I had basically given up on electoralism for years at this point.
I do not believe the western working class by and large has any revolutionary potential, basically JDPON-pilled.
But the genocide in Palestine really made me more invested in this whole dog and pony show again.
I guess I figured like…sure bourgeoise democracy will not bring about socialism, but at the very least you can still get some concessions potentially out of it.
Perhaps I was naive, but like…I wanted to hope there was some way the Democrats could be convinced to stop it by November, even if it was electoralist bullshit I feel like the Palestinians deserved (and still deserve) even a futile attempt.
But seeing the shit with the DSA, especially the SMC and Groundwork caucuses, seeing unions who oppose the genocide endorse Biden/Harris right out the gate, seeing the Uncommitted movement do the same while the Harris campaign has done nothing but spit in their face….
I am filled with a helpless rage. Americans are the most pathetic contemptible creatures on this earth.
I’M NOT EVEN ASKING FOR SOCIALISM! ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS THE DEMOCRATS TO COME AROUND ON AN ISSUE 77% OF DEMOCRATS AND 61% OF AMERICANS OPPOSE!
BUT EVEN THAT IS TOO MUCH, TOO HARD FOR THESE ORGANIZATIONS TO FIGHT FOR EVEN WHEN IT IS ALLEDGELY THEIR WHOLE REASON FOR EXISTING!!
I knew Americans were useless and selfish, and short-sighted and stupid…but I didn’t think they were to this extent.
That was my mistake I guess.
The older I get, the more I understand Stalin's purges and the Cultural Revolution in China. I have read zero Mao and have become a Third World Maoist anyway because of all the shit that goes on in the US.
my hottest take is that america will definitely need a cultural revolution if we ever overthrow the government.
it will need multiple, I legit cannot imagine a functioning socialist state in america without literally destroying it
I remember thinking this before even realizing I was a communist, just in dumb guy terms of "shit is so fucked up on every level here that it would take like, an entire decades-long national project to fix"
People talk shit on the cultural revolution for beinf tok mean to liberals but damn it china doesn't seem to be staying on top having reduced their power level
I almost preferred it when Biden was the nominee because at least then I could shit on him and my friends would all agree. They swapped out the face while keeping everything else the same and people are buying it. Shit sucks.
Honestly I did what I could with the advantage for the last couple years, and now some of my local liberals have been happy feeling like they can push back at me a bit, still love them though.
I've been having a similar flashes of "Wait, what if Kamala is the most progressive candidate possible and America has always been this shitty and indifferent to atrocity."
But I think there's genuinely a sense that the decay has been getting harder to ignore and it's making the people who don't want to see the cracks (most of them) go a little crazy. Everyone's hyperfocused on villains. Convinced that all we have to do is beat Putin in Ukraine and defeat Trump in the election and then things can finally go back to normal and the grinding decadence will stop.
There's a stench of desperation wafting off the enthusiasm for Harris and the repetition of "this is the most important election of our lifetimes" to the extent that it has become a meme isn't so much a statement of stakes as it is a prayer, an optimistic statement that what's left of the middle class will be able to retreat back to comfortable complacency after ensuring the reins go back into the hands of a competent technocrat who will fix things.
It has led to a willful and dangerous blindness and I feel some anxiety for when the time comes that it no longer becomes tenable to maintain.
I definitely get it, libs are shoving the genocide under the rug, basically saying they don't really care. ”It's unfortunate, but what can you do
” It really got me thinking again about how even American libs believe the US has to have a little a war crime as a treat.In general, I don't get how they're so enthusiastic about Kamala, because nothing's changed about her except she's now the candidate, and nobody cared about her before. ”MSNBC told me she's good”?
The optics are so much better with Kamala. She isn't a walking corpse and can complete sentences without trailing off. For libs that's enough.
I got out of the DSA over the Palestine stuff early this year. I can't say I don't miss the party life but it's nice not being in a Zionist and all around opportunist org.
I also had some revelations about the big unions at the end of last year and yeah we're all around fucked unless the US left starts figuring some shit out real quick.
