I think this type of thinking ends up being quite self defeating.
We should evaluate all politicians as vessels to carry out the will of the people.
When you consider them as such, not as people or entities to assign blame, as your goal is to be pragmatic, you look at their incentives and track records instead.
I think leftists often have this self defeating problem of being unable to stomach the fact that they will not get their ideal politician, and there will be no sudden uprising.
As a result, they often will criticize the politicians closest too them too loudly, ending up supporting “both sides” notions that cause voter apathy and let quite literally fascists win instead.
What I am saying is that we have to be pragmatic.
Particularly for the US, people have to realize that yes, while the DNC sucks, the democrats are the only practical, realistic way for people to actually end up winning.
Its long, slow, and no fun at all, but people have to support them publicly, and acknowledge their faults in ways that don’t dissuade voters from voting for them. They then must also vote in increasingly progressive candidates in primaries and local politics.
Anything else is simply grabbing a foot gun, because this imperfect system is very slow, and won’t change over night.
They then must also vote in increasingly progressive candidates in primaries and local politics.
BINGO. This is the way.
because this imperfect system is very slow, and won’t change over night.
Lemmy is full of people who blew their vote on a 3rd party or didn’t vote out of apathy or anger over a single issue that simply refuse to grasp this concept. 3rd party voters actually thought they could make a random unknown candidate the president, despite being a member of a practically non-existent party with ZERO representatives in Congress. Then their most popular 3rd party candidate got a whopping half of a single percent of the total votes cast, confirming that no 3rd party is going to win anytime soon. Probably in their lifetimes. They refuse to grasp that the real way to work within this shit system is to elect the Democrats then reform the party by voting out the members that won’t get onboard with more progressive policies. Political party reforms have happened multiple times in American history and conservatives just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party.
I love that Lemmy is almost devoid of conservatives, because I don’t need to listen to shitstains argue in bad faith in favor of fascism. But honestly, there’s so many of these people that I just described on here that refuse to work realistically within the established system that it makes me lose a lot of hope for the future. I guess they’re just banking on a revolution without realizing that not only is that probably not going to happen, but there are many examples in history of things being worse afterward because there was no plan for afterward and the void gets filled by something worse.
Long story short, you’re right. Elect the party that isn’t literally fucking fascists. Then reform it by voting out the non-progressives. That’s the only realistic way we get this nation back on track.
Thats in an ideal world, but its not practical for the US in particular because their system only allows for 2 parties.
In fact, many systems boil down to that due to first past the post forcing people to vote strategically instead of for the party that best represents them.
In reality, people have to vote strategically and then use internal party politics such as primaries to shift the party to a more progressive place.
Threatening to make them lose only means the worse party comes into power and rachets everything backwards far more than leaving them in place.
Thats in an ideal world, but its not practical for the US in particular because their system only allows for 2 parties
I dont mean electoral force, I mean popular resistance.
Even ‘working within internal party politics’ involves the use of force, because capital is constantly doing the same.
“In reality”, democrats are beholden to the same forces of capitalism as the Republicans are - pushing them ‘to the left’ will always involve a threat of force greater than the threat posed by capital.
Yeah. This whole thing where voting for someone is “falling in line behind” them is very weird to me.
Politicians are not your friends. Even ones I like, I don’t really look at as that I am “allied” with them. I’m just inputting that I want them in charge more than I like the other person; it’s sort of the last stage of the process of trying to control what my government might be in a position to do to me or do to other people in the world (for good or bad, often for bad).
Do these people go driving and decide whether the transmission “deserves” to be in third gear or second gear or whatever? Do they set “red lines” about when they will and won’t touch the steering wheel? Dude, the government is often terrible. Refusing to give any input to it until it gets better on its own seems guaranteed to be self defeating.
It’s literally terrifying how many people in this country don’t grasp this concept.
You cannot get hung up on punishing a political party over a single issue while holding the door open for fascists. You cannot bank on a 3rd party candidate that CANNOT under ANY circumstance win. You have to elect the best option that most closely aligns with your ideals, then reform that party electorally. It’s been done numerous times throughout American history and conservatives just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party.
That’s it. That is the way within the system we live in.
The only other option is flat out revolution and not only is that unlikely to happen, but history has shown us that without a clear plan for what happens after a revolution things can easily be worse as the void gets filled by other grifters and criminals.
I’m really not sure what’s going to happen in this nation going forward with so many people that simply don’t get this.
I mean, I think it is part and parcel of them thinking it’s safe for someone else to do their thinking for them. I definitely won’t say all of this “well we can’t be VOTING or anything, what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish?” mindset is maliciously engineered and injected into the discourse, but some of it is.
