because the system is set up not to. it’s not a real democracy.
Which of the two pro-corporate neoliberal parties in the US care about the environment again?
I mean, they don’t even care enough about their warmongering, lying, felonious child rapist of a president. French students are legit protesting harder than Muricans against their pedophile leader. Make it make sense.
Most people want to eat dinner but many refuse to pray for it.
which oil executive should i vote for
Because we have to deal with the rubes in the flyover states. I don’t know who could be so dumb to vote for Trump in 2024. How do tariffs lower prices? Can someone explain this leap in logic. How does pursuing an energy profile that is mostly fossil fuels lower prices?
Because no current system has offered a viable path. Sustainability, which includes climate and all the other factors, will require everyone to live with less to ensure everyone has enough of what matters.
Our politics, our economics our sociology consider asking the rights questions as radical, precicely because it threatens the wealth, power and prestige of those who have it. The elite would rather the poor who can’t cope, die in order to bring consumption to sustainable levels. Case in point, Bill Gates will write a book on what other people should do about climate change, yet live the hipocrisy of owning a small private fleet of jets and helicopters amd a leasing company for his slightly less elite customers.
Ecological economics calls this malinvestment. Not misallocation (suboptimal) but malallocation (actively hurts our goals) The resources of those jets could have built passivehouses, sustainable farms, sufficiency across countless domains. His communications could have been virtual. I think he is smart enough to know how to use Teams. But hypocrisy is not a mistake for these people.
The democratic choices of bad and worse don’t reflect viable paths. Worse will build autocracy that means profligacy for the ingroup, then doom for the vile and faster doom for everyone else. Cutting the outgroups down as the definition of sustainable shrinks and then cutting potential in group rivals.
The bad choice is to do the same thing, but instead of an in group and outgroups, we’ll have an in, an out and a middle class. The 2/3 will make the same decisions, but trim with a few select sacrifices across the three groups as the pie shrinks.
Bad and worse is not a viable choice. Even the greens where they exist, haven’t communicated a viable return to sustainable for all. They only hint at a portion of the changes required.
They probably let idiots/bots convince them not to vote over some culture war bullshit or wedge issue designed specifically to keep them away from the polls.
Neither party campaign’s on climate policy so the problem is the party, not the voter.
Yeah but it’s peak lib to blame voters for not voting hard enough, instead of demanding the bare minimum from those in power.
SMH
Instead of? You know it’s both, right? On public forums, you’re talking to voters so the proper action is encouraging their vote. When you make demands of those in power, you should be writing them directly, or congregating with others in protests that they’ll actually see.
What possible benefit do you get from making demands of people in power in the places they aren’t?
Things like, no more foreign wars, getting corruption out of office and government, free healthcare, free education, and reigning in corporations is supported by about 75-85% in our country.
Which parties run on those?
Not which one should we hope and vote for that will deliver, because right now, their promise is to “restore affordable care act tax credits” " address affordability" and “going after crooks”
Are we going to claim that the last two platitudes MEAN something?
If that is what so many Americans want, WHO IS THE DNC BASE?
The people in power don’t need to be informed more about what people want. They already know, they just don’t care.
In many cases, yeah absolutely. In others, the crazy side is a lot more vocal so that’s who the candidates cater too. Squeaky wheels and all that.
But my point stands, making demands only has a chance of accomplishing anything if you actually make them to the subject in question. Going to random forums, especially here, and making demands of politicians is silly at best, counterproductive at worst.
Not sure where you saw that but it’s actually central to the DNC platform.
Personally, I think this is more of a media diet issue. Climate policy isn’t very engagement-baitey so the Social media algorithms don’t push it.
Platforms are not the problem, the problem is that most politicians do not really believe in implementing them
I think the current problem is that the politicians who believe in implementing them don’t have the numbers to actually do so, and voter apathy gets in the way of achieving those numbers. There’s been a ton of climate policy over the years, it’s just that for the last couple decades the party that pretends climate change doesn’t exist has been stonewalling climate policy because it would hurt corporate profits.
Except Trump is implementing his platform, he’s trying to sell off public land, destroy forests, and he’s already gutted the EPA and many renewable energy programs.
So you can make up any excuse you want, anyone who cares about the environment and sat out 2024 is responsible for the backslide.
Nobody is defending Trump here
No you’re all just trying to convince everyone the entire democratic party is as bad as Trump which is a braindead asshole take but it’s all fuckin over this thread. All you assholes staying home next month means you support maga.
Keep lying cultist asshole
Biden forced rail-workers - who were striking for safer conditions - back to work. Less than a year later, a train derailment caused a massive chemical spill is Palestine, Ohio.
Everyone conveniently leaves out he got them more sick days, etc. weeks later.
Make your point but let’s at least involve all the facts.
Bernie led that charge at the last minute, and it still ignored every other demand they had. Notably, the ones that would have made train derailments far less likely.
