Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

[tyr_13]

"That no one, absolutely no one, should feel they have to do in order to pay for an education. Demanding that people should be willing to potentially die or worse, kill, before they complain about an obviously broken system or ask for lone forgiveness isn't a lot of things, including rational. Or moral."

Did I, anywhere in my thread, or did anyone else, demand that anyone should have to join the military? I clearly said it was an option. An option that both my husband (Navy submariner) and his brother (Air Force) chose.

And your entire argument is that some people can/did pay back their loans and that the existence of such options means student debt shouldn't be forgiven.

This is demanding that people avail themselves of these options if they want an education (which, as some of them are not college education, is kinda weird frankly) without forever debt. 'Have you considered that you could have signed on to kill people?' isn't a viable option for most of the people who now are over-burdened with non-dischargable debt most of them took on at eighteen on the advisement of the very people now denigrating their choice to do so.

The 'options' and advise here also follows this pattern of being something that might (might) be viable for any given individual but tell us next to nothing about the systemic issues, and do not scale in any meaningful way.

'They are always hiring in the trades' is nonsense. No, no they are not. This might seem to be the case, but let me tell you as someone who worked in the automotive industry where people like to say 'they're always hiring welders', NOPE. Absolutely not. At times that is the case it is because retention is so bad. I knew a guy who went to trade school for welding, got top certifications on every type of welding. He waited seven years to get a job worth a damn just to have that rug pulled out from under him. ('We don't need a Union here' is THE red flag right up there with 'we're family here' as far as jobs go.) Two of my best friends are machinists who make pretty good money, but not nearly as much as they should with the 3rd shift and other lack of benefits. Trucker drivers make 'great' money with absolute trash take home. It's a horrible job which is why they're always hiring; more people quit in a year than are hired. My recently departed step dad was a contractor for years. We know so many of the local plumbers and electricians and roofers in the area, and the work can be 'good', it just isn't viable for even a sizable minority of the people currently burdened by student debt.

Why would the laws of supply and demand NOT apply to any of these career paths? 'Electricians make great money!' would quickly stop being the case if a lot more people took it up. How many more jobs would be created by moving to more people in trades? I'm not saying it shouldn't happen. There are shortages in many fields. Many fields should have more people doing the jobs with less training and fewer hours than currently (Healthcare is like this, with a few people making a ton of money in exchange for stupid levels of over work when it could use some more people making a bit less dividing the labor up better.) However, it just doesn't fix the student debt crisis. It's a small part. Using it to justify not alleviating student debt is just a rationalization to avoid dealing with the sources of the actual problem. 'They didn't have to take on that debt' deflects from the fact that many of them didn't have viable options to get a good living and this is compounded by how few actually get to be middle class any longer. 'Why didn't you not do this thing we told you you needed to do? You could have done this other thing that also wouldn't have worked!' (Again, to the level it would need to in order to address the problem.)

The people getting this forgiveness have also already paid a ton as a group. They aren't getting out free of impact, and aren't being incentivized to take the same risk again.

Some people making bad choices that results in bad outcomes might be addressed by 'personal responsibility' or adding 'better people' to the equation, but once it becomes clear the issue is widespread enough to be systemic, such advise becomes a hand wave. This goes for personal/individual responsibility models of pollution, climate change, housing costs, wealth issues, policing, as much as it goes for student debt.

 

[Susheel]

Came up on my feed recently:

Over 10,000 Sign to Remove Sonal Shah As Homeland Security Advisor

Those of Indian origin are not necessarily in congruence with egalitarianism. Many carry their Brahminic caste privilege with them...case in point...Preeti Patel in the UK. The VHP is more or less the nascent Hindu version of the Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

 

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post
you linked 'lead head' to the difference in crime rates without mentioning other reasons:

Your "other reasons" are excuses somebody concocted to avoid facing reality.

Pulled straight out of your nether regions. Who is this "somebody" and how do you know their motives? You don't. Do think there are no reasons other than "lead head" for the differing crime rates is ludicrous. "The lead made me rob the 7/11!" LOL!

Quote:
Millennials are the most college-educated generation, which is generally linked to lower crime rates.

Going to college doesn't reduce crime; the less criminal are more likely to go to college. Lead, on the other hand, does increase antisocial tendencies, which increase crime. (Also, college attendance has been increasing in general for a long time, and anything that's just going up can't be the explanation for something else going first up and then down, like crime and/or lead in this case.)