I would add to your prescription for what we have to do instead, vocal activism and direct action for what an actually good solution would be, supporting candidates like AOC or Mamdani, and then if the only choice that emerges at the end of that on the ballot is between “everyone dies” or “policies that are really not ideal,” we vote for that second thing and keep fighting otherwise.
One of the reason I am suspicious of all the “anti-electoralists” on Lemmy is that they spend very little energy on all that stuff, as far as I can tell. Some of them actively are complaining about AOC and Mamdani, and saying that good leftists can’t support THEM, either, because (insert various bullshit). That is a lot more of a red flag than just the sort-of-plausibly-confused idea that voting for establishment Democrats is a bad thing.
Yeah, I mean on Reddit I would assume the people even against AOC/Mamdani are conservatives/Russians/bots trying to divide and conquer. But on Lemmy it almost seems like it really is just fabulously ignorant people. I say that not only because there’s a lot less bot/conservative activity on Lemmy, but also because I see a lot of comments from clearly real people that seem to think that in reality we can just magically skip to a situation where an ultra left government can materialize out of thin air if they personally want it badly enough.
I have to assume some of these people are literally underage and we all have pretty wild concepts about what’s possible in reality, especially the complex parts, when we’re that young. But some are clearly grown ass adults. It’s alarming.
There are clearly people who are just walking typing Dunning-Kruger effects with bad political opinions, but don’t show any kind of signs of being employed to spread disinformation and honestly seem self-consistent and high-effort about it in a way that makes it seem a little unlikely that they’re being fake about it.
But then, also, there are people who constantly spread the same little handful of talking points, don’t really seem to be putting much effort into making it believable and don’t seem self-consistent about it or even to be reading stuff that people reply to them with, sometimes make weird little errors which clearly indicate that they’re not from the US even though they care deeply about US politics, and so on and so on. That second population, I think it’s safe to say are deliberate mass-scale propaganda. It’s different on Reddit (and a lot more transparent, and they have populations of them like the pro-Israel propagandists who are not present on Lemmy), and to be honest I am also a little surprised that they have elected to spend effort on a tiny platform like Lemmy. But it seems obvious to me that they have done. And some of the nature of what they like to push makes it particularly interesting (as does the concordance that a lot of them seem not to be US-based which is very interesting to me.)
I think this type of thinking ends up being quite self defeating.
We should evaluate all politicians as vessels to carry out the will of the people.
When you consider them as such, not as people or entities to assign blame, as your goal is to be pragmatic, you look at their incentives and track records instead.
I think leftists often have this self defeating problem of being unable to stomach the fact that they will not get their ideal politician, and there will be no sudden uprising.
As a result, they often will criticize the politicians closest too them too loudly, ending up supporting “both sides” notions that cause voter apathy and let quite literally fascists win instead.
What I am saying is that we have to be pragmatic.
Particularly for the US, people have to realize that yes, while the DNC sucks, the democrats are the only practical, realistic way for people to actually end up winning.
Its long, slow, and no fun at all, but people have to support them publicly, and acknowledge their faults in ways that don’t dissuade voters from voting for them. They then must also vote in increasingly progressive candidates in primaries and local politics.
Anything else is simply grabbing a foot gun, because this imperfect system is very slow, and won’t change over night.
Or we could actually work to build up our own communities and set a real workers party up. Otherwise we are at the whims of fascists and fascist lite
BINGO. This is the way.
Lemmy is full of people who blew their vote on a 3rd party or didn’t vote out of apathy or anger over a single issue that simply refuse to grasp this concept. 3rd party voters actually thought they could make a random unknown candidate the president, despite being a member of a practically non-existent party with ZERO representatives in Congress. Then their most popular 3rd party candidate got a whopping half of a single percent of the total votes cast, confirming that no 3rd party is going to win anytime soon. Probably in their lifetimes. They refuse to grasp that the real way to work within this shit system is to elect the Democrats then reform the party by voting out the members that won’t get onboard with more progressive policies. Political party reforms have happened multiple times in American history and conservatives just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party.
I love that Lemmy is almost devoid of conservatives, because I don’t need to listen to shitstains argue in bad faith in favor of fascism. But honestly, there’s so many of these people that I just described on here that refuse to work realistically within the established system that it makes me lose a lot of hope for the future. I guess they’re just banking on a revolution without realizing that not only is that probably not going to happen, but there are many examples in history of things being worse afterward because there was no plan for afterward and the void gets filled by something worse.
Long story short, you’re right. Elect the party that isn’t literally fucking fascists. Then reform it by voting out the non-progressives. That’s the only realistic way we get this nation back on track.
