Comments by "Brandon M" (@brandonm949) on "The Hill" channel.

  1. "If you're disappointed with what the Democratic party is doing, you need to keep voting for us so we can keep disappointing you."
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  2.  @Spoon101  The majority of people hate their jobs. Working for the sake of working is terrible for the soul.
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  3.  Dennis Walker  A competent president could properly inform people about the virus without causing a panic. And he still did cause panic in the streets, as evidenced by the recent deaths in the Kenosha and Portland protests. Trump only knows how to create conflict.
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  4. Should be a thing in every state. It would've had a good chance of winning 2016 and 2020.
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  5. Seems fitting, since we still have to wait like 50 days before finding out.
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  6.  Brian Searle  If only we had an example where government spending and reducing inequality got us out of an economic depression...
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  7.  @TheAmbientMage  Did you just say social justice is an infringement on civil liberties?
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  8.  @Mmm_Kay  I can dream lol
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  9. Hasn't he been for single payer this whole time?
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  10.  @lgroots8691  Even if that's true, how was the media coverage a hoax? It sounds to me like they portrayed the severity of this better than Trump did.
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  11. It gets tricky because much of the division is between cities and suburbs and rural areas. I've heard Pennsylvania described as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in the middle". You can't fit that state into one ideological nation. The same applies to Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, and tons of other states. I think proportional representation with multiple parties is a better way to go. Party A vs. Party B is a recipe for failure. But with something like 5 parties, you focus more on forming coalitions than gaining power. For example, Progressives might work with Trumpists on ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or decriminalizing marijuana. We'd work with Libertarians on surveillance and policing issues. And we'd work with Moderate Democrats on gun control. Everyone becomes a potential teammate, and treating multiple parties as mortal enemies would be nearly impossible. I think that's the direction our country needs to go.
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  12. We don't usually think of LBJ as progressive, but two Civil Rights Acts, Medicare, and the War on Poverty are pretty great credentials.
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  13. It's an opinion show. All opinion shows have some kind of bias.
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  14.  @gf3055  One party passed a $3 trillion bill through the House in May, with stimulus checks, the $600 unemployment boost, protections for renters and homeowners, and a bunch of other goodies. The other party is offering a $300 billion bill with no stimulus checks and only a $300 unemployment boost. It might not even have enough votes to pass from its own party, which controls the Senate. I know Pelosi and Schumer suck, but the GOP is clearly worse here.
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  15. Lol, that was a very unsettling word to hear
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  16.  @cryptocrush-823  Are you referring to the world's 19th happiest country, where the life expectancy dropped for the last two years because of all the suicide and overdose deaths?
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  17. Trump isn't the one shifting the narrative negatively on immigration? Did you miss the time when he called illegal immigrants rapists and criminals? Or the time he banned travel from a selection of Muslim majority countries? Or the time he had a crowd chant "send her back" about an immigrant Congresswoman? Nothing the Dems have done comes close to that stuff.
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  18. Shout out to Gen X and the Zoomers as well; I know they hate not getting mentioned in these things because they've been getting the shit end of this economy as well. Much love. Let's get this country back on track.
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  19.  @whipstitchwebwork1383  Putting your insane callousness aside, don't you people work in those liberal cities? Isn't that how suburbs work?
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  20. Disagree. The new progressive movement started under Obama. Joe Biden isn't going to make things good. But he doesn't see us as enemies of the country and he's not gonna distract people with a bunch of other bullshit. We can work with that.
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  21. I'd be thrilled to have a country that resembled Austin, Denver, Nashville, Des Moines, or Madison.
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  22. Because "fascism" has been used in so many different ways that it ceases to have meaning. Similar to "socialism" and "liberal". But to explain the concept of Trump being fascist, I'll cite some passages from Umberto Eco's description of generic fascism (which he calls Ur-Fascism) that sound very Trumpian. "Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement ('When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun') to the frequent use of such expressions as 'degenerate intellectuals,' 'eggheads,' 'effete snobs,' 'universities are a nest of reds.'" Trump supporters often talk about how universities are "brainwashing" our students into becoming libs or socialists or whatever. Trump's claim that "the science doesn't know" that climate change is real, and Jared Kushner saying that they were "getting the country back from the doctors" are great examples of this. "In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason." As evidenced by his desire to lock up Hillary, Obama, multiple Bidens, and Gretchen Whitmer; telling the Squad to go back to their own countries; and calling the media "the enemy of the people". "The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition." "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." That was Trump describing Mexico in his very first campaign speech. You can find tons of Trump rhetoric like this, especially with the 2018 caravan. "Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside." Everything QAnon goes here. But with Trump specifically, there's the idea that Democrats are going to sabotage the election via mail fraud, or that the coronavirus was a "Democrat hoax" to tank the economy and make Trump look bad, or that Obama was tapping his phones, or even the old birther conspiracy. Trump loves to imagine plots against him. "Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party." Mocking a disabled reporter, talking about shithole countries, and the classic "I like people who weren’t captured" are good examples of contempt for the weak. As for popular elitism, at one Trump rally, he was complaining about the elites and how they didn't like him, and followed that by calling himself and his supporters "super-elites". Classic popular elitism moment. And finally, a commonly agreed upon fascist characteristic that didn't have a good description in the Eco essay - the idea of national rebirth. Which sounds a lot like MAGA. Or the idea that America "doesn't win anymore". It's not a perfect fit, but there is some similarity there. Hope this helps.
