#democrats are the worst

[theworldchangedwithoutme]

February 3, 2024:

Only 276 days until Brandon is a lame-duck president.

[simply-ivanka]

Democrats are not only delusional, they parrot the party line!!

Joe Biden is old.

Biden is sick.

Biden is incapable of executing the office of the President.

Trump is not connect to or supporting Project 2025.

Trump has detailed his policy in Agenda 47. See the Trump website.

if i see one more article, post, or news anchor talking about how joe biden is old, i'm putting my fist through a window. i feel like i've gone through the fucking looking glass.

this is project 2025, trump's plan for what he'll do if elected. whatever you think is in there, it's worse. watch a breakdown of the highlights here. this man wants to unravel the fabric of our democracy for good - this all aside from his vitriolic hatred of poc, his determination to start ww3, and the fact that he can't string a sentence together without telling outrageous and easily verifiable lies. his administration will start their crusade to exterminate trans people on day one, and they won't stop there.

do not talk to me about how joe biden is old, as if that could ever matter to me more than my life or the lives of my friends and family. my little sister is 14, she's trans, and i don't know what to tell her when we talk about politics, because one of these people wants her dead and the other one is old and some of you are still acting like those problems are equals.

i can't fucking stand this. i'm not hearing it this time, we are not repeating 2016. refusing to vote is not an act of protest, it is an act of complacency, and our most vulnerable will suffer for your negligence. vote like your life depends on it, because for some of us, it really fucking does.

[ravenkings]

[irenespring]

Really I think nothing shouts "my first Presidential election as a politically active person was 2016" more than the fact that when I feel hope and excitement for the future (possible President Harris) for more than five minutes I immediately get a crushing, all-consuming anxiety of "feeling this positive emotion now is going to make it so much worse when the worst thing possible happens" to the extent that I'll probably need my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency anxiety medication.

[qqueenofhades]

....I see it's another Stay Far Off Social Media And All News Sites kind of day. Sigh.

[tanadrin]

RE "revolutionary leftists are revolutionary because they know they can't win electorally."

It astounds me a little that there are leftists who think that a communist revolution is more likely to work than, like, fifty years of community-building and electoral politics. Sewer socialism, union activism, and other boring activities have brought much more success in the U.S. than agitation for a revolution.

What I mean is, setting aside the moral concerns (violence is bad, even when it's necessary, and if there are practical alternatives then we should pursue them), I am not a revolutionary leftist because I think we would lose a revolution. For one thing, there is a considerable right-wing element in the country that is much better prepared for this kind of thing, and I think that the majority of the institutions in the U.S. would pick fascism over communism if they had to choose, but also, prolonged violent action is ripe for breeding authoritarianism.

Goatse is concerned that "the party" might "abandon or neglect its primary ends," but what is leftism if it is not, at bottom, an attempt to improve the living conditions of all people, et cetera et cetera? To the extent that social democratic parties successfully pursue this end to some degree, they're better than than an ostensible communist party that talks the talk but commits human rights abuses. And, more than the fact that U.S. leftism has some pretty fierce opposition that would probably fare better if The Revolution happened tomorrow, I think that, even in winning, we would lose, because what came out the other end would look a lot more like Stalinism.

I think one thing the hardcore revolutionaries in OECD countries don't realize is that the reason they can't marshal support for their revolutions is that the socialists won most of the issues that were salient in the early 20th century--workers got more rights, better pay, unions were legalized, etc., etc. But it didn't take restructuring the whole political economy to do it, which is immensely frustrating if you believe that any society without your ideal political economy is inherently immoral and impure, so in order to justify an explicitly communist platform you have to rhetorically isolate it from the filthy libs and feckless demsocs who it turns out have been pretty effective within the arena of electoral politics in which supposedly nothing can ever get done, and treat them as of a piece with the out-and-out fascists and royalist autocrats of the 1920s and 30s.

Which, you know. Is not persuasive to most people! Most people understand intuitively the vast gulf between the SPD and the Nazis; they see that, milquetoast and compromising though they may be, the center-left can deliver substantive policy improvements without the upheaval of a civil war or political purges, and this is attractive to people who are not of a millenarian or left-authoritarian personality.

Which isn't to say that communists don't often make important points! It sucks having to fight a constant rearguard action against the interests of capital rolling back the social improvements of the 20th century, and it sucks that liberal governments in Europe and North America have historically been quite happy to bankroll and logistically support fascists and tyrants in the third world against communist movements (which invariably only exist as communist movements because these same fascists and tyrants have crushed more compromising movements and only the most militant organizations have managed to survive).

But I agree with you: communists also talk a big game about how liberalism is the real fascism (what's that line from Disco Elysium I see quoted everywhere about how everybody is secretly a fascist except the other communists, who are liberals?), while also being awful at democracy. Suppressing dissent because your small clique of political elites is the only legitimate expression of the people's will (which you know, because you have declared it to be so) really is some rank bullshit. A system with competitive elections is still, well, a system with competitive elections, even if those elections are structurally biased in certain ways; all the bloviating that attempts to justify communist authoritarianism cannot really obscure the fact that authoritarian systems are cruel and brittle, regardless of the ideology being served.

[simply-ivanka]

[tomorrowusa]

I'm not sure if there is a cure for Trumpnesia, but there are treatments.

This is what Trump was saying at CNBC the day after the first case of COVID-19 appeared in the US.

Trump dawdled while the virus spread throughout the US. He continued to claim it wasn't a big deal.

The spectacle of the Dow Jones plummeting on March 12th could jar a memory or two. It signaled the start of the Trump recession.

