Still Don't Sleep Though

Had a discussion with my wife's parents the other day. They thought it was hilarious. They laughed, alternating between mockery of the poor and "nobody helped me so everybody should suffer!"

She said maybe it's time to go no-contact.

Going no contact is a lot easier than it sounds: the biggest issue is "them" not respecting your new boundaries.
My biggest piece of advice is to never respond to them. The 'keeping silent and ghosting' part can be a challenge.
Ultimately, though, you owe them nothing but your happiness.
- It's tough. Years of upbringing makes it hard for her to not respond, but even in the best of times they were conservative nuts. But sure, not everybody likes their family's political views, right? They went full Nazi during his first term. Now, they don't even try to hide it and openly admit that they agree with everything happening.
- And delete your Facebook account. It’s just generally better for your mental health, it aids in stopping the cycle of billionaires feeding everyone information by whoever pays them. And then it stops unwanted contact from family. They can still post about you, but they’re screaming into an empty void of data centers at that point
Here’s to hoping leopards feast on their faces soon!
some in-laws are such terrible people once you get to know them. but the IL are the on the recieving ends of the cuts in the bbb, they are getting exactly what they wanted, they are just copium. i had cousins that after the astroworld crush, they were sitll "investing" in that venue, how immoral you have to be to do that, they would be the same people that would work for palintir because of money. asians are quite disconnected from politics/current events.

concentration camps and millions being stripped of health insurance and food assistance

So like Gaza?

Because I'm pretty sure this was the logic for people who refused to vote that this very community spent an entire year assuring me was a bunch of tankie bots from ml.

The majority of people who didn't vote for Harris don't care about Gaza. They're just larping on the internet.
She wasn't a zionist and wanted to end the war. It was a clear cut decision, but it was a brown and black sacrifice people were willing to make for their moral purity.
- I was ready to demand my Lefty comrades go vote for Kamala: after all, one Genocide is better than two genocides.
  But then she came out "tough on the border" and took that from me. She promised to be every bit as hard as Trump.
  https://theweek.com/politics/kamala-harris-immigration-policy-mexico-border
  But she worked HARD to alienate the Left. She took every piece of rhetoric I had and shat on it.
  So we have Kamala caving on Gaza with rhetoric (and walking it back)
  https://forward.com/fast-forward/666427/kamala-harris-does-not-agree-with-protester-who-shouted-genocide-her-campaign-says/
  But flatly refusing to do anything:
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/crocodile-tears-and-genocide-how-the-gaza-war-is-threatening-kamala-harris-s-white-house-chances/ar-AA1tnGVg
  Just like the Liberal Party. Promise almost nothing, make a symbolic gesture, do actually nothing.
  https://www.commondreams.org/news/harris-gaza
  So when she gets no support, why are Clinton Neoliberal, Reaganomics-poisoned-but-polite Liberals surprised? This is the Country they designed, on purpose.
  She wasn't a zionist and wanted to end the war
  Citation? Because any time I saw anything indicating that, she IMMEDIATELY walked it back. And I've cited (shitty) sources.
- So if you voted for Trump for his economic polices or yada yada you didn't also vote for the camps? Harris was a continuation of Biden, lip serivice to peace and unprecidented support to the genocide. Any vote on the ballot was a vote for genocide, if you voted, you voted for it.
There were a million reasons that people didn't show for Harris. Why do you scold only the people who were outspoken against genocide? Can you point to any evidence that this issue swung the election?
Biden put Harris in a terrible position by holding out as long as he did. Then Harris ran a horrendous campaign. That is why she lost.
People who care about Gaza are people who are politically engaged. That not who stayed home. Politically engaged people vote third party when they want to protest, and third party votes did not sway this election. Not even close.
People who stay home are normies who have given up. A lot of people need inspiration to show up, and centrist Democrats just aren't inspiring.
I can only suppose that your fixation on the genocide issue is because you like the genocide and were pissed off that people objected to it. That's the only reason to bring this trash up in every damn conversation about the Trump administration.

