The military would split if you tried to force red states to stop being shitty.
Most of our top weapons are in those red states.
So what’s the solution that doesn’t lead to half the country dead?
Plus, on the world stage, a “United” United States protects countries like Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, etc. What happens when we’re gone? China becomes dominant and just starts enslaving people in the lands it takes? The Saudis take over parts of the world and bring their shittiness with them? Russia fucks up more of Eastern Europe?
So what’s the answer here to some really complex questions?
Yeah, but I’d generally take our shittiness over Saudi or Russian shittiness. As a note, my family escaped Russia when the Bolsheviks took over, so I’m HIGHLY biased there.
China… I’m not sure about. I studied Chinese history in college, but that was 20 years ago so I kind of stopped paying deep attention around the time of Hu Jintao. Xi seems much more forceful and willing to expand China’s power via dominance and enslavement.
There are no GOOD superpowers, but I think the US is the least bad.
Contrary to what people believe, the US military has a fairly good cross sectional representation of the American populace. It is most certainly not right wing. I’ve known more than a few active duty military members and actually most were moderate to liberal on the political spectrum. And fairly intelligent.
That’s what I’m worried about and why I reject these calls from super-leftists for a new civil war. Do you want NYC, LA, SF, Detroit, Phoenix, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Portland nuked? Because that’s what happens when the hillbillies in Iowa and the Dakotas get their hands on the nukes that are stored there.
We’ve built the most powerful military the world has ever seen, along with the most powerful single weapon, and guys like the one I initially responded to just want to go ahead and shatter that with a civil war where the neo-Confederates WILL use that against Blue cities.
Why are you only rejecting the “super-leftists” and not the right wing who are carrying out evil acts and actually openly calling for civil war, and have been declaring we’ve been in a civil war for years?
Don’t you dare use my words to try to serve some political agenda.
Man, reading comprehension is NOT your strong suit, is it?
I’m this thread, I was responding to another leftist calling for, as he put it, “R E V O L U T I O N”.
Of course I’m also against shitty neo-Confederates ALSO calling for a civil war, but you already knew that, didn’t you, you condescending little sealioning fuckhead? Instead, you need to turn this into yet more whatabiutism.
I don’t want a new civil war. It’s that easy. If one starts, I simply don’t see a way that it doesn’t turn devastating and nuclear. Calling for a revolution is dumb: our military will likely split, and then two sides of the same super powerful weaponry are fighting in my homeland. No thanks!
Judging from your post history, you’re just lying. There’s no evidence of you ever confronting the right with their behavior, only the left. Therefore the only conclusion is that you are biased. Judging from your responses in other threads, this is because you support the status quo and fear losing it. A status quo degenerating into fascism and genocide, of which you are enabling.
Of course I’m also against shitty neo-Confederates ALSO calling for a civil war,
The left is not calling for civil war. They call for revolution which is fundamentally different. You’re purposefully trying to lie to weasel out of admitting you are wrong. And you are very, very much in the wrong.
And you have the nerve to use my words to serve your agenda, which you still haven’t apologized for by the way.
I’m kinda new here, so I don’t have much of a posting history, but let me set this up immediately.
Calls for a war of any kind in a nuclear-armed country is hella-damn dangerous. I don’t care what kind of war it is. Civil War, Revolution, whatever, the bottom line is that even if we don’t get mushroom clouds out of it, there are plenty of dirty bombs worth of nuclear material that could be employed by ideologically and hate-blinded assholes with an agenda and the unbending but quite wrong notion that they are not only RIGHT but are backed by their concept of goodness itself, the Almighty. And while I agree with the other poster that the entire US military isn’t a seething pool of Neoconfederate fucksticks, that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough to appropriate and attempt to launch nuclear weapons against ‘dins of sin’ as they might call large, liberal cities.
