Would you rather live in a Corporate Oligarchy or a Progressive Democracy?

[Armstead]

Maybe the choice isn't that binary, but it's close.

[Garrett78]

1. You're just being difficult.

Remember the 'D' and keep it holy.

[Armstead]

2. D as in difficult?

[Garrett78]

4. No, silly. Democrat.

And that letter stands 7 feet tall. It can consume Republicans "with fireballs from its eyes, and bolts of lightning from its arse."

Any and all criticism comes from its right flank. There is no valid criticism from its left flank. Remember the 'D' and keep it holy.

[MisterP]

6. that's the problem with sarcasm online: there's always someone who DOES think that way

I remember the arcing ecstasies in 2009 by people thinking Obama was about to dismantle the GOP forever

[Garrett78]

7. Sarcasm?!?

What ever do you mean?

[LondonReign2]

19. The voters certainly gave him the opening to pummel them

to a bloody pulp. Instead he choose to compromise, and showed he was such a good sport he'd start the negotiations WAY over on their side of the field.

When you have a poisonous snake pinned to the ground the last thing you should do is pick it up and try to give it a kiss.

[Armstead]

8. Difficult Democrat?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. Respectfully, the assertion embodied in your statement that there are no difference between...

Respectfully, the assertion embodied in your statement that there are no difference between Democrats and Republicans is facile.

-Democrats provided 95% of the votes to repeal DADT
-Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats provided eighty percent of the votes to provide marriage equality and the lone righteous Republican who voted with the Democrats is only there because Senate Democrats blocked the appointment of Robert Bork.
-Democrats provided 100% of the votes to pass a nuclear agreement with Iran which hopefully takes us off a path to war.
-Democrats provided 100% of the vote to pass the Affordable Care Act which expanded Medicaid to previously uninsured working class and indigent adults and and provide affordable insurance to millions of others.

Arguing the parties are essentially the same is usually an argument put forward by those whose status and income provides protection from Republican misrule.

[Garrett78]

16. I made no such assertion.

I don't know where you got the idea that I said there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans. I simply asserted that there is a valid leftist critique of neoliberal Democrats, that not all the criticism is of the hate-based and irrational right wing variety. I asserted that having a letter (be it written, typed or digitally produced on a screen) next to a name doesn't tell you all there is to know. It doesn't tell you that some Democrats are progressive, while others have strong ties to, say, Beacon Global Strategies. Or Monsanto. Or Burson-Marsteller. Or Corrections Corporation of America. Just to name a few random examples.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. Without writing a magnus opus I agree Democrats aren't all that

Without writing a magnus opus I agree Democrats aren't all that but the GOP's policies are flipping antediluvian.

[Garrett78]

20. Today's Republicans have gone off the rails.

But neoliberalism (privatization of everything from infrastructure to prisons to military contractors, so-called "free trade" agreements, deregulation, tax cuts, etc.) needs to be combatted no matter who promotes it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

21. I am a small l and big l liberal.

I want a well regulated market economy with progressive taxation and a robust welfare state.


As to prisons, private ownership strikes me as an abomination.

[leveymg]

3. Iceland, maybe?

[PowerToThePeople]

5. I know what we have does not work for the many

[6chars]

9. Do I get to be in the 1 percent?

Just kidding.

[Armstead]

10. No soup for you

[Garrett78]

11. Maybe more would have replied...

had you make it a poll. Peeps love polls.

[Armstead]

15. Well to be honest, I doubt many would say they want to live in an ologarchy

It's more a hypothetical question (rhetorical) in response to the latest outbreak of Socialistphobia.

Was not expecting people to outright defend an oligarchy, but thought there might be some responses as to why people think their candidate of choice might be better to defend the preferable choice of progressive democracy.

You know...issues, positions all that boring stuff.

[Garrett78]

18. I know. And I was just bumping your thread.

I, too, get tired of the assertion that criticism of the lesser evil is invalid.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Having lived my life in an oligarchy I'd like to try something different. K&R

[DanTex]

14. I'm for progressive democracy, which is why I support Hillary. Tossing the election to the GOP

could cause irreversible damage at this point.

[AOR]

23. The damage done by capitalist social relations...

is already irreversible for many among the working class and the poor and that damage will become irreversible for more and more until the chained fatal embrace of capitalism - as the only way forward-is broken. That damage will continue until the foundations of capitalism are addressed...foundations that consist of the institutionalized theft of labor of the working class and the theft of the commons for the unlimited profits of a minority ruling class that consists of very few.

[99Forever]

22. I disagree!

The choice is exactly binary.

[olddots]

24. Oligarchy eventually doesn't allow the regular people to play the game

a vicious cycle that may end the whole game .

[HereSince1628]

25. Sorta feels like the question is more, do you want to keep living in an oligarchy or change it

into a progressive democracy?

[Armstead]

27. Yeah, pretty much it

[cantbeserious]

26. Easy Choice - Progressive Democracy

eom

[demosincebirth]

28. Corporate Oligarchy for me.

[hifiguy]

29. Sometimes things really are just that simple.

Democracy and Bernie for me.