Roosevelt did great things for Americans while still being capitalist. The needle can be moved left without violent revolution.
“Both sides bad” is weak sauce.
No, the new deal only came to be after violent protests, and was largely a betrayal of labor groups because it gave a much watered down version of what was actually demanded, all while Roosevelt broke the strike he promised to support while campaigning. Read “Labor’s Giant Step Forward” by Art Preis if you want a more detailed accpunt
Quick reminder that there were other things going on in the 20s and 30s. You know, the height of socialism in the West, a strong labor movement willing to burn down factories, stuff like that. The New Deal didn’t come because leftists played nice.
The coal wars threatening to kick off a second civil war, y’know small things.
Blue Morpho apparently never learned about the Battle of Blair Mountain or the Railway Strikes.
A socialist movement independent from either of the major parties too!
So there ARE conditions by which reform can occur, neat.
Yes, but you have to be willing to crack bourgeoisie skulls.
I feel like Western labour just doesn’t have any leverage anymore. The rich simply do not need us. They have outsourced enough labour that they really don’t care if we strike en masse. Like, shut down which factories? They’re all overseas.
That’s what they want you to think. Their own lives depend on Western labor. That’s who runs the ports, the railways, the warehouses, etc. Also a lot of high-tech stuff is still in the West.
If you had to go back almost a hundred years to find any kind of example, I’m just going to gesture broadly at the next hundred years and rest my case.
Have fun wasting your time doing this. If they only fucked over Burnie once I might agree with you.
Well, they will still try. They won’t give it up. But it’s not possible to win it against them, like the Tea Party won against less extreme establishment Republicans
Yep.
All the keyboard warriors talking about revolution need to either pick up and gun and do it or get off their asses and help primary bad Dems to send a message and start the reformation process.
No one who made it out of high school should be saying “both sides” because it’s a profoundly stupid and unproductive thing to say. Did we have masked squads disappearing people before January? Did our allies all hate us? Were we threatening fucking Canada? Were we paying tariff taxes?
In addition to the points raised by some of the other comments I’d remind you of one uncomfortable truth. The business plot was attempted fascist takeover of America. That was thankfully put down because remarkably there was one honorable ex-marine they tried to involve the plot. That’s Smedley Butler. In the wake of that that attempted fascist coup basically nobody was punished. In large part because Roosevelt told them as long as they kept their mouth shut and didn’t block the New Deal he wouldn’t go after them. That’s basically the only reason it got through. Truncated as it was even then. Because most of the richest and most powerful people in the country we’re looking down the barrel of a gun otherwise.
Prescott Bush and his cronies should have been hanged.
And Smedley Butler Day should be a national holiday.
Removed by mod
Both sides are functionally the same when it comes to the world. There’s barely a difference between domestic policy between the two American parties. One uses sweet nothing’s to try assuage your fears and the other uses Force and strongman techniques.
Yeah the FDR Reformation came directly from FDR and we pushed through at his behest. According to my understanding of these politics at a time if The president hadn’t been FDR we would not have gotten those Reformations. Besides they hardly matter nowadays when they’re practically entirely Stripped Away. The last surviving one is social security and they’re pretty gung-ho about getting rid of that too.
Both sides
Instant downvote. Lazy trash.
Couldn’t be bothered to read. Ad hominem attack. Excellent representation of the American voter.
People who type the words “both sides” and then post don’t deserve to have their comments read.
People who are unable to read are one of the reason the United States is in the toilet.
People who use fallacies so they don’t have to engage with the objective facts of an argument they’re not able to impeach are another reason the world is falling to facism
can it be done again without another series of protests and pain the current era of capitalism?
With unintelligent comments like yours and all the discussions happening below meme threads, conflicts and violence is where we are heading to. I encourage you to learn more about the things you are talking about.
Both sides are varying degrees of the same ideology, give all the money to the economic elite so they bribe both parties into maintaining that policy above all other considerations.
One side shrugs and calls it free market forces(D) as you suffer under that policy goal, the other points and laughs at you and says you deserve it®. That is the extent of our “freedom” under American democracy.
One side appoints Justices that voted against Citizens United and one appoints Justices that voted for it. That’s a huge distinction.
It’s not the democratic party, it’s the US itself that is rotten. The dem are just another manifestation of the issue.
Samo for all political parties
This is GOP propaganda
It’s Democrat propaganda too. OP is helping the dems lose, just like they want
Since when do they need help to do that?
They’ve always needed help to lose. The Republicans are so horrible, voting for literally anything else is a no brainer. That’s why they hire strategists and consulting firms to help them lose.
Absolutely.
