Liberals
Liberals
165 comments
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ah good, lemmy hasn't changed a bit since i left it 2 months ago
welp see you losers next year
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Thankfully you left me this message so I can block you and never hear from you ever again.
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Dem's aren't even putting in the minimum effort into pretending to be an opposition party.
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They're gladly letting it all burn because they lazily expect it to mean easy wins in 2026. Then they'll manage to barely take the House and maaaaybe Senate, and literally do nothing with it.
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Fuck em. Saves me the grief of having to convince others they are a sunk cost and investing into them is like robbing ourselves because we never get anything of value back. Or if we do it's canceled out by all the other shit we conceded to corporate america.
Think of Martin, that dude didn't get shit from the dems until he was orginized and marching. The dems weren't on a path to provide rights. He did all the heavy lifting and they slithered into his camp and got him killed.
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Better than not voting and doing nothing.
The best would be voting and being an activist.
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The US is not a democracy, it's a capitalist dictatorship.
Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’
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Even if one accepts the argument that voting is not productive, that doesn't inherently justify not participating. There's plenty of things people do daily that are not productive or useful uses of their time.
Please demonstrate the harm caused by voting in the presidential elections.
Even if it's not productive, it takes at absolute worst case living in a hellscape without properly staffed polling places, one day out of your time every four years. I was able to do it and get back to my shit in 30 minutes this time, from the time I left home to the time I got back.
So even if it's useless, for me it was the same as sitting on my ass and watching a TV show. Explain why that is such a horrendous waste of my time that I should have instead not done it at all.
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You are free to participate in any kind of meaningless gestures and genuflection to make yourself feel better, but the US is a controlled authoritarian oligarchy with democratic window dressing and not a democracy in any meaningful way.
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Worse would be discouraging voting and activism. Instead try to tell people that nothing they do matters and just bend over and take it up the ass
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Malcom X said,
“ I don’t think that if I was cornered by any fox or a wolf, that I would have to take a choice between either one. I don’t see any choice between a fox or a wolf. A fox is a fox and a wolf is a wolf—to me. Neither one is the lesser of two evils. Both of them are evil. And Negroes, when they become politically mature, I think will realize that you don’t have to throw the bullets out of your gun just because you have a gun. Likewise you should wait until you have a target and bring that target down. I think when Negroes become really mature, they won’t vote just because they can vote. Sometimes they’ll abstain. Ofttimes in a position of abstaining is as effective in its results as an actual vote, as is proved in the UN. You have those who say “yes,” those who say “no,” and those who abstain. And those who abstain have just as much weight. And probably the most intelligent thing Negroes could do at this juncture would be to abstain and withhold their vote completely and make both the fox and the wolf fight it out among themselves.”
This was true when he said and is true now. Malcom X knows far more about opposition to reactionary politics than you do and he what he said was in no outdated then nor now.
(https://www.icit-digital.org/articles/malcolm-x-at-columbia-university-november-20-1963)
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Laws mean nothing if the Dictator in chief can break them without consequence.
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Yeah, there's not exactly a lot of options for those of us with front row seats to the US being dismantled.
This idealism around a violent revolution to resolve our problems is asinine. Protests are nice, but even they won't solve the key issue: we have a king that ignores laws right now, and we're being ruled by a kletocratic corporatocracy.
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It’s all of you.
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Not me. I want the zealots all beheaded. Yea, what they're doing is illegal and I also* voted. But now it's chop chop time. I should start a website to get 15% of the population to agree with me on a specific day. Kind of like The General Strike. But with more axe.
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I like where you're going but the general strike stuff is suppose to be the step in between, ya know. It's like a bit of a comprise before chop chop time. Just like hey guys we mad and have orginized and are willing to sacrifice.
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Not me, I'm on a whole other continent, watching the blaze, hoping it doesn't spread too far.
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I'm starting to see people rile up, fortunately, but it's not enough. I'm going down to my states senate office with a megaphone and gonna stir some shit up. You should too. People are like lemmings, they won't act until you do.
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I honestly don't think these one off protests will force any change personally. They are a start to network and I think we should shift protests to be places to centralize people to a method of communication.
