thanks for this screenshot of an instagram post of a screenshot of a tweet
Ah yes, supporting a Nazi apartheids israeli state to genocide all Palestinians is really a Democrat thing.
Did the Republicans want to bring back Healthcare? This is news to me!
What makes you think the Democrats automatically represent the interests of the people just because the Republicans are worse? They’re in power because while the Democrats are a fully formed turd, the Republicans are blood streaked diarrhea, and given the two options and literally nothing else thanks to first past the post and gerrymandering of voting districts, most people will indeed vote for the turd even if that’s not what they actually want out of the government.
I mean if you’re still supporting Republicans you’re kind of the problem.
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So do you just wake up as a curmudgeonly dingus, or does it take a few hours of the day for you to get like that?
Hi bot.
God, how I wish that your comment actually bothered me. Instead, I’m just entertained by your username having enough letters for the term “dingus”
If you still believe the Democrats are going to come through on universal healthcare or free college, you’re also part of the problem.
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Agreed that it’s harder, but that “private for-profit industry” shouldn’t exist. It needs to be abolished. Democrats loooooove their Obamacare, but all Obama did was make that industry mandatory. That’s the opposite of abolishing it.
Democrats’ only real incentive is to be better than Republicans. Since that bar is so low, it makes it easier to make much less progress and still be more electable than the Republican alternative. Also, because it’s important to get elected and garnering at least some Republican votes is often necessary, then they have more incentive to play it safe.
If Republicans got their heads out of their asses and started making progress, instead of pushing for regression, then Democrats would have more incentive to push harder on their policies.
Wait so your plan is to wait for the republican party to become progressive?
Dems and Reps aren’t the only groups that can get things done, and I’m not talking about voting third party.
Electoralism is purely harm reduction for leftists, no leftist policy will get through in a 2-party Capitalist state. Instead, change must happen at the grassroots level.
Organize, unionize, protest, all that good stuff.
Wait before voting 3rd party? Yes. Our voting system needs to change before that is a viable option.
There is no 3rd party. Voting for a third party candidate is no different than just not voting at all. The only message that you are sending is that you are fine with whoever actually ends up winning.
You want to voice your dissatisfaction with the system? Then vote vote more, not less. The reason you get nothing but shit candidates is because you aren’t voting in the elections that actually matter the most… the small, local elections determine who is running your schools, who is running your elections, they determine who is at the base of the power pyramid. It may seem like taking out one bit of support here or there does nothing, but one drop of water doesn’t make a flood. It takes constant, repeated drops to saturate the earth and let other drops build up.
Venice is sinking into the mud. The ground it sits on is unstable and slowly shifts out from below it, and it continues to sink. They are fighting to keep it up. They poor tons of money into jacking it up and trying to stabilize it, but it just keeps sinking. You want change? Be the sifting sand. Liquify the particles around you and remove the base that supports these shitty parties. And, you can’t do that if the people you vote for don’t win.
Our voting system needs to change
What are you doing to help change it?
I am voting for people who support changing it. Ranked choice voting is definitely being pushed where I live, which would be great because many Democrats have to use their votes in a way that does not accurately represent their actual preferences.
Additionally, since Republicans have a closed primary (which is scummy as fuck) many Democrats have to register as Republican just to have any say in who will run our government.
This is an amazing joke .
Crazy how you’re so wrong with your considerable experience seeing a joke in the mirror every day.
Democrats’ only real incentive is to be better than Republicans.
I disagree with that…their only incentive these days is to NOT be Republicans. They’ve taken up traditional right leaning republican policy at this point and are getting away with it. For example: The ACA is terrible, we NEED universal healthcare, however, the D’s are content letting big health insurance continue to rape the US. The D’s have also strongly backed off climate protections, and honestly, it’s too late for climate change so that’s maybe moot.
The point is, they don’t have any incentive to actually push policy…they just need to point and say “Republicans are bad” and the donations roll in.
