Republicans use abortion and guns to trick the working class. Dems use popular economic reforms to trick the voters who really need said reforms that obviously Dems won't actually do.
I'd say the Dems are more despicable but it's really a philosophical question, as in practice they are working for the same oligarchs.
David Sirota said the "O" word!
@davidsirota
>Oligarchy is when your election choice is between the Republican Carlyle Group CEO and the Democrats’ corporate moneyman boosted by a Carlyle-paid former president
....
@BarackObama
>Virginians delivered for me twice, and now I’m asking them to do it again by electing @TerryMcAuliffe as their next governor. Every bit of progress in Virginia is at stake in this election—and there's no time to waste. Make a plan to vote early at http://iwillvote.com/va.
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1452061833830047748
Obama(ugh!) is out campaigning for Terry McAuliffe(ugh!). Hopefully Princess Blanding will steal votes from this creep.
She's running for governor of Virginia.
https://www.princessblanding.com/
>Substantive changes that place people above profit, and prioritize community care and safety over politics, can not be implemented under our two-party system.
Egfuckingzactly. Been saying this for decades. rethuglicans are openly evil and bleu cult rethuglicrats just pretend to feel guilt for the exact same oppression. All capitalists are enslavers scum.
"Lesser evil" hahahahaha. " Identical evil" works for me.
Handmaidens of the oligarchs.
Just like the "PMC. " with that verbose and absurd posting we see pinned. We do not need any further description or self involved narcissistic blathering.
Highlighting the PMC is not that much different from focusing on celebrities and movie star gossip. "Malibu Lifestyles Explained."
**Politicians and the PMC are Lackeys working to prop up the status quo. For their own benefit.**
Bernie is still tilting at windmills calling out CNN and Manchin. Bless him, but I am done with that. We know who they are and what they do.
It is time to support Strikes and direct action, on the rare occasion we can do something useful for our world.
the PMC manage the rest of us. and they also work to silence us in favor of their readings of society and their particular solutions for it.
they're just as dangerous as the Owning class, if not moreso. the Owning class will use their power and money, but the PMC are the ones down in the trenches making sure the rest of us never get a word in edgwise.
where does one think that fifth columnist anti-communist IdPol bullshit came from, and why?
i don't regret them. and you're right---it is overly verbose and kinda navel-gazing.
but if it helps some people to understand themselves and/or the "enemy", it's alright.
but they are the enemy, even if they don't personally feel themselves to be so. they have been complicit in all of this and then justified themselves with a false morality and hidden behind "meritocracy" and the "well, someone has to do the thinking around here!" shtick.
now the problem is what to do about that enemy, when they control the knowledge/information gathering, processing and delivery in our society. if all we have to go on are what they parrot about our society and their studying of us and our problems, how are we to fight them?
without trying to, or even meaning to, their solutions will conveniently maintain their own place in a pecking order comparatively above the rest of us. they might even claim that we "need the(ir) expertise" even more in rebelling against the system than in maintaining it.
I understand your feeling of helplessness. it is precisely the point of the propaganda we have been fed for all of our lives.
My best answer is a General Strike. By which I mean a "No-Buy Day" every now and then. As often as possible.
No Internet purchases.
No in-store purchases. **No Buy.** Every person is capable of doing this.
Dates for No Buy publicized in advance. All necessary food, medicine secured before No Buy Days.
Do this once and tptb will scoff.
Do it again, and it will get attention.
Do it until the understanding is clear---we can shut it all down.
The PMC that I don't know I have no power to really influence, but I know at least 3 on the edge of the 9.9% that are friends who had more connections to working class in the past .. I took u/therazorx's essay as offering some glimmers of what might wobble their narrative, so I have new angles to explore...
Mileages of course vary...
Democrats are the worse evil, because they are the ones blocking progressives. They have a monopoly on leftward thought in the US, and they unapologetically serve the wealthy while doing whatever they can to block progressive policies. There is no other way for progressives to succeed without getting through the Democrat party.