Sorry you're going through this. It isn't fun. There's at least a few others with you though.
The Democrats simply must be destroyed. Both parties must be destroyed but I think the democrats must go first. A party built on this goal is necessary but dangerous and inherently subversive to the point of probably being illegal in some way
I do not believe the western working class by and large has any revolutionary potential
You are probably right about that.
Shit like this makes me want to piss away my 3 months of sobriety and just go back to being stoned all the time.
Good for you. I stopped being high all day. I smoke after five now. My psychiatrist prescribed meds but I’m too afraid to take them. She said maybe the weed is giving me my anxiety and depression. But it’s having a heart and mind in this world that is.
It's not that, it's the false consciousness. They believe they are in a democracy when they are in the Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS THE DEMOCRATS TO COME AROUND ON AN ISSUE 77% OF DEMOCRATS AND 61% OF AMERICANS OPPOSE!
It is not, and never has been, a mechanism for enacting popular will.
You've had 10 years for Gilens and Page to soak in. Be very enraged... but be not surprised.
I think it might be different if there were any viable third party candidate to rally around. It's hard to protest Harris over Palestine when like, Trump would be worse. Probably not much worse, but still hard to gin up any enthusiasm about it.
the point is to have enough people threaten to withhold their vote unless something is done by the election, it doesn't matter if there is a viable third party it only matters that Harris will lose Michigan and/or other states.
There's a scene in seven psychopaths where someone points a gun a Christopher Walken and tells him to put his hands up, and Walken just casually says "no", and the other guy gets confused and frustrated. That's how it feels threatening to withhold votes from the Democratic party.
That would be a great step, but we also need to allow candidates the ability to even be on the ballot
Show
Even then there are similar pitfalls. But at least the Shit Lite party can't cry spoiler as much.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
All due respect, and with the understanding that I'm not a brilliant political strategist. Can you explain how we get from point A (threaten to withhold votes) to point B (a positive outcome in Palestine)?
if you capitulate on every issue who the fuck is going to take you seriously
If Harris and the democrats fear they will lose crucial swing states and potentially the election because of what is happening in Palestine then they might be convinced to change course.
That seems pretty naive, given how they've been completely unwilling to compromise so far, and seem very confident they won't have to.
they're confident they won't have to because of spineless fucks like you who are supporting them unconditionally
That seems pretty naive
Says the dipshit talking
they've been completely unwilling to compromise so far, and seem very confident they won't have to
So let's support them anyway? Okay, god you deserve to be thrown full force into the deepest pit. You deserve, at best, an oubliette so deep and so dark you forget what the sun even is
K, I don’t care.
Either nothing happens or something happens.
Unfortunately, in America we can't within the current system. Reform or revolution? (Revolution)
If there was a third party, I honestly think there'd be a chance to make things better. Either to force reform by pulling votes from the bigger party, or being a vanguard for revolution. Just not the fucking green party, jesus. They didn't win a single county in 2016, and I fucking hate them.
and I fucking hate them
You should reexamine why you're directing statements like "I fucking hate them" to the green party instead of the party currently in charge of enabling the genocide in Gaza
Here's another lib who thinks you shouldn't protest someone over genocide because hypothetically Trump would be worse.
Do you still believe they're bitter enemies even though Kamala called Trump after the latest sad excuse for a shooter and condemned political violence? They're more like the face and heel in pro wrestling than anything.
I don't think they're enemies. I think their policies on Israel would be nearly identical, except Trump would be slightly more corrupt and incompetent. It's just hard to threaten to withhold a vote when there's no alternative.
there are alternatives, and withholding votes might get democrats to, yknow, fucking change their position in order to woo voters? Thats the whole point of compromise? seriously do i have to tell libs about how their own shitty 'democracy' works?
