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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 13th, 2024

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  • People elect representatives to represent them, not to compromise and pass the opposition’s agenda.

    It’s forgivable if the representative failed to obtain enough power, but if they have literally any means at their disposal and don’t use it, an unwillingness to use all the power the people gave them to do what they elected them to do is a betrayal of those people.



  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlThe Lesser Evil
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    7 hours ago

    The criticisms of the dem party don’t amount to “let the right win”, they amount to “the DNC prevents any political resistance to the right, they either need to be coup’d or destroyed if we want to stop the right from winning”




  • Lefties had nowhere else to go

    See, you’re working under the idea that everyone votes for the candidate that’s ideologically closest to them.

    By that understanding, running against the furthest-right candidate possible, and triangulating yourself to be 1 inch to the left of them should get you the entire electorate, except for the tiny percent of people who are more rightwing than Donald Trump.

    This is observably false, hence why democrats eat shit when they move to the right as they did in 2016 and 2024 (and in most midterms).

    In reality, every time you compromise a position or means-test a policy, you lose votes. “New parents will get $5,000” will always perform better than “new parents who fill out a this form and are making less than $50K and whose SSN is a prime number may be eligible for a tax break up to $5,000”

    Anybody who likes the idea of parents getting money will support the first, and anybody who opposes it will oppose both. But there’s a big chunk of people who will like the first, and won’t care about the second.

    Same reason “Free healthcare” will always perform better than “subsidies for health insurance for pell grant recipients who open a business in an minority neighborhood that operates for at least 2 years”


  • IQ only measures how good you are at taking IQ tests. They recalibrate score every year to maintain the same distribution of scores within a year. (they change what each question is worth so every year 50% of tests get above 100, 40% of tests are between 85 and 100, 40% of tests are between 100 and 115, etc.)

    The impact is that they have to make the tests harder every year. If you applied modern standards to 1920, the average score would be ~70.

    What makes more sense to you, that 8/10 people today would be considered near-geniuses 100 years ago, or we got much better at taking IQ tests?




  • No, fascism isn’t when you break rules to be effective in government.

    Would you call FDR a fascist?

    Republicans care more about open-carrying to committee meetings than to get anything actually done

    So go around them. Did you learn nothing from Obama giving the republicans half of the discretionary budget to appeal to their better nature, which the republicans voted against anyway? Or the compromised republican healthcare plan, Obamacare? West wing-brained libs claimed this was a stroke of genius, because everyone would see how civil and reasonable the dems were by reaching across the aisle.

    And then the dems got blown the fuck out in 2010 because republicans saw their representatives fighting for them, and dem voters saw their representatives unilaterally passing republican policy despite having a super majority in the house and senate.


  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mltomemes@lemmy.worldHey US, we did it four years ago
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    9 days ago

    So either Dems have to go low, and lower the bar further, bend the rules more, and be just as guilty of breaking democracy

    If you were elected to do X, and the rules get in the way, it’s antidemocratic to let them stop you.

    Every time the democrats used the parliamentarian or the villain of the week or the republicans or norms or rules they themselves set in the senate as an excuse to do what their voters want (and their donors don’t want), they are breaking democracy.

    Democrats don’t have to be perfect, they have to be effective. Republicans are effective, but only to do bad things. Democrats do manage to be effective sometimes, but only to do bad things, such as when Biden went around congress to keep arms shipments flowing to Israel.




  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter

    Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.

    Note that Hamas is not the only Palestinian faction, but as the one everyone sees fighting Israel, the other factions, and the people of Gaza support them. When the people of Palestine are no longer fighting for their existence, I have no doubt they will support more secular factions as they did before.


  • But killing and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians is. You have to be clear about that

    I am being clear.

    Would you condemn the Polish resistance because they killed some of the German settlers who came to settle Poland during the 1940s? The South African anti-apartheid movement because they burned some Boers and their collaborators alive? Or would you say the oppressor doesn’t get to judge the morality of the tactics the oppressed use?

    Requiring every antizionist to constantly stop to condemn Hamas creates a false equivalency between the people who are inside a concentration camp and the people keeping them there.

    That is my dream. Just people living together peacefully, no matter their religion.

    This is what existed before Israel, and god willing, it’s what we’ll have after Israel.


  • Great-grandchildren are being punished because their relatives (might) have fought against Israel

    Fighting against settler colonists who came and established an apartheid regime is not a crime.

    I am only criticizing the Israeli government, […] Israel in general

    Israel is a settler colonial project, an Israel that provided equal rights to all Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in its territory would be less related to the current state of Israel than modern South Africa is to Apartheid South Africa.

    not Jews

    Yes, we agree that it’s antisemitic as fuck to associate Jewishness with Zionism. When Israel is murdering children in public view, implying that Israel represents Jews is just blood libel with extra steps.