Actually, the other side mostly wants things to stay the same. Their constituents, on the other hand, would like to see better healthcare, education, unions, and stronger safety nets. But since the other side aren’t fascists, their voters are stuck with them.
This right here ☝️. The grassroots democrats I could support. It's the Chuck Schumers and John Fettermans that will undermine the party from within that make supporting democrats difficult.
Rotating villain. He allows them to tell their constituents "we want what you want, we just don't have the power because of thay one guy, but if you vote just a little harder, we won't pull the football away this time", while telling their donors "we ain't giving them shit lmao".
remember that one time the villain was 'the parliamentarian'? apparently that guy exists and is suddenly important when the democrats run out of reasons to blame republicans
PA senators are not subject to recalls, so it's out of the hands of the voters. He could technically be impeached and removed from office by the Senate itself... but for what, exactly? It's not illegal to vote a certain way, even if it's against the wishes of your constituency.
And even if Fetterman were somehow removed, PA is an extremely competitive state. Remember, he won against Doctor fucking Oz, so the chance of someone even worse coming in to replace him is quite high. The devil you know, etc etc...
Best case scenario is that he gets primaried into irrelevance in 2028 by someone with actual integrity. But even then, I'm not holding my breath...
You pull all of his committee assignments and neuter his value to lobbyists. If all he has is his vote on the legislation that hits the floor, he can't do much and it will hurt him both financially and politically, because if you don't have value to lobbyists they won't send you "gifts".
You attack him personally and threaten his business or personal connections. For example, if Dems wanted to pull Manchin in line, for example, they could have sent the DoJ after his daughter for price gouging consumers on pharmaceuticals.
And yes, while it doesn't matter now, you make sure he knows he'll be primaried out and smeared like yesterday's dog shit. Character assassination is effective and could bring someone in line, especially when they're enthusiastically supporting genocide and Israel's popularity is in the shitter.
That's how.
They've never been powerless. They're just complicit.
Not speaking for anyone else, but I’m fully aware of what the Democratic Party stands for. Problem is, the alternative has gotten so much worse.
Before the current madness, there was a part of me aching to vote for someone crazy to come and hasten the act of burning this mess to the ground. Then I saw it, and got scared. Maybe that’s when I should’ve leaned in.
The odds of us getting out of this with a revolution are vanishingly small.
The answer is going to be reforming the Democrat party by primarying the Schumers and the Fettermans out.
Party reformation has happened multiple times in American history and conservatives literally just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party over the last decade or two.
Right, but in the mean time it makes any attempt to claim "The Democrats stand for [insert policy position]" a lie, because while an individual democrat may believe in those things, the part as a whole can't agree on anything at all. They can't even align themselves on their own platform, let alone apply pressure to the Republicans. At best they're nothing but a speed break for more republican policy. You're still getting republican policy, just slower, and they can't move the needle in the other direction even if they win because they'll simply surrender in advance.
Wasting more time and more money trying to slow the rate the US collapses into a burning train wreck is an exercise in futility. The only real solution is to try and build a "coalition of the willing" to preserve what is left and the Republicans drive the rest, screaming incoherently, off the cliff they're headed for. Small scale organizing, networks to help move people to safety "underground railroad" style, to move material and finances in ways that circumvent federal control, create safe-havens that can resist federal encroachment and operate outside of federal regulation meant to break down resistance. Register some "Churches" that can provide physical plant and meeting grounds, as well as offer support services when federal support is ripped up. Build a nation within a nation.
Voting for Democrats isn't going to stop this spiral. They have no vision, no will, no unity, and zero political capital to actually create change. Sure, vote blue to slow the bleeding, if you're still allowed by next election, but as long as they're a party so big tent they have no direction at all, they're just a slower, more painful collapse.
Correction: They SAY they want health care and education, get elected, and then spend their political capital making most people poorer, doing fascism, and genociding.
I keep seeing this stupid, counter-productive sentiment and have yet to have anyone actually explain it to me.
Meanwhile, I'm old enough to remember when I was poor and had NO healthcare and the Dems fought tooth and nail to get Obamacare passed and then I had affordable healthcare. Millions of other people can tell you the same, if you need a history lesson.
The only difference I see here is that, under Democrats, it's primarily ICE and the cops doing the Nazi things and not CBP, and you'll recall that after George Floyd was killed Biden used his next SOTU to publicly call for more police militarization.
Also, go look up who first appointed Tom Homan, for a very good example.
Equal? Universal healthcare is derided as the delusions of radical extremists. A mere pipedream of anti-semitic tankies, if we're talking the gambit of American media.
The democrats had the house, senate, and presidency for 4+ years. Where is that Healthcare?
Spoiler: Both sides are bad, they both get paid off. Its just that one side is really fucking honest with you right now ... to the point where they commit crimes in public because no one will do anything about it.
And we should thank Trump for opening eyes of so many dumb people that thought otherwise. It had to get really bad before we see any changes. Though I see in comments many are still sucking off dems
Cool observation. Here's a smiley face sticker and a lollipop.
Here's another observation.
Both sides are NOT the same.
So, in a system where you WILL get one or the other for the foreseeable future, what would you consider to be the intelligent thing to do?
Also, you are wrong. Democrats haven't held a trifecta for 4+ years since the 1960s. In recent memory their control has only lasted 2-3 years at a time, and you've also failed to take into account that many things require a supermajority in Congress to enact and Dem's total control has typically been by a very thin margin.
Key Periods of Unified Democratic Control (White House + Senate + House):
2021–2023 (117th Congress): President Joe Biden, with narrow House and Senate majorities.
2009–2011 (111th Congress): President Barack Obama, passing the Affordable Care Act.
1993–1995 (103rd Congress): President Bill Clinton’s first two years.
1961–1969 (87th–90th Congresses): Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
1933–1947 (73rd–79th Congresses): President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the start of Truman’s term.
Where is that Healthcare?
When I was young and broke Obama, during one of those windows of control, gave me affordable healthcare when I had none and he had to fight tooth and nail with Republicans to get it.
You really need to do your homework before you post things on the internet that other people who don't do their homework will just accept as fact. It really doesn't help our situation.
“Did President Obama have "total control" of Congress? Yes, for 4 entire months. And it was during that very small time window that Obamacare was passed in the Senate with 60 all-Democratic votes.”
The healthcare bill written by Republican Mitt Romney that didn’t have universal healthcare and ended up being a handout to health insurance companies? That bill?
Were you not following the back and forth fight that went on back then for him to try to get anything through? Yeah it’s shit but it’s a lot better than the nothing there was. It was progress and if this country had actual adults in it instead of a bunch of emotional children and corrupt politicians then things could continue to progress.
Are you aware that reality is all sorts of imperfect and there will ALWAYS be corruption in political parties?
Are you aware that for the foreseeable future, and most likely for the remainder of your life, you will have Dems or Repubs in control?
So with those in mind, what good do you think it does to whine about a party having corruption when all parties will always have corruption and it's our duty to make the best decision within that reality? Such as making sure the WAY, WAY, WAY less corrupt party is in control and not the WAY, WAY, WAY more corrupt party.
Blaming the voters.
Why wouldn't they be to blame? How do you think the president and members of Congress got there? We live in a nation that willingly elected a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who ran a fraudulent university and charity and already had one massively failed presidency under his belt. Not to mention the open bigotry and obviously low IQ.
This IS a country full of child-like adults, and our government is a testament to that. Of course voters are to blame. We made this happen.
The person you are responding to was probably still breast feeding during Obama's presidency. So they're likely completely unaware that before Obamacare millions of people just didn't have healthcare and that Obama had to fight like hell with Republicans just to get it done.
117th Congress (2021–2023): Democrats gained control of the Senate (via Georgia runoffs) and held the House, paired with President Biden's election.
The 4-Year Period: This 4-year stretch saw shifting majorities in the Senate, but the Democratic caucus maintained a working majority to control the legislative agenda from 2021-2023, while holding the House from 2019-2023, marking a four-year tenure of overall legislative
You said they had the house, senate, AND presidency for 4+ years. The house yes, presidency yes, senate no. Nothing becomes law without the senate. Your claim was not accurate.
