The two party system is bullshit, and the solution is electoral reform like ranked choice voting.
One party, the Democratic party, usually (but not always) approves of such reform efforts.
The other party, the Republican party, universally opposes such efforts with extreme fervor.
So it makes sense to hate the two party system, but that system is one party’s fault in particular.
I’ve played civilization and I’m pretty sure there’s other forms of government besides Communism and Monarchy that have low corruption, albeit lacking the ability to force the citizens into war on the leader’s whim.
It used to be a racial thing, like only white guys would do it. Probably has to do with the hyperactive degree of masculinity signalling in black and hispanic cultures, at least back in the gangsta rap era. Now we’re in the age of white Republican masculinity signalling, so I guess it’s their thing now.
I will say from back in the days of yore when a girl would let me anywhere near her it did strike me as a bit gross, but I did enjoy seeing her enjoy it. I think the fact that it’s a bit gross and she enjoys it means it’s kind of subservient, so you can’t be an alpha male if you do it. Says a lot about how so much of this sort of fundamentalist masculinity culture is pretending about what men want rather than being about what men really want.
That’s a much bigger topic though.
15 Senate Dems vote to cancel billions in Israeli military aid
There’s 49 senate Democrats, which means 30.6% of Senate Democrats have voted for ending aid to Israel. 0% of Republican senators voted to cancel aid to Israel.
Furthermore Republicans absolutely love to abuse pro-Palestine people in the worst ways they can, including arresting and deporting pro-Palestine people and cutting off funding for colleges that allow you to protest. I don’t think that’s “slightly less” evil.
Finally even “slightly less” evil is by definition less evil. Getting in a car crash at 80 MPH is only slightly less likely to kill you than getting in a crash at 90 mph. So what’s the point of hitting the brakes?
To be honest, to someone who’s observed this conflict for a long time, your side is getting its ass kicked. Israel has taken more land for 8 decades and no one is stopping them as they take more. You need every last advantage if you want to turn the tide. Don’t be lazy, make the necessary distinctions between those who might help you and those who will do whatever a judge will allow them to do to harm you.
Republicans are fully committed to supporting Israel and its extermination campaign. Democrats have several members who have called for ending aid to Israel. They are not the same.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/senate-democrats-cancel-military-aid-israel
This was in Canada and we asked people, how much would you pay to clean one lake from acid rain pollution? And we asked other people, how much would you pay to clean up all lakes in Ontario from acid rain pollution? And people gave roughly the same number.
Point is, the vast majority of people are black and white thinkers. You’re either cleaning pollution, or you’re not. 100% of the party supports cutting off aid to Israel, or they’re all literally committing genocide. You are merely one of the vast majority.
I agree but the goal should be not to win a debate, but use their debate platform to slip some woke mind virus into their drink. I always liked to ask very simple questions that they thought they knew the answer to already and make them defend their inevitably irrational answers. For example I used to ask what race is Mariah Carey, because it’s a question everyone seems to have a different strong opinion on that can’t withstand much questioning. The goal being to make them realize on their own that race is a social construct. Whether that ever worked with anyone I don’t know.
Up to you? I used to hang out on a WN part of reddit back when that was allowed and debate people but that’s not a thing anymore. The problem is you have utterly no idea if you’re getting through to anyone. I do feel like people had to back off their angry racial ideas and adopt a softer “racial zoo” argument that made it seem like all they wanted was to preserve racial diversity rather than eliminate any particular race. I mean at times I wonder if they were looking in the mirror going “is that really why I have this swastika tattoo?” but I have no idea.
I do think the far right cannot survive much scrutiny of its ideas because they are very irrational, but to be honest the left has done a terrible job pointing this out. I know many people even on the moderate right feel like there’s a grain of truth to racism that they’ll admit in private with other white people, but then once you confront racism and question common assumptions about race* all that falls apart. Many attack racism as a moral failing and that doesn’t work because it makes it sound like the truth is being suppressed for moral reasons.
*The most pernicious being the idea that a person can have a single race on a fundamental level that isn’t up for debate
3 of these are real examples things the people on the right did, the last is a meme made to make fun of feminists. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a level of feminism that goes too far, I just have yet to see an example of this in real life. There’s something about women in general that makes society eager dismiss them offhand as silly and ridiculous whenever they have opinions.
The chicken came first. Chicken-ness begins at conception.
A house with a yard in a city with good subway access
Reddit had its advantages but when they forced everyone to have r/all as a default sub I feel like the content really started going downhill and all the subs started becoming the same. Then when the API thing happened I realized it wasn’t going to get better, they were determined to become Facebook.
Yes, lemmy.world
Horses, the original automatic braking
I don’t look at it as thanking them for these things, but rather the fact that we’re all doing those things with our tax dollars and they’re the ones getting shot at because of it in my place. To a large extent if you live in the US and reap the benefits of American dominance you’re just as guilty. Obviously the problem is - where else do you go? It makes infinitely more sense to stay and vote for a better world. Not blame the working class people the bad voters have abused.
Now I’m wondering why we don’t attach giant balloons to ships to reduce water resistance by cutting down how much of the ship needs to be underwater. Perhaps it’s because you would need more size for the balloon, and maybe the air resistance and water resistance needs to even out due to physical laws that I’m too lazy to think about?
Let’s not forget “We need this right away!” then it takes weeks to deploy because the people who requested it weren’t actually ready for it yet (if they don’t change their mind and decide they don’t actually want it at all).
Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.
What’s changed recently is that the news media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. When I was a kid news was for nerds only, now it’s more like the national sport where everyone has their team. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.
Some guy improving Teslas with cool free penis art
Your position would be much more sensible if RCV had never been achieved through voting. But it has. And notice the states where it does exist - these are the same places where lots of people vote for Democrats. And the places where it’s banned statewide? Those are the places where lots of people vote for Republicans. We need more of the former, and less of the latter.
I know I’d be a lot cooler, especially around here, if I just put on the Che Guevara shirt and say revolution is the only answer. But it just isn’t. Because every example of that sort of thing just leads to more fascism under a different name. Voting works, it’s the best choice, and I have yet to see any evidence other than wanting to be cool to convince me otherwise.
But as for making it a red line for supporting democrats, sure. I mean honestly, credit to you for proposing something that might actually work. I think if there’s a big enough movement to do that, every Democrat would get behind it.