Why do we even have to have this conversation in the first place
Why do we even have to have this conversation in the first place
623 comments
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Nononono you see life is easier if you just say BoTh SiDeS and move on. Sort of. You kind of have to repeat this mantra every time politics comes up for the rest of your life. But it sure beats thinking! That shit is hard!
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And when you or your partner get sent to prison because you had a miscarriage, you can rest easy knowing that at least you didn't vote for the guy that wouldn't have sent you to prison for having a miscarriage
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Just a friendly reminder....
The first thing I'll do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BdrOrwmk78Y
Im pro choice https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzdkAbu8dY
Not my highest priority https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxiDZejZFjg
parody... No https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1z4uhxpOnN0
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"Thinking is hard" is 5/4 of the way to right wing ideology.
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Also 7/6 of the way toward a [insert label] person who thinks the whole system is so corrupt that we all may as well give up on anything but spreading doom
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I think the best course of action is to just not vote! That way, I can be blamed when the United States becomes a facist religious country!
/s
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Bro you just changed my life with this revelation!
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life is easier if you just say BoTh SiDeS and move on
When they're both drawing money from the same basket of mega-donors, they're both pushing the same draconian border policies, they're both encouraging historic levels of new carbon emissions, they're both bankrolling an endless series of nightmare wars abroad, they're both advocating lower taxes and privatization of Medicare/SS, they're both deep in bed with Wall Street, they're both "pro-life", they're both religious sycophants, they even both call one another "communists" as a derogatory slur...
FFS, man. Where's the line?
But it sure beats thinking!
The more you think about it, the worse the situation looks. Its lose-lose. The only real question is whether we get Trump terrorizing the LGBT community at home or Biden flinging bombs at brown people living abroad.
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ITT: the same right wing trolls pretending to be leftists. Don't even bother.
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Not necessarily. There's also the accelerationists that want to burn the whole thing down and believe that they'll be around to rebuild their utopia in the ashes, without any regard for those who suffer and are murdered to try to achieve their selfish vision of society. All while ignoring the facts that accelerationism has never been demonstrated to actually work and that there's a pretty decent chance that they would be targeted for murder if an authoritarian government took over, prior to societal collapse.
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accelerationists that want to burn the whole thing down and believe that they’ll be around to rebuild their utopia in the ashes
More that the system needs to be burned down because it is actively harming people. Whether Trump or Biden is in office, the DHS is responsible for the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of tens of thousands of people. The Pentagon and its affiliates are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. Our Treasury and Energy Departments continue to subsidize historic levels of pollution which cannibalize vast swaths of arable land for fictitious profits.
Burning the political system that's destroying your country isn't about utopian idealism any more than sabotaging the bulldozer headed towards your house is about building your dream home.
accelerationism has never been demonstrated to actually work
I'd point you to the US Civil War as a very classic historical counterpoint. The country had to pass through four years of hell and quite literally immolate a large portion of its interior in order to purge the accumulated sins of a century of chattel slavery.
This isn't something anyone wants to live through, but we're far better as a country for going through it than subjecting another century's worth of Americans to the inhuman conditions of plantation bondage.
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Actually significantly below average even by the low bar of the Dem leadership. He was the most conservative democrat candidate in a field that included Amy Klobuchar and two billionaires, one of whom is a former republican.
He's barely to the left of Joe Manchin and neoliberals pretend that he's the most progressive president ever 🤦
And yes, of course he's still a much better choice than the Mango Mussolini, but talk about a low fucking bar!
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He is undeniably awful on some issues, however if you look at everything that's happened under him, I think you'll be surprised how much, lets say his people, have started to pull the US out of a 40 year old Reagan shaped hole.
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Sure, he's made some good cabinet appointments, but I guarantee that, for example, the excellent Lauren McFerran who's been doing a great job at NLRB wasn't his idea.
Party loyalists like the twitter troll Neera Tanden, unprincipled opportunists like Pete Buttigieg and conservatives like Merrick Garland are much more Biden's speed.
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Can you list out some of the legislation he's helped pass and some of his executive orders?
