While I believe we need to continue to fight, I really think it makes little difference

[rhett o rick]

for issues other than social justice issues, who gets elected president.

IMHO the president and Congress have little power in the areas of Foreign Policy, National Security and our Economy. When the president walks into office he/she will find that everything in these areas are under control and will be told that if he/she messes with anything important, it could lead to disaster and that would be on them.

And the move to global capitalism/corporatism can't be stopped. Capitalism relies on the perception of continues growth. The capitalists must continually increase their wealth and there are two ways to do it. One is exploit the earth, which is increasing and can't be reversed. The second is to take wealth away from others (also known as increasing the wealth gap). And since the Capitalist/Corporatists have the power, we really can't stop them.

Someone talk me down plez.

[cantbeserious]

1. Things Won't Change Significantly Until Citizens Demand Better Through Direct Action

eom

[MissDeeds]

4. That's it in a nutshell

As long as we settle for what we have, the status quo, nothing will change.

[oldandhappy]

2. fracking and war

I have other issues that I think a president can ignore, support, advocate et al but those are my two big ones. And there are differences in the candidates.

[rhett o rick]

5. Oh I agree there are differences in the candidates and I will fight against the candidates

that will make it easier for the world Capitalists to continue their current domination of governments.

I think only Sanders will try to fight the domination of the World Capitalists. Hillary Clinton has already proven that she is a true blue capitalist. Her family wealth puts her in the top 1% of the top 1%. And that doesn't include the enormous wealth held in the Clinton Retirement Foundation. I think she wants more and more and more, like a good Capitalist.

[oldandhappy]

9. yep. well said

[CrispyQ]

3. The system isn't broken; the system is fixed.

Both parties are on the corporate gravy train. One throws the people a few more crumbs along the way, but that's the only diff. The train is still speeding in the same direction with the same status quo assholes on board. HRC will either get nothing done due to scandals, real or perceived, or she will get a lot done, with the help of her neocon friends, & it won't be to my benefit.

We are truly fucked. Climate change is barreling down on us & it's barely on our radar.

[rhett o rick]

6. I am looking for someone with a theory on how we can stop our rush to global disaster.

I mean something that might work. The idea we will all join cooperatives, sit around the campfire smoking doobies, is a dream and won't work with others that are determined to steal everything. Backyard gardens will be eventually outlawed by Monsanto.

[CrispyQ]

7. On this issue, my optimism doesn't even reach a glass half empty outlook.

To lighten things up a bit, there is this:

[tex-wyo-dem]

8. Oh how I wish I could give you a good answer for that...

I've put a lot of thought into it myself. One main problem is that greed is a significant aspect of too many people's personality.

[Warpy]

10. Look at how complicated the whole thing is getting

and how overspecialized most people are expected to be in order to keep the whole edifice up and running.

All would be world empires have fallen. Sometimes it's taken the death of a charismatic conqueror, sometimes it just falls under its own weight as cogs in the machine break down and there are no adequate replacements.

It's a house of cards, held up by misplaced trust, hot air, and wishful thinking.

My own best guess says what will bring it toppling down is the fear of a few men at the center of power that the derivatives casino is getting just a little too shaky. They'll cash out and the ripple effect will shake the system apart.

As for backyard gardens, there will be massive civil disobedience. How can you grow pot out there without being able to hide it among the tomato plants?

[demwing]

11. As much as it burns, we have to follow the GOP playbook

Take control of local and state gvt, and create new media voices.

Populist reform, by definition, must trickle up. The value of a Sanders campaign comes not from what he'll do, but from what he can encourage you and I to do.

That matters.

[pangaia]

14. I noticed the repubs starting to do this exact thing back in the 80s.

It probably started earlier, but I didn't see it until then.

And you are right, it is maybe the only way to get control back,
BUT, my concern is....that it will take years and it just may well already be too late..

[aspirant]

12. Find a way to starve the beast

We the people pay for almost all this government (corps pay next to nothing in taxes) and without our contributions everything will come to a screeching halt.

Let's be creative, maybe a way exists for all us progressives to file bankruptcy and not pay, just receive refunds

Maybe each individual person should file as a corporation and receive every tax benefit they do.

Set-up a bank in the Cayman islands for individual people (or individual corps) accounts with NO MINIMUMS to stash any excess money away from the IRS just like the corporations.

If the corporations are getting everything they want, let's play the game too.

[rhett o rick]

13. Capitalism won't allow it. The beast is not caged and if we try to starve it, it

will simply eat us. Not saying I don't think we should try, but I see two possibilities, One we will continue to allow the beast to steal our standard of living until we are like Haiti or many other countries, or Two, we eventually get to the point of violence. I do not condone violence but see it as a possibility in our future.

