"William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist."
Yes let’s ‘both sides’ the two political parties.
That’s an intelligent and highly reasonable position to take given one party tried to overthrow the government in an attempted insurrection and the other didn’t.
Gosh golly gee, I really can’t separate them, they truly are as bad as each other!!!
The both sides argument is simultaneously a shitty argument and kind of true.
It's like you have the choice between being stung by a wasp on your arm or being stung on your urethra. One is clearly preferable to the other, but they are both still fundamentally the same shitty experience.
Except that it is not true.
The promulgators of the ‘both sides’ argument is conservatives. Why? Because they benefit from making Democrats look as shitty as they do.
It’s how you get people to vote against their own self interest.
Convince them to give you, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a chance because I can’t be any worse than the other guy, right?
If you honestly believe both parties are just as bad as each other then conservative propaganda has worked on you.
PS. I am not a democrat and I don’t like them as a party but when one side of US politics can give rise to a person like Bernie Sanders or AOC and the other puts forward Donald Trump you can’t honestly still think they are the same.
More and more working class people have stopped falling for the false narrative of the lesser evil spiel.
We will proudly vote our conscious, 3rd party, doesn't matter if swing state or not.
The bloods and crips will have to get better at convincing people to vote for them just cause less evil.
How do you even attempt to both sides after Jan 6th and trump. Both siding now a days is like claiming the sun and the moon are the same.
This is stupid. If you can't tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats at this point, you're just hopeless.
1956
Pretty sure it wasn't that black and white back then.
We can tell the difference, but we learned from 2016 and 2020.
No changes.
Look
I know the Democrats are far from perfect.
Large parts of them are neoliberal, capitalistic and at least financially clear right-wingers. And they often do much less than they could when on power.
But DUDE! There is a huge difference between a centrist party that doesn’t fulfill what it promises and should do, and a literal fascist party trying to overthrow democracy and attempting a genocide at trans people, not even two mention their racism, homophobia and other horrible positions.
They are not one evil. There is one not very good party where many people can rightfully be disappointed and one literal nightmare horrible straight up evil party. They’re not the same.
The sad reality is that the minority groups will always be targeted. Culture wars and identity politics are distractions, the bigger picture would be coming together along class lines (workers vs. wealthy).
Looking at the long term, a person who was at the fore front of civil rights will help much more, not voting for the status quo.
Fascists are not stopped by lying to the public on how well Biden is doing. Which is what the democrats keep doing, at a certain point it will stop working.
Thank you for your input!
edit: words
bOtH sIdEs
Thanks for your feedback...
You got it chief
Everyone is focused on the "both sides", no one is looking at how broken a non-preferential electoral system is.
Well, I suppose it's all a matter of perspective. Sure, none of them will implement radically progressive economic policies, they will indeed serve corporate interests and the PIC. From this regard, they can be deemed relatively similar, especially when you confront them with options that would be possible but are not championed by either (ex : universal healthcare). From other points of view, they have marked differences (ex : LGBT rights). In the end, although they can't be called the same, and the difference between them can mean life or death for people, I suppose we could say none of them display a strong commitment to emancipation and undying tries to corporate interests.
For non-Americans, the differences between your two parties are cosmetic at best. War crimes and increasingly bloated military budget continue regardless of presidency. Economic sanctions with the goal of causing suffering and unrest employed against less than convenient states are enacted and continued regardless of presidency. Your prison-industrial-complex enjoys bipartisan support. So did the war on drugs, so does the so-called war on terror. If you're going to vote, whatever reason you have to vote for democrats easily applies to better third parties not staffed by war criminals.
You don't speak for non Americans you bad actor
The issue is that any third parties are so weak as to be non-existent. Limited voting helps the right wing more than it does the left, so voting third party only hurts the Dems. There's a reason the GOP is trying to make it harder to vote.
Sadly, the Republicans are the strongest party - they are unified and fixated on one goal: dismantle the US government and privatise everything for maximum profit. They are all on one message and move as a powerful group. Their organisation (and lack of consistent values) is what keeps them in power.
The Democrats love status quo so when they are in power they don't want to make sweeping change, however needed. They are also quick to gatekeep within their ranks (ousting Franken, for example, who was exceptionally good against the GOP). There's a much more varied pool of ideas and goals, so they are unfocussed and weaker because of it. They also have yet to realise the political playing field has changed in the past 50 years.
Independents like the Green Party fail to raise any numbers because they are even more wildly disparate in their goals and ideologies and never show an interest in local politics, where you actually build supporters and show you can be an effective leader. They only turn up for presidential elections and nobody knows who they are. After they lose, they disappear for four years. You can't build a credible party by starting at the very top.
Ranked choice voting would solve some of this, but that'll never happen.
TL;DR: the US is boned.
Green Party doesn't generally show as much interest in local elections- but Libertarians often field a candidate and campaign in local elections.
Lemmy was not built in a day.
People need to keep learning and getting out of their bubbles so we can come together to fight against the wealthy.
This is not a US/West issue only.
Strikes are going on everywhere.
Thank you for your input!