Edit: Instead of everyone continuing with the "here's one thing I didn't like" game, here's a non-exhaustive list for you:
- Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement
- Rejoining the World Health Organization
- Revoking permits for the Keystone XL pipeline
- Ending support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen
- Withdrawing from Afghanistan
- Juneteenth National Independence Day Act
- American Rescue Plan
- Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
- CHIPS and Science Act
- Inflation Reduction Act
- Honoring our PACT Act
- Eliminating the Schedule F class of federal workers Trump created that stripped federal workers of job protections
- Restoring collective bargaining rights to federal workers
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Well there's the time he lobbied Congress to take away the rights of striking railway workers.
And then there's the fact that he circumvented normal procedures to expedite weapons sales to Israel twice in December alone.
That's just two of many examples of him being on the side of the rich and powerful and against regular people every time there's conflict between the two groups.
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Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement
Which is a non-binding agreement that the US is STILL not abiding by, so bfd.
Rejoining the World Health Organization
While continuing to downplay Covid-19, lifting the emergency status and forcing everyone back to work long before it was safe. Likely at the behest of donors.
Revoking permits for the Keystone XL pipeline
Which was a good thing more than made up for by mandating that any new renewable energy projects would be contingent on first increasing the amount of federal land leased for fossil fuel extraction many times over.
Ending support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen
Nope. The US is still very much supporting that genocide as well as the one in Gaza.
Withdrawing from Afghanistan
Which was a good idea horribly executed. Worst bungled end to a US war since Vietnam.
Juneteenth National Independence Day Act
Purely symbolic
American Rescue Plan
Insufficient but ok, I'm gonna be charitable and give him that one.
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Mostly a giant giveaway to corporations, it privatized a lot more infrastructure than it paid to fix.
CHIPS and Science Act
Another corporate giveaway.
Inflation Reduction Act
Failed to live up to its name
Honoring our PACT Act
Ok, this was a good on.
Eliminating the Schedule F class of federal workers Trump created that stripped federal workers of job protections
While taking rights away from other workers.
Restoring collective bargaining rights to federal workers
Unless they bother some of his favorite donors like the railway workers did
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He's barely to the left of Joe Manchin
You know Biden & Manchin were in the same Senate together, right? So it's in fact quite easy to look up & see that this is completely false.
He was the most conservative Democrat candidate
That's not what voters thought during the primaries. This Business Insider ranking has him middle of the pack. And this Pew poll shows him having more liberal support than Bloomberg.
If you can show me a ranking of the candidates ideologies that shows Biden as the most conservative (actual data that supports your opinion, not just feelz), go ahead. I'll wait.
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I don’t thing “above average” was a reference to how liberal he is.
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Hitler only lived to age 56. If trump had only lived to 56, he would've died in 2002, before The Apprentice had even aired. That's the better timeline for sure.
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Trump had his moment hiding in the basement while it all crumbled around him, but he missed his chance to do the world the same courtesy.
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oh shit!
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Ok great, we worked out what to do on election day. Now, what are we going to do the rest of the time? We must organize and build political structures outside the two parties, must force action to change the way the fundamental government of the United States operates so that it is a democratic body void of money, gerrymandering, the senate, and the nature of the Supreme Court. Congresspeople must represent a realistic and small number of people.
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This is the idea behind /c/inperson@slrpnk.net. The idea is, instead of using this platform to gripe at each other about "yes it is" "no it isn't" "yes it is", we can start to organize and make things better.
I propose that any time one of those awful "no one vote it definitely won't matter trust me" posts comes up, we make a thread underneath it with some links to productive positive things we're doing in addition to, obviously, voting for the guy who's not going to blow up the country and piss on the ashes. Turn the shilling into a reminder to get out and do something concrete.
Right after I get done typing this I'm going to go back to trying to figure out a way I can volunteer some time to the Biden campaign. I'm going to be honest, I feel a little corny even typing that out, but I think trying to make sure Trump doesn't win is for real the most effective thing that'll set us up for more positive change and less end-of-the-world disaster in the near future.
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This is the conversation created by the system. There were many other candidates than biden in 2020, but the party colluded to make biden the presidential nominee. Nothing stopped democrats from running a different candidate this year either except some superstition about the "incumbent advantage". Remember when that incumbent advantage worked in trump's favor in 2020...? Oh wait, it's all bullshit when your favorability rating is so damn low like it is for biden right now. It's okay, if we close our eyes and ears and scream "BUT THE OTHER GUY" loud enough, I'm sure it'll all work out. We should be asking why the machine only has two buttons, starting from a low bar and only going lower.
