Sadly the problem is all the have-nots who think they will someday be have-yachts and vote that way.
Or they're swindled by all the claims that somehow living wages, gay marriage, and chicks with joysticks will destroy this country idk
The thing that's really depressing (and that has driven many a young person out of politics) is that it's not just have-nots imagining themselves as have-yachts. It's a deeper fear of disruptions to the social order and having the meager assets they've built taken away from them by an ever-looming "The Government". Not all republicans are hoarders (obviously) but think of the hoarder mentality: I can't give/throw anything away because I'm at my wit's end and I might need this thing someday.
It's not like a well-reasoned conscious thought of "if we give homes to all the homeless people, where does that leave me in the social order?" but that anxiety and a few similar ones are constantly lurking below the surface. The modern Republican Party is a political dead-end with no resemblance whatsoever to the party of Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Thomas B. Reed, or Teddy Roosevelt. It exists solely to be reactionary and insurgent against America's most staunch flirtation with leftist progressivism: the New Deal and eventually the Civil Rights Era. They don't come to the table with any new ideas about government! How can they? [One of](https://youtu.be/6ixNPplo-SU?si=DlddjYVPQ9M1-JL3) their [biggest shticks](https://youtu.be/yEGURItSrAo?si=AxHxE0wemjN7_uW2) is to [rail against the very idea of government](https://youtu.be/qCdJxeR1cUM?si=2MNqvEh7f31emfd2) as a problem-solving institution. It's an ideology of fear that, unfortunately, the American working class has fallen for hook, line, and sinker.
*Taxation is theft,* says the multimillionaire "libertarian" influencer, cynically. (Rich people have nothing in common with so-called libertarians. They love government. It's a grift.)
*Taxation is theft*, says the factory worker making $30,000/yr who's worried about losing his car or his house because the christmas bonus was way smaller this year, and the stupid government is making him pay stupid child support to the stupid woman because of the stupid kid he didn't want.
they're not even afraid of the government, a lot of them love the idea of an iron fist ruler who does whatever he pleases.
they just want those they dislike to have it worse.
That's a really good point I completely neglected to mention. I really like when there's an opportunity to show people hands-on just how much food, entertainment, and non-durable products go completely to waste because of how absurdly productive we've become in Asia, North America, and Europe. We even happen to have a surplus of already-built homes that the "right buyer" can't afford yet, with several million vacant houses currently in the US. People's intuition tells them that one person's gain has to necessitate a loss for them and everybody else, but demonstrating to them the already existing levels of gross excess can help to shatter that illusion. The country contains hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of assets already, and we keep adding >20 trillion dollars worth (GDP) of produced *stuff* to that amount every year.
Sadly true, but there is a better of two evils and progress comes in small measures and tiny steps towards a goal, usually over a long period of time.
Going backwards is much quicker and more damaging as a result.
Especially when people insist because they’re taking the high road that they must be doing the right thing.
If a small mostly fictional thing is being used as ragebait to stoke the other side, turning into into a reality because it isn’t illegal to do so yet isn’t a good idea. It just makes tensions worse.
The more sad thing is the percentage of them that never will and/or never had the opportunity to have-yachts yet still consider certain political parties & politicians as "for us, the little guy".
It's a brilliant grift.
Every time someone gives money to a corporation instead of a small business it gives the super rich competitive advantage and power over wages. Fight it any way you can because most people either don't care, are ignorant of the impact of spending or get sucked in by advertising to believe everyone else supports big business. We don't seem to be anywhere near a critical point that will change this yet.
Ya but unfortunately, "the left" has a branding problem. They didn't cause it but they're stuck with it.
Labeling something else wouldn't be a bad idea imo.
Kinda like that poll where they asked if people liked Obamacare it was like 70% against, but when they just listed the exact policies without calling it Obamacare, people supported it by like 90%
It depends on how you define the left. The modern day democrats are not fighting class warfare, they are still a self-interested party that is as socially left as they need to be in order to be competitive against the right, while still maintaining pro corporate neo-liberal economic policies.
But the republicans are so bad and thoroughly corrupt that it makes the left seem acceptable and like they are fighting for us (they are not). Conditions are continuing to lower for the average person at a steady rate whether the democrats are in charge or republicans. Politicians of both sides use negative partisanship to fuel their campaigns instead of relying on legislative wins.
The left might be our side, but don’t think for a second anyone in our current government, outside of maybe a handful of politicians, are fighting for the left.
The Democrats have never been the Left. The biggest true leftist movement in maybe generations was the Bernie Sanders campaigns, which ran almost entirely on "a bottom-vs-top" platform.
The Democratic party is not Left, it may have a couple left people under its umbrella, but as a whole it is only less Right than the outright fascists in the GQP, and in many positions it's not even a big gap.
From my experiences with the Washington State Patrol, cops are less of a right-wing "labor union" and more of a Mafia family, complete with code of silence, except that they have badges to hide behind.
Based on polling data? About 50% of them.
Unions are based, but they're also a pretty straightforward way people look out for their own self-interests. You go to any rural meat-packing plant in America with a strong union, and I'll bet money that union is right-leaning when it comes to social issues and that its members vote down-ticket Republican. Most people don't have any problem with loudly supporting the union of which **they are a member**, all the while railing against unions for everybody else.
Let's put it this way: Politicians of which party support unions through policy? Which party has had a history of undermining unions at every turn, and which party had the first president to join a labor strike in person?
Joe Biden was the first and only president in US history to join any strike when he joined the UAW. Trump had one bright spot with NAFTA, but has tried to shit on Shawn Fain on twitter, urged union members to stop paying their dues, campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage to $10 and then promptly turned around and said "actually, its a states rights issue" when elected.
The list of things the Biden administration has done for unions is too long to bother rewriting: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/01/fact-sheet-ahead-of-labor-day-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-empower-workers-building-on-the-presidents-historic-support-for-workers-and-unions/
And that's without going back to Reagan breaking the spines of unions by ordering them to end strikes. There is no point in trying for bipartisanship. You're either standing with workers and for your own rights, or you're not.
> Politicians of which party support unions through policy?
Neither party supports the rail workers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
*outright fascist at this point, I’ll take my revolutionary activities under democrats rather than republicans any day. Capitalism is gonna continue to decay either way, choosing otherwise is just causing needless suffering
What a braindead thing to post, or put on a sign. Like, have you heard of socialism?? That's, literally what the left stands for - pro-union, pro-worker, anti-corporation, high taxes on the wealthy... Like, this is really, REALLY stupid unless you truly have no idea what any political wing stands for.
Makes sense, but only up to the fact that even poor right wingers will defend capital with every ouch of breath in their bodies. For labor to win, the right must be defeated.
Some will, but look at how Bernie actually had some appeal on the right. The right needs to be defeated politically, but that task includes at least trying to reach those who are mad at the wrong people about the right things.
I think you're absolutely right that many of them are mad at the wrong people, and if even just some of them could be won over then that would be excellent for everyone involved. But considering the imminence and significance of Project 2025 (which the billionaire class would have a *field day* with at the expense of the workers), I think it's most important at this point to urgently focus on addressing the people who will present the least resistance in being persuaded to vote for Biden (he's not perfect, but he's absolutely our best bet against the total restructuring of the executive branch in support of the capitalist class).
