1w ago

Does it count twice if I raise them both?

244 comments

I'm tired of the future being destroyed by billionaires.
- Who just so happen to wholeheartedly support the Republican agenda in the US, with the exception of Gates.
  You don’t make billions by supporting fair wages, labor unions, health and safety regulations, affordable and accessible healthcare, social programs, socialized infrastructure, and higher taxes on the wealthy.
  
  To be fair, there are plenty of billionaires backing the dems too, they're just a bit more subtle about their intentions, but they are not pioneers of the working class.
  Of course the dems getting in in 2024 mightve slowed the roll of fascism, but it would've just delayed it rather than solved any of the underlying issues. With the exception of some truly progressive members of the party, the dems are basically just there to uphold the status quo.
  
  Billionaires bankroll both parties, what are you talking about

I just want free public transit, affordable housing//rent/food/bills and some free time to actually enjoy being alive, is that too much to ask?
- Republicans: Yes, you entitled whiny millenial. Also, no one wants to work. Also you are probably a groomer.
- You filthy communist.
  -actual nazi magats
- Fill your bottle with one hand while working with the other. Don’t bother washing your hands, they’ll return the merchandise you’re mailing out anyway.
  /s if you really need it

You can blame only Republicans which even if they disappeared wouldn't solve the issue, or you can acknowledge that both parties are corrupted by oligarchs and PACS
- While I agree with your premise, its very disingenuous to imply a lot of issues wouldnt be solved/improved if Republicans blinked out of existence like a Thanos Snap.
  
  I do agree there are some issues that would not be there without the Republicans, that's not what I'm saying but rather saying only blaming the Republicans doesn't solve the real issues we have
  
  I think you both agree that it's more complicated than that and it's a systemic thing effecting both parties. I think he just wrote it differently than you read it
  
  Republicans blinking out of existence doesn't solve the fundamental issues of capitalism that inevitably lead people to those ideologies.
  Those systemic forces still exist, a new version of them would simply take their place when people tie their personal interests to the interests of capital.
- Apparently a lot of people don't mind being oppressed as long as the oppressors have decorum
- Yes they both suck, yes Republicans suck worse, but I think you're missing some important nuance of exactly how the Democrats suck. Let's game this out:
  If 77 million of the dumbest shitheads ever to walk the Earth were to simultaneously, spontaneously implode tomorrow, everything would change. But especially the Democratic Party. The party leadership would not be able to keep doing what it had been doing. Their whole game requires the Republicans to exist as a credible threat for what's going to happen if you don't keep giving them money and settling for whoever they foist on you. They always try to run the furthest-right soulless hack they possibly can, so they calculate what the threshold is that would make enough people say "fuck this, I'm sitting this one out" to throw the race to the Republican, and aim just to the left of that. So, with every single Trump fan or likely R voter gone ( and nothing of value lost ) the entire electorate is now split- pretty evenly on age lines- between the proudly centrist, CNN-watching Biden 2020 primary voters, and the angry progressive left who's been holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils their whole life.
  The Democratic party can only pick up the first group. Democratic Socialists take the other group. Nonvoters become a much smaller group, and third parties remain negligible. Now the only way for the Democratic party to survive (Especially since the c-suite and board of directors of most of their corporate donors just went poof, so those companies restructured as co-ops...) is to keep running the only play they know- unilaterally compromise and triangulate with the other party. So what they do now is move as far left as they can get away with without losing their base, who they're already losing to old age.
- Republicans: categorically awful on every single issue
  Democrats: Not that
  Babies: waaaah I want a competitive party that matches my opinions on every single issue
  Find me one major party in the entire world that matches your personal ideals 100%. Spoiler: it doesn’t exist, unless you happen to be a king or dictator of an authoritarian state.
  Two party systems means you have two parties with distinct ethics, and one party winning consistently means the country’s ethics will shift over time in the favor of that winning party. So keep spite voting against Democrats and see where that gets you.
  Edit: you know why the Democrats are similar to Republicans on so many issues? Because Republicans keep winning elections.
  
  It's not about opinion, there is scientific studies that give you evidence how the democratic interest of the vast majority is not represented, but the rich.
  There are also historical theories that explain why this neo-fascism was the inevitable outcome of neoliberal policies, because material conditions degraded. That's why it's happening everywhere, not just the US.
  The democrats shifted to the right, or away from social democratic policies since Trump not because they are winning strategies - but because they know the alternative for the voter is even worse. So policy not according to being able to win, but being able to gain and maintain power (donors, influence) and wealth.
  Policy currently has absolutely nothing to do with ideals, ethics or ideology. Those are just pretty words sold to the masses.
  You'll need drastic changes, a purge and redistribution of wealth and power and the news and social media.
  
