But I’d rather look at what modern people are doing and saying.
We would too but unfortunately fascists pretend that they’re not fascist by claiming their political party freed the slaves.
This obviously ignores their bigotry and hate for people of color and distaste for women… And well, I digress. Suffice to say that these assholes try to claim they’re not racist despite all the racist bullshit and hate they spread, and they use this claim as proof.
We would love to ignore it but we can’t. Best we can do is inform ourselves.
Yeah, the idea of a sudden swap is simplistic. The New Deal coalition included white Southerners and a substantial number of Black people and people who were otherwise prone to being sympathetic to Black civil rights. Certain dynamics protected the spot of Dixiecrats, but the contradictions were just too great for the party to hold together forever. It was a simple matter of absorbing the disaffected Dixiecrats.
Whenever someone pulls out the “dEmOcRaTs WeRe ThE cOnFeDeRaTeS” argument, you know they’re either dumb as fuck or arguing entirely in bad faith. Like bro the parties switched in the 1960s it’s just names at this point.
Saying the parties “switched” is a large oversimplification. But yes, as the Democrats became anti segregation, it had dissatisfied white, racist, voters in the south. Of which Republicans, were all too happy to cater to, thus the “switch”.
A close friend was raised in the Carolinas. They were taught that the civil war was about “states rights”. It wasn’t until they were an adult that they did their own looking into what “rights” the southern states were fighting for. It really opened my eyes to how the blinders have been put on so many people. I’m 100% sure that I have my own set, but it’s important to remember, and engage these people when you have an opportunity.
When you look at that process of waiting on somebody who has told you they were going to do something and told you they were going to be there for you and they were not, they are showing you in that moment exactly who they are. That means that’s somebody who cannot be trusted. So why would you the next time trust that person?
So, Maya Angelou said to me, when I was telling her one of these stories about, “I’m waiting and I couldn’t believe it and he didn’t call me and I don’t know what happened,” she was saying, “My dear,” in her Maya voice, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”
And so the adjunct of that is, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. Don’t wait for the twenty-ninth time."
The full quote is “When people show who you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Which I think is the best version of the quote, honestly. We’ve been letting conservatives scream about who they are without really believing them for 70 fucking years now. Now they’re not even afraid to put on a mask, they’ve gone fully mask-off on abuse and racism. This is what you get by enabling them through not believing them the first time. To me that’s the further issue that Angelou didn’t touch on. You’re enabling that behavior by treating them as though they will somehow magically change. For Oprah it was assuming that man would suddenly start calling and treating her right. For the US political establishment it’s for assuming conservatives are operating in good faith.
(It is Oprah Winfrey rephrasing statements she had been told by Maya Angelou. So the quote often gets attributed to them both, but I would consider it a Winfrey quote simply because she’s paraphrasing someone else, using her own words.)
(Also, while the quote is good and Maya Angelou is good. Fuck Oprah Winfrey and all the fucking snake oil peddling freaks she promotes.)
What you all need to realize is, those last 70 years have been DEMOCRATS showing you who they are: Useful idiots for the truly evil Republicans.
Yet no one believes it despite that being the only thing Democrats do… Obama Care is a Republican plan from Mitt Romney from the 90’s. Biden is now ALSO screeching about “securing the border”…
Democrats are the blissfully unaware idiots helping evil people, and nobody believes it.
Right, the affordable care act ISN’T based on Mitt Romney’s plan, and Biden totally didn’t say, “give me the ability to close the border and I’ll do it!”.
Ya’ll are in fucking denial and it’s beyond pathetic. The fascists are winning because you’re too fucking weak to understand that the Dems have been the “good cop” to the Republicans’ bad cop for decades.
Again, grow up and engage with the real world before it’s too late.
I am NOT saying, “don’t vote for Biden over Trump”. I’m saying, “don’t trust Biden to fix much without GREAT pressure.”. Yet you fucks cannot even hear the basic truth that not even the Dems are your friend unless you make a HEALTHY six figures or more. Pathetic. Fucking Pathetic.
I didn’t say them by name, but Democrats are who I was thinking about when I discussed how pretending they are operating in good faith is enabling that behavior.
Democrats enable Conservative criminality, because they play an endless shell-game of “but they’re really operating in good faith this time, we promise. We just need to reach across the aisle get a reach-around.”
