PhilipTheBucket @ PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat

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I don’t consider the core issues of that failure to be ‘pet issues’

They're definitely not. They are foundational to the problems in America today. The KPD's obsession with the SPD specifically and settling the scores of the past was a pet issue.

Addressing the economic and democratic crisis is the only way they could possibly win, and the only way to (maybe) fix some of the failures people are feeling.

Agreed.

A blip on a shear cliff, and pales in comparison to the immense growth of wealth in the form of capital. Musk didn’t buy twitter with a pile of cash from years of profit.

Agreed.

I do not think voters should take any blame for an electoral system that has completely failed them

I'm not really trying to say "blame." Like I said, most of the failure I think is a failure of media and education that failed the voters. You were the one that invented the idea that we had to "blame." You also seem to be sticking implicitly, without really addressing it outright, to the idea that it can either be the voters' "fault" or else the party's "fault" but not both, and because I said that who won the election is partly a result of who it was that people voted for, you are still lecturing me sort of an infinite length about how it is the party's "fault" that they got not enough votes, as if that's not something I agree with already.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this or explaining it to me over and over again in different ways. For variety, would you like to try predicting what my response will be, to this message where you're explaining it to me again?

Whether or not there are propaganda accounts actively trying to disperse and confuse resistance is absolutely pertinent to what we do from here.

It's definitely true that 95% of the Democrats haven't really been doing shit now that the horrors have started, and that talking about the election and how Trump shouldn't have won is kind of a lost cause now. The propaganda accounts I am more concerned with at this point are the ones going into /r/50501 and doxxing and confusing people, trying to drown out useful organization, generally trying to defeat anything that might oppose the fascists. I haven't seen those ones on Lemmy too much although I've seen a few. And misleading people about the bigger picture "in politics" as opposed to out of politics is still certainly a problem. They're both problems.

the Great Depression + the Gilded Age + the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand + the Civil War + segregation + Asian-American internment camps, but instead of happening over the course of a hundred years, we’re packing it all in to Thursday.

You forgot that on top of all that, the people on top have in their possession an integrated surveillance state superweapon the likes of which has never really been seen before.

How effective they'll be able to make it, in service of destroying anyone who opposes them politically, remains to be seen, but people who've managed to build pale imitations of it have in the past been able to accomplish terrifying things, and they got this version all for free and all complete, someone else having built it for them.

I definitely wasn't saying it will be a straightforward struggle or a fun time.

Biden presiding over the best-functioning economy in 20 years does nothing to improve the share of profit that goes to labor. Literally everything people feel desperate about only gets worse when the economy is doing well, because it accelerates a wealth disparity that makes it even less affordable to buy a house or groceries, let alone have time or money to contribute to a political project to make things better.

Biden improved the share of profit that goes to labor. He also raised corporate taxes by a huge amount to fund all this stuff he was doing. Houses and groceries both got more expensive, because of Covid, but also, wages went up by this pretty large amount (particularly for the working class you are concerned about here) so that they both got more affordable for the average person overall. They got way more affordable for the average poor person.

I don't know whether you know that or not. Almost no one does. That's why I say that our systems of political education are extremely bad. Would it be better if he was Bernie Sanders? Abso fucking lutely. But he actually went to bat for the working class in a way that almost no one in America has for a long, long time.

Outside of that one detail point, which is somewhat pertinent to my whole point that I'm making here, I completely agree with you about the despair people feel about the system, Biden being part of that whole broken system regardless of the good that he did, and that being a key reason why people aren't excited to vote for anyone, and pretty much 100% of the rest of it. I have no idea at all why you keep lecturing me on this and using bold and italics, as if somehow I'm not grasping the point.

We could be talking about issues of political propaganda, having a factual discussion about whether my assertion about Biden reducing income inequality for the first time in decades in America is even true, that kind of thing. But you seem like you're absolutely committed to pretending I'm not grasping the point and just raising the volume of your messages until the speakers are rattling, pretending that I am not. Why are you doing that?

People were getting born into slavery, live their whole lives working in the fields not knowing how to read, and there was a massive political and paramilitary fight over whether that was going to continue and how and where, which presaged the explicit military fight the whole country had about it.

Then we had the civil war.