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Sounds like a great moment to remember this:
Biden signals to aides that he would serve only a single term
The Democratic party should act in accordance to what its members want to believe is most appropriate, not what its elites impose on them.
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… some superstition about the “incumbent advantage.”
We probably agree overall but I gotta point out: in political science, it’s definitely not considered superstition. If it were just throwing salt over the shoulder, we wouldn’t be able to consistently verify the hypothesis. It remains one of the stronger electoral advantages for outcome prediction.
That tangarine palpatine lost in spite of this advantage is more a testament to his lack of popularity among the general electorate. And btw one of the strongest known DISadvantages is having lost an election previously. The quants will have a field day with this one either way.
TL;DR Incumbency advantage is real.
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We should be asking why the machine only has two buttons, starting from a low bar and only going lower.
A result of FPTP-voting and the way campaigns are financed. What you get is exactly what the old roman aristocrats intended, when they designed this system over 2 millenia ago to maintain influence: keeping money where the power is and vice versa.
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By "the party" you mean millions of voters? Or do you also just deny their agency?
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Billions upon billions of dollars are spent on advertising and media and you think that this has no influence in a party-controlled process where the party can decide to tell others to drop and support a single candidate.
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Name two states in the primary where Biden and someone under the age of retirement were running (and not dropped out and endorced Biden) that Biden won. SC and ???
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My family fought in both world wars. My grampa was part of the North African campaign, a cousin went down on the HMS Hood after being sunk by the Bismarck during the Battle of the Denmark Strait...
Living in Canada and watching our neighbours to the south gleefully embrace the fascism we ALL fought against is both disgusting and terrifying.
How the hell did this happen?
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Disclaimer: not a historian. I only know enough to be dangerous.
I had a longer reply typed up, but then I blundered into this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_in_North_America#United_States
In the 1920s, American intellectuals paid a considerable amount of attention to Mussolini's early Fascist movement in Italy, but few of them became his supporters. ...
According to Noam Chomsky, the rise of fascism raised concerns during the interwar period, but it was largely viewed positively by the U.S. and British governments, the corporate community, and a significant portion of the elite. This was because the fascist interpretation of extreme nationalism allowed for significant economic influence in the West while also destroying the left and the hated labor groups. Hitler, like Saddam Hussein, enjoyed strong British and U.S. support until his direct action, which severely damaged British and U.S. interests.[21]
My unqualified opinion is that there's still remnants of this that track with old money. If this was possible, culturally, 100 years ago, there's no reason why it can't be true today.
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Our election favourite (Canada) got the leadership by photo-opting with white supremacist groups and the notion one of his party rivals was a communist
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It's all downhill
It's the way things run
Because the old have illusions
And the young have fun -
AFAICT all of what's happening now can be traced back to Reagan and Murdoch.
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Patriotism is a hell of a drug. None of our countries were fighting fascism, exactly. That generations governments were trying to maintain their power, and it was a close fought battle both times. It was stopping the squareheads, krauts, bohunks and nips taking over then. It's not like our governments don't do fascist shit anytime they feel like, and can get away with it, but it is more that you think the governments over there, then, weren't also riding that same line of how far they can push it.
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Fundamentally: Boomers keep fucking over every generation after them. Literally every problem we're discussing is a result of that fact.
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The problem is that the democrats / social democrats around the world have really become corporatism and are now exploiting the far right - they don't have to enact left wing policies and can move further to the right or just do nothing. And then you're called to prevent "literal hitler". Yeah you have to, but it's a catch 22.
A "green new deal" or universal healthcare isn't even talked about anymore. People are just so sick of this shitocracy. And it's spreading everywhere.
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the democrats / social democrats around the world have really become corporatism
Yes.
and are now exploiting the far right
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You think Nancy Pelosi goes home every night and says "Thank god for Trump! Now I can do all the blandly centrist things I was doing anyway, and he's here to make it easier for me!"
And then you’re called to prevent “literal hitler”. Yeah you have to, but
You don't need the "but." Yeah you have to. That's a complete statement and it doesn't need anything else. You don't want to walk it back in any way. Yes. You have to stop Hitler. Glad we're in agreement.
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You think Nancy Pelosi goes home every night and says “Thank god for Trump! Now I can do all the blandly centrist things I was doing anyway, and he’s here to make it easier for me!”
