The Republicans Should've Faced Way More Criticism During The 2024 Presidential Campaign

This thread is an amazing honeypot for any instance admins looking for a well organized list of accounts to ban.
- I never expected this thread to go so viral.

Seriously blaming the tankies again? How bourgeoisie of you lol
If you want to blame something, blame the media. Both news and social media have completely sold out for profit. You CANNOT have a democracy if vast parts of your population is being misinformed. And this started with talk radio in rural areas many decades ago. And the democrats did nothing - because they are not left. Thanks for all the empty "Hope and Change" Obama!
So yeah, blame socialists all you want but their critique was valid.
You need a revolution or reformation. A massive change in who owns the means of communication to have a free press again that is not purely profit driven. Can you even imagine that? Is that something you would say? No. You'd rather blame and denigrate socialists and call them tankies. Look at the mass protests, it seems the libs aren't even calling for Trump to step down and demand new election lol. People would rather bow to unjust laws and simplistic principles than believe in democracy. Of course they are all being stage managed.
But this is just pathetic.
- Most of the mainstream media is owned by a few rich fucks, corporations who strive to make money. Corporations love fascism because that gives them more power and less regulations, so ofc they do everything in their power to enable fascism.
  The biggest lie I was told in school was that the market is thriving in competition, it doesn't. Corporations always want monopolies, so competitors are usurped and driven out by any means necessary.
- I'll say what I already said during the Brexit campaign - if a politician is caught on provably lying to the public, they should be fined, put in prison and prevented from making ANY public appearances or taking public offices for life.

Republicans are always evil. They don't do anything good. Ever. They're a known quantity. That's what we expect of them.
We expect the Dems to be better. And they get the smoke when they fail at that. Cutting Corp taxes. Border crackdowns. Genocide. Those are things that should exclusively be the pervue of Republicans. If dems run to the right they will always lose because the right was so triggered by Obama that policy doesn't matter to them whatsoever. It's purely teamsport for them. You can't appeal to them in any way. They see a (D) and vote against that person. Dems would never lose another election if they went only as far left as Bernie Sanders. We would have a perpetually booming economy and a high standard of living. But even that is far too far for the DNC Services Corp. So we get a gameshow host and a car salesman destroying everything.
- Republicans are always evil
  "Conservatives", not Republicans. Around 100 years ago the style of both parties in the US was almost exactly reversed.
- Dems would never lose another election if they went only as far left as Bernie Sanders
  lol
  About half of America thought Kamala was too far left. The idea that Americans are secretly socialists just waiting for a real leftist candidate and are willing to tolerate progressively more fascistic politicians in the mean time is simply ridiculous and without any basis in reality.

Seems to be a lot of talk here about authoritarianism.
Is demanding responsible speech over free speech absolutism "tankie"? ....because the US is demonstrating exactly what happens when you give free speech to fascists and don't monitor their "religion".
- Never forget you're speaking to brainwashed ppl that thinks China and Russia are evil and they are good.
  I had the most histeric discussion with people asking to to cite one leftist policy in Russia like this the fckin Mordor and they do not provide healthcare for their citizen but instead send them to the mine or whatever
  
  why do you defend Russia? it isn't leftist. with China, we could argue about Dengism and whether CCP is actually still Communist, but United Russia is explicitly right-wing. oligarchs and mafias control the country. their foreign policy is imperialist. Dugin called for the annexation of many countries, not just Ukraine. Prigozhin had a Nazi tattoo iirc. the Eastern Orthodox Church is the de facto state religion. Putin is explicitly socially conservative. he lets Chechnia operate a literal concentration camp for LGBT people. ethnic minorities were the first into his meat grinder as the war commenced.
  you really think Marx would think Putin is based?
  
  Are you high, buddy? Or lost?
  China and russia absolutely and provably ARE evil.

I dont know what you would expect anyone to say. Is there some surprise piece of wisdom about GOP politics that literally everyone in the country doesnt already know?

Republicans have no enemies on the right. Democrats have no friends on the left
- Extremely well said. It's pathetic to see the vicious infighting between far left and left to center, though both of them hate MAGA republicans.

Republicans ran on a purely populist agenda, that resonated with many non voters. If Dems had an ounce of sense, instead of digging their heel on 'vote losing' points, they would have acknowledged the merit of those populist rhetoric to defang republicans.
- Yeah it's crazy to me how quickly they dropped price controls as a talking point as soon as the corporate media was against it. That could have easily been their populist position to counter Trump's claims that getting rid of illegal immigrants would drive prices down.

Republicans are going to republican. Democrats at least have the pretense of representing their constituents interests.
It's like if an oil tanker that takes ten miles to stop was bearing down on a small passenger ferry. Sure it might be the fault of the tanker's crew but they can't stop and they won't stop. The democrats driving the ferry have the capacity to easily save everyone on board and simply refuse to do so. That's why people shout at them.

Anyone that uses the term "Tankie" unironically to refer to people to the left of them and the Democratic party are not a part of the left.
It's always helpful to identify the liberals that are getting "scratched" though.
- It's the good old Red Scare but using the word "tankie" instead of "commie" and the people doing it now are just as devoid of ethics and hard right as the Macarthists were.
  