Then we had the labor movement, people getting born basically into slavery again, and having paramilitary battles to fight for their right to simply live and exist and have some kind of voice in how their daily life was organized, and have some life outside of their slavery existence, instead of living on corporate fiefdoms obeying the owner of their company like a king.

Then we had segregation, poll taxes and voter literacy tests, police brutality, water cannons and tear gas and police dogs and lynching. When people talked about making lynching illegal it was a huge debate. Without lynching, what would we even do? To keep order?

Somehow, from that, we made it to today. People today can expect that they can vote, they can have newspapers or web sites that say whatever they want, they can be free of police public or private just coming around and fucking up their shit because they irritated someone powerful. (That last one is debatable in the modern day, but for 99.9% of people I would say that most of what I just said is still true.) But none of that happened because "constitution" or because "America."

It happened because people fought and died to make it happen. Maybe it's useful that there was a piece of paper somewhere that was giving them something to hope for when they wanted to give up, give an end goal in mind and remind them why it was important. They had something to talk about to other people about why they were doing it. But "the country" didn't do shit to help them in that fight. They just had to go and do it.

Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today.

I feel like at this point you're just inviting someone to say something so you can pitch a fit about "how DARE you" and write more screeds to jam up the conversation that's going on, and accuse the other people of being victims of propaganda.

Fuck that, man. Stay and fight.

Have a passport (definitely apply for one today if you do not), have a plan, if shit really goes sideways then it's every person for themselves and their family. But as hard as it might seem if you've grown up in a time of stability, we've been through way worse than this bullshit in this country, and we've usually come out of it stronger and wiser.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

go for it

Will do

Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’

Yes. In an "objective" sense if we separate away the realities of what it takes to sell people and win elections, it should have been enough that she didn't want to kill immigrants, destroy the government, and seize power forever, and the other guy did. And you seem to agree with me on this, up above, so presumably you're using the definition of "should have been" that I use in the following paragraph.

Clearly, in a "reality" sense instead of the objective sense, it wasn't enough to actually win, in this election. You are saying the American people are having an understandable reaction to both three decades (at least) of Democratic fuckery, and to bland corporate-friendly "status quo" messaging from a deeply flawed DNC campaign apparatus. Yes, I agree. As I keep saying. That's pretty sensible.

(Edit: I adjusted some things in the preceding paragraph)

I would also add to that that they suffered from an incredible amount of misleading propaganda that led them to believe absurd fantasies about the candidates. That's not paternalistic, that's reality. I don't think it is fair to ask them to look at corporate news, paid shills and total random idiots on social media, Russian-funded podcasters, and so on, and form an informed picture of reality. That's not saying they are dumb, it is saying that our systems of news and political information in this country are so shockingly bad that it would literally be better if people were throwing darts at a board to pick the president.

insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation to vote

Claiming that, instead of having legitimate grievances with democratic governance

Anything to avoid having to consider the possibility that the moderate approach to governance is what created the populist radicalization we’re now having to deal with.

Okay, I'm just going to stop my reply here.

Go back and read my message. It says 100% the opposite of that. You're spending time that you could have spent on your reply, telling me what I think on my side, and what you are telling me is 100% backwards. And then, in passing, you're lecturing me about how some things I already believe are true. I mean there's a little side issue of whether propaganda and voter miseducation was a factor in this election (and for some reason you are claiming that it was not), but you're barely even dealing with that. You're mostly just telling me what I think and arguing with me when I tell you I think different.

Again, I think this is actually a pretty important issue. I actually think I've said pretty much everything I wanted to say on the original discussion, and spending extensive time just repeating "No, I didn't say that, I actually said the opposite of that" seems like a screaming waste of time. We've gone back and forth about it for a couple of messages now and I'm not real into continuing for a bunch more.

I think this is a such a big problem that it deserves a specific real solution, way beyond just you and me talking about this specific issue. I think actually I'll try to write something up about it (as I threatened to do below when talking about the issue of propaganda accounts), or maybe work on a more sustainable solution of some sort.

“I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.

“Should be”, maybe, but it wasn’t.

Correct. Which indicates to me that something other than the content of the platforms was the issue.

Like I say, I mostly agree with you about the shittiness of the Democratic establishment and particularly as pertains to kneecapping Bernie, who would have addressed your (extremely valid) complaints and also would have won the election. Assuming no one shot him.