LOL! Why do you think there is more crime among the poor? Because they breathed in more lead from gas growing up? Education gets one out of poverty. The poor are the least likely to go to college; it's called the poverty cycle.

Education as a Tool for Breaking the Cycles of Poverty
According to Gates Foundation statistics, less than a third of young adults from poor families earn any kind of postsecondary credential.

Additionally, it’s possible that Millennials, who are overall empathetic and also, interestingly, more conservative than their parents’ generation, just don’t have the constitution for violent crime.

The "more conservative" bit is not true and depends on some misleading definition-gamery at best, but, even if it were true, that sentence would just be an attempt to connect conservativeness with being inherently against violent crime... which is dishonest nonsense that only a lying or brainwashed conservative would tout.

A crucial phrase was left out of that: Millenials are more conservative than their parents' generation when they were their children's age.:

The young adults, who were born between 1980 and 1994, are currently more politically polarized than Generation Xers and Baby Boomers, according to the paper, which was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on Wednesday.
Additionally, millennials are more likely to identify as conservative than either Generation Xers or Baby Boomers were at the same age, said Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and lead author of the paper.

“High school seniors are more likely to identify as political conservatives now compared to 10 years ago. Most surprising, more identify as conservatives now compared to the 1980s, presumably the era of the young conservative, such as the character Alex P. Keaton in the 1980s show ‘Family Ties.’ That goes against the common view of millennials as very liberal,” said Twenge, author of the book about millennials titled “Generation Me.”
“So the current view of millennials as liberals might be due to their age – young people are more likely to be liberal. But if you compare young people now to young people in previous decades, those now are more conservative,” she said.

The data showed that millennials are the most polarized political group that the United States has seen in some time, given their age, Sherman said.

Furthermore, “they are not the extremely liberal and Democrat generation that many anticipated,” he said, as the researchers found that the polarization that has emerged in the millennial generation may be driven by conservatives.

(https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservative-generations/index.html)

So what was that you were saying that this was "some misleading definition-gamery at best" that only "a lying or brainwashed conservative would tout,"?

It could also be down to the economy; though Millennials have a harder time finding a job, many of them may also have the wealth of their parents to fall back on.

...except that they just don't. (And it's not as if their parents didn't, at least not to any greater or lesser extent).

They don't?

Millennials Are Struggling To Get Jobs - Here's Why, And What To Do About It
Despite being an up-and-coming, in-demand generation, and one that’s consistently shaping how we think about work, millennials are still having a hard time finding reasonable jobs. The millennial unemployment rate stands at an unfortunate 12.8 percent, compared to the national average of 4.9 percent. The modern American workplace needs millennials to gain experience and replace previous generations in positions of leadership as time goes on, but millennials seem to be facing a uniquely difficult challenge doing so compared to other generations.

Additionally, the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in many cities and states means that generally, the crimes that are most common with Millennials simply aren’t being charged as often.

Irrelevantly-colored fish of an irrelevant species. The crime statistics that are being compared are not and never have been marijuana crimes, and any effect being caused by changes in laws in certain specific jurisdictions would only happen in those jurisdictions, not everywhere including in jurisdictions where the alleged cause didn't even happen.

1) How do you know that the crime statistics being compared "are not and never have been marijuana crimes"? You provide no evidence of this.

2) The rest of that paragraph is another claim made with zero evidence to support it. In fact, I've read lots of allegations and claims by you for which you've provided zero evidence while I, on the other hand, have quoted and cited evidence supporting mine.

...and is also itself another sign of less lead, not another separate unrelated thing; kids & young adults know that drinking alcohol is something they're told they shouldn't do because it's harmful, and doing stuff you're told you shouldn't do because it's harmful is a classic description of one of the symptoms of antisocialness, which is what unnaturally high lead increases. So this one actually is just another part of what I was saying, not a contradiction or alternative to it.

LOL! This is so far beyond unsupported nonsense it's pathetic.

Alcohol Consumption by Generation
Some studies have found that the younger generations, particularly the Millennials and GenZers, are drinking less than their older counterparts. This is due in part to the fact that they fear what will happen when they lose control when drinking and how their actions will appear on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram.

These younger generations are concerned about their health as well, but are mainly influenced by a wider cultural shift that younger people have accepted as normal: that of being watched on social media. As a result, the sales of non-alcoholic beer and cocktails are on the rise.

