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submitted 9 months ago by Confidant6198@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 31 points 9 months ago

On the ballot in 19 states totalling 220 electoral college votes.

Who wants to tell them you need 270 to win?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access_in_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election

[-] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 36 points 9 months ago

In case others need to hear this, please don’t vote third party. Even to start a revolution or whatever. It’s an incredibly privileged position to be able to endanger LGBTQ, immigrants, and women’s rights because you want to send a message. Vote Dem and back ranked choice or you may get the revolution the other way.

[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 17 points 9 months ago

Don't vote for genociders. It is an incredibly privileged position to vote for someone genociding an entire people as if it is just a normal election year.

And don't kid yourself on what Dems will do. They don't actually fight for any of that particularly hard because they know you will vote for them anyways, even I'd they commit genocide. In fact, the thing to do if you care about others' welfare is to demonstrate that you are not an automatic lever pull, that you require real concessions. Otherwise you are just a cheerleader for their entire program indefinitely, and that includes genocide.

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago
[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 8 points 9 months ago
[-] Maeve@midwest.social 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I was hyped about Walz for* a few whole days, and the day after Harris picked him, i got the bright idea to check his past statements on Israel. When I searched, I learned within 15 minutes that not only was he AIPAC supported, but also that he strongly and vocally supported Israel until Harris needed to pick a veep candidate, and got quiet. That's when I noped. This is nothing new, he just couldn't suppress his support any more.

Psychological suppression is like pushing an inflated beach ball under water: you can push it down to a certain degree, and then it bursts back to the surface, splashing water everywhere in proximity (water representing feelings).

[-] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries. It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general. You get real power to get actual shit done without risking fascism by letting the GOP win due to the spoiler effect.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan. I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries.

Are you suggesting a revolution is done within the bounds of the electoral system?

It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general

  1. You can't "capture" or "win over" parties like that, the electoral system is a filter.

  2. You can't change a party's platform in the general with some grand prayer or anything, they will do what they need to to satisfy their donors.

You get real power to get actual shit done

No, you don't.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan. I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

You're right, that is nonsense, please read leftist theory and talk to actual leftists. Nobody wants to rebuild from collapse.

[-] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Are you suggesting a revolution is done within the bounds of the electoral system?

Third party candidates and their supporters sure seem to.

You can't "capture" or "win over" parties like that, the electoral system is a filter

There hasn't been large ideological shifts within the 2 major parties? Are you serious? I will provide you an example: look at the GOP. The past several decades right wing radicals have focused on capturing local elections and statehouses, it has been wildly successful for them and has allowed these people to completely capture the party and expel pretty much any opposition. Capturing a party is absolutely in the table, we literally have historical examples with these same parties.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

Third party candidates and their supporters sure seem to.

They don't.

There hasn't been large ideological shifts within the 2 major parties? Are you serious? I will provide you an example: look at the GOP. The past several decades right wing radicals have focused on capturing local elections and statehouses, it has been wildly successful for them and has allowed these people to completely capture the party and expel pretty much any opposition. Capturing a party is absolutely in the table, we literally have historical examples with these same parties.

Why has the GOP (and DNC) gone further right? Random radicals? No. Fascism is Capitalism in decline, it's an inevitability that the establishment parties would move towards it.

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[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries.

Revolution does not follow the electoral cycle. PSL is constantly doing work. This is just a vehicle for reaching those who do not understand politics beyond electoralism and to raise the correct position that both capitalist parties create and maintain our oppression.

There is not going to be a revolutionary movement that begins work during a primary and then has completed the revolution at its end. Revolutionary work requires building organizations over years and decades.

It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general.

The party will never allow that lmao. Every attempt to work within the most viable party for this, the Democrats, has resulted in them changing their own rules. Just see how it worked out for the members of the DSA who took over in Nevada.

You get real power to get actual shit done without risking fascism by letting the GOP win due to the spoiler effect.

Biden and Harris are just as fascistic as Trump. They are nationalists committing genocide scapegoating immigrants and people overseas and pumping huge sums of money into cops' funds in response to uprisings over racial policing and racial oppression. They are just polite about it and use the right euphemisms.

Their policies are, in fact, the main driver of an ascendant right. Their policies degrade conditions and the response to them and fail to address the scapegoating that marginalization provides.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan.

Of course it is necessary. You think the capitalists will just let you vote them out of power?

I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

Please do less bullshit guessing and actually learn about this topic.

[-] Maeve@midwest.social 4 points 9 months ago

They are just polite about it and use the right euphemisms.

Yes. That my cognitive dissonance was so loud I could clearly see the evermore rightward march of the Democratic party, be horrified by ever-shifting rhetoric and policy but failed to recognize it until one of our brothers here pointed out to me in direct yet civil terms, i was embarrassed. Not ashamed, because I think shame wouldn't have allowed me to admit to myself, let alone others, that this is exactly correct.