The problem is that democrats are also perfectly happy to eat shit in the election and spend the next four years fundraising off Project 2025 and leading the #resistance, so it doesn't seem like they feel any need to be responsive to voters
If they eat shit because of mass defections and people throwing their weight behind 3rd parties, especially socialists like PSL who do non-parliamentary ground work as well, and people continue throwing their weight behind them voting for them and joining them, and continue agitating and growing to not only pull the Democrat-defectors and people who are holding their nose who can be convinced that this is not helping (of which there are and continue to be many); but also continually activating the 35%-50% that don't even vote because of how disillusioned and disenfranchised they are by the corporate-imperialist duopoly; such that the margins of working class voters that Democrats rely on by being the "lesser evil" are starved from them, while they are instead committed to fighting over the increasingly shrinking bourgeois and petty-bourgeois voterbase with the republicans then they will never get power again unless they reorient toward the left; which we know and you've stated as much, they are institutionally structurally incapable of doing.
This means either the ruling class floats a reformist social-democrat "labor" or "progressive" party to try to capture working class voters from moving to the growing socialists, which we are growing and will --- from those radicalized after the 2016 primaries to the George Floyd Uprisings to now and on it's been exponential; which would cause the Democrat party to split in half with half joining the republicans (that they've already been converging with anyway), and half hedging their bets and fleeing to the new "progressive" party like 'rats from a sinking ship,' which would not only alienate the new "progressive" party's left wing by "democrat-izing" the party with the same people and politics they were trying to escape from (with which sufficient agitation easily moves many of them into more radical politics and joining the socialists), but would force this reconstituting on the bourgeois politicians as a chaotic retreat into positions they don't want against a rising socialist party. This also, in turning the focus of the bourgeois politicians inward, inevitably helps the victims of imperialism and sharpens the external contradictions of empire, which have in many places already approached or reached rupture points.
Or they ignore this and ignore us and drop the thinnest-of-masks they still have; joining the open-fanged republicans straight away. This would be their worst option for maintaining the illusion of liberal democracy, and would promptly radicalize a huge portion of working people who never held any illusions about the Republicans or about Trump into socialist and revolutionary politics. And with supporting the PSL and actively engaging in movement-building with them, having the socialists standing on the other side of the see-saw with the weight of the working class when this happens, funneling masses to us, could legitimately lead to a sort of dual power situation. This latter option would be incredibly self-destructive for the ruling class, but they are that and have clearly become so comfortable and entrenched in their interest they've forgotten how to play politics, so who knows.
We need to think proactively and dialectically, and engage ourselves in confronting with sharp intent the contradictions that exist; with a mind for movement-building among the masses, many of whom still engage with electoral politics or otherwise still believe in it as an institution, if not the parties in it. This is what I see as the proper line. And though you're not wrong (in fact are quite accurate) in describing exactly what the Democrats are happy to do in their cruise-control political niche within the duopoly which they've grown so comfortable with, it is an improper and opportunist line to just accept that as is and so capitulate to their precepts which only serves their ends. Instead, we need to think about how to exploit their strategy by our understanding of what and who they are, and make it untenable and force them into positions that they are incapable of handling.
I think their policies on Israel would be nearly identical, except Trump would be slightly more corrupt and incompetent
wow so trump is the harm reduction candidate
Unironically I think Venezuela coup and Bolivia coups probably would have been less of a disastrous clusterfuck for the US, and much more competent and effective under Clinton, because of how petulant and stupid and impatient and spiteful Trump is in comparison to... basically anyone on the planet. John Bolton was all pissy about it in his book and interviews. Trump just hated the guy's mustache and would be petty all the time, and pushed himself into involvement where he had no place to, and eventually just got "bored" of Venezuela and scrapped it. Leaving things in the hilarious state where after Russia went into Ukraine, Nuland had to meet Maduro asking for oil while the US still recognized Guaido, and got grilled by, of all people, gusano-extraordinaire Marc Rubio in a congressional hearing over it (same hearing where Nuland admitted about the biolabs in Ukraine that was being denied elsewhere. Bizarre timeline)
Murdering Soleimani was fucking unhinged and horrible, but it's hard to say Clinton of all people wouldn't do something equally evil, but with less randomness and with more followup than just murdering a guy on a diplomatic mission, by the grace of Iran not causing a massive war over such a stupid thing, and claiming "victory."
