If insiders have done fuck all except blow money up billionaires asses, who can blame voters for liking outsiders?

First of all, at this point people in the US should vote against Trump for their safety, and that means in the current political system they have to vote for Harris. That’s the reality they have to face. The Trump party has made fascist announcements that are real and people should expect them to be made into real actions.

The problem is that the Democrats frankly have abysmal messaging and are drifting to the right further and further while using Trump as a threat to their voters. They adopt anti-immigrant policies and are distancing themselves from pro-LGBT stances, saying it’s the states decision. Both these issues as well as demands for a ceasefire poll exceptionally well, but the Harris campaign seemingly don’t want the edge. With all this they are signaling that right wing worries about immigrants and trans people are valid, although that’s absolutely not the case, and leave people to decide for example “do I want anti-immigrant light or extra harsh anti-immigrant?” when everybody says immigrants are an issue. This is unacceptably stupid and risking the vote. And that’s ignoring the elephant in the room that progressive policy like health care is exceptionally popular and using that as counter messaging would win her voters.

We’ve seen how popular the Democrats got after Harris took over and Walz got nominated. It signaled change. Now all the Democrats say that it’s gonna be the same old as usual treading on and the same bad argument vote us or you’ll get a dictatorship. I’m not denying Biden dropping out had nothing to do with the surge of popularity, but back then we also had comments like here, basically declaring any dissent from supporting a decrepit old man as the candidate as heresy. Now there are again, only Yes men here saying if you criticize Harris you’re a bot or a Trump ass eater. What is wrong with you?

Finally, I have the creeping suspicion that Democratic establishment people don’t fear a fascist Trump administration themselves personally as much as the population has to. Trump announces he will go after his enemies, Latinos and trans people (probably all queer people actually). He has anti women’s health and rights messaging all over his campaign. But that doesn’t seem to be a risk for people higher up in the party. I suspect that when you’re rich you don’t have to worry about abortion bans or HRT access. And if Trump threatens them with violence they always have money they can throw at him. It’s much more comfortable to run a risky neo liberal and right wing platform against a fascist if you can jump ship later on.

I’m not arguing for the BRD and how not fucked LGBTQ and women’s rights were. I’m arguing against a picture that the GDR had better rights in general when in fact most people who didn’t strictly follow the party line were heavily suppressed and observed.

Edit: forgot women’s rights

I’m not arguing for the BRD and how not fucked LGBTQ rights were. I’m arguing against a picture that the GDR had better rights in general when in fact most people who didn’t strictly follow the party line were heavily suppressed and observed.

Dissidents for “hey we need to fix the problems of socialism” or dissidents for “we have to dissolve socialist democracy and let the capitalists pillage us” were treated very differently

Do you seriously tell yourself the GDR was a democratic socialist country? The GDR not being democratic was exactly it’s problem and why it couldn’t reform its problems. And yeah, the people only wanted to get oppressed by capitalists when they protested in Leipzig and Berlin. If you really believe that I don’t know what to tell you. Are you some Wessi who doesn’t know shit about life in the GDR?

And the ones arguing for dissolving socialism got what they wanted, and the result is justification enough for their oppression tbh.

Man, they wanted something better than the shit show that their life had become. They had many ideas about how they could reform their country. A new socialist constitution, a emancipated reunion with the West etc. All they knew was that it couldn’t go on with the current SED clique.

How did the SED respond? Fucking off with the last money. They left their population with no help when they negotiated with Kohl. But hey, to you that’s just capitalist propaganda probably. Now it’s the people’s fault that they got screwed by the capitalists pfffff

Better to suppress right wing dissidents than let them oppress vast swathes of the population.

