1179
Praxis
(lemmy.nz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
1179 points (98.3% liked)
Microblog Memes
12343 readers
3885 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Yeah, things like the Democratic party supporting gay marriage after it gained critical mass in popularity are a total coincidence. The policies are just random. Same thing with the the Republican party morphing overnight into a white nationalist cult who doesn’t care about deficit spending anymore. You never know where the parties are headed, and it has nothing to do with the desires of the base and who they vote for.
I'm confused by the sarcasm. Do you think these are recent?
Edit: I'll assume by the response that it's "yes, I can forgive 2016 they didn't know" types. Look up the deficit by administration, or incarceration rates.
No, politics is not random, politics is what economic elites want. That’s why Marxist would say it’s a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”.
Here a direct quote from the famous 2014 study by Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page:
Disclaimer: There are sources that say this study has some oversimplifications and claim that at least “limited leverage” is possible.
But we shouldn’t settle for just limited leverage as people. Unfortunately, neither voting nor individual arson attacks will change that.
Instead we should see voting and (the limited effect it has on politics) as our tool to make more and more people realize that big business ruling everything isn’t an error in the system, but its core function. It always existed to protect the interest of the economic elites. We need to understand that the system has to be replaced not fixed.
Okay, but that quote doesn't support the conclusion that engaging in harm-reduction via voting is instead a bad thing. In fact, it doesn't even argue that your vote doesn't matter. The only thing it suggests - and I can't even say "proves" here, as your own disclaimer brings the validity of this study's conclusions into question - is that mass voting doesn't result in policy change from the major parties.
Voting for the party that is going to bomb brown people, rather than the one that is going to bomb brown people, round up locals who look too brown, and de-legitimize LGBTQ+ peoples of all demographics, is harm reduction worth engaging in.
I eagerly await the total failure of capitalism as much as the next socialist, but I am not condemning local minorities just to win some form of imagined moral high ground.
I just don't think the Ds actually do harm reduction. Biden and his DOJ had the Epstein files and they did literally nothing with them. And that's just the clearest example of the enabling they do. Obama and Biden expanded ICE into what it is today and created the policy framework that Trump is using, but Biden did nothing to address it when he was president. He just opted not to use it, knowing full well what the Republicans would do because they were literally publishing treatises on what they would do. The Democrats are harm reduction like the Good Cop has your best interests at heart.
Electing the ones who opt not to use ICE the way Trump uses ICE is an example of harm reduction. It doesn’t mean Democrats solve all problems; that’s literally the reason the term “harm reduction” is used - to distinguish it from optimal solutions, while still acknowledging its superiority over the alternative.
No, I'm sorry but that's not what harm reduction is. What you are saying is that the Bad Cop will hit you while you're cuffed to the chair and the Good Cop will come in and apologize for it. But the Bad Cop will come back and do it again in an hour. The cops are colleagues, and they work together. The Good Cop is not harm reduction. The Good Cop is manipulating you. And it's obvious. Again - Biden was VP when the policy framework for expanding DHS and ICE were created by him and Obama. Together they deported more people than Trump. Obama/Biden was the first administration to appoint Homan to be the deportation czar. Trump appointed him during both of his terms. Biden took power and had the knowledge, the experience, and the power to change DHS/ICE policy but didn't. Biden and his DOJ had the full suite of Epstein files but did nothing to stop or even slow down Trump.
It's time to face the facts. The Democrats are collaborating with the Republicans, despite all the noise they make to the contrary. They are manipulating you in a classic psychological ploy, and the only thing keeping it going is that people are falling for it.
Ah, you thing Republicans and Democrats are in cahoots. Well that’s kind of dumb. Have a good one 👍
As individuals, they are literally colleagues. As legislators, the Ds regularly vote with Republicans to make all sorts of things happen. Corporate profits are highest under Democrats. The military budget expands under both parties. Democrat presidents regularly continue the policies of their Republican predecessors, the most obvious being Obama/Biden+Clinton and their war on Libya. Ds and Rs celebrate together, dancing in the halls of government. They eat together, send their kids to the same schools, are members of the same social clubs, have far and away vastly overlapping interests in insider trading, property values, procurement contracts, global domination, suppression of domestic revolt, etc.
It would be obvious that they collaborate if it wasn't for the fact that PR professionals out number journalists 6-to-1 in the USA. The parties are PR firms, psychologically manipulating the masses into complacency, directing their energy towards dead ends, and keeping everyone fighting each other by turning everything into a moral issue that can only be solved by voting more morally.
I have had a read through that study, and I would consider the following points striking:
To give a counter example to this study: consider the exit to the gilded age. We have a period comparable to now, where political power was bought and sold; corruption reigned. However, the government of Teddy Roosevelt made a number of moves counter to corporate interests, breaking up monopolies, reserving vast swathes of national parks, legislation protecting food and drug adulteration (note: not an unequivocal fan of TR — I am not in favour of his gunboat diplomacy).
A more recent example: under the Biden administration, there was a significant uplift in antitrust efforts. Lina Khan was appointed to the FTC, and who knows what she could have accomplished given more time. In a UK-based example, we are (finally, thank fucking god) renationalising our public services. It is absurd to think this would have happened under the opposition.
TLDR: democratic socialism is possible; your study is a snapshot of conservative administrations in America and — no shit — they aligned with corporate interests.
That is not at all the TLDR. Your entire argument is that outside the US voting can influence policy. No one is arguing against that, but that in no way supports the thesis that democratic socialism is possible. All of history shows that democratic socialism has never happened. There is no known path to democratic socialism at all.
You hate democratic socialism because it doesn't kill enough people like Stalin's National Socialism