capital. But I can definitely see such a class asserting itself once Capital is abolished, or Capital is neutered to the point of being a subservient tool of whatever new order the meritocrats want.
If Porky's economy is "healthy", Porky can hire a virtually unlimited number of rent-a-cops from the desperate masses and grease all of the wheels to keep the meritocrats happy. Once the meritocrats have no further need of Capital and can openly rebel, once Capital can no longer deliver its promises, then you could have a potential rebellion. Another financial collapse could very well do it.

As to how the meritocrats get the masses on their side; they lie, duh. Tell the masses they'll get everything they want if they just follow the vanguard party, and push them back down once they've performed their role. Once they're fully in control, it doesn't really matter - they only need to perform at a bare minimum of competence to stay in power, just as long as they disarm the proles and have the will to mass genocide any that get ideas. Given what I know of the average millennial's mentality, I don't see them objecting to killing those they deem inferior.

What do the meritocrats accomplish by getting rid of money form? Also, yes they would have to function at way beyond minimum competence to stay in control in an America that going to go inevitably become increasing unstable due to tons of factors outside of their control. Once they abolish capitalism why would anyone stay on board for this insane "scientific dictatorship" which apparently casually genocides its own populace. I'd give it a year before it implodes, it becomes known as retarded tech startup Cambodia, and America Balkanizes.

Just a quick and friendly reminder that yesterday the senate passed a 700 billion dollar military spending bill.

Money would become superfluous if the US cannot back its fiat with military power or peg it to the price of oil. Hyperinflation and eventually a paralysis of the economy will force a change, and the people with a lot of private debt - the professional class - will want to liberate themselves from bankers and the capitalists forever, and the lower classes just want to eat again and also not have to deal with bankers.

You should know it's damn near impossible to overthrow a stable regime, no matter how tyrannical and horrible they are. No amount of hatred from the lower classes will overthrow the scientific dictatorship, especially if they are being casually genocided once they become too numerous to police. Take away the guns and power of the lower classes and it's just a turkey shoot. Rebellion would be like trying to overthrow the capitalist class at this very moment, when they have lots of guns and lots of money to buy whatever support they need to suppress a rebellion, plus the support of the professional class who, for now, are willing to accept capitalist rule as long as they get their cut.

Also, the scientific dictatorship would be quite adept at propaganda and essentially mind control a good part of the lower classes, or at worse buy them off with trinkets and promises (true or false) that they're better than the other lower class plebs. We have ample examples of that today with how poor whites are pitted against poor blacks, and you can literally invent any status symbol and make it a mark of pride, propagandize people to believe it, and it is done.

Further, the values of meritocracy are already inculcated in two generations and show no signs of going away any time soon. Even if people are not at the top, they believe internally, and they accept the ideology, that they are where they belong; it would be the rare agitator that rejects this arrangement, and these people would be singled out and either killed, or kept alive for public humiliation after they are degraded.

seems good to me

We're entering an interesting period where the contradictions of the American political system are compounding to the point that it's impeding its own ability to function. The two party system that ensured its stability at the cost of the exclusion of political alternatives is now a trap.

The Democratic party is facing an insurrection from progressive Berniecrats that largely represent the youth voting bloc. They are diametrically opposed to the policies pursued by the party establishment. In fact, their goals and objectives are mutually exclusive in numerous ways (the youth want more democracy, the establishment less, etc). This is an existential threat to the Democrats in the long run, but even in the short term it presents significant problems, for example the democrats having to deal both with progressive challengers as well as Republican opponents going into the midterm elections. Even if the establishment prevails over the Berniecrats, it's going to be at the expense of alienating a third or more of their

Prescient, accurate.