“If we ‘meet them in the middle’ and shift a mile to the right for the 3,041st time, they’ll totally meet us in the middle THIS TIME instead of sprinting another two miles to the right like they have every other time, we swear!”
I understand the panic in marginalized communities and them saying if dems don’t win they’re going to be fucked now, but they don’t get that we’re only a couple election cycles from democrats throwing them under the bus same as Republicans.
Well, I voted Biden in 2020, and here we are four years later and I ain't in a camp yet. Kind of seems like that's an inaccurate prediction, and you would be served by considering the chain of reasoning that led you to this pass, to see what improvements might be made in your process to enable better predictions in the future. Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change.
I agree that that's fucked. Giving the red team power means that number gets bigger, faster, and that no improvement whatsoever takes place. Perfection isn't on my political menu, do you have a suggestion that isn't accelerationism or not influencing the situation at all? Because "vote third party" sure doesn't seem to have "sent a message" in any way I can recognize. It just enshittified the country faster. Looks like harm reduction is the order of the day in politics while encouraging improvement via other means.
That’s funny, because things like the voting uncommitted campaign have already done more to move Biden to the left than any “strategic voting democrat” has done in decades.
You keep giving them your vote, you say, definitively “I agree with your current course.” They don’t hear, “oh they don’t like us so we’ll move left” they say, “lefties are more willing to sacrifice their values and still vote for us, so let’s move right and court more right wing votes”.
Unless you live in a swing state, there is vastly more strategic value in voting third party than there is in signing off on austerity and genocide and fascist immigration policy.
Hi. I voted uncommitted. In the primary. Also, I advocated for others to vote uncommitted, in the primary. There, it's a useful signal. In the general, it's handing the country to people gleefully proclaiming they want to round you up, and who openly and blatantly showed their disregard for your continued existence by letting a plague run rampant on the basis that cities vote blue and are more crowded so would suffer more death.
I think we will both have to do what we have to do. I don’t agree that voters in non-swing states voting third party is the same as voting for the other major party, and neither do the results of our elections.
Leftists and third parties didn’t enshittify the country faster -
That was Democrats who roll over and enable Republicans. That dedicate WAYYYY more energy to fighting anyone left of Joe than they EVER have fighting Republicans. That move the goalposts every time a third party meets the requirements for inclusion.
You blame third party voters for not “voting blue no matter who (even if that blue is anti labor and pro genocide)” but refuse to place blame with your precious democrats for actively stifling any voices left of mid right corporatism and actively changing the rules to keep anyone but the duopoly out of the system.
Fascism is fascism, and your insistence that the people actively supporting a racial cleansing will NEVER support it for other marginalized groups is lunacy.
I'm not sure why you think that letting the Republicans win by voting third party does anything but make things much, much worse, than not letting them win. First past the post elections are in part a keynesian beauty contest, and if you can't recognize how that is the case, I don't think you have a lot to correct me on.
I’m not sure why you think adhering to the system you admit is busted helps you as democrats race rightward because you’ll vote for them no matter what.
Dems are already actively supporting genocide and sidestepping congress to do so. It’s insane that you think they’ll stop there.
Y’all prove my point every day on here though, dems and their voters use every faschie tool in the box against anybody left of them, but yall never have boo to say about Republicans cause you need your boogeyman to justify marching further right.
Sure, there’s no way the inexorable march rightward the dnc follows and the explicit moves it makes to ensure leftists, third parties, and other establishment “outsiders” are acutely informed (including via court rulings stating that voters can eat shit the dnc does what it wants) that they have no place in the dnc ends badly.
Trump hasn’t put you in a camp either yet so by your logic he’s totally fine!
Trump and the rest of the red team are loudly and proudly proclaiming that they want to and moving that way in territory they control.
Do you have a suggestion as to what I should do that isn't accelerationism or removing any power I have to influence outcomes by turning to fantasy as a solution?
Pretty standard right wing whataboutism lol “bu-bu-but what about this thing that happen 150 years ago??? Clearly the Democratic party still wants slavery!!!”
Even though the names of the two major parties haven’t changed since 1854 (when the Republican Party replaced the Whigs), the ideological alignment of them has continued to shift, at least five times in total (or maybe six, if you count MAGA christo-fascism as separate from what the party was before).
I’ve always thought the MAGA phase was just an extension of what the party became during the George W and Obama years. Trump just exploited what was already there.
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