  Extreme leftist don't vote then wonder why a candidate doesn't try to earn their vote.
  
  Sorry your getting downvoted for making the children here uncomfortable.
  
  There are leftists trying to gain a foothold in the Democrat party, and some are succeeding (see the latest New York mayoral primary).
  Many people ignore primaries, though. You know who does vote in primaries? Older more moderate voters. So progressives tend to lose primaries, then the people who didn’t bother with the primaries complain there aren’t progressive enough candidates in the main elections, so they don’t vote.
  If you want more leftist candidates (within the FPTP system), support progressive candidates and show up to the primaries.

Not just Republicans, conservatives in general. All Republicans are conservative, but many Democrats are as well. That needs to change.
Mamdani shows it’s possible to start the purge of the DNC. We need to continue that. Primary every last conservative. Drive them from the DNC, drive them from politics, drive them from political discourse and public life. Authoritarianism must be crushed, Constitutional rights must be restored, and common sense policies for real people must be enacted. If we can’t achieve that, then all is lost and totalitarian neofeudalism will prevail.
- Not just Republicans, conservatives in general.
  You are correct! I tend to use the two interchangeably when I know that conservatives pushes out to a larger group.
  And frankly, anyone who acts like this was just another election where one side lost is only slightly higher on the totem pole than conservatives are.
- Mamdani shows it’s possible to start the purge of the DNC.
  Just worth saying again for the tankies that are very passionate, but seemingly not enough to vote or organize material change. As disappointing as the dems maybe they are still the home of the little progressive wing we have, and we should work into growing it.
- A part of purging the dem party means not voting for conservatives if they win the primary. There is a reason the conservatives win primaries despite having less popular policies than the progressives. A conservative dem losing a general purges the party of one more conservative who got us here.

I'm tired of rich and/or petty people controlling us. We're better than this.
- Left or right we're getting fucked one way or the other. The whole foundation's been corrupted to the core.
  It's like every debate, any talk of politics is pointless and anything truly reasonable is quickly surpassed overpassed by political "sports team" entertainment while people with real [heartless] willpower continue to do what they do. And I mean that from the streets to the president. The corruption is the same essence and the same evil at any wealth status, education, or social position and all of it is the rotted part of the foundation the country is built upon.
  
  That seems like a completely nihilistic and empty view of politics. What do you even actually think a society that isn't "corrupt" (or at least is less corrupt) could look like? How can you blame the people with no power at all just as much as the president?
  Blaming everyone for everything is basically the same as blaming nobody for anything.
  It's fine to think that the vast majority of people believe in propaganda or are worried about things that don't matter.
  My main problem really is with you saying "any talk of politics is pointless". It's just complete doomerism.
  
  You don’t really have a left, not at the moment. It’s getting better but oh my god the disasters it took for your shithole country to start to rally…
  
  When your "left" is just Diet-Republicans that are less hateful on social issues? Your perspective makes total sense.
  And to be fair? That is what the Democrats have served you. And I hate them harder then Republicans hate them. For this reason.
  I would like to invite you to a Solution-Oriented American Left in Zohran Memdani, Eugene Debbs, or Bernie Sanders.
  This is not the End of what the Left is. This is only where it Starts. we have entire books about the rich American history the Democrats-since-Clinton have entirely abandoned.
  
  Nothing makes the Right happier than when someone on the Left says that there's no hope.
  Look at NYC. The Dem candidate for Mayor is being threatened with deportation and arrest for being a Communist.
  The fight isn't over until we give up.
  
  Truth mate. This country and the entirety of its government is structurally designed to consolidate wealth into the hands of the owning class. It has been such for so long it is baked into our very culture of American society.
  We need revolt and a new system of not only economics but of government that horizontally distributes authority throughout the community instead of concentrating it into a hierarchical structure that can be turned against us if the wrong person lands a seat of power.
- We used to be. Currently we are not better than this.
  
  No, we really weren't. America has always been a pretty shit country to anyone who wasn't owning class. Any good that came about during the course of this country's existence was in spite of it not because of it.

How about tired of the uni-party system! We need real change, politicians who care about the workers, not corporations and their oligarchs.
- Right on, no argument here.

Im tired of the purely performative nonsense in modern democratic party as well. For the resources and votes that go their way they always find a way to deliver nothing, or actively betray us all. Supporting far rightwing genocide, pissing on progressives and progressive causes, and utterly ignoring the working class in the last ~10 elections (since Carter) are prime examples of this.
Time to toss the traitors out the door and clean this party out.

