this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Maybe you're misreading my intention. The image is supposed to convey that the Democrats use Republicans as a threat so they can stay in power, and the frayed rope represents them losing control. What did you think I was trying to say?
Yes, the Republican party is controlled by the Democrats so they can use them as a threat. Makes perfect sense now, there's no other explanation.
The Democrats and Republicans work together to make sure you don't have any meaningful choice. The Republicans don't know that they're being controlled because they have only the politics of hatred and destruction. Democrats keep them around for the appearance of civility.
Saying the Democrats control the republicans is silly but saying that they use the republicans as a threat to stay in power is indisputable. They literally funded pro trump candidates in republican primaries under the assumption they would be easier to beat in the general election.
That's what I thought you meant, the image implies they're the same thing wearing different masks. The elephant is the weapon, the donkey is the one using it. In other words, a one party system pretending to be two.
What? I'm really not into us politics and also it's pretty clear that the two party system is shit, but I never got the feeling that the two parties are similar in any way?
They have a lot more similarities than differences:
What the actual hell is this?
Misleading and full of bunk. The two parties are very far from one another, regardless of what this guy's cute little graphic says.
Say I'm a single-issue voter for nuclear disarmament, which party represents my interest?
Clearly the Democrats (specifically progressives) align most closely with what you want.
Cool story, bro.
Ok genius, first sentence. Who was on board from the getgo to stop the rollback?
Republicans. SOME Democrats join them, unlike ALL Republicans who are against nuclear rollback altogether.
Ergo, the Democrats most closely align with your goals.
Please inform me of the method by which one can vote for "SOME Democrats" without also implicitly consenting to be represented by the rest of the party.
And also, why you think your time is better spent trying to convince a hypothetical single-issue voter to capitulate than calling the Dems and demanding they do better.
You act like you have an alternative. Republicans are directly opposed to your pov, and Dems aren't perfect. Those are your choices.
Exactly. There is no alternative. This is a hostage situation.
And when the guy holding you hostage asks you to pick which of your kids he should murder first, the right move isn't to vote for the "lesser" evil, but to spit in his eye.
And by doing so you implicitly vote for the side that represents you the least.
Perhaps you should look up how first past the post works. Not voting IS voting, but not in a favorable way for yourself.
Neither party represents my interests and, as you've seen, the "lesser evil" argument doesn't motivate me in the slightest. If you want me to vote for Dems then you'll have to make them worth voting for and stop acting like they can coast to victory on fear of the Republicans alone.
I'm aware of FPTP and its mathematical implications, our country is designed to provide only the appearance of democracy while actually limiting choice to those candidates the parties deem inoffensive to their campaign financiers. And we're stuck with them unless you can convince the two-party state to abolish the leverage it has over third parties, so stop acting like they'll let you vote your way out of this situafion.
Real change would require a political revolution, and I've long since lost my faith that Americans would build something less fascist given the chance.
And there it is. The dumbest thing I'll read all day.
Let me know when the 2 party stranglehold allows you to vote it out. Until then you'll sit high atop your bullshit mountain preaching on the internet, whining on and on about how things should be.
Meanwhile, completely oblivious that you and people like you are exactly the reason why we don't have enough voting power to enact real change.
You don't even irritate me. I pity you.
You're the one insisting I don't have a choice here. Why should anyone bother helping reinforce a system designed to disenfranchise them? To keep the "wrong people" from taking power, as if that wasn't already the case?
If that sounds like Accelerationism to you, then you're reading me correctly. Preservation of the intolerable status quo only delays and inflames the inevitable upheaval.
Oblivious?
No, I'm counting on it. The Democrats won't change unless they have to, and people like me are the ones they need to change for. People like you, who "vote blue no matter who", can be safely ignored by party leadership since they know you'll vote for them anyway.
Well unlike you suggest, I don't vote blue no matter who, I vote blue because the other choice is demonstrably worse.
You wax eloquent about how things need to change and so you choose to do nothing, but what happens when you recruit enough lefties to your side that the right is able to establish the equivalent of a dictatorship via voter suppression, coups, etc? What then? At that point you are 100% fucked.
Are you one of these idiots who actively want a civil war? Because if so you can give that idea up, it isn't going to happen.
You are the equivalent of an old man yelling at clouds to change their shape.
You say nothing ever changes, but it already has! Biden, while being not nearly the lefty I would like him to be, has done a fantastic job compared to what I expected. It may or may not occur to you that Biden so far has governed much more left that Obama did.
Things do change, they just take time.
I'm sure the party cares deeply about this justification, since that seems to be all they're running on these days.
I remember back in 1984 when such a strategy was considered comical:
Says the guy who thinks that repeatedly voting in a game that was rigged from the start isn't "doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result".
Non-fascists will be forced to accept that working within a system that's designed to disenfranchise them can never produce a democratic government and join with the anti-fascists. The dictatorship is subsequently overthrown by popular action at the cost of many lives (which likely includes my own as a nonbinary person with left-wing politics). This creates space for a second constitutional convention to fundamentally reform the law of the land.
We've been 100% fucked for longer than you've been alive, the only question is whether or not you're comfortable with the current rate of fuckery and what you're willing to risk to change it.
Lol, of course not. I have merely accepted that nothing short of a second American Revolution could overthrow the two-party system and that things will definitely get worse before they can get better.
Hell, I predicted this way back in November 2016. Trump's win would galvanize the Democrats in 2020, and the subsequent lack of meaningful change depresses the vote enough that 2022 and 2024 go to the republicans. Trump then punishes his percieved enemies while the Democrats continue to chase Republican voters to the right, further fracturing their own left-wing base.
Oh we understand. It just means you're not worth talking to.
But you just replied to them
You don't determine my worth, fascist.
That's an actual liberal stance I see thrown around way too often so without a /s or some other explicit commentary I can understand why the post would be taken at face value or without assuming there's an implied sentiment.
Maybe I put too much trust in the audience, but I wanted it to accurately depict liberal ideology while subtly undermining its hypocrisy.
I feel that, like if a lib had posted this then they'd have been sincere about it but it was you posting it so we all know what's up
I think the frayed rope is the difference. A lib would put an unbreakable chain on the elephant.
The fact that you think that image accurately depicts liberal ideology is enough to dismiss this out of hand. A moment-in-time choice of vote is as indicative of an ideology as comparing weather to climate. And equating the vote against literal fascists, openly and with pride working to dismantle the republic and install an autocracy, as being a scare tactic just to stay in power is as small-minded as I seem to, disappointingly, expect from the internet.
But I understand all that if you’re spoon-fed that from your choice of news outlets, it gives you less to think about and more to “meme” about.
Where do you see any news outlets expressing that the Republicans are the threat used by Democrats to control the population? Even your attacks are disingenuous.
I never once said anything about “control the population.” Clearly you are doing exactly what idiot conservatives do — make shit up. Have fun living in the bubble of nonsense and intellectual mediocrity.
I didn't say you said that. Work on your reading comprehension. The idea that the Republicans are the threat used by the Democrats to control the population is the basis of MY meme.