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“Both sides bad” is why we have Trump.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage. Environmental laws have been all Democrats. If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
Decades of lesser evil voting is why you have Trump
Socially left on some issues and economically right on all issues isn’t left.
actually, your candidate running a dogshit campaign and telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off is why we have trump. we warned this would happen, too. anyone with a memory span longer than a pet goldfish remembers all of this.
No “vote blue no matter who” and not demanding actual representation is how we got Trump. People got duped by a con becuase they have never seen the real thing, so anything different can look appealing to the uncritical.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good or some shit.
I love how liberals bleat this because it implies genocide is good.
No it does not. It means do something to move the needle instead of sitting on the sidelines bitching about everything while doing fuck all. I know you guys are great at mental gymnastics but that’s a stretch even by the standard on .ml
Care to explain why people are stuck on the sidelines without a viable political party to represent their interests?
Nihilism, laziness, there are plenty of reasons.
Democrats didn’t flip on gay rights until Obama, and the Supreme Court did marriage equality. (Yes better than Republicans) Democratic leadership is already trying to send trans people under the bus to try to save face with the Republicans. Both sides are bad! We need to demand more from the democrats and force them to support the working class and to never back down when talking about human rights. Right now. The Democratic party is nothing more than an enabler of our abusive and coercive government/economic systems that allows lessor evils to even exist.
Democrats didn’t flip on gay rights until Obama
And Obama didn’t flip on gay marriage until the end of his first term. Biden came out in favor of it, which forced Obama’s hand, but it wound up being the right move; it energized the base when enthusiasm was starting to wane. Then, under Obama’s leadership, they continued to do nothing to establish gay marriage at the federal level.
“But he said something vaguely positive, that’s exactly like legal enforcement of their rights!”
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
Nixon created the EPA.
If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
If Democrats passed legislation, Biden’s achievements couldn’t be undone through executive order.
The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you’re giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn’t say they’re the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it’s kind of a, “pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” situation.
I miss Reddit. R. I. P.
Eh, I saw a lot of the same shit on Reddit. I think you’d have to go back at least 7 or 8 years to find a version of Reddit that wasn’t trash.
Nah. I had my feed highly curated to active and sane subs within my interests. It was too good to be true.
Not on .world. I’ve noticed .world is more of a neoliberal, mostly pro-capitalism instance in general.
Note, I’m talking more about the moderation rather than members.
Okay. I don’t understand all the different instances yet. I got instructions from someone on how to navigate it but haven’t sat down to try.
Basically all you need to know is every instance has their own admins with their own rules, and often times you will see instances who are focused on a particular group of people, like my instance, for instance, which is for hardcore computer geeks, but where everyone is welcome regardless of whether or not they are even into computers.
I also like my instance because they explicitly choose to not defederate with any instance. I can choose what to block myself, which is how I prefer it.
There are also instances like db0’s (former /r/piracy moderator) for example, which focus more on individual freedoms/anarchist philosophy.
I started off on .world for a month until I found my instance.
Your list supporting Republicans means you must support Trump. right?
I mean you can’t have it both ways. Nixon created the EPA, Nixon was Republican, therefore Republican policy is to put the environment first. That’s what you are arguing.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m correcting objectively false claims you’re making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, “full gay rights with marriage,” and the meme and OP did not say, “both sides bad.” Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
If you have to go back 50 years to find an example of when Republicans were good for the environment, you proved my point.
It’s no different than, “Republicans are the party of Lincoln!”
First reply: “Giving Nixon credit for the EPA means you support Republicans and therefore Trump.”
Second reply: “NIxon was so long ago he doesn’t count.”
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim pointing out a good thing Nixon did means I support modern Republicans while also claiming Nixon happened so long ago that he’s not connected to modern Republicans.
It’s also just factually wrong to say, “it was so long ago, its like saying they’re the anti-slavery party.” Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy. He’s basically the turning point for where the Republicans became the party we know today. He’s the reason it’s bullshit to point out Republicans are the party of Lincoln.
It’s also just factually wrong to say, “it was so long ago, its like saying they’re the anti-slavery party.” Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy.
Those two sentences are in exact conflict with each other. You say “it’s too long ago when Republicans were different” isn’t a valid argument." Then in the very next sentence you say, “it was long ago when Republicans were completely different.”
WTF?
