Until the Democratic Party stops excluding the Bernies of the world, elections like these are what we’re going to get. No one believes Democrats will actually do what they say they’re going to do, not even their own voters.
Until the Democratic Party stops excluding the Bernies of the world
So long as the entire corporate media system is poisoned against even the most mild democratic socialism of a 1980s-style left-liberal, the party isn’t going to do that.
Go back and watch what happened in 2020 when Sanders won Nevada. MSNBC, the “liberal” news outlet had Chris Matthews wailing in fear at the prospect of being lynched in Central Park. FOX News was screeching about how the entire campaign had been infiltrated by Chinese Communists and Hamas Terrorists. I’m amazed Sanders didn’t get the Harvey Milk treatment after he took California.
Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the progressive movement as a whole is entirely at odds with the Amazons and Starbucks and JP Morgan Chases that rule our world. Even in big blue states like New York (in big blue cities like NYC), progressives can’t win the high offices, because the establishment is so nakedly hostile to economic populism. Bernie’s own bright blue home state of Vermont voted in a Republican for governor by a Ba’ath Party 73/21 margin, rather than tolerate another Howard Dean style progressive Dem in that seat.
No one believes Democrats will actually do what they say they’re going to do
I believed him. I believed statements like this paved his road to victory in 2020.
Absolutely.
I’ll admit I voted Biden in 2020, thinking that a cultural win against resurgent American fascism would help turn the tide of history. (I didn’t have any delusions that he’d actually rule as a progressive.)
Four years later, with millions more in poverty, it’s only done the opposite.
I voted for Biden in 2020 wanting to give people a chance to remember they’re human, one timescale hoping that his centrist approach had a chance of fixing government. I voted for him again seeing that he made all the attempts anyone could imagine and was starting to attempt a few more progressive things
Trump is not fit to run the bank in a game of Monopoly, and I would vote against it
That would mean the DNC forever losing control of the party and therefore the rich losing control. They won’t let that happen even if it ends this country.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Agreed but I think the ones who stayed home and actively encouraged others to do the same are worse than Trump voters who keep it to themselves. That Trump voters scored 1 vote and the armchair activist made at least one person not vote
Honest question: how could I have improved the clarity of my comment to avoid it being interpreted as wrong as you did? I’ll rephrase it in bullet points.
A Trump voter who doesn’t preach is 1 vote for Trump
A non-voter who doesn’t preach is 1 vote for Trump
A Trump voter who preaches is at least 1 vote for Trump as they are actively encouraging others to vote for him. Their vote is the 1 plus the people they might influence
A non-voters who preaches is at least 1 vote for Trump as they are actively encouraging others to not vote. Their vote is the 1 plus the people they might influence
So in summary:
People who promoted voting for Trump AND people who promoted not voting are worse than people who quietly voted for Trump. All 3 groups are worse than quiet non-voters.
OC is referring to the non-voting advocates that disappeared from political discussions on Lemmy after the election.
I don’t remember anyone actively encouraging others to not vote. I’m pretty sure people would just openly say “I am not voting” and then be forced to defend themselves, but that’s certainly not the same as trying to convince other people to not vote.
Were you active on Lemmy earlier this year? It was pervasive. I don’t mean posts detailing why you shouldn’t vote, I mean tons of comments saying that if you voted Democrat this election, you supported genocide.
I’m just not sure if it stopped because their contracts ended or because the ruble tanked in value.
tons of comments saying that if you voted Democrat this election, you supported genocide.
Yeah, I believe that too. That isn’t the same as telling people not to vote. If you believe you have to vote for genocide to stop a greater genocide then more power to you, but you aren’t allowed to pretend you didn’t vote for genocide.
I’m just not sure if it stopped because their contracts ended or because the ruble tanked in value.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but the election ended.
Ya know what, you’re right! Shaming people for voting is not the exact same thing as directly instructing them not to vote. That is a super important distinction that absolutely changes their role in getting other people not to vote.
It also seems I was wrong about those commenters disappearing after the election. It was my fault to assume that they had a solution to propose. I wasn’t considering how hard that would be to find in total darkness with their heads up their asses.
You’ve defeated me on a technicality so now I must leave this conversation. Farewell!
It’s all a moot point when you consider the anti-democratic functions of our EC and winner-take-all district system.
