I don’t like memes like this because they are easily dismissed, since the left absolutely has problems, and it’s not just “we want healthcare”
However, the truth is, for all the faults the left has, they pale in comparison to the right wing batshittery.
Sometimes the best you can hope for is things only getting a little worse
As an outsider I see another problem with most of the US political discussions here. You all say that the republicans are obviously worse, make memes about them to your dudes to laugh at them. Yet half of your country active voters are likely to vote for them, would probably be more if they weren’t inherently apolitical.
This whole American political discourse seems more fit for /r/im14andimsmart because it’s mostly shitting on your opponents despite the fact that after 12 of the 16 years(the whole generation) of the democrat presidents more people want to vote for the other party.
I find it weird how you guys just laugh and meme at that like it’s non issue or just act as those people(hundreds of millions) are just stupid.
Everyone has picked their side and won’t hear a damned thing wrong about them since that would make them also wrong and every American is 100% right about things they feel, cause that is what our media makes us feel. And also is inherently needed for a class of wealthy elites to pretend they know or care at all for any other group of people when taking power over them.
It’s somewhat wrong to say “more” people want one side or the other since we still actually make it quite hard to vote and the rules on victory is convoluted in allowing unpopular (not majority of votes) victory in a political race.
Granted again there is lots of nuance in all of this and Republicans more sell a vibe than thought out ideas, that is usually based on a feeling of superiority that is not earned.
It’s the end of an empire. We haven’t been tending to the stalk and the central pillar of what makes us strong so it’s coming down and things are just gonna be bad as people on all sides argue they know how to fly.
That they managed to convince so many people to completely vote against their own interests is a testament to the power of propaganda. And you don’t have to be spiteful, stupid and/or uneducated to fall for propaganda, it helps a lot obviously, but there are still many progressive and/or smart people who fall for it as well.
The combination of spreading “alternate” facts through complicit mass media AND indifferent addictive social media is something that Goebbels could have only dreamt about.
To understand how people can become so misguided, I recommend reading or watching a few testimonies of people who lost a loved one to alternate fact rabbit holes. It’s similar to losing a loved one to a cult, only now it’s much more widespread than ever before. I did a quick search and found a testimony from an Irishman that is a good read: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/171w3kb/my_dad_is_falling_down_a_farright_rabbit_hole/
And for people who did not fall for “alternate” facts propaganda, to put all this history and background into words is not easy, so it’s easier and especially quicker to call people who have joined the far right cult, stupid and hateful. The cultists are stupid because they have fallen for the lies, and they are spiteful/hateful because hate is a large part of the far right cult. The far right cultists might not always have been stupid and hateful, but they sure are now.
Moonbats who promised something to an altar of Joe Stalin are a minority of leftists, including radical leftists such as most people here.
The right-wing nutcases are the hegemon. Those who aren’t themselves that extreme at the very least enable them, if not passively want the same things.
Do Simpsons screenshots automatically get that font when you try to put the text on, or is it something that just everyone has decided to do across the board?
Most people get these images from frinkiac.com and that site uses a font called Akbar.
The same people also run morbotron.com for Futurama and masterofallscience.com for Rick and Morty.
Too bad USA doesn’t have a viable left party
a viable left party will emerge when the republicans are long gone from politics, just the way the whigs went the way of the do do bird. i don’t know why people can;t see this. it’s a duopoly. everybody knows this. how can a viable third party exist in that format? yes, ranked choice voting would be ideal, but what if it never happens? vote blue no matter who until the choice becomes vote radical left no matter who. this is how you achieve change without resorting to violence.
That isn’t true, actually.
Within the US’ system of Liberal Democracy, the only parties that can afford campaigns are ones that can secure funding from the people and corporations with the most money.
Therefore, whichever party replaces the Republicans will be another right wing party.
Change comes from outside pressure.
You do not think that democrats are not left? Or that they are not viable?
The democrats in the US are the republicans of the 80s policy wise because the Overton Window has shifted way right due to 20 years of war and nationalism in our sports and media.
We have maybe a handful of soft left dems.