Why weren't they censured? Everything plays out EXACTLY like big business wants it. If you dont understand that corporations have nearly ful control of politics then we have nothing to discuss.
Here is the summary ... both sides bow down to billionaires and corporations.
Sure rotating villain and all that. Yes generally both sides serve their corporate rulers, but the progressives still caucus with Democrats, so they're slightly better and should always be voted for if the alternative is literal fascists. FPTP is the main problem in the electoral process.
You literally said dems havent had the House, Senate, and presidency ... then posted the Biden era where he had the house, senate, and pres. You are acting and posting like AI.
ROFLOL yeah it’s the Democrats fault we don’t have national healthcare. tHeY hAd foUR YeaRS WherE is It?? Smeared all over the soles of the Republicans shoes. That’s where it is.
However, with the increasingly shittier Republicans they have compromised further and further into utter shit. They've tacked toward shitty, pretty hard in some cases, to try to lure some shitty votes their way... alienating those who want less shit. They've opted to take money from extremely shitty people because they have a lot of money but those people desire there to be more shit. The Democrats abandoned their less shitty ground repeatedly even when they managed to find some real leverage, unleashing torrents of shit for no apparent reason (unless they actually want more shit).
So yes, their campaign websites have a lot less shit on them than the Republicans, but in practice the party as a whole has either pushed for things to be much shittier or compromised their alleged ideals unnecessarily resulting in things being much shittier.
There are certainly diamonds in the shit. I don't think it's all of them, but current leadership is definitely way more shitty than they look. What concerns me is that every time we get rid of some small contingency of Democrats that are obviously bathing in shit and willing to open the floodgates for the Republicans, we always seem to find just enough of the remaining Democrats wiling to dive in and replace them. It gives the impression that, for a significant subset of them, their campaign slogans and alleged ideals are performative.
I was banned from the lemmy.ml memes community for saying the Democrats are slightly better than Republicans. After saying it I needed to argue with 20 people at once, all with preprepared arguments, who were adamant that both sides are the same.
I've also recently seen that that community is extremely toxic in other ways.
Unfortunately we are all out of name brand luxury gay space communism.
We do, however, have Temu deluxe ambiguous resource "sharing" managed by Grok, and an couple open packs of glow in the dark ceiling stars. Only $19.99 a month at 30% interest when you buy now, pay later.
Is it easier for the general population to sway the voting of their democrat representatives towards healthcare and education reform or is it easier to sway the Republican reps? What about primaries, if your rep stubbornly refused to support their constituents desire for healthcare and education, are there democrat candidates that could be more focused on those issues? Are there Republican candidates?
You kind of need to work with the system you have until you can change it. Either you find the revolution, join it and force the change through violence, or you work in the system and push the reps you have to make it what you want it to be. There are no third party reps and won't be until you switch to a less archaic electoral system which won't happen without revolution or reps that understand it and see the value.
You kind of need to work with the system you have until you can change it.
Wow, what a lib take. You sound just like this lib:
Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
Sorry I'm editing this and removing the quite true bit. Part of my post does align with Lenin's quote (you'll note I also suggest you need to revolt as alternative, but some people aren't going to want to try that) so my question still stands. But in addition I'd like to ask, what the fuck are you on about? Are you suggesting you think Lenin was a "lib"?
Yeah I was trying to lampoon the lemmings who sincerely believe that participating in elections is fundamentally anti-left. I figured it would be obvious, but to be fair I have seen some particularly counterproductive tankies.
Yeah, the US gov seems to use The Onion as a manual these days, it desensitises the wider concept of satire because any nonsense could be a real thing.
It's wild that people think disengaging from the system completely is a solution, particularly when they aren't pursuing the alternatives. They are always light on what the alternatives are beyond starting an actual revolution (noones doing that, and if they are they are doing a shit job and need to start building some momentum and pressing ahead, turnaround on the plan-implement cycle needs to be quick lest it be dismantled by the state before it can get moving) or wallowing in self pity (not going to help).
I didn't catch the satire either, but I think it's because I don't know you and, well, people say a lot of dumb things on the internet. It is sad that discourse has gotten so stupid that I thought you were serious.
To be fair tone is hard to read. That said I am not sure our fellow lemms would get it. Some of us here read things to strictly. It reminds me of christian fundies in a way.
You're sort of missing the point of the statement. Which would itself indicate it's not a contradiction at all.
"Othering" people is making a blanket group an enemy. Humans do love to categorize things, and so the process of Othering based on arbitrary or immutable characteristics fits our known human biases well. It's an easy way to manipulate humans.
"These people" refers not to an arbitrary categorization of people, but rather a specific group of individuals in power right now that are doing real harm to people.
If anything, you could call it a limitation of English as a language, or my poor choice of words, but the statement on its own clearly indicates that there's no contradiction.
i felt embarassed trying to be a centrist at one point because i figured i should move where their goal posts were. they're trying to normalize shifting goalposts and they know it. unfortunately there's no actual social punishment for this.
People refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils is what got us the worse evil!
What are you even talking about? Biden got elected and enabled the modern-day holocaust lol. There is no "lesser evil", there are many heads to the same hydra: capitalism.
Less bad for you, maybe. Ask the people murdered by the Genocide Joe - Holocaust Harris administration if things would've been better for them. Ask the survivors if Harris being elected will bring back their dead family.
The point I'm trying to make is that you are unconsciously a white supremacist (yes, even if you are not white) who is willing to sign your name off to endorse the ethnic-based mass-murder of brown people overseas in order to protect your own privilege and comfort. That's "lesser evil". Try fighting all evil instead.
Aside from all that, Harris promised the "most lethal" military in the world - that means one thing, "killing the most people" - so on top of addressing your weak, white supremacist premise, I'm going to have to disagree with your weak liberal conclusion as well.
Thank you for having critical thinking skills and the patience to actually type it out for people who most likely won't even bother to read it in good faith.
I have neuropathy that has affected my fingers, my PC is set up on a coffee table in a corner cause that's the only space I have for it, and I usually only browse through Boost on my phone anyways. So, typing things out is a pain and I usually just point to authors and books to read.
What's happening in America is terrible but if you're comparing it to what is happening in Palestine as being even close to equivalent, you are a chronically out-of-touch and overprivileged liberal.
Blaming voters is just another way of wishing reality was different. Lots of people are telling you exactly how they are going to act but you are asking those without power to accommodate those with power. That's a choice and it says a lot about how you perceive power and it's authority.
In a discussion about the misrepresentation of political stances to further various agendas, it is not a whataboutism to point out a commonly held political hypocrisy.
If your primary concern had been its misrepresentation of your values, why didn't you lead with that? The topic of .ml and hexbear was brought up as examples of people pushing the narrative in OP - hence why including a hypocrisy about the topic common in those communities is relevant.
A pretty common sentiment on hexbear is that Putin is someone Lenin would have shot. Opposing the war in ukraine as an inter-capitalist war is pretty common position as well. I don't see the hypocrisy, just looks like someone attacking a made-up position
I've written before on electoralism. There are a few issues with @[email protected] point of view here.
To be clear I am not saying that elections are the only thing that matter or the only thing that we should be doing; just that it is foolish to be ignoring them. Ideally, we should be having our own party, but in places where that is not possible, we should participate in primaries and vote as left as possible. Diva's dismissiveness here is effectively saying we should step out of the way and let fascists have their way. Harm reduction is still important.
I will also just tag a comment here that voting is still a form of organizing and building credibility. If you have a movement and can persuade its members to vote then said members can also be persuaded to protest or strike. In the west voting carries little personal harm, so if people find that too tall then one can be sure that any higher order resistance might not happen.
At a minimum we should all be voting left in primaries to have statistics that there is in fact a left leaning populace that is being ignored. Protest votes and spoiled ballots are also good moves to do.
Diva is not wrong that the dems are also capitalists, but their apathy is discouraging leftist unity and changes to our material conditions.
Diva’s dismissiveness here is effectively saying we should step out of the way and let fascists have their way.
This is a false binary. I criticize democrat politicians for arming a genocide, that's me demanding better from them because their actions on that front cost them the election and tens of thousands of people their lives.
