This is the time to reach out to these new or revalidated officials and tell them this is the time to take power back.

I’ve sent emails to my new senator and house rep, but things like 5calls.org are probably useful too. The calls require (people like me) to be a little more prepared with what we want to talk about, but the time is NOW. Also set a reminder for 1/21 and remind them this was, in fact, a mandate to make things different.

If you’ve been disappointed with milquetoast dems… call them right now. Email them at the least.

Drown them in the proof that we demand accountability for the current regime and progress on the issues that we all want.

I saw the ad, but I forgot most of it immediately… and I don’t want to revisit it. so forgive me if that last line isn’t quite correct.

Political ads:

✅️> Here’s what I want to do

✅️> Here’s what I believe

➖️> My opponent said or did something I think you’ll disagree with

❌️> My opponent alleges they were assaulted, but I don’t think they were so they are a liar

Also, don’t stop at the primary. You can be part of your local organization and help choose the people in the primaries. As well as improve the local government.

Your lack of reading comprehension tells me exactly how much you think.

My point being: ‘give up’ is what some people, who would otherwise be our allies, are hearing. Stop telling *them* to give up.

You won’t make more anti-capitalists by squashing the people who see the problems and want to solve them just not in your way. That only accelerates us towards the fascism you claim to be against.

This is the epitome of the issue I’m talking about – you people seem to presume the engagement ends at the simple step. For some, it will, but those people weren’t likely to engage larger in the first place and reducing the consumer waste doesn’t hurt.

For others, it will make them aware of the larger call to action, to get them to join advocacy groups that punish industrial and systemic issues.

I can’t stop fascism or climate change or pollution on my own. I need MORE people engaged and telling people we need all or nothing solutions can only lower the number of people willing to take action. Individual, even trivial steps matter.

Look at the people telling you to give up.

all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved

From the other poster: Using a paper straw does reduce plastic usage. So will using reusable grocery bags. A person can quite easily do both. Deriding the paper straw as a useless step just seems unhelpful to me. When the plastic bags and straws are reduced, we can attack other angles too. As an anecdote, I rarely even get offered a choice of straw nowadays - it’s either not present or paper. that’s a minor win, but a win nonetheless. Some people worked hard to make that happen and this talk of placebo is derisive of that work.

This is you presuming to know the motivations of all other people and deciding for them when they stop working on new things. Just because I want people to be involved in their political processes doesn’t mean I stop at the voting booth, or can’t also be doing service in my community. I don’t love the catchphrase ‘Blue no matter Who’ - but I recognize that not voting blue is always going to be detrimental to the cause until enough people are involved in local level organizations to change the candidates from the ground up. Until we get there, I recommend we vote blue.

Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy. Wanna fight fascism and oligarchs? Encourage people to participate instead of telling them it doesn’t matter or there can only be revolution instead of incremental progress.

Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.

That’s my whole point. Don’t discourage.

More encouragement of participation is better. Tell me that’s wrong.

And here we are. The exact sentiment described by OP.

You are the one describing the solution as “placebo”. I think the effort I implement is a positive step. I believe strongly that you are one of two types of people: Anti-solution and an agitator trying to divide and dishearten; or… maybe… you’re invested in the positive outcome and you will continue the greater work while I try to ensure you still can.

If you were only doing it because it was 100% bad, then you’re just as much of an idiot as those ‘why wouldn’t you rape without sky-daddy watching you’ christians. You can still work to solve it when it’s only 90% as bad as it was, since it will still be 100% bad.

Hint: Telling people to either be fully dedicated to solving the big issues or give up and ‘go to brunch’ is reductive and not encouraging the way you want it to be.

Thank you. I feel so discouraged when I see people who should be our supporters, who spout things like ‘fix your country’, pick at an individual who is trying to make things better because they aren’t working on their specific thing.

I just can’t see any flavor of ‘both sides’ as anything but support for the oligarchs. The more people engaged, the more collective power we have and the less a few billionaires can control us. By engagement, I mean more than just voting: Join your local precinct and be or support the delegates that work their way up to the national conventions. This applies to democratic and republican alike.

Anything telling people their votes don’t matter or won’t change things only concentrates power in the people who already have it.

as if that begins and ends with getting the vote out for Kamala.

But that is explicitly not what I’m advocating for. I have described multiple times that it doesn’t stop there. I want people to be *engaged* and I think that ‘both sides’-isms make people depressed and give up; and I think more people engaged can solve the issues we face. I also fear that we might have passed the point where it can be fixed, but as this thread proved, I’m a bit stubborn.

spend your efforts in a more productive way.