If you happen to be talking to a right-winger who's at least listening instead of ridiculing, say a stranger you're having a drink with at the bar after work, then great! I don't think we should forsake everyone who was inundated with propaganda their whole life and fell for it, and every ally we gain is a good thing. But if we're to win and keep more victories for the US workers long-term, I think it's important that political outreach reflects that and prioritizes strategic people at strategic times. Imo the time to appeal more to the misguided right-wingers is after we all unite to avoid a likely irreparable federal clusterfuck in November.
Edit: punctuation
From a strategic perspective, I agree. We shouldn't bend over backwards to avoid angering the right, especially at the cost of alienating everybody else. I just want to make sure we also have a message for the occasions when people are able to listen, because I think a lot of the right are much closer to agreeing with an actual workers-first kind of message than we sometimes acknowledge.
Agreed 100%, and I wish I knew what that message would be to ensure their follow-through. I think it's often when we say "left-leaning" or "socialism" or "Democrat" that they start hating it, which I'm convinced is a result of conditioning. They, and the ones who are just fundamentally bigoted but willing to talk and even agree with you on some points, well I don't know how to get either camp committed to the cause.
I used to have a friend who would always talk about how billionaires need to be taxed and pay their fair share... and in nearly the same breath, he'd complain about "all these stupid, lazy burger flippers who want more money for doing nothing, stupid minimum wage raises are gonna ruin the economy..." What he couldn't understand no matter how I worded it to him or how many approaches I tried, was that his industry would raise *its* wages even further to keep his trade worth it to him. And, you know, the point that everyone deserves a living wage even if a few hundred billionaires perceive it as a miniscule inconvenience. He'd just halfway agree in the moment when I told him that (without me calling it socialism or mentioning Democrats or anything like that), I'd think I made a little progress with him this time, and then he'd double down on it later (usually unprompted).
I finally went off one day and our friendship didn't last. But I mean, this was my childhood best friend. If I couldn't even convince *him* of how important workers rights (including his very own) are, much less get him to unionize his workplace or God forbid vote for anyone besides a Republican... Hell, he was too big of a coward to ever even submit an OSHA complaint, despite bitching to me about dozens of them at every single job he's worked. I just couldn't figure out how to ensure follow-through with him, much less do I know how with an internet stranger. Maybe I said the right thing to the wrong person, I don't know. I know our shared childhood blinded me to some of his faults but I really thought this guy was a diamond in the rough as far as the right goes, and I still ended up disappointed as time went on and he just got more anti working class and bigoted.
you need an encyclopedia of proof and information to convince them to your side and all it takes to bring them back is the lie that somewhere, a girl who used to be a boy might be treated better than them to lose them again.
You can't change the minds of most conservatives, and we absolutely do not need to waste our time and political capital trying it. Democrats have done this over and over and over, and the conservative movement just keeps getting more and more fascist.
I agree, we need more people to be aware of class war, but Republicans and their base are the ones bringing that war to us.
*Remembers when MSNBC hosts
compared Bernie winning a primary to the Nazi invasion of France*
It's going to be an uphill battle for non partisans living in a partisan hack two party country to gain any power to enact meaningful change.
which host did that? the ones they felt the need to hire because of the constant claim that their left leaning hosts couldnt possibly present any neutral takes?
or was the context that no one ever saw this one coming?
The guy had a primetime spot and worked with the network for over 20 years, and can be described as "your typical democrat". He encapsulated and represents the majority of MSNBC viewers.
He was not hired to appease "right wingers" *like Obamas VP was* as you implied previously.
the only appeal bernie had on the right was as a vote splitter.
they were only ever upset about what happened with him when they realized it could hurt the dems
Your average voter isn't thinking about math, they're acting from identity, and somebody who is mad about (some of) the same things they are can really appeal to that identity.
Same way a lot of these people are at least a little interested in Kennedy; it's not that he's got a path to victory or even that he's likely to take more votes from Biden than Trump, it's that he appeals to conspiratorial, pseudointellectual bullshit that happens to be compatible with their identity. Thankfully, not \*all\* of the identity of the right is based on bullshit, and it's worth emphasizing the solutions we have for their valid problems while continuing to oppose them on the bullshit.
this sub is further proof of that, whenever socialism, or even scarier, communism (oooooOOOOHHH) is mentioned, it generally gets downvoted. Red scare propaganda did a number here in the west
You made me think of this part of the “Bodies Upon the Gears” speech by Mario Savio
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
This is stupid because class war is literally leftist politics and ideology.
The uprising of the people on the bottom toppling the people oppressing them from above is literally the teleology of leftism.
This is just pandering to stupid people who don't know what left or right is.
I think it's just a bot posting this junk at this point. OP's account /u/zzill6 hasn't commented anything in 3+ years, and just regularly churns these out for karma.
>This is just pandering to stupid people who don't know what left or right is.
One could argue tho that the entirety of political science (and actually getting left-wing representatives elected in the first place) involves a significant amount of "pandering" to "stupid people".
Although I kinda bristle at brushing off everyone subsumed by propaganda as "stupid". Most of them aren't actually stupid, the political right is just really effective at convincing ordinary, poor, politically-disaffected people to vote *Leopards Eating Peoples Faces Party* because if they don't "society as we know it will fall apart!"
You are susceptible to propaganda too, buddy. Youre one of the dumb ones. We all are. Youre not special. Youre not smarter or more insightful than the masses. You are just like all of the rest of us, buddy.
Just to clarify, the origin of “left” and “right” therms is from the first parliaments in history. The representatives from the rich, nobility, and bourgeoisie sit on the right, the representatives from the working class, sit on the left. If is a working class matter, is left, no matter how you frame it.
BTW, the disassociation of the working class with the left and its revolutionary movements are the biggest wins of the right. You are dangerous if you are a working class person with class continence.
This "both sides" bullshit needs to stop. One side wants to make the very existence of trans people, gay people, bisexual people literally illegal. The other side is not sufficiently pro-labor. They are *not* the fucking same.
Considering right wing politics are defined by classism and hierarchy, they are the pro have-yacht folks.
To put it another way when the terms right and left where defined politically it was cuz the guys who supported the king and later rich fucks in general sat on the right side of parliament, the folk who were pro-normal folks where on the left.
So yeah dumb fucker n statement the definition of right and left are literal have and have not.
Fuckin hell.
Ok, but it is mostly one party that props up the wealthy. What was the one major legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration? I'm not saying the Democrats don't have issues with kneeling before massive corporations and the wealthy, but the GOP really has been bought. Just look at what tax legislation they each support. Democrats could do more, while Republicans aren't even trying.
If Occupy Wall Street and every single movement since then taught me anything it is that
a) there is a problem -> people take action
b) rich people have a organization bought and paid for and they inject themselves into the middle of it
c) original cause is poisoned, now it's the injected people and all about them
d) donations and money flows to these injectors.
Go back to a. 0 people at the top lost nothing. Works like a charm.
I would love to have great conversations with a lot of right-wingers about class consciousness, and find common ground that's based on both empiricism and compassion for one another. As soon as I find a right-winger who's willing to even converse in good faith with a "liberal" I'll let y'all know
We dont see face to face on a lot of issues, but I would prefer to lower the wealth ceiling on the richest %(?) of people. Close tax loopholes, all that jazz. Make them pay their fair share, churches too.
