Originally Posted by
acptulsa
So, you take a sniff, mistake an anti-Fed argument for a minimum wage argument, and jump off board? Do you think victims of inflation and the systematic destruction of manufacturing jobs should be stripped of the right to vote, but corporations should get to vote even though they are things, not people? You say government is the problem, not the corporations, but I don't see you acknowledging who or what it is that is paying the lobbyists to make the particular bribes they make.
My what a fine job of dividing and conquering has been done to us! Trump fires up his Twit account and convinces the world that American Republicans in particular, and all white males in general, are a bunch of bullies. A bunch of genuine California fruits and nuts shut down one backwater joke of a state college and convinces the world that all Democrats are a bunch of bullies. There are a whole world of reasonable people in between, but the mainstream propaganda mafia refuses to point their cameras that direction, so everyone decides they don't exist. Or rather, everyone knows reasonable people exist, but we're so insular and fed such ridiculous images, that people get the mistaken impression that all the reasonable people decide all the other reasonable people are on 'their side of the damned aisle'.
And then come the litmus tests. 'What you say smells like an argument for minimum wage so I stopped listening to you.' Well so the fuck what if it smells that way? Should we all stick our noses in the air and run away if someone comes along who thinks there are worse band-aids than minimum wage laws? No wonder this site's traffic is in the toilet and this movement got itself stuck in the mud! This site was literally banning people for pointing out that Trump was a totalitarian, a Democrat in drag, and an orange clown and third grade bully who was about as likely to keep more than two percent of his campaign promises as Carrier was to manufacture 100% of its air conditioners in the U.S. Literally banning people over telling the truth.
This movement was founded on as many Democrats as Republicans. This movement was not founded on party lines. Libertarianism has always, always found as much virtue in the personal liberties the Democrats used to pay lip service to as in the economic liberties the Republicans used to pay lip service to. And the libertarian movement has always drawn disaffected people from both sides of the artificial construct called 'The Aisle'. It cannot thrive unless it draws from both sides of 'The Aisle'. It cannot survive without people from both sides of 'The Aisle'. And that's why the Powers that Be have redoubled their efforts to divide us along party lines. They have used everything they can think of to do it. They pushed a Republican candidate who looks, talks, acts and tweets like a third grade playground bully. They gave a whole lot of air time to a socialist clown in their abortive attempt to make Clinton look reasonable. With all the reasonable, well spoken conservatives available to them, they put Duck Dynasty on cable TV. They publicize 'woke people' spewing racism and sexism and claiming they are incapable of spewing racism and sexism.
And how do we respond? Do we redouble our efforts to reach out to the people the mainstream propaganda mafia are trying to demonize? Do we use a desire for a higher minimum wage as a starting point to educate people on how the Fed not only makes popping bubbles more destructive than ever before, but make the band-aid of minimum wage laws seem necessary? Do we turn that into a movement to end the Fed? Do we demonstrate that we are as reasonable as the Republicans are dogmatic and silly? Do we short circuit the divide and conquer tactics by reaching out? Do we concentrate on making the case that the only compassionate course is creating opportunity?
Oh, fuck no. Donald Trump throws us a few campaign promises he will never keep, and like Pavlov's Dogs, we start salivating, choose the lesser evil, go rabid in our defense of the great evil which is the lesser evil, commence banning longtime, beloved members of the site because they were once Democrats, apply litmus tests and pass judgment even though we can't tell a minimum wage argument from an anti-Fed argument, and take the side of politician-bribing corporations over citizens of the land because even though those citizens are working sixty hours a week, inflation has so eroded the value of their wages that they can't even house and feed themselves, much less pay taxes!
And then we can't figure out how the media can get away with labeling us heartless and make it stick.
Yeah. Stick a fork in this site and stick a fork in this movement. An orange clown threw us a few empty campaign promises and we torpedoes and sank ourselves. They finally found a candidate so mind-numbingly stupid to hand the one nomination to, and one so incredibly evil to hand the other nomination to, that we abandoned everything we worked for over nearly a decade and promptly voted for the evil that scared us slightly less than that other evil. Yay. It looked good for a minute there, but oh fucking well.
Nobody should listen to anyone who doesn't pay taxes. Indeed. Judging from what we're getting from this federal government--specifically, bent over and fucked--I don't think any individual should pay taxes. This government doesn't listen to anyone who doesn't bribe them, so let those who can afford bribes pay all the taxes. Nobody else is getting any value from the bastards at all.
