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- 2 yr. ago
Everyone gather round and take a close look at this specimen. Here is something very peculiar I've seen with the loudest ML users. They usually have a well rehearsed auth-left script with plausible talking points, but when it gets off script they show specific capitalist-coded rhetoric.
In real life, I've never met anyone on the left/far left who would use unemployment (especially under a capitalist-fascist hegemony) as a pejorative. The casting of unemployment as a personal failing and character flaw is a deeply capitalist narrative. The USSR, which they profess to support, widely publicized employment as a fundamental human right. It was in their Constitution!
So we have to consider: is this user dumb enough to think that furthering pro-capitalist fiction is praxis? Or are they not leftist at all, perhaps a false-flag agitant?
Nowhere did I say voting was sufficient or that America could/should be what it was. But on November 3rd, my options are either
- Allow them to solidify their power in the eyes of international observers by throwing away my vote
- Force their coup to be explicit by making them use violence against people exercising their democratic right to voice their opposition.
- By some sliver of a chance, potentially reduce their destructive power by installing the crumbling old guard in a temporary holding pattern.
Of those options, 3 is very obviously the least shitty one. And you said yourself, America won't be the same. Some of the people on the ballot are emphatically not the neolib old guard (hell, the dinosaurs are actively suppressing them) and have a growing base of support. My vote doesn't have to give them total power to fix America, It's worth 2 hours of my time to send a message.
- Jump
YouTube’s AI slop detector incorrectly targets Kurzgesagt as other creators fear same fate - Dexerto
Ah yes, the evil liberal-capitalist climate solutions: shilling solar panels, agriculture tech, electrification, more efficient production of cement and steel
Nothing like the glorious socialist solutions of the proletariat: Chinese solar panels, Chinese agriculture tech, Chinese electrification, more efficient production of Chinese cement and steel
Turns out that every productivist ideology imagines their band-aid efficiency gains will hand wave what is essentially a growth and finite resource problem. So yeah I agree with you on some level, the free market won't magically save us any more than an AES state market. You're just mad because you're hearing it from a video sponsored by the bad team
- Jump
YouTube’s AI slop detector incorrectly targets Kurzgesagt as other creators fear same fate - Dexerto
Ah yes capitalist propoganda like ...scrolls most popular... Countering coronavirus disinformation, explaining vaccines and the dangers of the antivax movement, the physical limits disproving the infinite growth lie of capitalism... Yeah, there's a lot of science fiction/fantasy topics but those are generally what gets views.
If they are pushing propoganda, they're pretty shit at it and should probably be spending their money on manosphere podcasts instead. Honestly you should be encouraging such inefficient efforts.
This is such a stellar example of the cold war tankie mindset. Anything a capitalist funds must be evil; anything from the west is a lie; it's my duty to counter everything coming out of their mouths; blah blah blah.
Everyone hate sharia law until they get those j u i c y halal burgers
Thanks for enlightening me. I had penciled 2 hours down on November 3rd to read about some candidates and put a piece of paper in a box. But now that I know that's not fighting I'll free those 2 hours up to start the revolution. Maybe I'll shop for bricks or something
The fact remains that if you think voting is worthwhile for any reason (which we're assuming for this conversation & I feel it is) then you need to organize and strategize with like minded individuals. You can freely choose where and when to do that, getting a consensus on who should run and when. But you can't choose the system you're running in or organize on the scale of tens of millions of people as a minority party. At the end of the day you still have to play around Duverger's law and the election laws in your areas.
Let's examine the real world USA voting process from the perspective of a theoretical group of like minded voters (we'll call them the LMV) who's goal is to quickly fill as many seats as possible with qualified, anti-fascist candidates. You can change their imagined tent pole tenets to be as wide or as narrow as you want so long as they want it done broadly and aggressively.
