That’s not even the whole story. A friend from Alabama said half his union voted for Trump and even the MLs in his area promoted Trump because accelerationism or something.
I see you understand the faults of the First-past-the-post voting system. Did you know that we can change how we vote at the state level?
That means blue states can easily avoid the situation you are describing by passing electoral reform. We don’t need need to wait for a hail Mary from congress to work out, we can do this right now. In fact, some states have already passed electoral reform.
Totally possible, there should be no excuses to keep things as they are. Democrats are self proclaimed defenders of democracy. Of course they would want people to vote how they want freely… right?
You seem very concerned with the spoiler effect, so I’ll leave you some videos on our current voting system and alternatives we can choose from. Because who could understand the flaws of the voting system and not want to fix it? So that people can vote how they wish in a democracy without a spoiler effect.
Change how we vote so we can have more then two political parties. As we can all see, a two party system is just one party away from a one party state.
And who wouldn’t want more then one chance to defeat the republicans?
…except the centrists and neoliberals went to Trump. Hillary and Harris both spent their campaigns courting them, and they both lost. Biden, for all his faults, had Bernie help him craft a progressive policy agenda and won. The Democrats undermine the progressive wing of their own ostensibly left-leaning party in primaries and other intraparty conflicts, then get to the general elections and get wrecked because neoliberals would rather vote for the Republicans than pseudo-Republicans.
Well, there are a couple of differences there. First, Trump is an excellent media manipulator. Every moment that pundits thought would be a campaign-ending gaffe became free publicity. He got the equivalent of $2 billion in free media coverage from CNN alone.
Second, Trump didn’t actually say or do anything that would upset the donor class like progressives do. He was more vulgar and crass, and the RNC was certain he would cost them the election, but he wasn’t an existential threat to billionaires the way Bernie was.
However, if you want an example of how the RNC behaves when someone like that is running, look at the 2012 Republican Primary. Mitt Romney was the frontrunner, but the base was unenthusiastic about him and looking for someone different. Ron Paul polled in second place literally the entire campaign cycle, but the pundit class gave him no coverage. They wrote endlessly about Chirs Christie, Rick Santorum, and even Herman Caine, all of whom had brief moments as the frontrunner, but they completely ignored Ron Paul. His staunch libertarian beliefs threatened the defense industry and Wall Street, so the media and the party just pretended he didn’t exist. (For the record, Ron Paul was a wack-job and I’m glad he never became president, but the Bernie parallels are strong).
There are only a few legitimate swing states, votes outside swing states don’t matter
In no swing state did third party votes supercede the difference between Kamala and Trump votes. Ie, even if every third party voter, Libertarians included, voted Kamala, she still would’ve lost.
Even under the Democrats, “No Rights” is still the party platform.
Leftists have always supported revolution as the only legitimate means of enacting change, while liberals aid in the constant rightward spiral. Voting is an incredibly small level of political activism, organizing is far more effective.
This comic is also directed to nonvoters. If as many people voted for Kamala as did Biden, she would have won.
Ask women, gay people, trans people, protesters, and refugees about that one bud
Yeah, I can tell how much more effective leftist organizing is compared to voting by motions around
Wrong for starters, and please tell me how Palestinians are better off under Trump’s “have Israel kill everyone so we can build a resort, and lock up anyone who protests” plan?
Communists did not create the wave of non-voters. To begin with, voter apathy is driven by the fact that the overwhelming majority feels the government, regardless of party, does not represent their best interests.
I’m in that category! That’s how I feel.
You can feel free to join the Leftists actively organizing and help make the struggle easier! Throughout history, it has only been through organized struggle that the will of the people gets represented when in opposition to ruling class interests.
I am 100% correct here. The DNC shipped mountains of bombs to Israel to obliterate civilians and national liberation groups, including aid workers. Trump’s position, though less apologetic, is the same: give Israel whatever it needs in order for it to perpetuate its existence as the equivalent of a US aircraft carrier in the Middle East so that the US can exert hard pressure on geopolitical adversaries in the region.
We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s nottrue? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going todo about it?