Yelling at the One Trump Voter or the One Jill Stein Voter or the One Hilary Clinton/Joe Biden/Bernie Sanders Primary Voter or what-the-fuck-ever is meaningless in the context of machine politics that ultimately decide who runs for office and who wins. The tiny cartel of partisan State Secretaries purging millions of voter registrations with a bias towards demographic groups that favor opposition parties will have a far more significant impact than your single ballot choice. The billions spent on advertising and marketing to shape public perception and limit the scope of national discourse, the tens of billions spent to orchestrate national media and pander to certain elite, overly represented economic interests, and the decades of Cold War propaganda we’ve been drenched in since Paul Weyrich, Pat Buchanan, and James Dobson gaslite generations of evangelical voters into believing defunding Medicaid would save unborn children, are far more responsible for the current state of electoral politics than your 11th hour hot take on who should be President.
Americans want desperately to believe that their liberal democracy isn’t like the kletocracies and kakocracies of the Big Bad Foreign Countries. But this exceptionalist (deeply white nationalist) mindset is just one more layer of bullshit we’ve all been forced to swallow.
The people who voted for Trump have been hoodwinked into voting against their best interests thanks to an entire consent manufacturing industry. And the people who voted for Biden/Harris, thinking they could win over these scammed voters by softly pandering to the same set of reactionary, xenophobic campaign pledges and bullshit paranoid theories and get-rich-quick scams are also getting hoodwinked.
You’re trapped in a systematic failure of electoral populism. “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy!” isn’t a way out. Its just a dogmatic belief that the Other Corporate Candidate was the panacea to the deep corruption that ails us.
Our electoral system has been having a scaling issue since the 1800s when we started adding a bunch of states. We patched over it with things like the Missouri Compromise and broadcast media, but now that we’ve closed the Gutenberg parenthesis we’re too balkanized as a society for the elections to work.
No, you see, the answer was voting harder. Centrists have the answer: extremely minor policy interventions without any structural changes whatsoever. The real enemy are the leftists, because The End of History only faltered because people don’t listen to centrists.
Cool. And that makes a difference how exactly? I’m sure dividing Americans into “terrible” and “slightly less terrible” categories is definitely going to solve all their problems.
No, actually, people who voted for Trump are worse than people who stayed home.
Until the Democratic Party stops excluding the Bernies of the world, elections like these are what we’re going to get. No one believes Democrats will actually do what they say they’re going to do, not even their own voters.
So long as the entire corporate media system is poisoned against even the most mild democratic socialism of a 1980s-style left-liberal, the party isn’t going to do that.
Go back and watch what happened in 2020 when Sanders won Nevada. MSNBC, the “liberal” news outlet had Chris Matthews wailing in fear at the prospect of being lynched in Central Park. FOX News was screeching about how the entire campaign had been infiltrated by Chinese Communists and Hamas Terrorists. I’m amazed Sanders didn’t get the Harvey Milk treatment after he took California.
Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the progressive movement as a whole is entirely at odds with the Amazons and Starbucks and JP Morgan Chases that rule our world. Even in big blue states like New York (in big blue cities like NYC), progressives can’t win the high offices, because the establishment is so nakedly hostile to economic populism. Bernie’s own bright blue home state of Vermont voted in a Republican for governor by a Ba’ath Party 73/21 margin, rather than tolerate another Howard Dean style progressive Dem in that seat.
Joe Biden to rich donors: “Nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected
I believed him. I believed statements like this paved his road to victory in 2020.
Absolutely.
I’ll admit I voted Biden in 2020, thinking that a cultural win against resurgent American fascism would help turn the tide of history. (I didn’t have any delusions that he’d actually rule as a progressive.)
Four years later, with millions more in poverty, it’s only done the opposite.
I voted for Biden in 2020 wanting to give people a chance to remember they’re human, one timescale hoping that his centrist approach had a chance of fixing government. I voted for him again seeing that he made all the attempts anyone could imagine and was starting to attempt a few more progressive things
Trump is not fit to run the bank in a game of Monopoly, and I would vote against it
I’d vote Charlie Sheen over Trump
At least he’d be able to act like he cared…
That would mean the DNC forever losing control of the party and therefore the rich losing control. They won’t let that happen even if it ends this country.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
I think you’re right.
Eh. They’re the same to me.
Both groups are irreedemable losers, just in different ways.
People who support Nazis are basically the same as people that just kind of let Nazis do their thing without lifting a finger.
You won’t lift a finger now that the election is over.
By a slight margin.
Agreed but I think the ones who stayed home and actively encouraged others to do the same are worse than Trump voters who keep it to themselves. That Trump voters scored 1 vote and the armchair activist made at least one person not vote
Ah I see: A vote for Trump is one vote for Trump, but not voting for Trump is two votes for Trump.
