Lemmy ml in shambles
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Too many people see compromise as a weakness and it's destroying democracy which is built on this very principle that all different kinds of people have to come together and make laws to create a common denominator.
But for some reason political parties today catch flak left and right if they compromise on some of their positions in order to achieve at least a bit of progress instead of being unyielding on it but not changing anything since noone else would agree on it.
Imho that's one of the reasons why populist parties today gain so much ground: the very act of compromise is seen as weak by many and they capitalize on that to attack the other parties
The fascist says 'Meet me in the middle!'
You take 1 step forward.
The fascist takes 2 steps backwards and says 'Meet me in the middle!'.
The shifting of the Overton window is real and an important part of the American Republican playbook.
However the above commenter is not talking about American Republicans, they're talking about the purity culture among leftists that prevents them from voting for left leaning liberals.
In the current election the choices are 1 step to the left or 50 yards to the right, and because it's not 2 steps to the left they refuse to vote.
I don't disagree, but I think the attitude comes from exhaustion at the Democrats spending 50 years meeting Republicans in the middle and telling more left leaning groups that their desires aren't as important or that they're at fault for Democrats losing because they scared off some mythical right leaning centrist who would have otherwise voted for the Democrats.
Plus, I'm not convinced that a large part of the not voting bloc that you hear online isn't actually just a disenfranchisement campaign.
I agree on the not-voting bloc - I'd also add that the zealotry I've seen, the black and white thinking... All of it reminds me more of religious fundamentalist groups than it does of the progressives I know.
Keep in mind that from state to state the amount of people who would be able to vote but have been restricted ranges from near 0% to 8%.
The three worst states are Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi.
It obviously doesnt account for all of the non voters but its still substantial.
In this case when we're talking about "non-voter" it's about the uncommitted movement, not about the deliberately disenfranchised.
The Republican party is thrilled with the uncommitted movement and has done as much as possible to push for their success.
It's not that I disagree with the uncommitted movement in principle: I hope that their push brings about real change. They are useful to the Republican party nonetheless, and if key battleground states like Michigan are lost because of them it will be a major blow to any hope of incremental change.
The Democratic party has to be the big tent party because the Republicans are the party of narrow minded bigotry. That does mean that there will always be leftists dissatisfied with the DNC.
When that dissatisfaction leads to "cutting off your own nose to spite your face" behavior is when the leftist purity culture becomes a problem.
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and what makes you think we dont vote for left leaning liberals, when its literally the only option?
The options are 50 yards to the right or 5 feet to the right, but fuck me for wanting someone to even look to the left.
Obligatory: I'm voting for the D, at least the VP pick is aware of the left.
Everyone loves the D
Something something political relativity...
That's fair, I don't live in America. I live in a country where I can vote for "spoiler" parties and it actually does take power away from center parties. The issue seems more generally relevant here.
Unfortunately even proportional systems have proven to be vulnerable to this lately
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If a party is viable they strictly speaking aren't a spoiler. 3rd party wise in the US. 3rd party candidates in local elections are great. In my state there are plenty of offices Republicans run for uncontested. I would vote sight unseen for any non Republican aligned candidate running against them.
National elections....... 3rd parties running here can't help but be spoilers. First there's 50 separate sub elections they have to qualify for in the first place. Most don't even qualify for half that at best. So they've already lost. Then on the off chance they somehow won one.(never really happened in 250 years) There's the EC system and delegates. Some states are winner take all, some proportional. And while they're supposed to vote to represent the states population. Faithless electors are a thing. Meaning 3rd parties just lost harder.
Its something like a .00000001% chance with an over 6 sigma confidence rating. You have better odds of getting struck by lightning multiple times while dancing the Macarena.
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No compromise with fascists. That's how we got here.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about democratic parties working together on issues in a functioning democracy with more than two parties. And if those parties have different ideas of how to reach a goal and compromise on it to get to the same goal - then that often results in them losing voters to parties pointing out how they broke their promise of doing it a certain way and how they should have insisted on their solution
Revolutions are long-term work. They are not nor ever have been overnight affairs throughout history.
Now there's an adage attributed to everyone's favoritr 20th century revolutionary actor: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."
These are to be taken into account together. Don't mistake those weeks as separate or independent from the decades.
Martin wouldn't have won without Malcolm. And he wouldn't have won if he spent all his time yelling at Malcom to calm down instead of fighting for civil rights.
You can say you want slow incremental change because you think we have plenty of time. (Most will disagree with you tho, cuz you're wrong)
But if you spend your time fighting against progress rather than making sure at least some progress is made...
We're going to spend more time backsliding than slowly walking up hill.
Go up the hill too fast and you just get there a little early, backslide too much and you can fall all the way to the bottom, break your leg, and never be able to climb back up.