But the only thing that would force the hand of change is a general strike for weeks/months like Georgia is doing.
One decentralized protest organizer is starting a method of collecting sign ups to organize such a protest. Im not sure who the original organizer is but id rather give trust that something will come of it.
Personally, I think I will see if I can be more involved in my local state politics and volunteering. Might see if I can run for local office or if that is feasible.
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A few days of not buying anything might spark some action. I for one will not be buying anything on Feb. 28. Perhaps these buy nothing days can be repeated and extended?
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Protests, strikes, or boycotts with a planned end date are next to useless. You can do that if it makes you feel good. But don't do it in place of real organizing. The best thing you can do now is organizing locally. Join your local PSL and support what they are doing.
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Yeah that's a great point. Soon as I saw the companies at the Inauguration I deleted social media platforms owned by them and switched to DuckDuckGo/Firefox. Ive been on Linux Mint for some time.
Protesting with our wallets and going against the whole consumerism culture of these oligarchs is definitely the way to go. :)
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Suggestions?
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Read and learn from successful revolutions, and the Marxist tradition in general, which correctly identifies both the root problem, and has a wealth of historical experiences for how to defeat it, the correct and incorrect roads taken, and what worked/didn't. Join working-class parties, and organize for our own interests, so that sociopaths who would be happy sacrificing all of us for the sake of profits, don't control society.
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml keeps an excellent study guide here, and I have one here.
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🫡 thanks comrade!
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Thank you, Dessalines. I of course remember your welcome when I first showed up in some instance in Lemmy. I admire the work and the structure of this alternative to social media and I quickly became aware that much of its success is due to your efforts. I have presumed they are all volunteer?
I am grateful for the two reading lists.
I have started one of the audio books already — one I’ve been telling myself I’d read forever.
But I’ll ask — considering how brutal and distorted much of what has been associated with this work became, how do people remain idealistic and hopeful about it?
If you take a gander at my last few posts, you’ll discover I’ve just been sharing a 3 second image of a swastika being blown upanywhere I can manage it. We all know where Trump is headed… same exact thing that happened to Hitler. I say we get to the end of this the sooner the better. I don’t know how to stay positive.
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2nd amendment
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Let’s see where it’s all heading I guess.
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I dunno, do something. Anything really. You have a handful of the richest people on earth trying to turn your country into a tech monarchy that wants to have the ability to put its people in vr prisons or kill then outright if it becomes uneconomic to keep them alive. Your entire people should be in a fight or flight response. Literally attacking the government and trying to kill the billionaires. It's that bad of a situation for you. This is the worst possible timeline. In 10 years I don't think the us will be a democracy. I think it will be a dictatorship kept in power by some type of artificial intelligence run surveillance system. The average man will have less and less economic importance to the oligarchy meaning less and less power to stand up to them until eventually you have to value to them at all at which time they start killing you. This is a nightmare timeline you are in.
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This just advocating for adventurism. Lenin said, in Adventurism that,
“*Now take the other groups which pose as “trends”. We shall enumerate them: 1) the Vperyod group plus Alexinsky; 2) ditto plus Bogdanov; 3) ditto plus Voinov; 4) the Plekhanovites; 5) the “pro-Party Bolsheviks” (actually conciliators: Mark Sommer and his crowd); 6) the Trotskyists (i. e., Trotsky even minus Semkovsky); 7) the “Caucasians” (i. e., An minus the Caucasus).
We have enumerated the groups mentioned in the press. In Russia and abroad they have stated that they want to be separate “trends” and groups. We have tried to list all the Russian groups, omitting the non-Russian. All these groups, without exception, represent sheer adventurism.
“Why? Where is the proof?” the reader will ask. Proof is provided by the history of the last decade (1904–14), which is most eventful and significant. During these ten years members of these groups have displayed the most helpless, most pitiful, most ludicrous vacillation on serious questions of tactics and organisation, and have shown their utter inability to create trends with roots among the masses.*”
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/09.htm)
Adventurism is just a non-Marxist and non-revolutionary response to reactionary politics. Advocating for it, and following through on it are useless. Assassinating Franz Ferdinand didn’t achieve the Black Hands goals’ and nor will it achieve any other groups’.
