Reminder that the Democrats would be considered even further right than the Conservative Party in Canada. And Canada itself is still considered pretty right wing with no big leftist parties (NDP is still center-right at best)
Yeah but Canada been allowing USA to get away with its bullshit around the world for the last 300 years for its own benefit so their hands aren’t quite as clean as you may think.
You’re completely correct and I for one am hoping the recent events finally get Canada to break ties with the US so we stop enabling them. We also have our share of atrocities separate from the US that we need to atone for, namely the treatment of Indigenous peoples and the environment.
From an outsider’s perspective it seems like the Democrats behave like that because the US electorate is genuinely right-wing and need pandered to.
It really isn’t that right-wing, especially economically, but there’s a lot of factors that make it seem that way. First is that it did go through a large, neoliberal shift in the 80s during the Regan years. When the economy crashed in the early 90s, the Democrats decided that, instead of returning to their New Deal roots, they would also run on neoliberal policies. The Republicans moved further right because of that, especially on social issues, and then the Rachet Effect described in the meme really started to ramp up.
Couple this with a lot of political illiteracy among the public in general, and you get a lot of people who actually don’t know what they believe and default to partisanship. If you poll people if they support gun control, you will get a very negative response, but if you break gun control into individual measures (longer waiting periods, mandatory background checks, magazine capacity limits, etc.) you get much more support. It’s the same on almost every issue; people don’t support a, “big government takeover,” of the healthcare system, but they broadly support Medicare for all. There’s a somewhat famous picture of a guy holding a sign that says something like, “Get Your Government Hands Off My Social Security,” that I think sums up this ignorance pretty well.
This attitude isn’t limited to the right, either. If you asked a Democrat “Who deregulated Wall Street?” they’d probably tell you Regan, Bush, or the other Bush. In actuality, the most significant deregulation, which lead directly to the 2008 financial collapse, was Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagal. Liberals think that Obama made significant progress on regulating Wall Street, but what he put in place was nothing compared to the deregulation that proceeded it.
Citizens United and the rise of mega donors also plays a pretty significant role in moving the parties away from policies that the general population want and towards the goals of a few oligarchs, but this reply is already way too long, so TL;DR: the country got pretty right-wing under Regan, both parties became more right-wing as a result, the population has become much more left-leaning since income inequality/cost of living went way up, but the parties are still both right-wing and most people are too ignorant to understand that.
Good comment, but this bugs me:
*Reagan
Regan was Reagan’s chief of staff for his last couple of years in office.
Holy shit, I don’t know when I started misspelling Reagan’s name, but now I feel like I need to go through thousands of replies and figure it out, because this has definitely been going on for months.
Pandering only works if you’re delivering more of what your audience wants than your opponent. It yields no votes from right wingers when they can choose fascists and get more of what they want.
But it does alienate people who would otherwise be your natural allies.
Nope, when you poll on individual policies, they’re way to the left of the democrats.
The democrats showcase healthcare bill wasn’t “subsidies for employer-based health insurance, that you have no idea what it’s going to cost and have to buy at a specific time of year by going to one of 50 sites provided by your state at a specific time of year and filling out a bunch of forms or face a tax penalty, with a sliding scale based on income, marriage status, and other factors” because that’s more popular than “free healthcare”.
Same if you ask americans about Biden (and Harris’s) policies of “loan forgiveness for PELL grant recipients up to X dollars depending on age, loan repayment status, income, parent’s income, and whether you were born on a prime-numbered date” vs “free college”
The democrats compromise their bills, not because there’s a bunch of “moderates” who are exactly between democrat and republican who will vote for democrats if they promote garbage versions of progressive bills that don’t actually help anyone, but because they know those versions are less likely to pass and be easier to chip away at, and therefore won’t piss off their billionaire patrons.
If you’re getting your perspective from billionaire-owned news, (which no fault to you, is most major news-sources) it’s no wonder that you’d think that. By the way, that’s the exact same narrative the “billionaire-bullypulpit” push here in the States, even though it isn’t so.
These politicians and the media have the same lock step lie. They say they’re moving to the right “because their voters are”, but they’re just gaslighting folks as cover for what they were doing anyway; whatever their rich donors tell them.
Our government behaves like that because it formally takes bribes.
If you look at the real issues ~60% want homeless fed and to help people back on their feet, healthcare and school to be affordable to everyone.
~40% want all those things, but they only want them for themselves and their families.
We’re at about 60/40 POS.
