Now the question is which is easier, convincing millions of people to vote for “anyone not a republican” or convincing a candidate to be more than “not republican”
Same here, most primary candidate drop out before I even get my mail in ballot. Also there hasnt been a fair primary in 12 years so like so for over a decade party direction has been at the mercy of quid pro quo backroom deals, or straight up just appointing a candidate. Why would the next one suddenly be a fair representation of the will of voters?
Yeah, it appears that Americans aren't getting the education they need regarding the horrors of fascism. Apparently the largest war in history happening less than a century ago due to fascism isn't enough. A war that was very well documented, including photographic and video evidence.
No the real question is: which is easier, bitching online or running for office. I wish 1 in a million people who whinge about lack of candidates would actually go run for something. I’ll vote for you.
It depends. What it means to be “more than “not Republican”” is different for different people. Some will never be satisfied, and others are just plain wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to drive down Democratic turnout so the fascists can hold power.
While yes, those groups certainly exist, the majority of people just truly need help from someone who actually cares to help them, and not someone who says they do, but abandons the idea when it turns out to be difficult to supply that help because it never meant that much to them in the first place, if it was ever anything more than talk to begin with.
Pointing out the tiny problematic groups without even mentioning the much larger legitimate group reminds me of people who complain about welfare because of the tiny group of people that exploit it, completely ignoring the huge amount of people that just need help.
Every time the welfare thing comes up I respond, so what? Who fucking cares if some tiny minority of people abuse the system if it means the people who really need it have easier access, or access at all? No one abusing welfare is so rich you would argue they don't need help anyway, unless there's some sort of corruption going on. Big companies take way more in handouts from the government than people on welfare. Why can't the big powerful successful corporations pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
If you are form the US, you are having your primaries by now.
Those are the ones where good people appear and need your vote to stay on the race. Go participate there, instead of complaining about the main election.
Just checked ballotpedia and found out that my rep has competition this year. Looked the guy up (Kyle Gauck) and he some ok stuff on his campaign page including that he won’t be taking cash from aipac and expanding healthcare access.
The people who support the "both sides bad" argument and the "protest non-voters" are children who still need their parents to order their tendies for them at Chili's.
Get involved.
Understand the actual candidates.
Vote in the primaries.
The general election should be the last step in executing your civic duties and by that time you should be voting for your team.
Get enough people on your side to un-rig them then.
Bernie should have been the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee against the most easily beatable GOP nominee in recent history, but at the time I was a smug centrist and registered independent and could not vote in the primaries in my state.
I also voted third party in the 2016 general election because there was no way I was going to vote for Trump or Hillary. So 2016 was my fault. I did this.
Exactly. I personally believe the election is going to be stolen, but nobody should fucking do the job FOR them. Voting MIGHT work, and you can still prepare for ridiculous, shortsighted guerilla fantasies after taking a day to go TRY the easy solution.
LOL. Yup. That's the crux of the terror that knocks people out of their considerate, critical, creative forebrain, and pushes them into their reactive social-dominating survival-focused fearful limbic reflex where they're easier to control.
This time, America... stop falling for it. :) We can still mend this.
Fascism only wins if you just give up and let it.
And so don't fall for the false dichotomies. ;D
More than voting may be required. And that does not mean badgering your fellow Americans into deeper divisive groupthink. :)
They'll try to shove you off the platform with constant negativity and trying to act like Trump is just a continuation of all the same. If you didn't care before, why do you care now?
I remember 2004, a friend had come back to our home town for new years, and in our fave local pub, he regaled us with stories of what it was like working with Trump. He told us about what a joke of a played narcissist he is, being primed by his psychopathic handlers for a puppet presidency. ... It seemed absurd, implausible even, for about a decade.
I heard recently they were planning on having Charlie Kirk become president in the distant future too... until he grew sense and conscience. Imagine if each of their puppets attain consciousness and conscientiousness... and they have no puppets left to deceive us with... :D
Imagine if USA had democracy. Cleared up all the election rigging, the fixed proprietary voting machines, the lobbying, the gerrymandering, the electoral college, the voter suppression, the bought corporate media, etc, etc, etc. Imagine if the people in USA got to vote forwhat they want, not merely under duress to vote againstwho they don't want.
So for fucks sake pick the one that's slower at it so you have more time to do something about it. It's not like voting locks you out of any other actions.
It's no use asking these people to do any kind of direct action. They think abstaining once every four years will bring an end to capitalism. They'll never attend a protest or vote in a primary, much less pick up a gun for the revolution.
Well, there's this thing called voting literacy, and the thing is, if your voting literacy is poor, you can say things you don't intend to say. So yes, you did say "I don't care, I have absolutely no preference". And it's your responsibility to learn enough mathematics to be able to say what you mean. I'm not gonna treat you like a baby and find the intended meaning in what you say, you have to grow up and say what you mean.
So implausible, it seems you're just trolling. Or maybe have crossed wires, replying to the wrong thing? ... Or maybe have some psyop programs running that you truly believe what you say, with your perception perverted by some kind of groupthink and the false dichotomy fallacies the programming produces? Or maybe narcissistic deflecting and blame shifting and trying to save face rather than entertain an idea and concede the logic and learn from it? Or... maybe you're on to something sound that you've just yet to effectively convey? But then, even if that's so, we're back to projecting, with the peculiarly expressed accusation of failing to communicate effectively (~ with mathematics?). And the condescending gaslighting hypocrisy doesn't help your case much either.
If you can quote the relevant parts, I'm happy to hear out your explanation that refutes my claim I did not say that. Especially if you can do it without the inflamed ego toxicity. LOL.
I think voting Democrat would have prevented kids being blown up in Iran, and it would have prevented ICE from having as many employees throwing immigrants in concentration camps, and I think it would have prevented the genocide of trans people that's going to start next year. And don't call Me an idiot, please.
Whatever you think needs to be done; absolutely anything ranging from peaceful protest to violent uprising. What exactly are you arguing, that it's best to sit back and take it? That it's better to put you face in the mouth of the leopard eating you rather than your arm so that at least you have a chance of fighting back? Even if one is an accelerationist (a profoundly naive position in my opinion, but that's another discussion) willfully not voting is the intellectually cowardly option, justifying inaction rather than sticking to your ideals and actively voting for the option you believe will accelerate the most. The point is that voting is not a mutually exclusive action to take like so many people on Lemmy seem to act like it is.
Its not about not voting. For a start, there's dozens of things to vote on than just one. Its about being shamed into voting for a bad option and not giving into that pressure tactic, and changing the narrative to making better choices
The ones who are going to do more are already doing more, and both-sidesing the ones who aren't is just going to make them do even less. Just let them help with slowing the descent down a bit, that's the most they're going to do anyway. It buys time for the ones who are doing something to do something.
I hate this take, because it ignores the reality that this isn't Europe and that you can't even get sick in this country without health insurance with risking homelessness, let alone any massive coordinated action.
Like around here they're always posting pictures of protests and you look at the people at the protests and it's all retirees and college kids. Why? Because everyone else is at fucking work because if they're not at work they miss a mortgage/rent payment and end up living in their car. The majority of US states have at will employment laws meaning they can and will fire you with no notice or even need to provide justification beyond the performative "this termination not due to you being a member of a legally protected class".
Wage slaves are still slaves, and telling people today that their inaction means they're complicit is no different then going back in time 200 years and telling the slaves on the plantations that they're just as responsible for their bondage as the people that put them in chains. Fuck that nonsense.
I've long been wary of anyone peddling an "only way". Yet to find a claim of "only way" that's not fallacious. Quite scary in this parroted psyop. "Be very afraid! Stay in your reactionary social-dominance totalitarian-psyche groupthink mass formation!" XD Gonna a be a beautiful beautiful thing, when people stop falling for it.
Y'know there are more than two sides right? And that they're not even sides? ... Beautiful beautiful thing when people snap out of the "lies so big that not even their inverse are true".
"Keep doing the same thing over and over again, and each time, expect a different outcome. It is the smart intelligent sane thing to do." -- Einstein, probably
I'm just sad that more than zero people have upvoted that idiocy. Guess I'll just take solace in the fact that more than twice as many people have downvoted it.
I mean, both sides DO suck. But the decision being made boils down to which side you think has the best chance of leading to an eventual outcome that doesn't suck. I'm not voting for a party I like, because frankly that doesn't exist as a viable option, but I'm not going to not vote just because neither side is better than a 3/10. I'd rather the 3/10 than the 1/10.
I think there's real value in being honest about your feelings. The people who represent us need to know we think they suck. The people around us need to feel like others have the same struggles we do. The space for nuance does exist.
The bigger problem is people who think withholding their vote is a form of direct action, and means they don't have to go out and protest against the oligarchs.
Your frequent reminder from the local queer, leftist furry that if "voting didn't work," Republicans and billionaires wouldn't spend billions of dollars on voter suppression and propaganda telling you that your vote doesn't matter.
Do your part, waste billionaire money by voting anyway, by any means necessary~
One should vote, it simply shouldn't be the end of it.
If you voted Democrat and thought you made your part, wrong. You barely made one shift towards one slightly less terrible group. This is not victory. A part of what you should do, yes. All you should do - not.
The psyop'd to defeatism think the lesser of two evils is the best they can do. Remind them, it's not. It's still evil.
Awareness of the totalitarian tacking tip-toe con may help dispel the groupthink affirmation of succumbing to that. One "side" loudly promises one personal freedom cared about while quietly taking two economic freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, then the other "side" loudly restores one economic freedom their "side"'s herd care about while quietly taking two personal freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, back and forth, stripping you of freedom, keeping you blinded in fear of what the other is going to take from you, divided and conquered. ... But try explaining that in a tweet/tictok sized explanation to those who've had their attention spans crippled.
Some say it's futile. It's not. Defy that dire prognosis.
Republicans also really love when you vote third party.
(Or Democrat party too, depending on where the votes are being taken from)
Until enough people do, and sufficient votes are taken from the purple party, that they lose.
... But then, may also need to mend all the lobbying, gerymandering, voter suppression, rigged voting machines, electoral college, etc first/simultaneously.
Imagine if the people in USA got a system that helped them vote forwhat they want, not againstwho they don't want. Imagine... :)
Until enough people do, and sufficient votes are taken from the purple party, that they lose.
Nope, you utterly miss the point. First past the post means that Republicans win when the anti-fascist vote is split.
If you don't like the current candidates of the Democrat party, then go vote in the Democrat primary.
Imagine if the people in USA got a system that helped them vote for what they want, not against who they don’t want. Imagine… :)
There is this little thing called "objective reality". First past the post sucks, but it is objective reality. You should try taking it into account, some time.
I remember when Gore lost Florida, and therefore the country, because less than one tenth of one percent of voters thought a protest vote for Nader was a good idea. In primaries and in smaller elections, sure, give third party votes a try. But the bigger the election, the more it converges on a choice between the two major parties, and one of them is worse than the other.
The Republicans would never have been able to steal it, if third party votes had not made it close.
If everybody who voted Nader had voted for Gore instead, there would have been no wiggle room for the Supreme Court to butt in. And every Nader voter who was not an idiot know from the polls that Nader would not win.
With Gore instead of Bush, there would have been no Iraq War, for one thing. And the US would have taken climate change seriously.
Well rest assured, I advocate voting, and warn against doing a "no-vote" as that's equivalent to a vote for "any tyrant will do".
And I doubt I consume much "right wing media" at all. ... Not sure I used the term as an adjective either... and so that whole line kinda threw me. Multiple ways invalid and unsound.
That's true, but I think neutral voters need to be told to do direct action a lot more than left voters. Everyone I know who does direct action voted Democrat. But I know lots of people who didn't vote and don't do direct action.
Until there are enough grassroots progressive candidates to take over the democratic party the same way the tea party movement took over the republican party, and finally some progressive initiatives can pass into law, such as eliminating FPTP.
Please don't take the "just vote democrats into office" answer to mean "sit tight and do nothing but vote" when voting is really the bare minimum activism you should be doing to preserve a democratic system.
Does it matter? Most voters have no attention span. They aren't revolutionaries. They aren't going to take to the streets no matter how bad things get. Stop trying to change people who aren't going to change when you lack the influence to change them in the first place, and focus on trying to leverage what you've got as productively as you can.
Build your cadres, make the change you can, and make lemonade from the lemons you've got.
And by "controlling" we mean "supermajority" thanks to the veto and filibuster.
And will things magically be better? Well, better, yes, good, no. First, it takes a lot of time to undo the harm fascists have done. And second, our oligarchs would still be in control, pushing for their needs above ours.
So we need to....... solve....... our oligarch problem AND win a supermajority AND then We the People need to push that Overton window back to the left, forcing our politicians to serve our needs.
.......which is why I say we're pretty fucked. But that's what needs to happen, anyway.
Or... any of many other options, than just more corruptible agents and assets.
I often imagine what it may be like with, not just adjustments to re-presentative democracy (like ranked choice voting, proportionate representation, etc), but even beyond direct democracy, even beyond liquid democracy, all the way to (what I call) config-democracy...
"Config-Democracy", where we each are free to input our say as elaborate (or as terse) as we want, updated when we want, as direct or deferring as we want. Where our "vote" is like a config file, not merely a single mark on a corrupted multiple choice. ... unless you want to vote like that still in config-democracy. You're free to. But I imagine everybody wants more say than that.
All kinds of facilitators can be developed for such. Heck, we even already have the likes of the political compass test, and the world's shortest political quiz, that for decades have already offered us better means to present our political philosophies. ... Funny how the crooks have not sought to implement that eh? Given how the spray of popular results show they'd be voted out of office the first day any such were implemented. ... Imagine that, huh? Real democracy, real organisation by the people, for the people.
Right. So the alternative to those is more Marco Rubios, Mike Johnsons, MTG, etc etc etc etc. All of whom are much worse.
We need better people running for office that get financial support from the people, but when it comes down to the general election, whatever addhats made it that far, the Democrat is going to be BY FAR the better pick 99.9% of the time. And if the Republican is truly better, sure, vote for them, but remember that at the party level, Republicans are the ones bringing us fascism.
The point - the entire fucking point - is people saying "Don't vote for the Fetterman/Manchin/etc in the general election" help the fascists win. Of course it's shitty options, but you want to pick the LESS. FUCKING. SHITTY. OPTIONS.
@resipsaloquitur@protist You all slobbered after Fetterman and Sinema and accused anyone who didn't similarly fall in love with them of being bootlicking establishment shitlibs.
It's really been something to watch your character arc from abusive "progressive" revolutionary vanguards to abusive "progressive" historical revisionist gaslighters over the past several years.
