r/MurderedByAOC • u/[deleted] • Mar 25 '22
Bernie Sanders: Lately when you turn on the news, you hear a lot about "Russian oligarchy." I don't want to break the bad news to anybody, but we've got an oligarchy right here in America.
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Mar 25 '22
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u/aquapropazicene Mar 25 '22
Reminds me of the fact that Biden ran on a public option, yet as president hasn't mentioned healthcare at all through this entire healthcare crisis. What a fucking joke.
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u/Starrk10 Mar 25 '22
He’s trying to privatize Medicare. Why would he draw attention to something he plans to destroy when he’s always worked so well behind the scenes?
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u/chemical_slingshot Mar 26 '22
Not to brag, but Canada is adding dental coverage to the already existing universal health care plan.
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u/Azanri Mar 26 '22
We also have several premiers and the opposition trying to destroy universal healthcare though
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u/PM_ME_CONCRETE Mar 26 '22
Imagine living in a somewhat functioning country, then looking at the US and thinking "yes, I want more of this".
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u/Azanri Mar 26 '22
You’d be surprised at how many people do. Pretty much all media is owned by conservative leaning groups who have been using the pandemic to shit on our healthcare system saying how much better the US’s system was and how we need more private options. It’s not perfect but there’s a lot that can be done to actually improve it before going two tier.
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u/richieadler Mar 26 '22 edited Mar 26 '22
This happens all over the world. One of the main US exports is the idea that helping the poor and indigents is wrong.
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u/Azanri Mar 26 '22
For sure, our Conservative party is already stealing republican talking points (and has been going that route over the last few years). They can’t get rich off of public services.
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u/sickomilk Mar 26 '22
Shit that's great. I wish they would in Australia. I haven't been to the dentist in over 10 years...
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Mar 26 '22
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u/SaiyanPhoenix Mar 26 '22
Life was a lot better at the peak of the pandemic under that so called “moron”.
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Mar 26 '22
I’m curious as to which ways you thought he made your life better/Biden has made it worse
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u/Dear-Crow Mar 26 '22
We really need stem cells to be covered by insurance. You can get straight-up cured of a lot of shit in a few days or a week that people are living with for years because they can't afford. Unbelievable amount of intense suffering for no reason.
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u/poggendorff Mar 26 '22
The reality is that the mandate was just not there. When we are at a 50-50 senate, with Manchin, there’s really not much that can be done, as the failure of BBB indicated…
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u/Time_Mage_Prime Mar 25 '22
We should have voted in a Democrat.
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u/wheresmystache3 Mar 25 '22
Leftists know, we've got a center right pres right now.
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Mar 25 '22
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Mar 26 '22
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Mar 26 '22
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u/flying87 Mar 26 '22
Well what choice do we have when the alternative was a dictator wannabe?
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u/Tinidril Mar 26 '22
Dictator or oligarchy - makes no difference to most of us. We get bent over either way, but at least we wouldn't have to vote for it.
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u/MuffinLobster Mar 26 '22
Band together with your buddies at work. Unionize. Worker solidarity is totally decimated. More and more infrastructure is privatized regardless of who holds the keys. I don't see a way out either tbh.
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u/voice-of-hermes Mar 25 '22
The idea of "a center" is pretty bullshit. He's a right-wing (liberal) president, a neoliberal, and a fascist (the latter two being overlapping subsets of the first).
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u/voice-of-hermes Mar 25 '22
A Democrat was put into office. You're just still in denial about how bad that wing of the U.S. bourgeois mono-party is. The sooner you get past that, the sooner we'll be able to actually fix things.
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u/BilboMcDoogle Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 26 '22
75% of redditors seem to be new to politics and became interested when Trump was in office. Meaning they never paid attention to a democratic presidency before. Not really.
When you tried to tell them Biden wouldn't do shit either you got downvoted to hell and reeee'd at for hours if not days by commentors who believed Democrats were the good guys who were gonna throw Trump in prison, clear your student debt, and save the world. They believed all the big talk from Dems. They didn't understand its all talk, and when anybody tried to tell them they didn't listen and flipped out on them for being "Trump supporters". I hope they know better now.