I’d say 60/40 is way off provably more like 80/20
That’s where I want it to be. But I’m worried it’s not
Eh if you ask any random person if they’d rather kill or house the homeless people I’m pretty sure they would say they’d prefer the latter
That’s just a strawman, the same goes for killing or raping people.
The people themselves aren’t entirely compassionless, But bathed in the propaganda, they’re told that the homeless or homeless because they’re bad, awful people. Most of the right-wing world view is designed to embrace greed by turning victims into Boogeyman.
You’re buried in propaganda if you think 40% of Americans would rather kill homeless people rather than house them
Not at all what I said
Where do you get your opinion of Americans? The answer doesn’t’ matter because every media outlet, including social media, is owned by billionaires. Lemmy being the possible exception, but don’t tell me you get the impression that Americans are right wing from here.
Doesn’t it seem weird how many think pieces about Trump voters there have been in the past decade? I’ve never seen an article about an Anarchist. Not a single article about someone who didn’t vote. Meanwhile, every algorithm takes you to the furthest right content you’ll accept.
The majority voted for trump, a fascist. Idk.
If you tell me you are a good person, I will require evidence. If you tell me you are a bad person, I will trust your word.
No, the majority of white people and the majority of people who voted voted for Trump. That is a big difference. As much as some liberals want to say “Not voting is the same as voting for Trump”, that is not true.
Weird focus on white people if it adds nothing to your point.
Not voting is certainly not an indication that they didn’t want trump and when dealing with a far right fascist, that is interesting. But we all can have some copium, so that we don’t need to accept that a shocking amount of people are dumb as rocks and that consequently they don’t quite care about stuff like due process, and don’t mind a fascist Leader.
At some point, we need to accept that currently the general public is conservative because they know the old ways and care too little to learn the new ones but get scared of change.
If the shoe fits, wear it. It’s weird that you think my comment “focused” on white people, and also weird that you’re trying to blame all Americans when Republicans are 90% white and the only group that the majority of which ever voted for Republicans.
Republicans are a white problem. There is no other way to put it. Sorry I’m not sorry if you’re unused to being talked about collectively., but not doing so is burying the lede. Every time you said “people”, it would be more accurate if you said “white people”, but you don’t even understand why you don’t do that.
I think it is a weird focus because it was irrelevant to your point, and the discussion at large. I could point out that American christians are far more likely to support trump than non-christians, but why? When we talk about the idea of the us electorate (that you chose to equate to american in your comment to the other guy. So I will say American too)
The collective in question was defined, “why do you think that about Americans?” To move the focus to white Americans is odd in that context. Imagine I would have said, “well republicans are far right”. You would have told me that we don’t talk about republicans but Americans. That I couldn’t and shouldn’t judge a collective by a subgroup. Yet that is what your focus on white Americans does in this conversation. It is not a bad observation, it is just a weird focus in this conversation.
And yes white Americans have voted trump in power, 61% of Americans identify as “white (not mixed)”. 71% of Americans identify as “white”. That is a huge part of the us electorate. If 57% (according to exit polls) of 71% of the us electorate vote for a fascist, of course, that is relevant and it should play a part in how I judge the us electorate.
But in the end of the day, all of that is more complicated than needed to answer the question, why do I believe the us electorate is far right. Trump won the popularity vote. You can break it up. But then we aren’t talking about your initial question, why do you think that about the us electorate? Instead we would talk about e.g. the white us electorate, certainly worth while exploring but not the topic at hand.
If you are unhappy with that, then don’t frame it as you do. I am answering your question precisely. Ask me a different question if you want to talk about a different topic. But don’t dismiss my answer because you don’t like it and claim that your comment didn’t focus onto white Americans and that the majority of the us electorate didn’t vote for trump while blaming white Americans (the absolute majority of the us electorate) for voting for trump.
I am sorry but the us is mostly white and fascist. That is what informs my opinion on us citizens as a collective.
Edit: you also seem very offended by the idea that I judge the us electorate based on a popular vote, saying that not everyone is that way. While happily blaming white Americans based on exit polls, ignoring that not everyone is that way. That is odd. Why can’t I judge the us electorate but you can judge the white us electorate?
Neoconservatism ruled the last 40 years but it’s not even a “conservative” doctrine. It’s a bipartisan Zionist foreign policy. Trump is a knee jerk response to Dems alienating people with centrist social opinions, Republicans shipping jobs overseas and both of them sustaining pointless forever wars.
Republicans shipping jobs overseas
I got news for you buddy. Look up who crafted and championed NAFTA
I’m being intentionally simplistic. Of course Dems are in on the grift of hollowing out the country.