  No, it's not. Tankies are their own thing, they're authoritarian communists. The fact you think they're regular communists has you spreading misinformation sympathetic to their cause.
  I'm as socialist as they come and I will forever say fuck tankies.
- Tankie is when they correlate the industrial growth of USSR as success when every other nation transitioning into a bourgeoise republic had similar growth
  Tankie is when they pick and choose traits of Stalin and refuse the facts of his authoritarianism
  Tankie is when they ignore the lack of progress in communism in USSR after Lenin died
  Tankie is when they make excuses for the failures of USSR by pining them all in the west
  
  industrial growth of USSR as success when every other nation transitioning into a bourgeoise republic had similar growth
  The differences being that the USSR uplifted everyone equally and not just a capitalist few; and that it developed without abusing imperialism and unequal exchange against the global south (and actually contributed the most to emancipatory movements and was key in the decolonisation of the 20th century and as a reference for worker movements in the west to push for further rights).
  Tankie is when they pick and choose traits of Stalin and refuse the facts of his authoritarianism
  Tankie is when they reject the big-man understanding of history and instead analyze the material and historical conditions of a particular era.
  Tankie is when they ignore the lack of progress in communism in USSR after Lenin died
  Tankie is when they point to the doubling of life expectancy in the Soviet Union and the only case of industrialisation of a country in history together with China that happened since the 20th century, excluding subsidised US colonies such as South Korea or Japan.
  Tankie is when they make excuses for the failures of USSR by pining them all in the west
  Tankie is when you understand that an imperfect but emancipatory movement which surmounted extreme odds, is desirable over the continuation of imperialism
  
  Sorry to hear you got scratched
- What if I use the term 'tankie' unironically to refer to people to the right of me?
  
  Probably some light mockery.
- It's a self report on the level of people who use dog whistles so loud they are foghorns. Just a word or two in the right context and you know you can ignore everything else you've read by them in the last 30 seconds.
- Yeah no, this isn't a "everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi" situation. I know what you're trying to do here.
- Tankies aren't to the left of anyone. They're a parody of the left that ultimately believe in right-wing authoritarianism in a slightly different hat. Leftist authoritarian is an oxymoron.
  
  Leftist authoritarian is an oxymoron
  It is an oxymoron because tankies aren't authoritarian. Tankies believe in collectivisation of the means of production, democracy in the government and in the workplace, maximal freedom speech and of arts, and welfare for everyone.
  What tankies don't believe in, is in wannabe-good leftism that lets itself be trampled by fascism, e.g. Allende in Chile or the Spanish Second Republic. Tankies believe in actually-existing socialism, which manages to fight imperialism, e.g. defeat of Tsarism in the Russian Empire and the liberation of Europe from Nazism, or the liberation of Cuban slaves from western oligarchs, despite some caveats and shortcomings that are overstated and heavily propagandized by State Department propaganda that libs swallow whole.

If centrists wanted criticism of republicans, they could have done that more.
But then they might not have got the endorsement of dick cheney. establishment democrats punched left and embraced the right.
- Its like how they never go after the war crimes of the last guy, it would open themselves to be prosecuted for their own war crimes.
  Why call out the bad things Trump does when you can court the mythical unicorn of "the disillusioned Republican" who is somehow not a total Fox News-brainwashed racist dipshit. Calling him and his supporters would would hurt a possible ex-Trump voter. All 4 of them.

Really..? I feel like all the tankie (tanky?) discourse I've personally seen has only had vile hatred to say about trump. (namely hexbear)
- i didnt know about Lemmy but i found hexbear first, and most of the stuff there was about how much they hate liberals and love Stalin. Several domains about dunking on liberals. For every emote like frothingfash theres twenty about liberal figures they hate as well as one or two about their favorite communist-backed mass killing.
  i am in no way a fan of mainstream liberal politics or big D Democrats. much of the political media I consume is deeply critical of Democrats and their strategies, but is also capable of doing the same to conservatives and the GOP. Lemmy ml and hexbear don't even appear to attempt to pretend about fighting conservative politics outside of vaguely actionable physical threats, meanwhile the 2024 presidential election was won by threadbare percentage points due to barely anyone actually voting. i understand not wanting to vote for Democrats considering their bad policies and genocide supporting, but there is such a thing as harm reduction, and now all the people who pushed people to not vote for Democrats are getting shipped off to blacksites by the Republicans. Can I say for certain that tankies and the like helped get Trump elected, either by accident or on purpose? No. But you certainly didn't help him NOT win!
  
  Several domains about dunking on liberals.
  When communists talk about liberals, they're talking about anyone who is pro-capitalism.
  you certainly didn’t help him NOT win!
  What did you do to get the democrats to stop the bad policies and genocide that caused them to lose?
  Or did you simply try to convince people that they should shut up about these things because Trump would be worse and you understood that the democrats changing course even if they knew they were on a losing trajectory was never in the cards?
  
  Liberalism has a different meaning than how it is used in American politics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Current US: a neoliberal capitalist nightmare being ruined by CEOs
Your most intelligent American: This is definitely the socialists' fault
- CEOs, openly supporting Trump to win: "This is good for business, he'll make us richer."
  Liberals: "This is the fault of like 100 people online who like socialism on the internet, where 1% of Americans are even aware of the place."
  
