I mentioned that I voted, and they naturally asked me who I voted for. I said, "De la Cruz. Third party."
"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that?", one of them said, and the whole group looked at me a bit puzzled — so I reiterated, "De la Cruz, a third-party candidate."
"...Wait, there's a *THIRD* party?"
It's been a hot minute since I last watched IASIP, I think I had mixed feelings on it...
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I'm certain a huge percentage of Americans don't know there are third parties. And I bet a sizeable number of Americans think Bernie is "third party". More than 50% of Americans read below a 6th-grade level. And - of course - Americans who can read at higher level usually don't. We aren't nation of readers either.
I was going to quote the literacy in the United States Wikipedia page but I decided not to. I noticed two things that are funny together.
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I assume the text is intentionally written to be obtuse, annoying, and unclear because it damages so much of the American mythos. The text is even worse than when I visited the page ~6 months ago.
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The average American would never, ever read more than a paragraph of that or similar crap because they can't.
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Ninja edit
Snopes is a very American site and can take forever to get to the point but they did answer their main question simply.
Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below 6th-Grade Level?
Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below a 6th-Grade Level?
This claim is true
Nationally over 20% of adult americans have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1
so first of all "nationally" is redundant, so don't jot that down.
Secondly: 1/5 of adult americans can't read AT ALL?? That's... that's too much.Christ that page needs and editor
The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential
Add quotation marks ffs
Modern jobs often demand a high literacy level, and its lack in adults and adolescents has been studied extensively.
Not really relevant to the discussion of literacy in the US. Certainly not in the introduction.
According to a 1992 survey, about 40 million adults had Level 1 literary competency, the lowest level, comprising understanding only basic written instructions.
You are adding it as a source, just write the claim and add the year the claim was made.
A number of reports and studies are published annually to monitor the nation's status, and initiatives to improve literacy rates are funded by government and external sources
Should be the first sentence if you're going to include it at all.
The funny thing is that the page was already bad ~6 months ago. I assume there's endless editor squabbling so the page becomes a bigger and bigger mess.
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Incidentally, yesterday I watched the Boondocks episode "It's a Black President, Huey Freeman" and plus ça fuckin change I tell you hwat
Great episode
"This child's indifference was so great, it made me want to take a razor and slit my own throat"
I think the main thing with the Euro mindset towards American
is similar to American electoralism: theatre.It was a pretty painfully liberal conversation all around, so I mostly stayed out of it. I feel like it was probably enough to just make clear who I voted for instead of aggressively going after every single bit of nonsense they said.
Oh sure, debating
is mainly a waste of time. Answering questions and educating is good though.Yeah, I got to explain how voting from abroad works, and I got to explain the general voting patterns of my family across the sea, so I did get to answer a few questions in that regard.
Nice! As leftists, it's critical to never tire of explaining. It's one of our main ways to gather new people
Have fun with what Trump wants to do with anything hexbear-adjacent! It rhymes with “schmoncentration camps.”
Any attempt to communicate that you may have had was utterly blown because you had to demonstrate your smug anticipation of watching scary tankies being mass murdered while you get to watch.
You're a scratched liberal, and there's very few meaningful distinctions between you and mask-off fascists, except that you're more passive-aggressive.
I'm not happy about it. I am trying to warn you that as many pig ballsacks as you post, you won't be happy if Trump gets in and starts gunning for you for real, even if Kamala was also an American president and brought some killing to the table as they tend to do. It can still get worse, and I wish you wouldn't help make it worse while smugly congratulating yourself on not being willing to engage with anyone who doesn't want it to be worse.
I like how you all assume I don't have queer or vulnerable people in my circle. I do. I might be vulnerable, too. You definitely might. The idea of laughing at someone who's trying to protect themselves and the people around them, because they don't have the same pig ballsacks queued up to send to anyone who tries to talk sense into them, is distasteful to me, also.
You might have a point that I shouldn't come right away with smug hostility. But, honestly, I don't know how else I could approach a conversation with this grouping.