>This is an existential threat to the Democrats in the long run, but even in the short term it presents significant problems, for example the democrats having to deal both with progressive challengers as well as Republican opponents going into the midterm elections. Even if the establishment prevails over the Berniecrats, it's going to be at the expense of alienating a third or more of their

Perhaps this is an incorrect assessment, but when I look at where young people are politically (the ones that care enough to involve themselves politically) I see a lot of them leaning left, but beyond that, they are very upset by the status quo and the political system as it stands. The few that are on the right seem to dislike the establishment/old guard as well. I just don't know that this outrage will ever be enough to change something that is so well defended and ensconced. Hell, what could even change? The leadership of the two parties are essentially put there by monied interests backing the party's infrastructure - and the US system doesn't really allow for more than two parties - so it becomes a matter of who has the money essentially by necessity - and monied interested are interested in keeping their money/ making more of it. I dunno man, I think economic/political/social/resource collapse and rebuilding is the only thing that really has a chance to remake a system this structurally broken - though (thankfully?) this system is working to engineer its own collapse at an increasing pace, so perhaps we will get our chance.

I think the average American does have a very distorted view of both how things are and how they were, and this distortion tends to increase the further from the poverty line one gets. For most young people in the US, I would imagine that they themselves either experience the compounding failure of the system directly, such as the student loan phenomenon, or are familiar with someone that is. The blinders haven't come away completely, but young people are increasingly deprived of the insulating effects of wealth that their parents were.

I don't know if there will be a sudden sharp break or lurch toward radical sentiments, but I think it's an unavoidable trend. Discontent with Bush drew people to Obama, who turned out to be just as bad. This in turn led to Occupy, and Bernie after that, and the treatment he got during the primaries and after drove people toward his progressive movement within the Dems as well as the Democratic Cops of America. When these reformist measures prove insufficient, I think it's only going to continue to push people in more radical directions.

I think you're correct on the points you bring up in one way or another. Most young people I interact with are left leaning, though this is mostly of a liberal bent due to the arrangement of American politics. More and more are discovering the history of the labor movement and the tradition of leftist thought that's been denied them.

The way I see things, the American government is already trapped by the fact that it can't change, because any change they make to accommodate the increasing needs of the electorate will undermine the entire paradigm they've constructed on quantitative easing and austerity etc. I think that the brazen way that the DNC behaved in the primary is evidence of this, because if Bernie were to effect even the mildest of reforms to alleviate conditions on the working class, the elaborate lies used to justify cuts to social programs etc would all be immediately shattered, especially if they end up working, or even perceived as working. The American political system has ossified to the point that it is unable to provide for any of the needs of the electorate in even the smallest way without cracking up, and I don't see this changing any time soon.

I'm this respect, the absence of the Left might be seen as a boon. Roosevelt was able to reform capitalism because the presence of a mobilized and organized Communist movement threatened the bourgeois enough to make concessions. In the absence of an organized Left, Capital has license to run amok. Unable and unwilling to compromise, it's viciousness will fall on the population in general, either out of intentional malice or its own natural functioning or both.

Because of this absence of an organized leftist intermediary, either to promulgate change in the government or moderate its responses to popular discontent, people in general will be increasingly exposed to its increasing incompetence and its arbitrary brutality, as well as the unrestrained exploitation of capital.

This has the "fortunate" effect of creating the conditions for an organized, revolutionary response, but also at this current time the opening for a liberal response by the tech bourgeois to present themselves as a legitimate alternative to both class struggle and the dysfunctionality of the "state." At the moment it looks like the democrats want to try and co-opt the progressive Berniecrat platform by taking on a facade of progressive politics, but I don't really see that working or lasting longer than the next presidential election. I think they'll try that, watch it crash and burn, and then turn to Zuckerberg and the like, but that's depending on how the midterms go. If the progressives give them too hard a time, I imagine the DNC will assume a much more reactionary bent by the presidential primaries.

I am conflicted here - because I hope against hope that you are correct, but I have seen first-hand this inability to make even minor and sensible changes to this system.

Look at the drug war for an example of this - a complete farce on the face of it, always has been, started initially to crush the hemp industry, and then later to target black and lefty activists - there was never any reason other than maintaining social and political control over the population by literally going to war with the American people, yet even when, what, 10 states or so legalize it for recreational use (and many more have it for medical) the government still maintains that it has no medicinal value? It is a flat, cynical lie, everyone knows it, but that doesn't seem to matter.

The war on drugs continues to ramp up - feeding into private prisons, drug company profits, police and prison lobbies, political entities who would rather maintain this easy way of taking voting rights (and future work possibilities) away from certain demographics, more cops in schools, more searches, less freedom, justification for mass-surveillance. No one believes that the war on drugs keeps anyone safe or keeps drugs away from people that want them - yet it can't help but escalate. There is simply too much money, resources, procedure, everything - wrapped up in continuing things as they are.