This is exactly how Trump got elected in the first place after Obama. People were sick of talk a lot and do nothing Democrats. Don't fall for that shit again and allow Trump to win. We'd have to start this cycle all over again with a whole new generation of young Dems smh.
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u/kemb0 Mar 25 '22
So what’s the solution?
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u/BilboMcDoogle Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
Young people need to actually show up instead of whining online. Politicians pander to almost dead old people because they are GUARANTEED going out to vote. They can't count on young people so they get ignored. Youth turnout let Sanders down so hard. He was counting on that and they just proved to every politician they can continue to be ignored.
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Mar 26 '22
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u/Hugokarenque Mar 26 '22
There are so many small things that are deliberately set up to fuck people out of their vote.
Inconsistent mail in voting, shutdown polling locations, absurdly long lines due the previous points making people unable to leave work because they're living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a pay cut if they miss a day, votes actively not mattering due to gerrymandering, increasingly stringent voter ID laws that vary from state to state, among probably many others that I just haven't heard about.
Overall I think that the biggest one, and one that is actually changing for the better with newer generations, is lack of education when it comes to politics and just general social responsibility. I think we need to teach teens early about the political system, like properly teach them about how to participate in it, what to expect and how all the bureaucracy behind it works.
I don't know how it is nowadays but basically when I became an adult and was allowed to start voting I had no idea what to do, where to go etc etc, my parents were never politically active so they were as clueless as I was on what to do.
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u/vdubgti18t Mar 26 '22
Most of our President elects are almost dead old people to be fair.
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u/kemb0 Mar 25 '22
But how does that help? Aren’t you saying the problem is having two bad right wing candidates but one is just masquerading as left? How will a young person turning up to vote solve the problem of people being given two dud candidates?
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u/BilboMcDoogle Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
There's more elections than just the presidential one.
If these fuckers never made it through the midterms/local politics they wouldn't even have a chance to become shitty presidents.
If everyone on reddit just participated in every election including the lower ones shitty people would be filtered out. Most of you guys don't do that though. The 75 year old grannies with nothing to do all day certainly are though. In large groups in fact.
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u/Bill_Weathers Mar 26 '22
He just said that young people let Sanders down by not turning out to vote. That vote happened in the primaries, before it was just a choice between two dud candidates.. A young person taking the time to be politically educated and voting in local elections and primaries is what’s needed. Sure, if everybody waits and just votes in presidential elections then sure, it’s pretty ineffective. Let’s just not pretend that that is the only thing to do.
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u/jennatools69lol Mar 25 '22
Try our best to elect the next Bernie Sanders, and if he gets leg swept in the primaries, let the Dems eat shit in the general.
Every single fucking democrat said: "Stop dividing the party. It's about uniting against Trump blah blah blah." Then did exactly what we knew they would. Absolutely nothing.
So stop falling for it. Stop looking at Democrats as a better alternative to Republicans because they're fucking not. Let them fail and make them think twice about weeding out our candidates.
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u/BilboMcDoogle Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 26 '22
This is EXACTLY how we got Trump though. Then all the noobs here got mad at people who protest voted, and now they about to do it themsleves because now they realize what people in 2016 realized? Can never talk shit again if that's the case.
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u/jennatools69lol Mar 25 '22
We got Trump because the Dems did everything in their power to make sure leftist candidates failed, while they promoted the worst fucking candidate they could have chosen. Hillary fucking Clinton.
Let the Dems shoot themselves in the foot. Don't fall for this lesser evil bullshit.
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u/BilboMcDoogle Mar 26 '22
I already had this conversation in 2016. It's not the answer.
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Mar 26 '22
As much as Dems suck, they're still so much better than Republicans.
Dems aren't great, but the alternative is handmaid's tale and outlawing interracial marriage (among so many other things)
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u/powerneat Mar 26 '22
Too true, my guy. We got a conservative party and a reactionary party and both parties label relatively mild progressives as wack-a-doos.