I feel like if our voting system wasn’t skewed so heavily toward Republicans (between the Electoral College, gerrymandering being legal, and a general “states can run their elections however they want” to allow Republican-controlled states to make whatever changes they want to favor themselves), we’d see a lot more progress. Instead, it’s harder and harder for liberals to vote, the votes count for less and less, and we’re barely scraping to just vote out fascists (if possible).
Fix the voting system, and we might get something worthwhile out of Democrats other than undoing some of their predecessors terrible actions and giving just enough to their supporters to whet their appetite without ever leaving them satisfied.
No one is deluding themselves into thinking that will happen. The alternative, voting for Trump, however, is unacceptable.
Fortunately, that isn’t the only alternative.
Vote Green.
I believe Democrats will at least make proposals to improve healthcare coverage and free college. More importantly, there has been significant progress over the last four years or so.
You mean literally mainstream policy positions for Democrats?
Lol…sure…lol. They burned Bernie at the stake for suggesting those things.
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What chides me the most is the underlying origin of the Republican Party, the very much needed fiscal conservatism, is now missing. It’s been traded for saboteurs rigging things to fail so they can gut chunks of government.
But… But the gays and the deep state? Hollywood elites?
This is why we can’t even get anywhere. Both sides purposely misrepresent the other.
Right, surely the people who keep doing horrible things and announcing plans to do more horrible are only unpopular with everyone else because of tribalism. Couldn’t possibly be their actions.
What would be your description of what both sides want?
I love how every response to calling out the tribal shit slinging hyperbolic strawman is “okay so what do they believe” completely missing thr point and side stepping it just to do more tribal shit slinging.
How is it tribal to know what you stand for or what you think someone stands for?
Because it’s obvious what the user asking for this wants is to know if the other commenter thinks differently, they wants a reason to attack them and belittle them. That is all that’s been happening in this thread.
I want to know what they think. I want to see how they view what the Republicans and Democrats are doing. I can easily say what I think they are doing and how they are not the same, so I want to know what makes them think they are the same.
This is exactly the problem. When you say that you want to ask these questions just to find out what ‘the other side’ thinks, you are treating the conversation as if the other person is a member of ‘the other side’ and can speak for their viewpoints. There can be people who disagree with you that aren’t far-right religious extremists.
Yea, so I want to know what they think.
Both sides clearly want to say the most extremist strawmans of the other side to rile up support and increase animosity towards the other side.
Yea, the far left of universal health care and diversity. Which has never been in power, unlike the far right.
Really? You turn this into a mis-characterization of the left? My point is that there are equally radically Twitter claims from the right. For instance, you don’t think there are Republican-voting individuals who think Democrats are coming for all their guns?
I do, but that’s not the far left, that’s the liberals. You go actual left and you keep your guns to protect yourself from the right wing lynch mobs that is ant the gays to die.
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The issue is that there are sides. And only 2 at that. Neither serves the people very well or we would have sane healthcare costs, wages, housing, transportation. We would also not have as much pollution in our air, soil, and water. "Both Sides"cater to political campaign donors above all else. That is the problem.
Out of the loop: what’s there about women not being able to vote or own property? Thanks!
If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine,” [Ann Coulter] said in a 2007 New York Observer interview.
Holy raging badgerfuck dementia is a terrifying disease
Republican women are gender traitors just like republican black people are race traitors.
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Being dumb doesn’t make you a “traitor”. There’s no gender war or race war to take sides in. A lot of people are just dumb, or bad actors.
Bad actors like yourself, clearly.
No, being dumb doesn’t make you a traitor. Though it doesn’t mean you aren’t when you commit acts of treason while being dumb.
more like fucking class traitors
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Holy raging badgerfuck *conservatism is a terrifying disease
This needs more upvotes
Thanks! And what about property?
Mostly just the natural progression of this level of misogyny. Implicit in removing the right of women to file for no-fault divorce, and such. Not a mainstream talking point yet as far as I’m aware.
The most sensible Republican.
