ricecake @ ricecake @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

I'm really not.

I get that you prefer the word oligarchy. That's fine. I'm not sure I feel strongly that we call them oligarchs or if we compare them to monarchs in our messaging how they're bad.

I'm just not seeing how a disagreement on verbiage without a difference in content makes someone as awful as people seem to be reacting.

So, I'm honestly asking: how is this republican lite? The headline conveys that she's saying to tone down attacks on the oligarchy, but then her words in the article make it clear she's advocating for a change of wording, not message.
Agree or disagree on the wording change, I don't see how "we need to stop trump and the oligarchs" is progressive, and "we need to stop trump and the wannabe kings" is milquetoast republican-lite.

As for the other parts, would your definition of the middle of the country striken with economic issues happen to include Michigan? The state that just elected her? Maybe when she's talking about things people in focus groups shared she might be talking about people from the state she represents?

Except she's saying a different word polls better, not that we need to focus less on them.

I don't see how saying a different word is more effective is the same as drawing attention away from the topic, or how saying Dems need to do better about avoiding being seen as ineffectual is an issue.

... Saying a word resonates better isn't the same as saying someone is too stupid to understand it.

She wasn't talking about who to push back against, but about messaging. "Stand up to oligarchs" doesn't have the same impact as "stand up to would-be kings". We sort of have a national history of opposition to kings, so it touches on some more foundational themes that mesh well with a push for constitutional order.

It's not an academic paper. Your speech doesn't get points deducted for using the wrong word for a domineering political ruler.

Have you just decided to be angry, and if you have to pivot from anger that "she's pro-oligarchy" to anger that "she's falsely implying that the oligarchy believes they rule by divine right", so be it?

Did you actually read what she said? It's a lot closer in message to what you just said than I think you might have expected.

I feel like the headline conveys a different message than even what the article does:

“She said Democrats should stop using the term ‘oligarchy,’ a phrase she said doesn’t resonate beyond coastal institutions, and just say that the party opposes ‘kings,'”

argued that the Democratic Party needed to lose its “weak and woke” reputation and “fucking retake the flag,” adopting a “goddamn Alpha energy”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/24/slotkin-has-a-war-plan-to-beat-trump-dont-be-weak-and-woke-00308176

She's literally saying the word oligarchy sounds pretentious and an opposition to kings resonates better, and that people think the party is weak and they need to present themselves more aggressively.

Click bait is click bait.

It's by donor profession. So things like "lawyer", "student" or in this case "retired".

I wouldn't target hfcs specifically for an ingredient ban, I'd target sugar fortifying food in general outside of reasonable expectations for the food product. (You can't make brioche without sugar, so no one would be surprised to learn sugar was added, but they might be if they learned their ranch dressing was sugar fortified).

Hfcs is the sugar of choice for increasing palatability of food by making it sweet because it's been subsidized so much. If you block it companies will just move to a different source of sugar. It's not hfcs that the issue, it's using sugar as a flavor enhancer.

Oh, I'm not arguing in favor of processed foods. We know that at the very least the processing usually entails adding a lot more sodium than people need, and that many of the more stable oils that get added tend to be much more slanted towards the unhealthy variety.

It's more that we shouldn't be demanding that our food be strictly natural and nutritive. We should be demanding that it's safe, that every ingredient have a justifiable reason for being there, and that the most conservative ingredients were used.

Without a coloring or flavoring, a perfectly healthy breakfast cereal consisting of ground oats, a processed food, is grey and exceptionally bland. Adding a small portion of beet juice concentrate and a dehydrated strawberry puree turns it into something pleasent to see and eat, even though there's no nutritional reason for them to be in the food.

At the end of the day, a significant portion of our lives will be spent around the act of eating. It should be pleasurable, and that can be done without being unhealthy, but not without allowing nutritionally unnecessary ingredients.

While you're right that there's no nutritional value to food coloring, not everything needs to be nutritionally optimal. "Looks appealing" is desirable in its own right.

We should justify food ingredients based on functional necessity and harmlessness, not on a strict criteria of nutritional necessity.