Didn’t vote for it isn’t good enough. 90M people didn’t vote. We needed 2M more to vote against it. Remember this when the midterms come around next fall.

We also need a political party that also understands this. The entrenched democratic advisers lost 2 times to Trump and I havent seen any mass firing. If anything, the establishment dems are attacking anyone trying to change.
- It doesn’t work like that. I’ve been saying this for decades, but maybe this explanation from a political strategist will do a better job.
  Simply put, the donors want to win to influence the candidates. They base their data on past voters, not the entire electorate. If you don’t vote, you don’t influence. It’s really always been that simple.
  We need to stop rewarding those who have the financial means to reach us in our living rooms, and actively seek out the progressives in every primary. Vote in every election. Stop allowing retirees to pick our candidates and continue to push the Overton Window to the right.
what we need is for people to start exercising their second amendment rights
If 2M more voted Democrat, Musk would have donated a bit more to make up the gap. I think we're flying past actual Democracy pretty soon. We'd need 20 million more before skewing the vote is prohibitive.
- Campaign money is important, but it also has it's limits. At some point, more spending has diminishing or even negative returns. We just saw that with Elon in Michigan.
There's no way to vote against something that both candidates support (eg. genocide).
- Your insistence on seeing black and white in a gray world will be your end.
- If they cared about genocide so much, they should have voted to prevent the one they would trigger back home.
- Primaries!
  If more people voted in primaries we would have probably had president Sanders instead of Trump the first time around

We need to be thinking about how 77 million Americans voted for Trump and thought that was a good idea.

And we need to work out how to prevent it from happening again.

One thing is clear, billionaires and politicians are unwilling to relinquish power or wealth, even when their holdings are obscene or they are incapable of governing.

We will have to threaten either their lives or the structures on which their holdings depend, and can't bluff. And they will likely choose death over surrender.

We won't prevent it until people learn to start talking to each other with compassion instead of hostility. As it stands, both sides think the other side is completely insane, and to some extent violent, and that they should not be associated with unless you are harassing them.
We've already burned the whole bridge down, and now need to rebuild it somehow. If republicans and democrats were separated geographically they might just split the country in two, but as it stands nearly every state has a large population of both, so in my opinion the only way forward is reconciliation.
- I'm ex republican. Higher education and having my life ripped apart by our state's AG fixed me... barely. Compassion won't fix these people. They fucking suck to their core and would rather die than change their opinions. I don't have a good solution. Platforming the stupid in our country is a large part of the problem.
- As it stands, both sides think the other side is completely insane, and to some extent violent
  Um, is it at all relevant that one side literally is insane, or that one side commits 99% of the violence? Where is the Democrats alligator Alcatraz for Christians? Where are the Democratic brown-shirt vigilantes running around with masks kidnapping people?
  I think Republicans are insane and violent because I see it with my own eyes. Are we supposed pretend their not? Screw that, I'd rather punch a Nazi.
- We won't prevent it until people learn to start talking to each other with compassion instead of hostility.
  You can't empathize with literal fascist... For two parties to reach common ground there has to be an assumption of both parties bargaining in good faith. If you continue to do that with fascist, people end up in camps.
  As it stands, both sides think the other side is completely insane, and to some extent violent, and that they should not be associated with unless you are harassing them.
  Well.... In the last 30 years, how many mass casualties events have been perpetrated by liberal or leftist extremist? You can't falsely conflate "both sides" when only one has a well recorded history of violence.
  There is no common ground when the side you want people to compromise with wants to put me and my family in a prison camp.
  We've already burned the whole bridge down, and now need to rebuild it somehow. If republicans and democrats were separated geographically they might just split the country in two, but as it stands nearly every state has a large population of both, so in my opinion the only way forward is reconciliation.
  Conservatism isn't an ethnicity....... It's a dangerous ideology that should have been stamped out during reconstruction after the last civil war. But people like you had the great idea of compromising reconstruction with reconciliation, so now we have to stomp it to death once again.