Harm reduction is still important
Harm reduction for whom? did it include Palestinians getting bombed with US weapons? any of other victims of US foreign policy? Trump couldn't operate with impunity as he is if the democrats didn't set him up for it.
voting is still a form of organizing and building credibility
No it fucking isn't. Organizing is organizing. Be it building dual power, mutual aid networks, unions, affinity groups, whatever. Voting is the bare minimum civic participation. Conflating them is a diversionary tactic designed to make people think they've done something groundbreaking by filling in a ballot.
If you have a movement and can persuade its members to vote then said members can also be persuaded to protest or strike
completely backwards. Movements don't start with voting and scale up to strikes. they start with material organizing and sometimes engage in electoral politics tactically (ideally with an actual workers party)
At a minimum we should all be voting left in primaries
Funny, did this in the 2024 'primaries' with uncommitted votes; all warning signs were completely ignored. surely if we keep trying the same things will work out eventually.
their apathy is discouraging leftist unity
I'm not apathetic, I'm actually quite involved in irl organizing (actual organizing, not electoral). I'm just not particularly invested in the democratic party.
For many vulnerable people. Its good that you are unaffected by the election results, but please check your privilege.
Voting is the bare minimum civic participation.
A bare minimum that mls cannot be bothered to do. As such they have no credibility to doing higher level activity.
Funny, did this in the 2024 ‘primaries’ with uncommitt...
Are you aware that there have been elections before that? We should have been organized long before. J Edgar Hoover thanks you for your contributions. You are the leftist he would wish to see. Disorganized and unwilling to take actions.
I’m not apathetic, I’m actually quite involved in irl organizing (actual organizing, not electoral). I’m just not particularly invested in the democratic party.
Right, you cared so much you couldn't spare an afternoon every two years? Maybe skip the shit posting a few days to get some of the time to do so. Not all of us are so privileged as to not care about the harm reduction at the least.
Its good that you are unaffected by the election results
I'm actually pretty fucking affected by them, I'm a trans woman and plenty fucking familiar with economic precarity. I've been having my prescriptions fucked with on and off ever since Trump got in office, my insurance even stopped covering pretty much every formulation of estrogen other than ones used by cis women
You're lecturing me about privilege because you don't like how I feel about your preferred party of genocide enablers.
A bare minimum that mls cannot be bothered to do.
I've voted in pretty much every fucking election on and off year in my adult life, plus I'm an anarchist.
J Edgar Hoover thanks you for your contributions
It's rich accusing me of being a fed/useful idiot while identifying voting for the democratic party as the truly useful activity.
You couldn't spare an afternoon every two years?
Once more, I've fucking voted every year for over two decades. I even vote in municipal elections, those happen on odd numbered years.
feel free to continue attacking straw targets though I guess.
Which side is telling us that these are the sides. I'm not disagreeing with either of the sides but I kind of feel like there's chirality to every political opinion.
Real, lasting change isn't going to happen instantly and with a minimal of effort.
Movements have to be built, leaders have to be cultivated. These things take time. Mistakes will be made. There will be times when you do everything right but still there are setbacks. If you want your working-class peers to represent your ideals in government, you have to support them. You have to be willing to let them learn, you have to help them out financially and strategically. Because otherwise, the vast majority of them can't compete against billionaires and their favored picks.
Voting alone is not enough in today's climate. Angrily typing at each other and posting furious videos blaming everybody but ourselves is not enough. You continue to do the same but expect different results -- you're going to be disappointed.
Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh MY candidate didn't win their primary. Guess what? You've got at least 2 more years to build a movement around people who reflect your values and represent you. You can't snap your fingers and expect the world to revolve around you instantly. Winning takes time, planning, strategy, organizing, money, and so much more. There is no quick fix strategy, and I guarantee you that even if literally every single thing from this moment forward goes exactly right and exactly your way, it's still going to be the better part of a decade (or longer) before there's any chance of arriving where you want to be. This isn't a sprint. It's not even a marathon. Making progress means you have to keep going.
Doesn't work when your side just fell asleep at the wheel and let the opposition take control. And that's the charitable take. Your side decided it was more important to fund a genocide than combat all the scary things in the first list.
Taking a step back and having the revelation that your electoralism means definitive genocide no matter who's in power should not be a reason to dig in and defend your electoralism. It should be reason to tear everything down.
Otherwise, youre taking the stance that Palestinians have a duty to allow themselves genocided to buy yourself time for more political waffling.
So did Biden and Harris wasn't going to be any different. Biden even went around Congress to make damn sure Bibi got exactly what he wanted and then some.
The progressive side of our politics still lives in the dem party and we have a better chance of getting our ideas out there in that party. Either by election like Mamdani or by appointment like Lina Khan.
To be clear I don't think Lina Khan was a lefty. Still her tenure in the FCC was rather pro consumer and pushing back on big corporations. That would not happen at all in any rep admin.
It's more about power than ideas. The problem with the establishment Dems is not that they have the wrong ideas but that they have been purchased by the oligarchs who get to win whether they get a D or an R.
Weird how this is the conclusion you came to instead of figuring out that the "your side" you're talking about isn't our side and hasn't been for a long time.
If you're American, people like you are the reason Trump is president. He was always going to genocide Palestine, and if you're saying so was Harris, then they're equal on that and you should elect Harris. Then AFTER she's in office you can pressure and throw mud and do everything possible to get the US to stop.
The average American I come across (at least online) very vocally can't be arsed. I don't mean in a general sense, I mean even in a left AF space like Lemmy, the average American user will argue up and down why a revolution in the US right now just "isn't feasible" and "we're all one paycheck away-" as repeated justification for kowtowing. I guess I get it, after all remember how no one ever revolted in France because they were all one loaf away from starvation?
The only ways for us to truly revolt, I think, would be to A. Storm the Capital like the right did, or B. Take over each individual state capital to freeze the government and seize control.
But even then, the military and police could wipe anything out if most are not on our side.
What? And then what? They didn't know what to do either, they took selfies and stole stuff and pissed in drawers or whatever. The country can function juuuust fine without access to the Capitol.
B. Take over each individual state capital to freeze the government and seize control.
Stranger, what kind of fantasyland are you living in? Do you think real life works like Domination in Call of Duty where you win if you hold all the points? Protestors could take the Capitol in Sacramento and most of California wouldn't even notice.
Our power is in our status as the working class, not in taking over government buildings. Taking over your nearest Starbucks would unironically be more effective at changing the trajectory of the country.
I'm afraid it's nothing that immediate or glorious (not yet anyway, but really, probably not for my generation... I'm 30. Maybe by the time the current youth are 30 we can have a shot.)
Americans are too disorganized to effectively exercise working class power, and too exploited to effectively organize. So you have to attack that reality from every front, many of which are mundane but essential.
Fighting exploitation primarily entails making things less expensive. The legal system will not save us, nor will electoral politics, though local politics are often worth the time. You can make it less expensive for people to raise children by watching their kids for them. You can make it less expensive for people to eat by growing food for them or cooking for them. You can make your own existence less expensive by buying used goods wherever possible and viable, and generally buying less consumer goods. I've had the same laptop for like 13 years, the same sunglasses for 15 years, the same shoes for 5 or 6 years, the same car for 5 or 6 years (with no plans to replace it).
All that money I didn't need is time I didn't need to spend working, which in turn frees me up to organize and just fuckin exist a little bit, which makes life more worth living, which makes you more motivated to fight for it. Add a little compassion / empathy to that mix, and it makes you more motivated to fight for other people too.
Then organizing looks different for everyone, but a good place to start is with (especially non-religious) organizations dedicated to feeding or otherwise serving the homeless, or environmental cleanup groups, or if none of that exists, just getting some friends together and doing something to improve where you live. Literally anything to make things better for those around you is how it starts.
You're skipping ahead, which is fine, we've all been there and we all wish we could accelerate things. But if we had the power to take over corporate offices to any level which would cause a real economic impact or actually threaten the safety of shareholders / executives, then they would already fear us too much to be fucking us over the way they are.
What? Jan 6thers were violent (if inept) insurrectionists, I just don't care what they attempted to do to a genocidal capitalist empire built on stolen land.
