This is of course a feature, not a bug.
This is of course a feature, not a bug.
ID: ally @missmayn posted: "the democrats were more energized and organized against campus protests than the current authoritarian takeover."
Can't escape the braindead c/Politics users even in this comments thread bruh.
People out here still blaming voters as if it isn't the literal textbook definition of a politician to meet consituent demands for their vote.
Not only was the DNC content in allowing Trump to win, they were content in losing just to protect Israel. a
There's a lot of unease about this, because some people believe everyone should just vote for the better of the two options; whereas other people believe the option needs to be good before they will vote for it.
Americans were given a choice between two options. One option was clearly better than the other, but the poorer option won, because the better option wasn't good enough.
It reminds me a bit of the game-theory around the game 'ultimatum'. Should we just accept whatever is offered, since it is still better than the alternative? Or should we sacrifice our meager reward to spite the person who offered an unfair split?
The way I look at it, it's not about spite, it's about not contributing to the problem. If this was a choice made entirely in a vacuum where the choices were dropped from the sky with no history and there were no future elections, and you could absolutely only choose between them and nothing else, then fine, choose the dems since I guess they will technically be "less bad."
The problem is the choice isn't made in a vacuum. There's a reason we have the choices that are presented to us in elections because this is a repeated game where past results affect later games. We keep getting worse and worse options from either party because they know people don't have a real choice. As long as the dems are anywhere before the line, even if they're shockingly close, then people will have to pick them. So they move right up to that line because they won't be punished for it. In turn, Republicans have the space to move further right now that the overton window has shifted.
The DNC feels free to rig primaries, which are supposedly where we're allowed to have input without risking a Republican winning, because they know that the outcome won't change people's votes, or even if it does, they don't seem to care THAT much about winning as long as actual leftists lose.
Repeat until we have Democrats who are anti-immigration, pro-war, pro-police, pro-surveillance, and pro-corporate and Republicans who have just taken their mask off. And this even trickles down to the base somewhat. How the hell does California vote to keep literal slavery around and still conceive of itself as liberal?
Also, this is less a strategic point and more of a moral one, but I take issue with the idea of the Dems being "better" as a given. Better for who? They're not better for the people they're helping to bomb. Why should their priorities not matter? How can you quantify their suffering against different kinds of suffering for other groups? "But the Republicans will do the same, so it's a wash, you shouldn't consider that." Meaning we've taken their issue off the table. It's no longer in the realm of politics because we've just accepted that it's fated to happen. It shouldn't matter to us.
"But you can apply pressure once they're in office, the Dems will be more receptive." How exactly will you pressure people who you've told you will unconditionally vote for and won't act against outside the system? And are they more receptive? They didn't stop supplying Israel. They never raised the minimum wage or got people healthcare. They never did anything to codify Roe V Wade or to sure up the courts against corruption. Plus once you spent all this political capital putting them in power, how many liberals or even progressives are going to meaningfully push back against them? Libs will go back to thinking everything is fine and a lot of progressives will just think they should try to "hold them accountable." Whatever that means.
Of course, merely not voting isn't sufficient to affect change, but I think putting all this emphasis on voting is doing harm to the effort to get people to get organized in other ways. It distracts them and it makes it seem like your principles don’t really matter. “If you are so adamant about supporting the people working against my interests, can you really be by ally? Do you really care about me?”
Those textbooks didn't have one option being a fascist takeover of the country.
What's so hard to understand that both Biden and the voters are at fault
George Carlin said it years ago but it bears repeating:
“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.
And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday.
Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Unless America finds a way to get the money out of politics, I don't think it's problems will ever get fixed by politicians. The class divide will widen and ultra wealthy will grab more money and power, while those below will be busy with culture war distractions and not focused on the class war.
The french did a pretty good job cleaning up.
There was a lot of turmoil before they stablized on the respectable undomesticated society they have today.
Maybe it could happen again?
As soon as I started reading, I just had to look up the clip
George, I know you were ambivalent at the end. You had every right to be. You were modern day Jesus and they didn't even bother to crucify you, they just pushed you aside and looked away.
I still miss you though. You would have said I was a fat ass and probably had security throw me into the streets but you and I share one thing, we saw it as it is. I miss that from you. The only place you find it anymore, after you left, is tucked away in controversial threads where everyone gets banned.
Miss you, you coke addled, frustrated, kind hearted to a fault, train conductor.
We need George back
Also, paragraphs my dude!
There I fixed it for you :)
I hadn't considered this until this post, but where are those protesters now?
Protests have been ongoing. Just off camera, mostly. Some students got suspended from the schools, other schools have been banning groups from organizing over pro-palestinian issues.
I mean, the Israel lobby won.
Facing felony charges from a democrat.
The media has no reason to cover the protests anymore
Being deported
They never existed in a meaningful capacity
You know Democrat politicians are rich oligarchs too, So it's in their interests just like the Republicans to protect their money bins. We need to stop worrying about Republicans and Democrats and start worrying about us working people. Free Luigi!
People also talked more about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock than most of Trump's recent actions. Welcome to Idiocracy. Hey I think Oww My Balls is on!
America is a one party state. But, in typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
If Democrats wanted Trump's authortarian take over and were just pretending to oppose the Right
What would they be doing differently?
Were you not paying attention? The school admin will step in to help attack the pro-Palestine students. They already have been.
