Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[Cthulhu 2020]

Dude, we are just witnessing the Fandom and its rituals.

If pointing out that none of the dumb shit you guys are predicting will come true is fandom, what would you call an unwavering desire to criticize Biden no matter what good he manages to accomplish? If we go by previous models, it's Biden Derangement Syndrome.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Is Theo still crying about retraining programs while offering zero solutions herself? Is she finger wagging everyone who expects someone to provide a marketable service to society?

Propping people up with welfare and paying for their retraining so that they can one day hold a good paying job may not be full blown socialism, but it is the love child of socialism and capitalism. Criticizing retraining programs just because they expect someone to someday have a use to society and support themselves through their own labor is one of the dumbest things I've heard on these forums, and that includes all the far right "bootstraps" comments.

I also have yet to see @Theodarzna address the actual problem here, that many industries are dying and there's nothing the government can do to stop them from dying, short of propping up an entire industry on the taxpayer dime. So assuming that these people will not have a job in the near future, or already don't have a job, what should we do for them? Should we give them unlimited welfare and say "Here, live off the hard work of others" or should we say "Hey, fuck you, either die or bootstrap yourself up"? Because considering retraining programs fit somewhere in the middle of those two solutions, and Theo is screenching about bootstrap statements, I assume the only solution she wants to offer up is an early pension for those 40 and 50 something coal miners to retire on?

Man @Edge- , the nerve of some people, expecting people to eventually get off of welfare and work.

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Yes... take the mantle from the maga chuds. Is this how things are going down? Trump is going so you pick up the alt rights tools and use them to beat back critics? I'm sure that's nothing to be concerned about.

I don't see any critics, considering nobody has actually criticized anything Biden has DONE so far, just what the crystal ball in their head is telling them he'll do, or something about HUNTER'S LAPTOP, EMAILS, BENGHASI!

People bitching about retraining programs are either far right shrills who want to bootstraps people up with no support, or people who wish that 40 something coal miners could retire permanently on the taxpayer dollar it seems.

[Theodarzna]

That policies like NAFTA have a place....

Cool, we finally have an admission that policy does things. Maybe now Democrats can be worth something.

So, to turn this around, do you believe that the advancement of technology has anything to do with the loss of many of these jobs to automation?

Yeah, its been known to happen. I tend not to blame those people for their situation or sudden poverty.

And no

Cool. I think its a tactic of yours that's fairly annoying.

[Machismo]

Cool, we finally have an admission that policy does things. Maybe now Democrats can be worth something.



Yeah, its been known to happen. I tend not to blame those people for their situation or sudden poverty.




Cool. I think its a tactic of yours that's fairly annoying.

Stop.

It's not sudden, this is something that has been known for decades.

You are lying... again.

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Cool, we finally have an admission that policy does things. Maybe now Democrats can be worth something.



Yeah, its been known to happen. I tend not to blame those people for their situation or sudden poverty.




Cool. I think its a tactic of yours that's fairly annoying.

Anyone else love the irony of Theo once again complaining about someone else doing what she does?

[Rasulis]

State, in no way should it be a private thing. And I think they'll love the jobs and a power plant more than "Learn to code, and driver for Uber you fucking hick!" If anything its the more misguided of the Liberals who aren't Atom-Pilled yet. Plus its cleaner than the coal fields. You can sell it if you aren't a patronizing jerk to them.



Then they can sell things to people with Ranger jobs, fix the cars of people with ranger and power plant jobs. Not everyone in a town is today SOLELY works in that factory or a steel mill or a mine. The Rangers, Power Plant Operators, the people who like Programming gotta buy food, car repairs and bread at some point.



What if's are great but I don't believe we should focus on jobs that require degrees to replace jobs that do not need them.

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A Park ranger job is far easier to get at a Community College than a CC certificate in C# leading to a ritzy job at google.

My other idea is simply tax the people benefiting from NAFTA and give it to those that were sacrificed.

My understanding is that National Park Service ranger is a GS-5 Federal level position. Which requires either a bachelor degree or 2 years GS-4 experience plus 2 years post-secondary education. Our property borders the Cleveland National Forest and we know a lot of the local rangers. I don't know of a single ranger that does not have a bachelor degree. Most, if not all, of them started with seasonal national park positions while they were still in college.

[Theodarzna]

Man, has anyone in this thread explicitly supported the gig economy, even?

You're tilting at windmills, Theo.

Have I said so? I am just placing a bet that we will see it soon enough.

