It’s almost like bots really have taken over the net. Combined with corporate controlled media (even websites, not just traditional media).
Maybe much of what you see if a Psyops to divide people to keep them infighting.
As the internet has become more accessible, anonymity on the internet has become less and less fun. Trolling used to be so… less destructive than it is now. Some take what they see at face value and will even spread it if it aligns with what they think but not what they’d say or do.
Lemmy isn’t immune to this either. I don’t know how many anti-Kamala threads I saw on Lemmy during the election trying to convince people to not vote - what a joke.
Maybe much of what you see if a Psyops to divide people to keep them infighting.
It was written in manuals by the CIA and KGB over five decades ago, before we even had an internet, how you can destabilize a democratic nation’s social discourse and undermine elections simply by creating a small group of agents who can slip into every major social debate or issue and immediately take the most extreme positions on both sides of every issue.
This creates and draws in contentious debate and arguing about the most radical extremes of every position until the average citizen tunes out of the debate, stops trusting what’s real, and just defaults to whatever state-media says is real because there’s no other option that makes sense.
That’s not to say the CIA and KGB were primarily responsible for the erosion of our society, the people doing this have been from all over the world and right inside the USA’s borders, each trying to do it for different reasons and agendas, but also each succeeding in creating a massive middle-class population with zero interest in following politics and social issues. The 2024 exit polling backs this up, showing that most Trump voters had no clue what Trump represented or what his policies were, despite it being his second term.
We get tunnel vision in places like reddit or lemmy and forget that for most people, their news comes from either nightly network television while distracted and cooking for their family, or from 30 minutes of browsing Facebook memes on a sunday night while preparing for another 6 days of working 10 hours a day.
And it’s still going on, and yes right here in Lemmy has PLENTY of these sock-puppets, astroturfers and bad-faith shills, as well as bots, designed to invade posts with wild takes and stupid derails in order to make people argue, so casual browsers start scrolling past the mess and lose interest in the issue.
You don’t need to posit bots to explain infighting. The entire Western political system is internally contradictory. We’re going to fight internally until we dissolve the contradictions that drive us. And that’s just nowhere near ready to happen. Case in point, you think the only reason not to vote Kamala is because of bots. Since you, and many like you, don’t seem to have any sense of reality, how are we ever going to deal with the contradictions that drive our infighting?
I certainly don’t think the only reason not to vote for Kamala is because bots, but to not think that bots aren’t diving division on Social media (which Lemmy is) I think is not living in 2026. The internet is not what it used to be.
The options during that election were 2 choices. We knew what would happen if Trump was elected, the writing was on the wall, Project 2025 was published, and people on Lemmy were still arguing about why not to vote for Kamala.
Convincing people to not vote for Kamala in arguably one of the most important elections was and is asinine, and shit was all over Lemmy during the election run. Give me a corporate Democrat over this shitshow any day, and the shitshow is only going to get worse.
how are we ever going to deal with the contradictions that drive our infighting?
There’s a difference between discussing conflicts and telling people not to vote because of those conflicts.
Since you, and many like you, don’t seem to have any sense of reality,
I don’t know, maybe we talk about respect to start? You just come into a conversation and start looking down your nose at others assuming that they’re not living in reality because they have a different opinion than you. What a bad way to start a conversation. What a bad way to win someone over. What a bad way to run a community.
I feel like I shouldn’t need to clarify, but just to be clear, I don’t think you’re trying to “win my opinion over” or “running a[ny] community” but the point is that from a non-conservative standpoint (since I don’t know you’re political spectrum, but are on Lemmy) these are things that I think should be persistent. Otherwise, it’s just going to push people away and/or people won’t even engage in the message.
and people on Lemmy were still arguing about why not to vote for Kamala.
The people who argued for that are the same folks that see the trolley problem and don’t pull the lever because pulling the lever would make them responsible for the result, while they feel like not taking action (even explicitly, intentionally not taking action) absolves them of responsibility for the result. So in their view they’d either be responsible for one person getting run over, or not responsible for 5 getting run over.
I saw VERY few people saying not to vote. What I saw was a ton of people saying that voting Kamala was voting for fascism and wouldn’t solve the problem. I saw a lot of people saying that they wouldn’t commit their time and money and relationship capital to organizing for Kamala because they weren’t going to support a fascist.
Voting is the absolute least powerful form of democratic expression, and voting Kamala would have resulted in an only slightly different path of incremental fascism. And now we’re going to talk about reality.
The reality is that Trump is not the CAUSE, he’s the EFFECT. The country is rotten to its core. It’s fundamentally and irreparably contradictory and it is based on the worst aspects of humanity. DJT may be bad, but Thomas Jefferson was worse. Don’t believe me? Jefferson ran breeding plantations, kept a slave girl in a cave inside his bedroom for raping, and tried to use his political power to end the transatlantic slave trade to drive increased demand for the slaves he was breeding domestically. Full on worse than absolutely everything DJT has done.
Voting to the Democrat fascist was not going to save us. The problem was here. Biden did fuck all to stop Trump. The Ds are doing fuck all to stop Trump. Voting for Ds is voting for masked fascism and Rs is voting for unmasked fascism. No. I do not think we should be spending our time and effort voting for masked fascism.
Again, reality. The reality is that mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus and has been for decades. The US imprisons more of its people than any other country (although El Salvador and Cuba beat the US last year, I doubt they’ll hold those positions much longer). The US parole system is 2x as big as the US prison population, it’s the biggest mass surveillance program of its kind. Bi-partisan support. Prison slave labor is a bi-partisan consensus. Prison slaves produce over $11Bn worth of goods and services. Collective punishment and starvation is a bi-partisan consensus. In the last 50 years US sanctions (and their EU followers) have killed almost 40 million people. Domestic wiretapping by the NSA has bi-partisan support. The war machine has full bi-partisan support. Obama and HRC destroyed Libya as part of the plan that the GWB administration established. Total bi-partisan continuity.
They’re ALL fucking fascists. They’re all mass murderers. They’re all slave masters. FFS Bill and Hillary has house slaves when they were in the Governor’s Mansion in Arkansas - literally black prison slaves worked for them in their domicile for years.
The problem is INSIDE THE HOUSE, it’s not outside agitators. Yes, outside agitators do exist. They are exploring what they can do to help the decline accelerate. But they’re just adding gasoline to an already burning country-wide forest wire that is 0% contained. The bots are accelerants. The problems are ours and ours alone. Kamala can’t save us. The Democrats can’t save us. They are fully and fundamentally part of the problem.
The Democratic Party have been the only party to drive positive change in this country. Positive social change. Positive economic change. Positive international change. Are they perfect? No - there is no perfect system. Chasing perfection is a fools errand.
To think that voting is the least powerful of Democratic expression is (I believe to be) an absurd statement. Local elections matter. Country elections matter. You’re not changing the system from the outside, a system that’s ran ~250 years. There’s no hope of a civil war beating the U.S. Military Complex. What will happen instead, just like the CIA did/does, is 3rd parties will join in to continue the fighting for their own gain.
The only change to the U.S. system so that the least amount of people die should have come from within.
Also, If they’re all fascists, and we literally have a choice between the fascist who at least has a backing party history of social and economic growth vs one whose going to try to become a defacto ruler; the choice should have been obvious.
The problems are ours and ours alone.
Then we are ultimately fucked. Corporate internet is programming masses due to being absolutely unregulated.
The Democrats can’t save us.
