ameancow

Our population voted someone into the highest office riding on the promise of drilling for more oil and increasing factory farming. We have atomized our culture so much that corporate forces have stripped people of their empathy and care and passion like an overripe banana and we don't mix perspectives anymore so that we can pull people back.

There's no hope of ending this misery until those of us who remain thinking with our minds get off the computer and start socializing, organizing, challenging people and pulling people into our idea of a better tomorrow. Most people don't even know where to find other people to talk to and debate with and this is by design. That's the trap we're in we need to break free of, and then maybe if we can get to that point we can start making cultured meats and alternative proteins a thing.

Otherwise, we're going to fish the oceans until they're dry and we will create hellish suffering for every life form involved until there's nothing left to feel pain.

So wait for a charismatic and perfect savior. We see what happens every time someone of this stature reaches the actual federal election stage.

I'm talking about what people can do here and now, which is built coalitions and not have purity tests about who is in it, just focus on single-issues like the right has done successfully over and over and over.

For some reason whenever someone says "compromise" every lefty immediately pictures "submitting on trans rights and abortion" or something.

I'm saying as individuals, you and me, scared lemmy browsers who don't think they have power: build social connections, make more friends, build activism groups, start in local communities and keep it fixated on solving ONE populist problem that we can get a much wider array of people behind, like childcare or school lunches or yes healthcare and unions, social security or other public safety nets and the whole long laundry list of items we want, but instead of overwhelming a population, local or national, with a huge list of inclusivity and ideals, we attack one thing at a time. I have watched the right do this over and over and each time they fucking WIN.

Again, your notions of an ideal candidate you would vote for are spot-on, I would vote for that person in a heartbeat, most would, but that person doesn't exist and they won't exist until they can ride on the momentum of grass-roots movements to tackle populist issues. The democrat party is not our ally here, not without a mandate under it and if we're more clever about building those mandates and then tying them together when it's time, we might have success.

But I'm getting really pessimistic here. Voter turnout is not the problem. Everyone, everywhere, is avoiding mixing. The atomization of our world is the problem. We had the highest voter turnouts and youth involvement in the last several elections than we've ever had, and they voted Trump. That's my whole point, that's the key we have to fight against, how someone like a brazen fascist and idiot can sway so many people, and it starts with re-mixing our values and perspectives and this may take some kind of "compromise" that may make a lot of isolated lefties really uncomfortable, like having conversations with people you don't like, like accepting people who hate you into your protest so you can both tackle a problem you both hate. If we can cross that boundary we can start mixing together again and pulling people out of this programming that corporate media does. Isolationism is killing our whole world and all our hope for the future.

We are facing a huge problem that nobody seems to be able to identify, which is not voter turnout. The sad, horrible truth is the last couple election cycles we had record turnout and more young people involved than ever before... AND THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP. It's going to happen all across the world as more and more people have access to their little algorithmic ideology bubbles.

So what's the problem? Atomization of groups. Everyone is isolated and not exposed to each other's perspectives and it's making a vacuum that corporations are easily leveraging to get their right-wing puppets installed so they can make line go up. This atomization is literally turning people delusional, and if we don't push back on it we are going to lose not just the USA but all democracy and organization.

We fight it with activity and community and socialization. If it takes screaming at people to get off their asses, I will do that and I will do it in ways that piss people off if it gets attention.

You berate neurodivergent and queer people specifically

Exactly the kind of bad-faith, seething, atomized perspective I want to fight by forcing people like YOU to listen to people like ME who will say things to piss you off and make you reconsider what someone else is saying. We need to do that not on Lemmy but out in bars, in family gatherings, in social media, in public lectures, in town council meetings and so on. Withdrawing now will kill you all. I am being dead serious. This avoidance of conflict except with people who want the same outcome as you is ruining our entire world.

If you have a way to make it work without compromise let me know, I'm all ears. Expert Mode: something that doesn't involve waiting for some charismatic and perfect savior figure to somehow come out of the sky and start successfully advocating for socialism. Nobody is coming.

Because what we're doing now isn't working.

