If we get a next time, everyone had better show up in the primaries to vote for the Bernie-equivalent or further left. If I'm the only person under 60 at my primary polling place again, I'm gonna snap.
Centrists don't win primaries because of Centrist Magic(tm). They win from disengagement of the young and high participation by fucking dinosaurs who still think it's the 1980s.
I’m with you. But our primary system fucking sucks and it disenfranchises people based on the staggered timings. I was so motivated for Warren and a ton of people I know were. But Biden had won by the time most people got a chance to vote, including me.
The timing thing I guess is interesting for giving people time to adjust but I would prefer a system where it was one day and one person one vote.
Centrists don’t win primaries because of Centrist Magic™. They win from disengagement of the young and high participation by fucking dinosaurs who still think it’s the 1980s.
And also by a pervasive campaign of suppression and character assassination of leftist candidates by corporate news media.
There was no primary. Biden won the farce of one that featured no competing candidates even appearing on a significant number of state primary ballots. And even that was thrown out the window. You're fucked again in 2028 if you put any amount of faith in that shitshow.
I mean, that only works if you have a substantial base of supporters who are already willing to endure significant hardship for the cause.
Considering we lack a substantial number of people who are willing to turn out for one day just to vote, I'm thinking that's putting the cart before the horse.
Change quite often starts locally and flows up. Those in the national party very usually come from state offices and work their way up. Make that pool of people as progressive as possible
Make no seat uncontested
Organize in every place you can. Beyond just elections, organize for unions, organize to protest, organize to stand with your community, do not given in to the complacency that the far right wants you to have
Power is not be given freely, you have to fight for it. That fight lives on and is worthwhile. Things will get worse before they can get better. But we can lay the groundwork for the future to be better
Poland is still inaccurate, as it was when it was posted here the last time
Edit: I tried to search for my comment last time but I didn't find it. So short summary: In Poland, an authoritarian far-right party ruled for a long time that acted heavily against the rule of law and separation of powers (they replaced their Supreme Court and discharged judges on other courts that didn't rule as they wanted) and was very anti-democratic (they turned the national TV into a propaganda broadcast). Amid huge protests, the opposition won the election, and while it is not a very left coalition, they were pretty successful in reversing many of this horrible things, e.g. taking back control of the TV broadcast with a completely new team. They couldn't undo everything as the president with a veto power is still from the old party but with the president elections coming soon this could change soon. And it's generally very euphoric and awesome what happened because it was really terrible what the other party did to this country.
In truth, after the elections in Poland and the change of power, the style of politics has not changed and the election promises have not been implemented. Therefore, it is most likely that the old power will win again in future elections.
The absolute fucking best part of this story is that the right wing party is literally called pis I cannot fucking contain myself fuck my life / rip / lol
I appreciate that this diagram shows that many countries around the world are going through this now. Though I disagree that the centrists aren't tackling the social problems. They're also not tackling the economic problems.
The graph is optimistic. If Argentina is any indication, the final result is the country stuck in the mud, spinning its wheels on "the previous government failed us because it was not far right enough! I, your populist savior, will fix that by dismantling any institutions that are left!"
Argentina was fucked before the current government made changes, which are actually starting to show improvement. Yes he cut tons of social programs, but they were also staring down Zimbabwe levels of inflation.
The selling of public assets does provide a temporary cash influx, in the same way that selling your tools of the trade might let you pay off your credit cards, only now you still have the same costs but no way to earn money.
But, look. Your former competition is hiring! I mean, sure, he's paying you less than you were making, but maybe one day you'll get a promotion in his company!
Only he actually charges you for tool use in the shop, so you're making even less than you thought. Enough to survive, sure. For now.
And, actually, some of those tools look kind of familiar...
At best this is confusing cycling the fascist drain as a repeating pattern. At worst it is apathy masquerading as insight. Fascists kill people in death camps and don't hold democratic elections. We've held on this long because we've been paddling against the current. Millions of people stopped paddling this election. Now we're hoping fascist incompetence clogs the drain long enough for us to get away.
We're going to be lucky to get another election. If we still have a democracy the effects of this next Trump term will outlive the next four years.
Trump got three justices onto the Supreme Court in his first term. These aren't going to go in and out of power. They are going to sit there until they die. Trump could get another three Supreme Court nominations confirmed in this next term. Their influence is going to shape this country for thirty years or more.
He promised to jail his political opponents. The Democratic Party might not exist in four years and if does it will probably have shifted to the right. They won't be a moderate challenger in any sense.
An oligarchy of billionaires has rallied around Trump as dictator. Project 2025 is going to give Trump an actionable agenda and an army of loyalists in government positions to execute it for him. Republicans control the Senate and are on track to take the House. The Republicans want to shape this country for decades to come.
All of this turns the discourse around climate change on it's head. Our models of what could happen are typically based on climate admissions staying the same or with efforts to mitigate them. Now we have an incoming administration who are going to pollute as much as possible. That's not a repeating pattern. It's a self-destructive process that ends with billionaires living in their apocalypse bunkers and the rest of us dead.
The far right refused to tackle the underlying issues and vowed to make them all worse. This is overwhelmingly the biggest issue. It becomes a far bigger problem than the underlying issues.
But it's good to be aware of what the meme points out, too. Been going on too long.