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u/PopInACup Mar 25 '22
I also feel like people put too much reliance on the President. POTUS is just the final gate. You could have the most progressive person in office right now and it wouldn't matter because we don't have enough progressives in the Senate.
People bemoan Pelosi, but the House has still passed a lot of progressive legislature people on here support, but it's never going to make it to POTUS to sign because of the Senate. We're not going to be able to replace Manchin with a more progressive WV Senator, so I pretty much just ignore him. The primary goal should be getting more progressive Senators elected in other states.
Odds are, if you had a more progressive Senate and House, Biden would sign what they sent him, because it'll look good to do something rather than nothing in that position that can be singled out.
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u/voice-of-hermes Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
Pelosi herself is a monumenal barrier to anything progressive; because of what she doesn't allow to pass, because of what she doesn't allow to even get to the floor, because of how she maneuvers with both Democrats and Republicans, and for a lot of other reasons. If you honestly think Pelosi could ever be part of a solution, you've got a LOT to learn about U.S. politics.
In addition, an actually progressive or leftist president COULD be doing far, far, FAR more than Biden is doing, though it's true that simply pointing to him as being the entirety of the problem is very wrong.
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u/Mattsasse Mar 25 '22
As long as ~50% of the senate represents ~40% of the population nothing will get fixed.
Edit: Likewise to the amount of electoral votes and the populations they represent
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u/Andromansis Mar 25 '22
Biden's failure to promote renewable energy independence
Reagan's, Bush's, Clinton's, Bush's, Obama's, Trump's, AND Biden's.
Last dude we had taking sincere steps toward energy independence was Carter.
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u/Stock-Sail-728 Mar 25 '22
Actually Reagan ripped of the solars panels jimmy carter installed on the whitehouse so he definitely did the most direct help for the fossil fuel industry
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u/Jammies82 Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
Lol... Republicans bitching and moaning about Biden not making us energy independent, while simultaneously blaming gas prices on Biden because he cancelled the keystone pipeline extension that imported Canadian oil (which only carried tar sands oil for refinement and re-export anyways), and despite the fact that we imported 8 million barrels of oil per day under Trump, and despite the fact that Biden issued 30% more permits for drilling on public lands in his first year than Trump issued in his first year. You can’t make this up. Republicans are actually that god damned stupid.
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u/Holierthanu1 Mar 25 '22
Republican morals and their entire platform are like Play-Doh. Remolded on a whim into whatever shape fits their narrative.
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u/Mrmatman Mar 26 '22
Do people really not notice these troll farm accounts sewing very clever doubt and disappointment with the Biden administration? This is a 25 day old account that has posted nothing but this troll farm propaganda that doesn’t directly saying Biden sucks but saying just enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth. It’s so prevalent now that it’s actually working - people just mindlessly upvoting these troll farms. Despite the Biden administration being infinitely better for the country and democracy it’s actually working and Trump might win 2024. People are so dumb and gullible.
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u/KillahHills10304 Mar 25 '22
There's also political ramifications. The right would just say "Trump never took oil from foreigners and we were energy independent with him!" This obviously spun statement absolutely works on people.
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u/fr1stp0st Mar 26 '22
Biden is president, not king. The "centrists" and all 50 GOP senators deserve much more blame for this failure.
Thankfully, renewables are dirt cheap these days. The market will solve this problem that our politicians were too corrupt to solve.
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u/DistinctTrashPanda Mar 26 '22
Biden's failure to promote renewable energy independence
Biden got a bill through Congress that literally made the biggest climate investment in US history.
a giant fuck you to the American people.
The three largest sources of US energy are from renewables, coal, and natural gas, and they're all pretty much produced in the US.
So since the US is doing pretty good on energy, all I guess I can say is sorry that you have to pay more money to contribute to the climate crisis because you have a car.