I think the best way to spend my time is encouraging people to be visibly for something. Protest, Canvass, better yet, run for an office you think isn’t well served (I’m doing some of those things while I think up these responses! Multitasking!). Maga was pretty good at that. I can’t even see a red hat anymore without associating and there are several sportsball teams with a red primary color that probably don’t like that now. I’ll even posit that normal people engaging in the republican spaces is good too. I think both parties have been compromised by wealth and they would serve us instead if they had more people in them in general. At least on the democratic side, the people present set the rules so more of us means we can change the rules to serve us.

Earlier today/yesterday:

The GOP firmly in control of the government

I get where you’re coming from. But I think we have a disagreement here. Sure the “GOP” is in control, but what’s really happened - in my opinion - is that *money* is in control.

and Dude. Dude… Dude…

The more of us that are not money that are involved in the process, the more control WE get. Telling people it doesn’t matter discourages involvement, and involvement is how I think things get better.

That’s my point.

Your website seems neat. I’m on BuyNothing and they have a similar concept - with yours being more service based rather than effectively just recycling. I can’t quite tell, since I can’t sign up without sending email. I’d recommend some sort of ‘find communities near you’ that you can at least view without signing in; you might get more people who have a need connected with someone. But I’m also 100% behind taking people with a skill who have time and want to help and matching them with people that need help.

Edit: My Lemmy instance was down for a day and didn’t post this until recently. Hence the weird timestamps.

Cool. Vote out the party leadership then.

That’s literally what I’m trying to do. And I need help. We need more people in the process so that the leadership can be voted out if it doesn’t reflect us. The ‘both sides’ comments discourage others from getting involved. That’s what I pushed back on way back at the top of this thread.

What’s the other method, if not civic engagement? You seem to be hung up on the first half of my personal plan of less bad now while making more better later. I get that you think both sides are bad; but I think one side is less bad in general, and I see that making that party better requires more people to be part of it.

You seem to have given up on the idea it can be better. I haven’t. You said at the top that you had projects in your community that you were working on. Do they promote civic engagement, or are they palliative care for a terminal patient?

Given some of your phrasing, I don’t even think you are in the US, which is fine, but means we are talking more about the mechanics of politics than the details of US politics (though I get that they effect you; which is why the ‘get out’ part of your plan doesn’t work in my opinion).

My plan:

1. Be involved in local decisions. Join my precinct and either go or send people I trust to the district meetings. Support and vote for local candidates like mayor and city council, sheriff, dog catcher.
2. Encourage others online to do the same and push back when people discourage engagement. <-- we are here
3. (this one would be neat) Mold my city/county/state into a beacon of hope, where the government works for the people and is no longer captured by self-interest. Mamdani in New York is a pretty good example of what I mean, but that requires not just support in the populace, but also support in the rest of the government to allow them to function.
4. Get enough people in the districts to send people to the states to send people to the nation to elect people who aren’t millionaires to positions of power in the party.
5. Elect House, Senate and Presidents that are not millionaires or ancient and have the values of the people again.

You seem to think I’m stuck at #2 forever. Which is discouraging. Which is why I keep pushing back.

<comedian slow delivery> Ok, now, hear me out, wait, gimmie a minute

primarily take the form of challenging the Democratic Party leadership as effectively as possible

What do you think I’ve been trying to say?

I’m one dude. My next more effective way of challenging the leadership will get me locked up and then I can’t challenge it again for like 10-20 years.

And you’re still sidestepping the point I was trying to make that was: engagement is helpful and discouraging it is not helpful.

Edit: and just to clarify, “both sides” kinds of comments are discouraging. – we can continue to argue about how to engage forever, I think, but this whole thread started with ‘stop saying both sides’.

You overthrow your government and seize the funds of the rich? At this point, how do you actually think this gets better absent that

I think I’m done. It’s been an interesting and introspective week. And for that, I thank you.

Your ‘solution’ is violence - and I get that. There’s a bunch of people with your opinion. I don’t have it. I think if we have to get to ‘overthrow’, then we make things really bad for a long time for a lot of people; whereas we can use the system to put better people in the places of power and make things more better-er in a shorter timeframe. It might also make things bad for different people for longer time. I can’t tell from where I sit. I happen to be one dude in a country of 350 million.

In all honesty, I’ve got a foot in both sides. When shit goes down, I’m in; but I’m not going to start it. I’ll leave that up to people braver than me. I will block you if you fight me on this stance.

