CW: The Guardian

spoiler

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/18/usa.dickcheney

2006 was part of the now dark ages we've been living in.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Oh, man. I thought there was going to be a punchline. :(

    Looking back there are many times I can't believe I didn't leave liberalism and become a leftist saying to myself "What was I thinking? The dems are fucking useless and will always be." I well remember the Dubya-Cheney administration. That is such a time.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah Bush and Cheney should have been a wake up call to many. I'm sure being a leftist at the time was painful, like, really, really, painful. I know I'd be pulling me hair out if I was an adult back then.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I have to laugh at myself when I review the administrations: Clinton, Bush-Cheney, Obama.

        At Obama I finally started to realize what a joke the democrats could be. In the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial meltdown and near second great depression - I was well aware of the lack of any justice for the systemic corruption and crime. The banksters surely thought of any monetary settlement (with no admission of guilt) as a kind of "transaction fee" put on them by the government.

        In the aftermath not a single high-level person went to jail. There were no trials. I believe there weren't even any indictments. It soured me on Obama but I didn't put enough blame on the democrats.

        Why? I'll never know.

        • ElGosso [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          One of the major key points of my radicalization too. My friends' families lost their houses and nobody paid the price. Then the FBI helped crush Occupy.

          • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            My friends’ families lost their houses

            I'm sorry to hear that.

            A treasury​.​gov page I looked at around 2011 said the meltdown cost Americans $17 trillion in household income. What an utterly insane number. The lack of justice for any of the real criminals at the top is evidence that the "no one is above the law" mantra is a ridiculous joke. To use powers of ten - if you're going to steal $10 to $10,000,000 and you get caught - you're going to jail.

            But if you steal $100,000,000 or ideally more - the worst that will happen is the government will fine your company. Plus - the public won't ever blame you or your criminal buddies. For a day or two (a week tops) - the public will remember that your firm, Evil Corp., paid a ginormous fine. Then they'll forget even that.

            Rant: God do I hate "no one is above the law". Every time I hear some earnest asshole use it I want to... you know the thing.

            Edit

            I searched for no one is above the law at Wikipedia. I got redirected to this...

            Nobody Is Above the Law

            Nobody Is Above the Law was a protest held on November 8, 2018, organized by MoveOn to protect the Special Counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller.

            Fucking libs.

          • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I wasn't only online sometimes during Obama's first term and I wasn't nearly as wise politically as I thought that I was. I don't remember when I started to really understand Obama's drone use was a way for an empire to exert its military power in a way that was (from the White House's perspective) super-low risk and super-low cost. Plus it was a way to field test matériel and tech stuff which the US government and the MIC always loves.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      We couldn't have formed an alternate world view because we were being kept in a box where that view was simply not available. I wonder what changed it?

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        For me it was Trump.

        Here's how I became a leftist...

        1. Trump won. Mother of fuck. What the fucking fuck. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

        2. Trump's inauguration and "American carnage". Holy fuckety fuck are we fucked. Trump is going to be far worse than I ever imagined. Mother of god.

        3. Miscellaneous stuff Trump or his administration did or was doing in the few months.

        4. Sebastian Gorka. There's a Nazi in the White House! My god. How the fuck!... And as days turned to weeks - I realized Trump was not going to fire him or ask him to resign. Also the democrats ignored Gorka. They just pretended he didn't exist. Even the Jewish dems. Even worse - the media still had a "Trump will become presidential" mindset and they quickly lost interest in Gorka. Both the dem and media POV left me aghast, enraged, and very depressed.

        5. In r/politics (around April???) some CTH fan saw one of my many "There's a fucking Nazi in the White House!" rants and turned me on to CTH and James Adomian.

        Within a month or two I had a religious like awakening. I realized without a doubt the dems were going to do nothing at all to stop fascism. and that I should have become a leftist decades before.