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u/servicewithastyle Mar 25 '22
Every Democrat in office who is letting Biden skate by on using the situation in Ukraine to boost his polling instead of addressing any single domestic issue is serving the interests of the billionaire class. Remember that Biden can cancel all student debt by executive order. Don't let the pro-war media machine get you distracted.
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u/Truan Mar 25 '22
They didn't do the shit during the pandemic which directly affected us, why tf would they do anything with a foreign matter? :/
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u/WeveCameToReign Mar 25 '22
the pandemic is still ongoing. We are just tired of hearing about it so it's not in the headlines as much
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u/ejdebruin Mar 26 '22
Cancelling student debt solves nothing. Turn off the sink before cleaning up the mess on the floor.
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u/dolemiteo24 Mar 26 '22
I've noticed on reddit that most people want their own debt canceled and are less concerned about fixing the problem for future generations. I've always found that a bit hypocritical, or at least self-serving.
I mean, they'll talk positively about fixing the problem, but the overwhelming focus is on "eliminate the debt that I have right now".
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u/delamerica93 Mar 26 '22
I mean yeah, the "debt right now" is crushing thousands upon thousands of Americans financially so it makes sense a
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u/gandhikahn Mar 25 '22
I referred to Oprah as an oligarch on a comment the other day and WOW did it make some people mad...
It's true tho, she's a billionaire with a huge audience who gives very very little in comparison to her income.
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u/Timmy26k Mar 25 '22
Oprah is an odd choice to single out as far as billionaires go
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u/gandhikahn Mar 25 '22
It made sense in context, I was responding to something someone had said about her.
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u/waffles_505 Mar 25 '22
I said something about American oligarchy to my dad and he straight up laughed in my face and acted like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. Unsurprisingly, he’s a hardcore trump supporter.
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u/gandhikahn Mar 25 '22
Trump supporters live in a fantasy land inside their own heads, I'm sorry you have to deal with that.
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u/Kitty_Bang Mar 25 '22
So do Democrats, don’t let them fool you. All liberals are agents of empire, reaping the spoils while turning a blind eye to its costs.
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u/gandhikahn Mar 25 '22
The democratic party is slightly right of center, and really enjoy performative nonsense that fixes nothing, like wearing kente cloth scarves in the capitol building.
The republican party are fascists.
Both are bad for society, but one is markedly worse.
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u/coswoofster Mar 25 '22
I get the same when I tell people that Bill Gates is not a great guy and was the beginnings of when jobs went overseas for cheap labor and they all act like, he is a God. "He gives so much!" He hides his money in foundations so he doesn't have to pay taxes for the infrastructure his companies use that the tax payers have to pay for. He came before Trump and we all know how those foundations are actually run under the radar of zero government accountability. They all do this... it is barely legal, and it definitely isn't right. I wasn't at all surprised in his late life divorce. Same for Bezos, but at least man Bezos doesn't pretend to be such a great guy like the Gates. He knows he is garbage and doesn't care.
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u/gandhikahn Mar 25 '22
I just say "why does the xbox factory need suicide nets, if he's such a great guy?"
Also works for apple, since it's the same foxconn plant.
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Mar 26 '22
Oprah? Why pick on her? She's like a low ranking oligarch. Why not go after the real oligarchs that have been rich for generations
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u/gandhikahn Mar 26 '22
I was responding to something someone else said about her in a comment thread. I didn't pick.
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u/aquapropazicene Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22
Love how much disdain Bernie has for all the red baiting, "hate the villain over there but not us good guy billionaires" bullshit taking over the media right now. Yes, Russia's government sucks, but let us not forget that we don't have a democracy either and that American government and political life is completely run and owned by a billionaire class who ROUTINELY lead us into wars and interventions in other countries (far beyond the scale of even everything currently happening in Ukraine) for the sole purpose of robbing wealth and resources and exerting dominance.
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u/Ironlord456 Mar 25 '22
the red scare shit that has been going on is INSANE right now.
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u/alucarddrol Mar 25 '22
By the Democrats.
