Damn, he’s kinda got a point
It’s demoralizing that we have to wait out the old white men in order to have progressive thought.
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The DNC and Dem leadership are the guard dogs of Fascism. The rest don’t matter.
Same energy as the Fox News classic “you complain about police violence but you never complain about gang violence”.
Maybe you’re just a paranoid misanthrope. 🤷♂️
“Everybody sucks and is out to get me!”
Nope, Dems are fascists too
downvotes from people who don’t know what fascism is
I mean, yes and…
[re-commenting with no instance shaming]
Every Marxist-Leninist user
Nothing lost by protest voting then
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power. It stops progress and results in incremental fascism disguised as a lesser evil. Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes despite several studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies.
Another Rosa Luxemburg fan I see. She spoke the gospel.
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power.
Its a political relief valve to limit the scope of corruption and the degree to which the public experiences pain. If you’re in the corona of folks who enjoy relief via reform, it is often enough to quell your desire to overthrow the system. If you’re not, it costs you support - often along ethnic or regional lines - in a way that divides your neighbors against you.
Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes
Voters are deciding political outcomes. Large waves of angry voters do change policies by forcing the government leadership into a reform cycle. This is often preferable to violent confrontations between an increasingly unpopular state leadership and growing crowds of dissidents.
Reform isn’t an illusion. It has material consequences for a subset of the angry populace. Soothing this populace and winning them back to the establishment’s side is why reforms work as a mitigation of revolution.
The illusion is in the belief that reforms aren’t necessary. Government leadership pumped up on its own hubris will often exceed the limits of the institutional system and undermine their function. Because reform requires appeasing people outside your immediate interest groups, they can often be characterized as an act of weakness rather than a strategic concession. And leadership that relies on the impression of strength (and the overt displays of brutality) can abandon reform as a vehicle for tempering hostility to policy changes, leading to revolutionary movements.
studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies
Studies have shown a large gap between public opinion and public policy. What these studies regularly neglect is the popular rejection of ostensibly favorable public policy, often in the wake of a short term media campaign or sudden economic shift, which temporarily change their historically stated positions.
Consent can and does get manufactured. And this consent is reflected in subsequent election results.
Cool cool, so why does voting vs not voting matter? What actionable alternatives would you suggest and why do those preclude checking a box on a piece of paper?
I’d argue that even an illusory vote has value as a public barometer. If 80% of a voter base is consistently voting against the incumbent party it tells you way more about their discontent than 80% not showing up.
You’re correct about that. In a chapter titled, Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?, Lenin argues that there are a number of reasons why communists ought to participate in elections even if they aren’t an effective means of implementing change.
As you mentioned, elections can be useful for a public barometer, they can also be useful for promoting ideas, they can be used to test potential leaders for opportunism, etc.
The caveat is that those goals are only really useful in the context of an actual communist party. It doesn’t really do us any good to know that people are dissatisfied with the current ruling party if they just support a different bourgeois party. It undermines the ideas we’re trying to promote if we just sheepdog people back into the fold of incrementalism and lesser-evilism and having faith in the system. And it does us little good to test “leaders” who are already avowed anti-communists.
All of which is to say, there are reasons to participate in US elections, but not through the democrats, rather through a third party that actually stands for what we’re trying to promote, like PSL.
Really, the main reason that Lenin argues for participation in electoralism is for the sake of reaching people where they’re at in order to encourage them to pursue other, more useful approaches, such as strikes.
You are confusing MLs with anarchists. MLs always think of the strategic importance of elections and choosing the lesser of evils.
That is absolutely not descriptive of the general comments and sentiment upvoted in the ML instance.
You should base what MLs is about by the writings of Marx and Lenin, and not by some randoms online.
No rational or decent person ever refused to vote against Republicans in swing states.
So what you’re saying is that you already have every “rational and decent person” voting against Republicans every election and that’s not enough to win.
The lesser evil argument again. We can research democracy and try to explain to the self proclaimed democratic world leader how it works (btw usa is rated extremely low on the democracy index)
What y’all are yearning for has a name
Democracy
Don’t let them pretend you have that when you don’t
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Helldivers is not as far from reality as one would think: managed democracy
What a stupid take.
