Back then the U.S. also was doing a famine on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of children, but let's be nostalgic for it.
we're ultimately responsible for the leaders we chose through voting.
politics in most of the western world has become a team sport making people ignore the TRULY fucked up things that our candidates do in order to ensure that their team wins.
also: the people with influence/finances have made sure that we're unaware that there are alternatives to team sport voting; but it's still our own individual responsibility to vote for our leaders and we'll continue to be fucked even more until this realization is forced upon us.
and i suspect it's going to take something catastrophic like climate change, war, serious economic depression, etc. to force us to wake up to this realization.
The ruling class chooses which candidates we get to vote for, e.g. Kamala Harris.
no, we are not. they pay to get their way by uninformed voters.
it is our responsibility to remove them from leadership though.
agreed on both.
the impact enabled by the people with the influence/finances coupled with the lack of self responsibility to inform yourself create uninformed voters and non-voters.
i doubt we are getting rid of fascism by just voting though.
the only voting choices people make are either diet-fascism or full-fat-fascism; the only way voting can make a difference is for people to vote for an alternative.
yes, but there isn't one though. if history is any indication, usians will have to rebel again.
there are several every voting cycle. i voted for de la cruz last time; but there better known names like jill stein.
did she ever had a chance though? i'm not from the us, but the people i vote for rarely end up elected or influential.
it's a chance to save your democracy by preventing the bigger parties from going to the right like they do in the united states.
is it? i've seen people say it, but never seen this happen in practice.
you're witnessing in real time what happens when we don't in the united states w both the republicans and democrats kowtowing to trump.
that's exactly what i mean. none of this has stopped democrats from going further and further right.
because it doesn't happen in the united states; alternative parties have significantly larger voter counts outside the united states and that forces the larger parties to appeal to voter concerns under a persistent threat of losing voters.
the democrats and the republicans have no such threat and keep shifting to the right as a result since americans refuse to vote for anything besides democrats or republicans.
alternative parties have significantly larger voter counts outside the united states and that forces the larger parties to appeal to voter concerns under a persistent threat of losing voters.
i live in such a country, it's honestly not much better. a hell of a lot more lip service though.
cause at the end of the day its the oligarchs who actually rule over us, not directly the president.
no country has been untouched by american intervention and that intervention has ensured that there are large powerful parties and small weaker ones.
things get significantly better when those small parties gain power like has happened in mexico in the last decade. but other examples like argentina, will show that american intervention will once again "correct" the course of history when the american military starts bombing mexico under the guises of the "war on drugs" and "war on terrorism" and insist that they were targeting drug cartels like the isrealis were targeting hamas when they executed the last al jazeera correspondent in gaza.
yeah i agree, that was kinda my point.
oic, i thought your point was that voting for non-mainstream parties wasn't effective and that's why i brought up how mexico's non-mainstream party has improved the lives of mexicans several fold when they were voted in almost a decade ago.
Whether she did or didn't doesn't matter. If we ever want an alternative to ever succeed we must first act as if their success is viable and grow their base.
If we concede defeat before we ever see results then others will never want to throw their lot in with us.
Though, personally, I believe the entirety of the electoralists, democratic republic a failure of a system that, intersectionally with capitalism, intrinsically is designed to oppress the working class by reinforcing an arbitrary hierarchy of control but that's a very long winded argument, it's 4:30 in the morning, and I have yet to sleep.
All I'll say is people should be more focused on local elections and building dual power in a way that your local electorate can actually see affect their lives.
democratic republic a failure of a system that, intersectionally with capitalism, intrinsically is designed to oppress the working class
that's pretty much my stance. in my country some mls are trying to subvert it, to no avail. in the rare situation they get elected, they have no means of changing anything significant other than the cabinet budget they use to agitate.
we obviously have no momentum for bigger goals, so we are working on pushing back on individual policies but they are coming up with those faster than we can pressure them to repeal.
it's a long and treacherous road, i can tell you that for sure.
... educated or not, an american citizen is only allowed to vote between selected bought-and-paid-for candidates representing only the interests of the ruling class.
Dems sued to keep De La Cruz off ballots in swing states, didn't bother with reliably Republican states.
americans have more choices than democrat or republican; but they don't chose the alternatives out of a combination of peer pressure and propaganda.
is it your stance that it is only peer pressure and propaganda that keeps other parties in the us from being viable? if not, what other barriers keep the two major parties in power?
there's a lot more and the next largest barriers are voter suppression and both of the dominant parties engaging in legal maneuvers intended to diminish the ability for people to vote for any alternatives.
Certainly although many folks did not vote for our current leadership we did not make overriding citizens united as a litmus test and if there was anything to ever have as a litmus test its that.
Endless war and genocide against people who's only "wrong" was wanting their resources to benefit their own people rather than Western interests was a pretty decent litmus test.
citizens united was only another milestone in a series of milestones that the rich & powerful achieved and they did it with our consent, as i mentioned earlier.
the only litmus tests that ever matter was whether or not you were capable of seeing that "spoiler effect" or "first past the post" or "the electoral college" were bullshit excuses meant to trap us into the team sport mindset.
Caring about citizens is a litmus test for whether someone is an ignorant liberal or not
Liberals think if it weren't for that, "there wouldn't be money in politics." In the real world, capitalism affords inordinate political and economic authority to the capitalist class, and this is true even if you have really strict rules on direct donations or funding campaigns or whatever.
Liberals have this fucking fantasy in their heads of a pre or post Citizens United world where the rich don't influence politics, but that's what it is, a fucking fantasy. Capitalism is inherently incompatible with actual democracy because the ownership of capital itself is what affords the capitalists political influence. Biggest employer in a town? You have inherent influence. Own the newspaper, TV or radio stations? You have inherent influence.
Oh that ludicrous. The spoiler effect gave us bush over gore and trump1. There are plenty of chances to get the canidates running but when it comes down to the wire not choosing better over worse fucks everybody.
i'll never understand why there are so many Lemmy instances full of opinions identical to what you'd see on reddit
there will always be another trump so long as people keep failing these litmus tests.
Mmm, tell me again how Clinton got elected and balanced the budget. Tough on crime and austerity for low income is what I recall.
i don't understand this comment
I think its a reference to him being vilified for his adult affair when he did a pretty decent job as far as presidents go. Thats my take anyway.
enabling a genocide in the balkans sounds very much like enabling a genocide in gaza to me.
see now I don't get that in the context of the chain. I me I get it, but it sounds like a non sequitor.
clinton & nato gave the croatian government weaponry to help croatia to ethnically cleans serbians from croatia.
biden/trump & nato give the isreali government weaponry to help isreal ethnically cleans palestinians from gaza
clinton broke campaign promises to fuck over marginalized groups and his own base.
trump broke campaign promises to fuck over marginized groups and his own base.
clinton and trump took different approaches, but both ultimately wanted the same thing; enforcing american hegemony.
That is demonstrably false. And even if it were true it doesn't change the fact that these parties are complicit in all the same shit. Maybe they should appeal to peoples material needs. They never will though because that is not their function.
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