noun
- a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
- policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
I have a fair amount of experience in small construction jobs and even more in woodworking, with a little bit of metal thrown in here and there down through the years.
Before I even read the text, my eyes immediately went to the fact that the nail gun Vice President Penis is holding doesn't have an air hose attached. Likewise, the stand-up screw gun that Mother is trying to appear to be using isn't plugged in.
Speaking as a working person, just once I'd like to see Republicans do two minutes of actual work for a photo op without insulting my intelligence. This is an even dumber version of Paul Ryan's 2012 stunt in which he spent a few minutes running clean dishes through a commercial-grade dishwasher.
I've done this type of work, I've done that, too. I currently work in a kitchen.
Just for once, could Republicans manage to stage a photo op that doesn't telegraph utter, flaming obvious contempt for working people?
I do not think that word means what you think it means, there, Turtle boy.
Just to get the obvious out of the way, why should the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico not have full representation in Congress? The people in both polities are American citizens. Why should they not have full, proportional representation in Congress? And...in the case of Puerto Rico in particular, also the right to vote in Federal elections?
There is no damned good reason for this situation, and no damned good reason it shouldn't have been fixed years ago. I presume Yertle is against it because he thinks that the Senators from these places would be at least predominately Democratic? Not. Necessarily. As recently as 20 years ago, Puerto Rican people that I knew were predominately Republican. If that's changed, Bitch, that's probably your fault. After all, why should any people, up to and including People of Color support a political party that has turned against them in every way possible, and whose debatable leader has now come out against full political representation for those people?
Action = Consequences, and standing athwart the flow of History yelling "Stop!" is only going to defray those consequences for so long. It's just plain out that simple. Political control and power only protects you and yours so long as everybody follows the rules...and in the era of Trump none other than Republicans have made a big show of not following said rules.
It's only a matter of time before other people follow suit. It's only a matter of time before the system starts to break down from there.
But Republicans don't know or care about any of that. Somebody said "Socialism" so, Beavis-and-Butt-head like, Republicans cackle and assume "everybody knows" what that means.
It has, after all, been an article of "Conservative" faith for at least a century-and-a-quarter that Socialism = Bad, mostly because then rich people would have to pay more in taxes and ooga booga people who don't have to worry about a bunch of shit would maybe be less likely to go to church or otherwise trust supernatural forces when their needs are being met by the State.
Never mind that Socialist absolutely does not equal Statist, Mexico had a mini-revolution on a state level 25 years ago that was fought by Anarcho-Socialists against the government...and today, Kurdish factions with similar views have been utterly indispensable in helping the U.S. and its allies crush Daesh in Syria.
So, Socialism Bad...unless we need boots on the ground in a war where the American public has no wish to send its own troops? Just like, Socialism bad unless we needed the Red Army to pound the shit out of the majority of Hitler's Wehrmacht while the Western allies liberated North Africa and Western Europe?
So, Socialism is only bad when Americans...particularly Brown Americans...want to make sure they get a piece of America...however small? That seems to be what Asshole Pucker-face is saying here.
And I'd argue that, at least since Joe McCarthy, Republicans haven't bothered to care what that word...and increasingly any word at all...even means.
Just over a year ago, I wrote about how at least for a majority of Republicans, politics was devolving into a series of Magic Words And Phrases.
Shameless plug; That article, Fiery The Angels Fell, is one of the ones that I consider among my best work. I'd say I hate it when I'm right, but I re-read the piece this morning and I gotta say things have turned out about how I thought they would.
We've hit the point...largely out of unreasoning "Conservative" fear of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and maybe a little of Bernie Sanders and where was that in 2016?) where "Socialism" has become nothing more than a Magic Word used by Republicans to scare the base...who, mind you, have profited nothing by Republican tax cuts and anybody who's even been paying the slightest attention knows this.
Except of course that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are more accurately considered Social Democrats. You know, the kind of people who Stalin detested enough to name-check that philosophy and explicitly call social democracy a moderate form of fascism. So yeah, Commies they ain't, at least not by the words of the guy old Tailgunner Joe was most afraid of.
But ya know, it's worse than that. People who regard civil rights, education, health care and voting as "Socialism" and some kind of a threat to their power...are at best an annoying anachronism (and mind you, I was taught these things were important by conservatives) and at worst, a threat to modern human civilization.
