Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter

This is false

I disagree. Pick a random Republican voter from this country and you’re very likely to grab someone from a red state. Let’s say Alabama. Their vote is as insignificant as a blue voter in California. So regardless of who you or who they voted for, their impact is nil.

But when we talk about complicity we’re not simply talking about voting. We’re talking about participation in the system. For example, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in the last few months you have drank a Coca Cola beverage. I don’t mean just their cola, but any of the myriad of drinks they provide. Whether it’s Sprite or Dasani or what have you.

You have contributed to the bottom line of a company that hires death squads to kill labor leaders (this is has been proven in court).

That’s just one infinitesimally small example out of an infinite number of actions you and everyone else have taken that perpetuates the system of exploitation we live. We are the chosen people that get to live in relative opulence while billions around the world struggle to survive.

So I’ll say it again. You are just as complicit. There is just as much blood on your hands as that Republican voter and yet you choose not to see it because it’s easier to maintain the delusion of moral superiority. Why? Again- reducing cognitive dissonance.

The ultra wealthy that keep us in this hellscape are republicans. They have much of the blame.

Here you get closer to the truth. It’s the ultra wealthy that ultimately decide what happens in this country. I’d go so far as to say they have all of the blame. Why? Because they are the only ones that actually have any autonomy. The research has been done before- American public opinion has zero impact on policy.

No matter who you vote for; over the long term the same policies will be enacted regardless.

If you have ideas on how to instill class consciousness in the kind of people who vote against their interests, let’s hear it.

The first step is to get rid of this atmosphere of hostility. You blame someone for the country collapsing, they get defensive and blame you for the country collapsing. We’re in the post-truth era so it doesn’t matter what is true or what is false. People believe what they do based on vibes. This isn’t an accident but intentional.

It is not the same as the imaginary harms “the jews” do. People would make up stories about nefarious evils of jews, but meanwhile the republicans are right there on TV doing evil. There was a nazi salute. There was an insurrection. These are things that happened.

I think we need to make a distinction here.

What we are seeing in the last few months of this administration is not the traditional Republican party. Trump has hijacked the Republican party much like Hitler hijacked the Nazi party. There is no more Republican party- it’s the Trump party.

The question instead that we need to ask is how was this allowed to happen?

The answer is that wealthy people thought it was in their interests. Simple as that. It’s why for example when you had the Trump inauguration the top tech CEOs all came to bend the knee and sat in the front row. The capitalist system has decided that having Trump at the helm is the most profitable outcome.

Trump worked hard to get to this point- he had to defeat the Republican establishment party. The Mitt Romneys and the George Bushes and the Mitch McConnels. Wealthy powerful people who wanted the status quo to continue indefinitely.

I think one key thing you are missing here is that the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans in creating Trump. Bill Clinton for example amplified Reagan’s economic policies that accelerated our descent into brutal neoliberal capitalism. As we descend further down, people become increasingly insecure.

People who are scared for the financial future vote for dictators. This has happened before and it will happen again. I believe fascism is like a herpes outbreak. It’ll never go away, but your immune system keeps in check most of the time. The issue is that our immune system is weakened and now it has a breakout.

Have you ever considered that this hostile attitude you show towards individuals is exactly what the system wants out of you?

What feels like resistance is actually just maintenance of the status quo. The elites have replaced class consciousness with culture war. Instead of hostility towards individuals who have been led to believe falsehoods through information warfare and weaponized insecurity, why not aim that hostility towards the systems in place that intentionally makes people afraid and angry?

If we wanted to get a little more psychoanalytical about it- this hatred of the individual who has been duped is pathological. It’s sort of like the Nazi and the Jew. The Nazi needs the idea of the Jew to maintain the Nazi world view. Certain excesses are only justified if you have an omnipresent internal enemy. By placing the Republican voter as the villain, you put yourself in the position of moral superiority.

By placing him down, you put yourself up. But really, I believe this may be subconscious projection. Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter. It’s hard to fix the cognitive dissonance of that position. All of us work, pay rent, pay taxes, buy products, post online, etc- we are tiny cogs that moves the machine forward.

