In contrast, tariffs and the government taking stakes in private companies reminds me of fascist Italy under Mussolini: https://www.historyfromonestudenttoanother.com/a-level/a-lev...
> Charter of Labour, 1927
> He recognised private enterprises as the most efficient, gaining him support from rich industrialists.
> The charter also stated that the state could take control of, manage or encourage enterprises that were considered inefficient.
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Next you’ll tell me North Korea is a democratic republic!
Socialism isn't just good or bad by default, how it is implemented is what defines its quality and morality.
Socialism isn't "what I like" and "things I don't like aren't socialism", it's a much more generic term.
Even if that were true (it isn't) that's like saying the D in DPRK stands for "Democratic", but using a word doesn't make it true. North Korea is not democratic.
Hell, even back in 1931, people knew the Nazi party was using false branding. You can see it with this anti-Hitler editorial cartoon [0], where Hitler is changing the emphasis of the party-name to schmooze up to different audiences.
Or remember that Night of the Long Knives [1] in 1934, where the Nazis murdered the "socialists."
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacobus_Belsen_-_Das...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
The world is going to shit and instead of dying with dignity people seek strong leadership and celestial intervention.
It is a tale as old as time.
When the public institutions fail people seek authoritarianism to actually get things done.
While doing so in an awful manner, the current administration is definitely getting things done.
I primarily blame Democrats for the current situation for they have been doing just an awful job of getting anything done or standing up to opposition, they are ineffective cowards and invited the current situation with their incompetence.
> I primarily blame Democrats for the current situation for they have been doing just an awful job of getting anything done or standing up to opposition, they are ineffective cowards and invited the current situation with their incompetence.
I agree with you that Democrats have been ineffective in opposing Republican policies but I think you've come to the wrong conclusion. When someone gets robbed I don't primarily blame them for being ineffective at securing their home, I blame the person who robbed them. Why wouldn't you primarily blame Republicans for pushing bad policies instead of Democrats for being bad at blocking them?
Because we are talking about a nation and a political party covering half the population and not an individual victim of a crime the "don't blame the victim" morality does not apply.
When government is doing a terrible job it loses the consent of the people and gets overthrown, usually by monsters. This is the problem with Democrats, they think they should continue to win, that they deserve to continue to win regardless of how they perform. Because they're right it is morally correct for them to continue winning.
THAT'S NOT HOW THE WORLD WORKS.
It is historically objectively true that governments failing to address the concerns of their people are replaced, usually by authoritarian autocrats. It's a pretty straightforward mechanism.
Democratic leaders in the party corrupted the process to put Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden on the presidential ticket. Democratic leaders in Congress failed to show any leadership, failed to address any problems, failed to stand up or take any sort of action that addressed meaningful problems in this country.
They created the environment for the right to fall off a cliff into extremism.
Instead of defending democracy they sat back and watched.
You've got hundreds of millions of people in this country, extremists are always going to exist. You can't pretend that they don't exist or hope and moralize and blame them for existing when their ideas get popular.
The ideas of the extreme right got popular because the ideas of the center and the left failed to convince enough people.
When my castle falls I'm not blaming the invading army, there's always going to be a new one testing my defenses. I'm blaming the castle guards.
This isn't the case of a poor defenseless victim of a senseless crime. This is the experts who should know better falling asleep at the wheel and intentionally ignoring reality because of their selfishness and stupidity.
From outside the US the view seems more like:
1. Democrats in power could never do anything because Republicans could always block by virtue of having majority somewhere.
2. Republicans blocked everything they could, simply because the Democrats were in power.
3. Democrats then get blamed for not doing anything.
4. the current administration is getting something done, yes. Some things are down the wrong path and shouldn't be done. Some things are debatable but perhaps the right path but doing them in a stupid manner.
PS: supreme court isn't helping.
From outside the US the view looks very different:
1. In 2016 Democrats choose a candidate based solely on internal party politics rather than to win an election, get routed by Trump
2. In 2024 Democrats choose a candidate based solely on internal party politics (letting Biden run) rather than to win an election, get routed by Trump
3. In 2025 Democrats try their best to put up a candidate for New York mayor based on internal party politics rather than to win an election
Gee, wonder what the pattern is here.
> supreme court isn't helping.
Similar patten here. How did the SC end up like this? If the roles were reversed, would R have done the same as D?
> 4. the current administration is getting something done, yes. Some things are down the wrong path and shouldn't be done. Some things are debatable but perhaps the right path but doing them in a stupid manner.
You really believe that if only D currently had a majority somewhere, the current gov wouldn't be doing most of the stuff it's doing?
I mean there was a :
1.5 In 2020 Democrats [did whatever and won the election].
So it's not all bad.
But yes, while my comment didn't go over their faults, the Democrats have plenty of their own too. But being blamed for doing nothing when you don't have the power is hardly their fault.
Ultimately, people in US politics on both sides are playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
Even when they had majorities, Democrats didn't get anything done. Didn't do anything to try to prevent what is happening now which was entirely expected. Allowed Republicans to steal a supreme court spot.