Unbelievable that there are some Americans in politics who wake up every day and consciously decide they want to destroy everything around them.
- Unbelievable that there are some Americans in politics who wake up every day and consciously decide they want to put their foot on someone else's neck so that they can feel superior, even if it means they are worse off.
  Ftfy
  
  Yes, thank you! You got it.
  
  Unbelievable that there are some Americans in politics that get off so much on being told 'you owned a lib' that they vote against their own interest and inspire baseless fear of normal human needs and rights.
- Unbelievable that the rest of the Americans would rather just sit there and take it than risk literally anything.
- It's unbelievable that half the voters wanted it. It's betrayal.

My grandpa killed Nazis so his son could become a Nazi
- Title to a future song of a generation, right here.

My optimism for the future is dead at this point. Even if we miraculously have a collective pivot into sustainable practices tomorrow, this train ain't stopping in my lifetime. Maybe it'll be better for future generations, I sincerely hope it is and I'll keep doing what I can to ensure that. But my future is doomed to dealing with the mess that unchecked greed and exploitation has wreaked upon our world.
- Yeah, this is kind of my attitude as well, sadly. I'm a younger millennial, but I feel I've been around long enough to determine we're truly just a pot of boiling crabs dragging everyone else down to try to save ourselves.
  I think one of the hardest parts of getting older, at least for me, is watching the childlike wonder and hope for the world within yourself slowly vanish. I'll never stop fighting the good fight, but the light has definitely died in my heart. Honestly, sad as fuck.
  
  Hope is a toxic ideaology. It does nothing but destroy us, like a cheap steak in hydrofluoric acid.
  It stays our hand, and slows our response.
  Hope needs to die.
  and be replaced by an unbridled, mindless, blackout rage.
  
  Crabs don’t need to boil to hold each other down, they’re just assholes.
  Like humans.
- Spoiler: It won't. The wealth gap inequality will continue to grow. Most of the world will essentially become slaves to the corporations and wealthy elites.

I'm tired of both Democrats and Republicans destroying the future, and people pretending Democrats don't because they do it slightly less
- Inb4 somebody starts saying you are just demoralizing people by saying "both sides are bad"

tired of the future being destroyed by capitalists and zionists. sorry, i repeated myself there..

I’m tired of the future being destroyed by capitalists/christian nationalists. That’s been happening for hundreds and thousands of years, every time they gain power, no matter where or when. Republicans are relatively new to this game.
I’m also tired of society having to relearn this lesson at great loss of life and suffering, over and over.
We’re smarter than this, and we far outnumber them.

I'm tired of this country sucking all the fucking life out of me.

I would change Republicans to 'selfish and narrow-minded individuals'
- So ... billionaires.
  
  Owning class.
  How much in your bank account isn't the point — it is how that money got there. It just so happens that practically nobody ever became a billionaire without the use of exploitation.
  Yet, it is not just billionaires but any who make their income through exploiting their private ownership over the tools, land, and resources which make production possible that, under the capitalist system, entitles those "owners" to the excess value of labor, in the form of profits, that are generated by the working class – individuals who must sell their labor to these owners for a wage – under their employment.
  
  Plenty of people who voted for the republicans are poor as shit. Selfishness doesn't stop downwards at being rich.
  Voting for a party just because you want others to suffer more than you do is pure selfishness too.

Just, ah, be careful of the angle you hold it at when you raise it.
- Indeed!
  
  Can also raise it at your side to avoid the bad zone.
- And don't leave your bite marks at a random fast food shop.

I would raise both hands, so we can include the Democrats as well.
Both are part of the problem. Along with their owners.
- One of them is certainly a much larger problem.
  My list of "ways conservatives have fucked or tried to fuck me or people I care about" goes all the way back to age 13.
  I'm not a cheerleader for democrats, but I think we can make our own thread to bitch about them. Only one party is speedwalking us to the 4th Reich right now.
  
  People are right to say Dems are different when it comes to domestic policy, but they agree with Republicans on almost all foreign policy decisions. A significant portion of the criticisms Democrat representatives made of the recent Iran bombings amounted to, "Hey, you didn't give us a chance to agree wholeheartedly!"
  And most of this "slide into fascism" is just taking foreign policies and applying them domestically. In that sense, Democrats hold a lot of the blame as well.
  
  I don't disagree. Republicans are overtly evil.
  But many people ignore that both have been facilitating the concentration of wealth and power that is at the core of all the systemic problems affecting almost everyone.
  It started around the Reagan era and was reinforced by die bushes and Clinton.
  Obama was the big "Change" candidate that was supposed to reverse the trend, but he betrayed people by entrenching it instead. They distracted people though the token measure of "wokeness" and obamacare, which did nothing to address the causes of those problems.
- When you say this, it leads the uneducated to conclude that the parties are remotely similar in terms of being problematic. Is this a lie you intend to propagate?
  