I’m not going to go dig through some poster’s posting history. You wanted DadWagonDriver to say he’s against righties calling for war? You got it in the post you’re replying to. Bam. There, he’s on record now for saying the Neoconfederates should fuck off already. That should be good enough for you, and that should be enough to set you straight. Enough with the calls for naked warfare. The way to fix our country is in the ballot booth, not on the battlefield. War always has been and always will be the weapon of last resort. Be ready to protect yourself, but don’t be looking for a fight. Why? Because wars rarely lead to the outcomes you want. Look at Iran when they overthrew the Shah. The Left then quibbled amongst themselves while the religious fanatics that were the Left’s ally during the war stole the reins of power and then outlawed being a leftist, among many, many other things.
Oh yeah, and in closing? The battlefield of today is a thermonuclear battlefield, and the thing about Thermonuclear War is that it is a most strange game to play. The only winning move is not to play!
You wanted DadWagonDriver to say he’s against righties calling for war? You got it in the post you’re replying to. Bam.
That is just a lie he told to disarm anybody reading and it clearly worked on you. He doesn’t feel that way, otherwise he would have been doing it in the first place. You need to learn to read context and really think about other people’s actions, approaches in debates, and what they’re really saying.
Just because you agree with him doesn’t make him or you right, and it doesn’t change the fact he’s manipulating you, is acting with ulterior motives and you’re falling for it.
What are the steps to a revolution without a civil war?
And wow, you looked at all, what, 25 Lemmy posts I have? Wow. Genius fucking detective here.
I don’t support fascism, you stupid fuck, but because I ALSO don’t support just murdering all the Republicans in the country, somehow that means I’m for the status quo.
I have zero to apologize for. You’re a dumb fucking teenager who thinks that we should have a revolution that somehow doesn’t devolve into a civil war, as if you can just say some magic words and red states, which have been a problem for this country since its foundation with all of the shitty compromises that had to be made to even FORM the United States, are somehow going to say “Oh, shit, this kid on the internet is right! Let’s accept what the left wants now!”
We agree that American conservatives are shitty humans who SHOULDN’T have power, but one of us doesn’t want millions of people to die to take power from them.
If I could wave a magic wand and take all military assets out of Confederate states while also getting every non-fascist out and to the better part of the US, then expel those shithole states, I would. But there’s no magic. There’s no way forward without war until at least until the geriatrics in charge die of old age. Unfortunately, the right has also weaponized new media, so GenX and a lot of my fellow elder Millennials have fallen for their shit, but fortunately it’s far fucking fewer than the Boomers and the self-glossed Greatest Generation.
I’m not willing to start killing Republicans, but it sure as fuck sounds like you are. About as far as I’d recommend is to slap anyone at your middle school who listens to Andrew Tate or Joe Rohan.
Heh. One of my favourite pasttimes is TTRPGing, and one of the settings I made to explore my disdain for the hard-right was a setting that featured the destruction of San Francisco by nuclear weapons by Conservatives. I could totally see a ‘Christian States of America’ nuking a liberal city…
The answer is not to lose the 2024 elections and even exceed what we did before. That starts at the local leveling and volunteering with voters rights groups and getting the youth registered to vote. And we must do this the next election. And the next. Until we can close loop holes to prevent further coups by Republicans.
I am as anti-republican as I can possibly be, but even so I realized that the current MO of the democratic party is not to overthrow the Republicans or stop them from doing horrible shit because they're profiting immensely from it.
They get so much grassroots support because they are not the bad guys that they don't even have to try to be the good guys anymore.
With that being said, they have actually done some good and I'm not against the democrats. I'm just not satisfied with their commitment to the cause and I really wish they would step it up, and any Democratic candidate that is closer to my ideal will get my vote over any establishment candidate.
We need to be the change we want to see. Representatives like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez weren’t recruited by the Democratic Party. They ran and won as Democrats often much to the chagrin of the National Party. They won’t make it easy. And they will absolutely try to recruit people to run against candidates that don’t play ball with them. But they can still lose no matter how hard they try.
This is your answer. The change we want isn't going to happen at the federal level only. The DNC has had a really terrible leader up until recently, but even so, they don't have a good pulse on the left-electorate. They can't seem to figure out that the country isn't center anymore.
