We need more people to say stuff like this. Trump’s entire stick is controlling the narrative and getting everyone to bend the knee so they say nice stuff about him. Any attempt at a counter narrative, no matter how mild mannered is a threat to his narrative and control over the discourse.

His social media response is damage control. We’ll be in a better place if we start talking about how immigrants are great and trans people want to be ourselves. Talking about how we would all have more money if we taxed billionaires would help to. The fact billionaires remove wealth from the economy by never paying taxes, never paying wages, and price gouging us all at the grocery stores.

I’m excited for the Jafar set, I was a huge fan of the Aladdin cartoon when I was kid. That show was like the Adventure time of the 90’s and early 2000’s.

The rule of law means that no one is above the law, not even the president. If the president is above the law then we do not have the rule of law. Being labeled a felon is the idea of a punishment, but since there are no consequences to this sentencing there is no punishment.

At least imposing a fine would have been consistent with precedent. At that point it would have been an issue with our laws being to lenient. That would have been a much more easily remedied problem than doing away with the rule of law, a founding concept of modern western civilization.

The rule of law was dead when the Supreme Court ruled presidents have immunity for core constitutional responsibilities and presumed immunity for official acts in Trump v. United States. This is another nail in the coffin.

If this is the lesson a majority of people learn we will be ruled by fascists for more than the next four years. Refusing to exercise power is self-defeating and will not inspire any revolutions. If we let things get worse they will get worse, because there is no floor to how bad things can get.

The same is pretty much true with my family as well. However thanks to the internet we have access to a larger subset of people than just our families.

It isn’t a system we should want to continue anyway. Immigration should be an opportunity for equality, not indentured servitude.

That’s the thing. It’s not enough to only be against something, although we still need to do that too. We have to be for something. We should definitely pick things we would be happy with too.

Thinking back to school, I had an ethics teacher ask the class what we thought the meaning of life is. The consensus from the class was whatever we believe. Then our teacher asked a follow up, in that case, what do we believe it means. No one had an answer.

We need to decide what we believe is important to us, what we value, and then figure out the most useful strategy to making that reality. We want to dismantle hierarchies, but that means thinking about what our lives would be without those hierarchies.

Right now, people are being told to imagine a world without certain groups of people, on the false promise that the elimination of people will improve their lives. We need to get people to imagine a world without certain classes of people. The elimination of class will give us economic freedom so that we will have the means to improve our lives.

Put a hold on that popcorn. It’s not a civil war. Elon and Trump are in agreement. What’s happening is some MAGA supporters are going through the five stages of grief. They seem to be somewhere around anger and bargaining. Trump conned his supporters like he conned his employees before them. Now Trump supporters are working their way to accepting Trump was always going to enrich himself and billionaires at their expense.

Now would be a good time to start pulling people away from MAGA. People need an alternative. Taking the wealth of billionaires as well as the source of their wealth would be a good start. Not to mention systemic change to our government’s institutions.

There’s a tactile experience to playing physical card games that digital games can’t replicate. Not to mention the social atmosphere at a local game store is more conducive to making friends than most digital games. I’ve found the only digital games that really let me connect with anyone are the ones where the voice chat feature is well implemented and well used. Voice chat is a given in physical spaces. =) edit: typo

There can more than one lesson to learn from an election. Democrats need a populist narrative to push a progressive and socialist agenda. Leftists need to learn to exercise power and keep fascists out of power. The only way to get the DNC to stop being neoliberal is to co-opt the party the way MAGA did to the Republicans. Not voting lets the fascists win and allows the Democratic Party to shift to the right.

We had the ability to stop Trump’s second term, but we failed to counteract the spread of accelerationist propaganda and impress the need to exercise power on the behalf of underprivileged people. No amount of fuck ups from the Democrats and their consultants justifies refusing to use our only tool to win political power during elections.

Only if we assume the only way to convince people of anything is to brainwash them as children. I would like to give people more credit than that. People can be convinced that they’re wrong, but it takes time. To that end, it’s useful to be vocal sooner rather than later.

With 4B in South Korea I think it was bad from the start and not a case of co-opting. With people championing 4B in the US it’s a case of it’s still new, but unfortunately has roots in a bad movement. Hopefully 4B in the US will reject the terf aspect of 4B in South Korea, but that will take work.

And socialists too! =)

The main issue is that 4B in South Korea specifically is a manosphere esq movement for woman. It ends up with the same reactionary bent to it as it is not about equality but separation. It ended up with terf rhetoric as well.