  Hmmmm, both supported genocide for one. Both take large sums from oligarchs and PACs to do their bidding. You can perhaps argue on some of the social issues but beyond that I don't see how you make a large difference in their corruption
  
  It's not a lie though. If the Democrats don't want to appear to be "remotely similar", maybe they could try distancing themselves from the Republicans, instead of adopting the Republican policies.
  
  On the matters most important, they are the same. Both are hell bent on the concentration of wealth and power with the elite.
  Republicans just add the flavour of being overtly evil, where Democrats pretend they are good.
  The political system is the problem, what we have today, is what it has been designed to do.

I'm just tired of being forced to exist in this meat prison, everything after that is just frosting on the suffering cake

I'm not even American and... Yes

Raise your hand if you're tired of Americans playing the victims while doing nothing
- Raised, but I feel like one of them. There’s so little I feel like I can do. I was going to go to a protest but wound up taking a group of scouts to the Indian Museum. Felt like a much better, and more impactful use of my time, and it was magical watching those kids hang on the words of our tour guide, as she told us the story of how they won their land rights.
  But that’s the long game, and I am terrified that the short term battles are not being fought.
  So many of my friends have just given up, waiting for the next election to fix it. I don’t have any faith that will work though.

I had a future? News to me.

Meme mentions republicans ruining the country. Know before I even click on it that the comments will all be about "B-but the democrats are just as b-bad!"
Typical Lemmy.
- Big brain moves, using 98% hitler to defeat 100% hitler.
  
  You're so fucking delulu that you think Democrats are 98% Hitler. Lmao.
- Some of them are. Specifically, Nancy Pelosi and Schumer. Establishment shills to the max. AOC, Bernie, and Jasmine Crocket are our hope for the future, although I'm a bit aggravated with Bernie's corporate donors. AOC does not accept money from large corporations. She is the obvious leader of the party.
- I've scrolled a few pages now and haven't seen a single one of those. Weird. I guess I'll keep going. I wouldn't generalize Lemmy like that though.
  
  This thread is full of it.
  
  There are two possibly three in this thread alone. Stop being intentionally myopic.

What do I raise for the present and the past?
- The Republicans have a position for that.
  You just lay on your back and pull your ankles over your head.
  
  Everything reminds me of her...

don't forget the past and present

🙋‍♂️

✋🤚

Forwards from (liberal) Grandma.

Things would still be shit if Democrats were in power instead, just a bit less so. It's not like everything was rosy under the very recent Biden administration. The two party duopoly needs to be dismantled and it should be a matter of priority for Americans.
- Oh I must have missed when Biden sold off public lands, sent masked thugs all over the country to lock up American citizens and anyone with a darker complexion away in concentration camps, gutted consumer protection, corporate oversight, environmental oversight, and every other agency that works for the people and not him, fired everyone in government not loyal to him, and sold of our national secrets to Russia. Must I go on because I have a whole notepad dedicated to keeping track of this shit. You cannot in good faith argue what you're arguing. You're just further pushing the Russian narrative meant to keep us so divided we can't progress. The Dems are by no means perfect but it's like comparing an apple with a few brown spots to a truck tire. I'd rather eat the apple.
  
  I had one of these running "is it both sides?" notes during the first term and my bullet points all seems so quaint now. "Gutting the state department and straining relationships with allies, praising dictators, threatening the press" hahaha..haaa fml
  
  Yet he and his successor failed to stop the most dangerous president in US history getting elected a second time. It's quite spectacular, really. The next president will be a Republican as well if the Democrats don't get their act together. It's always everyone else's fault but their own.
- Tell all the American citizens and legal residents that are being abducted and deported without due process that Democrats would only be a bit better.
- I agree. Trump is just a symptom of the problem. People didn't like Biden. They just didn't want Trump. With the wealth gap widening and the national debt interest costing more than our defense budget, there is no way our path was sustainable. It's one thing Elon said I agree with. I just wish we could have dealt with our shit without half the country being kneejerk about it and deciding they would just rather hate and alienate everyone while we deal with the natural consequences of our inevitably collapsing system. The collapse was coming regardless, but they needed everyones racist anger and inferiority complexes to accelerate it.
- A bit?