No, dude…just…no. You tried to claim that saying, “a Republican founded the EPA,” and, “Republicans ended slavery,” were the same, even though there was a century of history between those events. More importantly, Nixon is exactly the person you don’t want to make that argument about, since Nixon is the very person who pivoted the party towards its modern strategy of using the politics of racial aggrievement to get working-class whites to vote against their self-interests. Going back to the Civil War, or even the early Civil Rights era, things get ideologically murky, but you can draw a straight line between Trump and Nixon.
You say “it’s too long ago when Republicans were different” isn’t a valid argument.
He didn’t say that. You did.
He pointed out your hypocrisy when you said that stating the fact that Nixon created the EPA must mean he’s a Republican (and a MAGAt one at that), but then turned heel and said that any politicians from 50 years ago don’t matter (likely because the political landscape then is not the same as the political landscape now, which is reasonably true - he makes this same point by saying 1860 Republicans are not the same as 1960 Republicans or 2025 Republicans).
You stated he’s a Republican, then dissolved your own claim by saying support for past Republicans doesn’t matter. You’ve closed your own logic loop.
deleted by creator
If you’re talking about the Respect for Marriage Act, that was passed a decade after the Supreme Court established gay marriage as the law of the land. The overturning of Roe made Democrats decide that they should codify gay marriage, since they saw how badly failing to codify abortion rights turned out. It also reopens the door for Civil Unions and passed with large Republican support, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a huge win for Democrats.
As for the EPA, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but you are absolutely incorrect. Nixon proposed the EPA and NOAA through executive order, and it was later ratified by Congress. It’s possible you’re referencing some sort of dispute Nixon had with Congress on how they intended to create the EPA, but he absolutely supported it; it was his idea.
What a stupid comment
Why can’t stating facts just be that: stating facts.
Instead, people have to insert imaginations of their interlocutor’s position so they can try to dish an “own” before asking them for clarification first.
And we wonder why discourse is broken in today’s age
If I said Republicans generally support racist policies, a reply could be the fact that Lincoln freed the slaves and was a Republican.
Stating facts like that isn’t neutral. It’s the scientific equivalent of picking out one data point from an entire study to argue against a conclusion.
Spoken like a Weimar
Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple…
You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court…
If you want to say, “Well, the Dems are less evil,” then great, many people partly agree. But that’s not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden’s tombstone “Not quite as evil as Trump.” Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?
The Democrats didn’t do shit for gay marriage. That was the Supreme Court.
Also, Nixon created the EPA.
id like to remind you biden was a conservative running concentration camps for latinos at the border.
No, the DNC is why we have trump. It’s on them.
Obama wasn’t perfect at all, but his platform was at least change and progress. While he was originally against gay marriage he did listen to the public and change for re-election. If the DNC listened to the public instead of fighting against progress that would be great. But like… Biden was the throw away to conservatives for Obama’s VP to “balance out” Obama being progressive….And now he was their best idea on what to do for a better future? It’s pathetic, and demonstrates the above.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump. They’re saying the DNC is what even allowed trump to exist, by being greedy fucks who care more about their handlers than the American people and running the worst candidates they can. “Nothing will fundamentally change” is the dumbest, most “fuck you don’t bother to vote for me” fucking campaign I’ve ever heard.
Its fine let them keep losing. I honestly don’t care anymore. At some point progressives like Bernie, AOC, etc. will finally wake up & realize they don’t need Democrats to win. You want to see people passionate about voting again then it is time to leave the establishment behind. Anyone remember Bernie’s crowds in 2016? It was obvious he was may more popular than Clinton having to pay Beyonce & Jay Z for people to show up at her events.
They absolutely, 1000% need Democrats to win. Maybe not their respective districts, but if they want to get anything done on a national level, they need about half the country on their side, and that includes Democrats.
Now, they can certainly eat the party whole, the way the tea party and MAGA ate the GOP. That involves being more specific than “Democrats bad”. In fact, how did they do it? Did you ever see them telling people to abandon the Republican party?
I understand where you’re coming from, but Democrats need progressives to win. If they leave Democrats, it will be Democrats that will follow them, not the other way around. I don’t think trying to emulate MAGA is such a great idea. I know there are lessons that can be learned there, but I am still confident that a new party with popular progressives & populist policies would do more than trying to change a broken party from within.
It’s always easier to completely rewrite code from scratch than to make small modifications to an existing project.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump.
The meme isn’t that Biden was worse but that he did nothing. It’s proveably false. Trump himself proved it by criticizing Biden at inauguration and immediately undoing Biden’s orders.
If it was that easy to undo what biden did, then practically he did nothing.
Much of what Trump has “undone” wasn’t undone legally. Many of the things he did requires congress to rollback and other things are caught up in courts. But in the mean time they happened so it will be potentially unable to be put back even if it is ordered so.