I think things like voter suppression, access to information also weigh a lot heavier than some might think.
I’m also kind of wondering how they came up with this number of 11 million, if people are not politically motivated and activated but are still politically conscious enough to have priorities, there are systemic issues keeping them from voting. And especially at these large numbers, simply saying ‘well they should vote’ and being angry about them supposedly not voting won’t change a damn thing.
We don’t need to yell at people. We need to fucking strategize.
Uno reverse card
If so many people who care about the climate don’t vote, then why don’t politicians take a stronger line on the issue to appeal to them?
Exactly.
The United States has a problem with voter suppression, and a history of blaming societal problems on individuals to make it look like individual people are responsible instead of the people in charge.
Solid point. Part of it is a blame game as well. I try to stress how local policies are important. Yet you will still have politicians that will state they will do whatever to overturn popular vote. I mean take pot for example, 41/50 states and it’s only getting a reclassification.
Oh so we’re supposed to pretend that climate voters are so stupid they don’t understand that Republicans are bad for the environment?
No, you’re supposed to understand that people will be more motivated to vote if you appeal to them based on the policies they care about and follow through, instead of offering nothing beyond, “not the other guy.”
Why do you need to be “more motivated” if you care about climate change so much, when the options couldn’t be more clear? You are just making excuses for apathy.
How has the Democratic strategy of “at least we’re not the other guy” been working?
Why do you need to be “more motivated” if you care about climate change so much, when the options couldn’t be more clear?
I don’t know how I can possibly make this more simple. These people haven’t been motivated enough to vote for your party before. You want them to be motivated to vote for your party in the future. Therefore, you need to find a way to make them more motivated to vote for you. That’s why. This is not complicated.
You are just making excuses for apathy.
No, I’m simply shifting the focus to where it belongs.
There’s a mismatch between what the party does and what the people want, and your solution involves trying to change what the millions of people want instead of changing the handful of people who determine party policy. Not only is that completely undemocratic, it’s also completely impractical. Unless you have a magic wand you can wave that will turn millions of people into Lesser Evilists before you’ll need their votes, you’re gonna have to meet them where they’re at and give them things they want. Which is exactly how any democratic system is supposed to work.
It’s kind of amazing how entitled y’all are with your party. They’re supposed to be “public servants.” If a servant’s employer tells them to clean something, does the servant say, “It’s already clean enough, you need to learn to live with a little dust,” or do they do the thing they’re being fucking paid to do and clean it again, even if they think the request is stupid? The level of backtalk y’all give to the public is frankly unbelievable. You don’t act like public servants, you act like public masters, like you’re feudal lords who get to tell us what’s going to happen and we’re uppity rabble who needs to fall in line. You’ve got things completely upside down.
Why would you try to appeal to non-voters? They don’t vote. The right messaging won’t suddenly make non-voters voters.
Lmao have fun losing forever
Your message is literally why progressives hate Democrats and why your party only attacks progressives and actively funds and collaborates with MAGA
Democrats have shown time and time again who they work WITH and who they work Against.
Remember when the Democrats banded together to stop the scary revolutionary candidate bringing sweeping change for the people?
I do, it was Bernie, TWICE
Me when I reduce infinitely complex beings in static categories to fit my worldview.
Really? Metaphysical arguments? “X people are inherently this type of person and never won’t be” is such a lazy and uninspired argument.
Liberalism cannot question the status quo, as that status quo gets actively worse and worse from capitalism and imperialism. But hey… Those guys are actively making it worse, we just watch from the sides and maybe put some duct tape on it once in a while.
Ok so you lose then.
No one is going to open a restaurant where the target market is “people who don’t go to restaurants”. If you don’t vote you don’t matter to politicians and that’s all there is to it.
No one is going to open a restaurant where the target market is “people who don’t go to restaurants”
There’s plenty of people opening restaurants on the basis of “this kind of cuisine is not available in this neighborhood. I think people would like it.”
Your analogy is incredibly flawed. People are able to go to more than one restaurant.
Yeah, that’s not true at all. The hundreds of millions spent on voter mobilization, get out the vote, rock the vote, voter education, voter registration, and all attendant campaigns is such an obvious massive counter to your inispid narrative.
And yet voter turnout is consistently low.
Because voters have figured out that voting doesn’t fucking matter. Once you realize that a) the country has always been run by a single fascist bloc b) with multiple fascist factions fighting for control and c) fronted by two PR firms with subsidiary PR firms that drive psychological manipulation of voters into believing that d) this time it really is the most important election in history and e) voting will fix it and f) if you vote correctly then the fascists you put in power will stop being fascist and g) actually make structural change - once that becomes obvious, voting is just not something people are motivated to do. And to be clear even people like me who believe all those things vote in vast numbers because it is a ritualized symbol and it has implications in social situations and dynamics. And even still huge numbers of people just don’t vote, which means massive numbers of people understand that the system is fully irredeemable.