This is a long standing plan mainly by the Heritage Foundation and the GOP. Musk hacked vote tabulations to deliver them a victory and they're quickly dismantling America. They stand to inherit lifelong positions in the government without actual elections similar to Russia. There are less than a few thousand people responsible for all of this. Societies degrade rapidly under these scenarios. Remember them when if that happens.
- Musk hacked vote tabulations
  No he didn't. Unfortunately, americans are just that stupid. Thats the same rhetoric conservatives were trying to use when they lied about dominion.
  
  Ramapo 35 had democratic senator winning 80% of the vote and Harris received 0 votes. There is a lawsuit currently about this.

As an outsider you're both just as bad as each other, Republicans and Democrats
- It pains me that my fellow Americans cannot see this.
- They're both horrible but one is less horrible than the other. When you only have two choices you choose the less horrible option because not choosing is choosing the worse option.

Chickens roosting.

You're not really tired of it if all you can manage to do is raise your hand

Silly lib. Destroying the country is bipartisan billionaire driven affair.
- People don't want to admit that it isn't the Dems versus Reps; it is the working class people versus the oligarchic American government.
  Always has been.

And by protest-non-voters.
- I don't blame non-voters, disenfranchised from the uni-party system. It is the job of the politicians to work for the people, not the other way around. The politicians act like they are a celebrity, and we should bend a knee and vote for their scraps. Give the non-voters something to vote for, and they will be back.
  
  Non-voters is different than protest-non-voters, who are very much wrong in thinking protest non voting will effect positive change.
  For the rest https://lemmy.world/comment/17900385
  
  Well you sure showed those politicians
- Muslim and Arab Americans in Dearborn who listened to Kamala promise to kill their brothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon with utmost lethality, and decided not to vote for her, are the reason for America's burgeoning fascism. Thanks for the top analysis, chief.
  
  Exhibit A.
- someguy3,
  I'm not a high paid politicial consultant, but maybe the DNC could stop running bad candidates with rightwing platforms?
  I dunno. maybe its simply a matter of getting Dick Cheney up on stage with democratic party candidates instead of liz cheney. Or dem candidates should vow to kill all the palestinians faster than the republicans do. People of similar intent can disagree on minor implementation details without fighting right?
  So DNC centrists and republicans should really come out of the closet and live your truth out in the open --and just become a single party. The republidems. And nothing will fundamentally change.
  The progressives can form their own party, and according to your philosophy, proceed to lose. What do you say, isnit it past time for DNC and GOP to merge and finally show the filthy progressives who is boss?
  
  Boy that's lot of messages from you. You must be hella mad. Yup, you are.

Republicans and Democrats*
- Which is worse, the person who says they want to hurt you and then does it, or the person who says they want to help you and then doesn't? Progressivism is still a beneficial ideal, and some Democrats fight for it, while others pay lip-service because they will say anything to be elected. But Conservativism is a plague upon humanity, leeching resources and power to feed those willing to harm others to get it.
  So yeah, you can blame the mostly corrupt "good guys" along with the fundamentally selfish "bad guys," but that doesn't make them equivalent sides.
  
  Both are still bad though, and progressivism shouldn’t just be an ideal it should be action and resistance against the status quo. The Democrats and their Neoliberalism is harmful. Maybe not as bad as Conservativism, but also still bad.
  
  If both sides are ruining the future, it also matters which one is worse if you have to choose one. In this context, you dont need to choose only one
  
  Dems deliver, but it's always "n n not good enough" for certain people.
  Inb4 replies: The Dems need all 3 houses to pass anything. They've had that for, drumroll please, 4 years of the last 24 years. That's 2 years under Obama and 2 under Biden. Go back further to include Bill Clinton and it's 6 years of the last 32 years. Go further and it's 6 years of the last 44 years. And you wonder why progress is slow?
- BoTh sIdeS!
  
  Not both sides, Dems are barely left/center and have qualities shared with the right. I support far left politics
- Come on everybody. Pointing out that the Democrats are also failing us in different ways is NOT bOtH siDEz!!
  
  Yes it is because the degree of damage caused are different orders of magnitude.
  
  Definitely
  Ignoring the problems with democrats and only focusing on just how terrible republicans are will only lead back to where we are right now
  It's a vicious cycle
  
  https://lemmy.world/comment/17900385
- Republican and and Democrats*
  Humans

Not me. I’m indifferent about the Monarchy, and at least it means we don’t have a President as they have an uncanny habit of becoming dictators.

thats not how you spell "americans"
- Don't be a dick.
  
  This is a global platform. Unfortunately, the world is tied to American politics and economics. When Americans on the whole fuck up, the world suffers, look at 2008.
- Found the Republican.

Actually, why don't you go vote instead?

Now put your hand down if you've been doing nothing about it since 2016

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