There’s no change, no movement without leadership and organization. Between the 2 parties, the better leadership comes from the Democratic Party. The better organization comes from the Democratic Party. Until a 3rd party finds leadership, finds the organization to make the push for change, then they are it. Hopefully the future has that, but the past election was between what we’re seeing now and what could have been.
The Democratic Party have been the only party to drive positive change in this country. Positive social change. Positive economic change. Positive international change. Are they perfect? No - there is no perfect system. Chasing perfection is a fools errand.
This is a delusional position. No one is asking for perfection. I’m asking for Hillary Clinton to not celebrate the sodomization of a septuagenarian head of state with a bayonet by gleefully shouting “We came! We saw! He died!”
I’m not asking for perfection. I’m asking for the crimes against humanity to stop.
You know what’s not perfect? When politicians mortgage their oil futures and then oil prices collapse. That is so far from what I’m talking about it’s ridiculous.
I can keep going. Can we stop training terrorists? How about drone striking weddings? How about drone striking the funerals for people who died at the weddings? Can we stop propping up dictators for money? How about funding the militarization of the police? No? Too far? How about honoring the 300+ treaties the US has unilaterally broken? No. Is that a “perfectionist” demand too?
To think that voting is the least powerful of Democratic expression is (I believe to be) an absurd statement. Local elections matter. Country elections matter. You’re not changing the system from the outside, a system that’s ran ~250 years
Yeah, and guess what. For 250 years it’s been a genocidal, mass murdering, torturing, enslaving, white supremacist spreader of lies and violence. You absolutely ARE changing a system from the outside that’s run for 250 years. That’s LITERALLY how liberal democracies emerged from monarchies. It’s how the US and its European empire collaborators have made every change in government around the world. Not through voting. You want to know what voting got us after 250 years? The largest most violent psychotic military in the world committing acts of genocide, mass war crimes, and mass crimes against humanity for literally 2 fucking centuries and absolutely ZERO justice for any of it. From the genocide of indigenous people to dropping over 2.5 million pounds of ordinance on Laos when we weren’t even at war with them, to bombing literally every structure in Korea north of the 38th parallel and then dropping so much napalm that people needed to live in caves to torturing prisoners all over the world in CIA black sites to funding, arming, and providing logistics support for the genocide of Palestinians. That’s voting for you.
The only change to the U.S. system so that the least amount of people die should have come from within.
It will. But it won’t come from voting.
Also, If they’re all fascists, and we literally have a choice between the fascist who at least has a backing party history of social and economic growth vs one whose going to try to become a defacto ruler; the choice should have been obvious.
The choice should be obvious, but apparently it’s not. You don’t fucking support the fascists who are willing to take up the PR role of “good cop”. If you’re in the precinct, and there’s a good cop and a bad cop interrogating you, you don’t side with the good cop, no matter how he bandages your wounds or keeps you well fed, or even gets some help for your family.
Then we are ultimately fucked. Corporate internet is programming masses due to being absolutely unregulated.
No. It’s not. That’s white supremacy. You’re making a fundamental error in attribution. The problem is the EuroCentric white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Everything else stems from the rotten core. The propaganda. The distractions. The infighting. All of it. There is only one way out and that is to band together and fight ALL of the fascists, not spend our energy making alliances with the good cop.
There’s no change, no movement without leadership and organization. Between the 2 parties, the better leadership comes from the Democratic Party
Oh come on. You can’t be serious right now! ALL of the evidence is against this claim. The Democrats have NO fucking effective leadership. They spent 40 years of leadership not codifying Roe into law so they could campaign on it. They keep nominating candidates that have been proven to lose. They rat fuck their own people. They believe there should be a strong Republican party. They are millionaires, they work for billionaires, and they have achieved so precious little, and nearly everything they have achieved has been structured to enrich the white supremacist genocidal psychotic capitalist patriarchy. Not ONCE have the Democrats stopped the mass killings. Not ONCE have the Democrats dropped the prison or parole population. Not ONCE have the Democrats reduced the funding to the military. They do not have better leadership. They have better PR for people like you.
Until a 3rd party finds leadership, finds the organization to make the push for change, then they are it. Hopefully the future has that
You don’t get it. The Ds and Rs collaborate. They eat dinner together. They vacation together. Their kids go to same schools. They studied with the same professor. They rape people at the same island. They get their drugs from the same sources. They take bribes from the same brokers. They literally co-own the organization that runs televised debates. They work together to stop every possible third party. It’s not a question of 3rd party leadership, it’s a question of fascist dominance. You don’t vote fascists out of office. It’s never worked.
but the past election was between what we’re seeing now and what could have been.
Kamala had no plan to prevent any of this. If she had won, the BEST case scenario is that it would have delayed this chaos by 4 years. But the reality is that by the end of 2028, the economy will be destroyed regardless of who is in office. And the chaos would be on us anyway. Maybe Kamala would have fully invaded Venezuela or Iran in her first year. I have no doubt that ICE would have gotten the same funding (Kamala: “Don’t come.”). I do have doubts that they would be as openly brutal as they’re being now. But we don’t actually know. Kamala was no friend of immigrants and I could easily see her enforcing brutally. Especially since Tom Homan, the White House Border Czar, was an OBAMA appointee. (See how it’s bi-partisan).
No. The past election was not between what we’re seeing now and what could have been. It was between a small portion of what we’re seeing now and a different expression of the same fundamental contradictions. The country is still a psychotic white supremacist misogynist racist patriarchal shit hole. Maybe Kamala’s alternate universe would have seen Proud Boys and Bugaloo and Oathkeepers activate further and drive the same or worse chaos than we’re seeing now.
You gotta open your scope up. It’s not enough to want nicer rhetoric or gentler policing. It’s not. The Ds and the Rs are equally bloodthirsty on the global stage. They’re equally extractive. They’re equally rapacious. They administer the same system and that system does the same things regardless of who is in office. Again, I’ll point you to the list of 7 countries (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan) the GWB administration listed as targets for invasion and how Obama participated in continuity of that program. I’ll point you to Ruth Bader Ginsberg writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court that US’s fundamental claim of existence stems from the Doctrine of Discovery - a religious document from the Catholic pope that justified rape, genocide, and enslavement of anyone that wasn’t European anywhere in the world.
Obama kept Gitmo open. Biden kept the genocide in Gaza going. They all increased the military budget. They all increased police budgets. They all imprisoned whistleblowers. They all assassinated resistance organizers in South America. They all trained terrorists in West Asia and in South America. They all brutalized indigenous people here at home. They all poisoned the Earth irreparably. They all forced their trading partners in subjugation. They all protected massive criminals. They all spread lies. They all militarized the domestic police to prepare for “disturbances”. They literally created the conditions that we find ourselves in. They all KNEW IT too. They literally talked about Trump being bad, and we watched them do absolutely fucking nothing about it except blame voters for failing to vote enough.
Wake up, Mort. Shed the lie. The good cop is not here to help you. The good cop will not make it better.
I don’t disagree that those things have happened, exist, and are bad, but you again seem to think that change comes from a grassroots movement to tear the whole system down. We are wayyyyyyyy past that. This isn’t 18th century Europe. We have satellites in space that can connect to anywhere in the world in milliseconds. Without a full destructive reset, there is no tearing the system down. It has to change from within and it has to change over time.
Oh come on. You can’t be serious right now! ALL of the evidence is against this claim.
