“If you don’t vote for the guy supporting a fascist ethnostate doing a genocide then it’s your fault when the fascist wins!”
Eventually its just like fuck off. Shaming the people who have the right point of view rather than the party for its failures is more of a confession. Democrats have always had a choice of sure winners but instead go with the gamble who’s friendly to the donors. They helped Trump get the nomination in the first place too. You can’t win if you’re on the left with this cause you’re either blamed for the loss or betrayed and then shamed the next time around. Dems clearly don’t want these votes else they’d pick a candidate who could very easily secure them. Downward spiral politics.
Yeah like Dems are clearly preferable but the morality game they play to shame the people who are on the right side of every issue is a joke. They act like they have the moral high ground because the left voters they shame aren’t “realistic,” then they define what’s realistic as a narrow range of reactionary pandering. Meanwhile they’re giving money to run ads for the actual fascist GOP candidates as a strategic ploy to get ridiculous opponents they can win against. “Imagine if Trump was the GOP candidate? The GOP would be a laughingstock!” Yeah it’s going great… now it’s like “support the party enabling an apartheid state’s genocide or you’re a fascist” cause that’s the level you have to sink to for this to make sense. Then if you suggest this is wrong or Democrats needs to do better they shame you as a Russian troll or whatever the current bad influence is supposed to be. “If you express the correct moral view I can’t argue against you’re the bad influence” is basically what it comes down to.
This is so poorly reasoned, and so obviously aligned with right wing interests, that I genuinely wonder if this post is the work of a hostile foreign operative.
The woman in this meme is a darling of the right wing, a North Korean defector who claims “wokism” is more oppressive than a dictatorship. A thought so stupid, you wonder how right wingers could possibly believe it. How did a meme this bad get so many upvotes, if not without massive vote manipulation?
Your name betrays you. I don’t think you’re skeptical or open-minded. I thought it was funny. It’s okay if you don’t. Is this not a free platform? Downvote and move on.
Lol. Not a foreign operative, though I’m flattered to be called one by someone so delusional. I feel like I’ve just completed some important rite of passage. Thanks friend!
Here goes TokenBoomer, trying to get people to not vote again. Paid operative? Republican shill? Just deeply focused on pushing antidemocratic memes for the lulz?
I’m none of those. Just a person that thinks for themselves and doesn’t let others think for me. I never said not to vote. I just realize that it won’t stop the fascism that’s coming.
Just finished listening to August Nimtz on Upstream podcast. He explains why voting for the lesser evil will always push the economy further right.
I don’t let others think for me…here’s the link to a podcast I got my ideas from.
So, is your galaxy-brain take here that voting for fascism leads to fascism, voting against fascism leads to fascism and not voting leads to fascism and all 3 get us there at the same time? I mean, that sure sounds like you’re saying not to vote.
I have. He’s a psychologist though. August H. Nimtz, Ph.D., is a professor of political science and African American and African studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
He specializes in Marxism, political economy, politics of race, class & ethnicity, and African politics. So I trust he has more insight into politics. I don’t discount anyone’s opinions based on their political leanings. I’ll listen to Kim Jung-UN if you give me recommendations. I’ll admit I have trouble with Trump though, he lied too much.
That’s always a good idea. But our thinking is only as good as the information we are given. That’s why I like to get information from different sources and decide for myself.
I don’t have twitter. I don’t have Facebook. I have Reddit, but I don’t use it, I lurk. I only post here for engagement to populate the communities. When there is sufficient engagement here, I’m out. These meaningless exchanges are of no use to me. I post my opinions. If you don’t like them, post yours.
John Money was a professor and owned his own practice but was found much later to have lied about his data. So being a professor doesn’t really mean anything. Why do you as a person believe this other person?
Until Jesus comes back and tells us the truth, which isn’t happening anytime soon, experts appointed by the rigors of science is the closest socially we can get to an arbiter of truth. Individuals may fail us, but the framework still holds value.
I don’t doubt the guys credentials…but John Maynard Keynes was an author and Kings College fellow, and he got a lot of shit wrong, too.
Either there’s a lot of nuance that you filtered out of his theories, or the guy is playing the same game as Jordan Peterson (another author and professor who likes to talk out his ass).
The only logical conclusion of the argument you made was that voting has no economic or policy outcomes, and all democratic systems will inexorably lead to fascism. There is not sufficient evidence to support that claim.
