• santa@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    Take it to the top. It’ll be very difficult to argue a recent law of Congress not being fulfilled.

  • radiofreebc@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    This would have ended any other government in US history. I don’t know why Americans are okay with this now.

    • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
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      10 hours ago

      In the 1930s the US government bombed a US city and killed thousands of American civilians for the crime of being wealthy while black.

      In the 1890s the US government bombed and launched an all-out military offensive against American civilians for the crime of wanting to be paid for doing deadly mining work.

      In the 1950s the US government launched the largest and most wide spread secret police operation in world history resulting in hundreds of thousands of arrests, tens of thousands of convictions, and at least a three figure death count of American civilians for the crime of wanting the same rights as CEOs.

      American history is not a story of revolution, it is a story of wimpy capitulation to their owners.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        In the 1980s the government bombed Philadelphia, specifically the MOVE movement for the crime of being politically motivated while black.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            I mean they did admit to making fake bombs and planting them then called in bomb threats.

            The reaction they got was crazy for sure 100% but let’s not color them out to be some incredibly innocent benevolent society of pacifists.

    • matthurtme@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I’m 40 yrs old and I’ve never been okay with America. This country has traumatized me my whole life

    • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      This isn’t even in the top 10 atrocities of the USA, what makes you think that?

      Tell me your country, and I’m pretty sure they’ve done much worse, also. Surprise me!

      • Snowies@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        Notice how no one has any smart comments to respond to you with?

        Thats because it’s really fucking easy to criticize an entire country when you’re not in it.

        The American people were born here by chance, live paycheck to paycheck, and are separated from the people that make these decisions by thousands of miles and thousands of armed men with guns.

        What are we supposed to do exactly, specifically, as individuals… huh?

        We’re all fucking ears.

        If it’s so fucking simple, tell us how to fix it (not you Prole, them).

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          4 hours ago

          You’re not meant to do anything as individuals. You’re meant to do something as a population.

          Nobody says it is easy. It not, but the first step is to form organisations.

    • tortina_original@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Because Americans are cowards. Not saying this to mock them but they have grown incredibly lazy over the decades, they are not ready to lose any comfort so they mostly keep quiet.

      Pair that with a surveillance state that they have been specifically and repeatedly warned about over last 2 decades - they are fucked.

      I wonder how are “I have nothing to hide” and “They are not going to spy on me” geniuses rationalizing it now.

      I used to be mocked and laughed at when I tried warning people about what awaits them in the future (never mind that it is also my area of expertise and those people knew it). I don’t give a fuck anymore and they are screaming and posting angry messages on social media expecting someone else will fight for them.

      I suppose that’s the end result of brain washing your population with super hero movies.

      But noone is coming to save them.

      • Snowies@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        American here.

        What should I be brave enough to do individually, specifically (I live paycheck to paycheck).

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        Was Renee a coward?

        How about Alex?

        Sit down and stop making a fool of yourself. You don’t know anything about what’s going on, and you shouldn’t be generalizing.

        • tortina_original@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Yeah, fuck off mate with your virtue signaling. You have no idea how many fucking revolutions and civil wars I went through, which is why I know a thing or two about how this shit works.

          What is new for you is something other people have been through, some even few times before. Seems like people don’t understand that this is always done pretty much the same way. And they never listen, either.

          But hey, keep posting, that will help 👍

          Or just fuck off. I don’t care either way.

          • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            I know how many fucking revolutions and civil wars you’ve been through, zero.

            Oh no! You’ll tell me to fuck off. Whatever will I do? So powerful. I’m scared!

            • tortina_original@lemmy.world
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              6 hours ago

              Kiddo, I was trying to let you know that I don’t give a fuck about you or what you think. I have been through this countless times and over the decades (you see, I am giving you a hint that I am an old fart) I’ve learned that’s it’s better to just ignore dummies. You are right, I have not been through anything, I am just pretend posting because I have a strong need for validation from random fools or bots on what once was an Internet.