@RockBottom@FoxtrotDeltaTango To see braised chicken vs. dog shit on the menu and sit there, fold your arms petulantly, and demand a third option that doesn't exist while the dog shit is on a default timer to be rammed down everyone's throat if the chicken doesn't get enough votes is the much more immediate problem that you folks are somehow struggling with every single election.
Nobody is saying not to shit talking them, people are saying that nuance is needed. We need to push for better representatives. BUT. When the general election happens, we need to vote Democrat because REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING FASCISTS. Because while both sides suck, both sides do not suck equally. So shit talk your Democrats, as long as you shit talk your Republicans even more. Or do they get a pass because you write them off as evil?
Does your shit talking drive people away from voting for Democrats when the vote is Dem vs Repub? If so, you support fascism. Plain and simple.
Put your energy into change where it matters: Primaries, other offices, pushing society back to the left away from fascism. Make sure you're not helping the fascists win.
The OP meme is not calling for nuance, it's saying that if you're shittalking democrats you're helping Republicans win.
My democrat state rep sucks and is in practice a thinly-veiled Republican coasting on incumbency and people not investigating beyond the 'D'
My federal rep (D) has been actively complicit in perpetuating the genocide in Palestine and allowing Trump to walk all over Venezuela. I actually put in a lot of effort with antiwar groups to try to sway them in the past. What I learned is that when it comes to war and empire if they want to climb the ranks in DC they're going to tow the line.
Open Republicans are obviously worse, but theyre also a non factor in my state, they just run for 'nonpartisan' seats or pose as democrats. This is also why i chaff at vote-bluers, they will act like challenging an incumbent 'democrat' who sucks is somehow helping Republicans
If they weren't prolific warmongers and instead did things that were actually popular at home then they would probably be seen as more trustworthy and not lost to Trump repeatedly, idk how more to spell it out for you
Maybe, but then they would've been buried by AIPAC money, as we've repeatedly seen. They've done plenty of positive things at home, or at least tried to, but all that gets ignored. Sure, I'd love to see a positive change, but we have to acknowledge the reality of the political landscape, and opposing Israel is political suicide with current campaign finance influences.
They didn't oppose Israel at all and they ate complete shit anyways.
they may have 'tried' to do positive things at home, but they also spent billions arming a genocide which triggered a blockade of the red sea and disrupted supply chains. Failing to negotiate a settlement with russia didn't do energy markets any favors, the blowback from sanctions and energy prices absolutely contributed to inflation that people felt, and then blamed on democrats. 'brandonflation'
Like you can make excuses about AIPAC or whatever, but the people who felt the consequences of these wars voted accordingly. It sucks that there was no left candidate to vote for and that resulted in republicans winning. However that's also the democrats fault for not running a real primary and ignoring all the people voting uncommitted.
There were plenty of warnings, they were just ignored.
Sure, but Democratic voters are not democratic leadership. If you have a problem with Democratic leadership, tell it to them. Voters don't benefit from Democrats losing to Republicans.
Beyond the more general point, a concrete example - if the Biden admin didn't supply unlimited bombs to Israel, they would not have lost to Trump. There's enough numbers to support this claim.
There haven't been fair primaries in three presidential cycles. The DNC is a business and the primaries are entirely up to them and they have sucessfully argued in courts they have no duty to not medel in them any way they see fit. If primary turnout is low, the DNC owns a big share of why too.
Dear Americans, voting for Democrats will get you nowhere, too. I know this is hard, but you will have to start a revolution or vote for a third party in an unprecedented coordinated effort.
You're not wrong, but the time to fix that is at the primary and not the general.
And yes, I'm aware the DNC has their thumb on the scale when it comes to the Democratic primary. So that means vote in your local elections too, so that there are actually progressive candidates to choose from instead of corporate-owned do-nothings.
Sure, people deserve better options. But the fucking point is that WHEN those options do NOT exist, voting for the WORSE option is fucking STUPID and supports fascism. When anyone convinces someone who wouldn't vote for the less bad option not to vote, FASCISM WINS.
When people keep voting for the LESS BAD option when those better options do NOT exist, better options WON'T appear as voting LESS BAD removes the INCENTIVE for it. Therefore voting for the LESS BAD option ensures the options will always remain FASCISM and something slightly LESS BAD - no better options. If one wants better options, keep voting LESS BAD is fucking STUPID.
Your logic only applies to local/state elections. It does not apply to presidential elections.
If you vote 3rd party in a presidential election, you're a fool acknowleging you're incapable of doing basic math and fine with the worst case scenario.
Explain how does it not work? People not voting for the shitty D candidate, causing them to lose to R doesn't create an incentive for D to change course? Do I need to presrnt to you the last two years of intense D soul searching after Kamala lost?
fine with the worst case scenario.
Obvioisly that's part of the calculus. Most who question the lesser evil approach understand this. However you might not understand that no matter how hard you call people fools, that doesn't change the picture for people who've given up on voting for Turd Sandwich. Might even be achieving the opposite. A lot of people are done with the Turd Sandwich status quo and are either staying home or voting Giant Douche. Sounds like you have to give them something better to vote for if you don't want more Giant Douche.
I don't know, fucking genius, you tell me who fucking set ICE out murdering US citizens and throwing them into fucking camps? Are you a fucking fascist and trying to play around here and confuse people, or are you willfully this fucking goddamn fucking stupid? Either way, fascists certainly adore your contribution to the conversation.
Are you a fucking fascist and trying to play around here and confuse people, or are you willfully this fucking goddamn fucking stupid? Either way, fascists certainly adore your contribution to the conversation.
lol, good on yer trying to throw it back like that, but you have to put a unique spin on it or something. I lost my temper at you, but I stand by the spirit of it, even though I wish I'd been able to keep my temper better.
ICE, started in 2003... remember when the Democrat party was in power, both times, all three terms since then, when they got rid of ICE and... ohhhh wait.
When the general election hits, you will have two options (yea three or more). You can vote for the Republican, fascist candidate. Or you can vote for the Democratic candidate.
Anything other than - at that point - voting for the Dem is throwing your support behind fascists.
That is simple fact.
And that includes third parties.
Anything you want to try and do to change the system - because it fucking needs it - should be done before/outside of that process.
I guess people would have to elect at least one more fascist gov't then. Cause people don't give a shit what the process is and won't vote for turd sandwich in sufficient numbers no matter how much you insist they do. And I'm not doing that. I'm merely trying to present the view of the person who doesn't buy this shit, didn't vote Kamala and won't vote Newsom no matter how hard you scold them.
They DO have the right to not vote, but they also DO have a civic duty to cast their votes. Voters are the ones who decide elections, and if the results are bad, it is up to voters to do better next time. I think this is less blaming, and more just people trying to hold the electorate accountable for their choices.
Given the voter suppression & gerrymandering, the lobbying & corporate media consolidation, the electoral college & candidate selection process, the rigged proprietary voting machines & counting frauds, etc. etc. etc... [atop the First-Past-The-Post terror scam that coerces people to vote against who they most don't want between the perceived most likely to win].
More to mend than just getting people to "vote correctly".
If votes didn't matter, then none of the efforts you mentioned to suppress and manipulate the voters would be necessary. Yet they're happening anyway because people do ultimately hold the power, and that terrifies the rich and powerful who seek to control it.
People deserve to vote for someone they actually support, not the least terrible option.
Not if you live in reality.
Stop blaming the voters.
I'll keep blaming voters who keep voting 3rd party in presidential elections thinking a third party can win when the last most popular 3rd party candidate in the 2024 election only got 0.5% of the total votes cast.
I'll keep blaming voters that can't do simple math and make the most intelligent decision based on the reality they live in.
One of Propagandas goals is to get you to give up. Uncovering truths and doing research is hard according to Josh Johnson, if it was easy more of us would do it instead of watching memes. Propaganda is designed to flood you with so much crap that you question everything and then give up looking for the truth because its hard. Ai has not helped this.
Americans are truly a lost cause if they still think voting will get them out of this.
You need to organize yesterday and actively resist in a militant way paving the way for real democratic institutions by and for the people. Yet you still fail to see that the whole system is designed to keep you ignorant, enjoying the bread and circuses until you get to make a vote that changes absolutely nothing every 4 years and then go home satisfied that you practiced your democratic rights under capitalism. And you also fail to realize the severity of the situation you're in, any other country would be rioting right now but you're out there filming shit with the hope that some magic entity will step in and save you, or complaining about it on the internet.
Wake the fuck up Americans, for the sake of the rest of the world and yourselves as well.
No, the point is to agitate you against an establishment that wants to prevent you from having a better choice.
Liberals who are passionately defending lesser evil electoralism before primaries have even started are either idiots in denial or moderates who don't want to talk about why their party is nearly as unpopular as Trump.
As a lifelong Independent, this post can F all the way off.
Yes, this is my civil, indoor voice.
Don't you MFing tell me not to have opinions and free will, and that I should change who I am so I don't make a bunch of establishment Dems that genuinely don't care if I'm alive or dead have bad feels. Maybe the Dems should Fing field people that don't gobble billionaire scroat like they invented it.
And Democrats can maybe, just once in a while, not happily fundraise and capitulate and do the policy strategy version of pump and dump schemes around the central point of "hey, we're not the Nazis, we're the mildly annoying guys that whimper when Nazis do Nazi shit, but do eventually give them everything they want. So it's Nazi shit FAST or Nazi shit less fast with some of us around :D"
"Both sides suck" posts should encourage anyone with guts to see how much of the country wants a god damned set of independent candidates or even, (shudder) another MFing option between Shibag A and XXXL Shitbag B. People need to shed the chains of both parties and run at the local level. Give both sides a fucking scare.
If you have a problem with the truth, that's a you problem. You can disagree with a course of action, but if truthful criticism of Dear Leader makes someone The Enemy to you, you're much closer to fascists than you'd like to admit.
I like how people here are trying to have a discussion of whether or not voting third party, or voting at all, is necessary when there are currently concerns (and investigations) of Trump and the Epstein class rigging this last election in the first place. I should also remind everyone that there were similar concerns when Bush first got elected back in 2000. How sure are we that we can rely on voting if that is indeed true?
Furthermore-- I voted for Harris, but I am fucking sick and tired of voting for Democrats. Fucking sick and tired! They are fucking useless. I voted Democrat these last four presidential elections and it is these Democrats and the party as a whole who helped usher in Trump. It has done nothing but cause problems. Biden carved the pathway for both Trump and Netanyahu to carry on the genocide in Palestine and now in Lebanon. He helped the Israeli government go on this psychotic imperialistic crusade against others like Iran and very soon Cuba. And Greenland. Harris vowed that she would continuing working with the Israeli government if she was elected, and she vowed to have the ICE budget expanded also. Both sides ARE fucking bad. Democrats have done jack shit to try to impeach Trump or 25th amendment him so far despite the child sex trafficking through ICE arrests, nor the outright kidnapping and murders of American citizens on the streets and in ICE encampments. Nor for kidnapping leaders of other countries. The list goes on. Just impeachment alone.
Most Democrat congressmen are financed by AIPAC just like the Republicans. Whether anyone is liking or not, the Democrats are 1,000% enabling the Republicans, and even if Harris won this last election, we will be dealing with the potentiality that the Republicans would come back in full force by mid-terms or general elections anyway.
I understand that voting blue no matter who is a way for people to feel as though they are doing something. I still encourage voting. But voting blue no matter who, no matter how bad or how mediocre the candidate is, is clearly not working at all.
The overton window has shifted so far that we're getting warmongering from the democrats.
'Half' of the congressional left are sleeper agents for the right.
The DNC keeps pushing right and refuses to do anything to keep us from sliding into authoritarianism. Appeasing the right, Siding with Israel.
But not voting left is the same as voting right, that IS how the right wins.
And voting left is just giving them a blank check to keep sliding that window further right.
Neither party is going to let a third party in.
Appeasing the left is making them worse.
The rub, people think if they keep not-voting or voting independent, the DNC will give in and start moving stuff left. They won't. They don't truly want to win.
It's like fucking Brewsters millions out here, but "None of the Above" won't fucking help either.
I think, mostly, we can agree that the agenda of the "left" is the lesser of two evils, but the evils are getting so bad that we need desperately to do something to move the window back left a little.
Voting is about the lowest form of political influence (besides doing nothing). If all you do is vote then you're left with candidates determined by others. You can (and should) still vote for the least worst option of those that have a chance of winning, because not voting effectively means you approve of all options. The only thing you can vote against in an election where one of two options will win is one of those options, by voting for the other. Anything else won't matter.
If you want better options to vote for, you need to be politically active besides voting, actively working to establish better options, tell the established parties what candidates and policies you want them to support, support smaller parties that represent your interests better, and that might slowly shift it into a direction more to your liking.
Of course that's much harder that doing nothing at all and proudly telling yourself that that will somehow delegitimize the system - the system doesn't care. Election results are shown only as a proportion of valid votes, anyone else has no influence on the result at all.
“Literally the only way”? They tried violent treason and have refused to swear in duly elected reps that are not of their party. If you think they’ll leave when their term is up just because you voted someone else in… the major players aren’t going anywhere. These aren’t the kind of people that gain power and then let it go. Don’t not vote, but don’t believe that’s how we’re getting out of this mess.
Uh, if 95% of the voters are voting fascism one way or the other, it's a start. I think you wildly underestimate electoral inertia. Don't get me wrong, I wish you were right, but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Unless you've got an actionable plan to sway, like, 70 million people, maybe start with nudging the scales from fascism full-flavor to fascism lite and go from there.
Then vote in the primaries, absolutely do that and encourage everyone you know to do the same. And if a shitlib wins the primary, vote damage reduction.
Did you miss how the liberal Democrats' knives came out after a progressive won the primary?
They ran Andrew "Sex Crimes" Cuomo as a splitter.
So tell me again how voting in the primary is the only permissable way to get progress.
Again, progressive policies are more popular than liberal Democrats. The idea of centrism and incrementalism is just Lucy with the football. There are no centrist voters. It's a lie liberal Democrats tell so they can do stealth fascism.
Because it still worked? I didn't say anything about permissible, I'm talking about successful. You're allowed to do whatever, you just can't be surprised when certain actions are ineffective. You're allowed to build a shrine in your closet and try to voodoo progressives into office, but that's not going to accomplish much.
So tell me again how voting in the primary is the only permissable way to get progress.
Because the most popular 3rd party candidate in the 2024 presidential election only got 0.5% of the total votes cast. And there are ZERO 3rd party members in Congress.
It's basic math.
The only path forward is reforming the Democrat party by primarying the bad actors.
Both progress fascism. And historically both sides made some major strides towards it allowing for today's gov to exist. It's def a joint venture. But we do get to see increasingly more what's happening behind the curtain (that's usually when it's too late tho).
