this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 129 points 1 month ago (4 children)

My favorite Mamdani quote:

For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said at a rally headlined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It has seen its job as explaining why we cannot instead of showing how we can

And I don't think it is accidental. I think Schmuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are Manchurian MAGAs who sold out the Democrats a long time ago. Even if they aren't doing it purposefully, their cowardly and insipid behavior is 50% of the reason that MAGA regained power. They should be out of politics for that alone, they certainly haven't done ANYTHING to prove they deserve a second chance at punishing MAGA. They didn't do it when they had the chance, they aren't going to do it in the future.

We should all be calling our Democratic representatives, and strongly demand that they vote AGAINST Schmuck & Jeffries for leadership. Start now, so everybody knows going into the Midterms that they can expect substantial change by the new Democratic Party.

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 57 points 1 month ago (6 children)

No one needed to sell out the Democrats. When Nixon was president, the entire time the Democrats held strong majorities in both bodies of the legislature. You know what they did with it? They joined Nixon in developing the war on drugs to turn normal legal behavior into felonies that would disenfranchise Black people and those that associated with them.

The Ds have ALWAYS been this evil. No one needed to sell them out. They have always been a faction of the elite collaborating with the other factions of the elite.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

When Nixon was around, conservative Dixiecrats were still a thing. You can't really compare across different party systems.

[–] TRAHR@quokk.au 13 points 1 month ago

Now the default Dem is a conservative further to the right of Nixon.

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sure, that's why Biden was different when he architected the crime bill and why Clinton was different when he went after Black "super predators" and spiked racialized incarceration and why Obama was different when he expanded DHS and ICE immensely and appointed Homan and deported 3M people and human rights organizations fought his policies and why Obama and Clinton devastated Libya. Very different

[–] kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I mean, both Clintons are conservative dixiecrats, and they’re pretty involved in mainstream Democratic politics

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think it's like squares and rectangles. All republicans are absolute shitheads. Some Democrats are, too.

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[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 64 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It’s also weird how fascist policy like mass surveillance is going up at the same pace in blue states.

[–] nullspace@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Nationwide rollouts, small pockets of local resistance.

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[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 54 points 1 month ago (3 children)

First glimmer of hope in a long time has been Mamdani. Every week I feel like I hear about something new and great and it's weird actually seeing what someone can actually do.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago

It's also important to understand his limitations. The capitalist system cannot be changed out piece by piece into a socialist one. Mamdani is powerless against the capitalist class, at most he can pass welfare and social reforms. The benefit of Mamdani is that he helps prove that these reforms are actually pretty easy to establish, but at the same time we must understand that socialism without revolution is impossible.

That's why it's critical to educate ourselves and communities, agitate amongst the working classes, and organize for socialist revolution.

[–] Signtist@bookwyr.me 11 points 1 month ago

The biggest thing he should be showing you is that someone motivated can make noticeable positive change in a relatively short period of time. When you see another politician failing to make such noticeable changes, it's because they're not trying.

Yes, Mamdani still has a lot of work ahead of him - what we've seen so far is just a good first few steps, but they're obvious steps in the right direction. Whenever someone says "these things take time" and can't show any obvious first steps to prove that we're actually moving at all, then they're not actually doing anything - they're just saying they are and hoping you won't notice.

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[–] DudleyMason@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's only weird if you assume Democrats and Republicans aren't both working for the same handful of billionaires and that all the culture war stuff they fight over is just window dressing to distract you from that simple fact.

Once you recognize that the purpose of the Democratic Party is not to govern, but to capture and neuter social movements dangerous to Wall St, and secondarily to give people enough faith in the system that they'll keep voting and not revolting, then all the supposed contradictions make perfect sense.

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[–] sapphironZA@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Because Republicans are paid by the elite to make people suffer

And Democrats are paid by the elite to make people suffer.

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I expect at best it'll be business as usual when typical Democrats are elected. They won't persecute and prosecute Trump, they won't reverse most of his abhorrent policies and POs, won't restuff the SCOTUS with people who think over follow entirely a rhetorical edict, etc. etc.

I'm convinced those people saying no to revolution, it could make things worse, don't realize it's about as bad as it can get right now. When you're starting to pound at bedrock, going up is much easier.

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I think the controlled opposition theory is certainly true in-part, but it doesn't explain everything.

The other thing is that Republicans don't campaign on policy. They campaign on random culture war bullshit - much of which, while incredibly stupid and a waste of time, is popular.

So, sure, allowing Tesla to dump toxic waste into their constituents' groundwater is unpopular - but their constituents never hear about it until it's already happened, and then the politicians blame someone else.

Instead, they campaign on your parental rights to infect everyone in your kid's class with measels or to ensure your child isn't turned into a trans catgirl by public schoolteachers and trained to use a litterbox, or the competitive sanctity of the women's track and field team, or whatever other dumb bullshit they can come up with.

People can be made to care about that stuff easily. Then the politicians get elected, do some random bullshit culture war legislation to get re-elected, but focus on making their corporate donors happy by allowing them to more effectively fuck over the constituents.

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month ago

It's not weird at all. It's completely normal. Both "parties" serve the same system designed by literal enslavers.

[–] kablez@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Once you reach elected politician levels of wealth and power, red and blue is more of an aesthetic than a conviction.

Politics is all about maintaining the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Parties are just branding designed to entice people.

That's why it seems like there's a disconnect but there isn't, the system is working as intended.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

ITT: Excuses from people who like that the only thing democrats are willing to accomplish is weapons sales for genocide.

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (18 children)

There was a referendum to tax the rich in Illinois and it fucking failed, by a lot. We don't live in a liberal country. We live in a center-right country with strong far right tendencies.

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[–] brownsugga@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When those Epstein files first dropped, it's like "Well the people in charge of every nation actually believe they work for Satan" and they've been shoving war and AI and shit so far down our throats in the hope they can get us all to forget that the curtain was actually pulled away for a second but I don't think I can forget that

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[–] deifyed@lemmy.wtf 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Makes sense if Republicans control how controversial something sounds. We should investigate which political direction the owners of main stream media leans

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