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[Missouri State TPUSA President] Rutherford also noted that college campuses are a place where controversial ideas should be heard.
“Many students on this campus made it clear that her ideas were dangerous and unwelcome here in this pivotal moment in our country — where wrong is right and two plus two is five. When you are threatened with violence for daring to think differently, Ann Coulter is a necessary voice to bring to the table.”
Who’s making fascism and democracy “equal”? The media?
I don’t disagree that it’s taken broadcast and print media to finally start calling a spade a spade when it comes to right wing politics in the US - and that they’re still not going far enough. Trump himself is being correctly labeled as fascist, authoritarian, dictatorial; the people who fully support him are still managing to avoid those labels.
But I don’t think that’s the primary issue. I don’t think that “the media” is the problem. Trump and his ilk have done and said fascist, authoritarian, and dictatorial things for a long time, and there are enough people who like that and want that. Chris Christie and Liz Cheney, for example, are very outspoken about the danger Trump poses, but they still carry water for the party that is on track to nominate him for the presidency.
There are plenty of people in that same situation. That’s the problem. The solution is for them to find their conscience and abandon the Republican party. Maybe that will happen once the primaries get underway. Maybe they’re waiting to see if someone can unseat Trump’s presumptive nomination. If someone does unseat Trump in the primaries, you’re still left with a party that’s given him an incredible amount of support. You’re still embracing that support, and you’re still going to be beholden to those supporters - who have shown that they will vote you out if you don’t toe their fascist line.
We can have vigorous differences on policy. We cannot have differences on the core principles of democracy, on the very structure of our government. We must agree on process. The Republican party has shown that at its core, it does not agree with the core principles of democracy, and if you don’t abandon it, you are complicit.
I agree with your broader point that there’s a deeper issue with American voters who want fascism, but the normalization of far-right politics with ‘both sides’ horse-race bullshit has fed that problem, and very often there still is pushback to Trump and his ilk being described with the correct terms in the media. Only a few (relatively) left-leaning outlets note it with any regularity.
I know I kind of went off on a rant there, it wasn’t pointed at you. I follow ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC pretty regularly, and all of those are now (over the last few weeks) consistently reporting the real danger in real terms (MSNBC leads by a country mile, of course).
Really? I haven’t followed CNN closely in years, but they were always pretty wishy-washy, and what articles I’ve seen from them recently have been very… ‘both sides’.
Ah, I’m watching clips from broadcasts on YouTube. Maybe broadcast and print are handling things differently?
I’ll note that ABC has been on point with a lot of scoops. They’ve got to have a contact inside somewhere in relation to the many notable civil and criminal trials going on.
I had checked out on CNN for a while, too, since they shifted pretty center-right, but figured I should keep up with them in order to stay aware of what that perspective is. I’ll catch a Fox News bit here and there, but I’m not putting them in my feed. If you have any other suggestions, I welcome them.
Republicans have begun to resurrect the idea of household head exclusive enfranchisement, IE only the family patriarch can vote
I’m sure it’s just a complete coincidence that this policy mostly disenfranchises women, younger voters, and renters, all of whom lean democrat.
Woah, that’s cringe. Thanks for letting me know!
Well one side helps the rich and the other hurts them
But one side helps their viewers and the other hurts them
So I can see both sides
Slavery never went away, read the 13th amendment.
Old black Jo still picking cotton, for your ribbons and bows.
Everybody knows…
Sharecropping is not slavery in the same sense as it was in the early days of the US
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Idk about you but that seems to make it pretty cut and dry that slavery is illegal in the US. Prison is different because when you are convicted, you are stripped of many rights. I don’t agree with it, but it is what it is.
What happens when you also create or enforce laws mainly against minorities?
That’s exactly what happened in the South.
Shhh. You’re giving away the punchline.
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They stopped being humans when they decided to steal that bread to feed their children!!
/s
They stopped being humans when they decided to smoke that weed growing in the ditch or eat that wild growing mushroom.
