[−]_dark_matter_ · 2026-11-15 Sun 13:38 UTC ·
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Hardly a surprise - the trump administration corruption is well documented. This period is a black eye on every American, and is the opposite of laissez-faire capitalism. Instead of the best succeeding, those who can pander and make connections win (or in this case, be literally family members with a powerful person).
I hope we can move past this with the next admin, and continue to give the upper hand to businesses that want to succeed fairly in the USA.
To answer the question, no. I don't think the establishment democrats should be running the country either. They're just the MUCH better of two evils though. I'd prefer new age politicians to be the leaders.
But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
> But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
I agree it made conditions worse. I never denied that.
But I'm also looking at the entire chain of events which led to it. "Lesser of two evils" "voting" literally got us to this point. How could it possibly get us out of it?
"Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Ignoring the violent revolution option for obvious reasons, the logical thing to do would be to carefully design and build a new party from the ground up so that it can't succumb to the same levels of corruption that Dems and Repubs have, to disrupt the good cop / bad cop hypnosis that everyone is trapped in.
> "Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Good grief, how are Bernie bros still grinding this axe ten years on
That's laissez-faire capitalism. It always devolves into an oligarchy, as it's the only logical endpoint of runaway capital. Free markets create the material conditions that lead to them becoming captured and unfree.
[−]cmrdporcupine · 2026-11-15 Sun 15:56 UTC ·
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This is exactly the answer, and it's why so-called "libertarianism" is not just naive but destructive (and end-result authoritarian) as an ideology: it has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the "free market" actually is behind the scenes, imagining it as some sort of neutral/neutralizing / democratic mysterious force that prevents accumulation of power and being in opposition to "the State" when it is the opposite. "Free market" systems create the State and then dominate it and the interests involved create power systems for their own accumulation of dominance. And the end result is oligarchy.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
> This is exactly the answer, and it's why so-called "libertarianism" is not just naive but destructive (and end-result authoritarian)
Its why I can have some respect for the Dark Enlightenment guys. At least they take their idea of libertarianism to its natural conclusion.
[−]cmrdporcupine · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:30 UTC ·
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I mean, "respect" is one way of framing it.
I do think that Ayn Randian "objectivism" with its "altruism is a moral defect" is only one bad LSD trip away from just realizing what they really mean is just fully "might makes right", fetishizing power for power's sake, and embracing an explicit fascist ethos as a result.
Ideologically so concerned with identifying repression as a product of "collectivism" (and seeing "collectivism" everywhere) that they've obscured where the real violence lays & the OG violence that led to the establishment of enclosure and property rights in the first instance. Marc Andreesen's weird manifesto some years ago was fully on this path.
In that world view, "liberty" basically comes to mean: "I take your stuff." (and here's some slight of hand on how I've made it ok to do that, and why it's bad if it's the guvmint' that does that instead)
Corruption is legal in the US - at least relative to other democracies. It takes a lot for anyone to be attacked by the justice system, let alone criticized by newspapers, for giving money to a politician. Look at how Guilfoyle isn't in jail yet (in fact she's out of the press now) despite literally requesting a bribe for 100k.
"Ethics violations" is as far as it goes. We would need a radical overhaul of the legal system, but how can you do that when the patients run the asylum?
[−]kevin_thibedeau · 2026-11-15 Sun 16:35 UTC ·
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> Look at how Guilfoyle isn't in jail yet
The statute of limitations gives the next administration a year to indict her.
Pretty unlikely when you look at what happened in the last admin. Pay for play, pressuring Ukrainian prosecutors who were investigating family members' employers, his brother. Go back further and it gets considerably worse.
This admin is full of corruption, but acting as if one side is against corruption is laughable.
I hope we can move past this with the next admin, and continue to give the upper hand to businesses that want to succeed fairly in the USA.
https://archive.is/wSmtd
That make you happy?
That's precisely what a party of controlled opposition would do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniparty
But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
I agree it made conditions worse. I never denied that.
But I'm also looking at the entire chain of events which led to it. "Lesser of two evils" "voting" literally got us to this point. How could it possibly get us out of it?
"Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Ignoring the violent revolution option for obvious reasons, the logical thing to do would be to carefully design and build a new party from the ground up so that it can't succumb to the same levels of corruption that Dems and Repubs have, to disrupt the good cop / bad cop hypnosis that everyone is trapped in.
But I also don't look down on those who are aware of the above and elect to not vote as a result.
Not voting is itself a vote, in this climate.
Good grief, how are Bernie bros still grinding this axe ten years on
Good grief, how corrupt/delusional enablers are still denying facts ten years on.
Also, even post-Bernie, why do you think voters were entirely denied a primary the most recent time around?
The best Dems could do was install a proven unpopular pick and act surprised when she lost.
A vote is earned and not given, regardless of how loudly the “vote blue no matter who” argues (shouts?) otherwise every election cycle.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
Its why I can have some respect for the Dark Enlightenment guys. At least they take their idea of libertarianism to its natural conclusion.
I do think that Ayn Randian "objectivism" with its "altruism is a moral defect" is only one bad LSD trip away from just realizing what they really mean is just fully "might makes right", fetishizing power for power's sake, and embracing an explicit fascist ethos as a result.
Ideologically so concerned with identifying repression as a product of "collectivism" (and seeing "collectivism" everywhere) that they've obscured where the real violence lays & the OG violence that led to the establishment of enclosure and property rights in the first instance. Marc Andreesen's weird manifesto some years ago was fully on this path.
In that world view, "liberty" basically comes to mean: "I take your stuff." (and here's some slight of hand on how I've made it ok to do that, and why it's bad if it's the guvmint' that does that instead)
"Ethics violations" is as far as it goes. We would need a radical overhaul of the legal system, but how can you do that when the patients run the asylum?
The statute of limitations gives the next administration a year to indict her.
This admin is full of corruption, but acting as if one side is against corruption is laughable.
Clinton Foundation? Burisma?