So the elites have created an easy safety valve for that cognitive dissonance. Blame the others. Your life sucks? It’s illegal immigrants. Your life sucks? It’s Republicans. Your life sucks? It’s the gays. Your life sucks? It’s the Miami Cubans. And so on and so on.

Until the working class unites and redirects the hostility towards the pillars of power that keep us in line, there will never be any meaningful change in this country. This hostility you and other users show towards Republican voters is ironically supporting the very thing you claim to hate. We’re doomed to endlessly loop around a Möbius strip.

Most Americans have absolutely no clue how involved the immigration process actually is. Unless you have specific skills, have immediate family in the country you’re going, or are loaded… 95 times out of 100 you’re not going anywhere.

Although where there’s a will there’s a way. You get a tourist visa, overstay, marry a local.

I’m glad I’m a dual citizen with money stashed away in both the US and the country I was born. If shit gets too bad in the US, I can lay low elsewhere while things calm down.

The current administration’s strategy is to try and see if it sticks. For example one executive order was to end birthright citizenship. Blatantly unconstitutional. Was immediately blocked by a judge. But they still made the order.

They are starting to ignore the federal courts here and there. Dipping their toes in the water. Starting to indicate that judges are “radical left activist judges” and that they “have no authority” and that they should be removed and impeached and the system overhauled as a whole.

Right now the institutions are trying to block this administration but they are doing their best to set up for the moment where they will basically cross the Rubicon and ignore the Supreme Court.

I have a feeling we’re only months away from that moment and after that moment it will be clear to everyone that the US does not have 3 branches of government anymore but just one.

well said. I’m surprised at the reaction towards this specific event.

the administration is purging the federal government, rerouting tens of thousands of federal agents to enforce immigration (literally 80% of ATF is now focused on immigration. DEA, FBI, IRS, and more are all being recruited to help with immigration), illegally ignoring court orders, using a Stasi-like group of unmarked federal agents to intimidate with threats of criminal prosecution and force people into compliance (look at what happened at the SS office or the non-profit U.S. Institute of Peace), giving executive orders that are blatantly and explicitly unconstitutional (like the one to end birthright citizenship)

that isn’t even starting to mention the genocide happening in Palestine that is not only being condoned but openly embraced. we are arresting and attempting to deport individuals whose only crime is that they are anti-Israel. permanent residents are being denied entry into the country because they have a photo of a Hezbollah leader on their phone

the administration is using coercion and threats to force over 60 universities (Colombia being the most visible) to change the things they are teach, abandon certain policies, suppress student speech, and dramatically increase police presence. all in the name of fighting “anti-semitism”

it has only been a couple of months and right now Congress is making a stink about a text message

What do you think it’s platform should be?

If the name was “Tax the Rich” then I would assume the platform should be a tax on the rich. Either land or capital gains. I think increasing income tax on the rich is meaningless.

Would it need a social agenda?

I don’t think so. In our polarized environment, any social agenda you set will turn someone off. If this party were to succeed, theoretically, it would have to get elements from both the right and the left. And there are many on the right who are anti-establishment and upset with the current economic situation. I feel like if you put other issues like “pro-abortion” or what have you, you will dramatically shrink your base.

What conditions would be necessary for you to vote for it?

I would realistically never vote for a third party unless it had some serious momentum. For example during the 1912 election cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election

I would have voted for a third party. Teddy Roosevelt got 27% of the vote and he ran as a “Progressive” party candidate. Eugene Debbs got 6% (almost 1 million votes) as a candidate of the “Socialist” party.

But really, these elections are like once in a century type of event. Where a 3rd party actually has a chance in hell of winning.