  The brain activity of average American is a flat line at this point

I'm punching to the right, it's not my fault the Dems are always standing there 🤷

yeah the like 10 tankies in the US really threw that election...? The takes from people on lemmy are so fucking strange.
- +1
  I love Lemmy, but this is like the most "politically unrepresentative of IRL" space I’ve been in, and I’m a freaking recluse and sympathetic to its leanings. I think it’s even more extreme than Voat was (which was the opposite extreme since it was a thedonald ban refuge).

The difference is we don't expect anything good from Republicans. We expect libs to at least try but they'd rather punch left than effectively govern.
- I'm sure appealing to the non-existant moderate republicans will work again.
- goes both ways i suppose.
  
  What do you mean by that? What goes both ways? If you're suggesting that Republicans will attack other Republicans, that's not what we saw in the presidential race. Maybe if we rewind to 1992, why not.

Question: If you are in a country outside the US; And you unironically love china you see them as a viable alternative to America , as a market and for their technological achievements; are you considered by Americans to be a Tankie? I've always had the idea that "Tankie" equals "traitor" in the eyes of Americans.
- Yes, absolutely, that would 100% make you a "tankie"
  
  Well I come to Lemmie to find out I am 100% A Tankie! How scary!
- AFAIK, originally "tankie" comes from being on chinas side of the Tianamen Square Massacre. So on the side of the tanks. It doesn't have directly to do with U.S.
  So if someone thinks that China did good there, they are likely a tankie.
  Update: I looked it up and it seems I was wrong, it was about arguing in favor of using tanks in the Hungarian Revolution. See more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
  According to Christina Petterson, "Politically speaking, tankies regard past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China, etc."
  So you also have to consider yourself a supporter of what you understand "Comminism" means, to be one.
  
  Wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
  But actually: JFK Files Reveal CIA Role in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising
  The Hungarian Freedom Fighters were [Central Intelligence] Agency sponsored.
  See also:
  Operation Gladio
  Operation Condor
  The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discreetly Internationalized It
  The blueprint of regime change operations How regime change happens in the 21st century with your consent
  Foucault, Anti-Communism & the Global Theory Industry: A Reply to Critics
  
  And, incidentally, the tanks were leaving Tiananmen Square, not entering, “Tank Man” left the scene unharmed with some other civilians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk
  See Tank Man at the bottom-left.
  
  Why is the post up upvoted lol, it's objectively incorrect.
  
  this is incorrect, the origin of the term "tankie" comes from the UK in the 50s, used to refer to hard-line communists. The term references the USSR sending the military to Hungary in 1956 in response to the Hungarian Revolution.
  
  So for example, If I am in the social democrat party of my country or at least support them. And if the social democrat party of my country partly supports China, views them as allies or adopt economic policies of China does that mean we are all Tankies? This speaking of real economic policies treaties and not just abstract ideology.

I thought Democrats were better than Republicans because Democrats will at least listen. Why would I waste my time criticizing the side that doesn't listen.
- Oh they listen, to their donors, not the people who vote for them.

Tankies would unironically promote known Russian asset Jill Stein in actual left communities and then turn around and unironically talk about electing Trump in Hexbear and Lemmygrad, because he's friendlier with Xi Jinping.
I hate Tankies.
- wtf where is this Elizabeth Warren slander coming from?
  
  My bad I had her confused with Jil Stein for a moment. It's been a long day.
- Known Russian asset.
  You are part of the problem.
  You swallow any pill the democrats want to shove down your throat.
  What the cartoon should say in frame one is
  "Liberal democrats and republicans telling the left that the demands for social and financial justice is going to cost too much money."
  2nd frame
  "The entirety of congress signing off another billions dollar weapons package to continue the genocide against people living in tents while Americans are dying homeleww on the streets."
  
  Exhibit A

Bot farmers don't get paid to criticize republicans.
- Lemmy admins have the tools to identify bot farms.
  Show me a single Lemmy admin who claims that they exist, outside of the occasional rash of script kiddie spammers?
  The only people who make these conspiratorial claims are those without evidence.
  
  👨‍🌾

6 months in and Liberals are still trying to blame their election loss on the left.
- Ja, this meme is tripe. Tankies are the Lemmy bogeyman, used the same as 'woke' by the right.
- Ninety million people didn’t vote. Three million voted third party.
  What was the difference Trump won by again?
  
  The arrogance of assuming that anyone who didn't vote or who voted third party, just automatically owe your party their vote.
  The entrenched two-party system has done more to cripple democracy in America than any other factor, and yet it's so pervasive that y'all whip each other into line trying to shame anyone who tries to break free of it.
- What are you talking about? It only mentions democrats, republicans, and tankies.
  
  Tankie is what centrist liberals call everyone to the left of them

Unsurprisingly the tankies are silent on Orban refusing to follow international law by not having Netanyahu arrested for committing genocide.
- Yeah man everyone is totally silent on Israel’s complete disregard for international law and their war crimes, as well as the blatant disregard of justice from the rest of the world. Absolutely no one on the “tankie left” has been talking about that for almost 2 years.
- I hadn't heard about it. Is anyone talking about it on here? Was there a big post I missed?
  That is indeed bad, but I'm still just a little bit more concerned with my own country giving them a bunch of weapons than with a small country half the world away where I have no input on what they do not cleaning up our mess. Would you like me to write him a strongly worded letter or something?

