Yeah, that sounds like the most plausible explanation. It’s supposed to look like a heraldic lion passant: https://i.imgur.com/ZReMGZF.jpg
Yeah, that sounds like the most plausible explanation. It’s supposed to look like a heraldic lion passant: https://i.imgur.com/ZReMGZF.jpg
I’m not sure that’s what he’s going for. He just looks unhappy to me, which seems very plausible. If he had half a brain, he’d do a Bill Gates and put on a careless smile in his mugshot.
Does it? Or are you making the same mistake in your thinking as those guys who are terrified that the Dems are coming for their guns tomorrow despite numerous Dem administrations coming and going without anyone making such a move?
Or you could try to forestall it. Y’know, on the basis that a war is going to be much worse than the flawed rule of the Democrats.
My hope would be we would overthrow the ruling class
By voting for the party that represents the ruling class’ interests and advances its agenda?
my hope was for a leftist party in America, ranked voting and at least 5 competitive parties trying to attract voters, a removal of jerrymandering, senate votes in some way tied to population size
That’s nice and all, but in a two-party system you can’t get any of that. Your choices are limited to the lesser evil and a bunch of fascists who want to turn the two-party system into a one-party system.
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Historically when people like the Republicans rule a country they eventually have wars they lose to end the regime.
And you find that preferable to another four years of Joe Biden?
I guess you’re done pretending to be a leftist. Cool.
I understand your frustration, but again, that’s the nature of a two-party system. Your choice is between center-right and fascism. Adding more parties to the left of fascism just splits the vote and ensures fascist victory. Adding more to the right would be hard, since the Reps are pretty far right already. Though my hope for 2024 is that Trump get snubbed for the Rep nomination and makes his own party out of spite. I’d be pretty happy if that happened.
Getting a party to change its ideology is hard but not impossible. The Reps and Dems switched platforms once already.
No, that’s how you forestall a fascist takeover. You reform the Dems by getting jobs in the party and pushing it to the left from within.
What part of “the Democratic Party needs to be reformed” did you find unclear?
It is, that’s how a two-party system works. The Democratic Party needs to be reformed from within. Creating competition for it only ensures the failure of both and the rise of conservatism to power.
The NRA sways a lot of people with threats that the democrats want to “take their guns” but Republicans don’t hear that as a funny eye roll phrase. They 1000% think electing a Democrat is electing someone who will send the army to search their house and steal their property. They fully believe that is months from happening at all times.
That’s my point precisely. These people keep believing that the Dems are about to seize their guns regardless of how many Dem administrations come and go without it happening, so there’s no point trying to persuade them or reason with them. (At this point one might draw some parallels with expecting the imminent second coming of Jesus, which is also a popular belief in these circles.) Even if a pro-gun leftist party were established, these people would just be fed propaganda that its pro-gun stance is a scam, and they’d buy it hook, line, and sinker and vote against it. These entrenched right-wing voters are beyond saving, and focusing on them is a waste of time and resources that would instead be better spent mobilizing the apathetic left-leaning masses.
Only about 30% of Americans own a gun, and only a fraction of those are single-issue Republican voters. Establishing such a left-wing party might put a dent in the Republican base, but it would sunder the Democratic one and ensure unopposed Republican rule likely in perpetuity (they’d just seize power; already they’re barely managing to keep the mask of democracy from falling off).
The whole gun issue is a total distraction that does nothing other than galvanize the Rep base. The Dems should just avoid stirring the hornet’s nest and ignore it altogether.
It was great while it lasted, but I stopped using Trillian simply because people stopped using the networks it supported. I used it for ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger. The latter three don’t even exist anymore, and ICQ is a shadow of its former self owned by some Russians now. Some people migrated over to Skype, some I just lost contact with altogether. Thinking back to those carefree days fills me with a strange sense of melancholy. It all seems to have gone wrong somewhere along the way, and not just in terms of IM apps.
I’m skeptical. Trillian still exists, but hardly anyone uses it. It can’t connect to a bunch of services because their operators decided to disable third-party access, and I remember that even back in the day it was constantly playing catch-up with network updates that broke compatibility. “One chat app to rule them all” is a neat idea, but I don’t see it working in practice.
It’s not my job to hold Republicans to task. It’s republican voters that do that.
Oh also good luck holding democrats to anything after voting for them.
And you think Republicans are going to have any more success with their representatives? It is your job to hold Republicans to task, by voting someone else in. And there’s only one other party that has any chance of success at that.
At least with a real leftist party all of the “the LEFT!” Discourse won’t be about democrats anymore.
It’s already not really about them. The Dems do only a fraction of what the conservatives accuse them of. The whining about “the left” is going to be based on a persecution fetish fantasy completely divorced from reality regardless of whether the left in America is the Dems and/or some other party.
So your solution to the Dems occasionally enabling the Reps’ evil is to put the Reps in power so that they can enact their evil freely with no opposition at all? Sorry, but I’m not convinced by that logic.
if the dems never win the Republicans won’t have anyone else to blame anymore
I think you severely underestimate their ability to find scapegoats.
Given that every accusation is an admission, this indicates he realizes how deep the shit he’s in is. Good. Let him stew.