(Part 2) Top products from r/SandersForPresident

Unity comes when people within the party know their leader cares for them.

Do you honestly think that Hillary (and Bill) Clinton care about you AT ALL?

Reality check: SHE DOESN'T. (AND HE DOESN'T.)

She'll do whatever to make it SEEM like she cares, but SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT US (99% of Americans).

She's in this presidential election to win so her rich donors can get their federal appointments on boards and commissions and their interests lobbied and heard in DC, and implement laws that will ONLY benefit them.

Hillary Clinton is a puppet that's being manipulated by corporate interests.
ie. Clinton Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYRUOd_QoM

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469736845&sr=8-1&keywords=clinton+cash

If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I am NOT voting for the lesser of the two evils that are Trump and Hillary.

Progress will only be made with someone like Jill Stein of the Green Party, who shares the most similar values and beliefs as those of Bernie Sanders.

If you are a true Bernie Sanders supporter, you would vote for Green Party's Jill Stein in 2016.

The only reason Bernie endorsed Hillary is to save his political career.
If Bernie had held out until the very end and refused to endorse Hillary at the Democratic National Convention, then establishment Democratic politicians would not like him, and this would further impede his influence and progress in the Senate, where establishment Democrats make up a good amount of the Senate seats.

So the next best thing we can do is to elect progressive leaders to Congress to impede Trump or Hillary from furthering their top 1% interests and fighting for the 99% (the American people).

> Christian world view

For most of the history of America, Christianity was intimately tied with expanded social programs to help the needy, and moral issues were mostly left out of politics.

Knowing that they could not compete with Christianity and its support of the New Deal, big business leaders who did not benefit from it began to form think tanks to work up a strategy to counteract it. To clarify, a think tank is an institute that performs research intended to promote a specific world view. Essentially, these business leaders and millionaires paid scientists to figure out the best way to "sell" conservativism to the vast majority of Christian liberals and convince them to vote against their own self-interest (and, I would argue, the teachings of Jesus Christ).

One of the most famous players in this production was Paul Weyrich. His big breakthrough in think tank research was that by tying conservative economic policy with (manufactured) moral imperatives, he could convince people that liberal policy was immoral, which has a much stronger cognitive effect than convincing people that a certain policy is illogical or against their best interest. For example, you might avoid calling your mother a bad word, even if she deserves it, because you find it immoral to disrespect your parents - even though doing so may be very logical and may make you feel very good.

So they set to work on testing and developing moral arguments against liberal economic policy. If you do some reading into the output of those think tanks, I think you may find that many of your viewpoints align very closely with the talking points they spent very good money to scientifically develop and hone to be the most convincing.

They also did another very successful trick, which is to tie social issues that many Christians had strong feelings about - abortion, gay rights, interracial marriage - to their economic policy, despite the fact that they had little to no connection. (Quick - what's the connection between lower taxes and not allowing gay people to marry?)

If you, or anyone else, is interested in reading more, here are some good resources:

1. The official trailer for the film Common Ground: Christians and the Message of Bernie Sanders
   
   
2. The Gospel of Bernie Tumblr, run by a Liberty University alum. I suggest starting at the bottom of the page to read the oldest posts first.
   
   
3. Here is Bernie's full speech at Jerry Falwell's conservative, evangelical Christian Liberty University.
   
   
4. Read the aforementioned Wikipedia article on Paul Weyrich.
   
   
5. article (Politico): The Real Origins of the Religious Right
   
   
6. article (The Christian Left Blog): The History of the "Christian" Right
   
   
7. podcast (The Best of the Left): History of the Christian Right
   
   
8. book (George Lakoff): Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think

Not OP but I am a jazz musician. Yes and no. Be aware that a music career doesn't just automatically happen because you are a good enough musician, unless you're incredible or incredibly lucky. I HIGHLY recommend reading the book Beyond Talent before deciding on music as a career. You will have to act as your own booking agent, social media manager, and tons of other bullshit until you are a self-sustaining business. Or get picked up by someone already nationally known if you want to be a sideman, but that doesn't happen as often as it used to 50 and even 25 years ago. Also, be ready for private lessons to be a major part of your income for a while, possibly forever.

You can reach out to u/ocherthulu on Reddit, and in addition to offering his own insights, he can refer you to colleagues at RIT and elsewhere. His comment here (link) might be a good starting point.

 

The link in the above comment goes to the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (link), and they should be able to provide you with some policy insights.

 


The Autism Self-Advocacy Network (link) also offers guidelines for policy makers and can refer you to experts with relevant knowledge and experience.

 

You may also benefit from the insights offered by Administration for Community Living's (link) public affairs officers. You should get in contact with them.

