On Wednesday, the US Senate will hold a vote on whether to approve the Pentagon’s request to send another $20bn in armaments to Israel, after a year in which the Biden administration has supplied billions of dollars of arms used in Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.
Among the weapons to be approved are 120mm tank rounds, high explosive mortar rounds, F-15IA fighter aircraft, and joint direct attack munitions, known as JDAMs, which are precision systems for otherwise indiscriminate or “dumb” bombs.
Separate resolutions are being brought forward for each weapon type, including its cost to US taxpayers. However, together, the initiative is known as the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs).
As a result of intensive lobbying from pro-Israel groups like Aipac and the Democratic Majority For Israel, no arms transfer to Israel has been blocked.
The resolutions likely to gain the highest levels of support are expected to involve the tank rounds, which have been responsible for killing hundreds of civilians in northern Gaza in particular, and the JDAMs, which caused the death of well-known figures such as Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon, and six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza City.
We need to rebuild social capital. FDR didn’t just happen by himself, he had a backing of growing labor movement, and a much more community-oriented, civically-involved America.
We have that…
Like, you don’t need to convince voters that shit is broken, everyone is well aware shit is broken.
There’s just not an option that will honestly try to fix the root problem fucking everything up:
When both parties are pro-corps and anti-worker…
The problem isn’t growing a movement of voters, it’s finding a way to get a candidate past the primary so they can win the general.
Every election there’s two fights:
Fight the DNC moderates in the primary
Fight the Republicans and the DNC moderates in the general
If we don’t win the first one, there’s a very strong chance the candidate who makes it to the general won’t be able to beat the Republican in the general. Because they’re not what the politically disengaged want.
The good news tho is that there is very very few voters who would even want to pull another PUMA and vote R in the general if a progressive makes it. Some will 100% try it. And the media will shit their pants trying to convince us it won’t work.
But it can still work just as well today as it did 16 years ago when they voted R instead of for a Black guy with a progressive campaign.
There’s very few neoliberal voters, it’s just the people running the party pretend that’s the base.
We absolutely do not have that. We have a couch-dwelling population that hasn’t been civically engaged in a meaningful way in fifty years and running. Social capital has atrophied since the 60s by every discernible metric.
Maybe with the people you spend time with.
But lots of people are putting work in, all over the country.
Just don’t expect to hear about it from the party, or any of the big media organizations owned by billionaires for the express purpose of maintaining the status quo so they can keep their ill gotten wealth.
Quick edit:
Not sure why you’re talking about the 60s like everyone was hippies…
The majority of the population back then was fighting school busing like Biden was to preserve segregation, or the ones screaming insults and throwing rocks at children for going to the school they were told to attend.
Like, it’s important to understand the present, but you can’t do that when you’re obviously confused about the past…
If you’re spending your time with a large amount of civically involved, mutual-aid-providing people in America, you’re actually in the minority.
EDIT: Because I’m talking about statistical measures of things. Not feels and vibes like you’re thinking. It’s a well-studied subject, but I know nobody believes in reading or studying anymore.
First we need to do [thing that will take decades and which centrists will oppose every step of the way], and once that’s complete, we’ll come up with a new prerequisite,
Yeah these are things that “centrists” can oppose…talking to your neighbors, going to council meetings, joining a union, starting a poker game, or joining a social group. /s
Edit:
I mean hell start a podcast even. There’s literally no place I even know of in my town to build any of this so-called solidarity keyboard leftists talk about as if it’s ubiquitous. I live in a top ten city in one of the most left-leaning states and all I see is “let’s go Brandon” bumper stickers and maga stickers plastered on the backside of my street signs.
Maybe, just maybe, online leftists are full of it and America isn’t on the brink of some great socialist revolution. But who am I kidding, it’s inevitable, right guys? It springs up automatically out of the dirt like dandelions. /s