FTFY

ots upsetting how far down I had to scroll to find this comment
How do you vote against concentration camps when both candidates are genocidal?
- What would you have me do?
  Harris said she would work toward peace talks. Whether this was true or not will never be known. But from what I’ve read, despite what she really wanted, she had to “toe the line” and not stray from Biden’s policies if she wanted to keep her campaign alive.
  trump campaigned to not only let Netanyahu “finish the job,” and to write Israel a “blank check,” and to build a resort in Gaza, but also to build concentration camps ON AMERICAN SOIL, and to send Americans and immigrants in the US to foreign concentration camps.
  Not voting for either is essentially a vote for trump, in this current political climate.
  So voting for Harris is the closest we get to voting against concentration camps.
- you vote for the party that's open to negotiations on the subject, i stead of the part that is committed to genocide at all costs
- Lemme guess.....Whoa whoa genocide joe where did you come from where did you go, where did you come from genocide joe
- lol this nonsense again, let me guess you didnt vote in protest.
- Disingenuous bullshit.
- By trying to minimize the amount of ethnic cleansing happening and slow it the fuck down so we have a better chance at stopping it rather than let it go unchallenged electorally and via direct action.
- Exactly. The key to remember is that "vote blue no matter who" is a one-way street with one-way loyalty. Centrists demand loyalty from progressives, but they will never offer the same in return.
- Poor technocrit. Your attempt to keep Republicans in power by infecting progressive-leaning voters with apathy, it just keeps getting weaker and weaker, doesn't it?
- Show me one who wasn't "pro genocide".
  Edit: 26 down votes, and no one has even tried to put forward a "non-genocide" candidate. Really speaks volumes that they don't even try.

And the worst part?

They probably sleep sounder than you.

I see stuff like this and laugh. It would seem that most Americans, Democrats in particular, cling to the notion that they will have a chance to vote again. If there are midterms or another full election, they will be rigged the same as Russia, North Korea or any other "strongman" dictatorship. Keyboard warriors won't make a whit of difference.

It's one of the only things we have left to do so we better hope it makes a difference.
The right never gets any shit for using their key boards to advocate for murdering us all and it seems pretty effective for them.

Every human is created equal. But then again - those who believe themselves above other humans and actively hate them and try to strip their freedom away (through race, money, etc) - those I do deem to be less than human, and below me and anyone wanting to live in peace.

The hateful will always have reasons to hate, they actively look for them in everything and base their lives completely on their misery, and their ability to spread it to others like a plague.

If you can't live in a world with people different from you, and you feel the need to harm them, maybe instead of killing them, it'd be easier to get rid of you instead.

Fun fact: everyone who didn't vote for Hitler made it through the war with a 100% clean conscience, and did not regret any other inactions. /s

Reminder that Hitler lost the election. The liberals endorsed a conservative candidate in the name of unity, who won, and proceeded to staff the government with Nazis and made Hitler chancellor, in the name of unity.
The left, cursed with Casandra Syndrome, campaigned on "A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler is a vote for war."
Because there is nothing new under the sun, you even had the liberals who announced their endorsement of Hindenburg immediately start attacking the left for not supporting their best shot at defeating Hitler..
In the end, many of them did end up supporting Hindenburg. But liberals will always see the left as a greater threat than fascists.
- Fascinating that "I wish we had elected the Nazis sooner" is tankie orthodoxy.

You voted though, right? For Harris? That’s the only correct answer.

Non voters + Trump voters + Jill Stein voters brought us into this mess. I haven’t heard anything from Jill Stein, as a leader I hope she’s speaking out too to her base. ~~