I'm just saying two things can be true. The Democrats can be ghouls who need replacement or foundational reform, and also the electorate can be so addled by propaganda that they missed noticing that Biden did absolutely historic things to help the working class, address climate change, basically all the core issues except for Israel and even his Israel atrocity didn't apply to Kamala Harris except in people's minds. And that addled understanding and confusion was what cost them the election. The DNC consultants have dogshit messaging, also, which certainly didn't help, but people were mostly convinced that Trump would bring inflation back down again and Kamala Harris was just as bad so why bother (depending on which side of the aisle they were on).

Those two things can both be true. You seem like you're spending incredible words lecturing me on the first thing. Yes. I agree with you. Two things can be true.

If you read down to my comments down below, you'll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.

I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn't productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.

For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.

Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.

A lot of the accounts I'm talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven't bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I've seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be "false flags," how we need to be careful or they're going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.

I'm not saying that everyone should have spent all their time on Lemmy agreeing with each other that Ghengis was bad. I'm saying that spending all our time leading up to that election talking about what a problem Kamala Harris was, and how we shouldn't vote for her, would be weird and suspicious in precisely 100% the exact same fashion as what people were actually doing. Thank you for making my point for me, in fact, that's a really good analogy to explain it.

Assuming that the KPD ought to have joined the SPD against the Nazis simply because they were the smaller party (without addressing their concerns) completely disregards the political context of the moment.

No it doesn't. Insisting that we need to go to the smaller party's positions on everything because the center blah blah blah missed opportunity let's fight about our favorite pet issues that's what's really important right now disregards the political context of the moment. Keeping Hitler from coming to power was what was truly important, and the KPD fucked that up completely by not seeing the bigger picture and clinging to their pet issues and they pretty much all died when the horrors started as a result. Whatever sins you want to accuse the SPD of in their positions, it hardly matters. "I'm not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win" should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.

I think a similar critique of Democrats applies to 2024 (and to an extent 2016 and 2020, with con-founders). Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling. I think dems miscalculated because they assumed they could meet more voters in the middle like they always had, but didn’t realize that all those people aren’t there anymore.

Well... for one thing, two things can be true. It can be true both that the far left got itself distracted and the Democrats are a bunch of corporate whores who don't really "deserve" support. Not all of them but I would say the overwhelming majority are. I get why people aren't that excited about voting for them, in the same way I am not excited about paying taxes or working a job I hate to get to the one I actually want. However, failing to do those things in this election was a catastrophic tactical blunder which has already produced massive human suffering and promises much more to come. I hope we come out of it stronger, but the whole fucking thing didn't need to happen. You can reform Democrats without a bunch of immigrants going to El Salvador or worse because you didn't feel like holding your nose and you're privileged enough to be able to not have to.

And then, for another thing, I actually don't think the far-left lost the Democrats this election, although their lack of support was one more drop in the rainstorm. I think the election took place almost entirely in fantasy-land. The far left (tiny in American politics) thought that Kamala Harris was responsible for 100% of Biden's Israel policy, but also more mainstream people thought that Biden had accomplished nothing of value on climate change or for working people in the US, other people thought Trump was a genius at business who would bring inflation back down, and so on. It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn't matter that the Democrats' messaging was bad.

Harris was the better candidate. People in overwhelming numbers thought various imaginary things about her which made her "bad," although the question of what was up with Trump didn't really factor into it except among the very deeply confused. I think that's the result of really incredibly powerful propaganda being deployed at a massive scale, and the media being too apathetic to try to do its jobs even when people were listening to them. I don't think it's fair to say that Biden's performance, Harris's platform, or the far-left's organic reaction to anything, was responsible in any way for what happened. It was mostly just based on fantasies and misdirection. What we do about that, I have no idea.

yet your post is completely silent on Ghenghis Khan

If Ghengis Khan had been running for president of the United States last year, and I had been running around Lemmy yammering and biting my nails about what a problem Kamala Harris was, then fuck yes that would be weird. I think people should have called me out for it. Yes. That's my point.

That is, in fact, exactly the reason why I think it's stupid that these people were biting their nails so hard. Especially since the sum total of what they accomplished is to help put Ghengis in charge.

In re the first excerpt:

This, to me, sounds totally backwards.

