Yea, no disagreement. I more am curious if the federated nature is what helps mitigate that risk, or if there is some other systemic distinction that has helped.

I also just don’t know what the others were like long-term - did they peeter out? Would I realize it if lemmy was in the same decline?

Yes, famously anti-capitalist Liberalism…

This article is excellent, even if many here will be offended by the headline and refuse to read further.

This part struck me:

In the United States and elsewhere (think of French President Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous electoral machinations), the liberal centrism or ​“progressive neoliberalism” that casts itself as the bulwark against fascism is proving to be anything but. Not only has it contributed to the social miseries upon which reactionary politics feeds — mass incarceration, predatory finance, imperialist war and the rollback of social welfare have all been bipartisan projects in the past half-century — but it stands revealed as a failed brand, kept alive primarily by the investments of party elites and donors, but also by what historian Adam Tooze calls its profound narcissism. This delusional conviction that it is a historical force for progress, sanity and the good makes elite liberal politicians slip easily into paternalism and condescension—something many voters find more offensive than direct insults.

Edit, Jesus what a banger. The last paragraph is perfect, too

An anti-fascist politics does not require constantly decrying the fascism of your opponent (which may prove numbing or alienating) but it certainly has to cleave to a different logic than that which ​“depends on the moment” or on electoral calculus alone. It needs to discover ways to not just make emancipatory ideas popular — fortunately, many of them already are — but to weave them into a project rooted in everyday needs. To this end, liberal centrism is not just useless, it is an obstacle. It demands endless moral and political sacrifices from leftists and progressives, while not even serving as a decent vehicle for the kind of reformist compromises we might expect from representative politics. When existential issues are on the agenda, from genocide to the mounting climate catastrophe and the manifold crises it will bring, betting on liberalism is a fool’s errand.

I’m not actually sure comments get sorted by vote tally by default here.

I’ve always just ignored downvotes - I know when my opinion is unpopular, I don’t see the votes as validating. I’d be fine if there were no visible votes at all

If i could do this without my wife noticing, I’d be golden.

Unfortunately, she took to lurking some reddit communities right as I was exiting

I wonder if anybody here has tried some of the other failed reddit alternatives like Voat for a long enough time to be able to speak on how lemmy has fared relative to them.

I tried a few during other reddit exoduses, and they all felt… bad. Lemmy is the first one I’ve managed to actually stay on comfortably without being tempted back to reddit.

I’m not much for word games, thanks.

I just want to hear you say that votes cast not for your party aren’t legitimate votes

Never what I said, nor intended

voting for a 3rd party doesn’t count

Whoomp, there it is.

I just want to hear you say that votes cast not for your party aren’t legitimate votes

I voted third party.

Read it again.

So did OP.

It worked for some democratic voters, but not for the 14 million others.

I do consider that “game theory” voting (a) results in a definite single rational course of action for this election for anyone who favors democracy or left-leaning policies. But I also, it (b) is not be the endgame and just a mitigation until we prioritize ranked choice voting and other structural reform.

This is fine if there was any indication that the underlying problem of fascism in the US is going to be addressed by the incoming administration, or if you believe it is addressed by voting against it. The problem is that many of us don’t believe either to be the case, especially when the current campaign strategy has been to grant concessions to those nationalist solutions while turning away from socialist ones.

When neither of the most likely outcomes address the continued growth of fascism inside the US, the ‘game theory’ of electoral politics suddenly seems like a naieve indulgence more than any kind of solution, even a temporary one.

I think the miscommunication is that you’re looking for a game-theory explanation for the best way to vote given a desired outcome, and TDD (forgive the shorthand) is doing a higher-level analysis on large-scale electoral trends and demographics that explain a shortcoming in the democratic campaign strategy. Even working within the 2-party electoral system, democrats have been leaving a lot of voters on the table, and the only outreach they’ve been doing for those voters (who are getting more and more frustrated) has been to scare them/shame them into falling in line and swallowing their scruples.