You spent the whole elections saying that leftists were an irrelevant Demographic who could be safely ignored. And you’ll be saying it again come the next election. It’s only when you need someone to blame a loss on that they matter.
Can you tell us how the Dems are going to reform the voting system so that people’s choices are fairly represented? No? They have no plans for that because they perceive themselves as beneficiaries of a broken electoral system? Wow it’s almost as if they’re self interested crooks themselves
Edit: people downvoting this are the same people who’d hear about coca cola paramilitaries in South America and then switch to Fanta, thinking they’re voting with their wallets
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 them is 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?
Yeah if you think Bush was an acceptable choice and not a fascist then you don’t really have a leg to stand on with this “commies love gulags” nonsense. You think this El Salvador shit is new? Those of us who were paying attention know that Bush did the same shit, while they did their fair share of torturing alleged “terrorists” with no due process in our own black sites, the worst abuses were conducted in foreign countries like Egypt, when we sent prisoners there knowing full well how they’d be treated. Some of us have been fighting this battle for over 20 years, nice of you to finally wake up and notice now that someone you hate is doing it, but it would be nice if you’d notice when the people you like are doing it too.
It’s so stupid when liberals, defending a system with the largest prison population per capita in the world, with indefinite detention without trial, mass surveillance, etc, still try to take the moral high ground on that issue just because the word “gulag” sounds scary and foreign.
Compared to Trump? Absofuckinglutely. Bush had no desire to be a dictator. Trump absolutely has ambition to be a dictator, and if you can’t figure out how one of those is worse than the other then you’re too clueless to participate in an adult conversation regarding this topic.
Just a non-dictatator doing very non-dictatator things like stealing the election, operating secret extrajudicial torture dungeons where people are detained indefinitely without trial, illegally spying on innocent people en masse, and starting multiple wars of aggression.
I wonder how long it will take y’all to start rehabilitating Trump once he’s no longer the current thing.
Libs will always believe the “it’s not ‘Torture’ it’s ‘enhanced interrogation’” until they are the ones being interrogated. Then, suddenly, it’s ‘torture’, and it’s everyone else’s fault that we got rid of ‘enhanced interrogation’, not their fault for preserving the system.
The prisoners Bush had sent to Egypt were not sent from the US, they were sent from different countries that allowed extradition to Egypt. It was disgusting and abhorrent, but it isn’t the same thing as what we’re seeing now.
Flying people from the US to foreign prisons without due process is a blatant violation of the constitution.
The whole point of having extrajudicial torture dungeons is that they are extrajudicial. They may not have sent US citizens to them (although US citizens were killed in extrajudicial drone strikes), but the only “lawyers” they had access to at Guantanamo were people like Ron DeSantis who posed as a lawyer to try to extract information about which methods the victims found most unpleasant, to be shared with their torturers. If that sort of system exists, it can easily be turned against US citizens, as has happened.
Mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the constitution as well, and when the illegal programs were exposed, not only did no one involved in them get punished in any way, they kept doing them and the person who exposed them was hunted to the ends of the earth.
And meanwhile, immigration courts are basically kangaroo courts where young children can be made to defend themselves with no right to an attorney, and that’s been going on for a long time.
There hasn’t been anything close to rule of law in this country for a long time (if ever). Trump is just continuing the path we’ve been trending towards for a long time in a very overt and rapid way.
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.
Fascism isn’t a choice, or a policy, it’s Capitalism using brutal methods to defend itself, like when the Democrats sent Israel mountains of bombs to obliterate Palestinians. Fascism is not a distinct economic system, but the same underlying system as Capitalism, only when it’s in crisis and needs to defend itself while pretending it’s qualitatively different.
The Liberal answer to the political problems we see is to perpetuate it indefinately and purely act within the system that selects for whatever brutal methods it needs to sustain itself. This isn’t an answer, it’s approval.
As for gulags, I recommend reading Russian Justice. It’s a good thing to jail fascists, Tsarists, and others who would violently try to overthrow a popular government. Or, are you saying you wouldn’t jail Trump if given the opportunity?
