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this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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Democracy is still alive for now. That's why voting matters. Our flawed democracy is still our best chance at adverting fascism. Which is why the fascists want to take it away. Giving up early gets us nothing. So keep fighting.
I think his point is that, if our only alternative to fascism is to vote for a senile old man who was forced upon voters without a primary, then this system can't credibly be called democracy.
It is still democracy. It doesn't matter how old the candidate is.
Its not about how old the candidate is, its about not having other valid alternatives when you dont like the candidate chosen for you.
Edit: just to make sure the point gets across. Imagine going to a restaurant, the waiter asks if you want to drink moldy water or toxic industrial waste. You see behind him lies an array of normal, refreshing beverages but sorry, you weren’t given those choices so you can’t have any of that. Thats basically this election.
We live in a first-past-the-post voting system. These choices, Biden and Trump, are in part the result of that system. We need to change to a different system like rank choice voting or approval voting. But despite being flawed, our system is still a democracy.
You can only continue to call this system a democracy by setting the bar very very low. Pointless to argue semantics though, better to argue substance. We won't get to a better - more representative - democracy by working within the current system; we need to apply external pressure. People don't feel that voting in this election will save democracy because they don't feel there's enough of it left to be saved. Voting in this election can at best stave off a total collapse to fascism, but that's it.
Our democracy is a democracy. That is a fact. The most effective method to improving our democracy is using our democracy. US history has demonstrated this repeatedly. Our democracy is our most effective tool to prevent fascism, so we should fight to keep it as long as possible. The fascist movement will continue to grow until we defeat their ideas and abandon neo-liberalism. This means we need to elect Biden in 2024 and then elect a socialist in 2028. edit: typo
Meaningful progress has only ever been made in the US after mass movements engaged in direct action and protests (often met with violent state repression), and even then the legislation that's made is usually much less than the people wanted. This is not a sign of a democracy that functions for the people.
It is the sign of democracy for the people. All of the social, economic, and political progress in the US is thanks to movements that translated into legislation, amendments, and court rulings via our democracy. Without a democracy those movements would have hit a wall. Of course we need to continue to improve our democracy. We need unfettered majority rule in this country. It is functionally possible to achieve this, but people have to vote. The movements won't translate into positive change if people skip voting.
Why on earth do you think you'll be given the option to elect a socialist in 2028?
If Biden wins this election in 2024 we will have a Democratic primary without a Democratic incumbent in 2028. The last two times that happened we were given a socialist to vote for in the Democratic primary. In 2028 we need to make sure whoever that is wins the primary. We can do that by spreading socialist and progressive ideas in the fours years between now and the 2028 election.
If your choices are vote for A and democracy ends or vote for B, it isn't really a choice. If it isn't a choice, it's not a democracy. It's political theater. Not unlike mock elections in dictatorships.
You're fucked either way, both choices are pathways to the same destination. Just at different speeds/ different routes.
By electing Biden democracy continues and we will have the opportunity for better choices. There are ways to fix our problems, but we have to be willing to fight for them. If we choose to keep fighting we can avert self-destruction. In this case it means voting for a neo-liberal. That's a small price to pay for a shot at a better society and averting death camps.
Democracy's already gone if you don't have a choice. Little difference in the long term between either candidate. We're on the way to an authoritarian capitalist state much like China either way.
We had primaries this year. As per usual the incumbent president won their primary. Now the American people have two choices for president. With Biden we have a chance at electing progressives and socialists in 2026 and 2028. We will not have that opportunity with Trump.
Are you a bot? Keep saying the same thing without addressing what I'm saying.
A) right now the American has a choice between Biden and Trump.
B) you are claiming that you either vote for Biden or democracy ends
C) if there is no real practical choice, there is no real democracy.
Political theater. We're becoming a warped version of Soviet style system. Mock elections, need to pretend to care about things you don't actually care about, self censorship, etc.
Is there anything I could do to convince you otherwise? I have refuted these arguments multiple times. No matter how many times they are repeated they are still just as flawed.