As always, point me towards someone supporting Trump on here and I promise I'll give them an earful. There just aren't a lot of them on here. If I spend less time arguing against voting for Trump it's for the same reason I don't spend much time on here arguing against puppy murdering - because most people already agree that murdering puppies/voting for Trump is bad.
Sorry for disrupting the circlejerk, I guess? Like yeah I guess we could spend all our time denouncing puppy murderers and complementing each other over being enlightened enough to recognize puppy murder as bad, but I'd really rather not.
- I think that's kind of the point. In all my time on .ml, I saw daily posts and comments that were anti-Harris/Biden (and for very good reason). I never saw one that was explicitly anti-Trump. I assumed because he is very pro-Putin.
  So, to make your analogy more accurate, it's like everyone focusing on puppy-murder #1 and ignoring puppy, cat and goldfish murderer #2 because he also likes my sports team.
  Like, it's super easy... Fuck Biden because he allowed Palestinian genocide, but fuck Trump too because he has advocated for worse. I rarely, if ever, saw the latter on .ml.
  Unless things have gotten better for the Palestinians since he took office. It doesn't seem to be the case, but I sincerely hope so.
  
  I assumed because he is very pro-Putin.
  What a stupid fucking assumption.
  
  I never saw one that was explicitly anti-Trump.
  How many posts and comments did you see that were explicitly anti-puppy murder? I think you've missed the point of the analogy.
  I assumed because he is very pro-Putin.
  What? No, absolutely not. Nobody on .ml is pro-Trump, and anyone who was would be attacked and banned in short order.
  This is just liberal brainrot where you ignore everything we actually say and assign us made up stances based on your own preconceptions.
- Feel free to visit the new conservative comms and have at it.
  
  Which one? Do you mean the one that's exclusively anti-conservative posts?

"Tankies" made no measurable difference in the 2024 election. There's next to none of them in the USA. Go ahead: ask real people in your offline life what a tankie is, and see if even one single person has even heard that word.
Unless, of course, you're just applying that word to anyone whos not a Republican that's criticizing the dems. Then I suppose you'll find "tankies" everywhere.
It feels like a word that's just being used to divide the left.
- It’s the lib version of “woke”; it’s not even used for its original meaning anymore
  “All the tankie college kids who love Hamas lost Kamala the election” ok Kristen I’m sure they’re tankies. Please just finish watching your DVR of the Today show
  
  Thank you for clarifying, because I was confused. Like... 'Are the Tankies in the room with us now, OP?'
  What you're saying sounds correct, because I don't know anyone to the left of Harris who didn't recognize that Trump was worse. While I think that I might have one friend who refused to vote for her in a swing state, I think that the BlueAnon folks really misunderstood the actual consequences of losing support on the left.
  It wasn't really, imo, that those folks wouldn't show up. The problem was that I think a lot of folks never realized how much young blue-haired leftists dragged Biden across the finish line in 2020 by knocking on doors and convincing their uncles to vote Dem. I said throughout the election that losing those people wasn't really a risk of losing their votes, it was a risk of losing the core enthusiasm and turnout organizing that Democrats had largely outsourced to Bernie Sanders' base. And I could be wrong, but all that I've seen seems to affirm that this is exactly what happened.
  If someone has evidence otherwise, though. please let me know.
- Tankies aren't left, the word means exactly what it has always meant: supporters of Russian and Chinese Dictatorships. People who would side with the Tanks in their respective massacres of civilians.
  I really wish we lived in a world where psyops and social media made no difference in elections.
  
  If it's "always meant supporting Russia" but the term was coined when Russia was run by the communist party and part of the USSR? Do you not think the communist that supported Russia "the Tankies" would be against the capitalist Oligarchy that Russia currently is?
  You're just using a term to mean what you want it to. Definitely not what it's "always meant".
- There are definitely tactics being used to divide the left and the word tankie is not one of them. Purity politics is the death of left wing politics. The fact that people moved out of the way of blocking a legitimate facist government because Harris wasn't quiiite right is utter insanity
  
  Purity politics is the death of left wing politics.
  Having standards isn't "purity politics". Having no standards got us here.
  
  There are definitely tactics being used to divide the left and the word tankie is not one of them. Purity politics is the death of left wing politics.
  Why, then, are we running around calling people tankies when that is an ill-defined word that tends to change from person to person? I've seen it applied to everyone from left anarchists to starry-eyed idealists who call themselves communists, to actual Stalin-Did-Nothing-Wrong types (this last group deserves criticism, all twelve of them).
  The fact that people moved out of the way of blocking a legitimate facist government because Harris wasn’t quiiite right is utter insanity
  Focusing on an incredibly online, vocal minority is insanity, especially when your previous statement is about purity politics.
  Shouldn't you question why Harris and the democratic establishment couldn't beat actual fascism? Could it be that Trump used real issues in our political environment for his messaging? He lies constantly about why the cost of living is going up, why good jobs aren't here anymore, etc, but Harris ran on a platform of "Vote for me, nothing will fundamentally change" and voters didn't find that attractive for some reason.
  Even when voices within the party point out problems they are shouted down. Sure, Bernie is an independant, but he's been voting with the Dems the entire time, and they even pretended to let him run for nomination for president.
  The democratic party has been shifting right for decades, and the only messaging they have to offer is that approved by their donors. It's bullshit and it repels people.