But for reference with Eugene Debbs… 1 million votes in 1921 is like 3.2 million votes today. For reference the Green party got like 800k votes in 2024

believe me, i’m not under any illusion. but i do genuinely encourage you to do whatever you think will make things better. can’t get much worse

So, your solution is to quote Marx and hope the revolution will materialize.

it’s actually not quoting Marx. Marx believed that a capitalist society will over time always result in a worker’s revolution. I’m more pessimistic about human nature. I think a capitalist society will always result in fascist authoritarianism

I wish I had the privilege of letting things get worse

do it then. make things better, I’m rooting for you.

a capitalist society will always inevitably devolve into fascism, as short-term profit-driven thinking dominates decision making

the DNC is right up there with the GOP in terms of causing this clusterfuck. decades of neoliberal policies have left Americans financially insecure which has caused a total loss of faith in institutions over the last few decades.

in a good decade, a little crisis here and there is maintainable. but when you have dramatic knock-off effects of new technologies combined with global economic shockwaves like COVID and the Ukraine war, all of a sudden the establishment hold on power starts to slip. the corporate world doesn’t care about democracy. they’re more than happy to switch over to a fascist government- there’s a very high potential ROI in bending the knee.

Trump took advantage of this and beat them. We saw the corporate world switch sides during the inauguration. He is now purging the federal government of any elements that may oppose his further renovations.

This problem did not start last year in November. This problem started decades ago and spans generations.

It’s unfortunate but it’s the reality. We as a society are sick. We are fundamentally sick and getting worse. We ignored it and persevered, but it can only be ignored for so long. We are now starting to see serious symptoms, like a person who gets a fever and starts shivering.

Trust me, it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it ever gets better. We’re in for a rough decade.

you’re correct it’s not a unique experience to feel isolated from the rest of your peers. i feel like it’s an experience that might actually be increasing. i think social media ironically adds to this in the youth. many biracial people also experience something like this (ie, too white for the blacks, too black for the whites)

when i got here initially i moved to a place where nobody spoke my native language. so when i went to school, i would get put in a class all by myself with a nice lady who would hold flash cards with pictures on them. she would show me a card, it would say something like “cat” or “ball” and then she would repeat them over and over.

so the first year or so of primary school I was alone in a room because I didn’t speak english yet. really what eventually taught me english was cable TV

another element in the experience is being afraid of authority. the police were dangerous because at any moment if they caught us the family could get separated and we could get deported. one time my parents were cleaning an office late at night (they worked in cleaning when they first arrived in US) and they brought me with.

i didn’t understand what a fire alarm was so i pulled it. my parents, scared that the authorities would arrive and see a young child, took me and put me in the backseat of the car where people’s feet usually go and they put a blanket on me. they told me to be very quiet and not make a sound otherwise we could all be deported. so i hid in that car for an hour or so until the emergency services left

i share these things not to say i had a hard life or anything like that. I think I had a good upbringing. and I understand many Americans have had much worse experiences and also feel alienated as well.

But I share these things just because the story in the OP touched me because I was that 11 year old child once. It’s a life and a set of experiences a lot of Americans don’t really think about very much. Or at least historically has been more or less ignored.

Nowadays illegals have attention but unfortunately an overwhelmingly peaceful people become “rapists and murderers”. if you look up statistics, illegals are 2-4x less likely to commit crime than native born americans (if you get any charge at all, you can get deported… even if you get acquitted or the charges dropped!). so naturally they tend to be more careful breaking laws

Thank you. I feel like one these days. Especially after the naturalization ceremony. This is a country of immigrants and I’m part of it. I’m not ashamed of it anymore. I was when I was younger.

thank you, i appreciate the kind words. like i said, after processing and coming to terms with my upbringing, I see it as a positive these days. I got a unique outlook on life that most people don’t have the privilege to see.

I know things about this country Americans don’t have any clue about. By being sort of “in between” cultures, it lets you zoom out more easily. the world which was once small gets bigger.

It’s very depressing our world is still caught up in racial problems and not important problems like food and shelter.

I think people are scared. Americans are insecure about their future. Financially, emotionally, and societally.

I think we have to go through this painful phase but we will come out the other side with a new 21st century ideology. Once that fixes the contradictions of the 20th century one we still have.

exactly this. later on as an adult I realized I had my own path and that path was always going to be different from the average. got me thinking differently, opened my mind, etc. I think also knowing 3 languages helps

ideology gets impressed upon you at an early age already, especially here in the US.

