Americans: Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton

[Violet]

I will vote or Sanders, if he makes it to the finals, for no other reason but to listen to the Wingers in this country go completely bat shit crazy.  Other than that though, I will probably be far away on election day and not bother.  Anyone who thinks that this country can be saved by an election is, in my humble opinion, living a fantasy.  At some point a system is too badly broken to be fixed.  Progress will only come when that system is replaced by something new.  Any election that does nothing but put Democrats and Republicans in the White House, the Senate, and the House, will just be more of the same old system.

Light me up a revolution.  Put millions of Americans in the streets calling for resignations, trials, imprisonments, and wide spread removal of the elite in power.  Have them rampage through the SC building, haul the Justices who voted for Citizen United before a tribunal and have them tried for treason.  Actually Occupy Wall Street this time, haul that bronze bull out and throw it in the Bay, shut down the Market until the Big Banks are busted up, and have the CEOs doing perp-walks while Faux news goes dark because the FCC pulled their operating ticket in fear of the protesters paralyzing DC and chasing winger governors out of State Houses across the nation.  Write and approve a new Constitution.  The old one gave us the nation we see now, steeped in elitism, crony capitalism, war mongering, violence, racism, and misogyny.

Start any of that and I might think something is finally happening.  Otherwise it will just be the US fading into the dustbin of history.  The only real question is what comes next, and how it arrives.  But it will not arrive on the back of a sham election put on by a sham democracy, were the voters are a people buried in propaganda and unable to tell fact from fiction.

Revolution of that sort is bloody... and I'm afraid that your millions of americans in the streets probably don't have all that many tanks and jets at their command. It'd be a massacre, and most people don't have the jaw for it. I know I don't, the cost of any type of war is on MAGNITUDES greater a scale than the immediate monetary cost of bullets and deployments. Human magnitudes.

This country will not be 'saved' by an election, not ANY singular election, of any single person. You have to work at that from the ground up, and you DO, you *DO* have the option of accomplishing a ground-up restructuring of your government. Whether you run yourself, whether you vote for others... start at your local level... the 'inconsequential people' that you barely hear about. Those people accomplish a shit ton more than most people imagine they do, and they can use local governing as platforms to become mayors and governors and legislators. 

You don't need to rewrite a governmental system that wasn't actually broken to begin with. Every system has its flaws, and this system's flaws aren't all that bad, so long as you've an educated populace (the internet goes a LONG WAYS with this... Sanders COULD NOT run without it), and a participating populace. 

You can enact change. The system is designed as a PYRAMID. 

You are the bottom of that pyramid. When you're missing? THE STRUCTURE FUCKING FALLS.

[Reforged]

Bernie should get in, Hilary *will* get in.
A science background is a handicap when it comes to getting in positions of political power. People will see him as stuck up, untrustworthy and in some circles; ungodly. People are morons who vote against their own best interests.

Not that it matters, every candidate is bought and paid for dozens of times before they get even remotely close to any real position of power. Its how they pay for their campaigns and its how private enterprise gets its interests looked after time after time. They'll both give a couple of throw away gestures on some relatively irrelevant and obvious topics everyone gets flustered about while sneaking in some backdoor policies to settle their debts.
Thats how the keys to the kingdom get systematically sold every four years to the highest bidder. You can make small changes but the big changes belong to private enterprise.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

How can anyone take an avowed socialist, the most discredited modern ideology, seriously?
Or Hillary, the most obviously corrupt and conniving politician since Nixon, who has accomplished exactly zero?
And now some are calling for captain gaff Biden?

Seriously, is this the best the Democratic party can offer, two old white guys and bitter mean-spirited old white woman?

I'm seriously with you on Hillary. I'd rather see Trump as POTUS first. The only people who've EVER compared with Hillary are Reagan and fucking NIXON of all people. She is pure oily snake.

She is what ambition looks like. And it scares me. So yeah, if it comes down to a Hillary vs Trump sort of battle? I'll vote Trump.

But, I'd prefer that old white democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders It actually takes someone like him for someone like me to be remotely interested in voting. Above all: I despise corruption, and the enabling and allowance of further corruption, with no accountability.

Sanders is many things to many people... but I agree with him on some things, and am willing to compromise with him on others... and I, for one, would like to be proud of my country, and while we're so utterly backwards on so many things: that's not a feeling I'm likely to ever associate with the 'Good Ol' USA. 

Besides. If a critical mass support for these issues can be reached, and the american public can be remotely arsed... there's the potential to enact change, even if corporations and rich fucks want to keep the same old same old going forever until the very value of the dollar is sucked out and shipped overseas, and the government crumbles from all of the loopholes. Voting for Bernie Sanders isn't so much voting for the man... it's for what the man represents. So, if someone were to assassinate Bernie Sanders, it'd have a rather martyristic effect.