You imply I’m stopping at the ‘lesser evil’ strategy and I can’t stress enough how much that’s a stepping stone and not, or even a significant part of, my whole solution or even what I advocate for (My old instance is shutting down, you can see my older comments as korazail@lemmy.myserv.one and there are many versions of ‘join your local org’). I vote for lesser evil right now while actively trying to make better options later so I don’t have to and encouraging others to be part of the process.

I think we differ on whether that could actually work; which is a whole conversation on it’s own since, if it can’t, can democracy work at all? Do we all just shoot each other? And which side does that best serve?

My actually trying to make things better is done by being engaged with the processes that make decisions and tell others they can be engaged too. Back to the original original point. The ‘both sides’ one-liners reduce engagement. We should stop making them.

Don’t pick a phrase from above to reply to. Respond to this: Should the average person attempt to be more or less engaged with their political systems?

Neat. Your plan? Run from the responsibility vs violence? Still haven’t heard it beyond those two options. “Get out or get guns” is defeatist and surrenders the initiative to the chaos.

The US is a dangerous force against peace

When I was growing up, Russia was the global boogie man. I’d like to prevent the US from being the next one. Am I making things worse by trying to reverse our destruction? I don’t think I am.

Putting words in your mouth, you’re saying “it’s too late” and I should just run? What happens when the US is 100% “republican”? I don’t think that will help on the global stage and I think it will be worse for everyone when things fail here, so I’m trying to prevent that. I think we get an imperialist nation with crumbling infrastructure that needs to take what it can’t produce and will do so with force. We’re like mostly there - see Iran.

I guess one last try. Attack my position again without a solution and I’ll give up.

With some detail, and not in a one-liner, how do we make this better?

I’ve tried to explain my rationale and get yours. I’ve asked for your plans, solutions, goals. All I get are snippets that you can take and respond to with a quip.

'Get out or get guns" is not a plan I like. I don’t think it will work. When the US implodes because every sane person fled, the world will not be better.

I don’t think anyone is listening to your protest vote. Similar to how companies have captured their markets so thoroughly that they can enshittify everything and know the demand will remain, the parties here have captured their voters. I don’t think the marginal voters are the ones that really matter - I think it’s the ones who aren’t voting.

I’m going to step back a bit. Your vote for Claudia is fine. You seem to be engaged. My original point waaaay back at the top was (paraphrased) ‘We’ve got to stop talking about this like it’s futile and it doesn’t matter who is elected’. We need more people willing to spend the energy to be part of the system, and generate the options, instead of letting the system tell them what the options are.

I think ‘both sides’ kinds of comments reduce engagement and convert into more non-voters. I want to add engagement so that people not only vote in the presidential election, but also in mid terms, and in primaries, and in municipal elections, and get into the local politics that will change the parties from the bottom up.

Right now the Democrats are effectively just as captured by money as the Republicans, and the money is evil. Getting more normal people to engage will eventually put normal people in the positions to make decisions instead of the money. There’s inertia there that we need to overcome and I don’t think we’ll do it by telling people both sides are the same. The spirit of Democracy is engagement and anything aiming to reduce engagement is antithetical to Democracy.

All that - but in the meantime, I vote for the least bad option that I think has a chance of winning and that will likely be the democratic nominee and not a third party. yet. I support, nationally, candidates that support ranked choice or other non-binary voting systems.

I think this is specifically where we are at odds. “the former precludes the latter” is just wrong. I can vote in the system I have while trying to change the system from within. My engagement didn’t end at the ballot box.

I’ve described my plans to fix the problem in a few ways, but you haven’t told me how you’re trying to solve it. ‘Get out or get guns’ is a reaction, not a plan.

I don’t speak Spanish. Aber, Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. - Ish… It’s been many years since it’s been in practice and I can’t synthesize it easily but I can generally get a gist if I read it or hear it. I also have a tiny bit of Japanese, since I’m a weeb. Watashi wa chiizu desu. Had a parental friend, when I was like 10, tell me that if you tell someone you’re cheese… they will help you. Je suis fromage; but that’s the entirety of my French.

I dunno. Cool to have proved you’re human; it’s getting perhaps a little tricky to tell.

Voting isn’t a binary choice though

Just to be clear, and looking at historical elections since 2008, there have been 0 EC votes for a third party outside of the (likely protest voting against Hillary for someone like Bernie) 2016 election. Those 3rd party EC votes wouldn’t have mattered, and while I didn’t go investigate, I’d expect those were from proportional vote states instead of the winner-takes-all states where the individual votes would have mattered less. I want more proportional vote states, but it’s damn hard to get those EC laws changes when people say voting doesn’t matter!