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The current moment is like the recent wildfires. All this trash built up over the years and it sort of has to have its time to burn out. Everything just has to find a way to survive it until it runs out of fuel. When the pendulum swings back the other direction, just be ready to rebuild from the natural disaster.
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Sorry. But this is total crap. A dictatorship won't burn out by itself. People need to fight for freedom and democracy over and over again. It is not for granted!
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The current moment is like the recent wildfires. All this trash built up over the years and it sort of has to have its time to burn out. Everything just has to find a way to survive it until it runs out of fuel. When the pendulum swings back the other direction, just be ready to rebuild from the natural disaster.
Author unknown, February 1933
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It’s so dense and stupid to generalise everybody. It’s not like the US has more than 2 parties to vote on and the country is already having an us vs then mentality which cause people of the “other side” to disprove of anything the “other side” does. Does comprise even exist in US dictionaries?
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"I don't have a solution to the problem, I'm just here to reject the moral imperfections in yours."
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Leftists do have solutions, though. Usually Leftists are revolutionary, the idea that they don't have a solution just because they don't support voting as a legitimate tactic is flawed.
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Refusing to help stop MAGA from taking power is flawed.
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As though voting is a solution at all
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And what exactly are leftists doing that is so effective?
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There are no leftists in America because of the Nazi consolidation of power in the red scare and this is what you get.
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What a disingenuous question. Do the leftists have the resources, reach, recognition, institutional support and seer amount of fucking money that liberals do?
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You're absolutely right, it is clear that telling you to shut the fuck up has had no positive effect
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Why is it a problem for "leftists" to solve?
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It's a problem for everyone to solve
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They can't do that. The simple rule of LAW IN THIS COUNTRY should be enough to stop them. All we have to do is remove them from power. Where is the Democrats gathering part of our military and law enforcement to oust these people from our government? This is all it takes. Our country has very clear, simple laws that prohibit exactly what is going on right the fuck now from happening, and it's still happening. Why? Because they're afraid they'll be seen as the same as the people from 6 January? That it will give these asshats some sort of ammunition against actual justice? Fuck them. Fuck them, throw them out, lock them up, and re-educate the people that this shit isn't going to be tolerated. We can remove them forcefully because they did something wrong, they couldn't remove anyone because we didn't.
It's that goddamn simple. How is it not that goddamn simple? Fucking do something. Fucking throw these fuckers out. Now. Not next election cycle, not whenever a bunch of people want to finally get off their ass and violently rebel, fucking right now.
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In your country your political parties operate as one and the politics are managed by the oligarchy. Everything is occurring exactly as your business dictatorship wants.
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As Lenin said in State and Revolution, “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!“
This is no different and only shows the media’s effective advertising that people think otherwise.
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Which is why I want to drive the ones who still have a duty to this country's ideals to act. There ARE those who are like that, you know. And have the rule of law of this country on their side. So let's go.
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Lenin said, “Only simpletons put faith in words.” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/09.htm) This is the root of the discussion when it comes to “lawfulness”.
Your ideas of the violently rebelling “right now” doesn’t quite make sense. In the US, the white “proletariat” is still benefiting for the capital extraction occurring in the global south as Sakai has explained. This, as long as it is happening, will impair the development of class consciousness. A rebellion without class consciousness will not be substantive rebellion. It would either be pointless or adventurist.
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...what?
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So what are you doing? Just curious.
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Why are you defending the people with power to do something by attacking people who don't have a fraction of that power and opportunity?
Like seriously. Why are you defending them.
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I'm not attacking anyone and I'm not defending anyone. I'm asking what the fuck people who say I'm not doing enough are doing. I'm doing what I can to help with the symptoms of this and protect the vulnerable people I know of, but I don't think there's much I can do about the actual ongoing coup but goddamn it I'll try. A lot of my good friends are being hurt by this situation already and I can't do all that much about it myself. I see a lot of posts complaining that nobody is doing anything about the situation coming from people who aren't doing anything about the situation and asking me to do more than I am about the situation. I want the people who complain to be putting in some legwork or else not bemoaning that nobody else is.