Holy shit bro. Do you think Hohenschönhausen was filled with right wingers and capitalists and that your beloved party didn’t oppress the population? First of right wing networks were left alone all over the country. What we see now in Thüringen and Sachsen didn’t just hop over from the BRD after the wall fell. It merely got reinforced. Second, do you really think only right wing dissidents got suppressed? My father got in trouble because he stepped into the voting booth, NOT casting his vote openly for the SED. Democratic my ass bro, righteous suppression of right wingers lol. 100k Stasi agents 200k informants just for right wing dissidents, yeah right

Yes these rights rights were lost, but this paints the GDR in a positive light regarding regarding civil rights when in reality people who showed a smidge of dissent were persecuted.

A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible

The current situation is that he’s in a war in Gaza and that is keeping him in office. He can still spin this as “we are fighting against an existential threat”. Rocket defence and retaliation strikes aka the slow burning war in Lebanon is not enough for the Israeli society to unite behind Bibi. Only if they seriously attack. And I think Netanyahu wants to provoke such an attack.

Sending thousands of bombs God knows where they land is not a proper defense. It’s a huge escalation where Hezbollah will answer. I think the best argument against this strike has been thrown around everywhere: What if Hezbollah made such an attack where 3000 bombs where sent to IDF people. We would talk about a terrorist attack. Why is that different now?

Why is it okay for them to bomb Lebanon as well?

Bibi really wants a war with Hezbollah, doesn’t he? I mean you can’t call it defending Israels safety anymore when you provoke any and all responses every other month with a missile here, a bomb there and now thousands of bombs everywhere. This is just another measure to keep Netanyahu in a conflict so that he doesn’t have to bear the consequences of multiple corruption cases against him and the dissolving of his coalition outside unity cases in a war. Why is Europe and the US still covering for him? What is the rest of Israel doing?

I actually liked TLJ as well. Like others said, I liked these Force Connection scenes with Rey and Kylo, I liked how it dispatched Snoke, dismissing the idea of yet another Star Wars conflict being controlled by an evil old wizard and instead gives sets the way for a new story by giving Kylo Ren the reigns of the new empire (which was thrown in the trash by JJ in ep 9, which is the gravest sin for me of that film), and gives a plausible take on the seduction to the dark side and to the light side. I know these ideas were poorly implemented e.g. the proposition Kylo makes to Rey “Hey, look, I’ve killed the evil emperor! Join me and we can take this whole thing over. Let’s start by killing all your friends!”. What a great offer, Kylo. But still I liked that this was something new and more than just a rehash.

What I also really loved is that not every character has to be related to the Skywalkers or another character of the other trilogies, again something JJ threw in the trash by ep 9. Why does Rey have to of some ancient magical lineage? I liked the idea that the force was running through people everywhere, even through slave kids on the casino planet. Everybody can be a hero, even if your parents or ancestors weren’t. Wait, what’s that, JJ? Everything was Palpatine all along? Never mind then.

Beside Project 2025 and everything fascist he says and clings to to get elected so he doesn’t have to face judgement, you’ve got got to admit that sometimes he is hilarious. Unintentionally mind you, but still so funny.

Like this could have been an Onion headline or a sketch about how his whole campaign was ‘Biden old’ and now he’s caught with his pants down when Biden is no longer on the ticket. Next up he’s gonna claim Biden faked being demented so he could ruin Donalds campaign by dropping out. It’s all a conspiracy, folks…

I’d be dumbstruck if Kamala loses this at this point. It’s astounding to see how a campaign could swing so hard after such a fumbled debate and a literal assassination attempt.

I’ve seen him laugh one time, on a Logan Paul short. It was the oddest thing seeing Donald Trump laugh

Absolute insanity. When I’m seeing these things around the world and now in Ukraine I’m always trying to see a logical explanation, some twisted cynical reasoning for why you bomb these vulnerable civilian targets, and I can’t find anything. It’s just cruelty. Ukrainians aren’t going to surrender because of this, people and nations never have before. It just makes resistance to your war that much more defiant. If you bomb a childrens hospital, it’s just because you want to punish people for not letting you win.