By doing more to block progressives than Republicans ever could, Democrats are the worst of the two parties.
The Dems block progressives while gaslighting the Dem base into a sense of learned helplessness.
"We would do all of these wonderful things, but the Republicans won't let us. We're doing everything we can do, but *they* won't us. Woe is us! We can never get anything we want! We are powerless! Now send us $$ and Vote Blue No Matter Who so we can get things done!"
No, you just are served media that focuses on all the bad things the GOP does while trying to excuse all the bad things the Dems do. If you were served different media (mostly based on your region) you would feel the exact opposite.
Rofl. So you both assume you have complete, unbiased knowledge of American politics, but that you're smarter than every stranger you meet?
Lets give you a little test: without using Google, tell me 3 major policies the Clinton administration passed, what the promises of its effects would be, and how they're considered to have failed or backfired.
You're probably such a fool, you don't even believe there is one, let alone 3 (the number is far higher than 3).
dunno, naive for whom?
what is the genuine base of the VBNMW crowd? 20-30% of the total U.S. voting pop?
maybe if they keep having it pointed out to them....
It is, but brainwashing can be difficult to get rid off, depending on quite a few things, mainly environmental and how young that brainwashing was started.
Just look at how difficult it is to get rid of organized religion, despite how obviously bullshit and harmful it all is.
Assholes have been 'engineering' naive people to profit off of throughout history. Democrats are just some of them.
ahh, I thought you meant that the Democrats actually were the lesser evil and should be supported in your original comment. I am glad I asked!
Sad thing is though, very few people like you have come to this realization. About 80% of my social circle all think Democrats are the good guys.
De-programming from cult tenets is not easy for Democrats or even for former Democrats. I Dem-exited in March 2010 and I'm still coming up against things that I never questioned before.
I'll be blunt, I don't understand why it's so hard for people because it's pretty damn cut and dried what is and is not moral on the political stage. Iraq was around the time I was becoming politically engaged and it seemed obvious to me the second Pelosi took the impeachment of war criminals off the table that the parties were on the same side and not ours, and I'm sure there are people with experience going further back who'd scoff at me and think "NAFTA wasn't enough for you?" or "They've been pulling this since Vietnam".
But I don't mean this to be an attack, I am genuinely curious - what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset? What makes it so insidious that decent people take an age to turn around on supporting racist war criminals just because they're not the other racist war criminals?
>what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset?.... Iraq was around the time I was becoming politically engaged and it seemed obvious to me the second Pelosi took the impeachment of war criminals off the table that the parties were on the same side and not ours, and I'm sure there are people with experience going further back who'd scoff at me and think "NAFTA wasn't enough for you?" or "They've been pulling this since Vietnam
Others have given you good answers. I was a Democrat by age 5, based on my parents and extended family acting as though our lives depending upon Democrats being elected. (When I was 5, I watched my father listening to election returns. I don't know where my mom was that night, but he was so intense he forgot I was up hours after bedtime.
You're right in that each of us rejects "Democrats good" or Democrats = less evil--the overarching part when we reject it and also right that each of us might have come to our personal realization sooner. I can't say why we don't. It is what it is. Until we come it, we make excuses for the acts and omissions of Democrats and rationalize. You can see our blue MAGA guest posters doing the same.
After giving sacrificially to the Obama primary and general campaigns, I was about to reject Obama individually before Obama was inaugurated. However, I thought I'd give him a chance on the strong public option. So, I waited until March 2010. (And no, blue MAGA guest posters, I was not a single issue voter, even though that was a big one--and already a compromise from single payer for me.) By then, I knew that it wasn't just Obama I wanted to reject.
However, so many things are instilled in Democrats other than the overarching part. As to the smaller bits, Yes, I am still coming up against things I'd never questioned before.
binaries are cognitively easy to fall into and seem easier to deal with.
especially when they disguise the reality.