/s
It’s forced labor, not actual chattel slavery in the sense that the state can’t actually buy and sell prisoners and is obligated to free them under certain conditions. Nor, unlike chattel slavery, can one be born into the status of prisoner.
So it’s slavery. Got it.
If there’s an exception to a rule then it’s not a cut and dry rule. If slavery is illegal except when it affects certain people then it’s not illegal overall.
affects certain people
What certain people? Criminals?
Because when you, for instance, kill someone, you can’t just simply walk free and do whatever it is that you want? That’s not an exception. Minorities in pre-1865 US (including Indians, this is coming from one himself) committed the crime of not being white with guns.
You have to pay penance of some kind, you really think the government is going to just take people’s money they use to feed and house your ass for free? I work in corrections mind you (fucking hate it but it’s either that or homelessness for my family) and I don’t think drug users should be imprisoned for usage, violent offenders and pedophiles though? Yes, put their asses to work.
That’s no more slavery than a child doing chores.
The one rule of public policy, if they can do it to anybody, they have all the precedent they need to do it to you too, even if they swear you’re safe, oftentimes especially if they swear you’re safe.
I was so ready to just downvote for implying criminals don’t deserve rights and move on, but something about your argument does give me thought and I kinda wanna explore this more, especially since you’re working in this field yourself. Apologies if this is kinda ranty, I’m processing my thoughts and why the comment stuck with me as I go.
When people are put in jail, it costs money, like you said, it’s not free, so what do taxpayers expect to get out of that money? Depending on the answer to that question, yeah, it seems fair to think of manual labor as a way to offset the cost (though I doubt the taxpayer is seeing the benefits of those offset costs). I’d like to think in an ideal world however, what is being paid for is rehabilitation; turning criminals back into contributing members of society, in which case, their future productivity would ideally offset the costs to society of jailing them. I think there are enough stories of violent offenders who go on to be lawyers and such to show this is possible and what society should strive for, though I know it’s not easy and may not be possible in all cases. In this case, forced, manual labor would probably be counterproductive, but arguments could be made for voluntary or even paid labor that contributes to rehabilitation.
Outside of rehabilitation, there’s also the simple idea that jails are just paid to keep these people off the streets, in which case the consideration of cost is just, how badly do you not want these people in society? Following that idea, forced labor kind of makes sense, they’re just in jail to be off the streets, might as well make them useful while they’re removed from society, but then the argument is how much labor is ok?
Then again, if the idea is strictly punitive, any amount of forced labor becomes justified since the idea is that they are in there to suffer and serve penance. In this case I suppose the only consideration is whether the amount of penance in the form of labor fits the crime.
I’m just thinking out loud here, I don’t really know anything about this topic for certain. My background though is in special education, and I know from my early studies that whenever it’s tested, a lot of inmates turn out to have some sort of diagnosable learning difficulty, so I feel that the existence of jails to a large extent is a failure of society to support vulnerable people. At the same time, I do recognize that there are people who we really don’t want to be part of society and whom rehabilitation might not be possible, but then if I let my thoughts go down that direction the logical conclusion seems to be the death penalty? And that’s not something I’m really for, especially since there are already so many cases of wrongful death penalties.
tl;dr, I guess we really have to know what we want as the goals for jails as a society, communicate that clearly, and from there we can talk costs and the potential usefulness of forced labor.
Inmates DO have rights, most of the rights that you have, inmates have. It is namely the 2nd amendment that is taken away from specifically felons.
I do not nor have I ever supported the death penalty whatsoever, and that’s aside from exactly how inefficient the process is (the process leading up to death that is). I support rehabilitation, but rehabilitation outside of prison is for people addicted to crack, math, opiods, severely addictive substances like that. The rehabilitation for a murderer IS prison.
Work is not the only form of penance, as work in penance is just community labor. The penance is also paid in reflection and reconciliation.
I think the right to vote is also taken away in a lot of cases, right? But the part about rights wasn’t the main point I was trying to discuss.
