Unions didn't learn their lesson when they voted Reagan. They won't learn their lesson when they voted Trump. I hate to say this but they're tradesmen and not necessarily critical thinkers.
[…] they’re tradesmen and not necessarily critical thinkers.
Are you saying that tradesmen aren't capable of being critical thinkers? Or are you saying that they aren't critical thinkers in spite of being tradesmen?
I'm saying these tradesmen don't stop to think that they're voting against their best interest every time they suffer a major setback from a union busting Republican. Am I saying Biden was better? No, but at least he didn't dissolve the air traffic control union through the barrel of a rifle.
"I'm a fascist and a right-libertarian and pro-union." The only positive takeaway I have from this is that some people are so uninformed (or overinformed but with no ability to think critically) that they make these choices – and thus education and outreach may still yet save us.
I hate to say it but dismissing these people like that is how the Dems got here.
This is someone who wants things to be better. They're pro-union because they want someone to fight for their rights. And they're pro-Trump because all four years of the Dems has done for them is make prices higher. The Dems have been crowing about how the economy is doing better than ever, but for people like this it's not. GDP and the Fortune 500 being up is great for investors, but it's not great for an average worker. For an average worker, things are worse than ever.
They don't know that much about what Trump stands for, but they know he stands for "something other than this." And for these people - for the vast majority of people today - "this" isn't working.
The Dems need to reach voters like this, and they absolutely can. These people aren't for fascism, they just don't believe that that's what they're voting for. They believe they're voting for change, and Trump is the only person offering them change. What the Dems offered them was "more of the same", and that's not an appealing offer to people who are drowning.
My dude you are not wrong - but how do you talk to these people about policy nuances and compromise to get things done if THEY'RE the ones being dismissive about things and rejecting objective reality? I get that they're not doing well. That doesn't mean that anyone (including Trump) can wave a magic wand and make things better. It seems to me the only way to win these voters over is to play the Republican game - get your own propaganda arm for your political party and yell and lie louder than the Republicans.
Nothing counter indicative with libertarian and union. Unions allow more equal negotiating power with business/capital when government is limited in scope. People should be allowed to decide if they want to unionize for themselves though, without coercion from capital and with protections to be allowed to do so.
Libertarians should also be requesting government do it's job and crush monopolies and enforce the regulations that keep the "free market" both free and level for all participants, and the right-libertarians are mostly actually theocratic feudalists masquerading as libertarian these days.
That's why I specified right-libertarian. I think basically all left-libertarians recognize the need for workers' unions. The problem with right-libertarians here is that they see the union itself and the kinds of government regulation that lets those unions be effective as the entities "treading on" them.
Imagine being pro union but also somehow libertarian. Fuckin wild. Do they not realize that in a libertarian system anyone trying to form a union would be fired immediately?
I'm not sure I understand your point exactly. What exactly does the libertarian philosophy say about unions? A union is essentially just people who choose to associate with eachother and act as a single entity under an employer; in a free market, their bargaining power would be proportional to their size — its growth would impact the pool of potential employees that could be hired outside of the union. There could be, for example, laws in place which prevent a company from firing a union, which a libertarian would generally oppose, but a libertarian needn't necessarily oppose the concept of unions, imo.
My point was concise and abundantly clear. I'm not sure how one could fail to understand how an employer won't do anything they're not compelled to do by law (As evidenced by the very existence of OSHA, for one.) which would include good faith negotiation with a union.
There was a house like that at a town near us that has a cafe my daughter likes to go to. A giant Trump flag, a Trump banner on both porch railings, and a "Proud Union Home" sign in the yard. Made me shake my head every time I saw it.
I'm a school bus driver and we're all members of the Teamsters. Most of my coworkers are fanatical trumpers - in their universe it's the GOP who are pro-union and the liberals who are trying to destroy unions (and help the illegal immigrants). A few of the most fanatical trumpers are (married) lesbians as well. Dealing with conservatives has always been a frustrating experience, but at least they used to be internally consistent with their shit. This complete disconnect from all aspects of reality seems like the one truly new part of all this.
This complete disconnect from all aspects of reality
The rules they demand are only to apply to the out-group.
