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The corporate party vs everyday people (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago* by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 1 day ago* (11 children)

Voter depression task force out and about again right in time for midterms. Man "leftists" must really love having Republicans in power.

You folk are either Russian bots, or so far brainwashed by Russian bots you've become indistinguishable from them.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Everyone I don't like is a Russian bot and other fairy tales

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  • [–] -2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

    Says the ml brigadier. Hopefully the pay is decent.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (3 children)

    Oh, I'll vote and vote blue no matter who.

    But 2024 taught me that Americans do not care. They knew who Trump was. They saw how he is president. They heard what he said he wanted to do once in office. They knew about the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership and what its plan was. And the majority of voters couldn't be bothered to vote against him.

    On the Democratic side, I get the grievances, except that by not voting for the AIPAC lady, we're now watching as Israel plans to turn Gaza into a billionaire resort and just massacre the entire region. The Republicans don't have a conscience to be bargained with, while the Democrats have opinions that can evolve.

    The price of eggs was an excuse. Americans voted based on vibes and racism. Not specific racism though they're being fed fear of brown immigrants, but permission to be racist. And now genocide of everyone not MAGA is in the Overton window.

    Maybe all of the Republican election tampering and voter suppression shenanigans will fail to reduce the alleged blue tsunami to a blue trickle, and maybe the after-election shenanigans won't work, but that doesn't mean the Democrats are going to get full control of Congress and the Presidency in 2028. And if they do, that doesn't mean Democrats are actually going to sufficiently overhaul SCOTUS, and then ironclad elections from suppression, tampering, gerrymandering, voter caging and so on. And these things need to be done before any movement towards rebuilding regulatory institutions, soft power departments like USAID, reforming DHS or any of the other things that really need to be done.

    And if all this isn't done in time, then American voters will get impatient, and follow their brainwashing to vote in oligarch puppets again. And this time the US will become a one-party state, and might even see its constitution dismantled.

    So, I will vote. I think everyone absolutely needs to vote as if their lives and the lives of everyone they know depends on it. But I thought the same thing in 2024, and the constituency of the United States betrayed me. Seriously, eventually I'm going to end up on ICE's hit list, and they'll come for me. After that, they'll come for everyone else.

    SCOTUS has locked federal political power in favor of MAGA. It's entirely captured. It has the capacity to nullify any or all parts of the Constitution of the United States, if they decide to do so. Expect to see carveouts of the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments just the way they scalloped the 4th and 5th. We have one chance to stop them. One.

    So I'm not going to be dishonest about our actual chances. I still think everyone needs to vote. I also think Americans need to organize twelve million of us behind a single manifesto, so that when we general strike or occupy Washington, we have clear and established demands, and there is clearly nothing they can do about it and stay in power.

    But I don't think Americans are up to the task, even if they are skipping meals and living off ramen. Even if their family is abducted and disappeared by ICE. Even if they're choking on data center fumes. Moreover because they still believe they have to check the R to prove they're not effeminate or communist.

    I'll do my diligent duty. Heck I'm looking for my place in the organized resistance. But my faith in the people of the United States is gone. I'm not going to lie about that to purport hope or optimism.

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  • [–] 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    I think that people are mostly politically ignorant and for whatever reason, do not take the time to educate themselves on the deeper working of our political system. Most people rely on mainstream news or their twitter feed or podcasts to stay informed about what is going on. This is why messaging is so important.

    In the 2024 election, Trump talked about all the horrible things he wanted to do, but he framed it from the position of, "these terrible things will help you". Now to the politically aware folks like the kind that comment on political threads, we knew this was a lie. But we are the types of people to do research into crime statistics and know that immigrants contribute a minisicule amount of crime in the USA.

    Regardless of how we wish people were more politcally knowledgeable, they aren't, so it is important for the oppositional party to do that kind of informing. The Dem party should have been out there calling the Repubs ridiculous and giga-racist. Kamala Harris should have had a strong message of protecting our immigrant neighbors against racist dog whistles and highlighting the good they do. Instead, the Democratic party ran on strengthening the border and cracking down on immigrant crime.