At this point we need to create a mechanism that allows public pressure on a party.
Switching from FPTP voting (one-person, one vote) to something else will allow for other parties to have a chance but that will take time to brew.
We’re not ready for sortition (selection of officials by lottery) but that would end the career of politicians. And having barbers and coal miners govern is better than what we got now, even if they’ll need a lot of handholding, and an institution to swat away lobbyist pests.
The voters really did a number breaking open Pandora’s jar in November. It’s a fine mess they’ve brought upon us, and one we may not survive to clean up.
You also cannot replace it with a third party. So I guess we’re just fucked?
It’s almost like the original assertion is bullshit!
If you think that’s a large enough group that it had any impact whatsoever on the election, then you are insane.
Or it’s almost like the original assertion would push you to think that playing a game that was rigged from the start isn’t the smartest choice and that you shouldn’t stop at “voting for the less evil billionaire” as your only political option
We need to get involved at the primary level, not lament the choices we are left with when primary election turnout is hilariously low. I’d be surprised if the average voter even knows what a primary election is.
Same coin different sides, the policy is the same, dems have a bit more style and subtlety though, a bit more Thomas Shelby than Jesse James
They had their chance in 2016 to include Bernie Sanders, Democrats blew their chance by ditching Bernie.
Bernie Sanders lost the primaries. This bullshit has to stop.
Imagine being so immature that you throw a decade-long temper tantrum allowing a FELON PEDOPHILE to be president because you didn’t get your way once.
The DNC are the ones who lost to the felon pedophile. Don’t let them blame the left in order to avoid taking accountability.
No, Bernie was cheated out of winning the primaries by collusion between Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They will find a way.
This isn’t what happened. Centrists blame the left for all their failures, but the left keep showing up.
Welcome to America. There are A LOT of those immature fools throwing decade-long temper tantrums.
These same fools simply don’t grasp that the guy lost primaries, both times, because not enough people were voting for him.
Children.
Bernie is too liberal for all those big donors who pump up the Democrats via Super PACs. He might get in the way of them profiting off the American people. Bernie would have been the best choice for this country at beating back the MAGA movement before it became what we have now.
“Too liberal” for all the people who didn’t vote for him. Because he’s not as popular in real life as he is on the internet.
he’s not as popular in real life as he is on the internet.
Not exactly true. In both 2016 and 2020, the number one reason voters gave for choosing Clinton or Biden over Sanders was electability. They preferred Sanders, but didn’t think he could win the general. He didn’t lose because he wasn’t popular, he lost because people thought he was unpopular.
I’m not sure what that exact figure would be but I suppose it’s true for some percentage.
Downvotes from the people who don’t know Bernie lost in both the 2016 and 2020 primaries because not enough people voted for him.
You are correct. As much as I like the guy, he is not as popular in reality as he is on the internet. But you can sure hurt a lot of feelings by pointing out that reality on the internet.
I hold nothing against Bernie. He does have real integrity.
The problem I have is the portion of his supporters that are essentially left-wing Trumpers. They don’t care about the truth. They don’t care about what’s best for the country. They make lies about electoral cheating.
The only difference is that Trump is a fucking scumbag and Bernie has integrity. I say that because each time he lost in the primaries, he publicly endorsed the Democratic candidate. Because he’s not a fucking moron and knew how destructive Trump presidencies would be. I find it interesting that THIS is the one issue Bernie Bros disagree on with Bernie. All of a sudden, he should NOT be listened to? He has also never claimed to have been cheated.
On the other hand, I feel like I only ever see people arguing this on the Internet using examples of other people from the Internet. Every liberal person I know IRL loves Bernie, and many of them even say " But I understand that the party can’t run him because a lot of democratic voters think he’s too far to the left". Like, are these voters in the room with us right now?
There’s a serious flaw in using your personal connections to gauge an entire electorate. That said, those acknowledging him not being able to win are in the same boat with me. I’d love for him to be president.
I just think it’s funny that Bernie Bro “progressives” helped Trump come to power despite Bernie directly and publicly telling them to vote for Harris. All of a sudden they don’t care what he says. Bernie understands that any improvement is better than drastic regression. Wish I could say the same for about 10 million extremely stupid people.
You’re right, and I really appreciate you bringing up the statistical angle there. I am a bit of a stats nerd and indeed am aware of the multiple biases present in that sample of insufficient size. However, since the Internet is so full of bots and I don’t really trust the news on this, I don’t have much more to go on. It sucks, but polls seem like straight up misinformation at this point to me
For the meme, in that scene he lies to her. That said, this community is ready for that message.
i see mostly pushback actually, but hey i am still scrolling
This is a right-wing troll talking point. Don’t listen to it.
