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John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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I don't like Joe Biden, but this isn't a presidential approval poll, it's an election, and he's clearly better than any of the alternatives. And when it comes down to it, he's been better than I expected. We could have just had an exclusively centrist presidency, and while there's been plenty of centrism, he has been persuadable to progressive action.
And frankly even if you can't bring yourself to express support Biden for some reason, it should be pretty easy to want anyone who willingly associates with Republicans to lose and lose badly, because they're way beyond stealth-mode fascism now. Even the most jaded "they're all neolibs" voter from earlier elections can't possibly ignore that the Republicans are just fash now. There's a real danger if they win that cities end up with federally tasked jackboots kidnapping protesters like Portland.
When the vote is between someone (and a party) who says "climate change is more worrying than nuclear war" and "climate change is a hoax" the choice should be clear for any reasonable person. All the treason stuff aside (though very important, everyone should already be decided on that), climate change is the biggest issue for everyone I know. Probably for any average person under 50 if I had to guess.
I've seen people saying Hexbear users have been brigading politics communities of other instances. Not sure if it's true, but it would explain the massive influx of idiotic far right morons with a 6th grade writing level making bad faith arguments.
Don't fucking tell me what I am or who "my guys" are. Tankies are almost just as bad as conservatives.
Hexbear is leftist and lemmy.world defederated from the instance so you're speaking of phantoms
Every other country doesn't have first-past-the-post voting for their legislative branch.
So you like Trump for 2024, then? Noted.
which, if yall voting third party in some "safe state" and the candidate doesn't even support some kind of electoral reform, what are yall doing. this whole "swing state" thing is 100% bullshit and virtually any of 10,000 plans to fix it will work, at least send a message.
Perfect summary of how fucked the two party system and partisan identity in the US is. "Oh you don't want to get behind a party that supports the Palestinian genocide? Trump lover!" You basically have a moderate rainbow capitalist center right party, and a fashy culture war right party, they have the same donors and corrupt capital directing their policies though. The vote is like picking the aesthetic you want to see things degrade under.
Biden taking the L for pulling out of Afghanistan was the best thing he's done. Obama and Trump didn't want it and he finally went though with it.
These two things can be true at the same time:
Feel free to vote for West if you live in, say, California. But in a contested state, a vote for West is a vote for Trump (or his replacement as Führer).
There is an actual, material difference between the center-right big-business party (the Democrats) and the fascist party. If you don't believe me, go ask a gay schoolteacher from Florida.
You can't blame 3rd party / nonvoters for the faults of republican voters. Mentality like that is why we are stuck with point number 1.
Do you want to Make America Florida?
Who you or I vote for is not going to stop a second January 6th, it isn't going to change the plans in project 2025, the question is no longer about duely elected politicians, there is a high chance that Trump could be barred from running due to his actions on Jan 6th, but that doesn't change angry confused people's minds.
If you don't want to make america Florida convince a Trumper he's bad don't attack people who already know it.
Weren't you just talking about 3rd party/nonvoters? Because if they're truly seeing fascism on the rise and then not voting against it they're very much not the people who truly "know Trump is bad".
I was, voteing 3rd party is voting against fascism, unless trump ends up running 3rd party then it could go either way. There is more than just us and them, there are people inbetween, and treating them like the enemy is not how we get out of this mess.
It literally isn't, because it has no impact on whether a fascist gets elected.
So why aren't you out in Ukraine planning a covert mission to assassinate putin? By not fighting him you have no impact on if a fascist takes over the world.
Its a stupid argument it's not just yes or no.
you are playing into the fascists game by ignoring the other possibilities.
I'm not claiming I'm helping to eliminate the Russian fascist. You're claiming your vote is helping to prevent it domestically.
I'm claiming that you can't blame people who didn't vote for fascism for fascism.
You are claiming that people who don't vote how you want them to are helping to bring forth fascism.
following that logic by not fighting in Ukraine you too are giving rise to domestic fascism in that putin could one day become a fascist dictator of America if not stopped.
by not stopping him you too support fascism in America.
Edit: Don't let billionaires divide us, you are better than that, Republicans are better than that, I believe you want the best for america just like they do, you are both just confused on how to do it and who the actual enemies of democracy are.
Because of the shitty structure of the voting system, people who "didn't vote for fascism" can, in fact, be supporting the fascist party.
This is a mathematical consequence of the specific type of shitty that our voting system is.
As a supporter of better voting systems, you can realize that.
And then, as a voter, you can look at your district and you can look at the candidates, and you can fucking vote tactically in the way that will, in fact, mathematically, provably reduce the chance of electing a fucking Nazi.
Right now, under the voting system we actually have, if you're in a purple state and vote for Cornel West, if you are mathematically literate you know you're helping elect Trump.
That's just true. Simply true. It's a consequence of the shitty voting system, but it's a real consequence. That's actually how it will happen. It's not about how you feel in your heart. It's about whether police are going to drag LGBT+ kids away from their supportive parents. It's about whether birthright citizenship is retroactively abolished. It's about whether the January 6 perpetrators get not only pardoned, but appointed to office.
