Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.
Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:
Is a convicted felon.
Liable Sexual Predator.
Gets sentenced in November.
Has several more pending cases.
Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).
Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.
Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.
Wants war with Mexico (his words).
Tried to coup Venezuela.
Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.
Is the main driving force for America’s current division.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).
Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.
Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.
Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).
And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.
Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?
The Overton window has shifted dramatically in the last 10 years. He represents aversion to that
Propagandizing a proclaimed shift, and there being an actual shift are two different things.
Trump's side have proclaimed a shift which isn't actually a significant reality. Things change over a decade, but nothing notably significant has changed in terms of the over all running of the system, or the reproduction of culture/society.
It's mild progress being pushed by right wing propaganda as "civilization ending chaos".
I would be cautious about writing off an entire side's viewpoint as overdramatic. When they do that to the left, does anyone change their mind?
This is all about division.
We need to work on understanding the root cause of issues and working towards fixing that.
I think economics is actually at the core of the problem.
A lot of people don't have the basics right now, and they lash out at anything they can to try to fix it.
I didn't write them off as overly dramatic, nothing of the sort. They're dangerous (for some of the reasons you point to, division), and it's a very well organized, well funded, and well oiled machine that keeps them dangerous. Funded by technocratic and Libertarian billionaires.
So I agree with you, that it's an economic issue, but we can't just all sit down and "fix it" (that's a pipe dream) - you can't sit down with those invested think tank billionaires to solve the problem any more than you can play Jenga with someone who wants to smash the tower before it's built.
It doesn't work that way.
Thanks! Good response. I think it is always worth the effort to try and understand and talk to people and use words to convince them. I think everyone can be convinced, we just have to pull the right levers.
But if it's the community's opinion that that is not an option, and only violence is the answer. I have very low hopes for our country's future.
--- sorry for the wall of text
(Up to you whether you can be bothered reading it)
No offense, but when you say you believe in talking sense to people, have you been specifically occupying their rightwing spaces and trying to talk sense into them for the past ten years?
Most people haven't, those who have in an ongoing/consistent way, will understand it's not the community controlling the ideological messaging being posted repeatedly EVERY SINGLE DAY, the community is complicit in its brainwashing, but they're not the majority stakeholders or main sources of the crypto-fascist extremist economic Libertarianism currently posing as conservativism and "Classical (free speech) British Liberalism".
Ergo, violence isn't necessarily a constructive answer where you'd essentially be attacking people who are merely complicit in their own brainwashing (often self-indoctrinating for very personal and individual reasons) - leaving the question of: well what is the answer to these groups then?
I don't have a single answer or silver bullet, and it's probably upon the genuine left to now layout many answers on the table, including violent revolution, and parallel governments of mutual aid, but also, extending to culturally corrective efforts (consistent generational brigading/infiltration)... and even all the way down to the solutions of the establishment left.
But I think the big problem is that all of these can and will be folded back into the system. Incorporated. Worked back in, either by tyrants, profiteers, democrats, or PR agencies... So it becomes a question of - what parts of the system will proposed solutions necessarily extend, and will those extensions aid us to think outside the system, beyond it, beyond the current limitations of our own lives and societal limitations.
I would say mutual aid, and parallel governments/services probably do this. The system's responses to these tend to generate more rights, more service responsibilities, a better system, with more empathy.
Violence is better in times of direct fascist/reactionary violence, this might be more appropriate if Trump's fascism becomes violent again...
...and cultural solutions beyond PR campaigns, they can be valuable but without solid education in far left discourses, around unionism, marxism, anarchism, mutual aid, black liberationism and civil rights, labor history, schools like the Frankfurt school, ect. then people end up as establishment leftists....
...so it's also important to figure out how to extend resistances there too (resistances towell meaning but moderate leftists drifting right into centrism or further)...
But ultimately I figure it has to be about knowing how the system will react (and fold/co-opt answers presented into its self), and predicting how those reactions either extend problems or extend solutions/further possibilities...
...with the goal being the liberation of as many people from the struggles of class oppression under capitalism, as possible.
It's not an easy task, nor can it easily be thought about. Anyways, that's all I have.
Sorry again for the length, thanks and congrats if you got this far.
This is great suff and I agree for the most part.
I have not been occupying right spaces online. Don't have the time / energy. And I don't really put in the effort to try to change anyone's mind Online because people are change resistant online.
But
I do argue politely IRL for things that would help. Better infrastructure, trains, good jobs, love everyone, let people do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others, transparency in money and government, and make good things in America. Still unlikely to change minds but at least making friendships with people different from me.
I guess my overall thesis would be: online discourse is has proven unproductive. I'm tired of reading vitriol and "other side is so dumb wow."
Disappointed to see the echoiness of the echo chamber on Lemmy