So, again, practically meaningless distinction. Until democrats are willing to use the same tools they leave available to republicans, the democrats are ineffective.
Thing is, they don’t have the same opportunities. The one reason why trump has been able to push things through in this shitty manner, is because the Republicans have stacked the Supreme Court (because the holes from people dying got filled while Republicans were in power) and they have majority control of Congress.
When judges die while democrats have power, they nominate milquetoast compromise judges while republicans just go full far-right crazy. Democrats don’t fight to block the crazy republican judges nor do they even fight to get their own judges in. A great example is when Obama nominated Merrick Garland, an already lame pick, as a “compromise”. The republicans insisted on waiting until the 2016 election concluded and the next president was sworn in and the democrats didn’t fight back at all. Then as some dumb form of symbolism, they make Merrick Garland the Attorney General during Biden’s term and Garland proceeds to not prosecute Trump for four years. That should tell you how great he would’ve been as a supreme court judge.
So even if democrats do get a judge in, it’s a compromised “centrist”. How do you think the court will end up when one side packs in far-right wackos and the other side puts in moderate right-wing losers? Seems pretty clear what the direction would be even if democrats won every election until the end of time.
So why wasn’t Biden stacking SCOTUS?
LOL no it isn’t, Trump or someone like him was an inevitability because US elections are fixed and the people who have actual power in your society, Corporate board members, want fascism.
Truth there. I’m from a dark blue area yet city government here couldn’t act any different than if I lived in a dark red state. In some ways I actually think they are worse. All they have to do is put D next to their name & the voters will support them regardless of their actions.
Things have been getting worse my entire life regardless of who has been in charge. It gets worse more slowly under the dems, but it still gets worse.
Why is it too much to ask for things to get even a little better?
It gets worse more slowly under the dems, but it still gets worse.
Gay marriage? DEI? Pacific Protected waters? Arctic protected from drilling? It was getting better until Republicans were elected to undo it all. The Rachet Meme is a version “both sides bad” which is what helped Republicans win.
I 100% agree with you but I’d also like to point out that the EPA was made by nixon in the 70s. theyve done some good stuff too, just less
that was a very different party than current dnc. today’s dnc is controlled by two faced lobbyists pimps like schumer and pelosi, who will have trump win again and again than see aoc being a possibility.
in today’s dnc someone like al gore or obama will be suffocated out of primaries like bernie. heck schumer would probably have obama killed to keep dnc pro-israel
i will be surprised if aoc is not pushed out of the party by 28.
Schumer and Pelosi don’t control the DNC.
Correct. Not to mention the midterm congressional elections that only see ~20% turnout, and even less in the congressional primaries. The overwhelming majority are retirees, who will almost always pick the most conservative option in their party. People love to complain about term limits and appeasement centrists, but they don’t show up when they actually have a say in who represents them.
Accepting gays is definitely the same as funding sex change for prisoners and sending them to a female prison, which was one of the most successful ads in history.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/democrat-republican-elect-primary-1.6497911
It’s apparently all part of a Democratic strategy aiming to help those seen as extremist Republican candidates to secure their Republican party’s nomination. (Which Mastriano did win.)
The hope for Democrats is that those extreme Republican candidates would be much easier for Democrats to beat in the November general election. But the strategy has raised some concerns about effectiveness and whether it could have unintended consequences.
https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/
The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson as wanted candidates. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously,” the memo noted.
Before you reply to me directly please understand:
- The US overthrew democracy in the country I am from
- The US installed a fascist king with secret police that terrorized my family
- Once kicked out the US supported a dictator in the neighboring country where the other half of my family lived
- The US funded both sides of a war between my country and the neighboring one that led to mass civilian deaths, one side directly by giving a dictator weapons and cash and the other side clandestinely thru laundering money by selling drugs in Latin America
- Once they lost that war turned on the dictator in the neighboring country and invented reasons to illegally invade. Twice
- Toppled the regime and left a power vacuum that consumed all my family that lived there for literally hundreds of years.
- Created material conditions in the country my family is from that forced them to leave or die
You Americans are not the good guys, your country and government is evil to its core.
Reminder that the Democrats would be considered even further right than the Conservative Party in Canada. And Canada itself is still considered pretty right wing with no big leftist parties (NDP is still center-right at best)
Neoconservatism ruled the last 40 years but it’s not even a “conservative” doctrine. It’s a bipartisan Zionist foreign policy. Trump is a knee jerk response to Dems alienating people with centrist social opinions, Republicans shipping jobs overseas and both of them sustaining pointless forever wars.
