The Detour

It makes no good sense to live under the yoke of ideologies we erected during the iron, steel, oil, and machine era of the Industrial Revolution. The echoes of the worst examples of these ideologies reverberate in the minds of every engaged person today. Some embrace the worst of their own ideology. They see those parts as features rather than aberrations of human folly that can be readily done away with. Aberrations whose consequences were generational, in due time have become existential.

We have arrived at a crossroads. 244 years of Constitutional governance are about to be usurped by the specters that haunted the mind the George Orwell. We are going to let it happen. We're going to let it happen because the reality being erected around us today was repackaged Industrial Revolution-era propaganda amplified by 21st-century technology. For all intents and purposes, it is an impenetrable wall of lies that serves only to shape the reality we see and not necessarily the reality we live.

The American experiment has been defeated. I do not blame Trump or Biden. I only blame Americans. Americans want welfarist policies and believe the only way to get it is a socialist economy. Americans have no understanding of global politics, the pressures being applied, or the ideologies at play. Americans are extremely low information voters, and this is true on all sides of the political divide. Every election since George W. Bush's second term have illustrated to me that there are three possibilities in America: That Americans are searching for someone to connect to ideologically irrespective of their political party, or Americans have no idea what is going on and just check the block, or fascism and socialism are WAY more popular than we care to admit and we are willing to engage in either to ensure our respective team wins.

I personally believe the third option is the case.

This is NOT because of this election. This is The Path we've been on for decades. We took a detour with Donald Trump, in my opinion. But now we're back on track and the ugly truth is that it was always going to be this way, second term or not. The moment the detour was over, given either 2020 or 2024, we were always going to go back to The Path. At the end of it all, Winston loved Big Brother...with all of his heart.


BANG!

a reply to: projectvxn

To quote Trump:

'There's good people on both sides'

But what people don't understand, left and right are the same side, it's not left vs right, it's bottom vs top. All the common people, left or right are bottom, and those at the top do their best to divide us all and keep us there. It didn't matter who won left or right, because it was still someone at the top.

a reply to: projectvxn

Trump was just the part of the path where Americans said, "We value entertainment over intelligence."

a reply to: dug88

I think it’s more like I have a little money and...

Corporations don’t care if I spend until I am in dept. The population is a cash cow to them.

Government just sees me as a tool for redistribution of wealth.

Criminals, identity thieves, and hackers don’t care who they take from.

And seems corporations and and the government are filled with thieves.

All the campaign promises by Biden are impossible to implement without a Senate and with a weakened House. Outside of some flimsy exec orders and tearing up some he can't do much of anything that requires funding without compromising. The market clearly is reflecting there won't be much uncertainty.

He likely wins but the DNC paid a heavy price for one branch of government. Lost a bunch of seats in Congress and their voters are demanding real changes. They won't get those changes. All they will get are a large bag of excuses. This will infuriate their supporters.

In many ways it's good for conservatives. They now have the Cuban community onboard, picked up 10% of blacks, 7% of hispancis, kept the Senate and gained House seats with some major upsets. They also got a judge right before the buzzer.

It's not all doom and gloom. Not by a long shot. But to your point, this socialists fantasy will remain a fantasy. A really dumb fantasy that belong in a coloring book for children.

a reply to: projectvxn

If it’s socialism you care about, why didn’t you ever call out Republicans for their corporate welfare? Why is it only socialism when the government is helping people instead of corporations? If you’re worried about corruption why didn’t you call out the Trump administration when they removed all oversight of the stimulus bill? So they could pay out themselves and their cronies with taxpayer money. Which is the biggest socialist money grab in American history.

Why didn’t you raise objections when Republican senators voted almost unanimously to allow websites to be sued by people who disagree with what you post online? In effect eventually forcing places like ATS to censor your free speech?

Link

Why did you support an administration who destroyed net neutrality? And not only kept the Patriot Act alive but expanded it? Meaning even more of our privacy was taken away from us.

Why did you support an administration that handed control of the drone program to the CIA for the purpose of less oversight and transparency? Who through what little we can now figure out killed more people with drone strikes in a year in unnamed foreign wars than the last administration did in 8.

Why did you support an administration that continued and expanded the Obama administrations abhorrent treatment of immigrants who came here to search for a better life? Literally losing thousands of children who will never be reunited with their parents again?

If it’s freedom you care about why didn’t you raise your voice when this administration was using secret police to snatch protesters off the street in Portland and taking them to secret jails without allowing them any representation by lawyers? Why?

Why did you remain quiet?

If it’s truly America and freedom you care about, how can you give this administration a pass? To your credit, when this administration tried to secretly ask congress for the ability to indefinitely jail American citizens without trial or charging them, you spoke against it. But everything else, I don’t remember a word in protest.

I find it hard to believe it’s freedom or America you and others care about when you’re willing to give this administration a pass over nothing more than transitory partisan politics. But yeah, it’s the election of Joe Biden that means a loss of freedom and the rise of “socialism”. And not all of this that you stood by and watched happen without a word.

Give me a break.

a reply to: underwerks

If it’s socialism you care about, why didn’t you ever call out Republicans for their corporate welfare?

You've never read anything I've written in that regard so kindly keep those judgments to yourself.

Why is it only socialism when the government is helping people instead of corporations?

I abhor corporate welfare because that IS socialism. I am not against Welfarism in general. The problem here is the disconnect. Socialism and Welfarism are NOT THE SAME THINGS. You need a robust market economy for welfarism to be possible.

We can debate the merits and scope of the welfarism our society can afford. But we can't sit here and have an honest discussion about it if we can't even agree on the definition of terms. Socialism is the seizure of the means of production. This means factories AND people.

Welfarism is a method of flattening an economy to prevent the natural hierarchies of market forces from running roughshod over the average person. It is a means of controlling wealth disparities and providing a safety net below which no one can fall. Scaling and revenue generation are the biggest pitfalls in welfarist systems.

Socialists like the Jacobins would have you believe that these are all the benefits of a socialist economy. But that is not true. That is just socialism taking credit for something that is only possible in a market economy.

I find it hard to believe it’s freedom or America you and others care about when you’re willing to give this administration a pass over nothing more than transitory partisan politics. But yeah, it’s the election of Joe Biden that means a loss of freedom and the rise of “socialism”. And not all of this that you stood by and watched happen without a word.

I see you still have reading comprehension problems:

This is NOT because of this election.

a reply to: underwerks

If it’s freedom you care about why didn’t you raise your voice when this administration was using secret police to snatch protesters off the street in Portland and taking them to secret jails without allowing them any representation by lawyers? Why?

NO secret police were used. That was a narrative. Those officers were uniformed and all had badge numbers. Those officers were Federal Police who were under siege for 80+ days.

Why did you support an administration that continued and expanded the Obama administrations abhorrent treatment of immigrants who came here to search for a better life? Literally losing thousands of children who will never be reunited with their parents again?

Do you want children to end up reunited with their human traffickers? Do you think the coyote is gonna come back for the kids they stole? Those kids were allowed to enter the country after you people bitched about them being held in detention centers. When they were released they disappeared which is what happens to EVERY SINGLE ILLEGAL when they are released into the population.

You live in a very strange reality.

a reply to: projectvxn

This is a solid Original Post and I like your follow ups as well.

I wish there was a solution to all of this other than having an informed electorate because I know that will never happen.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

It's one thing to get our facts first and then manipulate them as we see fit.

It's another thing to manipulate lies into truth and run a country on that.