We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat | Bernie Sanders - eviltoast
  • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    Accelerationism can only ensure the US gets to fascism faster. Getting to fascism faster doesn’t destabilize the resulting christo-fascist regime. A fascist government will not just make it harder to make the US and the world a better place. Once the fascists take power they will actively work to make sure it is a worst place. A christo-fascist United States will actively harm everyone living in its sphere of influence and do nothing to put a check on other authoritarian dictatorships’ spheres of influence.

    Republicans winning elections sets us back decades. In this current election, our democracy is at stake. Neoliberalism has been pushing us in this direction for decades. We need a socialist political revolution to fix this. We need to keep our democracy long enough to perform a political revolution to change things for the better.

    Lemmy is inundated with accelerationist rhetoric. When I was still on Reddit, I saw plenty of conservatives. The most striking thing I’ve noticed from arguing with people on both Reddit and Lemmy is the similarity between accelerationist rhetoric and conservative rhetoric. Both accelerationists and conservatives assert the US has never been a democracy and that the US system cannot be fixed. Both of these assertions are contradicted by US history. This is not to say that these are the same group of people. What these false assertions highlight is that neither group values democracy.

    These next months leading to the election are essential, as that as when people are going to start checking in to the current election cycle. Progressives cannot afford to be silent leading up to the election. Democracy, even one as flawed as ours with its undermining of majority rule, is our most effective vehicle for progressive change that we have.

    People who do not value our democracy are going to troll, sea lion, and generally act in bad faith. The common internet adage, don’t feed the trolls, is not going to help us. People will act in bad faith in a vacuum. They know they need to spread their message the farthest and the fastest to see their ideology realized in this election. Progressives need to spread our message further and faster than them if our political revolution is to succeed. Progressives do not need to interact with every internet troll they encounter. But progressives must find ways to be vocal which sometimes involves engaging with bad faith actors.

    • makyo@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Bravo, perfectly said. And when you do engage bad faith actors, always keep in mind that you won’t change their mind. And you don’t need to, because you’re engaging with them to help other readers come to the right conclusions about the future of democracy.

      • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 months ago

        Yes, a major goal of our discussions in general is to help people reading the discussion. Ideally that would be pro-democracy conclusions. It’s reasonable to assume we won’t change bad faith actors minds in the short term. Studies have shown people reject new information that contradicts their beliefs. That’s why we are in an information race. The initial opinion people form between now and the election is the opinion they are going to have on election day. But I do think anything is possible in the long term. We just need to get there with our democracy.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I mean that the MAGA camp will claim victory regardless of the actual results. You know, like they tried before?

  • Dreizehn@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    The article is spot on. The USA needs more regulations, improved income distribution and the tax bracket from the 1960’s.

  • 3volver@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The pivotal moment in American history was at some point in the 1970s. We’re experiencing the effects of bad decisions made 50 years ago. Sanders winning in 2016 was our last chance. Biden will never be a progressive. We need our votes to actually matter. We need ranked choice voting or STAR voting, and we need to end the electoral college, popular vote now. I’m cynical at this point. I’ve accepted the idea that things will need to get worse before meaningful change occurs, which has been happening regardless of what I believe anyway.

    • demizerone@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Maybe a Trump win via Electoral College will snap some sense into the majority to finally do away with it.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Thanks to the disastrous Citizens United supreme court decision, billionaires and their Super Pacs are able to spend hundreds of millions to elect or defeat candidates they target.

    Despite spending far more per capita on a broken healthcare system, the average American now lives 77.5 years – 18 months less than in 2019 – and the lowest of any wealthy nation on earth.

    Unless there is a huge reduction in carbon emissions we will continue to see more drought, more flooding, more forest fires, more extreme weather disturbances, more mass migrations and more deaths as a result of the climate crisis.

    Since the supreme court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v Wade, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans, some with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

    A Trump victory will tell the entire world to continue their support for fossil fuels, and the planet we leave our kids and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy.

    We must work in coalition with all those who understand that we must do everything possible to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme rightwing Republican party, not just because he is “worse”, but because nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake in this election.


    The original article contains 1,500 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    ‘We’re in a pivotal moment’ sounds a whole lot like the ‘most important election of our lifetime’ bullshit.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It’s looking mighty bleak at this point. The results of the election won’t matter, and the courts have already largely shown they’ll keep their hands off until after said election.

    So yeah, let’s crash this car into the wall at 120mph and then try to pick up the pieces after.

    • psychothumbs@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 months ago

      What do you mean the results of the election won’t matter? They’ll determine whether a deranged and vengeance minded Trump becomes president…

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think the implication is,

        if the election results show trump wins = bad

        if the election results show Biden wins, the trump crowd will pursue another Big Lie, having learned something (??) from their 2020 failures, and will tie up the courts and lie cheat and steal until some or all of the election results are overturned with the full faith and support of the fascists in the SCOTUS.

        This is what not throwing this guy in the brig gets us. He orchestrated a coup. We know this.

        • psychothumbs@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 months ago

          Trump may try to lie and cheat his way to the presidency in the face of an electoral loss, but he’d have even less luck with that in 2024 as a challenger than he did in 2020 as the incumbent president.

          • misanthropy@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Ask me how I know you don’t live in the south.

            Trump is absolutely a possibility. Biden even legitimized it, offering to debate.

            • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              The South can always be burned to ground again. The South is barely able to maintain its own existence. If another pathetic rebellion like the one my ancestors participated in comes again I will happily gun down my own ilk, kith, and kin to maintain the tree of liberty. For it feeds on blood.