Go to the Democratic primaries and move the party left. And then, no matter who gets the nomination, vote Dem in the general election. This is exactly what the nazis did to move the GOP to the right and it worked great for them, and it’s something we can emulate.
no matter who gets the nomination, vote Dem in the general election
Its never worked before, but lets just try that again.
Yeah, not listening to this defeatist garbage. The Democratic party has been changed before. It will be changed again. The party is not defined by some monolithic ideology. We need massive electoral reform in the US to ensure elections are actually fair. First past the post is problematic. House and Senate functions are problematic. We need a solution to the two party problem, but until then, our vehicle is the Democratic party. Best to make it do what we want it to rather than just give up because “they’re corporatists”.
Yeah, not listening to this defeatist garbage.
Defeatism is thinking the only option you have is playing by the rules the bourgeoisie instated, not “stop believing in a corrupt party”
Unlike you, we believe in multiple options. We’re trying to move the Dems to the left AND pushing for electoral reform AND planning an armed communist revolution.
And you’re just whining
This is a right-wing troll talking point. Don’t listen to it. This is a far left anarchist talking point
Preach!
The real battle is in the primaries.
Corporate interests are human interests. They are the interests of the few. Its class. The class of the wealthy - the class of the few. Its always class we need to break down. Nothing maters more.
Liberals are so fiesty these days. Like a crab in steam.
Ship’s sailed. Dems are done. Good riddance.
I can’t stand this faux leftist bullshit. There’s a reason why I call this right wing nonsense: it impedes the improvement of people’s material lives. We don’t have to like the Democrats in order to reject this absolute nonsense.
And your attitude in turn is why there’s no party who represents the views of most people. You’ve already decided it’s impossible without trying, even though the majority of democracies in the developed world today are not trapped in two-party systems.
That’s the literal opposite of what I believe.
No, not the attitude is the problem, the problem is, that the president has mot to win having an absolute majority.
A d I think, US people would have had bigger chances achieving such rule in the voting system, if dems are in power, vs when trumpist are in power 🤗
But proof me wrong 😁 maybe it needs this dictator-shock in order to mobilise enough people to build enough pressure to get such a rule
Maybe we want a 3rd party to start actually doing something and winning local/state elections instead of randomly showing up every 4 years to try to win a national election.
The smart move, which we just got a hard lesson on, is to vote Democrat until a 3rd party becomes viable, because the other option is Republican fascism, which is what we got.
The smart move, which we just got a hard lesson on, is to vote Democrat until a 3rd party becomes viable
If THAT’S what you got out of this then I guess the US are fucked
Most modern democracies don’t enforce First Past the Post by law, and don’t have a winner-takes-all system. A better strategy is to primary democratic representatives as much as possible, and take over down-ballot positions as soon as possible. That way we can make steps towards dismatling Citizen’s United, repealing all the laws that prevent moving away from FPTP, and implement RCV.
I am more than willing to try, if not for the fact that splitting the left would cede electoral victories to the right for several cycles while people figure out what “the new left” is. If we do this in our current era, Republicans will actually kill us while we sit on our ass and convince ourselves to split our vote (as has been shown with the most recent administration)…
This has been shown in history-- every time a third party tries to get made, the opposition party wins for several cycles. The most notable of which is (imo) Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive party in 1912. It got 27% of the vote (2nd in terms of popular vote and won several downstream races). But, the left vote was split by 27%, so the right won by a very large majority. They decided to ultimately dissolve and infiltrate the left wing party.
You are 100% correct, but I fear this is too complex for most Americans to understand and too much of a “long game” thing for the rest to be willing to get onboard with. I have very little faith in our electorate.
There are two paths, an inside and an outside strategy. The inside strategy is far simpler, has far greater potential for success, and will harm the least people along the way. Acknowledging that isn’t “giving up”, it’s picking strategy like a grown-up, not some kid afraid to turn down a dare.
without trying
This is the most idiotic thing about third party advocates. There have been third parties running consistently for decades, and we are somehow supposed to pretend that that lengthy record of dismal failure doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, inside strategists haven’t won everything yet, so we are supposed to switch to a strategy with a far worse track record.
This is the most idiotic thing about third party advocates.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed in these discussions is how quickly the two-party advocates will bring out words like “idiotic” and attack the person not the argument… it really is a movement driven by fear.
Yeah it’s fear. Fear that fuckwits are going to drive the country into the hands of fascists. Is that not worth a bit of concern, or is that just too far fetched an outcome?
And don’t act like it’s one sided mate. Calling me a coward by coming at it sideways doesn’t change your meaning.
