but in the meantime I am a rational person who knows that a tactical vote for an imperfect party is better than letting jackbooted thugs and pedophiles run rampant.

I’m sorry but that’s only “rational” if your analysis is very superficial.

Tactical voting is exactly what has been happening in the US for DECADES and the outcome was ever more rightwing policies, social mobility crashing from almost 90% in the 70s to just over 10% now, increased poverty and so on, and even putting aside all social and economic issues and focusing only on political strategy, with this system the Democrat Party has not once but TWICE fielded a candidate so bad that they lost to somebody like Trump.

Logically doing more of the same would yield more of the same outcome - ever more rightwing populists getting elected - and the next time a far-right POTUS is elected (a guaranteed event if desperate people keep getting created in the US by falling median real incomes and opportunities alongside a captured Press specialized in blaming foreigners for it, because both parties have neoliberal policies) that next Fascist POTUS might actually be intelligent and hence even more dangerous than Trump.

Even in a fucked-up, undemocratic, power-duopoly system like the one in America, each vote isn’t simply an A/B choice that’s closed once done - the way things work in the US a vote is a cyclic choice where parties put forward their choices for candidates and the voters say “yes” or “no”, and then some years later the same happens again, so the response of voters to the candidates fielded in one cycle informs who the parties put forward in the subsequent cycle.

In other words, if people keep rejecting a certain style of candidate fielded by a party, that party is pushed to field a different style of candidate. This how the Republicans changed over the years fielding ever more far-right and populist candidates - voters responded badly to “serious conservatives” so the party fielded more and more “anti-immigrant loudmouths”. It’s funny that Republicans have been more responsive to their electorate than Democrats.

So each vote isn’t just a choice of POTUS, it’s also a message to the parties about the suitability of the candidate they have fielded and, last I checked, in Democracy it’s the obligation of parties to responde to voters rather than the other way around.

Under this broader analysis, the Kamala vs Trump result yields two possible views:

• Millions of people were wrong in not voting for Kamala.
• A few thousand people in the Democrat Party leadership were wrong in fielding somebody with insufficient appeal to voters as their candidate.

As I see it, if one is trully not a party loyalist and genuinelly wants avoid another Trump in the future, the most logical choice is to go with #2 for three reasons:

• This is the SECOND time Trump won against the candidate chose by the Democrat Party leadership. Once might be chance, twice is not.
• Success is more likely in changing what a few thousand people (the Democrat Party leadership) do than in changing what millions of people (the voters) do, so it makes more sense in focusing on the 2nd group when approportioning blame.
• In Democracy it’s the obligation of the people who are competing to be the elected REPRESENTATIVES of the electorate to appeal to the electorate, not for the electorate to simply comply with the choices of “leaders”. The US isn’t supposed to be like Russia were people are expected to not question the leader.

If one’s objective trully is to avoid having another Trump in power in the US, then logically the most effective way to do so is to push the DNC leadership to change (or replace them) since those people are VASTLY more powerful than votes and are fewer in number so change there is not only way more effective but also more likely.

Sadly, there’s a lot of people driven by party loyalism parroting “blame voters” self-serving propaganda from the DNC in order to avoid that those party leaders suffer repeatedly choosing candidates that don’t appeal to voters.

I thought the subject was about how NOT to have somebody like Trump in power, which naturally means examining EVERYTHING that led to somebody like Trump ending in power, which certainly includes looking at how and why did the other party in the power duopoly system in the US field such a horrible candidate that she lost against somebody as bad as Trump.

Of course if your “subject” is not “how best to beat/avoid a Trump president” and instead is “the electorate should be subservient to the choices of ‘my Party’s leadership’”, I can see how it would seem to you that I changed subject by not going along with the whole “the choices of the DNC are above challenge by the riff-raff” view.

Party loyals never challenge the choices of those they see as their betters - the Party leadership - and instead blame the masses for not going along with them: it’s never “how can we better make sure people want to vote for us” and always “people are horrible for not voting for us”.

Lebensraum

Actually it works best if you look at them all as ethno-Fascists (Fascists whose ideas are around ethnicity, rather than nationality like the more traditional Fascists) which is a pretty rare variant.

Obviously Zionists aren’t the National Socialist Party of The German Worker.

However they are ethno-Fascists, same as the NAZIs, hence sharing a lot of characteristics such as a race-centric discourse, extreme racist views and extreme sociopathic violence against those they see as “enemy races”, all of which explains to an extent why Zionists are so similar to NAZIs except in terms of which ethnicities they see as superior and which they see as “vermin”.

Also both ideologies were born at around the same time and were even for a while allied, though NAZIsm was defangued and mainly destroyed after WWII, whilst Zionism was given their own nation and left to spread their racism for 3 generations, which further explains the similarities between NAZIsm and Zionism (especially in terms of the style of propaganda).

