I've been shushing people who say there won't be free #elections in the #USA anymore
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"a lot of non-voters (or third-party voters) think that way."
right because they're morons. of course the dems suck. because the morons don't vote
"You can't vote people out, you can only vote people in, and the people running as Democrats are usually centrists"
because no one shows up in the primaries. how did mamdani get in, despite no support from the dem org? because people showed the fuck up
people not voting is the *cause*, not the *effect*
@benroyce Yeah, I agree with all that. The only thing I really disagree with you on is calling the Democrats left-wing. I'd allow "center-left" but I'd still strongly disagree with that categorisation, they are center-right. Just being less right wing than the Nazis doesn't make them left, it just makes them less right.
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This whole era has taught me so many on the right are ignorant bigots. Which you could say I should have known and I agree but I did expect more infighting and not such vast meek complicit silence from so called "patriotic conservatives" against obvious fascism
But also much more sadly many on the left are impotent spineless whiners who won't fight
Vote. Protest
Wringing your hands and paralyzed in mindless cynicism and toxic idealism is just pure loser
Swedish comedian and singer (and general mensch) Ronny Eriksson once joked about the difference between pessimists and optimists. When the pessimist says: "It can't possibly get any worse than this!" the optimist answers: "Yes it can!"
I thought about this quote a lot when I saw american progressives talking about not voting in the last election. Or Swedish leftists talking about that who is the american president doesn't matter.
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@benroyce Yeah, I agree with all that. The only thing I really disagree with you on is calling the Democrats left-wing. I'd allow "center-left" but I'd still strongly disagree with that categorisation, they are center-right. Just being less right wing than the Nazis doesn't make them left, it just makes them less right.
there is an ideological center and two parties to either side of it
that this is all much further right than we both want has no meaning. there is a left, because it is the left-er choice
to make it further left, we show up, we sustain, we iterate
there is no other option, and bemoaning things are so far right has no effective or actionable point, and in fact leads to inaction and stasis
it is like this, because the left doesn't fucking vote
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there is an ideological center and two parties to either side of it
that this is all much further right than we both want has no meaning. there is a left, because it is the left-er choice
to make it further left, we show up, we sustain, we iterate
there is no other option, and bemoaning things are so far right has no effective or actionable point, and in fact leads to inaction and stasis
it is like this, because the left doesn't fucking vote
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there is an ideological center and two parties to either side of it
that this is all much further right than we both want has no meaning. there is a left, because it is the left-er choice
to make it further left, we show up, we sustain, we iterate
there is no other option, and bemoaning things are so far right has no effective or actionable point, and in fact leads to inaction and stasis
it is like this, because the left doesn't fucking vote
@benroyce It's not bemoaning things to call the democrats center-right. I'm still voting for them because to do otherwise it's ludicrous. I just disagree with calling them something they're not. Political left and political right are not relative, they have definite meanings and the Democrats simply do not qualify as left wing. That's not to say that they can't become left, the Republicans switched sides after all, but right now they aren't.
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stop thinking of establishment dems as some alien omnipotent force that must be interacted with. in fact they're quite weak. just fucking ignore them
stop thinking of the establishment at all. you build it up to be this insurmountable enemy. it's an illusion that causes inaction
we show the fuck up in the primaries, and then we just own the joint. that's it
it all depends upon people showing the fuck up. beginning and ending of the topic
You might find this article interesting. It shows how compulsory voting in Australia led to policy shifts in government that benefited those on low incomes, pretty much vindicating everything you've been saying about why high voter turnout matters so much.
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Swedish comedian and singer (and general mensch) Ronny Eriksson once joked about the difference between pessimists and optimists. When the pessimist says: "It can't possibly get any worse than this!" the optimist answers: "Yes it can!"
I thought about this quote a lot when I saw american progressives talking about not voting in the last election. Or Swedish leftists talking about that who is the american president doesn't matter.
@jorny @benroyce @em_and_future_cats
i am that optimist.
😊
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@benroyce It's not bemoaning things to call the democrats center-right. I'm still voting for them because to do otherwise it's ludicrous. I just disagree with calling them something they're not. Political left and political right are not relative, they have definite meanings and the Democrats simply do not qualify as left wing. That's not to say that they can't become left, the Republicans switched sides after all, but right now they aren't.
Again you're asserting a 20,000 ft view rather than the functional reality. The dems are the left because they are to the left. Whether they are to the left of authoritarian mass murder or to the left of redistribution of billionaire's assets has no meaning
You're accurate in your words but your words lead to no functionality. The functional position is to use language that describes how it is, not how it should be. We can begin to move to how it should when our language is functional
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You might find this article interesting. It shows how compulsory voting in Australia led to policy shifts in government that benefited those on low incomes, pretty much vindicating everything you've been saying about why high voter turnout matters so much.
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@StarkRG @benroyce Pleasure. And since this is getting boosted a lot, I'll repeat what I said to you before: I know hardcore anarchists - the sort who think all top-down power structures (including the state itself) should be completely dismantled, and the only real democracy is grassroots and community-led - who 👉🏼still vote👈🏼, because they recognise that however broken the current system may be, keeping the far right out of government, both locally and nationally, is still hugely important!