If you guarantee your vote to someone, they will lose any incentive to act for your benefit. It's really that simple. And if genocide is not a bridge too far for you, God help you, because obviously there's no limit to what you'll put up with.
I usually see it as calling out the political capture of the two-party system which has rendered the United States an oligarchy with increasingly dysfunctional democratic functions. Quite often it is a call out of the partisanship that reinforces the rigidity of the two party system and preventing any positive or lasting reform. At the very least those are the valid contexts I know of for bringing up any both-sideism of the two American political parties.
But yes, the Republicans do win when there is less voting.
Try your hardest to create a new party the day after election day. If it fails, vote Democrat and start trying again the next day.
You have no idea how strongly and passionately I wish to see the day that you guys get a proper multi-party system. What you have right now is super fucked up.
That said, please be kind to leftists, and try to primary a candidate people can vote FOR, rather than just voting against Republicans. (America needs more Mamdanis, and "vote blue no matter who" is a reasonable stance but a TERRIBLE slogan.)
Same goes for leftists: Be kinder to and more understanding of liberals. Not everyone has it in them to be a hardline revolutionary.
(And don't forget to vote in the primaries.)
Supporting either is a support of fascism, as the Democrats, being a neoliberalist party, fundamentally enable fascism. This bullshit didn't just spring up overnight, it was the result of generations of political fuckery by the owning class to slowly and methodically consolidate power while keeping the working class pacified with bread and circuses.
Your simple, fallacy logic doesn't fly. Real change doesn't come from a ballot box.
Fascism - a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist political ideology that emerged in early 20th-century Europe, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and subordination of individual interests to the state. It promotes national rebirth, militarism, and often racial superiority.
Can you explain to me how you think the Democrat party is fascist? Because in this definition of fascism, the only one I can stretch to make work is "militarism", but then A LOT of countries would be falling under the fascist label.
Republicans, on the other hand, check all of these boxes.
The Democrat party is flawed and weak. They are not fascist. Learn to use words properly based on their definitions.
The most you can say about democrats is that they passively object to fascist ideology, but they never do more than throw procedural obstructions to fascist momentum and legitimize reactionary grievances by repeatedly affirming xenophobic anxieties about immigrants and minorities.
The reason leftists argue that both parties operate under the same fascist framework is that they both prioritize a failing capitalistic system over radical socialist reform, and so will (either by choice or because trying to preserve failing capitalist systems leaves them without a choice) bend to reactionary populism and abandon socialist populism.
"democrats are better than republicans because they oppose fascism" is really only true if you ignore the common consensus among political theorists that fascism is the end product of deteriorating material conditions and the tendency of capitalist systems toward self-preservation. So long as democrats deny the demand for popular socialist reform, they are nothing more than the moderate wing of the same fascist uni-party. To be truly oppositional to fascism they need to address the contradictions in their own political framework, or else be constantly pulled rightward by the same reactionary forces acting on the right.
A LOT of countries would be falling under the fascist label.
Yes. They are.
Less fascist is better than more fascist, but it's still fascist. Just some different aesthetics to keep the placatium palatable. Still corporatist fascist. Still fascist.
Check out the current voter suppression, and the [oft Democrat [and Republican] aligned [but not 3rd party/green/libertarian/independent aligned nor neutral]] corporate media "crystallising public opinion", and other parallels to the defining historic examples of fascism, in how they suppress opposition to preserve the dictatorial power and subordination of individual interests to the state, and how it promotes national rebirth ("CHANGE" as the perpetual political slogan, anyone?) to carry on with its "militarism" (jingoist hegemony and national supremacist global domination).
... Or keep complicitly hiding what's going on peddling placatium, and just keep repeating "USA Number 1" and "Land of the free" harder along with some "lesser" evil hopium.
1st ammendment is there to assure that freedom.
The freedom to hold dear to the whataboutisms of comfort in pointing at terrifying worse to keep terrifyingly convinced ones own groupthink is the right one, is the same freedom to strive to attain the mark of an educated mind, able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting nor rejecting it.
Supporting and enabling fascism is still fascism.
... Oh but it's less fascism. They said the one true way we're to think is like this and it's nicer than the one true way the other side have. ... Stay divided and conquered, while ever falling for the one true way of a groupthink, and the crooks will take everything from you, while you still are yet to stop falling for it.
That is exactly the arguments a Republican shill would use.
Even if both options are fascist, one of them is clearly less fascist. And unless you make sure a third option exist, not voting on the less fascist option will give you the more fascist option.
Or you are desperately unread in Republican theory. The post we are all commenting on is about you.
Having to rely on the lesser evil is a result of a 2-party system, which is a result in a winner-takes-all system.
If you want to break the system, go right ahead. But until then, your mentality is what caused Republicans to win and the US to slide even faster into fascism. This is the reality. Not whatever utopian view you have of the world.
So congratulations, you played yourself.
Unless you don't live in the US of course, which looks to be more likely every comment you make.
That's the thing. The person you're responding to is trying to draw you into an argument in which you acknowledge Democrats are also fascists. They are not. Not by the very definition of the word.
You don't need to point out that a less fascist party is better than a really fascist party, which is true, because one of the parties in question is not fascist. Period.
That’s the thing. The person you’re responding to is trying to draw you into an argument in which you acknowledge Democrats are also fascists. They are not. Not by the very definition of the word.
The? There are several flying around.
Which definition? e.g.:
Government and corporate power acting as one?
Binding people together in groupthink?
Military industrial complex rule?
"Neo-Liberalism" (the Orwellian euphemistic synonym, being neither new nor liberal... same old fascist)?
Centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, with a policy of belligerent nationalism, racism and jingoism
Oppressive, dictatorial control?
Top-down government / anti-democractic government?
Auth-Right (e.g. as per the political compass)?
Corporatism (the synonym preferred by Musolini)?
Oligarchy (exacerbated with Ed Bernays style "crystallising public opinion" and kakistarchy on its plutarchy/kleptarchy come attercoparchy) / "Big Baron"?
Not the Democrat party, the Republican party?
....
One of these is not like the others. ;)
Until that last one, I was struggling for a definition that didn't have the Democrat party also qualify.
No, Democrats are a center-right neoliberalist party. They are not fascist and I'll never claim that they are. I am trying to get people to read and educate themselves on how certain political philosophies, through the systemic forces which they reinforce and institutionalize (capitalism, electoralism, Imperialism, etc...), enable the political philosophy that is fascism to hold and consolidate power over the population.
Remember when the Democrats opposed the Patriot act? I do…n’t.
It’s honestly exhausting watching people drag out the Patriot Act like it’s some ultimate "gotcha" to prove both sides are the same. Using a massive, fear-driven over-correction from 9/11 as the benchmark for how these parties actually operate is just plain ignorant.
Major attacks like that ALWAYS lead to over-correction because everyone is terrified and trying to look "tough," but if you look at the last twenty five years of what they’ve actually done, that "both sides" argument falls apart the second you look at the record. The Patriot Act is the fucking exception, not the rule.
Since 2001, Democrats have actually passed things that help real people, like the ACA, the Inflation Reduction Act - which was the biggest climate investment we’ve ever seen - and the American Rescue Plan that kept people from drowning during the pandemic. They’ve pushed for student loan forgiveness, the CHIPS Act to actually bring jobs back here, and they tried to expand the Child Tax Credit. These are substantive, life-altering policies. Even when they’re sitting at center-right, they’re still in a completely different universe than the GOP.
Meanwhile, the Republican "to-do" list is basically just tax cuts for the rich and packing the courts with lifetime appointments specifically to gut every bit of progress we’ve made. That’s it. That’s the whole platform.
Deregulation, stripping environmental protections, and killing financial oversight.
When they aren't busy passing tax breaks for billionaires, they are blocking everything else. They’ve blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they blocked Build Back Better, and they’ve killed every single attempt at common sense gun safety or climate action. They don’t want to govern, they just want to dismantle the floor we're standing on.
Claiming the parties are the same because they both folded during a post-9/11 security panic is a lazy way to ignore two decades of completely opposite priorities. One side spends twenty years trying to expand healthcare and civil rights while the other side is obsessed with shrinking the state and blocking anything that doesn't involve a corporate subsidy.
WHILE THE SYSTEM STILL EXISTS, NOT SUPPORTING THE DEMS ENDS UP SUPPORTING FASCISM.
I honestly don't know what to do to get people to grasp this. I don't know if I'm mostly butting my head against young people's ideology. When we're young we're less likely to make any concessions or grasp how imperfect the reality we live in is. My fear is that I'm trying to get this basic concept through to people my age. If that's true, then this country is in deep, deep shit. Because this is not a hard concept to understand, especially if you've made it past that early adulthood no concessions it has to be just and fair phase.
Like, this is the reality you live in. These are your options on a federal scale. One is very clearly fascist, the other is not, despite a bunch of uninformed people in this very thread saying that both sides are fascist. Clearly these people have no idea what fascism is.
Do not underestimate the chemical lobotomies, the "crystallising public opinion" psyops, the irrational groupthinks. Still, speaking out, exposing them to other ways, as futile as it long seems, is necessary for breaking the spell. Much to mend. Beware certainty, especially in ourselves, lest we unwittingly succumb similarly, depriving ourselves nuance, pushed to polarised reductions, peddling metrics to bolster our certainty of our own one true way, denying ourselves access to multiple perspectives, deluding ourselves into naive realism, believing what we believe is reality, and not just a favoured perspective, one of many potential more.
Marxism is in of itself a proven failure. Trying to implement failed ideologies will only ever result in more of the same failure. There are other, more successful ways to bring change with better principles, more accurate framework, and better results historical results.
The young Marx, when there was still freedom in his thinking?
Middle Marx, when freedom was reduced to a wishful "it'll happen, trust the economics, bruh"?
Old Marx, when the "well then we'll make them free" & "some are more equal than others" tankies and totalitarians had completely usurped it, and handed it back to state-capitalists?
Best not take the freedom out. Other political philosophers are available.
"We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality." -- Mikhail Bakunin.
Bruh, I do believe you may have responded to the wrong person. I never mentioned Marx here other than to say I didn’t quote Marxism.
But
This ain’t Marxism bruh.
Is what you wrote. The very thing I responded to. That mentioned Marxism. I was merely expanding on that, showing it's not the one simple thing that many Marxists and many McCarthyians swing around like a homogenous cudgel.
"Well then we'll make them free", the contradiction of the auth-left, that has it face-plant, successfully making a mockery of "the left" in the minds they and their auth-right counterparts have both convinced to believe the only left. Freedom first, or they'll keep playing us across the economics tacking ever more authoritarianwards.
And to those in the Marxist-believer groupthink, and those peddling the notion that "neo-liberal" parties are "the left", there is no libertarian left. Oh no, don't look over there, and don't say things like that, or you're a Republican fascist. LOL. It's a lot more fun when you see through the psyop ploys, and stop falling for it.
No more having terror successfully deployed on the brain for political power usurping. Terrorism, definitively. No more of that. From those who accuse, but really confess. "Look out! Terrorists!" Is terrorist. And that's what the duopoly do. Keep scaring you into the arms of their counterpart puppet. "No such thing as bad advertising", especially when you've cornered the market and are in a system where people are scared into voting againstwho they don't want, rather than forwhat they do want.
Imagine what that's like... being in a system where you get to vote for what you want, not terrorised into voting against who you most don't want. Imagine. Not a system racing to the bottom of kakistarchy, but a system where you have a real say, towards good stuff.
No corrupting centralising single-point-of-failure power-nexus attracting the most ruthless and power-abusing.
Everybody getting their real say, without duress. Free to use their creative, critical, constructive, considerate potential of their forebrains (y'know, the thing oft said most separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom), rather than succumbing to our hind-brain's survival mode, all reactive and tribal, stressing us, making us sick. Imagine that, being healthy and free... Sounds like what'd happen if we didn't have all this fascism and kleptarchy and kakistarchy and attercoparchy. Sounds like real democracy; organised by the people.
Direct democracy, liquid democracy, hybrid democracy, config-democracy, so many ways better...
I know both sides are absolute shit, and I still voted for Harris. And I hate Harris, though not as much as Biden or Trump. I would not have voted for Biden.
I didn't "design" this opinion to manipulate anyone's vote. My opinion has been earned through life experience, including political volunteering and running for office.
Every time I say something like that a self proclaimed intellectual comes around and tells me how he couldn’t vote for Kamala because he is totally not a Russian bot and he had to stop Kamala from starting a war in the Middle East.
There's a lot that goes into the choice of a President, starting way upstream from the actual Presidential vote - after all, there are 340 million of Americans who could be President, so clearly there is a lot of choosing going on outside the actual vote to trim that down, otherwise the Presidential election vote would have a lot more than just 2 real options.
Sadly a lot of Americans seem to have been brainwashed into a sort of learned blindness were they think of the actual election vote as the entirety of the choice, not really pondering on the rest of choosing that must be going on to go from 340 million possibilities to 2.
Posts like this one are elements of the very propaganda used to convince Americans that their only power as citizens is in that one single moment were somebody else already trimmed 340 million down to 2 and a loud spectacle is made of them having the choice of 1 out of those preselected 2.
If one doesn't allow oneself to be swindled into such a reductive view of Democratic choice in America, it becomes pretty obvious that the vote itself does very little of the choosing and that have more of the choice one has to at minimum participate in Primaries, better yet do things like campaigning, even better be part of civil society groups, go on demonstrations and even distribute pamphlets and put up posters denouncing the actions of the worst politicians (such as getting money from AIPAC).
People who genuinely want to improve the way America is run wouldn't relentlessly try to artificial reduce the view that others have of the process down to the smallest and least mathematically significant part of it.
That most people being brainwashed into thinking that selecting between the last 2 is all that matters massively helps those doing the biggest and most obscure part of the choosing to retain said power and not be questioned for it, probably explains why the Propaganda pushing for the hyper-reductive take on the choosing of a President is so relentless and intense.
There are ethical lines some people actually won't cross, e.g. voting for the Ds who make anthropogenic climate change worse and so are causing a mass extinction, sell weapons to people actively committing a genocide, further an economic system that rewards narcissistic sociopaths and punishes ethical people, ...
Go look at the linked graph above again. You may not agree, but understand that there are people who do, and to get these people to vote for the Ds, you need to convince them why voting for omnicidal, genocidal, greedy sociopaths is the right thing to do. The "lesser evil" argument doesn't work on them, because if you look at the linked graph above and compare the distances between the parties, and understand there are ethical lines between the Ds and leftists/socialists/Greens/etc. they won't cross; then it means vastly better arguments need to be put forth. Yes the Rs are psychopaths and openly racist, but compared to the slightly less (compare the distances on the graph) sociopathic Ds, then
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13.