- Unless the LMV are authoritarian and anti-democratic, the goal of every step of the voting pipeline should be building mass consensus on the best candidates [Plural! More on this later]. From candidate nomination to campaign platform building to debates to primary elections to general elections. 1.i. Looking for the best candidates in our tent automatically excludes the entire Republican ticket. Any supportable candidates in the pool, right now, are on the Democratic ticket
- The large majority of US states have something other than a Top-N primary. In 45 states choosing to run an LMV 3rd party primary means automatically excluding yourself from the popular input of the 67%+ of the population who will end up voting in the general election. 2.i. Unless you have the party strength to fully fill an entire ticket with great candidates, it forces the general population to choose between your sparse LMV candidate pool and potentially good candidates running on the two party ticket
- USA elections are a very tall vertical slice. Your ballot will have city mayors, county clerks, state governers, federal congressmen and (if efforts like the National Popular Vote Compact work) national presidential votes.
Conclusion A: From 1 + 2 + 3 it follows that a small collaboration of people looking to fill all seats with the best viable candidates while they grow without national sway/resources, ipso facto, should not be organizing as a formal 3rd party. Even with local or state success, there is a hard limit on how much success they can have until they hit a critical mass. ∴ the LMV must work within the Democratic party
- Widespread political disinterest, apathy and forced disengagement is baked into the system by design. It best serves the interests of the duopoly to keep the general population so uninformed, busy, or distracted that they are effectively (or literally) disenfranchised. They want to select their voters and maintain their power by taking the entire spotlight of election seasons. 4.i. The system means voters don't have a deep understanding of who is/isn't on the ballot and who is paying for their campaign. They are unaware of anything but surface-level political jockeying. Beyond that, they don't have the connections or the time to fact check every attack ad or candidate resume.
- The political situation has gotten so dire that both sides of duopoly are clinging to their core by galvanizing their base and running solely against the opposition. Every race is couched in stopping the radical leftists or being not Trump. Neither side has a coherent platform, as evidenced by the MAGA 180° spins on war, tariffs, and national debt; the Democrat's flip flop voting and weak opposition. 5.i. The mutual suppression leads to an ever smaller but more zealous and loyal voter base. Remember that changing policy, leadership or candidates is a non-option for the people steering both parties. They must focus all resources and narratives on hardening their base or the decay of their party will quickly be terminal. Unfortunately for us, they have the money and connections to do that
- Since we've now established the LMV is competing as a Democrat bloc, you want your candidates to either lose early or win long. The tiny amount of campaign resources the LMV has means they must pick their battles. 6.i. On average, 1.i tells us that the LMV takeover will eventually run against decent or comparable candidates. The party leadership will sluggishly and daintily endorse compromise candidates to co-opt LMV momentum. That does not matter. The goal is control the elected seats, not control the fading party. Old guard leadership caving to progressive momentum only weakens their position.
- To fight LMV insurgency, the unpopular Democrat leadership is put into conflict. They must drive their low turnout just enough to win their general elections but not fuel the populist progressive platform. They say "vote blue no matter who" but they really mean "vote blue if you're hearing this and are one of demographics we want enfranchised"
Conclusion B: From 4 + 5.i we know that there is a certain portion of the population who will never risk anything but a Democrat vote in the general election, regardless of what the odds are or if they would spoil a good candidate. Add on 6.i + 7 and it becomes obvious that a very large blue turnout will help the insurgent progressive bloc. Even with the political illiteracy of 4.i, any populist platforms will naturally steer the voter to the progressive LMV bloc because the decaying party leaders are fundamentally opposed to them. It may not win every seat every time but the strategy is opportunist and will prevail in the long term.
∴ Aggregated over multiple elections and as a message to the average voting-eligible citizen: "vote blue no matter who" is a strategy that only helps progressives
Q.E.D.
...In case you haven't seen the parallels, our LMV cohort is using the same strategy that is bringing the DSA success. If you support DSA and DSA-adjacent candidates as you've said in other comments, I hope you see their current positioning and how propogating non strategic voting hinders their efforts.
Obviously there are internal DSA conflicts over long term strategy (dirty break vs clean break) and this isn't an eternal truth but I've yet to see any argument that takes an honest look at where the progressive bloc is right now, in 2026, and coherently argues for anything but more Democrat votes.
