I'm still saddened by thinking of what could have been. I don't think we'd be as worried this election if it was Sanders running for a second term.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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With the powers that be, I wonder how much he could have gotten done with actually fixing America. He'd be blocked everywhere by everyone with power, hell he might even have had an "accident", or caught a bullet outright.
There is something to be said for setting a precedent. I believe Bernie would have recognized that he would struggle with the major powers and so strategized to make friends and move around them, towards a larger end goal. Would there have been sweeping changes? Probably not the first four years. A second term with the groundwork? I think we may have seen things change.
You have to understand that a lot of us trust that Bernie wants what's best. If it took time and he asked us to trust him, we would. Yeah, there are arguments against this and what I spoke of further above, yet it is my belief that there would have been positive change.
I think that both what you and the other commenter have said is probably pretty accurate, but I also wanted to note that the office of the president is immensely powerful on its own.
Executive actions can have immediate changes without support from others. And having someone like Bernie in a position to set the national tone by being ‘the face’ of our politics for 4 years could certainly shift the Overton window. Bernie speaks his mind, and as the leader of the U.S., folks listen, even if he can’t pass policy. So if he spends 6 months leading up to an election talking about preference voting, ethics reform, or campaign finance - candidates and primary challengers are going to discuss those positions rather than leave them off their platform.
Those issues could shift the baseline of political power in the U.S. - if we had an election cycle or two where the president was driving national dialogue about it, voters would also choose candidates who made those things a priority - empowering - perhaps not Bernie, but maybe the next round of candidates, and possibly leading to permanent changes to our democracy.
Which is, well, very hopeful. But it illustrates what he could have done. Could have changed trajectories, rather than circling the same old drain that leads to a two party system where both parties are on the take from someone.
The lab-leak theory for the origins of the 2020 pandemic was racist disinformation; now, commentators and experts acknowledge it’s a genuine possibility.
just gonna open with that with zero supportive evidence huh? Jesus Christ.
As an expert in another field, I’ll gladly go on the record refusing to rule out almost anything that is not actually impossible. That doesn’t mean I think it happened, or even that it’s even slightly likely.
If you ask your experts “is this possible” you are not getting your money’s worth.
Was there evidence supporting the lab-leak "theory" at the time? I think there was not. And yet, Fox News was harping on this hypothesis, Trump was calling Covid the "Kung Flu", and racists were hate-criming Asian Americans in the streets. There is a reason we were saying just shut up about the lab leak at the time. (Admittedly, it might be true, but that doesn't mean its proponents in 2020 were right.)
Yeah, probably not the best example...
Fauci backtracked all his previous lies about the lab leak being a conspiracy theory https://youtu.be/AqYZw1TNFZ4?t=1m38s
UsRighttoknow found evidence that a US company outsourced virus research that described covid19 to the Wuhan Lab.
Of course it's no surprise that the Wuhan Lab of Virology is responsible for the outbreak of a virus right next to it. But hey that Pangolin wet market story sounds so funny let's keep repeating it.
wtf is a fauci and what kind of source is a youtube video.
The doctor who led America through Covid as official presidential advisor. And the one responsible for lab leak being called a conspiracy theory.
Him backtracking on lab leak says everything.
For the leak documents see https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/scientists-proposed-making-viruses-with-unique-features-of-sars-cov-2-in-wuhan/
This is so dumb. We'll never know exactly but from what we do the initial infections don't convincingly point to workers from the lab, genetic evidence suggests zoonautic origins are probable, there is no proof either way. The Chinese government isn't allowing an audit, and by this point it's too late anyway.
There is no reason to believe it's likely. Let alone certain. It's literally just "China, who the usaians call red china, is uncooperative" and "there's a lab studying Coronavirus's in a region with lots of them"
You just got linked proof.
Even the person who gaslighted the world into believing lab leak was a conspiracy, has backtracked it last month. You just saw the video
Just accept that the government lied.
What government? what are you fucking on about? I don't give a shit about political games in some hick filled military cult if you're talking about the evil empire.
There is zero evidence sars2 came from a lab, zero. Something being technically possible is not the same as it being likely.
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If you call Stewart both an expert and a commentator it's true!
Bernie would've caused so much positive disruption that they wouldn't be prepared for. AOC could probably get behind whatever Bernie was selling; the rest of the Democrats, I'm not so sure.
Both parties are different sides of the same coin. They just have different ways of accomplishing their end goals. Bernie posed a huge threat to corporate interests and the wealthy. They knew that. They also knew that a vast, VAST number of Americans supported Bernie, even across the political divide. Why do you think Democrats did very little recently when a surge of unionization happened? They're basically insider traders with a day job ignoring the needs of the people who had no other political choice.
The next two possible candidates in the 2020 election were that Klob... umm the lady with a name that doesn't want to be spell checked and what's his face, the current Secretary of Transportation. We all know, now, what they were offered to drop out of that race as they took up their cushy administrative jobs. Both of them represented monied interests and were splitting the ticket three ways for the true democratic nominee between them and Biden. All while the American middle and lower classes were turning out in droves for Bernie.
I won't say that both groups are equal threats, but I'll never forget not forgive what the DNC did. I vote for them because I value more than myself and know the existential threat that Republicans have shown themselves to be. Fuck the DNC, but also I'll be voting for Biden the same way I did in 2020, and before with Hillary in 2016, holding my fucking nose.
Remember that "journalist" who admitted, in an interview on iirc "Joe Rogan" or something, that CNN+NYT++ systemically "shut down" progressive issues, & progressive voices, in that election..
I'd been wondering what the hell was wrong, but .. propaganda "journalism" won a "battle" I hadn't even known was being waged..
Now, of course, the deck is getting stacked,.
the economic house-of-cards still is being propped-up by China & the US ( different parts of it: the fake-economy of China, & the issue 7x as much currency, but pretend that that doesn't cause 700% inflation idiocy in the US ).. but it must come down.
IF that economic house-of-cards comes down before the election, then the incumbent is hosed.
Period.
It's a slam dunk election for the outsider, then.
You'd better pray, successfully, for that economic-collapse not happening, until after the election, then, eh?
Being the old cynic that I am, I'm expecting the republicans to win, to revert the US to Jim Crow's "reality", & to finish the Civil War that they pretended to surrender in, so long ago.
Gutting NATO, backing Russia, the whole everything that Trump promised..
I'd be preparing, not praying.
( & am, tbh: health's improving.. )
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