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
If there are no ethical options, then activity making the world more evil isn't something these people will do.
both sides are bad, but voting for lesser evil is still better than letting bigger evil prosper.
But pretending choice between 2 evils is the ONLY option is what is perpetuating this bullshit.
And if there truly is nothing to be done except accept your one party system that is split in 2, you need to work on dismantling the whole system instead but that is chemoterapy level option so hopefully it doesnt get to that.
America needs more parties so people have actually something to vote.
The problem is both sides ARE bad. Both ... two. The two party system is broken, our Constitution was not built to handle political parties and George Washington says he regrets they were not banned in the Constitution. He said that political parties would destroy the USA in his farewell speech to the nation.
Independent parties are the only noncorrupt option ... but they are not viable in a two party system.
Just a reminder that liberals will never be on the side of the revolution. They're always going to say that voting for them is what matters. It's all a sham to prevent you from actually doing anything.
Just got perma-banned from the "Late Stage Capitalism" sub cuz I called the single moderator (always bad) out as a coward for deleting my comments pointing out that both sides are not the same and in the situation we find ourselves in it is to our benefit to vote for the one currently not engaging in fascism.
Kinda wish there was a rule that subs have to have more than one active moderator or get shut down after a period of time. But I guess some subs are so small and specific that wouldn't work. Just sucks losing subs to a single powertripping moron.
"Both sides are bad" are designed to encourage people to join or form alternative movements. Not voting is a possible, but not necessary, collateral side effect. The strenghtening of alternative movements is the only way out of this bipartisan nightmare, even if today it seems unreachable.
This debate is a sign that our democracy is dying. We can't find a good candidate anywhere in the political spectrum. The Democrats are intentionally incompetent and ineffective.
But the belief that the system is fixable enough that we can vote our way out of the problem persists. So the proletariat spend the last days of the empire arguing about whether or not voting works and if there are good candidates, meanwhile the bourgeois loot the treasury in preparation for coming collapse.
Voting in another bourgeois president will not fix any problems. At best, it will delay the inevitable. The system is unfixable. Even if we defeat Trump, the dissatisfaction with the status quo will continue. Even if Kamala had won, the dissatisfaction with the status quo will continue. The political class is incapable of devising effective solutions for the problems of a system they benefit from.
Something will rise from the ashes of this moment in history, I think it's time we get started on building that future.
There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to massive wealth inequality. There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to fascism. If you think voting alone is going to save our country, or the world, you have a problem.
This post is designed to keep people voting for the purple party.
Look around the world. Most places [have systems that] do not succumb to this corrupt harmful stupidity.
Vote and organise harder around independents and "3rd party" candidates. Especially any seeking to implement proportional representation, ranked choice voting, direct democracy, etc. Double especially for any seeking to eliminate the various layers of corruption in the democratic system, such as proprietary voting machines, voter suppression, the electoral college, lobbying, gerrymandering, etc.
No, actually, both sides are bad. American bipartism is a trap that only benefit the Epstein Class, who are both rep and dem. Destroy the dems, replace them with a true Left. Go for Mamdanis and such.
I've been voting in every election since I turned 18. That whole time pretty much was, "Don't vote third party because you're throwing your vote away." That logic has been used by the establishment for that entire time to justify not changing, not supporting socialist candidates, and amplifying the ratcheting effect. I WILL NOT hold my nose anymore. I'll write in a candidate. If anything, we should start coordinating outside of the established news structure and CHOOSE a third-party candidate to vote for and write in when the two options are garbage. Your vote is your vote, and every time you compromise your priorities to vote against your own beliefs and interests, you are playing their game.
TLDR: I'll write in my own chosen candidate before I ever hold my nose for Democrats again, and there isn't a damn thing anyone can say to change my mind.
When will we prolls wrap our heads around the fact that we have been excluded from the Democratic process by the electoral vote. Not trying to be mean or sarcastic I'm just looking for a timeline.
The Washington regime isnt a democracy, it just have the aesthetics of democracy. Giving your vote to the regime is to legitimize their reign. Resist might, sow seed that relights atrention towards collective endavours. Nationalism and walldoms will lead us nowhere. Democratic confederations is the future.
i vote every single time. i say both sides are the same but i dont mean politicians..i loved obama. i was fine with biden, just wish he was younger. would still vote for him even if he was a corpse because... it would be better.
when i say both sides i mean the bitches online. the people in real life are pretty normal.
online you have facist christians and facist islam lovers. i cant say muslims because they arent actuallyuslims, they are people who say they are left but embrace an intolerant people who behad gay people. so they are the same. everyone who picks a side (right/left) online is a facist
"Both sides are bad" is correct, but perpetuate the notion that you only can vote on the two different parties. There are other parties you can vote on.
"Literally the only way to stay in power", do I need to remind OP that they WON the elections? Democracy goes both ways, your "side" doesn't always win.
I'll vote, but never for a major party. Didn't do it at any point in the last decade that I've been eligible to vote and people were fine with that when Dems still won and even laughed at leftists who thought winning Dems should cater to them.
This is stupid. There are various good and bad reasons for both-sides-ism. It's not all a conspiracy. You just have to use your brain and engage everything on a case by case basis.
A very common phenomenon is that you have a few people who have particular unusual opinions, say on extreme deregulation. And they're often very intelligent and knowledgeable academics who can craft elaborate arguments in their favor. The more intelligent you are the more you can do the mental gymnastics to justify what you want to believe. The monied interests who want this deregulation find these people and amplify their voices or fund their campaigns. None of it needs to be a conspiracy. Every player has been selected for their genuine preexisting opinions.
There's a famous line from a BBC interview of Noam Chomsky by Andrew Marr. Marr asks "Am I self-censoring?". Chomsky replies "I don't think you're self censoring. I think you believe everything you say. But if you believed anything different, you wouldn't be sitting across from me right now." (Paraphrased from memory, not really quoted).
Anyone who didn't vote has endorsed everything that the government is doing right now, regardless of the election outcome. If the Dems had won, they would have endorsed the Dems' actions. Since the Reps won, they've endorsed the Reps' actions.
No they are trying to get you to vote for other candidates. Will we see one elected to a major office in the 50 years? Probably not. But it will take even longer if people keep getting stuck in the blue no matter who mindset
No. Just no. The truth is still the truth, and saying the truth doesn't mean you are trying to do anything but say the truth.
Both sides should be banned from holding political office or any involvement in the political process. Clean flush.
And then when you wake up from the dream world where both parties a completely rebuilt, you need to vote for your actual choices.
If the Republicans never have a chance of winning again, it becomes much easier for the actual progressives to differentiate themselves from the more centrist Democrats.
Never said anything contrary to what you are saying. I just can't stand posts like this BS that claim all people who say both sides are bad are really saying blah blah. Both sides are bad. That is just a fact. And I won't call either of them good. That doesn't mean anything more than it clearly says.
I vote in the primaries and support the most progressive, and least polotician like people I can find on the ballot. My state is solid blue, so I don't have to worry about a republican winning anything at the federal level.
YEah, that's fine. But what do you do until that happens, hmm? By not voting for the party that at a minimum causes LESS harm, you are supporting fascism.
If saying "the truth" means fewer people vote against the Republicans, the Republicans win and continue to fuck our democracy. All because people like you care more about the "truth" than strategically voting the best options on the ground at any given time.
That's WHY the fascists push "both sides" as hard as they do. It's one of the things keeping them in power.
Never said I don't vote against the republicans. You just highlighted the problem. Posts like this are meant to villianize people who acknowledge that both sides are evil. It litterally makes a divide between those who vote D, and those who vote D but admit they are evil too. That drives more people to not vote D.
Posts like this encourage people not to vote, which helps fascists win.
There's nothing stopping anyone from working on change at ANY fucking time, but NOT voting Dem in the general election is NOT the fucking time to do it.
:Shurg: the news everyday encourages people not to vote with how little the dems do and how much they give in. The post OP was referencing have negligible impact.
I know who owns them, and I know why they report what they report. That wasn't the point. The point was that thier impact is orders of magnitude more then the few people who the posts OP referred to might sway. So the real impact of ops post is to split up people who support the same overall goals, not to stop people from being convinced not to vote.
Oh you don’t like either candidate? What a special person you are! I can’t believe that a nation of 340 million people winnowed down their possible leaders to two people without producing one that you absolutely love!
100% vote blue no matter who. But pig fucking zionazi warmongering DNC will still screw you over, and 100% vote in primaries, and organize for a Green, or new, party that doesn't just show up when GOP pays them to split votes from DNC.
There's only two people who I have ever seen that harbor this mentality:
Enlightened centrists who think saying things like both sides bad makes them looks smart and pretending to be an "independent" thinker who's always in the center makes them feel smart
Far left extremists who purity test EVERYTHING and think anybody to the right of Mao is a neo nazi.
In both cases, they provide nothing of value to the discourse. Enlightened centrists are politically apathetic, and they only want to feel better about themselves by putting down "the sides", and far left extremists are not serious people because they're inherently irrational and dogmatic. There's no appeasing either of them nor should anybody try to. Most people are pragmatic enough to understand the point being made in these meme, but these dingleberries won't.
Nah, in the long run: a weak and unstable US is better for the rest of the world. Also: with the orange man, you know what you have and you don't want to vote for more genocide, right?
Now the question is which is easier, convincing millions of people to vote for “anyone not a republican” or convincing a candidate to be more than “not republican”
Hey, primaries are around now. It's a great time for that!
Participate in primaries. THIS is the election you want for that.
Depends on where you are. My state doesn't have primaries till August and by then it's basically already decided.
Same here, most primary candidate drop out before I even get my mail in ballot. Also there hasnt been a fair primary in 12 years so like so for over a decade party direction has been at the mercy of quid pro quo backroom deals, or straight up just appointing a candidate. Why would the next one suddenly be a fair representation of the will of voters?
What DNC did to Bernie caused Trump.
it doesn't really matter - regardless of how difficult it is, we should be doing both
Why not both?
Because that is not the reality of what is currently going on.
Perhaps we could focus on promoting the dangers that fascism is currently presenting to the United States.
Yeah, it appears that Americans aren't getting the education they need regarding the horrors of fascism. Apparently the largest war in history happening less than a century ago due to fascism isn't enough. A war that was very well documented, including photographic and video evidence.
Dude, we can't even come to agreement on the real actual truth about our own civil war when it comes to education.
No the real question is: which is easier, bitching online or running for office. I wish 1 in a million people who whinge about lack of candidates would actually go run for something. I’ll vote for you.
You mean Republican, right?
;)
Same as Democrats are not democratic, Republicans are not republican. ;)
Hard work undoing the newspeek this deep into the Orwellian hole.
It depends. What it means to be “more than “not Republican”” is different for different people. Some will never be satisfied, and others are just plain wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to drive down Democratic turnout so the fascists can hold power.
While yes, those groups certainly exist, the majority of people just truly need help from someone who actually cares to help them, and not someone who says they do, but abandons the idea when it turns out to be difficult to supply that help because it never meant that much to them in the first place, if it was ever anything more than talk to begin with.
Pointing out the tiny problematic groups without even mentioning the much larger legitimate group reminds me of people who complain about welfare because of the tiny group of people that exploit it, completely ignoring the huge amount of people that just need help.
Every time the welfare thing comes up I respond, so what? Who fucking cares if some tiny minority of people abuse the system if it means the people who really need it have easier access, or access at all? No one abusing welfare is so rich you would argue they don't need help anyway, unless there's some sort of corruption going on. Big companies take way more in handouts from the government than people on welfare. Why can't the big powerful successful corporations pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
If you are form the US, you are having your primaries by now.
Those are the ones where good people appear and need your vote to stay on the race. Go participate there, instead of complaining about the main election.
Just checked ballotpedia and found out that my rep has competition this year. Looked the guy up (Kyle Gauck) and he some ok stuff on his campaign page including that he won’t be taking cash from aipac and expanding healthcare access.
Aug 11th is voting day :)
This is the correct answer.
The people who support the "both sides bad" argument and the "protest non-voters" are children who still need their parents to order their tendies for them at Chili's.
The general election should be the last step in executing your civic duties and by that time you should be voting for your team.
the primaries are rigged, did you learn nothing from bernie in iowa?
Get enough people on your side to un-rig them then.
Bernie should have been the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee against the most easily beatable GOP nominee in recent history, but at the time I was a smug centrist and registered independent and could not vote in the primaries in my state.
I also voted third party in the 2016 general election because there was no way I was going to vote for Trump or Hillary. So 2016 was my fault. I did this.
Don't be me.
are you a superdelegate or something? you sound like your individual vote is super important
"But they'll steal the elections!!!!!"
Oh yeah? Just like all those state and special elections they've been losing by double-digit electorate shifts for the last 18 months? Including the one covering FUCKING MAR-A-LAGO???
Grow the fuck up. Get registered to vote, and when elections come round, VOTE, DAMN IT. Fascism only wins if you just give up and let it.
Exactly. I personally believe the election is going to be stolen, but nobody should fucking do the job FOR them. Voting MIGHT work, and you can still prepare for ridiculous, shortsighted guerilla fantasies after taking a day to go TRY the easy solution.
What are these gorilla fantasies?
You know, living in the jungle with your favorite apes
Yaaaaay. Bonobo life. ;D
Harambe.
LOL. Yup. That's the crux of the terror that knocks people out of their considerate, critical, creative forebrain, and pushes them into their reactive social-dominating survival-focused fearful limbic reflex where they're easier to control.
This time, America... stop falling for it. :) We can still mend this.
And so don't fall for the false dichotomies. ;D
More than voting may be required. And that does not mean badgering your fellow Americans into deeper divisive groupthink. :)
They'll try to shove you off the platform with constant negativity and trying to act like Trump is just a continuation of all the same. If you didn't care before, why do you care now?
It's not. It's different.
I remember 2004, a friend had come back to our home town for new years, and in our fave local pub, he regaled us with stories of what it was like working with Trump. He told us about what a joke of a played narcissist he is, being primed by his psychopathic handlers for a puppet presidency. ... It seemed absurd, implausible even, for about a decade.
I heard recently they were planning on having Charlie Kirk become president in the distant future too... until he grew sense and conscience. Imagine if each of their puppets attain consciousness and conscientiousness... and they have no puppets left to deceive us with... :D
Imagine if USA had democracy. Cleared up all the election rigging, the fixed proprietary voting machines, the lobbying, the gerrymandering, the electoral college, the voter suppression, the bought corporate media, etc, etc, etc. Imagine if the people in USA got to vote for what they want, not merely under duress to vote against who they don't want.
Imagine if it were real...
Both parties have the identical end goal in mind. One is just slower at it.
So for fucks sake pick the one that's slower at it so you have more time to do something about it. It's not like voting locks you out of any other actions.
