• @grue@lemmy.world
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    1406 months ago

    Democracy supporters have to win every single time, while the fascists only have to win once. This is not a sustainable situation. We have to do what is necessary in a way that’s a lot more permanent than just winning an election.

    • @anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      336 months ago

      I think a big part of this is rural over representation. Not even talking the senate, but the house to be fair should allot 1 rep per the minimum pop of any state, which would give us about 573 reps and like 676 electors for president. Hell if we did it as the founders intended, one per like 60k people we’d have a house of 5.6k members.

    • LeadersAtWork
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      246 months ago

      That requires carrying this energy past the election cycle, regardless of the differences we may have on opinion, and coming together in agreement.

      Historically, the Left has been rather poor at banding together. We’re more likely to argue than get things done most of the time. So it’ll be an uphill battle for leaders of smaller groups across the Nation. First though, we need to make it past this hurdle.

        • LeadersAtWork
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          26 months ago

          It’s still a choice that we should strive to utilize. Not doing so may mean not having that choice, or the illusion of one. I do agree though, it’s about time we shifted things back towards a better life for everyone.

      • @explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        26 months ago

        Did Harris have any pro-democracy stuff in her platform, like ending FPTP or the Electoral College? Trump campaigned on bad election reforms like ID requirements and same-day voting.

    • @Anticorp@lemmy.world
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      36 months ago

      Not really. The fascists won in Germany, yet they’re not currently fascist. Nothing is forever.

      • @samus12345@lemmy.world
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        126 months ago

        Fascism was defeated because of the Allies, led by the US, the country with the most powerful military in the world by a large margin. Who’s going to defeat the US if it goes full fascist?

        • @Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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          6 months ago

          80% of Nazi casualties happened on the eastern front by the Communists. But yeah, the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia has fallen to fascism, and now the US has too. The world is fucked.

        • @Anticorp@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to, but I don’t think the USA would be able to continue funding a military 20x the expense of the next most powerful military while under authoritarian rule. We have the funds for such a military now because of a hundred different conditions that wouldn’t exist anymore under a fascist government.

          • @samus12345@lemmy.world
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            176 months ago

            Fascist governments always collapse eventually because of loyalty over competence, but the thought of the damage a powerful country like the US would do before that collapse is terrifying.

          • @MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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            16 months ago

            The US spends 3.4% of GDP in defence. Israel is at 5.3%. Also the US only spends a bit more then 3x what China spends and well US products are more expensive. So the US can probably fund its military for quite some time, without too many problems and right wingers love to do it, to bomb the shit out of people.

      • Prehensile_cloaca
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        6 months ago

        Hubris. Democrats lose because characters like RBG and President Biden simply could not fathom that stepping aside was ALWAYS what they should have done.

        These miserable fucking dinosaurs have gambled away the good intentions, hopes, and stability of the entire nation because their internal mantra was that they are our political saviors, while everyone under 50 was full-throated screaming that they needed to step aside.

        Fuck all you geriatric, foot on the gas, oblivious, incompetent fucks. If (big if) we ever regain our Democracy, the first thing on the agenda should be AGE CAPS for all public offices. Elderly fucking hubris has doomed us to more misery.

        • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          106 months ago

          Democrats lose because characters like RBG and President Biden simply could not fathom that stepping aside was ALWAYS what they should have done.

          Lol, dude the guy that won the election is the oldest person to ever run for president in the history of the country, and a sitting Democratic president stepped aside due to public pressure for younger leadership, but yeah the concept of gerontocracy is what did them in. 🙄

        • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          26 months ago

          Age caps are good.

          A rating voting system would be good too.

          But I don’t think there won’t be younger people with the same kind of hubris.

  • @itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
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    586 months ago

    I do not trust Americans to “do their own research”. I’ve seen how that has gone in the past. Too many Americans do their own research while scrolling Facebook from the toilet.

