Political Memes

The big thing is that movements start from local political offices and can grow from there.

It can start with representatives, the rare senator, or even taking over of a party at the state level:

https://apnews.com/article/nevada-bernie-sanders-las-vegas-harry-reid-6f834efcd0dcc3644ce2365447aabab0

Participate in local elections, back primary candidates. Once the numbers are there at the nationwide level, we can push for a more representative electoral system.

We can push system that uses ranked choice voting like Alaska did. We can also increase the size of the house of representatives to better match the idea of representation the founding fathers had for us. It's been nearly a 100 years that the house was capped at 435

The founding fathers had envisioned a house that grew with the size of the country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment

This laid the intent that we have 1 rep per 30,000 people and increase the constituents per rep by 10,000 each time the house reached another 100 seats.

Or in other words, the max constituents represented by each rep in the house should be:

30,000 + RoundedDown(Number of house seats/100)*10,000

So at 400+ seats (1 rep per 70,000) would make sense for a country of 28 million. Really, with the wording of the amendment and understanding that the examples lay out a mathematical formula for expanding the house indefinitely (but with more people per rep as it goes up) we would have over a 1,000 reps! In fact, some quick math shows that per the original intents, we would have 1700 reps with at most 200,000 constituents each. This would hold until our population reaches 340 million when we'd switch to 1800 reps and a cap per rep of 210,000.

There's a current "Uncap the House" movement, however, I'm unsure of how much momentum they've been gaining.

To see how the number of constituents has grown per member over the years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#Number_of_members

In other words, we're being shorted almost 1300 reps!

Wait, we're not supposed to be disappointed in our government? Could have fooled me.

... or one party is more efficient at facilitating murder

America has a right wing party, and a party of hyper right wing nutcases.

Unfortunately it's a flaw in FPTP voting systems. The biggest thing that would help (in any country with FPTP) would be to move to almost any other sort of voting. Ranked choice would be the least disruptive, in the short term, but still allow for long term corrections to function.

You know, the values of keeping rich people rich and poor people poor.

Both are political liberals (as in: foCus on policies that benefit the wealthy) deal with it.

Counterpoint to yours on revolution: democratic systems are revolutionary. Elections can result in the overthrow of current governments in favor of new ones with the peaceful transition being a key factor.

I heartily disagree with the last panels initial premise: both parties don't stand for the same values. They both share values among some of their most prominent members. Namely neoliberal economic policy. But they are clearly not in sync with all policies: hence only one party attempting a fascist takeover. Ignoring the other things Democrats have accomplished

While I agree with your stance, I don't think that conflicts with the panel's stance or the way many of the memes are posing.

I think the point here is more "they're slightly different shades of the same color, but we need something very different." In the grand scheme of politics and views, US Democrats and Republicans are extremely similar, especially right now. I wouldn't discount democrats refusal to step into fascism, nor some of the progressive policies they push for, but these are minor differences in the grand scheme of things. Many of the things many people want in this country are vastly different than either party's stance, and that's what's being pointed to.

These memes also press for Revolution, which is definitely the dumbest thing to propose at this point. Revolution definitely has its place: namely if fascists actually disband democracy. But a revolution is a HUGE risk no matter who does it. Look at revolutions in the rest past, especially those started by popular sentiment: many ended in a totalitarian government, often backed by the military, who took power the moment the leaders faltered.

I think you're blowing this out of proportion. They're pressing for drastic change. Is that revolution? Sure, but it's not necessarily violent. The majority of these memes don't seem to push that. Maybe some do, but those are definitely not the majority here.

I'd summarize by this comment lower in this thread - I think it summarizes the same stance as these memes from an outsiders perspective:

Can you US people make a party that isn't a bunch of ghouls already so we can stop having this argument every day

It was so ~~disorganized~~sabotaged and so slow.

FTFY

Idk why you're equating far leftists and marxist-leninists. Lemmy will have a political bias depending on what your instance is. But the majority of Lemmy has had in the past, continues to have in the present, and for the foreseeable future will have a leftist bias. The software is made by leftists and has strong ties to the self hosted and GNU communities, which themselves are heavily associated with leftists and leftist politics.

It's way out of proportion to the tiny percentage of the politically active left that doesn't vote or doesn't vote Democratic. It's a feel-good virtue-signaling that does nothing but validate the lame excuses the establishment uses every time they lose to a fascist.

Despite the noise you see online (from people who's mind you won't change) leftists overwhelmingly hold their noses and pull the Democrat lever every 4 years. We don't need to be reminded of how much it sucks every damn day.

It's the ordinary non-policy-wonks that stay home on election day, and it's pathetic Democrats that make that happen. Sane Americans have checked out of the process because they don't see the point and have better things to do. They also aren't here to be preached at.

You don't need the left to show up to vote. We already do that. You need us donating to campaigns, passing out flyers, making phone calls, and countering the endless flow of bullshit from the right, and all the other things that you aren't doing because you are here feeling good about preaching to the choir.

The Democrats have my vote, but I can't stomach doing the establishment's work anymore. Just once I would like to be able to confront a rightist and not have them be able to counter with accusations of elitism and corruption that are absolutely true. Just once I would like to explain to someone how the Democrats actually will help them figure out how to get out from under a mountain of debt. I just don't have whatever it takes to advance campaigns of grift, elitist bluster, and empty promises.

German here. He had parties that weren't a bunch of ghouls. Some don't exist anymore or have never been in power, others either replaced the good guys with ghouls or the good guys were corrupted by power and became ghouls themselves over time. Face it, electoral politics aren't enough.

Yeah, if everyone voted. I don’t understand why people are confused by this. Just vote. Get your friends to vote. We know that most Americans aren’t evil. Otherwise this entire country would be like Florida. But only like a third of Americans able to vote do so.

You know who votes like, all the fucking time? The ghouls. They love to vote. And we don’t show up. Defeating Trump one more time should end the MAGA movement and then we can focus on propping up a candidate in 2028 who will actually capture the change that we want to see. Midterms too!. But this process only starts if we ensure Biden remains in the White House. You may not like his foreign policy, but he believes in climate change and won’t suppress democracy. Trump will effectively end it via Project 2025, courtesy of the fascist Heritage Foundation.