They don’t have to be the same to both be shit. They don’t even have to be equally bad to both be shit. I’d rather lose a toe than an arm, that doesn’t mean I’m excited to lose a toe.
Saying that “both sides are the same” is a moronic argument is not a defense of the 2 party system. It’s a defense of objective reality, one option is clearly worse than the other.
It's not bullshit. You USAians have distilled complex issues to "yes, no", " with us, or against us", "right, wrong", "racist, not racist", etc.
The first past the post system limits the voting options to just two, which limits the power and decision making to a few people who aren't allowed to diverge from their voter-base.
A centrist republican voter and a centrist democrat voter can't both vote for a centrist party. They both have to make a decision of "republican or democrat". A working class USAian can't vote for a working class party - no it has to be one of the two parties.
It's much easier for both parties to make it harder for working class people to vote and garner votes from the middle class upwards, than try to serve the working class. Or, they just indoctrinate the working class to vote against their own interests - what option do they have anyway? It's not like they could vote for a third, forth or fifth party that represents them.
Both parties do little for the working class because they know they don't have to do much. Feed them propaganda on social media, have political ads that DESTROY, OBLITERATE, SMASH the other side (or whatever sensationalist word is used), make promises, claim moral highground and quote Jebus a few times, and the working class will for them. And if they don't vote at all, that's even better!
Yeah yeah, democrats do more than republicans, but "represent" the working class is a stretch.
The USA needs a multi-party system, possibly with preferential voting. The only people with actual representative are the rich, in the USA.
Counterpoint: the rich want to get richer, and the lapdogs want their bribes, and the lazy folks in the middle can only be motivated by fear (not even greed works anymore, e.g. for retirees who already got theirs), so to break out of this cycle would take... ... ...
I’m starting to wonder if we could even break this cycle. Nobody seems to give a shit, and if they do, whatever they’re doing seems to not be working.
For fuck’s sake, a surprisingly large amount of Americans want an insurrectionist, fascist, Russian-loving “president”that has openly said he will be dictator (but “only” for a day!). It would be one thing if it were a vocal minority just being really loud, but the fact that there’s an actual large amount of people who want a person like that makes me wonder if the US citizenry is broken.
In the wild, it is rare to see a predator before it strikes. Have you ever seen one of those games where there is a picture and you are supposed to find it... but you can't, even zooming in and scanning every section, and then even when the answer is shown you can barely make it out? In the wild, prey aren't supposed to evade death - the entire food chain is predicated on that fact. Ofc the predator still has to cross the distance between it and the prey, but lulling it into a sense of complacency is the first part of its successful strategy, then it waits for the prey to turn its head, and only THEN does it pounce. Sorry if this is upsetting but it's very relevant I promise you, and in no way shippable for this conversation.
So in the wild, if I ever were to see this large fat orange buffoon, bumbling around while making wild hooting noises, actively trying to get noticed by saying whatever manages to get the most reaction from everyone around, I think I would be wisest to run away. Crucially though, not from the orange thing - which has no obvious teeth or claws or anything at all harmful - but from whatever it is that may be following it (whether the orange thing has any knowledge of that or not), waiting to take advantage of the distraction that it provides.
Whether any particular person wins the next election or not, there are always more willing to step up in their place - more Republicans, more Democrats, etc. - and a smart predator is ready to take advantage of whichever side wins in order to get what they want.
Sorry if you thought I was building up to some point worth knowing about - I have found no solutions, only more layers of problems the further deep you dig into these matters.:-( I will say that often when you meet Trump supporters irl, they can be very kind people - they are mislead, but aren't we all? It is the system that is broken, not solely them (obviously outliers exist, on both sides, and no they are not remotely close to being equal <cough>KKK<cough>, but nor is the problem uniquely on one side vs. the other either, plus the whole division between "sides" is working out VERY well to Putin's benefit, hence making me question just how much involvement his agencies have with the recent Civil War style divisionist thinking that is currently fashionable).
I think all we can do is question what we see, and compare it against what we KNOW to be true. Which not everyone is capable of - e.g. who has the luxury of that kind of time? A great place to start, imho, is to recommend watching https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs.