The last thing we need is another Southern redneck as POTUS so Hillary is definitely out.  

Bernie is too old and he's a Jew so he won't make too much progress.  

The Repubs are religious wackos who should be registered as members of the American Taliban party.  

Trump is a racist with a 200 word vocabulary so he will get the Repub nomination and most likely win the election.

Biden is supposed to run and is he does he will likely be the Dem candidate.  He will lose the election.

[Violet]

We may not be too far from that. The rich can't keep leeching a country dry of money forever. Eventually there will be an uprising.

Such an uprising is not in the rich's best interest. They'll give people little things here and there if it's getting hairy, and that'll usually obliterate that kind of movement pretty quickly. 

Such an uprising is not in the poor's best interest... not until death and a country filled with a civil war's trauma is preferable to living in these conditions....

But the funny thing is... when the poor are living in bad conditions, quite apart from the hilarious irony that it's actually bad economics for the rich: it's awfully hard to fight on an empty stomach after years of malnutrition. Depression sets in pretty hard, very difficult to motivate the poorest when you don't have anything for them to begin with.

[Violet]

The last thing we need is another Southern redneck as POTUS so Hillary is definitely out.  

Bernie is too old and he's a Jew so he won't make too much progress.  

The Repubs are religious wackos who should be registered as members of the American Taliban party.  

Trump is a racist with a 200 word vocabulary so he will get the Repub nomination and most likely win the election.

Biden is supposed to run and is he does he will likely be the Dem candidate.  He will lose the election.

Hillary isn't definitely out, she's slipping, but far from gone. The planned parenthood defunding is actually a huge boon to just about any female candidate.

Bernie is old, sure... a handful and one or two years older than Hillary. Biden's difference from Bernie, agewise, is 2-3 years. The VP is an important consideration for any presidential election, but it becomes more and more important every ten years of age your primary candidate goes up. 

Not all Republicans are members of the Tea Party.

Trump may win, and if he does? That's plenty fine by me, so long as that kind of horror actually works for waking up the disenfranchised. It could, but it'd probable just end up dividing our country even more.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

We may not be too far from that. The rich can't keep leeching a country dry of money forever. Eventually there will be an uprising.

Such an uprising is not in the rich's best interest. They'll give people little things here and there if it's getting hairy, and that'll usually obliterate that kind of movement pretty quickly. 

Such an uprising is not in the poor's best interest... not until death and a country filled with a civil war's trauma is preferable to living in these conditions....

But the funny thing is... when the poor are living in bad conditions, quite apart from the hilarious irony that it's actually bad economics for the rich: it's awfully hard to fight on an empty stomach after years of malnutrition. Depression sets in pretty hard, very difficult to motivate the poorest when you don't have anything for them to begin with.

The most effective revolution is when people simply stop caring and supporting the government, like what happened in the USSR.  One day people simply said "fuck it" and it was all over.  

Most people around the world simply don't care what kind of government they live under as long as they have some measure of peace and stability.   The government can oppress certain segments without any blow-back but it always has to be careful not to cross the line.  And most of the time it's hard to know where that line is.

[Silver]

The last thing we need is another Southern redneck as POTUS so Hillary is definitely out.  

Bernie is too old and he's a Jew so he won't make too much progress.  

The Repubs are religious wackos who should be registered as members of the American Taliban party.  

Trump is a racist with a 200 word vocabulary so he will get the Repub nomination and most likely win the election.

Biden is supposed to run and is he does he will likely be the Dem candidate.  He will lose the election.

The planned parenthood defunding is actually a huge boon to just about any female candidate.

I agree. These idiots keep offending women, and they are, from my perspective, the bigger voters. Those retarded republicans were saying all the wrong things against women last time in regards to abortion and rape, and of course many officials were fired from their jobs. These republicans are the dumbest people in the world. They think simply speaking their retarded thoughts aloud will somehow magically save them from the reality that people are finally waking up.

[Violet]

Bernie should get in, Hilary *will* get in.
A science background is a handicap when it comes to getting in positions of political power. People will see him as stuck up, untrustworthy and in some circles; ungodly. People are morons who vote against their own best interests.

Not that it matters, every candidate is bought and paid for dozens of times before they get even remotely close to any real position of power. Its how they pay for their campaigns and its how private enterprise gets its interests looked after time after time. They'll both give a couple of throw away gestures on some relatively irrelevant and obvious topics everyone gets flustered about while sneaking in some backdoor policies to settle their debts.
Thats how the keys to the kingdom get systematically sold every four years to the highest bidder. You can make small changes but the big changes belong to private enterprise.

Some may see Sanders as stuck up, people who've lived through the cold war may see him as untrustworthy, and the religious-vote may find his lack of faith disturbing.