They are vessels that must be driven toward change under the threat of force, sure
Thats in an ideal world, but its not practical for the US in particular because their system only allows for 2 parties.
In fact, many systems boil down to that due to first past the post forcing people to vote strategically instead of for the party that best represents them.
In reality, people have to vote strategically and then use internal party politics such as primaries to shift the party to a more progressive place.
Threatening to make them lose only means the worse party comes into power and rachets everything backwards far more than leaving them in place.
I dont mean electoral force, I mean popular resistance.
Even ‘working within internal party politics’ involves the use of force, because capital is constantly doing the same.
“In reality”, democrats are beholden to the same forces of capitalism as the Republicans are - pushing them ‘to the left’ will always involve a threat of force greater than the threat posed by capital.
Yeah. This whole thing where voting for someone is “falling in line behind” them is very weird to me.
Politicians are not your friends. Even ones I like, I don’t really look at as that I am “allied” with them. I’m just inputting that I want them in charge more than I like the other person; it’s sort of the last stage of the process of trying to control what my government might be in a position to do to me or do to other people in the world (for good or bad, often for bad).
Do these people go driving and decide whether the transmission “deserves” to be in third gear or second gear or whatever? Do they set “red lines” about when they will and won’t touch the steering wheel? Dude, the government is often terrible. Refusing to give any input to it until it gets better on its own seems guaranteed to be self defeating.
It’s literally terrifying how many people in this country don’t grasp this concept.
You cannot get hung up on punishing a political party over a single issue while holding the door open for fascists. You cannot bank on a 3rd party candidate that CANNOT under ANY circumstance win. You have to elect the best option that most closely aligns with your ideals, then reform that party electorally. It’s been done numerous times throughout American history and conservatives just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party.
That’s it. That is the way within the system we live in.
The only other option is flat out revolution and not only is that unlikely to happen, but history has shown us that without a clear plan for what happens after a revolution things can easily be worse as the void gets filled by other grifters and criminals.
I’m really not sure what’s going to happen in this nation going forward with so many people that simply don’t get this.
I mean, I think it is part and parcel of them thinking it’s safe for someone else to do their thinking for them. I definitely won’t say all of this “well we can’t be VOTING or anything, what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish?” mindset is maliciously engineered and injected into the discourse, but some of it is.
I would add to your prescription for what we have to do instead, vocal activism and direct action for what an actually good solution would be, supporting candidates like AOC or Mamdani, and then if the only choice that emerges at the end of that on the ballot is between “everyone dies” or “policies that are really not ideal,” we vote for that second thing and keep fighting otherwise.
One of the reason I am suspicious of all the “anti-electoralists” on Lemmy is that they spend very little energy on all that stuff, as far as I can tell. Some of them actively are complaining about AOC and Mamdani, and saying that good leftists can’t support THEM, either, because (insert various bullshit). That is a lot more of a red flag than just the sort-of-plausibly-confused idea that voting for establishment Democrats is a bad thing.
Yeah, I mean on Reddit I would assume the people even against AOC/Mamdani are conservatives/Russians/bots trying to divide and conquer. But on Lemmy it almost seems like it really is just fabulously ignorant people. I say that not only because there’s a lot less bot/conservative activity on Lemmy, but also because I see a lot of comments from clearly real people that seem to think that in reality we can just magically skip to a situation where an ultra left government can materialize out of thin air if they personally want it badly enough.
I have to assume some of these people are literally underage and we all have pretty wild concepts about what’s possible in reality, especially the complex parts, when we’re that young. But some are clearly grown ass adults. It’s alarming.
I think it is (at least) two populations.
There are clearly people who are just walking typing Dunning-Kruger effects with bad political opinions, but don’t show any kind of signs of being employed to spread disinformation and honestly seem self-consistent and high-effort about it in a way that makes it seem a little unlikely that they’re being fake about it.
But then, also, there are people who constantly spread the same little handful of talking points, don’t really seem to be putting much effort into making it believable and don’t seem self-consistent about it or even to be reading stuff that people reply to them with, sometimes make weird little errors which clearly indicate that they’re not from the US even though they care deeply about US politics, and so on and so on. That second population, I think it’s safe to say are deliberate mass-scale propaganda. It’s different on Reddit (and a lot more transparent, and they have populations of them like the pro-Israel propagandists who are not present on Lemmy), and to be honest I am also a little surprised that they have elected to spend effort on a tiny platform like Lemmy. But it seems obvious to me that they have done. And some of the nature of what they like to push makes it particularly interesting (as does the concordance that a lot of them seem not to be US-based which is very interesting to me.)