              Never stop posting 👍

      • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Every time someone calls USA cowards, they leave out their own country for some reason.

        Because they’re so brave! So very, very brave, that they can’t even have their own nation criticized. Truly heroic!

        • ViceroTempus@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Not endorsing them but seriously.

          WE should be endorsing them. This pretending that violence isn’t the answer to violence, is the problem. We keep giving our abusers a pass, because we don’t want to be “violent”. We keep pretending “two wrongs don’t make a right” but that’s been bullshit since it first came out of someone’s mouth while any form of justice system exists, as violence is needed to apprehend criminals, which literally takes a series of wrongs(Kidnapping, imprisonment, seizure of assets(AKA theft)) to make things right.

          Trump needs to be assassinated, as does his minions. We need to stop pretending there are other solutions besides “violence”.

      • breezeblock@lemmy.ca
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        22 hours ago

        The system is set up to keep us busy and living hand to mouth.

        Not to mention Fox News and the right wing media exists entirely to lie straight to our faces and fill our brains with culture wars so the average person has no idea which way is up.

        • tortina_original@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Right. I actually completely ignored the fact you guys are literally forced to just think about survival (day to day survival, I suppose for lots of people), you don’t get to plan a revolution 😕

          Yeah, it is incredible what has happened. I hope you all find strength.

          • Hazor@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            A lot of people I see on here lambasting Americans for not acting really don’t seem to grasp how hard it is to think about solving systemic problems when your every waking moment is consumed by worrying whether you’ll be able to feed your family today or keep a roof over their head tomorrow. Much of the US lives one or two missed paychecks from destitution. The fact that the standard of living generally is higher than in many countries doesn’t mean your kids are eating dinner tonight, and it certainly doesn’t mean you have leisure time to think about complex ideas like systems of government or equitable tax policy, let alone educate yourself about them. We have few safety nets, our culture actively maligns those who use them, and those in power are actively trying to eliminate them.

            A revolution under these conditions will only happen when sufficient masses have lost all access to basic needs.

            • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
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              10 hours ago

              A revolution under these conditions will only happen when sufficient masses have lost all access to basic needs.

              I wouldn’t rule out owners being fine with the military mowing down US civilians with machine guns

    • SGGeorwell@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Shamelessness is a tactic I think they adopted in order to prevent scandals from causing irreparable damage. If they stay resolutely shameless, they develop the ability to outmaneuver scandal by inoculating everyone against it. Everyone expects there to be zero consequences, and so eventually there aren’t any. A slow steady trickle of scandals might even be beneficial to this end. It numbs people. Major scandals get rolled into the machinery of diminished expectations, and here you have a fizzled story of this size. Americans are hypnotized by this scandal machine. It’s just a hypothesis of mine.

    • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      24 hours ago

      Even if you want to stay informed, you only have a couple hours between working all day, commuting back and forth, helping the kids with homework, and household chores. They have maybe an hour or two of available time to fit in any sort of news and relaxation.

      Because even when corporate owned media does cover it, they bury the stories so you need to actively look for them instead of it being front page or headline news. Even local station media is increasingly owned by corporate interests that just don’t show things or push small local fluff pieces instead.

      The 24 hour news cycle desensitizes people to basically everything. And the current political climate is designed around a constant influx of misinformation and disinformation that takes much more time to fight than it does to spread. And modern propaganda is extremely effective, across the board. Especially across social media, designed to create echo chambers and feed you more of the same constantly.

      • Jackie's Fridge@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        On top of that, your literal life depends on the machine. With no national healthcare, you need to keep your job to have the basic, astronomically priced insurance, and even if you have it, should anything go wrong, you could lose everything just staying alive. Not many people can afford the risk of fighting back. It’s toe the line or die.

        Struggle to stay informed. Struggle to keep your job. Struggle not to get sick or hurt. Struggle to keep your privacy. Struggle to get any other isolated, self-centred Americans to organise with you in any significant numbers to fight against the people with all the power, all the money, and a massive military they made a point of using against their own people to prove they would…

        It’s not impossible. But we will say it’s slightly daunting. For all their “freedom”, most Americans can’t even afford the time away from work to vote.