The White Army was a group loyal to the Tsar, and fought the Red Army in order to reinstate the Tsarist system. After the Soviets won the Russian Civil War, many former White Army members were persecuted for their crimes by the Soviet Justice System.
The authority on who was or was not a fascist was the Soviet Justice System, and the people of the Soviet Union. I linked Russian Justice since it does a good job laying out how the USSR’s justice system and courts worked. I think you’re deeply confused if you’re insinuating that I am the one who made those decisions, or intend to do so.
The White Army was a group loyal to the Tsar and blah blah blah commie BS
My man, I am a libertarian. Fuck whatever your interpretation of a big government utopia is, because it is most likely wrong.
That being said, I am fully aware of the flaws in my ideology - and there are many - but I enjoy libertarianism because it allows me to tell people like you to “GET OFF MY LAWN!” and not feel morally wrong for it.
That being said, I am fully aware of the flaws in my ideology - and there are many - but I enjoy libertarianism because it allows me to tell people like you to “GET OFF MY LAWN!” and not feel morally wrong for it.
Lmao I’ve never seen someone so explicitly accept that they picked their ideology out at the supermarket.
See, ideas generally fall into two categories, which I call “manmade” and “natural.” “Manmade” ideas are ideas that are specifically crafted to have mass market appeal, to fulfill some psychological urge of some demographic, whereas “natural” ideas are just reflections of the world as it actually exists. Libertarianism is a perfect manmade ideology, it allows you to tell “the man” to fuck off, to “GET OFF MY LAWN!” Who cares if the ideology is actually correct or capable of producing a functioning system? All that matters is that it makes you feel good. It’s no different from people who believe in quack medicine or crystal healing or whatever, it’s “I want to believe.”
People just want to go down to the supermarket and look through all different brands of ideologies until they find the one that really suits their own personal style, and then they bring it home and put it up on the mantle and polish it every day and keep it there, they would never dream of actually using it because they might get dirt on it, and anyway it would probably break since it’s not designed for that, it’s just there to look pretty. A proper ideology should be used so often it’s kept in the toolshed, where it’s rough and worn and not pretty to look at, but it’s designed to actually get the job done, and that ideology should be just as suitable whether you’re a nuerodivergent trans software developer or a Guatemalan dirt farmer. Because the truth is the truth no matter who you are or what your style is.
If you recognize that you only like libertarianism because it makes you feel good to believe in it, then you need to reject it immediately. You don’t just go through live believing whatever makes you feel good regardless of reason or evidence… do you?
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.
Supporting this, the Dems have literally funded far-right Republican candidates under a “pied piper” strategy, on the assumption that they’ll be easier to beat and to motivate voters to come out to stop them. Donald Trump himself benefited from this strategy, the Dem leadership loves Trump because he gets people so angry and they know they’re the only alternative.
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, either Definitely 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.
I mean, were Palestinians being genocided in Israel for… most of Biden’s presidency? And didn’t Harris say she fully supported Biden’s policies?
Indigenous people? They are laughing at us right now, because us white people are freaking out about stuff that’s been happening to them since white people showed up here.
Union workers? Come on, it’s not illegal for rail workers to strike in the US, thanks to Biden, who Harris, once again, said, she fully supported his policies.
Good for homeless people, as in creating more homeless people every year? Houselessness was spiking under Biden, and still is…
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.
How so, specifically?
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.
I’m starting to think you believe the rest of the world is ok with how we treat our citizens, and do the same…
That would be true for the 2000 election as well, but Democrats didn’t fight the SC decision and so we got two expensive wars in the subsequent 8 years that some democrats even supported, demonstrating their fascist sympathies.
Lemmy is full of people who want to actually discuss ways to have a better world, unlike you it seems lmao.
You’re trying to argue the status quo to people who saw what the status quo was since Reagan, but you still don’t get it.
I’m so glad my consistent votes for democrats over my life have definitely not lead me to the precipice of fascism… oh wait.
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.
… Did you forget how Trump said we were literally going to clean out Gaza and make it into a resort once he was in the office? You’re being very disingenuous.
And there it is. BlueMAGA only care about what Trump says, not what Democrats do. The complete extermination of every Palestinian isn’t the problem, the problem is whether the domestic rhetoric of American politicians sugar coats it enough to soothe them.
Another reminder that blueMAGA don’t see Palestinians as human.
Every option with any real chance of being elected supported Israel. Unfortunately your choices are essentially Dem, GOP, or one of several people who is definitely going to lose unless you can round up another 60 million or so voters to back them.
Ok. Still doesn’t change the fact that describing the Democrats as “boring and flawed neoliberals” despite their full throated support for genocide in support of a fascist ethnostate is only possible if you don’t consider Palestinians human.
I can’t wait to see the exact same argument play out every day in the Right Wing Gulag while a bunch of people try to convince me that the Left Wing Gulags would have been just as bad.
Let me say again, the FPTP voting system leads to two dominant parties, but nowhere in mathematics or law does it say the those two have to be Democrats and Republicans. We’ve always had the choice of a different two parties. That the Blue and Red duopoly would lead to fascism via the ratchet effect been clear for nearly 30 years.
I wouldn’t claim that Democrats don’t see the people of Palestine as human, exactly. They may just put it out of mind. Denial is a very potent force.
You’re not wrong. There’s nothing that requires the two parties be Dems and GOP. But you’re not going to overturn one or the other in a single election, and that means losing to the farthest big party from you, likely a few in a row, while that gets resolved. Especially if you try to do it top down instead of building support from local/county offices up.
Basically, if you could get enough third party support, you could either supplant one of the existing parties or force them to shift to stay competitive. The argument is that trying to do so with the office of president when doing so promotes a fast track to outright fascism is a painfully bad tactic.
Same deal, you’re not wrong. At the same time, it has to be done. Voting Democrat to hold off the fascists was, at best, a holding action rather than a viable, long-term strategy. A slow track to fascism, as it were, as they were going to win an election eventually. Democrats weren’t going to fix the problem. For example, we voted for Biden in 2020 to hold off the fascist threat, they attacked the Capitol because they lost, and Biden did next to nothing about it. Hence, the depiction of the party as the pawl in the ratchet mechanism.
Good. Since we’re the deciding factor, we have increased influence and more negotiating power going forward. Now the democrats (whose slogan is also “No rights!”) might actually listen to our demands next time if they don’t want to eat shit again.
And if they still won’t, then it’s obviously necessary to replace them and that has to start somewhere.
What’s “horrible” about it? It’s a very simple negotiating tactic that even a toddler can understand. The difference is that we aren’t throwing a fit because we didn’t get some toy we wanted or something, we’re throwing a fit because people are being murdered en masse before our eyes. If ever there was an appropriate time to throw a fit, that time is now.
Since our cause is correct and indisputably justified, the only thing that matters is whether the tactic is effective or not. And obviously it is effective, if the other side is being intransigent as they are, then “Do what we want, or else,” packs a lot more punch than “Do what we want, pretty please?”
Well, if it didn’t, then perhaps there’s no way to get them to do what we want and in that case it is imperative that they be replaced as soon as possible, a goal that is also furthered by voting third party.
That’s not even the whole story. A friend from Alabama said half his union voted for Trump and even the MLs in his area promoted Trump because accelerationism or something.
hey man remember when the democrats were in the house and senate and obama was president and they dismantled ACORN? haha damn that’s wild, bro.
I see you understand the faults of the First-past-the-post voting system. Did you know that we can change how we vote at the state level?
That means blue states can easily avoid the situation you are describing by passing electoral reform. We don’t need need to wait for a hail Mary from congress to work out, we can do this right now. In fact, some states have already passed electoral reform.
Totally possible, there should be no excuses to keep things as they are. Democrats are self proclaimed defenders of democracy. Of course they would want people to vote how they want freely… right?
You seem very concerned with the spoiler effect, so I’ll leave you some videos on our current voting system and alternatives we can choose from. Because who could understand the flaws of the voting system and not want to fix it? So that people can vote how they wish in a democracy without a spoiler effect.
Who indeed.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation
Well aware of alternatives to the flawed 1st part the post system. Which of the alternatives are in place nationally?
You may want to tell your congresspeople and neighbors about it, not just random shitposters on Lemmy for better effect, I know I have.
If you get mad at progressives for not falling in line, start running better candidates.
Since it’s so easy to fall in line, the centrists and neo-liberals should have no problem doing it.
You’re literally just playing into the hands of the ruling class when you spout rhetoric like yours.
Then run a progressive who can make centrists and neoliberals fall in line. Don’t be mad at me when you don’t see candidates you want.
Change how we vote so we can have more then two political parties. As we can all see, a two party system is just one party away from a one party state.
And who wouldn’t want more then one chance to defeat the republicans?
Why is it always progressives who have to compromise? Why can’t centrists for once have to hold their nose and vote for a progressive?
Because progressives aren’t making them in the primaries. Win the primaries, and you force the centrists to hold their noses.
Tell me more about how Harris won the primary.
…except the centrists and neoliberals went to Trump. Hillary and Harris both spent their campaigns courting them, and they both lost. Biden, for all his faults, had Bernie help him craft a progressive policy agenda and won. The Democrats undermine the progressive wing of their own ostensibly left-leaning party in primaries and other intraparty conflicts, then get to the general elections and get wrecked because neoliberals would rather vote for the Republicans than pseudo-Republicans.
The republican establishment didn’t like Trump, did that stop him?
Well, there are a couple of differences there. First, Trump is an excellent media manipulator. Every moment that pundits thought would be a campaign-ending gaffe became free publicity. He got the equivalent of $2 billion in free media coverage from CNN alone.
Second, Trump didn’t actually say or do anything that would upset the donor class like progressives do. He was more vulgar and crass, and the RNC was certain he would cost them the election, but he wasn’t an existential threat to billionaires the way Bernie was.
However, if you want an example of how the RNC behaves when someone like that is running, look at the 2012 Republican Primary. Mitt Romney was the frontrunner, but the base was unenthusiastic about him and looking for someone different. Ron Paul polled in second place literally the entire campaign cycle, but the pundit class gave him no coverage. They wrote endlessly about Chirs Christie, Rick Santorum, and even Herman Caine, all of whom had brief moments as the frontrunner, but they completely ignored Ron Paul. His staunch libertarian beliefs threatened the defense industry and Wall Street, so the media and the party just pretended he didn’t exist. (For the record, Ron Paul was a wack-job and I’m glad he never became president, but the Bernie parallels are strong).
Interesting and fair point.
There are only a few legitimate swing states, votes outside swing states don’t matter
In no swing state did third party votes supercede the difference between Kamala and Trump votes. Ie, even if every third party voter, Libertarians included, voted Kamala, she still would’ve lost.
Even under the Democrats, “No Rights” is still the party platform.
Leftists have always supported revolution as the only legitimate means of enacting change, while liberals aid in the constant rightward spiral. Voting is an incredibly small level of political activism, organizing is far more effective.
The DNC were enacting a genocide of Palestinians.
True
This comic is also directed to nonvoters. If as many people voted for Kamala as did Biden, she would have won.
Ask women, gay people, trans people, protesters, and refugees about that one bud
Yeah, I can tell how much more effective leftist organizing is compared to voting by motions around
Wrong for starters, and please tell me how Palestinians are better off under Trump’s “have Israel kill everyone so we can build a resort, and lock up anyone who protests” plan?
You just have a stupid voting system
Yep. Democrats are complicit. Check out the podcast episode “Americas Hidden Duopoly” to learn more, it’s the Freakonomics podcast I think.
I’ll try to scrounge up a link: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/americas-hidden-duopoly-2/
We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it?Why not both?
It seems simple enough to me
Hate the syatem
But also recognize that syatem exists
Work both in and out of the system to change things.
Or we just let the people who ratchet to the right keep power so they can keep ratcheting to the right and then wonder why it keeps happening
Exactly. That ratchet works on power.
Agreed, it’s stupid and needs reform, but it’s the one we operate under. Gotta play the hand you have, not the one you want.
You spent the whole elections saying that leftists were an irrelevant Demographic who could be safely ignored. And you’ll be saying it again come the next election. It’s only when you need someone to blame a loss on that they matter.
Can you tell us how the Dems are going to reform the voting system so that people’s choices are fairly represented? No? They have no plans for that because they perceive themselves as beneficiaries of a broken electoral system? Wow it’s almost as if they’re self interested crooks themselves
Edit: people downvoting this are the same people who’d hear about coca cola paramilitaries in South America and then switch to Fanta, thinking they’re voting with their wallets
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.
Fixed that for you.
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?
Yeah if you think Bush was an acceptable choice and not a fascist then you don’t really have a leg to stand on with this “commies love gulags” nonsense. You think this El Salvador shit is new? Those of us who were paying attention know that Bush did the same shit, while they did their fair share of torturing alleged “terrorists” with no due process in our own black sites, the worst abuses were conducted in foreign countries like Egypt, when we sent prisoners there knowing full well how they’d be treated. Some of us have been fighting this battle for over 20 years, nice of you to finally wake up and notice now that someone you hate is doing it, but it would be nice if you’d notice when the people you like are doing it too.
It’s so stupid when liberals, defending a system with the largest prison population per capita in the world, with indefinite detention without trial, mass surveillance, etc, still try to take the moral high ground on that issue just because the word “gulag” sounds scary and foreign.
Compared to Trump? Absofuckinglutely. Bush had no desire to be a dictator. Trump absolutely has ambition to be a dictator, and if you can’t figure out how one of those is worse than the other then you’re too clueless to participate in an adult conversation regarding this topic.
Torture supporter
Just a non-dictatator doing very non-dictatator things like stealing the election, operating secret extrajudicial torture dungeons where people are detained indefinitely without trial, illegally spying on innocent people en masse, and starting multiple wars of aggression.
I wonder how long it will take y’all to start rehabilitating Trump once he’s no longer the current thing.
Libs will always believe the “it’s not ‘Torture’ it’s ‘enhanced interrogation’” until they are the ones being interrogated. Then, suddenly, it’s ‘torture’, and it’s everyone else’s fault that we got rid of ‘enhanced interrogation’, not their fault for preserving the system.
The prisoners Bush had sent to Egypt were not sent from the US, they were sent from different countries that allowed extradition to Egypt. It was disgusting and abhorrent, but it isn’t the same thing as what we’re seeing now.
Flying people from the US to foreign prisons without due process is a blatant violation of the constitution.
Do you not realize that Bush literally established the Guantanamo Bay DC? The modern GOP are just running plays from Bush and Reagan’s books.
The whole point of having extrajudicial torture dungeons is that they are extrajudicial. They may not have sent US citizens to them (although US citizens were killed in extrajudicial drone strikes), but the only “lawyers” they had access to at Guantanamo were people like Ron DeSantis who posed as a lawyer to try to extract information about which methods the victims found most unpleasant, to be shared with their torturers. If that sort of system exists, it can easily be turned against US citizens, as has happened.
Mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the constitution as well, and when the illegal programs were exposed, not only did no one involved in them get punished in any way, they kept doing them and the person who exposed them was hunted to the ends of the earth.
And meanwhile, immigration courts are basically kangaroo courts where young children can be made to defend themselves with no right to an attorney, and that’s been going on for a long time.
There hasn’t been anything close to rule of law in this country for a long time (if ever). Trump is just continuing the path we’ve been trending towards for a long time in a very overt and rapid way.
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.
Fascism isn’t a choice, or a policy, it’s Capitalism using brutal methods to defend itself, like when the Democrats sent Israel mountains of bombs to obliterate Palestinians. Fascism is not a distinct economic system, but the same underlying system as Capitalism, only when it’s in crisis and needs to defend itself while pretending it’s qualitatively different.
The Liberal answer to the political problems we see is to perpetuate it indefinately and purely act within the system that selects for whatever brutal methods it needs to sustain itself. This isn’t an answer, it’s approval.
As for gulags, I recommend reading Russian Justice. It’s a good thing to jail fascists, Tsarists, and others who would violently try to overthrow a popular government. Or, are you saying you wouldn’t jail Trump if given the opportunity?
