a lil bee 🐝

  • 0 Posts
  • 91 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 18th, 2023

help-circle










  • They withheld the vote on obama’s nominee in order to get a Republican to install them.

    Yup, because they had control of the Senate. They were voted in. I’m not denying that Republicans are immoral, unethical scumbags with the intent to power game the system, but we have no tools to fix that in our current system other than overwhelming it. It only gets worse the longer we wait.

    There really aren’t a lot of other options for the citizenry. You can LARP at revolution or whatever, but I’m not volunteering first and I don’t see a lot of others doing so either. I, and a lot of other vulnerable people, are not going to come out on top, so I’ll pass on that solution.

    Fact of the matter is, we could have elected Hillary in 2016. Sure, there was Republican meddling and Comey and yada yada, but it was fully within our abilities and we failed. The Supreme Court would look entirely different right now and we would still have medical rights. We did flip the senate, so it was fully in play before and then Mitch would not have been able to block the Garland appointment. Those are concrete outcomes from something that was fully possible for us to prevent. So I’m just not comfortable writing off voting as worthless at this stage, even with the acknowledged difficulties, gerrymandering, etc.



  • Of course there’s a reason? Legislation was passed (the real problem here) and the entire point of the court is to evaluate legislation against our constitution. I agree with every single statement in your last paragraph, but you have to point the blame at the correct place. SCOTUS taking this up is completely legitimate and falls entirely within their role in our government.

    The state legislators are infringing on private citizens and their medical care. That’s the crime here. Even then, it’s important to understand that nothing is off limits to legislators. Even our core rights can be changed by a supermajority in the national congress. Power decides what rights get protected in a society. That’s been the recurrent tale of history for all time. We are beyond fortunate to have a sliver of that power and we are failing to use it to stomp these legislators into the dust. That’s the crime here, not SCOTUS taking up a case that falls entirely under its jurisdiction and mandate.





  • I agree with you, and yet… It’s winning them elections. We can be upset about it all we want, but it’s increasingly clear that bigotry and xenophobia are winning arguments in this era. We’re fucked if we don’t adjust. I’m not proposing we abandon migrants, but the one thing myself and the person you replied to likely agree on is that the left is increasingly losing sight of home and the average citizen, not in terms of rhetoric but in effect. We’re about to lose the EU and possibly lose support for Ukraine, see even more immigration restrictions, and see an empowered global far-right. The voters are telling us they have different priorities, which we need to focus on in a more altruistic way than the right. We have to be introspective here if we ever want to accomplish our goals.



  • I’ve never said that people should ignore any attempt at logic and just focus on their passions, but the modern cult of rationality and stoicism is ironically hugely lacking in self-awareness and rationality.

    I’ve never said that people should ignore any attempt at passion and just focus on their logic, but the modern mobs of righteous indignation and fury are ironically hugely lacking in empathy, tolerance (not of intolerance, before that gets tossed at me), and pragmatism.

    I agree that we mostly seem to be on the same page, but I really need to stress that I have not asked people to be soulless and I think that’s a mischaracterization of my asking for people to set their passion aside as much as possible as an exercise which is inherently temporary. We’re both just looking for balance here.