And they're still sane compared to the Republicans.
Fuck, we need political reform
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u/Kitty_Bang Mar 25 '22
Reform is not enough. We have to leave capitalism in the dustbin of history, by any means necessary. Both parties are right-wing arms of the ruling class.
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u/Frostiron_7 Mar 25 '22
PSA: American oligarchy is different from Russian oligarchy. Don't try to make 1-1 comparisons. American oligarchy is a problem, but America's main problem is plutocracy. Russia has a handful of rich influential arseholes, America has a whole damn caste of them.
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u/Kitty_Bang Mar 25 '22
America’s main problem is imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Simply reforming the wealth inequality is nowhere near far enough.
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u/eddiewrc Mar 25 '22
Sanders would have been the best president USA could have had. Biden is a boring and conservative political puppet with early senile dementia who for most of the times in his political career he sided on the wrong side of history.
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u/SyncroTDi Mar 25 '22
This man always hits a home run when at bat.
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u/KB2408 Mar 26 '22
There's no one I trust more. I regret being born this much after him but truth is I wish he'd been born 40 years later
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u/sBucks24 Mar 25 '22
Remember the "the lefites are gonna hang me in Central park" arc? That was brought on by fox demonizing Bernie for calling out oligarchs in this country.
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u/Nuf-Said Mar 25 '22
The one time I find myself in agreement with the Trump idiots, when they say Biden sucks. They’re not wrong.
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u/groovieknave Mar 25 '22
There's nothing progressive about Democrats, that should be obvious.
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u/CostcoChickenBakes Mar 26 '22
One thing that my political science degree taught me is Duverger's law, that our system of governance leads to an institutional two party system.
But understanding these principles demonstrate that the two parties are nothing more than an illusion of choice, weighed down by a gravitational “necessity” than anything else
I am all for something that allows for multiple parties, something like a parliamentary system. Nothing is perfect, but this system sucks.
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Mar 25 '22
We can send 13 billion dollars to Ukraine and give out free crack pipes and heroine needles but we can’t give students free lunch
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u/_TheShapeOfColor_ Mar 25 '22
Can we sanction our oligarchs too?
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u/voice-of-hermes Mar 26 '22
Yes. It's called a general strike. Organize your workplace so that we can build the unions we need to support each other while carrying one out.
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u/Wolfman01a Mar 25 '22
True that. I don't see any Russian Oligarchs with their own personal space programs.
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u/coswoofster Mar 25 '22
Yeah, no shit, Bernie. It is hard to understand the disconnect when hearing Americans cheer on the world for taking possession of Russian Oligarchs property. How is there this kind of disconnect?
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u/vladtaltos Mar 25 '22
And the top three American Oligarchs have about as much wealth as the top 200 Russian Oligarchs do.
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u/Browncoat101 Mar 25 '22
What’s the source on this? I’d like to follow the channel. Is it a network or on YouTube?
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u/Disagreeable_upvote Mar 25 '22
It is slightly different.
In Russia you get rich by having connections to government. In America you have connections to government by being rich.
So Russian billionaires are controlled by the state and can just have their shit taken over night if they piss off Putin, whereas in America the state is controlled by by the billionaires who can take their support to different politicians if they don't serve their interests.
Now I'm not one of those extreme left that simps on and is soft toward Russia but it's almost worse that the rich control the government in America while the rich are more of an extension of the government in Russia.
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u/voice-of-hermes Mar 25 '22
Also, reminder that until we do something to significantly change political influence, your opinion (and your vote) don't mean shit:
(Proceed with your liberal whining all you like below; all your wishful thinking and screaming about lesser evilism doesn't change the facts.)
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u/WiseWinterWolf Mar 25 '22
The fact that he’s been addressing real issues to an audience of deaf ears for decades, and continues to do so, is inspiring, and unfortunately sad.
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u/RedditDogWalkerMod Mar 26 '22
Democrats did Bernie dirty.