Oh fuck you’re an ml bot. Not worth engaging with. Buhbye MAGAtankie shitbird.
LOL
Ad hominem
You’re right Zohran Mamdani didn’t win NYC mayor. Fuck off bad faith troll. Who you working for?
Sewer socialists have a long history of winning in the USA, and also of being outmaneuvered entirely by the fascists in both parties, purged, and having nearly all of their progress completely undone.
The purpose of those programs is to increase turnout, not cater to the political leanings of likely non-voters. Dems don’t give a shit what those people want they just want them to vote because statistically they would vote for Dems. The issues important to those voters rarely come up which is exactly my point.
I don’t really expect a well reasoned response from someone going around saying things like “Europe can save Ukraine by disbanding NATO” though. Pull your head out of Putin’s ass and have your own thoughts.
LOL. You’re fucking amazing. You came to the conclusion that voter turnout programs only exist because they want voters to vote for them but literally won’t do anything that those voters want? That’s your conclusion? You couldn’t reason your way out of a paper bag. Which makes sense because you think an American who has been raised by Americans in America and consumed all the same anti-Russian propaganda you have consumed our whole lives is somehow having someone else’s thoughts when they have thoughts that disagree with the propaganda you and I have both been raised on. You are doing the meme.
If Dems primary concern is the will of their voters then why are they constantly doing things the majority of their voting base disagrees with? You’re acting like Dems know exactly what the people want when the central political problem in America for the last 15 years is that they either don’t know or don’t care.
Also, if your own thoughts are not Russian propaganda then why is what you’re saying matching Russian propaganda word-for-word? Disbanding NATO doesn’t help anyone but Russia and somewhere in that brain of yours you know that. You’re twisting words to make unreasonable things sound reasonable on both of these issues
Oh, sorry, so you’re saying Dems are constantly doing things their voting base disagrees with? So then why should people vote for them? You’re not making a strong argument for your position there.
You think Russian propaganda is the only source of anti-NATO sentiment in the entire world? Have you heard of Heusinger? Are you aware of the controversial decisions to staff NATO with Nazi officers? Heusinger was never even tried at Nuremberg.
Disbanding NATO doesn’t help anyone but Russia and somewhere in that brain of yours you know that.
Pretty sure it would’ve helped the Libyans if the “defensive” alliance that waged an offensive war on them didn’t exist.
NATO is a tool of neocolonialism and there are countless neocolonies around the world that it harms. Even if it were “defensive” (which it absolutely isn’t) it maintains an oppressive status quo over the global majority and gives member states the ability to attack wantonly, without fear of retaliation.
Well yeah, obviously bullies only bully the nerds because the Anti-Bully Club is so anti-bully. If the Anti-Bully Club just disbands instead of defending nerds, then the bullies will have no reason to keep bullying the nerds! Duhhh! (/s)
You’ll never get good faith engagement with ml so all you can do is try to piss em off and waste their time.
Ad hominem
No one is going to open a restaurant where the target market is “people who don’t go to restaurants”.
???
When you open a restaurant, the only target market is people who don’t go to your restaurant. Looking into how to expand your business to people who don’t already go to restaurants is absolutely a valid line of inquiry that companies persue all the time. Maybe the reason they don’t eat out because it’s too expensive, and you can appeal to them with lower prices. Maybe the reason they don’t eat out is because they don’t know how good your food is, and you can address that with free samples. Maybe they have dietary restrictions and you can appeal to them by adding vegan or gluten free options. Restaurants, like any business, are constantly looking for ways to break into new sections of the market. So your analogy falls completely flat.
Look at, for example, Little Caesars which at least back when I was in school had cheap ass $5 pizzas, they tasted like shit but they were $5 so being a broke ass college student I ate there all the time when I might otherwise have not eaten out at all. And that’s why they focused on keeping the price low instead of making it actually good. Because at $5, even groceries wouldn’t be much cheaper.
Likewise, if a political party is uninterested in appealing to people who don’t already vote for them, it must mean that they’re satisfied with their current level of support. Which, considering the Dems lost the last election, doesn’t exactly seem to be working. And what, do you think you’ll have better luck trying, again, to appeal to “moderate” Republicans? Let me know how that goes, lol.
People who don’t eat at restaurants at all are obviously not the same as people who don’t eat at a restaurant that doesn’t exist. You said you understood that concept but then spent the rest of your comment describing people who want to eat at restaurants.
This is what your commitment to your narrative has done to you. It has made you believe that there is a category of people who don’t vote because that is what they prefer, and you’re so committed that you are willing to make nonsense arguments that posit the existence of people who eat food but specifically will not and never will eat food if it’s in a restaurant.
Nothing about your narrative is reasonable. Give people something they want and they will pursue it
People who don’t eat at restaurants at all are obviously not the same as people who don’t eat at a restaurant that doesn’t exist.
Legitimately don’t understand this word salad.