Dear Liberals,
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I am so glad I can’t see the bullshit from lemmy.world on my server
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Your economic system guarantees fascism. You can’t vote your way out of it. Capitalist modes of production inevitably concentrate power and lead to fascism. It is unavoidable.
actually this time it’ll be different, we just won’t have another crisis of capitalism that requires the stamping out of revolutionaries
it was nice talking at you too hamid
do you still live in Iran?
just wanted to let you know the top comment was in opposition to your opinion
you seem to have defederated from us so maybe your instance and ones like it should defederate completely to make your life easier
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Surely this means we just aren’t voting hard enough
90 million people didn’t vote at all. Trump won with 77 million votes. 13 million more people did nothing, than all of the people that voted for Trump.
So, not any different from any other presidential election in the USA?
There were 3 million fewer voters than in 2020. This was the most advertised election in US history, and more people sat out.
“Didn’t vote” always beats out the votes for either candidate, though. A small downward shift in the numbers is probably the fault of Democrats dividing their own base by endorsing genocide.
Yup. According to polls, the number one reason people abstained or voted third-party was Biden/Harris handling of Gaza. It’s either an ignorant or arrogant choice, depending on their awareness of Trump’s sociopathy and unwavering support of Netanyahu.
It wasn’t a small downward shift though. It was greater than the amount Harris lost by, if you count the increase in third-party votes.
I agree. Whether it was ignorance or arrogance, the Democrats are entirely responsible for driving so many people away from the polls and squandering what could otherwise have been a shoe-in for Harris.
Or dumbasses are responsible for the fascist takeover here.
Dems aren’t great but it you couldn’t be convinced to vote here it’s not on them.
But yeah, keep making excuses for lazy people not doing their civic duty. It’s working out great.
Only an American could describe opposition to genocide as “ignorant or arrogant”
There was no opposition to genocide. That would be the ignorant justification.
The choice was between genocide, and genocide with fascism. Knowing that, and choosing to do nothing so you feel better, is arrogant.
I think in biden’s first election the “didn’t vote” category was beaten.
You could very well be right. My memory is like a sieve sometimes. XD
This has to be the most brain dead community on Lemmy, still pulling this “Both sides” bullshit
I don’t know on which community we currently are, but this is the most accurate depiction of what’s actually going on. Democrats serve the corporate elite and don’t really bother turning it left.
You aren’t wrong in that the democrats prefer the status quo but it’s far from both sides being the same. If we have to pick a side, and if we are still pro democracy, we do, there is only one correct choice.
Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it. For example, Ranked choice voting would be great, but let’s get more states to use it before expecting the highest office in the land to adopt it.
we are still pro democracy, we do, there is only one correct choice.
Western “democracy” in a nutshell. Catch-22 could only dream of such absurdity.
pro democracy
one correct choice
Pick one.
Having a choice means being able to make the wrong one, as we did.
Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it.
The democrats are only in power for at most two years, and that’s assuming there’s no quislings like Lieberman or Fetterman or Manchin or Sinema in them. So they’ve barely got enough votes to move the needle on anything, and voting is low on the priority list.
And after two years the Republicans win one or both houses of Congress and maybe the presidency, and then undo everything.
This has been repeating my entire life, and now it’s getting to the fascist endgame.
The system itself is broken and failing. It’s not going to help us.
Stop with this braindead serve the elites meme. Dems last admin passed tons of left wing legislation that benefited everyone.
Intersting, I do not remember any means of production being turned over to the workers? I dont remember a law passed to remove the scehdual F capabilities, I do not remember stuffing the supreme court in retaliation for Roe being overturned. Heck I do not even remember stufing the Postal board of governors so full that it would fire DeJoy and ensure a reasonable PMG for over a decade… Please enlighten me, what left wing actions must I look at
Genocide apologist
Yeah, Trump really was the better option for Gaza. Palestinians are so lucky to brave supporters like you fighting the American left and Israeli left on their behalf. Remember its the thought that counts, not the outcomes.
Trump’s brief, half-hearted ceasefire was already more than Democrats did.
And I take it from your claim that the Biden admin “benifited everyone” that you don’t see Palestinians as human in the first place
All those left wing policies being implemented like:
Look at this guy, believing there’s actually 2 sides
The most braindead instance is still .world. It’s basically reddit in a nutshell
You might not have noticed but 90% of these posts come from the same user
Welcome to .ml, you’ll get the jokes now.