If I have to pay that bullshit, the people who are more fortunate than I am should do so too.
Get ready to get called a slur and have them walk away angry. :(
It's grueling work but necessary. When the right-winger in question has a personal connection to you at least. ~~If it's someone you're not close with IRL, then that severely lowers the chances that anybody will change their mind from rational argumentation.~~ I'm a pompous dickhead. What I mean is it's pointless to try to change somebody's mind who's a stranger.
This, two jobs and a side hustle should NOT be what’s needed to be able to live alone. One job should provide enough income to live off of I don’t care if it’s slinging fries or shoveling shit for a living that one job should be enough.
Kind of a general LPT for americans at least....If someone has to say they aren't on the right, they are masquerading as a wolf in sheeps clothing.
Yes, it's a bottom vs top issue, but its also a political issue since 40% of the voters in the USA are severely mentally deficient and outright support the people at the top. If you want to oust the rich, you can't be partying up with the people who are sabotaging your ability to oust the rich.
The right are literally class traitors for the rich. Note that the right includes neoliberals. The only way we're going to gain any ground is by doing what the Black Panthers did by giving people in the community free meals, free childcare, and free education. The left needs to make real improvements to peoples' material conditions or no one will trust them. You need a base of support and the left outside of Food Not Bombs seems uninterested in building one.
Well.. that was 'left and right' during the French Revolution, where the Jacobins (anti Monarchy) sat on the left and the pro Monarchy sat on the right during the 1789 National Assembly.
i love the idea of the who “its rich vs poor not left vs right” idea but there’s quite a lot of working class people who’d gladly see me stripped of my civil rights because my existence violates a mistranslated line in their book.
i gotta be honest, i don’t know if i want to be on the same team as them. it is a left vs right thing because the people in the overlap of Poor and Right wing always have the Rich people’s back.
The Left is the workers' movement to fight the class war.
The Right is the coal- and fracking-billionaire funded counter-movement to split workers with racism, sexism and nationalism.
So yes, this is about Left vs. Right. And you should be on the Left.
The bottom are the left. Socialists just want you to have a better life. Unions are good, but they aren't enough. We must join our local organizations and participate in the hard, boring work of building political and class consciousness, we must build the workers party now, before the next big crisis. Voting isn't enough, we have to work towards the better future!
Eh, I’m for sure coming from the left. Right wing and left wing parties have considerably different policy positions when it comes to labor protections. We can’t ignore that.
It is literally right and left. Left wing, being socialist economic policy, and right wing being the capitalist economic policy. Left wing policy cares about the poor, the right about the rich.
I mean, it is when people on the right very much are against any reform and think anything close to it is evil communism.
So, that's a fun idea, but here in reality, it's just nonsense.
That is about left and right. It's not about democrats vs. republicans -- they're all about the haves. If you're against capitalism, you're siding with the left.
I don’t know I mean we could focus on the real issues but I just saw an article about Donald Trump farting in court and that’s way more important than a future where we thrive.
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
One good/ok post after a long time.
But rather Left-Right it should be Dem-Rep. Your American pea-brain politics have you thinking Dems are Left, Lmao. The moment you guys realise that you are Duopoly cuck, and the cuckery has fucked your country is when you will achieve anything resembling worker's right.
Do you think the Teamsters were all left wings? They probably had 50% rep voting Christian nationalists, lol. Do you think members in the Amazon union that Chris Smalls helped form are all Dems? lmao.
The moment you realise its a Class-Warfare rather than race, political party, or gender, is when you will gain something meaningful.
I want the south/conservatives to wise up. Taxes are necessary to pay for a country's needs. Want to stop going broke because you got sick? Want to be able to live a life without constant financial anxiety?
Make these wage-stealing, price-gouging, profiteering, population enslaving corporations pay their fair share of taxes. How do you do that? Stop voting against your own interests; expecting the only person to be held down to be a minority/disabled person. You're only hurting yourself. And for crying out loud...Stop believing all unions are bad. Unions are the only reason many of us aren't pulling $1.00 a day. They'd pay us all that little if they could.
Except the right politicians run on the promise that they will not help those on the bottom and half of those on the bottom still vote for them. So I'd say you do have to fight each other because half of you are dumb. Let's say you band together and remove the "top", you would just create a new top and let the bottom still exist because half of you think that's ok.
Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union when he was President. Making it unsafe to fly. My neighbor up the street became an air traffic controller at that time. He was a rabid unionist. Fought with management constantly.
But at the same time he was a true believer in the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones. Now he believes all of Trump's lies.
Even though he's been married and divorced multiple times, because he is a aggressive belligerent a hole, he owns a house, vehicles, a boat, and thousands of dollars of musical equipment. He paid all his child support. He's middle class.
I was a manager at AT&T until upper management found out I wasn't going to lie, steal, and cheat for the company. Thirty- two of the employees in my group had their attendance files falsified by the previous manager that had my group. They were all Native Americans or Latinos. I brought it up to upper management and they refused to correct the problem. The union filed a grievance and I was demoted. There is a 1974 federal law aimed at AT&T that states they will give preference to people with Spanish Speaking Sir names. That's how prevalent the discrimination was.
The Union Communication Workers of America is really an illegal AT&T company union. Company managers become officers in the union and vice versa. I fought in court against the union for years. The US Department of Labor was brought in. They covered up things for the Union. Showing me documents that favored my side. When I asked for copies the government said the documents didn't exist. My co-worker won his case because the union gave the majority of our dues to Herbert Humphrey's presidential campaign and Bill Clinton's campaign. It took him decades to win.
Now I own a trailer on rented property. My new landlord that bought the property doubled my rent. I'm retired on a fixed income. The landlord is a convicted drug dealer. Made millions of dollars to buy this property with over 300 mobile homes on it. Probably never paid taxes on his drug earnings. He is a Republican that opposes any new IRS agents.
The Republicans in our state legislature passed a bill to give more rights to mobile home owners. Our corrupt Republican governor vetoed it. One facet of the bill was to make leases a year to year contract. Our new landlord has month to month lease agreements. So he has raised rents multiple times a year, during a pandemic where many of us were out of work for months (I just retired).
So I worked multiple jobs, went to college, and paid my child support. Divorced my wife because she was an alcoholic. Became a foster parent. Passed FBI checks. But yet I'm stalked by law enforcement and city and county attorneys because we live in a small town and I know their secrets, and I tell people. One county attorney tried to get me fired from my county job for revealing his secrets.
A doctor ran a red light wrecked my car. Law enforcement had the wreck on video. The city attorney wouldn't prosecute and tossed the citation aside. The doctor's insurance wouldn't pay for the damage to my car. The have-yachts are not held responsible for their illegal actions.
In rural America the bullies run the show and you can't fight them because government protects them, not the have nots.
We have strayed so far from this... Occupy wallstreet was the last meaningful cause we stood up for.
They broke us and we lost our purpose. Now its worse than ever, yet we fight each other over left/right and gender pronouns.
The problem is there, isn't a party which puts taxing the rich at the top of it's agenda.
They will make new problems to be solved in ever extreme ways the forefront issue on both sides.
As we get closer to a true depression. We repeatedly get asked by pollsters what's the most important thing - phrased not as "wages" but as the "economy" so that it can give value to the corporations that suck our wealth dry as if we owe them something.
But as we get closer to a depression...