Here’s some articles to read:

https://www.them.us/story/how-4b-actually-leaves-trans-people-behind

https://time.com/7177557/4b-us-women-resisting-patriarchy-essay/

Shepherd, who is trans, notes that the many South Koreans participating in 4B have developed hateful anti-trans, anti-gay views, given the “bioessentialist ideology” that places immense import on child-bearing as a marker of womanhood. “Korean women aren’t transphobic or homophobic, I have friends there and they love me and my transness,” he adds. “I’m saying that the most stalwart members of the 4B movement, those who champion it the most passionately, usually fester in queerphobic forum spaces like Womad. This wasn’t intentional in the creation of the 4B movement, but a separatist movement based in biological essentialism is a movement that can very readily foster that environment.”

To clarify when I refer to leftists I mean, from left to right on the political spectrum, anarchists, anarcho-communists, communists, socialists, democratic-socialists, social democrats, and progressives. Of people with these political positions probably democratic-socialists, social democrats, and progressives were among the leftists that voted for Biden in 2020 in the greatest numbers.

Authoritarian communists or tankies are not leftists, but red fascists. They occupy the same position on the political spectrum as fascists and of course didn’t vote for Biden. Both red fascism and fascism are the same in that they both build hierarchies and then start killing people at the bottom of those hierarchies. The fascists build racial hierarchies. The red fascists build ideological hierarchies. Neither qualify as leftists because leftists want to deconstruct hierarchies.

We need people with better ideas. Progressive and socialist ideas specifically.

I’m not thrilled about the 4B movement as it’s transphobic, but I support women making decisions for themselves. Ideally this trend in the US will be lgbtq+ aligned.

I would assume lemmy would be supportive of this trend for people in the US in at least broad terms, but I remember the Man v Bear discussion. Bear by the way.

Here’s a challenge for anyone reading this, start by empathizing with these women and what they’ve been going through that would make this a popular trend for them.

I’ve had a couple swimming as a mermaid recently. I usually see from my perspective in dreams, so I don’t usually have a view of what I look like. Also, like aliens invade in my dreams or I’m going to classes and doing homework so I’m not really in the mindset to check. edit: typo

Let’s both hope your democratic non-voter buddies are pissed off enough at trump during the next cycle to show up and vote this time, because leftists definitely won’t if the dnc keeps going rightwards; again.

My argument is referring to leftists. They are the non-voters. By definition, a non-voter isn’t affiliated with any party.

The DNC will keep shifting right if leftists don’t vote for them. A tit-for-tat strategy will keep leftists out of power and Democrats moving to the right until one group changes strategies. The DNC isn’t going to systemically change unless it is co-opted by socialists and progressives, but the DNC can change who they cater to. The DNC can start catering to leftists incrementally if leftists start voting for Democrats.

I can understand how daunting of a task it may seem to get your own people to vote from where you’re sitting on a horse so high that you’re unable to understand that you’ve bought into an alienating stereotype of your most needful allies to defeat the trumpers,

Your argument’s horse is dead. Your argument’s position was shown to be false this election. Leftists didn’t vote for Democrats in 2024 and now Democrats are catering to moderates and conservatives who voted. Democrats are not catering to leftists. I recommend you get of your dead horse. Until then we will be ruled by fascists.

but I have faith that Americans will come to see how we keep shooting ourselves in the foot; eventually.

As long as we still have elections, leftists will learn to vote for the most left leaning viable mainstream political party or they will watch fascists kill us all with death camps and climate change. Unfortunately it’s not enough for bad things to happen to people to learn their lessons.

I recommend you take the time to understand how the 2024 election disproves your argument’s position. No amount of bad election outcomes, death, or destruction of the planet will do that thinking for anyone.

Studies have shown that new evidence that contradicts a person’s beliefs is both as painful as physical pain and is not effective at changing a person’s position in the short term. People have to take the time to internalize that they were wrong. If we start now people should understand they need to vote for Democrats by the 2026 and 2028 elections.

The Democrats are going to follow the people who vote. They get money from corporate donors to be neoliberals. We need a socialist and progressive movement to co-opt the Democratic party. But in the mean time, as long as we still have elections, we can kick fascists out of power and get the Democrats to cater to leftists incrementally.

This isn’t enough to solve climate change or wealth inequality, but until the Democratic party is co-opted the way the Republican party was by MAGA we need to exercise power by voting for the candidates the furthest to the left in elections. Between elections we need grassroots movements to get better candidates.