this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
144 points (94.4% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7212 readers
513 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
We can’t vote for a human or the wrong lizard might win.
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
Karl Marx
So, no elections or no masters? Marx wasn't an anarchist
What Marx says that the government represents the ruling class, and under capitalism it's the capitalist minority.
No shit.
But one works much harder than the other at supporting them.
One party represents just what is good for them and theirs with no consideration for long term function and stability of the country. The other represents just what is good for them and theirs but realize they need the country to consider relatively stably for their own long term good.
Eh, I see it this way:
- Republicans - desperate to hold on to relevance, so they're going for short-term wins
- Democrats - desperate to appeal to younger generations, and promoting the wants and needs of minorities seems to be working
I don't see either as caring too much for longer term stability. Democrats want to raise/eliminate the debt limit (i.e. more social programs), and Republicans want to use the debt limit for political concessions (i.e. appeal to base with lip-service to fiscal responsibility), neither seems particularly worried about balancing the budget.
democrats would allow taxes to be collected to not borrow much. Republicans would get rid of any taxes that are not straight out fee for service. Debt arises from not paying bills.
Last year, the US spent $1.7T more than it has received, and the controversial tax plan Biden put out in 2021 would rate revenue by $140-340B depending on the year. That's the most significant tax increase since 1951, and most have been less than a third that for the past 50 years. There have been a lot of Democrats in power in that time, and nobody took the deficit seriously.
You can blame Republicans all you want, but the point is that Democrats haven't been serious about raising taxes to cut the deficit. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans haven't been serious about cutting spending either. I find both major parties wholly disappointing, because even when they have a majority, neither actually does anything to really fix our fiscal problems.
What makes you think the democracts have any interest in the "younger generation?" The average age of democrat leadership is OLDER then republicans. Voter turn out among the younger generation is also abysmal because the dem do not appeal to the younger generation at all.
I didn't say they're successful at it, just that seems to be who they're trying to appeal to, at least in their public statements, such as:
- LGBTQ+ support
- minimum wage increases - I hope this mostly impacts younger voters
- free education/student loan forgiveness
- abortion
Those are things young people care about. Whether they're successful is another issue.
Vote for the candidate that will do the least harm to the most people
Agreed, that is why I vote for the PSL or green party candidate.
Think about how we got here
Very early on we out sourced a big chunk of the election process to volunteers, fans, fanatics if you will. Why raise taxes to pay for elections?
Parties took over the preliminary parts of the process in exchange for vetting potential candidates.
OK so I'm guessing but, no one works for free
The Pay may not be cash, power, influence, patronage are all nice.
Money has always been speech
Excess resources have always been required to have a meaningful political opinion
The system was designed for information moving at the speed of horse at great expense
The system was to serve 1% of the present population
Damm thing works better than one would expect :D
Thank you, captain obvious.
More useless "both sides the same" bullshit.
They don't have to be the same to both be shit. They don't even have to be equally bad to both be shit. I'd rather lose a toe than an arm, that doesn't mean I'm excited to lose a toe.
It's not bullshit. You USAians have distilled complex issues to "yes, no", " with us, or against us", "right, wrong", "racist, not racist", etc.
The first past the post system limits the voting options to just two, which limits the power and decision making to a few people who aren't allowed to diverge from their voter-base.
A centrist republican voter and a centrist democrat voter can't both vote for a centrist party. They both have to make a decision of "republican or democrat". A working class USAian can't vote for a working class party - no it has to be one of the two parties.
It's much easier for both parties to make it harder for working class people to vote and garner votes from the middle class upwards, than try to serve the working class. Or, they just indoctrinate the working class to vote against their own interests - what option do they have anyway? It's not like they could vote for a third, forth or fifth party that represents them.
Both parties do little for the working class because they know they don't have to do much. Feed them propaganda on social media, have political ads that DESTROY, OBLITERATE, SMASH the other side (or whatever sensationalist word is used), make promises, claim moral highground and quote Jebus a few times, and the working class will for them. And if they don't vote at all, that's even better!
Yeah yeah, democrats do more than republicans, but "represent" the working class is a stretch.
The USA needs a multi-party system, possibly with preferential voting. The only people with actual representative are the rich, in the USA.
