I created this thread as a place where we can discuss US news, politics, and discussion. There is already a PoliEra thread of course and that is fine. In my discussions with other forum pinkos on discord, I feel that there should be a more general US politics thread separate from PoliEra and it's community. I just feel coming in that they have had their own thing going for years, their own discord, a clique, and while that's okay, it gives that thread a sense of identity and social norms that can make it less casual friendly, more about the election, more centrist focused, more focused on pragmatic very serious people realpolitik. I am not here to take that away from them. They can do their thing, this is not a critique of them. Please do not talk about them in this thread.
At the same time, those of us who are Americans still have to live in this hellworld which at the point of the creation of this thread is currently experiencing a severe recession in part caused by a global pandemic that has hit the US particularly hard. While all that is going on there has been an unprecedented uprising against the police, in response to the murder of George Floyd as well as centuries of abuse, police collaboration with hate groups, police having nigh impunity when violating civil rights. Oh and of course there is an election where one of the candidates is a demagogue that has heralded a resurgent fascist movement and the other candidate represents the established status quo and a return to normalcy but, a normalcy that also includes ICE raids, for profit healthcare, and aggressive foreign policy.
It's a scary time to be an American. People are dying and the government has been unable and unwilling to support people staying home and keeping socially distant. "Over my dead body" said Lindsay Graham when asked about a second stimulus check. Trump has admitted to wanting to keep the numbers low by limiting testing and he and his VP have made wearing a mask in public into an issue of the culture war, making a necessary safety precaution during the worst plague of our lifetimes into a political statement. There are even those who question whether or not the virus is deadly or exists. Mixed messaging by state governments and an absent leadership has signaled that the US is accepting defeat, and is giving up doing anything about a virus that could claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable from the elderly, to the disabled, but also the poor and the incarcerated.
Links
Democracy Now is a newscast that plays every week day that reports on the news from outside the bubble of corporate news media bias. I have found their reporting to be consistently thought provoking. The lead anchor, Amy Goodman has been arrested multiple times for daring to cover such things as the pipeline protests.
https://www.democracynow.org/
When AlJazeera America was on tv, their reporting quality flew circles around the horse race focused CNN and DNC biased MSNBC. While it is state run out of Qatar, I find that it brings a refreshing international perspective and catches things that the US corporate media misses.
https://www.aljazeera.com/
Citations needed has been a godsend in highlighting the bias, PR, police stenography, and cushy relationship to power that the US media has. So much of this is what I took for granted but I feel as though it can be a real eye opener.
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded
A People's History of the United States is a great dissident history that cuts through the power serving hagiography that you learned about in school. I recommend it.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/peoples-history-of-the-united-states
I was thankful to my AP-US history teacher from 20 years ago for introducing me to "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which is another great history book that cuts through the ideology that lies behind US high school textbooks
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/lies-my-teacher-told-me/
Youtuber DoNotEat01 has two fantastic series that break down the power and politics that our cities and society have grown up around using the video game Cities Skylines as a model.
https://www.youtube.com/user/donoteat01
Noam Chomsky has many great books but the main points behind Manufacturing Consent are required understanding to cut through the fog of neoliberal ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich points out the impact of our economic system on the working poor and the destruction of meaningful social safety nets by the 1996 Welfare reform act. From a quote from wikipedia:
"When someone works for less pay than she can live on … she has made a great sacrifice for you … The "working poor" … are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
I heard about this one from Philosophy Tube. In this book Falguni Sheth argues that racialization is a sort of technology for exerting power against what the ruling class considers to be a threat to their power from "unruly" populations
https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Political-Philosophy-Race-SUNY/dp/0791493989
Michel Foucault's work about punishment and prisons and how these ways of disciplining inmates have this way of radiating outward outside the prison. You see it in mass surveillance. There is so much to cover, I recommendreading at least the cliff notes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish
At the same time, those of us who are Americans still have to live in this hellworld which at the point of the creation of this thread is currently experiencing a severe recession in part caused by a global pandemic that has hit the US particularly hard. While all that is going on there has been an unprecedented uprising against the police, in response to the murder of George Floyd as well as centuries of abuse, police collaboration with hate groups, police having nigh impunity when violating civil rights. Oh and of course there is an election where one of the candidates is a demagogue that has heralded a resurgent fascist movement and the other candidate represents the established status quo and a return to normalcy but, a normalcy that also includes ICE raids, for profit healthcare, and aggressive foreign policy.
It's a scary time to be an American. People are dying and the government has been unable and unwilling to support people staying home and keeping socially distant. "Over my dead body" said Lindsay Graham when asked about a second stimulus check. Trump has admitted to wanting to keep the numbers low by limiting testing and he and his VP have made wearing a mask in public into an issue of the culture war, making a necessary safety precaution during the worst plague of our lifetimes into a political statement. There are even those who question whether or not the virus is deadly or exists. Mixed messaging by state governments and an absent leadership has signaled that the US is accepting defeat, and is giving up doing anything about a virus that could claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable from the elderly, to the disabled, but also the poor and the incarcerated.
Links
Democracy Now is a newscast that plays every week day that reports on the news from outside the bubble of corporate news media bias. I have found their reporting to be consistently thought provoking. The lead anchor, Amy Goodman has been arrested multiple times for daring to cover such things as the pipeline protests.
https://www.democracynow.org/
When AlJazeera America was on tv, their reporting quality flew circles around the horse race focused CNN and DNC biased MSNBC. While it is state run out of Qatar, I find that it brings a refreshing international perspective and catches things that the US corporate media misses.
https://www.aljazeera.com/
Citations needed has been a godsend in highlighting the bias, PR, police stenography, and cushy relationship to power that the US media has. So much of this is what I took for granted but I feel as though it can be a real eye opener.
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded
A People's History of the United States is a great dissident history that cuts through the power serving hagiography that you learned about in school. I recommend it.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/peoples-history-of-the-united-states
I was thankful to my AP-US history teacher from 20 years ago for introducing me to "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which is another great history book that cuts through the ideology that lies behind US high school textbooks
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/lies-my-teacher-told-me/
Youtuber DoNotEat01 has two fantastic series that break down the power and politics that our cities and society have grown up around using the video game Cities Skylines as a model.
https://www.youtube.com/user/donoteat01
Noam Chomsky has many great books but the main points behind Manufacturing Consent are required understanding to cut through the fog of neoliberal ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich points out the impact of our economic system on the working poor and the destruction of meaningful social safety nets by the 1996 Welfare reform act. From a quote from wikipedia:
"When someone works for less pay than she can live on … she has made a great sacrifice for you … The "working poor" … are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
I heard about this one from Philosophy Tube. In this book Falguni Sheth argues that racialization is a sort of technology for exerting power against what the ruling class considers to be a threat to their power from "unruly" populations
https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Political-Philosophy-Race-SUNY/dp/0791493989
Michel Foucault's work about punishment and prisons and how these ways of disciplining inmates have this way of radiating outward outside the prison. You see it in mass surveillance. There is so much to cover, I recommendreading at least the cliff notes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish
