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Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.But...they said the last breath was the most important, and I'm sitting here alive with nothing to show for it!
god the number of people around hwre who said they were sitting out the 2024 election because they voted in 2020 and not everything got fixed…
Something something good men do nothing.
Look up Jerry Falwell and his 'Moral Majority.'
Falwell was a TV preacher who decided he wanted to get into politics. He had a simple formula to take over the GOP. The Party depends on small local clubs to do all the little things like getting petitions signed and driving folks to the polls on election day. Those clubs pick local office holders like sheriffs and county clerks.
Falwell told his people to show up at those clubs whenever there was a decision to be voted on. If there'd been twenty folks there for the last vote, Falwell's 'Moral Majority' would show up with fifty. Pretty soon Jerry had a lot of local folks in his pocket. Those soon became Congressmembers and Governors.
AOC did it in one Congressioal district.
The last important one was in 1980. The people celebrated their own destruction as they counted the days when they would be the millionaires inflicting themselves on society.
Fucking suckers.
Big capital owns both parties now, the literal 5ish spoilers between both chambers that the neoliberals hate more than their opposition party can't do a thing in a sea of hundreds of well bribed, oh I'm sorry "donated," sycophants. There's no escape under the current framework.
Worse, we've used our massive hard and soft geopolitical power since then to make the rest of the world as exploitative, sociopathic, and greedy as us, and we've been wildly successful at it.
Look up Jerry Falwell and his ‘Moral Majority.’
Falwell was a TV preacher who decided he wanted to get into politics. He had a simple formula to take over the GOP. The Party depends on small local clubs to do all the little things like getting petitions signed and driving folks to the polls on election day. Those clubs pick local office holders like sheriffs and county clerks.
Falwell told his people to show up at those clubs whenever there was a decision to be voted on. If there’d been twenty folks there for the last vote, Falwell’s ‘Moral Majority’ would show up with fifty. Pretty soon Jerry had a lot of local folks in his pocket. Those soon became Congressmembers and Governors.
AOC did it in one Congressional district.
If they owned the elections they wouldn't be trying so hard to stop people from voting.
democracy is when you let a bunch of unelected elders in robes dictate how society operates
They don't entirely, though. In fact, much of what the SCOTUS has struck down has been them saying Congress needs to do their job and write laws to do what they want the laws to do, versus having the SCOTUS legislate from the bench. Don't get me wrong, this SCOTUS is fucking awful, but there's some slight truth to some of what they've said on some of their rulings. For example, Roe v Wade could've easily become a national law, but Congress won't do it.
It's bad when even RBG was saying roe shouldn't have been used as law. The dems have had a ton of times to solidify it into law via the proper channels but won't because it gets votes.
Have they, though?
It wasn't because it gets votes, but because it loses votes. People will strongly object to one thing a hell of a lot faster than they'll give you credit for doing anything. Look at Biden's entire administration. We handled post-covid inflation* better than any other developed nation, but he didn't get credit for the 90% he fixed. He got shit on for the 10% left to go.
* And I'd argue a good chunk of that inflation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the bipartisan bill Trump signed into law while rejecting the oversight the Dems wanted. That was the biggest corporate giveaway in our nation's history. Literally just giving public money to private corporations. A step far beyond "privatize profits, socialize losses".
Dems believed, reasonably, that Roe was settled and wasn't in imminent danger. Holding a vote on that just pushes people away. Of course, in hindsight, they should have done it anyway. But as you can tell from this past election, and all the states that went red while passing women's rights legislation, having the issue out there is not getting them votes.
This only sounds reasonable until you think about it for 2 seconds. Do you really want the Senate and Congress to have to learn about and try to legislate the details of chemistry, medicine, finance, engineering, etc, rather than delegating figuring out the details of tasks like “make the food safe” or “make the water clean” to scientists and other experts at agencies?
Notice how I emphasized "some" twice in my comment. It wasn't a catch-all statement.
Lol remember signing our supreme court justice approvals. Fucking silly us.
I'm just glad Obama rolled over and allowed Mitch McConnell to steal a seat. Because the decorum that preserved really helped this country.
Senate was under republican control, Obama wasn't getting any justices confirmed.
Voters allowed trump to stack it?!
Obama didn't fight for his pick because the party wanted to use it to motivate voters to vote for Hillary, which didn't work.