In a sense yeah. We can't talk about the way she's used her position to conduct insider trading because people are so focused on Trump.
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Honestly, I'd agree with you if it weren't for the fact that it's blatantly obvious that our country is done and the only real meaningful solution available is to up and start a new one.
You all really, REALLY need to start fomenting an independent country before it's too late.
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There's so many parliamentary systems where you can vote for a candidate and still not "lose your vote", that's on the US. The problem isn't what the party is becoming, the problem is how the very electoral system is designed. The only solution in the US would first require the side led by personality cults to see it as a problem as well, which is unlikely due to the lack of critical thinking.
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and are now exploiting the far right
wut?
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Where is the 3rd button with "Become an actuall democracy"?
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doesn't exist, there is no "third button" you have to make it yourself, and until you achieve that it's a good idea to keep literally Hitler out of power, because you can't do that with LITERALLY HITLER
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haha that's not even an option. An oligarchy we are and an oligarchy we will stay.
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Pfft, like either side would let you have that.
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I'll settle for an actual Democratic Republic with no landowner-fellating "Electoral College"
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The reason we need to have this conversation every time is because we want to live in a democracy
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In a democracy, you get two choices and one of the choices ends the democracy so you really only have one choice.
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This conversation is the point. Without it, we would only have kings.
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"want". never have, probably won't
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Riddle me this. If he's literally Hitler how come no one has used their hypothetical time machine to hypothetically eliminate him?
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There was a guy who tried to rush the stage at a rally back in 2016. I remember wondering if he was a time traveler.
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Somehow him being killed makes things worse. Next question.
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Him being killed makes Mike Pence, an equally evil but significantly less stupid candidate, president
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Bc Trump's true worst enemy is his own mouth.:-P
Plus if he did die, they would just move on to Desantis or someone far worse.
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Maybe this is the optimal timeline and it just doesn't look that way because we're still in the middle of it and not at the end.
Yes, the US nuking Japan was horrific - but maybe we'd have had a much more brutal WW2 with half a billion lives lost if not for mutually assured destruction keeping it in everyone's pants.
Yes, Hitler was horrific, but maybe the world needed a wake up call for the importance of at least some form of diplomatic structure like the UN and things like human rights observers.
Yeah, Trump is scary as shit in what it might mean for Western democracy. But maybe this period we're in right now serves to push us forward to more modern democratic principles and protections suited to the modern age and not 1776.
Sure, AI misinformation and deepfakes are concerning - but maybe the proliferation of BS to an ad nauseum degree ends up undermining existing misinformation ops around things like vaccine denial or conspiratorial thinking where people currently gravitating to "doing their own research" online become better inoculated to BS by sheer volume of exposure to things they increasingly find they can't trust.
We only see the means, not the ends or their possible variations.
So even if there are time travelers, perhaps they are quite committed to what seems a mediocre timeline because the odds just happened to play out in such a way that our misery paved the way to their paradise.
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Figuratively Hitler. Literal Hitler is a skeleton by now.
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Skeleton Hitler is fucking scary
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True. If you dress a skeleton up like Hitler during Halloween, your house will be so spooky that no one will come.
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Secret Hitler.
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I thought that skeleton Hitler lives in Argentina?
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The US is kinda primed to really like their hitlers.
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Jesus christ this has gotta be one of the most annoying conversations people have every four years. uhhh we gotta vote because the other candidate is literally hitler guys he's literally hitler. uhhhh noooo I don't wanna vote at all because I'm cranky and my candidate has dementia and sucks waaaaah.
I feel like I'm stuck in a fucking time loop. I would much rather see people being like, oh you hate our options, like a sane person, but will probably vote anyways because it takes like an afternoon at most, if you really feel like it and hopefully don't have anything more important to do? Instead of this meme, I'd rather see like, oh, here's some shit you can do, here's some organization you can join, here's some place you can donate money, something like that. Here's what building you should throw a brick through the window of, you know? I'd rather see that, than these dumb ragebait memes.
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I don't remember anyone saying previous Republican candidates were literally Hitler. I also don't recall any of them saying shit that's taken almost verbatim from Hitler's speeches. No promises to be a dictator. No talk of political purges. No "blood and soil" rhetoric.