Who are you even comparing the Democrats to? Again… a 2 party system… So if we have to pick one, which yeah we fucking do because we are the minority voice, yeah I’m picking the one that’s not going to ship my friends to camps and try to become a dictator. That’s the comparison. It starts there and stops there until a 3rd party puts their hat in and uses the law to fight Corporations.
Civil Rights were put into law by Democrats. (HUGE grassroots movement from the civil rights leaders of the time, but it’s the politicians who codified it so that we have what we have today)
LGBTQ+ Rights? Democrats.
Healthcare? Democrats.
Social Security and Social Services? Democrats.
Technological security and advances? Democrats.
The U.S. sees the most jobs under Democrats.
Just give me a quick list of what Republicans have done for America when they are in power. Seriously, you keep railing on America and Democrats, you keep saying that both parties are the same. Give me a rundown of all the good things Republicans have done for Americans when they are in power.
I will legitimately bet you can’t. Maybe Roosevelt, but hell that was a long time ago wasn’t it? Where’s the party gone since then?
Kamala had no plan to prevent any of this. If she had won, the BEST case scenario is that it would have delayed this chaos by 4 years.
And maybe we could have had some progressive policies as well too which would have been nice. A few less deaths. Again, I just don’t know how you’re not comparing this to the Republicans. Like, like it or not, American is a 2 party system and to say that Democrats and Republicans are the same is completely missing all the progress Democrats have done. and how much destruction Republicans have done and/or tried to reverse.
We don’t know what ICE would have been like under Kamala, but I sure hope it would have had less actual Nazis and less actual white supremists leading them. I’d like to think that we’d have the Jan 6th people still held accountable. A lot less pardons of real criminal fraudsters. Yeah, it’s really hard to say what the U.S. would have been like under Kamala.
It’s not a question of 3rd party leadership, it’s a question of fascist dominance.
We can’t have a 3rd party leadership.
We can’t have Democratic leadership.
We can’t have Republicans leadership.
All we can have is fascist dominance.
If that’s is to be true, then why not try to pick the fascist dominance that’s going to do the least harm? A non-choice is always a choice for the worse of the two fascists - there’s no getting around that. The people who want the fascist that will do the least harm votes so, and the people who want the fascist to the do the most harm votes so, and it’s the people who don’t vote that unintentionally give the fascist who wants to do the most harm an edge/advantage. You may dance around it morally all you want.
On a sidenote, shoutout to both Biden, Obama, and a number of other Democrats for not being in the Epstein files. We all knew Clinton would be, that sleezy fuck, but I haven’t seen a single comment defending him - it’s all just “burn em all” which is cool.
They literally talked about Trump being bad, and we watched them do absolutely fucking nothing about it except blame voters for failing to vote enough.
Yeah, that does suck. Difficult to put myself in their shoes in this situation. The U.S. was a powder keg for J6 - psyops in full effect. The next 4 years should have been preparing for the worst. With how strong of an influence DJT and the psyops had on Americans, would arresting DJT and more been seen as a political power play and caused a civil war then? Would it have had been better for the Democrats to try to show America who DJT really is and have them choose, to get a room temperature of the U.S., then prosecute him? They were telling us all along: Hey, this dude is a real POS. Hey, here’s Project 2025 that he’s going to put into place if he becomes President. Hey, this dude has strong ties with known Pedophile Jeffery Epstein.
The fact that all of this was out in the open and many states were still Red shows just how effective the psyops was to begin with and how entrenched a real [bad] fascist opposition had become. Now that things are running it’s course, the Epstein files are being released. We are seeing how DJT is dismantling every aspect of traditional America (from Social Systems to International Support to Education). Now that we’re seeing Project 2025 put into action, there are folx who are changing their tune. Is them not liking DJT going to stop bombings, prison slavery, or genocide? No, but we’re a long ways off from doing that now. America is one step forward and 2 steps back because of division politics.
I can’t tell if you’re Anti-America or Anti-Humanity. There’s no country the size of the U.S that is any better and arguably they’re all much worse and have been for a lot longer.
All the things about bombings and collusion are true, but you’re not changing it from the outside. The civil rights movement had leaders and organization and from it came change. If you want to see the same change, then that’s how it has to happen: Leadership and Organization. At that point you either join in as a 3rd party to fight the system politically or you fight the system physically. Politically has the best chance to promote change. Physically has the best chance to be dominated by a separate, and worse fascist regime.
What practical solutions do you have outside educating people of the flaws of the system?
you […] think that change comes from a grassroots movement to tear the whole system down. We are wayyyyyyyy past that. This isn’t 18th century Europe. We have satellites in space […] Without a full destructive reset, there is no tearing the system down. It has to change from within and it has to change over time.
This is a hypothesis without any analysis. There is no logical reason to believe that satellites make revolutionary change impossible.
Between the 2 parties, the better leadership comes from the Democratic Party
Oh come on. You can’t be serious right now! ALL of the evidence is against this claim.
Who are you even comparing the Democrats to?
Republicans are clearly better at leadership. They know how to use power, execute their plans, understand the threats ahead of time. Democrats have good PR, but they suck at leadership. Except when it comes to preventing any move towards the political left. Then they’re suddenly the most cunning, intelligent operators in the country.
a 2 party system… So if we have to pick one […] I’m picking the one that’s not going to ship my friends to camps and try to become a dictator. […] It starts there and stops there until a 3rd party puts their hat in and uses the law to fight Corporations.
This is the fundamental problem. Democrats increased funding to ICE, increased the use of solitary confinement (internationally recognized as torture) on immigrants, including children. Solitary confinements went up under Biden/Harris. You’re still talking about good cop/bad cop, though. The good cop says “Hey, sorry about my partner. Listen, I won’t ship your friends to camps and won’t act like a dictator. You can trust me.” But the good cop never stops the bad cop. Why? Because there isn’t a two party system in reality. There is a one party system with a good cop and a bad cop. Do you know why, despite 250 years of this country, a third party has never been viable. Why a third party has never used the law to fight Corporations? Because the “2 parties” literally collaborate to prevent it. They are friends. They break bread together. They have reasonable conversations with each other. They send each other Christmas gifts. They donate to each others campaigns. Stop basing your entire argument around this idea that the 2 party system is legitimate. It’s not. It’s a totally illegitimate, undemocratic, dictatorial system by which the elite and ultra-rich run the country.
[List of Democrat achievements]
These are called concessions. This is literally the job of the Democrat party. They are the Good Cop. The Bad Cop is not allowed to give you a donut (most of the time) because it breaks the effectiveness of the psychological arrangement. The Good Cop gives you a donut and a coffee and then turns around and expenses it back to the precinct. Because the concessions are part of the process of managing the population. This is why EVERY time fascism has emerged it’s emerged from a liberal democracy, and why every single time a social democrat in South America or Africa made some progress during economic high times, the progress was always rolled back by the right wing in economic lean times. Because the function of the Good Cop is to get you to legitimize the system, to believe there is nothing outside the options provided, and that the Good Cop is worth fighting for and sacrificing yourself for.
give me a quick list of what Republicans have done for America when they are in power
Ended acid rain with cap and trade (G HW Bush)
The Americans With Disabilities Act (G HW Bush)
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (G W Bush)
The EPA (Nixon)
But you’re still missing the point even with these things. Even Trump had Operation Warp Speed. Why did Trump do that? Because the conditions in the country effectively forced him to. The government had to do something. That’s exactly how civil rights legislation got passed. Black people, not just MLK’s peaceful protestors, but the Black Panthers and other movements, created conditions that the government had to respond to. It’s not Democratic leadership that did those things. It was grassroots threats to legitimately disrupt the entire country. It’s always been this way. The 8-hour work day was won with general strikes that shut the country down. You don’t win by voting. You win by fighting. History has shown us this over and over and over again.