No matter our nationality, political ideals, deep, honest, fearless introspection is necessary.

Sometimes I feel the fear of Uncertainty stinging clear And I, I can't help but ask myself How much I let the fear take the wheel and steer It's driven me before, and it seems to have a vague Haunting mass appeal But lately I'm beginning to find that I Should be the one behind the wheel

[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

Yes, it's horrifying what a small change in perspective - a new angle of criticism, for example - can reveal about our world. There's no need to feel embarrassment, we are all embedded in a milieu of PR campaigns and a handful of political memes recycled indefinitely and it is so pervasive that it is not something that poli sci professors usually escape, either. Usually it's the exact opposite. They repeat and entrench lines of thought handed down to them without ever critically engaging with it. Universities across the West teach collective action problems as if they are laws and not constantly openly contradicted by example or that politucs is a one-dimensional axis from liberal to conservative. The latter truly reveals how little they have questioned or learned and opens up its own interesting questions about how academia functions. But anyways, point is, even the people nominally tasked with becoming experts on these sorts of things don't just automatically recognize this predominant myopia.

Recognizing such pervasive false perspectives and tropes tends to require a cold splash of reality that contradicts the narrative or extensive reading to discover new thought patterns. Or like in your case, talking to someone that has already done so. All we can do is be open to the constructive self-criticism like you make note of and to do our best to be personally morally consistent and empathetic.

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[-] Repelle@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

If you want to change the system and think you can do it from within, the primaries are the time. If you don’t think you can do it from within, do it from without and have your revolution on the streets—dont spoil the candidate that more closely aligns with your views.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago

If you don’t think you can do it from within, do it from without and have your revolution on the streets—dont spoil the candidate that more closely aligns with your views.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans more closely align with Marxist views, both are so far removed that it isn't a spoiler.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

It's an incredibly privledged position to intentionally decide to sacrifice Palestinians and support a genocidal regime, one that is failing to assist the rights of queer people, women, and immigrants, and one that is failing to adequately address climate change, and is working towards World War 3.

back ranked choice

  1. Would not fix the problem that candidates are filtered and preselected
  2. Will never pass at meaningful numbers
  3. Neither party wants RCV
[-] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

Tanked choice was passed in Maine and elsewhere. Many blue states are tying electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote to remove that stupid distribution. Primaries are open. Only one party is trying to make voting more accessible.

As for Palestine, if you don’t subscribe to the lesser of two evils then I guess there isn’t much to talk about but don’t let the Nirvana fallacy blind you too much.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago

Tanked choice was passed in Maine and elsewhere. Many blue states are tying electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote to remove that stupid distribution. Primaries are open. Only one party is trying to make voting more accessible.

Like I said, it's kept as a carrot yet isn't sufficient and won't impact anything.

As for Palestine, if you don’t subscribe to the lesser of two evils then I guess there isn’t much to talk about but don’t let the Nirvana fallacy blind you too much.

The GOP and DNC are 100% aligned on Israel.

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[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 9 points 9 months ago

Most of the people voting for alternative parties are themselves LGBTQ, immigrants, and women.

[-] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

Then this is for them, it’s a vote against your own interests. Statistically it can only hurt.

[-] linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

the dems are treating immigrants just as badly and deporting even more, they did nothing to protects womens rights to abortions or to protect lgbtq people and they are actively supporting a FUCKING GENOCIDE in case u forgot. They dont deserve a single fucking vote. If they lose and i doubt they will maybe it will teach them not to be genocidal at the very least.

[-] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

You seem pretty ill informed or willfully ignorant if you are saying both sides are the same. Politicians listen to the people who vote or donate to them not to the lunatic fringe. The right wing, and especially the Supreme Court have actively worked to destroy women’s rights, increase the influence of dark money, remove restrictions on executive authority, and funnel public money to religious organizations. Don’t let your anger with the pace of progress blind you to the stakes here.

[-] linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago

i never said they were the exactly the same infact i said they were even worse for immigrants at a national level because they are. And lets be very fucking clear here u are ok with genocide i am not that is the difference any other year i wouldnt care, but right now we have a regime in government who openly and loudly supports genocide who revels in the slaughter of children, the question at the polls is a simple one do u support that genocidal regime or not.

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[-] GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

Politicians listen to the people who vote or donate to them

Politicians do not listen to people who vote for them unconditionally. Why would they?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 points 9 months ago

Do you think they are running because they expect to win? Are you familiar at all with the Marxist view of Electoralism?

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

They aren't going to end capitalism if they don't win.