It's no use asking these people to do any kind of direct action. They think abstaining once every four years will bring an end to capitalism. They'll never attend a protest or vote in a primary, much less pick up a gun for the revolution.
Or, vote for something other than going to the bad place?
Someone offers you two pills, you don't have to take either. You can make your own, and seek other options.
Yeah, but if you say "I don't care, I have absolutely no preference", then when kids get blown up in Iran it becomes your fault.
Yeah. Don't say that. Who's advocating for that? Did you think I was advocating for that??
Well, there's this thing called voting literacy, and the thing is, if your voting literacy is poor, you can say things you don't intend to say. So yes, you did say "I don't care, I have absolutely no preference". And it's your responsibility to learn enough mathematics to be able to say what you mean. I'm not gonna treat you like a baby and find the intended meaning in what you say, you have to grow up and say what you mean.
Slanderous misrepresentation. Did not say that.
So implausible, it seems you're just trolling. Or maybe have crossed wires, replying to the wrong thing? ... Or maybe have some psyop programs running that you truly believe what you say, with your perception perverted by some kind of groupthink and the false dichotomy fallacies the programming produces? Or maybe narcissistic deflecting and blame shifting and trying to save face rather than entertain an idea and concede the logic and learn from it? Or... maybe you're on to something sound that you've just yet to effectively convey? But then, even if that's so, we're back to projecting, with the peculiarly expressed accusation of failing to communicate effectively (~ with mathematics?). And the condescending gaslighting hypocrisy doesn't help your case much either.
If you can quote the relevant parts, I'm happy to hear out your explanation that refutes my claim I did not say that. Especially if you can do it without the inflamed ego toxicity. LOL.
If you think voting Democrat would have prevented kids being blown up in Iran, you're the fucking idiot here.
I think voting Democrat would have prevented kids being blown up in Iran, and it would have prevented ICE from having as many employees throwing immigrants in concentration camps, and I think it would have prevented the genocide of trans people that's going to start next year. And don't call Me an idiot, please.
Then there is no hope for you because you are deluded
Do what about it exactly?
How the fuck does voting for slow burn help?
Whatever you think needs to be done; absolutely anything ranging from peaceful protest to violent uprising. What exactly are you arguing, that it's best to sit back and take it? That it's better to put you face in the mouth of the leopard eating you rather than your arm so that at least you have a chance of fighting back? Even if one is an accelerationist (a profoundly naive position in my opinion, but that's another discussion) willfully not voting is the intellectually cowardly option, justifying inaction rather than sticking to your ideals and actively voting for the option you believe will accelerate the most. The point is that voting is not a mutually exclusive action to take like so many people on Lemmy seem to act like it is.
Its not about not voting. For a start, there's dozens of things to vote on than just one. Its about being shamed into voting for a bad option and not giving into that pressure tactic, and changing the narrative to making better choices
But Americans aren’t doing anything about it except voting.
The ones who are going to do more are already doing more, and both-sidesing the ones who aren't is just going to make them do even less. Just let them help with slowing the descent down a bit, that's the most they're going to do anyway. It buys time for the ones who are doing something to do something.
Or maybe the accelerationists are right, make the nail rusty enough, fast enough, get the frog realising it has to jump out or it'll be boiled.
... if that's not too much metaphor mixing.
Solution space may be elsewhere.
Maybe the accelerationists are right, but then maybe they aren't and that's a whole lot of suffering and collateral damage for nothing.
YUP!
I hate this take, because it ignores the reality that this isn't Europe and that you can't even get sick in this country without health insurance with risking homelessness, let alone any massive coordinated action.
Like around here they're always posting pictures of protests and you look at the people at the protests and it's all retirees and college kids. Why? Because everyone else is at fucking work because if they're not at work they miss a mortgage/rent payment and end up living in their car. The majority of US states have at will employment laws meaning they can and will fire you with no notice or even need to provide justification beyond the performative "this termination not due to you being a member of a legally protected class".
Wage slaves are still slaves, and telling people today that their inaction means they're complicit is no different then going back in time 200 years and telling the slaves on the plantations that they're just as responsible for their bondage as the people that put them in chains. Fuck that nonsense.
Wrong
The left and the right.
Of the Overton Window.
So absolute reactionary and slightly less reactionary
As a non US citizen I'll say it again: you factually only have right.
The day most realize this will be the start of change.
Yup. In this case, the Overton Window's Auth-Right on the political compass. Those on the left half of it call themselves "The Left".
I've long been wary of anyone peddling an "only way". Yet to find a claim of "only way" that's not fallacious. Quite scary in this parroted psyop. "Be very afraid! Stay in your reactionary social-dominance totalitarian-psyche groupthink mass formation!" XD Gonna a be a beautiful beautiful thing, when people stop falling for it.
Y'know there are more than two sides right? And that they're not even sides? ... Beautiful beautiful thing when people snap out of the "lies so big that not even their inverse are true".
"Keep doing the same thing over and over again, and each time, expect a different outcome. It is the smart intelligent sane thing to do." -- Einstein, probably
You mean like rolling dice?
Lol.
More "bOtH sIdEz" idiocy.
I'm just sad that more than zero people have upvoted that idiocy. Guess I'll just take solace in the fact that more than twice as many people have downvoted it.
"I don't have anything of substance to add so I'll just call you an idiot"
See, you're already acting like a MAGA. Whee.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, you dumb fuck Americans should have voted for Vermin Supreme.
Ftfy lol
Lol yeah, also that.
Seriously, though, he’s as qualified as almost any US President during my lifetime, and more intelligent than most of them. Vote Vermin.
I want to preface this by saying that I do vote in every election, and I think everyone should exercise their right to vote.
That being said, both parties are bad. We're in a class war, and the Democrats are just as beholden/part of the oligarchy as the Republicans are.
The Republicans are definitely worse than the Democrats. There's no question there, but what we really need is a fucking revolution.
both sides are pretty bad, but you still gotta get on the bus
I mean, both sides DO suck. But the decision being made boils down to which side you think has the best chance of leading to an eventual outcome that doesn't suck. I'm not voting for a party I like, because frankly that doesn't exist as a viable option, but I'm not going to not vote just because neither side is better than a 3/10. I'd rather the 3/10 than the 1/10.
I think there's real value in being honest about your feelings. The people who represent us need to know we think they suck. The people around us need to feel like others have the same struggles we do. The space for nuance does exist.
Imagine the hammer is the polling box and all your solutions look like voting when see all your problems as nails.
Everyone should vote. Absolutely. Go out, do it, cast that ballot.
Voting won’t solve all of our problems. We need to go beyond just voting.
Amen.
Best comment.
Absolutely, but not voting will make solving all of those problems more difficult, not easier.
I think everyone on Lemmy knows that?
The bigger problem is people who think withholding their vote is a form of direct action, and means they don't have to go out and protest against the oligarchs.
Your frequent reminder from the local queer, leftist furry that if "voting didn't work," Republicans and billionaires wouldn't spend billions of dollars on voter suppression and propaganda telling you that your vote doesn't matter.
Do your part, waste billionaire money by voting anyway, by any means necessary~
One should vote, it simply shouldn't be the end of it.
If you voted Democrat and thought you made your part, wrong. You barely made one shift towards one slightly less terrible group. This is not victory. A part of what you should do, yes. All you should do - not.
The psyop'd to defeatism think the lesser of two evils is the best they can do. Remind them, it's not. It's still evil.
Awareness of the totalitarian tacking tip-toe con may help dispel the groupthink affirmation of succumbing to that. One "side" loudly promises one personal freedom cared about while quietly taking two economic freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, then the other "side" loudly restores one economic freedom their "side"'s herd care about while quietly taking two personal freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, back and forth, stripping you of freedom, keeping you blinded in fear of what the other is going to take from you, divided and conquered. ... But try explaining that in a tweet/tictok sized explanation to those who've had their attention spans crippled.
Some say it's futile. It's not. Defy that dire prognosis.
Carry on mendwards. :)
Republicans also really love when you vote third party.
(Or Democrat party too, depending on where the votes are being taken from)
Until enough people do, and sufficient votes are taken from the purple party, that they lose.
... But then, may also need to mend all the lobbying, gerymandering, voter suppression, rigged voting machines, electoral college, etc first/simultaneously.
Imagine if the people in USA got a system that helped them vote for what they want, not against who they don't want. Imagine... :)
Nope, you utterly miss the point. First past the post means that Republicans win when the anti-fascist vote is split.
If you don't like the current candidates of the Democrat party, then go vote in the Democrat primary.
There is this little thing called "objective reality". First past the post sucks, but it is objective reality. You should try taking it into account, some time.
Nope. Did not miss your point at all. You seemed to miss mine, and doubled down.
one week old account shilling for a political party
I remember when Gore lost Florida, and therefore the country, because less than one tenth of one percent of voters thought a protest vote for Nader was a good idea. In primaries and in smaller elections, sure, give third party votes a try. But the bigger the election, the more it converges on a choice between the two major parties, and one of them is worse than the other.
gore won that election. the supreme Court stole it.
The Republicans would never have been able to steal it, if third party votes had not made it close.
If everybody who voted Nader had voted for Gore instead, there would have been no wiggle room for the Supreme Court to butt in. And every Nader voter who was not an idiot know from the polls that Nader would not win.
With Gore instead of Bush, there would have been no Iraq War, for one thing. And the US would have taken climate change seriously.
Using “Democrat” as an adjective is usually an indicator of someone who mostly consumes right wing media.
This thread is full of commenters trying to convince people not to vote (for good lefty reasons, of course!)
Well rest assured, I advocate voting, and warn against doing a "no-vote" as that's equivalent to a vote for "any tyrant will do".
And I doubt I consume much "right wing media" at all. ... Not sure I used the term as an adjective either... and so that whole line kinda threw me. Multiple ways invalid and unsound.
Democrat Party (epithet)
It’s “Democratic party.” Democratic is the adjective modifying the noun party.
Did I ever mention voting for third party?
I'm not voting for liberal zionists under any circumstances. Your candidates and party suck and deserve to eat shit
That's true, but I think neutral voters need to be told to do direct action a lot more than left voters. Everyone I know who does direct action voted Democrat. But I know lots of people who didn't vote and don't do direct action.
To only have two sides is the problem.
Sure, but as far as what we can control right now, let's elect some fucking Democrats please
How much longer will this be a cookie cutter answer?
Until there are enough grassroots progressive candidates to take over the democratic party the same way the tea party movement took over the republican party, and finally some progressive initiatives can pass into law, such as eliminating FPTP.
Please don't take the "just vote democrats into office" answer to mean "sit tight and do nothing but vote" when voting is really the bare minimum activism you should be doing to preserve a democratic system.
I just wonder how patient US voters are, for the changes you project.
Does it matter? Most voters have no attention span. They aren't revolutionaries. They aren't going to take to the streets no matter how bad things get. Stop trying to change people who aren't going to change when you lack the influence to change them in the first place, and focus on trying to leverage what you've got as productively as you can.
Build your cadres, make the change you can, and make lemonade from the lemons you've got.
Yeah, if waiting for something before contributing to mends, the crooks will prevent that something to keep you passively complicit.
Mendwards now!
Let’s get Democrats controlling all three branches of government for more than 30 seconds to start.
And by "controlling" we mean "supermajority" thanks to the veto and filibuster.
And will things magically be better? Well, better, yes, good, no. First, it takes a lot of time to undo the harm fascists have done. And second, our oligarchs would still be in control, pushing for their needs above ours.
So we need to....... solve....... our oligarch problem AND win a supermajority AND then We the People need to push that Overton window back to the left, forcing our politicians to serve our needs.
.......which is why I say we're pretty fucked. But that's what needs to happen, anyway.
Defy the dire prognosis, and head mendwards anyway.
Until Americans learn how to vote for 3rd parties in local/state elections and get more than ZERO 3rd party representatives in Congress.
Yeah, we need more John Fettermans and Joe Manchins and Krysten Cinemenmas.
Or... any of many other options, than just more corruptible agents and assets.
I often imagine what it may be like with, not just adjustments to re-presentative democracy (like ranked choice voting, proportionate representation, etc), but even beyond direct democracy, even beyond liquid democracy, all the way to (what I call) config-democracy...
"Config-Democracy", where we each are free to input our say as elaborate (or as terse) as we want, updated when we want, as direct or deferring as we want. Where our "vote" is like a config file, not merely a single mark on a corrupted multiple choice. ... unless you want to vote like that still in config-democracy. You're free to. But I imagine everybody wants more say than that.
All kinds of facilitators can be developed for such. Heck, we even already have the likes of the political compass test, and the world's shortest political quiz, that for decades have already offered us better means to present our political philosophies. ... Funny how the crooks have not sought to implement that eh? Given how the spray of popular results show they'd be voted out of office the first day any such were implemented. ... Imagine that, huh? Real democracy, real organisation by the people, for the people.
:)
We can still mend this.
Right. So the alternative to those is more Marco Rubios, Mike Johnsons, MTG, etc etc etc etc. All of whom are much worse.
We need better people running for office that get financial support from the people, but when it comes down to the general election, whatever addhats made it that far, the Democrat is going to be BY FAR the better pick 99.9% of the time. And if the Republican is truly better, sure, vote for them, but remember that at the party level, Republicans are the ones bringing us fascism.
The point - the entire fucking point - is people saying "Don't vote for the Fetterman/Manchin/etc in the general election" help the fascists win. Of course it's shitty options, but you want to pick the LESS. FUCKING. SHITTY. OPTIONS.
@resipsaloquitur @protist You all slobbered after Fetterman and Sinema and accused anyone who didn't similarly fall in love with them of being bootlicking establishment shitlibs.
It's really been something to watch your character arc from abusive "progressive" revolutionary vanguards to abusive "progressive" historical revisionist gaslighters over the past several years.
what? what is anyone trying to revise?
@nsrxn "YoU jUsT wAnT mOrE fEtTeRmAnS aND SiNeMaS, uNlIkE uS, wHo NeVeR sImPeD fOr ObViOuS pLaNtS"
Come on, bud. 🙄
can you link this?
@nsrxn Can you stop gaslighting? 🙄
It's going to be an even bigger problem when it drops down to only having one side.
The Red Army is not coming to the rescue.
@RockBottom @PineRune They never have.
Especially when they're not even different sides.
It's one of many parts of the problem.
@RockBottom @FoxtrotDeltaTango To see braised chicken vs. dog shit on the menu and sit there, fold your arms petulantly, and demand a third option that doesn't exist while the dog shit is on a default timer to be rammed down everyone's throat if the chicken doesn't get enough votes is the much more immediate problem that you folks are somehow struggling with every single election.