In opposition Democrats are utterly failing to prevent the Republican agenda anywhere near the way Republicans prevented the Democratic agenda.
I would say it's embarrassing how badly my party has done but that underrates how I think their incompetence has put an extremely real risk of the republic falling into our imminent future.
>I primarily blame Democrats
For the millionth time:
In the US, our democracy is purposely built to give the minority party almost zero power. If you have less than half the votes in both houses, you can't do anything, full stop.
Go look at how often Democrats have actually won votes. Americans choose not to vote for democrats and then blame them for not having power.
It's ignorance.
Republicans have run this country for 90% of the past 50 years. The public institutions failing have been purposely meant to fail by purposeful sabotage by republican politicians, who openly describe their tactics and publicly boast about "starve the beast", and people STILL blame democrats.
It takes way more time, effort, and public goodwill to build up or reform US government institutions, by design than it takes to tear everything down.
If you are still blaming democrats, you are part of the problem. Blame the politicians who have been voted in, democratically given the reigns of power, and have used that power for 50 or more years to make things worse.
Add to that, republicans have held the majority of State governments for the past 20 years.
It's utterly INSANE the lengths people will go, the stupid rhetorical lies they will tell themselves just to not have to say "The republicans have actively harmed this country for 50 years"
The US system intentionally does not give the minority party any power.
> The Z in Nazi is for "sozialistische" === socialist
No, it's not. Emphatically, demonstrably not.
Ignoring your other stuff about attempting to make the tired "Nazis were socialists, it's in their name, see?" argument, which is just Wolfgang-Pauli-levels of "not even wrong", the "z" in Nazi comes from the German pronunciation of "National".
Yeah, it didn't begin as a shortening, but an insult pun, which is why Hitler banned the term after gaining power.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/society-culture/the-strange-o...
I might just not be reading correctly, but on the off chance I parsed your comment correctly, I respond to:
> The Z in Nazi is for "sozialistische" === socialist
by pointing out the Nazis were not, in fact socialist. They executed socialists and communists, but called themselves socialist in the same way the DPRK and PROC call themselves republics.
The Nazis and the Communists were different flavors of collective society based governments that put the whole ahead of the individual with a tight control over the thoughts and behaviors of people. Government, business, and industry blended together and you couldn't be in business without sharing the ideology and sharing power with the government.
"not socialism" is nonsense by people who really like socialism, nazism was just a different flavor of socialism and saying otherwise has been part of the propaganda in favor of socialists for a century.
You can be nice and have a socialist society, but it's also a lot easier to have a dictator rise to power in a socialist society because it's easier to hijack the collectivist mindset into a collective with extreme loyalty to an autocrat. You just have to make them angry and afraid.
Reflection: I have never seen upfront a more collectivist mindset than MAGA.
You've now watered down your frankly crazy statement of "Nazis were socialist, actually" to "Nazis and socialists a group of people that make policies to improve the wellbeing of that group". This fits every single other form of governance, outside of anarchy or extreme versions of libertarianism.
There's absolutely no good reason to ever make the statements you've made, outside of trying to make Nazis look better.
I swear to god everybody is just stupid and thinks socialism means "stuff I like"
Nothing you said there is true.
You're the one claiming the Nazis were socialist, which makes you look like a fool at best, and like a liar at worst. A cursory understanding of pre-war politics in German, which you could get from any number of sources, would lay bare how wrong the idea is.
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists
Answer: "No."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.abc.net.au/religion/nazism-socialism-and-the-fal...
Answer: "Any analysis of the electoral platforms, internal party dynamics and political actions of the Nazis between 1921 and 1945 makes this clear [that the Nazis were not socialist]. Perhaps the German Workers Party - the party of around 100 members led by Anton Drexler that preceded the Nazi Party (NSDAP) - might have sought to cobble authoritarian anti-capitalism (which is not the same as socialism) onto biological racism. The early, pre-Nazi party that Hitler joined toyed with forms of market control to benefit small businesses and to halt ostensible "foreign" - that is, Jewish - control over markets. But such dalliances would not last long."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/NazismSocialism.html
Answer: "This is standard propaganda for Fox News and the Tea Party. . . . "National Socialism" includes the word "socialism", but it is just a word. Hitler and the Nazis outlawed socialism, and executed socialists and communists en masse, even before they started rounding up Jews. In 1933, the Dachau concentration camp held socialists and leftists exclusively. The Nazis arrested more than 11,000 Germans for "illegal socialist activity" in 1936. . . . In the 1930s and even beyond, nazism, in sharp contrast to socialism, was strongly supported by leading capitalists."
> Were the Nazis socialist? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-need...
"The Nazis hated socialists."
Essentially, the name comes from a few socialists long before Hitler came to power, and the name just stuck even as non-socialists took over (early 30s) and began doing despicable things. It's a bit like saying "Johnson and Johnson is a company comprised of two individuals with the same last name" rather than acknowledging that's just the original name, long before it was rendered inaccurate.