I feel like reflection, reconciliation, rehabilitation, all those are processes that need to be facilitated to be effective, and at least from the outside, it doesn’t seem like that’s really happening in prisons. I’m not sure how prison can act as rehabilitation for murder in and of itself. I mean, in general, we know murder is bad, but there’s a lot that can be behind an individuals decision to kill someone and I’m not sure how being in jail by itself deals with that. I’m sure we’ve all heard the examples of say, someone killing the person who they found out was abusing their child, and generally people seem more sympathetic there, but in the end, it is murder. And yes, this is a fringe situation but for the sake of fleshing out ideas, does this person deserve to be put in jail and into forced labor? I feel like most people would say no, which means that even in the case of murder, there’s still some level of nuance as to what level of punishment is accepted by society.
The right to vote is usually taken away but like firearms, it depends.
The hypothetical circumstance you explained doesn’t play out like you typically think, they don’t always go to prison
Every rule has an exception, the better the rule the fewer exceptions. The perfect rule only has 1 exception. It’s the rule of exceptions to the rules. At least the people who wrote that were aware that exceptions needed to be included. Only sith speak in absolutes, with the exception of the speaker.
Constitution: slavery is legal under certain conditions.
You: “Idk about you but that seems to make it pretty cut and dry that slavery is illegal in the US”
While I agree with you we must admit that this is not a democratic republic or a republic in any way if we acknowledge that the law allows the ability to restrict voting rights.
If it must be an absolute then even someone guilty of treason must still have a representative vote.
Which I would agree with, but that is neither here nor there about what currently is.
You: “lol I’m gonna ignore everything past that part to try and prove my incorrect point”
Edit: and also ignore the point itself. If you have to meet VERY SPECIFIC CONDITIONS to make something legal, then it’s safe to say it is not actually legal or even technically
The media cares about one thing: money. Outrage=views, and they’ll report whatever they think will generate the most outrage.
Image Transcription: Tumblr
mikemaeshiro
[A screenshot of a twitter post which is transcribed below]
Rebekah Jones, @GeoRebekah
Everyone seems to agree that a revolution is long overdue in America
One side wants to bring back slavery, nazis, fascism, and women not being allowed to vote or own property.
The other side just wants healthcare and education.
The media thinks these two things are equal.
Haha don’t forget moderates.
“We should listen to both sides, I mean nazis and fascists had good ideas too!”
As someone who is not from the US I have to say: this “meme” is very biased and one sided. Most of you do not even understand how one sided it is. You are taking your moderate opinion and comparing it with the most extreme opinion of the other side. If the other side did this they would say:
One side just wants that they stop killing babies
The other side wants to brainwash children into mutilating their own bodies.
“Both sides” as a definition, before you ever make comparisons, is already a diminutive of reality. The idea that there are only ever two viewpoints, despite the reality of the current American political situation, is naive at best. Even within the two major US parties there are fractious and conflicting personalities.
The “both sides” argument isn’t asinine because it equates the two major players, its asinine because it accepts their premise that they’re the only ones that matter.
The “both sides” argument isn’t asinine because it equates the two major players, its asinine because it accepts their premise that they’re the only ones that matter.
Can’t it be asinine for both reasons?
It could, but the former is predicated on accepting the latter as fact. Argue about the former all you like, you’re basically already arguing that your opinion doesn’t matter because you only get two options anyways.
There are only two sides that matter thanks to our shitty voting systems.
If your argument were “There are only two sides that matter when voting” it would still be wrong, but at least it would make sense. Voting matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters.
This type of discourse is a symptom and a contribution to the large division, sort of a self fulfilling bullshit prophecy
So what exactly does the right want in your eyes and what exactly does the other side want
I’m not a conservative, but screaming THEY WANT FUCKING LITERALLY SLAVERY BACK is just asinine. Criticize the actual things they say rather than a hyperbolic strawman.
Yeah, sorry, right now it’s just “They want more Black people locked up in a system that allows them to be used as slaves, and they want to teach that old-fashioned slavery was actually good for Black people”
My bad. /s
Yes, that’s exactly my point. Say that instead, because that’s more specific and it’s less hyperbolic strawman.