Only two sides stand a chance of winning a presidential election. No amount of whining about the 2-party system changes that.
Stop whining everybody. Act like you are able to change something. I know you can do it!
I refuse to stop shit talking democrats, if they weren't absolutely complicit warmongers we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
Nobody is saying not to shit talking them, people are saying that nuance is needed. We need to push for better representatives. BUT. When the general election happens, we need to vote Democrat because REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING FASCISTS. Because while both sides suck, both sides do not suck equally. So shit talk your Democrats, as long as you shit talk your Republicans even more. Or do they get a pass because you write them off as evil?
Does your shit talking drive people away from voting for Democrats when the vote is Dem vs Repub? If so, you support fascism. Plain and simple.
Put your energy into change where it matters: Primaries, other offices, pushing society back to the left away from fascism. Make sure you're not helping the fascists win.
The OP meme is not calling for nuance, it's saying that if you're shittalking democrats you're helping Republicans win.
My democrat state rep sucks and is in practice a thinly-veiled Republican coasting on incumbency and people not investigating beyond the 'D'
My federal rep (D) has been actively complicit in perpetuating the genocide in Palestine and allowing Trump to walk all over Venezuela. I actually put in a lot of effort with antiwar groups to try to sway them in the past. What I learned is that when it comes to war and empire if they want to climb the ranks in DC they're going to tow the line.
Open Republicans are obviously worse, but theyre also a non factor in my state, they just run for 'nonpartisan' seats or pose as democrats. This is also why i chaff at vote-bluers, they will act like challenging an incumbent 'democrat' who sucks is somehow helping Republicans
How so?
What do you mean how so?
The democrats are prolific warmongers, they just think they're smarter about it than Republicans.
Oh I'm not arguing that, I'm just asking how that would have kept us out of this mess.
If they weren't prolific warmongers and instead did things that were actually popular at home then they would probably be seen as more trustworthy and not lost to Trump repeatedly, idk how more to spell it out for you
Maybe, but then they would've been buried by AIPAC money, as we've repeatedly seen. They've done plenty of positive things at home, or at least tried to, but all that gets ignored. Sure, I'd love to see a positive change, but we have to acknowledge the reality of the political landscape, and opposing Israel is political suicide with current campaign finance influences.
They didn't oppose Israel at all and they ate complete shit anyways.
they may have 'tried' to do positive things at home, but they also spent billions arming a genocide which triggered a blockade of the red sea and disrupted supply chains. Failing to negotiate a settlement with russia didn't do energy markets any favors, the blowback from sanctions and energy prices absolutely contributed to inflation that people felt, and then blamed on democrats. 'brandonflation'
Like you can make excuses about AIPAC or whatever, but the people who felt the consequences of these wars voted accordingly. It sucks that there was no left candidate to vote for and that resulted in republicans winning. However that's also the democrats fault for not running a real primary and ignoring all the people voting uncommitted.
There were plenty of warnings, they were just ignored.
Sure, but Democratic voters are not democratic leadership. If you have a problem with Democratic leadership, tell it to them. Voters don't benefit from Democrats losing to Republicans.
Beyond the more general point, a concrete example - if the Biden admin didn't supply unlimited bombs to Israel, they would not have lost to Trump. There's enough numbers to support this claim.
A lack of good options in the general is a sign of poor turnout in primaries.
Exactly. And a two party system basically ensures that.
There haven't been fair primaries in three presidential cycles. The DNC is a business and the primaries are entirely up to them and they have sucessfully argued in courts they have no duty to not medel in them any way they see fit. If primary turnout is low, the DNC owns a big share of why too.
Dear Americans, voting for Democrats will get you nowhere, too. I know this is hard, but you will have to start a revolution or vote for a third party in an unprecedented coordinated effort.
People deserve to vote for someone they actually support, not the least terrible option.
Stop blaming the voters.
You're not wrong, but the time to fix that is at the primary and not the general.
And yes, I'm aware the DNC has their thumb on the scale when it comes to the Democratic primary. So that means vote in your local elections too, so that there are actually progressive candidates to choose from instead of corporate-owned do-nothings.
Sure, people deserve better options. But the fucking point is that WHEN those options do NOT exist, voting for the WORSE option is fucking STUPID and supports fascism. When anyone convinces someone who wouldn't vote for the less bad option not to vote, FASCISM WINS.
When people keep voting for the LESS BAD option when those better options do NOT exist, better options WON'T appear as voting LESS BAD removes the INCENTIVE for it. Therefore voting for the LESS BAD option ensures the options will always remain FASCISM and something slightly LESS BAD - no better options. If one wants better options, keep voting LESS BAD is fucking STUPID.
Your logic only applies to local/state elections. It does not apply to presidential elections.
If you vote 3rd party in a presidential election, you're a fool acknowleging you're incapable of doing basic math and fine with the worst case scenario.
Explain how does it not work? People not voting for the shitty D candidate, causing them to lose to R doesn't create an incentive for D to change course? Do I need to presrnt to you the last two years of intense D soul searching after Kamala lost?
Obvioisly that's part of the calculus. Most who question the lesser evil approach understand this. However you might not understand that no matter how hard you call people fools, that doesn't change the picture for people who've given up on voting for Turd Sandwich. Might even be achieving the opposite. A lot of people are done with the Turd Sandwich status quo and are either staying home or voting Giant Douche. Sounds like you have to give them something better to vote for if you don't want more Giant Douche.
Congrats, you just elected fascists.
I guess you'll have to do something about it then.
I am. I'm trying to teach people how not to support fascists.
Hope you feel proud of your principles when they disappear you into the camps too.
the democrats or the republicans?
I don't know, fucking genius, you tell me who fucking set ICE out murdering US citizens and throwing them into fucking camps? Are you a fucking fascist and trying to play around here and confuse people, or are you willfully this fucking goddamn fucking stupid? Either way, fascists certainly adore your contribution to the conversation.
I don’t know, fucking genius, you tell me
Are you a fucking fascist and trying to play around here and confuse people, or are you willfully this fucking goddamn fucking stupid? Either way, fascists certainly adore your contribution to the conversation.
lol, good on yer trying to throw it back like that, but you have to put a unique spin on it or something. I lost my temper at you, but I stand by the spirit of it, even though I wish I'd been able to keep my temper better.
ICE, started in 2003... remember when the Democrat party was in power, both times, all three terms since then, when they got rid of ICE and... ohhhh wait.
Solution space lays elsewhere.
Ignorance must be fucking bliss.
🫠
When the general election hits, you will have two options (yea three or more). You can vote for the Republican, fascist candidate. Or you can vote for the Democratic candidate.
Anything other than - at that point - voting for the Dem is throwing your support behind fascists.
That is simple fact.
And that includes third parties.
Anything you want to try and do to change the system - because it fucking needs it - should be done before/outside of that process.
It's really not fucking complicated.
I guess people would have to elect at least one more fascist gov't then. Cause people don't give a shit what the process is and won't vote for turd sandwich in sufficient numbers no matter how much you insist they do. And I'm not doing that. I'm merely trying to present the view of the person who doesn't buy this shit, didn't vote Kamala and won't vote Newsom no matter how hard you scold them.
And that's part of the reason we have fascists in charge.
Can you spoil your ballot in protest?
The hour is later than you think, since both [sides of the purple party] are bought by the same interests.
There are even more less bad options, than the 2nd worst most likely to win. Baa-aa-aa-aad is still bad.
Well said.
Or as I take it a little further (s/someone/what/ hinting at more direct democracy too):
Imagine getting to vote for what you want, not against who you don't want.
But I really like how you put it too.
They DO have the right to not vote, but they also DO have a civic duty to cast their votes. Voters are the ones who decide elections, and if the results are bad, it is up to voters to do better next time. I think this is less blaming, and more just people trying to hold the electorate accountable for their choices.
Are you sure about that?
Given the voter suppression & gerrymandering, the lobbying & corporate media consolidation, the electoral college & candidate selection process, the rigged proprietary voting machines & counting frauds, etc. etc. etc... [atop the First-Past-The-Post terror scam that coerces people to vote against who they most don't want between the perceived most likely to win].
More to mend than just getting people to "vote correctly".
If votes didn't matter, then none of the efforts you mentioned to suppress and manipulate the voters would be necessary. Yet they're happening anyway because people do ultimately hold the power, and that terrifies the rich and powerful who seek to control it.
Not if you live in reality.
I'll keep blaming voters who keep voting 3rd party in presidential elections thinking a third party can win when the last most popular 3rd party candidate in the 2024 election only got 0.5% of the total votes cast.
I'll keep blaming voters that can't do simple math and make the most intelligent decision based on the reality they live in.
I'm not going to stop you, I'm not your dad.
One of Propagandas goals is to get you to give up. Uncovering truths and doing research is hard according to Josh Johnson, if it was easy more of us would do it instead of watching memes. Propaganda is designed to flood you with so much crap that you question everything and then give up looking for the truth because its hard. Ai has not helped this.
https://youtu.be/srr0rRgF2Fw
Americans are truly a lost cause if they still think voting will get them out of this.
You need to organize yesterday and actively resist in a militant way paving the way for real democratic institutions by and for the people. Yet you still fail to see that the whole system is designed to keep you ignorant, enjoying the bread and circuses until you get to make a vote that changes absolutely nothing every 4 years and then go home satisfied that you practiced your democratic rights under capitalism. And you also fail to realize the severity of the situation you're in, any other country would be rioting right now but you're out there filming shit with the hope that some magic entity will step in and save you, or complaining about it on the internet.
Wake the fuck up Americans, for the sake of the rest of the world and yourselves as well.
No, the point is to agitate you against an establishment that wants to prevent you from having a better choice.
Liberals who are passionately defending lesser evil electoralism before primaries have even started are either idiots in denial or moderates who don't want to talk about why their party is nearly as unpopular as Trump.
As a lifelong Independent, this post can F all the way off.
Yes, this is my civil, indoor voice.
Don't you MFing tell me not to have opinions and free will, and that I should change who I am so I don't make a bunch of establishment Dems that genuinely don't care if I'm alive or dead have bad feels. Maybe the Dems should Fing field people that don't gobble billionaire scroat like they invented it.
And Democrats can maybe, just once in a while, not happily fundraise and capitulate and do the policy strategy version of pump and dump schemes around the central point of "hey, we're not the Nazis, we're the mildly annoying guys that whimper when Nazis do Nazi shit, but do eventually give them everything they want. So it's Nazi shit FAST or Nazi shit less fast with some of us around :D"
"Both sides suck" posts should encourage anyone with guts to see how much of the country wants a god damned set of independent candidates or even, (shudder) another MFing option between Shibag A and XXXL Shitbag B. People need to shed the chains of both parties and run at the local level. Give both sides a fucking scare.
If you have a problem with the truth, that's a you problem. You can disagree with a course of action, but if truthful criticism of Dear Leader makes someone The Enemy to you, you're much closer to fascists than you'd like to admit.
Even if it is a puppet.
Damn you really blame people for not choosing between Moloch or Baal.
I like how people here are trying to have a discussion of whether or not voting third party, or voting at all, is necessary when there are currently concerns (and investigations) of Trump and the Epstein class rigging this last election in the first place. I should also remind everyone that there were similar concerns when Bush first got elected back in 2000. How sure are we that we can rely on voting if that is indeed true?
Furthermore-- I voted for Harris, but I am fucking sick and tired of voting for Democrats. Fucking sick and tired! They are fucking useless. I voted Democrat these last four presidential elections and it is these Democrats and the party as a whole who helped usher in Trump. It has done nothing but cause problems. Biden carved the pathway for both Trump and Netanyahu to carry on the genocide in Palestine and now in Lebanon. He helped the Israeli government go on this psychotic imperialistic crusade against others like Iran and very soon Cuba. And Greenland. Harris vowed that she would continuing working with the Israeli government if she was elected, and she vowed to have the ICE budget expanded also. Both sides ARE fucking bad. Democrats have done jack shit to try to impeach Trump or 25th amendment him so far despite the child sex trafficking through ICE arrests, nor the outright kidnapping and murders of American citizens on the streets and in ICE encampments. Nor for kidnapping leaders of other countries. The list goes on. Just impeachment alone.
Most Democrat congressmen are financed by AIPAC just like the Republicans. Whether anyone is liking or not, the Democrats are 1,000% enabling the Republicans, and even if Harris won this last election, we will be dealing with the potentiality that the Republicans would come back in full force by mid-terms or general elections anyway.
I understand that voting blue no matter who is a way for people to feel as though they are doing something. I still encourage voting. But voting blue no matter who, no matter how bad or how mediocre the candidate is, is clearly not working at all.
If you don't vote then you don't get to complain until the next election.
You refused to have a say and now you have to live with the consequences. No bitching.
And you should do that in all elections. Small and big.
It's two-fold.
The overton window has shifted so far that we're getting warmongering from the democrats.
'Half' of the congressional left are sleeper agents for the right.
The DNC keeps pushing right and refuses to do anything to keep us from sliding into authoritarianism. Appeasing the right, Siding with Israel.
But not voting left is the same as voting right, that IS how the right wins.
And voting left is just giving them a blank check to keep sliding that window further right.
Neither party is going to let a third party in.
Appeasing the left is making them worse.
The rub, people think if they keep not-voting or voting independent, the DNC will give in and start moving stuff left. They won't. They don't truly want to win.
It's like fucking Brewsters millions out here, but "None of the Above" won't fucking help either.
I think, mostly, we can agree that the agenda of the "left" is the lesser of two evils, but the evils are getting so bad that we need desperately to do something to move the window back left a little.
Voting is about the lowest form of political influence (besides doing nothing). If all you do is vote then you're left with candidates determined by others. You can (and should) still vote for the least worst option of those that have a chance of winning, because not voting effectively means you approve of all options. The only thing you can vote against in an election where one of two options will win is one of those options, by voting for the other. Anything else won't matter.
If you want better options to vote for, you need to be politically active besides voting, actively working to establish better options, tell the established parties what candidates and policies you want them to support, support smaller parties that represent your interests better, and that might slowly shift it into a direction more to your liking.
Of course that's much harder that doing nothing at all and proudly telling yourself that that will somehow delegitimize the system - the system doesn't care. Election results are shown only as a proportion of valid votes, anyone else has no influence on the result at all.
“Literally the only way”? They tried violent treason and have refused to swear in duly elected reps that are not of their party. If you think they’ll leave when their term is up just because you voted someone else in… the major players aren’t going anywhere. These aren’t the kind of people that gain power and then let it go. Don’t not vote, but don’t believe that’s how we’re getting out of this mess.
That doesn't negate the fact that both parties are, in fact, bad.
And scolding people for criticizing Democrats as "both-siders" means you like your fascism with less overt racism.