    When the politically ignorant voter looked at these two candidates, they saw one who said, "immigrants are a problem and I'm gonna get rid of them all" while the other said, "immigrants are a problem and I'm gonna get rid of some". They heard Kamala Harris say she wants to spend more money building the border wall when only a few years ago, the Democratic party was calling the border wall racist and bad. The common voter saw the decision between Coke and Diet Coke, no matter how innaccurate that comparison was because the Democratic party advertised themselves as Diet Coke.

    I really wish the common person would do a little more research into politics, but it isn't really surprising that they often sit out elections when the Democrats keep advertising themselves as Republican-lite. So while I agree that the constituency has some blame in the current atate of affairs, I think the Democratic leadership bears far more of the blame. They know what is popular and what would help them win, they just don't want to win with progressive policies that won't personally enrich them. This is why I think to fix our current state of affairs, most of our focus should be on the Dem leadership that are passively observing our descent to hell.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    But the pretense of democracy is that people will do their diligent research as part of their civic duty. Candidates should be entirely about platforms. Voting should entirely be about personal best interests. A high rate of political ignorance among the constituency is a symptom of a failing democracy already.

    To be fair, US democracy was flawed from the beginning, partly because our framers didn't know fully what they were doing (Hamilton made some broad presumptions in the Federalist Papers,) and partly because the system was gamed from the beginning to be ruled by the petit bourgeoisie, because they feared rule by the common (uneducated) mob. Also, since they wanted to keep their slaves, they failed to uphold the enlightenment value that everyone is equal under law.

    So we kinda got a bunk system to begin with.

    The natural thing to do, then, would be to instill civic duty into the modern public education system. Teach kids critical thinking. Instill in them a sense of duty to be a check on government. Teach them to think about what is in their personal best interest, and to vote accordingly. And as we learn about manipulative tricks by the Republicans (e.g. single issue voting, racism campaigning) teach kids to recognize those, and to know someone's trying to play them for a fool.

    We totally didn't do that. From the beginning, we taught obedience to authority.

    Now, it turns out there was one time we did start teaching critical thinking. We beefed up the liberal arts taught in schools. We were really eager to raise kids who were STEM savvy, who could philosophize, who were willing to ask difficult questions. We did it once, and it was triggered by a singular event:

    Sputnik.

    Since then, we not only went right back to teaching obedience. Then we went to teaching to the test, as part of Republican effort to dismantle public education entirely. Between that and our range of fundamentalist Christian traditions through the south and the red states, we essentially set up our citizens to be Trump's instant army. In 2015 and 2016, we watched as Trump took the entire Republican base away from all the other candidates, because he dared to be openly racist.

    Along with education, we also need our working class to have time and energy to engage civically. This means we need to allow them to afford to live while working them less. The three-day weekend and the 32-hour work week would be a start. (It would also likely increase productivity.) As an aside, our working class also need time and energy to parent, and since they don't get it, our kids suffer. As a gen-x latchkey kid, I didn't have parents at home, and yet our material standard of living wasn't any better.

    But again, we're not doing that.

    I suppose the survivors trying to start a new civilization can try sortition (that is election by lottery of all the qualified population). In that case they divide up duties so finely that no-one has too great an amount of power. And then they create a system of checks to make sure incompetent officials are out-voted until they can be replaced. That wouldn't mean tyrants would get into office, but our current system invites professional politicians, who dress fancy and speak with confidence, but can assert one set of positions while doing what their benefactors order them to do.

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  • [–] 2 points 15 hours ago

    Most people rely on mainstream news or their twitter feed or podcasts to stay informed about what is going on.

    And this is why I fear for Hasan Piker's safety. Traditional media is smearing him so badly that even C-Span hosts are saying shit like, "Hasan Piker has made many anti-Semitic statements" which is patently untrue.

    I think the Democratic leadership bears far more of the blame. They know what is popular and what would help them win, they just don’t want to win with progressive policies that won’t personally enrich them.

    I think a lot of this is also coming from the political consultant class. These people make far to much money on elections and it's not in their personal financial interests to embrace grass roots efforts to get politicians elected. They want big donors so they can make big ad buys(and get a commission).

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