Removed by mod
The White Army was a group loyal to the Tsar, and fought the Red Army in order to reinstate the Tsarist system. After the Soviets won the Russian Civil War, many former White Army members were persecuted for their crimes by the Soviet Justice System.
The authority on who was or was not a fascist was the Soviet Justice System, and the people of the Soviet Union. I linked Russian Justice since it does a good job laying out how the USSR’s justice system and courts worked. I think you’re deeply confused if you’re insinuating that I am the one who made those decisions, or intend to do so.
My man, I am a libertarian. Fuck whatever your interpretation of a big government utopia is, because it is most likely wrong.
That being said, I am fully aware of the flaws in my ideology - and there are many - but I enjoy libertarianism because it allows me to tell people like you to “GET OFF MY LAWN!” and not feel morally wrong for it.
Hey, beats being a fucking commie.
Lmao I’ve never seen someone so explicitly accept that they picked their ideology out at the supermarket.
See, ideas generally fall into two categories, which I call “manmade” and “natural.” “Manmade” ideas are ideas that are specifically crafted to have mass market appeal, to fulfill some psychological urge of some demographic, whereas “natural” ideas are just reflections of the world as it actually exists. Libertarianism is a perfect manmade ideology, it allows you to tell “the man” to fuck off, to “GET OFF MY LAWN!” Who cares if the ideology is actually correct or capable of producing a functioning system? All that matters is that it makes you feel good. It’s no different from people who believe in quack medicine or crystal healing or whatever, it’s “I want to believe.”
People just want to go down to the supermarket and look through all different brands of ideologies until they find the one that really suits their own personal style, and then they bring it home and put it up on the mantle and polish it every day and keep it there, they would never dream of actually using it because they might get dirt on it, and anyway it would probably break since it’s not designed for that, it’s just there to look pretty. A proper ideology should be used so often it’s kept in the toolshed, where it’s rough and worn and not pretty to look at, but it’s designed to actually get the job done, and that ideology should be just as suitable whether you’re a nuerodivergent trans software developer or a Guatemalan dirt farmer. Because the truth is the truth no matter who you are or what your style is.
If you recognize that you only like libertarianism because it makes you feel good to believe in it, then you need to reject it immediately. You don’t just go through live believing whatever makes you feel good regardless of reason or evidence… do you?
“I like being a libertarian because it allows me to be selfish, ignorant and rude while still feeling morally justified in all my actions”
Instead of malding, coping, and seething, would it kill you to engage in the “marketplace of ideas” libertarians tend to love?
In your libertarian society, what happens if I’m on your lawn with 3 of my friends? And we refuse to “get off your lawn”? Then what will you do?
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.
Supporting this, the Dems have literally funded far-right Republican candidates under a “pied piper” strategy, on the assumption that they’ll be easier to beat and to motivate voters to come out to stop them. Donald Trump himself benefited from this strategy, the Dem leadership loves Trump because he gets people so angry and they know they’re the only alternative.
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?
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.
Did you, though, or just try to lie?
I mean, were Palestinians being genocided in Israel for… most of Biden’s presidency? And didn’t Harris say she fully supported Biden’s policies?
Indigenous people? They are laughing at us right now, because us white people are freaking out about stuff that’s been happening to them since white people showed up here.
Union workers? Come on, it’s not illegal for rail workers to strike in the US, thanks to Biden, who Harris, once again, said, she fully supported his policies.
Good for homeless people, as in creating more homeless people every year? Houselessness was spiking under Biden, and still is…
How so, specifically?
I’m starting to think you believe the rest of the world is ok with how we treat our citizens, and do the same…
That would be true for the 2000 election as well, but Democrats didn’t fight the SC decision and so we got two expensive wars in the subsequent 8 years that some democrats even supported, demonstrating their fascist sympathies.
Lemmy is full of people who want to actually discuss ways to have a better world, unlike you it seems lmao.
You’re trying to argue the status quo to people who saw what the status quo was since Reagan, but you still don’t get it.
I’m so glad my consistent votes for democrats over my life have definitely not lead me to the precipice of fascism… oh wait.
