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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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People here still blaming this on minority voters are deafeningly silent on party leadership holding the coalition hostage over AIPAC funding
Stop directing your anger at people being robbed of basic representation instead of political actors who are gleefully accepting blood money to turn against their constituents and a blind eye to genocide
We know they're war-criminals. There's still a difference between that and leveling the place for a hotel. Trump gleefully accepted $100m from Adelson for the west bank.
Stop assuming we're pro-dems and not just anti-trump.
Gaza is fully leveled and Trump had nothing to do with it.
This is the shit that drives me nuts. No matter how many fucking times you explain it, they just cannot wrap their heads around this for some reason. Or they refuse to.
Votes for Dems completely unconditionally and demands others do the same "Why does everyone keep assuming we're pro-Dem? Don't they know that we send negative energy waves through our mind palaces towards zionist Dems all the time?"
I'm not accusing anyone of being pro-dems, I'm pointing out that this line of reporting is intentionally misdirecting anger at voters - who can literally only react to the policies and governance of the democrats as they are - instead of the democrats sabotaging themselves for thinking they could have their cake and eat it too.
Thinking that the democrats could participate in a highly-publicized genocide and not lose any voters is folly, but then turning around blaming the voters for the loss of votes is beyond hubris and well into delusion. Anyone with eyes could see this loss coming from a mile away and was screaming at the democrats to change course.
But the voters are to blame. So is the DNC. Both suck...bad. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans, including their political representative, are more concerned with propping up failing capitalism than actually fixing solvable world issues. At this point, I find it impossible to envision creating enough public and political support for actual change unless the entire economic system burns down. My fear is that instead of galvanizing the working class, ian economic collapse is only going to create a vacuum to be filled by the next fascist to secure even greater control.
If you have a practical solution, i'd love to hear it.
Lenin actually described this pattern, theorizing that "fascism is capitalism in decay."
There are a lot of marxists of a variety of bents who have their own theories on how to achieve a socialist state, but most of them guess that an advanced capitalist state has very little likelihood of transitioning without a revolutionary vanguard or violent class conflict.
It's a reason why socialist projects almost exclusively appear in pre-industrial parts of the world - but a classless communist state is only really achievable in more advanced post-industrial societies because they'd actually have the infrastructure to get to post-scarcity. So what ends up happening usually is either a protracted socialist "dictatorship of the proletariat", or a social democratic state that is slowly undermined by austerity until it returns to a more conventional capitalist organization.
All that to say: no, I do not think the US even meets the bare minimum of class consciousness required to avoid a fascistic collapse. The only good news is that, historically, fascist movements tend to burn out fairly quickly unless they have a competent leader. So, there's that.
Unfortunately, this is usually what happens when governments/societies collapse. Lot of people on the internet talking about burning it all down and starting over, not realizing that usually just makes things worse.
It doesn't matter if Democrats aren't picture perfect. Anyone willing to rub brain cells together knows they're infinitely better at governing than Republicans, including in regards to Palestine, and should vote accordingly. I don't need the Democrats to cup my balls and talk dirty to me to know the smarter move is to vote for them. I don't need to be courted every fucking election or my vote goes to a proto-fascist or I don't vote at all.
The majority of the fault is squarely on voters, not Democrats. Because they didn't fucking inform themselves responsibly.
A little less than half of all eligible voters don't vote in any given federal election - multiple factors more than the margin of every race; can we blame those people for every atrocity conducted on our behalf, too?
The outcome of every election since our founding was determined by how many people the candidates can get to turn out for them -that didn't suddenly change this time. Democrats chose to spend their efforts trying to disabuse their constituents of their moral objections and deny any real domestic reform, and they lost because of it.
I'm not assuming you're pro-dems, I'm pointing out that their loss is entirely attributable to their own political mis-calculation on top of their efforts to gaslight Americans about their roll and knowledge of the crimes being committed on their behalf.
Blaming voters for reacting to the Democrats' policy decisions - including the moderates they alienated - is simply yet another attempt to obscure the facts that lead us to this moment.
Probably more to do with the mass delusion and post truth world we live in.
And yes, enabling the greater evil is a failing of the people who voted against their interests because less evil wasn’t good enough.
Democrats enabled the greater evil by ignoring the interests of the constituencies they needed to win. It doesn't matter if the lesser evil is objectively the right choice - they still need millions of people to go to the booth and make that choice, and nobody has more control over voter enthusiasm than the democrats themselves.
This is nobody's fault but the democrats.
Because they didn't cut ties with Israel? There's no reality in which America is going to break up with their most important ally in the Middle East. Did you want Democrats to lie that they'd break ties so they could win and then go back on that promise? Flip flopping like that is what leads a country to having exactly zero allies.
