DogWater comments on Welcome to Lemmy

[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I can't argue with that angle tbh, they really might just be that stupid lol

It's really down to the individual as to what they believe the Democrats are really up to. It certainly isn't helping the middle and lower classes. The bar is so low right now...any change that drags us back to the left at all would be mind blowing at this point.

I'm hoping for someone like mayor Pete in 2028 if we are lucky enough to have a fair election by then, he's a great speaker and likeable to a ton of people I think. He has a shot at uniting the voters.

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[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

Pete would be a kind of Obama. But remember that Obama created the conditions for Trump. Honestly, people like them are worse because they get people's hopes up and then crush them with their (in)actions.

The only way to escape the cycle of neoliberalism (sham democracy, fascism, sham democracy, fascism, etc.) is to elect someone who is not a neoliberal. Someone who has a socialist mindset and can put democracy above capital. Someone who can acknowledge and attempt to fix real systemic issues which keep people down. Someone who is willing to tackle wealth inequality head-on through unapologetic redistribution. And maybe this should be first: someone who actually cares about workers' rights and wants to make it so that all the technological advancement benefits them too, through shorter workweeks and shorter workdays. We need a kind of person similar to people in the past generation who never stopped until they got the weekend and 8h workweek, that kind of character, someone who dreams big and fights for like a 3-day workweek of 4 hours each, and mandatory shares for each employee same as minimum wage, which btw should be like triple what it is now. And someone who believes that billionaires should not exist, i.e. can tax them to sub-billion wealth. (I know, craaazy.)

And of course to actually apply the law and prosecute the fascists and their propaganda machine (media, think tanks, billionaire donors) the way it always should have from the beginning since they've been conspiring and committing treason for decades. Sedition I think is the word. (And if this sounds like an exaggeration in the style of MAGA pundits, that's because every accusation is a confession with them. They preemptively accuse their enemy of doing the same thing they're doing so that it sounds crazy or at least unoriginal when they get accused of it later.)

Without very bold changes like the above, we are doomed. Mayor Pete cannot do that. He's a neoliberal with maybe one good idea, like abolishing the Electoral College or something. But it's not enough. The US needs Reconstruction.

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[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree with you on all that but 1 thing.

I don't see obama as a problem for progress. The executive is always fighting with the legislature in our system.

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-obama-had-total-control/985146007/

Obama had 60 Senate votes for four months and that's when the ACA was passed.

It seems to me a bit too reductive to say that he was not doing anything. The system is too complex for that. People think the president has a lever that controls gas prices though, so I don't expect this fact to matter to a lot of people.

i believe that someone like Pete will respond to pressure as well as appeal broadly, so we voters have a chance to put him there first.

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[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

Yeah, don't get me wrong — it's not that Obama/Pete types don't do anything. Generally they do things, and those things are good. (I'm simplifying for the sake of argument, since there are also bad policies that liberals engage in, obviously.)

The problem is that the good things don't go far enough — even ACA was based on the Mitt Romney plan drew up by the goddamn Heritage Foundation! It was a compromise of a compromise. All other developed countries have some version of universal healthcare, while the US has preventable deaths and medical bankruptcies and Blackrock suing United Healthcare for breaking fiduciary duty by not refusing enough clients, a thing it did so often that its CEO got merced for it.

Or, take education: as someone from an EU country, I have a master's degree and zero debt — it was all free although I did have to pass an exam ahead of a hundred others, but if I needed to pay, it would have been like 1-2k USD per year, with a chance each year to get into the free tier next year if I got good grades.

Anyway, my point is that when people get too many small compromises for a long time, they start to feel duped, they get uneasy, then frustrated, then angry (disinformation contributes a lot to this process), so next thing you know they begin to reject "not enough" in favor of "burn it down". People yearn for fundamental changes, this is why they're voting Trump types all around the world: they promise big change, they promise to move fast and break things. People feel like nothing ever happens, so the promise of any change gives them hope. Ironically, the fascist appeal is just a bizarro version of "hope and change".

And here's the darkest part: despite the differences I outlined above about healthcare and education, EU countries still have the same systemic problems. People still feel duped. People are still frustrated. People still choose fascists here. Because the problems are very deep: inequality, alienation, disinformation. And neoliberalism doesn't have an answer to any of them: you need a democratic socialist for that, i.e. someone who's willing to reject capital to put people's needs first.

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[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That's wild, the American brain truly cannot comprehend the amount of things you can have for free in the EU and in Nordic countries haha

It's a good point to remember that in other countries where they have more social safety net and social good baked in to their system the citizens still feel duped. The far right is rising all over the western world right now.

I definitely agree with your points. I want that type of leader on the left who can really changed things for the better here. But the system will never fund him. Bernie was doing crazy things with grass roots fund raising. His 27$ donation campaign was getting thousands of working class people to donate. I didn't know if we can ever get that kind of effort going again.

I don't know how you bridge the gap between what the people donate and what's required to win a presidential campaign because the elite are not going to help a far left candidate the way they help a Biden or Obama.

And that problem assumes we solved the other big issue of getting someone through the primary and selected to run.

Those are the hurdles where I get disheartened thinking about how an actual good candidate would be so hard to elect. They will fight that person every step of the way.

If you believe Michael Moore, the dnc lied at the 2016 convention and stole votes from Bernie in a critical state to ensure Hillary was selected. that's the type of things that really makes me question how much we could really grab at one time.

To me, it seems necessary to use stepping stones to elect someone who will do the campaign finance law reforms and maybe revamp the primary system. Then you can reach for that ultra progressive candidate. But that's just a back of a napkin theory. Idk how to really do it.

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