• Meow@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Democrats and Republicans aren’t actually against each other, they pretend to be two different parties as it is an effective psy-op to keep the populace believing in a Reformist path to change, so we do not pursue a Revolutionary path instead. As long as the populace continues to believe a Reformist path (like voting) is able to save them, the Capitalists can continue doing what ever they want, only Revolution can save us (IE we must save ourselves by overthrowing the Capitalists), and only once the people in general realize this, can Revolution actually succeed. It is also why we must keep pointing out to people how the system is rigged against us, how as long as we live in Capitalism Democracy is a lie and the oppression and exploitation and U.S. bombings will continue.

    • huey_m@reddthat.com
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      7 hours ago

      100% not a psy-op or collusion. They really just both bought deeply into the shift to neoliberalism in the 80’s, and it has so defined politics for the last 4 decades that few politicians have wrapped their heads around the fact that the continual rejection of both parties by the people is really a rejection of that neoloberalism that we’re clearly in the death throes of. Trump succeeded not because every person who voted for him was a racist (I mean, that’s definitely a big cadre among his supporters, but it isn’t what got him in), he succeeded because people are so desperate to end the neoliberal norm that’s crushing everyone that they’ll vote for a guy that literally soft-pedals fascism over another neoliberal.

      But I really do think the majority of them are true believers. They’ve been born and raised in that politically environment. It’s all they know and they really can’t imagine anything else, even if it’s really only been a few generations ago that things looked very different.

    • culprit@lemmy.ml
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      18 hours ago

      This “Good” Cop / “Bad” Cop routine has been going on for decades. Both parties are still cops and ACAB.

      • Meow@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        Just to be clear, Cops being bad is not an inherent property of them in and of itself, but rather Cops serve the State, and in a Capitalist country, the State serves Capital, and so the Cops also serve Capital, but in a Socialist country, such as China, the Cops are completely different as the State actually serves the interest of the overall masses, and so the Cops also by extension.

        • culprit@lemmy.ml
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          14 hours ago

          ACUCAB just doesn’t have the same snap to it, but Under Capitalism is an important distinction indeed. Reminds me of a Parenti quote about why socialist states have to have a significant level of state authority because of constant capitalist incursions and subterfuge.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Coalition building is required in any free society, and guess what, non-participation isn’t absolution.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    If “stop supporting genocide” isn’t the first step, then what the fuck is? I can’t think of a lower bar, but I’m told it’s actually a “purity test”.

    • CaliforniaSober@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      If you can’t see past your own nose then what else is worse? Your own nose isn’t a purity test it’s just your character… almost like it’s YOUR OWN NOSE.

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      Genuinely speaking the people crying about MAGA being a cult are acting cultish by expecting you to vote for someone who is openly promising to maintain genocide; MAGA is now openly saying they don’t care about all the evil stuff Trump has done, and blue MAGA are saying they don’t care if their favorite lib candidate is going to maintain genocide.

      If Adolf had been an actual socialist, and the guy he was running against was literally satan, would they actually say the solution here is to vote holocaust no matter who?

  • Set_Status_Online@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Really tired of “both sides bad.” Political change should not be moving fast and breaking things.

    Right now we have a hole to dig out from. We need to get to the point where we can vote for the people we really want.

    By not voting you say that everything is fine and you are okay with the status quo.

    Vote for the change we need right now. Do not let our future slip away.

    • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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      14 hours ago

      Genuinly curious. With your plan to vote for the democrats to dig out of the hole the US has dug itself, how will you be able to vote for the party that you want to vote for later?

    • Athena5898@lemmy.ml
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      20 hours ago

      The only reason you wouldn’t want to break things right now means you still think there is good in the system. The system is working as intended and absolutely needs to be broken so something better can be made.

      • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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        17 hours ago

        Alternatively, there can be the simple recognition that breaking the system that exists will result in a mass casualty event as current systems keeping the masses alive break down, and the resulting collapse will be capitalized on (lol) by your local warlord.

        I’m sure the local warlord will be a great bastion of anti authoritarian praxis.

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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          13 hours ago

          Brother your goverment, democrat or republican, does a mass casualty event abroad every other fucking week, when will you stop with the “me, me, me, me” attitude ffs.

          • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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            12 hours ago

            When I become Jesus Christ, savior, and responsible for the collective sins of humanity.

            Until then, I’m responsible for myself, and will act accordingly.

            • Oppopity@lemmy.ml
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              9 hours ago

              What’s the difference between you and a republican who can excuse all the shit Trump does because he’ll supposedly lower gas prices? They’re just being responsible for themselves right?

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              9 hours ago

              Then go back to the forest so that other people don’t have to be responsible for you

            • SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
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              12 hours ago

              The humankind is a collective. When a nation has individualism as a core value, what does that say about its human character?

          • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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            12 hours ago

            What an astute observation! I wouldn’t even describe it as a boil, maybe a light simmer if anything. Because you know what? My life is pretty nice.

            So now that we have established that fact, perhaps it would be prudent to consider how you reach the majority of the population that is in my boat (not literally, I mean, when I’m on my boat I’m generally reading a book on my own). But I mean the ones that think like this and don’t read books by Kropotkin.

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          14 hours ago

          A mass casualty event? Brother we’ve been in the mass extinction event for years, and every day we don’t destroy the system that created it is another day the odds of the human species surviving the next couple centuries continues to fall towards zero.

          • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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            15 hours ago

            Yes, I am certain that your life will begin improving measurably when the food runs out.

            • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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              13 hours ago

              Yes, I am certain that your life will begin improving measurably when the food runs out.

              Revolutions have had a history of dramatically improving living conditions for everyone as soon as the old system is abolished. The Russian revolution ended famine and doubled life expectancy.

              Alternatively, there can be the simple recognition that breaking the system that exists will result in a mass casualty event

              Revolutions also don’t have to result in violence (think of a mass strike across the entire country that never ends). But when capitalism gets desperate it will start a civil war if that is its only hope to maintain the old system.

              And think about the mass suffering caused by mass poverty, genocide, minority oppression, political polarisation, endless war, boring work and the list goes on. If one revolution is all it takes to install a democratic society and fix so many of our problems, I know I’m on board.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              14 hours ago

              Just one more election bro, I know we have The Camps and everyone on earth has organs laden with microplastic and we’ve killed fully one third of the forests and the oceans are turning to acid, but now is not the time for radical change bro

              I’m sure your life will (moderately, bipartisanly) improve when the oceanic algae is all dead and you can no longer breathe. At least then you won’t have the air to speak this tired nonsense, and I’ll only have to listen to our gasping coughs as we wait for the harm reduction to kick in.

        • Athena5898@lemmy.ml
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          16 hours ago

          There are already thousands and more dying by the second with the current system. There is already a mass causality event and it will continue to get worse as the current system makes the world less and less inhabitable.

          And we don’t have to have a “local warlord” the idea that people can put something better in place then fascism is ironically a right wing talking point. Though I blame the propaganda that has caused us to view our fellow as a enemy instead a comrade. But that’s a whole other point.

          • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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            16 hours ago

            Correct on all counts.

            And yet, the reality is that the collapse of society will lead to even more casualties. The other reality is that I don’t know of a single collapsed society that became altruistic, and did not devolve into local warlord killing each other.

        • Meow@lemmy.ml
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          15 hours ago

          In order to effectively break the system you need organized Revolution, and for that it must be supported by the masses, and for mass support it must help people, meaning the Revolution must be building something like a state within itself to support it’s own Revolution, so when it is big enough, when it finally has overthrown the Capitalists, it will already be prepared to take over as a governing body. The only chaos then is in the Revolution itself, but a small moment of bloody violence in plane sight is nothing compared to the massive death, destruction, torture and despair, that the system does constantly out of sight, hidden away (as much as it even can hide it), that the small by comparison but more in sight and quicker violence of a Revolution which will finally end it.

          • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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            15 hours ago

            Okay. Well, when this glorious mythic Revolution begins, we will see what happens. Until the second coming of the Revolution, were stuck in reality. Although it seems some of us might be stuck is a certain level of Revolution Revolution worship.