    • XIIIesq
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      136 months ago

      Research requires a critical mind. Think of a person you know that has average intelligence, 50% of people are more stupid than that.

      And I’m not saying that stupidity is solely an issue for the republican electorate, I’m just saying “do your own research” is an unrealistic expectation.

      People need to be engaged with.

  • Jo Miran
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    6 months ago

    Four years ago we gave it a stay of execution. Until we fully purge the fascist and focus government to actually serve the people, we are going to keep finding ourselves in chaos, until China beats us to and at everything.

    • @pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      146 months ago

      Yeah, a Trump victory scares me, but what scares me more is the more competent fascist that comes next. The Democrats can’t keep waiting for the Republicans to, “come to their senses.” The material conditions of the working class need to improve, or fascist populism will take in the absence of economic populism.

    • @Anticorp@lemmy.world
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      106 months ago

      It’s crazy how the global powers have handed China so much power as a result of their insatiable greed. China was hardly a concern 40 years ago, but 4 decades of manufacturing and stealing literally everyone’s IP have given them resources they didn’t have access to before.

      • @Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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        56 months ago

        China didn’t have to steal anything, the west handed them all of our trade and engineering secrets on a silver platter just to boost their profit margins.

      • Jo Miran
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        46 months ago

        Twenty years ago they were still basically nothing.

    • @timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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      156 months ago

      Poor take. Truthfully, the people want hate. That’s what trump ran on and promised.

      This isn’t about policy or likeability or whatever. This is what people want and they proved it. Stop blaming the Democrat party and blame what this country and its people are instead.

      • Prehensile_cloaca
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        6 months ago

        Are you kidding? The DNC circumvented the entire primary process to give us ANOTHER “anointed one” and, again, possibly the worst candidate possible to create the coalition that has always been Democrats’ bread-and-butter. They even had Hillary go down to FL to lecture voters, while Bill went to Michigan to preach to Muslim communities about why the war in Israel is right. It’s a fucking lampoon of strategy.

        Every single DNC “elite” should retire from politics, today. They’re losers, and losers lose. Because they never learn from their mistakes, which is what is required to win.

        • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          36 months ago

          They are elite. Not in quotes. The fact that they remain an elite and will remain an elite under Trump shows us that they are not losers and they don’t lose.

          They didn’t lose control over DNC, that’s what they care about, perpetual real power over half the politics in one big country, not temporary and limited power over all of it.

          In this case they have also shown Trump and anybody else that they are a very convenient opposition, that should remain as it is. It’s a win.

          But you’re the guys who flew to the Moon, invented nukes and the Internet. You’ll think of something.

        • @scemmy@lemmy.world
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          36 months ago

          I’m sorry, since when is circumventing primary process worse than literally trying to steal an election? You want the perfect Democrat to run, while the other side is running a joke.

          Let’s not kid ourselves, the reason Democrats lost was because of economy and voter apathy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see Democrats lose control of all branches of the government. No matter what strategies they adopted, it wouldn’t have worked.

          She was already a VP and our country still has inflation. People are idiots and blame it on Democrats.

          • @HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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            26 months ago

            I mean, it’s likely both. Apathy towards hate is still pretty bad imo, and hate is the Republican party platform. Also just saying, the economy needs some inflation and I think we’re around 3% right now, which economists agree is ideal? Not an expert there tho

      • @tyo_ukko@sopuli.xyz
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        86 months ago

        Hate and simple answers. Trump will “fix inflation” and “bring jobs back”, what could be better? Don’t ask how or what it will cost.

      • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        66 months ago

        He didn’t say he preferred trump, he said the Democrats are useless.

        Which they are; they couldn’t defeat an orange windbag with transparent aspirations of autocracy.

      • @Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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        116 months ago

        It’s more like all pretense is gone now. Before, there was this veneer of legitimacy. Now, it’s straight up fascism. It’s a matter of image projection.

      • XIIIesq
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        6 months ago

        More like the oligarchy now have 99% of the power rather than 98%.