Democrats certainly have flaws, but focusing on them during an election of such consequence resulted in Trump. And so being “right” was worth it???
Trump is a consequence of decades of lesser evilism and rightward ratcheting
If progressivism was so popular they could’ve taken over the Democratic party at any time.
If you’d developed class consciousness, you’d understand why neither party enacts progressive policies despite their popularity. Previously:
The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Sure sure sure. FDR never existed, etc. etc. etc.
Excuses right on cue.
When you have to go back 93 years to the Great Depression to find an example, you’ve made my point.
FDR did what he did to save capitalism from the threat of socialist revolution, and politicians have spent the last three generations clawing back the concessions he had made to socialist & labor agitators. They also purged socialists from labor unions, and they purged and even assassinated communists, to avoid any such thing happening again.
Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour:
The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.
Lol. Yeah, it’s a good thing we live in a Just World.
Progressives either need to win more races or just stfu already. It’s always somehow everyone else’s fault.
Thing is- I WANT progressive policy. But acting as if there is some big majority that’s just waiting for the perfect candidate is foolish. Either it’s not popular or people are LAZY just like I stated before and need to be shamed into voting regardless.
Inconvenient truth for progressives.
Progressives either need to win more races or just stfu already. It’s always somehow everyone else’s fault.
📽️
Either it’s not popular or people are LAZY just like I stated before and need to be shamed into voting regardless.
Lol. Yeah, it’s a good thing we live in a Just World.
The same Democrats that barely won the previous election by telling people not to focus on them but Trump. Imagine funding the murder of kids, ignoring the housing crisis & then thinking you could just pull out the previous playbook with a dementia patient, then anointing Kamala Cheney at the last minute.
Leftists are not liberals. The things that matter to leftists are different than the things that matter to liberals. We have different goals. The things liberals advocate for do not move us towards our goals. We have no reason to support you.
And yet many of us leftists are still calling you out. If anyone needs any more evidence of this, look up who voted for her the most. Black people, particularly black women, Jewish people, and the LGBTQ+ community. Now, who wants to guess which groups have been the loudest voices against capitalism in the US? Who has been the most politically active?
Its generally been us in the communities who are going to die.
But if these communities tend to be liberals then I will gladly be a communist liberal.
I will gladly be a communist liberal.
It is impossible to be a communist/anarchist/socialist/leftist liberal, because communism/anarchism/socialism/leftism are diametrically opposed to liberalism.
Its OK if the point went over your head
Mate you’d need to have a point for it tk go anywhere.
Yes, and leftists don’t put the same value in identity that liberals do. We obviously care to some extent, we believe in national liberation, and historically the communist movements have supported black people in the US for example.
You know what those communists didn’t do though? Vote for liberals.
Also if you’re trying to say that minority groups are the most politically active…I’d agree. That’s why leftist groups are represented by large amounts of those people.
“leftism is when identify politics”
Ok liberal
Lol If leftism is telling the groups who have historically been at the forefront of everything, including fighting against capitalism, that they need to shut up cause theyre just liberals, then I love liberals.
If liberalism is worrying about the communities who get harmed the most, then Im a liberal
But Im so glad to have seen over this last year that leftistism is apperantly thinking of us the same way Republicans do.
I didn’t realise I was talking to the incarnate avatar of “marginalised community”. Are Palestinians included in your metaphysical essence?
Yeah, leftists advocate for and support Trump. What matters to leftists is destroying people’s lives and the planet as long as they get to feel nice and smug.
If you want to save the planet, that takes abolishing the capitalist system. Neither major party is going to implement real measures to fix that. Harris was running on stronger borders too so I really don’t think its a reach to say we’d be getting ICE raids and destroyed lives under her.
In the words of Malcolm X: “If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound…”
Give me someone that wants to heal the wound. I’ll vote for them.
How open are China’s borders?
Did I say anything about China?
It’s where your anti-capitalism ideals come from.
But you just can’t put a price on that feeling of smug self righteousness ya know?
I mean… I’m not in love with the idea of “blocking movement to the left”, but I sure as fuck would take that over the freespin to the right we are on for now. Like, I get that Dem’s need to step their game way the fuck up because you don’t win elections by being the “second worst choice”… but still. If we didn’t want accelerated fascism…
Up until the moment we have enough confirmed support for a progressive movement, status quo is a hell of a lot better than accelerated fascism; if only to buy more time to build the aforementioned progressive support. I’m all for actual leftward movement, but gambling on unconfirmed support is stupid. Even the liberals understand that, in their sports-team monkey brain.
