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'Battle plan': How the US far right would dismantle climate programs
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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Politics
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JFC
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Don't be afraid: fight hard. That means not just voting, but actively supporting candidates to opposed them with both time and money.
Where are we getting candidates that oppose this?
In the Democratic party. Even the ones who are taking money from the fossil fuels industry largely signed on to the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a major piece of climate legislation.
They'll just give ot away in the next debt ceiling "debate" so what's the point of electing dems? It is hardly sending a rebuke to congress to elect one of the two parties. I would rather vote for an actual leftist that loses and causes the dems to lose too than vote for a dem and barley win. We don't advance voting in dems that don't represent us, but just represent Republicans not winning. Cia would kill them, but such is life.
A vote for a leftist with no chance to win is a vote for the conservatives. It sucks, but such is the nature of the two-party system.
Maybe if the dems never win the Republicans won't have anyone else to blame anymore and they would lose popularity and we could get over them I'm twenty years instead of them gaining steam. Maybe. But climate change is gonna wreck havoc before we try anything other than weak resistance.
Also funny enough my username is yours backwards. Lol
I think you severely underestimate their ability to find scapegoats.
Any hope is better than this: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/26/pass-it-pass-it-pass-it-pass-it-pass-it-the-president-says-about-a-bill-the-gop-says-will-be-useful-to-silence-lgbtq-voices/
From the front page this morning.
So your solution to the Dems occasionally enabling the Reps' evil is to put the Reps in power so that they can enact their evil freely with no opposition at all? Sorry, but I'm not convinced by that logic.
You remind me of myself when I was younger. And I hope you are right.
It's not my job to hold Republicans to task. It's republican voters that do that. It's republican voters that you need to reach. And it is republican voters that you need to convince that this system isn't working. At least with a real leftist party all of the "the LEFT!" Discourse won't be about democrats anymore.
Oh also good luck holding democrats to anything after voting for them.
And you think Republicans are going to have any more success with their representatives? It is your job to hold Republicans to task, by voting someone else in. And there's only one other party that has any chance of success at that.
It's already not really about them. The Dems do only a fraction of what the conservatives accuse them of. The whining about "the left" is going to be based on a persecution fetish fantasy completely divorced from reality regardless of whether the left in America is the Dems and/or some other party.
And some people vote for Republicans only for a single issue, mostly guns. There suddenly being a pro gun, socially left party as an option would do more damage to the republican base than having another four years of Joe Biden. Honestly at this point I think we start a grass roots effort to elect Queen Latifah without her campaigning.
Only about 30% of Americans own a gun, and only a fraction of those are single-issue Republican voters. Establishing such a left-wing party might put a dent in the Republican base, but it would sunder the Democratic one and ensure unopposed Republican rule likely in perpetuity (they'd just seize power; already they're barely managing to keep the mask of democracy from falling off).
The whole gun issue is a total distraction that does nothing other than galvanize the Rep base. The Dems should just avoid stirring the hornet's nest and ignore it altogether.
I don't think you are putting the right context on that 30% own a gun (and around half that don't could see themselves owning one in the future).
In 2020 American's came out to vote in larger numbers than has been seen in over 100 years and still only 2/3rds of people voted. So of that 66.6 percent about 51% voted for Biden. So that means about 33.79% of Americans voted for the democrat presidential candidate... in the largest turn out in modern history.
The NRA sways a lot of people with threats that the democrats want to "take their guns" but Republicans don't hear that as a funny eye roll phrase. They 1000% think electing a Democrat is electing someone who will send the army to search their house and steal their property. They fully believe that is months from happening at all times.
That's my point precisely. These people keep believing that the Dems are about to seize their guns regardless of how many Dem administrations come and go without it happening, so there's no point trying to persuade them or reason with them. (At this point one might draw some parallels with expecting the imminent second coming of Jesus, which is also a popular belief in these circles.) Even if a pro-gun leftist party were established, these people would just be fed propaganda that its pro-gun stance is a scam, and they'd buy it hook, line, and sinker and vote against it. These entrenched right-wing voters are beyond saving, and focusing on them is a waste of time and resources that would instead be better spent mobilizing the apathetic left-leaning masses.
And how does voting for Joe Biden help us reach them? We need democrats to believe they need to reach left, not right. But they are a center/right party at this point and expecting them to go left because you want them to is lunacy.
Republicans got you believing that voting for democrats that support them is your only option.
It is, that's how a two-party system works. The Democratic Party needs to be reformed from within. Creating competition for it only ensures the failure of both and the rise of conservatism to power.
Okay, keep doing what we are doing and hope they decide to change on their own?
What part of "the Democratic Party needs to be reformed" did you find unclear?
And we are going to influence this reform by... voting for them no matter what?
No, that's how you forestall a fascist takeover. You reform the Dems by getting jobs in the party and pushing it to the left from within.
Well, best of luck trying to convince the center right that they should be left instead of starting a leftist party. I don't think the dems should change, I think they are a great right wing party that I wish I didn't have to vote for anymore.
I understand your frustration, but again, that's the nature of a two-party system. Your choice is between center-right and fascism. Adding more parties to the left of fascism just splits the vote and ensures fascist victory. Adding more to the right would be hard, since the Reps are pretty far right already. Though my hope for 2024 is that Trump get snubbed for the Rep nomination and makes his own party out of spite. I'd be pretty happy if that happened.
Getting a party to change its ideology is hard but not impossible. The Reps and Dems switched platforms once already.