        That said, this administration has slammed the gas pedal and more and more people are starting to run out of what little they had. As their security erodes, they have less to lose. More and more are fighting back, and the Trump admin has proven they are not very good at pretty much anything. Rescuing the US won’t be easy, but it will be possible. They just have to future proof the place against the next Project 2025.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      I don’t know why Americans are okay with this now.

      That’s like saying you don’t know how a pig could fly…

      Americans aren’t ok with it. It’s just protesting won’t work, it’s armed rebellion or nothing and even on July fourth that’s not a very palatable option.

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        “Protesting doesn’t work” is literally propaganda for the status quo, don’t spread this crap, worse than just being defeatist and doomer it discourages others from protesting.

        Protest is a step in the process of rebellion… How many people are gonna rise up with an armed rebellion when they see the most of the population can’t even be arsed to attend a march or rally?

        And it does work.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          And it does work.

          Lol…

          It worked in the civil right movement because it wasn’t “Martin or nothing”.

          If the status quo didn’t go with Martin’s nonviolent movement, Malcolm was marching Black Panthers with AR15s in California…

          That is what worked

          If a protest ain’t a threat it’s pointless, and if the protestors aren’t openly armed with rifles, the police are going to escalate to violence.

          The only choice protesters get to make about violence, is if they do enough to discourage the state from starting it.

          Like, youre just too young to remember all the peaceful protests that failed, we’ve been doing this shit for generations and shit keeps getting worse

          Your funny fucking signs won’t save us champ, and acting like it will makes people unwilling to do what would work

          • ViceroTempus@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            Even MLK would shake his head in disgust with our current “Protests”, MLK was being peaceful but also doing things that broke the law, so they could overwhelm the jails, and police. Ones that made people uncomfortable so they had to pay attention. Protestors had to practice civil disobedience. The ones with signs and no pressure were the exact kind of protests MLK hated.

            Our “protests” don’t even do that. And any suggestions to do anything close to that is seen akin to violence by said protestors and they push back hard. People today don’t realize the kinds of protests or actions that actually work, and refuse to listen to people that actually know their history.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              MLK could protest by having people just exist in a space…

              The oligarchs learned their lesson and changed the rules. Part of which was drastically scaling up detention centers. Along with being able to label any protest as “terrorism” and throw people in prison for decades.

              We have the highest percentage of imprisoned citizens of any country, and because of privatized prisons they’ll happy to keep building more.

              The system is fundamentally flawed, trying to fix issues one by one is impossible by design. But this is our best (and possibly last) chance in the next two years to fix it at a ballot box. And we can’t put all our eggs in that basket.

              There’s a very good chance the oligarchs need a plausible threat of violence tho, and that means guns out at protests. If it stops police from using violence and arrests, then more people will be willing to protest

              • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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                6 hours ago

                The problem is, it won’t be fixed at the ballot box.

                You’ve been duped, not because you’re dumb, but because they’re very good at what they do… that’s the genius of our political system. Good cop/bad cop has been in use since ancient Rome, and it is now a fine art.

                It won’t be fixed at the ballot box, the Democrats will not save you. What did Biden do for you? Wake up. He couldn’t even pass minimum wage, didn’t even bother with one standalone bill. In eight years, Obama didn’t reform anything; “Obamacare” just funneled more money to for-profit insurance companies. Sadly, we’re used to so little, even that was an improvement.

                Go ahead and vote, I do. But that is because it’s my duty as an American, not because I think it will work. I am old… it’s never worked, and I don’t expect it to magically start working tomorrow.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  You should spend less time typing and more time reading.

                  If that doesn’t help ask questions.

                  But all you’re doing right now is telling people to give up, which is fucking stupid unless an oligarch is paying you, then it’s just shitty.