If you think every election is the same, you have really not been paying attention.
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But Democrats threw tens of millions of dollars to a “Pro-Trump” Dem Senate candidate in Tennessee. Mayor Adams, up in NYC, has echoed a host of the Trump “immigrant invasion” talking points, when confronted with bus-loads of women and children kidnapped and displaced by governors’ Abbot and DeSantis.
Then you’ve got Sinema in Arizona and Manchin in West Virginia and even John Ossoff of Georgia demanding hundred of millions for bigger and more heavily armed police forces to clamp down on any kind of public dissent in their historically red states. Our AG is once again refusing to close the torture camp in Gitmo, while Anthony Blinken runs around the Middle East peddling advanced weapons systems to extremist governments in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and India.
You can “Trump would be worse” all you like, but this shit is truly awful on a scale its hard to overstate.
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Even Hitler in his final hours wasn't as utterly deranged as Trump.
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Yeah, he at least had the decency to kill Hitler.
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Hitler did a lot of meth man, I'm sure he was pretty deranged
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Of course he was. But Donnie is on a whole other level.
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At least Hitler did shit on purpose. Trump is just like an LLM trained on Hitler and trying to find winning plays without having a clue how it works.
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It's a lot closer than you are suggesting. Trump, Mussolini, and Hitler are all very similar.
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Walmart brand Hitler.
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Choosing between missing the point and ignoring the problem sucks.
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99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler I can't believe I'm having to make this choice
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If only there was someone other than Trump and Haley
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This is a disfunctioning democracy.
The problem is that the true left is excluded from the game. The center (democrat) talk like they will do something, but they rarely do so, even when they have full power to do it. Then when elections come, they put the responsibility on the leftists to stop the fascists.
It is hypocrite and toxic. It fuels fascism. It is not a solution. It's building a dig to protect from a hurricane. It's at best buying some time for the center to keep the status quo and let the problems rot.
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These threads always end up achieving the opposite of their intended purpose.
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I've begun to think they are just a right wing tactic to drive that wedge just a little bit deeper. I expect that some of the more extreme voices on both sides are just trolls. Sadly, it's probably an effective tactic.
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Downvoting for misuse of, "Literally."
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I chose my words carefully.
Nov. 28, 11:13 pm: Called on the government to "come down hard" on MSNBC and "make them pay" for its critical coverage of Republicans, after previously vowing to investigate parent company Comcast if elected.
Trump made a “pledge” to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” in a Truth Social post Saturday “in honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day.”
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Literally now means figuratively as well, according to dictionaries. It’s literally insane.
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Yeah, but it's just Websters that acknowledges the use of literally to mean, "virtually," or, "figuratively," and they've gotten so much shit for that they wrote 3 paragraphs after the definition and a whole separate article trying to justify it. It's completely unjustifiable; their definition actually says, "a statement or description that is not literally true." Normally you never want to define a word with the word itself, much less define it as the the opposite of the word itself, but that's what happens when you try to turn an antonym into a synonym.
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I've never seen it put so succinctly before.
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I love Beau of the Fifth Column for finding my way through these conversations.
https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn
Shout out to his second channel where he answers direct questions.
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That guy is a spook and a human trafficker
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He did his time. The left is supposed to be about rehabilitation and not punishment.
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This is the sort of post you make to get those that are really Russian shills or have absolutely no criteria to reveal themselves. There's not any sort of comparison, and there's going to be a lot of people who are going to try to equate them as the same to disenfranchise people from voting.
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Not long ago I was "debating" with a "centrist". The funniest thing was that he could list 20 bad things the democrats do...... in a post about a republican whi was charged with abuse.... all the things he said revolved against the democrats, but hardly ever said a bad thing about republicans.
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Must... manufacture...drama...
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I'm not American, so I don't have much skin in the game.
Instead of complaining about something you can't control, perhaps you should look forward to the next four years and think about what kind of candidate you want to run, how viable a candidate they'll be, and how to best promote them for a presidential campaign.
Ultimately, you always get the politicians you deserve. If your choice is always a bit shit, perhaps you need to look at yourselves instead of complaining about who is assumed to be the best choice.
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Ultimately, you always get the politicians you deserve. If your choice is always a bit shit, perhaps you need to look at yourselves instead of complaining about who is assumed to be the best choice.