 

The link on Medicare is an essay by Andrea Louise Campbell at MIT (link), so that may be another place to look for good public policy research.

 

Of course, there are disabled people in your local community who should be at the forefront of any policy discussion, but these are good resources for giving you some background in the policy conversation so you have some grounding to prepare for meeting with them.

Do you have any evidence for the claim that people in general would rather not work? This site says that 25% of American residents volunteer, and I'd imagine that that would increase significantly if people weren't working for pay and suddenly had 40+ more hours of free time in their week.

I also recall reading an argument here saying that women in the past volunteered at higher levels, before it was common for women to work.

I just don't think it's true that most people would willingly stay at home doing nothing rather than contributing to the world in some way. I'd like to see some evidence in support of your claims.

It's not about race as much as seeing ourself in the person influencing us.

We are more strongly influenced be people we perceive as similar to ourselves. Even in bizarre situations. For instance in hotel rooms, signs that say, "75 percent of the guests who stayed in room 312 reused their towels" are more influential at getting people to reuse towels than other ways of encouraging people. Seems outlandish but true.

From the book Nudge by Richard Thaler - some of you may know him from the Selena Gomez scene in The Big Short
http://smile.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X?sa-no-redirect=1

His views pretty much sound the same as mine (I grew up evangelical, but have since changed).

If you haven't already, a good book to read is "America's Four Gods: What We Say about God—and What That Says about Us" by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader.

This book puts belief in God/god on a two-dimensional coordinate system (active/passive in the world vs. judgmental/nonjudgmental), using the huge data from the national Baylor Religion Survey, and looks at how these beliefs influence moral, political and other beliefs (they also have atheism as a control/contrast). Looking at this was really eye-opening to see why some people believe the way they do, especially how many fundamentalists and evangelical conservatives believe in an Authoritative God (active and judgmental); this authoritative view carries over into their political views, parenting styles and more.

For context, the author of this article, Thomas Piketty, is one of the most prominent and influential left-wing economists in the world. His book, Capital in the 21st Century, was extremely well-received.

Hi, u/Jkirk3279,

Thanks for your response. I'm going to try to go point by point and address your concerns.

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> You’re demented. You believe these Conspiracy Theories

The fact that the U.S. has shifted toward a financial oligarchy is not a “demented” conspiracy theory. It is the professional opinion of many economists and political scientists. And their conclusions are backed up by data. A recent co-study by political scientists at Princeton and Northwestern University confirmed it: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

And here are a few other sources which cover this topic well I think:

• www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
  
  
• www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html
  
  
• www.salon.com/2015/12/09/robert_reich_america_is_now_a_full_scale_oligarchy_partner/
  
  
• www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/?single_page=true
  
  
• www.the-american-interest.com/2011/09/28/oligarchy-and-democracy/
  
  
• www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
  
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  > you ALSO believe that a minority unable to get enough votes to nominate their candidate can "dismantle" the Democratic Party.
  
  I think I get what you’re saying here (but let me know if I’ve misinterpreted) — How can a group that wasn’t effective or powerful enough to win a convention believe they could be powerful enough to do an even more dramatic and seemingly more difficult task of dismantling a party? If you can’t do the little thing, how can you do the big thing?
  
  What I’ve suggested is sort of unknown territory, so I can’t say how things would shake out. But I can say two things.
  
  a) We are not a tiny group. We’re close to half the party. More, if you count Independents. We don’t have to storm the capitol, stage a military coup, or do anything other than simply walk out en masse. If we walk away from the party, it loses half its constituency and either implodes, disbands, and re-forms quickly, or it limps along for a while as a very different party. It loses its reach. It becomes almost purely corporate, and loses much of its claims to authenticity. And given that the party has alienated and made feel unwelcome an entire generation of voters (well, really almost everyone under 40) – who were intended to eventually take the reins – it’s just a waiting game. It’s simple math. If you don’t replenish your numbers, you go extinct.
  
  b) This campaign has solidified a social network among groups that were not really connecting before. It has excited and engaged a huge number of people who were not participating in the past. It’s set up a social infrastructure that is not going to just disappear. This group, in the past, was a disparate and dejected wash of people. But as an energized and organized group – and one that has a distinct identity (“Not me, us”) – we are a considerable threat. If we aren’t courted HARD and incorporated into the party, we’re going to form our own. And we’ve already got many of the tools and voter data that we need.
  
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  > You didn’t have enough votes to win at the State Convention, you claimed the Democratic Party cheated you
  
  If you'd like to debate any of the individual points presented above by /u/duder9000 , I'd be happy to discuss. Which of them did you disagree with?
  
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  > and now you’re predicting BOMBINGS.
  