The reason why it’s dumb to paint Greens or other third-parties as ‘spoilers’ is because of this implicit assumption that those votes will trickle-down into one of the two major parties if they weren’t there. TDD is pointing out that Greens (and RFK before he stepped out, and PSL, ect) are filling political voids that the democrats and republicans have left open by not addressing the concerns of those voters. Assuming those voters would simply make a different choice ignores the fact that there was something about whatever third-party candidate that was motivating them that isn’t present in the 2-party candidate. That voter is about as likely to decide not to vote at all as they are to decide to give up their scruples and vote for the party that they were actively avoiding in the first place, especially when that candidate has refused to give those voters/those interests representation.

All of this analysis is on top of a foundational understanding/materialist lens that suggests that the US is heading toward economic/capitalistic collapse independent of whatever electoral showmanship is happening every 4 years. This game-theory bullshit is completely indifferent to the environment that is actively pushing voters away from the center and into more and more extreme populism.

Yup. This is what frustrates me here and especially the last year: everyone pretends as if Trump is the singular threat that - once defeated- we may move on to other more important things.

But Trump is a manifestation of a national disillusionment with electoral politics and a broader economic failure. We keep dismissing the progressive populism of the left, while the fascistic populism on the right grows to a fever pitch.

If tonight trump keels over from a stress induced aneurism, by tomorrow lunch an opportunistic upstart will take his place because conservatives are frothing at the mouth for retribution. If Republicans return to classical wasp conservatism now, they’ll lose the next decade of elections because half their voting base simply isn’t interested in stale fiscal policy anymore.

The longer democrats ignore the conditions creating that current of populism beyond the orbit of Big Orange, the shorter lived any victories they might squeeze out now will be. We’ll see what happens Tuesday, but i think the odds are leaning away for Harris. We might have to confront that failure sooner than we think.

Yes.

It doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable, it’s just hilarious that they felt the need to include it lol

“Did Biden bite a baby? Maybe, but the guy who said something about it is a felon!”

if it’s relevant to what they’re saying, yea lol

How does Benny Johnson being paid by russia change or effect what he’s saying about Biden pretending to bite babies?

Like, if the article had said:

Lemmy user LowtierComputer, whom is alleged to like pineapple on their pizza, commented on an article about Biden biting the baby in the turkey costume.

“Wouldn’t you like to know who’s a Russian rat up front?” they wrote. Their post had been upvoted 4 times by midday Friday.

How does your preferred pizza topping relate to the topic of your comment (biden biting babies)? It might be true, and it might be important information to people who distrust pineapple-pizza-lovers, but it absolutely no bearing on the thing you wrote.

Lmao it’s just funny that an article about something so ridiculous has deleterious details about random conservative commentators in it, as if those details have any impact on whether the ridiculous thing happened or not. It almost makes you wonder if the story is actually about Biden at all, or if it’s about how shitty those commentators are and Biden was just the excuse to write about them.

The fact that this extremely unserious story is being taken extremely seriously by all parties involved is hilarious to me. Not just the faux outrage by the conservative media, but the shots being fired back by the lib media in response.

Ok, first, LMAO that this is real.

Second, the entire political media apparatus in the US has completely lost grasp with reality. Conservative media has predictably reacted to this with faux outrage, but the fucking liberal response to the conservative response is hilariously combative:

Conservative commentator Benny Johnson, whom the Department of Justice recently alleged was unwittingly paid by Russian state media to produce Kremlin sympathetic content, reposted an image of Biden biting the baby in the turkey costume.

“Apparently Joe Biden is biting babies at The White House this evening,” he wrote. His post had been viewed 740,000 times by Thursday morning.

Lol, like - sure - all objectively true. But throwing out ‘he’s a paid russian agent’ accusations against a tweet that’s pointing to something Biden actually did is batshit crazy lol. Is the implication that russia is paying Johnson to fabricate a story about Biden biting babies?

The US political media has become a parody of itself and all I can do is laugh at it.