The "both sides" crew somehow thinks the side that supports unions and civil rights and voting rights and due process and raising the minimum wage and not constantly starting wars is equal to the side that wants the opposite of all of that, and the tankies here think liberals are much worse, because tankies are just closet fascists that think yellow looks better on a red background than black and white.
Honestly, I thought the added "difficulty" of using Lemmy would keep idiots like that off this platform, but apparently not. Or foreign agents/bots are infiltrating Lemmy. Probably a combination of both.
If you look at both sides and think "same", you need to acknowledge you are not an intelligent or informed individual and you need to work on your education.
it feels like these are a bunch of buzzwords to likefarm instead of actually saying anything. No, i don't think the average republican / American is fully unprejudiced and benevolent. but to say an entire half of the country wants slavery back is nonsense
One side wants to enact fascism and the other side thinks they can stop them by dancing in frog costumes and compromising with said fascism by only doing fascism lite™
Yeah one of those people are the politicians who will lead America into fascism, other other one is the frog suit wearing idiot who will happily follow.
Ah yes, wanting honest discourse and a bit less divisive language obviously makes me either republican... or a bot... wow... now, not entire unexpected for a reaction if you dare speak up in an echochamber....
I would love though to hear your reasoning about why i possible couldn't be a real human left wing :). This gonna be good :).
Wow, some slight critisism about this meme and it gets removed?
....
And for misinformation no less, that was the reason given.
Can someone help a poor lemming and point to the "misinformation" that warrants the following remark to get deleted?
I'm very open to dialogue :)
"It's not that i don't get the sentiment, but these extremely biased posts don't really add much to the discussion either -_-...
If we're gonna go with the worst of what's claimed about the right wing, shouldn't you contrast it with the worst of what is claimed about the left wing? "One side wants to bring back slavery, nazis, fascism, and women not being allowed to vote or own property. The other side just wants to let foreigners invade our country, and let them rape our women and children."
This post returns here every month or so, and i really hate it. I kind of get the sentiment obviously, but this "lets put the worst things claimed about the others be contrasted to the best things we think about ourselves", are just preaching for the choir, and just sowing extra division in an already extremely divided world.
You know that what you claim about the right may have some truth, but is far from the accepted position. And you also know there are equally bad claims about the left from the right, that also have some truth in them... I wish this was the last time i'd see this silly post here, but that's wishful thinking i guess...."
I love how everyone is offended, but can't even write out why XD. But fair enough, if you guys just want to preach to the choir, have fun :).
(and no, i'm not even saying that democrats " let foreigners invade our country, and let them rape our women and children.", just that if you use the worst stereotype about the republicans, you can at least put it opposite the worst stereotype of democrats. You know, make a fair comparison, not your worst stereotype about "the others" versus what we like about ourselves.)
They’re probably more tolerant of posts and comments that exaggerate the harms perpetrated by Republicans than similar posts about Democrats because the stuff Republicans actually do is really fucking evil, and voting for Democrats is the only viable way to stop it, and it seems like you want to discourage this by drawing a false equivalency. But you already know this, concern troll.
I had to look up concern troll, it's apparently an evil kind of devils advocate.
And how is what i posted (comparing the worst what is said about republicans with the worst that is said about democrats) a false equivalency, but this post that compares the worst of one side with the best of the other side not?
All i'm saying is making this kind of false equivalencies just weakens your position. From what i can tell it's indeed obvious the real fucking evil that's happening in the USA (i'm from europe, so i of course have to go by what i can see & read online).
So it should be freakin easy to make your point without silly posts like this that are such an obvious false equivalence that it's imo just pathetic.
But having standards for the communication of the side i prefer is a thought crime here it seems? And i'm then somehow accused of the exact thing the original post is doing and that i'm complaining about. So you find false equivalencies an issue, but don't see an issue with the post here?
Actually, the other side mostly wants things to stay the same. Their constituents, on the other hand, would like to see better healthcare, education, unions, and stronger safety nets. But since the other side aren’t fascists, their voters are stuck with them.
This right here ☝️. The grassroots democrats I could support. It's the Chuck Schumers and John Fettermans that will undermine the party from within that make supporting democrats difficult.
Why haven't the democrats kicked out Fetterman?
Rotating villain. He allows them to tell their constituents "we want what you want, we just don't have the power because of thay one guy, but if you vote just a little harder, we won't pull the football away this time", while telling their donors "we ain't giving them shit lmao".
remember that one time the villain was 'the parliamentarian'? apparently that guy exists and is suddenly important when the democrats run out of reasons to blame republicans
He was elected in 2022, so his next election is in 2028.
Senators are elected for 6 years. House Representatives have election every 2 years.
Edit: gotta love the down vote, as if facts didn't matter, just feelings or as if I wrote the Constitution.
Didn't stop the democrats from giving the boot to Al Franken halfway into his term.
People have to have a conscience to be shamed into resigning.
Al Franken resigned, champ.
How would that work, exactly?
PA senators are not subject to recalls, so it's out of the hands of the voters. He could technically be impeached and removed from office by the Senate itself... but for what, exactly? It's not illegal to vote a certain way, even if it's against the wishes of your constituency.
And even if Fetterman were somehow removed, PA is an extremely competitive state. Remember, he won against Doctor fucking Oz, so the chance of someone even worse coming in to replace him is quite high. The devil you know, etc etc...
Best case scenario is that he gets primaried into irrelevance in 2028 by someone with actual integrity. But even then, I'm not holding my breath...
You pull all of his committee assignments and neuter his value to lobbyists. If all he has is his vote on the legislation that hits the floor, he can't do much and it will hurt him both financially and politically, because if you don't have value to lobbyists they won't send you "gifts".
You attack him personally and threaten his business or personal connections. For example, if Dems wanted to pull Manchin in line, for example, they could have sent the DoJ after his daughter for price gouging consumers on pharmaceuticals.
And yes, while it doesn't matter now, you make sure he knows he'll be primaried out and smeared like yesterday's dog shit. Character assassination is effective and could bring someone in line, especially when they're enthusiastically supporting genocide and Israel's popularity is in the shitter.
That's how.
They've never been powerless. They're just complicit.
Exactly.
Look at how Donald has dealt with people who get out of line. Democrats aren't powerless. The villain's part of their party strategy.
Because he was elected and is still serving his term?
And it doesn't appear that he's the type of person to resign.
Do the 21 people who have upvoted you thus far not understand how our government works?
Impeachment would be a good move to Fetterman for conning an entire state to vote for his fascist ass.
There's always a rotating villain.
Used to be Dianne Feinstein. Then it was Joe Manchin. Then it was that Sinema bitch. Now it's Fetterman and Schumer.
And people just kind of ignore the pattern and pretend it isn't a party-wide PR strategy.
Not speaking for anyone else, but I’m fully aware of what the Democratic Party stands for. Problem is, the alternative has gotten so much worse.
Before the current madness, there was a part of me aching to vote for someone crazy to come and hasten the act of burning this mess to the ground. Then I saw it, and got scared. Maybe that’s when I should’ve leaned in.
Then primary them.
The odds of us getting out of this with a revolution are vanishingly small.
The answer is going to be reforming the Democrat party by primarying the Schumers and the Fettermans out.
Party reformation has happened multiple times in American history and conservatives literally just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party over the last decade or two.
Party reformation takes time. That is life.
Right, but in the mean time it makes any attempt to claim "The Democrats stand for [insert policy position]" a lie, because while an individual democrat may believe in those things, the part as a whole can't agree on anything at all. They can't even align themselves on their own platform, let alone apply pressure to the Republicans. At best they're nothing but a speed break for more republican policy. You're still getting republican policy, just slower, and they can't move the needle in the other direction even if they win because they'll simply surrender in advance.
Wasting more time and more money trying to slow the rate the US collapses into a burning train wreck is an exercise in futility. The only real solution is to try and build a "coalition of the willing" to preserve what is left and the Republicans drive the rest, screaming incoherently, off the cliff they're headed for. Small scale organizing, networks to help move people to safety "underground railroad" style, to move material and finances in ways that circumvent federal control, create safe-havens that can resist federal encroachment and operate outside of federal regulation meant to break down resistance. Register some "Churches" that can provide physical plant and meeting grounds, as well as offer support services when federal support is ripped up. Build a nation within a nation.