I’m just punching right. Tell the Dems to stop standing there.
And it was the Dems who sued the socialist candidate off of the ballot in my state. Not the GOP. They occupy leftist space to prevent leftward movement, while Dems ally with the GOP to push through fascism.
- Yep, generalizations work across the board. /s
  Bernie and AOC are democrats. The Republicans and Democrats, although I could understand arguments against this, are humans. They can be greedy, shitty, liars, awesome, for the people and and for the oligarchs.
  I'm always a little suspect when someone in the face of the r's having convicted rapists, some of them pedos, on their platform, taking away constitutional rights, and tanking the stock market, say the left is too right. Are they? Some, but let's focus on putting out the fire, not the dumpsters paint job.
  
  I don't really know what to do with this comment.
  I don't know who you think the left is, or what actions you associate with putting out the fire.
  I believe that the Democratic party leadership is extremely hostile to socialist policies, despite their enormous populist electoral power. Universal healthcare is good policy and good politics. So are jobs guarantees and basic minimum incomes and paid sick leave and free college. I have found that most Democrats who have the power to decide whether they would like voters to associate them with these policies or would like to avoid being associated with them choose the later.
  I'll vote for the lesser of two evils, because I'm a highly educated supervoter news junkie. But ultimately what costs Democrats their power was not the criticism and anger I and people like me posted online: it was ignoring that criticism when we were warning them that they were running unpopular candidates on unpopular platforms.
  As far as I'm aware, conversations like this one are not hindering the good guys. What's hindering the good guys is their choices and lack of integrity. The reason people like Chuck Schumer can't stop Trump is not because I point out that he's incapable of stopping Trump. It's the other way around. I point that out because despite all efforts on the part of people like me, Chuck Schumer is unable to decide to stop Trump. That's an internal problem and most critics of Democrats -- which now includes most Democratic voters -- are just spectators pointing to this problem.
  
  Technically, no, Bernie is an independent who caucuses with dems and runs on their presidential primary ticket. But Bernie supports the dems and I'm with Bernie Sanders on like 95% of policy.
  
  Bernie & AOC are center right at best. They’re both still feverishly advocating for sending more arms to extremists in Europe and the Middle East.
  I’m not sure you’ve even seen the left, based on this comment.

It pisses me off to no end when people conflate legitimate criticism of Democrats with tankie rhetoric. The Dems are complacent, listless, corrupt, and lazy. They refuse to stand up to the Republicans until it's too late or doesn't matter.
The people want progressive politics: universal healthcare, living wage, affordable housing, education, and food. We want a sustainable future and an end to corporate greed.
The donor class, superpacs, and other sources of dark money in politics are what keep nearly everyone corrupt. Its addictive.
- That's cause "tankie" is right wing propaganda for exactly that reason. It blunts progressive discourse dead in its tracks.
  
  What's worse is that sometimes I can't tell if it's Right Wing trolls or truly insane hard leftists.
  I consider myself hard left progressive, but I have caveats like anyone. Tankies are so cartoonish, I don't know how to react.
- It pisses me off to no end when people conflate legitimate criticism of Democrats with tankie rhetoric.
  Last election season went something like this:
  Progressives: "Please stop sending weapons to a genocidal maniac who is using them to murder children in order to grab land. And stop actively protecting said genocidal maniac from consequences in the international community."
  Establisment: "STFU tankie!"
  
  Completely wrong, Tankies weren't just promoting primarying Biden, a pretty obvious lost cause from the start given his incumbent status, they were promoting voting against Biden in the generals. That is NOT advocacy against genocide in Gaza. Trump is a single-state supporter.
  
  Maybe if progressives in partisan primary states registered as Democrats and voted in the primaries, they wouldn’t be complaining about all the centrists in office.🤔
- and yet they are head and shoulders above the trump cult
  anyone that can't see that or chooses to campaign and vote against the democrats is so corrupted by socialist fundamentalism that they enabled fascism
  
  So when they agree to vote for Trump's demands, they're fundamentally better? Gutting Section 230 is the better choice because Trump said it, but they voted for it? Appointing Trump's batshit cabinet picks? Bombs are inherently less deadly if a D signed off on it instead of a R?
  Is my governor, Newsom of California, inherently better for being a democrat as he invites Republicans like actual open nazi and helper of Trump's rise to power, Steven Bannon? Is he inherently better when he agrees with Charlie Kirk that trans people don't have a place in society? Giving them not just a soap box, but a microphone and a speaker to the masses, and agreeing with them?
  This is better? Agreeing to their demands and pretending you're not helping their fascism?
- How will you get any of that without tanks?
  
  Though some temporary concessions might be had through labor militancy.
  
  Are you trying to say we can't have universal healthcare without leftist authoritarianism or do you not know what a "tankie" is?
  
  Have you said tanks once?

The thing is that they don't govern. The MAGA crowd does nothing. There's no constructive legislation. Everything proposed is to remove some imaginary barrier that keeps society from running well, but they make things worse. Even with good legislation, some people are wronged, and get left behind. Conservatives use the bad stories to justify doing nothing good.
The whole narrative with firing "unelected government bureaucrats" who are ruining our lives is BS from the start. The "unelected government bureaucrats" are simply employees doing the bidding of our elected officials. Trump has every right to pursue an agenda of shutting down institutions and culling the herd of government employees - he won the election. The correct way is through Congressional legislation. The problem is, that he and Musk/Doge DO NOT have the support of the people. The MAGATS know the legislation would never pass with the approval of the people, through their elected representatives - so they go about doing things illegally.

