Equal rights for
regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity are something that we, as a society, actually solved decades ago that aren’t even a question. They were brought back into public discourse by corrupt people that seek to keep us distracted while they rob us all blind. The two party system in the US (and any nation that uses a FPTP voting system that limits us to a MAXIMUM of two viable parties) is a HUGE reason why they still exist.
The reason we still argue endlessly about these solved issues is that the two parties are so similar in their other policies that they have decided to highlight those issues (as if there’s even a debate about them) because the two parties align in lockstep behind the other issues. The super wealthy people at the top don’t want us talking about things that will cause ALL of us to stand up and demand improvements to our material conditions so they have their demagogues loudly trumpet the absolutely miniscule differences between them and the conservative parties to whip their voters into a frenzy in support of voting against their best interest.
Then, I have to fight with unwitting dupes in the comment section that have fallen victim to the marketing gimmick that the black female version of Reagan is “fighting for good” despite her being politically aligned with Reagan on virtually every issue other than identity politics.
I’m calling the DNC technique of wrapping Reaganomics in a friendly identity politics outer shell “woke-washing” because of how similar it is to “green-washing”.
Chomsky proved this conclusively.
I agree with this assessment for the most part but one side of me plays devil’s advocate on this:
I sort of came to realize in the end that it was possibly purchased to push all leftists off the platform, allowing Musk to compete with Google and Facebook in heavily manipulating and censoring discourse in American society (and let’s be clear, they did. Just because it was an attempt to help “the good guys in the DNC” by Google and Facebook doesn’t make it not an open and shut case of treasonous manipulation of discourse.
As an absolutely prolific Twitter user pre-2016, I was very quick to leave….but at the same time, I eventually came to the sad conclusion that Xitter (pronounced Shitter) actually does need leftist voices as long as it exists. IMO, it (and Google and Facebook) should be dissolved, open sourced, decentralized, and socialized for the crime of treason/undermining democracy.
We (people of the fediverse with a strong sense of integrity) basically fled to our own decentralized, open source platform where we have 1 millionth of the reach with our voices. Being around such a cesspool where astroturfers working for Progressive think tanks and their conservative buddies would gaslight me about the popularity of things like Single Payer or student loan reform…which was not great for my well-being…But let’s not pretend that leftists that remain on the platform are bad people for doing so. An echo chamber has a way of brainwashing people. So, conservatism would be even stronger had more of our brethren not stayed.
Just a small counterpoint. I strongly dislike conservatism and the conservative ethos of “fuck you, got mine”…but perhaps they were playing 4D chess with us a bit.
It all goes back to money in politics. First-past-the-post and Citizens United absolutely fucked us. FPTP gave us a MAXIMUM of two parties (both are “private” organizations that literally have non-democratic bylaws for their primaries) and Citizens United made massive political bribes into a legal form of free speech.
Edit: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent and nuanced comment below that corrects my hypothesis and details the concerted effort by capitalists and the World Bank since World War II to violently quash any and all leftist/socialist movements that they deemed a threat around the world.
The cavernous power vacuum on the left caused by unchecked capitalism/corporatism (corporate personhood) caused all of the fiscal conservatives in the GOP to leave the circus and take over the DNC (look into the “Democratic Leadership Council” headed up by the Clintons and their right wing buddies). Now, we’re stuck with an extreme right wing vs. a bunch of old school Bob Dole right wingers like Chuck Schumer. As a leftist, it hurts so much to see the Overton window shift unnaturally toward fascism. We have “spirited” debate about things that wouldn’t even be a question in a society (equal rights for all people…like what the fuck. There’s only one answer that even remotely makes sense to non-sociopaths) that isn’t sick to the core with corruption. It hurts to be spat on and shamed by people that should be my allies (or in a different political party altogether) because I have the intellectual honesty to call out the DNC for their blatant corporatism. I always say: Obviously Trump is shit. It’s the power vacuum on the left that caused this shift toward radical right wing ideas becoming mainstream.
Here’s a favorite graphic to show how badly FPTP polarizes the US government: 
Markets are crashing. TD ameritrade locked all customers out of their accounts presumably to stop the bleeding. I’m literally watching myself lose thousands because of it. THIS is why I want decentralized finance.
Am I out of touch?
No, it's the forward-thinking generation of software engineers that want elegant, reliable, declarative systems that are wrong.
Am I out of touch?
No, it's the forward-thinking generation of software engineers that want elegant, reliable, declarative systems that are wrong.
I use NixOS btw.
Honestly, it’s because conservative politicians found a group of people who are susceptible to manipulation and uncritical support of anyone and anything that their church tells them to be.
Wait. Capitalism isn’t silicon serfdom?
This one is a future Streisand Effect hopefully.
The criminals in New South Wales that had this YouTube journalist’s house firebombed:
Yes. He also helped create RSS which is basically where content needs to be moving. He had exactly the same principles in mind as Lemmy/Mastodon creators and would have been a vocal opponent of what Reddit became. I mean, perhaps he could have eventually been corrupted, but judging by his record of hacktivism, he probably would have become a “problem” for the powers that seek to control/centralize, advertise to, and study our browsing habits.
I can’t believe how many shitlibs there are in here, using this opportunity to guilt people with an actual conscience into voting for this piece of shit as if he has some sort of moral high ground.
The real villain here is the system that makes any party outside of the two party system completely irrelevant: first-past-the-post.
We have two Republican parties. One of them just so happens to pretend better at being inclusive..but they secretly also wish that the poor could be burned to fuel their mega-yachts.
Yes. Glorified tape recorders that can provide assistance and instruction in certain domains that is very useful beyond what a simple tape recorder could ever provide.
Bernie would have won had he not been blatantly cheated in the 2016 DNC primary. We’d be in a MUCH different timeline had he won.
Edit: Corbyn was done dirty in the UK too.
No new movies and TV shows are being made. I’m a 43 year old industry veteran, forced to look for a new career.
Anecdotally, I used to make $120k/year for the past 10 years like clockwork. The past two years, though: I made $18,00 and $22,000.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-07-11/production-activity-report-hollywood
This article says 40% but that’s in LA. In other places, production is down 90%.