Advice I always share to new users is that you have a lot of power in who and what you can ban. For instance, you can ban:
Another user
A community (basically like a Discord channel)
An instance (basically like a Discord server)
People have said that Lemmy is heavily political and technological in content nature, so feel free to block those communities if you want to have a calmer experience. Doing so will probably remove a large chunk of content from your feed though.
I use Sync for Lemmy, and there's a feed on my homepage for "Everything". If you can figure out how to set that filter for Voyager, then you'll see posts from every away instance & communities that YOUR home instance & communities are federated to. If instances aren't federated, you won't see their content.
Regardless of there being any police investigations, rape reports, arraignments, trials, convictions, and incarcerations or not, Platner should have made his skeletons public ahead of the primaries.
Regardless of if the allegations are true or not, Platner should have disclosed these bad times in his life because the DNC and Israel would have absolutely used them against Platner anyways.
But that didn't happen and now we're here, and Mainers are starting to shift perspective away from Platner in recent polls.
Moral consideration includes whether the person has attractive morals to be considered a leader.
Anybody that commits a crime, that rehabilitates and demonstrates social behavior and not a social behavior, should be given the chance to run for public office. Lifetime bans from public office can be abused.
ICE agents that change their minds, leave the force, and show rehabilitated behaviors should absolutely be considered for public office.
None of what I'm saying that we should pick these folks over others that have the same policy views WITHOUT this same baggage. In my view the baggage shouldn't be deal breakers, because baggage is nuanced and deserves contextual understanding.
People demonstrate whether they've learned about their past wrongs through their actions. Speaking truth to power is an action, and it's better than nothing when the political parties in USA are rotten to the core. Maybe you Euroids and third worldists have better choices in political candidates. In the US, our choices for some races are Zionists, rapists, white supremacists, etc. The best we can do (in certain areas of USA) in the big dystopian 226 is rally behind people who do say the right things. Until someone better shows up, which wasn't the case in Maine until this Platner rape crisis and the alternative, Troy Jackson.
Who is Platner's campaign manager? Who is Bernie's? Zohran's? AOC's? I have no fucking clue because I'm not a political autist masking as an ML.
So all veterans, if they want to redeem themselves in the eyes of MLs, must do what's the equivalent of community service in dissuading the youth from joining the military, providing mutual aide for other veterans, and maybe 10-20 other things before they get moral consideration from the left.
Any veterans that don't immediately do that after leaving military service after as little as 1 tour and instead go on to do other normal economic things with their time like oyster farming, trucking, construction, whatever makes their living is not good enough for doing anything associated with political office.
Do these same purity tests apply to normal folks, the peasantry class, that have no military experience? What if some of those peasants do crimes like arson or domestic violence or murder? Do they also get banned from political office forever, even if they give back to their communities? How much do they have to give back? Are the requirements in years? Or should we measure people's emotions and cognitions to see if they've really learned their lesson? Do all leaders need to be pure, untainted lab rats grown into wealthy families that see no hardship?
Purity tests are the cancer of the left. There needs to be space for people to recognize their wrongs, and try to do better about it. Saying whether HOW they do better is right or wrong is arbitrary. Veterans that see how bad the MIC is would be best suited to know how to dismantle it. Former inmates that see how bad the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is would be best suited to know how to dismantle it.
Obviously it's better if vets, former inmates, etc. do all of the above. But I don't think we should rule out people if they don't, especially if there's no better alternative. The best thing to do in these dilemmas is find better candidates and support them. Without that, viability and policies is the only way forward.
My point was about propaganda prevailing over people's eyes and ears. That is a fact that happens for many. Not everyone has the privilege to act on their moral instincts like you. That's what I'm saying.
Veganism is an example from another context that underpins what I'm saying. Same can be said for veterans and new recruits. Hell, most Americans still see military people as heroes. Not saying I do, but that's a fact.
Propaganda can take longer for some if they choose to ignore reality.
Not a lot of leftists are vegans in this regard. If they saw how gas chambers, pistols to the head, knives to the throat are used to kill animals and get them prepped for people's chicken nuggets and jalapen poppers, you'd think they'd change and stop eating meat, but to them the speciesist propaganda that humans are better persists.
If a former veteran gets elected as a politician, blocks legislation that favors the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and Israel, and passes legislation that benefits the constituents at home, then that's some real, tangible restitution. And veterans turned dissenters of the existing regime may make more inroads than others without that background because of their spite and disdain for the status quo.
Someone being a product of the system they were indoctrinated into doesn't disqualify them from changing the system. That's purity politics.
Are you MLs going to exclude all veterans from the revolution then?
Are you MLs going to consider that all veterans are a monolith and deserve to be morally contempted for the rest of their lives, with no chance of rehabilitation and change?
Your list of comrades will never stop shrinking if this mentality continues.
Note that Platner denies these rape accusations, when the victim has contemporaneous receipts and Platner's therapy never got around to covering this. Apparently he can rehabilitate as a veteran but not as a sex pest. THAT'S the part y'all should be concerned with.
All governments are authoritative. They necessarily have to be so according to the social contract.
It's just funny that the person responding to you only cares about if a given government and ideology is authoritative when it's something they don't like.
Capitalist liberalism is also authoritative and seeks to suppress and oppress dissent against weath consolidation and rights violations.
Good. Elected representatives funded by their constituents and others in the working class mean there's less of a risk they pull up the ladder behind them and fuck those who got them into power.
Doesn't mean this won't ever happen. That's why I said risk.
Long term goals are of course to ban Citizen's United, set a cap on money needed to campaign for an elected position, and pass Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Am a numbers guy, I know you like da number