How’s that been working so far?

The American left has been refusing to vote for Democrats because they are not left enough since 1972, roughly speaking. Has it pulled the Democrats to the left yet?

Blame can be shared. It’s absolutely true that the Democrats like to run shit candidates, because Washington is a putrefying swamp of corruption and very few people who work there give a shit what happens to anyone let alone brown people halfway across the world. It’s also true that people who talk mainly about “refusing to vote for Democrats” thinking that’s going to be a useful strategy for improving anything are making the problem worse.

It’s not an either-or thing, where the first thing absolves someone of blame for the second. Just because the smoke alarms don’t work… doesn’t mean, the person setting fires on purpose, that all of a sudden it’s not his fault that the building’s currently on fire.

Don’t forget climate change and justice for working people.

Oh, and attempted genocide in Ukraine.

Oh, and also, that one of the central problems the Democrats have is that their consultants constantly lie to them about what will work to win elections, what the American people think, what policies are “popular” and things like that. The idea that if we just keep not voting for them, they’ll figure it out and stop supporting genocide so they can win elections again, is incredibly unlikely. All the Palestinians will be dead before it works. It is mired in a kind of “my only input to the system is voting” mindset which is pretty much guaranteed to failure. Very few people in Washington give a shit if people stop voting as a “protest” movement or w/e, they love it, it helps them consolidate their hold on power with even less input from the humane segments of the public.

If you wanted justice for Palestinian people there are about 50 things on the list that you could take vigorous action on that would produce some measurable chance of good outcomes, whereas with these guys it always seems to begin and end with not voting for Democrats. The only impact of which will be an increase in suffering and death of which there was already no shortage at all.

Glad you have the luxury. Meanwhile, “I will never through inaction let someone come to power who wants to torture or expel anyone who opposes him, and also supports Israel way more and has been overseeing Americans directly participating in war crimes instead of just standing on the side giving weapons, and also is opposed to fighting climate change among many other horrifying outcomes” is over on the sidelines, neglected.

And in the meantime people are dying both in Gaza (at an accelerated pace) and in CECOT, and in Louisiana, and soon, in your town. Quite soon.

This is vital context. They didn’t disable his truck because he talked trash about it. He loves his Cybertruck. They disabled it because he’s black and dances around like a black person while he’s talking about it, and that means he’s not welcome at the party. If he was Tim Pool making a song about how much he loves his Cybertruck they’d have invited him to the next event to put it on stage.

Oooooh! That hadn’t even occurred to me. I thought it was just garden variety shitty behavior. I think you’re right, though.

I also see the appearance of thelemmy.club (which as far as I can tell is now, whatever it started out as, a full-time conservative troll instance at this point) as interesting there.

Dude, go fuck yourself.

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/long-covid-mecfs-and-the-importance-of-studying-infection-associated-illnesses

There are entire things in the world that you haven’t heard of. I know it’s hard to conceive of, but these things happen.

There are some fucking ridiculous people in these comments lol

Were you aware of this? I was not. Anyway, I edited the title; how’s that seem?

It is hard to get account-banned from Reddit. Like mad hard. I mean, I’m not up on current events over there, maybe things have changed and they brand you as “antisemitic” and ban your account sometimes, but I feel like much more likely is that this is a you issue.

No, everyone doesn’t deserve a second chance. Certainly not everyone deserves a fourth chance, on the same platform.

motivates a lot of shitty behavior

Indeed

You are pretty much completely correct, though. It is (or should be) only mildly infuriating.

It’s not just trolling and drama though. I just don’t feel like ceding the narrative space to whoever can pull off the most clever ruse. Like, the truth is important. I know hoping for the internet to be reasonable and trusted is hopeless, but it just bugs me to see people deliberately spinning up this (very effective) total alternate reality about something that matters, on purpose, and having other people buy into it. To this very slight extent, I’m infuriated by it.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. “It’s just one simple job,” they said…

It also got people thinking in a different direction than “I agree with this” and “I disagree with this” as the main meaning of the vote.

At this point, I think most mainstream social media is corrupted enough by the dopamine loop that it’s fairly predictable that most of the comments would be taken over by it as well. Reddit comments used to be more informative than the article a lot of the time.

Think of all the stuff they are breathing…

I would have thought that that applied to the Uber wrongful death suit also, but at least one court decided that type of click-through terms were binding even though it was clearly a bunch of shit.

Although, it was overturned later because it’s a bunch of shit. But it was at least a debate.

https://evan.law/2021/05/18/murdered-uber-passengers-mom-can-keep-her-case-in-court-and-out-of-arbitration/