Unmute this meme immediately!
post
"Resistance theater" is a great term.
You know that you can strategically vote liberal and do direct action, right?
You know that you can strategically vote liberal
There would have to be a strategy in voting against your own interests. It's actively voting for bad things so worse things maybe don't happen? That's your strategy?
Correct. At present, the outcomes at the ballot box are "bad" and "worse". Of the two, "bad" is preferable. "Good" will require non-electoral direct action.
How many decades of turning up your nose at the lesser evil do you people need before you realize that just makes things worse faster?
Who is "y'all"? What exactly do you think is "something productive" and what are you doing, besides making things worse through electoral misinformation?
Then why aren't you doing that? And again, who is "y'all"?
To tell me why you aren't doing the productive things you're whining about no one else doing?
Do you think I'm a DNC strategist? Do you think I'm anyone other than an exasperated leftist trying to get foolish leftists to stop shooting themselves in the foot so much (literally impossible I don't know why I bother)?
Maybe I'm deliberately ignoring the context clues because the associated conclusion is completely asinine, and I'm giving you a chance to correct course.
If it gets blue MAGA libs to actually start doing something productive instead of whining that they can't ignore politics anymore, then I'm on team acclerationism.
This wont work, the libs realize you dragged them into the mud (because you guys keep saying that's your intent) and view you as an enemy that is working to bring about their suffering. That's exactly why its so common for people to complain about "protest non-voters" in the first place. They already use their middle class resources to simply flee or batten down the hatches & hide, and leave the poor and minorities behind to suffer. Some small portion of them seem to even (in desperation) side with or play nice with fascists to survive.
Non-libs who are also non-accelerationists are mostly just going to grow cynical and bitter. They aren't going to throw their lives away for a violent revolution they did not sign up for.
Accelerationism is aggressively stupid and it will always fail. You wont get enough people willing to work with you to start a revolution when its obvious you dragged people into hell with you. You can't create the conditions artificially. You just have a bunch of scared and angry people bickering and when they can afford it, fleeing.
So just to clarify, you're perfectly fine sacrificing the millions of vulnerable people who will suffer and die under accelerationism, in exchange for the gamble that maybe your ideology might get more popular. And you have the gall to call libs "blue MAGA"?
This isn't a game, people have already died because of this. Maybe crawl out of your bubble long enough to think about the outcomes of your gambits.
Considering libs, much like MAGA, want everyone who they think is on their side to fall in line and vote/support their chosen genocidal fascist and attack anyone who criticizes them by viewing them as the enemy (whether it be calling them an undercover agent from the other side or working with some foreign nation to make them lose), I don't see a difference. We saw it last year with everyone that criticized Harris and we're already seeing it again with anyone that criticizes Newsom. Hell I've even seen some of them doing it with criticism towards Jeffries.
Because American elections are first past the post, do you not know how that works? Voting for the person you like the most is foolish. You identify which of the two front-runners is most horrible, and vote for the other one to keep the worse one out.
If you want a better option, you need it to be one of the two front-runners, otherwise they're just a spoiler. Pushing for an alternative that's not a front-runner betrays a tragic political ignorance.
Lmao.
"We're the good guys because we're making things worse more slowly" is one hell of a self report.
Slowing the decline is one aspect of treatment, and the best outcome presently available via electoral action. More significant progress requires alternative methods. Mitigating damage via the electoral vector is more valuable to the efficacy of those alternative methods than whatever it is you're trying to do by not mitigating damage.
Holy shit, so many words just to cope that you got owned. Yikes.
Name another "aspect of treatment" from within your delirious worldview, if voting for the lesser evil is just one aspect. I dare you to elaborate.
More significant progress requires alternative methods.
Like what?! You're so close to reality, yet so far away.
so many words just to cope that you got owned
What are you, 12? Why would I be "owned" by a fundamental misunderstanding of electoral mechanisms?