I'm just sayin' it seems to me like the average Republican at this point never quite mentally got past the age of 14 and thinking the Neo-Feudalism and giant robots of the Battletech universe were just great.
Truth is, it's not a bad game system, the level of universe-building is utterly impressive...if a bit dated being that all this was originally put out there in the 1980's...and they never retconned it to account for current events at the time. In actuality it hardly supports one political view in particular, taking instead the notion that centralized authority became necessary as humanity propagated across the stars. A number of the nations and quasi-national military forces are, in fact, described as Socialist...a couple using that dated Cold War definition in particular, in fact...but the world as built has its liberals, its libertarians both conservative and socially-oriented, and hell it's anti-State Iconoclasts as well. Not just that but in the early 1990's the writers pretty much assumed LGBT equality or at least acceptance would be a given...and that what racism there was had largely realigned more according to culture and faction than skin color. One of my favorite characters in the novels was a Black Samurai...another was his factions spymaster, whose name clearly suggested South Asian descent.
The trouble is, the people who nominally grew up to be today's Republican Party never got past the part about riding around in some giant walking tank while being the Baron of some planet or other.
Just like they never read any deeper into Starship Troopers than that one had to serve in the government or the military to be a citizen or any deeper into any Heinlein novel than whatever gun happy bullshit supports the latest tear that the NRA is on.
Yeah, you could try maybe being an embattled Chinese future-Communist struggling to hold things together under the rule of a mad dictator and using Mechs that were built out of what you had, not what you wanted, or a Japanese-culture-based super Ninja or maybe a techno-Samurai who'd best his political rival in a game of Go before the two of them strap up in 60-metric-ton walking tanks and blast the shit out of each other...or a German-Scandinavian merchant-warrior with an even bigger Mech commanded by incompetent generals who had a tendency to lose the war even if you won the battle. But anybody who's played this game will tell you that the system stacked the deck totally in favor of the Anglo factions both past and present, to the point where such was a sore point with more dedicated fans.
The thing is, in a lot of cases the average citizen who doesn't have millions-in-whatever currency in assorted accounts doesn't make out all that well, often at best going into the field with a ballistic vest and a laser rifle against weapons that'd wipe out an entire platoon at once, or working in a factory or field or mine somewhere and hoping that shit doesn't get raided by pirates riding metal monsters.
For extra points, I had a week-long argument last week at work poking holes in a co-worker's adoration of the Warhammer 40K universe (much to his annoyance, and I've played that game as well, and it sucks) and if you think the Battletech universe is shitty you ain't seen nothing yet. (It's a literally fascist universe ruled by a catatonic dead guy in which faster-than-light space travel is accomplished by short-cutting through hell.)
And that's the kind of science fiction that a lot of Republicans read...and read badly, I might add.
But we live in the real world, where the only way to hold shit together is to be as fair as possible to as many people as possible, even if it doesn't make everybody happy and only works sometimes...and where, like it or not, heroic shit is best done on a smaller scale, like in how you conduct yourself. It's not glamorous but that kinda beats the alternative.
And I frankly prefer a future where at least most people work at least somewhat together for the betterment of all to any of the alternatives, both historical and fictional or theoretical.
On Twitter last week, I watched a video...shared by somebody who's political leanings I'm not sure of save that they appear to be on the anti-Trump end of the conservative spectrum...that showed two guys messing around with a fairly basic robot, one getting the thing to do various tasks and the other smacking it with a hockey stick and otherwise being real abusive, to disrupt its efforts. For the record, the poster was appalled and said "They're going to remember this, and they're going to kill us all."
That story has been written a few times too, in the various iterations of Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, and the Terminator movies...among others. I have no mouth and I must scream, anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?
Don't any of these motherfuckers read decent science fiction, or at least watch movies?
If we, the living, in the present day don't throw motherfuckers like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump out of office at the first available opportunity...well, just remember that some people's idea of the future is Conservatives and Robots that they can abuse and you and me or any descendants we might have (much less any resistance by the robots) don't appear to factor in at all.
And that, my friends, is why Mitch McConnell thinks education and health care and peace and everybody getting to vote is socialism. You have to be alive to have Constitutional rights.
...
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.
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