Voting in elections is like breathing. The next one is always the most important one of your lifetime.
The last important one was in 1980. The people celebrated their own destruction as they counted the days when they would be the millionaires inflicting themselves on society.
Fucking suckers.
Big capital owns both parties now, the literal 5ish spoilers between both chambers that the neoliberals hate more than their opposition party canāt do a thing in a sea of hundreds of well bribed, oh Iām sorry ādonated,ā sycophants. Thereās no escape under the current framework.
Worse, weāve used our massive hard and soft geopolitical power since then to make the rest of the world as exploitative, sociopathic, and greedy as us, and weāve been wildly successful at it.
Look up Jerry Falwell and his āMoral Majority.ā
Falwell was a TV preacher who decided he wanted to get into politics. He had a simple formula to take over the GOP. The Party depends on small local clubs to do all the little things like getting petitions signed and driving folks to the polls on election day. Those clubs pick local office holders like sheriffs and county clerks.
Falwell told his people to show up at those clubs whenever there was a decision to be voted on. If thereād been twenty folks there for the last vote, Falwellās āMoral Majorityā would show up with fifty. Pretty soon Jerry had a lot of local folks in his pocket. Those soon became Congressmembers and Governors.
AOC did it in one Congressional district.
If they owned the elections they wouldnāt be trying so hard to stop people from voting.
The last important one was in 1980.
I think millions of people are about to find that the last important one was a month ago now. Especially all the ones that are about to be put in concentration camps and the ones who care about those that are about to be put in concentration camps.
By āimportantā I meant our overall trajectory and our ability to change it.
Every election has consequences for many, what I meant was that, imho the conversion of the former opposition to neoliberals, and the codification of legal political bribery that started with the creation of the Federalist society in the 80s that culminated in Citizens United means fight over social rights all you want, beat yourself bloody poories, the economy is no longer something the people have a say in under the current government.
The economy is the core rot that breeds desparation, which leads to hatred, which leads to scapegoating. The conditions are right for Trump, and if not Trump, someone like him, because of the effective economic dictatorship of our oligarchs.
As you said IF weāre permitted a vote again, weāll keep electing āstrongmanā archetypes like trump out of ignorant desparation(no different than Germany post ww1 because of sanctions), and weāre desperate because weāre largely not benefitting from the value weāre generating by design.
Without making the economy work for society, weāll keep circling back to fascism until it destroys us, and we no longer have the means to change the economy because almost anyone and everyone can be bought by those with effectively infinite sums in the light of day now to keep their exploitation in place.
democracy is when you let a bunch of unelected elders in robes dictate how society operates
They donāt entirely, though. In fact, much of what the SCOTUS has struck down has been them saying Congress needs to do their job and write laws to do what they want the laws to do, versus having the SCOTUS legislate from the bench. Donāt get me wrong, this SCOTUS is fucking awful, but thereās some slight truth to some of what theyāve said on some of their rulings. For example, Roe v Wade couldāve easily become a national law, but Congress wonāt do it.
Itās bad when even RBG was saying roe shouldnāt have been used as law. The dems have had a ton of times to solidify it into law via the proper channels but wonāt because it gets votes.
Have they, though?
It wasnāt because it gets votes, but because it loses votes. People will strongly object to one thing a hell of a lot faster than theyāll give you credit for doing anything. Look at Bidenās entire administration. We handled post-covid inflation* better than any other developed nation, but he didnāt get credit for the 90% he fixed. He got shit on for the 10% left to go.
* And Iād argue a good chunk of that inflation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the bipartisan bill Trump signed into law while rejecting the oversight the Dems wanted. That was the biggest corporate giveaway in our nationās history. Literally just giving public money to private corporations. A step far beyond āprivatize profits, socialize lossesā.
Dems believed, reasonably, that Roe was settled and wasnāt in imminent danger. Holding a vote on that just pushes people away. Of course, in hindsight, they should have done it anyway. But as you can tell from this past election, and all the states that went red while passing womenās rights legislation, having the issue out there is not getting them votes.
This only sounds reasonable until you think about it for 2 seconds. Do you really want the Senate and Congress to have to learn about and try to legislate the details of chemistry, medicine, finance, engineering, etc, rather than delegating figuring out the details of tasks like āmake the food safeā or āmake the water cleanā to scientists and other experts at agencies?
The Supreme Court only has the power it does because the legislature has been dysfunctional. Most of their terrible decisions are not based on the constitution, but rather their interpretation of laws written by Congress. Congress can easily override them by passing a law saying āNo, that Is not what we meantā.
āSeparation of powersā is an incredibly nonsensical concept. If we live in a democracy then the democratically elected legislature should have total power. The idea that unelected judicial branch can dictate policy is indeed anti-democratic, the judicial branch should be wholly subervient to the legislature. The same is true of the executive branch, the executive branch also should be wholly subservient to the legislature. Giving a single guy control over the whole freaking military and making the branch roughly independent is also entirely nonsensical. It has happened historically in the past in several countries that the executive just tells the military to attack the legislature and the country collapses into a dictatorship. This literally almost happened in South Korea literally today, although the president backed down at last moment. Any country with separation of powers is already borderline a totalitarian dictatorship, since it just takes a single crazy executive to decide to pack the courts and disband the legislature solely for their own personal gain and the whole thing falls apart.
Lol remember signing our supreme court justice approvals. Fucking silly us.
Iām just glad Obama rolled over and allowed Mitch McConnell to steal a seat. Because the decorum that preserved really helped this country.