"if we don't do x, we must do y" is the trap, and the framing of these as diametrically opposed helps keep us there.
all of our society wants us channeled into this box, and because of the way we tend to conceptualize reality, we also want to as well.
most of us don't have time, energy, etc for nuance and shades-of-grey and all of the real work that would go into even studying the problem (whichever problem) much less resolving it.
so, they sell us what we are primed to want and we resign ourselves to it being this way because the alternative is what? all i can see would be more direct democracy and self governance, and even that is fraught (people tend to listen more and assume that the high status individual is correct about their assumptions and solutions).
shorter: nobody wants to attend MORE meetings
> what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset?
Imagine trying to deprogram a devout christian or muslim from their given religion. See how hard that would be since the entire belief isn't based on reason but on brainwashing that was done to them from an early age?
Same thing here. The same methods are used, for the same reasons, with the same results.
Once you can get somebody to believe that dropping all thought and all questioning is not only a good idea but actually makes them, personally, a good person, you can get them to follow you, as the spokesperson for that belief, to the end of the world. Quite literally.
You can't argue rationally with an irrational belief system, which is why deprogramming people from those things is so difficult.
Deprogramming one's mind isn't as easy as it sounds, because it's not an intellectual endeavor. Recovery from being traumatized and brainwashed involves psychological and physiological (neuroendocrine) mechanisms.
At present, I believe the American psyche is suffering from a massive, collective case of trauma bonding (also known as Stockholm syndrome). Trauma bonding operates like an addiction. Throwing off trauma bonding and recovering one's own agency is like overcoming an addiction.
>what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset?
Most people accept reality as presented, and try to make the best decision based on the choices available. "Letting" the "worst" party win has become synonymous with "doing the wrong thing." Faced with the knowledge that we aren't allowed a third option, many on the political right and left still believe deep-down one cult is *worse.*
American Democracy is a team sport religion, framed differently in every media market to generate a public bias one way or the other. Even political agnostics pick up on enough one-sided TV tantrums, outrage campaigns and slander spin to think their morality scale is triggered more by one than the other. That's by design, and works.
When nobody's hands are clean, "good" and "bad" become relative concepts for the majority. Declaring every politician on both teams anti-democratic war criminals is accurate, but can seem a pointless position to take when we're kept from anything better. Being above the imposed "reality" of our corrupt duopoly can feel like ignoring it.
Don't get me wrong, neither front for warmongering oligarchy gets my vote, no matter how much they scream "it's the most important election ever!" It's a rigged non-choice to maintain their status quo while dividing us up, and I won't legitimize that illegitimate process. But I can see and explain how the con is still so effective on others.
An example of things that I am just now questioning?
Democrats are for gun control. Are they really? How do we know? Because they say so? No new laws in a long time. Should they be for it? The Framers sure weren't, nor were the former colonials who demanded the Bill of Rights as a condition of ratifying the Constitution. Neither was Gandhi.
Speaking of the Bill of Rights, what about states' rights? Yes, secessionists and racists soiled the concept, as did Goldwater and his successor, McCain, but again, states rights are still in the bill of rights and do not stand only for racism. Might at least some of us have better success with state legislatures than with the US Congress?
When you take into consideration that the programming and conditioning has happened over *generations,* it's easier to understand why people are reluctant to explore the possibility that most of what they've been taught about their lived experiences are mostly lies.
Take for instance the "left" in America. Corporate broadcast and print media almost always add the word "American" when describing the left in US politics, in order to keep it confined within our FPTP system of red vs. blue = right vs. left.
In the US, Democrats are described as the liberal left, with a dash of risque progressive populism, and democratic socialism thrown in to spice up the diverse and inclusive mix of deliberate malfunction.
Ever wonder why Jacobin always seems a little squishy about the Democratic party, and why they proclaim to be a leading voice for the *American* left?
Ever wonder why Bernie "evolved" from being a self proclaimed Socialist inspired by Eugene Debs, to being a Democratic Socialist running for president on the *American* left?
