Won’t even draw a hard line at genocide
I don’t understand how the Democrats in USA can be considered left-wing. Sure, they are more left than the Republicans, but in my eyes they certainly not left-wing.
basically, the US is a one party system, but it has two parties
“The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” - Julius Nyerere
Easy. We set the FBI on all the actual leftists decades ago. So the movement is having to slowly rebuild itself in the US. As a result Progressives are the farthest left things most Americans have experience with.
I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.
In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.
Calling the democratic party a “coalition” is extremely generous. It’s historically been a corrupt patronage network since Van Buren and any attempt to make it represent the will of its voters is thwarted internally. Its history is a graveyard of progressive movements.
In the American sensibilities, the Democrats are left wing.
I know we’ve shat on Americans too many times that Democrats are not leftists and Republicans are far-right, but there is a place and time for doing so and I learned to cut Americans some slack. Americans simply have different Overton window because of different history and culture (I have explained before as to why, but I cannot be bothered to write another wall of text about it). Other countries don’t even follow a left and right political dichotomy. Many places, especially in developing countries, vote on personalities than policies. But few of us crap on people from developing countries for not following policy-based discourse, or not following the European-originated sensibilities of “left or right” politics.
Americans are heavily propagandized and are politically illiterate. Generally speaking, they do not even know there is a world beyond “liberal” (Democrat) and “conservative” (GOP). It is considered nerdy and wonkish to even know very much about the two party bourgeois electoral system. So their sensibilities only mean as much as propaganda has eliminated any possibility of political education, let alone capacity for action in solidarity with humanity (even when empathy is there, correct analysis is not) for the vast majority of them. That requires developing projects dedicated to political organization and education outside and away from the two bourgeois parties.
Americans should only be cut slack to the extent that they are ignorant. They should not be cut slack for their knowing embrace of war, domination, racism, and so on. And when you simply inform them of the existence of such things, they will rapidly educate you in their commitment to the project. Perhaps they will momentarily feel bad, but most of the time they will quickly find a psychological salve for cognitive dissonance, lest they act outside of the tracks laid down for them by reactionary and genocidal capital. Our work on the left is to peel off more and more from those tracks and turn them into fellow track-peelers, this is naturally an opportunity for exponential growth if we can consistentlu break past what keeps them on-track.
Turns out, if you’re further left than either realistic candidate (because FPTP), it makes it really easy to figure out who you should vote for. “I wonder if I should vote for the person who’s not left enough for my liking, or the one is so far beyond that as to be the diametric opposite of left. Whatever shall I do?”
Yeah, the “you’re voting for genocide” argument is also ridiculous, as the choices essentially boil down to:
🔲 One genocide (with a potential of partial mitigation)
🔲 2+ genocides (and the one being even worse)
🔲 Don’t care (in green)
🔲 Don’t care (in yellow)etc.
Genocide is bad. That should not be a controversial statement. I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose, and I will use my other energy to advocate for less (and hopefully zero) genocide.
You don’t have to like that fact. I certainly don’t like it. But this is exactly what harm reduction looks like.
This is just a monstrous reframing of a bipartisan genocide. Voting dem or voting rep is a vote for genocide, full stop, because they support the same genocide to the same magnitude, materially. Pretending Dems are better because genocide makes some of their voterbase sad is wrong.
I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose
Then vote Greens or PSL.
Then vote Greens or PSL.
Sorry, I’m not going to vote “don’t care” on genocide no matter how many faux leftists pretend it’s the morally superior option.
You’re going to have to explain this convoluted logic to your grandchildren when they ask you why you voted for genocide.
What I’m going to have to explain to them is why I voted “don’t care” in 2016. That’s a mistake I will forever have to live with. But if I can convince a few people not to make that same mistake, I will at least be able to reduce the harm I did.
It’s morally superior to vote for genocide but pretend your flavor of genocide isn’t the exact same as the other flavor of genocide.
Look, if you don’t care about LGBT folks, women who need abortions, asylum seekers, etc. you can pull that “don’t care” lever. But “I care about making a symbolic, but ultimately toothless, gesture about Palestine more than I care about the lives of thousands, possibly millions of others” is what voting third-party is telling the system right now. If that makes you feel morally superior, we’re at an impasse because I don’t know how to explain to someone that an action to save lives is more powerful than an unrealistic gesture about saving even more lives, but which will realistically increase the amount of death and suffering.
Is there a red line for you in the sand, or would you vote for Hitler if 101% Hitler was running? When do you abandon hope in the Democrats, if being genocidal Imperialists doing nothing to help marginalized groups, and are running to the right of Trump in 2016 with respect to immigration, doesn’t?
That’s a non-sequitur, because that’s not what’s happening by any means. But thanks for ceding the point that you’re okay feeling morally superior by doing something that’ll get more people killed.
Look, if you don’t care about LGBT folks, women who need abortions, asylum seekers, etc. you can pull that “don’t care” lever
Not a person living in USA, wouldn’t a coalition govt be better then, as the Roe vs Wade issue happened while the Democrats were in power?