You say you shouldn't ever vote for Fetterman but you can look at his platform and voting record and still say he made a better senator than Dr. Oz. In the final ballot we were faced with a pro-Isreal, pro-war fascist and an anti-vax, abortion banning, climate denying, pro-Isreal, pro-war fascist. Regardless of how successful the administration has been at forcing those issues, Fetterman was still the right choice.
The real failure was in lacking a better candidate in Fetterman's primary, in which he was still the best candidate. If the other two had won, you'd be looking at a pro-Isreal, pro-war, anti-labor fascist
Damn you know compute is getting expensive when even the fascists can't afford their disinfo bots
Well at least one contemporary disagrees
[John Brown] was with the troops during that war, he was seen in every camp fire, and our boys pressed onward to victory and freedom, timing their feet to the stately stepping of Old John Brown as his soul went marching on. — Frederick Douglass
What good comes from abandoning reform of a decadent party so weak it can't even bind it's members? The campaign war chest, brand name, and entrenched two-party benefits are there for the taking.
People point to Bernie and complain about his voting or the debacle of his nomination as evidence that the establishment has a stranglehold on the party. The truth is that he's done more to dismantle their stranglehold than anyone in modern history (yes, more than Trump, the Clintons, Obama or Biden): exposing that the boat can be rocked through the sheer populism of good economic policy.
We've now seen that simply running decent candidates in a similar manner (some farther left) doesn't just threaten but overpowers them. The concerted effort against Mamdani, El-Sayed, Donavan McKinney and others has had middling-to-miserable results.
Simply continuing to vote blue when necessary and engage in primary insurgency drains their resources and weakens their grip. Voting with your conscience (read: no strategy) marks you as an "independent", essentially a non-voter who can be safely ignored. Why bother listening to you when courting even a single red vote is double the value? You have no impact on their internal policies and can't threaten them in a primary.
Lmao I didn't know parrots could ride bikes but here you are backpedaling! Impressive!
both parties
Blah blah blah both parties. Guess what, we could have swallowed the pill to keep the vast majority of those people alive 20 years ago when voting in the 2000 presidential election. Instead people "both sides-ed" and stayed home with atrocious turnout. They made the choice that killed those people and YOU are making the same choice today. But your choice is even more callous because we don't have to theorize about the tragedy, you can see it happening live.
The march of fascism and collapse of capitalism is irrelevant to the conversation. One corrupt politician spent decades building climate into his political platform, regardless of what other theoretical ways he would fuck us. The other was drill baby drill. And now those people are dying.
I'm the one advocating for human lives and you are calling me out for it
No jackass, YOU'RE advocating for non-voting as a tribute to DEAD victims. Your gesture didn't bring them back to life or even slow the genocide. The USA is trampling around causing as much, if not more, damage than ever.
I'M advocating for human LIVES. Real people, alive today and just as oppressed under the boot of capitalism, who now are going to die because every non-Democrat vote didn't value their lives. That's the difference in our stances.
The genocide in gaza is just the tip of the iceberg of what the US government has been involved with
For reference, 1.3 million people is about as many deaths as the USA caused in Vietnam. You're perfectly capable of rationalizing suffering on the scale of one of the largest human tragedies in modern history but you draw the line at what is literally "the tip of the iceberg" in your own words.
The fact is that you don't care about minimizing human suffering, you care about having to see viscera. Admitting that the real world requires shitty choices causes cognitive dissonance with your ideological naval gazing; it's simpler to brush those dying Indian children away as necessary for your imagined scheme.
I've never argued that, that's more what you are doing right now.
But you did! Your argument was an emotional appeal to videos of dying children. You couldn't vote for a collaborator to that tragedy that because it made you feel bad. You felt it would be an endorsement of genocide and incongruent with your self image.
I acknowledge that my 2024 presidential vote went to a genocide enabler; I've laid out the reasons it was strategically defensible in keeping millions alive and mitigating permanent damage to the only biosphere we'll ever get. Can you stomach your choice? Can you tell me what rational tree of outcomes had such a high likelihood of improving humanity's future that you would tacitly endorse the death of millions? Or are you ashamed that you made an emotional, unconsidered and impatient decision?
