• grue@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Democracy supporters have to win every single time, while the fascists only have to win once. This is not a sustainable situation. We have to do what is necessary in a way that’s a lot more permanent than just winning an election.

    • anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      I think a big part of this is rural over representation. Not even talking the senate, but the house to be fair should allot 1 rep per the minimum pop of any state, which would give us about 573 reps and like 676 electors for president. Hell if we did it as the founders intended, one per like 60k people we’d have a house of 5.6k members.

    • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That requires carrying this energy past the election cycle, regardless of the differences we may have on opinion, and coming together in agreement.

      Historically, the Left has been rather poor at banding together. We’re more likely to argue than get things done most of the time. So it’ll be an uphill battle for leaders of smaller groups across the Nation. First though, we need to make it past this hurdle.

        • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It’s still a choice that we should strive to utilize. Not doing so may mean not having that choice, or the illusion of one. I do agree though, it’s about time we shifted things back towards a better life for everyone.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          “…The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.”

          • Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Nov 13, 1787
          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.

            Good goddamn, Jefferson was wrong again. I bet this is what a lot of judges are thinking about when looking at J6 cases.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        They did a great job at that. It has lasted 248 years. But they also gave us a framework for updating our constitution and government, and that has been sorely neglected for a long time. The founders were wise enough to recognize that the system would need to change as times changed. What they didn’t seem to anticipate is the insane tribalism created by technologies that weren’t even a dream at the time, and how that tribalism would grind our government to a halt.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Fascism was defeated because of the Allies, led by the US, the country with the most powerful military in the world by a large margin. Who’s going to defeat the US if it goes full fascist?

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to, but I don’t think the USA would be able to continue funding a military 20x the expense of the next most powerful military while under authoritarian rule. We have the funds for such a military now because of a hundred different conditions that wouldn’t exist anymore under a fascist government.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Fascist governments always collapse eventually because of loyalty over competence, but the thought of the damage a powerful country like the US would do before that collapse is terrifying.

    • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s only going to happen if the side in favor of democracy is given a decisive victory. Squeaking out another win isn’t going to be enough.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Did Harris have any pro-democracy stuff in her platform, like ending FPTP or the Electoral College? Trump campaigned on bad election reforms like ID requirements and same-day voting.

      • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Hubris. Democrats lose because characters like RBG and President Biden simply could not fathom that stepping aside was ALWAYS what they should have done.

        These miserable fucking dinosaurs have gambled away the good intentions, hopes, and stability of the entire nation because their internal mantra was that they are our political saviors, while everyone under 50 was full-throated screaming that they needed to step aside.

        Fuck all you geriatric, foot on the gas, oblivious, incompetent fucks. If (big if) we ever regain our Democracy, the first thing on the agenda should be AGE CAPS for all public offices. Elderly fucking hubris has doomed us to more misery.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Democrats lose because characters like RBG and President Biden simply could not fathom that stepping aside was ALWAYS what they should have done.

          Lol, dude the guy that won the election is the oldest person to ever run for president in the history of the country, and a sitting Democratic president stepped aside due to public pressure for younger leadership, but yeah the concept of gerontocracy is what did them in. 🙄

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Kyrsten Sinema is in her 40s, Bernie Sanders is in his 80s.

          Age is not the factor here.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Age caps are good.

          A rating voting system would be good too.

          But I don’t think there won’t be younger people with the same kind of hubris.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I do not trust Americans to “do their own research”. I’ve seen how that has gone in the past. Too many Americans do their own research while scrolling Facebook from the toilet.

    • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Research requires a critical mind. Think of a person you know that has average intelligence, 50% of people are more stupid than that.

      And I’m not saying that stupidity is solely an issue for the republican electorate, I’m just saying “do your own research” is an unrealistic expectation.

      People need to be engaged with.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Four years ago we gave it a stay of execution. Until we fully purge the fascist and focus government to actually serve the people, we are going to keep finding ourselves in chaos, until China beats us to and at everything.

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, a Trump victory scares me, but what scares me more is the more competent fascist that comes next. The Democrats can’t keep waiting for the Republicans to, “come to their senses.” The material conditions of the working class need to improve, or fascist populism will take in the absence of economic populism.

      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        1 month ago

        No other fascist has the cult of personality that trump does. If we can rid ourselves of this scourge, it will cause a reckoning and reset among the conservatives. I hope.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It’s crazy how the global powers have handed China so much power as a result of their insatiable greed. China was hardly a concern 40 years ago, but 4 decades of manufacturing and stealing literally everyone’s IP have given them resources they didn’t have access to before.