You know the choice you have. It's a shitty choice, because you and I both know that the first-past-the-post voting system creates shitty choices.
But still ... don't vote for fascism.
You know what is bullshit? Money. A $100 bill and a $1 are the same physical thing. Why should a $100 bill be worth 100 times more than a $1 bill? It’s all the same thing.
But society uses money, I have to play by those rules. I can’t pay five lunch with $1 if they says it’s $20. I have to work in the system even if it sucks.
Become a hermit
Sure I can. Every eligible voter who did not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 shares partial blame for Trump winning. Less than people who voted for Trump, but more then none at all.
Personally I would put more blame on the democrats for not fielding a better candidate that could have beaten trump not the people who didn't vote for a shit candidate
That’s too many layers of assumptions. I can tell you for a fact that not voting for Hillary lead directly to Trump winning in 2020. We have no idea how another candidate would have done running against him in the general.
Everyone who did not vote for Vermin Supreme is also responsible for letting Trump win.
Do you think before you type?
I don’t count pointless hypotheticals.
Holy fuck is this insane. While it was still dumb, complaining about lack of differentiation between neoliberalism with social conservative tendencies and neoliberalism with socially liberal tendencies could at least masquerade as a cogent argument, but "fashy culture war" isn't just another stylistic draping on neoliberalism, it's storming school boards, skinheads marching through cities, and federally directed jackboots kidnapping protesters.
That's all happening now while Biden is in office though, and the police work for the state. Weapons are also being sold to fascists and extremists who repress moderates all over the world. The difference is under neoliberalism domestically, as long as people are equally represented, and the visible oppression is externalized, the structure is strengthened and remains. The Republican model says some deserve to be worse off based on their identity, which is in practice an opportunity for exploitation of all, it's a way to blame systemic stresses on an internalized other. The stresses remain in either case and the system continues to degrade.
Neoliberalism has already had its crisis and essentially died, in the sense that it's not believed in anymore but still guides institutions.
Where are the DHS (or other federal agents) kidnapping protesters? They didn't just randomly decide to show up in Portland and they weren't just randomly chosen from among available federal forces. They were sent there by Trump because they were a young organization with the least inertia to resist the fascist turn.
As to the other two, I suppose it's true it's still happening, no one solved the problem of evil, but they aren't being called "fine people" and sheltered by the head of the executive branch. Zero chance the Proud Boys go to prison under a fascist president and more than likely they will be pardoned (and given a green light) if that happens. The idea that a fascist president doesn't make fascism markedly worse is insanity.
All the flowery words about international relations are just avoiding answering the question of actual fascism, while also basically ignoring that fascist leaders were rising at the same time and supporting each other. What bullshit fake leftism to just hand wave away the rise of fascism, both at home and abroad.
Feds are notorious for harassing and threatening effective protestors, and the police and military in the US are full of organized fascists already, that's just getting worse in any partisan scenario. International relations is actual fascism, because it's all about protecting the interests of private US companies who do business in countries with less regulations and labor standards, and forcing those countries to remain friendly to US interests in this manner. So the oppression resulting from this system is externalized and hidden from the American collective conscious which is more involved with a culture war that doesn't really change the status quo system but gives it moral justification and context. Results are incidents like Coca Cola hiring death squads in Columbia to harass and murder labor organizers, or just exploiting entire workforces. The military industrial complex side of this is basically death for any political organizations left of center in any country the US has interests in, the story of the last half century. Pertinent example, Biden pulling out of Afghanistan ended decades of involvement that basically started with providing insane amounts of weapons to Mujahideen Islam extremists and warlords which culminated in 9/11. Iran is the exception but the US is materially very friendly to repressive Islamic states for these economic reasons, those states aren't inclusive by any stretch of the imagination and actually murder so-called sexual deviants. As long as it's not happening in the US neoliberal Democrat supporters can feel like their hands are clean of fascism the system they support inflicts. So I would flip around that last paragraph and say this is a material reality entirely avoided by US Democrat progressives.
It helps to think of it in pragmatic terms of what your vote does, versus whether or not you fully support X or Y. It is undeniable that given the stupid electoral system we were born into, that voting third party effectively supports whichever mainstream candidate you don’t want to win.
All the rest of the time, whether in primaries or public forums like this, you argue and vote for what/who you really want.
But once you hit the general election, it is essentially cast in stone that either the R or D candidate will win.
We need ranked choice voting so that candidates care about what the people really want, versus just getting more votes than one specific other person.
You like Trump for 2024. I've noted it. It's in my notes! You're in trouble now!
He's clearly not, first because he fell for the ~~People's~~ Grifter's Party and second because he's not even trying to win. Jumping into a presidential race as a third party is just an exercise in self-promotion and maybe a little political grifting along the way. He sure as shit isn't trying to engage with the political system to induce positive political change because no outcome of his candidacy believably accomplishes that.
Marianne Williamson is a nutjob. Trump would destroy her in an election.
I think Marianne Williamson is an excellent candidate. But voting is literally a rigged game and there's only one answer where we don't all lose our democracy.