The second part that hurts is that this changes so little in the grand scheme. Maybe some guy who was living under a rock who was skeptical changes his mind about this invasion. But the vast majority of Russian internet propagandists, pro-Russia politicians in parliaments in the EU and around the world and people blinded by Putins lies will find some pathetic excuse to deny and deflect. And in a week the next atrocity occurs somewhere

Yes, congratulations, you have suddenly become aware that building support for an election starts slightly sooner than a week before election day.

Thanks, Pug. I wasn’t aware.

But to be serious, these posts like yours started at the primaries, even longer before the election than now, with the same messaging: Leftists that don’t want an even bigger shift to the right in democratic policies should not complain, or else they are at fault for Trump term number two. That’s crazy. Maybe, just maybe, the DNC can do something themselves to prevent Trump. Instead of blackmailing supporters, they could do something these supporters like.

If you’re 3% of a coalition that wins by 1%, you’re big enough to sink the entire coalition if you throw a hissy fit over being asked to join up against a literal fascist, but not big enough to warrant losing the support of, say, 40% of the coalition.

If someone is only 3% or even lower of your base, but you depend on them or else you don’t get the majority, these 3% don’t just get a 3% say in the coalition. The majority has to make bigger concessions than they want. That’s how 2+ party coalitions work in other parliaments. Smaller parties aren’t just there to be dragged by a chain to vote for everything the bigger party/parties want them to, just for little treats here or there.

Also, I don’t think only 3% want a ceasefire or don’t want republican immigration policies enacted by their own candidate, it’s considerably more people.

I’m looking at my calendar and wondering, it’s not November right? It’s still June, or isn’t it? As an outsider, why are American leftists basically being called fascist enablers when they are only protesting and demanding reasonable, better policies? And yes, they leverage their only political power they have in the USA, their vote, in June months before the election, to get better policies. Wow what an undemocratic move of them.

Now they are demonized for it, at the same time I’ve seen nothing here last week when Biden enacted a right wing immigration law with an executive order. So it’s okay to try to sway republicans, even though the GOP has racist views on lock as their USP.

It’s like they are Schrödingers leftists: powerful enough to prevent Biden from being reelected and it’s totally their fault if Trump wins, not the democratic party, but not powerful enough to receive any compromises because they are such a small voter base and so radical with their demands of stopping a genocide and protecting illegal immigrants.

Is the president not at fault at all when he doesn’t change his course? Also a majority of people seem to favor a ceasefire. Why not at least for campaign purposes actually enforce a ceasefire from Netanyahu?

I don’t get this Schrödingers democracy thing here. The American people should save democracy by voting for Biden to stop Trump. But they can’t make demands against the pro-Israeli positions of Biden. You aren’t even in the real election phase, the election is in six months, and people can’t criticize or demand better action from their own elected president. Hell, I’ve seen these kinds of memes since the primaries, which are meaningless for Bidens candidacy except that you can send signals that you maybe have to change your course. But nothing has changed at all since then either, only empty words. How is this democratic then?

I’m not even saying that Biden has to do everything the most radical people on the pro-Palestine side demand. But Biden doesn’t even try to find a compromise. He could maybe leverage the power that the American government has over Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza. If he feels brave he could even demand the stop on more settlements.

But they … DO something about this issue in-between elections. They are protesting and demanding the Biden administration to change their course. That is political action. What else are they supposed to do? Anything other than playing with the political power that’s left to them?

Everybody against those demanding a harder approach against Netanjahu’s genocidal campaign and threatening their votes is talking about how these people have to save democracy by voting Biden regardless of what he’s doing. Well, isn’t that part of a democracy?

Yeah, when you sell loot boxes of digital skins that are widely used on 3rd party illegal e-sports gambling sites, you make billions. Great job, Valve. Ever wonder why e-sports teams have these “BETKING360”-sponsors? It’s because young men have money to gamble with and the potential for being the next generation of gambling addicts. Valve knows that, it just doesn’t facilitate gambling directly. It just plays bank

I have no love for Gabe Newell, even if he has these charming video skits he sometimes does for TI or whatever