America needs some perspective. You complain that your only choices are a doddering fool or a toxic narcissist who wants to actively destroy the nation.
Here in Canada we look at our options and think “America is so much better, I wish we had an option to vote for a doddering fool. All we have are narcissists”
No joke I wish we had a leader as good as Biden. The bar is so low that the devil is doing the limbo with it down in Hell.
No I would definitely vote for trudeau a 100 times over before Biden, and we have at least 3 choices in almost every riding. We don’t have to worry about gerrymandering and voters reform while unlikely is at least a topic mainstream politicians will tall about.
Comparing ourselves too much to the states is why canada is the mess it is, it’s still no contest with the states.
Trudeau is importing the world’s problems in the name of propping up the real estate investor class (of which he is a member) and pumping up fake GDP numbers. GDP per capita is plummeting in Canada with excess immigration.
Singh is in his pocket, a waste of a vote. I was an NDP voter all my life, I’m done.
Polliviere is an absolute idiot who will ride a wave of hatred for Trudeau into office.
Voters in Canada have no power and no representation as all votes are whipped. Your MP is a seat filler. We have no ballot initiatives or direct democracy options that America has, and reform will never come.
Biden listens to people who know what they’re doing and stands out of the way… Passed legislation supporting workers and unions, energy infrastructure etc. meaning he’s both more left than Singh and more business-friendly than PP
No I’m serious, I’m here in SK and we’re trying to push Moe and his cronies out for the NDP this fall, and our biggest problem is the federal NDP damaging the brand by backing Trudeau. All we say all day is “The SK NDP is not affiliated with the federal party, we stand for working Canadians, vote Moe out”
If you think $500 for low income and seniors is anything other than a bone thrown to pacify the poor then Singh has pulled the wool over your eyes.
The requirement for “no access to insurance” absolutely torpedoes the entire thing. Private insurers need to fall, universal coverage is the only way. Dental is the Canadian equivalent to the entire USA health insurance racket.
Congrats on living in the one green riding, which does give you some power over your single seat party… Which ultimately holds no power at all in our broken system.
I’m sorry to say I voted Trudeau on the promise of electoral reform, which he then told us we didn’t want. I’m in a safe blue riding which means my vote is pointless, so I’m going full protest vote next time for the PPC 🤣 Max is laughable, especially his obsession with dairy supply management, but enough votes for “burn it down” will hopefully send a message.
I’m sure the tragic mass genocide of the polish people, the Jewish people, the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill, The romani and much much more (it’s genuinely depressing). Is very much comparable to the deportation of illegal immigrants. To an semi well off 2nd world country.
And to answer your question. no I’m not a republican (conservative) nor am I a democrat (labour ).I wouldn’t vote for dementia man nor would I vote for orange man in a billion years.
Let me lay brass tax here’s what I believe in. I would like for better civil liberties , Human rights that applies to everyone equally regardless of your politics gender race country or creed (natural rights) , first admendment rights, Castle doctrine. A free market, and property rights. I could go on but I’ll be here all day.
No, you cant have typed out that obvious sarcasm and seriously meant it. A little bit of genocide? Thats how you’re describing someone you’re voting for?
Yeah, I feel like people are freaking out and ignoring that Biden (and Trump) are largely the people they surround themselves with, and the policies they push.
I was talking to some friends and I don’t get independents at this point. If you don’t know who you’re voting for and need to see this debate to decide, you haven’t been paying attention to the past 8 years.
This isnt a dig at him but Biden probably hasnt made a single decision without heavy guidance by all the people around him. This is always the case to a degree i assume, but probably even more with senile people like him. It just makes the whole concept of a president so nonsensical.
Bro, maybe the Wally world clientele is different in your neck of the woods but seeing someone with makeup on, or their hair did (leaving aside the question of quality for the time being…) is the exception to the rule.
I think the real upsetting thing isn’t Biden’s performance, or having Biden as president for four more years. He achieved quite a bit after all. The real upsetting thing is the DNC being such cunts that they even pushed for this debate, hoping that Biden could win, only to deny and ignore Biden’s abhorrent performance immediately after. That Bernie got shafted twice by them, that is the really upsetting part.
