"Laughter is a power that even the world's most powerful figures must bow down to"
...is that so, after all?!
Satire needs independent grass roots funding. If the satirist you love costs $10M per year, well, people who love satire better be putting $10M per year on the table to pay for that, because if it's just (for example) a Disney product then to Disney $10M of satire which annoys the God Emperor is a bad deal, lets buy $10M of police procedural or whatever instead.
To be clear: It is very possible that an independently funded satirist just means in six months or six years God Emperor Trump decides he's entitled to shut that down and they do get arrested or whatever, this is not a magic solution, but I think a critical weakness in the US is that so much of this is actually funded by giant corporations and thus psychopaths. It's choosing to fight with one arm tied behind your back.
Will that break the cycle? Power corrupts, and attracts the corrupt. After a 3rd party attains power, it will become as corrupt as the other two.
The reason that 3rd parties look better right now is precisely because they have no power or money.
If you want to build a third party, you have to start at the bottom, with local races, and work your way up. You can't do it starting with national races.
Votes do matter. What if Kamala had gotten no votes at all, would that be the same real effect? Yes and no
There is no authoritarian line he can cross that turns away his apologists. They pretend that Biden or Obama were somehow worse (which, even if true, is an illogical argument for democratic norms), pretend that these are private decisions not coerced by the state power, or cheer for "retribution" against their idealogical opponents while embracing a diminishing of democratic freedoms. They have no red lines for Trump. He can deny established science; deny access to life saving vaccines; control the media; accept billions in personal investments from foreign governments in return for US policy; kill people in international waters without oversight... that's just this month's list!
It's not a phenomena I could have truly internalized without experiencing it first hand. It has changed me even as a late-middled-aged adult. I wonder what it must be like for those younger, who are assembling the foundations of their political and social opinions.
If you're talking about the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, then sure. But that's mostly because the Democrats are only nominally "leftist." Both parties are pro police, pro military industrial complex, pro Zionism, and pro capital. Both support the American white supremacist imperialist order. It isn't left and right where American power structures are concerned, it's center-right and far-right.
But the distinction on the ground, with real people, is definitional and couldn't be more distinct in that the left recognizes class struggle and sides with the workers, while the right recognizes class struggle and sides with capital. The dissonance between the left and the Democrats versus the harmony between the right and Republicans is why the Democrats keep losing elections - between the two camps only Trump and the Republicans are actually giving their constituents what they voted for.
Now that we are here, we need bipartisan cool heads to establish good rules.
What I did hear was some "facts" that did not seem to line up with things I heard in the news. I just assumed he ignored his staff of "fact checkers" -- see Kimmel's comments when he had the dust up with Aaron Rogers -- and was just on another of his anti-Trump rants.
While his show isn't all that bad, his monologues are political and have gotten old. Stick to jokes.
Perhaps this should encourage you to look inward and acknowledge the “news” you listen to is interested in something other than facts.
Everything Kimmel said was factually true.
If you would like to quote the part you are struggling with, and include an explanation about why you feel his statement lacks truth, I can point you to supporting sources.
edit to add: also, saying a lie isn't a reason to have FCC license taken away. see: Fox News.
No drama, it's just not a "see: example" you should use in discussions such as this.
lapcat•4mo ago
_DeadFred_•4mo ago
Paradigm2020•4mo ago
I see him as "the dude" that did the best interview on the whole ongoing israeli slaughter with piers morgan (part 1 and 2) using actual facts...
tim333•4mo ago