That is madness. The reason the US gets shit candidates is because of shit takes like that (sorry). Because there are incredibly forces at work. Not "behind the scenes" so much as baked into the rules of the system. Economic power rules all. And those who pursue power or money without regard for anything else are statistically the most likely to achieve it.
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So, if the rules are crooked, but the public largely supports these rules...you're getting the politicians you deserve.
It's not a criticism of you or your views, more the views of wider society that don't align with your own. It's a similar story in many countries, and ultimately your choice is a reflection on your country.
"You get the politicians you deserve" is a common/famous saying that applies to many countries everywhere. It explains why the UK voted for Brexit, it explains how Donald Trump rose to power, and it explains how someone like Biden won the nomination to become the next president. You might not like it, but it often accurately reflects your society as a whole, so it shows how divided society is.
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Well put. This is why the left has had trouble growing compared to the right. The Kochs played the long game, to the point that it spiraled out of their control. None of their push to the right was instant.
That's something the left has trouble with. It has to be now or never, even if there's a 1% chance of making it happen now.
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!inperson@slrpnk.net might be a good place to start.
I have no idea how you somehow got the impression that I posted this to complain about Biden. But yes, voting and advocating for better candidates in the future is incredibly important. We got into this mess because of the wrong people winning power, but we still have quite a few tools to get better people in power, it's just not easy or automatic.
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Except the part where we get the occasionally get to make a binary choice of which candidate sucks the least between a fascist & a neolib corporate shill .
The rules & who gets to write/enforce them determine the winners.
The donor class decides who the candidates are, money being speech & all We outsourced the a big chunk of the election process to the parties to avoid raising taxes to pay for elections.
The thought was the party fanatics would work for free.
No one ever works for free. The pay is influence, future consideration for decisions...-
But the public supports these rules, correct? Hence, you get the politicians you deserve.
If you (and by you, I mean society) didn't support these rules, they'd promote a counter-culture candidate like Trump, or they'd do something to change the rules. This isn't the case, because for its failings, people at large like the current system enough to not do anything about it. Those parties in power also have enough support to keep the steady flow of same-y politicians flowing.
It's not a criticism of you or your country. It's ultimately a truism of politics that if the system you choose produces poor candidates, your people support poor choices.
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"Literally Hitler"
Yeah, I don't like what Biden is doing in Gaza either.
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I know! He came into office with strong sanctions being applied to Israel for their massacre policies, a decades-long established ban on the construction of new settlements, and an agreement which was undoing illegally constructed settlements and resettling Palestinian families back into their homes. Biden broke with all of that, gave Netanyahu a green light to start their apartheid policies again, and personally visited the West Bank and shot a few Gazans himself with a sniper rifle, just to emphasize the point.
In contrast, Trump is famous for protecting the rights of Arabs. Just like he is Hispanics and Chinese people. Why, the strong protections that all Palestinians enjoyed were partly his doing. They were part of the Iran / Muslim immigrant / asylum seeker reforms he enacted. Although, the main work was started by other Western politicians. I can't wait for Trump to get elected, and undo all the harm Biden's been doing, and finally set us on the road to lasting peace in the Middle East, and a world where the rights of vulnerable non-white people will finally be strongly protected in the halls of power.
Or...
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You're having this conversation because those in charge (E: the obscenely and well established rich, not to be confused with the politicians they buy) want you to, so you're busy fighting each other about the illusion of choice they've given you, instead of fighting them over the oppressive system they impose for their own benefit. The fact that you even have to ask just proves how well it's working.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
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You're having this conversation because those in charge want you to
This is as deranged as a damn qanoner. It's literally the exact same line of thinking. Yeah, you got this overly complicated world all figured out while no one else understands; believing there is a mysterious group in control is the most baseline conspiracy theory there is, it provides an understandable reason and solution to an infinitely complex reality that we cannot comprehend.
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Above average Democrat? Please, the guy has dementia. And no, I'm not a right winger, and I obviously think Trump is a worse option. But Biden isn't above average anything at this point. He's barely awake.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/biden-mexico-gaffe-real-lesson/677402/
But that's not even the point. Nancy Pelosi would be better than Trump, and I hate Nancy Pelosi. A dead cat would be better in the office of the presidency than Trump. You could trust the dead cat not to order the National Guard to start shooting BLM protesters, or drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, or start mass deportations. Picking out Biden's flaws as a reason not to vote for him, whether those flaws are real or blown-out-of-all-proportion by a lazy and dishonest media, is missing the point by about the length of the grand canyon.