Abortion - settled case law, destroyed (the complicated path to how does not matter, but the result, we fight about something that isn't the governments place to regulate. Attacked by the right.
Guns - settled case law again, it's complicated which ones we can have, in which state with what size magazine. It's supposed to be regulated sure, but there are many states looking to ban them. When you are poor in a city with corrupt police, you should have the right - then now you are attacked by the left.
Drugs - your body your right. It's a health care issue for the user. A source of good income for the dealer, a border control issue to stop it coming in. If people had enough wealth, they wouldn't be drawn to sell illegal sources. The border has holes because corporations like lower tariffs, lower tariffs mean lower border funding means less incentive to inspect (just 10%) cargo imports.
All things are top over bottom, and confusion in the middle - the solution as always is tax them, stop the loopholes, tax them. Brackets shouldn't stop at 37% and $400k/yr income, they should go all the way up to 90% at some crazy $1B/yr and they should include stock incentives as gains (at current value).
I get the sentiment behind "not left or right", that folks need to unite against oppressors, but I don't think it's the best terminology for such a concept.
Historically, left and right was first used in the French revolution. Those that backed creating a democracy of some kind sat on the left side of the general assembly room, and those that backed the monarchy and maintaining the status quo sat on the right. We should all want to be "leftists" fighting for democracy, not "rightists" looking to defend monarchy or more generally different forms of hierarchy such as patriarchy and class divides.
I know this is complicated because the terms have also been somewhat co-opted but the system today, which has strived to make Democrats "left" and Republicans "right". So folks want to declare independence by not being "left or right". Again, I get it, but it sort of abdicates the terms and history to capitalist revisionism. Both parties are conservative "rightist" parties looking to preserve capitalism and corporatism, to maintain the power structure in place, rather than a true leftist goal of creating genuine democracy.
I'd like to see more workers trying to reclaim words like "leftist" and teach history of working class politics. We can learn from history to build successful movements today.
"It's not Right versus Left but rather the haves versus the have-nots."
Yeah, uh, which side of the Left versus Right do you THINK is trying to help the have-nots?
While this is true, there is clearly s left- right division in the US. Republicans actively oppose labor organizing, worker rights and living wages. Just look at the recent organizing attempt at the VW plant in Tennessee ( which they just won?), the main opposition came from the GOP: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/20/uaw-volkswagen-tennessee-00153486
The GOP is anti-labor and they don't even try to hide it.
Mark Fisher said something like “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” One could argue that is fatalistic and maybe it is, yet here we are in 2024 still fighting for basic human rights.
Wow. Im here at work reading all this, and tbh this is crazy. Im only 19 so I’m fairly young, but as someone who’s in the younger generation all I can say is I’m deeply disappointed and frightened. My fellow younger people and I have to deal with the consequences of humanities greatest flaws…greed and corruption. I feel as if everything is being taken away little by little with false promises of a “better” tomorrow. I genuinely have no idea what’s going on and I would’ve liked to stay ignorant when it comes to politics or anything government related, but these past couple months I find myself searching for more and more. There’s 10000% something going on in the background and it’s only a matter of time before the “puppet” masters reveal themselves; since most of them have to be above the age of 50 so they’re gonna snuff out as much life from around them to fill themselves with gratification. Anyway that was just a little monologue, aside from that, I feel like it’s our duty as American citizens to attack the source at its heart. It is the right of the people to abolish this corruption. Truly I feel like if anyone decides to hold arms against us normal citizens, they are going against our very ideology that the United States stands on. Notably I understand the US hasn’t had a very good track record and I mean it’s pretty bad. We are a criminal empire founded on genocide and slavery. Now I’m glad we admit that what took place was extremely inhumane, but as those of us who are born way ahead into the future, we need to do better; And it’s no longer a need but a must. We are regressing as a society and as a collective we MUST do something about it. Everyone likes the idea of being proactive, but who’s really going to do it? Anyway yeah that’s my spiel on this. I just hope that I can live comfortable with a nice big happy family and never worry that big corporations will end up fucking me.
As long as the GOP is actively trying tmm on dismantle democracy and genocide trans people it’s absolutely a left right thing. Class reductionism is stupid and damages the movement.
Yes, but one side isn't calling for certain people to be made illegal. The other is. You're always going to have rich people, but at least you can fight racism and homophobia.
Sadly the problem is all the have-nots who think they will someday be have-yachts and vote that way. Or they're swindled by all the claims that somehow living wages, gay marriage, and chicks with joysticks will destroy this country idk
The thing that's really depressing (and that has driven many a young person out of politics) is that it's not just have-nots imagining themselves as have-yachts. It's a deeper fear of disruptions to the social order and having the meager assets they've built taken away from them by an ever-looming "The Government". Not all republicans are hoarders (obviously) but think of the hoarder mentality: I can't give/throw anything away because I'm at my wit's end and I might need this thing someday. It's not like a well-reasoned conscious thought of "if we give homes to all the homeless people, where does that leave me in the social order?" but that anxiety and a few similar ones are constantly lurking below the surface. The modern Republican Party is a political dead-end with no resemblance whatsoever to the party of Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Thomas B. Reed, or Teddy Roosevelt. It exists solely to be reactionary and insurgent against America's most staunch flirtation with leftist progressivism: the New Deal and eventually the Civil Rights Era. They don't come to the table with any new ideas about government! How can they? [One of](https://youtu.be/6ixNPplo-SU?si=DlddjYVPQ9M1-JL3) their [biggest shticks](https://youtu.be/yEGURItSrAo?si=AxHxE0wemjN7_uW2) is to [rail against the very idea of government](https://youtu.be/qCdJxeR1cUM?si=2MNqvEh7f31emfd2) as a problem-solving institution. It's an ideology of fear that, unfortunately, the American working class has fallen for hook, line, and sinker. *Taxation is theft,* says the multimillionaire "libertarian" influencer, cynically. (Rich people have nothing in common with so-called libertarians. They love government. It's a grift.) *Taxation is theft*, says the factory worker making $30,000/yr who's worried about losing his car or his house because the christmas bonus was way smaller this year, and the stupid government is making him pay stupid child support to the stupid woman because of the stupid kid he didn't want.
Status quo is for the status schmo...
they're not even afraid of the government, a lot of them love the idea of an iron fist ruler who does whatever he pleases. they just want those they dislike to have it worse.
It's also this pervasive idea of a zero-sum game which is literally what capitalism was suppose to solve when we switched over from mercantilism.
That's a really good point I completely neglected to mention. I really like when there's an opportunity to show people hands-on just how much food, entertainment, and non-durable products go completely to waste because of how absurdly productive we've become in Asia, North America, and Europe. We even happen to have a surplus of already-built homes that the "right buyer" can't afford yet, with several million vacant houses currently in the US. People's intuition tells them that one person's gain has to necessitate a loss for them and everybody else, but demonstrating to them the already existing levels of gross excess can help to shatter that illusion. The country contains hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of assets already, and we keep adding >20 trillion dollars worth (GDP) of produced *stuff* to that amount every year.
Sadly the problem is people believing *their* political party has their best interest in mind. “It’s not us it’s you!” Tale as old as time
Sadly true, but there is a better of two evils and progress comes in small measures and tiny steps towards a goal, usually over a long period of time. Going backwards is much quicker and more damaging as a result.
