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The Bidens want back in
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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So win by throwing the rights of the queer community and minorities to the dogs?
I understand your frustration here. You and the minority communities do matter! With that said, the only way for you to have recognition and equality is to overthrow those in power. Those in power use you and other minorities as sock puppets pandering to wedge issues. While wedge issues are important to you and I, they are meaningless to those that use them to divided us.
If you let them keep using you as their wedge issue you can expect nothing but quarter measures and lip service in return. They need you to be that wedge issue to continue their robbery. You are being used, and as long as your useful nothing will materially change for you. You will be pulled left to right with every administration shift, never getting anything you need and deserve.
What matters to those in power is money. That's it. Right and left alike. Nothing else! Not you or any minority or what you/they/I care about will change while these kinds of people are in power.
I'm not saying to put your priorities on the back burner. I'm saying we have to come together to burn the fascists down to get what we want together. Money out of politics is the only avenue for any change. That might have to be the only priority for a moment til we have a functioning government that has the power to actually change all our lives for the better.
That got us Hillary instead of Bernie, then Biden instead of Bernie. And this thinking exactly perpetuates the ratchet effect. We always have to win just a little harder, then we can change what matters. THAT is what got us here.
I am NOT queer, nor a minority. I'm among the very last group of people that will be sent to the camps. But my values don't require me to be personally affected to stand firm by my fellow humans.
Edited to add:
But if I were a member of one of those groups, I'd probably be pretty upset that you are telling me I should treat my very existence as a "wedge issue" to be avoided. I won't go further for fear of putting words in someone's mouth.
That a bit crazy, they are wedge issues. The consultants red and blue have defined them so..
The left and the right pay consulting firms hundreds of millions to devise ways to create/use these "wedge issues" to divide us. That's the game. Keep you fighting over these issues and never doing anything meaningful to change things. Puppets and pawns.
The only game that will ever make any meaningful change is the money game! That's the only game that matters to them and the only one we need to win for all the wedge issues to be treated as real life issues.
We cannot have a functional democracy any other way. It is the only issue that will be able to bring about any meaningful change.
Don't let these think tanks divide and blind you or you risk just being the latest fad en vogue "wedge issue" political prop. Doomed to be used till your usefulness runs its course and they latch on the next whilst you get nothing in return. That's the plan all along.
I absolutely stand by the lgbt peoples as I stand by the others marginalized by society. What I'm saying was pretty fucking clear! If you want real lasting change there is only one real issue that matters. We have to break the money system. Or else nothing changes ever!
What got us Hillary not Bernie was the DNC, the same people that use the marginalized as props for political gain. People should have figured that out by now, if they are paying attention. The neoliberal right wing democrats! They own the DNC! They despise their own constituency. They loathe anyone that challenge their money making machine.
First I want to say that I was more terse in parts of my reply than you deserved, I apologize.
Let me make my main point slightly differently.
For people who are not members of those groups,these can be used by politicians as wedge issues.
For many people who are members of those groups, the current administration presents an immediate existential threat.
So making the decision to not focus on those issues in an attempt to curry favor with people who have already proven difficult to peel off when Kamala also tried to tack right for their votes (forgive my use of another meme below) seems careless with other peoples' lives, to me.
And I still say this kind of thinking just further incentivizes D to move further right. "Look, we went right and won!" It's now very, very clear that winning votes is all that matters to many incumbent Democrats.
I don't want to appeal to any right winger, neoliberal or neoconservative. No where in either of my posts did I advocate such. Those on the left, the real definition of left, are easily fractured into faction's. It is our nature as independent thinkers.
My only goal of my posts on this thread is to help people realize that they are being manipulated by these wedge issues devised by consultants to separate/divide us. Not that these aren't real issues they absolutely are. However they are labeled wedge issues for a reason. Excellent division tactics of manipulation and used in that manor.
We have to fight the $$$! That's my point. Those on the real left need to coalesce behind that singular goal. That's the only way to win freedom and equality for all.
My dad said to me once, "Pick your battles wisely, figure out whats the most present obstacle to your success, form a strategy that will succeed or you will fail. Sometimes that means playing the long game."
I agree with this.
But if we do it to the exclusion of other concerns, we increase the vulnerability of these marginalized groups for an indeterminate period of time.
Conservatives fight the culture war because they have swallowed propaganda about these groups and now (still, I'd argue) hate them. Members of those groups and their allies fight the culture war because the writing is on the wall for what is going to happen to people in those groups if we don't.
I knew you people would disagree but I don't care.
Inherently, leftists support protections for minorities. It's part of being decent.
The problem is the conservative propaganda noise machine has amplified the anti-immigrant, woke and LGBT stuff as a distraction from the fact that billionaires are hoarding and stealing your wealth. And they're gaining power to keep it this way.
The immigrant and LGBT stuff just angers bigots, gets them energized to vote against their own interests. Republicans are winning, bigly, not sure you've noticed.
It's working because of people like you who can't navigate this very successful propaganda.
Seems to me you are proposing that we cater to the bigots.
Yeah that's a lot of words to tell me my empathy for people not like me is a problem.
Nope. I'm saying the LGBT stuff doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does. It's amplified as a propaganda tactic to get bigots votes. They get power, which results in bigoted policies to keep power.