Ah, choosing to ignore the territorial annexation that took place during the war or annexations that failed? And China?

I mean, there have been some of the largest protests in American history. There's really no reason for the administration to care though. Public approval doesn't get them anything. If a third of the country protested tomorrow they would just dispute the numbers and carry on.

If your goal is to create a white Christian ethnostate and never give up power, people you already don't care about asking you not to isn't going to stop you.

We need more people taking more action, but protesting is just how you communicate that there are numbers to make it safe to resist. The protests themselves won't do anything.

You're skipping the whole "fillibuster" thing. You need 60 to even have a vote on a lot of issues.

To be fair on that one, Puerto Ricans seem torn on what they want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_political_status_for_Puerto_Rico

Up until Trump the US has been reasonable about independence questions since WW2, for the most part. (Highlighting that independence is different than being free from interfering)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acquisitions_table

Notable examples would be places like "Tibet", several Baltic states, and an attempt on Finland. Hell, Russia is currently trying to annex Ukraine.

They specifically said 20th century, and were obviously referring to the post world war period.

After the wars, the US sought soft power, not territory.
Aligning with them was often a more safe move.

That never actually says they're selling at a loss, just that they're not using the same market based pricing structure as American businesses.

Looking at some other sources, it looks like they overproduced materials to keep prices low, since their primary potential competition refuses to use state money to fund production of critical resources.

It's manipulative, but it's not selling at a loss.
It's difficult to feel sympathetic towards us when we refused to invest in the industry and shutdown the people responsible for helping develop the industry.
If it was that critical we should have just spent to money to develop the industries domestically, which would have made lower prices moot.

Being upset that a country that calls itself Communist doesn't follow free market ideology seems foolish.

Cool. You wrote an opinion that perfectly matched the opinion of a particular demographic that's common on the site, and are now very offended that no one knew you were someone less common.
Which also entirely draws the conversation away from you saying it's good that the government pulled funding from an organization that's doing something good because government messes everything up.

They're already a non-profit. Why are you upset that they got money from the government? Wouldn't the ideal to you be an NGO that got money without being under government control, and was therefore free from business influence as well?

Linux is a great example. It's backed by a non-profit foundation, under the direction of mostly corporate advocates. That's what people talk about when they talk about a non-profit being beholden to corporate money.
The shape of Linux has steadily been pushed towards being more and more focused on server and data center operations, since that's what the people in charge of funding allocation care about, and that's what they'll direct their parent organizations to contribute developers to working on.

Your government sucks. I get that. It doesn't mean I don't expect more from mine, and it doesn't mean that I reject the notion that I should have say in the management of the things around me.
The NGO that you envision will do a better job managing the drainage where I live doesn't answer to me, and I have no recourse if they mess up and flood my house.

I'd like something like the NGO you envision, but with public accountability. This is often called a "government".

Yeah, the lobbying question is a complicated one.

In an ideal world it would be much closer to how the standards committees work. The issue isn't people sharing their opinions and desires for how the system should work, it's when they use inequitable means to bias the decision. My industry, security, has lobbied for official guidelines on security requirements for different situations. Makes it easier to tell hospitals they can't have nurses sharing login credentials: government says that's bad, and now your insurance says it's a liability.

The problem is that lobbying too often comes with stuff like a "we're always hiring like minded people at our lobbying firm, if you happen to find yourself in the position to do so, give us a call.".
It's too easy for people with a lot of money to make their voices more heard.

It's not that the wealthy and business interests should be barred from sharing opinions with legislators, it's that "volume" shouldn't be proportional to money. My voice as a person who lives near a river should be comparable to that of the guy who owns the car wash upstream when it comes to questions of how much we care about runoff going into the river.

So you want it to be run like it is today, but with less money? Do you think they're going to spread whatever incompetence you see them having via funding?

Usually when people celebrate the removal of government from a public service it's because they think it should be arranged to turn a profit.

You didn't list your stance on every issue in your comment so I can only assume that you have the rest of the beliefs that I've always seen go with that opinion.