Uh, if 95% of the voters are voting fascism one way or the other, it's a start. I think you wildly underestimate electoral inertia. Don't get me wrong, I wish you were right, but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Unless you've got an actionable plan to sway, like, 70 million people, maybe start with nudging the scales from fascism full-flavor to fascism lite and go from there.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Polls show progressive ideas are incredibly popular. Liberal Democratic politicians aren't.
The road to progress isn't through Gavin Newsom.
Then vote in the primaries, absolutely do that and encourage everyone you know to do the same. And if a shitlib wins the primary, vote damage reduction.
Shitlib > Overt Fascism
Here's hoping distilling it down to that can help some people understand.
Mamdani.
He won the primary (in a Democratic stronghold). Awesome, let's keep that up where we can. Vote in your primaries.
But if your district's Mamdani is a long shot third party, maybe make sure the shitlib beats the fascist until that long shot has widespread support.
Did you miss how the liberal Democrats' knives came out after a progressive won the primary?
They ran Andrew "Sex Crimes" Cuomo as a splitter.
So tell me again how voting in the primary is the only permissable way to get progress.
Again, progressive policies are more popular than liberal Democrats. The idea of centrism and incrementalism is just Lucy with the football. There are no centrist voters. It's a lie liberal Democrats tell so they can do stealth fascism.
Because it still worked? I didn't say anything about permissible, I'm talking about successful. You're allowed to do whatever, you just can't be surprised when certain actions are ineffective. You're allowed to build a shrine in your closet and try to voodoo progressives into office, but that's not going to accomplish much.
Because the most popular 3rd party candidate in the 2024 presidential election only got 0.5% of the total votes cast. And there are ZERO 3rd party members in Congress.
It's basic math.
The only path forward is reforming the Democrat party by primarying the bad actors.
Or violent revolution (not happening).
Both progress fascism. And historically both sides made some major strides towards it allowing for today's gov to exist. It's def a joint venture. But we do get to see increasingly more what's happening behind the curtain (that's usually when it's too late tho).
I think you missed my point.
As an American that's never not voted, I don't understand these fucking assholes.
Genuinely... Fuck them. We're fucked because of the people that don't vote, not because of the minority of insane MAGA's.
The winner of our last presidential election was actually "didn't vote".
Both sides bad AND you still have to vote.
Right, but that's also no excuse for running lesser monsters on the other side. We have every right to refuse all monsters no matter their severity.
If you guarantee your vote to someone, they will lose any incentive to act for your benefit. It's really that simple. And if genocide is not a bridge too far for you, God help you, because obviously there's no limit to what you'll put up with.
I usually see it as calling out the political capture of the two-party system which has rendered the United States an oligarchy with increasingly dysfunctional democratic functions. Quite often it is a call out of the partisanship that reinforces the rigidity of the two party system and preventing any positive or lasting reform. At the very least those are the valid contexts I know of for bringing up any both-sideism of the two American political parties.
But yes, the Republicans do win when there is less voting.
Try your hardest to create a new party the day after election day. If it fails, vote Democrat and start trying again the next day.
You have no idea how strongly and passionately I wish to see the day that you guys get a proper multi-party system. What you have right now is super fucked up.
https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States
EDIT: Also, yes, Trump and GOP are definitely trying to downright rig elections and that can't be ignored, of course
Yup.
That said, please be kind to leftists, and try to primary a candidate people can vote FOR, rather than just voting against Republicans. (America needs more Mamdanis, and "vote blue no matter who" is a reasonable stance but a TERRIBLE slogan.)
Same goes for leftists: Be kinder to and more understanding of liberals. Not everyone has it in them to be a hardline revolutionary. (And don't forget to vote in the primaries.)
Even if we DO vote, we still get Republicans. They just wear a different color and use a different letter.
That’s just what a Republican would say to potential Democratic voters 🤔
No, that's what a leftist would say who recognizes that there can be no progress for the working class by continuing to enable the capitalist elite.
Yes, and we need a revolution if we can't effect change from within the current system.
BUT THE FUCKING POINT is that WHILE THE SYSTEM STILL EXISTS, NOT SUPPORTING THE DEMS ENDS UP SUPPORTING FASCISM.
Supporting either is a support of fascism, as the Democrats, being a neoliberalist party, fundamentally enable fascism. This bullshit didn't just spring up overnight, it was the result of generations of political fuckery by the owning class to slowly and methodically consolidate power while keeping the working class pacified with bread and circuses.
Your simple, fallacy logic doesn't fly. Real change doesn't come from a ballot box.
Fascism - a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist political ideology that emerged in early 20th-century Europe, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and subordination of individual interests to the state. It promotes national rebirth, militarism, and often racial superiority.
Can you explain to me how you think the Democrat party is fascist? Because in this definition of fascism, the only one I can stretch to make work is "militarism", but then A LOT of countries would be falling under the fascist label.
Republicans, on the other hand, check all of these boxes.
The Democrat party is flawed and weak. They are not fascist. Learn to use words properly based on their definitions.
The most you can say about democrats is that they passively object to fascist ideology, but they never do more than throw procedural obstructions to fascist momentum and legitimize reactionary grievances by repeatedly affirming xenophobic anxieties about immigrants and minorities.
The reason leftists argue that both parties operate under the same fascist framework is that they both prioritize a failing capitalistic system over radical socialist reform, and so will (either by choice or because trying to preserve failing capitalist systems leaves them without a choice) bend to reactionary populism and abandon socialist populism.
"democrats are better than republicans because they oppose fascism" is really only true if you ignore the common consensus among political theorists that fascism is the end product of deteriorating material conditions and the tendency of capitalist systems toward self-preservation. So long as democrats deny the demand for popular socialist reform, they are nothing more than the moderate wing of the same fascist uni-party. To be truly oppositional to fascism they need to address the contradictions in their own political framework, or else be constantly pulled rightward by the same reactionary forces acting on the right.
One is fascism. The other enables fascism through systemic means. Thus, support for either is supporting fascism.
Go read theory. You'll learn a thing or two. Malatesta has good works on this subject.
Can you, using the defnition of fascism, describe how Democrats enable fascism?
Yes. They are.
Less fascist is better than more fascist, but it's still fascist. Just some different aesthetics to keep the placatium palatable. Still corporatist fascist. Still fascist.
Check out the current voter suppression, and the [oft Democrat [and Republican] aligned [but not 3rd party/green/libertarian/independent aligned nor neutral]] corporate media "crystallising public opinion", and other parallels to the defining historic examples of fascism, in how they suppress opposition to preserve the dictatorial power and subordination of individual interests to the state, and how it promotes national rebirth ("CHANGE" as the perpetual political slogan, anyone?) to carry on with its "militarism" (jingoist hegemony and national supremacist global domination).
... Or keep complicitly hiding what's going on peddling placatium, and just keep repeating "USA Number 1" and "Land of the free" harder along with some "lesser" evil hopium.
1st ammendment is there to assure that freedom.
The freedom to hold dear to the whataboutisms of comfort in pointing at terrifying worse to keep terrifyingly convinced ones own groupthink is the right one, is the same freedom to strive to attain the mark of an educated mind, able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting nor rejecting it.
Supporting and enabling fascism is still fascism.
... Oh but it's less fascism. They said the one true way we're to think is like this and it's nicer than the one true way the other side have. ... Stay divided and conquered, while ever falling for the one true way of a groupthink, and the crooks will take everything from you, while you still are yet to stop falling for it.
Sublimating out of it is impossible?
No.
It's necessary.
this definition isn't accurate
That is exactly the arguments a Republican shill would use.
Even if both options are fascist, one of them is clearly less fascist. And unless you make sure a third option exist, not voting on the less fascist option will give you the more fascist option.
Lol if you think that's the argument of Republicans then you are desperately unread in leftist theory.
We don't play that bs, reactionary "lesser evil" bullshit.
Or you are desperately unread in Republican theory. The post we are all commenting on is about you.
Having to rely on the lesser evil is a result of a 2-party system, which is a result in a winner-takes-all system.
If you want to break the system, go right ahead. But until then, your mentality is what caused Republicans to win and the US to slide even faster into fascism. This is the reality. Not whatever utopian view you have of the world.
So congratulations, you played yourself.
Unless you don't live in the US of course, which looks to be more likely every comment you make.
That's the thing. The person you're responding to is trying to draw you into an argument in which you acknowledge Democrats are also fascists. They are not. Not by the very definition of the word.
You don't need to point out that a less fascist party is better than a really fascist party, which is true, because one of the parties in question is not fascist. Period.
The? There are several flying around.
Which definition? e.g.:
....
One of these is not like the others. ;)
Until that last one, I was struggling for a definition that didn't have the Democrat party also qualify.
This whole thing has me think of Pacific's song, "Break your social system". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNCrYT--VKk
No, Democrats are a center-right neoliberalist party. They are not fascist and I'll never claim that they are. I am trying to get people to read and educate themselves on how certain political philosophies, through the systemic forces which they reinforce and institutionalize (capitalism, electoralism, Imperialism, etc...), enable the political philosophy that is fascism to hold and consolidate power over the population.
Go read a damn book.
YOU'RE SUPPORTING FASCISM BOTH WAYS EXCEPT ONE IS JUST SLIGHTLY SLOWER
Remember when the Democrats opposed the Patriot act? I do....n't.
It’s honestly exhausting watching people drag out the Patriot Act like it’s some ultimate "gotcha" to prove both sides are the same. Using a massive, fear-driven over-correction from 9/11 as the benchmark for how these parties actually operate is just plain ignorant.
Major attacks like that ALWAYS lead to over-correction because everyone is terrified and trying to look "tough," but if you look at the last twenty five years of what they’ve actually done, that "both sides" argument falls apart the second you look at the record. The Patriot Act is the fucking exception, not the rule.
Since 2001, Democrats have actually passed things that help real people, like the ACA, the Inflation Reduction Act - which was the biggest climate investment we’ve ever seen - and the American Rescue Plan that kept people from drowning during the pandemic. They’ve pushed for student loan forgiveness, the CHIPS Act to actually bring jobs back here, and they tried to expand the Child Tax Credit. These are substantive, life-altering policies. Even when they’re sitting at center-right, they’re still in a completely different universe than the GOP.
Meanwhile, the Republican "to-do" list is basically just tax cuts for the rich and packing the courts with lifetime appointments specifically to gut every bit of progress we’ve made. That’s it. That’s the whole platform.
Deregulation, stripping environmental protections, and killing financial oversight.
When they aren't busy passing tax breaks for billionaires, they are blocking everything else. They’ve blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they blocked Build Back Better, and they’ve killed every single attempt at common sense gun safety or climate action. They don’t want to govern, they just want to dismantle the floor we're standing on.
Claiming the parties are the same because they both folded during a post-9/11 security panic is a lazy way to ignore two decades of completely opposite priorities. One side spends twenty years trying to expand healthcare and civil rights while the other side is obsessed with shrinking the state and blocking anything that doesn't involve a corporate subsidy.
Do you freebase the copium?
Just say no to more of the same bullshit, instead of retconning it or desperately making excuses for it.
I honestly don't know what to do to get people to grasp this. I don't know if I'm mostly butting my head against young people's ideology. When we're young we're less likely to make any concessions or grasp how imperfect the reality we live in is. My fear is that I'm trying to get this basic concept through to people my age. If that's true, then this country is in deep, deep shit. Because this is not a hard concept to understand, especially if you've made it past that early adulthood no concessions it has to be just and fair phase.
Like, this is the reality you live in. These are your options on a federal scale. One is very clearly fascist, the other is not, despite a bunch of uninformed people in this very thread saying that both sides are fascist. Clearly these people have no idea what fascism is.
Do not underestimate the chemical lobotomies, the "crystallising public opinion" psyops, the irrational groupthinks. Still, speaking out, exposing them to other ways, as futile as it long seems, is necessary for breaking the spell. Much to mend. Beware certainty, especially in ourselves, lest we unwittingly succumb similarly, depriving ourselves nuance, pushed to polarised reductions, peddling metrics to bolster our certainty of our own one true way, denying ourselves access to multiple perspectives, deluding ourselves into naive realism, believing what we believe is reality, and not just a favoured perspective, one of many potential more.
Marxism is in of itself a proven failure. Trying to implement failed ideologies will only ever result in more of the same failure. There are other, more successful ways to bring change with better principles, more accurate framework, and better results historical results.
This ain't Marxism bruh.
Which Marxism though?
The young Marx, when there was still freedom in his thinking?
Middle Marx, when freedom was reduced to a wishful "it'll happen, trust the economics, bruh"?
Old Marx, when the "well then we'll make them free" & "some are more equal than others" tankies and totalitarians had completely usurped it, and handed it back to state-capitalists?
Best not take the freedom out. Other political philosophers are available.
"We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality." -- Mikhail Bakunin.
Bruh, I do believe you may have responded to the wrong person. I never mentioned Marx here other than to say I didn't quote Marxism.
I literally posted a picture and quote of Malatesta.
But
Is what you wrote. The very thing I responded to. That mentioned Marxism. I was merely expanding on that, showing it's not the one simple thing that many Marxists and many McCarthyians swing around like a homogenous cudgel.
It seems more like you've made an error there.
"Well then we'll make them free", the contradiction of the auth-left, that has it face-plant, successfully making a mockery of "the left" in the minds they and their auth-right counterparts have both convinced to believe the only left. Freedom first, or they'll keep playing us across the economics tacking ever more authoritarianwards.
And to those in the Marxist-believer groupthink, and those peddling the notion that "neo-liberal" parties are "the left", there is no libertarian left. Oh no, don't look over there, and don't say things like that, or you're a Republican fascist. LOL. It's a lot more fun when you see through the psyop ploys, and stop falling for it.
No more having terror successfully deployed on the brain for political power usurping. Terrorism, definitively. No more of that. From those who accuse, but really confess. "Look out! Terrorists!" Is terrorist. And that's what the duopoly do. Keep scaring you into the arms of their counterpart puppet. "No such thing as bad advertising", especially when you've cornered the market and are in a system where people are scared into voting against who they don't want, rather than for what they do want.
Imagine what that's like... being in a system where you get to vote for what you want, not terrorised into voting against who you most don't want. Imagine. Not a system racing to the bottom of kakistarchy, but a system where you have a real say, towards good stuff.
No corrupting centralising single-point-of-failure power-nexus attracting the most ruthless and power-abusing.
Everybody getting their real say, without duress. Free to use their creative, critical, constructive, considerate potential of their forebrains (y'know, the thing oft said most separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom), rather than succumbing to our hind-brain's survival mode, all reactive and tribal, stressing us, making us sick. Imagine that, being healthy and free... Sounds like what'd happen if we didn't have all this fascism and kleptarchy and kakistarchy and attercoparchy. Sounds like real democracy; organised by the people.
