Grifters grifting grifters lol.

Voting isn’t actually support

On the other hand, making a deliberate choice not to act does mean supporting whatever happens without your action

Interesting. So, by drag’s logic, a Trump voter isn’t responsible for supporting Trump, but a nonvoter is.

It’s amusing to see the kinds of ridiculous knots y’all tie yourselves into trying to twist around language in an attempt to resolve your cognitive dissonance and punch left.

What answer is that? All I’m doing here is interrogating your worldviews, and it seems I’ve found a pretty significant bit of cognitive dissonance, haven’t I?

Not an answer to my question.

Are you asking which of the two major parties in the US is the “second” party, making the US more democratic than if there were a single party?

Yes, that is what I’m asking. To say that having more than one party makes our system more democratic means that there must be at least two parties whose existence both make the system more democratic. So, does the Republican party, whose candidate tried to overturn an election, make the system more democratic? Does the Green party, which the person I responded to said should face legal retribution for their role as a “spoiler,” make the system more democratic? Maybe the Libertarian party? Which one?

First off you didn’t answer the question, second off you put words in my mouth saying that I’m “fixating” on that as “the only possible change.”

Roger that, you can’t answer because your worldview is incoherent.

Downvoters are welcome to answer the question too. Too bad none of them can either 💅

Quick question: is the US more or less democratic than if it were a one party state, and if the answer is more, then which other party is it that makes it more democratic?

Could do worse tbh.

Just one more year of occupation bro. I promise bro just one more year and it’ll fix everything bro. Bro. Just one more year. Please just one more. One more year and we can fix this whole problem bro. Bro cmon just give me one more year I promise bro. Bro please I just need one more year.

Liberals oppose war challenge level: impossible.

Of course, it has nothing to do with corporate money or higher prices for consumers, it’s purely the people not participating in the system of abuse who are the problem. Very logical and definitely not just a defense mechanism.

Oops, you forgot to answer my question again.

Cut the crap. It’s plain as day what’s happening here - you want to discredit the people who are actually doing things in order to make yourself feel better about not doing anything. It’s just a defense mechanism, and the person you’re really trying to fool us yourself.

Whomst amongus could’ve predicted that you couldn’t answer?

Oh, which candidate that supports those things you mentioned were you going to vote for but now aren’t? Love to hear even a single name.

Of course, you can’t answer that, because that’s not a realistic path in the short term. Let’s say you were going to run for office on that platform. First, the major corporations that have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are are going to dump money into the opposition. Second, people will oppose it because it would increase the price of meat - they’ll say you’re an elitist who wants to make it so that only the rich can have access to it, and emphasize the effect it’ll have on grocery bills. They’ll also talk about the environmental impact your regulations would cause, since it would take more land to treat animals humanely. And they will also call you a hypocrite for refusing to give up meat while calling the production process unethical, to the point of being deserving of jail time.

So explain to me how exactly you would’ve overcome those obstacles, if only us mean insidious vegans weren’t so preoccupied with asking you to give up your treats.

Thoughts and prayers? No. Fines. Potentially jailtime. Potentially forcing them to sell farms and factories.

And how do you intend to implement those things? Thoughts and prayers.

Sources that I’d prefer to regulate in terms of animal rights, but every time that comes up, you people divert the conversation to “if you’re not gonna be vegan you’re evil either way so it doesn’t matter” and everyone tunes out.

Pack it up, vegans. This person was going to wish upon a star to regulate animal agriculture, which would’ve done it, but we just had to go and advocate for making material changes on a level we have control over, and that forced them to be explicitly fine with abuse. If only we had your thoughts and prayers, what a horrible miscalculation on our part.

I never claimed that the Republicans are not unreasonable. As you say, the Tea Party was very unreasonable, and republicans at that time stonewalled Obama, despite his all of his attempts at reasonable compromise. That’s my point, it isn’t new.

My issue is that the narrative of reasonableness is tied to the status quo. When the status quo is failing, then people will be more prone to drastic changes then staying the course. If the two sides are “the status quo” and “not the status quo,” then the worse the status quo gets, the more prone people will be to consider the “not the status quo” option. If you think things are generally headed in the right direction, I suppose that’s fine, but if you feel, as I do, that conditions are deteriorating, then that’s a problem, and if that continues, then it becomes inevitable that the strongest “not the status quo” option is going to win, whether now or later.

That’s why I think it’s a better strategy for the left to embrace progressive policies in a very bold way, in order to present an alternative vision of the future that is distinct from both the status quo and the far-right. Those policies would be the best chance of setting us on a positive path that would prevent things from falling into chaos, while also offering an alternative to the failing capitalist status quo that isn’t fascism. Because the road we’re on currently makes fascism an inevitability.

If what you say is true, and the democrats are now assured victory on the basis of being the only reasonable party left, then why is this election still a toss-up?

The democrats have been pushing that angle with Trump since 2015, and with republicans in general before that.

“Reasonableness” is at the core of democratic messaging, and that’s a problem because what that does is allow the right to set priorities and values uncontested. Bush went into Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama didn’t stop that, he just said he would conduct the war in a more “reasonable” way. The same thing with Biden’s attempted immigration bill that would’ve expanded the executive’s ability to crack down on immigrants, the idea that cracking down on immigrants is necessary is uncontested, it’s just about doing it in a more “reasonable” way. And when someone’s electoral pitch is being reasonable, it puts them in a weaker position because they’re expected to be reasonable and willing to compromise even when the other side stonewalls them, which republicans always do.

Apart from those things being bad, it’s also not really an effective strategy. Many people are more concerned with whether a politician is on their side and representing their interests rather than whether they are being reasonable. On top of that, many Americans are straight-up anti-intellectual and so the reasonableness angle doesn’t resonate with them. And there’s a certain extent to which reasonableness is socially defined, and so if the current system isn’t working for people and they want it to change, then they’re probably not going to be concerned with existing norms of what is and isn’t reasonable. Essentially, the reasonableness angle can at least potentially come across as elitist.

The democrats squeaked out a win with that angle in 2020, in the middle of Trump’s terrible mishandling of the pandemic, and it’s possible that they’ll squeak out another one now, but if reasonableness was such an effective angle then every election against Trump should’ve been an absolute blowout.

Other countries’ affairs should be a bigger deal in our elections. If the US is going to play world police, then it ought to represent the people it’s policing. Since those people can’t vote, US citizens have a responsibility to learn and understand things from a global perspective and to place their interests on equal level to that of our own. If the US wasn’t so intimately involved in other countries’ affairs, you might have a point, but as it stands, prioritizing one’s own concerns over the people who are being killed and oppressed in our names is unethical and undemocratic.

Also, with just the money we’ve sent to Israel, we could end homelessness. Also, many of our police travel to Israel to be trained in their methods. The violence there also creates refugees which affects immigration. There are lots of domestic issues that are affected by foreign affairs.

Bush is up there but if Netanyahu hasn’t already passed him, he definitely will as the genocide continues.