🤡
Deeply unserious ideology. Hope you grow up and start living in the real world some day soon.
3500 people died in one day due to extreme heat in India. At that rate you'd surpass Gaza's death toll in less than 20 days, and it's only getting worse. Countless more are now turning into climate refugees, forced from their unlivable homes just like the Palestinians. Tell me how little those lives mean to you.
Tell me you're fine with 3500 deaths - the vast majority being children, the elderly, pregnant women and chronically ill - on top of hundreds of Gazan children just to keep your moral purity. Palestinians are still being murdered, but at least the excess mountain of human suffering let you feel good about yourself.
That's a fine position to have if you want to hold it. But that still dodges my actual question: what does any of that, in a real material way, have to do with putting a blue ballot in a box to prevent the mass tragedy of millions of climate deaths?
The onus is on you:
Prove to me that allowing the red fascists to be elected will lead to a better material outcome worth those millions of lives
You aren't doing that, you're just throwing a fit about reformism and giggling at the schadenfreude of policies like ICE and tariffs hurting Americans; ignoring the real and permanent damage done to millions across the globe.
Your position is childish and unconsidered. If you think it's imperative that the USA collapse then why aren't you banging the drum calling for foreign military intervention to dismantle it? Why would Democrats being in power prevent that solution? People are dying while you sit on the sideline and smirk, you're no better than your imagined "blue maga".
WRT China emissions: per capita the USA emissions were shrinking faster than China's per capita emissions were growing. So yeah I guess we can talk about that if you want to be wrong?
Also, you don't need to hallucinate offshored USA emissions, consumption based emissions are tracked for us
Look up some facts before you imagine more gotchas that doesn't exist
Not sure what that has to do with anything, Trump is shattering that even more. Unless you'd prefer the US stop production and fuel usage increase by 30+% just through shipping oil from the middle east.
Biden had total greenhouse gas emissions (you know, the thing that actually matters) down to their lowest level since 1989. Lowest per-capita since 1940. Tell me more about why Americans should give tacit approval for mass death, displacement and extinction with a non-vote to halt and reverse that progress.
Give me the math on how many millions of brown lives you approve of murdering by that method in the name of accelerationism. I'm not joking, tell me. How does permanent and irreversible climate damage, hurting countless future generations, stack up against X million lives today?
[BTW China has overtaken the US in total GHG and CO2 emissions for a while now, should probably take that lie out of your argument]
That's not relevant to the topic at hand and a false dichotomy. You had a choice to vote for mitigating the very obvious and irreversible tragedy. You tacitly approved a social murder 17x as big as Gaza on day 1, let alone a discussion about Democrat green policy mitigating more damage. The clock is ticking and already more than Gaza are doomed.
The slim chance at accelerating overturn of the system, which doesn't look any closer to today than 2024, was worth murdering them by inaction? Tell me what math you're using that doesn't look insane next to someone claiming that the world is more nuanced than 70k Gaza deaths. Tell me how your choice will end any differently to the people who decided not to vote for Al Gore to "teach Democrats a lesson", which only accelerated the irreversible destruction of our biosphere (in addition to numerous other tragedies)?
Why limit yourself to one genocide when you can 17x the deaths by letting maga win?? Going to keep posting this until someone gives me a sane answer:
Trump's choice to immediately dismantle America's climate policy will kill 1.3 million people, most in India/China/Pakistan/developing African countries. Tell me again how superior you are by throwing away a vote to keep them alive.
There's no nuanced conversation to be had because your argument isn't based on anything close to a nuanced perspective. Going to paste my same reply from elsewhere here:
Trump's choice to immediately dismantle America's climate policy will kill 1.3 million people, most in India/China/Pakistan/developing African countries. Tell me again how superior you are by throwing away a vote to keep them alive.
Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world How do you keep up with news from other countries?
D*tic Sists of America