Voting for Democrats isn't going to stop this spiral. They have no vision, no will, no unity, and zero political capital to actually create change. Sure, vote blue to slow the bleeding, if you're still allowed by next election, but as long as they're a party so big tent they have no direction at all, they're just a slower, more painful collapse.
the media is owned by private individuals with their own agenda.
Correction: They SAY they want health care and education, get elected, and then spend their political capital making most people poorer, doing fascism, and genociding.
Lol. Can you describe how Democrats "do fascism"?
I keep seeing this stupid, counter-productive sentiment and have yet to have anyone actually explain it to me.
Meanwhile, I'm old enough to remember when I was poor and had NO healthcare and the Dems fought tooth and nail to get Obamacare passed and then I had affordable healthcare. Millions of other people can tell you the same, if you need a history lesson.
By supporting Israel.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-votes-renew-fisa-spying-tool-earlier-republican-revolt-rcna147557
Again.
Constructive comment. Perhaps read the thread before responding in the future. Thank you and have a lovely Friday.
Still better than Nazis.
Chopping off a finger is better than chopping off an arm.
Yeah that's literally what living in the US was like
chopping off an arm and telling you your arm is gone, is better than chopping off your arm and telling you your finger is broken
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Neither perfect nor good are in any capacity available anywhere in the US.
Let's try aiming for "just a teeny tiny bit less evil, but still absolutely despicable". This sounds realistic.
Two things can be bad.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Evil is also the enemy of good and the lesser evil is still evil.
Ok. I pick the lesser evil.
Every fucking time.
Or don't pick evil and pick good? There is always a choice.
I don't know that I agree.
The only difference I see here is that, under Democrats, it's primarily ICE and the cops doing the Nazi things and not CBP, and you'll recall that after George Floyd was killed Biden used his next SOTU to publicly call for more police militarization.
Also, go look up who first appointed Tom Homan, for a very good example.
Then you need a better education.
Of course.
Very constructive and insightful comment. Thank you.
No, the media doesn't think that, the owners of the media wants the media to say that they're equal
Equal? Universal healthcare is derided as the delusions of radical extremists. A mere pipedream of anti-semitic tankies, if we're talking the gambit of American media.
We need to keep repeating this, it's a CLASS war.
It's always been a class war. Sometimes we do some of the fighting but the rich are always fighting.
No war but the class war
The democrats had the house, senate, and presidency for 4+ years. Where is that Healthcare?
Spoiler: Both sides are bad, they both get paid off. Its just that one side is really fucking honest with you right now ... to the point where they commit crimes in public because no one will do anything about it.
And we should thank Trump for opening eyes of so many dumb people that thought otherwise. It had to get really bad before we see any changes. Though I see in comments many are still sucking off dems
Yes, being insane for Democrats is almost (but not really) as bad as being MAGA.
What years where these pray tell? I guess if you don't mean "4+ consecutive years" but that would be silly wouldn't it?
Also, why did you fail to mention the Supreme Court? Interesting.
No one said consecutive. That is rarely possible with the usual midterm losses. Biden had 2 and Obama had 2.
Lol ok
They're not the other side that this post is talking about.
Cool observation. Here's a smiley face sticker and a lollipop.
Here's another observation.
Both sides are NOT the same.
So, in a system where you WILL get one or the other for the foreseeable future, what would you consider to be the intelligent thing to do?
Also, you are wrong. Democrats haven't held a trifecta for 4+ years since the 1960s. In recent memory their control has only lasted 2-3 years at a time, and you've also failed to take into account that many things require a supermajority in Congress to enact and Dem's total control has typically been by a very thin margin.
Key Periods of Unified Democratic Control (White House + Senate + House):
2021–2023 (117th Congress): President Joe Biden, with narrow House and Senate majorities.
2009–2011 (111th Congress): President Barack Obama, passing the Affordable Care Act.
1993–1995 (103rd Congress): President Bill Clinton’s first two years.
1961–1969 (87th–90th Congresses): Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
1933–1947 (73rd–79th Congresses): President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the start of Truman’s term.
When I was young and broke Obama, during one of those windows of control, gave me affordable healthcare when I had none and he had to fight tooth and nail with Republicans to get it.
You really need to do your homework before you post things on the internet that other people who don't do their homework will just accept as fact. It really doesn't help our situation.
This argument is either based on ignorance or bad faith.
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-obama-had-total-control/985146007/
“Did President Obama have "total control" of Congress? Yes, for 4 entire months. And it was during that very small time window that Obamacare was passed in the Senate with 60 all-Democratic votes.”
The healthcare bill written by Republican Mitt Romney that didn’t have universal healthcare and ended up being a handout to health insurance companies? That bill?
Were you not following the back and forth fight that went on back then for him to try to get anything through? Yeah it’s shit but it’s a lot better than the nothing there was. It was progress and if this country had actual adults in it instead of a bunch of emotional children and corrupt politicians then things could continue to progress.
Like the dems.
Blaming the voters. The endpoint of every democratic argument.
Voters and non voters alike are ultimately responsible for the political makeup of the country, yeah.
I like how you make the most basic truthful statement possible and people still downvote you.
Not a great sign for the future.
Yeah, cuz both sides are equally corrupt.
Two questions.
Are you aware that reality is all sorts of imperfect and there will ALWAYS be corruption in political parties?
Are you aware that for the foreseeable future, and most likely for the remainder of your life, you will have Dems or Repubs in control?
So with those in mind, what good do you think it does to whine about a party having corruption when all parties will always have corruption and it's our duty to make the best decision within that reality? Such as making sure the WAY, WAY, WAY less corrupt party is in control and not the WAY, WAY, WAY more corrupt party.
Why wouldn't they be to blame? How do you think the president and members of Congress got there? We live in a nation that willingly elected a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who ran a fraudulent university and charity and already had one massively failed presidency under his belt. Not to mention the open bigotry and obviously low IQ.
This IS a country full of child-like adults, and our government is a testament to that. Of course voters are to blame. We made this happen.
The person you are responding to was probably still breast feeding during Obama's presidency. So they're likely completely unaware that before Obamacare millions of people just didn't have healthcare and that Obama had to fight like hell with Republicans just to get it done.
Millions of people still don’t have healthcare under the ACA.
The ACA was based on a healthcare bill by Mitt Romney.
You’re literally using a republican bill passed by democrats as evidence for the parties not being the same.
Dont argue with me. Go argue with history ....
117th Congress (2021–2023): Democrats gained control of the Senate (via Georgia runoffs) and held the House, paired with President Biden's election. The 4-Year Period: This 4-year stretch saw shifting majorities in the Senate, but the Democratic caucus maintained a working majority to control the legislative agenda from 2021-2023, while holding the House from 2019-2023, marking a four-year tenure of overall legislative
You said they had the house, senate, AND presidency for 4+ years. The house yes, presidency yes, senate no. Nothing becomes law without the senate. Your claim was not accurate.
Argue with Google. Not me. Biden had the house and senate.
You sound like AI.
Do you remember Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? Remember how they kind of held up everything?
Why weren't they censured? Everything plays out EXACTLY like big business wants it. If you dont understand that corporations have nearly ful control of politics then we have nothing to discuss. Here is the summary ... both sides bow down to billionaires and corporations.
Sure rotating villain and all that. Yes generally both sides serve their corporate rulers, but the progressives still caucus with Democrats, so they're slightly better and should always be voted for if the alternative is literal fascists. FPTP is the main problem in the electoral process.
You are responding to someone who doesn't do his homework and who is being upvoted by other people who do not do their homework.
You literally said dems havent had the House, Senate, and presidency ... then posted the Biden era where he had the house, senate, and pres. You are acting and posting like AI.
ROFLOL yeah it’s the Democrats fault we don’t have national healthcare. tHeY hAd foUR YeaRS WherE is It?? Smeared all over the soles of the Republicans shoes. That’s where it is.
A lot of world class dipshits on this very platform think both sides are equal. Getting pretty tired of reading
"Both sides are fascist, one's just more open about it."