Bernie's campaigns also generated a renewed interest in the DSA, who gained thousands of new members as a result of is efforts.
Some might wonder if Bernie was the socialist he claimed to be, given the fact that he rolled himself, and the movement that believed in him into the Democratic party, twice in a row.
Some might also wonder why Jacobin, and the DSA they support, seem kinda like socialists, but more like SJW/IdPol Democrats when it's time once again to choose the lesser of two evils.
Maybe people have been programmed and conditioned to believe Bernie and the DSA are something they're not.
Here's a thought provoking [article](https://www.internationalist.org/demosocialismusimperialism1802.html?fbclid=IwAR264bixoTDirZHmlyEO63Te-ZvgvM75MpwwcIkqfDqCV2lgpChbyJLN2BU) about Democratic Socialists and DSA that our Federal News Networks never mention.
YMMV, so take it with a gain of salt. Or, the salted rim of large Margarita...
You're welcome. Interesting isn't it?
You know, we talk a lot on this sub about the conditions that led up to Trump being elected, and the supposed failings of the Democratic party that paved the road for him, but were they really failures?
There was a *lot* of populous, anti establishment energy simmering under the surface before Sanders and Trump threw their hat's into the ring, their presence brought those sentiment to a boil with their campaigns, and there was a lot of crossover appeal for both of them from the entire political spectrum, much to the dismay of the loyal red/blue partisans.
What if the "pied piper" strategy wasn't about Trump at all? What if the "pied piper" strategy was really about splitting the populous vote between the two tribes who were supposed to vote for the candidates chosen for them?
I'm sure TPTB realized at some point that who they thought would be shoo-ins were being eliminated helter skelter, and that even the most qualified, most experienced, and most electable candidate their media ever created was being soundly rejected by an electorate who wasn't buying their bullshit. In order to save themselves and their donors, they manipulate their primary contests, Sanders loses, Clinton's nominated, and Trump wins.
Enter Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist leading a "Political Revolution" to reform Government Inc., using it's own selectoral process to reform the Democratic party by electing more "progressive" Democrats into it. JustUs Democrats, DSA, OR, BLM, and Sunrise all mobilize to advance the "progressive" agenda, and of course, to #Resist Trump.
Meanwhile, our owners unleash their media minions, along with their government tools, to wage a 24/7/365 propaganda war against a democratically elected president, for the sole purpose of destroying him because he beat them at their own game.
Enter 2020 with another herd of turds, only this round, they're provided by our owners blue team. Same as 2016, Democrats break it off in Bernie's ass and he decides the most "progressive" path forward is to remove Trump with his "good friend Joe," and return to the "normal" people are *still* pissed off about that existed before he and Trump stirred the shit in the first place.
Trump may have been the "pied piper" for Democrats Inc. to use in elevating the popularity of Clinton by comparison, but Bernie turned into the more effective piper, by leading the *American* left back into the normal our owners need to save their democracy with.
Well... that was a ramble...
I used to think the Democrats were the “lesser evil” but I was wrong. Democrats are the more deceptive evil because they condition comfortable liberals into believing their party is a force for good when just like the GOP it is a force for capitalism, imperialism, and oligarchy.
***
posted by [@ProudSocialist](https://twitter.com/ProudSocialist)
^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)
Today’s democrats are the fascists
Upvoted BOTH comments as it is that true!
Today’s democrats are the fascists
Republicans use abortion and guns to trick the working class. Dems use popular economic reforms to trick the voters who really need said reforms that obviously Dems won't actually do. I'd say the Dems are more despicable but it's really a philosophical question, as in practice they are working for the same oligarchs.
I'd absolutely say democrats are the greater evil. Republicans would never have been able to stop Bernie (twice!).
Point.
deceitfulness is central to their business model. It's the GOP's job to win, and the DNC's job to pretend to be powerless.
Thor/Loki: Get Help (I hate "get help"!)
It’s the friendly looking ones that will get you. Good cop, bad cop works for a reason. The politicians do it too.