This latter part also explains how Israel is a nation dominated by late 19th century white colonialism views who unironically see themselves as having “Western values”, whilst most of the West has actually significantly improved beyond such mindset since the 19th century and are nowhere as prone to things like mass murdering of civilians because of their ethnicity.

One wonders why some relentlessly insist in treating the selection of a Democrat Party presidential candidate as a fait accomplit which should not be looked at, criticized or challenged, whilst treating the Presidential vote in a completelly different way.

The idea that the choice of candidate matters not implies that who the candidates are has no influence whatsoever in who gets elected, which is not at all consistent with the observed results of US Presidential elections over the years.

Surely anybody wanting that America is better led, rather than driven above all by party loyalty, when trying to figure out what went wrong in order to avoid a repetition of it, will look at the entire process rather than treating some of the choices that led to a Trump win and those who made them as “beyond question, it is as it is” whilst at the same time treating other choices and those who made it as “entirelly to blame for the outcome”.

So, Kamala would be less incompetent than Trump (such a low barrier that literally a stone I got out of my shoe the other day is less incompetent than Trump).

Meanwhile, Bernie would have stopped support of Israel when they started Genociding in Gaza.

The difference between Kamala and Trump is an inch, the difference between Bernie and Trump is a yard.

Strangelly the “Kamala beats Trump” parrots never seem to mention the alternatives to Kamala who could have been the Democrat Party candidate and are vastly better than BOTH Kamala and Trump.

Both NAZIs and Zionists claim to represent an entire ethnicity.

Both NAZIs and Zionists claim “their” ethnicity is inherently superior to others (“ubermenschen”, “God’s chosen people”)

Both NAZIs and Zionists react to criticism of their actions by saying the critics are discriminating against the ethnicity they claim to represent (“against the Arian Race”, “anti-semitic”)

Both NAZIs and Zionists openly call those belonging to the ethnicities they see as less than human “vermin”.

Both NAZIs and Zionists mass murder those of the “vermin” ethnicity with such extreme sociopathic violence that they’ll actually directly and purposefully murder children as a standard practice.

In both NAZI Germany and Zionist Israel it is common for roving bands of members of the dominant ethnicity to attack members of the “vermin” ethnicity whilst the police turns a blind eye or even activelly participates.

Both NAZIs and Zionists openly state that they want to get rid of the “vermin” ethnicity, including both using the expression “Final solution for the [vermin ethnicity] problem” to describe their plan to do so.

And don’t get me started on how the Propaganda techniques of both are incredibly similar and how if you grab most things said by Israeli politicians, replace “Jews” with “Arians” and “Muslims/Palestinians” with “Jews” you get something indistinguishable from NAZI statements.

IMHO, the only real difference between NAZI Germany and Zionist Israel is which ethinicities they deem “ubermenschen” and which they deem “untermenschen” and the historical symbol they have chosen to represent the. This is probably why most politicians in Germany - a nation which was never fully denazified - “unwaveringly support” Israel.

There being no real pushback from the rest of the World on the present-day version of the NAZIs they will keep on doing ever more NAZI things until they’re openly running a modern equivalent of gas chambers and concentration camps (which they’re already doing covertly with Gaza and the mass murder of Palestinians there).

The behavior of Western leaders now is way more disgraceful than what Chamberlain did and personally I think that there must be a lot of Western politicians on whom Israel and the US have blackmail material, which for some will be pedophilia-related.

So yeah, Israel has been doing this for literally decades, is doing this right now and will continue to do this in the future because their leadership are ultra-racist ethno-Fascist sociopaths, over 70% their population are ultra-racist ethno-Fascist sociopaths and a lot of Western politician and Press owners are sociopaths and criminals.

Oh, and by the way, The Guardian was one of Israel’s greatest cheerleaders and Propaganda partner until recently and still is, now focusing more on whitewashing the attack on Iran rather than the Genocide in Gaza and being a bit less obvious in their pro-Israel propaganda (down from overtly doing it, now they’re mostly using Manufacturing Consent techniques like use of the passive/active depending on the side, passing statements from one side as fact whilst those of the other are listes as “claims” and so on).

This is literally a situation where Kamala would do NOTHING AT ALL towards Israel different from what Trumps is doing - i.e. not doing anything about it.

Of all the possible scenarios you could use to point out that Lesser Evil is not Greater Evil, this is the worst one since Kamala would do the same toward Israel as Trump, but be more of an hypocrite about it (like saying some bullshit about “the US does not interfere with internal Israeli affairs” whilst sending them more bombs).

It would be way better to compare the actions of a possible non-Evil candidate that the Democracts should have fielded (but did not because the party is under the control of evil sociopaths) with those of Trump.

“What would Bernie have done?” sounds like a much better question to suggest here as the contrast with Trump would be huge.