Stupidest fucking sentiment I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Absolute lack of education and critical thinking skills to say shit like that.
The lack of critical thinking skills is when people cannot understand that one side is fascist and the other enables the fascists.
To many leftist, capitalist imperialism is just fascism in disguise, and they are entirely correct.
I don't think they're both equal, they're certainly both shit.
How do you measure the quality of shit?
Let's just say I wouldn't let Maxine Waters or Mitch McConnell watch my dog
If "shittiness" was a binary, they'd definitely the same. However, in the real world it's a spectrum that looks more like:
Beautiful!
Now, add some marionette strings to both parties, connect those strings to a billionaire's hand and it will be a perfect representation!
With their proposed ideas, I'd mostly agree.
However, with the increasingly shittier Republicans they have compromised further and further into utter shit. They've tacked toward shitty, pretty hard in some cases, to try to lure some shitty votes their way... alienating those who want less shit. They've opted to take money from extremely shitty people because they have a lot of money but those people desire there to be more shit. The Democrats abandoned their less shitty ground repeatedly even when they managed to find some real leverage, unleashing torrents of shit for no apparent reason (unless they actually want more shit).
So yes, their campaign websites have a lot less shit on them than the Republicans, but in practice the party as a whole has either pushed for things to be much shittier or compromised their alleged ideals unnecessarily resulting in things being much shittier.
There are certainly diamonds in the shit. I don't think it's all of them, but current leadership is definitely way more shitty than they look. What concerns me is that every time we get rid of some small contingency of Democrats that are obviously bathing in shit and willing to open the floodgates for the Republicans, we always seem to find just enough of the remaining Democrats wiling to dive in and replace them. It gives the impression that, for a significant subset of them, their campaign slogans and alleged ideals are performative.
I was banned from the lemmy.ml memes community for saying the Democrats are slightly better than Republicans. After saying it I needed to argue with 20 people at once, all with preprepared arguments, who were adamant that both sides are the same.
I've also recently seen that that community is extremely toxic in other ways.
To be honest what I really want is fully automated luxury gay space communism.
They won't give us that either.
That's fine, we'll give it to them for free.
It isn't theirs to give. It is ours to take.
Fully luxury automated gay space Communism. That way the abbreviation becomes almost an acronym. FLAGSC, rather than FALGSC
Unfortunately we are all out of name brand luxury gay space communism.
We do, however, have Temu deluxe ambiguous resource "sharing" managed by Grok, and an couple open packs of glow in the dark ceiling stars. Only $19.99 a month at 30% interest when you buy now, pay later.
Yes, but you can have my portion of gay
Just save it for later. Forever is a long time.
Ok, I just hope it doesn't spoil. What is the shelf life of gay?
Indefinite! And on the way, you'll discover new and amazing types of straight.
Sounds like a plan
Ive been told that its not gay in a 3 way, and with a homey in the middle theres some leeway.
Can you confirm? I dont want to run out of credits.
Obviously the republicans are genuinely terrible people
But I'll give you an equivalence that actually holds up
Both parties have their snouts in the trough and depend on huge levels of external funding which completely undermines your democracy
That is a problem that needs to be fixed
OK, fix it when the government isn't on a bloodhunt for transgender people, to start with.
The media isn't talking about general ideas, they're talking about political policy.
And, no, the Democrats don't want healthcare and education for everyone as policy, if you think they do, you haven't been paying attention.
Is it easier for the general population to sway the voting of their democrat representatives towards healthcare and education reform or is it easier to sway the Republican reps? What about primaries, if your rep stubbornly refused to support their constituents desire for healthcare and education, are there democrat candidates that could be more focused on those issues? Are there Republican candidates?
You kind of need to work with the system you have until you can change it. Either you find the revolution, join it and force the change through violence, or you work in the system and push the reps you have to make it what you want it to be. There are no third party reps and won't be until you switch to a less archaic electoral system which won't happen without revolution or reps that understand it and see the value.
Wow, what a lib take. You sound just like this lib:
-Vladimir Lenin
Quite true,what's your suggested alternative?Sorry I'm editing this and removing the quite true bit. Part of my post does align with Lenin's quote (you'll note I also suggest you need to revolt as alternative, but some people aren't going to want to try that) so my question still stands. But in addition I'd like to ask, what the fuck are you on about? Are you suggesting you think Lenin was a "lib"?
I completely agree with you. I thought calling Lenin a lib would negate the need for the /s
Apologies for for missing it, I was distracted by a loud whooshing noise like something was flying past my head ..
Yeah I was trying to lampoon the lemmings who sincerely believe that participating in elections is fundamentally anti-left. I figured it would be obvious, but to be fair I have seen some particularly counterproductive tankies.
Satire is truly dead.
Yeah, the US gov seems to use The Onion as a manual these days, it desensitises the wider concept of satire because any nonsense could be a real thing.
It's wild that people think disengaging from the system completely is a solution, particularly when they aren't pursuing the alternatives. They are always light on what the alternatives are beyond starting an actual revolution (noones doing that, and if they are they are doing a shit job and need to start building some momentum and pressing ahead, turnaround on the plan-implement cycle needs to be quick lest it be dismantled by the state before it can get moving) or wallowing in self pity (not going to help).
I didn't catch the satire either, but I think it's because I don't know you and, well, people say a lot of dumb things on the internet. It is sad that discourse has gotten so stupid that I thought you were serious.
To be fair tone is hard to read. That said I am not sure our fellow lemms would get it. Some of us here read things to strictly. It reminds me of christian fundies in a way.
Oh, stop. Really.
TF does that even mean? If you’re implying I’m a useless tool that comment is about as useful as your tired old “both sides”.
Oh good. Another opinion. And we’re not talking about the media, we’re talking about your comment. Don’t move the goalposts.
The two sides are the people and the state/capital, right? ... right?
the "media" doesn't "think" they all just push their current agenda
So foolish to think this way.
The longer we sit here and make it about the "other" is another day/year/decade that these people play us and stay in power.
The internal contradiction is strong here.
You're sort of missing the point of the statement. Which would itself indicate it's not a contradiction at all.
"Othering" people is making a blanket group an enemy. Humans do love to categorize things, and so the process of Othering based on arbitrary or immutable characteristics fits our known human biases well. It's an easy way to manipulate humans.
"These people" refers not to an arbitrary categorization of people, but rather a specific group of individuals in power right now that are doing real harm to people.
If anything, you could call it a limitation of English as a language, or my poor choice of words, but the statement on its own clearly indicates that there's no contradiction.
i felt embarassed trying to be a centrist at one point because i figured i should move where their goal posts were. they're trying to normalize shifting goalposts and they know it. unfortunately there's no actual social punishment for this.
It’s wild how often both sides gets used to blur real differences.
both sides are bad. One is just infinitely worse.
People refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils is what got us the worse evil!
What are you even talking about? Biden got elected and enabled the modern-day holocaust lol. There is no "lesser evil", there are many heads to the same hydra: capitalism.
Uhh yeah Biden bad but things would be less bad if Harris had won, doesn't make her good, what point are you trying to make
Less bad for you, maybe. Ask the people murdered by the Genocide Joe - Holocaust Harris administration if things would've been better for them. Ask the survivors if Harris being elected will bring back their dead family.
The point I'm trying to make is that you are unconsciously a white supremacist (yes, even if you are not white) who is willing to sign your name off to endorse the ethnic-based mass-murder of brown people overseas in order to protect your own privilege and comfort. That's "lesser evil". Try fighting all evil instead.
Aside from all that, Harris promised the "most lethal" military in the world - that means one thing, "killing the most people" - so on top of addressing your weak, white supremacist premise, I'm going to have to disagree with your weak liberal conclusion as well.
Thank you for having critical thinking skills and the patience to actually type it out for people who most likely won't even bother to read it in good faith.
lol yeah I used to do audio transcription so I have like a ~100 WPM typing rate... I can waste some internet words
I have neuropathy that has affected my fingers, my PC is set up on a coffee table in a corner cause that's the only space I have for it, and I usually only browse through Boost on my phone anyways. So, typing things out is a pain and I usually just point to authors and books to read.
well fuck me for prioritizing the genocides happening in my own country over the genocides happening on the other side of the planet.
edit: responded to the wrong comment, but the one I meant to respond to was also by you so I'm leaving it.