If a bar has Nazis, it’s a Nazi bar. If the Dems are collaborating with Nazis, as this latest move certainly makes it seem, then they are also Nazis.
Even between Nazis there are levels. You wouldn’t put Hitler and some german citizen that voted for him at the same level, both suck but are not the same.
Democrats have definitely shown to not be as bad as Republicans. The system is broken but you can choose to say “It’s all the same, so I won’t do shit” or you can choose to acknowledge that even within this shitty system, there are better and worse options.
They might not be on the same level but I still wouldn’t vote for someone who supported Hitler. This lesser-evilism is literally how Hitler came to power in the first place, the social democrats supported Hindenburg for president as a lesser evil to stop Hitler and then Hindenburg just appointed Hitler as chancellor anyway.
I’m not saying to vote for the next Democrat puppet. I’m saying that pretending that democrats are the same or worse than republicans is a ridiculous claim. I’m all for something sane that breaks us out of this shit.
This guy wants you to throw your vote away.
so edgy
This was made in like 1994
If recent history is any indicator of how much Democrats are willing to fight for what’s right, I have better things to do with my fucking time than vote. I’m done with them.
If slightly less but still very much recent history is any indicator, that attitude is exactly what got us into this shit in the first place. One group isn’t doing what’s right, so let’s just hand victory to the group that pledges to do as much evil as they think they can get away with. Too many people with better things to do with their fucking time than keep a felon pedophile rapist wannabe-Mussolini conman out of office, I guess. Glad you got all the better things done though, with your fucking time.
Democrats got us into the mess we are in
Right, because the Republicans control the presidency, the house, the Senate, and inexplicably the supreme court, obviously it’s those darn stinking Democrats who did all this. Don’t get me wrong, I am livid at their inaction, but to throw your hands up and say “whelp, better just hand the Republicans the key to the castle” is at best defeatist and at worst actively destroying this country.
at worst actively destroying this country.
That’s the best thing that can happen for the rest of the world, constantly bullied and terrorised by the bipartisan regime.
But americans didn’t give a fuck about that. Now they cry bcs they got a taste of their own medicine.
Well guess what, we don’t give a fuck about you either, on the contrary.
Let Trump do his worst and you can all rot in hell where you belong.
The sooner the better.Ah, so you’re going mask off as just being a bad person? Nice.
yes you’ve got me.
Being against the cancer of the earth, that has invaded, carpet bombed, droned, bullied, regime changed or sanctioned half the world and helped terrorists or genocide regimes is being a bad person.
This guy wants you to keep doing the same useless thing, already obvious and ridiculed 150 years ago
Just commenting here so it’s high up enough to see: this guy is an admitted accelerationist. Position invalidated. Thanks.
Any vote in the oligarchy is a vote thrown away.
Any “no vote” is a vote for “any oligarch will do”.
please provide evidence
This guy wants you to throw your vote away.
Honest my ass. They lie almost as much as their orange hogfather
“Both sides are the same but the dems are worse” - said by nobody who is paying attention. There is a reason ‘both sides’ is exclusively weaponized towards one party and not the other.
this meme doesn’t say they are worse
It’s really sad to see how many people fall into the trap of party identity instead of thinking for themselves.
It’s incredibly obvious that the Democrat leadership and establishment has long since stopped caring about their constituents and prioritized corporate interest.
It’s so frustrating that people have become so wrapped up with party identity that they can’t just not see the cancer, they actively defend it.
“Blue no matter who” and the general response to this meme is so fucking stupid because it keeps the corrupt establishment in power and sidelines the actual progressives.
Edit: I bet you people are mad that Cuomo lost because you all obviously love your establishment shills so much.
“Both sides bad” is a thought terminating cliche designed to deter people from honestly comparing the two parties and seeing the gulf between them. I’m not defending the dems. I’m not defending the two party system. I’m not defending any of it.
