The whole "everyone is 12" extends to things like this btw, if voting meant nothing, why is there a constant concerted effort of making voting particularly difficult? Are the politicians bored? Or is there something to a vote we're not seeing that they do? Of course you don't think those things you're 12.

Did BLM actually change things?

tell me one political ideology that's not left or right

That’s lemmy as well. Tons of talk. Absolutely zero action.

Trump wasn't even elected on the second term when he was shot at so he doesn't have the grounds to invoke the Insurrection Act. But now as the president, he can't use that prior incident. He's waiting for any excuses to invoke the act as incumbent president.

It's not a majority of the population that's doing this, it's a very small minority with a slightly larger minority supporting it and a vast majority saying "well don't get too rowdy yet, that's what they want."

Everyone seem to have forgotten about last year when people talked about raising arms in response to the brutal ICE abuse, and the government floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act. The government did tone down the raids and scapegoated Gregory Bovino, but in any case, are people really willing to be martyrs and raise arms next time around if it's brought up again?

There are discrete opportunities to firebomb walmarts and I support each instance

Haha, the paid trolls are much more convincing and I've noticed a lot more sophisticated propaganda on the fediverse. Regular Bots are probably in higher abundance on meta and Reddit and other big tech social media platforms.

Those subs are just propaganda tools for russian and chinese bots and propagandists - and the useful idiots. You cannot really tell any of them apart.

This is literally the kind of thing that the trolley problem thought experiment was made to explore

no, it's not. the trolley problem is a series of questions that help you to explore your own morality and understand your tendency (consequentialism or deontology or divine command theory, etc) and how far you're willing to stick to your beliefs.

there are no correct answers to the trolley problem.

They love to go on about the French Revolution, yet never acknowledge that it immediately led to dictatorship.

Illusion of choice and controlled opposition.

They have delivered NOTHING since the neoliberals infected the party. They are leadership and no one will replace them. I won't keep listing all the ways that the leadership has stated and shown how they aren't going to fix any of this. They will just make the "Jack Smith" rematch and "that will get trump this time"!

We will watch trump (if he is still alive) either never show up or pleas the fifth. We will watch the clips and get excited for a year and a half and then, election time!

It will be narrow margins, we CAN'T have another maga in there, better keep voting blue and NOT progressives because they are "unelectable". Better keep appealing to the right, THAT WILL DELIVER FOR THE WORKING CLASS SOMEDAY

Experts already agree that we are in fascism. Please look into how many people vote out of fascism

When in the 40 years of this will be enough for people to see?

So to you, maintain the status quo and keep the masters happy so they don't release their "retribution" on us again.

Be quiet slaves?

True, but do democrats improve more than the previous republican made it worse? It doesn't feel like it.

Also I wouldn't use Healthcare as an example of something that works in the US

Why is it ok to refuse to use 1 tool, but not the other?

I think it's okay that some of us want to exercise our rights but draw the line at breaking the law.

If you want to blow up (or even give up) your own life for the cause, that's your choice. It's not mine.

Do you not understand that incremental change is possible without revolution? There's a middle ground between "maintain the status quo" and "overthrow the government."

If you were born in this century, you haven't ever seen evidence that Congress can actually pass legislation that makes our lives better. It used to happen, and I believe it can happen again if we can elect people who aren't corporate shills.

There was a time when people like Mamdani weren't the exception and political figures actively tried to make life better for all of their constituents. That should be our expectation, and anyone who doesn't deliver should lose re-election.

This is impossible with the current leadership and they don't change.

People aren't going for the stupid "blue no matter who". Mamdani and Al-Sayad have even shown that "blue no matter who" isn't even a thing that the DNC believes in. Why do you think that is? When the DNC had a leader who wanted change and younger reps, they canned him IMMEDIATELY
AIPAC funds %60 of the Dems and the Dems will ALWAYS fund Republicans to defeat progressives in elections so they can win by you blue magas

You cannot vote out of fascism it has NEVER happened and we have been couped

I am not against voting. I am against voting for Democrats (the status quo) they cannot be removed until the DNC gets rid of support for Israel and neoliberals are kicked out of the party and sent to the right where they belong.

You cannot compromise with pedophiles. You do not incrementally reduce concentration camps. You don't incrementally make progress with fascists that are killing DNC reps in MN (when have they brought that up), threatening and intimidating ilhan Omar (of which SCHUMER HAS SADI NOTHING) .

THEY ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE

Although I'm sure we can vote better politicians, I'm also highly doubtful that we will vote better politicians. People are uncultured, uneducated, propagandized to their eyeballs and wholly unwilling to learn.

But if they talk really hard maybe the green party gets 5% which would do checks notes absolutely nothing in a first-past-the-post system

And some people draw the line at supporting candidates that don't support human rights or support Israel, yet that one gets you yelled at and told "we have to use every tool available".

Wrong! 5% of votes in green party means checks notes Democrats get 5% less votes, which secures a victory for Republicans!

The fuck do you know?

Ever heard of OpSec?

If there was opsec there wouldn’t be talking about it

Okay but this analogy falls apart because there have been many actual revolutions and never even a single rapture.

The contemporary USA, China, France, and many other countries’ governments were created by revolutions, it’s not even like they’re particularly rare in human history.

at least none that could be directly related to action. which is exactly what OP was complaining about..

Locally it did. Seattle still has less than half the cops we did before 2020, it’s awesome.