What's happening in America is terrible but if you're comparing it to what is happening in Palestine as being even close to equivalent, you are a chronically out-of-touch and overprivileged liberal.
Blaming voters is just another way of wishing reality was different. Lots of people are telling you exactly how they are going to act but you are asking those without power to accommodate those with power. That's a choice and it says a lot about how you perceive power and it's authority.
As do .ml and hexbear.
Excuse me for not seeing a credible difference between genocidal warmonger (blue) and genocidal warmonger (red)
But Putin attacking countries is fiiiiine. Ukraine and Western propaganda and all that.
firstly isn't that whataboutism?
either way I'm opposed to inter-capitalist wars and despots like Putin.
In a discussion about the misrepresentation of political stances to further various agendas, it is not a whataboutism to point out a commonly held political hypocrisy.
I mean it is a misrepresentation of my political stance, plus the topic was warmongers running our government and they were like 'what about russia'
If your primary concern had been its misrepresentation of your values, why didn't you lead with that? The topic of .ml and hexbear was brought up as examples of people pushing the narrative in OP - hence why including a hypocrisy about the topic common in those communities is relevant.
A pretty common sentiment on hexbear is that Putin is someone Lenin would have shot. Opposing the war in ukraine as an inter-capitalist war is pretty common position as well. I don't see the hypocrisy, just looks like someone attacking a made-up position
Q. E. D.
Where's the lie though
I've written before on electoralism. There are a few issues with @[email protected] point of view here.
To be clear I am not saying that elections are the only thing that matter or the only thing that we should be doing; just that it is foolish to be ignoring them. Ideally, we should be having our own party, but in places where that is not possible, we should participate in primaries and vote as left as possible. Diva's dismissiveness here is effectively saying we should step out of the way and let fascists have their way. Harm reduction is still important.
I will also just tag a comment here that voting is still a form of organizing and building credibility. If you have a movement and can persuade its members to vote then said members can also be persuaded to protest or strike. In the west voting carries little personal harm, so if people find that too tall then one can be sure that any higher order resistance might not happen.
At a minimum we should all be voting left in primaries to have statistics that there is in fact a left leaning populace that is being ignored. Protest votes and spoiled ballots are also good moves to do.
Diva is not wrong that the dems are also capitalists, but their apathy is discouraging leftist unity and changes to our material conditions.
This is a false binary. I criticize democrat politicians for arming a genocide, that's me demanding better from them because their actions on that front cost them the election and tens of thousands of people their lives.
Harm reduction for whom? did it include Palestinians getting bombed with US weapons? any of other victims of US foreign policy? Trump couldn't operate with impunity as he is if the democrats didn't set him up for it.
No it fucking isn't. Organizing is organizing. Be it building dual power, mutual aid networks, unions, affinity groups, whatever. Voting is the bare minimum civic participation. Conflating them is a diversionary tactic designed to make people think they've done something groundbreaking by filling in a ballot.
completely backwards. Movements don't start with voting and scale up to strikes. they start with material organizing and sometimes engage in electoral politics tactically (ideally with an actual workers party)
Funny, did this in the 2024 'primaries' with uncommitted votes; all warning signs were completely ignored. surely if we keep trying the same things will work out eventually.
I'm not apathetic, I'm actually quite involved in irl organizing (actual organizing, not electoral). I'm just not particularly invested in the democratic party.
For many vulnerable people. Its good that you are unaffected by the election results, but please check your privilege.
A bare minimum that mls cannot be bothered to do. As such they have no credibility to doing higher level activity.
Are you aware that there have been elections before that? We should have been organized long before. J Edgar Hoover thanks you for your contributions. You are the leftist he would wish to see. Disorganized and unwilling to take actions.
Right, you cared so much you couldn't spare an afternoon every two years? Maybe skip the shit posting a few days to get some of the time to do so. Not all of us are so privileged as to not care about the harm reduction at the least.
I'm actually pretty fucking affected by them, I'm a trans woman and plenty fucking familiar with economic precarity. I've been having my prescriptions fucked with on and off ever since Trump got in office, my insurance even stopped covering pretty much every formulation of estrogen other than ones used by cis women
You're lecturing me about privilege because you don't like how I feel about your preferred party of genocide enablers.
I've voted in pretty much every fucking election on and off year in my adult life, plus I'm an anarchist.
It's rich accusing me of being a fed/useful idiot while identifying voting for the democratic party as the truly useful activity.
Once more, I've fucking voted every year for over two decades. I even vote in municipal elections, those happen on odd numbered years.
feel free to continue attacking straw targets though I guess.
You're not excused until you learn to post comments that aren't mind numbingly stupid.
Eww, you're from .ml. Remind me to put on gloves next time before touching your comments.
Which side is telling us that these are the sides. I'm not disagreeing with either of the sides but I kind of feel like there's chirality to every political opinion.
Real, lasting change isn't going to happen instantly and with a minimal of effort.
Movements have to be built, leaders have to be cultivated. These things take time. Mistakes will be made. There will be times when you do everything right but still there are setbacks. If you want your working-class peers to represent your ideals in government, you have to support them. You have to be willing to let them learn, you have to help them out financially and strategically. Because otherwise, the vast majority of them can't compete against billionaires and their favored picks.
Voting alone is not enough in today's climate. Angrily typing at each other and posting furious videos blaming everybody but ourselves is not enough. You continue to do the same but expect different results -- you're going to be disappointed.
Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh MY candidate didn't win their primary. Guess what? You've got at least 2 more years to build a movement around people who reflect your values and represent you. You can't snap your fingers and expect the world to revolve around you instantly. Winning takes time, planning, strategy, organizing, money, and so much more. There is no quick fix strategy, and I guarantee you that even if literally every single thing from this moment forward goes exactly right and exactly your way, it's still going to be the better part of a decade (or longer) before there's any chance of arriving where you want to be. This isn't a sprint. It's not even a marathon. Making progress means you have to keep going.
The discouraging part isn't that it's going to take a long time.
The discouraging part is that the majority of people need to be convinced that they should treat others like human beings.
I aM nEuTrAl
"Look how bad the other side is"
Doesn't work when your side just fell asleep at the wheel and let the opposition take control. And that's the charitable take. Your side decided it was more important to fund a genocide than combat all the scary things in the first list.
If you look around at what's happening right now you'll see this was a false choice. Trump was always going to give Bibi whatever he wanted.
Taking a step back and having the revelation that your electoralism means definitive genocide no matter who's in power should not be a reason to dig in and defend your electoralism. It should be reason to tear everything down.
Otherwise, youre taking the stance that Palestinians have a duty to allow themselves genocided to buy yourself time for more political waffling.
So did Biden and Harris wasn't going to be any different. Biden even went around Congress to make damn sure Bibi got exactly what he wanted and then some.
The progressive side of our politics still lives in the dem party and we have a better chance of getting our ideas out there in that party. Either by election like Mamdani or by appointment like Lina Khan.
To be clear I don't think Lina Khan was a lefty. Still her tenure in the FCC was rather pro consumer and pushing back on big corporations. That would not happen at all in any rep admin.
It's more about power than ideas. The problem with the establishment Dems is not that they have the wrong ideas but that they have been purchased by the oligarchs who get to win whether they get a D or an R.
What does this have to do with Biden giving Bibi exactly what he wanted?
The thread is about both-sides-sim. I pointed out a case in how its still helpful to vote as left as possible.
Yeah and left is not letting Bibi get a single thing, even if that means losing Israel as an ally and supporting a party that's not a major one.
Weird how this is the conclusion you came to instead of figuring out that the "your side" you're talking about isn't our side and hasn't been for a long time.
At least we're not in the other car coming at us straight on.
If you're American, people like you are the reason Trump is president. He was always going to genocide Palestine, and if you're saying so was Harris, then they're equal on that and you should elect Harris. Then AFTER she's in office you can pressure and throw mud and do everything possible to get the US to stop.
"Everyone" being... everyone in Europe?
