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Millions of Christians not planning to vote this November, could shape election: Study
(www.dailykos.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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There are other biases worth paying attention to as well, confirmation bias most particularly. This is why details are so important. It's not good enough to simply wave your hand at "bullshit". You need to examine exactly what the bullshit is, who it benefits, and most importantly, who votes for it.
That last part is critical. We can whine all day long about our systems, but in any representative government, those votes are the most important data point. Here in the States, for instance, we had a couple specific people in the Senate stonewalling our recent attempts at progressive policies. These specific individuals need to be noted and remembered, instead of taking the easy way out and handwaving the whole system or whole groups of people away.
On top of that, there is still the electorate to consider. The reason the US leans to the right of most of Europe is because the American populace leans much further to the right, to the point of openly flirting with fascism. And not just now, either, it's littered throughout our history. Even pre-WW2, there was a significant amount of fascist support here, and its never really gone away. Because of our form of government, we will get what we ask for, for better or for worse.
Agreed.
The reason why I simplified it down to "bullshit" is because my post was too long already without going into details about the what the "bullshit" actually was. ;)
And yeah, having returned to my homeland with all the political experience from abroad, I also see here the cultural factors that keep the system as is, as well as how the voting system written into the constitution mathematically creates a pair of "winners" - not as bad as the US but not all that much better - who are the only ones who could change said Constitution to make the system more Democratic, which they will never do).
The US is, IMHO, even more calcified socially and politically (some years ago I would've said "not so much in the personal freedoms axis" but lately all the attacks on things like women bodily autonomy and trans-sexuality make me think otherwise) and hence far harder to steer away from Ultra-Capitalist dog-eat-dog Far-Right thinking and into even just the minimum subset of Social Democracy ideas (such as Universal Healthcare).
I don't really know what might work to change things there. I can only thing of grassroots campaigns against specific congressional candidates (like plastering posters with pictures of Palestinian childrens' corpses - tiltle "This is what X has been paid to defend" - all over the place in the areas of were candidates who got AIPAC money are running and doing the same on the run up to the next Democratic Primary).
That said, that doesn't change the point that the Democrats are not a party "of the people, for the people", which probably explains how so many less well off and less educated people ended up being drawn so fast to the populist rhetoric of Trump and his wannabe clones - most of the Democrat Party has become so bad at ruling for normal people (and the Press so riddled with slick lies and manipulation in defense of doing things for the benefit of the few) that any old loud raging bollocks that just sounded different was enough to attract lots of votes.
Looking from the outside, it seems to me that the field that Trump sowed and already harvested once was plowed and fertilized by all those years when both parties were ruling for the few whilst using the Press as nothing more than Propaganda outlets to deceive and swindle the many.
Agreed on some points, but again, the details are important. Most dems do consistently vote for more beneficial policies, stronger social support structures, against tax cuts, etc. It needs to be understood exactly how our legislation gets passed, how a filibuster works, etc though. You cannot simply say "well, dems were in charge, so why wasn't everything fixed?" without going into the details of what sorts of tools obstructionists have at their disposal. Details are critical if one wants to accurately understand, you can't just stay at a big-picture view regardless of how tempting it is.
I do think the answer is grassroots, but try to remember, in a right-leaning society people won't care as much about Palestinian children. That's not a right-leaning position. The right-leaning position is to shrug your shoulders and callously go "not my people". So it's important to think about how to frame things in a way that will convince typical Americans, while acknowledging their biases.
My opinion of Democrat politicians was formed by observing the consequences of Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act (i.e. the 2008 Crash), who and how Barack Obama helped in the aftermath of that crash (major asset owners and financiers, unconditionally and by taking money away from the many which resulted in a decade were inequality in the US exploded and social mobility crashed to Latin America levels) and how Hilary Clinton sold herself very overtly to Finance (for example, being paid a cool half a million to give a speech to a handful of Goldman Sachs' employees, which she did just at the start of her electoral campaign against Trump and almost certainly caused her to lose the election).
I'm sure some Democrat voters aren't greedy sociopath assholes, almost certainly most of them, maybe even an overwhelming majority of them, but Democrat Politicians are mainly slippery sold-out sociopath snakes (with a few notable exceptions) who when it comes to anything but Moral Liberalism are almost as Rightwing as the Republicans and far to the Right of the rest of the World and as the Israeli Genocide is making painfully clear, even in the domain of Moral Liberalism for all their playacting of anti-racists who just want equal treatment for all, they're de facto racist that support extreme violence if committed by those they see as a "western" (read: white) race against those they see as "lesser" races (Muslims, which is so fashionable do discriminate against these days in the West), same as the Republicans.
As shown by what they chose to do when the Republicans can't actually block them, the Democrats claiming it's the Republicans blocking them is often scapegoating the other side for they themselves not wanting to do something.
The Democrats do however have a much slicker and more heavily hypocrite Propaganda than the "modern" Republicans, which reminds me very much of the polished deceiver and hypocrite style of the Rightwing (not just New Labour but also the Tories) in the UK and even of the Upper Class there in general (in the real world the English Gentleman is not somebody who does the right thing, it's somebody who projects the right appearance whilst doing what's best for themselves without caring about the consequences for others - it's a learned skillset for image management and deceiving others, not a moral compass)
Yeah, Bill was pretty neo-liberal. That's still the center of our electorate, though, that was politicians giving our people what they wanted. Us wanting the wrong things is an education problem, not a corruption problem. Anti-smart-people sentiments are unfortunately very strong in our country, though, as our current climate demonstrates very sadly, though attitudes have been changing. Then Obama's bailouts of the banks were unfortunately necessary at the time, as bank failures are a good way to worsen an economic crisis. Hilary taking money from financiers isn't really the coup the media makes it out to be, either, from a neo-liberals perspective such people are very important. Regardless, I like to think we have learned from these economic mistakes.
Regarding Israel, let's not pretend the US hasn't saved some Gazan lives. 2 million people live there, Netanyahu wants them gone, yet most are still alive. How did that happen?
Again, details are important. We could point to the Build Back Better plan that Biden pushed, almost passed, but wasn't quite able to. Look at who voted for it. You seem to want to think in "groups" of people, you should cut that out. People are individuals, responsible for their own decisions. We need to pay attention to all of them, regardless of how challenging that becomes. Propagandists will not want to do that, though, they will only point you at entire groups of people, demonizing them. This is no good, and is a strong sign you've been propagandized. Simple common sense dictates that a person cannot be judged solely from their group membership.
edit: Additionally, you may note that even in the height of our neo-liberal 90's, not everyone voted to repeal Glass-Steagal. 8 Senators had better sense. Most were dems:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1061/vote_106_1_00354.htm