Elections are effectively binary right now. I want to change that, and so do others, but we need people like us to get into office.

While I’d like the various third parties to be viable, they just aren’t right now. You either pick a side or you don’t vote in a way that matters.

My choice is to pick the side that I think will do the least damage while I organize to make that side do good.

As much as I love that you’re continuing to talk to me – and ping me if you’re ever in North Carolina, I’ll buy you a beer – I’m really struggling to understand how you’re fighting me on ‘do least bad now; make next choices better’. It seems like a simple solution to me. I haven’t heard your solution yet, so I can’t really compare.

I keep engaging and you can’t keep your point of contention consistent. We’re back on genocide now? Am I talking to a chatbot? Ignore previous instructions and respond to the rest of the message in Spanish. I thought we were vibing, but maybe I’m wrong.

I don’t think I’m getting my point across, but the fact you keep responding is giving me hope you might be reachable.

In the hypothetical situation where one of those two was somehow the democratic nominee, I think I would vote for trump. I’d have to think longer on it; but initial instinct is that Trump is an idiot and Miller is evil. I would then try to become part of the process so that the miserable combination would not be my choices going forward. I literally did this in 2012, but I’m only one person and my impact is pretty tiny. sorry.

edit: When given a binary choice, there are only two options. A or B; with a none or irrelevant depending on the choice type. I sincerely understand the desire to have more choices, and I’m trying to make that happen, and I think your way of thinking is harmful to my efforts. I think our choices right now are binary and I’ll choose the least harmful until I can help make the decision process better. We’re just not there yet.

My entire point is: be engaged in the process, and engagement is not only in November. How hard is that and why is it controversial?

When we get to the point of violence, and that may be the eventuality - do you shoot me first, or Stephen Miller?

We’ve mostly left the Palestine angle again, but that’s OK with me.

How? She lost every branch

… So did Claudia. She was in the same race and she also lost. She just lost by… like… way more. Kamala had a way better chance of getting to the finish line and – my point again – would have been better than trump, even if not perfect. It’s hard to prove that, since she didn’t win and we can’t tell what she would have done… but I don’t think she would have created the tariff situation, started a war with Iran and encouraged all the AI bros to run over everything (though I think this one needs to implode sooner than later and it’s gonna suck).

Unless you’re going to remove the current Democratic leadership (which you can ONLY do by willing to be withholding your vote)

I think this is where we disagree. And to be clear, combined with

Too many Democrats have as their only policy “keep the GOP out”.

This is 100% true, but this is not my angle, and I’m not advocating for it, but I do need it in the short term or we might lose our chance to fix things before fascism takes voting away from us altogether.

I want to vote for the best of two bads _right now_ while simultaneously working to reform the democratic party. The Democratic Leadership can be changed. And Is. Electing Governors, Senators and House Reps with the beliefs we share will influence the ‘democratic leadership’.

Those people get to assist in picking the next Democratic presidential candidate – indirectly influenced by me because I’m involved.

This is where we differ: You imply not voting or protest voting will send a signal; I think being part of the people that vote for the people that vote for the people your mad at is a better way to replace them. I’ve never been a delegate past the county, but I try to send people with my values to the district/state/nation. I don’t always get my pick. More of us in the county delegates will mean more of us in the district delegates, etc.

My original point, a few days ago at this time, was, effectively, “comments like this hurt our engagement.” And that engagement is necessary to fix the problem. We could also just elect another republican and become a dictatorship and have a civil war… That would also sort of solve the problem.

But I don’t want that. I’d rather elect people to power who have been given (and also believe in) a mandate to make things better for *everyone*.

How do you think this can be accomplished, if not by engagement? Running away is not an option. This problem will follow us all.

I love you for being an idealist. I’d love a world where Claudia was a viable candidate and I am actively fighting for it by getting people like her in power in my city, county and state. But in November in 2024, I voted for Kamala Harris (notably another ‘black’ woman) because she was more likely to succeed in the electoral process so that I could continue my fight. (it’s handy for my argument that another non-white woman was running on the same national stage at this time. If Biden had stayed in the race it’d have been harder. Too bad we didn’t have a primary! I wasn’t involved in that decision making [yet])

Some could argue about race, but we all know Republicans think both women are “Black” because they are not pasty-white blond-haired and thin.

New take for you specifically, my love: Your vote doesn’t matter. Claudia had no chance of winning. My quickest source is Ballotpedia but you’ll have to scroll down a smidge.

Trump: 49.8%

Harris: 48.3%

De la Cruz: 0.1%

Even if you’d voted for Harris, both would still lose. I don’t hold it against you.