The left has no plan sufficient to deal with this. I hear vague rumblings about strikes and revolutions and the power of the working class united, but the working class isn’t united yet. There is no organized, validated plan to effect that revolution. There’s no leftist Project 2025. That’s a natural consequence of the commendable independence of leftists, but it has the unfortunate consequence of being tactically untenable. The right uniform under the banner of their dictator, the left squabbles about trivialities.
It’s not that I wish it to be so; I would vastly prefer the left to have a functional plan to secure power. But it is the reality; I see neither such a plan, nor the necessary organization to implement such a plan. That’s why we vote lesser evil. We strive for the stationary phase of the ratchet to avoid the freewheeling phase, because we don’t yet have the organized strength to break the pawl from its housing.
Once we have that organized strength, and not sooner, we can break the pawl. Sooner, and the ratchet spins freely to the right.
And how’s that working out for you?
A bunch of shortsighted cosplayers with no sense of praxis or political literacy protested the do-nothing Dems and we got the freewheeling fascism MAGAs. How’s that working out for you? How’s the glorious revolution coming?
So it’s not working then?
But I assume you’re going to keep doing it anyway. All while continuing to accuse other people of being short sited with no sense of praxis.
Flagrant hypocrisy! This was your plan, not mine. How’s it working? Did a third party win? Did we end the genocide in Gaza yet? Don’t equate your plan’s failure with our recognition that it failed. You gambled, and this is what we get. Own it, maybe learn something about implementation.
Yup, looks like I was correct; you are going to keep doing it anyway, while desperately projecting your own failure onto others.
Keep up the “I’m rubber you’re glue” act buddy, it’s age appropriate. I wanted Trump to lose, you wanted Harris to lose. You got your wish, this is on you. Or keep blaming everyone else who tried to warn you that it was a stupid idea, how dare they point out the glaring flaws in your strategy. Let’s see if that makes a leftist plan materialize.
You didn’t have a choice, the economic system in the US concentrates power in the hand of people with money and they are fascists. If it wasn’t 2024 it would be 2028 after 4 years of congressional stalling. The path the US is on is predetermined, they don’t have to fix every election to the vote, they fix a percentage of them over the course of decades to push the policy to the right.
You’re not wrong. But if I had cancer, and a doctor gave me a way to delay the inevitable, I would take it. Maybe it can’t be fixed, maybe it’s totally fubar. But I don’t have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.
But I don’t have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.
Unless those people are Palestinian, then fuck 'em.
I get why you are pissed off, and have every right to be. How both parties of the American government have treated the Palestinian genocide is beyond reprehensible, immoral, inhumane, and frankly disgusting. And that is only a small slice of the harm caused by the US across the globe. All of which I condemn wholeheartedly.
But Trump is actively making it harder for anyone to help slow, stop, or otherwise prevent additional unnecessary death and suffering. So while yes, the genocide would have continued under the Dems, there may yet have been innocent lives that could have been saved that will now be lost. When faced with saving 1 out of a 100, or 0, I believe that 1 life is worth saving. I even have the audacity to hope we could have saved more than just 1 out of 100.
I don’t intend to give up on anyone, but I also have to accept that my power is limited. So doing what I can to prevent the genocide from accelerating, in the hopes that it gives even one more child a chance to escape, is worth it to me. Maybe it isn’t the best strategy, but it is the best I could do with my time and ability to affect change to the best of my knowledge. I certainly would have preferred if the US electorate had united to solve these problems long ago, and we could have used our collective force for unambiguous good, but when even my parents won’t listen to me on the changes I think the country needs to make, steering the entire country in the right direction is beyond me at this point. Despite that fact, I still can’t just bury my head in the sand and say “sorry Palestinian child, I could have done everything in my power, kicking and screaming, to give you a snowballs chance in hell. But instead I felt it was more important to give up to the feelings of despair”.
I get that a lot of folks, yourself included I assume(?), believe that abstaining from voting or voting 3rd party would send a strong message that we will not be complicit in the countries support of a genocidal regime. And I can see why that would be your strategy, maybe in 100+ years that kind of strategy would actually amount to more saved lives, I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that in the short term, our collective inability to keep Trump out of office has made many things worse for many people, minority groups most of all, and has made sure that the Palestinian genocide has only accelerated with the enthusiastic support of the US government under the Trump administration.
But with all that said, I hope that you haven’t given up either, and are with me in doing the best you can to help anyone you can to the best of your abilities.
and has made sure that the Palestinian genocide has only accelerated with the enthusiastic support of the US government under the Trump administration.