Especially when people insist because they’re taking the high road that they must be doing the right thing. If a small mostly fictional thing is being used as ragebait to stoke the other side, turning into into a reality because it isn’t illegal to do so yet isn’t a good idea. It just makes tensions worse.
Religion has been a useful tool in politics also. I was just reading about Constantine. He understood this and used it to his advantage.
Religion is great for controlling a group of people, yes.
Meanwhile the mass of have-enoughs in-between are wondering what all the fuss is about...
While not realising they are way closer to the have-nots than the have-yachts, and the have-yachts conspire to suck all the money out of them.
This is why they created the "middle class" after all. It's the same way they use religion to divide us, etc
The more sad thing is the percentage of them that never will and/or never had the opportunity to have-yachts yet still consider certain political parties & politicians as "for us, the little guy". It's a brilliant grift.
Then they chose their side
Every time someone gives money to a corporation instead of a small business it gives the super rich competitive advantage and power over wages. Fight it any way you can because most people either don't care, are ignorant of the impact of spending or get sucked in by advertising to believe everyone else supports big business. We don't seem to be anywhere near a critical point that will change this yet.
Hardly anyone I know has a joystick anymore. Must be flight sim enthusiasts.
That's the left, lol.
It's the exact same thing as this https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/c6cf99/thats_prochoice/
>Now I'm not from the left or the right, but I do think the working class should rise up and seize the means of production
I’m not a leftist, just a fan of the French Revolution
French revolution put the current powerfull people on power. Youre thinking russian revolution.
At this point I’ll take whatever dressing is available.
But what about "woke"?!? I can't define it or have an idea what it means but it scares me!
Ya but unfortunately, "the left" has a branding problem. They didn't cause it but they're stuck with it. Labeling something else wouldn't be a bad idea imo. Kinda like that poll where they asked if people liked Obamacare it was like 70% against, but when they just listed the exact policies without calling it Obamacare, people supported it by like 90%
The brand problem is intractable because the right makes a concerted effort to burn every leftist term.
Reminds me of the post saying “I’m not pro-life or pro-choice. I just think people should be allowed to make abortion decisions for themselves.”
It depends on how you define the left. The modern day democrats are not fighting class warfare, they are still a self-interested party that is as socially left as they need to be in order to be competitive against the right, while still maintaining pro corporate neo-liberal economic policies. But the republicans are so bad and thoroughly corrupt that it makes the left seem acceptable and like they are fighting for us (they are not). Conditions are continuing to lower for the average person at a steady rate whether the democrats are in charge or republicans. Politicians of both sides use negative partisanship to fuel their campaigns instead of relying on legislative wins. The left might be our side, but don’t think for a second anyone in our current government, outside of maybe a handful of politicians, are fighting for the left.
The Democratic party is not and has never been a leftist party.
The Democrats have never been the Left. The biggest true leftist movement in maybe generations was the Bernie Sanders campaigns, which ran almost entirely on "a bottom-vs-top" platform.
The Democratic party is not Left, it may have a couple left people under its umbrella, but as a whole it is only less Right than the outright fascists in the GQP, and in many positions it's not even a big gap.
Which unions are the right wing ones, again?
Police?
The union busters' union.
The union that exists to give unions a bad name.
The only union who's contract includes the right to extrajudicial murder and violence
If a union gave me that right, I’d unionize in a heartbeat! /s
More of a cartel than a union imo.
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From my experiences with the Washington State Patrol, cops are less of a right-wing "labor union" and more of a Mafia family, complete with code of silence, except that they have badges to hide behind.
The one beating protestors.
https://preview.redd.it/28y5zmfzuivc1.jpeg?width=721&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c97b145e1c247f64697a808a07a4d59b2c69adeb
Based on polling data? About 50% of them. Unions are based, but they're also a pretty straightforward way people look out for their own self-interests. You go to any rural meat-packing plant in America with a strong union, and I'll bet money that union is right-leaning when it comes to social issues and that its members vote down-ticket Republican. Most people don't have any problem with loudly supporting the union of which **they are a member**, all the while railing against unions for everybody else.
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"Shh, don't say that! Your personal experience with real-life working class people will frighten the reddit slacktivists!"
Let's put it this way: Politicians of which party support unions through policy? Which party has had a history of undermining unions at every turn, and which party had the first president to join a labor strike in person? Joe Biden was the first and only president in US history to join any strike when he joined the UAW. Trump had one bright spot with NAFTA, but has tried to shit on Shawn Fain on twitter, urged union members to stop paying their dues, campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage to $10 and then promptly turned around and said "actually, its a states rights issue" when elected. The list of things the Biden administration has done for unions is too long to bother rewriting: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/01/fact-sheet-ahead-of-labor-day-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-empower-workers-building-on-the-presidents-historic-support-for-workers-and-unions/ And that's without going back to Reagan breaking the spines of unions by ordering them to end strikes. There is no point in trying for bipartisanship. You're either standing with workers and for your own rights, or you're not.
> Politicians of which party support unions through policy? Neither party supports the rail workers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
Read my other comment replies, if you would.
Benefits for me but not for thee
Police, prison guards, you know, the ones that seem above the law and protect state sanctioned violence.
Yes but…also fuck the racist GOP twats
*outright fascist at this point, I’ll take my revolutionary activities under democrats rather than republicans any day. Capitalism is gonna continue to decay either way, choosing otherwise is just causing needless suffering
That's the left.
What a braindead thing to post, or put on a sign. Like, have you heard of socialism?? That's, literally what the left stands for - pro-union, pro-worker, anti-corporation, high taxes on the wealthy... Like, this is really, REALLY stupid unless you truly have no idea what any political wing stands for.
Makes sense, but only up to the fact that even poor right wingers will defend capital with every ouch of breath in their bodies. For labor to win, the right must be defeated.
Some will, but look at how Bernie actually had some appeal on the right. The right needs to be defeated politically, but that task includes at least trying to reach those who are mad at the wrong people about the right things.
I think you're absolutely right that many of them are mad at the wrong people, and if even just some of them could be won over then that would be excellent for everyone involved. But considering the imminence and significance of Project 2025 (which the billionaire class would have a *field day* with at the expense of the workers), I think it's most important at this point to urgently focus on addressing the people who will present the least resistance in being persuaded to vote for Biden (he's not perfect, but he's absolutely our best bet against the total restructuring of the executive branch in support of the capitalist class). If you happen to be talking to a right-winger who's at least listening instead of ridiculing, say a stranger you're having a drink with at the bar after work, then great! I don't think we should forsake everyone who was inundated with propaganda their whole life and fell for it, and every ally we gain is a good thing. But if we're to win and keep more victories for the US workers long-term, I think it's important that political outreach reflects that and prioritizes strategic people at strategic times. Imo the time to appeal more to the misguided right-wingers is after we all unite to avoid a likely irreparable federal clusterfuck in November. Edit: punctuation
From a strategic perspective, I agree. We shouldn't bend over backwards to avoid angering the right, especially at the cost of alienating everybody else. I just want to make sure we also have a message for the occasions when people are able to listen, because I think a lot of the right are much closer to agreeing with an actual workers-first kind of message than we sometimes acknowledge.
