A reminder that you can’t vote your way out of FASCISM!

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 day ago

    I think elections are legitimate, in that it’s two somewhat-competing friendly interests measuring public support for issues.

    They both know that they depend on the other to blame for their “failures”, and neither party could survive on its own.

    It doesn’t work with just one tag team; it’s like pro wrestling, you need two teams to put on a good show, a face and a heel.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    For some reason I misread this as like power suit suits and thought it was a Warhammer 40k meme or something.

  • lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world
    53·
    1 day ago

    Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between rule by actual warlords and rule by “warlords in suits” has so much privilege and ignorance of world history that their opinions should bear a warning label.

    Pinochet used to have political prisoners - that is, his OWN people - raped by dogs. This form of torture was well known in his own country. When was the last time you heard about Mark Carney or Emmanuel Macron doing something like that?

    • Yuccagnocchiyaki@lemmy.world
      51·
      1 day ago

      The Panama papers, Epstein files, and Guantanamo Bay were all what we heard about and there are unnamed, unmarked ships and oil rigs in international waters, as well as apartments and ranches in the US.

      The Israelis own us and we do their bidding. They rape prisoners with dogs. Are you ready to defend ICE and their 4000+ missing prisoners?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      1 day ago

      Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between rule by actual warlords and rule by “warlords in suits”

      You can’t tell the difference between the velvet glove on top and the iron fist underneath? What are you, stupid?

      Pinochet used to have political prisoners - that is, his OWN people - raped by dogs.

      Like we did to the Palestinians?

      Oh, but when Robert Kraft and Rebecca Mercer finance it, the situation is different somehow.

      When was the last time you heard about Mark Carney or Emmanuel Macron doing something like that?

      As to Carney, he inherited a state police notorious for sexual assault.

      Investigation into alleged RCMP misconduct against Indigenous girls in Prince George enters final stage

      And I can’t speak to Macron directly, but Jean-Luc Brunel is a whole different story. No shortage of Epstein connections in Paris and Milan.

  • ThisUsernameKillsFascists@piefed.socialEnglish
    315·
    3 days ago

    Voting is easy, it takes very little effort. Even just the pretense of them not being warlords and the modicum of protection that pretense provides is worth the negligible effort of voting. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing more effective things, but those things are not undermined by voting in the least.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 day ago

      Voting is easy, it takes very little effort.

      YMMV.

      The church leader’s case fits a pattern that has emerged in Texas under Paxton: Aggressive prosecutions for alleged election fraud crimes that upend lives but result in few cases that go to trial and end in a conviction. The Republican attorney general and his supporters believe election fraud is rampant, and point to the large number of charges filed as proof. Yet many of those charged have stories like Sanchez’s.

      Civil rights groups say the charges tend to target Black or Latino voters and volunteers, many of whom are Democrats. The result has been a chilling effect on volunteers and community groups that for decades have worked to increase turnout in a state with one of the nation’s lowest voter participation rates. Critics say the charges are part of a wider effort by predominantly White, Republican state lawmakers to suppress votes in some of the fastest-growing parts of the majority-minority state: urban and suburban communities that lean Democrat.

      “The goal isn’t to get a conviction,” said Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, who has defended Texan clients against election-fraud claims and won a 2021 case that curbed the attorney general’s prosecutorial power. “It’s to set up a climate of fear around voting. He uses these witch hunts to gain attention and money.”

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      384·
      3 days ago

      I helped organize a 600 person union, I was doing rapid response in Minneapolis, and I helped organize the Worker Assemblies in Minneapolis.

      Both sides fucking suck.

      • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
        176·
        3 days ago

        Is there a side that while sucking is still better than the other? Both sides suck, but they are not the same.

        • gogonan@lemmy.world
          62·
          2 days ago

          To be honest with you, every time the dems have had power they have squandered the opportunity to prevent further corruption in this country, or to protect our future on a long enough timeline to negate the aftereffects of the next election cycle. That inaction and useless hand wringing is such a flaccid and disgustingly inept response to the very real dangers and very pressing concerns of the near future. If they can’t be trusted to combat republicans, then what’s the fucking point?

          • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
            21·
            2 days ago

            The point is that doing nothing is still better than doing the wrong thing. I would also say that neolib dems are not the end goal. The increase in DSA and WFP candidates is a step in the right direction that needs support to continue.

            The civil/societal improvements of any period in history do require a fight but also legislation. The civil rights movements of the 1960s did not just have people marching in the streets or threats of fire being met with fire it also had legislators who had prior been opposing or ineffective that were able to work with newer more radical legislators. DSA and non-AIPAC candidates are those more radical ones and some (not all) of the dems are the opposing/ineffectives that can work with them.

            Tldr; Its a lot easier to fight for better than simply for survival.

            • gogonan@lemmy.world
              41·
              2 days ago

              It’s hard for me to motivate myself to care when a lot of the times it feels like the “doing nothing” that’s happening is a coordinated and controlled opposition to an evil agenda that is also working toward the same goal, but more quietly. I get that we have a token few democratic socialists, but it isn’t enough to upset the establishment that takes money/bribes from the same donors, has similar corrupt interests, and allows what’s happening to happen with only some pearl clutching and finger wagging to show their disapproval.

              At the rate that republicans are dismantling what precious little safeties there are for civilians, it’s hard to imagine some comeback renaissance where anything close to the damage caused becomes damage fixed before our country is completely destitute, and corpos poison every well they can get their greasy little fingers in to the detriment of everyone else here. It saddens me.

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          17·
          3 days ago

          I think our answer is outside of politics. Liberal Democratic politics is only useful insofar as slowing the erosion of our rights while living under the ruling class. We have to get organized to have a national general strike and completely stop the system until we have an equitable society.

          • JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip
            210·
            2 days ago

            And then we could all ride our winged unicorns to the great banquet in the sky where nobody gets sick and everyone is a good person.

            • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              101·
              2 days ago

              The mass strike on jan 23rd in Minnesota was so effective that over 50 CEOs sent a letter to the president asking for de-escalation, and reduced ICE presence in Minneapolis by 90%. After a 1 day mass strike.

              Maybe you don’t believe in the power you hold as a worker, but I do.

                • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  8·
                  2 days ago

                  Why do you think I’m organizing unions? MN did great, but it was a practice run. We need more people to be organized to our cause. I cannot be in every state at the same time, but I can make my state respond better next time.

                  Other areas also participated in the mass strike, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the MN turnout. Organizers like me know what they need to do in their state, but we’re not ready for a national strike committee yet.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          1313·
          3 days ago

          Oh Jesus, he thinks president peanut did everything right. 🤣🤣🤣

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          133·
          2 days ago

          No. But I did watch as liberal politicians across Minnesota tried to coopt our worker assemblies in attempts to neuter our movement for their own political goals.

            • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              161·
              2 days ago

              We know that the GOP is the enemy. But pretending like Democrats are our allies while they hold a knife behind their back doesn’t help either.

              We, the working class people, do all the work to improve this country. But democratic politicians want us to believe that only they can make things better. We’ve been waiting for universal healthcare since the 30s, during the great depression. Liberals pushed the Taft-Hartley act and went around the president to pass it. Liberals only liked MLK and Malcolm X after they died, and probably think Fred Hampton and Huey Newton had it coming.

              If you’re expecting Democrats to save us, you will be sorely mistaken.

              Edit: also, point to the part where I said that they were the same.

            • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
              8·
              2 days ago

              The dems had a chance to defund ice and shut down the govenrment until it was eliminated. They stabbed us in the back instead.

    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
      212·
      3 days ago

      The issue is the enemy is obfuscated. Like grapes of wrath… “Well who owns the banks?”