You said you understood that concept but then spent the rest of your comment describing people who want to eat at restaurants.
Someone who doesn’t currently eat at restaurants might start eating at them if the restaurants find a way to appeal to them. That’s not a complicated concept.
If I’m vegan, and no restaurants in my area offer vegan options, then I am someone who doesn’t eat at restaurants at all. If a restaurant opens up that does offer vegan options, or if an existing restaurant adds a vegan option, then I might start eating at restaurants. Do you not understand this concept?
Likewise, someone who doesn’t vote might start voting if they’re appealed to. This is equally uncomplicated.
As we all know, if you just keep telling people to vote, eventually they’ll just be like “Yeah! I’m gonna take off work from the job that doesn’t give me time off, go find a polling place, which isn’t close and crowded because the state doesn’t run enough polling places, then try to go there in a town without public transportation! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?” Then they get there and find out that most of the local elections are uncontested and the federal ones have only a choice between no climate policy and climate policy which is insufficient but delays the necessary work until it’s too late. Then after begrudgingly voting, they realize that their districts are so gerrymandered their vote basically didn’t count anyway.
Nope, no need to change anything, we just need to keep telling people to go vote. It hasn’t worked yet, but… uh…
Both candidates were pro war. War is the top polluting activity humans do. People chose not to vote last time because we had absolutely miserable candidate choices, an undemocratic primary, and formal war crimes support from our own party. Anyone who wags a finger after that shenanigans and talks about climate in isolation from the rest of it is missing the forest through the trees.
Both parties are also pro record fossil fuel extraction.
How big of a record is each trying to break? Just by a hair? Or trying to break the record for years?
Why do you people always make it out like the democrats are just barely beyond perfect? The reality is they’re abhorrent monsters. Biden didn’t just make it worse by a hair, He made it fucking terrible
So, if anyone was wondering, this- is the bOtH siDEs psyop bullshit that you all hear about.
Pretty much, sadly it describes the majority of Lemmy as a whole given its foundation.
Yes. “Anyone who doesn’t vote for my party is a Russian psyop”
SOUNDS REASONABLE
All of the comments above your stupid one actually list reasons and justifications for people’s decisions.
Care to elaborate? Or are you a Schumer bot? Blue maga? You here to scare people away from the scary working class reps?
is a Russian psyop
Your words, not his. Plenty of troll factories and gullible groups around the world, but the money pours down from where it pours down.
Both sides are not the same, one has been way worse for the environment than the other, the majority of this thread is rife with ignorance, plenty of it wilful. This thread might as well be called a theater.
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_first_Trump_administration
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_second_Trump_administration
You are both-siding this and appealing to perfection as a solution, both common appeals used in manipulation, just like the majority of this theater is doing.
No, and you are ignoring all history and past elections as are all of the other DNC shills.
There has ONLY BEEN PROGRESION TO THE RIGHT. The overtone window has shifted so far to the RIGHT because ymof you centrist fucks and your capitulating to fascists, that yes, both parties are fascist.
Your stupid argument that both parties are not the same is not something people make. If you go to a party and you want a drink, and you can only have coke or a bottle of dasani water, you are drinking a coke product. You do not get a choice eve. Though they are different.
We are at a point where we are literally running against cyberpedophile Nazis that are doing warcrimes, and establishing concentration camps and your “opposition party” is running on “restoring ACA tax credits”
Since Im just a dumb American who doesn’t understand anything, can you please explain to me why the democratic party STRUGGLES to beat what I mentioned above?
Why is their current platform not to “hold immediate trials for treason and warcrimes”, “dismantling concentration camps and locations missing migrants” " delivering free healthcare and education like 85% of Americans want" “taxing billionaires and corporations into submission”, “stopping support for the most hated country and leader in the world, Israel and Netanyahu”
Please explain
What a garbage spew of accusations. This thread is about climate change, and it’s clearly you want to derail with a lot of baggage, which ironically enough, one side is still considerably worse than the other for each and every issue you try to shotgun with. I doubt you are American, and I doubt the why of each needs to be explained in anything other than an theathered echo-chamber.
You are both-siding this and appealing to perfection as a solution, both common appeals used in manipulation, just like the majority of this theater is doing.
Again, and again, and again, and again, and again …
This is exactly why I don’t argue with these kids. It’s a massive waste of time. you’ve far more patience than I have.
I think you’re mistaken in thinking they are a child. I suspect it’s more like 3-5 psychologist sitting in a room thinking up the “perfect” response to drive their narrative.
Dismissal without rebuttal. Got it
The last rebuttal with hard facts and links just made you spew a word salad of gaslighting while ignoring anything you were offered. I don’t have any hope for you, I’m just annotating for other readers caught up in the theater.
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Nah, I don’t debate with dumbasses that say shit like “bLuEmAgA”. It’s beneath me.