The KPD had tried to overthrow the government through violent force with guns, and the establishment government including the SPD had violently fought back. A generation later, the KPD was still so incensed that the SPD had not gone along with getting shot and overthrown that they refused to get things together with the social-democrat + center-party coalition, ran their own spoiler candidate, fought the SPD in the streets, and basically treated the "not left enough" party as the main enemy all the way up until they all went into the camps. Whereas the SPD was still giving speeches against Hitler and trying to muster resistance to him in government even when parliament was half-empty because of all the disappeared opposition.

I have no idea how the groups you're talking about here map onto the groups I am talking about. But, to me, the problem of splintered opposition to Hitler was 100% a far-left-created problem, which would be an incredibly apt comparison as regards the most recent US election if the election had happened on Lemmy or if the US as a whole had any kind of far-left representation that went above low single digits.

In re the second excerpt:

Yes, it is mathematically certain that in any FPTP election system, things will coalesce into two parties which are both a few inches to one side or another from the center. That is a good argument to me for not doing FPTP. I don't think you can blame the left-er of the parties if they don't want to wander away from the center and start losing elections.

If we're going to apply that to the US, I think the "center" in the US being so far to the right that it's off the edge of the table is a whole separate problem, largely corporate-media-created, but I think asking the center-right party we call "Democrats" to start losing elections from now on so that everyone on the left can feel better about the Democratic party positions is probably not the answer to that.

(Actually, there is one caveat: They could have just not fucked over Bernie and let him win the election which he 100% would have. That would have been nice. If you want to try to help talk them into doing something like that in the future, that would be grand, but I think (a) hoping for a candidate as good as Bernie to come along every election is a tough ask (b) some campaign finance reform will need to go along with it and maybe putting some people in prison for accepting bribes just to send the point home. If we're still trying to operate within normal politics. All of this is a little academic now since Trump is aiming to run the elections going forward.)

Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don't think everyone who fits a lot of OP's criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there's a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.

Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a "sheepdog" or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that's who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who's got a comprehensive master plan I'm just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.

The level of public education in American schools, about anything that isn't a STEM precursor, is basically nonexistent. The STEM precursors are sometimes covered okay and sometimes covered poorly, depending on your school system, but outside of that it might as well be nothing.

I went to some good schools and I literally can't think of a single thing I learned about World War 2 from school, let alone about Germany before the war. It all comes either from family talking to me about it or from my own reading. I like to think of myself that at this point I have some fairly in-depth understanding but that's not because of school.

Every person in every role in every system makes their own decisions. We're all just people. It happens that, in the military, there's a very firm habit backed up with some enforcement, of always deciding to do just whatever the person "above" you tells you to do, but that habit gets broken sometimes. During times of political or systemic upheaval, it gets broken a lot more than it would seem like.

The military people will certainly show up and gargle, no question. But they'll also think it's an incredibly stupid activity to be part of, and they'll remember that he was the one that ordered them do it, and they definitely won't remember him fondly for it as events get more and more chaotic and exciting in the months and years to come. Personally I'm in favor of him doing as much of this stuff as possible.

Glad to have you with us. We're talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let's rock.

Please stop strawmanning us (I'm sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the "3rd party leftists" so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the "revamping" as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won't win, and so on.

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org

What's your reaction to these parts?:

I will say that the two examples that come most clearly to mind for the proof requested in the first quote are two people who are in that category of “talks CONSTANTLY about how voting for Democrats would be a terrible thing that no self-respecting leftist would EVER do for any reason”, who also claimed to be American, who also made mistakes that no American would make. One of them used non-American characters to punctuate a number, and then when it was pointed out they got confused and didn’t understand what people were pointing out that was weird about their number. Another claimed that they employed a bunch of people and paid them all $250k per year (and, again, seemed not to understand that this was a wild thing to claim when people pointed it out).

Actually one of the tells of those accounts is that they will sometimes accuse others of not being pro-Palestinian, and being rabidly pro-Israel, which as far as I can tell no one on Lemmy is. There are specific useful reasons why I think they are making that accusation, but if I were just doing this as a way of disagreeing with people, why would I take some person who is making a pro-Palestinian point which I completely agree with, and decide that they are a propaganda account just so I can “attack” the viewpoint I agree with?