Have fun with your chosen outcome. I hope it brings you good things. Good luck.
even if Kamala was also an American president and brought some killing to the table as they tend to do. It can still get worse...
We know. Democrats create the conditions that make it nearly inevitable that someone even worse will come to power.
I'm queer and disabled. Do not assume you speak for all of us.
I am trying to warn you that as many pig ballsacks as you post
I didn't post a single PPB and you're still crying at me.
you won't be happy if Trump gets in
No shit. The difference is that you believe that an effective continuation of Biden's regime that didn't even abolish most of Trump's prior policies and even expanded many of them would induce happiness. Maybe for you it would, if your lanyard's on tight enough and you've been huffing sufficient fumes from the wine cave.
I don't mean wine fumes.
I like how
Nope, not hiding that rage well. Stop doing that.
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Have fun with your chosen outcome. I hope it brings you good things. Good luck.
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didn’t even abolish most of Trump’s prior policies and even expanded many of them
Do you really believe this is true? I can probably hit a list of 20 that he reversed or removed, if you want to switch away from pure bait and into something factual.
Tell me, what Trump policies did he expand? What are some of the many?
Do you really believe this is true?
Biden didn't close Trump's camps (and Obama started most of them!), he just renamed them.
Biden let most of Trump's executive orders stand and didn't reverse them.
Fucking DeJoy is still running the Post Office, and that's after his attempts to ratfuck the previous election!
Biden handed out more oil drilling permits than Trump did!
Biden dished out more money for foreign proxy wars than Trump did. The mass murder campaign still going on in Palestine is under his watch, approved and financed accordingly!
Do you have any fucking ground to stand upon at all or are you just going to post more passive-aggressive shit?
I can probably hit a list of 20 that he reversed or removed
THEN FUCKING DO IT.
Biden didn’t close Trump’s camps (and Obama started most of them!), he just renamed them.
This one's a whole can of worms that would require some level of good faith and listening for me to explain fully. Short answer, Biden tried to change the US's immigration policy several times and it didn't work. It's fundamentally a terrible system, and he did some amount to change that and didn't hit the gas on its most terrible features like Trump did, but it's still terrible today, and we can say that it's okay to hold him responsible for that since at the end of the day, the buck stops with him. I have more I could say on it that you would interpret as liberal bullshit, but you're not a million miles off base.
Biden let just about all of Trump’s executive orders stand and didn’t reverse them.
Biden reversed 31% of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_orders_by_Donald_Trump
I don't know what your metric for, "just about all" is. I think you'll have to get more specific than just the raw number. I have no real idea which ones are most significant or whether specific ones in those significant areas were left or undone.
To me, Biden did great on the climate, horrendous on enabling genocide in Gaza, and great on undoing the great fuckening of the working class that's been a project since 1980. With both of those "greats" calibrated within the limits of what he could do within our pretty dystopian governmental system. Those are the biggest things I care about. If you want to talk specific actions, bring up the actions instead of just generalities about how many orders.
Biden handed out more oil drilling permits than Trump did!
There's a popular way of talking about Biden's impact on the climate that's crafted by the right wing to depress support for the Democrats among the left, so that they can get people in who really want to destroy the climate, by making it sound like there's no difference between the parties.
The IRA is the biggest climate action an American president has ever done, ten times over. It's predicted by experts to roughly double the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions every year:
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2023/07/12/new-study-evaluates-climate-impact-ira
That's not enough. It's laughable. But how he got a bunch of American politicians including Joe Manchin to agree to that much, I have no idea.
It needs to be doubled again, this year or ideally 15 years ago, to make a difference. If someone comes out saying that we need to redouble the thing 5 times over to make a significant difference, and laugh in the face of this 4% shit, that sounds great to me. I would support that. If someone cherry-picks particular ways of looking at it, counting permits being one of those ways, that don't really reflect what it did for emissions, and then argues that it's not worth voting because Trump would be basically the same, I'm going to be suspicious of their motives.
I don't know why I spent this much time laying out facts about how I look at it. I may not continue. But you said factual things, so I'm willing to have at least a short factual conversation about what happened.