I grew up illegal in the US. I was brought on a travel visa at the age of 5 and it wasn’t until my mid 20s that I became a citizen.

I vividly remember being in elementary school, around her age, in music class where we were learning the national anthem. The entire class would stand up and we should sing “I’m proud to be an American” and I remember silently crying as I stood up and sang the song.

I cried because I understood even at that age that I was not an American. I was part of everything while simultaneously always being detached from everything. Never fitting in, but pretending to. I think long-term it created a strange sense of detachment from society. This shit fucks you up and it’s heavy stuff for a child to process. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I really started to understand and internalize a positive narrative from my upbringing. An 11 year old child does not have the capacity to process this.

And I’m in my 30s now- I grew up illegal before social media and before this xenophobic outburst started circa 2016. I’d imagine it’s so much worse today.

I feel for this little girl. I feel for all the children in the country who’s only crime was existing. Obama, while famously being the deporter-in-chief (both Obama terms aw more deported than Trump’s first term), at least did offer DACA as an executive order for these children.

Really, I think you can tell the state of a society by how they treat the vulnerable. And the US is getting increasingly brutal and cruel. We’re in for a wild fascist ride, comrades. It’s only just begun.

The machine can’t help but consume its own critique, and every time it does, it exposes its own absurdity.

I appreciate your second response here, it seems less hostile.

My counterpoint would be that capitalism is an Ouroboros. It’s forever devouring its own tail- consuming its own critique and spitting it back out as commodity. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Every once in a while there is some sort of social movement (punks, hippies, hip hop, gays, etc) and it has a real chance to threaten the system.

Punk becomes a fashion statement, hip-hop a soundtrack for commercials and corporate events, gay pride becomes a marketing gimmick. It’s incorporated, stripped of any revolutionary potential and repackaged as an ideological product for you to consume.

This is the perverse genius of capitalism. It doesn’t survive in spite of crisis. It needs the crisis to survive. The absurdity becomes palpable, like you mentioned, but it doesn’t matter. The system flaunts this absurdity, knowing full well that we have no way out.

It is a trap- a Möbius strip of ideology.

So while I enjoyed the performance and I don’t expect anything more from Kendrick (he is under no obligation to be a real revolutionary figure), I also think we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking this was anything more than a corporate spectacle meant to sell future Super Bowl tickets by way of exploiting the discontent and dissatisfaction of poor blacks. (and really, it’s two fold. a) you exploit the black culture not only in the positive way that’s black-positive b) you exploit the angry white culture who is threatened by it). You get to double dip.

You’re right to put on the glasses. Just don’t forget they distort as much as they reveal.

Yep. When you think you have been freed from ideology at that moment you are in ideology. Turtles all the way down. I am under no illusion that I am an not an idiot.

I don’t claim to be an activist. I’m interested in the ideological undercurrents

You want revolution without the mess, rebellion without the noise, but that’s not how this works.

This is the very thing I’m claiming about the performance. It’s controlled rebellion. Performative dissent. Dissent and dissatisfaction itself becomes commodified and sold back to you. It allows the viewer to feel like they’re part of something revolutionary without ever threatening the system. Imagine a safety valve, releasing just enough pressure to prevent real change. It’s like a laugh track in a sitcom. It tells you what to feel. You can have the experience of laughing without actually having to laugh.

This type of “socially conscious” art (movies, music, etc) functions in a way lets the consumer feel like they have participated in something emancipatory without actually having to. It’s ideology.

Note at no point did he criticize the status quo. He did not mention president Trump, who was present in the crowd, at all. Kendrick, a legendary socially conscious rapper who is an icon for life- chose not to say anything at all. Why?

Either a) he doesn’t care or b) he understands there is a very small window of acceptable “dissent” he is allowed to express. I think this micro-dose of dissent pacifies and sedates the viewer.

hijacked their platform and made them pay for it

He made them pay? He made them hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the most highly viewed super bowl performance in my adult life.

this isn’t about your approval.

