Yes, I would like better representation than I have, and that means being willing to criticize the party’s failings 😅
I don’t thing the process of democracy really works if people just have blind allegiance to a party. I’m frustrated that my best choice has consistently let me down, that doesnt make me an asshole.
I’d very much like for them to fix their shit, I think defeating fascism depends on it, and that means recognizing the ways they’ve fallen short.
My brother in Christ I have voted straight ticket Democrat in every single election I have every participated in, which has been every single one I can. And your assumption that I’m a single issue voter makes me feel like you’re making a lot of assumptions about who I am, which is frustrating
I am not a single issue voter. And I consistently show up and vote democrat. Please don’t make the assumption that I fit into the caricature of “only cares about one issue and won’t vote”
I don’t say this to try and be a dick, I think its important to be able to have discussions around these topics, but a party’s platform document really is not important to me. Their voting record is. Their actions are. And the more I learn about politics the more their voting record and actions the last 10-20 years frustrate me.
I will 1000% give credit it to Lina Khan. She was a godsend and gave me hope that maybe the american political apparatus could actually be operated in good faith by someone who understands what it means to be a civil servant.
When we did last had a senate majority under Obama he failed to pass a more impactful healthcare reform bill. And we got a version that he said was essentially just Mitt Romney’s healthcare bill. I have personally benefited from obamacare. And, we had the opportunity to pass something much more meaningful. And we just didnt.
Democratic foreign policy is horrifying. One of my closest friends is part of an ethnic and religious minority group that was subjected to ethnic cleansing after Obama backed a militant group controlling Egypt because it was momentarily convenient to our interests. If I remember right the statistics she told me were that the population dropped from something like 15% to 5% in a matter of a few years. Because of it she went into intelligence research (as an academic, not working for the government) and now lives with the imagery of people (often her people) being executed burned into her head because she specialized in propaganda and recruitment materials made by radical Islamic terror groups, and lots of radical Islamic terrorist groups love using video of executions and beheadings as recruitment material. She left the field because she can’t do it anymore.
We outright refused to engage with the fact that Israel is intentionally killing an entire civilian population as an issue lots of people care about last election. We still aren’t even all on the same page about it.
It feels like they have done nothing but present themselves as progressive without actually doing any of the progressive shit that would fix people’s problems. Every time we’ve gotten a genuinely progressive candidate the party’s response has been to degrade them and try to undercut their efforts.
And frankly, I think we could have had a much stronger hold of the legislature if we actually put forward candidates that folks believed cared about their issues on any kind of regular basis, instead of just people taking lots of corporate campaign funding and posturing about how much we care about minorities without putting forward policies that would help said minorities in any meaningful way
There are probably meaningful accomplishments that the democratic party has accomplished that I’m blind or ignorant to, and you’re welcome to inform me of them. I’d like to have a more well rounded perspective. And at the same time, I don’t think its unreasonable of me to be angry with them. They have taken a frankly ungodly amount of corporate money. The DNC’s document outlining what went wrong last election was an actual joke, that blamed their loss on voters.
Sorry for the ridiculously long reply. A lot of my thoughts on this subject are still ill-formed and inconcrete enough to be difficult to communicate concisely.
In all fairness “kinda slow to get with the times” is at least a slight underrepresentation of how culpable democrats are for the current political moment 😅
They are not the same. And they are also clearly almost exclusively accountable to their donors, and for a very hot minute now have done nothing to meaningfully adress the countries class-based dysfunction (that disproportionately impacts minorities) while championing minorities in almost exclusively superficial ways that have laid the groundwork for the current cataclysmic anti-inclusionary social movement thats feeding our rapid decent into neo-fascism.