I used the ballot box and voted straight blue, yes.
Really looking like it’s time for the next box and I hate that but no nazi deserves to breathe
No it was the democrats who put a candidate forward so uninspiring and indifferent on many different issues that people didn't vote for her.
People didn't want come that had no stance against the genocide and was different from biden.
- No it was people who didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris. Everyone who doesn't work at the DNC needs to learn that lesson. Everyone who works at the DNC has a different set of lessons to learn. Like be a socialist and abandon neoliberalism.
  The fact that we had a choice of someone other than Biden was incredible from a political standpoint. It's laughable more people weren't jumping at the chance to elect the candidate who wasn't a lifelong, diehard Zionist.
- Multiple people can be at fault. The Democratic party definitely fucked up by not holding a primary, but every single person who had a ballot in front of them and decided that letting Trump win was acceptable fucked up even worse
As a proud supporter of Claudia de la Cruz, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know she hasn't given up her flight: https://www.instagram.com/1claud9/, https://pslweb.org/
I am seriously tired of hearing this shit, what point does that matter now? Are you going to change the election? Move forward, we can't do anything about how people voted now and it's just alienating and irritating people.
- To remind people that their actions have consequences and that they need to take an active role in the democratic process if they want to preserve it.
- You're fight, people don't like hearing about the consequences of their own actions. They like sitting comfortably, pretending they did what they could to stop it
- People needed to vote for the not fascist candidate in a choice between a not fascist candidate and a fascist candidate.
  It's not hard. Learn the lesson or die to fascists. People will be too dead to be alienated.
- "Look, I know that these people voted for you and yours to suffer, but you just need to get over that so that we can come together and be a happy family again. You not getting over that one little tiny bump in our past just alienates everyone that wanted to see your life destroyed. It was a tiny blip from our past. Just get over it already." ~You....for the most part.

I have a relative who has been on medicaid on and off who "doesn't pay attention to politics". I frequently explain current events to them- like efforts to cut medicaid that may cause them to lose their coverage.

The obliviousness (or complacency, in many cases) of some people is unbelievable.

- This is sending me
- TBH I don't want to talk to a bunch of libs who put me in a boiling pot. It's annoying, condescending, and it does absolutely nothing to change the water temperature.
the "dont pay attention to politics" are the low information voters of trump, there are 2 types of conservatives: one watches fox news, or any right wing related media and consumes current events in a skewed way and somewhat up to date and the other are low info voters people who just take snippets and take the talking heads of (fox or right wing grifters like shapiro) out of the context because they dont understand the full story,
i think most are the latter, i know 2 people that are like this(still supporting ye and believing hes not actually BIPOLAR AND JUST TROLLING)
If only they had voted!!! It would be a totally different world!!! jfc...
- Some of us are old enough to remember what things were like before Trump. Things would be completely different if Harris had won, and you're a fucking naive child if you believe otherwise.

It’s fucking depressing though. I voted for Harris, went to college, worked in IT and was a good little worker, got a decent credit score, barely got a starter home…

By all accounts I did everything right. But I’m still fucked. Going to be laid off this year and this IT industry is fucked. We all are. We can’t do anything because the wealthy always win. I’m depressed most days and only find joy in reading sometimes but other hobbies don’t feel the same.

Every time I’ve voted, my candidate of choice loses. I’m powerless. I’m not well.

What kind of genres do you read? If you dig speculative fiction I'm happy to share recommendations and am happy to talk books. It's not much, but just nerding out about stuff somtimes helps.
- I'm not op, but I like speculative fiction. I was really into Ministry For The Future. I also liked Termination Shock.
  What have you got?
  I think it's pretty rad that you offered to recommend books. You're alright.
- I used to be dogshit about reading but I’m trying to finish the Fourth Wing series. I’m on the last book.
  But I noticed I generally enjoy thriller genres. Like The Silent Patient which was a thriller murder mystery.
  And another thriller I liked was about a very thin haunted house. God the name escapes me.
  Yes any recommendations are welcome and appreciated.
- How is Kamala a genocider? A scum?
  You have a lot of judgment and anger. You need to grow the parts of understanding, conversation, and kindness.
By all accounts I did everything right.
Maybe the actual problem is your definition of "right".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
Every time I’ve voted, my candidate of choice loses. I’m powerless. I’m not well.
Maybe you should start acting on your own instead of placing your life/future/trust in the hands of some sociopath.
- What are you suggesting Americans do to survive? This is some bullshit reply.

By not voting you did vote.