Do you have any fucking ground to stand upon at all or are you just going to post more passive-aggressive shit?
Lol. I am king passive-aggressive. I don't need anyone's help at being liberal or smug. But someone from Hexbear complaining that they're talking to someone who's not being nice to them in their tone and presentation is fucking hilarious.
I'll talk facts for at least a short time, if you want to, but let's not get ourselves confused about who took a shit in this particular paddling-pool and made it all unpleasant to have a conversation in.
This one's a whole can of worms that would require some level of good faith and listening for me to explain fully
In other words, you will believe everything and anything about the camps except the material reality that the camps are not fucking closed.
Biden reversed 31% of them.
That's fucking pathetic. That's a win to you?
There's a popular way of talking about Biden's impact on the climate that's crafted by the right wing
AGAIN, you will believe everything and anything except the material reality that Biden handed out more drilling permits than Trump did.
Lol. I am king passive-aggressive.
Trying to own it doesn't make it less obnoxious, you liberal clown.
But someone from Hexbear complaining that they're talking to someone who's not being nice to them in their tone and presentation is fucking hilarious.
Once again,
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I'll talk facts for at least a short time
So far your facts have been desperately coated in
about why Biden was so ineffectual and by your own admission that at least 69% of those executive orders from Trump stand.If you want to keep showing your whole ass, continue. Just lay off on the passive-aggression and the
coating of each and every Biden failure (or deliberate victory for the ruling class, as intended).If you're going to complain about your liberal bloviating not being received well while wishing death and suffering on everyone else here, then after that smugly and masturbatorially claiming you're here to "talk facts for at least a short time" at least pick a lane before you're banned.
That image didn't show up and it was surely liberal cringe shit anyway so I don't want to see it.
Just a clarification, I'm not at all wishing death and suffering on anyone here. I am predicting it for a lot of them that are in the US, if Trump wins, but it's not at all what I want. Not wanting people to suffer is precisely why I'm talking with you all. It's not because it's fun. This creatively backwards reception so everyone can get busy dunking is precisely the kind of big-brain thinking that leaves you all unwelcome in most places even on Lemmy.
It seems there is to be no meeting of the minds. I think I'm okay with that.
Just a clarification
You already made it clear that you're a passive-aggressive coward that loathes people that don't agree with your copium-loaded dubious "facts" that even as presented make Biden look like the Blue MAGA also-ran he always was.
that leaves you all unwelcome in most places even on Lemmy
The bloodthirsty liberal lanyard status quo warriors aren't inviting Hexbears to the wine cave. What a loss.
It seems there is to be no meeting of the minds.
You presented nothing of value and nothing we haven't seen here many times already.
I think I'm okay with that.
Then get the fuck out.
Palestinians are being put in concentration camps right now and Kamala has promised she will increase support.
You people are despicable“schmoncentration camps.”
Ugh. Yeah pretty fitting for liberals. Genocide, but cutesy.
You people never have anything novel to say. You all regurgitate the same tired arguments, never once stopping to investigate the inane drivel you spit out after letting it bounce around in your empty heads for a little while. Since it's never anything new, I don't need to write anything new
I am going to treat you with a three part course though, we started with the main course so here's an intermezzo and the dessertOh hey. Another "I can't wait to see you tortured" post from a liberal. There's a guy collecting these on Bluesky
I voted Democrat in 2020 for whatever an overseas vote in a blue state is worth — the past four years left me without much need of convincing that the best strategy for US federal elections is indeed to vote third-party. Stateside "Seppos" will often experience some amount of cognitive dissonance upon learning that this is my informed decision, for my decision runs contrary to the civil-religious orthodoxy they were indoctrinated into practically since infancy. And the simplest way for such "Seppos" to deal with that stress is not to actually question their own indoctrination, naturally, but rather to convert their stress into aggression towards the stressor, which is in this case a non-binary second-generation immigrant on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
It is dubious at best that such "Seppos" will ever do anything actually productive with their stress — The whole of Seppoland is after all built cap-a-pie on this colonial psychopathology.