But that’s STILL not the point. Republicans do things that make their voters think they support what the voters support. Democrats do things that make their voters think they support what the voters support. When the Rs raise taxes, they do it quietly and when they cut taxes they do it loudly. The Democrats are the opposite. Why? Because Republican voters want lower taxes and Democrat voters want more social services. The two parties cannot significantly cross over this boundary because they would lose their voters. I don’t know why this is so hard for people to see, but if Republicans increased taxes to pay for social services they would LOSE. And if the Democrats cut social services to increase corporate profits, they would LOSE.
And yet, corporate profits are better under Democrats! Shocker, right? The Democrats working for the corporations?! People point at the ACA and say “Look at how the Democrats got more people access to health care” ignoring the fact that they easily could have extended Medicaid. It would have been cheaper. It would have helped more people. It would have been easier. But it wouldn’t have created profits for insurance companies.
Both parties are driven by the maintenance and expansion of global capitalism and they only give to the people as a concession
Think about it. Let’s say you have one group. Everyone in the group want the same things: world dominance, fascistic control over the people, unconscionable wealth for them and the elite. That one group has one brand. They go and get people to vote for them, but they make the voters lives worse. What happens? Eventually the people throw them out. Now they can’t achieve their goals.
Take that same group, but they form two brands. One just openly does what they want, pandering to a subset of the population. The rest of the population gets angry. They want someone else. So the same group deploys B team. B teams says “we’re here to help” and then continues to maintain and expand global capitalism, continues to execute world domination plans, continues mass incarceration, continues increase super profits for the ultra wealth. Now the people are upset with B team. What happens? A team comes back in on a winning message and continues the slaughter, the slavery, and the extraction.
That’s what is happening here.
We don’t know what ICE would have been like under Kamala, but I sure hope it would have had less actual Nazis and less actual white supremists leading them
Again. Tom Homan was an Obama appointee. And the US vetoed the UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazis under Obama and under Biden.
Operation Paperclip, under Harry Truman (D), collaborated with the Vatican to save 10k Nazis from justice and relocated them throughout South America, giving them money, property, jobs, government protection, etc.
All we can have is fascist dominance.
If that’s is to be true, then why not try to pick the fascist dominance that’s going to do the least harm?
Wow. I mean, if this is your position, you’re well and truly gone. You support the fascists that give you and your friends the donuts. Sure they put toddlers in solitary. Sure they sodomize septuagenarians with bayonets. Sure they train death squads that kill entire villages. But you and your friends got a little more comfortable and honestly isn’t that progress?
With how strong of an influence DJT and the psyops had on Americans, would arresting DJT and more been seen as a political power play and caused a civil war then
Oh man, wouldn’t want to have open conflict! That would be terrible. Better to just let a fascist take over without any resistance. Listen to yourself. No one in their right mind thinks like that. They’re all on the same fucking team is why they did it.
The fact that all of this was out in the open and many states were still Red shows just how effective the psyops was to begin with and how entrenched a real [bad] fascist opposition had become
SMDH - no. America was not corrupted by psyops. This is who America is and has been from the beginning. The country was built on human trafficking. Thomas Jefferson was a pedophile serial rapist. The pilgrims prayed thanksgiving after every time they slaughtered an entire Indian village, including children and elderly. We have people living today who participated in lynchings and are upset that black people have their own universities. It’s not a psyop. It’s America.
No, but we’re a long ways off from doing that now. America is one step forward and 2 steps back because of division politics.
Again, completely wrong on the misattribution. The reason for prison slavery is not because of division politics. It’s because it’s a bipartisan consensus. Same with prison slavery. Same with torturing people at the border. Same with spying on Americans. Same with bombing anyone and everyone in the Global South. Bi-partisan consensus. Get it through your head. Look at the voting records. Look at the historical records. Look at the death records. Look at the budget numbers. 70-year bi-partisan consensus It has nothing to do with division and everything to do with unity.
There’s no country the size of the U.S that is any better and arguably they’re all much worse and have been for a lot longer.
Just go research prisons and parole around the world. Compare with America. It’s a hellscape here.
What practical solutions do you have outside educating people of the flaws of the system?
Use voting only to choose which enemy you’d rather fight
This is a hypothesis without any analysis. There is no logical reason to believe that satellites make revolutionary change impossible.
Absolutely, I’m just some person, but the point is that the world is so interconnected and defined that any shake up of any first world countries makes revolutionary change from things such as civil war extremely unlikely. Not to mention the other 1st world countries will insert their troops to wrestle power as well. Communication is faster than ever which means that responses and action can be faster than ever. It is a no win scenario without strong international relations, political understanding, and again - leadership.
With how strong of an influence DJT and the psyops had on Americans, would arresting DJT and more been seen as a political power play and caused a civil war then
Oh man, wouldn’t want to have open conflict! That would be terrible. Better to just let a fascist take over without any resistance.
That would be my position if I were un their shoes. An open conflict where the Democrats in charge have no choice but to use the U.S. military to fight off American citizens (trying to get DJT in power), or try to persuade Americans to see who DJT and their party really are, who are going to try to use the U.S. military to fight off American citizens, by choice. The former would have left many dead, and the latter, if won, would have saved many, along with possibility of being able to prosecute the troublemakers (DJT n Co). They completely failed - you say by choice because they’re on the same team, I say by psyops because there are external forces also trying to succeed (in their own way). Again, I do not believe that they are on the same conceptual team, but certainly the same sport with some of the same sponsors.
give me a quick list of what Republicans have done for America when they are in power
Ok, I like these, but damn how far the party has fallen from doing things for actual Americans like this; whereas the other cop has always been like this?
It’s not Democratic leadership that did those things. It was grassroots threats to legitimately disrupt the entire country. It’s always been this way. The 8-hour work day was won with general strikes that shut the country down. You don’t win by voting. You win by fighting. History has shown us this over and over and over again.
It also wasn’t the majority of Democrats fighting against these things, it was the majority of Republicans. Republicans (as you say, the bad cop) are obviously almost always against these laws. Ultimately it was and continues to be Democratic majority that signs these into law in most cases, especially in recent years. Though, I understand it doesn’t matter if it’s all a charade, the point of a Democratic system is that it should be We The People and the politicians respond to the people, in which Democrats have and usually do.
And yet, corporate profits are better under Democrats! Shocker, right?
This is both true but… tough. Corporate profits really sored during the Bush era in the early 2000s. Then we get Obama and Biden terms which seemed like healthy steady growth. The absolute biggest corporate profit jump comes from post-covid / AI bubble times under Biden. DJT is “tough” for corporations, but not because he / their administration, but because his whole purpose is to sow chaos, misdirection, and confusion.
Both parties are driven by the maintenance and expansion of global capitalism and they only give to the people as a concession
Yes - both parties support Capitalism. I support regulated Capitalism. We have been in a time of unregulated Capitalism for too long and it’s now capsizing the political structure meant to hold it together. I believe Capitalism itself is a byproduct of human evolution, will always exist in some form due to sociopathy and psychopathy (which I believe are evolutionary traits), and has to be regulated in some form. Since I believe it will always exist, and should consumerism win out over humanity, we’re likely doomed anyway. I embrace it but with the caveat that it has to be fought, but it’s too big to be fought by you, me, or grassroots, but from within the political system it runs on.