Is it that hard to grasp that you people feel the need to treat it like a joke?
“They don’t want literal slavery back, they just want a system of forced labor for ethnic minorities which is used to make a few private individuals incredibly wealthy while keeping the laborers in subhuman conditions under the absolute control of their overseers.”
I treat it as a joke because it is a joke. It would be like arguing that a party that ran on expanding debt slavery isn’t literal slavery because you can’t trade debt slaves.
When you treat it as a joke, you’re not treating it like a real thing that’s happening
Go ahead and continue to laugh and that’s how Republicans get elected. You boil real problems down into hyperbolic strawman and you will never get across to the side that is told by their media and their politicians that we scream theyre actual fucking nazis.
Instead talk about how the modern prison system is a form of indentured servitude akin to slavery that predominantly impacts minorities. Can you reasonably equate it to actual slavery? Yeah that’s a comparison, but to just go around to say ACTUAL FUCKSLAVERY THEY HATE BLACKS SO MUCH THAT THEY WANT TO OWN THEM AGAIN is just fucking stupid.
Go ahead and continue to laugh and that’s how Republicans get elected.
Yes, definitely, the cause of Republicans being elected is that people call out modern-day slavery as modern-day slavery. You got it. Really nailed it.
You boil real problems down into hyperbolic strawman and you will never get across to the side that is told by their media and their politicians that we scream theyre actual fucking nazis.
I’m sorry, should I have been saying they weren’t Nazis when they began stuffing undesirables into concentration camps and forcibly sterilizing them? Or encouraging violence against minorities and their political opponents?
When do they cross the Nazi line? Do I have to be marching under the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign before I get the right to call them Nazis?
Fucking dumbass.
Okay but still, what exactly does the right want in your eyes and what exactly does the other side want
That’s entirely pointless and you’re just trying to find out if you need to hate me or not. There is literally no benefit to the discussion by bringing that in, just to make it easier for if you need to automatically decide to disregard my opinions.
The people on the right are being lied to and manipulated by their media and their politicians, I find that actually talking to them on an individual level you’ll find that they’re not all fascist or racist (my first cousins are half black, but my grandmother is a conservative and very much not a racist. I have gay family members and she doesnt scream about persecution) You should take a gander at Fox News and see what they say about us on the left, and youll see my point. They say all kinds of hyperbolic shit that’s sometimes technically correct.
My point is that if you act like Fox News does, it’s adding to the division (which is fox news goal, division makes them money)
To continue to have discourse in this manner is only going to make things worse. We need to figure out how to approach the issues before we continue this shit slinging
How are you going to comment something so vague and “both sides” the argument but won’t even present your actual point.
I did present my actual point, I said “my point” fucking literally. Ffs
No you haven’t. There’s nothing in this post that is similar to FOX. Where’s the lie in the post?
You could have taken the opportunity to make a small change for a bunch of Lemmies but instead you just gave us a drive-by hot-take without any substance of counterfactual argumentation.
Good job, idiot.
Small chnage? The fuck are you on about? Also, hypocrite much
I’m not the one making outlandish claims like the GOP aren’t a party of corrupt fascists. Not a hypocrite in the slightest. I’m always right on brand.
Feel free to put forth literally any argument at all, because you still haven’t.
Why do I need to argue with you? Do you base your self worth on your ability to win internet arguments or something?
Also, not every statement needs to be an argument. I made an observation, you’re the only one who feels the need to make it an argument, and honestly that’s a huge part of the problem. You’re going to dissect what I say, belittle me, and continue on your way without ever even considering what I say.
How do I know this? YOUVE ALREADY DONE THAT. What is the point of arguing with someone who immediately calls you an idiot for having an opinion. It’s childish and I won’t waste my time arguing with someone who treats it less like an exercise in intellectualism and more of a bid for this artificial social hierarchy.