But plenty others will see him as a breath of fresh air with his honesty and absence of detectable duplicity, will have their trust in what he stands for (he's a largely irrelevant figurehead, kind of like a president  ), and will find his generosity and his understanding of religious morality... to be in their own best interests, and will vote accordingly.

Whether a candidate is bought or not does matter, at least to some people. The fact that candidates are plenty often corrupt doesn't necessitate that all candidates are corruptible, certainly integrity exists, and some people really are passionate about the changes they would like to see in the world, and don't give a rat's left tonsil about money beyond what they need to live on plenty happy. 

Explain to me... who stands to gain from a given policy. That's where you track the representation of who's bought your candidate. WHO stands to gain. Someone always stands to gain. Of course... the presidency is more PR and guiding than anything, it's the legislature and supreme court that see by far the greatest prevalence of corruption, the local level governments at times too, if there's something important enough to a rich person at that level.

Great change can belong to the public... and it has in the past. The reason that our current situation is so... depressing... is that there ARE historical analogues. And they worked.

[Violet]

The most effective revolution is when people simply stop caring and supporting the government, like what happened in the USSR.  One day people simply said "fuck it" and it was all over.  

Most people around the world simply don't care what kind of government they live under as long as they have some measure of peace and stability.   The government can oppress certain segments without any blow-back but it always has to be careful not to cross the line.  And most of the time it's hard to know where that line is.

It took a lot longer than one day for that to 'just happen'... it caved in upon itself through many years of terrible economics. But, sure, it's entirely 'possible' that you could arrange for 250 million people to up and decide to not pay their taxes all on the same day. 

And then watch as they do anything to fix their government while their currency goes down the shitter, their governmental restructuring is messy, and people suffer terribly in general through the transition... particularly when the likes of police and military go off of their leash, and people get thinking that their coveting of their neighbors' goods is really kind of unaccountably in their favor.

They don't have to be too careful, really. Though, we've had plenty of rioting in the last couple of years to show that this can get ugly if it continues going in certain directions. Avoid overdoing it, however... and it'll be a relatively minor backlash. Policy changes, barely any additional cost to it. 

Huge transitions are very rough... i wouldn't call them the most effective until the alternative is utterly ineffectual. And we're actually heading in the direction of no-return for that. So, best to get in ahead of a total collapse that would shatter the world's economy (again) while the rich use it to simply get richer (again...)... but sure, sure... we could have that kind of revolution...

[Reforged]

Bernie should get in, Hilary *will* get in.
A science background is a handicap when it comes to getting in positions of political power. People will see him as stuck up, untrustworthy and in some circles; ungodly. People are morons who vote against their own best interests.

Not that it matters, every candidate is bought and paid for dozens of times before they get even remotely close to any real position of power. Its how they pay for their campaigns and its how private enterprise gets its interests looked after time after time. They'll both give a couple of throw away gestures on some relatively irrelevant and obvious topics everyone gets flustered about while sneaking in some backdoor policies to settle their debts.
Thats how the keys to the kingdom get systematically sold every four years to the highest bidder. You can make small changes but the big changes belong to private enterprise.

Whether a candidate is bought or not does matter, at least to some people. The fact that candidates are plenty often corrupt doesn't necessitate that all candidates are corruptible, certainly integrity exists, and some people really are passionate about the changes they would like to see in the world, and don't give a rat's left tonsil about money beyond what they need to live on plenty happy. 

Explain to me... who stands to gain from a given policy. That's where you track the representation of who's bought your candidate. WHO stands to gain. Someone always stands to gain. Of course... the presidency is more PR and guiding than anything, it's the legislature and supreme court that see by far the greatest prevalence of corruption, the local level governments at times too, if there's something important enough to a rich person at that level.

Great change can belong to the public... and it has in the past. The reason that our current situation is so... depressing... is that there ARE historical analogues. And they worked.

The system organically erodes integrity. Those who aren't willing to compromise themselves simply don't get near. They don't get the funding and they don't get the press. It isn't that they care about money in the beginning, some of them really don't, its that its needed to win. Thats all it takes, thats the window corruption gets in through. Presidents change but the people who buy them don't. They know the pressure points, they know the price of everything and they know how to shape policy to their own ends. If he isn't corrupt he won't get in.

Would we get stem cell research? Very likely. Would we get an end to this creationist nonsense in schools? Possibly.
Will we see an end to the systematic rape of poorer countries for their resources in exchange for profit? Will we see an end to the free sale and purchase of our personal data?  No. Never. That will never happen because these things are profitable and have huge money behind them. We have the illusion of choice. The public get scraps from the table carefully arranged to look like a prize winning turkey to distract us from the decadent feast going on in the background.