And the US vetoed the UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazis under Obama and under Biden.
What does that mean exactly? The vote was like “Nazis are bad: Yes or No” and the U.S. was like “Nah”? Was it supposed to be like German laws that would fine individuals for their Nazism expressions or something? I don’t understand the point of the vote or what’s it’s impact was supposed to be, even after looking into it. It seems for all purposes, performative, and sponsored by Russia on some of the occasions?
It’s not a psyop. It’s America.
It’s a portion of undereducated America stricken from a system that’s been starving their education specifically for this purpose. These come from mostly Red states. I can’t imagine what hoops one would have to jump through to not realize that America is, and has been, a target from external hostile countries. The psyops used our unregulated social media and to pose as actual Americans and drive discussions specifically targeting those uneducated Americans. The endgoal (ofc in my opinion) is Oligarchy and finalized corporate power, though it’s my understanding you believe that this has been the case for a long time, but I believe that it’s been a growing issue and not the defacto.
The Americans states where there are diverse groups of people and educated people aren’t rooting for torturing immigrants or shooting protestors. These are the folx who weren’t targets of the psyops, because they’re more difficult to rally (for this particular side, not for a cause in similar fashion).
Just go research prisons and parole around the world. Compare with America. It’s a hellscape here.
Yeah? Is this all we’re comparing to places like Russia or China? It just boils down to prison systems and not their much longer stances against personal freedoms of expression, violence, genocide, bombings, and collusion? 250 years compared to centuries? Cynical sure, but I guess the U.S. had some catching up to do, but at least it’s making better progress than those equally large countries.
If that’s is to be true, then why not try to pick the fascist dominance that’s going to do the least harm?
Wow. I mean, if this is your position, you’re well and truly gone.
I think this is where we are, yes. I’m not sure how much further we can take our arguments as I understand your position but disagree on it’s compete integration of “good cop, bad cop” and how to fight it (the system we’re in). I do appreciate the discussion though; take care m8
It’s almost like bots really have taken over the net. Combined with corporate controlled media (even websites, not just traditional media).
Maybe much of what you see if a Psyops to divide people to keep them infighting.
As the internet has become more accessible, anonymity on the internet has become less and less fun. Trolling used to be so… less destructive than it is now. Some take what they see at face value and will even spread it if it aligns with what they think but not what they’d say or do.
Lemmy isn’t immune to this either. I don’t know how many anti-Kamala threads I saw on Lemmy during the election trying to convince people to not vote - what a joke.
It was written in manuals by the CIA and KGB over five decades ago, before we even had an internet, how you can destabilize a democratic nation’s social discourse and undermine elections simply by creating a small group of agents who can slip into every major social debate or issue and immediately take the most extreme positions on both sides of every issue.
This creates and draws in contentious debate and arguing about the most radical extremes of every position until the average citizen tunes out of the debate, stops trusting what’s real, and just defaults to whatever state-media says is real because there’s no other option that makes sense.
That’s not to say the CIA and KGB were primarily responsible for the erosion of our society, the people doing this have been from all over the world and right inside the USA’s borders, each trying to do it for different reasons and agendas, but also each succeeding in creating a massive middle-class population with zero interest in following politics and social issues. The 2024 exit polling backs this up, showing that most Trump voters had no clue what Trump represented or what his policies were, despite it being his second term.
We get tunnel vision in places like reddit or lemmy and forget that for most people, their news comes from either nightly network television while distracted and cooking for their family, or from 30 minutes of browsing Facebook memes on a sunday night while preparing for another 6 days of working 10 hours a day.
And it’s still going on, and yes right here in Lemmy has PLENTY of these sock-puppets, astroturfers and bad-faith shills, as well as bots, designed to invade posts with wild takes and stupid derails in order to make people argue, so casual browsers start scrolling past the mess and lose interest in the issue.
You don’t need to posit bots to explain infighting. The entire Western political system is internally contradictory. We’re going to fight internally until we dissolve the contradictions that drive us. And that’s just nowhere near ready to happen. Case in point, you think the only reason not to vote Kamala is because of bots. Since you, and many like you, don’t seem to have any sense of reality, how are we ever going to deal with the contradictions that drive our infighting?
I certainly don’t think the only reason not to vote for Kamala is because bots, but to not think that bots aren’t diving division on Social media (which Lemmy is) I think is not living in 2026. The internet is not what it used to be.
The options during that election were 2 choices. We knew what would happen if Trump was elected, the writing was on the wall, Project 2025 was published, and people on Lemmy were still arguing about why not to vote for Kamala.
Convincing people to not vote for Kamala in arguably one of the most important elections was and is asinine, and shit was all over Lemmy during the election run. Give me a corporate Democrat over this shitshow any day, and the shitshow is only going to get worse.
There’s a difference between discussing conflicts and telling people not to vote because of those conflicts.
I don’t know, maybe we talk about respect to start? You just come into a conversation and start looking down your nose at others assuming that they’re not living in reality because they have a different opinion than you. What a bad way to start a conversation. What a bad way to win someone over. What a bad way to run a community.
I feel like I shouldn’t need to clarify, but just to be clear, I don’t think you’re trying to “win my opinion over” or “running a[ny] community” but the point is that from a non-conservative standpoint (since I don’t know you’re political spectrum, but are on Lemmy) these are things that I think should be persistent. Otherwise, it’s just going to push people away and/or people won’t even engage in the message.
The people who argued for that are the same folks that see the trolley problem and don’t pull the lever because pulling the lever would make them responsible for the result, while they feel like not taking action (even explicitly, intentionally not taking action) absolves them of responsibility for the result. So in their view they’d either be responsible for one person getting run over, or not responsible for 5 getting run over.
I saw VERY few people saying not to vote. What I saw was a ton of people saying that voting Kamala was voting for fascism and wouldn’t solve the problem. I saw a lot of people saying that they wouldn’t commit their time and money and relationship capital to organizing for Kamala because they weren’t going to support a fascist.
Voting is the absolute least powerful form of democratic expression, and voting Kamala would have resulted in an only slightly different path of incremental fascism. And now we’re going to talk about reality.
The reality is that Trump is not the CAUSE, he’s the EFFECT. The country is rotten to its core. It’s fundamentally and irreparably contradictory and it is based on the worst aspects of humanity. DJT may be bad, but Thomas Jefferson was worse. Don’t believe me? Jefferson ran breeding plantations, kept a slave girl in a cave inside his bedroom for raping, and tried to use his political power to end the transatlantic slave trade to drive increased demand for the slaves he was breeding domestically. Full on worse than absolutely everything DJT has done.
Voting to the Democrat fascist was not going to save us. The problem was here. Biden did fuck all to stop Trump. The Ds are doing fuck all to stop Trump. Voting for Ds is voting for masked fascism and Rs is voting for unmasked fascism. No. I do not think we should be spending our time and effort voting for masked fascism.
