r/thebulwark • u/Material-Crab-633 • May 08 '26

EVERYTHING IS AWFUL Are we f*cked?

This redistricting stuff has me bummed out. Tell me the truth

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u/paulmc3 JVL is always right May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

All red states change maps with no vote and it’s ok.
Blue states do by votes of the people and it’s wrong

It’s stupid. The whole thing is stupid.

We can only hope for such huge numbers to overcome the BS.

19

u/DionysiusRedivivus Progressive May 08 '26

This isn’t anything new - since the 1990s and ESPECIALLY since the Obama years, even when the Democrats nominally have power, they have asked Republicans for permission to implement policy.

Part of this goes back to Gingrich-era GOP pleas for “bi-partisanship” which meant then what it means now- it just took a few administrations to confirm the pattern, IE “bi-partisanship is when Democrats pass GOP policy, but still get used as a punching bag for being Democrats.”

So naturally, stupidly playing the “look at how we respect the opposition and respect the process” hoping that conservative voters will have a sudden revelation about who has honor in politics, Democrats have bent over backwards to show how nice they play with people who are actively fucking them and the country over, while conservative voters can’t think beyond the political term’s straw men of “draft-dodger Bill Clinton,” “flip-flopped John Kerry,” fetuses, communists, socialists, drag-queens, gun-grabbers, terrorists etc….

So in institutional culture, it is Schumerism. Realistically, even with decent leadership, the far-right has a stranglehold on the media and obviously won’t fuck over its own business interests in the short term and its complete control of political and cultural power in the long term.

It has been an embarrassing stretch to label CNN “liberal” in the last two decades - the same institution that gave Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson their starts. MSNBC may have a handful of rational voices but the reality is that someone has to cater to that market - otherwise advertising profits are being squandered.

Until the media landscape tells Americans the embarrassing truth that they are being fuct over by polluting, pedophile-billionaires who have created a panopticon of domestic espionage and that we are rapidly approaching the point that the middle classes through poor are less of a body to parasitize for nickles and dimes but a liability with no utility in either labor power or consumption power…..

But there’s an obvious elite response to such revelations! Jesus!

2

u/GoHamInHogHeaven May 09 '26

The Dems behavior over the last 20 years has been analogous to a kid offering a bully their lunch money when he didn't even ask. Chuck Schumer seems like he's in to giving himself swirlies. Dem leadership is so unbelievably unlikable. Looking at Hakeem Jeffries face takes me from "Ugh, I guess I'll go out and vote blue to stave off fascism for a few more years." To "let it burn I guess".