No, he hasn’t. The genocide was every bit as “accelerated” and the supporting of the US government every bit as enthusiastic under the Democrats, and you only think otherwise because liberals were engaging in mass genocide denial and apologia when it was their team doing it. In this sense, Trump has been better for Palestine, because at least now liberals are actually acknowledging what’s happening.
This also torpedoes the “lesser evil” argument for me, because how can I trust people to vote lesser evil when they won’t be honest with themselves about the evil the democrats were doing?
you only think otherwise because liberals were engaging in mass genocide denial and apologia when it was their team doing it.
Well, no. Actually I think it is accelerated because the Dems engaged in performative humanitarian efforts, which while largely ineffective still presented a minor barrier to the complete genocide. Trump on the other hand has called for Israel to “finish the problem”, and said that the Gaza strip just needs to be “cleaned out”. Beyond that Trump has said things to the effect of “US will own the Gaza Strip”, and is pushing for the displacement all remaining Palestinians, which is by definition escalating the situation to a declared ethnic cleansing, which Trump has attempted to mitigate by saying is only “a small number of people relative to things that have taken place over the decades and centuries.”. His administration has even been directly consulted regarding airstrikes and said that “All hell will break loose” on the enemies of Israel and the United States
And given all of that, it is fairly clear that he is throwing the full weight of the US government behind the genocide, without even the faintest facade of decency or “humanitarian efforts”. So while it’s obvious that the Dems were still allowing the genocide to move forward, it was being ever so slightly hampered by their desire to “appear humane”. Trump has removed those final barriers and now it is accelerating.
And you don’t have to take my opinion for it, you can take it from the warmongers mouth. Israel’s far-right former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who quit Netanyahu’s war cabinet earlier this year to protest the Gaza ceasefire deal, confirmed the synergy between Trump’s thinking and extreme conservatives in Israel, saying on Xitter “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship” in response to Trump’s proposed plans for Gaza.
Beyond that, in the United States, Trump has attempted to silence dissent against the genocide. From attempting to strong arm colleges into forcibly stopping protests on campus, to deporting any foreign nationals who speak out, to instructing the Justice department to “aggressively prosecute pro-Palestinian activists”.
Which kinda torpedoes the claim that “Trump has been better for Palestine”, especially on the ground of “now liberals are actually acknowledging what’s happening.” I don’t really see how a group of people who have no political power, and are actively being silenced from using their freedom of speech and assembly, could be an improvement at all. Doubly so when the Trump administration isn’t even asking Israel to pretend to not be committing a genocide, but rather encouraging it.
Which kind of puts us at an impasse. Because the logic of your claim that “Trump is actually better for Gaza” sounds… insane to me. And even if your logic was correct, I don’t see the value in promoting Trump now, given that he is still perpetrating and encouraging genocide and needs to be stopped just as urgently.
But given your world views, I think you kind of need your rational to be true just to protect your sense of self. Because if it isn’t, then you would have to reconcile the fact that your efforts may have played a part in making things worse for the LGBTQ+ community, women, minorities, the world economy, the education system in the US, privacy laws, and the few Palestinians in Gaza that otherwise could have been saved (if only so the Dems could save face), to name just a few.
Here is the kicker however, despite your rather colorful accusations towards my character, I don’t think you are out to intentionally cause harm. We are both limited in our abilities to affect change, and (I hope) are doing the best we can with the knowledge we have to make the world a better place.
So maybe instead of assuming that “lesser evil voters” are “untrustworthy” and seeing them as your enemies, recognize that many of them share the same goal as you. Recognize that we need to work collectively towards these goals. And if you think there is a better way, speak up! I’d be glad to listen, especially if you have a good plan moving forward instead of trying to rehash decisions long since cast. But don’t think listening is somehow admitting defeat either. As far as I’m concerned, we are not enemies and we are not competing to prove who is “more responsible for the world’s problems”. We are all going to need to work together if we are serious about making this world a better place for everyone.
e: yeah i flipflop
I empathize a bit, but it’s not like democrats haven’t been getting more leftward either.The truth is though that ultimately, politicians are gonna be malleable to those who are going to vote, both because of the very simple “if I focus here, I will be more likely to get the most votes while providing due change”, but also because the idea of democracy is based in the trust that publics will emerge to voice their concerns to the politicians.Most politicians are just not online enough to gather the discourse that we would be experiencing, and also there’s the whole issue of not knowing how much of it is foreign interference in a trench-suit pretending to be the voices of the locals. That’s why direct calls to voicing these concerns to local politicians, and being willing to hear them out as much as they hear you out matters a lot. Some do forget over the years, but a lot join politics because they genuinely want to make life better.Democrats spent their entire life understanding what FPTP is and their entire political understanding hangs on explaining it to other people any time Democrats get criticized.
