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.
It's pretty simple, if your vote is for a 'lesser evil' that is a negative choice proposition, hardly worthy of the word 'choice' or 'democracy'. Two bad choices are still two bad choices, even if one is marketed as slightly less bad. The entire Dem strategy for like decades now has been this prisoners dilemma proposition. They never provide federal protection enshrined in law because that would take away the leverage of this strategy. The only way to break out of this pattern is to really threaten it directly by not acquiescing to it like good little liberals. That is why you have cognitive dissonance over this topic. The social pressure of 'lesser evil' is so deeply embedded in the liberal worldview that any questioning of it is adjacent to being a terrible right-winger.
The cultural war divide benefits Dems, so they do everything to perpetuate it instead of reconciling it. You need to comprehend this to have a realistic understanding of US political economy.
I can acknowledge all of that, and understand it intellectually, and still see that a vote can reduce the speed of encroaching facism.
Trump lost Georgia by 11k votes, Bush won Florida by 537 votes -- sometimes meaningful things do happen with relatively tiny margins and if they can be swayed in a preferred direction, I'll take it.
How is this a threat? This is, I think, core to my failure to understand your position. To me that sounds like giving up and giving free rein to continue rolling back abortion rights, lgbtq protections, etc. This sounds completely irrational to me so if I've misunderstood you (or others, or this position in general) I am happy to be corrected on my assumptions. Thanks!
show me where any of this has stopped or slowed under Biden please. that is the issue.
give your vote away to a party that does not fight for these things but only uses them to receive your vote because you have no other option. that is the problem with continuing to vote for them without any real commitments or guarantees that they will do anything material to make things better or even stop the rightward momentum. if you can't understand that, then you should really learn more about political history.
Of course I can't :) unfortunately all I can say is that I believe it would have been (or will be) even worse under a second trump term, or many of the other republicans making a name themselves on the national stage. Lately, Joe sure is making your case a hell of a lot more clear.
I believe I understand this point and why it is important. A few others have pointed it out as well. I think I am drawing different conclusions from it though.
Of course you're right, always room to learn more. And by no means am I claiming advanced knowledge :)
One thing I regret about the way this discussion* has gone, is that the conversation has trended towards presidential and/or national elections. But, I guess it is a common touch point many people have a frame of reference for, and it was easy for me to go along with for that same reason. I wish we talked more about local organizing, alternative parties, and different aspects of election processes such as voting methodologies, primaries, ballot access.
* broadly throughout the entire thread; not specifically between you and I.
worth a read: https://mronline.org/2020/09/12/the-insidious-workings-of-the-political-ratchet/
once you understand the ratchet, it becomes more difficult to support the Dems that foreclose any real leftward movement in US politics in favor of centrist triangulation that moves the discourse further rightward
The USA is not a victim of encroaching fascism. The USA was fascist before it was even founded. Everything you can be that is "fascistic" was done by white European settler colonists before the Third Reich did it. Gas chambers, concentration camps, eugenics, wars of extermination, etc.
The Democrats aren't against this stuff. Ruth Bader Ginsberg relied on and reinforced the reliance on the Doctrine of Discovery for the legal basis of the USA. The Doctrine of Discovery is part and parcel of the religious decrees that demanded European settlers murder, rape, enslave, and break every non-European they came across.
The USA is the reservoir of fascism. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explicitly details how the program of the USA was what he wanted to emulate and apply to the Slavs. His entire leadership team studied the USA to base their program on it, everything from apartheid to propaganda.
The USA ruling class supported the ride of fascism in both Italy and Germany. When the USA finally entered the war it wasn't to end fascism it was to stop the growth of communism. The USA collaborated with the Vatican to bring Nazis to safety all over the US sphere of influence. They created NATO and staffed it with Nazis. They worked with NATO through Operation Gladio to reinforce and support Nazi partisans all throughout Europe.
Every time a vote comes up in the UN to condemn the glorification of Nazis, the USA votes against it.
Fascism is a Euro-settler phenomenon. It predates the US. It was perfected in the US. It emerged in Europe from the reservoir of the US. It returned back to the US when it failed to defeat communism. The US maintained it the entire time.
The idea that fascism is encroaching is a lie. It's always been here. The only solution is revolution.