Well voting for the Capitalist party ain’t it. So start by NOT voting for the Capitalist parties, and then seeing what else you can do outside of the voting booth. But if you refuse NOT to vote for the Capitalist party, then do you really have a problem with the current system since you are actively supporting it.
I don't follow you. They are BOTH the capitalist party, though not equally so. Also, voting for one side vs. the other does not mean that you agree with EVERYTHING that they do - in fact it is more common these days to vote against the other side and ignore what your own might plan or actually do. Nor is it true that avoiding voting - e.g. for mental or physical health reasons - means that someone does not care at all about what happens as a result of the election. Plus, a rather ENORMOUS fraction of people in the USA could skip a particular vote and it would not make the tiniest iota of difference, due to the electoral college system, though that heavily depends on where you live, and also trends to be more true the larger the region impacted (federal > state > county), whereas local elections could turn on a dime and also make a huge impact regardless of what goes on in upper levels - e.g. federal sends monies to help people but locals turn that aid away b/c "reasons".
Unpopular opinion alert: I dare to say that many people who should NOT be voting - especially those who do little to no research beforehand - would vastly improve the outcome of elections by NOT voting, and thereby contribute more that way than they do now, by actually voting, where they tend to just magnify the votes of whatever the TV & radio talk show people (or more recently, pastors behind the pulpit) tell them to do. The latter makes the USA even more of a plutocracy than later, when the votes get ignored and the rich get whatever they want regardless of who got elected does.
You are missing the big picture. Capital benefits by people voting for either party of Capital. It doesn’t matter which one you vote for, important things like material conditions for real people will never improve if you vote like you are advocating. If you can’t even vote against Capital, then what good are you?
One party represents just what is good for them and theirs with no consideration for long term function and stability of the country. The other represents just what is good for them and theirs but realize they need the country to consider relatively stably for their own long term good.
Republicans - desperate to hold on to relevance, so they’re going for short-term wins
Democrats - desperate to appeal to younger generations, and promoting the wants and needs of minorities seems to be working
I don’t see either as caring too much for longer term stability. Democrats want to raise/eliminate the debt limit (i.e. more social programs), and Republicans want to use the debt limit for political concessions (i.e. appeal to base with lip-service to fiscal responsibility), neither seems particularly worried about balancing the budget.
democrats would allow taxes to be collected to not borrow much. Republicans would get rid of any taxes that are not straight out fee for service. Debt arises from not paying bills.
You can blame Republicans all you want, but the point is that Democrats haven’t been serious about raising taxes to cut the deficit. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans haven’t been serious about cutting spending either. I find both major parties wholly disappointing, because even when they have a majority, neither actually does anything to really fix our fiscal problems.
What makes you think the democracts have any interest in the “younger generation?” The average age of democrat leadership is OLDER then republicans. Voter turn out among the younger generation is also abysmal because the dem do not appeal to the younger generation at all.
Think about how we got here
Very early on we out sourced a big chunk of the election process to volunteers, fans, fanatics if you will. Why raise taxes to pay for elections?
Parties took over the preliminary parts of the process in exchange for vetting potential candidates.
OK so I’m guessing but, no one works for free
The Pay may not be cash, power, influence, patronage are all nice.
Money has always been speech
Excess resources have always been required to have a meaningful political opinion
The system was designed for information moving at the speed of horse at great expense
The system was to serve 1% of the present population
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. The US doesn’t have a 1 party system. If you meant 2 party system, that’s not really true of any specific arrangement of political party spectrums across the world. No system covers most countries. Wikipedia lists 15 countries, many among the most powerful and influential globally that are effectively 2 party systems.
There are so many reasons why the working class lack representation in America and I don’t think a single one of those reasons is the 2 party system. In fact, on paper, the US has no limit on how many political parties there can be. The reason we have a 2 party system has more to do with our voting system and the spoiler effect that happens over time in all First-Past-The-Post voting systems.
I think the reason the working class lack representation has so much more to do with the money in our politics. The politicians are more concerned with continuing their political careers and earning more money for themselves than they are with helping the working and poor classes.