Or are coalitions not allowed?
Or is the central govt powerless in such issues?The overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a direct consequence of Trump’s election, as it was the three justices he was able to appoint (including Mitch McConnell’s fuckery about Merrick Garland) who changed the Supreme Court’s makeup to include so many right-wing partisans.
The US government is essentially a theatre troup trying to convince the public there is nothing outside the 2 party system, while both parties serve their donors alone.
Dont care may be not voting at all, not automatically applicable to people who vote for the candidates libs dont like.
Voting third party is telling the system that you don’t have a preference between the two candidates who have even the slightest chance of winning. It sucks that there’s such constrained communication one can do (and we need a better voting system), but in the short term, the three options I’ve listed are what you have the options to communicate.
Well, the electoral college isn’t actually FPTP, it’s even worse than that.
The Left begins with anti-capitalism. If you aren’t against capitalism, you aren’t left.
That’s actually a really good layman’s explanation. I’m going to use that combined with, “you’re not a capitalist just because you support them. Capitalists are the people who own the capital.”
Libs are seething at this absolute correct take. If you’re pro free market, you’re a liberal and thats as ‘left’ as you’ll ever be.
Libs are seething, period.
when they say they’re left, but then they’re authoritarian
Marx and Engels were called “authoritarian” so frequently by their contemporaries that Engels wrote On Authority. What’s considered “authoritarian” is a moving target, an arbitrary line in the sand just for people who succeed in revolution, or at least in throwing off western Imperialist powers.
If your argument is that Marxism isn’t Leftist then that’s hilarious
my argument isn’t that marx isn’t left (especially since I’ve read his later works), nor that auth-left isn’t left… just that I’m an anti authotitarian leftist
Gotcha, you’re just anti-Marxist then. Can’t say I agree with that, but that’s less nonsensical than saying Marx isn’t left.
I don’t belive marx to be really auth, since he was striving for a stateless society, I just disagree with him on how we get there
so I’m not exactly an anti marxist, but neither a marxist
The US has two parties: center-right and far right.
(This is a lie internet lefties tell each other)
No, this is literally where the U.S. falls on a global political spectrum. The Democrats would be considered center-right in most other nations. Even by their own historical standards, they’re center right; if you took a Democrat from 1975 and transported them to 1995, they’d ask you why the party had adopted the Republicans’ fiscal policies.
What’s the lie?
That Democrats would be considered right-of-center in other countries. They’re clearly a center-left party.
They’re clearly a center-left party.
by what measure?
Seeking social justice through redistributive social and economic policies of government.
the extent and effort at which they create and enforce those policies is the measure of left or right in this country; not the existence of those policies because both republican and democrats say that they want those things; but when you investigate beyond the lip service you find that conservatives will give token-at-best support for the policies while leftists will support it with full vigor.
tldr: the democrats very tepid support for these things is what makes them center-right; because the party that calls itself conservative takes pride in doing this, while most democrats do it too and hope you don’t notice.
longer: democrats only push for re-distributive policies (if at all) once it becomes popular and they’re forced to respond; not because democrats are progressive. see biden’s decades long anti-gay crusade that suddenly stopped once he needed the votes and his expansion upon trumps draconian anti-immigration policies; or clinton’s establishment of anti-gay service and anti-gay marriage; and then see kamala backtrack on liberal positions like pre-k; community college, childcare, medicare expansion, etc. only the democrats very weakly seek social or economic policies of government and; for the most part; behave like republicans when it’s time to put their money where their mouth is; that’s why they’re center-right
it sounds like you’re judging these books by their cover without reading any of the material. we’re on social media so it’s par for the course; but your takes are going to be divorced from reality if you don’t bother to go further than shallow understanding.
Center-left? In what way? They are genocidal imperialists, they aren’t anticapitalist in any form.
They want to use the power of government to reduce the harms of capitalism, via minimum wages, social safety nets, child tax credit, subsidizing more environmentally friendly energy production and electric cars.
No they are not as far left as you and the people you talk to online, I didn’t say that. You are allowed to want different policies. You’re just incorrect to call them right wing.
They want to use the power of government to reduce the harms of capitalism, via minimum wages, social safety nets, child tax credit, subsidizing more environmentally friendly energy production and electric cars.
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No they don’t, lol
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That isn’t “center-left,” that’s center-right.
No they are not as far left as you and the people you talk to online, I didn’t say that. You are allowed to want different policies. You’re just incorrect to call them right wing.
Leftism starts at anti-Capitalism.
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While it isn’t what they mean, I would say both parties are different flavors of far-right. Both are genocidal imperial warmongers that promulgate oppression of the marginalized in support of neoliberal capitalism. One does it openly while the other plays a game of taking credit for social changes it opposed and occasionally throwing a bone or two to those constituencies even while materially screwing them over in all other ways. And it will throw them under the bus the moment they can get away with it.
Really, they are part of the same team and they fight those opposed to them far harder than they fight each other. Good cop/bad cop for the same precinct.
surely if you enable a genocide that makes you extreme right right? so it’s extreme right and extreme right