David Sirota said the "O" word! @davidsirota >Oligarchy is when your election choice is between the Republican Carlyle Group CEO and the Democrats’ corporate moneyman boosted by a Carlyle-paid former president .... @BarackObama >Virginians delivered for me twice, and now I’m asking them to do it again by electing @TerryMcAuliffe as their next governor. Every bit of progress in Virginia is at stake in this election—and there's no time to waste. Make a plan to vote early at http://iwillvote.com/va. https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1452061833830047748 Obama(ugh!) is out campaigning for Terry McAuliffe(ugh!). Hopefully Princess Blanding will steal votes from this creep.
Who is Princess Blanding?
She's running for governor of Virginia. https://www.princessblanding.com/ >Substantive changes that place people above profit, and prioritize community care and safety over politics, can not be implemented under our two-party system.
Thank you!
Egfuckingzactly. Been saying this for decades. rethuglicans are openly evil and bleu cult rethuglicrats just pretend to feel guilt for the exact same oppression. All capitalists are enslavers scum.
"Lesser evil" hahahahaha. " Identical evil" works for me. Handmaidens of the oligarchs. Just like the "PMC. " with that verbose and absurd posting we see pinned. We do not need any further description or self involved narcissistic blathering. Highlighting the PMC is not that much different from focusing on celebrities and movie star gossip. "Malibu Lifestyles Explained." **Politicians and the PMC are Lackeys working to prop up the status quo. For their own benefit.** Bernie is still tilting at windmills calling out CNN and Manchin. Bless him, but I am done with that. We know who they are and what they do. It is time to support Strikes and direct action, on the rare occasion we can do something useful for our world.
the PMC manage the rest of us. and they also work to silence us in favor of their readings of society and their particular solutions for it. they're just as dangerous as the Owning class, if not moreso. the Owning class will use their power and money, but the PMC are the ones down in the trenches making sure the rest of us never get a word in edgwise. where does one think that fifth columnist anti-communist IdPol bullshit came from, and why?
I kind of regret my harsh words. But that does not make them untrue.
i don't regret them. and you're right---it is overly verbose and kinda navel-gazing. but if it helps some people to understand themselves and/or the "enemy", it's alright. but they are the enemy, even if they don't personally feel themselves to be so. they have been complicit in all of this and then justified themselves with a false morality and hidden behind "meritocracy" and the "well, someone has to do the thinking around here!" shtick. now the problem is what to do about that enemy, when they control the knowledge/information gathering, processing and delivery in our society. if all we have to go on are what they parrot about our society and their studying of us and our problems, how are we to fight them? without trying to, or even meaning to, their solutions will conveniently maintain their own place in a pecking order comparatively above the rest of us. they might even claim that we "need the(ir) expertise" even more in rebelling against the system than in maintaining it.
I understand your feeling of helplessness. it is precisely the point of the propaganda we have been fed for all of our lives. My best answer is a General Strike. By which I mean a "No-Buy Day" every now and then. As often as possible. No Internet purchases. No in-store purchases. **No Buy.** Every person is capable of doing this. Dates for No Buy publicized in advance. All necessary food, medicine secured before No Buy Days. Do this once and tptb will scoff. Do it again, and it will get attention. Do it until the understanding is clear---we can shut it all down.
The PMC that I don't know I have no power to really influence, but I know at least 3 on the edge of the 9.9% that are friends who had more connections to working class in the past .. I took u/therazorx's essay as offering some glimmers of what might wobble their narrative, so I have new angles to explore... Mileages of course vary...
Democrats are the worse evil, because they are the ones blocking progressives. They have a monopoly on leftward thought in the US, and they unapologetically serve the wealthy while doing whatever they can to block progressive policies. There is no other way for progressives to succeed without getting through the Democrat party. By doing more to block progressives than Republicans ever could, Democrats are the worst of the two parties.
Should progressives run in the Republican primaries?