I love this point (and I've said something similar to my liberal co-workers) - I feel that the left is growing in its mainstream appeal to some degree, especially with people under 35 or so - but what will that growth actually accomplish if the system doesn't allow us to influence it? Media doesn't have to cover our movements, and when it does it finds the dopiest half-wits to interview. The police-state has never been better equipped to target activists and infiltrate left-leaning groups. I just don't have much hope for this system allowing for change - I think it will change after it collapses, but I'd bet on all of the shit we hate being doubled-down on until that happens.

Yes, people react and do things in their self-interest. Congrats on figuring that out
Lmao not even close to true. Is this a meme or do you really think no protests happen for any of these?

Yeah and almost none of the "good" Dems supported it. Dems are trash and Bernie dropped back into "independent" mode quickly for a reason, because being a Democrat is fucking toxic and it should be

What some peaceful protest in some college in the mid west were few greenies occupied a park?
It's not a meme, it's the reality. There is more outrage in the population if only whites nominated at the oscars than for serious stuff.

It's hard to say.

In my opinion, we're already at the cusp of widespread disenfranchisement. The Republicans have been leading the way on that front with their voter ID restrictions, but the Democrats also exposed their hand with all the stunts they pulled during the Primaries. Flipping districts, "losing" voting records, purging people, etc. What little responsiveness the government had before is already getting pared away.

So, broadly speaking people are reliant on two major sectors to satisfy their everyday needs: the various levels of the government, and the various outlets of the private sector. Unless some major systemic change occurs, I believe that the ability of both to respond to these needs will continue to decay. As capital is drained from the consumer population, capital will become increasingly uninterested in serving them. As competition intensifies for the lower levels of capital, The bourgeoisie will increasingly turn to the government to maintain and ensure profitability. This will mean a culling of social programs (the USPS for instance, not quite a "social program" but a government department in direct conflict with the private sector), and an intensification of so called law enforcement.

In both cases I believe people are going to start experiencing more detriments than benefits, and out of necessity they're going to have to find alternative means of fulfilling them. If there are no stores to sell them food, jobs to pay for it, or a government to supply it, then people will have to either steal it or grow it for themselves.

Assuming that the capital accumulation processes continues along its current trajectory, capital will grow increasingly scarce among the working class, and as that happens their ability to effect any kind of appreciable change via the mechanisms of bourgeois democracy will also diminish. Eventually, even if you were to assume "normal" functioning of these things undisturbed by disaster, the ability for average people to create change, whether by voting in the booth or "with their wallets" will reach absolute zero.

At that point, with no way to supply for their needs by official means, people will have to turn to alternative methods to satisfy them, in the same manner that when obstructed people turned to speak easies and back alley abortion clinics in the past. Ideally, this would be in the form of communist organizations, but I can't say that's for certain. This is assuming also that capital doesn't develop its own means of organizing and profiting off of progressively desperate people, like the return of company towns or some fresh new hell that I can't even imagine. In my estimation, though, any measures business or government take to deal with these problems will be ultimately ineffective, if only because their root causes will remain, and any sort of substantive remedy would be in the eyes of capital prohibitively expensive.

I apologized if my responses meander, I'm at work and customers keep interrupting me, which doesn't really help maintain a coherent train of thought.

Maybe you shouldn't have said "not even a protest" if you were gonna walk it back immediately lol

Dude I think we're way past disenfranchisement. Case in point - the democrats still deny doing anything wrong in the primaries, though they did have to admit in the court case that was brought against them that they have no legally binding responsibility to run fair primaries, but that leads in to the fact that despite DWS and like 3-4 DNC staffers stepping down there was no consequence for those in the party establishment for essentially rigging their primary, running a garbage candidate, losing to Donald Trump, and utterly failing to get a competent new 'resistance' platform together in the year since the election. We're seeing the beginning of that now with Bernie's medicare for all bill, but for one, that's not coming from the democrats, and for two, last I checked, Schumer and Pelosi (senior-most dems) hadn't even supported the bill yet.