Could you summarize his reasoning? A podcast isn’t accessible for a lot of people browsing Lemmy. I’m also not prepared to simply defer to an “expert” when it comes to political science.
I’m skeptical. It doesn’t make much sense to me that the US would be further right under HRC than Trump, who caused a generational shift to the right and literally tried to overthrow the government. Or that the US would be further left under Trump than Biden. Under Biden, we’ve seen some of the most muscular regulation of corporations in a generation.
The North Korean defector in this meme is also celebrated by the alt-right for her “anti-woke” ramblings, which has me questioning this angle.
His premise is that both Democrats and Republicans are corporatists that will resort to fascism to stave off any movement from the worker class in America. He teaches political science. This has nothing to do with the North Korean meme lady.
Nothing you said supports the claim that voting for the “lesser evil” always pushes the economy further right.
Voting for abolition ended slavery. Voting for pro civil rights party got us civil rights. Voting for pro-labor politicians got us labor protections and the new deal. And in recent years, Trump oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth to the elite rich in history, while Biden has installed the most aggressively progressive FTC in a century. Against this history of obvious progress, what actual evidence does this guy cite?
It was obviously both. The violence without actually implementing the political policies would have been pointless.
Show me an example where voting for the lesser evil leads to the adoption of more right wing policies. That is the specific claim you are supposedly defending.
It’s not my opinion, it’s August Nimtz’s. I do agree with it though. FDR did the New Deal. Lincoln did the Emancipation, LBJ did civil rights. Public opinion was a factor, but it was the threat of social unrest that enacted them. As for the example of right wing policies, each Democrat caters to corporations. Maybe not as much as the Republicans, but they still do. After Reagan, we voted for the lesser evil Clinton, who did Welfare Reform and repealed Glass-Steagall. After Bush, we voted for the lesser evil Obama, and change. There was no change, he kept Bush’s surveillance state, did more drone strikes and the War on Terror. Promised healthcare, but borrowed it from Romney and the Heritage Foundation. Then after Trump, we settled for the lesser evil and Biden. Who promised his corporate funders that “nothing would fundamentally change.” We still don’t have healthcare, no campaign finance reform, no student loan forgiveness, scuttled a railroad strike, and is currently complicit in a genocide. If you think we are headed in the right direction; by all means vote for Biden. I see the systemic problems with the electoral duopoly and have no misconceptions that if we continue on this path, social unrest will facilitate the state to quell strikes, protests and riots. Business as usual never necessitates change, only the threat of violence from a social movement can do that. But we need to do that now, before it’s too late. I’m not telling you who to vote for, I will vote for Biden myself. But I’m under no illusion about the situation we are in, and what it takes to get out of it. I’m just disseminating information I found helpful and encouraging. It is better to be an informed electorate than an uninformed one.
You haven’t shown how Democrats led to a further move to the right compared to Republicans. For example, Obama tried to pass universal healthcare with a public option. Zero Republicans voted for it, and the public option was defeated by independent Joe Lieberman. If there were one more Democrat in the senate, we would’ve had universal healthcare.
Meanwhile, Republicans under Trump literally tried to repeal Obamacare. The reason why progressive policies don’t pass is NOT because too many people vote for Democrats, but because too few do.
That’s ridiculously untrue. You’re looking at two examples.
How about Civil Rights, the New Deal, Women’s suffrage, Pure food and drug act, the Meat Inspection act, Social Security, Medicare, the Sherman Act, Glass-Steagall Act, minimum wage laws, workers compensation laws, and on and on and on.
Yes because the American public shifted to the right post Reagan, in reaction to the Cold War and stagflation. Dems reacted by shifting to the median voter, to neoliberalism, especially because the left keeps listening to bad advice and staying home instead of voting.
You haven’t shown how Democrats led to a further move to the right compared to Republicans.
They ain’t moving left.
For example, Obama tried to pass universal healthcare with a public option. Zero Republicans voted for it, and the public option was defeated by independent Joe Lieberman. If there were one more Democrat in the senate, we would’ve had universal healthcare.
Before Sinema, it was Manchin. Before Manchin, it was Lieberman. And if it wasn’t them, it would have been another Democrat. They’re always one vote away. Curious.
The reason why progressive policies don’t pass is NOT because too many people vote for Democrats, but because too few do.
Yeah, why do Progressives’ always have to ask for more rights and a better standard of living? Can’t they just be happy with the way things are?
