this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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Trump's narrative, despite being just a makeover of the political establishment, is that he's anti-establishment. Democrats are just nakedly the political establishment with clown makeup pretending to be "progressive". Trump's message resonated with his audience, the Democrats' message didn't. Both of them are genocidal maniacs that are using nuclear weapons to hold the entire world hostage. Let's keep our eyes on the target here.
He isn't anti-establishment though, except that he's more concerned with self aggrandizement than practical policy. Democrats are establishment that occasionally align with voter needs, Trump is 100% aligned with his own needs, which occasionally defy the establishment when there's a conflict with his interests.
Again, this comes down to messaging, i.e. rhetoric. Not in content, but in vibes. The Democrats need to pay more attention to vibes, rhetoric, than content. You're just repeating what I said with different words.
I am not repeating what you said, we have fundamentally different understandings of this system. Trump and Biden are both puppets of an imperial machine. You are trying to play strategist for the Democrats, my interest is in ending the machine. You are under the illusion that Trump emerged out of left field and is operating of his own accord, I am aware that he's just a slight rebranding of establishment policy made to look like some kind of wildcard.
Your understanding of my point is incorrect. I am under no such illusion. Your interest in "ending the machine" lacks praxis to accomplish that goal. My interest is in Democratic strategy only insofar that it is a stopgap solution to that very same goal. I have no interest in equivocating liberals and fascists. Certainly, the one begets the other, in the same way a tiger cub will become an adult tiger, but I am more confident in our ability to overcome a cub than an adult tiger.
I seek Democratic victory only insofar that I do not see a mature threat to the establishment, and I seek an establishment party which is easier to subvert in the meantime, while meaningful praxis matures. Slow descent into fascism is preferable to accelerated descent into fascism, because I do not believe that accelerationism is in the interest of the people. The risk of enduring fascism is too high.
Now kiss. We're all on the same side here. Left infighting is what has doomed us all. Yes Trump is a disgusting capitalist bigot piece of shit, but that's what the American people want. They may be too fucking dumb but they want the system to change and Trump is offering to flip the whole table.
Stop fucking fighting and let's figure out what to do.
Once again, focus on rhetoric. The people want a compelling narrative. All the policy in the world means nothing if the people aren't buying. The people are dumb, they want entertaining stories. Give them what they want, instead of convincing them they should want something else.
Is a fucking fist in the air and the rifle in the other attractive enough yet?
No, not really. That carries an incredible amount of personal risk. As bad as things are, they're nowhere near get-shot-in-the-street-by-the-military-fighting-for-liberty bad yet.
The democrats and their stupid supporters suck all the air out of the room and frustrate real leftist change. They waste everyone’s time and energy on electoralism only to back stab their supporters. Fuck them. Let’s kill the democrat party once and for all they deserve to no longer be a political party after this election loss. They lost on purpose in service to capital. Liberals can’t get that through their thick fucking heads.
DEMOCRATS WOULD RATHER LOSE TO FASCISTS THAN APPEASE THE LEFT.
Repeat that a million times until it sinks through. They are a waste of time.
Maybe we should focus on killing the MAGA party first tho. What possible benefit is there in going from "bad party vs worse party" to "worse party vs countless splintered leftist factions"? Your order of operations is all wrong, if we're going to kill a party, let's focus on the actively fascist one first.
You don't topple electoralism overnight, we need a functional alternative first. Otherwise you're just handing control over to the fascists. Uncoordinated discontent isn't going to cut it. We need actual organization with an actual plan of action. The time and energy "wasted" on electoralism is miniscule, there's plenty available to back alternatives once a workable alternative is actually presented. Present it.
The fascist one is popular. You’re not going to kill it when the country was founded on the prototypes to fascism.
What’s needed is a real alternative that is the opposite of fascism and not just fascism lite. Why vote for the fascism lite party when you can just have the real thing?
Again, the fascism lite party would rather lose to the full blown fascists than cede any power to the left. the fascism lite party needs to be fully replaced by an anti fascist one if we’re gonna play electoralism.
So your response to a popular fascist party is to... destroy the only party with enough popularity to slow it down? Bold strategy, Cotton.
Fully agreed, but maybe let's build that before getting rid of the lite version. I'd rather fight a bear with a shotgun than a stick, but I'm not going to throw away my stick in the hope that I'll just stumble upon a shotgun before the bear kills me. I'm swinging that stick with everything I've got up until the exact moment I have something better to replace it.
That’s why they lost the whole country in a landslide? Federal, state and local elections? Fucking cringe ass liberals coping and seething.
Democrats won’t let us build an alternative because they’re too busy sucking all the oxygen in the fucking room and wasting everyone’s time and energy. They need to go the way of the whigs, fucking yesterday.
They still got nearly half of the vote, they lost by less than 2%. The real landslide losers were literally every other party.
I didn't realize we needed their permission.
Again, absolutely minuscule waste of time and energy. The vast majority of voters literally just show up and tick a box. No one is stopping you from dedicating your time and energy to alternatives. Voters just aren't stupid enough to throw away their bear-fighting stick just because you tell them a hypothetical shotgun would be better. Bring the shotgun and we can talk.
Are you under the impression that the Whigs just... disappeared one day and everything was fine? There were years of chaos culminating in the Civil War.
The dems lost the presidency, the house, the senate, and most state and local races. Whether they lost by 1% or 10% is irrelevant - it was a fucking landslide loss and all you’re spewing is liberal fucking cope.
You misunderstood my point about the democrats sucking all the air out of the room. They co-opt every fucking “leftist” and “progressive” movement (and all the activism work) so far and then suffocate it with a pillow and pivot to fascism lite instead. Do you think I haven’t gone down this path? I canvassed for Bernie in 2016. The democrats are not our fucking friends and their existence is to thwart left wing activism from having any effect at all.
