the official 2024 US Presidential Election thread

Lord_Buscemi
RiverleavesElmius

It's a first for me to be labeled as a fascist, a brainless fascist to be precise. Political discourse nowadays, it comes with the territory. You basically proved my point. The "horror" I see has nothing to do with Harris herself, she's just a nonentity, who may turn out to be acceptably competent. It's the whole culture built around the political process, the cynicism, the blinding fireworks, the bullshitery masked with "joy" and "brat" and all the other nonsense. The coronation of Harris was a revelation, a glitch in the matrix. Nothing, NOTHING I wrote suggested a preference for the Donald, nor am I dabbling in bothsidesism. I have deep reservations with both parties, but that doesn't mean they're the same, or their potential risks are identical. Just because the cult of Trump is such a phenomenon, with all kinds of future scenarios possible, the feared, the practical or the imagined, I am not willing to turn a blind eye to the obnoxiousness of the DNC. Good luck for the people of Gaza with the lip service of sanctimonious Kamala. What's worse: Giuliani salivating over "2 year old Palestinians who learn how to kill 'Mericans" or Bill Clinton stuttering non-arguments like "if it were you" to somehow justify the mass slaughter. One side is mostly open about their dehumanisation. The other side hides it behind a mask of feigned compassion. Maybe the Republicans would have been worse (I doubt it though, Trump wouldn't have wanted to preside over that mess for over a year, not out of mercy, but to avoid the associated bad press). Maybe Harris has a little more wiggle room than her fossil predecessor vis-à-vis her Israeli handler, but the fundamental trajectory stays the same.

Regarding my "enlightened centrist nonsense", if you had any idea how I view the corrosive nature of political centrism as a weapon to choke off any debate, you wouldn't accuse me of such nonsense. But both of you have a valid point drowned out by your unnecessary condescension: Notwithstanding all kinds of theoretical debates about virtues and vices of this and that, in the real world, political choices have real consequences. If the Trump nightmare is truly going to be the standard bearer of "naked and undeniable fascism", then you're right, the corrupted horseplay of the Democrats isn't going to be the biggest problem.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees. The Dems are evil at foreign policy? Very astute observation, I hadn't noticed the obilterated remains of Gazan children on my twitter feed every day. I'm a socialist, I already know and abhor American foreign policy to its very core. But that's not the point. Enlighted centrism isn't shitting on both parties, enlighted centrism is shitting on asinine trivialities about campaigning culture for the sake of "measured discourse". Is that really the takeaway from this election cycle? It's unbelievably tone-deaf.

Aren't you Swiss?

Okay, so is corporatist Italian fascism what you define as real fascism? Or is it the Hiterlite Volk fascism of the Third Reich? What about the Catholic militarism of Franco, Salazar, Pinochet? Are scholars of fascism, many of whom agree with labelling Trump as such, unqualified in their field as they have never lived under fascist occupation? 

Trump very much meets the definition of Umberto Eco's Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt, written in 1995. Long before the hysteria of modern political discourse.

1. The cult of tradition
2. The rejection of modernism
3. The cult of action for action's sake
4. Disagreement is treason
5. Fear of difference
6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class
7. Obsession with a plot
8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak"
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight
10. Contempt for the weak
11. Cult of death
12. Machismo
13. Selective populism
14. Newspeak

So was Hobsbawm and he was an incredible historian. 

Sending GOOD VIBES from top of the border, y'all...

Goddamn it the marijuana initiative lost, and I just finished rolling one up for tonight’s festivities. Nevermind it’s not gonna be a fun night *sparks blunt*

urbanpatrician called this ........dude is like the Nostradamus of assessing US politics and the WNBA tbh........

Gotta say my man, you were right. The economy is king.

A meltdown for the ages.

The silver lining is Biden's reputation and legacy are destroyed forever.