gabbath

joined 2 weeks ago
[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

IMO the Democratic Party is just an institution. It can be taken over the same way MAGA took over the GOP. I agree a multi-party system would be better, but that requires Ranked Choice Voting and I'm not sure if even regular voting is safe right now (although this is an opportunity to reform voting into popular vote + RCV, since it's clear the current voting system isn't enough to protect democracy). But I digress.

With the current system you need progressives to primary the crap out of corpo Dems. Parties don't have ideologies, people do. Change the people and you change the party. (Incidentally, this is what Project 2025 is trying to do with the state: replace all the government workers who oppose them with Trump worshippers.)

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This sounds nice but in practice will backfire. You need the systems to be universal, so that everyone, including the richest, have a stake in wanting to see them improved. Otherwise you'll get a two tiered system where the public versions are trash because they're underfunded and the private versions (what the rich use) are great but also expensive af.

You want things to work like insurance, where everyone pays in but only the people who need them use it. I want Musk to pay a fuckton into Social Security, not nothing at all because he doesn't use it. Even now there's a problem with Social Security in particular because, even though everyone has to pay it, it puts a cap/limit on how much you pay, so Musk currently ends up paying his share in the first day of the year, and his contribution amounts to the same as a teacher or something.

Universal programs with progressive taxation, that's the way. Low taxes at the bottom, high taxes at the top.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago

Funny seeing Musk on this list after his "I'm just a consultant" bit.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

Given the crap you can read on the White House website nowadays, I'm questioning more whether America is a real country, because it feels more like three fascist oligarchs in a trenchcoat.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Many just straight up don't believe you when you tell or even show them. They think you're brainwashed so they don't take you seriously. They just believe Big Brother loves them and would never lie to them.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also, they won't be cheaper.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

like if the Onion was written by a bunch of bootlickers.

This is exactly what it is. Seth Dillon was also the guy who recruited the Libs of TikTok lady, if memory serves.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Clicked the link and got a banner for a movie trailer which mocks the idea that January 6 was violent.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Now that I absolutely agree with. All try to emulate left principles to market their stuff, by which I mean they say "we get it and we care about you".

Lol at "stethoscope theory" :)

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'm not a fan of Horseshoe Theory. It's very handwavey and kind of implies centrism is the way to go, and I don't agree with that at all. I think the status quo is crap and needs to be changed... quite a lot actually.

Anyway, I think there's a brand of what's generally called leftism that's correct, and I think it's somewhere in the libleft quadrant, if we're to go by the political compass. And the further from that you go, the more "wrong" you start to get by giving more power to either the state (authleft), corporations (libright) or an unholy alliance of both (authright). Really, all of these to me are ways of being wrong by bestowing extreme unaccountable power to some institution or institutions, when the key should be accountability and avoiding the concentration of power (which includes wealth) into a few unelected unaccountable hands. Either of the three extremes, apart from the lower left, gives you some form of fascism, by which I mean things like: cult of personality, cult of work, making people's well-being secondary to some abstract goals/principles like the state or meritocracy, that sort of stuff.

I don't think that's Horseshoe Theory though... is it?

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Truth be told, I don't even know what an actual far left is. I always saw the left-right spectrum as woefully asymmetrical, because there's a handful of ways of getting things right (as in being correct factually + morally) and a million ways of getting them wrong. The former generally aligns with "left", and the latter with "right".

I've seen some vile opinions from people supposedly on the left which were indistinguishable from the far right, and it starts like you said with this irrational need to avoid agreeing with liberals at all costs, which in time leads them down delusion avenue.

[–] gabbath@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I didn't think I'd see the day Mike admitted a mistake like that. Times are dire, folks...

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