War kills people and nobody pollutes less than a dead man 🤷
But do you actually have a source for that? Because agriculture is the largest driver of ecological collapse and I’d be shocked if a handful of aircraft carrier emissions outweighs tons and tons of foods and goods being shipped.
If anyone considers climate to be their highest priority, the choices weren’t even close to comparable. One was milquetoast green half measures that would kick the can a little further and one was nosedive everything off the cliff and irreversibly accelerate the climate catastrophe. If you stayed at home and were fine with the second choice you were flat out lying about your priorities.
The person you are responding to has a history of not knowing shit about what they take about.
Are they responding to you?
Yeah, it’s a good thing both candidates were the same on every single issue, too, so there was literally no difference in picking between the fascist and the non-fascist. Fantastic job recognizing your duty to stick to one single issue where you feel they were the same!
One thing you’ll eventually have to come to terms with is that it’s the government of the USA that is and has always been fascist and that the two parties aren’t going to stop the fascism that they both manage and benefit from. Biden had the Epstein files and did nothing. You think the voters are gonna stop fascism when the candidates are all fascists and fascist defenders?
Well one party didn’t try to overthrow the election, stop our votes from being counted, call for violence against their dissenters, pardon the people who tried to take control of the government by force, remove anyone who tried to prosecute them, remove anyone who didn’t fall behind them. But I mean the dems didn’t make life changing bills, only generally positive ones while having a majority of checks notes 1 seat. Republicans are an ocean of fascism and dems are a bucket, but I guess it’s better to lose all our rights, help Russia invade Ukraine, and destroy the planet instead of voting for those fascist dems :3
And then Biden took office and he and his DOJ had the full Epstein files AND Project 2025 was openly published and explained and promoted AND Biden said “we have to stop these people” and then did what? That’s correct. He did nothing. He had literal documentation that DJT committed wanton infanticide and rape and human trafficking but did nothing. Nothing. Biden did nothing with the Epstein files while Harris told immigrants not to come to the US because we were absolutely going to continue torturing them at the border and nothing was gonna stop them, just like nothing was going to stop the Israeli genocide and the American participation in it.
No, sorry. The Democrats are not “less fascist” just like the Good Cop is still a cop.
The Ds aren’t going to save Ukraine either. The parties don’t make military decisions, the military does and the parties ratify it. That’s why Obama continued Bush 2’s projects, including invading Libya, which was on Bush’s list but he never got to it. Don’t forget Obama refused to give Ukraine any weapons and declared Venezuela a national security threat after Bush 2 tried to coup Chavez. Trump was the first president to approve arms transfers to Ukraine. I know it’s confusing because you think the parties are “evil” and “almost good” but they aren’t, they are both fascist imperialists and it’s why this all happens this way.
It’s also why the Obama administration expanded ICE and DHS and then deported 3M people with Tom Homan at the helm, just like Trump used all the Obama-era policies and even appointed Tom Homan himself to run deportations (though Trump hasn’t yet caught up to Obama’s numbers).
You’re falling for the manipulation. You somehow believe that the con artist saying “that guy has a knife, I’ll protect you, just give me your wallet” even after that con artist walked away and did NOTHING about the guy with the knife.
The evidence is clear. Both parties are maintainers of the world fascist empire, and one party appeals to the voters with fear of “the other” and the other party appears to the voters with the fear of “being bad people”.
The way I see it, it’s more like they’re ok with it as long as the knife is pointed at someone else. Fascism is imperialism brought home. All that imperialism has been happening non-stop and even at home, marginalized groups have been subject to all sorts of terrible things.
They’ll call that less bad because it doesn’t affect them yet. And in the narrowest sense I guess they are technically correct exactly in the short term. But 1) It’s not better for those other people. 2) They don’t see how one inevitably leads to the other. The same tools they built to stop “our enemies abroad” can and are used to suppress dissent at home.
If a Dem ran that as a fucking bare minimum promised to reign in the military, police, and surveillance states and curb executive power, I’d be more sympathetic to the argument for harm reduction even if they didn’t agree with me on other things. But if they’re just going to keep enabling all of this, at best the only “harm reduction” happening is some people getting to ignore the suffering until next election.
at best the only “harm reduction” happening is some people getting to ignore the suffering until next election
This exactly.
if they’re just going to keep enabling all of this
It’s beyond enabling. They are architecting it, expanding it, normalizing it, and selling it.
Well if you’re not one of the people dead from ice, healthcare cuts, environmental impacts from all the solar/wind cuts, dead from cancer from the research we stopped, dead from food illness, dead in the war in Iran, dead in the invasion of ukraine, dead from measles, dead from USAID being gutted, or completely destitute from the cost of living, then yeah here’s not much “harm reduction” to be had really.
Maybe this argument works if Trump hadn’t completely ruined the world and directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and probably much more when diseases start spreading because of government sponsored vaccine denial and USAID cuts.
Biden expanded the ICE concentration camps Trump took over from Obama, what an odd thing to mention.
USAID was used as a front for the CIA and various regime change operations.