Yeah its not just republicans doing that
Before you reply to me directly please understand:
- The US overthrew democracy in the country I am from
- The US installed a fascist king with secret police that terrorized my family
- Once kicked out the US supported a dictator in the neighboring country where the other half of my family lived
- The US funded both sides of a war between my country and the neighboring one that led to mass civilian deaths, one side directly by giving a dictator weapons and cash and the other side clandestinely thru laundering money by selling drugs in Latin America
- Once they lost that war turned on the dictator in the neighboring country and invented reasons to illegally invade. Twice
- Toppled the regime and left a power vacuum that consumed all my family that lived there for literally hundreds of years.
- Created material conditions in the country my family is from that forced them to leave or die
You Americans are not the good guys, your country and government is evil to its core.
There’s so much Democrat bootlicking in here, the comment section smells of wet leather and shoe polish.
If you can’t draw the line at genocide, you’re trash. No exceptions.
Republicans aren’t 100% gun ho about trumps recent (and easily foreseen) fuck ups.
If we replace First-past-the-post voting, we could easily see the republican party get replaced with a more reasonable conservative party like the democrats.
Plus, you know, screaming at people unrepresented in government to vote for your preferred political party isn’t actually democracy.
If Alaska can do it, so can your state!
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
There is nothing more cringe than seeing americans debating wheter they’re fascist or not due to X or Y politician rhetoric when they have been dropping bombs abroad for their entire existence.
I try to remind people that we have no “Leftist” party or even a “Centre left” party anymore. We have Center right and far right now.
This is why revolution and working class organization is necessary.
Also funny when people complain about Leftists critiquing the Dems. Pre-election you said to wait, now it’s post election and the same complaints arise.
That’s right, everybody knows that the left and the right are perfectly equally bad, and the act of voting to stop the bleeding and starting a revolution are mutually exclusive /s
And then after years of this nonsense, people wonder how the poor voter turnout that got the fascist elected happened.
You believe the Democrats are ‘the left’?
You can’t stop the bleeding, liberals are permascratched now
The act of stabbing your artery in order to stop the gangrene you got from repeatedly stabbing your arteries is indeed just as bad as dipping your gangrenous tissue into your open wounds to spread it faster. Neither make you better. Neither is a true stopping point.
Or in other words, Dems are the clutch and reps are the gas. You have no brakes. You might be able to stop without a brake, maybe even stay stopped. But shits going to get worse no matter which you choose since you’re actively ignoring the brakes.
I like the metaphor of a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a piece of flotsam in the cold water a mile from shore. He’s losing body heat, and eventually hypothermia will set in and he will drown. But if he lets go and starts to swim for shore, he’ll lose body heat even faster, use up his energy, and he probably won’t make it. The “harm reduction” argument says that he should reduce his heat loss, and stay clinging to the flotsam. He’s safe right now, while attempting to get to shore is difficult and dangerous.
Of course, by the time that the fallacy of that strategy becomes apparent (*gestures at current events*), he’s too cold and weak to even attempt the swim.
who said anything about the left?
2024 election was second highest turnout in 20 years wasn’t it?
Democrats commit genocide and pretend to be sad about it. Republicans commit genocide and post the 🤣 emoji
Democrats commit genocide and post the🙏 emoji
Republicans commit genocide and post the 🤣 emoji
Dear Liberals,
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I am so glad I can’t see the bullshit from lemmy.world on my server
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Your economic system guarantees fascism. You can’t vote your way out of it. Capitalist modes of production inevitably concentrate power and lead to fascism. It is unavoidable.
it was nice talking at you too hamid
do you still live in Iran?
just wanted to let you know the top comment was in opposition to your opinion
you seem to have defederated from us so maybe your instance and ones like it should defederate completely to make your life easier
actually this time it’ll be different, we just won’t have another crisis of capitalism that requires the stamping out of revolutionaries
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Democrats spent their entire life understanding what FPTP is and their entire political understanding hangs on explaining it to other people any time Democrats get criticized.
Bought a lot of European stock during the trump crash so…
THANK YOU COMMUNISTS FOR NOT VOTING 😁😁😁😁
6% total increase in a mooooooooooonth lalalallalala
Ahhhhhhh bonjour mademoiselle… mon chérie… Ma femme pour toujours 🌝
From what I’ve seen it’s more like republicans fuck everything up, then democrats come in and un-fuck everything. Then the democrats introduce good policy that Republicans take credit for. Rince and repeat.
“Genocide is good policy”
I never said I was a fan of genocide. I am and always will be a democrat even though I can’t vote. Maybe you should read my comment again since I think you’re reading it the other way around.
