- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
My father’s side of the family is super, duper, ultra hardcore “conservative” Trump-loving “Christian”.
They love, love, love to bring up politics at every conceivable opportunity. It’s one of those situations where I have loathed going for visits for decades and sometimes even making the obligate check-in calls plays heck on my “nerves”.
But in the past few years when the conversation turns political, I’ve started hearing big shifts in tone when it comes to opinions on the ultra wealthy in the USA. The last time I was at a family gathering around the holidays, they were berating the Luigi situation and talking about how disgusting it was that anybody would do that, let alone condone it.
That conversation literally did a 180 once I pointed out how it was interesting that the school shooting that happened that same day (or maybe it was a day or two before/after) had received a fraction of the coverage. And it was interesting how murders of people who aren’t rich don’t get that kind of coverage. Basically, when people like you and me get killed for whatever reason, you don’t hear about it. But a rich person is shot and suddenly it’s national news and top billed news for weeks. Wonder why that is?
And those conservative “I hate liberals and liberals should be shot” relatives of mine were in complete agreement.
So, whether you think it sucks or not, you need to know that if you actually want change and actually want things to improve, you’re going to have to forgive and you’re going to have to find common ground with people that you otherwise disagree with on a fundamental level. Fuck you if you say otherwise, you are wrong. And I don’t say that lightly.
There you go, dems. You know what they want.
God I wish we had elected Bernie.
Oh they know, but 98% of them consider taxing the rich to be self-persecution. The current crop of establishment dems need to be recalled or primaried, they’re too corrupted to turn a new page.
Yup! The issue is the dems are supported by, you guessed it, the rich. Aside from a few outliers who put their beliefs and morals ahead of their wallets or power, most of the dems would never turn their back on their oligarchic stakeholders.
I mean, fuck, they make $174,000 a year and work like 130 days a year. Assuming 8 hour work days, that’s ~$167/hour, before any sort of lobbying or
bribesgifts. They can just sit there and do fuck all and be happy as a cow, so that’s what they do. For some reason, we (the people) keep voting for them, usually just out of fear of the other guys getting the spot.I hate this fucking system.
For some reason, we (the people) keep voting for them
There is definitely a lot of propaganda at work in the “media”, and divisive identity politics which drive those votes. Unfortunately that stuff doesn’t matter at all when it comes to people’s material living conditions, which should be the true litmus test for elected officials.
Thankfully it seems people are starting to wake up to those cheap manipulative tricks, and it showed with the Dems’ massive loss in the last election when they refused to change tactics. If they cared about winning they’d definitely change things up now, but they only care about lining their own pockets so I’m not going to hold my breath.
One solid theory on how to oust them is that a lot of what gets someone into office is name recognition. They get re-elected because it’s that comfortable, familiar name with the correct letter beside it that voters always see at the ballot box. Perhaps primary challengers can start to win if they get their name out there across multiple election cycles, but it does take a lot of valuable time to do it that way.
It’s not lost on me that this speaks to an incredibly uninformed voting populace regarding policy positions, but it’s really hard to appreciate that nuance in the context of today’s 128 character quips or sound bytes. Hopefully we can get back to that level of interest once we have people in power demonstrably helping their constituents as opposed to simply robbing them while convincing them of something else entirely.
Hey California, New York.
Maybe start taking some notes from Nebraska. This is why when the common political wisdom claims you have to run “moderates” and blue dogs in rural districts, I puke in my mouth.
Nebraska gets one electoral vote per 400k people. California gets 1 per 731k. Nebraska gets two senators to represent 2 million people while California gets two senators to represent 39.5 million people.
Stop acting like this is some moment of Nebraska having progressive clarity. It isn’t. Had states like Nebraska with unproportional representation actually voted for more progressive candidates we wouldn’t be in this boat. But sure, bemoan the states who have tried to do something but can’t because of an antiquated system. Even though nothing would have changed since Trump also won the popular vote this go around anyways.
Also, Kamala didn’t lose because she was a moderate. She lost because she’s a mixed race woman. Not saying progressive policies aren’t my values and aren’t appreciated, but people want to look at Kamala and think we lost because she had a middle ground personality rather than the harsh reality that the voter base isn’t ready for a mixed race woman to lead the country.
Had states like Nebraska with unproportional representation actually voted for more progressive candidates we wouldn’t be in this boat.
Omaha, Nebraska is fully owned and operated by Berkshire Hathaway. The state’s legislature is fully in their pocket. The statewide representation is entirely Buffett/Munger pilled.
People will tell you these guys are liberals, then get all google-y eyed when the states put up straight fascist representation decade after decade, while the billionaire class goes on TV and says “Gee, I wish this wasn’t happening to you all.”
Stop acting like this is some moment of Nebraska having progressive clarity.
The issue is that Democrats, and the neoliberal caucus in particular, have gone out of their way to misunderstand and therefore give up on, or to run in an entirely wrong manner, for seats that are very, very winnable.
As you point out, Nebraska has a 20:1 ratio of people to Senators relative to California. That means your electoral “dollar” goes 20x farther in Nebraska than it does in California. And as is evidenced above, they hate their Republicans almost as much as they hate Democrats, like most of America.
Also, Kamala didn’t lose because she was a moderate. She lost because she’s a mixed race woman.
Miss me with this neo-liberal fucking dipshit take. Get the fuck out of here with this. She lost 100% because of her rightward step, and sure, being a mixed race woman would have been an uphill struggle, but America elected a black man named Barrack Hussein Obama, in the fucking war in the god damned middle east, because they thought he represented what he campaigned on: change. Yes its a sexist and racist country, but far, far more-so, it is a country desperately trying to change the status-quo politics which quite literally aren’t working for anyone.
If you are so pudding brained this is the lesson you learned from 2024, you will never win another election in this country again. Before Kamala pivoted to right wing positions (prior the convention), her polling was on headed straight to the fucking moon. Why? Because the only things people had to go off of to estimate who she was, was her 2020 primary platform: And its a super fucking popular platform. Its the platform that Bernie ran on. Its the platform that got Biden elected.
She was cruising on a rocket ship to be in the range of 53-56% by election day. And then the fucking moderate Democrats stepped in. With their fucking “well reasoned” arguments about centrism and courting the “moderate Republicans”. And she stepped to the right. She cut a speaking position for a Gazan delegate to give space to a “moderate Republican”. She chose to platform Liz fucking Cheney, who lost her primary with 25% of the vote. Harris quite literally said that she would “do nothing fundamentally different” and that “nothing would change” under her Presidency.
Get to the back of the fucking bus with this shit, because if this is the political wisdom you coming to the table with, we can not afford to have you leading.