None of these respond to my points. Democrats passed Obamacare. They were one vote away from going even further left with a public option. Meanwhile, Republicans were ALL votes away from any healthcare reform. Claiming that Democrats made the country go further right than Republicans is completely bizarre.
Yes it’s pretty disappointing. And even worse, during Trump, the US was much closer to repealing Obamacare than extending it.
But why describe this as Democrats coasting instead of blaming Republicans? Are you expecting Democrats to expand publicly funded healthcare without control of the House, and barely controlling the Senate with two conservative Dems?
But why describe this as Democrats coasting instead of blaming Republicans?
Because they keep expecting gratitude for taking the plan Obama ran on and nerfing it down to what Clinton ran on. And not doing anything at all in the intervening years to improve it. It’s been 15 years. All we’re getting now is minor piddly shit that the party tarts up as the greatest thing in the history of mankind.
Do they expect gratitude? Obamacare hasn’t been a major piece of marketing in a long time, except when Republicans demand it be repealed.
In fact, that’s revisionist history: Democrats were heavily punished for Obamacare by voters, not rewarded. Polling showed that the farther left public option, called “death panels” by the right, was even less popular. The left, as is typical, quickly abandoned Dems to “teach them a lesson”, and we had 8 years of “Tea party” crazies controlling congress.
Polling showed that the farther left public option, called “death panels” by the right, was even less popular.
Congratulations on killing it for Republicans then. How’d that work out for the party? Oh yeah, Republicans still voted against you and you alienated the people who voted for you.
But at least you get to blame everyone to your left for the results of your party’s greatest accomplishment: killing the public option.
I am not touting it. The specific claim we’re discussing is whether voting for democrats cause right leaning policies compared to voting for republicans. It didn’t. Nothing you’ve said has addressed this point.
I am not touting it. The specific claim we’re discussing is whether voting for democrats cause right leaning policies compared to voting for republicans.
It doesn’t and I never said it did. But let’s not pretend that it’s preventing right leaning policies or putting left leaning policies in place.
Is it? The Affordable Care Act was a palliative. It served its purpose of pretending to solve a problem, but making it worse. Life expectancy is declining, housing is becoming unaffordable, college tuition continues to rise, there’s a mental health epidemic. Even when Democrats have had control of Congress and the Presidency, nothing substantial changes. Maybe next time, right?
Yes, the US should’ve also passed a public option. That would’ve made the US system very similar to those in Scandinavian countries (who don’t have single payer btw). But again the reason we didn’t get it is not because we had too many Democrats! Remember: that’s the extreme thesis you’re defending and providing no evidence for.
How do Scandinavian countries get their progressive policies? It’s not by voting for the right leaning party!
Thank you so much for your patient and clear defense of reason. The person you’re arguing with is certainly not arguing in good faith – they are constantly throwing out partial truths and never once addressing your actual point. You’re adding a lot of value in the way you’re commenting, and I salute you.
That is not my thesis. My thesis is that it doesn’t matter if it is Republicans, or Democrats. You are never getting ranked choice voting. It is a threat to DNC control. The government is captured by corporations through special interests and lobbying. It’s never getting better with voting. Only with a social movement will things change.
You explicitly said you endorsed Nimitz, who said voting for the lesser evil leads to right leaning policies. Now you’re defending the much more modest thesis that it doesn’t matter who you vote for. You never said this before. Even this less crazy thesis is extremely dubious. I’ve given dozens of examples of how voting matters.
Other countries have changed voting systems. How did they do it, despite it threatening control by the ruling parties? Voting, actually. I agree that it will take a social movement, but it’s utterly bizarre that you seem to think that’s somehow orthogonal to voting. Trump had historically low favorability even amongst Republicans until he won. His winning an election caused a social movement to take root.
“It’s a mistake to think you’re exercising political power [by voting]. What you’re doing is registering a preference,” said August Nimtz, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. Nimtz was clear that a vote does not directly impose one’s will upon the political system as many believe it does. Nimtz also argued that the action of voting is the opposite of most meaningful political action: it is one taken alone, and is often over in a matter of minutes. Real political change stems from sustained collective action. Source
I’m not even sure what this means. Bill Clinton was not exactly pals with Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich. I’m not sure why or how Clinton would have ushered them into power. What was the devil we knew?