It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that the DNC would rather lose than have an actual progressive win. None of the shitty things that Trump wants to do will hurt them, (stupid take if they cared at all about their descendants but they’re either too arrogant or too ignorant to worry about that) but actual progressive policies that helped average people WOULD hurt their way of life. Marginally. Like, the tiniest little amount. Like, your yacht can only have one master bedroom instead of four. But why give that up when you don’t have to?
“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”
I’m voting for Biden though, and I’ll keep voting as progressively as possible in the down ballot elections. If a progressive movement from the bottom up can start by doing things like getting rid of FPTP, we still have a chance. And to anyone thinking about not voting, please do. The president is one person. They are the single most powerful person individually, (taking aside impact on the judicial system) but the collective impact on your day to day life is far more influenced by down ballot positions. Research your down ballot candidates and vote. Many of those races are decided by only a handful of votes. Yours matters.
It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that the DNC would rather lose than have an actual progressive win.
It’s not in their interests to let a progressive win. Just like their counterpart, the DNC takes a shit ton of bribery donations from corporations lobbyists. Bringing in a progressive who would reform the system or push back against pro-corporate policies is biting the hands that feed them.
The title of this video is “An Anarchistic Watches West Wing” or something similar. I only watched 20mins but it was good so far. It’s a criticism of the American Capitalist system, American Democracy (power of the president, presidential hero worship), etc. via the way it’s portrayed in the West Wing.
Aye. The timestamp I linked specifically talks about something talked about in this thread, which is that the DNC would rather have the far right win than move left.
I’m using my app’s built in video player and I guess it didn’t recognize the time stamp. I wanted to give people an idea of the context because I think it’s worth a watch. I’ll give that timestamped portion a watch later.
At this point I doubt tankies should be much of a concern. What are they, 1-2% of the potential Dem voter base? I’d sooner worry about the indecisive ones who have seen the performances in the debate.
They’re especially loud here because Lemmy’s developers are tankies. Some are even supposedly former Chapo Trap House peeps that got kicked off reddit. It’s the most annoying part of this place trying to be a reddit replacement. But it’s getting better with users calling them out.
What are they, 1-2% of the potential Dem voter base?
Add a .000 in front of those numbers and you might be right. If those numbers were accurate you would expect somewhere between, what…1 and 2 million tankies in the US alone?
No, see, that would mean there are people out there who disagree with me who aren’t either tankies or maga, and that impossible because that would mean… that would… oh no…
To be fair, the men’s rights movement is absolutely characterized as alt-right by the mainstream media. People tend to assume all sorts of things about you when you bring up any kind of men’s issue. Most people (including other men) have difficulty empathizing with grown men, and thus they subconsciously expect that men’s advocates are motivated by something else, such as misogyny. It’s hard to move past our biological and cultural tendencies and view men as vulnerable and in need of support.
Depends on the approach. In a lot of queer friendly spaces men’s issues are generally accepted as incredibly valid as gay and trans men tend to get pretty hardcore beat down by failing to pass the bar of the expectations of cultural masculinity and on average they require more outside help from services or others because they are less likely to be able to return to their families to escape abusive relationships and face addictional precarity.
But the difference tends to be a general understanding that while women definitely get it and can absolutely sympathize they also aren’t in a particularly great position to change things in a general sense because women also have to regularly fight against social power of systems that depower their autonomy that are fronted by men and they generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men’s behalf.
It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you. If your job, legislature, judicial system and potential funding structure is only made up of a minority of women you are asking a lot of people who don’t have institutional power to flex even on their own behalf and a lot of women have deep seated anger regarding that disparity so when someone tries to pile more on their plates the gut reaction is to throw it back. Women might be willing to assist, but they aren’t going to accept doing the lions share of the required admin for another group when they have other priorities. The same goes for queer groups, racial minority groups, religious minorities, disability affected groups and so on. They might have room on their plate to show up to your protest… But usually that requires you to you show a willingness to reciprocate and show up to theirs.
generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men’s behalf.
