natural_motions

@natural_motions@lemmynsfw.com

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natural_motions ,

Those little goons aggro easy. Any time you walk by a field where they're nesting they start circling you and squeaking and making a ruckus.

natural_motions ,

It kind of illustrates why anarchy is as doomed to fail as libertarianism; note the use of force and the fact that the anarchists friends are not there defending him.

Anarchy cannot defend itself from organized outside threats because it is, by its nature, not organized, particularly in its use of force to confront fascism.

natural_motions ,

Yes, and that mutual aid relies on people all voluntarily helping when there is a problem, rather than having people who are tasked with ensuring people are protected, which is the same reason libertarianism fails; it's an ideology that doesn't acknowledge human self-interest and selfishness, instead it assumes everyone will just agree to abide by a communal philosophy. Many people do not, for all kinds of reasons.

If you are going to create laws and codes of conduct and a means to enforce those laws that's just a normal state with extra steps.

You can maybe do anarchy at a small scale and in specific contexts but not at the scale needed to make a society function and do things like protect minorities the larger community doesn't give a shit about.

natural_motions ,

Not just Michigan, multiple states had similar uncommitted showing (In states where the dem primary wasn't pre-emptively canceled, obviously).

In NY some 12% state-wide left their ballot blank since you can'tvote uncommitted, I think 15% in the city.

Dem strategists should 100% be freaking out and doing everything they can to convince Biden to stop support for Israel. If not that then they should be showing that the rest of the party is not onboard with Biden's radical support of the Netanyahu government. Party leadership could, for example, ban members from taking any more AIPAC money, same as they did with the NRA. That kind of thing would actually do something real to assuage some of the rage people are feeling, even if Biden himself continues to be a fool.

natural_motions ,

No. Voting for the candidate you don't like is voting for the candidate you don't like.

natural_motions ,

My willingness to differentiate ends with genocide. Just a personal thing...

natural_motions ,

Imagine describing not supporting genocide as "smug"...

We're in this predicament directly due to 40 years of neoliberal strategy. There's no one to blame but people who continue to reward "less evil" dems with power.

Do you want to keep the Republic, or not?

Corporates Dems are Republicans. When are you guys going to grasp this?

natural_motions ,

You're thinking in terms of a single election cycle. That's why neoliberals are able to keep doing this every single election, how they get you to accept genocide.

natural_motions ,

You're asking me how much Dems have to lose in order to understand why they're losing and to stop playing chicken with our democracy?

How would I know that? You would hope one lost election to a reality TV star rapist would be enough to prompt a post-mortem, but the idiots learned nothing from 2016 so I would imagine it might take a while for it to sink into their thick skulls. How long does it take someone to add 2+2?

natural_motions ,

What makes you assume the Dems would move to the right? Where do you think they would get votes from?

As much as the democratic establishment likes to pretend there's some untapped well of "moderate" republicans they can access if they just get their messaging right, it doesn't exist. Anyone who thinks GOP voters are going to vote democrat is deluded, Trump is going on criminal trial and is still loved by Republicans.

Even the exit polling for Democrats' "tricky" Nikki Haley scheme in New Hampshire showed that most of the right-wing voters who despise Trump still wouldn't ever vote democrat, they're just staying home.

They can move further to the right if they want, but Democrats are barely able to scrape enough votes together to beat Donald Trump of all people, let alone compete with the GOP on their own turf. Meanwhile they refuse to acknowledge that their base is now increasingly Millenials and Gen-Z.

There's a reason Obama won in a landslide before everyone realized he was full of shit, and it wasn't because he signaled leaning to the right. It was because he convincingly pantomimed as a progressive promising "change". Those same voters he fooled are now grown up and more saavy, they understand that money tells the truth. They're much harder to fool.