The reason we didn't have a "red tsunami" at the midterms, which going on historical trends should have happened, is because of the extremely hard work of grassroots orgs that mobilized the voters on the left (typically low-turnout voting bloc) in local, state, and federal races. And they did all that on a shoestring budget, with little to no help from the DNC.
The change is going to have to be from the local level up. That's how the GOP got to their "minority rule" status, and it's how we'll win back true democracy.
I’d guarantee you and bet that the military is overwhelmingly in favor of supporting the left should it come to it.
Otherwise, they’d have to admit that they stand against the entire purpose and cause of the military.
I just don’t see that happening. Either I have too much faith in the intelligence of our armed forces, or I’m wrong, but this is how I see it going down.
I agree that most of the military would favor the Union again, but there’s a significant enough amount of neo-Confederates that it would cause BIG problems.
Just go to proportional representation, FPTP is crap in otherways. Actually everyone would be chuffed if the electoral collage just went away, the bar is not that high.
I did not think what you had could be called FPTP though? Other countries have more then 2 parties and FPTP but between the collage and borked rules in the US basically make them impossible.
I say fuck representative government. We as people, all of us, are flawed. And no matter who we elect, they will at some point, use the power or voice we've entrusted them with to their own ends and for their own means. We need Digital Direct Democracy. It's time to end the notion that society needs elected representation to act as wranglers and moderate our opinion. The technology is here and honestly I think it's a system that the founders would have been behind.
Technology could largely streamline that and condense things in plain language for people to understand. Research councils and individual polling could help to dictate ballot composition. I've seen it proposed that you could enact whats known as liquid voting, where by you could entrust a like minded friend you consider more knowledgeable to vote for you. Outside of that, so much of that individual policy is performative and redundant. We can change how the system works incrementally and work toward greater levels of involvement and knowledge will become more common the more people have a taste for it. We can incentivize participation by linking it to civil duty and a lessening of your personal taxes.
there's at least 5-7 states where you could pass it as a constitutional referendum. The only hang up is that we are baked in as representative governments on a state level due to agreements made to the federal government constitutionally when we joined the union. You'd have to find a way to make a representative system function like a delegate system, but not under the eyes of the law. It seems like a real moonshot, but where I'm at all it would take is the courts to approve the language and around 50,000 signatures to get it on the ballot. 50%+ of the vote and it's enacted.
The Electoral College is just to elect our President. It has no other purpose than that.
As an American, you vote for four people who represent you directly in the government: your Representative in our House of Representatives, two Senators in our Senate, and the President. The Senators are a relatively recent addition as for a long time, Senators were appointed rather than directly elected, and some people are talking about going back to that system. But for now, that’s 4 people you vote for.
Representatives are voted for by their voters in their individual districts. This is like a MP. In some districts, such as those in Maine, we use Ranked Choice Voting. In others, we have a sort of runoff election if nobody wins a majority. However, in most, we vote FPTP, and the guy with the largest share of the votes wins.
Senators are state-wide votes. We’ll only vote for one at a time, and over 6 years, we’ll have one election for one seat, another election for the other seat, and a ‘bye-year’ where we don’t vote for Senators at all. Like the House, this is rarely RCV or Runoff, but is frequently FPTP.
POTUS votes are run nation-wide, but they really are state-wide in all states except Maine and Nebraska, where they are hybrid Congressional District-wide and State-Wide. This is where the Electoral College comes in, and trying to RCV this could well challenge constitutional crises because if no one candidate gets more than half of the EVs, the race is thrown to the House, which is an anti-democratic thing.
So First Past the Post and the electoral college aren’t mutually exclusive.
The electoral college is voting logistics, a relic of a time when sending paper ballots in a sealed box from Vermont or Georgia to Washington was a months long horseback ride through dangerous territories. It was a clever solution to solve the logistics of running a democracy on the technology they had at the time.
First Past the Post is a simple voting system where each persong gets one vote with one name on it. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins. The problem with it is it tends toward 2 parties through the spoiler effect. If there are 2 parties that run similar enough platforms, that splits the voting base, because either party will satisfy those issue needs, but the opposition to those issues would be one big voting bloc. Thus the 2 losing parties will siphon off voters from the other losing party until eventually one party remains.
