I do not hope everyone starts talking like Mamdani tomorrow.

Mamdani talked for NYC and its problems. My hypothetical Mamdani would just be quick witted, and talk about active solutions for the people, but on the federal scale. I by no means think people would magically agree to everything Mamdani is talking about. It was about a shift in messaging to being about pragmatic change for the people. not fighting progressives within the party etc.

What won’t work is "let’s divide ourselves as progressives vs. establishment, pro vs tepid trans support, split every hair and make ourselves look like the weak navel-gazers they paint us as. Stop dithering about **who is “DNC” and who isn’t. **

Im not sure I follow that last part. The DNC is a very real organization with very real leaders and goals. Its not something that is disputed, its a factual, existing organization.

We need to identify and empower these people within the Democratic party, and that might mean putting side differences to build the big tent coalition we need.

Part of the problem, is that you need a draw, and if you can’t use hate, you have to use appealing to the common person with change. The idea that its about a bigger tent, is something that needs change within the DNC/Old gaurd too.

They don’t seem to want to accept the progressive elements, and Im not talking about the people online who say nonsense about third parties or revolutions, I mean people like AOC, Bernie, Mamdani. They fight them tooth and nail, and thats part of the problem. Of course, as I mentioned, we can’t solve that though, as we’re not part of the DNC, hence the solution I recommend.

Its interesting that both comments that push the nonsense of voter apathy and non participation in the only political system you have needed to completely take a singular part of a multi stage solution out of context to attempt to ridicule it.

If I had just said supporting the democrats and left it at there you might have had a point, actually no, you still wouldn’t as the “light it all on fire mentality” is just anti human. Instead though, you have a very poorly constructed strawman argument, and the response to the other person with a similar style of comment is just as applicable here, but even more so since you are so blatant in your misrepresentation.

were the democrats not in charge after the first trump term an utterly failed to do anything?

Like passing a huge infastructure package, buying a shit ton more vaccines, attempting to and partially succeeding at college debt relief for a large number of people, imposing a minimum corporate tax rate and more?

They didn’t do nothing, they just didn’t provide you the world in one term. You were never getting that, and even if magically your perfect government was voted in tommorow, they wouldn’t be able to give you that without a super majority, and even then it would still probably take more than one term.

More than all of that though, your comment completely misses the rest of my comment to use one part of it out of context to pretend I said changing nothing about the democratic party would be the solution. Thats very bad faith of you.

That’s what the Republicans did to them.

I don’t think this part is true. I agree with the part before this, but not this.

The republicans caused a surge in their hate. They appealed to the heartburn in their esophagus’s, not their hearts and minds.

I think the voter apathy is really what has them winning. The fact that people can recognize that the DNC seeks to do nothing, and somehow have been tricked into thinking this means their votes mean nothing, or that they can’t be changed.

We, on the other hand, have been hitting them over the head with their own racism and stupidity, ignoring the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing - and how we’re playing into Republican hands by doing this over and over.

I don’t think its this at all. In fact, when we stopped doing this is when their votes went up. People largely respond to democrats actually fighting for something instead of saying “at least we arent that other guy”.

The democrats currently, as a group, come across as “We’ll change nothing” and thats the problem. Its a problem that can be fixed though.

Now is the time to build the progressive party as a big tent - if you hold one progressive tenant, you’re a democrat, goddamn it - and start inviting voters into it, with solutions to their problems and acceptance of their ass-backward views until we can soften and change them.

This mentality I actually believe is part of the problem. This speaks as if we’re all a part of the DNC, and we’re not.

Our levers to control this are as I described. Slow change through primaries, state and local politics.

We would all love if tommorow the Democrats turned around and started talking like Mamdani about practical solutions, but they don’t want to do that due to their donors, and the fact a shit ton of the old guard are just rich conservatives.

All these “we need to do X” that start with the DNC magically changing their incentive structure are in similar fairy tale land to a revolution. They misunderstand where the actual roadblocks are, and treat the DNC as if it weren’t currently antagonistic to their goals.

Yes its complex to say that the DNC is antagonistic to your goals but you need to support the Democrats anyways with a full chest, but the world is complex, and this is the reality of a winner takes all/first past the post system. There are 2 major parties, eventually, always under these systems, and you pick the least bad one, and force it to change slowly.

People, you’ve gotta stop waiting for a revolution.

Any “solution” that starts with “you first” and involves fighting against forces that vastly out gun you, with people you absolutely would not agree to fight with is a complete non starter.

You have to realize that even if such a revolution happened, after it happened, they’d just pick the same systems that lead to that result.

You want a hail mary but you will not get it.