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So even if Biden is a bad candidate we should pretend like he's not because the alternative is worse? Trump is absolutely much worse, but that doesn't make Biden good. Why do we have to sell him as an above average candidate when he's not? Honestly I don't really see your point here. Claiming that Biden is bad doesn't make Trump any better. I'd also like to clarify that I never said that anyone should not vote for Biden. And I definitely don't endorse voting for Trump as an alternative.
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People who make these arguments are the same people who argue 3rd party voting is impossible and infeasible and get mad when I criticize senile Biden, even after voting for senile Biden.
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[...] 3rd party voting is impossible and infeasible
Well with the current voting system of the US, a viable third party on the national level is impossible. It shouldn't be and the voting system needs a serious rework to better reflect better working democracies, but currently voting for a third party instead of the democrats is helping the republicans. And with what the republicans currently are openly planning, this really isn't the right time to let them anywhere near power.
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Show us your evidence that a third-party candidate is more likely to win than they are to throw the election to Trump.
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No you need to like that you're voting for a genocider
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Electing Hindenburg really saved us from Hitler
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Some on the left were still lukewarm towards Hindenburg; the Communists exploited this by running Thälmann and promoting him as "the only left candidate". Hindenburg failed to receive the requisite majority of votes in the first round, but was able to win reelection in the runoff.
Hindenburg's reelection failed to prevent the NSDAP from assuming power. Two successive federal elections later that year left it as the largest party in the Reichstag, and anti-republic parties in general holding the majority of seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election
Hindenburg wasn't left enough for many of the Communists, and they thought that getting a candidate they'd feel better about supporting was more important than stopping Hitler.
It was the last election many of them ever saw, although of course they didn't know it at the time.
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That's not that point, Hindenburg was still elected as the lesser evil and Hitler was made fucking chancellor. Electing a lesser evil changes very little if they are still evil. Hindenburg was even supported by a large portion of the SPD (unfortunately). This is often seen as social democrats turning on the left as usual. Hindenburg wasn't even left, of course communist didn't support him.
Hindenburg being elected did not stop the NSDAP from seizing power is the entire point of my argument. It only delayed it slightly. Having communist support would never have changed this. Having a communist government might have (but obviously that is pure fantasy given the political situation at the time).
I'm actually realizing after my rambling that I'm not entirely sure what point you are trying to make? Are you suggesting is the fault of communist that Hindenburg's election was insufficient in preventing Nazi control? /Gen
Edit: I think what you're saying is that communists almost put hitler in power sooner but introducing a third party candidate that took votes from Hindenburg?
In this case I see what you mean and understand why you would see it that way. However this is the fault of the political system in place forcing that sort of situation which is why I advocate for the dismantling of that system. I do not agree with thälmann and the KPD's belief that a government and it's society can be reformed through electoralism. Materially I understand how placing a third candidate into that election was incredibly risky I just think that shouldn't be a problem. We shouldn't have to worry that pushing for progressive change within the system will cause the opposite.
I'm with you when you say Biden is better than trump but I'm not with you when you attempt to work within a system that is designed specifically to benefit the bourgeoisie in order to improve conditions for the proletariat. In my eyes it's absurd to believe that its even possible to do so.
Damage control does not lead to positive change, it just delays the inevitable harm
If you're interested I recommend reading reform or revolution by Rosa Luxembourg. I don't expect you to radically change your views on this but I think you deserve to understand where I'm coming from. I get it if you think communist desire for revolution is pure fantasy, living within the imperial core will do that to you but please give it a shot. Try to understand. It's worth it, I was like you once. Most of us were.
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If this said below average it would be better
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It would be *accurate
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Where's the button for "none of these candidates?"
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That one's wired to the second button.
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We stop with this fucking red vs blue clown show.
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Rfk is red you clown
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What is this wedge-driving troll shit.
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Sorry, but not voting for anti-vaxer is a hill I'll die on.
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Bobby jr is not a serious man.
He has a funny wife though.
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LMAO
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Democracy kind of breaks down if you can't make demands anymore, since the "lesser evil" is the only viable option.