Counterpoint: the rich want to get richer, and the lapdogs want their bribes, and the lazy folks in the middle can only be motivated by fear (not even greed works anymore, e.g. for retirees who already got theirs), so to break out of this cycle would take... ... ...
I have no clue.
I’m starting to wonder if we could even break this cycle. Nobody seems to give a shit, and if they do, whatever they’re doing seems to not be working.
For fuck’s sake, a surprisingly large amount of Americans want an insurrectionist, fascist, Russian-loving “president” that has openly said he will be dictator (but “only” for a day!). It would be one thing if it were a vocal minority just being really loud, but the fact that there’s an actual large amount of people who want a person like that makes me wonder if the US citizenry is broken.
In the wild, it is rare to see a predator before it strikes. Have you ever seen one of those games where there is a picture and you are supposed to find it... but you can't, even zooming in and scanning every section, and then even when the answer is shown you can barely make it out? In the wild, prey aren't supposed to evade death - the entire food chain is predicated on that fact. Ofc the predator still has to cross the distance between it and the prey, but lulling it into a sense of complacency is the first part of its successful strategy, then it waits for the prey to turn its head, and only THEN does it pounce. Sorry if this is upsetting but it's very relevant I promise you, and in no way shippable for this conversation.
So in the wild, if I ever were to see this large fat orange buffoon, bumbling around while making wild hooting noises, actively trying to get noticed by saying whatever manages to get the most reaction from everyone around, I think I would be wisest to run away. Crucially though, not from the orange thing - which has no obvious teeth or claws or anything at all harmful - but from whatever it is that may be following it (whether the orange thing has any knowledge of that or not), waiting to take advantage of the distraction that it provides.
Whether any particular person wins the next election or not, there are always more willing to step up in their place - more Republicans, more Democrats, etc. - and a smart predator is ready to take advantage of whichever side wins in order to get what they want.
Sorry if you thought I was building up to some point worth knowing about - I have found no solutions, only more layers of problems the further deep you dig into these matters.:-( I will say that often when you meet Trump supporters irl, they can be very kind people - they are mislead, but aren't we all? It is the system that is broken, not solely them (obviously outliers exist, on both sides, and no they are not remotely close to being equal \KKK, but nor is the problem uniquely on one side vs. the other either, plus the whole division between "sides" is working out VERY well to Putin's benefit, hence making me question just how much involvement his agencies have with the recent Civil War style divisionist thinking that is currently fashionable).
I think all we can do is question what we see, and compare it against what we KNOW to be true. Which not everyone is capable of - e.g. who has the luxury of that kind of time? A great place to start, imho, is to recommend watching https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs.
We can, but we will need guillotines.
Well voting for the Capitalist party ain't it. So start by NOT voting for the Capitalist parties, and then seeing what else you can do outside of the voting booth. But if you refuse NOT to vote for the Capitalist party, then do you really have a problem with the current system since you are actively supporting it.
I don't follow you. They are BOTH the capitalist party, though not equally so. Also, voting for one side vs. the other does not mean that you agree with EVERYTHING that they do - in fact it is more common these days to vote against the other side and ignore what your own might plan or actually do. Nor is it true that avoiding voting - e.g. for mental or physical health reasons - means that someone does not care at all about what happens as a result of the election. Plus, a rather ENORMOUS fraction of people in the USA could skip a particular vote and it would not make the tiniest iota of difference, due to the electoral college system, though that heavily depends on where you live, and also trends to be more true the larger the region impacted (federal > state > county), whereas local elections could turn on a dime and also make a huge impact regardless of what goes on in upper levels - e.g. federal sends monies to help people but locals turn that aid away b/c "reasons".
Unpopular opinion alert: I dare to say that many people who should NOT be voting - especially those who do little to no research beforehand - would vastly improve the outcome of elections by NOT voting, and thereby contribute more that way than they do now, by actually voting, where they tend to just magnify the votes of whatever the TV & radio talk show people (or more recently, pastors behind the pulpit) tell them to do. The latter makes the USA even more of a plutocracy than later, when the votes get ignored and the rich get whatever they want regardless of who got elected does.
You are missing the big picture. Capital benefits by people voting for either party of Capital. It doesn't matter which one you vote for, important things like material conditions for real people will never improve if you vote like you are advocating. If you can't even vote against Capital, then what good are you?