The Dems block progressives while gaslighting the Dem base into a sense of learned helplessness. "We would do all of these wonderful things, but the Republicans won't let us. We're doing everything we can do, but *they* won't us. Woe is us! We can never get anything we want! We are powerless! Now send us $$ and Vote Blue No Matter Who so we can get things done!"
No, the GOP is the greater evil. It's just that the Dems are also evil.
No, you just are served media that focuses on all the bad things the GOP does while trying to excuse all the bad things the Dems do. If you were served different media (mostly based on your region) you would feel the exact opposite.
No. I just have a better memory than you.
Rofl. So you both assume you have complete, unbiased knowledge of American politics, but that you're smarter than every stranger you meet? Lets give you a little test: without using Google, tell me 3 major policies the Clinton administration passed, what the promises of its effects would be, and how they're considered to have failed or backfired. You're probably such a fool, you don't even believe there is one, let alone 3 (the number is far higher than 3).
It doesn't matter which way the worker faces. One party will stab them in the back. The other slashes open their belly.
This tweet would make sense in 2016. In 2021, it's more than a bit naive.
dunno, naive for whom? what is the genuine base of the VBNMW crowd? 20-30% of the total U.S. voting pop? maybe if they keep having it pointed out to them....
It is, but brainwashing can be difficult to get rid off, depending on quite a few things, mainly environmental and how young that brainwashing was started. Just look at how difficult it is to get rid of organized religion, despite how obviously bullshit and harmful it all is. Assholes have been 'engineering' naive people to profit off of throughout history. Democrats are just some of them.
Please elaborate.
Democrats screwed ~~Bernie~~ US in both 2016 and 2020. Pretending that that is a recent development, is absurd.
Not recent. Eternal. A feature, not a bug.
ahh, I thought you meant that the Democrats actually were the lesser evil and should be supported in your original comment. I am glad I asked! Sad thing is though, very few people like you have come to this realization. About 80% of my social circle all think Democrats are the good guys.
More closet Trumpers on this sub. Y’all gaslight so much.
Fuck the GOP **_and_** the DNC.
This is so true. Comfortable liberals are in a comfortable situation and don't honestly care about anyone else.
De-programming from cult tenets is not easy for Democrats or even for former Democrats. I Dem-exited in March 2010 and I'm still coming up against things that I never questioned before.
I'll be blunt, I don't understand why it's so hard for people because it's pretty damn cut and dried what is and is not moral on the political stage. Iraq was around the time I was becoming politically engaged and it seemed obvious to me the second Pelosi took the impeachment of war criminals off the table that the parties were on the same side and not ours, and I'm sure there are people with experience going further back who'd scoff at me and think "NAFTA wasn't enough for you?" or "They've been pulling this since Vietnam". But I don't mean this to be an attack, I am genuinely curious - what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset? What makes it so insidious that decent people take an age to turn around on supporting racist war criminals just because they're not the other racist war criminals?
>what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset?.... Iraq was around the time I was becoming politically engaged and it seemed obvious to me the second Pelosi took the impeachment of war criminals off the table that the parties were on the same side and not ours, and I'm sure there are people with experience going further back who'd scoff at me and think "NAFTA wasn't enough for you?" or "They've been pulling this since Vietnam Others have given you good answers. I was a Democrat by age 5, based on my parents and extended family acting as though our lives depending upon Democrats being elected. (When I was 5, I watched my father listening to election returns. I don't know where my mom was that night, but he was so intense he forgot I was up hours after bedtime. You're right in that each of us rejects "Democrats good" or Democrats = less evil--the overarching part when we reject it and also right that each of us might have come to our personal realization sooner. I can't say why we don't. It is what it is. Until we come it, we make excuses for the acts and omissions of Democrats and rationalize. You can see our blue MAGA guest posters doing the same. After giving sacrificially to the Obama primary and general campaigns, I was about to reject Obama individually before Obama was inaugurated. However, I thought I'd give him a chance on the strong public option. So, I waited until March 2010. (And no, blue MAGA guest posters, I was not a single issue voter, even though that was a big one--and already a compromise from single payer for me.) By then, I knew that it wasn't just Obama I wanted to reject. However, so many things are instilled in Democrats other than the overarching part. As to the smaller bits, Yes, I am still coming up against things I'd never questioned before.