Its a one party system because the US Democratic and Republican have the same policies on almost everything. Both provide endless funding to the military. Neither will defund the police. Neither will tax carbon or stop pipelines from being built. Neither will provide single payer healthcare. Neither will invest in building sustainable transportation infrastructure (high speed rail, interstate public busses). Neither will tax carbon or animal consumption. Neither will make universities free and get rid of student loan debt. Neither will provide housing to homeless people. Neither will comply with international laws related to war crimes or refugees. Neither will establish data privacy laws or break up the big tech industry. Neither will shutdown the NSA and illegal government mass surveillance infrastructure.
In the US it’s a one party system with an illusion of choice.
The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital. The two segments that make up this single party share the same fundamental liberalism. Both focus their attention solely on the minority who “participate” in the truncated and powerless democratic life on offer. Each has its supporters in the middle classes, since the working classes seldom vote, and has adapted its language to them. Each encapsulates a conglomerate of segmentary capitalist interests (the “lobbies”) and supporters from various “communities.”
American democracy is today the advanced model of what I call “low-intensity democracy.” It operates on the basis of a complete separation between the management of political life, grounded on the practice of electoral democracy, and the management of economic life, governed by the laws of capital accumulation. Moreover, this separation is not questioned in any substantial way, but is, rather, part of what is called the general consensus. Yet that separation eliminates all the creative potential found in political democracy. It emasculates the representative institutions (parliaments and others), which are made powerless in the face of the “market” whose dictates must be accepted.
Marx thought that the construction of a “pure” capitalism in the United States, without any pre-capitalist antecedent, was an advantage for the socialist struggle. I think, on the contrary, that the devastating effects of this “pure” capitalism are the most serious obstacles imaginable.
Eh. That’s not really related to the current problem of lack of political representation for non-capitalists. A communist utopia that was built on depopulated land would’t really have any issues being a utopia for the existing people just because they genocided some folks 200 years ago.
They literally are though, the tools and processes of capitalist extraction and subjugation currently used both inside the US and out are finely honed versions of those that enabled colonial extraction and subjugation.
They definitely are. The country was founded by a bunch of slave owners. Yes, back then it was difficult to get a bunch of haggard, sexual deviants from Europe, who believed they were rightful owners of a land they just set foot in, to understand how voting works, and collect those votes in a timely manner across a massive country in a time where the fastest means of transport was a horse. Imagine trying to explain instant run off voting to somebody who was dirty all the time and whipped slaves for fun, or the people who had to work in mines and who could barely read, let alone utter a grammatically correct sentence.
The electoral college and first past the post are relics that have everything to do with their time of conception as well as the circumstances they were conceived in.
The here and now is the only thing I care about. If our current system isn’t meeting the needs of the people that are alive today, then I don’t give a fuck about it or its history. That system is trash and should be destroyed. That system has a name of course and it is Captialism and Capitalism will never allow the working class one iota of power regardless of the excuses you make for it or the history you ascribe to it.
This is to ignore the entire political culture of the United States and it’s history, and how this history is viewed by its contemporaries, and how this view of history influences the present and future. Remember, who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past!
Any hypothetical “communist utopia built on depopulated land” would have to have, at some point, contended with the history of how that land became depopulated in the first place, and the accompanying ideology of colonialism, expansionism and capital accumulation which enabled that, in order to become a “communist utopia”. Otherwise, failing to contend with that history, it would not be a “communist utopia”, and the ideological descendants of those who carried out the original genocide, depopulation of land, and capital accumulation would still be in charge, most likely trying to expand their empire and methods of subjugation globally. Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s going on in the USA right now! I’ll just quote an excerpt from Samir Amin’s Revolution From North To South to illustrate the point further:
The political culture of the United States is not the same as the one that took form in France beginning with the Enlightenment and, above all, the Revolution. The heritage of those two signal events has, to various extents, marked the history of a large part of the European continent. U.S. political culture has quite different characteristics. The particular form of Protestantism established in New England served to legitimize the new U.S. society and its conquest of the continent in terms drawn from the Bible. The genocide of the Native Americans is a natural part of the new chosen people’s divine mission. Subsequently, the United States extended to the entire world the project of realizing the work that “God” had ordered it to accomplish. The people of the United States live as the “chosen people.”