I read this post as being about Malcolm. He kept the pressure going his entire life. He always kept organizing and kept the pressure going. Really I think what this is encouraging people to do is to look more towards Malcolm X than to Marcus Garvey. Look for the true anarchists, not for the people who want to redo capitalism but this time their group is on top, because that shits how you get Israel genociding Palestine
Look for the true anarchists, not for the people who want to redo capitalism but this time their group is on top,
I couldn't really follow your comment even before you implied anarchy so the only other alternative to capitalism...
Or how that relates to an ongoing genocide...
Like, I just can't follow anything you just said. I understand all the words, but there's nothing tying them together
If we're being charitable, we can assume they're talking about they're talking about liberals doing bandaid fixes to keep the orphan-crushing machine running and fascists who are angry the machine isn't benefiting them as much.
Most modern revolution mindset is both childish and often used as a way to shield and justify the real underlying cynicism and lack of willingness to put in work.
If you're defining long-term as 4-8 years, sure. If your idea of long-term is defined in decades, are you aware the planet is on fire?
this is nuanced. in the UK after ww2 our army's returned without housing, without long term health care which we did fight for and Britain had an NHS and housing within 5 years but we had to struggle to get it. now in current, we've slowly been selling our NHS, council housing isn't built at the necessary speeds. our towns and cities as well as education are on the brink of bankruptcy. capitalists are far better at small incremental changes then we are.
where incremental action does work is strike action, anti war movements as they empower the working class to fight but we wont get the world we want without a revolution. speaking of cause a classless society.
*affected
small win
Do believe you're incorrect. Here's a quick source to read. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/affect-vs-effect-usage-difference
Hey, still a small win though because either you change your understanding of effect as a verb or I do!
This is kind of a garbage take. Revolution is just one puzzle piece in the large set of tools necessary to effect real change. Revolution can also happen in many different ways from silent to political to violent. And all of those can very much happen overnight if all the pieces are in the right place.
Do you have any examples of successful overnight revolutions?
I think (I hope) by overnight revolution, they mean the tipping point from civil unrest into actual change. It took a decade of protesting for Civil Rights to get popular support, but the law was drafted, written, and signed in less than a week due to the destruction wrought across the country after MLK was assassinated.
Right? If China and Russia are anything to go by, I want none of that revolution. They still have garbage governance even today. I'm convinced a revolution would get us from shit to absolute vile hot diarrhea.
I think I prefer trying to change the diet instead, just to stick to the metaphor.
If China and Russia are anything to go by, I want none of that revolution
Before the revolution, China had regular famines. Today they have none and have experienced one of the highest increases in living quality in human history.
The same phenomenon applied to the USSR (before Yeltsin's coup undid all that and caused the largest drop in life expectancy outside of a war).
China famously had some pretty massive famines after the revolution as well. China's real ascendency happened after Mao had been gone for a while and reformers were able to change his worst policies. China still struggles to this day to elevate its massive rural population, with more than half not receiving a high school education.
But more to the point, all industrial nations saw the exact same (and more) living improvements, so it's hard to really attribute it to political violence.
Yes, the revolution didn't fix everything overnight, but it did lay the ground-work that allowed them to fix their problems. Unlike say India, who is a net-exporter of food, yet still has excess deaths associated with malnutrition.
By pretty much every measure China lagged the industrial world for several decades. China beat Japan in WW2, a country which got nuked twice, and didn't pass the much smaller country in economic output until the mid 90s. Pretty much everyone outside China agrees that Mao's policies held them back immensely due to poor economic planning and continuous political strife.
You say that cuz you're comfortable. If you were a serf in Imperial Tsarist Russia you might have a different mindset.
This is the difference though. Many modern leftists insist that iterative harm reduction under capitalism is exactly the same level of oppression as being a feudal serf. That's actually the core basis of their thesis - that any capitalism is literally violence against them and therefore justifies violence against others.
Have there been just revolutions in the past? Of course. But overthrowing kings and dictators is quite a bit different than tearing down a society which has both injustice but also a high standard of living. It seems to imagine that only the injustice will be eliminated through violence, which is demonstrably untrue.
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I'm not sure about how this makes me feel.
It is a highly appealing statement to the carefully, but barely, suppressed centrist in me.
I suspect a placebo.
Sounds like something we're supposed to hear in order to not rise up. I know I've been waiting a while and it sucks to see the young generation going through the same hoops.
I'll just keep waiting till someone actually needs help building a gallows or something
You missed the bit where it says "work". Waiting is not work.
They've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas!
It's actually the opposite - the idea that you need a revolution to enact change is meant to keep you demoralized and pacified because you won't get off your couch unless you see people marching in the streets.
You are exactly the type of person that's not being spoken about.
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