Name another "aspect of treatment"
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Promoting progressive candidates in primaries
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Writing your representatives directly
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Becoming active in local politics
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Protesting
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Arming yourself
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Building community and mutual aid with your neighbors
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Unionizing your workplace
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Collaborating with leftist groups to coordinate action
And that's off the top of my head. None of those actions are lessened in any way by voting for whatever the Dems put out in the general election, to keep MAGA out. Any other electoral action perpetuates the acceleration of fascism. We've got concentration camps and military in the streets, continuing to pretend that "both sides" are identical is just patently unserious if not deliberately in bad faith.
Your turn. Answer the question: What alternative action is available at the ballot box that yields a better outcome? I think you keep dodging the question because you know you don't have an answer. You're either a shill, or a kid hypnotized by counterproductive idealism.
I asked you for an example of something that will enact change besides voting and you cough up a listed headed by "get people to vote" and "become politically active (by voting)". Alarmingly-low levels of awareness.
Buy a gun? For what? Connect the dots for us: how can gun ownership be an aspect of treatment? What's the gun treating?
Talking to liberals about electorate politics is so disturbing. A boot could be on your neck and you'd still pledge allegiance to capitalism and its myriad apparatuses as the One True Way.
Why am I not surprised that someone who believes it's impossible to do two different things is incapable of reading past the first element of a list. Honestly, you're being deliberately stupid at this point. Maybe seek mentorship from someone who had the brainpower to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Again, not liberal, just not stupid. Work on your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, then your opinion might hold non-zero value.
And you still haven't answered the question. Are you too dumb to come up with an answer, or are you a shill?
What's the gun for, champ? You brought it up.
And again, still unable to answer the question. You're now tagged as "Fascist's Little Helper". I don't have time for fascists or their useful idiots
A liberal is calling a communist a fascist!
It's not very effective.
What's the gun for? Are you really throwing in the towel after I pressed you on your own idea?! Jfc.
I asked you a question, you ignored it and asked me a question.
I answered that question and asked you the first question again, you ignored it.
I asked you a third time, you deflected.
You're in debt here, and you still can't answer the question.
I don't have time for fascists or their useful idiots.
Why would a good little voting liberal like yourself need a gun? How is that an aspect of treatment?
I mean, if I were in your shoes, I'd probably walk that one back before proceeding. You know, because I'd be embarrassed.
What's the gun for, bossman?
Look where that got us. It's a bad strategy and needs to be retired.
It being a bad strategy and also the best available strategy are not mutually exclusive. No presently actionable strategy has a better outcome.
So there's no strategy that has a better outcome than Trump's second term? You sure about that?
What? Trump's second term is largely the result of not strategically voting for lesser evil.
What alternative, actionable strategy would have led to a different outcome? Actionable means "Everyone votes for the same third party" doesn't count. So go on, what was the alternative strategy that had any chance whatsoever of succeeding?
I think you're missing the point. The strategy out of the DNC going on two decades has been "our horrible candidate is less horrible than their candidate," and it took a worldwide pandemic and thousands of deaths for it to work once.
They need to stop and find someone who isn't horrible if they ever want to win again. That or just let the world burn and hope it's only the neolibs that survive. I wouldn't bet on that myself.
On the contrary, you missed the point. I do not set DNC policy, it does no good to tell me what they should be doing. If "making them lose" was going to affect their strategy, it would have worked in 2016.
I am but a lowly voter, who has to live in this country. As a human being, there are many options available to me to try to effect change. As a voter, I am functionally limited to choosing between the two most popular candidates.
Voting for the less fascist of the two is not what I want to be doing, but it is the most likely to support all the other non-electoral options available to my fellow humans, without sacrificing the vulnerable to the greater evil.
So in other words, you're just trying to assuage your own guilt for being powerless in the face having to actually do something to change things.
"I don't set DNC policy, I just blindly promote it no matter what."
"I'm not a fascist, I just loudly promote actions that benefit them".
Hi, yes, calling communists fascists is certainly a strategy that makes a lot of sense.
I'd ask you to define both terms but I don't want to cause you distress.