  • demizerone@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Democratic party is fucking useless. We will never be free unless we rid ourselves of legalized corruption.

    • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Poor take. Truthfully, the people want hate. That’s what trump ran on and promised.

      This isn’t about policy or likeability or whatever. This is what people want and they proved it. Stop blaming the Democrat party and blame what this country and its people are instead.

      • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Are you kidding? The DNC circumvented the entire primary process to give us ANOTHER “anointed one” and, again, possibly the worst candidate possible to create the coalition that has always been Democrats’ bread-and-butter. They even had Hillary go down to FL to lecture voters, while Bill went to Michigan to preach to Muslim communities about why the war in Israel is right. It’s a fucking lampoon of strategy.

        Every single DNC “elite” should retire from politics, today. They’re losers, and losers lose. Because they never learn from their mistakes, which is what is required to win.

        • scemmy@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I’m sorry, since when is circumventing primary process worse than literally trying to steal an election? You want the perfect Democrat to run, while the other side is running a joke.

          Let’s not kid ourselves, the reason Democrats lost was because of economy and voter apathy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see Democrats lose control of all branches of the government. No matter what strategies they adopted, it wouldn’t have worked.

          She was already a VP and our country still has inflation. People are idiots and blame it on Democrats.

          • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I mean, it’s likely both. Apathy towards hate is still pretty bad imo, and hate is the Republican party platform. Also just saying, the economy needs some inflation and I think we’re around 3% right now, which economists agree is ideal? Not an expert there tho

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          They are elite. Not in quotes. The fact that they remain an elite and will remain an elite under Trump shows us that they are not losers and they don’t lose.

          They didn’t lose control over DNC, that’s what they care about, perpetual real power over half the politics in one big country, not temporary and limited power over all of it.

          In this case they have also shown Trump and anybody else that they are a very convenient opposition, that should remain as it is. It’s a win.

          But you’re the guys who flew to the Moon, invented nukes and the Internet. You’ll think of something.

      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s more like all pretense is gone now. Before, there was this veneer of legitimacy. Now, it’s straight up fascism. It’s a matter of image projection.

      • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        More like the oligarchy now have 99% of the power rather than 98%.

        The issue is that we believe we have a free democracy when the only power we have is to put an X in a box every few years. The system isn’t broken, it’s working as it’s designed to.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          The issue is that we believe we have a free democracy when the only power we have is to put an X in a box every few years.

          Right.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That’s not true, we had a good run from the forties until I was born in the eighties. A whole forty years of some amount of power!

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Voting is like breathing.

    Every election is the most important one of yopur life.

  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I get why people say you “have to” vote against someone in a First Past The Post voting system. What I don’t get is the inaction from the democratic party on changing the voting system between elections.

    I wish the democrats had one tenth the urgency they claim to have. Democracy is one election away from falling… wouldn’t you want multiple chances to defeat the republicans every election?

    Democrats are so full of themselves, they won’t accept that they might have to step out of the way to prevent the republicans from ruining this country. This fight is greater then the democratic party. They should start acting like it by pushing to get rid of FPTP voting in the states they control.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      What I don’t get is the inaction from the democratic party on changing the voting system between elections.

      1. The Democrats didn’t secure a large enough majority in previous elections to overcome Republican resistance to changing things like FPTP voting or the electoral college.

      2. There is a lot of contention within the Democratic party (at the federal level at least) as it shifts further towards the right in an effort to remain in power. Getting rid of FPTP voting would make it harder for centrist/right leaning Democrats to remain in power.

      Several states have switched to RCV for some of their elections, and progress has been slow, but it’s being made. If you want to see more, elect people that prioritize implementing better voting systems.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      that’s why we keep being forced to chose between the lesser of two evils; it’s still evil either way

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Except people aren’t choosing the lesser of 2 evils every time. If they did, it would pass back across that “Evil” line. That’s literally the nature of it.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Not when both choices keep gradually drifting towards more evil. The current Dem leadership is to the right of Reagan and trying to rehabilitate one of the worst war criminals and -profiteers in the history of the world and his ideologically identical daughter.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    What democracy?

    The Democrats and Republicans fought harder to keep the party I support off the ballot than they did to stop each other from getting elected.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It was very close. As predicted, the battleground states all came down to 1 or 2 percent. Everything fell within the margins of error.

        Unfortunately, the 1 or 2 percent leans all went in Trump’s direction.