Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I'll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I'll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
I appreciate your attempting to exercise self-awareness, but I am again asking you to step back and look at the bigger picture: Let's say there is validity to the claim "This is the most important election of our lifetime." I reject that claim, it seems to have no material basis, but let's say it is real. What is this really saying? "This is the most important election you have encountered yet" This is a critical distinction that is never articulated because the simple fact of the matter is that what you are saying didn't become a meme this cycle, it became a meme -- being generous -- in 2016 (less generous would put it in the mid-20th century). 2016 got this treatment, 2020 got this treatment, 2024 is getting this treatment, and can you tell me with a straight face that 2028 won't be treated the same way?
So we have a pattern of crisis being proclaimed, where each one is said to be worse than the previous crises, and there is absolutely no model to stop it except by being so myopic you can't see the future 3 inches past your nose. Let us say that it is "the most important election of our lifetimes [so far]," that's because it beat out the previous crises, but the ones after will surely be worse. Even giving what I view as an unreasonable amount of leeway to your hypothesis, the calculus of risking Trump winning in order to actually make positive change and develop a means to break this vicious cycle of ever-greater threat of catastrophe. You are sinking and debating that we should spend forever slowing how quickly we sink instead of trying to get out of the water.
Lol! I appreciate your well-crafted backhanded compliment :)
To lay it bare, why do I think this election (and the previous two, and the next) are so important? I think there are two major crises facing us simultaneously. One is the climate crisis. The other is the web of corruption, subversion of truth, weaponization and/or crippling of institutions, and legalized bribery -- a nebulous but worsening condition that I believe started with Reagan but has continued relatively unabated for 50 years and took off like a rocket under Trump and has metastasized to all levels of government, and shows no signs of stopping.
In the case of climate, every year that passes without remediation is bringing us closer to hell on earth and there may be no going back. In the case of corruption etc - US democracy is eroded faster and faster if unaddressed and it might already be too late to save it. You might even agree with me there -- except on the point that it makes each upcoming election "important", of course.
IMO these are two different forms of existential crisis and until they are addressed -- seriously addressed, not just assuaged out of the public consciousness -- the conditions are getting worse and worse and the possibility of resolving them shrinks. Every other problem we face takes a back seat to these order-of-magnitude-larger issues, and no meaningful progress can be made on the lesser issues.
So I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say each election is the "most important of our lifetime". With the magnitude of these crises, why wouldn't the importance of these choices be outsized compared to other points in recent history?
In all honesty, I think the most important presidential election of my life was 2000. Not only do I believe that the country could have been a leader on climate issues under Gore, Bush's War on Terror response would've been different/less-bad (maybe not, I'm sure folks around here will argue), we also would've had a completely different supreme court and all that comes with that.
I probably have a few more things I could add to that paragraph but to continue with my attempted self-awareness, I realize now that I'm probably just spewing standard lib talking points that don't bear repeating, so I'll knock it off.
Good analogy, and you're 100% right. I won't deny it because that is exactly what I am arguing for and I'm trying to understand the other viewpoint(s). IMO the longer we have (i.e. the slower we sink), the more time we have to figure out how to get out of the water, or how to execute the get-out-of-the-water plan. But also, the impression that I get from this community - the one I'm trying to get clarity on throughout this discussion - is that we should stop treading water and get on with the sinking already. Or, that shouting "get out of the water" constitutes a plan of action. (Note: this sounds overly dismissive, and I don't mean it that way - following along the analogy brought me here)
After a few mishaps I've now learned to write my responses in a different editor so lemmy-web doesn't eat them, and when I pasted this from my text editor into lemmy I realized this is my longest response yet. So, I want to say thank you again for the spirited discussion and your patience with me throughout. Hope you're having a good day despite (what I assume is) an exasperating online discussion!
This web of corruption you are refering to is capitalism and liberal democracy itself. It did not begin with Reagan, its always been this way. What you view as it "starting" with Reagan is the ascendence of neoliberalism which is still just capitalism and liberal democracy.
The idea that any of this became worse with Trump is ludicrous and massively ahistorical. You could say it became more visible because libs chose to examine it more closely and because Trump is more transparently corrupt. But its hard to argue he's more corrupt than other admins lor politicians. The main reason Trump was not impeached on emoluments was because congressional dems are guilty of the same shit.
I think this is your stumbling block to understanding our position. Sink-more-slowly by unconditionally voting for one of the people pushing you into the water is not a plan. We already know how to get out of the water. Other people have done it, other countries are not in the water because they've had revolutions against liberal democracy. And that is the problem - liberal democracy can not stop this, because liberal democracy is the sustem which maintains capitalism and the oppression of the ruling class.
Your example of the 2000 presidential election should give you a bit of insight into why voting at a presidential level is pointless. Gore won, but the Supreme Court interfered and put the guy they wanted in place.
There will always be some equivalent force to prevent any real change at the presidential level. See also the DNC rat-fucking Bernie in 2016 and 2020 and the DNC pied-pipering in trump in 2016
Since I have been procrastinating on giving you a proper response, I will point you to a thread full of people discussing the issue who hopefully won't bite your head off. Feel free to tag or dm me or whatever.
https://hexbear.net/post/957255?scrollToComments=false