Yah i don't care, it's not worth the hate. It feels pretty fucking bourgeoisie to organize around hating someone who just doesn't live up to what you want in a creator while we have actual democracy falling across the world. Just don't look at the comics.

If that's not working, that means she's living in your head and you need to figure out why.

I was an artist online for years and eventually quit because of all the drama, and you don't escape it, if you're not constantly, aggressively preserving your IP, it WILL get used by others for whatever they want. I can dump boatloads of stories and links to artists who had their work used by everyone from other artists who painted over their art and claimed it, all the way to major corporations just plain stealing designs and characters.

Out of all the "toxic" creators, maybe we should bandwagon against actual shitty people and shitty artists. Ya'll have Stonetoss's twitter and socials, why not focus some of this smarmy better-than-thou armchair art-snobbery on an actual toxic nazi? Literally, the same site here broadly, Lemmy, that has on it's top trending posts, a "punching nazis" meme, does almost NOTHING to actually challenge real threats to our way of life when it's as easy as a targeted social media campaign. I guess that takes scaaary organizing though.

Absolutely true, and what's really wild is most of the left is broadly prideful of being intellectual, and so desperate to have intellectual fights that they tear each other down and find ways to nitpick their own allies into destruction. Just because they need to fight someone they can win on their own terms.

The enemy army is OVER THERE, it's JUST RIGHT THERE! I want to shake everyone and aim all this effort to call out "problematic tones" and "cultural insensitivity" into actual action before we're all just pawns in a techno-feudalism state, disposable as robots slowly replace even the workers, the last playing piece we had as people.

Lefty former martial-art teacher and gun owner here. I fully agree and have to argue about it a lot. This generation of lefties is completely dulled by short-attention-span self-medication and escapism and pseudo-socialization through discord and other online chats substituted for real socialization.

Whenever you talk about the need for actual organizing, forming groups, taking action, suddenly everyone has nine-hundred very special "conditions" that prevent them from doing anything. We may have co-opted the term "snowflake" from the right but it was targeted accurately at the start. Everyone thinks "someone is coming" or that there's going to be a revolution "any day now" as if there's some underground left-wing movement planning things and they're just not invited. Motherfuckers you all ARE the left-wing in this country, ya'll think the fucking democrats are gonna save you?

The left also gave up on the american flag, easily isolating itself in the public eye as an anti-american group. I hate that. I don't get it. Yes, America has been awful and continues to be so, but if you don't claim ownership of the goddamn land you live on, someone else is going to take it... and guess what's happening.

This is just what it's like to get old and grumpy. Youth is wasted on the young. I did my time organizing, I did volunteer work and phone banking for my local community and leaders, I tried. I really, really tried. I even narrowly, accidentally avoided assassination a while back but details would dox me. And I get lectured here about the ten thousand reasons why they can't do hard things, why they have been relegated to retreating to back-water websites nobody visits having imaginary fights with imaginary nazis. Part of me is so done with humanity I feel like a lot of these kids deserve the consequence of being self-absorbed and undisciplined. But I guess I still have some lingering hope that someone will read something that makes them get off the couch.

This site, and honestly modern leftism in general, is utterly weak and in a sorry state. Lotta tender kids hiding in their discord groups talking hard about punching nazis, overthrowing the government, revolutions, etc. But if even half of them went out and organized and voted as regularly as the conservative orc army we wouldn't need to be boarded up behind cultural firewalls.

Ya'll desperately wish there were right-wingers and nazis on this site. The isolationism of the internet has left the entire population having arguments in the shower and imagining how thoroughly they owned their imaginary opponents.

Protip: you can ACTUALLY go outside and punch ACTUAL nazis at protests and demonstrations in towns near you! themoreyouknow.gif

Also, you're blocked, you're not even remotely equipped to have a real discussion if you call any of what what said here "pivoting" just keep letting herd-mentality guide you, I'm sure it will always serve you well.

If you call that "keeps pivoting" you're really short on attention span, and maybe you need entertainment that doesn't require you to pay attention for more than three panels. That's probably where this cartoon lost you.