What a stupid post. Yeah it's progressives' fault mango Mussolini is POTUS /s. This is a talking point manufactured by MAGA handlers that some broadly Dem-supporting people choose to broadcast, now outside the US. This is a type of brainrot that undermines critical thinking, divides the left, and helps elect the right. Canada deserves better
- Tankie are leftists, they are not progressives.
  
  And progressives are not leftists, they are centrist liberals. Sanders is never going to call abolishing private ownership of the means of production.
  
  Left is Progress, Right is Conservation of old ways (Conservative)
  Tankies are not Leftists, even
- Progressives are separate from tankies. You can have leftist ideals without supporting authoritarians.
  You must understand that under first-past-the-post the party that receives the most criticism tends to lose. It's much easier to pressure democrats into doing the right thing then with republicans.
  
  Progressives are not leftists, they are centrist liberals. No matter how many times Sanders calls himself a socialist, he is never going to call for abolishing private ownership of the means of production.
  
  There was a lot of pressure for the most banal, milquetoast, form of representation ever in the form of having a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic national convention with a vetted speech that involved nothing that would have criticized Israel at all.
  Even that was too far.
  Either the progressives are powerful enough that you have to take them seriously and give them concessions, or they aren't and you get to ignore them.
  What you don't get to do is give them nothing and blame them when you lose. Or, I guess you do if you'd prefer to lose the general over letting a progressive win the primary.
  Huh, funny that, who knew there is a lot of levers and controls that a primary winner, even one that lost the general, gets.
  
  No one calls themselves a tankie. It is a pejorative term for a progressive. It is used to silence legitimate criticism and helps right-shift politics
  (Edit: I think your frustration is really more with the mainstream media and what news they choose to cover and amplify)
- helps elect the right
  Trump, the farthest right viable candidate, was elected because he got the most votes.
  Regardless of your feelings about her, Kamala was the most viable opposition to Trump.
  Some people were most active being anti-Kamala.
  In your opinion, did the anti-Kamala influencers hurt Trump's election, or did they help Trump's election?
  
  Kamala was the most viable opposition to Trump.
  You really believe that, huh?
  
  This is bullshit though, please actually explain how Kamala is the most viable opposition to Trump? Trump is far right, and Kamala is a centrist conservative. America is further right than you think it is, Kamala is in no way shape or form an opposition.
  Kamala is right wing. Trump is further right wing, guess who is gonna win?
  You mentioned opposition, then where is your opposition party? Trump is a by product, you just explained how you get fascism.
  
  She was objectively much better than Trump. Hopefully in the future Americans have the single transferable vote for presidential elections so they can vote for other candidates in other parties.
  
  Anti- Biden/Kamala influencers helped elect Trump. The biggest of those influencers were the mainstream media. The double standard of reporting (Biden/Harris vs Trump) is very well documented. (And the ring-kissing is approaching authoritarian levels now.) Ideas that actual grassroots would-be Democrat voters sabotaged the the Democrats' success in the election is much less certain, but perhaps a more attractive version of reality than the big-money-funded pro right-wing system we're up against. Less in-fighting amongst the left please

tell me you don't actually talk to "tankies" without telling me you don't actually talk to "tankies".
- Liberals are right wing, what did you expect ? Human levels of intellect ?

This is just a meme designed to divide people who share common interests in opposing corruption and to turn them against each other instead.
- This is a common misconception, but leftists and liberals do not share interests. Liberals are reactionaries who wish to return to a previous status quo they enjoyed, same as conservatives, but they disagree about what point to return to.
  Leftists seek to move forward and dismantle capitalism. Liberals would rather (and often do) ally with conservatives to defeat leftist goals, because they know no society enjoying the fruits of post-capitalism would wish to return to the Obama era.
- If they weren't willing to do the bare minimum to stop Trump in 2024, we're not on the same side. At best, they're useful idiots for the fascists.
  
  Lol, it's kinda funny, I might not be fully awake, but I read this as "if they [the democratic party] weren't willing to do the bar minimum [not supporting a genocide] to stop Trump... At best, they’re useful idiots for the fascists."

People criticize the dems because they hope the dems might listen.
We need a way to have our voices heard if you don't want us shouting and protesting.
To reduce infighting amongst the democrats, create official avenues for grievances and disagreements to be settled that can actually influence party platform and trajectory without tearing the movement apart.
Use the settling of our varied perspectives to bind us so that our unsettled disagreements don't tear us apart.
- Putin loves the fact that the time you chose to criticize them the hardest was during the election. Good job being a pawn for Putin.
  
  That's because they concentrated their fuckups in election season. Biden ran a mostly fine operation, then in the final year he decided the best end for his term was to genocide Gazans and Harris decided to abandon everything the Democratic party was supposed to stand for.
- To reduce infighting amongst the democrats, create official avenues for grievances and disagreements to be settled that can actually influence party platform and trajectory without tearing the movement apart.
  This is literally the purpose of the party. People who are quick to disclaim the democrats' corruption have never been to a DNC meeting. It takes more than one person, and it takes more than one meeting, but that's literally what it's there for.
  I see a lot of shitting on the Democrats (which, surprise, helps republiQans) but I don't see a lot of discussion about meeting. I don't see a lot of "join us for the ___ meeting on ____ ". Just a ton of idiot garbage like "libz! voting is a sham. they all hate Palestinians"
  
  I don't see a lot of "join us for the meeting on ".
  This is literally the purpose of the party.
  Right. It's not fulfilling its purpose. That's what we're asking for.
  
