There's a lot of unease about this, because some people believe everyone should just vote for the better of the two options; whereas other people believe the option needs to be good before they will vote for it.
Americans were given a choice between two options. One option was clearly better than the other, but the poorer option won, because the better option wasn't good enough.
It reminds me a bit of the game-theory around the game 'ultimatum'. Should we just accept whatever is offered, since it is still better than the alternative? Or should we sacrifice our meager reward to spite the person who offered an unfair split?
No, not Biden. First of all, he wasn't running. It was the party more broadly. By just saying Biden, the party doesn't have to change, but the voters are naturally expected to change and be more willing to vote for whatever genocidal shit demon the party demands unquestioning fealty to in 4 years.
To a point we can blame voters. What do you think Trump is doing right now? He's supporting Israel. It's just that his campaign was full of lies. I've seen small debates between people where the Harris voters would try to argue that Trump was pro-Israel, showing tweets from before his campagn that clearly conveyed his political views. Of course the other side was too adamant.
We can also blame American education. Thankfully, I grew up in a good area, so I was taught proper civics in high-school, and taught about political policies and propaganda at my University (it was a GE, I was an engineering major).
Unfortunately the whole Israel situation is a lost cause anyways as both parties will never give it up. It's an asset for the US in the middle east.
George Carlin said it years ago but it bears repeating:
“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.
And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday.
Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Unless America finds a way to get the money out of politics, I don't think it's problems will ever get fixed by politicians. The class divide will widen and ultra wealthy will grab more money and power, while those below will be busy with culture war distractions and not focused on the class war.
Protests have been ongoing. Just off camera, mostly. Some students got suspended from the schools, other schools have been banning groups from organizing over pro-palestinian issues.
This is the important part. Corporate propaganda outlets will not report on burgeoning political movements that threaten the status quo, unless they are absolutely forced to, and only then to deride and ridicule them in order to discourage their growth.
Who's the democrat? The person who arrested them, or the state attorney? I believe their state attorney is a Democrat, and that's where it would normally come from, not a cop. Not sure who ordered it though
You know Democrat politicians are rich oligarchs too, So it's in their interests just like the Republicans to protect their money bins. We need to stop worrying about Republicans and Democrats and start worrying about us working people. Free Luigi!
Nobody was blaming anyone in the post, just making an observation.
But yes the first step in growth is realizing your mistakes and they refuse to do that. Fascism depends entirely on lazy, uninvolved and conflict averse people. Nowhere in the world has fascism ever come to power without the support of "centrists". The US democratic party is a party of centrists with no goals and no interest in actually doing anything. They have created the perfect breeding ground for a fascist takeover.
I have posted it before and i will post it again, the democratic party is not free of blame. They cant just lean back and blame everything on Trump or Musk or voters.
The US democratic party is a party of centrists with no goals
That's just not true. The democratic party is a coalition group with a great variety of goals that don't form a coherent ideal. You have AOC who's a either a social democrat saying she's a democratic socialist or a democratic socialist who's hiding her true ideals behind policies that advance her goals but are far easier to sell than what she really wants. Then you have obvious fascists who are clearly there only to enable the wealthy. Aside from them you have the people who believe that the democratic process is sacrosanct and above defiance even in the face of someone obviously attempting to subvert it.
Aside from that, on average the Democrats prefer action against climate change, that the rights of minorities be protected, and are less anti-worker than the GOP. These are real differences that matter. There's no such thing as "centrism" and pretending otherwise is an amazing way to excuse not supporting the largest institution that will lock your worst enemies out of power, even if they don't do anything.
Furthermore, even if the DNC literally never got anything done (which, to be clear, they have done good things that support workers like favorable rules for Unions)that would be great for us, because it'd mean their feckless ineffectual leadership would give us plenty of room to build parallel institutions, educate, and bring others around to our ways of thinking. When the GOP is in charge that becomes harder and it's more dangerous for everyone involved.
Curious how that graphic doesn't say Left and Right on the horizontal scale but rather Liberal and Conservative, whilst the title describes it as showing that the Democrats have moved to the Left which is quite a different thing from Liberal.
It's almost as if that's a piece of propaganda meant to deceive readers...
I dislike the democratic party as well, but that just flat-out isn't true. There are focused efforts to stop most of Trump's exec orders and many other actions (as they relate to him trying to act like he has control of governmental spending, etc.) as many are blatantly illegal or unenforceable and also to stop Musk. Now, senators and house members aren't doing a ton, but there's not much they can do - they are a bicameral minority. They actually are threatening a government shutdown, but that hasn't occurred yet. Most of the resistance is rightly coming from the judicial branch.
It's cuz college students are easier to kick but Republicans fight back. The Democrats are doing their usual bit of having a few committees to complain while the republic burns and alternatively hand-wringing "I wonder why we lost the election????"
What I don't understand is that there aren't any protests going on for the current administration. Like he's calling to literally remove all Palestinians and no one cares now?
MLK and Malcolm X tried to warn us about liberalism a long, long time ago... and I don't think the left, even now, has realized what liberalism truly is - the "political arm" of the capitalist order. The carrot to the fascist stick.
It is not the fascists that have rendered the left so ineffective and weak in the Anglophone world, Clyde - it's the liberals that did. And all your edginess doesn't hide the fact that the left still virtually have no answer to liberal co-optation - unless you want to inform me of some brilliant plan that the left has managed to hide for the last seven decades?