I am claiming that we have a chance to save democracy by voting in Biden in 2024. It is not a guarantee, but it will be possible to elect candidates who are not neo-liberals or fascists in 2026 and 2028. If Trump is elected in 2024 democracy will end. We would not even have this opportunity if we did not live in a democracy.
Averting fascism and death camps is a real choice. Having the opportunity to build a better society is a real choice. There is still democracy for now.
edit: Also, the option to end democracy is a choice. It's an option that can happen in a democracy. And there are fascists who want to choose this option. We need to out vote them.
Democracy is about choice. If we don't have choice democracy is already dead. We are not fighting for democracy- it's already gone. We are fighting about how the future authoritarian government will develop.
We have moved past neoliberal. We have transitioned into protectionist mergers between state + corporate power regardless of candidate.
Both candidates agree fully on this. Oil company profits have surged under Biden. Cooperation with big tech companies (for example banning competition or manipulating online speech) have happened under Biden.
You are under this mentality that this is a bump in the road. We have already started turning sharply to the right back when Trump was first elected and then we accelerated the shift during and after COVID.
Either way we're going to see war, economic instability, and political radicalism. The game is over, we have lost.
I'm going to at least keep my human dignity and vote blank on the next ballot. I cannot in good conscience play a role in this conversion process.
We are experiencing late-stage capitalism because neo-liberals refuse to change our institutions. Unless we do something, the US is going to have an oligarchy of billionaires that rally around a christo-fascist dictator.
I am not arguing the current state of our country is a bump in the road. I am arguing for a strategy that amounts to a last ditch effort to avert fascism. The fascist movement will not go away if Biden wins this election. Voting for Biden is only the first step that has to be done if we want to prevent our country from becoming a christo-fascist dictatorship. Neo-liberalism got us into this mess and the longer we stick with neo-liberalism the larger the fascist movement will become.
All we are getting by electing Biden is 2024 is a chance to elect people with better ideas and a willingness to use political power to make systemic changes in 2026 and 2028. We need socialists and progressives in political positions. There is no value in giving up early. We might as well vote because we get the same result if we try and fail as not trying. edit: typo
We can still get back to democracy. This isn't democracy. Did you even read my comment btw? This knee jerk canned response isn't even human.
We are living in a democracy right now. The fascists are attempting to takeover our democracy. If we didn't have democracy there wouldn't be an election.
Then let's hold a primary.
The Democratic Party's primary already happened. As is typical for American politics the incumbent won their party's primary.
Well, at least in the states where they didn't succeed in keeping everyone else off the ballot.
There was no real primary. Even 2020 wasn't a real primary. The fix is in with mainstream media and the major outlets taking their queues from the establishment.
The idea that we have an actual democracy is laughable, and the Democratic party does everything in their power to keep it that way. Biden won in 2020 because the establishment picked him and the media did as they were told. There is no democracy without an independent press.
Biden is a better choice than Trump for a multitude of reasons, but not saving democracy.
We have a democracy. There is a real Democratic Party primary every four years. Incumbent presidents usually win their primary when they are up for reelection.
The press is independent, but for profit in most cases. There are of course non-profit exceptions. The fact capitalism exists doesn't mean democracy doesn't exist. It means the owner class has a profit motive to overthrow our democracy.
Electing Biden preserves our flawed democracy for four more years. This gives us time to build grassroots movements to put people with better ideas into political positions in the next two elections. It delays the christo-fascist movement for four more years, who have to win a presidential election to succeed.
Getting Biden in office is how we save our democracy, but not because of something he will do. In order to save our democracy, we first have to keep it. Then we have to fix it.
This year they literally canceled the presidential primary in several states so, no, we don't have a primary every four years.
Radical consolidation of the media industry has largely killed independent journalism. There is a long list of media personalities who were taken off the air for daring to speak the truth. Anchors are selected to represent the establishment perspective on everything. Media ownership and the establishment work together to dominate the narrative. For profit or non-profit is irrelevant. PBS is now as captured as the private networks.