Again, reality. The reality is that mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus and has been for decades. The US imprisons more of its people than any other country (although El Salvador and Cuba beat the US last year, I doubt they’ll hold those positions much longer). The US parole system is 2x as big as the US prison population, it’s the biggest mass surveillance program of its kind. Bi-partisan support. Prison slave labor is a bi-partisan consensus. Prison slaves produce over $11Bn worth of goods and services. Collective punishment and starvation is a bi-partisan consensus. In the last 50 years US sanctions (and their EU followers) have killed almost 40 million people. Domestic wiretapping by the NSA has bi-partisan support. The war machine has full bi-partisan support. Obama and HRC destroyed Libya as part of the plan that the GWB administration established. Total bi-partisan continuity.
They’re ALL fucking fascists. They’re all mass murderers. They’re all slave masters. FFS Bill and Hillary has house slaves when they were in the Governor’s Mansion in Arkansas - literally black prison slaves worked for them in their domicile for years.
The problem is INSIDE THE HOUSE, it’s not outside agitators. Yes, outside agitators do exist. They are exploring what they can do to help the decline accelerate. But they’re just adding gasoline to an already burning country-wide forest wire that is 0% contained. The bots are accelerants. The problems are ours and ours alone. Kamala can’t save us. The Democrats can’t save us. They are fully and fundamentally part of the problem.
The Democratic Party have been the only party to drive positive change in this country. Positive social change. Positive economic change. Positive international change. Are they perfect? No - there is no perfect system. Chasing perfection is a fools errand.
To think that voting is the least powerful of Democratic expression is (I believe to be) an absurd statement. Local elections matter. Country elections matter. You’re not changing the system from the outside, a system that’s ran ~250 years. There’s no hope of a civil war beating the U.S. Military Complex. What will happen instead, just like the CIA did/does, is 3rd parties will join in to continue the fighting for their own gain.
The only change to the U.S. system so that the least amount of people die should have come from within.
Also, If they’re all fascists, and we literally have a choice between the fascist who at least has a backing party history of social and economic growth vs one whose going to try to become a defacto ruler; the choice should have been obvious.
Then we are ultimately fucked. Corporate internet is programming masses due to being absolutely unregulated.
There’s no change, no movement without leadership and organization. Between the 2 parties, the better leadership comes from the Democratic Party. The better organization comes from the Democratic Party. Until a 3rd party finds leadership, finds the organization to make the push for change, then they are it. Hopefully the future has that, but the past election was between what we’re seeing now and what could have been.
This is a delusional position. No one is asking for perfection. I’m asking for Hillary Clinton to not celebrate the sodomization of a septuagenarian head of state with a bayonet by gleefully shouting “We came! We saw! He died!”
I’m not asking for perfection. I’m asking for the crimes against humanity to stop.
You know what’s not perfect? When politicians mortgage their oil futures and then oil prices collapse. That is so far from what I’m talking about it’s ridiculous.
I can keep going. Can we stop training terrorists? How about drone striking weddings? How about drone striking the funerals for people who died at the weddings? Can we stop propping up dictators for money? How about funding the militarization of the police? No? Too far? How about honoring the 300+ treaties the US has unilaterally broken? No. Is that a “perfectionist” demand too?
Yeah, and guess what. For 250 years it’s been a genocidal, mass murdering, torturing, enslaving, white supremacist spreader of lies and violence. You absolutely ARE changing a system from the outside that’s run for 250 years. That’s LITERALLY how liberal democracies emerged from monarchies. It’s how the US and its European empire collaborators have made every change in government around the world. Not through voting. You want to know what voting got us after 250 years? The largest most violent psychotic military in the world committing acts of genocide, mass war crimes, and mass crimes against humanity for literally 2 fucking centuries and absolutely ZERO justice for any of it. From the genocide of indigenous people to dropping over 2.5 million pounds of ordinance on Laos when we weren’t even at war with them, to bombing literally every structure in Korea north of the 38th parallel and then dropping so much napalm that people needed to live in caves to torturing prisoners all over the world in CIA black sites to funding, arming, and providing logistics support for the genocide of Palestinians. That’s voting for you.
It will. But it won’t come from voting.
The choice should be obvious, but apparently it’s not. You don’t fucking support the fascists who are willing to take up the PR role of “good cop”. If you’re in the precinct, and there’s a good cop and a bad cop interrogating you, you don’t side with the good cop, no matter how he bandages your wounds or keeps you well fed, or even gets some help for your family.
No. It’s not. That’s white supremacy. You’re making a fundamental error in attribution. The problem is the EuroCentric white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Everything else stems from the rotten core. The propaganda. The distractions. The infighting. All of it. There is only one way out and that is to band together and fight ALL of the fascists, not spend our energy making alliances with the good cop.
Oh come on. You can’t be serious right now! ALL of the evidence is against this claim. The Democrats have NO fucking effective leadership. They spent 40 years of leadership not codifying Roe into law so they could campaign on it. They keep nominating candidates that have been proven to lose. They rat fuck their own people. They believe there should be a strong Republican party. They are millionaires, they work for billionaires, and they have achieved so precious little, and nearly everything they have achieved has been structured to enrich the white supremacist genocidal psychotic capitalist patriarchy. Not ONCE have the Democrats stopped the mass killings. Not ONCE have the Democrats dropped the prison or parole population. Not ONCE have the Democrats reduced the funding to the military. They do not have better leadership. They have better PR for people like you.
You don’t get it. The Ds and Rs collaborate. They eat dinner together. They vacation together. Their kids go to same schools. They studied with the same professor. They rape people at the same island. They get their drugs from the same sources. They take bribes from the same brokers. They literally co-own the organization that runs televised debates. They work together to stop every possible third party. It’s not a question of 3rd party leadership, it’s a question of fascist dominance. You don’t vote fascists out of office. It’s never worked.
Kamala had no plan to prevent any of this. If she had won, the BEST case scenario is that it would have delayed this chaos by 4 years. But the reality is that by the end of 2028, the economy will be destroyed regardless of who is in office. And the chaos would be on us anyway. Maybe Kamala would have fully invaded Venezuela or Iran in her first year. I have no doubt that ICE would have gotten the same funding (Kamala: “Don’t come.”). I do have doubts that they would be as openly brutal as they’re being now. But we don’t actually know. Kamala was no friend of immigrants and I could easily see her enforcing brutally. Especially since Tom Homan, the White House Border Czar, was an OBAMA appointee. (See how it’s bi-partisan).
No. The past election was not between what we’re seeing now and what could have been. It was between a small portion of what we’re seeing now and a different expression of the same fundamental contradictions. The country is still a psychotic white supremacist misogynist racist patriarchal shit hole. Maybe Kamala’s alternate universe would have seen Proud Boys and Bugaloo and Oathkeepers activate further and drive the same or worse chaos than we’re seeing now.
You gotta open your scope up. It’s not enough to want nicer rhetoric or gentler policing. It’s not. The Ds and the Rs are equally bloodthirsty on the global stage. They’re equally extractive. They’re equally rapacious. They administer the same system and that system does the same things regardless of who is in office. Again, I’ll point you to the list of 7 countries (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan) the GWB administration listed as targets for invasion and how Obama participated in continuity of that program. I’ll point you to Ruth Bader Ginsberg writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court that US’s fundamental claim of existence stems from the Doctrine of Discovery - a religious document from the Catholic pope that justified rape, genocide, and enslavement of anyone that wasn’t European anywhere in the world.