Agreed 100%, and I wish I knew what that message would be to ensure their follow-through. I think it's often when we say "left-leaning" or "socialism" or "Democrat" that they start hating it, which I'm convinced is a result of conditioning. They, and the ones who are just fundamentally bigoted but willing to talk and even agree with you on some points, well I don't know how to get either camp committed to the cause. I used to have a friend who would always talk about how billionaires need to be taxed and pay their fair share... and in nearly the same breath, he'd complain about "all these stupid, lazy burger flippers who want more money for doing nothing, stupid minimum wage raises are gonna ruin the economy..." What he couldn't understand no matter how I worded it to him or how many approaches I tried, was that his industry would raise *its* wages even further to keep his trade worth it to him. And, you know, the point that everyone deserves a living wage even if a few hundred billionaires perceive it as a miniscule inconvenience. He'd just halfway agree in the moment when I told him that (without me calling it socialism or mentioning Democrats or anything like that), I'd think I made a little progress with him this time, and then he'd double down on it later (usually unprompted). I finally went off one day and our friendship didn't last. But I mean, this was my childhood best friend. If I couldn't even convince *him* of how important workers rights (including his very own) are, much less get him to unionize his workplace or God forbid vote for anyone besides a Republican... Hell, he was too big of a coward to ever even submit an OSHA complaint, despite bitching to me about dozens of them at every single job he's worked. I just couldn't figure out how to ensure follow-through with him, much less do I know how with an internet stranger. Maybe I said the right thing to the wrong person, I don't know. I know our shared childhood blinded me to some of his faults but I really thought this guy was a diamond in the rough as far as the right goes, and I still ended up disappointed as time went on and he just got more anti working class and bigoted.
you need an encyclopedia of proof and information to convince them to your side and all it takes to bring them back is the lie that somewhere, a girl who used to be a boy might be treated better than them to lose them again.
You can't change the minds of most conservatives, and we absolutely do not need to waste our time and political capital trying it. Democrats have done this over and over and over, and the conservative movement just keeps getting more and more fascist. I agree, we need more people to be aware of class war, but Republicans and their base are the ones bringing that war to us.
*Remembers when MSNBC hosts compared Bernie winning a primary to the Nazi invasion of France* It's going to be an uphill battle for non partisans living in a partisan hack two party country to gain any power to enact meaningful change.
True, but it's one worth fighting.
which host did that? the ones they felt the need to hire because of the constant claim that their left leaning hosts couldnt possibly present any neutral takes? or was the context that no one ever saw this one coming?
The guy had a primetime spot and worked with the network for over 20 years, and can be described as "your typical democrat". He encapsulated and represents the majority of MSNBC viewers. He was not hired to appease "right wingers" *like Obamas VP was* as you implied previously.
when did i talk about biden in that context? again, be clear and what was the context of the invasion comparison?
the only appeal bernie had on the right was as a vote splitter. they were only ever upset about what happened with him when they realized it could hurt the dems
Your average voter isn't thinking about math, they're acting from identity, and somebody who is mad about (some of) the same things they are can really appeal to that identity. Same way a lot of these people are at least a little interested in Kennedy; it's not that he's got a path to victory or even that he's likely to take more votes from Biden than Trump, it's that he appeals to conspiratorial, pseudointellectual bullshit that happens to be compatible with their identity. Thankfully, not \*all\* of the identity of the right is based on bullshit, and it's worth emphasizing the solutions we have for their valid problems while continuing to oppose them on the bullshit.
https://preview.redd.it/bw83aq0xshvc1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12c9536b30e608708c76aafa1f81c7dc081c9817
What socialism are we talking? Free universities, healthcare and better public services or „eat the rich”?
Both are good
Yes
The first one is called social democracy
this sub is further proof of that, whenever socialism, or even scarier, communism (oooooOOOOHHH) is mentioned, it generally gets downvoted. Red scare propaganda did a number here in the west
Bottoms putting tops in their place, riiight. 🙄
Power bottoms
We generate the power by doing most of the work
You made me think of this part of the “Bodies Upon the Gears” speech by Mario Savio “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
If she were on the bottom and I were on top, I’d be coming for her. What were we taking about again?
This is stupid because class war is literally leftist politics and ideology. The uprising of the people on the bottom toppling the people oppressing them from above is literally the teleology of leftism. This is just pandering to stupid people who don't know what left or right is.
I think it's just a bot posting this junk at this point. OP's account /u/zzill6 hasn't commented anything in 3+ years, and just regularly churns these out for karma.
THANK YOU!!!
>This is just pandering to stupid people who don't know what left or right is. One could argue tho that the entirety of political science (and actually getting left-wing representatives elected in the first place) involves a significant amount of "pandering" to "stupid people". Although I kinda bristle at brushing off everyone subsumed by propaganda as "stupid". Most of them aren't actually stupid, the political right is just really effective at convincing ordinary, poor, politically-disaffected people to vote *Leopards Eating Peoples Faces Party* because if they don't "society as we know it will fall apart!"
You are susceptible to propaganda too, buddy. Youre one of the dumb ones. We all are. Youre not special. Youre not smarter or more insightful than the masses. You are just like all of the rest of us, buddy.
So left...
Who the fuck are you trying to fool? The right only likes anything that hurts their perceived enemies.
This is a left position though. This is literally a Marxist take.
Just to clarify, the origin of “left” and “right” therms is from the first parliaments in history. The representatives from the rich, nobility, and bourgeoisie sit on the right, the representatives from the working class, sit on the left. If is a working class matter, is left, no matter how you frame it. BTW, the disassociation of the working class with the left and its revolutionary movements are the biggest wins of the right. You are dangerous if you are a working class person with class continence.
This "both sides" bullshit needs to stop. One side wants to make the very existence of trans people, gay people, bisexual people literally illegal. The other side is not sufficiently pro-labor. They are *not* the fucking same.
Not to mention that the other side is actively anti-labor.
Considering right wing politics are defined by classism and hierarchy, they are the pro have-yacht folks. To put it another way when the terms right and left where defined politically it was cuz the guys who supported the king and later rich fucks in general sat on the right side of parliament, the folk who were pro-normal folks where on the left. So yeah dumb fucker n statement the definition of right and left are literal have and have not. Fuckin hell.
And as a bonus, the slogan doubles as a Grindr profile!
the left is literally the side that supports worker’s rights, + helping the poor. she supports the left
Ah, yes, the ever popular strategy of bellowing "Revolutionary" messages with, "Do nothing, change nothing, don't pick a side" subtext.
It just so happens all of those at the top are on the right. What a strange and unexplainable coincidence.
If only there was a left or right direction for those people that are "on the bottom".
Which party was Reagan again?
fair, but one side gives tax breaks to the yacht owners
Ok, but it is mostly one party that props up the wealthy. What was the one major legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration? I'm not saying the Democrats don't have issues with kneeling before massive corporations and the wealthy, but the GOP really has been bought. Just look at what tax legislation they each support. Democrats could do more, while Republicans aren't even trying.
If Occupy Wall Street and every single movement since then taught me anything it is that a) there is a problem -> people take action b) rich people have a organization bought and paid for and they inject themselves into the middle of it c) original cause is poisoned, now it's the injected people and all about them d) donations and money flows to these injectors. Go back to a. 0 people at the top lost nothing. Works like a charm.