Scarecrow; nobody claimed that how kids are raised doesn't affect how they turn out. In fact, I even brought up the fact that it does so myself by even mentioning at all the bit about being told that the way things are in the asylum is how they must always be kept; it's part of the explanation for why even people in the post-lead generations still sometimes perpetuate the same antisocial attitudes of their leaded-up parents & grandparents. However, as I'm sure you already know perfectly well I was saying, there are also other factors affecting how people turn out, in addition to how their parents raised them, not instead of that. And less lead is a pretty big one of them.

NO, what you said is that the lead headed "neurologically stunted patients/inmates", i.e. Boomer/Gen. X, " somehow reproduced", not "taught" their children to be, "healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves":

"The current world is essentially an "insane asylum" where the neurologically stunted patients/inmates somehow reproduced healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves and raised them in the asylum and told them that they way things are in the asylum is the way things need to always be.

DON'T PEE ON MY LEG AND TELL ME IT'S RAINING!

 

[Stacyhs]

Think back to those times, which were *checks watch* fifty years ago. What would you have thought of someone who was then 68? What do you think they would have thought of you at the time?

They were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 10s and 20s. They fought for suffrage. They brought in the New Deal. Did you respect your elders, young Stacyhs, and let them set the pace of social adjustment on the strengths of their laurels from bygone ages? Or did you write them off as doddering old coots, maybe well-intentioned but archaic and hidebound in their perception of society's ills?

What, then, should the young members of your party think when they see their venerable leadership refuse to give up the torch, or fight for issues important to them, or even allow them their own voice in the party, because they did a thing fifty years ago?

Why are you asking me this when this has never been a point I've debated? My point is that I'm tired of Baby Boomers being blamed for all the ills of the world which is pretty much what you were doing. It had NOTHING to do with older leadership refusing to give way to the younger generation.

 

[Stacyhs]

the counter-culture was just that, a radical counter-culture and not the mainstream. The boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes, but they overwhelmingly weren't. Bunch of posers.

Did I say everyone in the 60's and 70's were part of the counter-culture? No.

But no generation that has fought for any cultural/social change was in the majority. It's always been the vocal minority that actually made the noise, did the protesting and moved the change forward. The suffragettes were never in the majority; most women weren't out marching or going to prison. But the 19th Amendment was still passed. It was the same with the Civil Right movement or the anti-Vietnam war protesters; the majority of young people weren't out there marching and protesting. It was the vocal minority of them that got the results.

The 'revisionism' that you claim exists...without any evidence of it... because "The Boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes," is just nonsense based on nothing but your imagination. You think Boomers are all a bunch of "posers" because you've got your knickers in a twist that we're all not far-left enough for you. You really need to get over Bernie not winning.

Don't worry, I'm sure plenty of younger people are going to pretend they were in portland throwing tear gas back at cops in a couple decades instead of posting "back the blue" memes on Facebook and generally being bootlickers, or pretending they weren't rabid transphobes and were always cool with queer people. The boomers have no monopoly on the rosy lenses of self-revisionism.

Sure of that are ya? Well, if you're as bad at predictions as you are at describing Boomers as being "LARPers" and "posers" because we all claim to have been hippie, tripping, free love, flower children, don't gamble.


https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2011-sep-12-la-oe-bowman-baby-boomers-more-conservative-20110912-story.html

As a matter of simple math, the baby boomers had nothing to do with the 60's civil rights movements. The earliest boomers were born in '45. All but the oldest boomers were still children during this era.

Nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement? Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and 1968: earlier Boomers would have been their late teens and early 20's, not children. At least according to my simple math.

The people getting bit by police dogs were not boomers.

You sure about that? You better tell that to Lynda Blackmon Lowery who was born in 1950:

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March

As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed eleven times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans.

The heyday of the boomer was later, the 80's through today (because grandpa won't give up his car keys). Reagan and Clinton era neoliberalism is their legacy.

So you think the Boomers had no effect on ending the Viet Nam War, equal rights for women, etc. ? Hmmmm...I lived through the 1960's and 1970's. Did you? Or are my life experiences simply "revisionism" ? Maybe I'm LARPing. Or posing.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Why are you asking me this when this has never been a point I've debated? My point is that I'm tired of Baby Boomers being blamed for all the ills of the world which is pretty much what you were doing. It had NOTHING to do with older leadership refusing to give way to the younger generation.

What do you think "gerontocracy" means?