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i see european accounts saying the vote in the USA is now corrupted
europeans also like to tell americans to vote third party
third party in an FPTP voting system divides the left and hands MAGA a win
and the vote is controlled by the states. maybe some red states will corrupt the vote but they are already red states
europeans are entitled to speak on american politics
but europeans really need to educate themselves before they say something which only harms their own concerns
@benroyce @jawarajabbi I think you guys are missing the point... They mean third party as in people that the people want to vote for, like Zohran Mamdani.
Politics in the USA is broken... The dems are not putting forward candidates that the people actually want. I have a feeling that a lot of "back room" politics have something to do with this.
Voter turn out is something like 60-65%
This should be a big enough indicator something is wrong. -
@StarkRG @benroyce Pleasure. And since this is getting boosted a lot, I'll repeat what I said to you before: I know hardcore anarchists - the sort who think all top-down power structures (including the state itself) should be completely dismantled, and the only real democracy is grassroots and community-led - who 👉🏼still vote👈🏼, because they recognise that however broken the current system may be, keeping the far right out of government, both locally and nationally, is still hugely important!
@StarkRG @benroyce @ApostateEnglishman I firmly believe that doing any little bit of harm reduction you have available to you, however insignificant, is worth doing. And voting is one of those things (particularly in local council elections in the UK, where turnout is around 30% but actually the ideology of the council makes a huge difference to things in people's day to day lives like road or cycle lane funding, recycling collections etc)
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@StarkRG @benroyce Pleasure. And since this is getting boosted a lot, I'll repeat what I said to you before: I know hardcore anarchists - the sort who think all top-down power structures (including the state itself) should be completely dismantled, and the only real democracy is grassroots and community-led - who 👉🏼still vote👈🏼, because they recognise that however broken the current system may be, keeping the far right out of government, both locally and nationally, is still hugely important!
voting is just tactics in a larger war
and "waah, but i want perfect, waah" is immature impotency
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@benroyce @jawarajabbi I think you guys are missing the point... They mean third party as in people that the people want to vote for, like Zohran Mamdani.
Politics in the USA is broken... The dems are not putting forward candidates that the people actually want. I have a feeling that a lot of "back room" politics have something to do with this.
Voter turn out is something like 60-65%
This should be a big enough indicator something is wrong.Mamdani ran as a democrat
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Mamdani ran as a democrat
@benroyce @jawarajabbi Yes, a person people wanted to vote for...
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@benroyce @jawarajabbi Yes, a person people wanted to vote for...
a person people wanted to vote for *because they voted for him*
Mamdani is elected because people showed the fuck up, not because the democrat org offered him to us
you have cause and effect backwards
we show up, we get 50 Mamdanis
we complain the dem org isn't serving us what we want: stupid lazy excuse making = no Mamdanis
we just show the fuck up
that's it
we're in charge
fuck establishment dems, they're a red herring
Mamdani proves they don't matter, we matter
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@StarkRG @benroyce @ApostateEnglishman I firmly believe that doing any little bit of harm reduction you have available to you, however insignificant, is worth doing. And voting is one of those things (particularly in local council elections in the UK, where turnout is around 30% but actually the ideology of the council makes a huge difference to things in people's day to day lives like road or cycle lane funding, recycling collections etc)
@StarkRG @benroyce @afewbugs Yeah. I was part of a team of 18 volunteers who dropped around 13,000 leaflets across two campaigns - an unofficial one against Reform UK, and an official one in support of the independent candidate - in the run-up to a local by-election. Sadly Reform still narrowly won, but we did manage to shave a few percentile points off their vote share.
Yet most of us think the electoral system is beyond repair. Allowing cynicism to become inaction is, as Ben says, juvenile. 🤷🏻♂️
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a person people wanted to vote for *because they voted for him*
Mamdani is elected because people showed the fuck up, not because the democrat org offered him to us
you have cause and effect backwards
we show up, we get 50 Mamdanis
we complain the dem org isn't serving us what we want: stupid lazy excuse making = no Mamdanis
we just show the fuck up
that's it
we're in charge
fuck establishment dems, they're a red herring
Mamdani proves they don't matter, we matter
@benroyce @jawarajabbi Yeah, and Clinton was the right choice in 2016...
Berni would have been a much better choice but Clinton was business as usual.
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@benroyce @jawarajabbi Yeah, and Clinton was the right choice in 2016...
Berni would have been a much better choice but Clinton was business as usual.
what are you saying
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@StarkRG @benroyce @afewbugs Yeah. I was part of a team of 18 volunteers who dropped around 13,000 leaflets across two campaigns - an unofficial one against Reform UK, and an official one in support of the independent candidate - in the run-up to a local by-election. Sadly Reform still narrowly won, but we did manage to shave a few percentile points off their vote share.
Yet most of us think the electoral system is beyond repair. Allowing cynicism to become inaction is, as Ben says, juvenile. 🤷🏻♂️
@StarkRG @benroyce @ApostateEnglishman it's a commitment to personal purity, never sullying yourself by touching a system that's less than 100% perfect, over actually attempting to make things a bit better in the world