There is an active authoritarian takeover of our country, which is right now taking away people’s rights. Harassing them for what they say, and shipping them out of the country without even the token gesture of checking their legal status. They have already tried to prevent a peaceful transfer of power, and confidently talk about ending term limits.
For some reason supposed leftists have no interest in this, and would rather do the far right’s work for them. Do you think these things would be happening no matter who was in power? Push the party left in primaries and local elections, fight for ranked choice to make third parties viable, call out the dems when they do something bad. Don’t pretend the two sides are the same, and don’t imply that voting is a waste or counter-productive.
RE your edit: Why are you so antagonistic to people saying it’s important to vote against the far right? Mamdani was the clearly better option, and I hope his proposals are proven effective. This is the kind of local election win that can nudge the party to the left. Just don’t disown him the moment he is seen working with dem leadership.
Both sides bad
no one said this. you are fighting a strawman
That is literally the content of the original post that spawned this entire conversation.
no, it’s not. The content of that post is explaining why they criticize Democrats more than they criticize Republicans. it’s not saying “both sides bad”
Do you think these things would be happening no matter who was in power?
Yes they would be, but in different ways. Democrats always set the stage for Republicans to commit crimes against the working class. Trump put kids in cages built by Democrats. Trump militarized ICE and deportations after Democrats increased their funding to their highest levels with the largest increase of detention center construction. Liberals were outraged when they found Trump was denying due process to those he deported while ignoring Obama did the same thing with upwards of 75% of those he deported denied using a law signed into law by Bill Clinton.
And the Democrat ratchet effect prevents anything started by Republicans from ever slipping back.
Push the party left in primaries and local elections
This is another failed strategy that’s never worked, after electing them they have no obligation to fulfill their promises, all they need to do is create another manufactured crisis before the elections that require everyone to come together and defeat their imaginary foe, ‘the most important election of our lifetime.’
Calling out Dems when they do bad holds no weight when they know you will come back afterwards and reward their bad behavior with reelection.
Would you agree with this statement? “Both sides are irredeemably bad, people should not vote or participate in American politics”
They are not equally bad, the side that poses as an ally and a protector of is the marginalized while actively causing them harm is by far worse.
So you agree with the statement? Or are you saying the dems are meaningfully worse so people should participate in opposition to them?
Republicans don’t pretend to care. We know exactly what to expect from them
I don’t vote for Republicans. Never have, never will. I do engage with Democrats, and tell them my needs and expectations.
Which they promptly ignore
“Fascist” is the terminally online leftist version of “woke”
Except it’s accurate and a real word.
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Man, Russian propaganda really did a number on your country
US politics is a result of US propaganda
Still not entirely sure that propaganda didn’t originate from Russia. He and Putin are besties.
People blame Russians because the propaganda from rich Americans is so ever present it’s hard to notice. We’re like fish trying to see the water.
They spent $24 billion dollars over the past election. And that doesn’t even count all of corporate media. Ever notice how pretty much everything everyone on TV says benefits the status quo?
Sure, Russians are running whatever ops they’re running, but whatever they can do is a drop in the bucket next to multiple 24 hour news channels.
You are so blinded by western propaganda that everything that defy it is <insert a foreign danger here> propaganda.
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billionaires fund democrats too lmao
the fact that so many people (and presumably you) think “voting for the lesser evil” is the end all be all of political engagement is perhaps one of the bourgeoisie’s greatest victories
Democrats cannot be trusted. They will betray everyone as we have just seen with the government closure vote
How can you blame the entire party for the actions of a few? Most Democrats, establishment and otherwise, seem really upset by what those senators have done
You don’t think it’s suspicious that the only ones that voted with conservatives were the ones that won’t face retribution at the ballot box next year? That there’s most likely several people that voted “no” that just wanted to save face?
That’s a problem with Schumer and Ossoff. Blaming this on all Democrats bereft of any evidence is the stupidest shit ever. It’s like you people fucking WANT fascism
I want both parties and all politicians dead and buried in unmarked graves. Fuck the lot of them for the shit they bipartisianly support.
I don’t support the GOP, but the statement could be adjusted for them as well.
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
They’re arguing against absolutes, like that sithy quote itself.