        • matthurtme@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          As someone with lived experience going through occupy wall street, no it doesn’t. All I saw that accomplish was funds being embezzled, my friends get shot in the face with rubber bullets, and some of them now have criminal records. What did we get? A dollar raise to the already unliveable minimum wage.

          Did anything change on wall street? Hell no. It got worse. Sanders says that the rich own 93% of all the wealth this country produces.

          Protesting didn’t do jack shit.

          Protest now and you need to get a permit. What in the fuck is that? There’s key note speakers and performers and shit. That’s not a protest, that’s a fucking festival for people who have enough money to cosplay protesting

          • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            I feel for your experience, but Occupy Wall Street famously had no clear set of demands - that was why no significant policy changes came from it. It was a valid protest, but with no stated legislative goals that could be enacted by politicians.

            • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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              6 hours ago

              Occupy Wall Street famously had no clear set of demands

              Bullshit, come on. 15 an hour was everywhere. That’s a pretty simple demand, and how did you miss it? Seriously

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              Occupy Wall Street famously had no clear set of demands

              No, that’s what billionaire owned media told people too ignorant to realize they weren’t on our side by 2011…

              https://occupywallst.nyc/demands

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Goals

              Just because you’re still ignorant of their goals 15 years later, doesn’t mean their goals didn’t exist.

              Just that you’ve never even taken the two minutes to check…

              That’s crossing the line into willfull ignorance

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I think the problem here is people took:

          Armed rebellion

          As storming DC and something that ain’t going to happen.

          Calling the president a pedophile and the politicians who protect them is an act of rebellion

          I’m just saying if we aren’t openly armed, no one is gonna give a fuck what we say.

          10k unarmed prosters get beaten and arrested all the time, no big deal.

          Cops aren’t going to start shit with 50 people with rifles and plates tho. Whether or not there’s 10 people or 10k behind him them.

          It’s not a matter of how many people, it’s how many rifles that makes power listen, or at least pass gun control like Reagan did.

          • [deleted]@piefed.world
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            14 minutes ago

            As storming DC and something that ain’t going to happen.

            You mean the thing that literally happened in an attempt to overthrow a fair election just a handful of years ago? That was just a bunch of morons who cared more about some lies, surely there are enough rational people to overthrow for valid reasons.

          • moustachio@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            It’s true, lots of states have stand your ground laws that absolutely would apply to the types of aggression cops show to protestors. Police know this, and almost certainly would be trying to keep the event peaceful.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              Legality doesn’t matter.

              What matter is their method of handling protests is making people panicked, scared, and making them prioritizing avoiding immediate pain…

              That literally only works on unarmed protesters, because a very large amount of people have an instinctual response to fight instead of flee. And if even one decides to fire on cops, the cops will all fire back and then so will all the armed protesters.

              It’s MAD, mutually assured destruction in the moment.

              Because of that, and cops being cowards, they will not follow orders to escalate to violence against armed protests.

              It’s their only move, and AR15s and plate carriers take that away from them.

              That’s just the reality of it. Clever signs and logic won’t help, we need to make them too scared to escalate to violence and being visibly armed is the only way to make them scared

          • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
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            10 hours ago

            If you can’t escalate to focused violence against political (or at least “politicized”) targets, then your protest lacks moxie.

    • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      23 hours ago

      If we come back from this, one of the first things needs to be the US Marshall service being moved under control of the Judiciary. So they have an actual enforcement arm for their decisions, instead of relying entirely on the Executive, which clearly will just ignore the decisions, and Congress will sit idly by.

      Congress has two ways to override the Executive, one is veto overrides. The other is impeachment, which also can override the Judicial, and the processes include the enforcement of those decisions.

      The Executive enforces laws as its primary function. As such, they can enforce those laws against the Legislative and Judicial as necessary.

      One of the two main purposes of the Judicial branch is to ensure the other two are writing the laws correctly, and that those laws follow the requirements of existing ones, like the Constitution. So they can rule on passed laws, but they do not have a mechanism to enforce those, they rely on the Executive to do that, even if the Executive is the issue. Or they rely on the Legislative to act on a lack of enforcement.

