Before you reply to me directly please understand:
- The US overthrew democracy in the country I am from
- The US installed a fascist king with secret police that terrorized my family
- Once kicked out the US supported a dictator in the neighboring country where the other half of my family lived
- The US funded both sides of a war between my country and the neighboring one that led to mass civilian deaths, one side directly by giving a dictator weapons and cash and the other side clandestinely thru laundering money by selling drugs in Latin America
- Once they lost that war turned on the dictator in the neighboring country and invented reasons to illegally invade. Twice
- Toppled the regime and left a power vacuum that consumed all my family that lived there for literally hundreds of years.
- Created material conditions in the country my family is from that forced them to leave or die
You Americans are not the good guys, your country and government is evil to its core.
I would try to guess your country but there are too many that the US has done this to
My guess is iran
OP said it was in Latin America tho
No, the CIA was selling drugs in latin america…
Iraq was invaded twice
Have you considered being born to a wealthy white family in the West? I hear it’s much easier
“Both sides bad” is why we have Trump.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage. Environmental laws have been all Democrats. If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
Democrats didn’t flip on gay rights until Obama, and the Supreme Court did marriage equality. (Yes better than Republicans) Democratic leadership is already trying to send trans people under the bus to try to save face with the Republicans. Both sides are bad! We need to demand more from the democrats and force them to support the working class and to never back down when talking about human rights. Right now. The Democratic party is nothing more than an enabler of our abusive and coercive government/economic systems that allows lessor evils to even exist.
actually, your candidate running a dogshit campaign and telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off is why we have trump. we warned this would happen, too. anyone with a memory span longer than a pet goldfish remembers all of this.
Decades of lesser evil voting is why you have Trump
“Both sides bad” is why we have Trump.
You have Trump because you have capitalism and the reactionary political class serves a purpose in it. Liberalism tells you to only think of politics in a vacuum: whatever the last election was and what the next election is. In this vacuum they limit the world of politics down to what the two capitalist parties promise for capital, which varies and triangulates over time. The GOP was originally a party of free states and slavery abolition and the Democrats slavers and Southern white racists. Look at how they shift over time, both parties existing now for over 120 years. If you only ever look at the previous and next 4 years of what the capitalist political duopoly gives you, you will never understand the currents or why your “good guys” are increasingly xenophobic and transphobic or how political choices are actually made, because it is not just every four years at a ballot box proxied through some weirdos in the electoral college.
Anyways, both sides are bad. Have you already forgotten Biden’s genocide in Gaza? Dems’ “tough on the border” pivot? Breaking the rail strike? Being competent stewards of imperialism? I think liberals like to forget Blue Crimes, they are basically told to do so by mass media and it doesn’t comport with parasocially liking the sunglasses ice cream guy if you acknowledge he’s a genocidal racist. It isn’t really your fault to be in that bubble, but it is on you if you don’t seriously listen to others taking the time to explain its problems.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
Absolutely wrong. Gay rights were popularized by left struggle, not struggle from Dems. Dems were dragged there by younger people that were radicalized by the people actually fighting for gay rights. Pride was a riot. The liberal assent and cooption was lagging, not leading. And in the US, gay marriage at the federal level was created by fiat of unelected lords (the Supreme Court) and not Democratic policy, despite Dems having full control of Congress and the Presidency in the neighboring period. Finally, gay rights are not full. I don’t understand why you think they would be. Gay people still face all kinds of oppressions in the US and the law only rarely protects them.
Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
This is simply factually incorrect. Early “environmental” laws were largely implemented by Republicans, including Teddy Roosevelt, also a racist genocidal war criminal. This was in many ways responding to muckrakers and organized labor who saw the environment, living conditions, and working conditions as inextricable.
Nixon signed the EPA into existence.
If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
Democrats don’t do nothing, they just avoid doing the vast majority of things good for humanity in general and even just the US citizen working class. Even when they promise to do so, they have an excuse and whipping boy ready to go. Oh, Ovama and the national platform said single-payer? Sorry there’s Lieberman and we can’t kill the filibuster and oh man no discipline at all. Cancel student debt? Oh sorry there’s a parliamentarian that we can just override and fire and okay we will issue a conspicuously legally weak executive order and then fold at the earliest opportunity.
But Democrats do implement policies, they just do so in the interest of capital. Their platform represents certain formations of capital, the GOP’s some others, and they share many donors. The different formations undo each others’ work when in power. Or at least they don’t flex their muscles until something is intolerable to them.