The FTC has been in the news for proposing an extremely progressive legal theory of anti-trust called the New Brandeis school. They’ve sued Meta, Google, Microsoft, and many others on anti-trust grounds. Biden appointed the main and most progressive legal theorist behind the movement, Lina Khan, surprising even progressives.
We probably also need new legislation if and when democrats retake congress, but the will is certainly there if voters will reward it.
You said “many” muscular new regulations but can’t list a single one. A lawsuit is not a regulation. Enforcing existing regulations is something that is supposed to be done, and not worthy of praise. The bar for our politicians protecting us is extremely low.
Really you can’t find a single one? What do you think the policies of the FTC in relation to what it will sue over is? It’s a regulation. Because it’s a regulatory agency regulating an industry. I honestly don’t even know what you would want the FTC to do. There is a consensus that they have been surprisingly active.
I don’t know what you think a “regulation” is, or what you mean by “crafting new ones”. Your question doesn’t make much sense to me.
If you’re asking in good faith and wanting to learn, not just win an internet argument, let’s get into it. The pro-corporate anti-trust standard since the Reagan years is called the “Consumer Welfare standard”. According to that standard, to simplify, a merger is bad if it leads to market inefficiency or higher prices for consumers. It’s a hyper libertarian standard. It is notoriously hard to prove and has led to massive concentration of the market.
The New Brandeis School takes a broader look at the market harms, such as harms to the labor market or to market platform choice. That means, to simplify, that a greater range of corporate behavior is deemed unacceptable that we’re previously considered fine. When corporations are found violating the new standard, they are sued by the FTC, and the courts decide the penalty. So your question doesn’t make sense. Change in enforcement regimes is what a regulation is.
It’s an interesting statement but you need to work on the “why” before we can call it a hypothesis. Also, I’m gonna need some kind of unit of analysis for “better”.
You are fine with it, though. You’re fine with voting third party, and prefer it over preventing fascism from gaining traction. If you weren’t fine with fascism, then that would supercede your desire to feel morally superior for not actually participating in the system at all.
I am not fine with it just because I refuse to play the silly game of republican vs democrat. You really overestimate your intelligence to think you know me like that.
You have a choice at the polls. You can scream into the void, where nobody hears you and you have no effect on the election’s outcome, or you can grit your teeth and vote for the candidate who isn’t a fascist, and you opt to scream into the void. It’s hard to believe you aren’t fine with fascism when you put your own feeling of moral superiority above the actual real world consequences of allowing a fascist to win.
I mean sure, women are having their rights violated in many states now, and even those who don’t get abortions have to endure an investigation into their womb when they have a miscarriage, but at least you didn’t vote for some democrat in 2016, right?
I dont need you to believe anything. But I’d rather shoot myself than vote for someone I dont believe in. Having to vote for the lesser evil candidate is not democracy
I’d rather shoot myself than vote for someone I dont believe in
Yup. And because of that, people are actually suffering in real life.
Having to vote for the lesser evil candidate is not democracy
You don’t have to vote for the lesser evil candidate. But much like that story from the Witcher, other people often pay the price for you keeping your hands clean.
People will always suffer. My vote wont change that. I can depend on people who vote democrat to vote for the democrats. I know that without a doubt, leftism is the future of america and regardless of who I vote for, that wont change.
Couldn’t rely on them back in 2016. The next few generations who are going to have to live with Trump’s supreme court picks really could have used our help, but we were too idealistic. “People will always suffer” is such an awful way to justify inaction, and it certainly makes it sound like you are fine with it.
It’s more based on game theory. If your vote would decide between 2 candidates, but you vote for a third candidate that had a magnitude less amount of support, you are letting other people decide the election.
That’s why a vote for a third party is a vote for the candidate you don’t want to win. The only way to change this is for a change to how elections happen (ie ranked choice voting).
You guys created that prisoners dilemma for yourselves. Canada doesn’t have ranked voting either for federal elections and we have a party called the NDP which has been slowly creeping up on the conservatives and liberals. Last time I voted I didn’t get the winner I wanted and life went on. People died, babies got born, kids got older, high school classes graduated, and eventually we’ll vote again. What I hate the most about politics is how short term everyone’s plans are. We should be thinking more than 4 years ahead.
If you have two parties with deeply rooted power, it’s going to take longer than a year to change that. You might never get the 3rd party winner you want, but your kids could when they’re adults. A lot can change in 10 years when the conditions are set so imagine 100.
You guys created that prisoners dilemma for yourselves.