New media caught the establishment by surprise and did manage to make inroads, but that has largely been brought under control. Democrats and Republicans cooperated long enough to pressure social media companies to tweak the algorithm to direct viewers to "trustworthy" news sources, a group that laughably includes FOX News and MS-NBC and excludes independent news providers.
Electing Biden can't preserve democracy where none exists. There was that study out of Stanford that showed zero statistical correlation between the policy desires of voters and what legislation gets passed. We have the facade of democracy, but no actual democracy.
What we do have is the fight for Democracy, and that fight has a much better chance under Biden than Trump. That's not a minor distinction. I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy. They are democracy's enemies, and they are my enemies. The entire fight for democracy in an age of media manipulation is a fight to pull back that curtain. That fight doesn't stop because of Trump.
Biden was a write in candidate in New Hampshire and won. Delware was cancelled because only Biden got enough signatures. Florida's cancellation is still being challenged in court. These exceptions are exceptions, they don't mean we didn't have a primary. The incumbent won the primary, like incumbents usually do.
The media isn't perfect. Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. CNN was artificially shifted to the right by a rich donor. But the situation isn't as bad as your argument claims. We just had most of mainstream media attacking Biden over his debate performance. For profit media follows the profit motive to everyone's detriment. There isn't some kind of organized conspiracy to control the news.
We have a democracy. The policy people want and the policy that gets implemented has diverged since Regan. Neo-liberalism is the cause of this. Neo-liberalism suppresses socialist ideas, while allowing fascist ideas to take root. Neo-liberals cling to the status quo and believe that our institutions are fundamentally good. That we just need good people in charge of them. So they resist systemic change and fail to get to the root cause of our problems.
Our intuitions are fundamentally flawed and need to be fixed. We need majority rule in our democracy and wealth redistribution in our economy. We need to abolish the Electoral College, proportion Senate seats by population, have Supreme Court justices run for election to name a few. We need to remove the owner class by taking away their wealth and the source of their wealth. Workers need to own the corporations they work for. Every worker needs to be given an equal percentage of the company in stocks or bonds and be paid out regularly in dividends or interest. Billionaires need to be taxed until they are millionaires.
In addition to being difficult to implement neo-liberals are going to intuitively resit these changes. The fixes all involve systemic change to systems they believe are inherently good. There are people who would rather elect Trump than fix these problems. Not because they are fascists, but because neo-liberalism has led them to believe that a 'good man' needs to be allowed to do 'what needs to be done'. There are of course people who want their prejudices to be validated and overt fascists. But neo-liberalism leaves people susceptible the idea that systems don't need to be fixed and that only the people need be to changed.
Thanks to neo-liberalism it easier for a fascist to convince people to blame their problems on immigrants and minorities than for a socialist to convince people to solve their problems with systemic change and wealth redistribution. This is not to say that it is impossible to convince people socialism is the answer to their problems. Just that we actively have to educate people about the flaws of neo-liberalism and fascism in addition to convincing them about progressive and socialist ideas.
I am not arguing for this.
I am arguing for this.
I am not arguing Biden will save democracy. Biden is a neo-liberal. His political ideology prevents him from saving our democracy. The same goes for the Democratic Party who are predominately neo-liberals. I am arguing that we, as in the American people, need to save our democracy. The first step in the strategy I am arguing for is to elect Joe Biden. Out of the two viable candidates, he is the candidate who is not a fascist. Electing Biden will preserve our democracy, flawed as it is, for four more years.
Then we need to use the 2026 and 2028 elections to elect socialists and progressives. We ideally want a socialist president to win in 2028. We need to co-opt the Democratic party the way the christo-fascists co-opted the Republican Party.
The fascists will not be defeated until we defeat their ideas. Once Trump is out of the picture MAGA and the Republican Party will find a new guy. Fascists movements are springing up in Europe. Modi is the head of a hindu-fascist movement in India. Getting Biden elected is not the solution, just a way to delay the fascists in the US long enough to start implementing actual solutions. edit: typos
There are a lot of non-democracies with elections.
Not a lot of them vote out the would be dictator so that he incites an insurrection.