You guys need to get like 30 political parties. THAT is a democracy. The US has never been anything else but a dictatorship since at least Reagan, where you only get to choose the least worst asshole out of a group of assholes
The rise of the far right is a complex global phenomenon with multiple contributing factors.
The commitment of all political elites in the US to relentlessly attack leftists leaves a smoother path for fascists, and i definitely think it’s right to call out dems for this.
But the problem is much more than just a right to center-right party like the dems stifling leftists.
But how can american political discourse if not blame dems???
Dems haven’t been center right in decades, they may be barely left of Republicans but center on the political scale does no move, only parties do. With the Overton window Dems have been far right for years
To me, it boils down to what political alignment best suits the political money machine, and in a vacuum that will always be strong police, strong military, and a loose application of the laws that are meant to control their actions toward 99% of the population.
That may be simplistic as well, but the scrooge mcducks of this world have far more use for the bootheel than they do for the reallocation of their wealth to the great unwashed.
VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO isn’t working out.
Let’s pretend somehow the R party disappeared tomorrow… a new party would be formed, and they would do they exact same thing for the Democrats.
Because it’s a tag team. Each needs the other to blame their failures on (the failure always being “what the people want”).
Some approximate percentages on “what the people want” according to repeated polls for decades: 70% of voters want higher minimum wage… 70% of voters want term limits for reps… 80% of voters want to end insider trading… 70% of voters want universal healthcare… 80% want the rich to pay taxes again… and so on. Use your favorite source.
It doesn’t matter. Our choices in this political system are “anti-union secular capitalists” vs. “anti-union theocratic capitalists”, and “what the people want” is not a voting option.
I vote every election, and I often vote Democrat. But I realize it’s more like another poll than an actual route to political change or reform.
On the bright side, the banks are very happy! If they invest in absolute shit, the taxpayers will always be there to “bail them out”, over and over and over and over and over again.
I wonder if that’s connected to inflation and lower standards of living and shorter lifespans? Meh, whatever. STOCK MARKET 50K BABY
Trying to scare people off from voting with principle and warning of “splitting the votes” is a neoliberal propaganda. Canada and UK are also two-party systems, and yet they have third parties gaining seats. The now centre right British Labour Party tried to also do the same scaremongering in a by-election to dissuade voters from voting the Green Party, which took the torch of British leftism. And yet, the vote splitting didn’t happen, and the Green Party won by a huge margin against the right wing Reform and Labour.
America could learn a lot, instead of listening to their mainstream media who brainwash their citizens of being corralled to think within an allowed narrative. I remember a Singaporean diplomat years ago, who made a comment that even though America is nominally a free country, he finds the news and discourse to be limited and insular-- which is practically the same as listening to state-run news in countries like China.
Although, this hasn’t always been the case. One hundred years ago, third parties in America do get seats. I think the difference is that one hundred years ago, ordinary Americans were more politically proactive and engaged. One hundred years ago was the generation that ended the Gilded age and elected the Roosevelts. I don’t know what happened but my suspicion is that after World War II, when the nation experienced enormous wealth and prosperity that previous generations never experienced before, Americans have become complacent.
I vote third party often (D too, R from time to time), and it’s the quickest way to find out what Ds and Rs really think of “democracy” (which is contempt).
Meanwhile, socialists are the only reason we have minimum wage in the USA, they have been fighting for it since the early 1900s, libertarians and greens are the only reason we have legal weed, they’ve been working for that since the 1970s, and so on. Only after LOSING VOTES to third parties do the major parties even bother changing their platform to get an edge over the other.
Most Ds and Rs don’t realize this, because it’s not reported on, and many don’t have any clue about what is happening beyond the very obvious.
I encourage people of all parties and platforms to become politically involved and see how things work, a few months of being a precinct committee officer (the lowest rung of the political ladder) will open many eyes.
Ds and Rs are not in the constitution, they are private organizations with their own selfish interests over and above representation. I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that very popular initiatives are squashed by the majors whenever possible; 70% of voters want universal healthcare, for example. It doesn’t matter what “the people” want.
Thanks for your post, I agree with it 100%.
VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO isn’t working out.
Only because people didn’t. In a binary choice, fuckwits voted the worst choice. This was an intelligence test that America failed.
In identical news, evolution isn’t immediate.
Democrats have contributed to that failure with their vote blue no matter who approach, an approach that fails to hold them accountable for any of their actions, which is why we have Democrats that are barely to the left of first-term Trump
It’s not working out because the system is not designed that way. It is only a binary choice for those that believe Democrats are different from Republicans, they are both shades of fascism that don’t give a fuck about the working class
I would blame it on the fracturing and proliferation of unregulated information sources, starting with unregulated cable TV, and then social media.
Simple stupid, but emotionally appealing messages like memes, spread faster than well reasoned and thought out arguments.
And far right propaganda excels at that.
Every radical movement has come with innovations in media: The printing press, newspapers, state propaganda, radio and television, and now social media.
And yeah, a lot of those waves ended in wars that resulted in regulation of media to keep the peace.
And we can blame Democrats for that as well, before Clinton’s telecom reform act, media was heavily regulated, who could own what, how much they could control, how much market share they could cover. The TRA got rid of all those barriers, that’s how we went from hundreds of media owners and sources to 5 who can tightly control the message.
It’s becoming clear to me that the best form of government would incorporate ideas from many different ideologies.
That’s like saying that a little bit of cancer is okay, just not too much. Because eventually the cancer will take over
What did you think I meant by that? That we should incorporate facisim and a monarchy or something?
I imagined some of that Nordic model bullshit
This post is propaganda abolishing the right of its role in the war on leftist institutions.
It’s Democrats that are fighting leftists not Republicans. It’s Democrats that are defending Republican actions, not leftists
Nah, democrats (used to) let minorities to be part of the status quo.
Leftists: “We need to do away with billionaires.”
Democrats: “More 👏 black 👏 queer 👏 disabled 👏 billionaires! 👏”
They have always tokenized marginalized communities
Sorry but no. The far right is on the rise globally, and as much as Muricans want to feel self-important, their cultural and political export has not yet reached a level where the actions (or in this case, inactions) of a domestic political party that doesn’t even really align with any other party globally (given Dems consider themselves leftists when compared to actual alignment based on policies, they’re firmly center-right to right), are not a direct contribution to it.
No, for example, the right rose in Europe in the wake of the immigration crisis starting ca. 2010 (compounded with the global crisis of 2007-08, which admittedly was caused by the US financial market), which in turn is a result of US interventionalism in the Middle East for the past, oh, thirty years (well, it was about 30 years in 2010), but especially the ramped up failed wars since 9/11, that only managed to destabilise the area enough so that a large swath of people would pick out whatever remained of their lives from the rubble and move towards the EU in hopes of a better, safer life.
That combined with the sitting, mostly center-left governments’ complacency in most EU countries, has led to a major humanitarian crisis that left the poorest of most EU countries’ feel neglected, and now that same layer was enthralled by the far right, that used the ongoing support of immigrants as the kernel of truth in their web of lies, convincing swathes of people.
So no, the Dems not being leftist enough isn’t the reason the far right is on the rise globally. It hardly even contributed to it since even the most leftist presidents have continued to bomb the shit out of the Middle East. And when two-term presidents can’t even wrap up wars their predecessors began in 8 years… that’s not a policy issue anymore. That’s straight up the system keeping the wars going because they’re profitable, and no amount of extreme leftist policy is going to take that trash out.
You clearly link a global far right rise with american imperialism, we wouldn’t be there if the Democrats were truly on the left.