They need not fear any of the rules they demand, because they are part of the in-group: Christians by self-proclamation. Trumpublicans by self-declaration. Wealthy by self-declaration. None of that even has to be true, they just have to think they are part of the in-group, and they expect none of these rules to ever bite them in the ass. That is how a man married to a black woman can try and end marriage for couples with different skin colors. That is how a lesbian can vote for people that hate lesbians. Because they think it is not about them, because they are on the "right" side. You can see the very same thing in Germany, where one of the leaders of the popular nazi party "AfD" is a lesbian.
Should they not care about others in the same situation as they are? No, because these fuckers have 0 empathy. Zero. None.
The sad part is that in the end, it will come and bite them in the ass, and they will argue that that is okay and right, as long as it bites someone else in the ass even harder. And the guys who are the real in-group, the guys with billions to their name, they are sitting their, laughing about all of us because once again, they managed to keep us underlings fighting amonst ourselves instead of making ready the guillotines.
Unfettered capitalism means people have a rough time, instead of doing a bit of introspection it's easier to blame minorities and/or look for a guy who talks big and promises big sweeping changes
No, failed the working class. Since the eighties the Democratic party has been on a heavy neoliberal kick. One which result resulted in massive damage to unions Nationwide. Don't forget that it was Bill Clinton who signed an HW Bush initiative in NAFTA. Don't forget the Barack Obama allied with Republicans to push free trade agreements. Don't forget that Kamala Harris walked back a lot of the pro Union rhetoric that Joe Biden campaigned on.
Sometime in the '70s Democrats started losing control of the working class and the unions. Richard Nixon spearheaded that movement and was successful in it. Much like we're seeing today he couched it in counterculture. It's a part of our history that we don't talk about enough. Nor do Democrats pay enough attention to class in general.
Would you mind explaining the how the presence of the Gadsden flag on its own shows that "the Democratic Party has failed the working class"? I just don't exactly understand your comparison.
Oh, it is already happening. There are a LOT of these people in my part of the country. They are all fuming because their compensation is getting cut, and some companies are moving to Europe, in preparation for the Trump tariffs.
Change the oil every 3000 miles, use synthetic or synthetic blend(dexos) and you will have your best chances.
If you need to replace the timing chain, you replace it with a new engine. Maybe you can get lucky and your mechanic is a rockstar that catches it at the right time and you trust them enough to spend a few grand replacing the chain, but the majority of cases are that the pistons fucks the valves like a Tijuana hooker you pick off the pole.
They're good at getting shit done, but horrible at letting anyone know they did it.
So they fix something, give a speech that translates to "Political nerd shit!" and middle America doesn't care, doesn't listen, or worst of all.. attempts to listen and has no idea what is being said.
Meanwhile Trump does nothing, directly takes credit for a good thing that happened regardless of or even in spite of him, and then they cheer for it because they don't hear "Political nerd shit", they hear "I got ya a big one, there's never been anything like this. We won huge!"
And then they applaud because although nothing is actually happening because Trump is incompetent, they FEEL like maybe something is.
Look at all the people going "So now that Biden's leaving, we're getting more Stimulus Checks right? Cause Trump signed those and he's back" (Ignoring that that only happened because a pandemic that Trump worsened, and because Democrats in the Senate pushed for it), only for Newscasters to keep having to HARD Deconfirm that anything like that is going to happen.
Biden was kicked out of office and Kamela barred from office, because of problems that Biden and Kamela were both acknowledging and had already been in the middle of solving.
The dumbasses who think Trump's tariffs are magic spells that lower prices are going to regret the election....
Since I didn't fuck around, I'd love to skip on "Finding out"
What they're going to learn is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans care if their families eat, and next election, it'll be 25 million who decide not to vote instead of ten, like it was this time around.
You "both sides are the same" fools are even worse than the libertarians. What's your genius idea, buddy? That if you can get nobody to vote in the next election, then the political system will grind to a halt, scratch it's head and say, oh shit, let's call FlashMobOfOne and ask them what we do now? LOL
What YOU are going to learn is that apathy like yours is always a Loser's strategy. All it ever does is ensure that the worst choice gets elected, the one that absolutely does not care to come to the table and listen to your ideas. The one that is 100% Conservative and will do everything in it's power to undo every Progressive accomplishment.
You know, just like what happened this time. Instead of being a chump your whole life, read some history. You'll be surprised to see there is a long record of people like you being ignored for hundreds of years.