It’s why the Dems in this country range from vaguely progressive corporate neoliberals (think Biden or Pelosi) or to highly progressive further left wing* people (think Bernie or AOC. And Republicans range from conservative corporate neolibs (think Romney or McCain) to reactionaries and outright fascists (think Boebert and Marjorie Green).
*compared to the rest of our representatives in America
Well yes, but way back many years ago in school the two systems where treated as not the same type. My country has FPTP but we don’t consider the US to use it (at least years ago in school). This could be because of how like many countries with FPTP ours does have more then 2 parties win seats in every election where in the US it is though legal means almost impossible (I know they exist but I don’t think any have won a seat). This also could have been some weird pride thing as well, as learning world political systems in public education always seemed to have a bit of the propaganda to it.
In any case it is interesting and neat to learn you guys use FPTP also.
I believe people have the right to be who they are as long as it isn’t hurting others, but Intolerance should be met with intolerance, nothing less will do.
I have been screaming this for a long time now. As a memeber of the LGBTQ Community, we cannot tolerate the intolerant, even if we are called islamophobic, religiousphobic or whatever. We cannot let these assholes take away our rights. It already started in Italy and it will keep spreading if we keep tolerating these assholes.
Liberals are spineless cowards, we have to fight back. The fascists gave us permission to use deadly force and self-defense the moment they use deadly force against us
Why not give hime a life of regret, sitting behind bars for ever, knowing he thrown his life an freedome away because of a flag. Revange isn’t the solution and killing people makes as as bad as them.
You’re making a huge assumption that the guy would regret what he did… I doubt someone who would kill over a pride flag would have the mental capacity necessary for honest self reflection.
He would have 10 hours a day to think for the rest of his life. We all changed over time. Not saying i know who he could become, just saying that some people change by 180°.
“Well, you know. You’ll just be sitting there, minding your own business, and they’ll come marching in, and crawl up your leg, and start biting the inside of your ass, and you’ll be all like, ‘Hey! Get out of my ass you stupid rainbows!’”
this kinda literally the scene from Boys when the idiot gets brainwashed online to being a hate filled fascist cunt who then walks into a store and killa the cashier because he thinks he is a supe-terrorist
but conservatives absolutely won’t get the metaphor in that shit.
watch conservative shitheads distance themselves from this, fox news will claim they had nothing to with this while pushing thwir hate filled fear mongering shit
Not just a light spectrum! A symbol of freedom to be yourself, too. While I certainly agree they don’t like colors, they also definitely don’t like people being comfortable in their own skin
I’m not saying this to cast doubt on anything, I believe the reason given for the attack, I’m simply curious (probably because I used to be a first responder). One thing I haven’t seen explained in the articles I’ve read about this story is how do we know that he assaulted her for the flag and then shot her? Who called 911? How did they know who the suspect was?
The most plausible explanation to me is she was still alive when the cops got there but died before the paramedics were able to transport her, so she was able to tell them something, since no witnesses were mentioned. Second most plausible is there were witnesses.
Wasn’t she killed in her store? Virtually every store these days has security cameras. As for who called 911, guns are loud. Unless you’re in the middle of nowhere, there will be people who hear the gun shot, even if they don’t see what happened.
Yes but I thought I read somewhere that the shooter was confronted soon after (a couple hours?) which would be very fast to find and go through security footage. And yes about the gun, but that wouldn’t necessarily get them the motive and description of the suspect. It doesn’t really matter to me that much anyway, it was just an unknown aspect of a story I am interested in.
“I’m not questioning the reason for the attack but how do we know that’s the reason.”
It’s acceptable to question sources. This story is definitely likely true, but there also plenty of cases of stuff written online(and what police say) being untrue and it’s okay to probe it a little.
I agree, but with the amount of trolling some people do regarding LGBT stuff I wanted to be very clear I’m not one of them. Since every article is stating it as fact and not using “alleged” I assume the journalists know with some certainty, but I haven’t seen it detailed anywhere.
Yeah. BOTH parties died, and the cops have yet to explain what happened in their encounter with the shooter.
