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This is Left Praxis, LIBERALS would never understand the 4d chess involved in how Trump winning helps Palestine and American minorities.
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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My 2c as a non American: The politically active "far-left" will likely hold their noses & vote for Biden as "damage reduction".
The non-voters will be the disenfranchised, suppressed and the "non-political".
Then whatever happens, democrats will blame the "far-left" and talk about how they could have done better if only they'd appealed to some imaginary conservative swing voter who doesn't exist.
I'll end up voting for Biden. Not psyched about it, but pragmatically the alternative is so much worse. Might get shit from the ultratankies and hexbros, but I'd rather do damage control than whine about Biden and do nothing while an actual fascist snakes his way back in.
It doesn't feel good. And it isn't good. But this is the reality we live in at the moment.
Thank you, comrade. I mean it. 2000 wasn't like this. 2004 wasn't like this. 2008 and 2012 weren't like this. The opposition was cretinous and eager to violate what rights they could, our failure to defeat them in 2000 and 2004 caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, minimum, and is a stain on our soul, but they weren't a direct threat to democracy itself. More than happy to cheat if they could, but not trying to fundamentally dismantle the system. This? Trump? I don't know that we would survive a second term - large amounts of 'us' and the republic itself.
The vote for the Dem candidate (one hopes not Biden) is essential against fascism.
2000 was like this, the Supreme Court literally passed a law to get Bush to win the presidency.
Why do you feel the need to lie about this?
Did you miss the part about being more than happy to cheat, or did you ignore it?
Oh, sorry, you're correct, we haven't had real elections since 2000.
You don't think cheating in an election, discounting votes, counts as being a threat to democracy? Using the Supreme Court to make a ruling for the sole purpose of making Bush president? That's more than a threat, that's a headshot.
If you think that we haven't had real elections since 2000, why do you say things are different now? This has been ongoing. I don't see why you feel the need to make a narrative that this is all new.
I think dismantling the ability of the opposition to acquire office or remove the ruling party from office is a existential threat to democracy.
Playing legal games to go against the popular vote and stall a region's vote is a violation of democracy. Not an existential threat to it.
So unless you'd like to tell me how we haven't had elections since, I stick by what I said.
There is now legal precedent to do that at any given moment. I'm literally so confused about why you are trying to die on this hill? Republicans have been eating away at voting rights for a long time. If only some people have their votes counted, that's not a democracy.
Edit: not to mention the persistence of the electoral college, which has already fundamentally destroyed the idea of democracy.
Funny enough, one of the most outrageous parts of that case was that it explicitly did not establish legal precedent for it.
So have we ever been a democracy, in your eyes?
It's real funny that you're trying to normalize Trump's behavior by casting it as just another Republican administration.
Not ha-ha funny.
If it happened before, what is stopping it from happening again? Why can't the Supreme Court do it again and also say "yeah but it's not a precedent"?
Why do you feel the need to pretend the US is suddenly becoming undemocratic? And why have you ignored that question? I am actually curious here?
The same thing that would have stopped it in 2000 - an undeniable vote margin advantage in the contested state.
Why do you feel the need to downplay and normalize the threat to democracy currently occurring?
Republicans have been like this for a long time, why are you denying it? It was bad in the 80s too. Did you forget Reagan? And his genocide against gay people during the AIDs crisis? Saying the Republicans have always been bad doesn't make Trump any less bad.
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/
If anything, acknowledging this history strengthens your case against Trump, because we can look at the impacts of Republican policies and nominations.
Republicans have always been bad, I'm pretty sure I was clear about that. But a presidential election of a Republican has not, previously, been a threat to the basic functioning of democracy. Now if you're done playing apologist for the first attempted autocouper in US history...
Someone would have to be out of their mind to interpret anything I have said as being a Trump apologist. Weren't you just complaining about "purging" over disagreements? You seem perfectly happy to call me a "Trump apologist" for pointing out history. Recognizing that Trump is part of a broader pattern of conservative policies can only help.
And Trump was not the only coup in the US https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre
But there are plenty of ways Republicans are currently awful, and have been awful. Are you saying that January 6th was worse than the genocidal handling of the AIDS crisis, worse than successful US-backed coups in South America? Worse than the GOPs ongoing history of voter suppression? It's all bad.
edit: v cute how quickly you downvoted me 🥺
And here I thought it was apparent that I was talking about the national government when discussing the fucking USA. And that's not a fucking autocoup in any case, which is what I said.
Uh huh. Sure. Making equivalences of the first attempted autocoup with prior Republican policy doesn't sound like Trump apologia at all.
Do you really not see the parallels of a white supremacist coup? Even if it is state, and not federal?
So ... you do think January 6th is worse than all that? You just want to ignore history? Why? Republicans have been bad? Can you please explain why you want to deny that Republicans have always had awful, anti-democratic strategies that rely on disenfranchisement? Trump is part of a larger pattern, there is a reason he was able to rise to power. It's not like Hitler was the first person to think up anti-semetism.
And if you tried to play apologist for Hitler by trying to make an equivalence between him and all prior antisemites, it would sound about the same as this does.
Have you never heard of antisemitic pogroms?Hitler had technological advances for his genocide, but he was far from the first.
You really just flit from idea to idea, don't you?
I am responding to your exact message. You said
And I said:
If you think that's a non-sequitor, that explains a lot of your attempts at discussion.
Tell me more about how previous antisemitic pogroms and the Holocaust were equivalent.
They just didn't have the technology to enact something on the scale of the Holocaust, but the genocidal intent was the same. Not to mention the hundreds of years of legal subjugation and regular scapegoating. I don't see why you think it's useful for you to pretend that Republican extremeism is new, if anything this is the latest iteration of an ongoing plan. One could definitely argue that it's urgent to outvote Trump, and acknowledge his place in the context of history. What you are doing is intellectually dishonest.
Yep, definitely, it's just the scale of the Holocaust that's exceptional. /s
I think we're finished here.
Did you really not understand what I was saying? Do you think anti-semetism was not broadly acceptable before the Holocaust? Hitler got his ideas from somewhere. The violence during the Holocaust was tolerated for a reason. Anti-semetic officials in the United States government enabled the Holocaust to continue for longer than it could have, had action been taken.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Holocaust
I don't see how it benefits you to deny history. We exist in the context, etc etc
And here you are kind of defending the Republicans? Like, oh the vote margin was small so it was kind of okay? Wtf? lol
Why wouldn't there be narrow vote margins again? It's not implausible.
You asked me what would stop it, not what was okay. Or have you forgotten?
So ... it could happen again? I just don't see what you're trying to do here by saying this. It could definitely happen again.
Are you just being deliberately obtuse?
So yes, it could happen again. With a small enough margin. Which, is not out of the question.
As an American, let me assure you, there are plenty of swing voters. Altogether too many, honestly. People who are deeply political often spend their time around others who are deeply political, which colors their views significantly.
The Dem tendency to chase the swing voter is real, and counterproductive, but it's not for an imaginary voter. The issue is that the swing voter they're trying to appeal to isn't voting on policy. They're voting on feelings. So when the Dems move their policy right, they piss off and demoralize large amounts of left-leaning voters, but do only a little to sway swing voters.
This is more perceptive than most things I've read on lemmy.