To only have two sides is the problem.
Sure, but as far as what we can control right now, let’s elect some fucking Democrats please
How much longer will this be a cookie cutter answer?

Until there are enough grassroots progressive candidates to take over the democratic party the same way the tea party movement took over the republican party, and finally some progressive initiatives can pass into law, such as eliminating FPTP.

Please don’t take the “just vote democrats into office” answer to mean “sit tight and do nothing but vote” when voting is really the bare minimum activism you should be doing to preserve a democratic system.

@searabbit @RockBottom "the same way the tea party movement took over the republican party"

How did this work out for the country? I forget.

I just wonder how patient US voters are, for the changes you project.
@RockBottom @searabbit They can always touch the fuckin' stove again if the injuries they caused themselves last time aren't healing fast enough for their liking. 🤷‍♂️

Does it matter? Most voters have no attention span. They aren’t revolutionaries. They aren’t going to take to the streets no matter how bad things get. Stop trying to change people who aren’t going to change when you lack the influence to change them in the first place, and focus on trying to leverage what you’ve got as productively as you can.

Build your cadres, make the change you can, and make lemonade from the lemons you’ve got.

Yeah, if waiting for something before contributing to mends, the crooks will prevent that something to keep you passively complicit.

Mendwards now!

Let’s get Democrats controlling all three branches of government for more than 30 seconds to start.

And by “controlling” we mean “supermajority” thanks to the veto and filibuster.

And will things magically be better? Well, better, yes, good, no. First, it takes a lot of time to undo the harm fascists have done. And second, our oligarchs would still be in control, pushing for their needs above ours.

So we need to… solve… our oligarch problem AND win a supermajority AND then We the People need to push that Overton window back to the left, forcing our politicians to serve our needs.

…which is why I say we’re pretty fucked. But that’s what needs to happen, anyway.

Defy the dire prognosis, and head mendwards anyway.
Until Americans learn how to vote for 3rd parties in local/state elections and get more than ZERO 3rd party representatives in Congress.
Yeah, we need more John Fettermans and Joe Manchins and Krysten Cinemenmas.

Right. So the alternative to those is more Marco Rubios, Mike Johnsons, MTG, etc etc etc etc. All of whom are much worse.

We need better people running for office that get financial support from the people, but when it comes down to the general election, whatever addhats made it that far, the Democrat is going to be BY FAR the better pick 99.9% of the time. And if the Republican is truly better, sure, vote for them, but remember that at the party level, Republicans are the ones bringing us fascism.

The point - the entire fucking point - is people saying “Don’t vote for the Fetterman/Manchin/etc in the general election” help the fascists win. Of course it’s shitty options, but you want to pick the LESS. FUCKING. SHITTY. OPTIONS.

@resipsaloquitur @protist You all slobbered after Fetterman and Sinema and accused anyone who didn't similarly fall in love with them of being bootlicking establishment shitlibs.

It's really been something to watch your character arc from abusive "progressive" revolutionary vanguards to abusive "progressive" historical revisionist gaslighters over the past several years.

what? what is anyone trying to revise?

@nsrxn "YoU jUsT wAnT mOrE fEtTeRmAnS aND SiNeMaS, uNlIkE uS, wHo NeVeR sImPeD fOr ObViOuS pLaNtS"

Come on, bud. 🙄

can you link this?
@nsrxn Can you stop gaslighting? 🙄
I'm not. Ive never seen someone deny being bamboozled by any of those three. the objection is that we were bamboozled, and we won't be fooled again.

@nsrxn "Ive never seen someone deny being bamboozled by any of those three."

Woooooow.

if it's so unbelievable, surely it's because it would be easy for you to show it's not true
@nsrxn I admire your commitment to the bit.
I would still love to see any evidence for your position

Or… any of many other options, than just more corruptible agents and assets.

I often imagine what it may be like with, not just adjustments to re-presentative democracy (like ranked choice voting, proportionate representation, etc), but even beyond direct democracy, even beyond liquid democracy, all the way to (what I call) config-democracy

Config-Democracy”, where we each are free to input our say as elaborate (or as terse) as we want, updated when we want, as direct or deferring as we want. Where our “vote” is like a config file, not merely a single mark on a corrupted multiple choice. … unless you want to vote like that still in config-democracy. You’re free to. But I imagine everybody wants more say than that.

All kinds of facilitators can be developed for such. Heck, we even already have the likes of the political compass test, and the world’s shortest political quiz, that for decades have already offered us better means to present our political philosophies. … Funny how the crooks have not sought to implement that eh? Given how the spray of popular results show they’d be voted out of office the first day any such were implemented. … Imagine that, huh? Real democracy, real organisation by the people, for the people.

:)

We can still mend this.