The practical buckleys tagline solution you all hate but is the only one that works is supporting the fuck out of the democrats in not only the short term (to stop so many people from being harmed), but in the long term too, this way they can’t just use the right as an excuse to go to the right. All that time, youll need to replace the old guard with more progressive members through overwhelming support in primaries, and being active in state and local politics.

Thats the only way forward where you can win, and its a lot more feasible and less painful than any revolution fantasies. In any of those fantasies, its more likely your head rolls than any of the ghouls we all hate.

No.

Is that why most politicians, musicians, comedians etc, still treat it as their main platforms to get info out? Because they don’t take it seriously?

The big problem is actually that they do. That social inertia works so slowly that they didn’t.

That some random crypto company making Bluesky was the closest to a solution, and it looks like it will also have some power crazed person leading it.

Is this a shower thought or just a luke warm take

Gotta say this difference seems very arbitrary. He bought a company, and platform. Both direct how people spend their time. A platform is obvious but a company, he directs what the people who work there work on. Its definitely a match to somewhere far past where money buys you things.

No, that was absolutely that. Do you not think he gained a massive amount of control with that?

I’d say, at least for me, I try to remember that “cynical” is not always correct. Under the same idea as “trust, but verify"

Isn’t that already what cynicism prescribes?

Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others.

Negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness.

Expressing jaded or scornful skepticism or negativity.

Skeptical of the integrity, sincerity, or motives of others.

It would seem, at least to me, we might not be disagreeing much but instead at a point of not quite getting our ideas across to each other, which is fair because words can have multiple meanings even within the same context.

I would say my point of contention are these 2 sentences

I extend the benefit of the doubt, but less so when there is some real risk or cost to me.

I lose little to nothing in keeping myself open to the possibility (and hope) that someone is being honest with me, while still looking for the signs that they might not be.

As to me, they seem somewhat contradictory, as the first with the benefit of the doubt seems contrary to the second with looking for the signs that they might not be worthy.

So basically this hasn’t been proven false, hasn’t been proven true, but has supporting evidence for at least major parts of the narrative.

In essence, its not a smoking gun but could be a compelling story if packaged correctly and the relevant information was gotten more concretely.

More than that, it seems usual sources aren’t debunking nor covering it.

Do you believe in mainstream media outlets still?

My belief is that they can be used to confirm a story, but the absence of it does not confirm anything because they all are under the chilling effect of the regime if not owned outright by a right wing billionaire member.

Just to be clear, what I am not saying is “believe everything without evidence” what I am instead saying, is that relying on compromised sources as your version of truth, despite that in the past typically being most reasonable, may no longer be. I mean, why are we all here on lemmy anyways right?

We can all hope so, but the reality is the title is more “you first” thinking rather than practical solutions that actual people will do.

To put an at least temporary stop to this, people will have to continue resisting until midterms, where anything short of a democrat sweep will seal the US’s fate.

All the people who don’t want this, center right to tankie should be campaigning their asses off about this, because this will continue to be the reality until you accept that pragmatism often requires taking shitty solutions and working them into being better rather than just hoping magically for a hail mary.

I find that viewing the world cynically is self-reinforcing, and it is a difficult cycle to escape from. Accurate or not

I know I cut partially into another sentence but to me its what my big takeaway is. There is an attitude that thinking cynically is bad, even when its accurate, and I don’t see the appeal. It seems to have the mild positive of letting people believe in their fellow man more, but then a bevy of negatives from allowing people to be manipulated more easily.

I prefer to think of humans as broadly better than that, without sacrificing pragmatic vigilance for the parts of my life where assumptions of potential innocence aren’t too risky

What level is that though? I’m struggling to think of a point where it doesn’t pay to accurately have a feeling of what the potential of the other person is.

It will be, but not only from them winning. This aittitude is a big part of the problem.

You won’t win via a violent revolution, and you wont win via a third party (anyone who understands the basic forces involved when a system has winner takes all or first past the post), so instead you win by slowly taking over the democrat party with increasingly progressive candidates.

Its literally the only way a slow system like the US can be changed, and this “why didn’t they fix it in one term!!!” attitude seeks to attribute blame rather than problem solve.

I think the smart take is to understand the DNC is antagonistic towards our goals but simultaneously is the entity we need to slowly change (through primaries, state and local politics) and continue to support while that happens to avoid the massive harm of having republicans win.

Oh nowadays you can get 26tb drives pretty affordably, so a 4 bay NAS could be getting you 50TiB now.

Of course most people don’t need all that though… including me honestly but hey, that data isn’t going to collect itself.

pretty sure that’s meant in a light hearted fashion

God forbid someone have an autocorrect typo

They will, at actual problems, while you get angry simping for billionaires who consider you scum.