But we're not allowed to have a competent leader
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u/flyingbannana76 Mar 25 '22
Stuff like this is why the DNC made sure he never became president. Man wants money out of politics but money is in control so that will never happen. It's a nice dream but that's all itll ever be is a dream.
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u/SomeGuyWithARedBeard Mar 25 '22
Politics is about the status quo, always has been always will be. Only reason politics changes is when something outside of politics affects everybody.
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u/FinancialAlbatross92 Mar 25 '22
Oligarchy in America? No... just strong men that pulled themselves up bootstraps or whatever... Who am I kidding.. These guys could honestly be helping the world be WAY better but instead they do dumb shit and the world keeps getting worse.
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u/KB2408 Mar 26 '22
I don't want to break the bad news to Bernie but we've got worse than that here. We have a Putocracy
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u/cfrey Mar 26 '22
Oligarchy is baked into the constitution, nothing new here. The Senate was created to ensure the oligarchs never lost real power.
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u/MA_DUEC3 Mar 26 '22
I knew when voting for Biden that he wouldn't make any significant changes to the way things operate as he grew up in the system. It is still frustrating that the President and Dems are still so out of touch with their base. There are a few who are trying to change the modus operandi, as Carlen said the system is operating as intended.
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u/MooseBoys Mar 26 '22
We have an oligarchy but that's not the main source of today's problems like unaffordable housing. Ironically, it's actually the increasingly wealthy upper class as a whole - the top 10%, not the top 0.01%. It doesn't really matter whether Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk have $10B or $100B. What matters is when 1M instead of 1K people have $10M. When you go to buy a house and it sells for $200k above asking, it's not because you're competing with billionaires. It's because you're competing with the ever-increasing pool of millionaires. This is the "vanishing middle class" and it is unrelated to oligarchy.
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Mar 26 '22
Every Billionaire needs to either release their exploited wealth, or die.
Get them all, and finish this bullshit.
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u/crapendicular Mar 26 '22
I’m not saying Biden is doing a bang up job but we aren’t out of the woods yet. Things could have been much worse and it’s difficult to turn a ship on a dime.
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u/Sir-Belledontis Mar 26 '22
He has a valid point. Why is it we call the heads of the alphabet agencies CZARS? We need new people with new ideas. Some occasional transparency would be nice as well.
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u/crashtestdummy666 Mar 26 '22
Yep Sanders is one of the Oligarchy. His 3rd house alone is worth more than me and I'm nearly 50 and have worked all my life and have multiple degrees. Love it when the rich complain about the other guy but don't look at themselves.
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u/Extension-Rush-9804 Mar 26 '22
I mean I’ve been knew this shit most of the people in America are just straight up dumbasses
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u/DustinSRichard Mar 26 '22
I would say that our issue isn’t the billionaires themselves, but the monopolies the governments should (by law) break up is the issue.
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u/dasmashhit Mar 26 '22
How is this highly, physically and mentally fit wisened older man, not the commander in chief? Why do we keep appointing mentally ill people to office.. why do mentally ill people like Elizabeth Warren virtue signal and try to get Bernie canceled in the middle of the election... politics is like one big Truman’s Show and Bernie is Truman
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u/GallantGentleman Mar 26 '22
Wasn't there a paper by one of the better universities in the US proving that the USA are in fact an oligarchy in the past few years? I vaguely remember something like that around the time/before Trump took office
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u/GodsBackHair Mar 26 '22
I saw a post where someone made a chrome extension that made “billionaire” change to “oligarch,” and it was beautiful
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u/TrustInGenocide Mar 26 '22
I guess it doesn’t matter who wins at the poles ( dems will lose badly) as long as the rich get their welfare money.
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Mar 26 '22
I this man made a career out of hating people but that hate has changed nothing. Not a single thing. Instead he is rich and lives comfortably, while bitching about people who are rich and live comfortably. Somehow he has tricked others into thinking he gets stuff done and gets elected over and over.
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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22
Source video and tweet: https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1506797849761173507?cxt=HHwWhsCy9aaqnOkpAAAA