Obama kept Gitmo open. Biden kept the genocide in Gaza going. They all increased the military budget. They all increased police budgets. They all imprisoned whistleblowers. They all assassinated resistance organizers in South America. They all trained terrorists in West Asia and in South America. They all brutalized indigenous people here at home. They all poisoned the Earth irreparably. They all forced their trading partners in subjugation. They all protected massive criminals. They all spread lies. They all militarized the domestic police to prepare for “disturbances”. They literally created the conditions that we find ourselves in. They all KNEW IT too. They literally talked about Trump being bad, and we watched them do absolutely fucking nothing about it except blame voters for failing to vote enough.
Wake up, Mort. Shed the lie. The good cop is not here to help you. The good cop will not make it better.
I don’t disagree that those things have happened, exist, and are bad, but you again seem to think that change comes from a grassroots movement to tear the whole system down. We are wayyyyyyyy past that. This isn’t 18th century Europe. We have satellites in space that can connect to anywhere in the world in milliseconds. Without a full destructive reset, there is no tearing the system down. It has to change from within and it has to change over time.
Who are you even comparing the Democrats to? Again… a 2 party system… So if we have to pick one, which yeah we fucking do because we are the minority voice, yeah I’m picking the one that’s not going to ship my friends to camps and try to become a dictator. That’s the comparison. It starts there and stops there until a 3rd party puts their hat in and uses the law to fight Corporations.
Civil Rights were put into law by Democrats. (HUGE grassroots movement from the civil rights leaders of the time, but it’s the politicians who codified it so that we have what we have today)
LGBTQ+ Rights? Democrats.
Healthcare? Democrats.
Social Security and Social Services? Democrats.
Technological security and advances? Democrats.
The U.S. sees the most jobs under Democrats.
Just give me a quick list of what Republicans have done for America when they are in power. Seriously, you keep railing on America and Democrats, you keep saying that both parties are the same. Give me a rundown of all the good things Republicans have done for Americans when they are in power.
I will legitimately bet you can’t. Maybe Roosevelt, but hell that was a long time ago wasn’t it? Where’s the party gone since then?
And maybe we could have had some progressive policies as well too which would have been nice. A few less deaths. Again, I just don’t know how you’re not comparing this to the Republicans. Like, like it or not, American is a 2 party system and to say that Democrats and Republicans are the same is completely missing all the progress Democrats have done. and how much destruction Republicans have done and/or tried to reverse.
We don’t know what ICE would have been like under Kamala, but I sure hope it would have had less actual Nazis and less actual white supremists leading them. I’d like to think that we’d have the Jan 6th people still held accountable. A lot less pardons of real criminal fraudsters. Yeah, it’s really hard to say what the U.S. would have been like under Kamala.
We can’t have a 3rd party leadership.
We can’t have Democratic leadership.
We can’t have Republicans leadership.
All we can have is fascist dominance.
If that’s is to be true, then why not try to pick the fascist dominance that’s going to do the least harm? A non-choice is always a choice for the worse of the two fascists - there’s no getting around that. The people who want the fascist that will do the least harm votes so, and the people who want the fascist to the do the most harm votes so, and it’s the people who don’t vote that unintentionally give the fascist who wants to do the most harm an edge/advantage. You may dance around it morally all you want.
On a sidenote, shoutout to both Biden, Obama, and a number of other Democrats for not being in the Epstein files. We all knew Clinton would be, that sleezy fuck, but I haven’t seen a single comment defending him - it’s all just “burn em all” which is cool.
Yeah, that does suck. Difficult to put myself in their shoes in this situation. The U.S. was a powder keg for J6 - psyops in full effect. The next 4 years should have been preparing for the worst. With how strong of an influence DJT and the psyops had on Americans, would arresting DJT and more been seen as a political power play and caused a civil war then? Would it have had been better for the Democrats to try to show America who DJT really is and have them choose, to get a room temperature of the U.S., then prosecute him? They were telling us all along: Hey, this dude is a real POS. Hey, here’s Project 2025 that he’s going to put into place if he becomes President. Hey, this dude has strong ties with known Pedophile Jeffery Epstein.
The fact that all of this was out in the open and many states were still Red shows just how effective the psyops was to begin with and how entrenched a real [bad] fascist opposition had become. Now that things are running it’s course, the Epstein files are being released. We are seeing how DJT is dismantling every aspect of traditional America (from Social Systems to International Support to Education). Now that we’re seeing Project 2025 put into action, there are folx who are changing their tune. Is them not liking DJT going to stop bombings, prison slavery, or genocide? No, but we’re a long ways off from doing that now. America is one step forward and 2 steps back because of division politics.
I can’t tell if you’re Anti-America or Anti-Humanity. There’s no country the size of the U.S that is any better and arguably they’re all much worse and have been for a lot longer.
All the things about bombings and collusion are true, but you’re not changing it from the outside. The civil rights movement had leaders and organization and from it came change. If you want to see the same change, then that’s how it has to happen: Leadership and Organization. At that point you either join in as a 3rd party to fight the system politically or you fight the system physically. Politically has the best chance to promote change. Physically has the best chance to be dominated by a separate, and worse fascist regime.
What practical solutions do you have outside educating people of the flaws of the system?
This is a hypothesis without any analysis. There is no logical reason to believe that satellites make revolutionary change impossible.
Republicans are clearly better at leadership. They know how to use power, execute their plans, understand the threats ahead of time. Democrats have good PR, but they suck at leadership. Except when it comes to preventing any move towards the political left. Then they’re suddenly the most cunning, intelligent operators in the country.
This is the fundamental problem. Democrats increased funding to ICE, increased the use of solitary confinement (internationally recognized as torture) on immigrants, including children. Solitary confinements went up under Biden/Harris. You’re still talking about good cop/bad cop, though. The good cop says “Hey, sorry about my partner. Listen, I won’t ship your friends to camps and won’t act like a dictator. You can trust me.” But the good cop never stops the bad cop. Why? Because there isn’t a two party system in reality. There is a one party system with a good cop and a bad cop. Do you know why, despite 250 years of this country, a third party has never been viable. Why a third party has never used the law to fight Corporations? Because the “2 parties” literally collaborate to prevent it. They are friends. They break bread together. They have reasonable conversations with each other. They send each other Christmas gifts. They donate to each others campaigns. Stop basing your entire argument around this idea that the 2 party system is legitimate. It’s not. It’s a totally illegitimate, undemocratic, dictatorial system by which the elite and ultra-rich run the country.
These are called concessions. This is literally the job of the Democrat party. They are the Good Cop. The Bad Cop is not allowed to give you a donut (most of the time) because it breaks the effectiveness of the psychological arrangement. The Good Cop gives you a donut and a coffee and then turns around and expenses it back to the precinct. Because the concessions are part of the process of managing the population. This is why EVERY time fascism has emerged it’s emerged from a liberal democracy, and why every single time a social democrat in South America or Africa made some progress during economic high times, the progress was always rolled back by the right wing in economic lean times. Because the function of the Good Cop is to get you to legitimize the system, to believe there is nothing outside the options provided, and that the Good Cop is worth fighting for and sacrificing yourself for.
But you’re still missing the point even with these things. Even Trump had Operation Warp Speed. Why did Trump do that? Because the conditions in the country effectively forced him to. The government had to do something. That’s exactly how civil rights legislation got passed. Black people, not just MLK’s peaceful protestors, but the Black Panthers and other movements, created conditions that the government had to respond to. It’s not Democratic leadership that did those things. It was grassroots threats to legitimately disrupt the entire country. It’s always been this way. The 8-hour work day was won with general strikes that shut the country down. You don’t win by voting. You win by fighting. History has shown us this over and over and over again.
