• CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I feel like this all ignored the complete bastardization of any sense of language or definition in American politics. None of these words mean anything and engaging in it is playing party to the fucked up games people have invented to delay any sort of growth or action.

    “Neoliberal conservativeism” was a thing. They’re all nazis now. ‘Liberals’ is a slur against anyone who isn’t left enough. ‘Liberalism’ is the blood-shy self-blind median our parents and grandparents wanted for us so we didn’t have to watch our friends die in imperialists wars in Asia. Libertarianism was supposed to be a rejection of any of this and got coopelted by some of the most evil freaks in the system. The Left represents the most meaningful and poplist messaging we can mannage and is still consumed by bickering from people who can’t walj and chew gum or breathe at the same time.

    Stop trying to argue the labels.

    • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The truth is dead. There is no democracy, there is no politics. Just rich people throwing bones.

      USA is just an oligopoly.

      • veryblandusername@fedinsfw.app
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        3 days ago

        Representative democracy is worthless anyways. It favors short term, short-sighted solutions to problems that require long term, sometimes painful corrections. But the party that implements such policies will be heavily punished as soon as the public feels that pain. So instead the public continues to vote in short-sighted but temporary joy seeking politicians.

        An epistocracy combined with a civic service model would be far better. To be able to vote you must demonstrate a baseline capability of intelligence and rational thought along with having performed civic service in some way. Otherwise you cannot vote and simply live life normally.

        • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Democracy is simple and instinctual, democracy has the mechanisms to solve the issues you mention, that is what the parliament is for.

          But democracy requires good faith, unity and solidarity. The oligarchies have bombarded the baseline of those three by means of the new technologies.

          I have hope thought, this conflict between the few against the majority is always there. Twitter made Obama president, Twitter made Trump president.

          • Daftydux@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 day ago

            It doesnt help when the people acting ingood faith, unity, and solidarity have immoral intentions. You can have a fully functioning government that is completely evil. There has to be some inherent conflict to keep us continously evaluating societys trajectory.

    • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Top comment:

      Stop trying to argue the labels.

      Rest of comments arguing labels.

      But, I think we need a banner to gather under, don’t we? Maybe it’s “proletariat”, but not many people know what that means. Your typical American family hasn’t a clue. Most of us aren’t arguing about labels on social media. Most of us are posting TikToks of our dogs, and watching Mr. Beast or Cocomelon(?), apparently. And, whoever-the-hell Charli Grace D’Amelio is. They know “socialist bad” and capitalism is money and they like money. They know Rs on the ballot let them have guns and promise lower taxes.

      Man, looking at Nextdoor where I live is disheartening.

      • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        That is the issue. I want to say people need to operate on more of a policy facing. “What do you support?” “Affordable housing and reasonable weath distribution”, sick. Easy vote. Don’t care if they’re D, don’t care if they’re a liberal, don’t care. Obviously that’s very simple and naive. You have to do some labeling.

        The problem is people have just given up on identifying the doublespeak. Trump got elected promising no new wars and some mediation on Gaza and was just straight lying. The median voter felt no reason to question it and a lot of well meaning people said ‘this is better than silence on a genocide’, and that was it. The thinking stopped and we threw the world’s easiest choice the the most belligerantly narcississtic, indigent, and negligent person on the planet.

        Now these dumbfuck tankies who crowd all of our pleasant fringe online communities are taking the bait again and using their refusal to acknowledge context to feel some kind of superiority about it. I’m so tired.

        Edit because my typos were out of control.

      • 5318008@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        But, I think we need a banner to gather under, don’t we?

        Your typical American family hasn’t a clue… They know “socialist bad”…

        This is why the specific banner probably doesn’t matter very much. The association “socialist → bad” just comes from a long-running campaign by Western Capitalists to make sure that the peasants make that association. It basically goes,

        1. The USSR is bad, and
        2. they are socialists, and therefore
        3. socialism is bad.

        And that’s enough for most people. It’s easy to highlight a country’s flaws and convince someone that the country is bad, so 1 took hold, for reasons both reasonable and unreasonable. And 2 is free because they have socialism in the name. And 3 is a common logical fallacy, but it works, because it turns out people aren’t very rational.

        If we picked up the “Proletariat” banner instead, the same thing would happen.

        1. The USSR is bad, and
        2. they implemented some of Karl Marx’s ideas, and so
        3. Karl Marx is bad, and so
        4. the proletariat are bad.

        It’s not a marketing problem. It’s a problem with who gets to control all of the marketing narratives.

        • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          ‘Not a marketing problem, it’s a problem with markeing’…

          Look I don’t want to drag you too hard here but you do have .ml in your handle so I’m gonna just do this as briefly as possible:

          You are referencing a 70 year old political movement as if we haven’t had 70 years of history happen since then. We are so far past red scare tactics that everyone who found out how fucked it was died and now they’re trying it again but stupider.

          We have a crazy unbelieveable opportunity happening right now, actively, in New York, where someone openly referring to themselves as socialist is making massive moves where they are proving that Government can actually be leveraged to make improvemnts for the working class and can also remove incentives for weath hoarding. People are actually paying attention to the DSA and D’s are actively campaigning against ‘themselves’ with more effert than we’ve seen them use in 10 years against Trump.

          So no, not a marketing problem, it’s an availability to actually express power and follow through on actual governance problem. I know you haven’t said anything about electoralism so I will take ownership for bringing it up, but it’s effective electoralism that is going to keep this door open. It’s happening.

          • 5318008@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            It’s not a marketing problem. It’s a problem with who gets to control all of the marketing narratives.