No, the DNC is why we have trump. It’s on them.
Obama wasn’t perfect at all, but his platform was at least change and progress. While he was originally against gay marriage he did listen to the public and change for re-election. If the DNC listened to the public instead of fighting against progress that would be great. But like… Biden was the throw away to conservatives for Obama’s VP to “balance out” Obama being progressive….And now he was their best idea on what to do for a better future? It’s pathetic, and demonstrates the above.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump. They’re saying the DNC is what even allowed trump to exist, by being greedy fucks who care more about their handlers than the American people and running the worst candidates they can. “Nothing will fundamentally change” is the dumbest, most “fuck you don’t bother to vote for me” fucking campaign I’ve ever heard.
Its fine let them keep losing. I honestly don’t care anymore. At some point progressives like Bernie, AOC, etc. will finally wake up & realize they don’t need Democrats to win. You want to see people passionate about voting again then it is time to leave the establishment behind. Anyone remember Bernie’s crowds in 2016? It was obvious he was may more popular than Clinton having to pay Beyonce & Jay Z for people to show up at her events.
Bernie and AOC are sheepdogs for the Dems. They are all-in on the party. When people become disillusioned with Dems, they pop in to spread false hope and convince people to come back and believe in the Dems.
It is true that the welfare state is popular and thar is basically what they are selling. The public wants healthcare, not the cruelty and expense of the capitalist extraction insurance industry. So Medicare for All sounds great in comparison. It’s very popular when actually explained to people.
But it will never become policy without turmoil. The health insurance industry is a huge leech excreting profits for the owner class. Dems want to dangle it in front of voters but will never suppory it when in power, they will enginerr a Lieberman or parliamentarian because the party is completely beholden to capital, including insurance capital.
I’m sure you agree with a lot of what I have said. I just want to emphasize that Bernie and AOC are not really outsiders, they are ineffectual refornists whose only current function - one that they embrace - is to keep people that hate the crimes of the Democratic Party, up to and including genocide, to keep voting for them.
They absolutely, 1000% need Democrats to win. Maybe not their respective districts, but if they want to get anything done on a national level, they need about half the country on their side, and that includes Democrats.
Now, they can certainly eat the party whole, the way the tea party and MAGA ate the GOP. That involves being more specific than “Democrats bad”. In fact, how did they do it? Did you ever see them telling people to abandon the Republican party?
No “vote blue no matter who” and not demanding actual representation is how we got Trump. People got duped by a con becuase they have never seen the real thing, so anything different can look appealing to the uncritical.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good or some shit.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
Nixon created the EPA.
If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
If Democrats passed legislation, Biden’s achievements couldn’t be undone through executive order.
The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you’re giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn’t say they’re the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
Not on .world. I’ve noticed .world is more of a neoliberal, mostly pro-capitalism instance in general.
Note, I’m talking more about the moderation rather than members.
Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it’s kind of a, “pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” situation.
I miss Reddit. R. I. P.
Eh, I saw a lot of the same shit on Reddit. I think you’d have to go back at least 7 or 8 years to find a version of Reddit that wasn’t trash.
Nah. I had my feed highly curated to active and sane subs within my interests. It was too good to be true.
Dear Liberals,
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I am so glad I can’t see the bullshit from lemmy.world on my server
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Your economic system guarantees fascism. You can’t vote your way out of it. Capitalist modes of production inevitably concentrate power and lead to fascism. It is unavoidable.
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Here is the education that you need to take over the Democratic Party:
David Hogg, the new Vice Chair of the DNC, has allocated $20M to primary out the old appeasers, and replace them with youthful progressives to create a true opposition party.
Democratic primaries only see ~20% turnout in congressional elections. 30/50 states have partisan primaries, meaning you must be registered as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
Rather than progressives and leftists fracturing over third-parties, we need to all block vote progressives into the Democratic Party through primaries and replace the deadwood centrists that have been content with the status quo.
Check your state’s primary type here: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
You cannot take over the Democratic Party. It will just change its own rules before you get the chance. The people running it are all feeding from the same donor trough, either as politicians or consultants. You think they will let you just take the trough away? Friend they make the party rules! They will just change them! They already did this against Bernie, an imperialist socdem, someone who isn’t even a real threat to capital (just the insurance industry) and they thwarted that even when it had momentum and kids allowed themselves hope for healthcare without poverty. This is the basic nature of capitalist parties: they are beholden to capital, not the people, and certainly not you or I.