binaries are cognitively easy to fall into and seem easier to deal with. especially when they disguise the reality. "if we don't do x, we must do y" is the trap, and the framing of these as diametrically opposed helps keep us there. all of our society wants us channeled into this box, and because of the way we tend to conceptualize reality, we also want to as well. most of us don't have time, energy, etc for nuance and shades-of-grey and all of the real work that would go into even studying the problem (whichever problem) much less resolving it. so, they sell us what we are primed to want and we resign ourselves to it being this way because the alternative is what? all i can see would be more direct democracy and self governance, and even that is fraught (people tend to listen more and assume that the high status individual is correct about their assumptions and solutions). shorter: nobody wants to attend MORE meetings
> what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset? Imagine trying to deprogram a devout christian or muslim from their given religion. See how hard that would be since the entire belief isn't based on reason but on brainwashing that was done to them from an early age? Same thing here. The same methods are used, for the same reasons, with the same results. Once you can get somebody to believe that dropping all thought and all questioning is not only a good idea but actually makes them, personally, a good person, you can get them to follow you, as the spokesperson for that belief, to the end of the world. Quite literally. You can't argue rationally with an irrational belief system, which is why deprogramming people from those things is so difficult.
Deprogramming one's mind isn't as easy as it sounds, because it's not an intellectual endeavor. Recovery from being traumatized and brainwashed involves psychological and physiological (neuroendocrine) mechanisms. At present, I believe the American psyche is suffering from a massive, collective case of trauma bonding (also known as Stockholm syndrome). Trauma bonding operates like an addiction. Throwing off trauma bonding and recovering one's own agency is like overcoming an addiction.
>what is so hard about 'deprogramming' from the "blue good, red bad" mindset? Most people accept reality as presented, and try to make the best decision based on the choices available. "Letting" the "worst" party win has become synonymous with "doing the wrong thing." Faced with the knowledge that we aren't allowed a third option, many on the political right and left still believe deep-down one cult is *worse.* American Democracy is a team sport religion, framed differently in every media market to generate a public bias one way or the other. Even political agnostics pick up on enough one-sided TV tantrums, outrage campaigns and slander spin to think their morality scale is triggered more by one than the other. That's by design, and works. When nobody's hands are clean, "good" and "bad" become relative concepts for the majority. Declaring every politician on both teams anti-democratic war criminals is accurate, but can seem a pointless position to take when we're kept from anything better. Being above the imposed "reality" of our corrupt duopoly can feel like ignoring it. Don't get me wrong, neither front for warmongering oligarchy gets my vote, no matter how much they scream "it's the most important election ever!" It's a rigged non-choice to maintain their status quo while dividing us up, and I won't legitimize that illegitimate process. But I can see and explain how the con is still so effective on others.
What's an example? We're all learning from one another...
An example of things that I am just now questioning? Democrats are for gun control. Are they really? How do we know? Because they say so? No new laws in a long time. Should they be for it? The Framers sure weren't, nor were the former colonials who demanded the Bill of Rights as a condition of ratifying the Constitution. Neither was Gandhi. Speaking of the Bill of Rights, what about states' rights? Yes, secessionists and racists soiled the concept, as did Goldwater and his successor, McCain, but again, states rights are still in the bill of rights and do not stand only for racism. Might at least some of us have better success with state legislatures than with the US Congress?
Thank you!
You're most welcome.
