Rottcodd
Every single "failure" of "socialism" to which its opponents point came to be specifically when, and because, people in positions of influence and power turned their backs on their claimed principles and chose instead to live lives of wealth and privilege.
Or in other words, "submit or die."
Handing out cash with no strings attached discourages people from working and ~~reaping the rewards of individual success~~ making some undeserving piece of shit even richer.
I sincerely think it's broadly accurate - that, for the Republicans and especially for Trump, (most) every accusation is a confession.
There's a simple psychological element to it, most often illustrated by moralists who rail against perversion of one form or another, only to be revealed to be perverts.
There's another aspect to it though, and I think this is more often the case with Trump specifically - it's a way to proactively undermine someone else's accusation against you. If you can get your accusation out there first, then they end up sounding sort of like a child saying, "I know you are but what am I?"
If we're going to go all conspiratorial, here's my theory:
Both campaigns are dealing with old men with diminished faculties.
There's some drug cocktail(s) that both campaigns have been using to pep the doddering old farts up for public appearances.
If you'll remember, very shortly before the debate, the accusation that "Biden's on drugs" made the rounds, and Trump made some noises about demanding a drug test.
For some reason - possibly fear, possibly determination in the face of a challenge, possibly a subtle communication that the Trump campaign had some hard evidence they would, if pushed, release publicly - that led to the Biden team withholding his customary drug cocktail.
Trump, meanwhile, was dosed to the eyeballs.
And that was the contrast we saw - Trump was on drugs, while Biden, for whatever reason, for that night alone, was not.
Remember - for the Republicans broadly and especially for Trump, every accusation is a confession.
Except that it's not fealty. The DNC and the power brokers don't give a damn about Biden specifically.
It's shallow and ill-considered self interest.
If Biden steps down, then that opens up the nomination process, and as they've done the last two times, the rank and file are going to want a progressive. If anything, the call for a real progressive is going to be even stronger than it was in 2016 or 2020, in part because so many on the left have been disilliusioned by Biden's mealy-mouthed criticism of but tacit support for the Gaza genocide, and likely even more because Trump and the fascists riding his coattails are an existential threat not simply to progressive causes broadly, but to progressives personally.
But a determined call for a progressive candidate is the last thing in the world the DNC and the power brokers want, since a sincere progressive is going to alienate some number of big donors, so undermine the ongoing flow of soft money. And that ongoing flow of money matters more to the DNC and the power brokers than anything else, including winning or losing.
And at this point, so much of the mood on the left is so strongly against the neoliberal hacks that if they try to do the same thing they did in 2016 and 2020 and force a neolib hack on the voters anyway, it's likely that they'd end up pissing off so many voters that their candidate will do even worse than Biden would've done.
So the "logical" (in a very narrow and warped context) thing for them to do is to stick with Biden, and likely lose.
And in fact, losing and then fundraising in their role of (supposed) opposition is pretty much standard operating procedure for the Dem hierarchy - that's a role in which they're obviously comfortable and that they'd undoubtedly expect to just slip right back into.
The thing is though that this election is different. This isn't just a choice between two slightly different flavors of neoliberal establishment hackery - this is a choice between safeguarding democracy or inviting the wholesale destruction of democratic institutions and the establishment of a fully empowered hate-fueled right-wing, plutocratic oligarchy. The Dem elite will quite likely no longer be able to fundraise on being the (supposed) opposition because opposition will be effectively prohibited.
So it's time for them to make a hard choice - to potentially sacrifice their own unearned privilege, basking in a sea of soft money, for the needs and desires of the people whose interests they're supposed to be furthering. And really, though they're likely unable to see it, fir their own long-term interest as well.
Unfortunately, I don't think they have the necessary integrity or determination to make that choice.
They know very well what they are doing. It’s just that their wealth isolates them from the consequences of it. They don’t care about healthcare, climate change, education, unemployment, because that’s for the 95% to worry about. They are rich enough to don’t give a fuck, and they feel safe doing so.
And that rather obviously describes someone who's rather obviously mentally ill.
Specifically, they lack empathy and have little to no conscience, so have little to no concern for the harm their decisions might cause to others. Those are the hallmarks of both antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy.
Mm... sort of.
The US had the enormous advantage of starting its life with material resources of which most can only dream, so it couldn't help but achieve some fairly significant success, and as long as things were relatively easy, it generally did. But it never quite managed to pull its head out of its ass. Its material advantages made it so that it generally managed to get by in spite of the fact that it's head was firmly lodged up its own ass, but that also meant that it never learned anything. So it just stayed in a diminishing circle of bad decisions until it reached a point at which smart decisions were necessary, and it revealed itself to be mostly incapable of making them.
And at the moment, it's actually subject to a mass movement that lauds the days of the bad decisions as the good old days, since the people still have their heads too far up their asses and can't recognize the reality that they were always bad decisions, that the prosperity that accompanied them was simply due to the US's enormous material advantages and in spite of, rather than because of, the bad decisions, and that a return to those bad decisions in an era in which those material advantages have been squandered is just going to make things even worse.
Which, granted, is still sort of a "good run" - much smarter people have still failed to do even close to as well, since they were stuck starting out with pretty much nothing but disadvantages.
But one can't help but wonder what could've been had we not had our heads so firmly lodged up our asses...
No, it in fact won't.
It will potentially present a colorable semblance of the output of such an intelligence, but it is not itself intelligent AT ALL. It's just an enormous database programmed in such a way that it can and does do complex statistical analysis, such that it's notably likely, in response to input, to output content that will appear to be products of comprehension, analysis and reason (the hallmarks of intelligence), but without in any way, shape or form actually engaging in any of those things.
It's really very, very simple.
Regulation of things like pollution serves the interests of the people broadly, but undermines the interests of a handful of obscenely wealthy sociopaths.
And much of the current Supreme Court explicitly works NOT to serve the interests of the people broadly, but to serve the interests of the obscenely wealthy sociopaths.
And that's it, right there. Just as has happened in numerous past civilizations, the power structure in the US has become so warped and corrupted - so entirely in the control of sociopaths - that it not only no longer even pretends to serve the interests of the people, but tends to explicitly work against their interests.
And the hell of it is that the ruling class is so far gone in corruption and shallow self-interest - so sincerely deeply mentally ill - that they don't recognize that ultimately they're working against their own interests - that serving the interests of the people maintains the health of the society from which they benefit, and that working against the interests of the people undermines that health. Like any other mindless parasite, they're going to destroy their host, and in so doing, ultimately destroy themselves.
And the US will just be added to the ever-growing list of societies destroyed through the machinations of a relative few profoundly mentally ill people granted undue wealth and power.
While denying them to everyone else. Other than white male christofascists.