McTurtle refused to vote to confirm, and legally all that needs to happen is the Senate has an opportunity to vote to confirm. Obama had a year to say:
"I take no vote to mean no objections, Merrick Garland is on the SC"
Except Garland probably wouldn't be that much different than Trump's picks.
Stop blaming the voters for stupid shit the only option we have to vote for keeps doing.
The party refused to pressure Breyer & RBG to step down. Obama refused to play hardball with Garland.
Biden negotiated with himself and cut debt forgiveness to 10K. Then the SC strikes it down ~~, and he throws his hands up and walks away~~. I'm old enough to remember when Trump's obviously unconstitutional muslim ban got banned and he rewrote it and tried again until it stuck. It didn't fully take until the third try. Then he expanded it twice.
[Edit: I looked it up and he did give it another go, my b]
Biden didn't give up on debt forgiveness, he pushed 20 different forgiveness schemes instead of trying to get the original 1 scheme reapproved
Yep
It's because the same billionaires/corporations donate to both parties.
If a moderate wins, the most they'll do is "try" they were paid too much money to actually succeed, so they do the bare minimum till people stop complaining they didn't do anything.
And the donors know that means a republican will likely win the next election, which is their preference anyways.
The moderate wing of the party only exists to make sure the wealthy never lose and we never really win.
It's funny (funny in the sense that I have an uncomfortable chance of not fucking surviving the next four years) that so many self-proclaimed leftists have a strategy that boils down to "Let the fascists win and then complain about it".
Including a bunch here who have also seemingly deleted months worth of their comments as cover.
Don't worry, they'll have fresh accounts with which to repeat the same points as before, just with an added dash of "I don't believe anyone ever ACTUALLY held those opinions you're criticizing (that I deleted on my previous account)"
Funny that so many centrists have a strategy that boils down down to, "ignore leftists and then complain when they don't vote for us."
Sorry, here I thought self-proclaimed leftists might have some interest in preventing fascism, but as many leftists on here have repeatedly and joyfully assured me, they don't give a single solitary fuck about the oppressed or the working class if Their Guy(tm) isn't the one preventing fascism. Not unlike the Thalmann bootlicking that goes on on some corners about Lemmy about how right he was to hand the country over to Hitler, rather than risk cooperating with the dreaded SHITLIBS.
Red fascists have nothing to distinguish them but a coat of paint.
EDIT: They go on for a half-a-dozen comments or so denying that they're saying that leftists didn't turn out because they weren't enthused, and then go right back around and admit that leftists didn't turn out against fascism because they weren't enthused, but that's just life and we should deal with it.
Apparently, expecting antifascism out of leftists is above pjwestin's standards for us.
Cool story, bro. Do you think that the twelve million fewer people who voted for Harris were all Lemmy Marxist? Or maybe they were just people who didn't like her total lack of a working class message, endorsement of the Gaza genocide, or attempts to woo, "moderate," conservatives instead of her base.
The Democrats thought that they could ignore leftists and focus on moderates, gambling on the looming fascism being enough to get the left to show up anyway to bail them out. Turns out that was a bad fucking bet, and they created a huge enthusiasm gap that cost them the election. Maybe try blaming the party that spent $1.6 billion on this shit strategy than a handful of protest votes.
Edit: For the record, Pug's edit is a lie. Pug's argument is, "You're saying progressives let fascism win because they didn’t like Harris, and she wouldn't pander to them." To which I keep replying, "No, I'm saying campaigns don't have good turnout with groups they don't campaign for, and Harris chose to campaign for moderates, not progressives." To which Pug keeps replying, "So you agree with me!" Also, he calls me an apologist for fascist enablers a few times.
Obviously, we're not saying the same thing. His framing is an attempt to blame leftist groups for the Harris loss, while mine places the blame squarely on the decisions of the Harris campaign (since getting votes was literally their whole job). You're welcome to go through the thread and make up your own minds, but it's probably not worth your time to read the whole thing. It certainly wasn't worth mine to write it.
And this is why repubs want to shut down the Dept. of Education. We already stopped teaching Civics/Government in schools a long time ago, which has led us to this current level of ignorance about how our government works and what powers the president does and doesn't have. For the last year(s) I've seen comments demanding Biden do this or that thing he has no authority to do (even thinking he can order other countries' leaders to do what he wants!). They think it means he just doesn't want those things to happen.
They think POTUS is supposed to be a king who just has to decree whatever he wants and it happens, no matter what the other 2 equal branches of government do. They want a king, dammit! So they voted for a king. They elected Trump who will throw out the Constitution and be a king for them. Enjoy having a king, suckers.
