politics

That's not idiots. That's people that don't make much money, hate their job, and saw an opportunity to leave with some change in their pocket while dumpster fire is just smouldering and not a full blown blaze yet.

It doesn't work that well, since that's less than 1% of federal employees.

By appeasing the centre, they mean the rich donors.

I dumped that into ChatGPT to figure out what that would mean:

"Gold-progressing": If "oro-" means gold, then "orogressive" could describe something advancing toward wealth, golden standards, or prosperity.

"Mountain-moving" or "Mountain-progressing": If we go with the geological meaning, "orogressive" could mean progressing through or overcoming mountains—maybe symbolizing overcoming big challenges.

"Speech-advancing": If "oro-" is tied to oral communication, "orogressive" might mean someone who is progressive in speech, rhetoric, or persuasion.

Honestly, all of those are ironically far more aspirational than "progressive". I give it 4/5 stars for your newly-minted neologism.

I watch an ungodly amount of porn and still manage to do some basic keeping up on politics. The problem isn't the other things people want to do, it's that being up-to-date on politics is straight up a faux pas. Everyone can agree that our current government sucks, but start trying to tell the vast majority of people about anything specific, such as, I dunno, how Mitch McConnell stole Supreme Court appointments from Obama, their eyes glaze over. People think it's cool to bitch about your own problems, but if you learn enough to do anything about it and advocate for political action, you become a tryhard.

The Democrats don't have to field a candidate if they're that worried about splitting the vote.

It's not like they try to win anyway.

Yeah, but that won’t last forever. Give progressive dems a chance to campaign in earnest for their platform, without the chains of establishment pro-corporate policies around their necks, and you might be surprised how quickly the 90-million non-voters come around.

Yes, because of First Past The Post voting.

Say there's a region that's 60% left-leaning and 40% right-leaning. If the far left splits off from the moderate left, you get 30% far left, 30% moderate left, and 40% right-leaning. The winner in a FPTP election is the party with the most votes. Even though 60% of the voters are still left-leaning, the election will go to the right-leaning party with 40% of the votes. Their 40% beats either of the parties with 30% of the vote.

Canada experienced this phenomenon in the 1993 federal election. The conservatives previously had a majority, but there was a split, and the Reform Party split from the Progressive Conservative party. There were almost as many right-leaning voters as before, but the Liberals won a huge victory. Because of the vote split, a lot of conservative ridings ended up electing a Liberal MP.

Basically, if you care about progressive politics, get rid of First Past The Post. Only once it's gone should you consider splitting the party. Splitting the party while FPTP is in place is just handing victory to the GOP.

Not sure where you're from, but we have some problems that stand in the way of coordinating any kind of resistance. At least, not proactively.

In short: we have no living memory of domestic war, famine, epidemic, or wholesale financial hardship lasting longer than a few years. We've had tastes of those things, but they always effect people disproportionately, usually along class lines. So being proactive by taking up arms, or preparing for economic catastrophe, is literally unthinkable for most.

Meanwhile, the usual kind of political corruption that we're accustomed to just came to an end, and is changing shape before our very eyes. Nobody knows what to do with that, yet.

American cops are extremely right-wing, love shooting people, and are never punished for it. If you go to a demonstration, even one that's supposed to be peaceful, you're risking getting killed.

Any attempt to organize into militias or battalions would be seen as an uprising, and the FBI would investigate. The FBI has always been a fairly right-wing organization, and they're now under the thumb of Trump, who regularly talks about using violence against protesters. Joining a militia or a battalion would be a good way to get killed.

The US is a really big place, and most of this is happening in Washington DC, which is pretty remote from most of the country. Washington DC is a strange place with a large, fairly poor urban black population, and a relatively wealthy white suburbs. The white suburbs make roughly 3x as much as the black population. So, while black people might be interested in protesting, they know they'd be much more likely to be hurt or killed by the police. In addition, while many care about these issues, a lot of them don't have the time or energy to get involved because they're focused on just getting by. For the white population in the suburbs, a lot of them have jobs connected to the government, so they may be more restricted in what they can really do than someone who just has some random office or factory job. In addition, people who work for the government are more likely to try to work through channels rather than protest in the streets.

I think it might take something more drastic to deal

Gets truer everyday as long as we the only other option is neoliberalism and "the lesser evil".