Sounds like we are fascists than. Guess we gotta wait for another county to declare war on us and come kill the Republicans who put all the leftists in concentration camps.
I guess you're done pretending to be a leftist. Cool.
I'm not seeing the connection. Historically when people like the Republicans rule a country they eventually have wars they lose to end the regime. We already have political prisoners in super max from twenty years ago. I wonder how long the rest of the world let's us get away with our bs.
And you find that preferable to another four years of Joe Biden?
No? My hope would be we would overthrow the ruling class, but we've never even gotten close to deciding as a nation that 12 people having all of the money is a bad idea. So it all only really matters so much.
But again no, my hope was for a leftist party in America, ranked voting and at least 5 competitive parties trying to attract voters, a removal of jerrymandering, senate votes in some way tied to population size, so whatever insane percent of the population California is, is not represented by 2% of the voting power. I want a lot of things, and on a lot of these the majority of Americans agree. The IRS should send you a bill for the taxes owed like other developed nations, but because of lobbies we can't have that. I want a health care system that makes sense and doesn't have to charge $600 for an Ace bandage. I want and I want and I want. Most Americans do. I want children to not be starving in a nation that screams we are the greatest Earth has ever, or will ever see. We have plenty and we refuse to spread it to those in need. People need to petition the government for years and hire lawyers just to ask for help because they can't work anymore. We continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars testing unemployment benefits receivers for drugs ever though almost no one has been caught and kicked off benefits for it. We have legalized slave labor with our prison system hiring out manual laborers for dollars on the hour and paying tge inmates pennies as low as 13 cents an hour. We have legalized child labor still because the agricultural sector has always been exempt from that rule. Our wages are kept as low as possible for the price of goods to still be purchased, slowly pushing more and more people into the lower class. We have more homes with no one living in them than we have homeless people by something like 2.6 times. We regularly refuse ambulance trips when they are required because they are so expensive, there are ways to not pay, but most people who know that can afford to pay it.
If this is a functioning democracy how do you defend it? If this is a developed nation why do we insist on grinding people at the bottom for fuel?
By voting for the party that represents the ruling class' interests and advances its agenda?
That's nice and all, but in a two-party system you can't get any of that. Your choices are limited to the lesser evil and a bunch of fascists who want to turn the two-party system into a one-party system.
Guess it's wait for the war then.
Or you could try to forestall it. Y'know, on the basis that a war is going to be much worse than the flawed rule of the Democrats.
The flawed rule is what leads to the wars.
Does it? Or are you making the same mistake in your thinking as those guys who are terrified that the Dems are coming for their guns tomorrow despite numerous Dem administrations coming and going without anyone making such a move?
They passed it. And managed to (so far) preserve it, and look likely to keep on doing so to the best of their ability with the possible exception of a handful who are bought off. I'll work to elect them because of that.
If that is all you require than I wish you the best.
You mean like how they gave it away in the last one?
Oh wait, Biden played the Republicans like a harpsichord last time they pulled that crap.
Yeah, stuffing Congress full of actual leftists would be better, but let's not pretend these Democrats are completely incompetent.
Well, if getting defence spending up 3%, capping all non-defence discretion spending, requiring an end date to student loan repayment holds, and actually getting money to the IRS so they can do their job is all Biden "playing him like a harpsichord"... really don't want to see what him sucking up is like.
Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/05/29/whats-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal-struck-by-biden-and-mccarthy.html
Somebody's gotta do it, and I don't see the rest of the civilized world chipping in.
Yep, that's what tends to happen when Americans vote Republican. Protip: don't vote Republican.
A setback, nothing more. There have been headlines of further attempts to get student debt forgiven, and again, filling Congress with Democrats will get it done.
Over the vigorous objections of Republican billionaires who desperately don't want to get caught evading taxes. That's a big deal.
You already did see it, in 2017 through 2021. It, uh, was not good.
Two steps forward and two steps back until it's your kids turn to pick up the mantle.
You get them on primaries. And before that, on local level.
What? Democrats had Bernie and he couldn't win a primary against someone with the worst record in congress.
Did you vote on primaries? Did all your friends vote on primaries? Did you participate in your local process of choosing delegates? Do you know how this process is happening in your constituency? If the answer on any of this questions is no, you should get more information about it, and while you will be doing that, you will discover your answer on how come Bernie lost primaries despite being so loved among people who don't vote.
Out of 240 million eligible voters, 19 million voted for Biden and 9.6 million voted for Sanders. Without changing that dynamics there is no changing anything else.
And if I answer yes to all of those questions and was in an early voting state that had Bernie doing much better than Biden? What then?
If 10 more millions or so people will do the same, you would have Bernie as a nominee. But they didn't, and you don't. That's a democracy. Now, in order to have it your way, you could for example continue your political activism, maybe even try to get elected somewhere.
What you can't do is to say "everything is rigged because the outcome is not what I wanted" and call it a day. That's not a democracy.
What are you even talking about? I don't have to do anything. And I don't at all understand why you told me that tge definition of democracy is in fact, not where, "what you can't do is to say, "everything is rigged because the outcome is not what I wanted" and call it a day." That is wild.
Everything is rigged, and I can't imagine anyone being crazy enough to say otherwise. I make okay money and would need to work for like ten thousand years to make what some others in our country make in a second. Are you telling me that a system where one person can be placed on such a pedestal could ever be a good thing?