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.
… Did you forget how Trump said we were literally going to clean out Gaza and make it into a resort once he was in the office? You’re being very disingenuous.
And there it is. BlueMAGA only care about what Trump says, not what Democrats do. The complete extermination of every Palestinian isn’t the problem, the problem is whether the domestic rhetoric of American politicians sugar coats it enough to soothe them.
Right, because he definitely didn’t also increase material support and restart weapons orders that Biden had cancelled.
HOW is that worse than what Biden was doing. Biden spent 15 months cleaning out Gaza
The democrats red line was building a hotel in Gaza. Not genocide.
Biden was the first to float that idea actually.
Another reminder that blueMAGA don’t see Palestinians as human.
Yeah, just non-citizens, as is right and proper.
Every option with any real chance of being elected supported Israel. Unfortunately your choices are essentially Dem, GOP, or one of several people who is definitely going to lose unless you can round up another 60 million or so voters to back them.
Ok. Still doesn’t change the fact that describing the Democrats as “boring and flawed neoliberals” despite their full throated support for genocide in support of a fascist ethnostate is only possible if you don’t consider Palestinians human.
I can’t wait to see the exact same argument play out every day in the Right Wing Gulag while a bunch of people try to convince me that the Left Wing Gulags would have been just as bad.
Let me say again, the FPTP voting system leads to two dominant parties, but nowhere in mathematics or law does it say the those two have to be Democrats and Republicans. We’ve always had the choice of a different two parties. That the Blue and Red duopoly would lead to fascism via the ratchet effect been clear for nearly 30 years.
I wouldn’t claim that Democrats don’t see the people of Palestine as human, exactly. They may just put it out of mind. Denial is a very potent force.
You’re not wrong. There’s nothing that requires the two parties be Dems and GOP. But you’re not going to overturn one or the other in a single election, and that means losing to the farthest big party from you, likely a few in a row, while that gets resolved. Especially if you try to do it top down instead of building support from local/county offices up.
Basically, if you could get enough third party support, you could either supplant one of the existing parties or force them to shift to stay competitive. The argument is that trying to do so with the office of president when doing so promotes a fast track to outright fascism is a painfully bad tactic.
Same deal, you’re not wrong. At the same time, it has to be done. Voting Democrat to hold off the fascists was, at best, a holding action rather than a viable, long-term strategy. A slow track to fascism, as it were, as they were going to win an election eventually. Democrats weren’t going to fix the problem. For example, we voted for Biden in 2020 to hold off the fascist threat, they attacked the Capitol because they lost, and Biden did next to nothing about it. Hence, the depiction of the party as the pawl in the ratchet mechanism.
I will direct you to my comment here.
I’m 13 and this is deep
As a colorblind person, this seems perfectly reasonable.
Good. Since we’re the deciding factor, we have increased influence and more negotiating power going forward. Now the democrats (whose slogan is also “No rights!”) might actually listen to our demands next time if they don’t want to eat shit again.
And if they still won’t, then it’s obviously necessary to replace them and that has to start somewhere.
hehe, I agree with you. If we don’t get what we want we root for the worst possible outcome, and just hope that we are important then!
The meme is about voting third party, not Republican.
But yes, there have to be consequences to us not getting what we want. It’s a very simple concept.
that’s a horrible concept
First Past The Post voting is a horrible concept.
What’s “horrible” about it? It’s a very simple negotiating tactic that even a toddler can understand. The difference is that we aren’t throwing a fit because we didn’t get some toy we wanted or something, we’re throwing a fit because people are being murdered en masse before our eyes. If ever there was an appropriate time to throw a fit, that time is now.
Since our cause is correct and indisputably justified, the only thing that matters is whether the tactic is effective or not. And obviously it is effective, if the other side is being intransigent as they are, then “Do what we want, or else,” packs a lot more punch than “Do what we want, pretty please?”
I guess we’ll see If that worked next election
Well, if it didn’t, then perhaps there’s no way to get them to do what we want and in that case it is imperative that they be replaced as soon as possible, a goal that is also furthered by voting third party.
deleted by creator