As said by a wise man, a silent majority does not exist in policy.
Republicans aren’t 100% gun ho about trumps recent (and easily foreseen) fuck ups.
If we replace First-past-the-post voting, we could easily see the republican party get replaced with a more reasonable conservative party like the democrats.
Plus, you know, screaming at people unrepresented in government to vote for your preferred political party isn’t actually democracy.
If Alaska can do it, so can your state!
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
Here is the education that you need to take over the Democratic Party:
David Hogg, the new Vice Chair of the DNC, has allocated $20M to primary out the old appeasers, and replace them with youthful progressives to create a true opposition party.
Democratic primaries only see ~20% turnout in congressional elections. 30/50 states have partisan primaries, meaning you must be registered as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
Rather than progressives and leftists fracturing over third-parties, we need to all block vote progressives into the Democratic Party through primaries and replace the deadwood centrists that have been content with the status quo.
Check your state’s primary type here: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
I am from the Bronx. I was a registered democrat my entire life. Somehow when my wife and I went to vote in 2016, after making sure we were registered, we were turned away from the polls because “we weren’t registered”
2 years later I started receiving the letters and was suddenly registered again.
The reason Bernie lost in 2016 is your fucking party threw us off the rolls because of who we are and where we lived. Your fucking party stole that election. You are full of shit and it is you that is a fascist enabler by making an excuse for corruption.
It’s not my party. I’ve been left of the Democrats since the 90s. It’s the party that more closely aligns with my values between the only two that can win a US Presidential Election.
I believe you, and I’m sure you’re not the only one with that problem. I didn’t say it was the reason Bernie lost, because I’m fully aware of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Hillary’s collusion, but it was a contributing factor.
I volunteered to direct foot traffic for the general election, and chatted up several other volunteers about the disappointing results of the primary. They told me that they couldn’t believe how many registered independents and no party affiliation voters they had to turn away. Apparently partisan primary requirements aren’t common knowledge, so I’m sharing this information to prevent other people from having the same experience.
It’s not my party
It’s enough your party that you’re willing to do genocide denial for them
What you described is a big issue. I feel it shows just how much there needs to be a push for change nationally and within each of the states to lobby the Democratic Party for change. Some states have open primaries, some have closed, and others have semi-open primaries. It makes no sense for states to not just be semi-open or fully open for primaries, as closed primaries just further alienates the party from potential voters.
As someone that voted Bernie in 2016, we didn’t have the votes in 2016 for Bernie to make it through the primary. The country itself was not as progressive in 2016 as it is now imo, especially so for the Democratic base.
For Bernie to have even had a chance to win the primary, the election format would have needed to not be First Past the Post. He was a victim of vote splitting found in First Past the Post and then establishment Dems allocated their voters votes to go towards Hillary. I don’t think it was fair what happened to Bernie especially with the DNC, but I realize now it was a flaw of the system itself that makes it extremely difficult for a progressive to win a Democratic presidential primary. I think it makes zero sense why people can’t pick their favorite candidate(s) first and then pick backup ‘safe’ candidates for elections. Also there is the issue of some states excluding people not registered with a party from voting in the primary. I feel it is a bad move to prevent these voters at the primary level since non-affiliated voters are usually the ones that ultimately decide the elections and they can give input ahead of time if they would vote for that candidate in the general election.
Having ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting would help prevent a popular candidate like Bernie from losing by default to a ‘safe’ establishment pick.
Edit: Trust me, I would like to be wrong about 2016 and just how progressive country as a whole was at the time. But we’re really backwards in a lot of ways, especially so back then. The bulk of older voters were at most were economically voting for Democrats, not on social or economic policy by and large.
Lol, and this was the establishment Democrat response:
Hilarious that Carville claimed progressives have purity tests in the same breath
Yup. He’s trying to preserve the “schism” between progressives and liberals. That’s how you know it’s the right move. We need to shift back the Overton window.
David Hogg
Be unarmed if you wish, but don’t choose for other people how they defend themselves.
The Democrats will not defend us, the justice system will not defend us. We are on our own.
Sounds a lot like the “both sides are the same” argument with more steps. If people voted left wing then the politicians would go left wing.