By the time the Democratic Partu is “taken over” by anything, it will be because it has found a way to make capital happy by adopting a policy that costs them nothing. Which means we win nothing of serious value and the spiral of capitalist degrading conditions continues.
In the meantime, what role do these reformers actually serve? If they can’t change what needs yo change, what other effects do they have?
Well, they mostly just convince people to have false hope for the party, delaying its need to crash and burn and be replaced, ideally with something more effective than a bourgeois electoral party.
The Democrats suck but there’s a huge difference between voting for boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil. Don’t make me tap the chart.
You don’t get to do a genocide and then say the other guy is “100% concentrated evil.”
No matter what action you took in this last election. You were voting for genocide.
- Republican - genocide
- Democrat - genocide with less fascism.
- No vote - The two major parties are pro-genocide so you are genocide by default.
- Third party - none of the third party candidates had a chance so genocide by default.
So accusing anyone of voting for genocide is kind of silly because everyone did. No one really had a choice.
You voted for genocide and are now trying to absolve your conscience by claiming you had no choice, and that in reality everyone did what you did.
No, a lot of people didn’t do what you did.
We all did, we all voted for it. We didn’t all vote for fascism though. That was a you thing probably.
You looked at a party committing genocide – the worst thing people can do to one another – and made the decision to co-sign that. I voted for someone who opposed genocide.
No matter how desperately you want to water down the choice you made, it’s not the same as the one I made. You don’t actually have to shuffle along with genocide because Democrats lied about some half-assed loan forgiveness or something.
Assuming what is in heart incorrectly doesn’t counter my facts.
I didn’t vote for the Dems because of loan forgiveness, I voted for them because they were the least fascist option.
It’s ok though, I understand you are struggling with how your vote supported rapidity brining fascists to power. The large amount of death caused by the loss of USAID. Sending of innocent people to El Salvador concentration camp. Autistic people being marked as non-human. And look at that, it isn’t even half way though the first year of this term.
Literally, your only hope right now for a good outcome is if soo many people die that we 180 out of this with a revolution that somehow doesn’t result in another authoritarian being in charge soon. Seriously, shit is soo fucked right now, I have become an accelerationist.
It’s ok though, I understand you are struggling
What do you think you are accomplishing by being such an insufferable ass?
Democrats should be trying to win back voters like me – voters who have supported lots of Democrats in the past, but who will not support genocide. They (and you) are instead telling those voters to fuck off. They (and you) make a lot of noise about wanting to win elections, but have no strategy besides browbeating voters, a strategy that just failed.
I dont get it.
OPs cartoon makes it clear that the dems are oposed to left-wing policies, so commie guy refused to vote against his interests.
The problem isnt commie guy, it’s all the other brainless sheep who keep voting for the same two parties who don’t represent them.
Consider this: if all the people forced to vote opted to vote someone else, then the Dems would really understand why they’re failing, and more, you’d have the basis for an actual third party to from.
But instead you and other dimwits keep preaching the same old 2 party rethoric who has been fucking you over for decades.
The problem
isnt commie guy, it’s all the other brainless sheep who keep voting for the same two parties who don’t represent themis definitely commie guy for not understanding that a boring and flawed neoliberal Democrat is preferable to a fascist dictatorship.Fixed that for you.
Consider this: if all the people forced to vote opted to vote someone else, then the Dems would really understand why they’re failing, and more, you’d have the basis for an actual third party to from.
Wrong answer. That made sense under Clinton vs Bush or Obama vs Romney, not nowadays. We can “consider” your proposal when there’s not a damn fascist dictator threatening to send US citizens to an El Salvadorian gulag for disagreeing with the President.
Then again, commies tend to love gulag’ing people who disagree with them, just ask Stalin… So maybe commie guy sees the gulags as a good thing?
Every single one of those elections, the Dems chanting “us or fascism!!”
It’s kinda like the gun safety debate: we can not discuss it within 72 hrs of a mass shooting.
After 72 hrs, nobody wants to talk about it, or we have another one.
When will the Dems actually oppose fascism, instead of saying they want to?
Additionally, who is that “boring liberal republic” better for? Certainly not Palestinians. Certainly not for union workers on our rail lines. Not for people becoming houseless. Not for queer people. Not for indigenous peeps, either…
So, just for white, straight people, so we need to keep supporting it?
Additionally, who is that “boring liberal republic” better for?
