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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • Lets back up a bit.

    You claimed that the Gaza issue ‘alone’ proved your point. So originally you were suggesting that not only those 6 mil were left fanatics, but the other 12 mil as well? *

    My claim is that there are two groups: crazy abstaining leftoids and normal people who lean left. The Dems lost because they failed to effectively appeal to this second group. You might think that this group is stupid - I’m not arguing that, lots of groups have poor judgement and they are definitely not the worst, but it’s still besides the point.

    I think that group can be mobilized with a good campaign that appeals to those people. I think that’s a big part of how Mamdani got unprecedentedly high turnout in New York. I don’t think that everyone who voted for him was a mad lefty.

    • btw, I want to point out the study said that those people listed Gaza as ‘their top issue’, not their exclusive reason for abstaining. Saying that every single person who listed Gaza as their top issue for abstaining was some kind of terminal lefty is a mad enough claim in itself.






  • I’m not surprised. Carl Sagan saw this coming in 1995

    I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…


  • Isn’t there enough bad things happening right now to complain about? This is a totally imaginary scenario that is years away and you’re all ruining your day a little bit more by engaging with it.

    WHY?

    It is totally wasted energy. Total waste of time. Counter productive to your political goals. Encouraging a culture of fixating on problems you have no idea how to solve. Bonding over helplessness and apathy.

    You know a lot of canvasers are thinking about ditching the dems and going independant? You could encourage them, you could become one of them, you could help give them arguments and counter narratives, make memes, shitpost for a good cause, post in mixed comment sections where half the people hate you and fish for an even mix of upvotes to downvotes - that’s how you know you’re reaching people! Take a little pleasure in becoming unbotherable.

    Also, counter narratives are great because you don’t have to substantiate anything. ’ ICE is deporting random innocent people to fill quotas ’ - your move, rightoids, I spent five seconds writing that and one braincell. Zero effort and they might end up spending 100x the effort countering it. God knows I’ve been on the other side of that. It’s a brilliant rhetorical tactic.

    You don’t even have to keep arguing, you can just post ‘sounds dumb’ or ‘bad argument’ or nothing at all and just leave!

    Bots wouldn’t exist if posting comments on the internet didn’t do anything. And even doing nothing is better than perpetuating misery-posting culture in the online left.

    Tony Benn said that the job of the left is to 1) anger people and 2) inspire hope. We need to get a lot better at the second one.

    :edit:

    Just to clarify, I also hate the Dems lmao





  • PERFECTLY CLEAR? They walked back calling them WEIRD, let alone FASCISTS! And the moment they win Biden is shaking hands and saying lets all get along! Where’s the panic? Where’s the urgency?

    People do not know what’s going on. They still don’t. You have no appreciation for how much noise is drowning out the signal. If the Dems gave a shit about democracy they should have called Don a pedophile 1000 times every day of the campaign.


  • American democracy and freedom are fucked. But I don’t blame those 36% of non-voters. These people were INSPIRED to give up on politics.

    It’s the media environment. Political coverage fucking sucks by design. Left populism is too interesting to be given air time, too much of a threat to the people who fund the parties and own the media. Politics used to be interesting. Politicians used to say things, now they just run out the clock with white noise.



  • Absolutely right on point A.

    Point B: This is wrong and you’ve obscured the idea. " we ( potential third party voters ) must vote for them because we ( left voters as a whole ) are voting for them " It’s not circular logic, they are two different groups.

    So as someone who wants the DNC ( and the GOP ) to disappear, here’s what I think are the important questions:

    1. At what point does a third party become viable?
    2. How do you build support for a third party when the spoiler effect is real and everyone knows it?

    IMO a good idea would be a threshold system. So anyone can join the party and say, " I will vote if there are X commited voters ". If not, the party stands down. They get to build support without spoiling the vote.

    This is all theoretical of course since the US may have just had it’s last election.



  • 1 ) public ignorance is a widespread social force not a personal character fault that happens to individually affect the majority of the population.

    2 ) This attitude of moral contempt is actively repellent to the people we need to reach out to, who do not subscribe to your premise. A lot of people don’t think they are fascists - they are wrong, but they’ll still look at you funny unless you can do a damn good job of making the argument. The Dems couldn’t, the media couldn’t, and nobody is watching it anyway. WE have to do it. Make better arguments and reach out to people instead of circlejerking and making our opponents arguments for them.