So sick of hearing this. Who is alive right now who had a hand in creating the current system? Who is commenting on lemmy right now who has any congressional say? Anyone who says this knows it’s bullshit but is trying super hard to sound edgy. Don’t bother.
Because if everyone who doesn’t like either option actually voted third party, even if that party did not win, the percentage would be big enough to make the Democrats and Republicans shit their pants and scramble to adapt to keep their status quo.
The only vote that is wasted is when you’re not voting on the candidate you want to lead the country.
Lol, fuck Joe Rogan and 97% of what’s said on his podcast but this lady nailed it, genocide or genocide light these are likely our choices. Be mad about that, please.
Genocide is not a fake thing. It’s a complex situation, but my point is Biden isn’t even a leftist, nor does he seem to care much about human lives at all- the lesser of two evils thing has never been a weaker argument.
I honestly think Biden IS a republican, practically. Dude was Obama’s VP ffs, he’s a self-proclaimed capitalist and definately cozy with the establishment
Technically, sure but my answer was pretty plainly yes in between the lines, SatansMaggotyCumFart. He’s building Trump’s wall. He’s not doing shit about Covid but pretend it’s gone away, arguably he could pressure Israel not to commit their palestinian genocide or at least not continue to directly fund it with our tax dollars… Price gouging is still out of control too, and universal healthcare? That’s a joke now, right?
I lived through a trump presidency too, and I’ve been just as scared for my life since Biden took power. If he was worth defending he would be doing more to make sure Trump 2024 isn’t even a possibility. But instead he’s alienating his base nonstop and hoping nobody keeps score.
Yes, things can be fucking nuanced, you troll. piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=iiSVdr5AjIsHere’s a wildly relevant clip to support my point since I’m very, very tired. Dude is NOT a good person.
Both sides are the same, except one side wants lgbt folks dead and the other side doesn’t want lgbt folks dead
Both sides are the same, except one of them reacts to news about gas stoves being bad by turning on the gas and huffing it, and the other just replaces their gas stove with electric
Both sides are the same, except one side doesn’t want me to be allowed to hold office because I don’t believe in a god, and in fact bans me from holding office in many of their states for that reason, and the other side doesn’t care whether I believe or not
But yeah both sides are absolutely exactly the same besides a few minor details
You’ve convinced me, I guess I’m fine with the party that presently wants all the lgbt folks dead being in power, because the other one could potentially be swayed to change their present position of not wanting all the lgbt folks dead
Nah, I already said you convinced me. I fully regret voting Biden in 2020. I mean, if I’d voted 3p, we might have gotten Trump, and life would be worse for everyone, but at least I wouldn’t have tried my best to reduce the amount of suffering in the world by filthying my hands by voting for anyone but Christ himself.
To clarify, I’m not fine with it, but as an adult I understood that my choices in 2020 were Biden and Trump, and I hope you can understand that Trump would have been as bad as Biden in all the ways he’s bad, and worse than Biden in every other way.
I’m just scared that the “good” party is so happy to use the same arguments it uses when it kills the minimum wage increase to defend supporting genocide.
It’s like they’ve given themselves license to do anything as long as republicans can be credibly worse.
Yup. If my daughter ever has a miscarriage, she’ll be investigated for murder and possibly thrown in jail because us fuckers didn’t just grit our teeth and vote Clinton, but hey it’s fine because both sides are bad, so the greater suffering that exists now is worth it because you and I get to say our hands were clean in 2016.
No, it’ll happen because fuckers like us allowed Trump to win in 2016, allowing him to install conservatives in the supreme court who gave the states their newfound rights to ban abortion. That shit is 100% on the president, and your daughters and mine, and our granddaughters and their daughters will all have to fight ever harder to claw back the modicum of self-governance the supreme court granted them 50 years ago.
But I guess I’m not allowed to care about my daughter because the current president isn’t as good as I want him to be. I guess it’s worth letting actual literal fascist Ron Desantis win 2024 as long as we get to say “I didn’t want either party to win,” as if that fucking matters.
We have Hitler versus the guy no one wants. The guy no one wants is not 99% Hitler, not 50% Hitler, not even 5% Hitler. He's just the guy nobody wants.
OP certainly doesn’t think so. It won’t be good for your sanity, but take a look at their comments in this thread if you want to be blown away. Apparently voting for the Democrats makes the US more right leaning than voting for the Republicans.
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