Jentu

This country was founded under genocide and fascism and continues to this day. We still have legalized slavery that we support every time we buy tomatoes at the grocery store as well as our tax dollars. Anti-protest legislation and weaponry are being pushed every single year so much that you can now be considered a domestic terrorist if you protest on a road or pipeline depending on the state. We are relatively comfortable as a direct result of us taking advantage of the global south and continued colonialism projects. The more the unsustainable status-quo is extended, the more people will want to burn shit to the ground because they're seeing their friends and family struggling with absolutely no help from a government that would rather bomb brown kids and bail out corporations and practice insider trading than help them out. They are having to choose to never have children and never own a home because of the status quo. Thinking voting in the same system that got us into this mess will fix it is naive. Should trump even be allowed to run if we were a real democracy? Should citizens get any say in if we're perpetuating a genocide if we were a real democracy? If you think voting for biden will "save democracy", you obviously think we have more time than we actually have.

Voting 3rd party is an answer to the wrong question. The question of "how do we fight off fascism" can't be solved at the ballot box, and it can't be solved by someone who refuses to treat threats of fascism harshly and swiftly or even help bolster defenses against it. Voting for someone who is trying their hardest to lose this election isn't going to fix this. Voting 3rd party isn't going to fix this. Being convinced that the government will be our saviors against themselves means you only need to be engaged in politics when it's time to vote. Get to know your neighbors. Physically defend the most vulnerable against those who are willing to "just follow orders" from a fascist government (state or federal). Sabotage and protest and strike until the capitalists and government start bleeding money and are willing to operate in good faith. If you think that's too much work, go ahead and vote for biden and blame leftists when he inevitably loses. Fascism is already here, but it might start affecting you soon.

If this person's beliefs are sincerely held, showing people on the internet the "the right way" to go about being serious about privacy is an impossible task. One can't be on the World Wide Web and "be the change they wish see" (i.e. not be on the web) with regards to their privacy perspective.

And I'm not sure if it's defeatist to state that all of us, just by being online, likely have some hooks in our mouths. It's just the cost we pay for not being luddites. Yes, there's benefits to not having a ton of hooks in us, which is why we do what we do, but even one hook is enough to steal your private info and sell it to everyone. We're posting to the World Wide Web after all, not Gopher/Gemini/Onion. Hell, this goes beyond the internet since the DMV freely sells your personal information too. We make these limited sacrifices so we have an actual community instead of feeling like we're self-righteous in our loneliness.

His mushroom video is also super interesting! I keep stumbling upon his stuff every so often on YouTube, and I'm always wishing he'd post more.

President decided by sortition (like jury selection) with a less military-focused role, cabinet members decided by voting on a list of working professionals in the applicable field (aka someone who works in agricultural sciences to be secretary of agriculture), housing as a human right, functional petitions that can initiate a direct vote in a special election on any issue with enough signatures. Ban prison labor and for profit prisons. Ban private schools and invest heavily in public schools. Employees of public services like libraries, schools, gov jobs pay no taxes. De-militarize the police. Sever the relationship between police and current/former prosecutors (possibly by only getting out-of-county prosecutors to oversee cases involving police?), enshrine prisoner voting rights, enshrine Land back policy, no corporate ownership of single family homes. Rent for an apartment has to be split to be exactly what the mortgage currently costs for the owner of the building + overhead, repairs and community agreed upon updates (if the building has no mortgage anymore, it is lowered to be only what is needed for overhead etc.- being a landlord shouldn't be profitable, it should be a service), salary has to be clearly marked on every job posting and if it is found out that they are underpaying what they advertise, the labor board can fine the company by percentage of total profit increasing 2x every time it happens. All jobs are union eligible except for police. State tax benefits to influence city centers to become car-free. Loitering is a protected activity. Ban EULAs that can change at the will of the company. Force companies to pay out money to those they stole data from and sold. Ban the NSA, TSA, FBI, and CIA. Ban the stock market in some way that wouldn't be awful. Ban more performant car/truck tires that's causing our microplastics problem in favor of almost entirely naturally decomposing tire compounds. All vehicles and machinery are subject to the emissions standards of cars. Farmers are always allowed to set up a stand and sell products from their farm in parking lots (even parking lots of grocery stores). No unmarked police cars and no police sirens at night. No 24 hour news cycle. Crackdown on javascript's power on the internet. Break up apple, google, Microsoft, and any other behemoth I'm forgetting. Ban court fees. Ban non-competes. 3-4 day workweek. On top of location representation in our federal government, include wage representation and age representation as well. Surprise, all businesses are co-ops now! There's probably way more, but I can only fantasize so much lol

We were talking about the trolly metaphor. I wished there was a way to see my own posts that were deleted.

Oh, you're the person who responded to my message in that now-deleted post and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't see it anymore or respond to you. (I'm with you btw, we weren't fighting lol) Thanks for this post because I thought either Lemmy was broken or I was using it incorrectly

It’s an easy decision to make if you aren’t the one tied to the tracks. Palestinian Americans are losing their families and flipping that lever will neither bring them back nor make the situation better. Not only that, but flipping the lever without any real change of action from the DNC just means they can just trust their base to overlook genocide again and again in perpetuity as long as republicans remain the worse choice (which will be always).

If you'll allow a pretty silly continuation of your metaphor, I think a lot of those people who don't like either option of "pull the lever" or "don't pull the lever" would rather move people from the track and let the trolly go on than just sit there and watch people die. Sure, there's people who would rather take apart the tracks so people can't continually be bound to them, and there's also people who would rather take apart the train, but I think the most vocal critics would be fine with going back to holding their nose and voting for Biden if he just stopped supplying arms to perpetuate a genocide (as well as stopped vetoing UN resolutions for cease fire). That's why there's such a vocal push to no longer be complicit in genocide- to get Biden to take people off the track (there will still be people on the track for a while since we've sent enough weapons to last a while and even after our weapons run out, there'll still be people on the track, but at least we won't be putting them there). But it's honestly exhausting seeing Biden flirt with absorbing ex-nikki haley voters rather than even look at the left to help him stay in power.

Though that being said, there's probably more Nikki haley voters than leftists in this country (I say this as a leftist), so I guess it's a fine strategy if his goal is to win, but expecting leftists and antifascists to be happy with our continual march rightward is silly.

I was thinking more so if Trump won the election rather than succeeded the insurrection, but I'll give you that. Fascists are gonna fascist. I just don't see any way to stop creeping fascism so long as people are downplaying atrocities for the sake of damage reduction. We're going to end up with fascism regardless since we're doing nothing to prevent it.

Perhaps we should work to make sure no one is on the tracks instead of pulling the lever?

This isn’t nearly subtle enough to be funny. Just call a doner a gyro and call a gyro a doner.