Like, obviously the shooter was a murderer and a bigot. But was he a threat to the cops? I’d feel a lot better if they said something (or maybe that’s just not being reported by the news sources I’ve seen?)
No one deserves to be killed. Even bigots and murderers have that right.
There are a lot of great things about this country, but the gun violence rate is fucked.
IMO, death is too-good for anyone who deserves to be killed. It’s an easy out.
But in answer to your question, I’m not surprised. Somebody who crosses the line in a rage is less likely to just give up without a fight. Somebody being a confrontational, hateful asshole who picks that fight and then kills someone is more likely to be like “welp I’m fucked, might as well go out shooting.” They may even believe that they’ve got some kind of moral high ground, although such a belief is more likely a justification in their own heads.
Yes, we have missed the chance to subject the shooter to questioning in court and expose their prejudice properly. Now there is a danger they will become a martyr
Sorry, but I disagree. Any piece of shit that hates others so much that they will kill because of It- needs to be put down like the animal they are. They deserve no mercy and need to be removed from the population.
We should come up with some process where a small, randomly representative democratic panel can be informed of the facts and then decide if he’s really the murderer.
Well, Stalin was a fascist. And Tankies like to call everyone who doesn’t 100% agree with their radical views as fascists and like to throw out “lib” like it’s a slur to anyone they’re arguing with. I’m just making an educated guess here.
No one is advocating committing hate crimes against anybody. You are purposefully strawmanning other people so you can manipulate them into adopting your way of thinking, and I am not gonna let you do it.
You’re a prick.
And the hate crimes and genocide are exactly the hate I was referring too.
This clown is motte-and-baileying himself by claiming he meant hate crimes when he was clearly talking about, and says outright, feeling hate in his previous posts.
He was not talking about hate crimes. He was talking about feeling hate and is purposefully conflating the two so he can motte-and-bailey himself out of admitting he is wrong.
That means this guy has an agenda, and is very likely a Nazi apologist.
Everybody do not listen to him or people like him.
I checked a couple of their comments on other stuff, they love Nietzsche and think child labor laws are a bad thing. Yea this person is 100% a Nazi apologist, or maybe just a straight up Nazi pretending to be a centrist
I am not a Nazi apologist like you claim, and I see now that we are clearly beyond the point of reasoning with the intolerant bigots - they must be removed by force as you’re saying. I agree with your points. We’re fighting the same fight, just in different ways - and I never attempted to formulate a strawman fallacy (although your ad hominem is nearly as repulsive). I agree with your method now, I was simply trying to find a way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed where clearly there is no way.
Sorry I made you feel so insulted by my argument as to make those points against me. I concede.
It is this type of morality that drove him to do what he did. Life is not just a commodity you can just throw away. Instead of trying to bury the problem with more violence, try and sort it by educating the kids better in this area.
Oh, shut up. There’s nothing about discussing the underlying factors that contributed to this woman’s death that is in any way disrespectful to the memory of the victim.
If I were to become a deceased victim, be it of crime, disease, or accident, I would want my death to be looked at enough to see if we can find ways to prevent others from suffering my same fate. To do less would be to negate the value behind my passing.
How many normal people will we allow conservatives to kill before we act? History has shown that an infestation of conservatism cannot be cured by pacifism.
The war conservatives insist on waging against normal people will look exactly like this story. Conservative murders normal person in act of terrorism.
Do your part to train and prepare. You don’t have to be a fighter to help others. Learn to evac wounded and administer trauma first aid. Teach others. Do your part.
And won??? So there’s not a current moment to ban books talking about LGBTQ people? There’s not a “don’t say gay” bill in Florida? There’s not people attacking trans kids and adults and making it illegal for them to get healthcare? Phew. I was so worried about all those things.
You’re allowed to disagree. This man wasn’t killed by police because he disagreed with the shop owner having a rainbow flag. They killed him because he murdered her and (presumably) didn’t surrender when they caught up to him.
I think what you’re talking about is the rest of us calling out your bigotry. That’s not oppression or control by the government. That’s society leaving you and your outdated beliefs behind.