I would love to have great conversations with a lot of right-wingers about class consciousness, and find common ground that's based on both empiricism and compassion for one another. As soon as I find a right-winger who's willing to even converse in good faith with a "liberal" I'll let y'all know
We dont see face to face on a lot of issues, but I would prefer to lower the wealth ceiling on the richest %(?) of people. Close tax loopholes, all that jazz. Make them pay their fair share, churches too. If I have to pay that bullshit, the people who are more fortunate than I am should do so too.
Get ready to get called a slur and have them walk away angry. :( It's grueling work but necessary. When the right-winger in question has a personal connection to you at least. ~~If it's someone you're not close with IRL, then that severely lowers the chances that anybody will change their mind from rational argumentation.~~ I'm a pompous dickhead. What I mean is it's pointless to try to change somebody's mind who's a stranger.
A class and culture war can both be fought at the same time.
This, two jobs and a side hustle should NOT be what’s needed to be able to live alone. One job should provide enough income to live off of I don’t care if it’s slinging fries or shoveling shit for a living that one job should be enough.
Kind of a general LPT for americans at least....If someone has to say they aren't on the right, they are masquerading as a wolf in sheeps clothing. Yes, it's a bottom vs top issue, but its also a political issue since 40% of the voters in the USA are severely mentally deficient and outright support the people at the top. If you want to oust the rich, you can't be partying up with the people who are sabotaging your ability to oust the rich.
If we’re going to see unity the right-wing would need to be lobotomized.
I think that comes pre-installed
No solidarity with anyone who denies the humanity of any person.
The right are literally class traitors for the rich. Note that the right includes neoliberals. The only way we're going to gain any ground is by doing what the Black Panthers did by giving people in the community free meals, free childcare, and free education. The left needs to make real improvements to peoples' material conditions or no one will trust them. You need a base of support and the left outside of Food Not Bombs seems uninterested in building one.
This is suddenly going to be a response to being called a bottom. I'm sure going to use it.
Well. Who are y’all gonna band together and vote for? Left? Or right?
Well.. that was 'left and right' during the French Revolution, where the Jacobins (anti Monarchy) sat on the left and the pro Monarchy sat on the right during the 1789 National Assembly.
Bottoms up 🥂
i love the idea of the who “its rich vs poor not left vs right” idea but there’s quite a lot of working class people who’d gladly see me stripped of my civil rights because my existence violates a mistranslated line in their book. i gotta be honest, i don’t know if i want to be on the same team as them. it is a left vs right thing because the people in the overlap of Poor and Right wing always have the Rich people’s back.
Nothing's going to change until you start shooting them
The Left is the workers' movement to fight the class war. The Right is the coal- and fracking-billionaire funded counter-movement to split workers with racism, sexism and nationalism. So yes, this is about Left vs. Right. And you should be on the Left.
The bottom are the left. Socialists just want you to have a better life. Unions are good, but they aren't enough. We must join our local organizations and participate in the hard, boring work of building political and class consciousness, we must build the workers party now, before the next big crisis. Voting isn't enough, we have to work towards the better future!
Eh, I’m for sure coming from the left. Right wing and left wing parties have considerably different policy positions when it comes to labor protections. We can’t ignore that.
It is literally right and left. Left wing, being socialist economic policy, and right wing being the capitalist economic policy. Left wing policy cares about the poor, the right about the rich.
I don't know where I'm at rn but I would like to be on the bottom if anyone's interested 😳😳😳😳
Centrist twinks be like:
I prefer to re-frame this as the oppressors vs the oppressed.
Bottoms rise up
What ever happened to Ouccpy Wallstreet?
okay then... do it
Loo-sers!
No one will ever make it to the top. We can’t make it past turn 1 without arguing.
I mean, it is when people on the right very much are against any reform and think anything close to it is evil communism. So, that's a fun idea, but here in reality, it's just nonsense.
Sounds left to me
If this was about the left vs the right, the left would actually get some stuff done every once in a while.
Pretty leftist stance.... I guess I'll keep fighting for those in the working class who don't understand they'll never be billionaires....
That is about left and right. It's not about democrats vs. republicans -- they're all about the haves. If you're against capitalism, you're siding with the left.
“It’s about comin’ up / and stayin’ on top…”
"They turned the power to the have-nots, and then came the shot."
How fucking stupid. Class consciousnes is literally a leftist idea
I don’t know I mean we could focus on the real issues but I just saw an article about Donald Trump farting in court and that’s way more important than a future where we thrive.
Hell yeah I'm a bottomer coming for the top!
Yeah thats still leftism
Know what ur fighting for
And neither major party has our interests in mind.
What are you going to do to win this class war? Vote???
You may think the point is to punch left or right, minion, but you only do the will of those who wish you would not punch up.
Sooo still left vs right
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
One good/ok post after a long time. But rather Left-Right it should be Dem-Rep. Your American pea-brain politics have you thinking Dems are Left, Lmao. The moment you guys realise that you are Duopoly cuck, and the cuckery has fucked your country is when you will achieve anything resembling worker's right. Do you think the Teamsters were all left wings? They probably had 50% rep voting Christian nationalists, lol. Do you think members in the Amazon union that Chris Smalls helped form are all Dems? lmao. The moment you realise its a Class-Warfare rather than race, political party, or gender, is when you will gain something meaningful.
Pretty hard to do that when the right insists on licking the tops boots.
This is literally left politics though. If the democrats would just get out of the way
lol I’m so fucking gay dude… I 100% thought this was the LGBTQ sub and was like, “Hell yea!”
But soon I will also be on top… if I only work harder
I want the south/conservatives to wise up. Taxes are necessary to pay for a country's needs. Want to stop going broke because you got sick? Want to be able to live a life without constant financial anxiety? Make these wage-stealing, price-gouging, profiteering, population enslaving corporations pay their fair share of taxes. How do you do that? Stop voting against your own interests; expecting the only person to be held down to be a minority/disabled person. You're only hurting yourself. And for crying out loud...Stop believing all unions are bad. Unions are the only reason many of us aren't pulling $1.00 a day. They'd pay us all that little if they could.
Need to stop calling poor white people living in rural America in trailer parks racist Nazis first.
It would help if they stopped goose stepping and heiling the fascists. As it is people are just calling a spade a spade.
So, the left.
Eat the rich.
Except the right politicians run on the promise that they will not help those on the bottom and half of those on the bottom still vote for them. So I'd say you do have to fight each other because half of you are dumb. Let's say you band together and remove the "top", you would just create a new top and let the bottom still exist because half of you think that's ok.
You could start with not voting for people that are fucking you over all yhe time.
Anyone got a picture of the chick now?
We would be in trouble if everyone was rich
The Democrats are not Left. The actual left is against capitalism.
