492
rule
(lemmy.cafe)
plspls_pls_ stop calling each other fascists or astroturfers unless you have a thorough understanding of the uncommitted movement and what u.s. primaries are. there is so much blatant misunderstanding and misinfo going on it’s bad.
edit: if any loser dares call for an uncommitted vote in the general election? i will kick them in the balls (gender neutral) (in minecraft)
You may end up confronted with your ball-kicking obligation, especially if the GOP is consistent taking all opportunities to add more disinformation to the season. I'd guess whether such a disinformation program was successful might make the difference between a thousand scattered uncommitted write-in votes across the nation or 100,000 localized in battleground states.
The 2016 election remains fresh in my mind, in which Trump was so obviously a monster that we expected a landslide by Clinton. Yet somehow while everyone knew Trump was dangerous enough hated Clinton enough to take that risk that he won by the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, and boy, the US is jolly sorry we let that happen, but not sorry enough to change it, even though we were pretty jolly sorry for letting George W. Bush steal the election from Gore in 2000, via a SCOTUS ruling that even warns don't use this to set future precedents ( NARRATOR: Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) has been used to set precedent or justify opinions in later SCOTUS rulings. )
US voters are imbiciles. They're ignorant. They can't operate their voting materials correctly. They get confused and suppressed. And these factors can sometimes be used to change the course of elections.
In 2024, our election is about one thing:
That's where we are in the US. It's our only choice. Trump may not invade Poland and France, but he will quit NATO, and he will start interning non-whites and sending ICE to lock people up in detention centers. Some people think it won't be as bad as the German Reich. I think Germany is going to be holding the US' beer.
It's madness, but we really have no choice but to put Democrats in office. In the meantime, regarding the genocide in Palestine, by all means crab at your representatives and senators (state and US). Block traffic. Blow up pipelines. Tell young people the risks of joining military service. (Check your counter-recruitment groups for talking points and scary stories.) Join your local mutual aid organization. Raise all kinds of Hell.
But the election, despite what it is supposed to be, is not where members of the public gets to express itself...except for the one issue of whether or not we let the Republican party take over the US permanently.
So you have no choice for this election. It's sad, but it seems to be what it is. But what then?
If Biden is elected again, what will happen next term? You hope trump will die or finally end in prison? How long will you keep fascism at bay like this? How is it that there is half a year left before the election and you're already in this dire situation?
It's a situation that sucks. Yes. The US is on the verge of falling apart. Paths of least resistance are towards either civil war or an autocratic state that will try to preserve popular loyalty by targeting marginalized groups. Fascists doing genocide.
Regarding your question How long will you keep fascism at bay like this? the answer is as long as we have to.
It's not a hopeless cause. The Republican party is crumbling from within, is bleeding money and loyalists. The MAGA coalition is so focused on doing what Trump wants that it's ignoring down-ballot elections. Then there are numerous efforts to interfere with or obstruct Republican efforts to pass hateful laws, even while we can't really depend on the courts since so many benches have been filled with MAGA loyalists. But the failure of the courts to be either impartial or fair, favoring tough on crime justice over rehabilitation is an old one. But the Democratic party might just be able to outlast the Republican party, which will end with a second premature coup d'etat.
One of the advantages we have is the ubiquity of phone cameras and internet, which means the public gets to see more of what happens on the ground. This is impacting the situation in Palestine as well, as news is no longer controlled by a couple of agencies, but has plenty of independent leaks. I'm sure this informs the movements of the White House towards curbing Netanyahu and the IDF, supplying Gaza and moving towards a Palestinian state and an international coalition team to enforce terms. When gross images of atrocity go viral, whether that's IDF prisoners being mistreated, or people getting gunned down by US law enforcement, it is a really bad look when officials ignore or dismiss such incidents.
That said, all the myths that allowed for two far-right political parties in the US to control state and federal governments have been debunked while their plutocratic overlords (campaign financial contributors) still are pushing for a neo-feudal state, and the recinding of civil rights. It mirrors the situation during the Great Depression, for which FDR's New Deal was a stopgap and industrialists and Hoover were looking at Mussolini and Italy in admiration and envy. (All that got interrupted by WWII and the cold war).
So I can say with confidence I have no idea what will happen next, but doing anything to give the US to the Republicans or to incite civil war would make shit a lot worse for the common American, with very little chance we'd get any public-serving progress out of the outcome for a century or two.
So the first step is recognizing the degree to which the US has been destabilized and how much civil rights have been stripped from the public, despite what kids are being taught in public schools.
US elections are an unusually long process. They normally take about a year of actual voting because of the primaries.
And nothing good can happen during these primaries?
If you're going to cast a protest vote during the presidential election, the primaries is the time to do it. You're only voting for the presidential candidate that will represent your political party, so there's less risk of getting someone you won't like.
I don't know if it's official yet, but Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee for the election this November. The same can be said for Biden as the Democratic Nominee, as I don't know if an incumbent president has ever lost their party's nomination. So while we will nearly certainly have to pick between an old man with bombs and an old man with bombs who wants to tear down the government and rebuild it with himself at the helm, you can still show your disapproval at the ballots.
Trying to proofread this and it sounds like a fucking Trainwreck. I don't know if that's my fault or the government's.
thank you for taking the time to write this summary /gen
i do not disagree.