            ‘Not a marketing problem, it’s a problem with markeing’…

            It’s clear to me that I said two different things. Is there anything about either that you would like me to clarify?

            Compare: “It’s not a strategy problem; it’s a game-design problem.”

            You are referencing a 70 year old political movement as if we haven’t had 70 years of history happen since then.

            I’m explicitly referring to it because of the 79 years of history. 79 years of history tends to have an effect on the public consciousness.

            We surely don’t believe that the average person formed their “socialist → bad” association from exposure to socialism, right? Then, why do they believe that? Most Americans can’t even accurately describe what socialism is. How did it come to pass that they are so convinced that “socialist → bad”? If this is about the USSR, then surely the organic version of this is that everyone would be convinced “USSR → bad” instead, right?

            The only reason it’s worth mentioning in this context is the resulting 79 years of shaping public opinion.

            We have a crazy unbelieveable opportunity happening right now, actively, in New York, where someone openly referring to themselves as socialist is making massive moves

            Yes, that’s great. I’m happy that people have the opportunity to see the impact that well-managed social policies can have. I would say that the marketing is quite good.

            and D’s are actively campaigning against ‘themselves’ with more effert than we’ve seen them use in 10 years against Trump.

            Yes, and that’s part of what I’m referring to when I say that it’s a problem with who gets to control all of the marketing narratives. We have a two-party system, and both parties are actively stacking the deck against anyone campaigning on good social policy.

            Consider how the average person gets their political information. If both major parties have decided that it’s better if everyone believes “socialist → bad”, that’s simply what most people are going to be exposed to, and what most people are going to believe.

            Mamdani is an anomaly: he happens to be so likeable, with ideas that are so popular, that this didn’t stop him from winning anyway. It also helps that paying a few thousand influencers to spam anti-leftist content can be somewhat counterbalanced by paying 200 influencers to spam pro-Mamdani content.

            https://campaignlegal.org/update/campaign-finance-regulations-must-address-influencers-and-streaming-platforms-protect-voters

            Hopefully driving this point home: the marketing strategy for these ideas is good, because people generally like good social policy. However, the marketing environment is biased toward whoever spends the most money.

            • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              So yes, to be clear, you’re saying two different things but I feel like if you’re going to invoke something like marketing you need to acknowledge that marketing itself is not ever going to be the thing we use to fight something like capitalism, in which the very concept of marketing is like ‘we’ll take the giants fingers and crush his own windpipe with it.’ The master’s tools’ and all that.

              Think about everything ICE is doing that isn’t being televised. Think about what Gaza would look like if this was 1990 and we only had the same kind of coverage available as we did with the Gulf War. Yes, obviously the people in power are only going to let us see the events and definitions they want to implant in the median voter but it’s so much bigger now than in the McCarthyist era.

              And obviously whoever spends the most money in the marketing arena is going to win. But even then the cracks are showing. AIPAC has made itself known and we’re starting to see people, Mamdani included, who are overcoming the money in lieu of principle. Of course he’s likeable and persuasive and all of that, he’s an effective politician who understands strategy and optics. We just need more.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Ah, the Great American lie. Well one of them. The idea that American liberalism is somehow different. And yet when you actually start examining it it looks exactly the same. I mean you just said that liberalism in America is Anti-Imperialist and anti-war. If you’ve never opened a history book I suppose you might have come to that conclusion. How else you do it I have no fucking idea.

      • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        If you actually read what I said it’s what out parents and grandparents wanted to achieve in lieu of imperialism and war. They were wrong because they couldn’t face the truth that the country their parents died for in WW2 would go on the put a boot on the neck of any country that tries to challenge their one sided control over worldwide economics.Then they died in droves in Korea and Vietnam for an ideal they just couldn’t believe mislead them.

        If you actually read it, of course.

      • jimmy90@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        well yes it is capitalism with regulation

        better that that populist bullshitters that have no idea what they’re doing

        look at this magical dream! every time we get in control and try to get to it, it turns into a genocidal nightmare. yipeeeeee

    • chloroken@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      Reading this comment indicates you have a lsss-than-desirable understanding of politics.

      I want you to literally get a dictionary and encyclopedia and look up each term you just used. You’re about to learn some wild shit and become slightly less chauvinistic and ignorant.

      • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        You noticed you got downvoted, and I’m going to explain this for you very slowly, but if you can show me where in any real execution of the terms in our national political discourse you can find a unanimous adoption of your ‘dictionary definition’ of these terms then I’ll concede you are so, so much more smarter than me. I don’t think Fox news has ever spit at a dictionary. You missed the fucking point.

        • chloroken@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          No point was missed. You demonstrated, during your rant about how people misuse words, that you don’t know what most of those very words mean.

          I’ll say it again. If you open up an encyclopedia of your choice and look up these mystifying words like “libertarianism” and “socialism”, you’ll actually get a real, concrete meaning for each of them, which would help a LOT in your quest to point out that others pervert political vernacular.

          But go ahead, say it again reeeeeal slow for me. I rather enjoy when chucklefucks try and fail to patronize me.

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              Yeah, this tankie (cloeobroken or whatever the fuck) needs to fuck off. I see it’s not just me that they like to harass.

              • CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world
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                10 hours ago

                They do that. I blocked him. They read one 200 year old pamphlet and think they’re instantly more intelligent than anyone. I’ve really become an anti-theorist, they’re fucking insufferable.

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  Yeah I blocked the asshole also. I’m pretty much with you. People with that attitude definitely think they’re very intelligent but I gotta say they really come off as highly not so.