The republicans are now a full-on fascist cult with members of the old guard ditching the scene because of the craziness. The world better hope sane Americans keep his ass out of the White House, because if fascists get full control over the U.S Military and the weapons they now have, you’ll see death on a scale that will make WWII seem like a minor hiccup.
As someone who has been following politics since the 90s, do you really believe the Democratic party of today is to the right of the Democratic party of 1996? I just completely disagree with that. The Democratic party today has way more progressive voices than it did back then, and the average politics of the party has obviously moved left over that time.
Your complaint is that it’s not as far left as you want it to be, which is a completely different conversation.
And comparing today’s Democratic party to the Republican party of the 80s demonstrates a fundamental unawareness of history.
So, in most political parlance, there’s “to the left of” and “Left”. “Left” generally refers to some general socialist, pro worker, anti established capital party where the exact specifics vary from region to region and don’t matter for this conversation.
The Democrats are definitely to-the-left-of the Republican party, and they’re definitely viable.
They are not Left though, because they favor policies typically associated with other political descriptors in other regions (I will use Liberal with no specific connotations), like a preference for things like tax rebates instead of entitlement programs. A Leftist solution to rising housing prices might be a government program to build more houses in urban areas, price caps, and government subsidies. A Liberal policy might give tax breaks to housing developers to use market forces to encourage them to increase supply, and tax rebates to certain groups to increase their effective purchasing power for housing.
That’s why people say the US lacks a viable Left party. We have a viable party to-the-left-of the other viable party, but they are not “Left”.
There is crossover, and these lines are not sharp.
A good example, and particular to this context, is how a leading Democratic proposal for instituting universal healthcare was to create a health insurance marketplace that the government would then put a public option into and subsidize for people in certain demographics, with a legal mandate for everyone to purchase or be provided with healthcare through said marketplace. The hope being that competition would increase efficiency and people would still have choice for their insurance if they wanted.
A Leftist solution would be to assert that everyone is now covered by government insurance and you can go to the doctor and the doctor can bill the government, who will handle various price negotiations as the defacto monopoly on paying for medicine. This would gut the medical insurance industry.
People who are unemployed should:
- Be given a living wage from the government.
- Be given subsidized food and housing as long as they can show they’re looking for work.
- Die.
Left, Liberal, Right.
They’re no where near left compared with other countries: the US Democrats are centre-right.
Bernie Sanders is the only one I know of who’s actually left-wing.
This is because US politics’ overton window has shifted right since the 1980s. And will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.
The democrats actually trend left of major labor and social democratic parties around the world but why let actual policy comparison get in the way of the narrative?
In any other nation, they’re far-right.
Edit: Amerikkka is the only nation, apparently
Interesting. Which “other nation” has a party the is left enough for you and regularly hold power?
The democrats actually trend left of major labor and social democratic parties around the world but why let actual policy comparison get in the way of the narrative?
It’s a variant of both sides bad, and if you get an honest answer it’s probably for Jill Stein. But the odds are it’ll just be a drive-by snark about biden committing the jenosides.
Block user is an available option, but only after you’ve had the pleasure of several essentially identical responses.
It’s a serious point though. Things like public ownership of utilities or a wealth tax aren’t supported by the vast majority of Dems.
Both sides are corrupt, not “the same”
And not the same corrupt, and that corruption doesn’t mean they deliver the exact same outcome.
Yep. But on the idea of the corruption alone the outcome is what benifites the individual politician.
There’s things happening right now that the middle saying “both sides are the same” should be the least of anyone’s worries. We’re now not only making the right the enemy but we are now attacking the middle, which has pretty much zero power and hasn’t done much of note to make everyone an enemy.
We need to stop focusing on what Joe Jackass thinks and believes and start to focus our hate on the government system itself. We’re on the fast road to self destruction if everything is done out of hate and to stick it to’ them’
One side is more corrupt than the other.
Which side that is, I leave as an exercise to the reader. But I assure you one side is worse, and that means we have to vote for the other side.
If there was actual left, there would be health care already. Instead there are billionaires.