They both massively hurt the environment, so I dont really care that one of them does not deign to do token gestures of goodwill.
The war in Ukraine started under Biden.
The war in Iran is bipartisan.
The cost of living was already making people destitue and all Democrats had to say about it was that the economy was doing great.
Healthcare cuts? The healthcare system has been abysmal forever and all dems did was pass a subsidy for insurance companies.
Its not like the cancer research would save anyone but the wealthies in this nation.
Food illness spreads now, which is terrible. It is correct that the current regime is worse administrators of minutiae.
Yeah, I mean, you basically get it, you just think Trump is somehow special. Biden authored the Crime Bill, Clinton put it into law, they ruined millions of lives, mostly of black Americans. Obama/Biden and HRC created an absolutely massive crisis in Libya by funding, arming, training, and coordinating a terroristic “resistance” and then used NATO to bomb the most prosperous country in Africa into devastation where they now openly sell human slaves. The Ukraine situation requires you to imagine history started a few years ago - Bill Clinton openly and public wanted to include Russia in NATO, even after Putin took office. Hell, Clinton was instrumental in legitimizing Putin. The invasion of Ukraine is not something Trump caused and it’s not something he can end. If you have ever studied proxy conflicts like this one, the way you end the bloodshed is by surrendering and signing a treaty. The way you kill more people is by funneling more guns and mercenaries into the proxy. We’ve known this for decades. The US military literally justified some of its proxy wars with Youth Bulge Theory, stating that when there’s too many MAMs (military-aged males) that they could pose a threat to stability so it’s important to get ahead of youth bulges, create the conflicts before they become something we can’t control, and let the conflict kill off the youth bulge. The US is fucking sick.
As for everything else you listed, there’s an equally deadly Democrat equivalent. The embargo on Cuba means that the Cuban vaccine that prevents lung cancer is completely unavailable in the US. Democrats have deported/repatriated more people than Republicans have over the last 25 years. And the reason those immigrants are coming to us in the first place is because of bi-partisan destruction of South American and African countries.
I’d ask you to consider how we got here. Trump didn’t just fall from the sky and started wrecking things on his own.
I could go into the whole history of the last quarter century and beyond, but to keep things simple, let’s go with a personal example:
I live in an area I would describe as blue MAGA. They regularly vote (corporate) Dem at the federal level, although local politics is very Rep dominated. My rep is a multiple term incumbent Democrat who we have tried and failed to primary multiple times, including one election where I was directly involved in the progressive opposition campaign.
As far as issues that enable fascism goes, they:
-
Voted for more ICE funding and increased border security.
-
Voted for increases to military spending.
-
Voted to support Israel’s genocide.
-
Participates in the war mongering around countries like Iran. To the extent that they had any issue with Trump’s recent war, it was a matter of poor execution rather than any principled stance against US imperialism. This matters beyond some lefty purity test. Stances like these and the policies they lead to help manufacture consent for these wars.
-
Failed to press for congress to act on it’s constitutional responsibility to stop presidents from illegally starting wars.
-
Voted on a Republican resolution to condemn the horrors of socialism at a time when right wing fascism is the dominant, pressing crisis in our country.
I could go on, but you get the gist. They’re exactly the kind of Democrat we’re talking about who enables the fascists to do what they do.
So… setting aside the fact that he’s probably in a safe seat anyway, what should I do come election day? Is voting for this person a vote against Trump and fascism? Is this harm reduction? Can I expect them to do ANYTHING to reign in this administration when they have not even tried to do so before? IF they’re not going to, what exactly is the benefit? And there are costs beyond what they will do in office. Incumbency comes with a pretty big electoral advantage. Continuing to support them makes it harder to unseat them later.
-
His prosecution was underway and he was about to be convicted and then sent to jail wtf are you talking about? And then the public elected him president, so the investigations stopped. Do you want Biden to just put him in prison with no trial? Just push the send him to jail button that even with trumps fascist army of yesmen he can’t do? Insane how these rewrites of history always come right before an election, I would’ve hoped the Ukraine strikes on the datacenters would’ve slowed it down.
Waiting for 1 dem president that murdered American citizens and sent 200b worth of armed thugs, and the national guard. I guess Obama mishandled the border, which is basically the same thing as telling people immigrants are rapists and murderers, removing as many protections for people of color, and being intentionally evil and murdering people with hired thugs.
It’s just rewriting history, Biden was unbelievably outspoken in his support for Ukraine, was sending them aid, had terrible views of Russia. With Republicans we get a war with Iran and we suck Russia off and tell Ukraine get bent. We can see what the two parties did during this war, we don’t have to guess. Democrats have been with Ukraine since day 1, Republicans against. Trump cut off all Ukraine aid as fast as he could, Biden sent it as fast as he could, there is no mystery there.