But that’s STILL not the point. Republicans do things that make their voters think they support what the voters support. Democrats do things that make their voters think they support what the voters support. When the Rs raise taxes, they do it quietly and when they cut taxes they do it loudly. The Democrats are the opposite. Why? Because Republican voters want lower taxes and Democrat voters want more social services. The two parties cannot significantly cross over this boundary because they would lose their voters. I don’t know why this is so hard for people to see, but if Republicans increased taxes to pay for social services they would LOSE. And if the Democrats cut social services to increase corporate profits, they would LOSE.
And yet, corporate profits are better under Democrats! Shocker, right? The Democrats working for the corporations?! People point at the ACA and say “Look at how the Democrats got more people access to health care” ignoring the fact that they easily could have extended Medicaid. It would have been cheaper. It would have helped more people. It would have been easier. But it wouldn’t have created profits for insurance companies.
Both parties are driven by the maintenance and expansion of global capitalism and they only give to the people as a concession
Think about it. Let’s say you have one group. Everyone in the group want the same things: world dominance, fascistic control over the people, unconscionable wealth for them and the elite. That one group has one brand. They go and get people to vote for them, but they make the voters lives worse. What happens? Eventually the people throw them out. Now they can’t achieve their goals.
Take that same group, but they form two brands. One just openly does what they want, pandering to a subset of the population. The rest of the population gets angry. They want someone else. So the same group deploys B team. B teams says “we’re here to help” and then continues to maintain and expand global capitalism, continues to execute world domination plans, continues mass incarceration, continues increase super profits for the ultra wealth. Now the people are upset with B team. What happens? A team comes back in on a winning message and continues the slaughter, the slavery, and the extraction.
That’s what is happening here.
Again. Tom Homan was an Obama appointee. And the US vetoed the UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazis under Obama and under Biden.
Operation Paperclip, under Harry Truman (D), collaborated with the Vatican to save 10k Nazis from justice and relocated them throughout South America, giving them money, property, jobs, government protection, etc.
Wow. I mean, if this is your position, you’re well and truly gone. You support the fascists that give you and your friends the donuts. Sure they put toddlers in solitary. Sure they sodomize septuagenarians with bayonets. Sure they train death squads that kill entire villages. But you and your friends got a little more comfortable and honestly isn’t that progress?
Oh man, wouldn’t want to have open conflict! That would be terrible. Better to just let a fascist take over without any resistance. Listen to yourself. No one in their right mind thinks like that. They’re all on the same fucking team is why they did it.
SMDH - no. America was not corrupted by psyops. This is who America is and has been from the beginning. The country was built on human trafficking. Thomas Jefferson was a pedophile serial rapist. The pilgrims prayed thanksgiving after every time they slaughtered an entire Indian village, including children and elderly. We have people living today who participated in lynchings and are upset that black people have their own universities. It’s not a psyop. It’s America.
Again, completely wrong on the misattribution. The reason for prison slavery is not because of division politics. It’s because it’s a bipartisan consensus. Same with prison slavery. Same with torturing people at the border. Same with spying on Americans. Same with bombing anyone and everyone in the Global South. Bi-partisan consensus. Get it through your head. Look at the voting records. Look at the historical records. Look at the death records. Look at the budget numbers. 70-year bi-partisan consensus It has nothing to do with division and everything to do with unity.
Just go research prisons and parole around the world. Compare with America. It’s a hellscape here.
Use voting only to choose which enemy you’d rather fight
Absolutely, I’m just some person, but the point is that the world is so interconnected and defined that any shake up of any first world countries makes revolutionary change from things such as civil war extremely unlikely. Not to mention the other 1st world countries will insert their troops to wrestle power as well. Communication is faster than ever which means that responses and action can be faster than ever. It is a no win scenario without strong international relations, political understanding, and again - leadership.
That would be my position if I were un their shoes. An open conflict where the Democrats in charge have no choice but to use the U.S. military to fight off American citizens (trying to get DJT in power), or try to persuade Americans to see who DJT and their party really are, who are going to try to use the U.S. military to fight off American citizens, by choice. The former would have left many dead, and the latter, if won, would have saved many, along with possibility of being able to prosecute the troublemakers (DJT n Co). They completely failed - you say by choice because they’re on the same team, I say by psyops because there are external forces also trying to succeed (in their own way). Again, I do not believe that they are on the same conceptual team, but certainly the same sport with some of the same sponsors.
Ok, I like these, but damn how far the party has fallen from doing things for actual Americans like this; whereas the other cop has always been like this?
It also wasn’t the majority of Democrats fighting against these things, it was the majority of Republicans. Republicans (as you say, the bad cop) are obviously almost always against these laws. Ultimately it was and continues to be Democratic majority that signs these into law in most cases, especially in recent years. Though, I understand it doesn’t matter if it’s all a charade, the point of a Democratic system is that it should be We The People and the politicians respond to the people, in which Democrats have and usually do.
This is both true but… tough. Corporate profits really sored during the Bush era in the early 2000s. Then we get Obama and Biden terms which seemed like healthy steady growth. The absolute biggest corporate profit jump comes from post-covid / AI bubble times under Biden. DJT is “tough” for corporations, but not because he / their administration, but because his whole purpose is to sow chaos, misdirection, and confusion.
Yes - both parties support Capitalism. I support regulated Capitalism. We have been in a time of unregulated Capitalism for too long and it’s now capsizing the political structure meant to hold it together. I believe Capitalism itself is a byproduct of human evolution, will always exist in some form due to sociopathy and psychopathy (which I believe are evolutionary traits), and has to be regulated in some form. Since I believe it will always exist, and should consumerism win out over humanity, we’re likely doomed anyway. I embrace it but with the caveat that it has to be fought, but it’s too big to be fought by you, me, or grassroots, but from within the political system it runs on.
What does that mean exactly? The vote was like “Nazis are bad: Yes or No” and the U.S. was like “Nah”? Was it supposed to be like German laws that would fine individuals for their Nazism expressions or something? I don’t understand the point of the vote or what’s it’s impact was supposed to be, even after looking into it. It seems for all purposes, performative, and sponsored by Russia on some of the occasions?
It’s a portion of undereducated America stricken from a system that’s been starving their education specifically for this purpose. These come from mostly Red states. I can’t imagine what hoops one would have to jump through to not realize that America is, and has been, a target from external hostile countries. The psyops used our unregulated social media and to pose as actual Americans and drive discussions specifically targeting those uneducated Americans. The endgoal (ofc in my opinion) is Oligarchy and finalized corporate power, though it’s my understanding you believe that this has been the case for a long time, but I believe that it’s been a growing issue and not the defacto.
The Americans states where there are diverse groups of people and educated people aren’t rooting for torturing immigrants or shooting protestors. These are the folx who weren’t targets of the psyops, because they’re more difficult to rally (for this particular side, not for a cause in similar fashion).
Yeah? Is this all we’re comparing to places like Russia or China? It just boils down to prison systems and not their much longer stances against personal freedoms of expression, violence, genocide, bombings, and collusion? 250 years compared to centuries? Cynical sure, but I guess the U.S. had some catching up to do, but at least it’s making better progress than those equally large countries.
I think this is where we are, yes. I’m not sure how much further we can take our arguments as I understand your position but disagree on it’s compete integration of “good cop, bad cop” and how to fight it (the system we’re in). I do appreciate the discussion though; take care m8
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