        The issue is that we believe we have a free democracy when the only power we have is to put an X in a box every few years. The system isn’t broken, it’s working as it’s designed to.

        • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          26 months ago

          The issue is that we believe we have a free democracy when the only power we have is to put an X in a box every few years.

          Right.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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      106 months ago

      I wonder how quickly will the US progress from Elon Musk prancing around on stage to Trump Jack Ma-ing him, or if Bloomberg will commit suicide by six shots to the back of the head.

      The golden age of the US oligarchy has been this past period. Under fascism, the causal relationship between having power and money reverses.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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          26 months ago

          Look at Russia’s oligarchs. Hell, look at Hungary.

          There was this one wealthy guy bankrolling Orbán’s campaigns, one of the wealthiest people in Hungary. He got into an argument with Orbán publicly. Today he’s neither wealthy, nor living in Hungary.

          The people will not turn on rich people. I’m saying rich people are used to be controlling politics, but in a Russian style system, rich people are controlled BY politics, not the other way around.

          • @Fedizen@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            He’s still alive and no longer in hungary? so like rich people might move to their vacation estate for a year or two? this is just ordinary rich people stuff except instead of doing it for a tax cut they’re doing it because they publicly disagreed. Its theater. The whole point is to protect the money piles. It took russia like 20 years to start fussing about rich people that left the country

            • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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              46 months ago

              Imagine Murdoch arguing with Trump, trying to bankroll another party to rein him in, with it ending in him selling all his news outlets and retiring.

              The point is that money doesn’t get you political power in this system.

      • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        46 months ago

        WDYM, Hitler was pretty friendly with German oligarchy. No suiciding them or something, their relationships were pretty chill, having fun together, going to countryside, going to each other with families, having coffee.

      • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        26 months ago

        True.

        But now more of the hurdles will be removed. Gotta make that wealth extraction more efficient 📈🥴
        Can’t let those poor and middle class people hold onto any of their money.

      • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        16 months ago

        That’s not true, we had a good run from the forties until I was born in the eighties. A whole forty years of some amount of power!

  • @UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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    126 months ago

    I get why people say you “have to” vote against someone in a First Past The Post voting system. What I don’t get is the inaction from the democratic party on changing the voting system between elections.

    I wish the democrats had one tenth the urgency they claim to have. Democracy is one election away from falling… wouldn’t you want multiple chances to defeat the republicans every election?

    Democrats are so full of themselves, they won’t accept that they might have to step out of the way to prevent the republicans from ruining this country. This fight is greater then the democratic party. They should start acting like it by pushing to get rid of FPTP voting in the states they control.

    • @zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      176 months ago

      What I don’t get is the inaction from the democratic party on changing the voting system between elections.

      1. The Democrats didn’t secure a large enough majority in previous elections to overcome Republican resistance to changing things like FPTP voting or the electoral college.

      2. There is a lot of contention within the Democratic party (at the federal level at least) as it shifts further towards the right in an effort to remain in power. Getting rid of FPTP voting would make it harder for centrist/right leaning Democrats to remain in power.

      Several states have switched to RCV for some of their elections, and progress has been slow, but it’s being made. If you want to see more, elect people that prioritize implementing better voting systems.

    • @eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      66 months ago

      that’s why we keep being forced to chose between the lesser of two evils; it’s still evil either way

      • @kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        -16 months ago

        Except people aren’t choosing the lesser of 2 evils every time. If they did, it would pass back across that “Evil” line. That’s literally the nature of it.

        • @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          36 months ago

          Not when both choices keep gradually drifting towards more evil. The current Dem leadership is to the right of Reagan and trying to rehabilitate one of the worst war criminals and -profiteers in the history of the world and his ideologically identical daughter.

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    26 months ago

    What democracy?

    The Democrats and Republicans fought harder to keep the party I support off the ballot than they did to stop each other from getting elected.