Yes. You don’t need a trial for
-a live broadcasted coup attempt and attack at the capitol that was clearly organized and called for by an already established criminal and cult leader,
a PowerPoint presentation of a coup,
a big ass binder of a coup called project 2025 with names and plans of a government conspiracy to throw a “revolution” for the rich “that will be bloodless if the LEFT allows it”.
Over a years worth of committee investigations and hearings
And all of Jack Smith’s work.
YES HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUNISHED SEVERELY IMMEDIATELY
What would Biden have done if Ilhan Omar organized a group of leftists to storm the capital, after a year of perpetuating a rigged voting system, and angering a crowd on tv, and publishing a binder called "Bernie’s roadmap to taxing billionaires and removing AIPAC, IT WILL BE BLOODLESS IF THE RIGHT ALLOWS IT?
What do you think would happen to us?
Same on genocide too, don’t forget!
Oh and immigration!
Loads of new .ml accounts spreading “don’t vote” around, how very unsurprising.
They had to recreate their accounts after Yandex was targeted by Ukraine.
😂🤣😂🤣 thanks for the laugh 😂 that would be the funniest shit if true ha ha
Edit: maybe it Is true 😳
It all makes sense now…
who do you think was non-fascist?
Here’s the rub:
Most of these idiot kids are too young to vote anyway, and the rest are too stupid to recognize their own name on their mailer.
Don’t look at me. I voted for Godzilla
if clearly motivated people don’t want to vote for you, it’s not an indication that they should lower their standards, it’s an indication that you should have standards to begin with
it’s cute how liberals here are so resilient to reality. people don’t care for slow, steady, painfully incremental progress (if even that) when every summer is so much hotter than the last one.
There hasn’t even been slow progress for anything but shifting right. We have been losing everything from the new deal.
It’s literally their equivalent of trickle down economics. SOMEDAY IT WILL HAPPEN DESPITE ALL EVIDENCE SHOWING OTHERWISE
What’s not cute, is how there are people fucking stupid enough to not understand the simple concept that when your opponent is a anti-environmental fascist-
YOU VOTE AGAINST THE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL FASCIST.
It can’t get any easier, yet you people STILL don’t seem to understand it. Let me put it another way:
When you have cancer- YOU TAKE THE CHEMO. You live to fight anther day. You don’t say,
“Yeah, no. Chemo sucks. I don’t want to get sick, so, let the cancer take me.” This is PURE ignorance.
Well, if the supposed opposition is anti-environmental fascist-supporters, then they aren’t going to get people out to vote.
Your analogy is severly flawed. The Democrats are less like chemo, and more like alcohol. It makes you feel like the pain is going away, but in the end, it’s only helping the cancer.
Exactly. If they aren’t a Fetterman, then vote for them no matter what.
The only way voting will be ever be effective again is if we shift the Overton window back. The only way to do that (in regards to voting) is to vote for leftists at the local and state level. The ones that actually win are running under the Democrat banner.
That’s pretty much the only way we get out of this mess democratically speaking. That said, we do need to be doing more than just voting to have any actual chance.
Non voters aren’t motivated to vote, they’re non voters, why would anyone cater to a group that intentionally throws away any influence they could have?
Thanks, I’ll go on and implement a policy to destroy the ability to vote for as many people as possible in as many ways as I can come up with, that way they become non-voters and I don’t have to listen to them. Oh wait, that policy is already what’s happening.
Because progressives don’t fucking vote and give power to Republicans by doing so. If you refuse to participate in the system then you don’t get to be upset when the system disregards you.
Over several decades, progressives are told to vote for the lesser evil, they do, and then the lesser evil helps the greater evil silence progressive voices, so that progressives eventually find out they can’t vote anymore.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yeah, and not voting will make everything much worse a lot faster.
So please, throw away your vote. The republicans will thank you.
If progressives voted in every election over the last several decades we’d have a progressive democratic party, but progressives mostly don’t vote. You sound like a republican.
I sound like a Republican when saying that the Republican have destroyed voting rights? sure buddy.
You sound like a republican because you were spouting both sides bullshit.
Incremental progress is better than actively working to make things worse, but y’know, stick to your guns and help make SURE things get worse. Good job!
i think you misunderstand
i’m not saying people shouldn’t vote (truthfully, i don’t care). i’m saying parties who want votes should have policies worth voting for.
y’all keep talking about how the “let’s not vote for the lesser evil because it’s still evil” voter strategy has lead to terrible results. why not talk about how the “let’s be the lesser evil instead of doing anything good that people would want to support” party strategy has lead to the same terrible results?
The time to make that change is before the general election.
Anytime you’re presented with two choices, take the less bad option. But if that’s the only time you bother to act, or even worse, if you don’t even act THEN to pick the lesser bad option, then you are one less vote against the worse, and therefore by your actions support it. But you already supported it if you weren’t fighting for better options.
