If what you’re seeing doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is in your interpretation?
It sounds like you see R promising “bad thing” and D promising “less-bad thing, but we will move right next time” and so you want to just give up because both options are bad.
But I think this involves viewing the parties as monolithic entities that you have no control over (as seen in “the Democratic Part Elite kept out Bernie”) when they’re actually just composed of people. An important factor is that the American people on average are much more conservative/authoritarian/pro-corporation than typical Europeans. Somewhat by history, somewhat by US-sourced indoctrination, somewhat by foreign-sourced indoctrination.
When I see real-life progressives, they’re always taking the most-progressive available action of the moment. In the moment of a US presidential election in a swing state, that most-progressive action may be voting for the slightly-less-bad candidate. But voting for a candidate doesn’t tie them to that candidate’s policies and they can spend the majority of their time and effort focused on progress.
When I see online progressives(?), they’re primarily concerned with giving up: tearing down other progressives’ efforts because they’re not progressive enough but not offering an alternative. The result of this, intended or not, is a populous who doesn’t offer resistance to authoritarianism and probably welcomes it in the end.
There’s nothing “progressive” about supporting genocide.
From the moment I reached the age of reason, I was outraged at the pointless wars of aggression being waged in the Middle East, wars that were supported by the vast majority of the Democratic party. Even when we got a supposedly “progressive” president, Obama, he doubled down on the killing and bloodshed. For twenty years I have been told this lesser evilist nonsense, as the bodies piled higher and higher. Then, almost as soon as the bipartisan forever wars came to a close, they merely shifted focus to killing other Middle Easterners in Palestine through the proxy of Israel, at an even greater intensity than before. Twenty years of patiently waiting, twenty years of no progress being made whatsoever, twenty years of killing for no benefit to anyone but arms manufactures and oil companies, twenty years of Americans never getting a real chance to vote on whether it should continue because both parties supported it, and you have the audacity to call yourself a progressive, and to attack me as not a real progressive, when you’re the one that’s perfectly fine with that?
Maybe you should have been doing something other than waiting patiently for twenty years. I don’t know why people expect something to happen when they do nothing.
Oh, of course, something! If only I had thought to do something, the wars would’ve been stopped, the Patriot Act repealed, and Guantanamo Bay shut down. And the solution is so obvious, staring me right in the face: something.
Maybe the difficulty you’re having is that you want to judge all action as good (it results in a perfect world) or bad (it does not result in a perfect world) and so inaction becomes the only safe course.
The Patriot Act wasn’t created by a single individual. Not only did it require hundreds of powerful politicians working together, but many hundreds of administrative workers, tens of thousands of government employees to apply it, and millions of American voters who approved of it.
Some of the authoritarians behind the Patriot Act were, I’m sure, disappointed at how gentle it is and how few rights it strips away. But they still worked hard every day to enact it and I think you agree that it’s played a role in making America more authoritarian and more willing to accept greater loss of rights.
Do you think it’s possible to make change in the other direction in the same way? Through imperfect, compromised, incremental changes? If not, why do you suppose this only works in one direction?
No, of course not. You just explained exactly what I would have to do to make that happen: something. I don’t see how the course of action could possibly be clearer.
If what you’re seeing doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is in your interpretation?
It sounds like you see R promising “bad thing” and D promising “less-bad thing, but we will move right next time” and so you want to just give up because both options are bad.
But I think this involves viewing the parties as monolithic entities that you have no control over (as seen in “the Democratic Part Elite kept out Bernie”) when they’re actually just composed of people. An important factor is that the American people on average are much more conservative/authoritarian/pro-corporation than typical Europeans. Somewhat by history, somewhat by US-sourced indoctrination, somewhat by foreign-sourced indoctrination.
When I see real-life progressives, they’re always taking the most-progressive available action of the moment. In the moment of a US presidential election in a swing state, that most-progressive action may be voting for the slightly-less-bad candidate. But voting for a candidate doesn’t tie them to that candidate’s policies and they can spend the majority of their time and effort focused on progress.
When I see online progressives(?), they’re primarily concerned with giving up: tearing down other progressives’ efforts because they’re not progressive enough but not offering an alternative. The result of this, intended or not, is a populous who doesn’t offer resistance to authoritarianism and probably welcomes it in the end.
There’s nothing “progressive” about supporting genocide.
From the moment I reached the age of reason, I was outraged at the pointless wars of aggression being waged in the Middle East, wars that were supported by the vast majority of the Democratic party. Even when we got a supposedly “progressive” president, Obama, he doubled down on the killing and bloodshed. For twenty years I have been told this lesser evilist nonsense, as the bodies piled higher and higher. Then, almost as soon as the bipartisan forever wars came to a close, they merely shifted focus to killing other Middle Easterners in Palestine through the proxy of Israel, at an even greater intensity than before. Twenty years of patiently waiting, twenty years of no progress being made whatsoever, twenty years of killing for no benefit to anyone but arms manufactures and oil companies, twenty years of Americans never getting a real chance to vote on whether it should continue because both parties supported it, and you have the audacity to call yourself a progressive, and to attack me as not a real progressive, when you’re the one that’s perfectly fine with that?
Maybe you should have been doing something other than waiting patiently for twenty years. I don’t know why people expect something to happen when they do nothing.
Oh, of course, something! If only I had thought to do something, the wars would’ve been stopped, the Patriot Act repealed, and Guantanamo Bay shut down. And the solution is so obvious, staring me right in the face: something.
Maybe the difficulty you’re having is that you want to judge all action as good (it results in a perfect world) or bad (it does not result in a perfect world) and so inaction becomes the only safe course.
The Patriot Act wasn’t created by a single individual. Not only did it require hundreds of powerful politicians working together, but many hundreds of administrative workers, tens of thousands of government employees to apply it, and millions of American voters who approved of it.
Some of the authoritarians behind the Patriot Act were, I’m sure, disappointed at how gentle it is and how few rights it strips away. But they still worked hard every day to enact it and I think you agree that it’s played a role in making America more authoritarian and more willing to accept greater loss of rights.
Do you think it’s possible to make change in the other direction in the same way? Through imperfect, compromised, incremental changes? If not, why do you suppose this only works in one direction?
No, of course not. You just explained exactly what I would have to do to make that happen: something. I don’t see how the course of action could possibly be clearer.