Why are you so emotionally invested to continue the two party system?
Unless you work in media or politics, this system does not serve you.
Saying that "both sides are the same" is a moronic argument is not a defense of the 2 party system. It's a defense of objective reality, one option is clearly worse than the other.
Boiling every criticism of the not-worse party as just a "both sides" argument is also pretty disingenuous.
One option is clearly worse... but that doesn't mean the other is above criticism.
keep voting for "your team" champ!
keep voting for your team champ!
Both sides being bad doesn't imply that both are bad in the same way.
If either side represented the working class, we would have had universal healthcare over 50 years ago.
Most countries don't have a 1 party system for this reason
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. The US doesn't have a 1 party system. If you meant 2 party system, that's not really true of any specific arrangement of political party spectrums across the world. No system covers most countries. Wikipedia lists 15 countries, many among the most powerful and influential globally that are effectively 2 party systems.
There are so many reasons why the working class lack representation in America and I don't think a single one of those reasons is the 2 party system. In fact, on paper, the US has no limit on how many political parties there can be. The reason we have a 2 party system has more to do with our voting system and the spoiler effect that happens over time in all First-Past-The-Post voting systems.
I think the reason the working class lack representation has so much more to do with the money in our politics. The politicians are more concerned with continuing their political careers and earning more money for themselves than they are with helping the working and poor classes.
Its a one party system because the US Democratic and Republican parties have the same policies on everything that actually matters to people's quality of life. Both provide endless funding to the military. Neither will defund the police. Neither will tax carbon or stop pipelines from being built. Neither will provide single payer healthcare. Neither will invest in building sustainable transportation infrastructure (high speed rail, interstate public busses). Neither will tax carbon or animal consumption. Neither will make universities free and get rid of student loan debt. Neither will provide housing to homeless people. Neither will comply with international laws related to war crimes or refugees. Neither will establish data privacy laws or break up the big tech industry. Neither will shutdown the NSA and illegal government mass surveillance infrastructure.
In the US it's a one party system with an illusion of choice.
But one works much harder than the other at supporting them.
I don't think that's really true, they both essentially ignore the working class. The right caters to small business owners, the just caters to large business owners, and both generally ignore the workers.
The both like to say they're working hard for the workers, but they really don't follow up with effective policy.
So something like Obamacare is irrelevant to workers? Biden's vocal support for unions means nothing?
Obamacare
That depends on what you're talking about when you say "worker." The people who benefited the most were younger people, poor people, women, and monitorities, so not the average 9-5 lower middle to middle class worker (factory, construction, etc), and certainly not the middle to upper middle office worker, but people who work in fast food, seasonal labor, and janitorial staff. Basically, if you weren't offered insurance at work, you probably benefited. For nearly everyone else, insurance got more expensive.
But yes, that's about the closest Democrats have gotten to benefitting workers recently. But it more benefited the underemployed and minorities, so I see it as Obama seeking to expand support among those groups.
Biden's vocal support
Pfft, that was mostly to avoid economic distruption and thus a political nightmare. A quick resolution to the strike benefited him more than the workers (midterms were coming up, food prices were already high, etc).
Let's look at the deal. Workers wanted 15 days of paid sick leave and better working conditions. What they got was 1 day off paid sick leave, allegedly lower penalties for unpaid time off, and a pay increase (24%), which from my reading largely caught them up with inflation. Here's a quote:
Even the best-case scenario doesn’t look like a massive victory for labor, but the devil is in the details
Vocal support doesn't put food on the table, actual, passed bills do.
The bills Biden has championed are largely around green energy and infrastructure (mostly trains and highways). I guess this tangentially benefits workers (more construction projects, slightly better mass transit, etc), but I see it benefitting shareholders and company owners more (green energy and construction company ownership), as well as himself (big bill he can point to in the debates).
If he actually cared about workers and unions, he would've struck a better deal with the rail workers and passed bills protecting people seeking to unionize. But instead we get what we always get from politicians, a lot of hot air.
If he actually cared about workers and unions, he would’ve struck a better deal with the rail workers and passed bills protecting people seeking to unionize.
I didn't realised presidents had the power to strike deals with unions or pass bills.