First past the post system and all of that.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
- Thank you, now Rush is going to be stuck in my head.
  (No seriously, thank you. Prior to this, my head was stuck with nursery rhymes.)
- a qoute from a ds9 episode, during one of the dominion episodes, something along the lines "as not doing anything is as bad as supporting the occupation"- vedek
I read it as they voted blue.
- Considering how many enlightened geniuses said that they just couldn't vote for Harris over Gaza... I don't actually think that's a safe assumption.
alot of conservatives do that, yes many dont vote at all because they cant be bothered, those are the low info voters. there are al group that will not vote for any reason simply because of jury duty summons. some people cant afford 1 day or a few weeks off, and JD doesnt compensate for your loss income, its "pathetically just giving change to homeless people", and employers arnt legally required to do so other either, because its on the courts to pay.

Remember when Trump wiped women and people of color from DoD and other government documents in his DEI sweep? Fucking sucks man.

It's not just Trump. It's the state that he operates just like his predecessor and current collaborators in both "parties".
It's a big mistake to assume this is some kind of break rather than a smooth continuation.
US deportations under Biden surpass Trump's record
- Biden did not use deportation as a weapon against legal permanent residents, green card holders, infants, and political opponents.
  I think you know what you're doing. You're all over this thread. I just realized that all of the bullshit here is you.

these manufacturing guilt posts would work if we were not seeing dnc sabotage mamadani to favour predatory stooges just like trump. the “blue no matter what” is only for trash candidates that superpacs want. everytime we get close to a leader that we want like bernie or aoc or mamdani, dnc shows they work for the trumps not against them.

i am not a violent person so pls suggest how we can help get aoc elected in 2029 without doing a luigi on likes of pelosi and schumer ?

does anyone really thinks that these dnc elites actually care about anyone other than themselves and the megadonor billionaires:
https://lemmy.world/post/32363324
...you think AOC is an outsider? Oh sweet, sweet summer child, bless your heart.
- she might not be an outsider but she seems to have a spine, supports the progressive cause and candidates. she is the way “lesser evil” that we should be settling for. she is also liked and respected by a lot of fringe gop voters. so there’s a good chance that in time she also get fulls house and senate majority.

BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE!

I’m sure that’s of great comfort to the people in concentration camps. Legit so gross to acknowledge concentration camps currently existing and being run by your own government, and somehow still making it about you.

What can the average US citizen do about concentration camps that are outside the US but controlled by the US?
- Never forget. /S
- 2A exists for a reason
- Did you phrase it this way to avoid talking about the ones in the US?
  At bare minimum they could not turn the existence of these camps into the opportunity to talk about how morally pure they are. Useless and obnoxious at best, callous and heartless at worst.

I’m definitely taking a dump on that bitch Virginia Fox’s grave when she dies and you know it’ll be soon cuz she’s an elderly, geriatric, expiring, old bitch.

They want this. Look at this post from their perspective and it makes you look like joke to them.

I'm not saying this as an insult...

Know thy enemy.

Something something first they came for the something something

It occurred to me that everybody uses “Nazi” as a shorthand for psychopathic authoritarianism, but no living generation actually knows what it was like to live through that (disclaimer: obviously there are countries that had this the whole time). This time we’ll actually see the “I didn’t vote for this” voices gradually disappear from the internet and at the end we’ll have a new name for this.

Who did you vote for then?

Vote for Republicans = You're an evil Nazi

Vote for Democrats = You're an evil liberal, and liberals are just veiled fascist

Vote for third party = You're wasting your vote, you're probably just a foreign asset

Vote for progressives = You support neoliberalism that masquerades as milquetoast socialism

Don't vote at all = You're a privileged asshole who caused all these issues by not voting

It literally doesn't matter what you do or who you vote for, you simply can't win with these people. There's no appeasing them, they will forever complain about how you vote.

Ever since the 21st century, voting Democrat (voting against Republicans) has been compulsory to stop the degradation of our institutions to corruption and towards autocratic rule.
But a lot of people didn't get the memo.
And to be fair a lot of Democrat candidates didn't offer anything themselves, but to not be the destructive Republican guy.
The memo part has a lot to do with the massive far-right propaganda machine that is literally controlling minds (just not instantly or with a wavy beam)
The latter part has to do with the mass precarity that neoliberalism allows to persist. If you're going to be in danger under King Log, why not vote for King Heron. And this is an issue across many nations with principle parties being neoliberal and far-right.
You forgot someone on your list. You. How would you describe yourself, I wonder? I know how I would.
- Let me guess, am I nazi too?