This is certainly true, but the pairing back of social support has been happening since the 70s. Wages stagnated, foreign intervention exploded, unions were destroyed both by intentional union-busting and globalized trade becoming even easier. Again, I have a feeling that Americans could be reduced way beyond where they currently are without mounting a competent resistance or new political reality. Gotta' fight for your rights -but that means no income - and in America today that means you're homeless, hungry, and essentially an illegal entity - you cannot exist in the public spaces without being there to buy something - you have no money and no private space to retreat to - persona non grata was never more fitting than it is when applied to the homeless in modern America.

I suspect you are correct - but I think the solution of the elite will be to build more prisons.

I think we're there already, my friend… If not we're so close that the distinction doesn't matter much.

I think again that this is already happening.
Can't afford drugs in the US? Got to Canada.
Can't get an abortion in your state? If you have resources you travel to get it somewhere else.
Can't buy the drugs you like legally? Black market or drug tourism to a state that does.
Can't afford media/entertainment? Pirate it.
Can't afford housing? Tent city.

I think your last sentence there was more correct - company towns are coming back. Really, looks at places like Seattle and the amount of real estate that Amazon is picking up. Every alternative is de-legitimized and criminalized, while the private solutions are heavily lobbied for.

I think this is key - though I see the root-causes of a lot of social ills in our post-peak-oil world to be energy related. Gas is essentially never going to be cheaper-and-easier to extract than it was ten years or so ago - and the effect that that will have on an economic system that necessitates constant growth, in a world where people continue to have more children, who require more food, who necessitate more crops being raised, harvested, and transported - I think the issues our future will face will come from this essential energy element's new-found scarcity, and I don't think this mandatory reduction of growth is something anybody is truly ready for.

No prob famalam - I'm at work too, and it's kinda' scattering my thoughts a bit/making me ranty. Cheers to our mutual fucking of porky's projected productivity!

By and large I agree. I don't think it's too cynical to say that America is a democracy in name only and that legally curtailing voting access is just a formality. Speaking broadly across all fifty states and levels of government, average people haven't been completely shut off from the political process, yet.

Maybe "disenfranchisement" wasn't the right word, because I don't just mean curtailed access to voting rights, but an active program to restrict, reverse, or otherwise remove what little remaining political volition people have left. For example, removing the ability for people to bypass the legislature by means of ballot initiative. In my state, a rural city built their own broadband after being underserved by Time Warner Cable for years. TWC bribed the governor and legislature to make such "anti competitive" practices basically illegal.

So you're right, we're past simple disenfranchisement, and we're going to increasingly see the active restrictions of access to political power for the working class, if not the exclusion from access to it altogether. Just the other day I saw a headline where "half of millennials" would give up their voting rights if it meant debt forgiveness. I shudder to think of what "progressive initiatives" like that will be proposed in the future.

It's hard to say definitely because of the variety in the state of the social safety net across the country, the tremendous gulf between rural and urban life, and the relation between various sectors of welfare and the economy.

Some regions and communities are already flat lined as far as economic or government support go. You can't get welfare without looking for a job, but if there are no jobs to get, your options are leave, get on disability, or starve.

apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Right now, the general population I believe is just getting by in various ways, but the assault on the vestigial programs that allow them to do so is constantly under attack. The opioid epidemic is another symptom of this, as people both use the drugs to escape, and sell them to make ends meet. You might be right, especially for the older part of the population that think "the good times" are going to come back, but for more and more people, especially young people, of things get any worse they're basically fucked.

I don't doubt it. I can't help but worry about what comes after that, though.

You're right, I'm thinking of what people will do when they can no longer afford these other capital intensive means, flying to Canada and so on, when either the resources for doing so are unavailable and/or other legitimate means are precluded. If a city goes to provide its own food by buying farmland or starting its own factories or whatever, and Monsanto lobbies the state government to crush it.

Ah yeah, exactly.

I'm not sure what to think in regards to energy needs. I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I'm not sure what the average person's energy needs are going to be. If the downward trend regarding wages and employment continues, then I don't see how many Americans will be able to afford any of the things for which they need energy in the first place. Gas prices are moot if you can't afford a car.