I guess they had faith in Americans to be informed enough to know that despite not being perfect, they're INFINITELY better than Republicans. But that faith was 100% misplaced because Americans, my friend, are DUMB.
Because - far from 'cutting ties' with Israel - they actively shielded them from international accountability and continued supplying them with the bombs they were (and are still) dropping on Palestinian children
That is literally the fucking opposite of how voting works. You only got two choices for a winner here Biden or trump and not voting Biden = trump.
You guys seem to think there's a 3rd option here.
First past the post voting literally shows otherwise. You are a fool.
They did enable the greater evil, but it was voters who ultimately put them in office, not Democrats. The buck stops with the voters. Or it did - they made sure it won't any more.
Guess I'll just repeat myself:
"they still need millions of people to go to the booth and make that choice, and nobody has more control over voter enthusiasm than the democrats themselves"
If you want to play games with abstracting agency away from the people who had control of the entire situation, go nuts. But not only did the democrats have every opportunity to make the case for themselves, but they also dug the grave they're now laying in by building their platform around AIPAC money (and large corporate donors) to begin with.
The democrats simply cannot win with the political machine they've constructed anymore.
Now that's a statement I can agree with. In America political parties have to lie through their teeth and foment fear to win elections. Because Americans are easily manipulated.
Because they showed up to this campaign with receipts of their accomplishments and focused on talking policy and avoiding blatant propaganda and it clearly didn't work. Meanwhile, a guy who openly admitted he didn't have plans and told everyone immigrants were eating people's pets got to become the most powerful figure on the planet.
Americans are dumb. They must be lied to. Democrats should start doing that. Hell, they should have just lied that they'd break ties with Israel so they could win.
Lmao, is that what they did?
If you're gonna emulate what the republicans are doing, why not say 'fuck the parliamentarian' and just plow through actual, substantial reforms? Why pick the deception part and not the complete disregard for the rules in service of achieving your agenda part?
Congratulations on helping trump win. You're partially responsible when Gaza goes bye bye. Not the Dems.
If all it took for trump to win was a handful of internet weirdos to loudly oppose an active genocide then maybe the democrats were never going to win in the first place.
Congratulations on helping Trump win even more by defending the Democrat's incompetence and distracting the fight away from the actual fascist in the White House. Go ahead and continue attacking the left and the Muslim base. I'm sure that'll help slow down Trump's attack on your democracy.
You realize the person you're responding to LITERALLY believes the same about you, right?
That's their entire point.
Throwing a not-that-pithy "This is all your fault" won't even phase them. Would it phase you if they did it to you?
Surely you see the difference between Democratic leadership and the masses that believe in some semblance of humanity. I swear your short-sighted goal of overthrowing the system has resulted in millions of Americans marching goose step and lining trans children up for the slaughter.
Own your part now or history will not look kindly upon you and your ilk. You are right, but also very wrong.
Those kids had already been placed in that line by the system you're defending - half the states in the union had already been targeting them while democrats were at the helm, and now the democrats have the audacity to be blaming their loss on being too trans-friendly.
It is okay to be wrong, I know you are riding on a high right now. It is in a lot of ways bullshit though and you are also responsible for what has happened.
That's a healthy attitude, good job
Please elaborate what the party leadership could've done differently to not alienate the other voting blocks mentioned.
They could have defended the lives of Palestinians and acknowledged that the genocide was happening.
It was Biden's press secretary and SOS who got up on a podium everyday and assured the press and those "other voters" that Israel wasn't doing anything wrong. They drew that line themselves, not anyone who was protesting the genocide.
How short is your memory?
Biden expressed disapproval multiple times.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-3591fb5f82b22cf8e5d1060fccaef115
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/17/biden-netanyahu-sinwar-gaza-war
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/13/biden-speaks-with-israels-netanyahu-urges-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza
Whether intentional or not, you are spreading misinformation. The same kind that got Trump and Musk into the Oval Office. And people are upvoting you. Congrats.
This one is kinda funny to me because people interpret trump saying nearly the same words is evidence of his genocidal intent.
But none of those 'statements of disapproval' conveys the severity of their literal fucking war crimes and genocide, which would be a minimum (I would think) to convince a skeptical zionist voter that maybe some intervention is justified. Not to mention that Harris repeatedly refused to commit to withholding lethal aid every time she was asked during her candidacy.
And this is how trump got elected. Have some self awareness and knowledge of game theory.
seems like the game theory applied didn't seem to work very well, maybe it's not our priors that need updating..::
Why do you criticize regular people about game theory and not the actual people crafting the strategy to win an election?