  Yeah. Imagine if all these people actually showed up to primaries.
  Or motivated non voters to show up to primaries

Im an european socialist and thought tankies were a degoratory term for authoritarian communists. I did not think the few commies in the states mattered that much in your public debate. Or am misunderstanding everything about the meme?
- Democrats are now so rabidly pro-war, they accuse anyone criticizing the defense industry or forever wars of being tankies.
  
  I remembering being called Tankie for wanting to defund the military for Israel and using the money for Ukraine and helping the poor, as the money for Israel vastly outspent the money spent for Ukraine and most social services.
- I did not think the few commies in the states mattered that much in your public debates.
  There's some influencers in the states with pretty wide reach; I know a few people irl who are vaguely leftist in ideals, especially as they all belong to one or more marginalized groups, who didn't vote because "Kamala is a cop" and "I draw the line at genocide" and "at least my hands will be clean".
  So they aren't tankies, they wouldn't vote for trump in a million years, but on the fence about voting at all and some "leftist" social media influencers pushed them into the not voting camp.
  This is just my small scale anecdote, I can't say if my limited population sample actually means anything nationally.
  (Sadly now, they are all absolutely crashing out over the state of affairs, like we didn't know this was all going to happen under Trump)
  
  Thank you for the answer.
  In our political landscape all flavours of leftists agree from democratic socialists to soviet nostalgics and anarchists agree Trump is a fascist.
  Many socialists do not vote here, because they say there is no parties representing them. But no sane person would even consider Trump an option, liberal or even moderate conservative.
  It makes the states very exotic for us and then I got confused about the tankie meme, because now I am not sure what is meant by tankie.
  Here it loosely means someone who fantasize about a benevolent soviet empire. But the old school commies here hates fascists with a passion and dream about tanks driving into Berlin after WWII, hence the name tankie.
  Back to the meme. I get confused because the people I call tankies will removed and moan about centrists and moderates until the second coming of Lenin or whatever. But they are also the first ones to try organize an anti-fascist response against the ultra conservative populists over here.
  American politics are hard to understand from the outside and it has been even harder the last couple of months.

What pisses me off is how I was called alarmist and an idiot for warning people about exactly what’s happening now. At this point I consider what’s happening to be karma and my countrymen to be swine who have trampled over the pearls I have given them.
- Not to invalidate your point but your metaphor suggests that tankies should care about capitalist status symbols. By that logic, you gave the wrong arguments.
  
  Respectfully, I don’t think you get it and I wasn’t very descriptive. I never tried arguing with the tankies because I saw how far gone they are. I tried to make everyone else realize how crazy they are and everyone but the libs underestimated them. And I mean libs, not democrats, not even the gays (except the trans). Kamala never really got it either otherwise she wouldn’t have appealed to the rich and usurped the party nomination.
- Yeah that's kinda the meaning of the idiom

Oh no dems are not perfect let's Satan/Hitler win to teach them a lesson!
Like bruh try won't learn but let's get rid of Satan/Hitler first. And ill be first to turn on them.
- Like bruh try won’t learn but let’s get rid of Satan/Hitler first. And ill be first to turn on them.
  The democrats have literally funded far-right republican candidates because they know you're operating on this logic. Trump himself was part of this "pied piper" strategy.
  
  Yup as other said they will move to lose before they go left. Think about why that is. Cause if the gop is gone they are the next target. So they do crap like everyone mentioned. They just want donations. GOP is their boogeyman.
  The strategy outlined is vote to make gop not viable. Then progressive dems will have more free to form new party. Threat of gop prevents this. Afterwards DNC replaces gop as right party. If that plan doesnt sit well with you please vote third party. Its a drop in bucket but oceans are made of drops.
- And that's the thing, the Dems losing doesn't teach them any lesson, they're not going to pivot to the left because they lost, they'll only double down on neoliberalism.
  
  DNC logic
  
  they’re not going to pivot to the left because they lost
  We see that exact thing happening now. They haven't learned a thing.
- If you're willing to sacrifice one minority group to Satan, why should members of other minority groups not believe they are next?
  
  100% agree.
  But just to put in perspective, 1 side said ill f over 1 group and other side said "ill do way more than that casual". And in fact since 2 months of getting in are actively trying to f over the world.
  Voting DNC was also temp truce against GOP. I rather be mildly disappointed than fearing for future. If DNC won ill be pushing for more progressive stuff but now we got to work to get nation back to "normal". Its like wanting to plant a tree but some jerk poured sand in the hole. Now we got to undo this crap before progress can happen.
- If so many people refused to vote for Democrats because they were too far right, then the Dems should have moved left. If Leftists are too small a group to matter and the Dems are right to court the right then stop complaining when Leftists don't vote for you. You can't have it both ways.
  
  Dems are not progressive they move to who votes. Team lefty hate the choices so opt out. Meanwhile DNC sees right voters consistently vote and move to court them. DnC is not on our side they are on their side. They said they are not the opposition party. We all know that. But they are opportunists so more left votes since they will move left. Especially if the GOP is no longer a viable option. Hence why I say turn on them after the GOP is voted to hell.
- Tankies want Hitler to win and the country to collapse. They are like evangelicals deeply wanting the apocalypse to happen to punish all the people who didn't agree with them.
  So this outcome is perfect for them because despite their whinging, leftists are deeply unpopular in the US amongst the majority of the population.
  