            Revolution.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              14 hours ago

              See, because the anglosphere is drenched in leftover christian thought, and because liberals fundamentally have a magical view of the world and society, you see revolution as something akin to the rapture: some grand external event to be prayed for and waited on. Meanwhile, since communists have a scientific view of the world and society, we see revolution as a machine to be built. What you’re doing is the equivalent of walking up to a shipyard and going “Pffft, good luck magically manifesting your glorious ships, idiot.” Just a fundamental misunderstanding of how history develops. Movements just spontaneously arise at full strength out of nowhere in the movies and video games we all grew up on, so of course reality must work the same way, right?

              You want to talk about “we’re in reality”? Yeah, we’re in the reality where the working class in many countries have already achieved the building of a revolution. That’s a concrete fact, not some article of faith you can pessimistically handwave away to justify your continued murderous apathy. We live in reality, so roll up your sleeves and get to work with the rest of us.

              • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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                14 hours ago

                Okay. Well, when all your hard work leads to actual tangible results that are better than the status quo, then we’ll talk.

                Until then, less blabbing and more sleeve rolling

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  14 hours ago

                  “Build a revolution for me and then I’ll show up after”

                  Consumer brain is a disease on par with Alzheimer’s. You’ll never be anything but a dead weight to any social organization with that attitude. Look around yourself, opportunities to build have never been more abundant. I’ve helped create a recurring mutual aid event in the community where we exhange food, clothing and services, much of it homegrown and handmade. We have regular self defense training and educational lectures from people of different expertise. We’re connected with the local ICE watch org, a growing anti data-center movement and Palestinian orgs for miles. We are beginning to host study sessions and draw up outlines for political education. We even have a direct member with a shot at city council, which would make our job even easier than it is now, which, I gotta tell you, is pretty easy these days. People are fucking done with all of it.

                  All of this and more can be yours. This is what I have achieved in less than one year of really, actively studying and trying after having spent the previous decade as a depressed addict. The only thing holding you back is this learned helplessness, this ingrained idea that someone else has to do it first because you are incapable.

            • Meow@lemmy.ml
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              14 hours ago

              It wont just magically happen on it’s own, if we only wait for it we are more likely to see the inside of a US death camp as the Capitalist rulling class is getting scared and desperate and have been laying the foundation for the people to be moved further into Fascism for a long time. It is possible only with our willingness to organise together within one or more (cooperating) Revolutionary Parties to learn and use Marxist Leninist Theory to slowly awaken Class Consciousness within the population and prepare the way for a successful Revolution supported by the newly awakened masses. This has succeeded many times already, even though the USSR unfortunately collapsed, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and the People’s Republic of China are still standing against all the Capitalist Imperialist hostile odds, and China in particularly is more technologically and scientifically advanced then the US by now, and have provided enormous improvement to the lives of everyone they get involved with. It is why the Capitalist Imperialist “Core Countries” (Global North) are so desperate to smear them with endless lies and nonsense not based in reality or evidence, and the CIA/MI6/MOSSAD assert their control and spread such misinformation via “news” (Propaganda is basically just another name for this give or take), Hollywood, Social Media AI bots, Youtube algorithmic control, and even our very Video Games (do people believe Call of Duty is politically neutral).

              With all of that they shape our very view of reality to make us support things against our own interests, and to avoid learning anything real about the countries that threaten Capital.

              Edit: I was a little confusing about the point on propaganda, I mean that it is more or less another word for news, mostly involving the handing out of pamflets or leaflets, it has been twisted into being the same as saying “misinformation” very likely as a way of discrediting bottom up, glass roots style movements (what the working class has access to as a way of communicating among the populace) while leaving the Capitalists corporate “news” reputationally intact.

    • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      Political change should not be moving fast and breaking things.

      It should absolutely 100% be that when the alternative is genocide and fascism.

        • CaliforniaSober@lemmy.ca
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          11 hours ago

          It’s been a multi year mockery of common sense while even thinking of discussing common good being screamed out of the room by folks screaming over listening. It’s been common and weird while certain folks lean into it…

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      “We need to vote for change and to dig ourselves out from this hole!”

      -Proceeds to vote for Democrats, who change nothing, and dig the hole deeper.

      “Oh well, my memory will have reset long before the next election comes around, so we can do it all again!”

    • Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca
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      This is the most political-history ignorant comment I’ve read in a very long time.

      How do you think people have rights?

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      We need to get to the point where we can vote for the people we really want.