The average American I come across (at least online) very vocally can't be arsed. I don't mean in a general sense, I mean even in a left AF space like Lemmy, the average American user will argue up and down why a revolution in the US right now just "isn't feasible" and "we're all one paycheck away-" as repeated justification for kowtowing. I guess I get it, after all remember how no one ever revolted in France because they were all one loaf away from starvation?
Oh, wait a minute.
The only ways for us to truly revolt, I think, would be to A. Storm the Capital like the right did, or B. Take over each individual state capital to freeze the government and seize control.
But even then, the military and police could wipe anything out if most are not on our side.
What? And then what? They didn't know what to do either, they took selfies and stole stuff and pissed in drawers or whatever. The country can function juuuust fine without access to the Capitol.
Stranger, what kind of fantasyland are you living in? Do you think real life works like Domination in Call of Duty where you win if you hold all the points? Protestors could take the Capitol in Sacramento and most of California wouldn't even notice.
Our power is in our status as the working class, not in taking over government buildings. Taking over your nearest Starbucks would unironically be more effective at changing the trajectory of the country.
Think less "Capitol" and more "capital".
True. So what would you suggest? Taking over corporate headquarters and places like Wall Street?
I'm afraid it's nothing that immediate or glorious (not yet anyway, but really, probably not for my generation... I'm 30. Maybe by the time the current youth are 30 we can have a shot.)
Americans are too disorganized to effectively exercise working class power, and too exploited to effectively organize. So you have to attack that reality from every front, many of which are mundane but essential.
Fighting exploitation primarily entails making things less expensive. The legal system will not save us, nor will electoral politics, though local politics are often worth the time. You can make it less expensive for people to raise children by watching their kids for them. You can make it less expensive for people to eat by growing food for them or cooking for them. You can make your own existence less expensive by buying used goods wherever possible and viable, and generally buying less consumer goods. I've had the same laptop for like 13 years, the same sunglasses for 15 years, the same shoes for 5 or 6 years, the same car for 5 or 6 years (with no plans to replace it).
All that money I didn't need is time I didn't need to spend working, which in turn frees me up to organize and just fuckin exist a little bit, which makes life more worth living, which makes you more motivated to fight for it. Add a little compassion / empathy to that mix, and it makes you more motivated to fight for other people too.
Then organizing looks different for everyone, but a good place to start is with (especially non-religious) organizations dedicated to feeding or otherwise serving the homeless, or environmental cleanup groups, or if none of that exists, just getting some friends together and doing something to improve where you live. Literally anything to make things better for those around you is how it starts.
You're skipping ahead, which is fine, we've all been there and we all wish we could accelerate things. But if we had the power to take over corporate offices to any level which would cause a real economic impact or actually threaten the safety of shareholders / executives, then they would already fear us too much to be fucking us over the way they are.
No matter the choice, the streets will run red, and lives lost, if such a thing were to happen.
Such a thing SHOULD have happened on Jan 6.
"I wish my fascist government had massacred the other group of stupid working class people"
shitlib take
Sorry princess, it wasnt a peaceful tour, no matter what your semi-sentient olestra stain wannabe-god says.
What? Jan 6thers were violent (if inept) insurrectionists, I just don't care what they attempted to do to a genocidal capitalist empire built on stolen land.
Rooting for either side makes you a loser.
ITT: a lot of people pretending there's more than one side
The "both sides" crew somehow thinks the side that supports unions and civil rights and voting rights and due process and raising the minimum wage and not constantly starting wars is equal to the side that wants the opposite of all of that, and the tankies here think liberals are much worse, because tankies are just closet fascists that think yellow looks better on a red background than black and white.
The side that "supports unions" has resulted in unions falling from 40 to 10% of the workforce since the 1970s (and most of those left are government)
The side that supports "raising minimum wage" refuses to raise minimum wage for almost 20 years... and the last wage increase was abominable.
The side against "constantly starting wars" constantly starts wars.
The side that supports civil rights is just fine with The Patriot Act, which they voted to pass and continue to use and expand.
It's like you don't even read what you write, it's programmed and automatic.
And that's the problem.
Don't forget Joe Biden also overriding the ability of railway workers to strike, and Gavin Newsom vetoing unemployment pay for striking workers.
Anyone who thinks Democrats are "pro worker" is huffing their own fart gas.
Honestly, I thought the added "difficulty" of using Lemmy would keep idiots like that off this platform, but apparently not. Or foreign agents/bots are infiltrating Lemmy. Probably a combination of both.
If you look at both sides and think "same", you need to acknowledge you are not an intelligent or informed individual and you need to work on your education.
They're obviously not the same...
However, they are both anti-union and pro-corporate
do you even want healthcare, neoliberal community poster FoxtrotDeltaTango
...
Both of you maybe? Why did Democrat took it personally anyway?
it feels like these are a bunch of buzzwords to likefarm instead of actually saying anything. No, i don't think the average republican / American is fully unprejudiced and benevolent. but to say an entire half of the country wants slavery back is nonsense
It’s the bottom half, if that helps.
One side wants to enact fascism and the other side thinks they can stop them by dancing in frog costumes and compromising with said fascism by only doing fascism lite™
Those are two diffrent groups of people
Yeah one of those people are the politicians who will lead America into fascism, other other one is the frog suit wearing idiot who will happily follow.
You... are either a bot or a Republican
Ah yes, wanting honest discourse and a bit less divisive language obviously makes me either republican... or a bot... wow... now, not entire unexpected for a reaction if you dare speak up in an echochamber....
I would love though to hear your reasoning about why i possible couldn't be a real human left wing :). This gonna be good :).
Wow, some slight critisism about this meme and it gets removed? ....
And for misinformation no less, that was the reason given.
Can someone help a poor lemming and point to the "misinformation" that warrants the following remark to get deleted? I'm very open to dialogue :)
"It's not that i don't get the sentiment, but these extremely biased posts don't really add much to the discussion either -_-... If we're gonna go with the worst of what's claimed about the right wing, shouldn't you contrast it with the worst of what is claimed about the left wing? "One side wants to bring back slavery, nazis, fascism, and women not being allowed to vote or own property. The other side just wants to let foreigners invade our country, and let them rape our women and children." This post returns here every month or so, and i really hate it. I kind of get the sentiment obviously, but this "lets put the worst things claimed about the others be contrasted to the best things we think about ourselves", are just preaching for the choir, and just sowing extra division in an already extremely divided world. You know that what you claim about the right may have some truth, but is far from the accepted position. And you also know there are equally bad claims about the left from the right, that also have some truth in them... I wish this was the last time i'd see this silly post here, but that's wishful thinking i guess...."
Username checks out
I love how everyone is offended, but can't even write out why XD. But fair enough, if you guys just want to preach to the choir, have fun :). (and no, i'm not even saying that democrats " let foreigners invade our country, and let them rape our women and children.", just that if you use the worst stereotype about the republicans, you can at least put it opposite the worst stereotype of democrats. You know, make a fair comparison, not your worst stereotype about "the others" versus what we like about ourselves.)
They’re probably more tolerant of posts and comments that exaggerate the harms perpetrated by Republicans than similar posts about Democrats because the stuff Republicans actually do is really fucking evil, and voting for Democrats is the only viable way to stop it, and it seems like you want to discourage this by drawing a false equivalency. But you already know this, concern troll.
I had to look up concern troll, it's apparently an evil kind of devils advocate.
And how is what i posted (comparing the worst what is said about republicans with the worst that is said about democrats) a false equivalency, but this post that compares the worst of one side with the best of the other side not?
All i'm saying is making this kind of false equivalencies just weakens your position. From what i can tell it's indeed obvious the real fucking evil that's happening in the USA (i'm from europe, so i of course have to go by what i can see & read online). So it should be freakin easy to make your point without silly posts like this that are such an obvious false equivalence that it's imo just pathetic.
But having standards for the communication of the side i prefer is a thought crime here it seems? And i'm then somehow accused of the exact thing the original post is doing and that i'm complaining about. So you find false equivalencies an issue, but don't see an issue with the post here?
like... wow... really really really... wow...
Actually, I believe you. This seems more like autistic pedantry than malice.
It kind of says a lot about this place that some slight pedantry is immediately viewed as malice...
And this meme is still terrible :p