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The Ratchet Effect (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 hours ago by DougHolland@lemmy.world to c/aiop@lemmy.world
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[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 6 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Can't say I'm a fan of this in any sort of 'universally true' sense. I mean, if you want to go after corporate democrats, poor message-making from dems, or dems uselessly trying to aim for bipartisanship in the past, then IMO you're in to some strong points that can and should be addressed and dissected.

OTOH, I feel like painting everything with 'the whole system is the same' type-message is one of the most inaccurate and disempowering things you can possibbly do as a potential voter or agent of democracy. It may seem clever, it may seem edgy, it may express a certain reality in terms of one's outlook, and in some cases I do agree that it's very much true. But ultimately, going hard in to this message is to me like saying... "well, there's no point in doing anything, so let's just sit back and watch our rights continue to erode by the workings of late-stage capitalism."

The reality as I currently see it is this-- the modern "GOP" is now the complete antithesis of everything that it was founded for, and it's always worth remembering that it was the nation's most progressive major party for its first ~50yrs or so. (feel free to look that up if you need to) Point is, nowadays it's little more than a fusion of corporate interests, extreme right-wingers, and a voting base that's... I can't even find the words to describe.

Meanwhile, the dems indeed have problems at the top, much of it arguably based on establishment politicians being pretty much neutered by the flow of money. Or worse. OTOH, you look at federal-level voting records, and it's in fact the dems who still commonly vote for the interests of the body of American citizens. So the whole idea of 'both sides are the same' is ludicrous when the above info is added to the mix.

Fortunately, there's hope on the horizon if you really do believe in hopefulness and useful politicians truly representing the people. National examples would of course be AOC, Mamdani, and the rising El-Sayed, on top of others already in congress, doing their thing a little more quietly.

As I see it, these midterms are basically the very last chance for the nation to recover itself from the awful, self-damaging, 50-60yr history of the nation leaning in to republicans message-makers and button-pushers, who did a tremendous job of stoking up voters on various hot-button topics, but who were ultimately corporate sellouts to the nation.

Lastly, for whatever the truth and limited usefulness of the OP message, you should know that it's exactly the kind of thing that Russia, the CPC, N.K., and other hostile entities are cheerfully willing to flood online spaces with. Because they're doing it for a reason, and it's working, sadly.

Just for the record, much of their known method is to reduce a complicated issue in to a *gotcha* kind of thing that makes the reader feel clever, reducing them as much as possible in to a single-issue voter, or hopefully non-voter if the message worked.

this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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