He’s been shot at since he was president again… there are a lot of assassination attempts, it’s hard to keep up

Kinda seems like leftists spend a LOT of time thinking about how to avoid counter-revolutions but whatever

Ok fair, at least there's been revolutions.

I'm just saying that's how people are treating it. Why bother working for it when it's inevitable? "It'll come save us all" while ignoring the hard work and problems. Ignoring that long term permanent change is more of a result of boring, slow work.

No? Why would you assume that's what I'm about? What a weird leap.

It's not about keeping the action secret, it's just about preventing the powers that be from finding out who took the actions.

If you can fire bomb a Walmart and have them not find out about it, that's actually pretty impressive, or it was a really small fire.

There's a certain leftist opposition to structure in general.

I had a comrade who was actively trying to get out of jury duty because he has fair objections to the legal system. Others in our organization were encouraging him to wear communist pins and whatnot so he doesn't get selected.

But like... what if some reactionary takes your place on the jury? Is that preferable to you being selected and needing to briefly take part in a deeply flawed system that you believe should be overhauled? Shouldn't people who have dedicated their life to fixing these systems make it a point to operate within them in some capacity?

It's as if they are worried participating in the system in any way will somehow taint you.

This is a real problem. US politics has turned into a team sport where "our side" and "their side" are supposed to be enemies fighting for dominance instead of working together for the common good. Voter loyalty to the political team is prized regardless of the real-life result that the team achieves. Critical thinking is actively discouraged and propaganda dictates the perception of reality.

The challenge is how we break that propaganda bubble and get people to hold their politicians to a minimum standard of actually improving the lives of their constituents.

A lot of people say they have deprogrammed their family members through a long process of good-faith discussions and targeted debunking of conspiracy theories or false reporting. Some have used chatbots to educate their loved ones or even manipulated algorithms to show fewer partisan conspiracies and more factual information.

Cults famously fall apart when their leaders die, and the leader of America's most dangerous political cult is no spring chicken. It's possible that the blinders will fall away pretty quickly after he's gone. But that doesn't mean we can't -- or shouldn't -- attempt to make progress where we can in the meantime.

For being so focused on inclusion, we have an issue with purity testing for sure. Maybe people need to accept less perfect allies.

I advocate both.

Politicians in AIPAC's pocket count as "corporate shills" in my book.

Many of the top Democrats are bought and paid for, they don't make people's lives better, and people should stop voting for them.

But the place for your protest vote is in the primaries, where you actually have a better choice. In a general election where your choices are Corporate Democrat or Fascist Republican, the two are simply not interchangeable.

People who make that false equivalence and discourage voting because "both sides are the same" have exacerbated the general apathy that has enabled the Republican party to push American political discourse farther and farther to the right for the past 30 years.

"People who make that false equivalence and discourage voting because “both sides are the same” have exacerbated the general apathy that has enabled the Republican party to push American political discourse farther and farther to the right for the past 30 years."

That's the biggest lie of all. You centrists have been shitting on the left and APPEASING the monsters that got us here now. THAT is why political discourse and policy has shifted farther and farther right.

Idealism is great, but you need to have some roots in what you can realistically effect. There are very left-wing people that can do both. I'm a liberal though.

The partisan purity tests on the left are a big part of the reason why Republicans keep winning general elections.

Republican policies are bad for anyone who isn't rich. Their party is literally promoting fascism at this point. But somehow the fact that a Democrat isn't 100% what you want them to be means you should stay at home and not vote?

Be advised that the thing Republican voters are best at is falling in line. They will vote for a candidate they actively hate ... as long as that candidate has an R next to their name on the ballot.

The time for purity tests is the primary. Vote for non-AIPAC, pro-trans candidates then. Cast your ballot for the person who best represents your interests. Actively campaign for them and convince everyone you meet to vote for them.

But in a general election, if you refuse to vote because you don't like the Democrat (with whom you agree on 80% of issues), you're ceding the choice of representative for your state or district to the people who will vote Republican no matter what. And I doubt you will agree with even half of that person's votes.

You might feel like you've done something valuable and righteous, but all you've really done on a practical level is make it easier for the right-wing candidate to win a majority.

Even if you're not enthusiastic about voting for the Democrat, you can feel good about voting against the Republican.

I haven't been excited about voting for a lot of people in my life, but I am still quite proud of the fact that my vote helped a dead man beat John Ashcroft for a seat in the Senate.

Right. I must be tired.

Someone actually did firebomb the local Walmart last night...

It also pressures dems to lean more left. A thing we should be doing in blue states.

The people talking about doing illegal shit won't brag about doing said illegal shit, unless they're stupid.

Politicians and Russian bots.

Voting doesn't change anything, though, it contributes to the nothing changing if you think voting does anything. The gradual change you're talking about is organizing and building alternative systems of power so that in the future there can exist the basis of a revolution.

And your solution is…?

INCREMENTAL CHANGE!!!

Idealism isn't great, don't ever say that.

I'm not sure what their opinion is, but:

Warfare against the private property owning class that rapes children and funds genocidal imperialist wars.

Also, even for those who only care about 1 issue (whether Gaza or Trans rights or something else), it’s important to have some sense of nuance on that issue and not frame it in completely black-and-white terms. Chances are that a given AIPAC Democrat candidate is less hostile to Palestinians than their Republican opponent, or that an anti-trans Democrat on the wrong side of trans sports and bathroom issues is running against a Republican that wants trans folk jailed or killed. The Democrats are far, far from perfect, but they are still better than the Republicans on every single issue.