Slow to get with the times is more than just being charitable. They kinda suck. They are not a monolith, no group is, but there is good reason why people call them controlled opposition. I’d like for people to be wrong about that and for them to fix their shit. Because fixing the Democratic party still feels easier than uprooting the deeply entrenched two party system, and there are candidates that make me hopeful… But I’m not holding my breath :/
Interesting, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it typed before! Thank you! ☺️
Thank you for the context
Is the guy actually trans? I don’t quite follow the situation that prompted all this 😅
wildly extreme
Uhhh. I mean. They’re not wrong per se… 😅
He’s advocating murdering pregnant women; wildly extreme doesnt quite seem to cover it
Thats very fair. I don’t know if its accurate to call the response at scale a boycott. I’m sure lots of people are boycotting though
Yeah, I agree that boycott is really not the right way to describe what’s happening here
Theyre not doing it in coordinated protest, they just dont wanna fuckin come here 😅. Can’t imagine why, its like a historical reenactment, you can step back in time to when everything was worse! What a cool vacation /s
I dont know what a hooverville is, so probably not 😌
I appreciate this being a reply that engages with the human experience folks are having there as much as the need for treatment and containment measures
Obviously its not helpful to burn treatment clinics. And also, very clearly theres a large cultural and human need that needs to be addressed in some way to manage the current crisis.
Kinda just a sad situation all around. Burial traditions and the grieving process are really important, and being denied the ability to participate in them must be deeply painful. I hope that medical and cultural practices can somehow adjust over time and find something more stable long term
That seems kinda degrading to the people its intended to support and treat with humanity
Wow… What a train wreck
I didn’t realize it’d be possible for it to be even more vapid and feckless than I expected…
Certainly, it almost undoubtedly has pros and cons, but every source I saw explicitly describes it as an example of a regressive tax, so I do feel like its fair to put “regressive” in the cons column… 😅
I dont personally have a strong stance on the subject, I dont know a ton about taxes, I was mostly just explaining why someone might want to do away with it because folks were misunderstanding the person who wished we didn’t have it. I only know its considered regressive because hank green talked about it in a video. I was just trying to add context based on something I had learned
I think its fair to ague it still serves certain purposes or has advantages, but I get the distinct impression its considered ‘on the regressive end of the spectrum’ by every authority on the subject that I have access to, I’m not sure you’re right that it’s just “maybe” regressive 😅
I’m no tax expert but my understanding is that sales tax is classified as a regressive tax
https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/glossary/regressive-tax/
I mean they list it as their first example of a regressive tax. I learned that it was considered regressive from hank green, who’s a well known science educator. And its always possible he got something wrong, this isnt science, but thats why I looked it up just now…
Edit: the IRS website has a reference page for teachers on educational content and exercise for school kids. It describes some taxes as “truly regressive” and the wording suggests its considered a gradient of impact relative to wealth, but it also explicitly says:
Classroom Activity
Explain to students that sales taxes are considered regressive because they take a larger percentage of income from low-income taxpayers than from high-income taxpayers
Target just had me do a weird personality test and a weird “one way interview” which is just you recording yourself awkwardly answering conversational questions about how you’d respond to various scenarios. On a time limit. With three attempts, and if you decide to rerecord, you can’t use the previous recording anymore
Meanwhile waffle house asks you like 3 questions via a chatbot and then asks you to schedule when you’d like your interview to be 😅
I think their point may be more thay sales taxes are regressive- they disproportionately impact people with less money, as those people need to spend all or most of what they have for necessities, while folks with a large surplus of wealth or income only need to spend a small portion and much of it can go towards savings or investments
I dont think its unreasonable for someone to say they’d rather just do away with sales tax altogether. We may have more appropriate tools with which to fund the government
Edit: the IRS and also taxfoundation.org both explicitly describe sales tax as being regressive. I just checked cause I’m not an expert and someone asserted that they aren’t regressive. I dont believe thats accurate.
https://apps.irs.gov/app/understandingTaxes/teacher/whys_thm03_les02.jsp https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/glossary/regressive-tax/
At least the moon swatch thing with omega looked nice. Though if I remember right they were really crummy workmanship and looked pretty shoddy when actually released or something
This design doesnt even look all that compelling to me 😅
Yaaaaaaay! Thats so cool! ☺️☺️
If we’re at the part of the conversation where we accuse eachother of being a psyop or secretly pro-fascism because we disagree on how to solve our problems I think probably we’re past any hope this might be a worthwhile conversation
You can take a look at my history if you really think that. I think the way I choose to engage with people leaves it pretty unambiguous whether I’m engaging with people in good faith. My previous main is @Cris_Color@lemmy.world if you think three months of history is a red flag of some sort.
Take care.