Your empathy is irrelevant if you have no power, which you don't. Do you not recognize that it's getting worse for the LGBT community? Potentially way fucking worse.
Your way isn't working, because you don't understand that it's not actually your way, it's the wealthy in power that have you hyperfocused on anything other than them hoarding wealth and consolidating power, and destroying what rights and freedom we have left.
It matters far more than you are giving it credit. Throwing one group under the bus is immoral and we should oppose it because of that, but it is also just stupid tactically. Our strength is solidarity. Everyone for everyone and against the oligarchs who are destroying this world.
It does not, and I'm absolutely not throwing them under the bus.
I've already said, inherently and foundationally, leftists support protections for minorities of all types, period. It should be really easy. It doesn't matter in the sense that it's simple, bigots who discriminate against any minority should be an extreme outlier. The problem we have is a long term lack of education and cultural indoctrination that supports bigotry. Because of this there's way more ignorance and bigotry than there should be. The cure for this really is widespread education. We can't educate if we have no power.
We can't fix it without power. The true moral thing to do is logically understand how to get power. Keeping immigrant and LGBT issues at the top, is just getting the right to win. Hell, even immigrants went more for trump this election.
This is the most important thing, but in a way that actually works. The oligarchs are winning and getting more of the masses on their side, because they're using the immigrant and LGBT issue stuff to rally they're supporters to get votes and keep power. Conservatives are winning all over the world, and they all use these tactics.
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.” - Le Guin
There's a poem about this very attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
And you know what? You can plainly see it happening.
All during the election it was LGBTQ. But that's kinda back seat (for now) -
Then it was undocumented immigrants that were criminals.
It took no time at all before we heard about non-criminal undocumented immigrants being swept up. And then Native Americans.
Now it's clearly people who have made honest mistakes.
And Trump now says he wants to send protesters to El Salvador too.
He's going to come for the queer folks.
He's going to come for you if you aren't a cis white male or tradwife to one. It's just a matter of time.
We stand together or not at all.
Yowza. That doesn't apply to my comments at all.
Then you aren't expressing yourself very well.
Agreed.
Copy/paste of my other comment, the gist of what im saying:
LGBT, woke, and immigrant issues are amplified by those in power to get more votes on the right, and distract from the most important issues: oligarchy and wealthy elites who are exploiting the poor and working class.
This doesn't mean these issues aren't important, they are. They're just used to distract from what's more important, and energize bigots who end up supporting the right.
Anti oligarchy and the billionaire exploitation should be the most amplified issues talking points. This, done correctly, might even get some support from outside the left (remember luigi?, glimpses of far left and far right joining together).
This doesn't mean throw minorities under the bus. It means switching priorities, to get power.
OK agreed!
I agree with you that they use them to distract from those issues, but I disagree with how you are ranking them. I will attempt to explain that at the end.*
I agree here too, but that support will be limited, insincere, a facade, a brittle alliance, because the moment they have to support policies that will help people not like them, or that require them to accept policies based on someone else's deeper understanding of a topic than their own (for one example a global pandemic and the precautions an uncertain world needed to take until treatments and vaccines could be developed), they will go running back to maga, or at least to whatever is remaining of R at that point in time.
I believe you think it doesn't. I think you can't possibly be considering how such an approach will allow for harm to those groups until your plan bears fruit. (which it may not ever do)
During the period of time between the switching and the power, it means willfully risking the lives of other people who are members of groups that (apologies for my assumption if I'm wrong) it doesn't sound like you consider yourself a member of. The willfully is important. There's no avoiding that we all make decisions that will have external impacts we haven't considered, but there's no way around that this is a choice to increase the vulnerability of those groups for an uncertain period of time.
For the next bit, I'm going to copy paste a bit from a prior reply also, with some edits.
I said I'd more thoroughly explain my disagreement with you on this point.
I am NOT queer, nor a minority. But if I were a member of one of those groups, I’d probably be pretty upset that you are telling me I should accept that I'm going to lose my gender affirming care or the protections of the civil rights act with nary an expectation of backing from allies, because for an indeterminate amount of time they have decided they need to let me and others like me suffer for a political gambit that may or may not pan out.
EDIT: So it's a distraction to the RIGHT who eat up the fake bullshit about these groups. But to the people who are in those groups it's a legitimate existential threat. (Forgot to tie it all together in the first draft)
IMO that sort of thinking brought us Hillary (vs Bernie) and Biden (vs Bernie) and contributes to the rightward walk of the Democrats exemplified by the latter half or so of Kamala's campaign and by memes such as this:
"We'll win by converting Republicans... but as leftists."
Stop chasing that stupid fucking dream of a left coalition that's just gruff manly workers without all those whiners talking about things that don't affect you and might even have made you feel bad once upon a time. Solidarity isn't a quiet nod and a "trust us", it's showing up for your fellows and having their back even when you're not in the firing line.
"We're not going to talk about your issues, but you should believe we'll fight for them once we have power" is literally why the Democrats just lost. But like the anti-woke centrists you're still going to pretend wokeness, which was approximately 0% of the Democratic campaign, was the problem. That's why you can't be trusted to say you'll get to it as soon as the politics that caters only to your interests gains power.
Yep.
Kamala tried that, but as a centrist - all that talk about her glock, all that lack of talk about climate change or palestine (or LGBTQ issues), all that time being chummy with Cheneys.