Senate was under republican control, Obama wasnāt getting any justices confirmed.
Refusing to hold a hearing could have been interpreted as de facto confirmation.
No it couldnāt. The Senate has to confirm them, and McConnell refused to hold a confirmation vote. There wasnāt a damn thing Obama could do about it.
Itās funny (funny in the sense that I have an uncomfortable chance of not fucking surviving the next four years) that so many self-proclaimed leftists have a strategy that boils down to āLet the fascists win and then complain about itā.
Including a bunch here who have also seemingly deleted months worth of their comments as cover.
Funny that so many centrists have a strategy that boils down down to, āignore leftists and then complain when they donāt vote for us.ā
Sorry, here I thought self-proclaimed leftists might have some interest in preventing fascism, but as many leftists on here have repeatedly and joyfully assured me, they donāt give a single solitary fuck about the oppressed or the working class if Their Guyā¢ isnāt the one preventing fascism. Not unlike the Thalmann bootlicking that goes on on some corners about Lemmy about how right he was to hand the country over to Hitler, rather than risk cooperating with the dreaded SHITLIBS.
Red fascists have nothing to distinguish them but a coat of paint.
EDIT: They go on for a half-a-dozen comments or so denying that theyāre saying that leftists didnāt turn out because they werenāt enthused, and then go right back around and admit that leftists didnāt turn out against fascism because they werenāt enthused, but thatās just life and we should deal with it.
Apparently, expecting antifascism out of leftists is above pjwestinās standards for us.
Cool story, bro. Do you think that the twelve million fewer people who voted for Harris were all Lemmy Marxist? Or maybe they were just people who didnāt like her total lack of a working class message, endorsement of the Gaza genocide, or attempts to woo, āmoderate,ā conservatives instead of her base.
The Democrats thought that they could ignore leftists and focus on moderates, gambling on the looming fascism being enough to get the left to show up anyway to bail them out. Turns out that was a bad fucking bet, and they created a huge enthusiasm gap that cost them the election. Maybe try blaming the party that spent $1.6 billion on this shit strategy than a handful of protest votes.
Edit: For the record, Pugās edit is a lie. Pugās argument is, āYouāre saying progressives let fascism win because they didnāt like Harris, and she wouldnāt pander to them.ā To which I keep replying, āNo, Iām saying campaigns donāt have good turnout with groups they donāt campaign for, and Harris chose to campaign for moderates, not progressives.ā To which Pug keeps replying, āSo you agree with me!ā Also, he calls me an apologist for fascist enablers a few times.
Obviously, weāre not saying the same thing. His framing is an attempt to blame leftist groups for the Harris loss, while mine places the blame squarely on the decisions of the Harris campaign (since getting votes was literally their whole job). Youāre welcome to go through the thread and make up your own minds, but itās probably not worth your time to read the whole thing. It certainly wasnāt worth mine to write it.
You know people can just read the comments themselves right. Dont need your edit biasing things.
Have you considered that the vote between democrats and republicans is really about whether we will abuse foreigners for our wealth or abuse our own people? Which one is the noble one to vote for again? The one that wonāt harm you right?
Every āI wonāt vote for Kamela because sheās almost as bad as Trump on Palestineā, signed our death warrant.
honestly I think Joe Biden withdrawing after the primaries is the biggest nail in the coffin. The primary elections are worth like 10 billion in free media coverage. The second biggest is probably Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney who has like 15% approval and dropped her poll numbers every time. Distant 3rd is maybe Gaza.
Yes, but they werenāt the majority who fucked us.
Itās just more striking when some of the people fucking us are self-proclaimed leftists who are supposed to be on our side.
How many āleftistsā do you think exist in the US? Like, is this more or less than 1% of the electorate? 5%? This has the same energy as The Onionās āstill too early to tell which minority to blame for the electionā. Maybe the Dems just actually suck ass.
And this is why repubs want to shut down the Dept. of Education. We already stopped teaching Civics/Government in schools a long time ago, which has led us to this current level of ignorance about how our government works and what powers the president does and doesnāt have. For the last year(s) Iāve seen comments demanding Biden do this or that thing he has no authority to do (even thinking he can order other countriesā leaders to do what he wants!). They think it means he just doesnāt want those things to happen.
They think POTUS is supposed to be a king who just has to decree whatever he wants and it happens, no matter what the other 2 equal branches of government do. They want a king, dammit! So they voted for a king. They elected Trump who will throw out the Constitution and be a king for them. Enjoy having a king, suckers.
There does seem to be a disparity between what biden can do and trump can do though doesnt there.
When government is functioning as it was designed, the checks and balances work, and a POTUS who does not respect the law would be checked, impeached, and/or removed. But when an entire party that is in power not only refuses to act as a check, but willingly does his bidding, then the law-breaking POTUS is effectively a king.
We have examples in the past, like Nixon, who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment by his own party. We have an example today, of the president of South Korea, cancelling his declaration of marital law under pressure from both the opposition and his own party.
The Constitution is an agreement, governing with the consent of the governed. Once the majority of those in power refuse to abide by the Constitution and rule of law, then it is no longer worth the paper itās written on and we no longer have a functioning democratic republic. That is where we are.
Isnt biden ignoring popular will to back israel an example of democrats doing the same thing? Everyoneās acting like democrats follow all the rules and republicans break them all.
There is, for sure, but that is a bit like arguing there is a disparity in what a good driver and bad driver can get away with.
Thatās just simple entropy. Itās far easier to be destructive than it is to be constructive.