“Well, I didn’t pick which restaurant to visit very well, and this restaurant only has moldy fruit or sandwiches made literally from shit. I don’t like either option, so I’m just gonna eat whatever they bring me”. Sure, it’s not a great analogy in the sense that picking a different restaurant is not so easy in the context of politics, but I think it makes the point - always choose the lesser bad option. I’d rather eat the moldy fruit (we’re assuming that we must eat something in this metaphor) than the literal shit. And then work harder to try and prevent us from going to this restaurant next time. But if you are presented with the two bad options and one is worse, not picking an option is fucking stupid.
It blows my mind that these people just won’t even try to understand such a simple concept. Their entitlement, alongside their little purity test cost us not only our democracy, but is RAPIDLY forwarding the environmental damage they pretend to stand against.
It’s mind-numbing dumbassery.
Your point was well said, but it will sadly fall on deaf ears. They don’t want to be told the right way to do things, they want to be told the conveinient way to do things. The way that makes them look good. The way that doesn’t require an effort-
….the way that doesn’t involve sacrifice.
Their entitlement, alongside their little purity test cost us not only our democracy
so, people who aren’t content with atrocious (when, don’t they know that it could be cataclysmic???) are a sizeable enough population that they can sway elections… yet, seemingly, it’s not worth it for democrats to cater to them by not being atrocious? which is it?
you talk of effort and sacrifice. for what? voting? calling people dumbasses on the internet because they checks notes express empathy for those who refuse to settle for eternal mediocrity?
“is it so hard to understand that trump is worse” is it so hard to understand that people who see other people being bombed, forests burning, rights taken away, and their lives getting steadily worse, under liberals and conservatives alike, are not gonna fucking bother at some point? people are not game theory machines, “your life gets worse” vs “your life gets worser”, despite having an obviously correct answer, is not a motivating choice, what a surprise
if you believe in saving democracy so much, demand more out of your elected officials instead of demanding less of people who are tired of suffocating under the boot. but, maybe that requires too much effort, and involves too much sacrifice, idk
You know how you demand more from your elected officials? BY FUCKING VOTING IN THE FUCKING PRIMARIES YOU FUCKING DONKEYS.
Yeah, as a rule, I don’t read the propaganda you people believe in. Your job is to spread your bullshit and move on, my job is to calm it out.
“my job is to calm it out”
Is that your bot programming? That’s your job?
Progressives or others that are critical of the establishment democrats have given you ESSAYS of evidence all throughout here and you just say, “nope, you’re all dumb if you don’t vote for my party”
But I guess that could be indictive a being a bot OR just being an actual establishment democrat
It seems like you actually believe anyone who thought Harris was a bad candidate voted for Rump?
That’s so simpleOr they just didnt vote, yes.
2024 was a colossal failure for months before the election. They gave trump legitimacy by backing down “Sleepy Joe” biden, but didnt do it quick enough to hold a primary.
Democrats are fighting on being “the other guy” but thats not an identity. Theres a reason people love mamdani so much, and its because he has values.
But what if they voted for Harris, while thinking she was a terrible candidate? Did that possibly not occur to you?
Millions didn’t. Did that occur to you?
Of course. That’s why I expected her to loose.
Typical MAGA.
Your inability to make the bare minimum effort necessary to stand in front of fascism seems to have also allowed you to not know or care what the outcome was-
Since you seem to like simplicity so much,…
How about you stop pretending any of this matters to you since you have proven via your conscience choice you made to not bother yourself with it.
Simple as……
What choice did I make?
What minimum effort did I not do?Voting for the candidate that does less harm to the environment.
Maybe not you, but plenty others did. And that is why we got trump.
I think you answered my second question? I’m going to assume you did.
Of course that’s why we got Rump. He got more votes. Harris ran against a convicted felon, fraudster, and rapist. It should have been a cake walk to beat him. It was the Dems campaign to loose. She lost anyway, because she was a bad cantate, and the Dems fucked up massively. You can’t blame the reff (the voters) when one team played so obviously badly.
It’s a two party system and you have three choices.
Vote A
Vote B
Don’t vote.
Not voting is still an action. It means either option is fine, otherwise you would have voted for a specific candidate
But what if they voted for Harris, while thinking she was a terrible candidate? Did that possibly not occur to you?
Then they liked her more than the other options.
I know we’re talking about Americans, but this is a simple enough concept. Even for them.
Yah I kind of thought that was simple enough that nobody would think it was what I was asking about.
The whole idea I apparently need to directly explain is, someone can believe that she was and is a bad candidate, while also voting for her. That we can call out her terrible campaign, and how bad the Democrats are at this game; Wanting and hoping for them to be better. You can support your team, while complaining about how much they suck. Too many here seem to think any criticism of any Democrat is support for Republicans. But that kind of simplistic black and white thinking is what Republicans do. I’d want more for us.
This has been the case since the 1990s, when does it deliver, can you show us?
What have working class people GAINED while settling for the “lesser of two evils”?
Where are the incremental steps to the left that you proclaim exist?