And you're such a good ally that you'll show up and resist, right? You won't just watch your neighbors be carted off, but you'll stand arm in arm and resist gross human rights abuses, yeah? The same kind of resistance you put up to ICE during their raids or to weapons being shipped overseas for genocide? The same way you protect minority communities from violent police? You liberals are such amazing heroes, always putting yourselves between the oppressed and their oppressors. You definitely aren't complicit in 'tough on immigration' rhetoric, funding the police even more, or commiting a genocide. So glad to have you around for when we childish communists can't recognize the real enemy to progress and human liberty.
Why is it voters fault? Why the fuck can't the Dems actually provide policy that people want?
If the people holding back their vote is due to the current genocide in Gaza, THEN WHY THE FUCK DON'T THE DEMS CHANGE COURSE ON THAT ONE FUCKING POLICY?
Because if I blame the voters, then I don't have to admit that my country and its elections are a joke.
The sophist of the hour didn't take the time to address this point. I wonder why!
Democrats don't need my vote thanks to all the support Dick Cheney's endorsement will bring.
What political party opened the concentration camps at the border?
WHO PUT THE KIDS IN THE CAGES 
You fascist fuck really enjoy gloating over putting people in camps. You're a good reminder that Hitler wouldn't have been possible without the SPD acting exactly like you, sticking to a failing liberal order with all the violent fervor they could muster and then immediately falling in line with the new status quo when things got serious. If Amerika gets more camps, not just the ones it is already running at the border, not just the slave labor system you call your prisons, but outright extermination shit, you'll not be out protesting and fighting the pigs, you'll not be the one hiding your neighbors from the gestapo, you'll beat yourself off to the thought that you already did all you could by performing your pathetic ballot box ritual.
Wait but I thought lemmy libs say we're secretly Putinist Trunp supporting bots?
Which is it?
Yeah Idk how Trump is supposed to be harming me and my misinformation troll farm friends here in Tblisi.
This meme is dumb because it ignores that the republican candidate in question has harmed us in the past and his judicial appointments and policies continue to harm us in the present.
Not that the dems are a solution to the problem.
The democratic candidate is harming us right now to a similar extent. She's not rude on twitter though
Kamala Harris has specifically said she doesn’t intent on overturning past law re trans rights. She has a past and a present of harming trans people, and yet
Not that the dems are a solution to the problem.
Then what's your fucking point?Someone post the Kamala line about how we need to "follow the law" (just following orders!) when it comes to lgbt rights
The main problem is that the dems harm as well, in the present. Genocide is a good example
I voted for genocide over there so it won't happen over here, but if it happens over here, I don't really care because it wasn't my fault
Hey, are you saying you wouldn't do something about concentration camps?
Because it really seems like you're fine with concentration camps
Ha! I had a feeling it wouldn’t be popular.
No, I’m not at all fine with concentration camps. I’ve started doing some small amount of advocacy recently that is resisting them to some small degree.
I don’t really know you, so I have no idea. For all I know you are doing a ton of other productive stuff, in which case great. But the one data point that I have at this stage is that you’re supporting voting for a stooge who the ruling classes are completely thrilled to have in the election, sitting there compliantly siphoning off 1% of the electorate to no purpose and serving as a stand-in for RCV, widespread protest, incrementalism, or anything else that might threaten their power that might otherwise get some investment of energy instead.
They hear that you really want to vote for a minority party in a FPTP election, and they laugh and laugh, chortling themselves to sleep secure in the knowledge that you’re content to spend time on counterproductive grandstanding that only helps them consolidate power that little bit much more. They can’t wait to get back to reality of colonial dominance tomorrow, as it is the reality of their lived experience, knowing that people who could be their opponents are spending time instead on fantasies.
I eagerly await your angry downvotes. Deep down, you know I’ve got a point.
I eagerly await your angry downvotes. Deep down, you know I’ve got a point.
Uhh...
You can have this as a consolation prize I guess?
Your writing here is truly evocative of the teachers of young Athenian statesmen in the fifth century BC.
