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?”
I think there is solid reasoning in most of what you said. But there is a key point that I don’t agree with…
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.
You say “people will have to pick them”; but that’s obviously not the case - otherwise they would have won.
One could choose to reverse your reasoning to say that the Republicans are free to become more and more progressive without being punished, because there is no other real option. … Clearly that doesn’t seem to be happening; but why not?
There’s are a lot of different reasons why the window might shift left or right… but one fairly simple force is that it will tend to shift towards the party that is winning. Right now, the Republicans are winning, and so the Democrat tries to be just a bit more like them in the hope of capturing enough for the ‘middle ground’ to win. It is pretty natural to think that the middle is somewhere between the two parties, rather than further to the left. I think if the Dems were actually winning elections then they would not be sliding towards the other party. It would be the other way around.
What’s missing from your analysis is the material backing of the parties. The Democrats and Republicans, with the backing of their corporate donors, both represent the interests of the capitalist class. They have their differences in some areas, but neither is interested in disrupting the fundamental relationship between classes and the means of production, which is what grants capitalists their power. So winning or losing elections is less important to them than winning while compromising on that core class interest.
One could choose to reverse your reasoning to say that the Republicans are free to become more and more progressive without being punished
Two things: Why would they? If they want to serve capitalists and they can get away with doing so, they’re gonna do it. Second, in a superficial rhetorical way, they have made appeals to progressives. They use some of the language of economic populism talking about elites controlling you, or the economy giving you a hard time, corporate censorship of media, failures of institutions, and the way we spend money on awful foreign adventurism instead of on helping people at home.
Of course this is all for show and for the things they don’t just straight up lie about, they subtly twist the messaging to play to the same feelings while turning the attention to things that aren’t the problem. Failings of institutions becomes anti-intellectualism. Economic worries get directed to competition with immigrants and foreigners instead of the capitalists exploiting all of them. Corporate censorship gets turned away from the influence corporations have over our communications to just being about crazy woke people who “don’t understand how things work” and can’t handle people “telling it like it is.” Isolationist isn’t about being anti-war or anti-multinational corporations, it’s about how wars don’t benefit Americans enough and how outside influences from scary foreigners is corrupting the country.
Post Clinton and Obama, the Democrats became the party of “everything is fine except for those dumb dumb bigots.” And after Bush, the Republicans pivoted to the counter-narrative of that while still maintaining their priority towards the interests of the capitalist class. So neither party is really addressing your concerns, but one seems to be at least acknowledging the problems you have and telling you you’re a super special person and the other party seems to be ignoring your pain and kicking you while you’re down.
And of course with Republicans in power, I’d expect these roles to flip again. Once Trump does enough of his bullshit he’s gonna say everything is great except for those whinny wokes and the Democrats are playing opposition to that, even against policies they supported while in power like deportation, but only go so far as saying that things were better before Trump ruined everything. If we could just go back to before that everything would be fine. Even more specifically, post Trump there has been an effort to pin things all on specific people rather than any structural critique or even going to far as to broaden it to the party as a whole. “There are good, honest Republicans I might disagree with, but respect, but Trump is pure evil and everything bad that’s happening is specifically because of him” or some other rotating cast of figureheads like Musk, Desantis, etc. even though all of these policies are things Republicans have been working towards for decades, sometimes with the help of Democrats.
So no, I don’t think the stances of the political parties ever really ebbs left based on who wins elections. We had 8 years of “Hope and Change” Obama and the party completely balked at Bernie for actually wanting to follow through on the empty rhetoric of Obama.
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Sorry the system we’ve been abused by for the last 100 years didn’t change over night because you had a thought about it.
Sorry the system we’ve been abused by for the last 100 years didn’t change over night because you had a thought about it.
Are you?
I am, I want a system that is responsive to the voters needs and isn’t constantly gamed. At the same time, you can’t pretend that is the system we have. We need to acknowledge how it works and work within that framework to get an outcome that is closer to what we want. Outside of that, you’re talking about mobilizing millions of people who don’t want to mobilize. You do both, you don’t just pretend that if you, as an individual, act in a way that aligns with your idealistic view of the world that you will see results. You work within the system to send it in the direction you want while also acting outside of the system to force changes we actually need.
I could go on, but won’t bother if this is all lost on you.
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
No, not Biden. First of all, he wasn’t running. It was the party more broadly. By just saying Biden, the party doesn’t have to change, but the voters are naturally expected to change and be more willing to vote for whatever genocidal shit demon the party demands unquestioning fealty to in 4 years.