  I’m not suggesting that someone is going to bomb the convention in November. What I am saying is that if the Party continues to take obvious moves to silence and stop us… riots seem like a predictable eventual result. And at that point, the Party could respond one of two ways — either backing down, opening up the circle, and saying “OK, let’s listen to their concerns and see how we can win them back” (de-escalating) or by digging in and cracking down harder (escalating). If they respond to riots with escalating actions, I’m simply suggesting that the tension and responses would escalate.
  
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  > WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
  
  Given that you’ve come to a Sanders-specific sub-reddit, made zero attempts in your post to establish any common ground or connect on any level, but simply to insult me and say, in essence, “You’re so stupid and insane on every level and we won’t ever agree” — I’m just trying to figure out what you’re trying to do?
  
  Did you come here to insult a group of people thinking that would change their minds? Did you know that you wouldn’t change minds (so didn’t attempt to establish any credibility or kudos or ethos with us), but just decided that you would get some pleasure purely out of the act of hurling insults, regardless of its uselessness? Are you here because you’re being paid as a employee of the Clinton campaign’s Correct the Record group and you’re at work? Are you just a troll? What’s your goal? Why are you here? I know that it's really unlikely that you'll respond sincerely, but, I figure it's at least worth a try.
  
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  Edit: formatting

I think when talking about politics with ANYONE it is good to remember that all humans are emotional first, and rational second.

Rider and the elephant.

book recommendation on the subject

edit: check your local libraries.

Hah, a politician with sleeves rolled up, in a barn or other rural setting where it's not a fake foto op, like with Beto and Tom Steyer - who?.

The filibuster book is kind of a ramble, obviously.

Reich's Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few is pretty devastating and echoes many of Bernie's themes. The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz is good too. And Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land.

i would just challenge all of you to read about jeff bezos there's a really good book about him https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219266

it's more a critique of bezos but it kind of gives you more context regarding the type of person he is

The book of rev was discarded as heresy until it was championed for it's ability to target heretics by labeling them anti-Christs. There was a ton of other apocalyptic literature at the time that never made canon for good reason. Any Christian who's done research on the early church, yet still believes in the rapture doctrine, is fucking 110% delusional by their own standards; at least Islam is consistent in their madness. Elaine Pagels wrote a fantastic, short book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.ca/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634

Found it. Amazon Prime too 🙌


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NYBZMX9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iTDCCbQJZXQF1

I don't think you're being fair. I referenced labor laws and civil rights for a reason. These things weren't handed to us. People fought really hard for them. This is probably the most informative book that covers this part of American history and it's a really fascinating read.

It's like, just think of what working conditions used to be like for people until they started mass protesting, going on strikes, boycotting, forming unions. Google about The Wobblies and about Eugene V. Debs. Read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. These things are important to know about. And you can really see first hand how much influence people wound up having. There were so many rights we didn't have back then that we have now because of the dedication and activism of former generations.

That's why I personally disagree with the idea that participating could ever amount to jack. We'd still be living in the same conditions as our ancestors if the public hadn't participated---as they are meant to in a democracy.

Are you open to books about it?

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/a-review-of-ha-joon-chang_b_840417.html
  
  
  
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/17/kansas-where-the-gop-civil-war-began-long-before-the-tea-party/
  
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Our-Nation-Migration-Transformed/dp/0307461513
  
  
  
• http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62629.Conservatives_Without_Conscience
  
  
  
• http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
  
  
  Those are what I can think of off the top of my head, but I know I'm forgetting some...
  

Here is a much more relevant and practical book.

https://www.amazon.com/Bernie-Sanders-Protest-Arrest-T-shirt/dp/B07NYBZMX9

>I believe there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Wikileaks is no friend to America

Again. The entire way you're framing that is exactly like neocons in the early 2000's.

You should read the book called Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First. I am sure you will find yourself agreeing with the neocon more than you think.

Yeah, the pedophilia thing is the most disturbing. It makes The The Handmaid's Tale and Future Home of the Living God seem plausible.

Do you understand why we even support Sanders here? Your post history has almost nothing in this sub, other than this very thread, and a lot of your many recent posts are just defending the Fed.

If you disagree with Sanders, his positions, and me, that's fine. But don't link me to things and say I'm being ridiculous as if I'm some child. If you want to say, "Hey, you're wrong/are a little ill-informed, why not read this and tell me what you think from this perspective?," I'd be open up to that. I'm okay with being wrong and learning new things. But you don't do that, because you don't care to change real opinions, you want to look tuff on the Innernets for dem karma.

Here, I can do it, too. Why don't you start here if you don't want to say anything ridiculous?

Side note: I didn't mean to say or imply Dimon personally got any money from it, but that places he was associated with did. It's an appearance of corruption, and in my view actual corruption, for that to take place.