      You people have actual short term memory loss

      How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

      -Hunter S Thompson, 56 years ago

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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        • we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends – and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it. *

        Frederick Engels 135 years ago

        That shithole’s banana republic politics is the longest running gag in history.

    • radiowaffle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Precisely. We are not in a place where it is possible to make a different choice. Other countries seem to not understand it - do you know how massive our country is? How inconsistent our education is? How divided we are? We are not, under any circumstance, uniting half of the country in voting 3rd party, especially not now when tensions are so high. We have to get past the point where being picky dooms us to the greater of two evils. Should it work this way? Of course not. Should we try to change this stupid two party bullshit? Absolutely…but not right now. Right now, there is too much at stake.

      • SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Should we try to change this stupid two party bullshit? Absolutely…but not right now. Right now, there is too much at stake.

        With such mentality, pro status quo, change won’t ever happen.

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        Should we try to change this stupid two party bullshit? Absolutely…but not right now. Right now, there is too much at stake.

        Its sad that people are so ignorant they don’t realize that the controlled opposition wing of the US empire has done this for every election, and people are still falling for it. Liberals have the memory of a goldfish, and are naive enough to think the US is a democracy.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Absolutely…but not right now. Right now, there is too much at stake.

        This would be more persuasive if you didn’t say it every election for decades.

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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      Democrats arming genocide is now “Russian propaganda”, I am so happy to see the blue maga conspiracy world crumble on contact with reality, you smug racist morons truly deserve every ounce of the confusion and impotent rage that your self-inflicted future has in store for you.

      • velma@sh.itjust.works
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        Yeah I find this push for the US to take arms against the US army kind of a weird one at this point. It’s not going to happen overnight and the US is fucking huge. Like, do you all realize how geographically BIG the US is? Do you have any understanding of the difficulties we face in mounting any sort of physical resistance to this shit? You’re solidly delusional if you think complaining at individuals on Lemmy is going to spark a physical revolution here.

        • Athena5898@lemmy.ml
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          19 hours ago

          Okay, counter point. Why complain at people on Lemmy then for pointing out facts? You kind of make it apparent this way that this is about your world view being challenged.

          If you acknowledge that you have to do more then vote and America is not a democracy. It means you have wasted you time and your life on people who literally cannot care about you with the way the system is.

          We are not voting our way out of fascism. We are not fixing a system working as intended.

        • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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          You know the take is factually correct but you still dismiss it because you want treats for yourself and you are willing to compromise on US imperialism for it.

          • velma@sh.itjust.works
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            Nah, I agree with the take. I disagree that fighting in the comment section against people who are more aware than the average us citizen is going to produce the results you want.

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                lol I’m not fighting, I’m having a discussion.

                You’ve taken the position that anything except shouting about revolution is simping for the US. There’s no middle ground for talking with you apparently.

                • Meow@lemmy.ml
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                  15 hours ago

                  If you seriously support having a Revolution in the US then reading Theory is not optional, there are errors upon errors upon errors that people inevitably fall into if they do not have a correct understanding of the world, it’s history, and how society, economy, the state, Capitalism and so on actually work, which kills a Revolution and result in horrible failure. Cowbee (I think, or maybe it was yogthot or how ever the name is spelt) has a good beginners reading list you can work through, at the least you should read works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin at a minimum.

                • SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
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                  17 hours ago

                  Revolution, or invasion, is the only solution for the US. People outside don’t believe in people inside’s willingness to make the former happen. The latter is the retribution waiting to blow in their faces.

              • velma@sh.itjust.works
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                1 day ago

                You think all 350 million people in the US worship cops and military?

                lol don’t @ you - you replied to my comment.

                • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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                  Are you friends with anyone who works on military projects, in the “defense” industry, is in the military or has served in the military in the past (same question for police)?

                  Do you attend events that include “thanking the troops”? Do you allow your kids to go on field trips that involve the military or cops? Do you go to war museums? Participate in or support Cadet programs?

                  Have you filed an objection to selective service (if you fall into the demographic that it applies to? Are you rude to recruiters? Do you protest recruitment offices if they open in your community?

                  If yes, then congrats on your gold star for the bare minimum. If not then maybe you and the other the 350 million Americans can ask themselves why they put their social comfort over human rights .

                  (And yes I do these things in my own country)