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Whether a country is a democracy or not depends on whether its people are really the masters of the country. If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy.
—Xi Jinping
Post this in lib spaces but put it over top a picture of Obama
and then show two more panels, one of campaign Obama saying to Planned Parenthood that his first priority would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, and another panel after he's president and at iirc his first press conference says "Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority,"
You have been banned from lemmy.world for Ruzzzian Poopaganda
Do me a favour and put "spreading russian disinformatsiya" as the reason for banning whenever you next ban a lib
I was having a beer with my old boss, who was trying to get me to do some freelance work for him. Politics came up, and he's one of those libertarians who thinks every person should own their own tractor, and doesn't understand how larger systems work. I told him Bernie Sanders (our senator) had soured on me. He says "It's so good to see when young people break free of their political alignment as they get older", all confident and sure that if I wasn't on the "left", that surely I'd moved towards the right. The look on his face when I told him the two American political parties were so far to the right that they might as well be the same right-wing party was priceless.
"smh you're just an extremist! Now please, understand that we can't change anything, vote harder! :smuglord: "
Don't less than half of Americans vote? I don't understand why that's never a bigger story
Most of them realize their material conditions remain the same despite which shade of fascism is running the government
Sure, but the fascists who aren't in power might get into power if they realised there's a lot more people who don't vote, than there are people who vote third party or might switch votes from one party to the other, which seems to have been the strat for 30 years now.
So people should vote for politicians that do nothing to improve quality of life so we dont get a made up scenario
you got this far in this text thread and you think I'm arguing for the democrats? Jfc I at least have the decency to present it as a question when I think someone is spouting nonsense.
Yeah man I'm totally for bourgeois democracy and I think the democratic party can be reformed and win and I think it'd be good if they did it by promising things and not doing them, that is definitely a rational conclusion to draw from my text in this thread.
Goddamn the whole internet is twitter these days
That's just freedom baby!
I don’t understand why that’s never a bigger story
because who owns the media
Yeah but like I'd imagine at least one consultant would suggest to the Dems that they appeal to the majority who don't vote. Could be good for a cycle right after midterms or something
that's to some extent what mamdani's campaign did and was a decent chunk of sanders' appeal in 2016
Yeah it seems like there's constant one-offs but never any wider institutional acknowledgement of the viability of that strategy. Yuck that was my most consultant sentence yet
Because the "base" of that party is 
Yeah I know, but it's still weird to me it never comes up during the two weeks of dissent that are allowed whenever the Dems eat shit
weren't like 60% of new york non-voting as well?
I'd guess that they'd need to weigh up whether winning an election would be worth letting that particular cat out of the bag. I mean, if they plan to implement 90% of what the other team does, and roll back 0%, is it really so important that they win?
There's more to gain by allowing the Overton window to resemble a letterbox, an Overton Fissure, than winning elections.
Sure, I understand the purpose of bourgeois democracy, but what I am surprised at is how the party machine manages to continue this uniformly with ignoring a potential massive resource, when it is otherwise plagued by factionalism and opportunists. I would imagine that people like AOC and her ilk would go harder on it, but they don't, even though it would probably elevate their position within the party.
The only reason they do what they're doing now is because it worked for slick willy. The reason he did it is because they weren't doing it and it elevated him to a position of power. I'd imagine someone else would likewise make use of an unused viable strategy in order to jump the line and get into office.
Or maybe I just don't notice it.
Turnout for presidential elections is around 55%-60% with a bit of a trend up for elections since Trump won (last 4 were 54.9%, 55.7%, 62.8%, and 58.63%).
Midterms are generally lower, ranging from 35%-40% but with a similar trend up since 2016 (last 4 were 41%, 36.7%, 50%, and 46.8%).
Seen another way:
2024 US Population: 340,000,000
2024 Election votes cast: 152,000,000
Number of Americans not counted: 188,000,000 (55%)
there is like 50 million kids hiding here
...suggests that the Democrats’ gains are probably more related to independents’ increasingly sour views of President Donald Trump.
So... I guess it's true that mass deportations and genocide and police brutality are more palatable when it's all done "quietly/civilly' and under a blue banner. Or I'm being too cynical here
More people are independents, Gallup polling finds
Okay, that's somewhat useful–
More independents have described their political views as “moderate” over the last decade
Nah please don't tell me these "independents" buy into the idea that the Democrats are actually the far left
... I guess it's true that mass deportations and genocide and police brutality are more palatable when it's all done "quietly/civilly' and under a blue banner. Or I'm being too cynical here
It's what happened last time he was president 
also the reason why some users argued he was the "harm reduction candidate" out of the two parties. Boden deported more people than Trump 1, ICE has been around since Dubya (I think) and cops get more money every year. At least under Trump it's blatant and libs pay attention.