You can’t absolve Biden’s part in this though, if his administration hadn’t hid how he was just not in a condition for another years of the presidency (I believe even Biden has admitted this now) then an actual primary could have happened. Instead it was swept under the rug until the last second, then they scrambled to get a non-geriatric candidate that was a good pick for the situation but wasn’t picked by voters.
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.
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.
Focus up during our upcoming elections, because it seems like you fall for social media propaganda easily.
I’ve probably been through more elections that you’ve had years on earth
As an American, this is complete horse shit.
Sure, but look where your logic has led you guys to. Maybe try not being so hard headed. The rest of of leftists around the world shake our head at how toxic the American left has become, and how they love to clap back at any criticism with venom.
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 !politics@lemmy.world 🙄
Were you not paying attention? The school admin will step in to help attack the pro-Palestine students. They already have been.
The post claimed the democrats persecuted them more than Trump, I demonstrated the post is false. I never said a single thing about the school admins, nor do I care. Hey, you were just promoting Luigi in another sub and now you’re over here siding with a Tankie Community?
Can you quote the part of the post that claims the Democrats persecuted the students more than Trump persecutes the students?
Edit: rereading the post, I see that there is a potential ambiguity similar to the ambiguity in your first sentence.
The meaning of the post is the the democrats put more effort into putting down the protests than they put or are putting into putting down the current authoritarian rise to power.
It didn’t mean that they put more effort into putting down the protests then the current authoritarian rise to power is or would put towards putting down the protests.
The post is literally this and it’s false:
No, the post did not make that claim. Re-read it.
I’m a socialist. But your “tankie” accusation, along with your other empire apologia, has given away that you’re just here to astroturf. Fuck off.
What does boot taste like?
You’re really bad at astroturfing. This is weakest DARVO attempt I’ve seen on here. This a poorly designed bot, or a poorly educated human?
All my stances are genuine, unlike you who changes stances from one community to the next so you can masquerade as a leftists while you promote fascism and violence.
What the fuck are you talking about?
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.
Sounds like confusion stems from you believing words and actions to be of equal value. Which is typical for any defense of Democrats.
No, there are actual legal challenges. As for the government shutdown, that is absolutely just words as I said in my comment.
No, there are actual legal challenges.
Yeah, like I said, you believe words to be actions.
A challenge in court is, objectively, an action. As opposed to “words”. Already some of the executive orders have been blocked. I can give sources if you are actually interested, but you’re not being reasonable.
Farting is also objectively an action. That’s not the kind of action people are calling for.
I understand that you believe this to be some kind of proper action. You don’t have to keep reiterating it.
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.
Just off camera
This is the important part. Corporate propaganda outlets will not report on burgeoning political movements that threaten the status quo, unless they are absolutely forced to, and only then to deride and ridicule them in order to discourage their growth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised
The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat
The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live
Ah yes. Fascists taking over the county? Time to blame their opposition. Help their opposition? Nah, I’d rather blame them.
Lol, what opposition?
It’s not enough, but I’ve seen more of it from the DNC than I have you.
I’ve seen more of it from [the elected officials delegated to head the country], than [the random poster on the internet].
the bar is in hell.
You and other poor people dummy
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 Democrats will learn the wrong lesson from this: “We need to convince more Republicans to vote for us!”
They were taught the wrong lesson. The left refuses to vote for them because they don’t perfectly represent them; moderates turn out and can be swung from time to time. What tangible evidence do they have that moving left will gain them more votes than it will cost them?
The left refuses to vote for them because they don’t perfectly represent them
They perfectly represent you.
They do not. You have the unfortunate habit of reducing those who disagree with you to inaccurate caricatures, in a vain attempt to bolster your own poorly formed ethos.
They do not.
Oh cool. How have they failed to represent you to perfection?
You have the unfortunate habit of reducing those who disagree with you to inaccurate caricatures, in a vain attempt to bolster your own poorly formed ethos.
From the person who literally just misrepresented the entire left thus:
The left refuses to vote for them because they don’t perfectly represent them
I’m a leftist. They are neo-liberals. My wishes for them to beat out the fascists does not mean they represent me.
What tangible evidence do they have that moving left will gain them more votes than it will cost them?
Actual data from Bernie Sanders’ campaign showing that he was vastly more popular overall (and especially in red states) than the centrists.
And Bernie endorsed Harris, and she lost.
And? Do you think an endorsement automatically means everyone who would have voted for Bernie would vote for Harris? Like I said, Bernie’s popularity over other Democratic candidates was most pronounced in red states. Those votes didn’t transfer to Harris, they transfered to Trump, or to no one at all.
Like I said, the wrong lesson was taught.