"Nobody is showing up to protests. Fucking liberals who think voting was enough." Says the fella who has never been to a protest.
"Won't somebody do something?" Begs the person who has never called their reps.
Etc.. Insert your own example here.
All I'm saying is that there's a lot of complaining where there could be calls to action by people who aren't doing much themselves. It hurts to have someone ask "yeah but what are you doing?" When people want to vent but I think maybe people should have that question at top of mind even if it makes venting less effective.
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I have been calling my representatives and senators every week thanks to reminders I set up using an app I found called 5 Calls. I would recommend that everyone do the same. Become a thorn in the side of every single Democrat and Republican that represents you. Make them remember who they work for.
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Telling people not to vote apparently
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It's really the keyboard activists. You would be surprised.
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Just try to tell them the parties are the same. I've been pilloried three times, they cut my balls off, and I'm set to be hung tomorrow at dusk.
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The issue isn't that the parties are the same. It is that neither should be in power. And you're all too fucking brainwashed to realize the only way out of this mess without violent revolution is a third party gaining power. And even with, probably.
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Amen brothersister
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3rd party can't really gain power with first past the post. We have to implement ranked choice or approval voting before meaningful 3rd party choices are viable.
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Saying a simplistic, basic-ass statement such like "both parties are the same" is just annoying and not correct
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Ok, but no one here said that. Thats a strawman liberals put up to avoid a few topics.
Those topics you'd rather not talk about:
Is all of gaza destroyed right now or not? Were tens of thousands of innocent civilians massacred there with our help on Bidens watch?
If you admit the above then he's a war criminal isnt he.
Bidens response to the defund and reallocate movement for justice was to ignore the plees and increase police funding, correct?
Did abortion go down on Bidens watch? Did his previous work as head of the senate judiciary committee contribute to that?
Didnt Biden carry through with his promise to the rich donors that "nothing would fundamentally change"?
Biden and Harris were not for gun control were they. Are guns just not a problem anymore in our schools? School shootings stopped?
Did the Dems talk about the issues important to the poor and middle class? They sure needed their votes.
Did Biden have the polling numbers to win at any time in the 2 years leading up to the election? And did Harris do anything to differentiate herself from what was clearly a candidate who was about to lose in a big way?
Did Biden/Harris even bother to craft and talk about a Dem party platform? All we heard was "I'm not trump".
Do you think if Harris had differentiated herself from Biden, talked about the poor and working class's struggles and afirmed that the gaza war had to change, she would have still lost? I dont think so. But she chose not to do those things right.
And now Biden/Harris lost but its everyone elses "fault"? come on man. Stop lying to yourself and holding a pointless grudge and leveling these "both sides are the same" playground name calling distractions from these truths. Biden and Harris made the choices that led to the loss. They are not victim here, they are the perpetrators. We all got effed by their incomptence and hubris. Every demographic of voter was angry at Biden/Harris. Do you deny that?
You shouldnt be blaming the desperate voters who have been ignored and abused by their party, while excluding Biden/Harris from any blame. Some of you lot keep saying he's one of the best presidents ever-- when all of the above topics argue pretty strongly otherwise, if you;d just acknowledge that the topics even exist.
But you wont. You wont reply, you'll downvote, and thats the end of it for you.
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You're ignorant or lazy if you cannot see the difference- even if it is a nuance . . .they are different. For easy reference just check the Internet for voting disparity between the parties. Give me your top 5 most important values and then see which party aligns with them. Most likely you will not be able to say - they are both the same when voting for or against the 5 values I hold in highest regard.
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My most important values are:
- no genocide, like under a whole Dem can we do that first?
- basic income for everyone regardless of status
- universal healthcare for anyone who ever should need it
- the legal system shouldnt discriminate based on who a person is
- you can fite me to to death on this, Trump is a shit piece and if i lived in Idaho I would have voted Harris but ya know what "oops" with regard to the electoral college I guess you are on the same team as me in Cali.
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165 comments