Same logic applies to men as well. And I don’t like your perspective of said groups always being enemies of each other. If this perspective was uniformly adopted, queers will never have their rights because they are a minority. While the majority groups only fighting for theirs. IMHO we need to look at all these as human rights and human values. Not gay rights, trans rights, women’s rights or men’s rights. Otherwise we don’t get anywhere.
That’s not quite what I mean. It’s not that they are enemies of each other it is just that reciprocity is a road to success. A lot of the LGBTQIA for instance is solidarity based. Everyone has their main concern that focuses their own needs. Like folks who push for asexual stuff is different than say trans stuff. You wouldn’t go to an allosexual trans person to get your marching orders for organizing for Ace things or vice versa. They have independent agendas and groups who do the main work. Successful adgendas put in the primary effort and give lower effort tasks to do to allies.
Like okay, example. There’s the regular list of regular concerns from men’s advocacy groups. Education accommodations to close gaps for students and resources for domestic abuse shelters for men. Those are two very common issues. On their own however it doesn’t matter how often you say it, I could agree with you those would be good thing but that isn’t enough…
You need someone dedicated to actually create the initiative. Maybe organize a group of psychology professionals to advocate to a school board for changes or set up a non-profit to get shelters going… Governments generally only adopt things once a model has been tested so just getting shit done to prove your model has to usually be grassroots : That’s the stuff that a primary organizer does. It’s tough work. It takes a lot of free time and dedication. There’s admin aspects where you need to talk to professionals, get a dedicated core of like minded people together and point them in a direction, deal with a lot of very impassioned ideas clashing against each other and hours of effort. It’s a frustrating blood, sweat and tears endeavor. Most people have the energy at most to do one of these maybe two during their lifetime. A lot of people can’t manage it even once. Chances are nobody is going to sign on to help you with this generally unless they got enough skin in your game.
Look back at the history of the LGBTQIA and you will find hundreds of fairly small groups working this way for very specific initiatives. The main people of those group’s cores are usually either people of that specific queer minority who are directly effected or family or friends of a minority member who died.
But what a primary group creates is secondary tasks. Maybe they create the charity that does the main work and other people who want to help but don’t have time to volunteer kick money into it. The primary group organizes the protest and post the posters and reach out to allies… and all the allies need to do is show up.
With a lot of men’s advocacy groups there’s this toothless helplessness where they aren’t asking people to join in to do secondary tasks. They just state problems that exist. It kind of comes across to groups that are more used to organizing like they aren’t giving trying to give someone a job they are trying to convince you to start their small business for them from scratch.
I don’t think anybody is expecting women to do administrative work on behalf of men’s rights. It’s more that women tend to react with outright hostility when men advocate for other men.
It’s actually the feminists who frequently argue that men need to be fighting for women’s issues. I haven’t seen the reverse from male advocates, partially because it’s quite obvious that such a request would be summarily denied. Men generally just want:
funding for men’s shelters
sympathy & aid for male victims of domestic violence and sexual assault
solutions for the growing educational achievement gap
a discussion about various legal discrepancies when it comes to conscription, marriage, and parental rights and responsibilities.
None of this requires women to assist or flex their institutional power. But when men are systematically denied access and funding for various forms of governmental aid, it seems like certain women are flexing some of their institutional power to prevent men from having access to the same kind of social safety net that women enjoy.
It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you.
This is a faulty analogy, because men’s issues are women’s issues and vice versa. It’s impossible for women to actually solve their own problems without also solving men’s problems. How are women ever going to keep their oxygen masks on if they are surrounded by men who are suffocating and trying to rip the mask from their face? In order to help anyone, you need to help everyone.
You miss my point. What mens advocacy groups are missing is that they aren’t doing the primary work required. They just kind of expect that stating the issues are enough.
Like let’s take the mens shelter thing. Cool. I agree… So Where do I donate? Who is doing the admin? What’s the aim, the targets. What is the method? Who’s talking to the accountants and doing the paperwork and signing the papers. Are you seeking a grant? Who’s filing it? Who’s name is on the lease for the property? Who do I contact to volunteer my time?