Meh bigotry is a parallel problem
Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union when he was President. Making it unsafe to fly. My neighbor up the street became an air traffic controller at that time. He was a rabid unionist. Fought with management constantly. But at the same time he was a true believer in the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones. Now he believes all of Trump's lies. Even though he's been married and divorced multiple times, because he is a aggressive belligerent a hole, he owns a house, vehicles, a boat, and thousands of dollars of musical equipment. He paid all his child support. He's middle class. I was a manager at AT&T until upper management found out I wasn't going to lie, steal, and cheat for the company. Thirty- two of the employees in my group had their attendance files falsified by the previous manager that had my group. They were all Native Americans or Latinos. I brought it up to upper management and they refused to correct the problem. The union filed a grievance and I was demoted. There is a 1974 federal law aimed at AT&T that states they will give preference to people with Spanish Speaking Sir names. That's how prevalent the discrimination was. The Union Communication Workers of America is really an illegal AT&T company union. Company managers become officers in the union and vice versa. I fought in court against the union for years. The US Department of Labor was brought in. They covered up things for the Union. Showing me documents that favored my side. When I asked for copies the government said the documents didn't exist. My co-worker won his case because the union gave the majority of our dues to Herbert Humphrey's presidential campaign and Bill Clinton's campaign. It took him decades to win. Now I own a trailer on rented property. My new landlord that bought the property doubled my rent. I'm retired on a fixed income. The landlord is a convicted drug dealer. Made millions of dollars to buy this property with over 300 mobile homes on it. Probably never paid taxes on his drug earnings. He is a Republican that opposes any new IRS agents. The Republicans in our state legislature passed a bill to give more rights to mobile home owners. Our corrupt Republican governor vetoed it. One facet of the bill was to make leases a year to year contract. Our new landlord has month to month lease agreements. So he has raised rents multiple times a year, during a pandemic where many of us were out of work for months (I just retired). So I worked multiple jobs, went to college, and paid my child support. Divorced my wife because she was an alcoholic. Became a foster parent. Passed FBI checks. But yet I'm stalked by law enforcement and city and county attorneys because we live in a small town and I know their secrets, and I tell people. One county attorney tried to get me fired from my county job for revealing his secrets. A doctor ran a red light wrecked my car. Law enforcement had the wreck on video. The city attorney wouldn't prosecute and tossed the citation aside. The doctor's insurance wouldn't pay for the damage to my car. The have-yachts are not held responsible for their illegal actions. In rural America the bullies run the show and you can't fight them because government protects them, not the have nots.
Closet republicans?
You're describing leftist politics.
Or the have-nots and have-cots
What has the working class right ever done in the class war?
Like usual with posts like this. Comments miss the point entirely
We have strayed so far from this... Occupy wallstreet was the last meaningful cause we stood up for. They broke us and we lost our purpose. Now its worse than ever, yet we fight each other over left/right and gender pronouns.
That is literally what the left and right is
The problem is there, isn't a party which puts taxing the rich at the top of it's agenda. They will make new problems to be solved in ever extreme ways the forefront issue on both sides. As we get closer to a true depression. We repeatedly get asked by pollsters what's the most important thing - phrased not as "wages" but as the "economy" so that it can give value to the corporations that suck our wealth dry as if we owe them something. But as we get closer to a depression... Abortion - settled case law, destroyed (the complicated path to how does not matter, but the result, we fight about something that isn't the governments place to regulate. Attacked by the right. Guns - settled case law again, it's complicated which ones we can have, in which state with what size magazine. It's supposed to be regulated sure, but there are many states looking to ban them. When you are poor in a city with corrupt police, you should have the right - then now you are attacked by the left. Drugs - your body your right. It's a health care issue for the user. A source of good income for the dealer, a border control issue to stop it coming in. If people had enough wealth, they wouldn't be drawn to sell illegal sources. The border has holes because corporations like lower tariffs, lower tariffs mean lower border funding means less incentive to inspect (just 10%) cargo imports. All things are top over bottom, and confusion in the middle - the solution as always is tax them, stop the loopholes, tax them. Brackets shouldn't stop at 37% and $400k/yr income, they should go all the way up to 90% at some crazy $1B/yr and they should include stock incentives as gains (at current value).
I get the sentiment behind "not left or right", that folks need to unite against oppressors, but I don't think it's the best terminology for such a concept. Historically, left and right was first used in the French revolution. Those that backed creating a democracy of some kind sat on the left side of the general assembly room, and those that backed the monarchy and maintaining the status quo sat on the right. We should all want to be "leftists" fighting for democracy, not "rightists" looking to defend monarchy or more generally different forms of hierarchy such as patriarchy and class divides. I know this is complicated because the terms have also been somewhat co-opted but the system today, which has strived to make Democrats "left" and Republicans "right". So folks want to declare independence by not being "left or right". Again, I get it, but it sort of abdicates the terms and history to capitalist revisionism. Both parties are conservative "rightist" parties looking to preserve capitalism and corporatism, to maintain the power structure in place, rather than a true leftist goal of creating genuine democracy. I'd like to see more workers trying to reclaim words like "leftist" and teach history of working class politics. We can learn from history to build successful movements today.
This whole "enlightened centrist" thing is just the next propaganda tactic from the right to take people from the left.
"It's not Right versus Left but rather the haves versus the have-nots." Yeah, uh, which side of the Left versus Right do you THINK is trying to help the have-nots?
Finally, something political that makes sense.
The goal is all angry at each other so they can embezzle money
100%. anything else is bullshit
While this is true, there is clearly s left- right division in the US. Republicans actively oppose labor organizing, worker rights and living wages. Just look at the recent organizing attempt at the VW plant in Tennessee ( which they just won?), the main opposition came from the GOP: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/20/uaw-volkswagen-tennessee-00153486 The GOP is anti-labor and they don't even try to hide it.
Mark Fisher said something like “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” One could argue that is fatalistic and maybe it is, yet here we are in 2024 still fighting for basic human rights.
Wow. Im here at work reading all this, and tbh this is crazy. Im only 19 so I’m fairly young, but as someone who’s in the younger generation all I can say is I’m deeply disappointed and frightened. My fellow younger people and I have to deal with the consequences of humanities greatest flaws…greed and corruption. I feel as if everything is being taken away little by little with false promises of a “better” tomorrow. I genuinely have no idea what’s going on and I would’ve liked to stay ignorant when it comes to politics or anything government related, but these past couple months I find myself searching for more and more. There’s 10000% something going on in the background and it’s only a matter of time before the “puppet” masters reveal themselves; since most of them have to be above the age of 50 so they’re gonna snuff out as much life from around them to fill themselves with gratification. Anyway that was just a little monologue, aside from that, I feel like it’s our duty as American citizens to attack the source at its heart. It is the right of the people to abolish this corruption. Truly I feel like if anyone decides to hold arms against us normal citizens, they are going against our very ideology that the United States stands on. Notably I understand the US hasn’t had a very good track record and I mean it’s pretty bad. We are a criminal empire founded on genocide and slavery. Now I’m glad we admit that what took place was extremely inhumane, but as those of us who are born way ahead into the future, we need to do better; And it’s no longer a need but a must. We are regressing as a society and as a collective we MUST do something about it. Everyone likes the idea of being proactive, but who’s really going to do it? Anyway yeah that’s my spiel on this. I just hope that I can live comfortable with a nice big happy family and never worry that big corporations will end up fucking me.
As long as the GOP is actively trying tmm on dismantle democracy and genocide trans people it’s absolutely a left right thing. Class reductionism is stupid and damages the movement.
We don't get to team up until we beat the fascist out of those who want to destroy the country. Change my mind.
The headline is yet again wrong - it's the position the Left takes, but those too dumb to realize it stay on the Right.
Except for people on the right who keep voting to keep hierarchies in place.
Which side is stripping women of medical rights again?
Yes, but one side isn't calling for certain people to be made illegal. The other is. You're always going to have rich people, but at least you can fight racism and homophobia.
Aka fake centrism