I didn't call communists fascists, I called you either a fascist or s fascist's useful idiot, because you support fascists.
there is no evidence they support fascists
Their positions directly help fascists. Whether they know it or not, they are supporting fascists.
wrong on all accounts
"Nuh uh", truly the height of persuasive debate. Self-delusion isn't fighting fascism. Voting stupidly doesn't fight fascism, it supports it. If you promote that nonsense, then best case scenario you're a fascist's useful idiot.
a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
And the evidence has been made clear. If you still can't see it, you're just as complicit.
saying it doesn't make it so.
Neither does denying it. "Both sides"ing Democrats in general elections helps MAGA, that is a simple fact. It would sure be nice to have an alternative electoral system where it makes sense, but we don't, and it doesn't. Ignoring reality for idealism turns people into useful idiots.
Both sides"ing Democrats in general elections helps MAGA, that is a simple fact.
wrong
Nope, I'm right, this is a fact, not an opinion.
The electrical opinions of someone who doesn't know what a circuit breaker is are worthless. Likewise, the electoral opinions of someone who doesn't understand Duverger's Law are worthless.
Educate yourself before making a fool of yourself.
duvergers "law" is more of a tautology. it doesn't describe any actual natural phenomenon like gravity does
duverger's law is a tautology because, from a critical rationalist perspective, a tautological statement cannot be empirically tested or falsified. it's true by definition. duverger's law states that a plurality-rule election system tends to favor a two-party system. however, if this law is framed in such a way that any outcome can be rationalized within its parameters, then it becomes unfalsifiable.
for example, if a country with a plurality-rule system has more than two parties, one might argue that the system still "tends to" favor two parties, and the current state is an exception or transition phase. this kind of reasoning makes the law immune to counterexamples, and thus, it operates more as a tautological statement than an empirical hypothesis.
the critical rationalist critique of marginalist economics, which relies on ceteris paribus (all else being equal) conditions, suggests any similarly structured law should be viewed with skepticism. for duverger's law to be more than a tautology, it would need to be stated in a way that allows for clear empirical testing and potential falsification, without the possibility of explaining away any contradictory evidence. this would make it a substantive theory that can contribute to our understanding of political systems rather than a mere tautology.
You tortured a lot of smart sounding words to say nothing of value. As I said, worthless.
now who looks ignorant
Still you. That's not what a "tautology" is, and even if it was, your argument still makes no sense.
you haven't read any critical rationalists, and it shows.
edit: I accidentally a couple letters, but look at this fucking bad faith and proud ignorance
edit: it's understandable I guess that when your worldview is threatened, you slink off pretending you were right all along.
Is it truly a bad strategy? Or is there much less direct action than what's needed?
I've got a solution, get rid of Facebook and Fox News in your Maga people's lives. Put parental controls on their TVs if you can and try to convince them that Fox News was bought out or something. It's the constant deluge of bullshit that's causing this.
MAX FISHER: The places where Facebook usage - not general internet usage, but specifically Facebook usage - was significantly above the average for Germany, the number of attacks on refugees was also well above the average.
SHAPIRO: That's author Max Fisher, who writes about this research in his new book, "The Chaos Machine." It's not just that violence against refugees went up in places where people used Facebook a lot. The researchers also looked at outages - Facebook disruptions - and they found that when the platform went offline in a specific place, attacks against refugees in that community dropped.
FISHER: Extended time on social media is addictive, and it changes your behavior, and it changes the way that your mind works. And it does that in a consistent direction towards more outrage, more extreme ideas and a greater hatred of us versus them.
You could wipe every reactionary television station, radio station, magazine, social media, and newspaper off the face of the earth, but capitalism's internal contradictions would make their resurgence inevitable.
So long as wages are suppressed, social safety nets withered, wealth inequality balloons, education decays, retirement age grows, and healthcare becomes unattainable, the backside into fascism is inevitable.
How do you think fascism took hold in Germany, and how was it mitigated?
Your analysis falls into the same trap as other liberal analysis - that our means of changing our politics is a function of "changing people's minds" in "the marketplace of ideas". Liberal analysis champions the notion that "ideas" are what turn the wheels of history. In reality, it was Soviet T34s blasting Nazis into mist that mitigated German fascism - not some completely unachievable and unpragmatic scheme to break into retirement homes across the country and put parental controls on grandpa's favorite flavor of right wing pundit TV.