On the following day, Friday the 13th, Trump belatedly declared a state of emergency.

In April he held daily media events where he gave out bad medical advice. If he had been a doctor, that would have gotten him charged with malpractice. He first told viewers to take malaria medicine for COVID. [Malaria is a parasitic disease while COVID is a virus.] He then suggested that people stick UV lights up their butts. And he famously told people to drink bleach. This t-shirt was a reaction to that...

All that year he downplayed COVID-19 as the US death toll and infection rate skyrocketed.

Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic

It's true that the virus spread everywhere. But the United States had the highest death rate per million of any G7 country. Only Boris "Partygate" Johnson's UK came close.

Reminders of Trump's disastrous last year in office can temporarily keep Trumpnesia at bay. But frequent boosters are a necessity.

[lulu-spooks]

Hell has once again opened its gates and through the archway we can see a glimpse of something truly horrifying.

[theworldchangedwithoutme]

Spotted in D.C. heading toward Virginia.

[pjharvey-moved]

i’m constantly conflicted btwn “the us is a world power and an imperialistic force with probably unmatched cultural, economic, and militaristic power worldwide, so people from other countries have every right to have opinions on our politics” and like … being incredibly incredibly exasperated by all the posts by non-americans calling american progressives stupid and varyingly implying that donald trump isn't actually a real threat and we're all so stupid for not realizing democrats and republicans are just the same and not just opting out of the whole system altogether, because that’s apparently a remotely feasible option

[michaelpaul7]

Republicans - your hypocrisy is showing.

[goldkirk]

Sharing one of the more powerful quotes from this current chapter of The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945.

The situation, where even heroism was denied the men of the democratic Left, came about in no small part because of the failure of the Social Democrats to understand the nature of Nazism. Just as their basic premise in the years before Hitler came to power was the erroneous assumption that the Nazis were essentially Putsch-ists who could not possibly attract a mass following, so their basic premise after Hitler came to power was the equally erroneous assumption that his would be a government similar to the others of the Weimar period.

The most eloquent document on this was the set of instructions sent out to SPD Locals in District Hanover on March 23, 1933. It was filled with instructions about sending for handbooks on Socialist policy in communal affairs and filling out questionnaires; in short, carrying on business as usual. The only reference to the phenomenon of Nazism was contained in paragraph seven;

Will the election of our village and town representatives be approved? That is a question which is repeatedly being asked. The question is unanswerable because we do not know what this government will do. However, in any case, we must, now as always, select trustworthy comrades as village representatives wherever we have a majority. Should they later not be sworn in, then we will take a position on this. Under no circumstances should we value any of our rights cheaply.

This at a time when SPD leaders were having their houses searched in the middle of the night for weapons! This when the officers of the Reichsbanner were being herded into jail by Storm troopers, beaten in the prisons across Germany, cast into Nazi concentration camps! The SPD, the only defenders of democracy in Germany, the men who should have been gathering guns and calling the general strike, or at least developing an underground with passwords, false names, and other paraphernalia of effective covert resistance, were instead being urged to keep the party files in order, to avoid bookkeeping errors, and above all to purchase the latest pamphlet on parliamentary tactics in village councils.

If the central offices of the SPD did not know “what this government will do,” the local socialist leaders in Northeim soon found out.

(the book goes on to describe the experiences of five Northeim Social Democrats over multiple pages of raids, imprisonment, misery, and persecution)

[referencees]

I cannot stand the ‘I won’t vote’ mfs who are still riding atop their high horses raining down their moral superiority over us all, and using the horrors of what has happened in Palestine to justify it all. If any of yall actually gave a single practical shit about the people in Palestine you would be knocking on doors and campaigning for whoever the fuck they put on the ballet as the democratic nominee. Are you really so deluded that you think a Trump presidency wouldn’t be WORSE for Palestinians (and basically every other person on earth)??? You think he won’t allow them to scale their genocide even more?

Anti-voters would rather refuse to participate in an imperfect system than acknowledge the true reality of plans of permanent Republican fascist takeover with Project 2025. Like truly they are a Republicans wet dream. Y’all bitch and moan about everything all day long but when it comes to doing a single thing to change those things y’all can’t be bothered.

If you won’t even consider a solution to a problem unless it is ‘perfect’ you will never have a solution. None of you will EVER find a candidate who passes all your morality checks and can practically be elected and make change. You will have to make compromises with people you don’t like. You will have to work with people you disagree with. Does that suck ass? Yes it does. Has that always been the reality of a functioning democracy???? YES IT HAS. Get off your asses and vote in November.

[izooks]

Here are just 10 of the worst things President Trump did during his presidency:

1. He discussed imposing martial law and using the military to re-run the 2020 election in swing states.

2. He invited the Taliban to Camp David on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, which was seen as shameful.

3. He gave Turkey a green light to invade Syria and attack the Kurdish allies who helped fight ISIS.

4. He asked the president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, leading to his impeachment.

5. He continued to spread the notion that the U.S. is fighting "endless wars" despite low troop levels.

6. He used anti-Semitic tropes to attack his political enemies.

7. He ridiculously claimed "Our country is FULL" despite labor shortages.

8. He empowered al-Qaeda in Syria by aligning with Russia and Iran against ISIS.

9. He attacked the FBI, intelligence community, and other institutions instead of showing respect.

10. He made no effort at bipartisanship and spent more time attacking Republicans than Democrats.

[volfoss]

If I had a nickel for aquatic based very old comics hero who has such a bafflingly wild backstory that I just HAD to read their entire chronology. Well I'd have 2 nickels