Dems realize that they cannot pull the same old tricks but actually have to reform in order to get those base voters back. They understand it, they just don't want to because it means an inevitable end to the corporate gravy train. So they paint their own base as "extremists" and concoct these crazy schemes to prop up right-wing nutjobs as their competition so their corporate candidates look better, but it's simply not working. They've brought us to the brink of fascism and it's not working unless you make it work for them.

natural_motions ,

The mechanism by which you make it clear and demonstrate reliability as a voter is, in part, by still by voting. The Uncommitted vote is a good example of how you make a message very clear, but that uncommitted vote means nothing if those people then cave in November and vote for Biden despite him basically giving them the finger in response to their uncommitted votes. Any political analyst with half a brain would understand why Biden lost in that scenario.

So finding and using any means by which to send the message and then being willing to back that message up with action is how it functions.

natural_motions , (edited )

I would vote for someone other than Biden as long as they didn't take AIPAC money. If they actually replaced him at the convention it would be a material acknowledgement that this kind of insane support for Israel is politically unviable going forward in the Democratic party.

I'd also consider voting Biden if Hakeem Jeffries banned Dems from taking AIPAC money, similarly to how Dems banned taking NRA money back in the day once the NRA started trying to play both sides against eachother.

It would also help if the Dem establishment raised a finger to defend progressive members when AIPAC raised millions to unseat them (even if it meant putting a Republican in their seat).

There's a lot that Dems could do to bring people back to the table, but the complete lack of any kind of real action is basically a repeated slap in the face to the non-genocide supporting wing of the party. What people don't want is "meetings with the community" and "private phone calls to Bibi expressing my stern disappointment". People have been clear to Biden what he needs to do, there's nothing to discuss or negotiate about.

natural_motions ,

They literally killed two Iranian generals and a bunch of other officials at a consulate. So yes, Israel is trying to escalate a regional war so Bibi can keep his genocide going. Iran has actually showed pretty remarkable restraint.

It's the same old tired play that fascists do to stay in power. Like, literally every time, and somehow people don't catch on...

natural_motions ,

This would be true if Democrats didn't actively surpress and ignore younger and progressive voters and candidates, instead focusing on a non-existent class of swing voters.

If a candidate goes out of their way to not represent you, derides and ignores your needs, why would you vote for them?

The Democratic party is broken by corporate greed and has been since Citizens United. People are wise to that reality and have no interest in participating in a system that doesn't protect them, fight for their rights or show any real interest in progress.

natural_motions ,

Well, no, if the Democratic party is only going to listen to their "moderate" neo-liberal swing voters then the only way of waking that demographic of people up is letting them experience the consequences until they "get it".

Take RvW for example, it didn't matter how loudly progressives warned people of the imminent failure of Dems to protect bodily autonomy, your average woman needed to go through the experience of losing RvW before they started to understand and give it a shit. And even now, idiots hail Ginsberg as some kind of hero feminist icon, they still don't grasp the depth of the problems we're facing as a nation.

From the responses here it sounds like we unfortunately need to learn more painful lessons before people understand that neoliberalism isn't just the lesser of two evils, but is an abject failure unequipped to fight the war that needs to be fought. It needs to go yesterday.

natural_motions , (edited )

The consequences are already happening for people, you are just in a comfortable enough position where you can accept the status quo. To a lot of people it doesn't matter and while you might say to those people "Fuck you,I don't care if Dems gave failed you for forty years, I'm doing ok still so vote for who I say." the bullying and demanding just isn't working on people anymore.

Time for neoliberals to be the ones to start compromising. If they don't want to they can come down here with everyone else and get an education.

natural_motions ,

And you're literally putting your mark of approval on genocide.

natural_motions ,

Everyone has to riot, and right now too many middle class liberal types are accepting of "half-way fascism" because it's not effecting them.

They're fine with the center left getting shoved to the side as "extreme", they're fine with minorities losing their rights as long as it's not them, they're fine with not looking too closely at how Dems have been culpable in the broken system we live in, looking too closely at the fact that Dems want things to stay exactly how they are and are ill-equipped and unwilling to fight the far-right.