The best they can hope to do is take votes away from Harris ensuring a Trump win, which is 180° the opposite of their message.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So no, you aren't familiar with the Marxist stance on Electoralism. For reference, they are Marxists.

No, they do not need to win the election to end Capitalism. Participation in bourgeois elections is to delegitimize the system (such as pointing out Dem/Rep collusion to kick them off the balot in Georgia), and advertise their platform.

Marxists believe revolution is necessary and electoralism is a sham.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 9 months ago

That sounds like a way to get a lot of people killed and end up worse than how you started.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

Historically, Marxist revolutions have dramatically improved conditions.

[-] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

Happy to hear more info here

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago

You'd have to be a bit silly to think the Tsarist regime was better for Russia, the nationalist Kuomintang for China, the fascist slaver Batista for Cuba, etc.

[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 months ago

The vast majority of every poverty alleviation statistic for the last 50 years has been China.

Generally speaking, third world countries do not advance without tackling the worldwide capitalist system. This is because it is set up to enrich international corporations largely seated in the heart of first world countries, particularly the US, and can only sustain itself through the maintenance of profits acquired through exploitation of those third world countries. Unequal exchange, forcing international business-friendly labor laws on them, preventing them from building up their own industries so they must import necessities, structuring their economies around whatever the imperial core needs (lithium, oil, an underpaid service industry), forcing them into situations where they have a ton of dollars and therefore must import using them, etc etc.

Under this scenario, conditions in these countries regularly degrade. Poverty and a lack of infrastructure, low wages, and the necessity of a pro-international-capitalist government means petty autocracy around the basics of life. High unemployment, rates, few prospects, a brain drain, and eventually internal violence via black markets, the associated organized crime, the government, and those who correctly recognize the problem and attempt to directly combat it (fighters for national liberation, socialists, etc). Things are not good and they rarely get better, quite the opposite. They shift according to whims far outside their control at virtually any level, as they are enslaved by capital right down to their national government. Resistance movements rise up for simple things like insigenous rights, land rights, etc, and the federal government suppresses them with far greater violence.

When organized anticapitalist forces win a revolution, they tend to work directly against the problems that fomented the revolution. They address issues of land rights, abolish systems like feudal relationships and the most heinous capital relations, invest in public education, utilities, housing, etc that were denies by their xapitalist comprador governments.

And the US responds. It attempts to destroy them, as it requires control over its vassal states to maintain its position at the top of a conveyor belt moving their resources and other labor products over to itself. Much of what you see that is negative in countries run by socialists is of that particular legacy. The US killed 20% of the population in North Korea and tried to isolate it so it spawned Juche. After the fall of the USSR, its primary trading partner, the US unleashed a massive series of sanctions, attempting to starve the country of everything needed to run it. The meme of a starving, poor North Korean is from the poverty created by fuel and food from sanctions. You until the late 80s North Korea regularly outperformed South Korea. This playbook has repeated many times. Those countries that can both carry out the initial revolution and then defend it against attack do much better than the alternative offered to them.

You might be thinking, "hey, but what about Japan or Taiwan or Estonia? They are doing okay." This is true, though you should keep in mind that they have been propped up in order to act as forward bases against targets of US Empire, namely Russia and China. And they are reigned in and will be subjugated as soon as it is seen as more beneficial than not for US interests. Japan experienced this in the 90s when the US created a massive recession for them.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 9 months ago

I went to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_revolution and clicked on the most recent successful entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_Civil_War

The civil war was characterized by numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions, massacres, purges, kidnappings, and mass rapes. It resulted in the deaths of over 17,000 people, including civilians, insurgents, and army and police personnel; and the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly throughout rural Nepal.

That's not great.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 9 months ago

You'll notice that the government did far more of the killing than the Communist revolutionaries. And, like I said, metrics are improving since overthrowing the previous regime.

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[-] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 8 points 9 months ago

Who did the killings? What are the numbers on social violence, social murder, in the previous status quo? The capitaliat status quo is one of poverty and disposession, hard lives and early deaths due to a lack of infrastructure, safety in workplaces, poor nutrition and healthcare, environmental degradation, etc.

That violence is intentionally maintained by the capitalist order, it is violence done to every working person, but particularly those in the global south like Nepal. Include it in your calculations. Watch it dwarf those numbers.

[-] metaStatic@kbin.earth 4 points 9 months ago

Survivorship bias, after we murdered everyone that was having a bad time everyone was having a great time.

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

They do need to win an election to end capitalism, because they have no power unless they win.

They can literally do absolutely nothing to accomplish their goal unless they win, but then since they mathematically can't win either, all they can do is yell impotently into the void.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Which part of "revolution is necessary and electoralism is a sham" was difficult for you?

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[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 6 points 9 months ago

Where's the article?

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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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