      The Judicial as it sits, is both one of the strongest and weakest links in the system. And until now, that weak part hasn’t really been exposed since the Justice Department has historically been generally left to operate independently of the President, even though nothing actually prevents it from being abused like this.

      • Manjushri@piefed.social
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        11 hours ago

        Congress also needs to re-establish it’s own enforcement capabilities. The “guard rooms” in the capitol need to be fitted with modern prison cells and the Sergeants at Arms of the House and Senate need to have contingents of trained officers under their own command. It’s high time that people refusing to answer to Congress or committing contempt of Congress be detained properly without having to wait on a corrupt Department of Justice to to their job.

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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        10 hours ago

        If we come back from this, one of the first things needs to be the US Marshall service being moved under control of the Judiciary.

        That’s a great idea, and in hindsight it’s ridiculous that it isn’t already like that.

        • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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          6 hours ago

          Personally, if the USA gets a complete overhaul, I think that there should be checks and balances through how each branch gets personnel. Furthermore, a fourth branch, the military, so that the executive isn’t in charge of that function.

          The staffing concept goes something like this:

          • Congress decides how many personnel the other branches can hire each year. Congress has to ask the judiciary, executive, and military branches to give them people to fill assorted roles as part of the congressional branch.

          • The judiciary hires and trains bureaucrats and military commanders. After they have completed training, they are passed onto the executive, congressional, and military branches. Every so often, commanders and burecrats will have to be retrained by the judiciary.

          • The executive will train ordinary soldiers, and release them into the service of the military. The executive also assigns logistical staff for the military, such as quartermasters, kitchen staff, and so on.

          • Once a bureaucrat or military member is a certain age, they can either retire or continue their career working for the judiciary. As members of the judicial branch, these workers can serve as bailiffs, enforcement troops for court orders, be assigned to serve congress as support staff, and so on. This means the judicial has a relatively fewer bodies than other branches, but they are also the most experienced.

          • The military can give the other branches defensive staff, such as cybersecurity experts, embassy guards, and so on.

          Probably not perfect by any stretch, but the idea is to make it harder for any one branch to become “the” branch when it comes to human resources.

          • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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            6 hours ago

            Ehh, that sounds over-engineered in my opinion, and reveals a lack of understanding of the organizational structure of the government. I understand you say it’s an overhaul, but I think it stretches credulity a little too far.

            Aside from the fact that it’s unlikely to work as intended, it could also create a variety of unseen issues which may be even worse in the long run. Generally, large changes to the constitutional order need to be done with the utmost care. There’s a good reason it would require supermajorities in both chambers, as well as the agreement of a supermajority of member states. That being said, it’s not likely to gain that much support.

            There are other more important changes that I think it would be better to focus on, which also have a greater chance of passing given enough support.

            For instance, moving the Marshalls under the Judiciary is downright sensical; and as recent events make abundantly clear, necessary. Maybe even the entire DOJ, although putting prosecutors and sitting judges under the same authority might be dangerous.

            We could add to that, giving Congress control over their own independent (and non-partisan; precisely how to achieve this would have to be worked out) security force.

            Beyond that, we need electoral reform (ranked-choice voting and perhaps proportional representation), education reform (self-explanatory), healthcare reform (universal public healthcare, obviously), labor rights, consumer rights, the list goes on. Criminal justice reform as well. A lot of pieces of this pie, but that doesn’t mean we need to turn it into a pretzel.

            Oh and of course, overturning the Citizens United ruling, bringing back Net Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine, and undoing so many other harmful rulings that have accrued over the decades since Nixon and Reagan.

            Undoing the legacies of Reaganomics more broadly and returning to a more FDR-style economic system.

            And of course a full-blown demagafication project, and not half-assed like Reconstruction either.

    • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Thank God we elected Biden to put a stop to those Republicans!

      Oh… wait. Nevermind. He did absolutely nothing, I forgot