[Antiganon]

Have I said so? I am just placing a bet that we will see it soon enough.

I think there is a time and place for the gig economy - that being when we have UBI supporting the basic needs of the entire population and earned income is for luxuries, rather than subsistence.

In a world where college was 100% public funded, I could see college students driving for Uber as a means to have additional money to go out on weekends for example. As a (currently unemployed) 9-5 IT professional, I can see a situation where I might work extra tickets from home on a gig basis so that I can pay off my mortgage faster or have more money for a family vacation. No different than trained tradespersons picking up extra work from their friends/neighbors/classified ads over and above their day jobs because they wanted to leverage their skills for more money.

This thing we have now where people are driving 60+ hours in their own cars for two different rideshare providers just to make rent? That's garbage, and needs to die.

[Edge-]

Cool, we finally have an admission that policy does things.

You act as if I've denied this at literally any point in the discussion, which unless I'm misremembering, I have not. Slow down off that victory lap.

Yeah, its been known to happen. I tend not to blame those people for their situation or sudden poverty.

Cool, nobody else is blaming them for an industry no longer being economically viable where they live, regardless of if it's for policy reasons or not.

That's why, as Endus discussed, ghost towns exist as cautionary tales of what happens to single-industry communities. Now, I'm not saying, "Well those dummies shoulda just like, built power plants and diversified!", but it's also kinda a reality of what the risk of being a single industry community is.

In an ideal world would we be able to keep folks in the communities they want to live in, even if their local industries die off? Absofuckinglutely. You'll never find an argument from me that in a world where work is optional, wealth is no longer a thing that exists, and there's continued societal progress and plenty for all, that should absolutely be the priority. And I don't mean those descriptors in any demeaning or dismissive way like, "lawl utopia", I genuinely think that it's possible to achieve this goal eventually...maybe just with like, extensive mining of comets and interplanetary movement...BUT I DIGRESS. My point is that what you want as the ideal, ain't remotely objectionable to what I'd view as the ideal. In fact, it's pretty darned close.

But we don't live in an ideal world where any of that is practical, so we have to deal with reality. That means ghost towns are gonna exist, and like the folks before them they're gonna have to figure out a way to transition to other industries, or move where the work is. It's what everyone else in industries and professions all over the country do all the time. Those are the realities that we live in. And everyone you're arguing in this thread acknowledges those struggles and the hardships, and acknowledges the woefully inadequate failures of the US's attempts at retraining programs. You have literally no argument on this. But as a practical solution, absent that ideal world that we don't yet live in, projects like revamped retraining learning from the approach the Germans have taken and has proven effective, additional financial support for struggling communities to help steer in outside investment or relocate people to where they can get new jobs, or the other things we've talked about are our best shot at doing some good for these folks as quickly as possible.

Cool. I think its a tactic of yours that's fairly annoying.

Sorry, I don't do it to annoy you or anyone else intentionally. It's just the best/only way I've found to keep track of discussions online.

[Felya]

Why are you acting like Biden wasnt vp for 8 years lol? I havent really being paying attention to this thread, but outside of these forums I've seen plenty of criticism of biden. He is a career politician he doesnt get a clean slate now he is president elect.

But regardless is turning around and using trump style rhetoric a great idea?

Tell me when you start criticizing Biden... the current subject is a poster not being able to understand that no one is promoting the gig economy.

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Have I said so? I am just placing a bet that we will see it soon enough.

I am willing to bet it will be you doing it...

Edit: In fact... you already are... name the jobs that don’t require training, for manufacturing and coal mining jobs. Remember that both nuclear scientist and park ranger are idiotic suggestions. What jobs do you mean, if not gig jobs?

[Cthulhu 2020]

Why are you acting like Biden wasnt vp for 8 years lol? I havent really being paying attention to this thread, but outside of these forums I've seen plenty of criticism of biden. He is a career politician he doesnt get a clean slate now he is president elect.

Yes, he was VP for 8 years. Yes, Biden has an active political career even before that. Aside from the 90's crime bill, people generally don't have much to say about what Biden has actually done. And see, here's the point of looking at someone's past actions: To get an idea of what the future might look like. The problem comes when people assume something someone did 30 years ago is something someone would do now. Given how recently Biden has voted on issues, would you say he'd vote for that kind of crime bill again? The answer is no, he wouldn't.

But regardless is turning around and using trump style rhetoric a great idea?