@RockBottom @FoxtrotDeltaTango To see braised chicken vs. dog shit on the menu and sit there, fold your arms petulantly, and demand a third option that doesn't exist while the dog shit is on a default timer to be rammed down everyone's throat if the chicken doesn't get enough votes is the much more immediate problem that you folks are somehow struggling with every single election.
It’s going to be an even bigger problem when it drops down to only having one side.
The Red Army is not coming to the rescue.
Especially when they’re not even different sides.
Only two sides stand a chance of winning a presidential election. No amount of whining about the 2-party system changes that.
Stop whining everybody. Act like you are able to change something. I know you can do it!
It’s one of many parts of the problem.

They’ll try to shove you off the platform with constant negativity and trying to act like Trump is just a continuation of all the same. If you didn’t care before, why do you care now?

It’s not. It’s different.

Both parties have the identical end goal in mind. One is just slower at it.

The left and the right.

Of the Overton Window.

So absolute reactionary and slightly less reactionary

Yup. In this case, the Overton Window’s Auth-Right on the political compass. Those on the left half of it call themselves “The Left”.

As a non US citizen I’ll say it again: you factually only have right.

The day most realize this will be the start of change.

So for fucks sake pick the one that’s slower at it so you have more time to do something about it. It’s not like voting locks you out of any other actions.
But Americans aren’t doing anything about it except voting.
The ones who are going to do more are already doing more, and both-sidesing the ones who aren’t is just going to make them do even less. Just let them help with slowing the descent down a bit, that’s the most they’re going to do anyway. It buys time for the ones who are doing something to do something.

Or maybe the accelerationists are right, make the nail rusty enough, fast enough, get the frog realising it has to jump out or it’ll be boiled.

… if that’s not too much metaphor mixing.

Solution space may be elsewhere.

Maybe the accelerationists are right, but then maybe they aren’t and that’s a whole lot of suffering and collateral damage for nothing.

I hate this take, because it ignores the reality that this isn’t Europe and that you can’t even get sick in this country without health insurance with risking homelessness, let alone any massive coordinated action.

Like around here they’re always posting pictures of protests and you look at the people at the protests and it’s all retirees and college kids. Why? Because everyone else is at fucking work because if they’re not at work they miss a mortgage/rent payment and end up living in their car. The majority of US states have at will employment laws meaning they can and will fire you with no notice or even need to provide justification beyond the performative “this termination not due to you being a member of a legally protected class”.

Wage slaves are still slaves, and telling people today that their inaction means they’re complicit is no different then going back in time 200 years and telling the slaves on the plantations that they’re just as responsible for their bondage as the people that put them in chains. Fuck that take.

Or, vote for something other than going to the bad place?

Someone offers you two pills, you don’t have to take either. You can make your own, and seek other options.

Yeah, but if you say “I don’t care, I have absolutely no preference”, then when kids get blown up in Iran it becomes your fault.
It’s no use asking these people to do any kind of direct action. They think abstaining once every four years will bring an end to capitalism. They’ll never attend a protest or vote in a primary, much less pick up a gun for the revolution.

I’ve long been wary of anyone peddling an “only way”. Yet to find a claim of “only way” that’s not fallacious. Quite scary in this parroted psyop. “Be very afraid! Stay in your reactionary social-dominance totalitarian-psyche groupthink mass formation!” XD Gonna a be a beautiful beautiful thing, when people stop falling for it.

Y’know there are more than two sides right? And that they’re not even sides? … Beautiful beautiful thing when people snap out of the “lies so big that not even their inverse are true”.

Lol.

More “bOtH sIdEz” idiocy.

I’m just sad that more than zero people have upvoted that idiocy.

I remember 2004, a friend had come back to our home town for new years, and in our fave local pub, he regaled us with stories of what it was like working with Trump. He told us about what a joke of a played narcissist he is, being primed by his psychopathic handlers for a puppet presidency. … It seemed absurd, implausible even, for about a decade.

I heard recently they were planning on having Charlie Kirk become president in the distant future too… until he grew sense and conscience. Imagine if each of their puppets attain consciousness and conscientiousness… and they have no puppets left to deceive us with… :D

Imagine if USA had democracy. Cleared up all the election rigging, the fixed proprietary voting machines, the lobbying, the gerrymandering, the electoral college, the voter suppression, the bought corporate media, etc, etc, etc. Imagine if the people in USA got to vote for what they want, not merely under duress to vote against who they don’t want.

Imagine if it were real…

I refuse to stop shit talking democrats, if they weren’t absolutely complicit warmongers we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
How so?

What do you mean how so?

The democrats are prolific warmongers, they just think they’re smarter about it than Republicans.

Oh I’m not arguing that, I’m just asking how that would have kept us out of this mess.
If they weren’t prolific warmongers and instead did things that were actually popular at home then they would probably be seen as more trustworthy and not lost to Trump repeatedly, idk how more to spell it out for you