Forum Post: Can't Look Up
Posted 1 month ago on Oct. 8, 2025, 3:58 p.m. EST by agkaiser
(2586)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
An AI warning posted here and elsewhere:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G2w1YGNWkAAzXyY?format=jpg&name=360x360
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G2w1REoXgAAef5F?format=jpg&name=small
"The only hope to save ourselves from Trump’s authoritarianism is mass movements. We must build alternative centers of power — including political parties, media, labor unions and universities — to give a voice and agency to those who have been disempowered by our two ruling parties, especially the working class and working poor."
"The Democratic Party and its liberal allies decry the consolidation of absolute power by the Trump White House, the repeated constitutional violations, the flagrant corruption and the deformation of federal agencies — including the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — into attack dogs to persecute Trump’s opponents and dissidents. It warns that time is running out.
"But at the same time, it steadfastly refuses to call for mass mobilizations that can disrupt the machinery of commerce and state. It treats the handful of Democratic Party politicians who address social inequality and abuses by the billionaire class — including Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani — as lepers. It blithely ignores the concerns and demands of ordinary Democratic Party voters reducing them to disposable props at rallies, town halls and conventions.
"The Democratic Party and the liberal class are terrified of mass movements, fearing, correctly, that they too will be swept aside. They delude themselves that they can save us from despotism as they cling to a dead political formula — mounting vapid, corporate indentured candidates such as Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party candidate and formal naval officer running for governor in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill."
"A “year out from the 2026 midterm elections, there is little evidence that negative impressions of Trump’s performance have accrued to the benefit of the Democratic Party, with voters split almost evenly in their support for Democrats and Republicans,” the Washington Post summary reads.
"The liberal class in a capitalist democracy is designed to function as a safety valve. It makes possible incremental reform. But, at the same time, it does not challenge or question the foundations of power. The quid-pro-quo sees the liberal class serve as an attack dog to discredit radical social movements.
"The liberal class, for this reason, is a useful tool. It gives the system legitimacy. It keeps alive the belief that reform is possible."
"Clinton’s welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, threw 6 million people, many of them single mothers, off the welfare rolls within four years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies and Medicaid coverage. Families were plunged into crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that paid $6 or $7 an hour, or less than $15,000 a year.
"But they were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those dropped from welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton also slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $14 billion in Medicaid funding. The overcrowded prison system handled the influx of the poor, as well as the abandoned mentally ill.
"The media, owned by corporations and oligarchs, assured the public it was prudent to entrust life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. In the meltdown of 2008, life savings were gutted. And then these media organizations, catering to corporate advertisers and sponsors, rendered invisible those whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism.
"Barack Obama, who raised more than $745 million — much of it corporate money — to run for president, facilitated the looting of the U.S. Treasury by corporations and big banks following the 2008 crash. He turned his back on millions of Americans who lost their homes because of bank repossessions or foreclosures. He expanded the wars begun by his predecessor George W. Bush. He killed the public option — universal health care — and forced the public to buy his defective for-profit ObamaCare — the Affordable Care Act — a bonanza for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
"If the Democratic Party was fighting to defend universal health care during the government shutdown, rather than the half measure of preventing premiums from rising for ObamaCare, millions would take to the streets.
"The Democratic Party throws scraps to the serfs. It congratulates itself for allowing unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on for-profit health care policies."
"Our captured institutions, subservient to the rich and the powerful, are capitulating to Trump’s authoritarianism. All we have left is sustained non-violent, disruptive civil disobedience. Mass movements. Radical politics. Rebellion. A socialist vision that counters the poison of unfettered capitalism. This alone can thwart Trump’s police state and rid us of the feckless liberal class that sustains it."
et veritas vos liberabit ...