America is a one party state. But, in typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
Can't escape the braindead c/Politics users even in this comments thread bruh.
People out here still blaming voters as if it isn't the literal textbook definition of a politician to meet consituent demands for their vote.
Not only was the DNC content in allowing Trump to win, they were content in losing just to protect Israel. a
There's a lot of unease about this, because some people believe everyone should just vote for the better of the two options; whereas other people believe the option needs to be good before they will vote for it.
Americans were given a choice between two options. One option was clearly better than the other, but the poorer option won, because the better option wasn't good enough.
It reminds me a bit of the game-theory around the game 'ultimatum'. Should we just accept whatever is offered, since it is still better than the alternative? Or should we sacrifice our meager reward to spite the person who offered an unfair split?
The way I look at it, it's not about spite, it's about not contributing to the problem. If this was a choice made entirely in a vacuum where the choices were dropped from the sky with no history and there were no future elections, and you could absolutely only choose between them and nothing else, then fine, choose the dems since I guess they will technically be "less bad."
The problem is the choice isn't made in a vacuum. There's a reason we have the choices that are presented to us in elections because this is a repeated game where past results affect later games. We keep getting worse and worse options from either party because they know people don't have a real choice. As long as the dems are anywhere before the line, even if they're shockingly close, then people will have to pick them. So they move right up to that line because they won't be punished for it. In turn, Republicans have the space to move further right now that the overton window has shifted.
The DNC feels free to rig primaries, which are supposedly where we're allowed to have input without risking a Republican winning, because they know that the outcome won't change people's votes, or even if it does, they don't seem to care THAT much about winning as long as actual leftists lose.
Repeat until we have Democrats who are anti-immigration, pro-war, pro-police, pro-surveillance, and pro-corporate and Republicans who have just taken their mask off. And this even trickles down to the base somewhat. How the hell does California vote to keep literal slavery around and still conceive of itself as liberal?
Also, this is less a strategic point and more of a moral one, but I take issue with the idea of the Dems being "better" as a given. Better for who? They're not better for the people they're helping to bomb. Why should their priorities not matter? How can you quantify their suffering against different kinds of suffering for other groups? "But the Republicans will do the same, so it's a wash, you shouldn't consider that." Meaning we've taken their issue off the table. It's no longer in the realm of politics because we've just accepted that it's fated to happen. It shouldn't matter to us.
"But you can apply pressure once they're in office, the Dems will be more receptive." How exactly will you pressure people who you've told you will unconditionally vote for and won't act against outside the system? And are they more receptive? They didn't stop supplying Israel. They never raised the minimum wage or got people healthcare. They never did anything to codify Roe V Wade or to sure up the courts against corruption. Plus once you spent all this political capital putting them in power, how many liberals or even progressives are going to meaningfully push back against them? Libs will go back to thinking everything is fine and a lot of progressives will just think they should try to "hold them accountable." Whatever that means.
Of course, merely not voting isn't sufficient to affect change, but I think putting all this emphasis on voting is doing harm to the effort to get people to get organized in other ways. It distracts them and it makes it seem like your principles don’t really matter. “If you are so adamant about supporting the people working against my interests, can you really be by ally? Do you really care about me?”
To a point we can blame voters. What do you think Trump is doing right now? He's supporting Israel. It's just that his campaign was full of lies. I've seen small debates between people where the Harris voters would try to argue that Trump was pro-Israel, showing tweets from before his campagn that clearly conveyed his political views. Of course the other side was too adamant.
We can also blame American education. Thankfully, I grew up in a good area, so I was taught proper civics in high-school, and taught about political policies and propaganda at my University (it was a GE, I was an engineering major).
Unfortunately the whole Israel situation is a lost cause anyways as both parties will never give it up. It's an asset for the US in the middle east.
If Democrats wanted Trump's authortarian take over and were just pretending to oppose the Right
What would they be doing differently?
George Carlin said it years ago but it bears repeating:
“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.
And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday.
Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Unless America finds a way to get the money out of politics, I don't think it's problems will ever get fixed by politicians. The class divide will widen and ultra wealthy will grab more money and power, while those below will be busy with culture war distractions and not focused on the class war.
The french did a pretty good job cleaning up.
There was a lot of turmoil before they stablized on the respectable undomesticated society they have today.
Maybe it could happen again?
I guess it's up to the American citizens. I wonder how much worse it'll become before they start really fighting back.
Every society is 3 missed meals from a revolution.
Most of the country already lives paycheck to paycheck. If most people became unemployed and couldn't find work they'd be homeless in less than a year.
They have plenty of circus, but bread (or eggs) is going to get more expensive.
Idk where the edge is but I think if our incompetent government doesn't push Americans over the edge soon climate change probably will.
You know Democrat politicians are rich oligarchs too, So it's in their interests just like the Republicans to protect their money bins. We need to stop worrying about Republicans and Democrats and start worrying about us working people. Free Luigi!
It's cuz college students are easier to kick but Republicans fight back. The Democrats are doing their usual bit of having a few committees to complain while the republic burns and alternatively hand-wringing "I wonder why we lost the election????"
People also talked more about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock than most of Trump's recent actions. Welcome to Idiocracy. Hey I think Oww My Balls is on!