Checks-and-balances rely on:

1. Voter interest in civic participation

2. Careerist politicians and bureaucrats

If voters have no civic interest and prefer masturbatory prejudices to serious consideration of civic duty, and if ‘careerist’ politicians are given immense power and wealth for stepping aside (either by retirement or by simple non-action when in office) thus rendering self-castration of their office personally meaningless to their career path/personal fortunes, checks and balances don’t mean shit.

All systems are reliant on a population’s willingness to obey and enforce their rules. We in the US, apparently, have very little appetite for that anymore.

I just found it online somewhere, almost certainly not from the source. Looking up the text sent me to

https://anomalousdata.tumblr.com/post/150635167243

As the four years of the Biden administration in the face of literal fascism showed, there are definite drawbacks to that approach.

It’s not usual procedure for evidence to be released to the public, and both Biden and his pick for the DoJ, Merrick Garland, were unimaginative precedent-driven ghouls who wouldn’t take a piss if it didn’t have a court case and bipartisan agreement in the past five years authorizing it.

Did you not follow the entire Obama-era policy on Gitmo?

It was attempted to be closed, multiple times.

I think it speaks more to how shallow policy questions tend to be.

Abstract policies are a notoriously poor way of polling for voting patterns.

But it seems most people don’t have a strong opinion on our New York boy, which is honestly the best we could ask for at this junction. May Zohran the DESTROYER’S enemies be DESTROYED Mamdani succeed and, for our sakes if not necessarily his, go on to national politics after. Gods know we need him.

It’ll pass in ten minutes. These cultists do not have the same values as people we would consider ‘normal’. This will not sway them any more than the past five dozen fucking times some fundamentally undeniable issue of hypocrisy in ultra-vile evil shite has come up.

What’s going to happen when maga finds out that everything they were groomed to believe in is all about the very people they listened to, trusted in and destroyed for

Nothing, just like the last 500 times this happened.

“Just cry harder, liberals are as bad as fascists” - acceptable, normal

[mocking this view] - UNACCEPTABLE, rude, how dare you be this unproductive 😭

Fucking listen to yourself, and maybe reflect on who and what you choose to tone police.

I can tell you, American liberals are just as much to blame for fascism as the uneducated morons brainwashed by it.

“D-don’t blame people who allowed fascism to take over… that’s mean… but FUCK those who tried to stop it, literally as bad as fascists!”

About the level of discourse I expect from Lemmy at this point.

Facts don’t matter. All up and down this thread is just utter disregard for any aspect of reality that contradicts the narrative.

We’re not any smarter than the fascists, apparently. Just less morally repugnant.

Yeah, but first you were talking about how the general populace was going right

They subsequently elected Starmer, of all people, didn’t they?

This idea that success (which maybe doesn’t require to form the next government) translates to a higher share in votes might be a statistical thing, but it’s not constructive, it just leads to opportunism.

I’m sorry, if Corbyn didn’t form a government, as majority or coalition partner, didn’t move politics in the UK left, nor politics in his own party left, nor moved demographics in the UK left… what kind of success are we looking at, here?

For the record, I’m not blaming Corbyn for this loss. Far from it. I’m only saying that going left is not enough

Yeah you can say that to suit your narrative, but it’s complete BS. In fact Corbyn had significantly more votes in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer in 2024.

Which governments did Labour form at the time, again?

The left has to convince voters, not follow them, wtf

Electoral success and convincing people are not mutually exclusive options; the former is an immensely powerful tool for the latter. Unless your plan is “Hand the gun over to the fascists, put it to your head, and hope that when they pull the trigger it will inspire the masses to spontaneously learn the words to the Internationale in their hearts and rise up against fascism”, it involves some amount of concessions to the majority of voters.

But sure, run on gay marriage in 1940 until you win, I’m sure the Black folk who are being lynched won’t mind waiting another few decades, nor will the unions seeking better conditions, nor the folks trying to stop social security from being repealed etc etc etc etc.

And when you ask them what performative outrage that is, their answer is generally less “They made minor economic concessions to the working class!” and more “They acknowledged that BROWN people and TRANS people have RIGHTS”

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You made no real argument whatsoever originally other than saying Obama wasnt a neoliberal president, which is just baseless and stupid.

Would you like to re-read my original response and point out where I said anything about the neoliberal characterization of Obama, or is that too arduous and trying a task to attempt?

You refuse to asses information from an article that well predates the Palestinian Genocide by a longshot and has nothing to do with the conflict whatsoever.

That’s not one of the several genocides that Jacobin denies, and thus not one of the ones I was talking about. Though, for that matter, the article certainly does not predate 1948.

Best of luck living with your head in the sand

What irony.

Oh fuck off dude, youre pathetic and you know it.

For… objecting to something that you said, and that you have been entirely incapable of mounting even a nominal defense of, probably because you’re aware that it was said as bad-faith bullshit with no grounding in reality?

Uh, okay.

If I wanted campist apologia from genocide deniers, I could read Jacobin rag on my own time. I’ll pass on someone trying to use it as a replacement for having thoughts of their own. I note that you didn’t actually respond to what I actually objected to,

He massively carried water for the whole “if I made it, anyone can” and “black people suffer from a culture of poverty” type of nonsense,

But I guess that would require you to defend the points you make, and wouldn’t that just be an awful fate?

when in reality they’re walking hand in hand with people that are pushing us to absolute limit of barely acceptable and then dangling what they’ve known they should’ve done forever ago in front of us when we’re finally at our breaking point.

Please, talk to some ordinary Americans sometime. Some of the real, salt-of-the-earth types who regularly and reliably vote, and who make up the majority of the country.

You know, morons.

“The Dems aren’t going left enough fast enough!” is not generally the refrain, even from those who do vote Dem.