#and this kind of purity politics nonsense is how Clinton lost

[striving-artist]

From @fjordtoughtexblade​ on this post about Biden’s Student Debt Plan

You can call me progressive as though that’s some form of insult, but I still think that they should commit to just eliminating it all together, all payments and all debt accrual via education, the whole kit and caboodle.

Banks renegotiate the terms of loans all the time, that doesn’t make them bastions of class equality. Reworking the current educational debt structure doesn’t do away with what the ACTUAL problem is: the designation of education as the sole province for the rich.

Is Biden better than Trump? Yeah, in the sense the being killed quickly is better than being killed slowly. What I mean is, this whole situation is a pile of horse shit, and to sell it as anything else is, at the least, disingenuous.

@striving-artist Joe Biden is a right-of-center moderate, and he’s *barely* that. In most other western countries he would be a true believing, dyed in the wool conservative. Reworking the loan structure is the barest of bare minimums that a government could do to incentivize the continued participation of millennials and gen z in a workforce that soon going to need to prop up the failing economy of a nation about to navigate the largest and most deadly ecological disaster in the history of mankind.

It’s a bet hedged against our better futures. Designed to *look* appealing to liberals while *being* appealing to conservatives. But the blowback’s gotta go somewhere, and it hits us right in our future. He could have committed to completely erasing the structure of paying for knowledge, college and vocational training would be free and freely available, and the US could have one of the most highly educated, most highly trained workforce in the world to help guide us through the shitstorm that everyone know’s is coming, but instead we kowtow to the desires of a few ultrawealthy people, and knowledge is inaccessible to the lower classes.

So, please, spare us all the unenthusiastic explanation of a truly, and deeply disappointingly transparent capitalist attempt at an olive branch between the right and the “left.” Thinking about it just makes me sad.

sorry to pull this into a new thread, but I cannot bring myself to reblog that full wall of text again. Unfortunately this is also a very long post, but, I wanted to cover a couple things. OP is tagged bc it felt rude to quote them and not tag.

These kind of responses (and I’ve gotten about a dozen or so out of 9k reblogs) are as far to the left of Center in America as the Tea Party is to the right. They’re ridiculous, and they’re damaging to their own cause. I am a progressive, and these responses annoy me.

This is like walking into an ice cream shop, and being pissed that they won’t sell you a burger. There are no burgers on the menu.They’ve never sold burgers. But maybe, If you and all of your friends show up, time and again, week after week, and support the ice cream shop, while continuing to ask for burgers, maybe, eventually, they’ll add burgers to the menu. But if you walk in once, throw a fit, write a yelp review and think you’re done, they’re gonna ignore you. They should. You’ve proven your demand is performative, and nothing more.

You wanna know why the Tea Party became accepted as a thing and the far left hasn’t? because y’all keep leaving yelp reviews and going home. The Tea Party moved the Overton gap to the Right. The Far Left threw a fit and weakened their support when Obama had to compromise to get progressive bills passed.

And this idea that you can measure American Politicians on other countries’ scales, is absurd. That’s not how anything works. But if you do, make sure you look at the full spectrum. There are places that make Trump look like a flaming liberal. But see, we live here, and have to deal with our political scale.

The options currently on the menu are the only things we can choose from and expect to receive, and there is no version of the future where we flip a switch and instantly get the future we want. Go ahead, order a burger, you aren’t going to get one.

There is no version of American politics where a guy gives a magical speech in congress and the clouds part and the light shines down and the conservatives suddenly decide to enact a wealth tax, ban all guns, and commit to a socialist lifestyle.

Oh, wait, or were you planning for armed revolt instead? Have fun facing the US Military, they’re disgustingly overfunded, but I’m sure you’ll be fine. Enjoy your coup.

You wanna fix things? You wanna move The Overton Window until talking about fully wiping loans is a real debate in congress? Until we’re talking about not just taxing the income of the wealthy, but taking back and redistributing the mountains they’ve gathered? So do I. Do you have a plan? Not just wanting the electorate to miraculously shift left, but an actual plan to move them? No? Do you have anything other than whining and pie-in -the-sky dreams? Cause right now, there is only one way we move towards our goals. We find the best option we’ve got, and we remind them constantly that we want more. 

It is slow, it is painful, it is the work of years, we have to compromise, we’re going to lose some battles, and the rewards are incredibly rare. It is easier to give in, give up, and surrender to whatever the right wants this week. We keep ourselves going by celebrating what we can. 

So how dare you tell people they’re aren’t allowed a moment to be happy when something goes our way? This plan isn’t enough, but even this would change my life, and that’s true for millions of people. For the space an hour one night, my future looked a little less terrible, and I was excited, because the work during the primaries had done something. Biden’s plans are further left than any major presidential candidate in history. Hands down. But I’m not allowed to be happy about that?

Fine. Sure. you wanted a burger, I get that. A burger sounds nice. But every time this attitude shows up, I’m reminded why the GOP has so thoroughly trounced the democrats in so many elections. The far right always votes with them, because they can see that incremental improvement is better than incremental loss. Meanwhile the dems have the far left, which has people like this, sitting at home, writing pissy yelp reviews about the fact they wanted a burger.

I’m genuinely sorry this group has decided to live their life in a way where they’re not allowed to be happy until everything is perfect, because they’re never going to be happy. I can’t live like that. So yeah. I’m gonna keep celebrating the small victories.

#us politics #rant #long post #again #sorry about that followers #I'm usually less shouty #but we're two weeks out #and this kind of purity politics nonsense is how Clinton lost #and how we got trump #so I'm gonna have to keep yelling for the next few weeks #and then walk into the ocean and become chthullu if he wins again #and as always #if anyone has an actual plan to light switch shift us so Bernie is considered a centrist #I'd love to hear it