What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Valmy]

Just got my letter from Uncle Joe patting himself on the back for giving me $1,400.

Yeah they wanted to make sure you knew where you got that money from after they didn't put his name right on the check like Trump.

[Josquius]

I do agree that "making your own way" in life is a virtue. But I also think "toxic individualism" is the end state of worshipping "rugged individualism" too much. If America ever really was exemplified by rugged individualism, the actual historical record of such people would be at odds with the sort of society we have today in which it's widely understood you should only care about yourself and your nuclear family. The people who colonized the Atlantic seaboard and their descendants who settled the interior did it without a tremendous amount of government help by modern standards--and because I know someone will jump on it, I'm familiar with the military involvement and various programs granting land etc to settlers; what I'm saying is when you trek many miles into mostly untamed country away from government institutions you do not have obtain the sort of day to day government help that is available to you in modern times. However these people didn't do it without a lot of societal help. The country wasn't settled by hermits, it was settled by larger groups of people that largely developed organic societies that covered a lot of mutual assistance needs that weren't available from a more organized state at the time.

Good term to describe whats going on, toxic individualism is definitely a rising problem today.
I dread to think how awful it is in the US as its even getting pretty bad in the UK.
If something can be done to make you £1 better off even if it makes a million people each £100 worse off then thats a great thing and to be supported.

[Razgovory]

Just got my letter from Uncle Joe patting himself on the back for giving me $1,400.

I got my cash but I have received no letter.  Also, sending out a letters is a cheap trick.

[Valmy]

I cannot really say enough how much I have appreciated these last few months. Yes we just had an election 10 days ago but man the political pressure seems to have been released so much since the end of January. The year after a Presidential election is always a nice time, where everybody takes a nice break out of sheer exhaustion. I know the gauntlet of continual campaigning in 2022-2024 is coming but it is nice to have a short break.

[Tonitrus]

Just got my letter from Uncle Joe patting himself on the back for giving me $1,400.

I got my cash but I have received no letter.  Also, sending out a letters is a cheap trick.

Agree.  Put them in The Flame.

[viper37]

After years of ranting against Republicans that cut taxes to the rich, the Democrats finally have the opportunity to do something about it.  The President is more than willing to hike corporate taxes and income taxes that were lowered by successive Republican administrations.

But the Democrats in Congress don't want to... because it would hurt them in the midterms, it seems.

[Valmy]

There is no basis to the claim it would hurt their re-election chances but rather their fund raising chances.

Anyway feel free to link me to some evidence the Democrats who are blocking this overlap with the ranters you previously mentioned because that would be delicious.

[Eddie Teach]

Just got my letter from Uncle Joe patting himself on the back for giving me $1,400.

I got my cash but I have received no letter.  Also, sending out a letters is a cheap trick.

Agree.  Put them in The Flame.

What if they Surrender?

[alfred russel]

After years of ranting against Republicans that cut taxes to the rich, the Democrats finally have the opportunity to do something about it.  The President is more than willing to hike corporate taxes and income taxes that were lowered by successive Republican administrations.

But the Democrats in Congress don't want to... because it would hurt them in the midterms, it seems.

What is a fascinating dynamic is that it seems the parties are completely committed to arguing for incremental change no matter what situation is presented.

Corporate tax rates were 35% for a long time. Trump got them cut to 21%. Democrats obviously strongly objected. Now Biden is proposing to undo those cuts to....28%. This is seen as too radical by some in the democratic caucus and it seems like they are going to go with 25% or so.

But I have no doubt that if we were starting the second Hillary Clinton term now the rates would be 35% and no Democrat would be pushing to reduce them to even 28%.

[viper37]

Anyway feel free to link me to some evidence the Democrats who are blocking this overlap with the ranters you previously mentioned because that would be delicious.

One of the texts I read about this yesterday:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/05/11/biden-taxes-democrats/

[Valmy]

Well I don't see much overlap with the ranters but notice how fundraising concerns were their concern and not what the voters actually want. Kind of sums up the problem in Washington right there.

[The Larch]

Hey Sheilbh, I've just read that there's a movement amongst US Catholic bishops to excommunicate Biden for his support of abortion, with the Vatican having to come out to stop them on their tracks. Do you know more about this?

[Sheilbh]

Hey Sheilbh, I've just read that there's a movement amongst US Catholic bishops to excommunicate Biden for his support of abortion, with the Vatican having to come out to stop them on their tracks. Do you know more about this?

Nothing that unusual - I think it's more that there's a group of US bishops who want to refuse him communion. His bishops (in DC and Delaware) and the Vatican oppose that. This happens with every prominent Catholic Democrat (Pelosi, Kerry etc).

I think the wider issue is there is a group of US bishops who are primarily focused on Republican culture war politics - so the only thing that matters is abortion. But they also have cast doubts on the vaccines, the most extreme attended one of Trump's "Stop the Steal" rallies, they don't care about climate etc. This wing of US Catholicism could be welded with the mainstream to an extent when the Pope was JPII or Benedict - even if neither of them were as partisan as these bishops. Under Francis it's more difficult - and my guess is the same will apply under his successors (who are now more likely to come from the global south and not care about internal US politics).

There's also a weird synergy in all this around conspiracy theories. So the very partisan bishops are encouraged by Archbishop Vigano (former nuncio in Washington) who has basically made loads of allegations about Francis - that Vigano's warnings about child sexual abuse, that there's a gay conspiracy at the heart of the Vatican - and obviously all of that links quite easily with QAnon which Vigano has sort of referenced. Plus old customary radtrad conspiracies about Jews and freemasons. It is interesting and weird.

But in the end I wouldn't be surprised if we see schism in the US church eventually. There's a wing of US Catholicism that understands their faith as part of the political identity which has primacy - and the Church position on most issues (except for abortion) doesn't really align with that political identity.

[Syt]

Putting this here as "general US politics".

This overview seems a bit reductive? Also, didn't know that Grant was president in the 1860s.

[Valmy]

So it involves both the ECW and ACW. That is a very Languish topic.