Political Memes

I’m just thinking out loud here. What if Progressives that are registered as Democrats changed their registration to independent? Also, stop sending them your money. We could organize it to happen over one week. Then keep it that way for 30 days. See how much power we truly have. If we can show the Democratic party that they would never win another election without us, maybe they would be more likely to listen.

I mean, honestly, if you manage to coordinate action on that scale, you're probably better off either attempting to take over the Dems or start a third party entirely.

We have to be careful though, I know this President is running roughshod over the Constitution with the blessing of SCOTUS and Congress but they don’t have enough votes or State legislatures to amend the Constitution. If they get that, then that truly is the end of this experiment.

Next election isn't for a year and a half, and there's no guarantee that it'll mean anything. If you want to try anything radical in electoral terms, now's definitely the time to do so. The chances of failure substantially changing our position is... low, unlike previously.

We just saw Progressives not voting for Harris, which lost her the election. The Democrats ignored that.

The good part is that the Democrats have no plan right now. So if anything Progressives should register to primary in better candidates. Also donations, but to individual candidates. This is why New York mattered so much. If Progressives can win, then it is a huge problem for the neoliberals.

Amazing how consistently they show up on here.

The problem here is having only two choices.

Yeah, our system is fucked. Unfortunately, we play with the cards we have, not the cards we want.

In Germany the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the early 1930s prioritized legalistic resistance (e.g speeches, court challenges) over mass mobilization. They rejected general strikes against Hitler even after the Reichstag fire. Also there was No mass uprising when Hitler dismantled civil liberties, the people and the parties had no coordinated strike network.

Guess what happened. Guess whats happening now.

I bet a lot of people living in Germany in the '30s said “I don’t do politics” too.

Thats a wildly ironic statement. The last election held in Germany before the fascist took over was the highest voter turnout in the weimar republics history, over 86%. Theres so many parrellels between the end of the Weimar republic and the US right now, and you are talking about the period of time and the place that maga modeled their 2024 strategy after. And I think you're mistaken about the voters then as you are about voters now.

In the late 20s and early 30s the SDP (social democratic party-- the centrists in Germany) failed to address the rise of the conservatives and in some cases cooperated with them. They were the party who negotiated the treaty of versailles after vanquishing the left shortly before the treaty negotiations, which was disastrous for a lot of industries and created new classes of privilege, and an opening for the conservatives (NSDAP) to whine about money and make a stage show of austerity, just like GOP conservatives have been doing for years in the US. The actual financial burden of the treaty on Germany was manageable-- but unpopular, especially during a global depression when fear ran high.

The SDP dem centrists were seen as corrupt, weak, and indifferent to the struggles of their voters-- much as todays dems are. The SDP were fighting gentelmans games and writing sternly worded letters while the far right NSDAP systematically took power bit by bit. The SDP were fragmented and weak by internal division, and distracted by the center of the party fighting the left (the KDP)-- who were ostensibly allies but disliked each other. Do you see all the parrellels with 2024? I sure do.

Whats different than today is that the left back then were agitating for actual communism, whereas the US progressives today are more like republicans from the early 80s. Today's Progressives are 99.99% capitalists-- barely leftists at all by European standards, and they are just flatly not communists. There's less reason for US dems and the US left to come to blows, but they still do today, like an eternal clockwork. The German KDP were also generally unpopular, and tended to garner only single digit percentages in national votes. Much like today's progressives, but they were needed for centrists to win elections, same as today.

The fascists appealed to a muscular uniparty nationalism after labeling the centrists as weak and corrupt, and the KDP as nuts, especially after just battling the Russians-- exactly like trump is doing. Its not that German people said they "didnt do politics", its that the centrists lost the trust of the voters so enough of them sought the strength of a group that said they were sick of the centrists and leftists ineffective and perceived as corrupt bullshit. The KDP were also hated along with Hitlers NSDAP far right, who each had militia groups of WW1 veterans that took low level actions and intimidations against each other. Picketting, stinkbombs, fights, the occassional murder. I've left out the competing histories of antisemites and zionists, but theres a lot going on there too, although less important to the NSDAP's rise than the economic and trust issues of the parties themselves with the voters. But I will say that the eventual holocaust of Jews and Poles didnt just arise out of nowhere, there was a lot that led to it, some of it related to trade boycotts of all things, and people seldom talk about what politcs and disputes actually led to the murderous hatreds of the holocaust. They prefer george bush-esque "they hate us for our freedoms" or "no one knows why Hitler hated Jews" type of reductive avoidance of any investigation of facts.

So-- same as then-- dont blame the voters. Blame the doddering centrists leadership of then and today. Theres a reason that 85 year old German president Hindenburg who ran as a centrist and then made a deal appointing Hitler chancellor is ridiculed throughout history, same as Biden looks like he will be. A very reduced and dementia ridden Hindenburg died in office one year after appointing Hitler chancellor and was often ridiculed and doubted by voters in all parties, in exactly the same way Biden was/is. After he died Hitler consolidated the presidency with the chancellory and there was then no one to realistically challenge him. You'd think people would learn that trusting 86 year presidents like idiot Paul von Hindenburg -- Or Biden-- or trump to run a country doesn't work out well for the voters.

Actually the turnout was the highest in that time and the conservative centrists and "progressive" centrists made sure to demobilize people and hand power to the Nazis.

They also said "we didn't know", 2000 feet downwind of a human oven factory. "And if we did what could we have done?". Those people are still alive and they're not a small minority of even our country.

I believe there are three reasons our broken two party system stagnates and rots:

1. Our slavery founders intended for our system to be a plutocratic republic that would resist change, not a democracy

2. The purpose of every state is to maintain order which requires preserving itself

3. Fixing our system would require our politicians to vote against their own interests, to risk their own power and status... This goes against every ideal that capitalists believe in. Capitalists believe that as long as they follow the rules, they are entitled to everything they can take. The fact that the rules were written by the rich to favor the rich is of no concern to them.

Also, I'm installing a bigger motor so you have a reason not to vote for the other party, because they'd get to go even faster