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  23.  @alexandereckert5184  Why would someone who said "I'm not voting for a cop" support our law enforcement?
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  24. Green Party?
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  25.  @blindlemon9  Disagree on the second to last sentence. Trump is destroying the hell out of our society, as noted by the rising number of people who think the election will be invalid if their candidate loses, the rising number of people who think violence is justified to achieve political goals, and the increase in white supremacist violence since 2017. And he has a ton of contempt for "Democrat states and cities", which is something like half the electorate.
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  26. Y'all are so casual about 500,000 to 1,000,000 American deaths. 99.999% of Americans survived 9/11 and we shut down our air space, gave the government a bunch of new surveillance powers, and started two wars over it. It was just 4 flights. Total overreaction, right?
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  27. That's the world we're in right now
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  28.  @jaytorres2726  Either it's a hoax or it's being politicized. It can't be both. And since Trump used the word "hoax", I'm going to assume that's what he meant.
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  29. No ranked choice voting, and the major parties are so bad, it's often worth it to vote against one of them. We need ranked choice for electing the President and governors, and proportional representation in the House and Senate.
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  30. They could just campaign on passing that chunk of bills the House passed in 2019 and get most of the Green votes. I know the living wage is in there, I think there's some gun control in there and a whole bunch of other goodies that Dems never seem to talk about anymore.
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  31. Probably not to actively shoot people, but I could see them buying a self-defense weapon. I've certainly considered it.
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  32. They don't have another strategy. They want that corporate money.
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  33.  @dnyalslg  Fair enough. Your second to last sentence suggested that Trump would let people be free to choose their destiny and I felt the need to challenge that. Neither party seems to be interested in freedom at this point.
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  34. I'll give you number 1. But abolishing the electoral college leaves us with a straight popular vote election. That's like the exact opposite of authoritarian. And we've been counting votes after election day for years, because there are a lot of them and sometimes things get stuck in the mail system. We did it in 2016 and no one tried to nullify the results. Trump's just making excuses because it looks like he's going to lose.
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  35. As a stats major, I approve
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  36. Which is fine as long as that counts in his national total.
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  37. Will do
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  38.  @JH-ci7gu  Who's been assaulting, threatening, or targeting Trump supporters?
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  39.  @countpicula  I know plenty of Biden voters who haven't assaulted/threatened/targeted anyone. Trumpers just have a massive victim complex.
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  40.  @willowgem4573  I totally agree with you. What you're talking about is just a different set of statistics. The unemployment rate is meant to measure if people who want to work can find work. If we had a New Deal economy where one spouse could afford to stay home and take care of the kids, the raw unemployment rate would be huge, but the economy would be working really well. I think Yang wanted to have like a dashboard for measuring the wellness of the country. Economically, I'd love for the Gini coefficient to become a major stat, productivity gains vs. wage gains should be something we check on every year, and work hours per week would be a good stat as well.
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  41.  @TechnoEstate  Are you implying that voting Republican is not being a sheep? (Also, we need to stop this smear campaign against sheep, but I digress.) Bernie got like 30% of the primary vote this year. He got destroyed by Biden, because Trump scares people toward a safe centrism. Obama drove people to populism. Right populism ended up winning in 2016, but the Obama presidency created the Bernie movement, and almost got him the nomination.
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  42. Then you form coalitions and have discussions and make deals. That's how politics should work. With two parties, it's less about discussion and more about gaining power so you can do anything you want. And that's how you get the shitshow we're currently in.
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  43. The economy is doing well?
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  44.  @Scrooks1  You need more than 20,000 good jobs to make a good economy. How's unemployment looking?
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  45. You're willfully ignoring that those blue states have very large, dense metro areas, where spreading a virus is way easier. And NYC, LA, and Seattle were the first places COVID was introduced to, before we had established practices for treating it and not spreading it. South Dakota has like 10 people. Of course they didn't need to lock down. And as much as Trump wants to deny it, he's also President of the blue states. Treating half your constituents like shit is a stupid way to run a country.
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  46.  @Redactedlllllllllllll  The Dems also believe in trickle down. They just throw in enough extra treats to say, "See, we're better than the Republicans."
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  47.  @Jason-jb3vp  And what, everyone will just magically pretend COVID doesn't exist and go to crowded malls and such?
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  48.  @Jason-jb3vp  Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States " I would consider keeping citizens (and the economy) afloat during a depression would count as providing for the general welfare of the country.
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  49.  @rubies200  So far you've shown you don't understand communism, Maoism, or the Constitution. It's a hat trick. More importantly, by the BLS's latest figures, there are 13.6 million unemployed people and 6.6 million job openings. 7 million unemployed people literally wouldn't able to get a job. And that's not counting all the people who had their hours and/or wages severely cut.
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  50. To be fair, Trump's got some Orban and Bolsonaro in him.
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