It's cuz college students are easier to kick but Republicans fight back. The Democrats are doing their usual bit of having a few committees to complain while the republic burns and alternatively hand-wringing "I wonder why we lost the election????"
MLK and Malcolm X tried to warn us about liberalism a long, long time ago... and I don't think the left, even now, has realized what liberalism truly is - the "political arm" of the capitalist order. The carrot to the fascist stick.
I don’t think the left, even now, has realized what liberalism truly is
Lmfao, new to leftist spaces are you? 😂
Lmfao, new to leftist spaces are you?
Unfortunately, no. I'm not.
It is not the fascists that have rendered the left so ineffective and weak in the Anglophone world, Clyde - it's the liberals that did. And all your edginess doesn't hide the fact that the left still virtually have no answer to liberal co-optation - unless you want to inform me of some brilliant plan that the left has managed to hide for the last seven decades?
I dislike the democratic party as well, but that just flat-out isn't true. There are focused efforts to stop most of Trump's exec orders and many other actions (as they relate to him trying to act like he has control of governmental spending, etc.) as many are blatantly illegal or unenforceable and also to stop Musk. Now, senators and house members aren't doing a ton, but there's not much they can do - they are a bicameral minority. They actually are threatening a government shutdown, but that hasn't occurred yet. Most of the resistance is rightly coming from the judicial branch.
Ah yes. Fascists taking over the county? Time to blame their opposition. Help their opposition? Nah, I'd rather blame them.
Nobody was blaming anyone in the post, just making an observation.
But yes the first step in growth is realizing your mistakes and they refuse to do that. Fascism depends entirely on lazy, uninvolved and conflict averse people. Nowhere in the world has fascism ever come to power without the support of "centrists". The US democratic party is a party of centrists with no goals and no interest in actually doing anything. They have created the perfect breeding ground for a fascist takeover.
I have posted it before and i will post it again, the democratic party is not free of blame. They cant just lean back and blame everything on Trump or Musk or voters.
The US democratic party is a party of centrists with no goals
That's just not true. The democratic party is a coalition group with a great variety of goals that don't form a coherent ideal. You have AOC who's a either a social democrat saying she's a democratic socialist or a democratic socialist who's hiding her true ideals behind policies that advance her goals but are far easier to sell than what she really wants. Then you have obvious fascists who are clearly there only to enable the wealthy. Aside from them you have the people who believe that the democratic process is sacrosanct and above defiance even in the face of someone obviously attempting to subvert it.
Aside from that, on average the Democrats prefer action against climate change, that the rights of minorities be protected, and are less anti-worker than the GOP. These are real differences that matter. There's no such thing as "centrism" and pretending otherwise is an amazing way to excuse not supporting the largest institution that will lock your worst enemies out of power, even if they don't do anything.
Furthermore, even if the DNC literally never got anything done (which, to be clear, they have done good things that support workers like favorable rules for Unions)that would be great for us, because it'd mean their feckless ineffectual leadership would give us plenty of room to build parallel institutions, educate, and bring others around to our ways of thinking. When the GOP is in charge that becomes harder and it's more dangerous for everyone involved.
Curious how that graphic doesn't say Left and Right on the horizontal scale but rather Liberal and Conservative, whilst the title describes it as showing that the Democrats have moved to the Left which is quite a different thing from Liberal.
It's almost as if that's a piece of propaganda meant to deceive readers...
"Where's the both sides people after an election" lookin' ass.
As a Canadian, American voters and the left in particular told democrats to eat shit and go away this past election. They allowed this trump takeover and called democrats fascists. Now you want those same democrats to save you? They’re gonna take a 4 year vacation and watch you people reap what you sowed, while they enjoy their money and vacation homes. It’s absurd that the American left has become so toxic, splintered, and frankly easily played by the right.
American voters and the left in particular told democrats to eat shit and go away this past election
Nope. You've got it EXACTLY backwards.
The Left implored the Dem leadership to learn from their past mistakes and listen to their base.
In response, the Dem leadership refused to listen and their apparatchiks everywhere, including on Lemmy, called the Left Trump fans, false flag operatives and a ton of other bullshit.
"Internet commenters were mean to us so now we're gonna do what we can to never hold power again" sure is a strategy, if you're 8.
It's pretty much the same "argument" structure as the Far-Right's "I've became a Racist because those other people were calling me a Racist".
You should stop getting your US news from mainstream outlets. You’re just rattling off propaganda.
I don’t watch any of your trash news at all. I’m just using my logic. You fools got played, how can you say you didn’t when you’re literally standing in shit? American leftists have become so toxic and offensive, which makes sense after all it’s just in the American blood and culture. The rest of the world, we just shake our head at you guys. ALL of you guys now, fuck your whole shit hole country
What I don't understand is that there aren't any protests going on for the current administration. Like he's calling to literally remove all Palestinians and no one cares now?
there aren't any protests going on for the current administration
Are you fucking kidding me??
Take your apparatchik strawman back to [email protected] 🙄
Let's also remember that Trump is deporting international students who participated in pro-Palestine protests on US campuses
Saw people protesting Gaza just yesterday, not at the 50501 group either.
Wasn't there supposed to be a big one yesterday across all US state capitals?
The media is in the pocket of the president. Why would they publish that story