• s@piefed.world
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    3 days ago

    What does the appositive “That” refer to? My understanding of grammar would say it is the most recently preceding noun, which in this case has a specifier.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Harris wrote in her memoir “107 Days,” which was released Tuesday, that she predicted how Trump would act in a second term, but she didn’t expect the level of capitulation from the private sector toward him.

      She was pressed on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” about why she didn’t anticipate such action and responded that she believed “titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy.”

      “And one by one by one, they have been silent, they have been … feckless,” Harris said. “It’s not like they’re going to lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons.”

      “Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”

      Harris predicted that corporate leaders haven’t spoken up because they fear Trump’s threats, want a merger approved or want to avoid an investigation.

      The former vice president in her Ellipse speech before the 2024 election called Trump a “petty tyrant” and warned that “the United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”

      • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        She believed that the “titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy?” WTF? The people spending billions of dollars to make sure people believe that unions are evil and that trickle-down economics was created by God?

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yeah. Before the rule of law was so corroded from trump farts it actually was a fairly reliable thing for industry to support the Constitution and society as a whole; to respect it, to not try publicly and zealously to destroy it.

          I know it sounds like a different planet.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            No, it wasn’t. I don’t know where you got this idea, but it’s so wrong.

            • Optional@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              From . . . living in it? i don’t mean to suggest corporations were crusaders for truth or justice or anything, just that they weren’t typically inclined to support blatant authoritarianism from a demented babbling rapist idiot.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                2 days ago

                Except they were!

                The Business Plot, aka the Wall Street Putsch is a 1933 example of an attempted fascist takeover by business people. Then there’s all the attacks on unions that they’ve done, and so many other examples. The elite are always trying to gain more power. They always have and always will.

                • Optional@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  In general, I’d agree, but I find that it’s usually the guy who started ThingCo who’s funding ALEC and the FOP rather than ThingCo as an organization. With banks, oil, pharma, (now tech), and Hobby Lobby excepted. Those aren’t the only corporations in the country tho. And there’s nothing that says corporations can’t be fair and do good. Employee-owned, sustainable, fair-trade, cruelty-free, organic etc., these are not bad things.

                  I think she’s saying these are people with outsized power and thus outsized responsibility to keep blatantly illegal incompetence from disrupting everything have been worse than useless in the face of a shakedown, and that’s bullshit. It doesn’t seem crazy to me as a thought. They should be fighting because their business is going to get hit one way or another.

                  • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                    2 days ago

                    In general, I’d agree, but I find that it’s usually the guy who started ThingCo who’s funding ALEC and the FOP rather than ThingCo as an organization.

                    Clearly you don’t know how willing companies are to work with Fascists. Historically, they are very willing to do anything that’s profitable. They only don’t break laws if they think it’ll cost more than they make.

                    Employee-owned, sustainable, fair-trade, cruelty-free, organic etc., these are not bad things.

                    These are exceptions, not the rule. Also, most of them are just greenwashing.

                    I think she’s saying these are people with outsized power and thus outsized responsibility to keep blatantly illegal incompetence from disrupting everything have been worse than useless in the face of a shakedown, and that’s bullshit. It doesn’t seem crazy to me as a thought.

                    They don’t have the responsibility to do shit, but I wish they would. I agree we should try to hold them accountable, but historically they are not. Just look at how many businesses became what they were because of their assistance to the Nazis.

                    They should be fighting because their business is going to get hit one way or another.

                    Yeah, I don’t know about that. If they fight back then they for sure get hit immediately by the fascist Trump regime. If they play along they may, but may not. They will probably even be rewarded in the short term, which let’s them get ahead of competition.