Honest question: how could I have improved the clarity of my comment to avoid it being interpreted as wrong as you did? I’ll rephrase it in bullet points.
A Trump voter who doesn’t preach is 1 vote for Trump
A non-voter who doesn’t preach is 1 vote for Trump
A Trump voter who preaches is at least 1 vote for Trump as they are actively encouraging others to vote for him. Their vote is the 1 plus the people they might influence
A non-voters who preaches is at least 1 vote for Trump as they are actively encouraging others to not vote. Their vote is the 1 plus the people they might influence
So in summary:
People who promoted voting for Trump AND people who promoted not voting are worse than people who quietly voted for Trump. All 3 groups are worse than quiet non-voters.
OC is referring to the non-voting advocates that disappeared from political discussions on Lemmy after the election.
I don’t remember anyone actively encouraging others to not vote. I’m pretty sure people would just openly say “I am not voting” and then be forced to defend themselves, but that’s certainly not the same as trying to convince other people to not vote.
Were you active on Lemmy earlier this year? It was pervasive. I don’t mean posts detailing why you shouldn’t vote, I mean tons of comments saying that if you voted Democrat this election, you supported genocide.
I’m just not sure if it stopped because their contracts ended or because the ruble tanked in value.
Yeah, I believe that too. That isn’t the same as telling people not to vote. If you believe you have to vote for genocide to stop a greater genocide then more power to you, but you aren’t allowed to pretend you didn’t vote for genocide.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but the election ended.
Ya know what, you’re right! Shaming people for voting is not the exact same thing as directly instructing them not to vote. That is a super important distinction that absolutely changes their role in getting other people not to vote.
It also seems I was wrong about those commenters disappearing after the election. It was my fault to assume that they had a solution to propose. I wasn’t considering how hard that would be to find in total darkness with their heads up their asses.
You’ve defeated me on a technicality so now I must leave this conversation. Farewell!
The person you’re talking to was one of the biggest voices of this shit before the election.
Killing two people is worse than killing one person. Both are still morally questionable actions.
Which people?
It’s all a moot point when you consider the anti-democratic functions of our EC and winner-take-all district system.
Yelling at the One Trump Voter or the One Jill Stein Voter or the One Hilary Clinton/Joe Biden/Bernie Sanders Primary Voter or what-the-fuck-ever is meaningless in the context of machine politics that ultimately decide who runs for office and who wins. The tiny cartel of partisan State Secretaries purging millions of voter registrations with a bias towards demographic groups that favor opposition parties will have a far more significant impact than your single ballot choice. The billions spent on advertising and marketing to shape public perception and limit the scope of national discourse, the tens of billions spent to orchestrate national media and pander to certain elite, overly represented economic interests, and the decades of Cold War propaganda we’ve been drenched in since Paul Weyrich, Pat Buchanan, and James Dobson gaslite generations of evangelical voters into believing defunding Medicaid would save unborn children, are far more responsible for the current state of electoral politics than your 11th hour hot take on who should be President.
Americans want desperately to believe that their liberal democracy isn’t like the kletocracies and kakocracies of the Big Bad Foreign Countries. But this exceptionalist (deeply white nationalist) mindset is just one more layer of bullshit we’ve all been forced to swallow.
The people who voted for Trump have been hoodwinked into voting against their best interests thanks to an entire consent manufacturing industry. And the people who voted for Biden/Harris, thinking they could win over these scammed voters by softly pandering to the same set of reactionary, xenophobic campaign pledges and bullshit paranoid theories and get-rich-quick scams are also getting hoodwinked.
You’re trapped in a systematic failure of electoral populism. “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy!” isn’t a way out. Its just a dogmatic belief that the Other Corporate Candidate was the panacea to the deep corruption that ails us.
Our electoral system has been having a scaling issue since the 1800s when we started adding a bunch of states. We patched over it with things like the Missouri Compromise and broadcast media, but now that we’ve closed the Gutenberg parenthesis we’re too balkanized as a society for the elections to work.
No, you see, the answer was voting harder. Centrists have the answer: extremely minor policy interventions without any structural changes whatsoever. The real enemy are the leftists, because The End of History only faltered because people don’t listen to centrists.
Edit: guys this is sarcasm…
Cool. And that makes a difference how exactly? I’m sure dividing Americans into “terrible” and “slightly less terrible” categories is definitely going to solve all their problems.
Well we need to know who needs to go into reeducation camps.