There does seem to be a disparity between what biden can do and trump can do though doesnt there.
When government is functioning as it was designed, the checks and balances work, and a POTUS who does not respect the law would be checked, impeached, and/or removed. But when an entire party that is in power not only refuses to act as a check, but willingly does his bidding, then the law-breaking POTUS is effectively a king.
We have examples in the past, like Nixon, who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment by his own party. We have an example today, of the president of South Korea, cancelling his declaration of marital law under pressure from both the opposition and his own party.
The Constitution is an agreement, governing with the consent of the governed. Once the majority of those in power refuse to abide by the Constitution and rule of law, then it is no longer worth the paper it's written on and we no longer have a functioning democratic republic. That is where we are.
I'm sorry, who allowed Trump to pack the court? The Debt Collective?
Every single non-voter in the country willingly allowed the Republicans to fuck everyone over.
Edit: Going back decades, obviously. The latest election has nothing to do with the current SCOTUS. And sure, it's not the American non-voters' fault they're brain dead consumers with no will of their own. It's all very sad, blah blah blah.
The republicans I suppose. If I recall correctly they were against Obama appointing a judge before the end of his term for some reason while very supportive of Trump appointing judges before his term ended
When democrats lose: "We could've had a utopia if you had simply voted for us!"
When democrats win: crickets
When democrats lose: “We could’ve had a utopia if you had simply voted for us!”
"We could have averted fascism" is "utopia" now?
Funny, but considering that you repeatedly insisted that you didn't give a fuck how many Americans and Palestinians have to die to satisfy your urge for political purity in the run-up to the election, unsurprising.
Like how biden winning in 2020 averted fascism? Also, don't make things up about me, I did not insist any such thing.
Like how biden winning in 2020 averted fascism?
Yes, if you will remember, we were not under a fascist regime in 2020-2024. I understand that's a hard thing for bougie middle-class kids to understand, but some of us actually have to deal with the government in our day-to-day lives.
Also, don’t make things up about me, I did not insist any such thing.
When democrats win: ~~crickets~~ "We didn't win enough so I'm afraid our hands are tied."
Funny thing is they never win enough. Even when they win a majority, magically enough members switch sides to cancel any possibility of progress. It's like a rigged carnival game, but you think that if we simply adjusted our aim we could certainly get the ball in the hole. It's crafted to look like you have a chance when you really don't.
I always took crickets coming out of the political arena to be a positive. I want my politicians to shut the fuck up and govern, thank you very much.
Leaving out the part where Biden refused to even consider stacking the court and instead ordered a commission on Supreme Court reform. Then, after three years of silence, with only three months to go before the election, they came out with...term limits and a binding ethics code. Two milquetoast reforms they didn't even run on.
Who is "y'all"? People are blaming anti-debt activists for trump? Another new low for the libs.
The for profit media and captured education system has pitted non wealthy Americans against each other irreparably by design.
As they rage over how to address the social issue symptoms of our crony market capitalist economy, the one truly unapproachable topic is remaking our economy to reward honest labor over increasingly abstract (credit default swaps, stock shorts, etc) speculative, insider information laden GAMBLING, or rebuilding a safetynet for our fellow neighbors that struggle, and that necrotic economy we the people have been largely deluded into not wanting to address causes or exacerbates all the problems we do get a vote on to provide the illusion of choice.
Example: abortion is usually an economic decision, and rightly so. If the owner's greed hadn't required 2 full time incomes to run most households, and the minimum wage were a living wage, there would be less abortion and birth rates would go up, no threats or bans required. Worker productivity skyrocketed for decades, but that wasn't enough, everyone get into the factories and cubicles and make the masters moooooaaaaaaar!!!!
To thunderous applause as the tens of millions of deluded economic victims are told GDP is life, and life is GDP, and if they're struggling, it's the powerless homeless people outside dying faults, lowering property values that stopped them from getting a raise. Bullshit.
The United States isn't a society, it is a death cult of greed/avarice enablers, and it's easy to see if you recognize the deification of our supposed "free market" they shove down your throats as the self-serving lie that it is.
Freedom without responsibility is a destructive force. The owners feel no responsibility towards the nations they exploit, including ours.
"No no you don't understand. The Dems just need to want it more! They just need to fight for it more! Something something bully pulpit! Something sometime party whip!"