 

[Delvo]

In the general population, lefty thinking is more associated with the young and righty thinking is more associated with the old, but the average age among politicians (at least at the Federal level) is higher for Democrats than it is for Republicans. But that doesn't mean the way to look at what the DP has been doing to make it that way is in terms of age, as in failure/refusal of the old to step aside for the young. The driving force behind it is ideology: they're righties in a party which has (so far) still been the party that young lefties join, and they're fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents.

In a way, it makes perfectly obvious political sense to do so. The only problem has been that they need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them, and that means walking a tightrope between projecting an image of themselves to the left and governing to the right, and that rope keeps getting thinner and wavier.

 

[bruto]

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

 

[Tero]

a whole year and 3 months and
Louis DeJoy is still there

 

[Aridas]

a whole year and 3 months and
Louis DeJoy is still there

On that front, at last check, Biden's nominees that could make any difference there are still being filibustered.

 

[Stacyhs]

What do you think "gerontocracy" means?

I didn't introduce that word; you did. I repeated it and put it into quotes for a reason:

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post
I'm so tired of baby boomers...the old folks, the "gerontocracy", the "olds" being blamed for the ills of this country.

Try reading for context.

 

[Stacyhs]

In the general population, lefty thinking is more associated with the young and righty thinking is more associated with the old, but the average age among politicians (at least at the Federal level) is higher for Democrats than it is for Republicans. But that doesn't mean the way to look at what the DP has been doing to make it that way is in terms of age, as in failure/refusal of the old to step aside for the young.

The average age of Democrats in Congress is 61 and of Republicans is 58.

Overall, there is an average of a three year difference in age.

Half of the US Senate is 65 years or older
Exactly 50 of the 100 senators are at least 65 years old. There are more Senate Republicans than Democrats who are 65 years or older. But in the House, nearly twice as many Democratic members are at least 65 years old than House Republicans.

As for the larger difference in the House, let's look at the quality of those being elected. The GOP are electing such stellar people as Boebert, Greene, Cawthorn, etc.

The driving force behind it is ideology: they're righties in a party which has (so far) still been the party that young lefties join, and they're fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents.

Exactly HOW are the "fighting to keep their ideological opponents out"? Not encouraging young people to vote? Making it more difficult for them? Keeping them off of committees?

In a way, it makes perfectly obvious political sense to do so. The only problem has been that they need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them, and that means walking a tightrope between projecting an image of themselves to the left and governing to the right, and that rope keeps getting thinner and wavier.

Again, just HOW are they 'tricking" youngsters and lefties into voting for them?

First you claimed that the Dem "oldies" are "fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents" (the leftie youngsters) and then you claim they "need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them." Which is it?

Sigh. You do have a penchant for making claims without providing any facts to back them up...claims that are mostly just highly biased opinions.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I didn't introduce that word; you did. I repeated it and put it into quotes for a reason:

Try reading for context.

"Okay Boomer"

[ETA] Sigh... I hate flippant replies even if they're called for. Putting something into "quotes" doesn't mean you can just ignore it and knock down a strawman instead.

 

[Stacyhs]

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

 

[Delvo]

{no point in bothering to itemize}

The tone of voice in which the following text was written is not a yell but a low, slow, calm, flat delivery...

Your berzerker "it's Delvo!!!!! " rage is exactly the same for points we agree on as for those we don't, including the ones where you had to lie about what I'd said just to pretend there was more disagreement than there was. Such a compulsive need to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" over every distortion you can come up with for every word and every sentence structure every time you see my name/avatar, without even stopping to notice when we're in agreement on the actual subject, is the most perfect demonstration imaginable that, even if I did bother to edit around the nearly constant personal attackery and counter your points where I actually do disagree, you definitely wouldn't really listen. You don't appear to be even capable of it as long as it's me, because to you the subject isn't the subject; I am. (This is also demonstrated, in other posts of yours before, by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me, although I don't recall this latest post of yours containing one this time.)

If I were looking at this the way your behavior shows that you are, I suppose I'd say something like "wipe off the drool, get down off the countertop, put down the red crayon, and breathe slowly til either your heart rate adjusts to your lungs or you pass out", but it's actually just mildly sad. This can't be a good way to go through life. I hope that you don't have this same kind of response to other stimuli as you clearly consistently do to my presence, and that you recover from whatever made you this way. In the meantime, I am a stimulus that you can and should easily cut out of your life with the Ignore List, for the sake of your own well-being. I have already just done the same, not for the same reason, but because rational conversation with you is simply not a possibility in your current state, knowing that your response to absolutely anything & everything from me will always be the same for the foreseeable future. (...including this one, at least at first.) There's just no point, for either of us.