We need to closely watch Greece because it is the model of what will eventually happen to all countries. They will struggle with setting up a post-capitalist system because capitalism has ruined them. But I am not optimistic. Any system they get to work will be vulnerable to capitalist exploitation. For example, the capitalist may get control of their water supply and drain them of whatever wealth they manage to create among themselves.

[jtuck004]

15. "One we will continue to allow the beast to steal our standard of living " That's what the beast

needs for leverage.

Only when we can let go of that stuff, when we think freedom means more than comfortable homes and lazyboys will we get it back again. But most people today would not die to make sure it exists for others, (except, perhaps, on a reality show), and that is all the tyrants need to hold it over our heads.

History isn't promising. People threw Jimmy Carter out and elected Reagan to avoid turning the thermostat to 68 degrees. Lazy bastards.

la Boetie said all we have to do is quit giving the tyrant all that he has, our legs, our arms, our lives, and he will fall of his own weight. We can't even deny ourselves a little warmth to help our own damn economy.



Do you believe that shit?

I suspect some are in for a lesson in where American exceptionalism leads. And I think the ones who pay for it, our kids kids and theirs, after perhaps a nuclear war, and certainly mass dislocation from global weather changes, are gonna spit on the landfill they throw our bodies in after they dig us up to repurpose the land. As the waters rise.

Btw- 50 million people on food stamps, about 100 million working poor - they already live lives of violence. And that's just in this country.

Does that help?

[rhett o rick]

16. Help? Help me decide there is zero hope? Yes. When people calling themselves Democrats

support a corporate run oligarchy and disparage those that would fight for freedom it shows that 1. They are susceptible to the propaganda of the Oligarchy, 2. They have been raised to put their personal comfort above being free and thinking for themselves, and 3. They can some how, rationalize that helping corporations make profits is more important than helping the 2.5 million homeless children. And they call themselves Democrats.

I want a revolution but no violence. I know that the Corp-Oligarchy will not allow that because they want the violence, they welcome the violence because they can use it. They will pit one section of the 99% against the other and use the violence to justify clamping down more on our rights. Actually we've had a good start on this civil war. The Oligarchy is currently militarizing the local police forces and promoting tough drug laws that see the minority communities targeted and singled out to be incarcerated. This can't continue before the minority communities rebel. Sadly, it seems the minority communities, fault the white middle class in lieu of the Oligarchy. Racial unrest plays directly into the hands of the Oligarchy. Don't get me wrong, blaming the white middle class is understandable as that is where the support lies for "voting" in the Corporate politicians. What's sadly ironic is that the portion of the middle class that supports the Big Corporations (New-Democrats) will tell you they support the minority communities and they think they do. But it's their elected politicians, call them neo-liberals or New-Democrats, that have clamped down hard on the minority communities.
Michelle Alexander explains it clearly in her book, "The New Jim Crow." The New-Democrats (DLC) clamped down hard on drug laws that effected mostly the AA and other minority communities. Not only that they severely damaged welfare programs but also made it impossible for felons to get welfare, foodstamps, and help with education costs. And why one might ask? To win over those Americans that support the conservative racial agenda. The New-Democrats created the current racial under-caste. And yet there are people that claim to be fighting for racial rights but that support the New-Democrat's agenda.

[jtuck004]

17. Act like Democrats. You mean the ones turning over school buses and teaching their kids to beat up

black kids in '71, (good, deep blue FDR democrats whose parents lives were saved by the New Deal) or the "kinder" Democrats putting tens of thousands of black folks in jail because it is a path to more in donations, not standing up to the fascists and racist in the 90s?

You want people lo act like Democrats? They are.

No violence? Take a look around - 50 million people on food stamps, 100 million working poor, black men with a 35% unemployment rate - which the Democrats could fix by spending money, but they would rather crow about their low deficit, while some kid goes hungry, or not offer government jobs that are about the only place someone can get a color-blind shot at the job. An insurance program which denies coverage to 35 million people so it can give better coverage to the ones who signed up, The veterans, thousands deep in a line waiting for care after they gave what was asked by an ungrateful nation.

Ask the black person who had their face ground into the pavement for the same behavior that a white driver was allowed to drive away from.

There is already daily violence, but a few people make enough to insulate themselves, pretend there isn't any.

What you want is for people to act like human beings, like they were somehow dependent on each other to make it. Because we are.

But they haven't had to in so long, I suspect the world will burn before it gets their attention.