You seem to care more about my approval than I do. What difference does it make if I approve? I liked the performance but I’m discussing the ideological basis for these styles of performative vague dissent.

Me and you both are constantly eating from the trash can of ideology. It’s painful, but it’s worthwhile to put on the glasses so you can at least see what you are eating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k

Kendrick dropping truth bombs on the NFL’s biggest stage

What truth bombs did he drop? Some vaguely rebellious sounding lines? “The revolution will be televised?”

This was milquetoast at best. Actively harmful at worst. I really enjoyed the performance but he is doing exactly what he criticizes the record labels of doing. Taking black culture and commodifying it by turning it into a spectacle.

This was corporate spectacle and nothing more.

“Come, comrades, and claim your Che Guevara t-shirts. Indulge that half-buried discontent with the system by picking up these subversive punk rock accessories. For a fleeting moment, we’ll even add a trans flag poster—yours for nothing but shipping and handling. Put on the revolution you crave.”

It was always meant to be a show

The border is over 1,500 miles. It’s so wildly expensive and impractical to build a wall over all of it that the notion is absurd. And if you build a wall, people will climb over it. They will bury underneath it. They will cut through it. Etc

Even if he had succeeded there is little chance it would have meaningfully stemmed the tide of illegals coming across the border. Trump was fully aware of this. But it’s doesn’t matter- like I said- it was show. Americans don’t want a complicated speech on the nuances of economic migrant migration to the US. They don’t want to hear about labor shortages in the US and the changing demographics.

It’s much easier to say “We’re building a Wall” and everybody applauds. Trump on a fundamental level understands this very well. And he’s really really good at it.

Having said all that- it doesn’t even take into considering more than majority of illegals in the US did not cross the border at all. They come on legal visas at legal ports of entries like airports and just overstay their visa. So the Wall is incapable of even impacting the largest source of illegal immigrants.

what didn’t happen was the result of concentrated effort. This time the dems seem more resigned

The Dems have slowly been joining the GOP in the anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Joe Biden near the end of his turn did a photoshoot with CBP and talked about strong borders and used the world “illegal” in a speech. He promised to halt the construction of “the Wall”- he instead expanded construction.

Back when Biden was running initially he campaigned on “a compassionate approach to immigration”. Kamala, however, campaigned on “strong border and national security”

The entire country is becoming radicalized. That isn’t to say GOP (and Trump especially) is more extreme, but a rising tide lifts all boats. or maybe sinks them, I don’t know

i wonder if it’s all just a big show. he threatened tariffs to mexico and canada. when canada said “ok bro fuck you too” all of a sudden they come to an agreement to delay. similar story in Mexico. in a few weeks he’ll say “i got the best deal out of the history of deals. Mexico and Canada are gonna pay their fair share” and people will forget about it to focus on the next ludicrous thing he says

i wonder if it’s gonna be the same with the deportations. something like 5% of the workforce is illegal. and they are highly concentrated in specific industries. it would wreck havoc on those industries and the economy as a whole. it’s really hard to understate. something like every 100 illegals deported causes something like 18 jobs to be lost according to research from Iza based on Obama’s radical deportations. (Obama’s 1st and 2nd term both deported more than Trump’s first term)

i read an analysis by an economist the other day, the deportations alone could reduce lead to the GDP shrinking by something like 3%. keep in mind the housing crisis back in '08 led to a 2.4% decrease in GDP

basically- if Trump actually goes through with his plans we’re in for a long period of economic hardship that we haven’t seen in half a century. and with it comes lots of radical movements because people will be angry and scared and the right wing is more than happy to throw fuel on the fire

however… maybe this is all sort of a show. Kind of like his last term with “the Wall”. The wall was never meant to be built nor was it meant to accomplish anything. It was just a big theater for his base. An easy to understand symbol to point to. Trump supporters believe based on feeling and not on logic.

of course, that could just be me being optimistic.

yeah this is just the start. it’s gonna get progressively worse until inevitably the system blows up. that could take decades. i’m guessing it culminates in some sort of unwinnable war