Direct democracy, liquid democracy, hybrid democracy, config-democracy, so many ways better...
[/Dreamer].
BOFE SIDEZ YOU SAY?!!?!?!?!
Goddamn. You may as well be a Russian operative.
If you can't see the differences, put on some fucking glasses. It's not exactly subtle.
The differences are
Oh, sorry, there is one; one of them hates rainbows and the other pretends to like them. My bad
No, this claim is false.
I know both sides are absolute shit, and I still voted for Harris. And I hate Harris, though not as much as Biden or Trump. I would not have voted for Biden.
I didn't "design" this opinion to manipulate anyone's vote. My opinion has been earned through life experience, including political volunteering and running for office.
Uh-oh. I guess this means I should show up to the polls next time. And vote for the less-bad candidate.
But I hate it. I HATE ALL OF IT.
Every time I say something like that a self proclaimed intellectual comes around and tells me how he couldn’t vote for Kamala because he is totally not a Russian bot and he had to stop Kamala from starting a war in the Middle East.
Dump the f'n Electoral College!!!
The Democrats are bad, but the Republicans want you dead.
Do you really need it spelled out more than this ? VOTE for heaven's sake.
The fact that you think there's two sides is the problem.
There's a lot that goes into the choice of a President, starting way upstream from the actual Presidential vote - after all, there are 340 million of Americans who could be President, so clearly there is a lot of choosing going on outside the actual vote to trim that down, otherwise the Presidential election vote would have a lot more than just 2 real options.
Sadly a lot of Americans seem to have been brainwashed into a sort of learned blindness were they think of the actual election vote as the entirety of the choice, not really pondering on the rest of choosing that must be going on to go from 340 million possibilities to 2.
Posts like this one are elements of the very propaganda used to convince Americans that their only power as citizens is in that one single moment were somebody else already trimmed 340 million down to 2 and a loud spectacle is made of them having the choice of 1 out of those preselected 2.
If one doesn't allow oneself to be swindled into such a reductive view of Democratic choice in America, it becomes pretty obvious that the vote itself does very little of the choosing and that have more of the choice one has to at minimum participate in Primaries, better yet do things like campaigning, even better be part of civil society groups, go on demonstrations and even distribute pamphlets and put up posters denouncing the actions of the worst politicians (such as getting money from AIPAC).
People who genuinely want to improve the way America is run wouldn't relentlessly try to artificial reduce the view that others have of the process down to the smallest and least mathematically significant part of it.
That most people being brainwashed into thinking that selecting between the last 2 is all that matters massively helps those doing the biggest and most obscure part of the choosing to retain said power and not be questioned for it, probably explains why the Propaganda pushing for the hyper-reductive take on the choosing of a President is so relentless and intense.
People who won't vote for the Democrats don't necessarily see the world the same way as people who do vote D. Really go have a look at https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
There are ethical lines some people actually won't cross, e.g. voting for the Ds who make anthropogenic climate change worse and so are causing a mass extinction, sell weapons to people actively committing a genocide, further an economic system that rewards narcissistic sociopaths and punishes ethical people, ...
Go look at the linked graph above again. You may not agree, but understand that there are people who do, and to get these people to vote for the Ds, you need to convince them why voting for omnicidal, genocidal, greedy sociopaths is the right thing to do. The "lesser evil" argument doesn't work on them, because if you look at the linked graph above and compare the distances between the parties, and understand there are ethical lines between the Ds and leftists/socialists/Greens/etc. they won't cross; then it means vastly better arguments need to be put forth. Yes the Rs are psychopaths and openly racist, but compared to the slightly less (compare the distances on the graph) sociopathic Ds, then
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13.
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
If there are no ethical options, then activity making the world more evil isn't something these people will do.
You gotta use that energy to push people in the primary
both sides are bad, but voting for lesser evil is still better than letting bigger evil prosper. But pretending choice between 2 evils is the ONLY option is what is perpetuating this bullshit. And if there truly is nothing to be done except accept your one party system that is split in 2, you need to work on dismantling the whole system instead but that is chemoterapy level option so hopefully it doesnt get to that.
America needs more parties so people have actually something to vote.
You gotta keep voting the lesser of two evils for the main elections, while voting for the best alternatives you can find locally.
The problem is both sides ARE bad. Both ... two. The two party system is broken, our Constitution was not built to handle political parties and George Washington says he regrets they were not banned in the Constitution. He said that political parties would destroy the USA in his farewell speech to the nation. Independent parties are the only noncorrupt option ... but they are not viable in a two party system.
Just a reminder that liberals will never be on the side of the revolution. They're always going to say that voting for them is what matters. It's all a sham to prevent you from actually doing anything.
Bingo.
Just got perma-banned from the "Late Stage Capitalism" sub cuz I called the single moderator (always bad) out as a coward for deleting my comments pointing out that both sides are not the same and in the situation we find ourselves in it is to our benefit to vote for the one currently not engaging in fascism.
Kinda wish there was a rule that subs have to have more than one active moderator or get shut down after a period of time. But I guess some subs are so small and specific that wouldn't work. Just sucks losing subs to a single powertripping moron.
This is lib bullshit. Voting is how you keep the Epstein class in power.
Prove me wrong and nominate an anti-genocide candidate.
Bonus: https://www.spyculture.com/john-krasinski-plays-the-innocent-act-when-it-comes-to-making-political-propaganda-again/
Yeah.. I already voted last election but the below makes me concerned..
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/read-the-emergency-executive-order-trump-activists-are-rallying-behind
Note the article says this is being pitched but nothing surprises me anymore
"Both sides are bad" are designed to encourage people to join or form alternative movements. Not voting is a possible, but not necessary, collateral side effect. The strenghtening of alternative movements is the only way out of this bipartisan nightmare, even if today it seems unreachable.
This debate is a sign that our democracy is dying. We can't find a good candidate anywhere in the political spectrum. The Democrats are intentionally incompetent and ineffective.
But the belief that the system is fixable enough that we can vote our way out of the problem persists. So the proletariat spend the last days of the empire arguing about whether or not voting works and if there are good candidates, meanwhile the bourgeois loot the treasury in preparation for coming collapse.
Voting in another bourgeois president will not fix any problems. At best, it will delay the inevitable. The system is unfixable. Even if we defeat Trump, the dissatisfaction with the status quo will continue. Even if Kamala had won, the dissatisfaction with the status quo will continue. The political class is incapable of devising effective solutions for the problems of a system they benefit from.
Something will rise from the ashes of this moment in history, I think it's time we get started on building that future.
There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to massive wealth inequality. There is no historical precedent for an electoral solution to fascism. If you think voting alone is going to save our country, or the world, you have a problem.
This post is designed to keep people voting for the purple party.
Look around the world. Most places [have systems that] do not succumb to this corrupt harmful stupidity.
Vote and organise harder around independents and "3rd party" candidates. Especially any seeking to implement proportional representation, ranked choice voting, direct democracy, etc. Double especially for any seeking to eliminate the various layers of corruption in the democratic system, such as proprietary voting machines, voter suppression, the electoral college, lobbying, gerrymandering, etc.
And most of all... stop falling for it.
No, actually, both sides are bad. American bipartism is a trap that only benefit the Epstein Class, who are both rep and dem. Destroy the dems, replace them with a true Left. Go for Mamdanis and such.
I've been voting in every election since I turned 18. That whole time pretty much was, "Don't vote third party because you're throwing your vote away." That logic has been used by the establishment for that entire time to justify not changing, not supporting socialist candidates, and amplifying the ratcheting effect. I WILL NOT hold my nose anymore. I'll write in a candidate. If anything, we should start coordinating outside of the established news structure and CHOOSE a third-party candidate to vote for and write in when the two options are garbage. Your vote is your vote, and every time you compromise your priorities to vote against your own beliefs and interests, you are playing their game.
TLDR: I'll write in my own chosen candidate before I ever hold my nose for Democrats again, and there isn't a damn thing anyone can say to change my mind.
When will we prolls wrap our heads around the fact that we have been excluded from the Democratic process by the electoral vote. Not trying to be mean or sarcastic I'm just looking for a timeline.
The Washington regime isnt a democracy, it just have the aesthetics of democracy. Giving your vote to the regime is to legitimize their reign. Resist might, sow seed that relights atrention towards collective endavours. Nationalism and walldoms will lead us nowhere. Democratic confederations is the future.
Voting gives the system an appearance of consent and legitimacy. Mass non-compliance is the answer.
I vote in all elections, while simultaneously believing all politics is theatre conducted by those that actually own the world.
i vote every single time. i say both sides are the same but i dont mean politicians..i loved obama. i was fine with biden, just wish he was younger. would still vote for him even if he was a corpse because... it would be better.
when i say both sides i mean the bitches online. the people in real life are pretty normal.
online you have facist christians and facist islam lovers. i cant say muslims because they arent actuallyuslims, they are people who say they are left but embrace an intolerant people who behad gay people. so they are the same. everyone who picks a side (right/left) online is a facist
Being a condescending fella can also become a problem.
Not kidding.q
Yes exactly that mentality is part of the problem.
It's called critical support numbnuts.
"Both sides are bad" is correct, but perpetuate the notion that you only can vote on the two different parties. There are other parties you can vote on.
"Literally the only way to stay in power", do I need to remind OP that they WON the elections? Democracy goes both ways, your "side" doesn't always win.
At the very least, people not voting definitely benefits someone—apathy is never neutral.
No raindrop feels responsible for the flood.
I'll vote, but never for a major party. Didn't do it at any point in the last decade that I've been eligible to vote and people were fine with that when Dems still won and even laughed at leftists who thought winning Dems should cater to them.
Voting third party is also a vote for Republicans.
I really don’t think that this is limited to American politics.
This is stupid. There are various good and bad reasons for both-sides-ism. It's not all a conspiracy. You just have to use your brain and engage everything on a case by case basis.
A very common phenomenon is that you have a few people who have particular unusual opinions, say on extreme deregulation. And they're often very intelligent and knowledgeable academics who can craft elaborate arguments in their favor. The more intelligent you are the more you can do the mental gymnastics to justify what you want to believe. The monied interests who want this deregulation find these people and amplify their voices or fund their campaigns. None of it needs to be a conspiracy. Every player has been selected for their genuine preexisting opinions.
There's a famous line from a BBC interview of Noam Chomsky by Andrew Marr. Marr asks "Am I self-censoring?". Chomsky replies "I don't think you're self censoring. I think you believe everything you say. But if you believed anything different, you wouldn't be sitting across from me right now." (Paraphrased from memory, not really quoted).
Anyone who didn't vote has endorsed everything that the government is doing right now, regardless of the election outcome. If the Dems had won, they would have endorsed the Dems' actions. Since the Reps won, they've endorsed the Reps' actions.
No they are trying to get you to vote for other candidates. Will we see one elected to a major office in the 50 years? Probably not. But it will take even longer if people keep getting stuck in the blue no matter who mindset
And honestly they are boring. Ugh, these guys are also bad!.. so fucking what. Sit down and die on the hill of moral high ground?
No. Just no. The truth is still the truth, and saying the truth doesn't mean you are trying to do anything but say the truth. Both sides should be banned from holding political office or any involvement in the political process. Clean flush.
And then when you wake up from the dream world where both parties a completely rebuilt, you need to vote for your actual choices.
If the Republicans never have a chance of winning again, it becomes much easier for the actual progressives to differentiate themselves from the more centrist Democrats.
Never said anything contrary to what you are saying. I just can't stand posts like this BS that claim all people who say both sides are bad are really saying blah blah. Both sides are bad. That is just a fact. And I won't call either of them good. That doesn't mean anything more than it clearly says.
What's your plan to achieve that other than posting here?
I vote in the primaries and support the most progressive, and least polotician like people I can find on the ballot. My state is solid blue, so I don't have to worry about a republican winning anything at the federal level.
YEah, that's fine. But what do you do until that happens, hmm? By not voting for the party that at a minimum causes LESS harm, you are supporting fascism.
If saying "the truth" means fewer people vote against the Republicans, the Republicans win and continue to fuck our democracy. All because people like you care more about the "truth" than strategically voting the best options on the ground at any given time.
That's WHY the fascists push "both sides" as hard as they do. It's one of the things keeping them in power.
Never said I don't vote against the republicans. You just highlighted the problem. Posts like this are meant to villianize people who acknowledge that both sides are evil. It litterally makes a divide between those who vote D, and those who vote D but admit they are evil too. That drives more people to not vote D.
Bull fucking shit.
Posts like this encourage people not to vote, which helps fascists win.
There's nothing stopping anyone from working on change at ANY fucking time, but NOT voting Dem in the general election is NOT the fucking time to do it.
people voting is how we got every president but gw bush.
they were all terrible.
no more presidents.
Then change the system. Eliminate voting or whatever.
But meanwhile, VOTE FOR THE NOT-FASCIST OPTION. :P
you're really confusing. a minute ago I thought you wanted me to vote for the democrats
Cute.
options
:Shurg: the news everyday encourages people not to vote with how little the dems do and how much they give in. The post OP was referencing have negligible impact.
And who owns the media? You have to ask yourself why the media reports what they report.
I know who owns them, and I know why they report what they report. That wasn't the point. The point was that thier impact is orders of magnitude more then the few people who the posts OP referred to might sway. So the real impact of ops post is to split up people who support the same overall goals, not to stop people from being convinced not to vote.
Cross post this to lemmy.ml you coward. I double dare you lol
But a democratic politician did that one thing thirty years ago!
Oh you don’t like either candidate? What a special person you are! I can’t believe that a nation of 340 million people winnowed down their possible leaders to two people without producing one that you absolutely love!
So what are the "The "Both sides are bad." posts exist to diswuade you from voting." posts doing?
100% vote blue no matter who. But pig fucking zionazi warmongering DNC will still screw you over, and 100% vote in primaries, and organize for a Green, or new, party that doesn't just show up when GOP pays them to split votes from DNC.
But corporate Dems, which was harris. Is barely better than trump.
There's only two people who I have ever seen that harbor this mentality:
In both cases, they provide nothing of value to the discourse. Enlightened centrists are politically apathetic, and they only want to feel better about themselves by putting down "the sides", and far left extremists are not serious people because they're inherently irrational and dogmatic. There's no appeasing either of them nor should anybody try to. Most people are pragmatic enough to understand the point being made in these meme, but these dingleberries won't.
voting is literally not the only thing USAmericans can be doing. Their government must be destroyed. It is not impossible, it happened in my country.
Nah, in the long run: a weak and unstable US is better for the rest of the world. Also: with the orange man, you know what you have and you don't want to vote for more genocide, right?