Ha! I had a feeling it wouldn’t be popular.
Your shirt saying that you are a scratched liberal that gets off to fascist fantasies of mass murder answers a lot of questions asked about whether you are a scratched liberal that gets off to fascist fantasies of mass murder.
so I have no idea
No shit. You're ignorant in general and really should go away.
I eagerly await your angry downvotes
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We can't downvote you but you could downvote yourself, I have a few other suggestions on what you could do to yourself too
Go fuck yourself is pretty close to the top of the list
I eagerly await your angry downvotes. Deep down, you know I’ve got a point.
Lol
Reddit tier main character syndrome complete with "I eagerly await your angry downvotes" on fucking Hexbear. Lol. Lmao even.
The ruling class chortle themselves to sleep no matter who anyone voted for, the entire game is theirs. You're not going to legislate away capitalism. The incrementalism promised my entire life has only produced more right wing candidates over time.
You're not the opponent of the ruling classes because you vote a certain way in bourgeoise elections. You're the one grandstanding here, claiming that this voting is so very important. It's a ceremonial ritual and I'm not gonna offer even a ceremonial vote for a party committing genocide. Eat my ass you smug liberal dork
No, I’m not at all fine with concentration camps. I’ve started doing some small amount of advocacy recently that is resisting them to some small degree.
Fantastic, though this depends on how you're organizing. Getting organized is the only way to effect change.
I don’t really know you, so I have no idea. For all I know you are doing a ton of other productive stuff, in which case great. But the one data point that I have at this stage is that you’re supporting voting for a stooge who the ruling classes are completely thrilled to have in the election, sitting there compliantly siphoning off 1% of the electorate to no purpose and serving as a stand-in for RCV, widespread protest, incrementalism, or anything else that might threaten their power that might otherwise get some investment of energy instead.
The ruling classes kicked De La Cruz off of Georgia's ballot, keeping her name but ensuring no votes for her count. RCV is a carrot that is both too ineffective to meaningfully change anything and yet too effective for either party to allow at scale. Widespread protest happens outside the ballot box, and "incrementalism" is doing nothing for the people as the Empire dies. You can't threaten the ruling class by supporting them via the dems.
They hear that you really want to vote for a minority party in a FPTP election, and they laugh and laugh, chortling themselves to sleep secure in the knowledge that you’re content to spend time on counterproductive grandstanding that only helps them consolidate power that little bit much more. They can’t wait to get back to reality of colonial dominance tomorrow, as it is the reality of their lived experience, knowing that people who could be their opponents are spending time instead on fantasies.
They already consolidated their power, moving away isn't helping them. The main thing you don't get is that the dems also serve the ruling class
I eagerly await your angry downvotes. Deep down, you know I’ve got a point.
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Hexbear doesn't have downvotes
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You don't have a point.
keeping her name but ensuring no votes for her count
Can you elaborate on this
Her name is on the ballot but votes for her are disqualified. It's mainly helping
agitprop.Ruled ineligable for ballot status after being added to all ballots.
main
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I didn't read all that but it is funny when you said deep down I know you have a point. No lol
You're chortling. I'm eagerly awaiting your angry downvotes and you're chortling.
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they laugh and laugh, chortling themselves to sleep secure in the knowledge that you’re content to spend time on counterproductive grandstanding that only helps them consolidate power that little bit much more. They can’t wait to get back to reality of colonial dominance tomorrow, as it is the reality of their lived experience, knowing that people who could be their opponents are spending time instead on fantasies.
That's a lot of words to say "I've decided I don't like you, so I'm going to cast aspersions"
My rebuttal:
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Have fun with blue flavored genocide. I hope you sleep good at night knowing voting for the girlboss candidate literally changed fucking nothing.
Both the Dems and Reps are thoroughly anti-Communist, they are aligned on that point and on genocide, ergo it is on the people to oppose them both. Revolution is necessary and the main path to victory.
i'm writing in Philip The Bucket and you can't stop me
I eagerly await your angry downvotes