… Wait you want me to be that guy who creates all that framework? You want me to pay for the lawyers and, wrangle the committee and spend my nights arranging experts and to set up the charity? Okay… Why me exactly? I am a transmasc non-binary person fighting for my union to cover trans healthcare and showing up to city halls to stop book bans and bathroom bills. I totally have like 5 hours free on a Tuesday you can have or maybe $50 out of my pocket to an organized cause but that’s not exactly gunna help you unless someone does the framework to make that useful…and I am sorry but like hell am not about to throw myself on that particular beaurcratic sword. Doing that for a cause that directly effects my security to exist in public is hard enough.
Saying “we should have men’s shelters” is not giving someone a actionable task. People love actionable tasks! They are easy : show up here and protest, go here and donate, go here to run a fundraiser, volunteer here sign this petition etc etc etc… But just plunking "We need mens shelters somewhere is basically low key implying you aren’t personally asking the listener to do anything… Or you are asking them to do everything. Like I can totally agree all these things are worthy endeavors… But you aren’t giving me a framework here for my endorsement to translate into anything helpful. Okay. Shelters got it I agree. Job done, argument won. Victory. Woo.
Doing the primary work is not fun or intuitive or easy. But what it CAN be is managed by a very small team. The initial investment is always in personal time money and extreme frustration and growing the thing takes patience.
Look to the LGBTQIA model and you will find a myriad of different small independent groups generally focused around singular letters of the acronym who have a diehard core and damn near always the people who founded them were the people who experienced the problem directly or the surviving loved ones of people who died. The circle of secondary supporters are usually more varied but the Leaders basically need to be able to devote at least around 100 man hours apeice per year doing pretty intense work that involves a lot of key decision making. If you really are fired up about making this thing real that’s the bit that needs to be done so other people can push it. Or find someone already doing the thing and support them. Amplify their message and organization. Grow them.
Allies are also more likely if you create solidarity. Try partnering with a women’s shelter group to learn their process, reach out to the Gay community to tap their activism networks by explaining how your interests intersect, cross promote. Be prepared to reciprocate. Nobody likes selfish people who take up all the oxygen in the room. People will find time to help people who make reasonable direct asks that respect the time and resources needed to attend to their own admin first.
But in general I don’t see this engagement style from cis straight men’s activism groups. A lot of the time they seem to be fairly unhealthy because they just want to ruminate on how life sucks while practically nobody steps up to the plate to do the critical and nessisary front work. I just hear “women don’t care”, “nobody cares” “this should happen”… But what I NEVER hear “Okay, here’s our plan. Let’s meet.” “do this.” “support this.” “here’s how to effectively ask for this”, “support this court case” “I’m throwing a fundraiser” “let’s build our own shelter”… If you aren’t asking these things of each other then you have zero business demanding it of anyone else.
And if someone comes at me with “well I DO run or support a thing but nobody seems to care…” there’s usually some kind of reason why people aren’t latching. Chances are good if you aren’t crowing your most modest successes as wins and keeping hope and optimism as your center people are going to doubt your ability to deliver on your intentions. You can’t afford to mope, you need to change your approach, experiment and figure out what your winning formula is, replicate it, amplify it CELEBRATE it.
Because if no one actually cares… If you can’t advocate, If that actually is the implicit nature of the world there is no sense in complaining. You are fucked. You might as well go down fighting.
I keep wanting to light a fire under your asses. These things are worth fighting for but so often you don’t realize what you are doing to yourselves. You keep reinforcing your learned helplessness while looking at stuff that people worked damn hard to make real through individual personal effort and sighing over how that isn’t happening for you. That stuff didn’t just pop up out of the ground because someone clapped their hands and believed in fairies. Somebody get boots on the fucking ground already!
If you can’t find someone doing the admin for the thing that’s your ride or die issue then you have to create one and chances are good that person is gunna have to be you. Nobody is generally lining up to take that gig… You can keep trying to convince rando people to try and take on your heaviest burdens but chances are all its going to do is make you angry when they just shoulder their own pack leaving you with nothing but a few kind words of encouragement before moving on down the road. You get a lot more faith in humanity when you hand them an item or two from your pack to carry for you as most people will help you out under that circumstance.
lemmyshitpost
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.