There is never a reason to debate or enter a conversation with a conservative. Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Every word.
Conservatives insist on communicating through violence. So be it.
Well no. Conservative, to me, means a federal government that’s pretty much powerless to change anything in the States (10th amendment), that doesn’t invade the privacy of Americans (4th amendment), and that doesn’t go around waging war without declaration.
That’s not what we have. That’s not what either conservatives or liberals want, so we need a new label.
I’m not really interested in whatever Newspeak the people actively attacking democracy, education, and our Constitutional rights push, be they Reagan-type neoliberals or modern “conservatives” who sure do use a lot of dogwhistles they hope decent people are too clueless by design to hear until it’s too late.
When someone tells you they hate socialists and they’re definitely not a liberal, connect the dots.
Tbh in most of the civilized world ‘liberal’ is not a compliment. American brought tankies, wokies and liberals to the worldwide left, and that is NOT something to be celebrated (or maybe as the CIA’s best psyop)
It’s definitely going that direction, and with no one willing to do what it takes to shut them down, America is destined to end up in another civil war.
Of course, I’ve no doubt it’ll be over quickly and the conservative party will be abolished- it’ll still result in an unnecessary loss of a lot of lives.
This kind of stuff makes me so angry. Like if I allowed my anger to run rampant and I had the ability to do these things my imagination would cause me to do some of the most horrendous things to this guy.
Stuff a couple of rainbow colored bad dragons into his orifices, perform srs on his corpse, put him out for free use to any interested necrophiliacs, and then grind up whatever is left of his body after 2 weeks and invite any interested satanists to desecrate and deconsecrate his corpse and consign his soul to Satan and then chunk the pieces into the ocean as fish bait and video the whole thing (keeping the identities of our friendly neighborhood necrophiliacs safe) and post the video to liveleaks.
Then for safe measure I would troll any sites where people are talking about this and encouraging the actions of the guy and I would hunt them down and do the exact same goddamn thing to them.
You murdered someone because they had a flag you didn't like in their fucking window. The fuck.
You can't even blame it on your religion because like your religion says "you shall not kill", it never mentions shit about a fucking flag, so the one good thing about you having the religion assuming this person was religiously motivated at all is that they violated the primary commandment that their God told them not to violate.
So it's not like they're not going to hell when they died anyway.
Sorry, I'm going to go and like get some therapy or something I'm just unreasonably angry right now. I'm neither trans nor gay I'm just absolutely sick of hatred.
Is this defensive? I was questioning the placement of the story, not supporting the shooting. I am 100% pro-LGBTQ, and I don’t know how it came across any other way.
And then if they succeed in that then what? Did they win? Do they take their ball and go home? It's not like the world was all hunky-dory in the fifties. There's no golden age to go back to.
Okay but at that point only white Christian nationalists are left.
Yup, and then they decide to start in on Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Quakers, and Catholics.
Like what are they going to do take the 18 million people left in America and wage war on the rest of the planet?
Probably, yeah. When they have rid the country of those they consider to be undesirable and it hasn’t solved all of society’s problems like they said it would, they can either admit that they committed genocide for no reason or start looking abroad for new monsters to blame shit on and then slay.
They would get annihilated,
Yeah, there’s one little wrinkle in that outlook. Fascism does really short-sighted stupid shit at the end when it gets desperate, and has no regard for human life, and they would have access to the US nuclear arsenal.
A lot of countries have historically legislated religion, does that make being religious a political act? I don’t think so. Same with this. Don’t let people co-opt something that you and doesn’t effect others and let them make you a villain or a martyr because of it.
If you don’t think mass movements for human rights are “political,” what do you think “political” means? I’m seriously asking. Do you not think civil rights marches were political, either? I do not understand.
Sorry for the late response. I thought politics were about the people in charged off making rules. Clearly, no one ever explicitly told me the definition of the word. I guessed the word based off of where it was used like a lot of other words.
Supporting LGBT+ people apparently is, along with a bunch of other things I'd consider 'basic human decency' thanks to the right wing in this country going absolutely bugfuck the last decade and change.
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