Honestly they all deserve the hague, but then the US would invade the hague
unless he wins a state by one vote, it makes no difference. If he wins by multiple votes, specifically due to low turnout from low enthusiasm for Harris, then it's her fault as a candidate for not appealing to the electorate.
Yeah, it would absolutely be her fault. Wouldn't help Palestine much though...
No, I agree. I think that Palestine isn't the only issue that matters, though, and she'd be different than Trump on a lot of other issues. Female reproductive health, appointing judges, having a working FTC and FCC. So if I'm going to withold my vote to help Palestine, I'd like some reason to believe it would actually help them.
Female reproductive health, appointing judges, having a working FTC and FCC
motherfucker just look at all the fucking nothing Biden has done on that. Roe v Wade overturned on his watch and the only response was.... nothing! Telling you to fucking vote! He's already in fucking office, stupid!
christ your fucking lemmy instance is rivaled only by that stupid fucking star wars one for random ass shitlibbery
You're implying that me voting for Harris would help Palestine, but in the scenario I just laid out, my vote is not enough to have changed the outcome!
You’re right that their policies on Israel would be nearly identical. The point is that they don’t have to be. OP pointed out that 77% of Democrats and 61% of Americans support ending the genocide, why isn’t she listening?
Because she knows that Palestine isn't most American's top issue, so she can afford to lose the few people that would go through with a boycott.
Just looking for a quick clarification on two points before further responses:
- Do you agree that Israel is commiting genocide?
- Do you agree that the US is the primary financier of that genocide?
So we're at the point where it seems you acknowledge the horror of the US empire in basically being directly responsible (it could stop the money faucet at any moment if it viewed stopping the genocide as being in its own interests) for what I personally can only imagine as the worst crime against humanity possible to be committed by a state actor.
Tactically the only real electoral power you have as an individual is the threat to withhold your vote, and to deploy that tactic most effectively you'd give a very explicit reason for that withholding in order to apply pressure to the party who ostensibly does want to win an election. Infinitely better than individually voicing this tactic is creating a large bloc of people who exist within the critical states where 10-20k people will potentially determine an election. Getting the number of people in this bloc higher is the only real electoral strategy at forcing Kamala's campaign to acquiesce to electorate demands and bring forth a better outcome for Palestine because if she doesn't she will, explicitly, know she will lose. This provably works because the democratic party has already proven that in the face of an electoral impossibility (Joe Biden winning re-election) they will try to preserve power.
Even if you're a "there are other issues more important to me than attempting to stop my nation's genocide voter" (and if you are one of these people I really recommend a lot of introspection about yourself, your morals, and your convictions)- recognize that the violence being financed, supported, and enacted abroad WILL INEVITABLY COME HOME at some point if it is not rejected by the electorate. I don't know your most vulnerable issue and where it would rank on democrats deciding genociding or interring you would be politically expedient for them, but it sure seems that at least attempting this tactic even if it's just you falsely signaling to them that you won't vote for democrats over their financing and arms supplying of this genocide is in your long term interests so that you hopefully stop or at least delay the empire turning its violence on you.
Because she knows that Palestine isn't most American's top issue, so she can afford to lose the few people that would go through with a boycott.
So you're saying she's a fully cognizant sociopath? Wow great selling point, liberal
except Trump would be slightly more corrupt and incompetent
So, he would be the harm reduction candidate. And you are saying that people should vote for Harris.
I think it might be different if there were any viable third party candidate to rally around.
The vast majority of USians live in a state where there's only one viable candidate. Voting for Harris in Alabama, Texas, or Florida is as pointless as voting for De la Cruz, so you might as well vote for the candidate who doesn't want to exterminate all Palestinians.
Honestly give me anything that trump would be worse on in which Harris would be far better. Like not status quo but actually trying to improve things where trump is trying to not. Serious policy shit, throw it at me.
viable third party candidate
There are, but to liberals "third party" means "unviable"
hard to protest Harris over Palestine when like, Trump would be worse. Probably not much worse, but still hard to gin up any enthusiasm about it.
skill issue?
ah yeah better support genocide then
Throw yourself
Into
The
Pit