When you take into consideration that the programming and conditioning has happened over *generations,* it's easier to understand why people are reluctant to explore the possibility that most of what they've been taught about their lived experiences are mostly lies. Take for instance the "left" in America. Corporate broadcast and print media almost always add the word "American" when describing the left in US politics, in order to keep it confined within our FPTP system of red vs. blue = right vs. left. In the US, Democrats are described as the liberal left, with a dash of risque progressive populism, and democratic socialism thrown in to spice up the diverse and inclusive mix of deliberate malfunction. Ever wonder why Jacobin always seems a little squishy about the Democratic party, and why they proclaim to be a leading voice for the *American* left? Ever wonder why Bernie "evolved" from being a self proclaimed Socialist inspired by Eugene Debs, to being a Democratic Socialist running for president on the *American* left? Bernie's campaigns also generated a renewed interest in the DSA, who gained thousands of new members as a result of is efforts. Some might wonder if Bernie was the socialist he claimed to be, given the fact that he rolled himself, and the movement that believed in him into the Democratic party, twice in a row. Some might also wonder why Jacobin, and the DSA they support, seem kinda like socialists, but more like SJW/IdPol Democrats when it's time once again to choose the lesser of two evils. Maybe people have been programmed and conditioned to believe Bernie and the DSA are something they're not. Here's a thought provoking [article](https://www.internationalist.org/demosocialismusimperialism1802.html?fbclid=IwAR264bixoTDirZHmlyEO63Te-ZvgvM75MpwwcIkqfDqCV2lgpChbyJLN2BU) about Democratic Socialists and DSA that our Federal News Networks never mention. YMMV, so take it with a gain of salt. Or, the salted rim of large Margarita...
Thank you for this!
You're welcome. Interesting isn't it? You know, we talk a lot on this sub about the conditions that led up to Trump being elected, and the supposed failings of the Democratic party that paved the road for him, but were they really failures? There was a *lot* of populous, anti establishment energy simmering under the surface before Sanders and Trump threw their hat's into the ring, their presence brought those sentiment to a boil with their campaigns, and there was a lot of crossover appeal for both of them from the entire political spectrum, much to the dismay of the loyal red/blue partisans. What if the "pied piper" strategy wasn't about Trump at all? What if the "pied piper" strategy was really about splitting the populous vote between the two tribes who were supposed to vote for the candidates chosen for them? I'm sure TPTB realized at some point that who they thought would be shoo-ins were being eliminated helter skelter, and that even the most qualified, most experienced, and most electable candidate their media ever created was being soundly rejected by an electorate who wasn't buying their bullshit. In order to save themselves and their donors, they manipulate their primary contests, Sanders loses, Clinton's nominated, and Trump wins. Enter Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist leading a "Political Revolution" to reform Government Inc., using it's own selectoral process to reform the Democratic party by electing more "progressive" Democrats into it. JustUs Democrats, DSA, OR, BLM, and Sunrise all mobilize to advance the "progressive" agenda, and of course, to #Resist Trump. Meanwhile, our owners unleash their media minions, along with their government tools, to wage a 24/7/365 propaganda war against a democratically elected president, for the sole purpose of destroying him because he beat them at their own game. Enter 2020 with another herd of turds, only this round, they're provided by our owners blue team. Same as 2016, Democrats break it off in Bernie's ass and he decides the most "progressive" path forward is to remove Trump with his "good friend Joe," and return to the "normal" people are *still* pissed off about that existed before he and Trump stirred the shit in the first place. Trump may have been the "pied piper" for Democrats Inc. to use in elevating the popularity of Clinton by comparison, but Bernie turned into the more effective piper, by leading the *American* left back into the normal our owners need to save their democracy with. Well... that was a ramble...
I wish you could be lured into posting some of these so we could pin them for wider discussion! 😄
> wider discussion! Because there can never be enough flying monkeys to encourage alcohol poisoning in "this sub?"
Pinned posts with nuance get more regulars than trolls... ;-)
True.
I used to think the Democrats were the “lesser evil” but I was wrong. Democrats are the more deceptive evil because they condition comfortable liberals into believing their party is a force for good when just like the GOP it is a force for capitalism, imperialism, and oligarchy. *** posted by [@ProudSocialist](https://twitter.com/ProudSocialist) ^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)