Is this like a political compass kind of thing?
Kind of, it shows that there are a few ways to try to achieve change. So if you keep trying one of those methods and don't see the change you want, it might be time to change tactics.
The political axes of moderate–militant and liberal–radical may seem equivalent, but they are not. It’s true that liberals are often moderates, and radicals are often militants. But that’s not inevitable and it’s not universal. I’ve worked with plenty of radicals who were also moderates, who sought to make fundamental changes in the power dynamics of their communities using low-risk action to make gradual changes. And I’ve worked with liberal militants, who were willing to fight to make changes within established power structures. In any case, all of these approaches can have a time and place in resistance struggles.
I quite like this bur the layout is terrible. Why not just make the perspective normal so its readable?
The only real resolution is the one people don't want to admit to publicly. They can't even write the words out and publish it. It's not even a game of chicken. Nobody lives forever. History has seen the correct treatment to what he is in the past. It should be done now as well.
Well... You're not wrong.
But it’s not helpful to doom about these things.
I dunno, acknowledging the problems seems like a good start
Lemmy has been chock-full of these memes critical of the dems since the election. How much more of this "good start" is needed before people move on to the next step (whatever it might be)?
Everyone I know is already aware of the fact that we’re bracing through a torrent of garbage. I’m terrified that reluctant voters are going to choose the party that will turn the pressure higher or ignore the flesh stripping blast. My skin has peeled to the bone. Throwing suspicion at the only people capable of closing the valve is not relevant to me.
If they're capable of closing the valve, why haven't they? They either complain they don't have the votes to make a difference; or when they do have the votes, they say "this is the time to compromise" or whatever lame excuse to continue to do nothing.
A prerequisite to getting into a position where one is "capable of closing the valve" is to prove, beyond any doubt, that they are not a person who could ever dream of closing that valve. Even a little bit.
You are being one of those "ignore the flesh stripping blast" as you tell others that "throwing suspicion" is "not relevant". Motherfucker we've been throwing a lot more than just suspicion at them for 50+ years and they won't do shit. I'm glad you've got enough bodies between you and that nozzle so that the level of inaction is irrelevant to you, but that's not true for your shields.
Dude, we’re a decent proportion of the way into the transition to fascism. Your absence of situational awareness and reading comprehension is going to sway people toward cranking up the pressure. Again.
In what world does my saying that my flesh has been stripped to the bone indicate that I haven’t been affected? Read between the lines, ya doofus
You're right. Everything's ok.
/s
Dude, the US is on fire. Pointing out that there’s a sewage leak is unhelpful.
But they are. Think what the message is implying here. Don't do the things that are actually important to actually pull votes to your side. There's no point since it's all rigged. This post is propaganda.
This post is like some political consultant group found things that could sway an election and turn tides and then inverted it to imply those things are just silly
This post is propaganda.
So is this reply. Also being propaganda is funny in this case since nothing here says anything about not voting, just that currently the two party system has broken down and no longer feels like democracy (due to how it is not). In this case who would the propaganda be for? The democrats? Not likely, they are not helped here. The republicans? Don't think they care, many don't plan on having fair elections again. Big molotov?
This helps Republicans. You're not going to see that. But that's why the left is in the situation they are in. You're all still in the stone age that you're not relevant anymore. It's not that the Democrats are shit. The entire left are so far behind that they won't catch up anytime soon
Not a democrat, not even an american.
The us is no longer a democracy, and is fast becoming the next global pariah state.
It's still a democracy. There is still a lot of order and authority keeping things running. It's just a shit show right now. But places like Lemmy and other social media radicalizing people are trying to undo it
That's not what a democracy is. North Korea has a lot of order and authority keeping things running as well for example.
Every form of government requires that.
Kinda, but to be a democracy requires just a touch more. This might shock you, but declaring something does not make it true. You can't just yell "Freedom", "We are #1" and "This nation is a democracy".


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