The third parties are equally useless. Electoralism doesn’t work and america is in its death throes as a nation. It’s about time the democrat party apologists wake the fuck up and see the writing on the wall.
Yeah, no shit. Look around you, that’s where we are heading only this time it’s not going to be fought on clean lines but guerrilla style block to block neighbor against neighbor.
Just remember what the democrats did to Bernie in 2016. We could of been finishing our second term with him but instead we’re staring at the abyss wondering when the other shoe will drop.
Never said they were. Democrats are there to muzzle Leftists, Republicans are there to euthanize them. You can figure a way out of a muzzle, you can't figure a way out of being dead.
What's your alternative? Where's the shotgun you want us to replace our stick with? Not the idea of a shotgun, not a mechanical diagram of a shotgun, but a tangible thing actually ready to be used? Because I don't see one. I see splintered infighting factions. Uncoordinated discontent is not tangible.
We have the Internet. This is the easiest time in all of history to coordinate like-minded people. Where's the Leftist playbook? Where's Praxis 2025? Discrete, organized, unified coordination behind a common cause? "Shit's fucked" isn't a plan. A vague call to guerilla rebellion isn't a plan. Who are you fighting? Where? How? Are you just relying on millions of Leftists to spontaneously become stochastic terrorists? How long do you think that will last going up against the largest military the world has ever seen?
Self-proclaimed Leftists are a rounding error in the general population. Sure, people are dissatisfied, but not nearly enough to risk their lives in the streets behind some nebulous aspiration. Not enough of them to make a difference at least. You're not advocating revolution, you're advocating mass-suicide.
Develop a plan, garner a critical-mass of support, then we can abandon damage mitigation and work toward meaningful change. Maybe try educating the MAGA working class instead of shouting at Leftists who criticize your lack of organization. This disorganized infighting is only helping the fascists. I'll keep recruiting with the one hand, but I'm keeping my stick in the other until that shotgun materializes.
We're on the same side. Stop trying to fracture our side and focus on trying to bring people to it.
My alternative is mass unionization and more Luigi. Gotta hit the capitalists where it hurts.
They only understand wealth and their own mortality.
Were not on the same side. Your plan is “democrats are all we got guess we’ll have to work with them.” The democrats are no longer worth working with.
Guess what Kamala Harris recently accomplished? She missed the tie breaking vote for the NLRB seat, losing a seat on the board that protects unionization efforts two years early. don’t fucking tell me that democrats are just a fucking muzzle.
What do you think I’m doing in my real life? Do you think I don’t have leftist infused conversations with all my trump voting coworkers? A whole lot of them are of the Bernie to trump pipeline (vermont). They are not the media caricature of trump voters. They would easily vote leftist if it was marketed right. The democrats are not leftist and their policies along with Republican policies actively hurt American workers. Most people are one $1000 emergency away from homelessness. Get fucking real.
You’re coming off as a democrat apologist to me in every single comment. I’m not a fool.
Agreed. How long do you think that will take though, and are we supposed to just keep letting fascists entrench themselves in the meantime? That's the point of voting lesser evil, to slow down fascism so it's easier to defeat when proper praxis is mature enough to actually defeat it. We're not voting for representation, we're voting for weaker enemies.
False. My plan is "Democrats are the lesser evil, let's make sure they keep winning until we have something to replace them with. I'd rather flight a neo-lib than a full-bore fascist"
We need to get one or both of the two major parties to move to the left from their current position.
Neither seems interested.
They won’t, capitalism itself needs to be overthrown. They’re both the party of capitalism.
He's not, but that's his brand. And one of the few things he's good at is selling his brand.
What you've got is a bunch of people fed up with the system in some pretty fundamental ways, many of which don't even know how to voice their problems accurately. One side sells itself as anti-establishment (even though it's not) and the other side is nakedly as establishment as can be (to the point that they'll ratfuck primaries against anyone who rocks the boat even a little) but is very vocally progressive when they don't have to actually do anything about it or when doing so won't rock the boat even a little.
Correct, because, again, they are better at rhetoric/messaging/branding. Again, that's what we need to be doing.
So you're content with democrats just lying to get elected instead of making material changes in their policy that make people want to vote for them? You want them to be the better option than Republicans... by acting like Republicans, with the exact same policy, but it's a woman or a POC doing the policy??
That's just objectively false. No, their policy isn't good enough, but to pretend that it's exactly the same is disingenuous.
The Democrats are always going to be controlled opposition, I just care about them beating MAGA long enough to develop an alternative that can actually replace them. I don't vote for representation, the ones who represent me don't have enough support to win yet. I'm voting for the easier-to-defeat enemy.
They are not easier to defeat or someone would have done it in the last 40 years. They are sloppy and old but don't think that it makes them any easier especially when they aim to represent the Status Quo.
Easier than the other. And not quite so hostile to human rights.
The hostility makes them more obvious a target. You need only look around currently to see that.
This is so self defeating. If every person that said this just voted their beliefs instead of spreading this ideology like a cancer, if the Democrats even have a party left after that, you would be able to use your bloc to pressure them into being everything you say they are.
They said the same shit when Bernie ran in the primaries "oh, he's too old, he's not electable!!" until they realized that Bernie was too popular and just rat fucked the primary instead. He wasn't even running on the date of the primary and he still got half the votes that Biden did!!
You realize there are republicans that think this way too? It doesn't only benefit democrats. Not all Republicans are fully behind Trump, but they'll be damned if they vote for a democrat.
Parties win when people vote for them. That includes you. Stop spreading this self defeating, voter shaming ideology just to fucking lose elections because the democratic platform is hollow ineffective bullshit that the dems served up knowing you'll fucking vote for it anyways.