threatening to let conservatives further mangle the country when you have a progressive alternative is selfish and incredibly narrow-minded.

And how exactly is not voting doing that when…

the democrats are already winning the votes of young and decided voters

Either the Democrats are comfortably winning (in which case we can vote with our conscience), or they’re not (in which case vocal opposition to genocide might encourage them to change policies to garner our vote).

The alternative is that nothing will get them to change policies because they’re not interested in our vote. In which case the whole “turn up and the Democrats will move left” theory is nonsense.

I’ll ask the same question i did on the other thread. Why, do disaffected voters have to …

[show] up during primaries or generals to indicate that moving left will pay anything back.

Why not just poll them, or focus-group them, or use proxies like social media?

You seem to have no problem with the notion of leftist groups communicating preferred policies to Democrat strategists, but then seem to bizarrely assume that the only way to communicate a willingness to vote is to actually vote (for a party you don’t agree with).

Tell me… We all go out and vote Democrat. They get into power. How do they now know it wasn’t the support for genocide that won them the vote and go even further next time?

Yep. Spot on.

We now live in a world where ‘leftist’ opinion is “Do as your government tells you, don’t question authority, and don’t ask for anything more”.

Anything that isn’t Trump is to be unquestioningly accepted. And they wonder why folk-devils are made…

Step one - set up a few folk-devils who are the embodiment of evil and must be stopped at all costs

Step two - do whatever the hell you like, including funding actual genocide, because “hey, at least we’re not those guys…”

Ohh. A whataboutism and a confirmation-bias Google search.

Does that score double?

Anyway, confusion aside,I’ve decided to take your advice and eschew online research.

I’ve found some good old-fashioned print resources…

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/subscribe/

https://nypost.com/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1510779027/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I look forward to getting stuck in to some bias-free research and clearing out those pesky old opinions. Thanks.

Online users (except Wogi@lemmy.world) tend to select claims that adhere to their system of beliefs and to ignore dissenting information.

Fixed that for you. Or did you not even realise you’re online right now?

Surely you mean “one should…”

No, on second thoughts…

Exactly the point I was making. You engage in whataboutism when it suits you. It’s nothing to do with any ideological commitment to authenticity in discourse. It’s just boring tribalism.

Proving my point. You’re even actually proud of your blind fawning obsequiousness. Its sickening.

Most people “doing their own research” fall in to the latter category.

Did you Google that?

I’ll be sure to heed your lesson. But, just to be clear… is it that I should do somebody else’s research, or that I should get somebody else to to mine…?

And, one more clarification… Is it that I should hold an opinion but not go on to Google until I find the result supporting it, or that I should not hold an opinion and then not go on to Google to form it, or not hold an opinion and then go on to Google to confirm it… No, wait, that isn’t going to work… Perhaps, hold an opinion and then go on to Google to deny it… Sounds wrong… I know, go on to Google to hold an opinion and then deny it myself… No. Have myself as an opinion and then deny Google… Get Google to give me an opinion and then hold it?

It’s written very, very small in the bottom right, in one of the bald old man’s liver spots.

Ahh… So now the whataboutism… I’m beginning to get the picture.

by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict — in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

• Chomsky 1988

… By 2024

everything the newspapers tells us is just true…

Good to know how far we’ve come.

Taking that attitude you’re showing you’re not here in good faith.

If you want good faith arguments perhaps don’t start with condescending comments about “kindergarten” level civics and have enough charity to at least start from the premise that it might actually be you who’s wrong rather than just assuming that any argument you don’t agree with must be the result of your interlocutor being kindergarten level dumb.

You construct a twisted, narrow interpretation so that you can walk out on it and say look at this very narrow interpretation, explain this narrow interpretation.

Followed by…

Do they lose? Do they win?

Broad and wide-ranging narrative … anyone?

And then you go on to tell a story about what each president ‘would have done’ which, I presume you must have gained from direct personal conversations with them, unless… Oh, you’re not just believing things they tell the newspapers… You sweet summer child…

what would happen if they won consistently and overwhelmingly? They’d move left. They could do left things, without losing the next election. This is pretty simple.

It might seem simple to you. But it contains two hidden premises and two logical flaws.

The first hidden premise is that they actually want to move left (and so would take an opportunity to do so). You’ve not yet made a case that they do. A scattering of slightly-left-of-neocon policies is not very convincing.

The second premise is that each event is a response to the last and not to any of the hundred other factors in American politics at the time. Again, just showing one thing followed another does not prove it was caused by it.

The first logical flaw is that you’ve still not provided a mechanism by which successive democratic campaign teams know somehow why they lost, that it was their slightly leftist policies and not, again one of the other hundred factors in politics at the time.

The second logical flaw is that you’ve still not explained why democrats need an actual election to find out that lots of leftists will vote for them. Why can’t they just poll, like everyone else does? They presumably rely on polls to tell them what policies these non-voters want, so why do they need an actual election victory to learn that in four year’s time these people will likely vote for them. Why can’t they just ask? That’s the normal way all other political strategies are worked out - focus groups, polls, town meetings… You’re singling out willingness to vote as a fact about potential voters which is somehow inaccessible to the democrat strategists without the proof of an actual election win, but assuming other facts, like the policies they’d like, can be ascertained. Why?

Oh. And whilst I’ve got such a golden opportunity to have “kindergarten” level civics so patiently explained to me…

How do the Democrats find out the political leanings of the voters who won them the vote in order to reward? them next time with policies they like? Is there some magic poll they can access, but only after an election? Because any poll which they could access before an election would obviously tell them in advance what a willing and committed set of voters they’d have if only they put in some more left wing policies.

You’re suggesting polling subtle enough to determine policy preferences among different demographics, but somehow incapable of determining voting commitment/apathy. Apparently an actual election is the only way anyone can find that information out. But once done they magically know exactly why everyone voted the way they did.

If the left voters show up, then guess what? More left policies will be adopted.

Why? A left vote is worth 1 (because they wouldn’t have otherwise voted right), a centre vote is worth 2 (because it’s also a vote away from the other party). So it doesn’t matter how many on the left “show up” their votes simply aren’t worth as much as centre voters.

That’s the argument given. Centre votes are worth double. The corollary is that they’ll always be the target demographic.

And also the fact that all arms manufacturers are public companies, invested in by global hedge funds which any wealthy investor from Tehran, to Moscow, to Washington will be heavily invested in.

We live in a global economy of asset management. It doesn’t matter which government invests the tax dollars in which firms, as long as the money flows in the wealthy investors profit, then use those profits to promote more wars (among other things) to drive more profits.

If a centre vote is worth double, then it doesn’t make any difference if the left are mobilised to vote or not.

With a mobilised left it’s left-vote=1 centre-vote=2

With an apathetic left it’s left-vote=0 centre-vote=2

Either way the centre vote is worth more so the party moves to the centre.

But if this is wrong, and the left vote is indeed worth more, then why change policies to court the centre, why not have openly leftist policies to attract this game-changing leftist vote?

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim that the democrats have to hide their leftist agenda to gain votes and also claim that the leftist voting block is the make or break of electoral success.

But in a vacuum it wouldn’t be required. It’s about making choices regarding those issues we allow to take media attention, and more importantly, play the role of the ‘enemy’, literally the ‘bringer of death’ in this meme. Not poverty, not corporate greed, not the pathological indifference to suffering of the Big Mac munching consumer…

No. One bloke who’s probably not even calling all the shots and will be dead and gone in a few decades whilst the whole bloody monstrosity carries on because everyone’s attention is just on the next Disneyfied super villain.