  Tankies want Hitler to win and the country to collapse. They are like evangelicals deeply wanting the apocalypse to happen to punish all the people who didn't agree with them.
  Your analogy is even more apt than that. A lot of them are accelerationists/anti-electoralists too, who hold the faith-based belief that making the world worse will magically cause the working class to unite and overthrow their oppressors. The belief is based upon the words of a dead authoritarian and has no historical data to suggest that it is remotely accurate. They are happy to give vulnerable populations as blood sacrifices because of their faith in it somehow resulting in a better world.
  
  I hate that i agree you are right.

Americans are children who get abused by both parents but they think Mom is better because she hits them less.
- It will vote for the lesser evil or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it is told. It puts the ballot in the fucking basket!
- You can thank the spoiler effect from first-past-the-post for that. I will take 5 lashes with incremental improvements instead of just 20 lashes.
  
  Great. See us in 8 years when you're supporting a dem who wants 8 active genocides above a repub who wants 10 active genocides. This is what your weird version of liberal "pragmatic" utilitarianism will get you.
  I'll leave you with some Mike Davis:
  In biology, one learns about a certain species of caterpillar that can only cross the threshold of metamorphosis by seeing its future butterfly. Proletarian subjectivity does not evolve by incremental steps but requires nonlinear leaps, especially by way of moral self-recognition through solidarity with the struggle of a distant people. Even when this contradicts short-term self-interest, as in the famous cases of Lancashire cotton workers’ enthusiasm for Lincoln and later for Gandhi, such efforts not only anticipate a world beyond capitalism, they concretely advance the working class’s march toward it.
  Socialism, in other words, requires nonutilitarian actors, whose ultimate motivations and values arise from structures of feeling that others would deem spiritual. Marx rightly scourged romantic humanism in the abstract, but his personal pantheon — Prometheus and Spartacus, Homer, Cervantes, and Shakespeare — affirmed a heroic vision of human possibility.
  
  It seems your real criticisms are about FPTP and the failure of mainstream media

Fuck the tankies, they are irrelevant.
- Simultaneously irrelevant and responsible for the Democrats losing the election...
  
  How so? I doubt they played a big part in the election.

Its in tankies best interest to have a kremlin agent elected and in power. Its what they're paid to do/blackmailed with cp for
- Communists are indeed famous for receiving funding for their political action
  /s just in case

Democrats in full force with the projection.
- They wouldn’t call themselves slightly corrupt in that case…
  
  "Slightly" hahaha.
  
  Is "slightly corrupt" the new euphemism for "aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide"?

They faced the same amount as usual, but media made sure to squelch any reporting on it and to amplify every voice on the right. It's not the civilians that chose to turn every single thing Kamala did into an opportunity to shit on her while ignoring everything Trump was doing.

Tankies are Republicans and fascist sympathizers
If you support authoritarians you aren't a communist
- Lmao average .ml user
- Least deranged anti-communist. (I'm just kidding, their post history is completely deranged).
- The Lemmy.ml users mock you of course.
  
  Don’t spew nonsense, don’t get mocked 🤷
  Every time Reddit steps on a rake, a fresh wave of Reddit immigrants show up, and a few of them bring Reddit shit-takes with them.
  Republicans being “very corrupt” is a given. It goes without saying. And they’re impervious to accusations. Pointing out their hypocrisies to them is pointless because they know they’re hypocrites, and they don’t care. And anyway, there are virtually no Republicans on Lemmy in the first place, so it’s not even possible to point their hypocrisies out to them.
  Liberal Reddit immigrants have only ever seen criticisms of the DNC come from the right, and some of them falsely assume that any criticism they see on Lemmy must also be coming from the right. And that is because they’ve never been on a non-corporate, predominantly leftist social media platform before. They’ve only ever been on corporate social media platforms, which are liberal spaces, and by liberal I mean in the traditional, international sense, not the confuddled American sense.
  Anyone who doesn’t want to see genuinely anti-capitalist takes can always go back to the corporate social media bubble they came from.

MAGA deflects all introspection. This ability allows them to justify all their actions.

As is tradition. In the Weimar Republic the communists were far too busy fighting the social democrats to put up any meaningful resistance against the Nazis.
- Is that why they killed them first?
- Yeah I wonder if there was a reason the communists were fighting both the nazis and 'social democrats,' and had to spend more time fighting the larger group that was openly funding the nazis.
  
  The social democrats were funding the Nazis? Suuuure, buddy.

this is one of the biggest problems on the left, granted these people generally do bitch about trump and his admin.
The problem is that they bitch about everyone, short of lenin literally rising from the dead, nobody would ever sate their hunger for bloodlust, they only wish to see the world burn so they can be angry about it.
OFC this one is a bit more specific to the commie left, but this is also generally true amongst the left as well, we're too busy bitching about stupid shit, to actually do anything productive most of the time.
- I can already hear the reeeeeeing coming from the tankie triad at this.

Its more like extremely corrupt and 1937 germany but yeah i still want extemely corruotnover the other option.

Yes, and it wouldn't have fucking mattered.