Certainly not Palestinians. Certainly not for union workers on our rail lines. Not for people becoming houseless. Not for queer people. Not for indigenous peeps, eitherDefinitely Palestinians. Definitely union workers. Definitely homeless. Definitely queer people. Definitely indigenous people.Fixed that for you.
If Kamala Harris had won, literally all the groups you just mentioned would be far better off than under a literal fascist dictatorship which Trump’s lackeys want to establish.
Honestly? I’m starting to believe lemmy is, like reddit, filled with a bunch of clueless college kids who haven’t set foot in other parts of the world and have no idea what it’s like to live under a dictatorship, and thus take the rights and freedoms they have completely for granted.
Sadly, Trump is about to teach us all a lesson in authoritarianism - You, myself, and everyone else on the planet.
How would Harris have been better for Palestinians? She was part of an admin that was assisting their genocide and always maintained that she would continue doing that.
How would Harris have been better for Palestinians?
LMAO Trump has pretty much let Netanyahu off the leash and is going to turn Gaza in to a hotel and resort. If you can’t figure out how this is the worst scenario for the Palestinians then you aren’t intelligent enough to be discussing this matter.
She was part of an admin that was assisting their genocide
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No she wasn’t.
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You don’t know what genocide is.
Oh I see, our fundamental disagreement is that you don’t think Israel is committing genocide against the palestinians. I think trapping people inside a narrow strip of land, cutting off their supply of food and water, and carpet bombing the place for 2 years is definitely genocide but I guess you know better or whatever
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The problem with voting for a party simply because “we aren’t fascism” is that it produces the most perverse incentives imaginable. If the only way Democrats can win the White House is by simply not being fascist, what motivation do they have to reform the system so that fascists won’t be able to come back into power?
If there is a free election in 2028, and if Democrats somehow manage to win, they need to act decisively. They need to pass a storm of legislation that drastically curtails the powers of the presidency. If they don’t, then we could be right back with another wannabe dictator Republican in power in 2032. We need to end the emergency powers, curtail the powers of ICE, end the mass surveillance, essentially dismantle the entire post-911 security architecture that put us at such a danger of dictatorship. It’s an evil machine that never should have been built.
This is the fatal error of wanting to support a centrist Dem in 2028. The only way such a candidate is going to get elected is if they can run against the specter of fascism and dictatorship. They have zero motivation to dismantle the tools a future dictator would use; they need there to be a threat of a future dictator in order to win reelection. If that centrist Dem wins in 2028, and makes it so dictatorship is impossible, what are they going to run on in 2032? They need there to be a credible threat of dictatorship in order to win election. A centrist Dem can never dismantle fascism, as the looming potential of fascism is their only hope of getting elected. Centrist Dems want to dangle the threat of fascist dictatorship, like a Sword of Damocles, over your head forever. Corporate Dems will never dismantle what is their only hope of getting and retaining power.
The problem with voting for a party simply because “we aren’t fascism” is that it produces the most perverse incentives imaginable.
So your solution is “Just let the dictator take over and do whatever he wants”?
Not a very good solution.
First, that is an extremely bad-faith interpretation of my words, and you know it.
Second, historically, when countries face autocratic moments like ours, often the only way they out the autocrat is by completely abandoning the corrupt center-left party that allowed and enabled the far right authoritarians. Voters often spend several election cycles fruitlessly trying to get the center-left party to make the necessary changes to challenge the autocrat. In the end, the center left party loses more and more popularity, until it collapses completely. Their credibility is mud with the general populace; they simply have no viable path to winning an election. The party needs to collapse into nothing. Only then is there enough room for a new party that can actually challenge the autocrat to rise. They try several cycles of dutifully voting for the center-left corporate party, but it just doesn’t work. In the end they just have to let it burn.
Centrist Dems are not going to be able to defeat Trumpism. And this inability also makes them incredibly weak candidates to win elections against Trumpism. If the DNC is going to just keep forcing useless ineffectual centrists on the party, really, the quickest way to defeat MAGA will be for as many Democrats to abandon the Democratic Party and vow to never vote for them again. Centrist dems will just keep losing election after election after election. They’re losers. Weak, ineffectual losers. They can’t win elections against Trump. Biden only managed to eek out a win in 2020 due to Covid.
If Dems are going to keep forcing corporate centrists through, you are actually delaying the defeat of Trumpism by voting for them. As corporate Dems can’t win a general election against Trumpism, voting for them is as completely pointless as voting for third party candidates in 2024. Centrist Dems just aren’t serious presidential contenders anymore; you shouldn’t take them seriously. A vote for a centrist Dem is a vote for another MAGA term. Even if a corporate Dem gets the nomination, a vote for them is still a vote for a longer MAGA reign.