Also: elections are overrated/don't work.
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You only have this option as the final stage. You have primaries to vote for the actual better candidate.
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So you've been incessantly writing in to your congresspeople to make demands, make sure they know where you stand on important issues, right?
Not just shitposting and encouraging people to do even less to exert control over their systems of government than the fairly minimal input-lever which is voting, right?
Right?
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Elections did a pretty fucking good job of getting women sent to jail for having miscarriages
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Am also agreeink with elections not work. Many people say no to elections. A vote is wasted. Look at a great leader like Putin - he needs not the many votes to stay in power.
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Get fucked. Biden and the majority of Democrats in Congress are actively seeking to fund the genocide of the Palestinians. Trump is 1000% worse, but I will not vote for any of them, fuck em all.🖕
This country gets what it fucking deserves and I'm not going to be complicit in any of it any more. I'll tend to myself, my loved ones, and my chosen community, thanks.
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Can I have your phone number to give to the loved ones of anyone who dies in a Trump-promoted genocide, or gets imprisoned within the US for the crime of being trans, or whatever he does? You can talk to that person about how you're tending to yourself and your chosen community.
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I'm not voting for a genocide-funding, ethnic cleansing apologist. End of story. 🖕
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For this truly to be the only ethical choice a would-be voter could make, you'll have to go totally off grid until you achieve full self-sustaining status on your homestead. Electricity, water, road access, these are things that we take for granted but could easily be things lost due to bad policy making. Refusing to interact with the trolley problem is the same as allowing the trolley to run over the larger group of people.
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I'm not voting for a genocide-funding, ethnic cleansing apologist. End of story. 🖕
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So courageous of you. That'll really help those people you claim to care about. I'm glad you're able to make a genocide about you and how you feel about it. You're so morally superior for choosing the path of giving up and ignoring things you don't understand, I hope you still feel smug about not supporting our society for being imperfect while trump starts putting people in camps.
Edit: also, from someone that actually chose to spend their life trying to do something about the shit you're talking about: go fuck yourself. It's so fuckin annoying seeing so many people on Lemmy think the most moral thing is to give up and ignore the problems of others while simultaneously using those problems against those who actually try to make a fucking difference. It's basically "well you didn't fix it so it's your fault".
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I am doing something to fix this shit. I teach high school, and I instill empathy in my students every fucking day. What the fuck do you do? I've been voting the lesser of two evils for almost 30 years, and guess what, cunt? Society is the most cruel and evil it's ever been.
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LBQT ppl offended during republican presidency: 50k
War deaths during democrat presidency: 50k
You tell me which is the Hitler.
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Brain rot.
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This is the most idiotic comment I've seen on Lemmy so far. Congrats, it's pretty impressive.
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Truth hurts.
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This is the only election where I'm throwing my arms up and saying 'fuck it' to.
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Please don't
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Out of all the ones we've had between center-right bland white men who disagree on small quibbles of how to divvy up the work product of the working class between themselves, all of a sudden this one where there's a for real democracy ending fascist in it with a good chance of winning, that's the one where you say "naw I'll sit this one out"?
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Lots of useful idiots for the far-right who think they're painted working-class red.
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3 steps toward fascism with the guy who bypassed congress to back genocide or 5 steps towards fascism with the guy who wants to sidestep congress to back genocide.
They're the same picture. 🤷
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Things can get significantly worse. Stephen Miller is talking about red state militias being sent into blue states to deport immigrants who go to pro Palestine protests.
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I mean it's more like no progress toward fascism or just fascism
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Biden is committing genocide but literally Hitle...
No actually Literally Hitler is a good description of Genocide Joe.
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As we all know, Donald Trump would not have enabled the genocide of Palestinians far, far more than Joe has
I mean, there's literally no fucking difference between 10 children dying and 10,000 children dying, so why should we care? Better to let those extra 9,990 children die than dirty our hands voting for someone who wouldn't save the 10
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He's an amateur compared to Xi.
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I fucking hate this guy and how all he ever says is genocide Joe. you know a complete dummy when they refer to Biden with some pathetic right wing adjective because calling someone names is all they got.
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Bro deadass. I don't think I've seen a comment from them without it. Pretty sure they get paid to say it as much as possible, no matter how wrong it is.
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Good thing you're always here to defend Genocide Joe.
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