Of course, the American ideology is not the cause of U.S. imperialist expansion. The latter follows the logic of capital accumulation and serves the interests of capital (which are quite material). But this ideology is perfectly suited to this process. It confuses the issue. The “American Revolution” was only a war of independence without social import. In their revolt against the English monarchy, the American colonists in no way wanted to transform economic and social relations, but simply no longer wanted to share the profits from those relations with the ruling class of the mother country. Their main objective was above all westward expansion. Maintaining slavery was also, in this context, unquestioned. Many of the revolution’s major leaders were slave owners, and their prejudices in this area were unshakeable…
The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital.
the ideological descendants of those who carried out the original genocide, depopulation of land, and capital accumulation would still be in charge
Disagree. After a revolution where full communism was implemented after a purge, why would the same wealthy families of the US be in charge? And if they were “in-charge” how could you call what they implemented a “communist utopia?”
I don’t want to get into the specific of what “true” communism is. But my assertion is that history has momentum, and multi-generational influence, but it isn’t absolute and revolution can certainly remove those influences and stop that momentum. Otherwise you may as well just give up and say that humanity is doomed because we are all descended from a bunch of murders/settlers/etc.
Disagree. After a revolution where full communism was implemented after a purge, why would the same wealthy families of the US be in charge? And if they were “in-charge” how could you call what they implemented a “communist utopia?”
Thats my point. That in order to advance, to achieve a revolutionary advance, to remove/purge those wealthy capitalists from power, you have to deal with the history of the formation of the United States at some point. There is no other way, you cannot get to the point of a revolution without addressing that history, as that ideology and history is perfectly suited to the process of capital expansion. You are absolutely right in that the revolution and it’s forces would have to remove those historical influences and stop their momentum. That is the way forward. No one is doomed to the past of their ancestors, as long as they are prepared to move forward and support the creation of an equitable world for all.
Thanks for your Point of View. I’m not sure I agree nor understand what it means to “deal with the history of the United States,” in a leftist social or political movement but it’s probably that my interpretation of what you are saying isn’t meshing with your meaning.
I don’t think that’s really true, they both essentially ignore the working class. The right caters to small business owners, the just caters to large business owners, and both generally ignore the workers.
The both like to say they’re working hard for the workers, but they really don’t follow up with effective policy.
That depends on what you’re talking about when you say “worker.” The people who benefited the most were younger people, poor people, women, and monitorities, so not the average 9-5 lower middle to middle class worker (factory, construction, etc), and certainly not the middle to upper middle office worker, but people who work in fast food, seasonal labor, and janitorial staff. Basically, if you weren’t offered insurance at work, you probably benefited. For nearly everyone else, insurance got more expensive.
But yes, that’s about the closest Democrats have gotten to benefitting workers recently. But it more benefited the underemployed and minorities, so I see it as Obama seeking to expand support among those groups.
Let’s look at the deal. Workers wanted 15 days of paid sick leave and better working conditions. What they got was 1 day off paid sick leave, allegedly lower penalties for unpaid time off, and a pay increase (24%), which from my reading largely caught them up with inflation. Here’s a quote:
Even the best-case scenario doesn’t look like a massive victory for labor, but the devil is in the details
Vocal support doesn’t put food on the table, actual, passed bills do.
The bills Biden has championed are largely around green energy and infrastructure (mostly trains and highways). I guess this tangentially benefits workers (more construction projects, slightly better mass transit, etc), but I see it benefitting shareholders and company owners more (green energy and construction company ownership), as well as himself (big bill he can point to in the debates).
If he actually cared about workers and unions, he would’ve struck a better deal with the rail workers and passed bills protecting people seeking to unionize. But instead we get what we always get from politicians, a lot of hot air.
If he actually cared about workers and unions, he would’ve struck a better deal with the rail workers and passed bills protecting people seeking to unionize.
I didn't realised presidents had the power to strike deals with unions or pass bills.
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