Because regular adults should be responsible enough to see through blatant manipulation by blatantly bad actors. And if they can't, that's no one else's fault but their own.
That's not an answer to why you hold regular people to account for their actions but not the politicians and strategists actually running the campaign.
Also it wasn't "manipulation". The genocide actually happened.
He's literally spreading misinformation and I posted links to prove it.
And he's being upvoted and you're being downvoted. Which makes your comment even more poignant. Fucking internet man. Humans simply weren't ready for it.
I find arguments that the non-voters shouldn't be blamed for Trump because party leadership didn't properly encourage them to vote for Harris idiotic. Everyone has a duty to educate themselves about their vote. Shifting blame to the DNC is both patronizing and destructive. The DNC sucks.... You know who else sucks? people who didn't stand up against Trump. Those people are grown ass adults who actively helped a fascist by doing nothing but bitch.
A-Fucking-Men
These two sentences are in contradiction
Here, see if you can spot the double standard:
"The [voters] suck… You know who else sucks? [the DNC] who didn’t stand up against [Israel]. Those people are grown ass adults who actively helped a fascist by doing nothing but bitch."
I don't understand. You are quoting two different posts, then concluding that two different people with different viewpoints represents a "double standard"... That is also an idiotic take.
With that said, OPs comment asking what the DNC could have done isn't contradictory or hypocritical if you put it alongside my viewpoint. It simply illustrates that you will never make every voter happy on every plank of your platform. We are all different people with different goals. Democracy is about compromise and understanding that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Certain non-voters attitude became "because neither side aligns with my very specific interest, I'm just not voting! That'll show the Dems that they can't win unless they support [insert political viewpoint here].". To go back to my elephant analogy, it's like those people saying "I'm going to starve because i can't eat the elephant in one bite!"
So for some people, their line in the sand is a humanitarian Gaza policy, which will likely require a strong military presence to enforce ceasefires and aid deployment. For others it's a distaste for overseas military actions, and any intent to increase American involvement in the middle east. One side is pissed off and won't vote if it looks like you are abandoning Palestinians. The other side is pissed off if you suggest increasing military operations in the region, even if it's to deescalate Israeli aggression. You can't please both.
So voters from both of these camps chose to sit on their vote because they couldn't get what they wanted... In exchange they helped someone that is likely destructive to both camps' larger interests, as well as their specific interests discussed above, get elected. That is their right and choice. Just like it's my right and choice to call them out for supporting fascism through inaction.
Looking at it that way, I'm not sure how you could say our viewpoints are contradictory.
Ok, now apply that criticism to those who (hypothetically) wouldn't have voted if Biden had stopped supplying military aid to Israel.
The Democrats created that block of voters by repeatedly lying about their knowledge of Israel's war crimes. Not only could they have done the right thing by withholding their offensive aid from Israel, they could have also not lied about it.
Democrats tried obscuring the scale of devastation in gaza with their own involvement, and then lost because they got caught and then doubled down. You can't treat your constituents with that much contempt and expect not to lose those voters, and then post-rationalize the lie by claiming that they would have lost more voters had they been honest and intervened.
You seem to think the election was more about punishing Biden for Gaza than preventing trump from destroying America.
Those were the only two choices. Period.
The thing that you don't want to admit here is that you chose trump. You in part made this current reality happen while we tried to prevent it.
Gaza will be gone and you will have literally helped trump do it by not voting Harris.
That fact will never change.
No, I don't. Elections allow citizens to participate in deciding their representation, and those candidates campaign for votes by convincing normal people that you will represent their interests.
I shouldn't have to cite the history of how that started for you to understand that's just how it's always worked, and if there was ever an implicit intent for every single person to vote in every election they would have (at least) made election days a holiday (since most polling places were a half-day's trip from land-owning patriarchs at the beginning).
This a-historical fantasy of elections being objective measures of the totality of a voting population's will is an absurd caricature of our democracy, and it's only purpose seems to be to shift the responsibility of candidates to advocate for their qualifications and onto voters, who are not obligated to make that choice when the candidate themselves has abdicated their own responsibility to justify their candidacy.
Gaza will be gone because democrats decided their relationship with a fascist ethnostate was more important than stopping a fascist from taking the executive office, and even your and my vote for Genocide Lite was made into a meaningless sacrifice because of it.
Bingo.
There were two and only two options. There is no reality in which there was another option.
Harris or Trump were going to be president and one expressed disapproval of what Israel was doing and the other straight up said they should finish the job.
Anyone who didn't vote or voted 3rd party, helped usher Donald Trump into the Oval Office and sealed Gaza's fate. They could have chosen to limit the amount of suffering, but they chose to take their ball and go home instead.