      “And now the owner men grew angry. You’ll have to go. But it’s ours, the tenant men cried. No. The bank, the monster owns it. You’ll have to go. We’ll get our guns, like Grampa when the Indians came. What then? Well—first the sheriff, and then the troops. You’ll be stealing if you try to stay, you’ll be murderers if you kill to stay. The monster isn’t men, but it can make men do what it wants.”

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      249·
      3 days ago

      What’s really fumy is people only noticing at election time what we say all the time.

    • chunes@lemmy.world
      82·
      3 days ago

      how many times have you been through this. it’s tiring even watching your side win. nothing big changes after, just the small stuff.

    • SaltyAmerican@lemmy.worldOP
      1422·
      3 days ago

      You don’t know who’s on the front lines because you’ve never been to an actual protest. And both sides implies that there are two different sides. There is not. There is one side and then there is the working class.

      • olejellylegs@lemmy.zip
        1510·
        3 days ago

        I’ve been to actual protests since the 90s. I can see that you’re the issue, not those protestors I was next to. I know how they vote, you would call them the boogeyman while they support your cause.

      • JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip
        23·
        2 days ago

        You don’t know a thing about that person. It’s fun to think that only you know the answers, but at some point you have to grow up and realize that you don’t know them either and being a smug dickhead accomplishes nothing.

    • GodlessCommie@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      115·
      2 days ago

      Democrats are not left of center, they are not even remotely close to center. They are barely to the left, and in many cases on par, with trump

    • Cyanova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      72·
      2 days ago

      What agency or power do you have in government? You are picking from a pre-approved list of would-be rulers.

      Edit: and to be clear, I am not telling you not to vote, but for fucks sake stop pretending you have actually done anything until you have actually done anything. Voting is beneath the minimum for that.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      825·
      3 days ago

      Ahh, who threw his wife under the bus and profusely apologizes to genocidal Zionists.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          410·
          2 days ago

          Holy stockings, their memory shrinks from decades to a year, the closer to election time it gets. Hey, grasp at straws. Maybe you’ll find something the size of a pool noodle to float.

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
            103·
            2 days ago

            Yes, Mamdani is such a Zionist bootlicker that the leader of Israel found it necessary to spend a significant portion of his address to the international UN complaining about the mayor of an American city. Are you just scared of him because he is brown or something?

  • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
    63·
    2 days ago

    I mean, yes, and also, if I lived in an encroaching neo-feudalist/climate-changed induced wasteland–not that I know anything about that–and we voted for warlord, I would probably still vote pragmatically/tactically.

  • Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    82·
    3 days ago

    At least the warlords of the past had to occasionally lead from the front and show why they rule.

    I’d love to see trump try and run a sortie over Iran to drop another bomb, or try and lead a ship through the straits. The war would be over very quickly.

    • Gyrcas@piefed.zipEnglish
      162·
      3 days ago

      Actually no, unions had to fight liberalism for their rights, same for women, people of color and those wheelchair bound.

      But also the democrats are way less bad than the republicans, saying they are equal is just siding with the republicans because why bother when both are the same. Democrats are still horrible, don’t get me wrong, but it is still easier with them in power rather than republicans

      • UpAndAtThem@lemmy.world
        72·
        3 days ago

        I’m very pro-union, but I dont think this is quite right. Unions have historically taken the lead on many issues of social justice for sure, and fought both parties to do so.

        We also can’t just ignore things like The New Deal etc. or the fact that historically the only Republicans to be pro-union were the long gone liberal Republicans. Most of the direct anti union legislation of the past 100 years has also been proposed/passed by Republican political will.

        If we paint all ‘liberal’ politics with the brush of neo liberal garbage, we will fall into an all sides trap that will only further the rightward ratchet, undercutting actual meaningful progress.

        Personally I see evidence this happening both inside and outside of unions, and it will be neo-con garbage that wins out. Were rights for women, people of color, those wheelchair bound etc. Conservative ideology? I think not.

        Not libertarian either, as that ideology will in practice leave some more equal than others, aka the rich and the bosses.