We've had them for over a decade at this point. They were first established and construction started during the Obama administration. During 45 AOC among a few other politicians did a performative photo-op in front of them and then that party as a whole proceeded to do nothing about them. Now we seem to have come back full-circle.

There seems to be a concerted effort to pretend that what's happening is business as usual, and not a direct result of Trump.
Fuck outta here with that.
- Hang on a second. Trump and the Republicans are obviously way more extreme, but Obama was the deporter in chief for a reason. One of the greatest terrorists in world history with the drone program. Just because Republicans are fascist lunatics doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge what led here.

If all you're doing is "voting", then you have no right to a good night's sleep at all.

If you're still self-righteous about losing like 9mos later, that's even more gross.

Where is this dream candidate anyway? I haven't seen them out there opposing genocide... Much like this gross meme...

*ignores a century of withering away of social safety nets and institutions at the hands of dems and Republicans, and primarily capitalists
*at the 11th hour and 59th minute of the devolution into fascism, nobly votes for handwringing and pragmatic genocidaire vs unabashed and bombastic genocidaire
*"I'm doing my part! Screw you, Tankies and Ruzzians for destroying America! Muslim and Arab americans in Dearborn who decided not to vote for a woman who promised to kill their bothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon with utmost lethality are redfash, and are the reason for the pickle we're in now. Ignore the last 200 years of history that led us here."
Yep, checks all the liberal boxes. History only starts where it is convenient.
- So many fucking internet tough guys.

The Electoral College System: 'I don't really care, do u?'

Moral superiority really doesn't do much in this situation, but OK.

So you voted Green.

No, they said they didn't help Trump get elected.

Yes you did. You just convinced yourself that your team was powerless when they didn't do anything to stop it.

Lol what should Harris have done to stop this? Please be specific.
- With the benefit of hindsight? Raise hell, break away from Biden, and acknowledge that our economy is not fine.
- Jesus, so many things.
  Stop simply handing out subpoenas and arrest Trumpers for ignoring them, and then go on every news show and hammer the message that Republicans are not above the law.
  Go after Joe Manchin's daughter for being part of the leadership of a company that price gouges people for prescription drugs until he starts voting the way the party wants him to.
  Remove all of Kirsten Sinema's committee seats so she can't personally profit off of lobbyist cash, until she starts voting the way the party wants her to.
  Refuse to support genocide. Revoke aid to Israel.
  Have the president hold a press conference, every single day, Donald-style, where all he talks about are the things we can't have because of the Republican-controlled Senate and hammer home the message that obstruction is the reason why food is becoming cost-prohibitive.
  Revoke any federal contracts to gun manufacturers that sell AR-15's to public vendors, and make it very publicly clear that he will do everything he can to bankrupt gun manufacturers who do.
  Pressure RBG endlessly to retire while Obama has control of Congress.
  And that's just off the top of my head.
  It's astonishing that you've sat through six months of this presidency and you're still able to gaslight yourself into believing that Dems had no power when they had the presidency and Congress. They just didn't give enough of a shit to fight but the hardline fascists do.
  Christ, Biden's presidency did nothing meaningful except make people poorer and angrier, and made himself out to be an egotistical, demented buffoon.

I didn't vote For this at all, but I did know when I voted that this was still the most likely outcome, regardless of whether my candidate won or not. When you are forced to pick between Hitler and Vichy France, you know you are going to lose whoever wins, it's only a matter of time.

Of the things listed in this post, I don't think Harris would have pursued any of those. There are other negative outcomes that may have been the same, but I don't think any of those.
- Harris wouldn't have, no, but she would've left the door open for Republicans to do it anyway 4 years from now. There is a reason Democrats never stop Republicans, and never try to ensure they can't take away our rights.