ICE is the rebrand INS went through after 9/11 and the creation of Homeland Security, my car is older than ICE.
The only thing I can think of when people mention INS is the Wu-Tang lyric. Anyway with the economy how it is and new things being worse than old things, you having a car that's older than ICE could mean anything between 6-60 years (I'm being cheeky, I understand what you mean)
So... I guess it's true that mass deportations and genocide and police brutality are more palatable when it's all done "quietly/civilly' and under a blue banner. Or I'm being too cynical here
WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD ICE MURDERING RANDOMS
And before ice it was just as bad, if not worse.
Violent crime has been going down since the 1970s after abortion was legalized, birth control pills were available, and lead was reduced.
Both my parents came from a small town that in the 1950s had an ordinance that blacks could be shot if in the city limits, after sunset, if without a white escorting them .
Lots and lots of violence happened in the USA that was not reported in the news. The murder rates from previous decades are very much underestimated.
The narrative I've been seeing getting tossed around is that "Obama did it by treating them like humans and following proper procedures"
Like, they're practically going mask-off on how they don't actually care about the vile shit ICE, or even the police, have done, so long as it's all "legal" enough for their sensibilities. Which isn't surprising, but man is it bad for the blood pressure
Remember how we had kids in cages a few months into trump's first term 
and noone talked about how those "temporary holding facilities" were an Obama era policy? Or how we stopped talking about them as soon as Biden came in? 
even though deportations increased under him?
I think Biden reversed the policy of separating kids from parents, which is a perfect encapsulation of the "pulling the knife halfway out" method of solving the problem Malcom X talked about.
I’m being sarcastic. This hasn’t always gone on, referring back to Obama everytime someone dies under this vastly expanded gestapo is beyond pretentious.
I don't understand how it's pretentious, would you mind expanding?
my inner pessimist tells me that this rejecting is fueled by social media and that the trend will reverse once the oligarchy finishes making social media just as complicity as legacy media
I'm optimistic in this regard. I think the future you're describing is already here. Their grasp on social media is stronger than ever, but they've overplayed their hand. It grows more clear every day that these platforms are nothing but tools of social conditioning and control. The popular resentment for these platforms rivals the political parties themselves, and likely exceeds that of the traditional media. I mean, how's Mark Zuckerburg polling lately?
if they've had this control already; they wouldn't have lost the narrative on gaza and US interventions to gen-z & gen-a.
they're only now realizing this mistake and doubling down to fix it
The thing is they build up this control, and every time they squeeze they piss it away. They squeezed during the George Floyd uprising. The Silicon Valley platforms censored the Blue Leaks across the board. They banned this community for it's uncritical support. What happened? We slipped through the cracks. Sure, we might not be agitating on their platforms as much any more, but we're free. We're able to discuss and analyze the state of affairs much more clearly now. The same thing happened with the Russia-Ukraine war. They cracked down hard, flooded the zone with war propaganda, banned a lot of sources of information which weren't toeing the line (to be clear, they deliberately leave the cranks alone every time they do this). People signed up for Telegram and continued following their sources there instead.
The genocide in Gaza is somewhat unique, because a lot of the primary sources there are explicitly proscribed as terrorist organizations to begin with. There was no r/Hamas or r/PFLP to ban. No funny memes for mujahidin teens Facebook group. The horrors of the genocide were broadcasted much more organically, in bits and pieces from thousands of personal accounts. If anything, it is much more difficult to censor something like this compared to a centralized news organization, website, or internet forum.
Every time they do one of these crackdowns, they are eventually effective at limiting the flow of information on the mainstream platforms, but it is a phyrric victory. The Internet itself is too porous. Every time they crush a community on Reddit, it turns into one on Discord, one on Matrix, and two on the Fediverse. All the while, it is too easy to grab a clip from one platform and post it on another. The actual social networks involved change with every crisis too. If they are effective at rooting out everyone involved in radical environmentalism, they will still be starting from a very elementary level on police abolition, or BDS or regime change in one country or another. The surge of gestapo freaks in Minneapolis has activated a whole new wave of people recently who were not and did not need to be on their radar before. And this dynamic will continue playing out as well.
We need to be careful about falling into early 2000s style Internet utopianism, but despite their methods being more sophisticated than ever, they definitely don't have this shit under control, and they won't until they start arresting people by the busload for posting.
Hope so too. “Meet the new media, same as the legacy media. Only this time, Fox News bothered to make more than one Fox News.”