 

[Stacyhs]

The tone of voice in which the following text was written is not a yell but a low, slow, calm, flat delivery...

Your berzerker "it's Delvo!!!!! " rage is exactly the same for points we agree on as for those we don't, including the ones where you had to lie about what I'd said just to pretend there was more disagreement than there was. Such a compulsive need to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" over every distortion you can come up with for every word and every sentence structure every time you see my name/avatar, without even stopping to notice when we're in agreement on the actual subject, is the most perfect demonstration imaginable that, even if I did bother to edit around the nearly constant personal attackery and counter your points where I actually do disagree, you definitely wouldn't really listen. You don't appear to be even capable of it as long as it's me, because to you the subject isn't the subject; I am. (This is also demonstrated, in other posts of yours before, by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me, although I don't recall this latest post of yours containing one this time).

If I were looking at this the way your behavior shows that you are, I supposed I'd say something like "wipe off the drool, get down off the countertop, put down the red crayon, and breathe slowly til either your heart rate adjusts to your lungs or you pass out", but it's actually just mildly sad. This can't be a good way to go through life. I hope that you don't have this same kind of response to other stimuli as you clearly consistently do to my presence, and that you recover from whatever made you this way. In the meantime, I am a stimulus that you can and should easily cut out of your life with the Ignore List, for the sake of your own well-being. I have already just done the same, not for the same reason, but because rational conversation with you is simply not a possibility in your current state, knowing that your response to absolutely anything & everything from me will always be the same for the foreseeable future. (...including this one, at least at first.) There's just no point, for either of us.

In other words, Delvo, you can't refute anything I said with any evidence so you resort to the ad hominem fallacy. You accuse me of "lying about what (you) just said when I did not as is there for anyone to see. Then you accuse me of attacking you personally all the time and this is evidenced
"...by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me," which is
false because I just went through every single rule 12 violation I've been issued since I joined and there were exactly ZERO for any post to you or about you. Ironically, just what do you think your rant above is?

If you choose to put me on ignore, fine. If you can't stand the heat of being challenged with evidence, then get out of the kitchen. This is a skeptics' forum, not an echo chamber.

 

[Stacyhs]

"Okay Boomer"

[ETA] Sigh... I hate flippant replies even if they're called for. Putting something into "quotes" doesn't mean you can just ignore it and knock down a strawman instead.

And yet again, you fail to actually address the issue which is that your question to me was based on a false premise that I had argued something I never did. There was no strawman on my part.

 

[kevbo]

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

Thank you. I'm a boomer and I get tired of being lumped in with many of our more conservative peers. We didn't all forget the sacrifices and passions of the 60's and 70's. It may take longer to get where we want our society to be, but I do believe we will get there. It is going to take more than one term to undo the damage of the last president. With congressional obstructionism Obama wasn't able to undo two terms of W. But he did try, and now Biden faces the same, if not worse, obstructionism. I believe it is going to be a long hard process. We need to work together and celebrate even small accomplishments.

 

[kevbo]

On that front, at last check, Biden's nominees that could make any difference there are still being filibustered.

^^ This. It isn't that people aren't trying, but the Republicans have mastered obstructionism, first under Bush and then Trump. Accomplishments are going to be small and slow in coming for a long while. Perserverence is key.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

And yet again, you fail to actually address the issue which is that your question to me was based on a false premise that I had argued something I never did. There was no strawman on my part.

What the hell are you talking about? You replied to me. If that wasn't an actual response to what I was actually saying, you were just taking the opportunity to shake your cane and yell at clouds, then fine but you ought to have said so.

[ETA] On second thought, this is exactly the problem. Old liberals identify more with old conservatives than with young liberals, to the extent that they'd rather reach across the aisle for support than sort out conflicts within their own party. We saw this last year when Dem leadership sided with Republicans to kill the progressive half of the BBB rather than push it through as they'd promised.

It is going to take more than one term to undo the damage of the last president. With congressional obstructionism Obama wasn't able to undo two terms of W. But he did try, and now Biden faces the same, if not worse, obstructionism. I believe it is going to be a long hard process. We need to work together and celebrate even small accomplishments.

I like your sentiment, but we don't have more than one term. The next GOP administration will wreck the system even further. It's not like the spine of neo-Fascism has been broken and we can plan on a slow, peaceful reconstruction process. They're still out there. These are not normal times. The only thing we'd be celebrating is our dignified defeat.