For people like Theo and others who had zero issue with Trump (or even carried a torch for him) and are suddenly screeching over things Biden hasn't even done yet, I'd say Biden Derangement Syndrome is pretty apt. It's actually pretty generous. When someone is raging about something someone hasn't even done and will likely never do, it shows a level of obsession with a political mark that goes beyond normal concern. It's pathological lying surrounded an immense wall of world building where the person has constructed their own fantasy version of reality, and lives out their life as if the fanfiction in their head is what is happening in reality.

[Cthulhu 2020]

No thanks you've made it clear you have blinkers on.

I'd rather have those conversations with people that I dont have to convince that shit like running a sex pest was a disgusting stab in the back for the left.

What would you like to discuss? There were seven complaints that were basically "Biden got really close to me and it made me uncomfortable but that's all" and one person alleging assault, who's not opted to take their allegations to court, which is generally what you do when you've already gone public with allegations if you actually want justice for what happened? Why was Reade so vocal about the alleged assault during the election campaigns and is now quiet? Why did she wait til the campaigning began?

Not necessarily saying her story is false, but the timing of it appearing and disappearing, along with Biden's team saying it's just false, and Reade herself not going to court to dispute those claims, makes it highly sus. After all, Stormy Daniels took Trump on in court over that NDA.

[Cthulhu 2020]

No he wouldn't vote for the crime bill, what he has done is promise cops more money for training when there is massive civil unrest due to police brutality. He has shown not real interest in demilitarizing the police or making substantiative change.

I'm not going to stop you laying into people like theo but embracing trump supporters logic and tactics isnt something you should do uncritically. Leaning into some idea of Biden derangement syndrome might lead to people over looking the very credible criticism of biden.

Let's be honest, we're not going to see any real criticism of Biden from Theo and at least 90% of the people who are going to post in this tread negatively about him. We're going to get the outrage du jour from the peanut gallery. Those people like Theo and multiple others who will appear at whatever Biden's first nontroversy Fox News can cook up.

There will be things to criticize Biden legitimately for, but you'll never hear about those things. Why? Because everyone will just agree that criticizing him for it is a good thing and move on. Those types of things will be lost in the flood of nontroversy posts this thread is going to see. Democrats are generally very good about seeing and acknowledging the faults in their leaders. Meanwhile, the horseshoe left and right tend to either deny faults or spin them as desirable features. Then they bitch about the color of Obama's suit or his choice in mustard and believe it's some kind of actual political criticism.

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Haha me too was a huge performance that disappeared when it became inconvenient wasnt it. Way to hone in on that

I dont think it's that hard to run a candidate that isnt facing accusations of sexual misconduct (being generous)?

I believe many people can be telling the truth about assault under the #metoo banner, though I realize many could be making it up, and some could be mixing fact with fiction. I've been falsely accused of sexual assault and have been sexually assaulted. People's minds work in interesting ways, both as the victim and as... well I guess I don't know the perspective of an actual assaulter, but as someone who has had a bumping of the butts in a tight hallway painted as sexual assault, I realize how much people can write fiction in their own minds and believe it.

I just see the timing of Reade's story surging, along with the Biden campaign basically calling her a liar by saying the story is not true, along with her lack of interest in pursuing a court case to dispute that. She's already gone public and pushed it, no reason to hold out unless it was BS.

And yes, basically every candidate faces people coming forward, that's just become a trend now. Some of them are real, some of them are not, and almost all of them are paid for whether real or fake.

[Elegiac]

Let's be honest, we're not going to see any real criticism of Biden from Theo and at least 90% of the people who are going to post in this tread negatively about him. We're going to get the outrage du jour from the peanut gallery. Those people like Theo and multiple others who will appear at whatever Biden's first nontroversy Fox News can cook up.

I really do think it's mostly a function of doing everything possible to poison the well because certain people are now afraid their husband will be taxed more under a Biden administration with a Democrat controlled Congress.

[Elegiac]

Why is admitting biden is a terrible compromise to have to make so hard?

It isn't difficult - people have been pointing out Biden is an imperfect candidate for the entire duration of the primary. The problem here seems to be you and Theo have your knickers in a twist because other people's every second breath doesn't contain denunciation of Biden or the Third Way or whatever, combined with a very Trumpian view that all criticism is valid criticism regardless of its actual basis in, you know, fact.

Admitting Biden isn't perfect isn't hard; what's hard is taking your criticisms in good faith given the above. That, and y'all spend vastly more energy purity testing Democrats and trying to paint the party on the same level as the Republicans which really does little more than service the narrative that the Bernie Bros are just a vehicle for regurgitating right wing talking points into left wing spaces.