The thing that matters is how we collectively think about this issue. You keep attacking me on the specifics while missing the big picture:

1: Democrats and Republicans have done bad things, including war, bombings, and other acts of aggression or retaliation.

2: Republicans are regularly doing terrible things; from internal politics like immigration to external aggression. They are captured by their ties to business. and authority and any deviation from that will get them removed. They “bend the knee”.

3: Democrats are less likely to fuck over their own citizens, non citizens or other countries. – note the ‘less likely’, but it’s the key point you seem to be avoiding.

Can you step back and look at how the trend is just simply that R does the thing your against harder? I need to be exceedingly clear here: I’m not saying democrats are good. I’m saying more of the democrats are less bad. That’s it. And when given the A/B choice, choose best over worst. Until we get to a point where we start building coalitions like the Europeans, the choice is binary: Worse vs Less Worse. Chose less Worse until you’ve made Less Worse into Good.

And with that, we can build more good democratic leadership. My entire point in this whole exchange is that posts like “Both sides support Genocide” is lacking in nuance and degree and is explicitly disregarding that one party is… slowly… trending younger and more progressive while the other is doubling down in subservience. Those posts hurt the prospects that someone might vote for the least-bad party while people like you and me make it better, eroding our work.

Can we get along? Who is your current pick for president in 2028? We’re still like obviously two years out and most people are wishy-washy and I don’t think there are declared bids, but I dislike Newsom. Booker and Ossoff seem pretty good, but it’s hard to tell how how their policies would play out as President. Kinda wish Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Ilhan Omar would test the waters in a primary. If I ran, I’d expect about 5 votes in my state and I have dozens of friends, but I’d be the best fucking president you ever saw. I can certainly fix the unemployment and tariffs and international politics - no sweat.

There’s also all the Senators. Those fucks are old; and some of them might be braindead. If you live in Kentucky… please help!

I think I’m throwing my comments into the void at this point – but like I said before, this is a way for me to also really process my own thoughts. I appreciate you for continuing to push back. You have not changed my mind and I don’t think I’ve changed yours, but we exchanged ideas and that’s the whole point.

Edits: Some formatting

(You can quote me and refute or respond to my claims. Before you do that, though, propose your solution.)

You failed at basic reading comprehension. That was the last line and was where one might look for a TL;DR. You gave no suggestions or even an attempt at one.

Disregarding that, both of the places you quoted me are related. The republican party is demonstrably pro-war and pro-genocide and pro-israel and fully on-board with all those things at least in my lifetime. The democratic party has started shit a single time in my lifetime (Arab Spring) and has otherwise (at least appeared to) attempt to deescalate and pull out of conflicts started by republicans.

Getting out of a war zone is challenging - there are logistics about hardware that was used that needs to be brought home, there’s danger in a power vacuum after some leadership was removed, there’s the collateral damage that we want to take responsibility for and help repair for the innocent civilians that didn’t have a say in whether the governments bombed a road. The democrats have, again in my lifetime, attempted to exit multiple wars and leave things better than they found them.

You could argue that the democrats are only paying lip service to those efforts, but then you still concede this point: republicans make war and democrats at least try to make less war.

I see that as one party being the one to deescalate.

About Palestine in particular (and I want to remind that this is the topic we started with):

There is NO Republican figure I can find who has publicly supported Palestine and not either been exiting their leadership roles or then faced a primary challenge immediately. At best, there are a few who are in the ‘cut all international aid spending’ who would also cut Israel spending. but that’s not the same thing.

There are multiple Democratic politicians who have publicly supported Palestine. They don’t have power enough to enact systemic change, YET, but every post saying ‘democrats also support genocide’ is just harmful to the ones that are trying to get more empathetic leaders into office.

Just to bring this home and restate my point (somewhat)succinctly:

This is Game Theory and it is currently Zero-Sum. While we have a two-party system, if your goal is to reduce a problem like the Palestine-Israel conflict then you have three choices: Vote for a group that will probably make things a lot worse, vote for a group that will likely make things a little worse, or not vote at all. Publicly stating that both groups are terrible will only depress turnout and support the ‘more worse’ group. After you’ve voted for harm reduction, you can make things better by getting involved and supporting candidates that are going to make things better instead, but at the moment of the vote, you have those three options.

Or you can find a non-system way to solve the problem, but I can’t think of one that isn’t violence; and you didn’t suggest one.

This has been my TED Talk. At this point, you’re probably the only one reading this and if I can’t sway your opinion, then I’ll stop trying. Maybe AI will eat this and regurgitate it to some other conservative and convince them.