The only way they get knocked out of that stupor is by being faced with the cold reality themselves.

natural_motions ,

Unfortunately ebikes in the US are priced as if they're some kind of luxury toy for silicon valley dorks. You could get an actual motorcycle for the price of a lot of ebikes here.

It's similar to how a lot of electric cars are priced $50k and above, they're not being made accessible for people, they're still treated like a status novelty for the most part.

natural_motions ,

Biden is the only moron here. If he wasn't fixated on supporting this genocide he'd be able to just sit back and watch the GOP eating itself alive. We'd all have a good laugh and then he'd win in November.

Instead he's playing chicken with our Democracy in defense of a far right-wing government half way across the world that despises him.

It's the most politically boneheaded shit I've seen in my entire life, and all in the name of slaughtering children. He's insisted on making it morally impossible for people to vote for him, even as the supposed "lesser of two evils".

natural_motions ,

Uh, trans women face out-sized violence and rape from men as well. So it is a safety concern for them as much as it is for cis women.

natural_motions ,

But if people recognize Trump as the significantly worse candidate, and don’t vote for Biden, then they are fully in support of Trump and whatever comes from his second term.

No, they aren't. They simply can't morally support a pro-genocide Democrat. They cannot support a party that refuses to fight but also demands the right to take all the air out of the room.

I really hope people learn this time around that you can't vote shame people into supporting a candidate. Dems really need to reform their approach and reassess, the lesser of two evils strategy has brought the country fully into fascism, it isn't working.

natural_motions ,

Sure, and you are actively voting for genocide. You are complicit.

See how that works?

If 2016 is not a lesson for liberals, then we might as well quit caring entirely and just give up whatever rights and freedoms we claim to value.

No, we don't give up caring, but it's important to understand that Biden is not a stop gap, he's not the lesser of two evils, he does not represent a force in opposition the fascism or a "chance to turn things around down the road". By empowering Democrats like Biden, you are signaling to them that they can keep weaponizing extreme right-wing nut jobs to get their own right-wing corporate shitheads in power.

I refuse to enable that. I'm done playing it that way.

And unfortunately, voters like you will need to personally be effected by the reality of where establishment Democrats have led us with their "lesser of two evils, bi-partisan compromise with fascists" bullshit before you actually understand the necessity of Democratic reform. Until you actually experience it you will continue to think it's this abstract thing where you can vote for whoever the chosen Dem is and nod along with MSNBC telling you that's the best that Dems can do and "next time we promise, no genocide lol."

This coming election is already lost to the right, whether it's Trump or Biden, they both represent the same direction. A Biden admin is not more workable than a Trump one, it doesn't represent an opportunity to move things forward on anything that matters. Whether it be climate change, human rights, our democracy etc. Biden proved that with his shell game of corporate pork that he's shoved through during his time in office.

So the choice becomes about the long-term strategy -- you can vote for Biden and genocide and simply delay the inevitable as the cycle repeats itself next general or mid-term and you again find yourself faced with the choice of empty right-wing suits verses extremist nutcases, pretend that somehow your vote is doing anything to push the right back, or you can embrace the reality that you're already in a pitched battle against fascism that's going to take at least a century of pain and strife to win and send the Democrats a message that they cannot win elections playing chicken with our rights.

It isn't a war that can be won with bipartisanship, or by milquetoast Republican-lite dipshits with corporate money spilling out of their ass.

natural_motions ,

Well, no shit, the entire strategy of conservativism at any point in history has been to prey on the dumbest demographic of humans and form them into a support base.

There are two kinds of conservatives 1) idiots 2) Grifters who prey on the idiots

natural_motions ,

Sure, and even now establishment Democrats are also quite conservative. Biden is just a Republican from 20-30 years ago. The main difference is he plays on the "enlightened centrist" type of idiot, rather than the religious/white nationalist flavor.

The party title doesn't mean so much as the actual policy and political philosophy.

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