Which is how we get a spat of "progressives" bitching about identity politics and claiming that Biden has dementia all of a sudden.

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Nothing was learned i guess. Do you not see why this is tiring, how the democrats used me too to attack trump but the second it became inconvenient people start doing exactly what people complain about when it comes to the way sexual assault is handled

"People didn't take our character attacks seriously once the inconsistencies in Reade's story became more apparent under scrutiny " doesn't make you a victim, hun.

[Elegiac]

Its the fact that the second biden declared victory the level of scrutiny and the standard that trump was held to is now gone

Y'all keep repeating this without having ever actually proven it's the case, lol.

Your issue really does seem to boil down to that there isn't as much Biden criticism on your social media feeds as there has been Trump criticism. Which isn't reflective of anything but your own social media feeds.

Basically, we'll criticise Biden for the things he's actually doing wrong rather than "Becky heard Laura heard Stacy overhear in the bathrooms that Janet Yellen supports austerity" and things of that stunning level of intellectual honesty.

[Shalcker]

I also have yet to see @Theodarzna address the actual problem here, that many industries are dying and there's nothing the government can do to stop them from dying, short of propping up an entire industry on the taxpayer dime.

"Many industries are dying" because of acts of government (federal and state level) supporting their competition and/or exploitation that left them barely profitable and vulnerable.

It didn't happen in a vacuum or through "pure market forces" (unless you consider buying/"lobbying" lawmakers to pass those acts to be one).

[Elegiac]

Uh take a look at what you're doing right now?

You're attacking the veracity of a claim of sexual misconduct from a purely speculative position. Look. At. Yourself.

I'm attacking the veracity of a claim of sexual misconduct that was given its consideration and failed to hold up to scrutiny - unlike the accusations against Trump.

What you are doing right now, on the other hand, is insisting that because scrutiny hasn't revealed that Biden is secretly just as bad as Donald Trump, the former must not be being scrutinized hard enough.

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Also I'm gonna point out that "the minute Biden declared victory" line is one that's being circulated through a lot of the cosplay leftist circles because folks like Briahna Joy-Gray are upset that the market for ostensibly progressive grift isn't as appealing to regular folks when there isn't an actual fascist in office.

[Elegiac]

Biden won and a bunch of people were like "welp good enough" and just stopped fighting hard for what is right

You keep saying this and forgetting that you kinda need to demonstrate it's the case beyond "trust me bro".

Or is this the part where you claim that people pointing out a lot of anti-Biden criticism is bad faith must means they abandoned their values despite the fact people have been pointing out a lot of anti-Biden criticism is bad faith for the entirety of the primary even when they weren't voting for Biden? Lol?

[Elegiac]

It's the implication that my criticism is in bad faith that's getting me, like theo sure.

It is. People who are still pushing the Reade story despite the fact it was given adequate scrutiny and failed to hold water are arguing in bad faith. Sorry, not sorry.

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I mean I pointed out you doing it. Is that not good enough?

You didn't point it out, is the thing. You are claiming that is what I'm doing, which is entirely different owing to the fact you're wrong. Lol.

Pointing out that a given criticism of Biden is bad faith is not "absolving him of scrutiny". Once again y'all are just mad people aren't wasting every second breath on "fuck Biden".

[Elegiac]

I never even brought it up? It's not the only thing he is accused of and I wasnt pushing that particular case, that was you and cthulu.

Oh, so you're going to push the cases which have even less merit than the Reade one appeared to have?

You do get how that's worse, right?

But yeah you're definitely creating an environment in which people feel comfortable coming forward with allegations of sexual assault which was what me too was about. I guess it has outlived it's usefulness.

Remind me how pushing unsubstantiated or politically motivated claims of sexual assault is supposed to help furnish such an environment?

Pot, kettle. You don't have a moral high ground to retreat to here.

I mean my concerns are legitimate these are my beliefs, not sure what to say, I dont think what you're doing is particularly excusable as someone who claims to be progressive.

You believing something doesn't make it a legitimate concern. It is on you to demonstrate that the concern is legitimate rather than just crying victim every time someone doesn't take your claim at face value.

You guys are pushing this divide by doing this shit.

The one in which the purity testers claim that no, it is in fact the people who demand evidence for claims who are furthering the political divide by their pesky need for claims to have substance beyond "my friend on Twitter said Joe Biden has dementia".