If they force another corporate centrist through in 2028, the 2028 election is already lost. At that point, the goal should be to make sure that the corporate candidate loses spectacularly. The corporate Dem is never going to win, but they might eek out a 45-55 loss that lets the DNC keep pretending that corporate Dems have a chance at winning the general election. At that point, with the election already lost, the goal should be to make sure the centrist Dem loses by an overwhelming, comically large 30-70 margin or similar. You need to take so much credibility from the Dems that the party collapses completely.
We’re in a fight that is going to take more than one election cycle. Accept that now. You need to think more strategically than just one election cycle in the future. Because “vote blue no matter who” can actually extend the reign of the MAGA movement.
Hopefully we won’t get stuck with a shithead corporate centrist in 2028. But if we do, I’ll be boycotting the presidential general election, only voting in the Congressional elections. I do this because I care about the country, and I want to see MAGA defeated as quickly as possible. If a corporate Dem is the nominee in 2028, then Dems have already lost the election. At that point, your thoughts should immediately move to 2032, as that will be the next chance Dems have at ousting MAGA.
First, that is an extremely bad-faith interpretation of my words, and you know it.
Nope. Pretty sure I was right the first time, and your novel of a post only convinced me of that further.
I get that Democrats are weak, incompetent p*ssies, but at the rate we’re going we’re not going to have another real election. There’s a very good chance that from here on, we’re going to have Russia-style elections where the winner - Trump - is predetermined and the election is just for show.
As awful as the Democrats are, if you didn’t vote Democrat in 2024, hope you enjoy the sham “elections” because it’s what you voted for.
And just who are you to presume to correct anybody’s point of view? Because telling me that commies and fascists like to send people to gulags is doing nothing to change anybody’s mind. Let’s face reality here: that doesn’t hit anywhere close to home, especially when you have so much right-wing media spinning it around and justifying it.
The issues that actually hurt most people, your working class and poor people, are toxic to democrats because they need policies that will hurt their traditional pocket fillers.
They all chose, a long time ago, to serve their masters, and it’s now coming to the breaking point: people can no longer afford to pay rent and basic necessities with their job.
This is when all hell breaks loose, the social contract breaks down, and you have incompetent psychopaths elected into power - because people are desperate and they want shit to change.
You can keep yelling at the top of your lungs that the alternative is awful and horrible and Hitler and gas chambers, but what you’re ever more likely to hear is that “well, at least it ends the despair”.
But sure, ignore everything and keep being as perplexed as most other democrats as to why people keep voting for that buffoon.
And just who are you to presume to correct anybody’s point of view? Because telling me that commies and fascists like to send people to gulags is doing nothing to change
anybody’smy mind.Fixed that for you.
From the sound of it, you seem content with letting Trump be dictator and do whatever he wants, so why are you arguing with me? Shouldn’t you be off praising Dear Leader Trump for making the country great again?
This has to be the most brain dead community on Lemmy, still pulling this “Both sides” bullshit
I don’t know on which community we currently are, but this is the most accurate depiction of what’s actually going on. Democrats serve the corporate elite and don’t really bother turning it left.
Stop with this braindead serve the elites meme. Dems last admin passed tons of left wing legislation that benefited everyone.
All those left wing policies being implemented like:
Is significantly reducing the cost of life saving medicine and giving families $300 a month per kid not left wing policy?
You’re either incredibly uninformed or purposely undermining the left I can’t tell which.
The extra $300 per month would be a better argument if they tried to keep it going instead of letting it lapse…
Its ending under trump. The 1 year of significantly boosted CTC was government assistance given to people. The right wing version of that would have been tax cuts for business. Could he have passed legislation that kept ctc at that amount, probably not and it would likely be repealed by Trump. Just because something could be better doesn’t mean it isn’t good. If you use “it could be better” as an justification for something being bad then people can say the same thing about things you mention. Oh yeah he passed boosted CTC forever well he should have increased it more, he should have given to to all families, he should just give that money to everyone. Lets be realistic instead of delusional so things in the real world can actually get better.
It ended under Biden along with most of the benefit increases we got because of covid. It was bad enough to have a massive spike in child poverty after decreasing.
Lets be realistic instead of delusional so things in the real world can actually get better.
Except that’s not at all the case