Of course, pointing out that there are several Democrats who would act way differently from Trump or Kamala in this would bring up the point that a party which sidelined non-evil candidates in order to field a “as evil as possible but just shy of the other party’s” Presidential candidate needs to change and that would be questioning the perfection of he tribe and the quality of its chiefs, a step too far for a tribalist party faithful parroting “those who didn’t vote for Kamala ‘voted’ for Trump” DNC propaganda …

Well, you see, I trust the view of a Turkish person (whilst this being the Internet were everybody can “be” whatever they want, I’m chosing to trust you on being what you say you are).

What I don’t trust is an American “press trust classifier” set-up by some random person, with obscure connections and which already has a long track record of profound political bias.

Being the one which decides which Press can be “trusted” and which cannot is a perfect place for a Propaganda op (if you think the Press is a great place for Propaganda, imagine how great a “Worldwide Press trust authority” is) to shape opinion in this era of open access to information in the Internet and which specifically targets newspapers when Social Media is by far the biggest playground for modern Propaganda, and this coming from a country with one of the least trusted Press environment in the World and which is known for regularly all kind of interestes doing this kind of shit (not just the apparatus of the state setting up “opinion shaping ops” but also ultra-rich setting up “think tanks” to push “studies” endorsing policies that favor them), just adds to the suspicion that this isn’t just some pure soul who is trully worried about the evils of misinformation on the Internet.

That this specific forum - were people often get “moderated” as “anti-semites” for criticizing Israel - in this specific Lemmy server - were when I was a member of it and after heavilly criticizing Israel due to its actions in Palestine, I got an e-mail in the address I had used to register as a user of that server and which only server administrators could get from a group in Israel inviting me to a “learn about Israel” online conference - has endorsed this, further adds to my mistrust of this “worldwide press trust authority”.

The relentless push for this “press trust authority” here has a deep stink of “opinion shaping”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the “most moral army in the World” fully showing their “Western values”.

Using the guy in a basement who thinks the New York Times is leftwing as an authoritative source for the bias of news sources isn’t the trump card you think it id.

A coin flip would be less biased than an American-based media “trust” checker op which reliably tags everything shotrt of Fascism as leftwing.

The Guardian, spinning this as “regime survival” rather than, you know, Iranians trying to avoid being the victims of the same kind of Genocide as Palestinians (and, by the way, The Guarding was also busy for over a year spinning baby mass-murder there as Israeli self-defense), as if any other Iranian government would not have done exactly the same as this one when attacked by the US and Israel with the cooperation of all those Gulf states hosting American bases.

This article should’ve been posted in !ManufacturingConsent@lemmy.ml

Social Mobility measures both people going up and down in social class, and its relative rather than absolute - it’s a measure of movement between social classes in society, not about children being wealthier than their parents.

Your entire line of argumentation to deny it (one wonders what’s your motivation to do so) is completely wrong because you don’t even know what it actually means.

Rather than a wall of text of denialism, how about you provide an alternative explanation for the status of modern America compared to the days when a single white collar worker could earn enough to feed a family of 5 and have a car and a nice house.

Or is it your whole point that America is just fine and has never been better?!

What I’m talking about here is the massive social, political and economic trends of the life-cycle of an Empire.

So keep on Zooming Back your perspective.

Here is an historic graphic of Social Mobility in the US.

Here is the Gini Coeficient that measures inequality (the higher the more unequal), which actually understates the reality because it’s not that great at reflecting internal inequality in the top quintile (i.e. things like how the top 1% are now way much richer than the top 10% than before).

So all the way back in the 1970s, America started changing from the “Land Of Opportunity” were “everybody has a chance” as shown by it’s massive social mobility back then to the equivalent of a feudal system - a zero-merit environment where the rich are rich because their parents were rich and those born into poverty are unable to rise up from poverty - AND on top of that the richer were getting richer and the rest were getting poorer.

For most of the population that meant more povert and less opportunity hence less hope. From that you get more discontent.

So, how do the elites pillaging a society deal with such increase in discontent due to the activities of said elites?

Deceive the masses (for example: more and more lying in Politics, Press capture and subversion into a Propaganda machine and in present day psychological manipulation via Social Media), increase oppression (for example: ever more murderous policing, criminalization of “no victim” activities and harsher punishements) and in the case of a Democracy subvert the systems by which the citizens chose who will manage the nation (for example: political corruption, Gerrymandering, taking the vote away from felons - which typically hail from the poor - and, specifically in the barelly-Democratic US system, internal capture of the two parties in the duopoly of power that rules the country as illustrated by how the DNC gave the nomination to Hillary Clinton some years ago).

So the entire system was pillaged by local elites and then when the discontent caused by that pillaging grew, it was corrupted by those very same elites to redirect or suppress the consequences for those elites.

Foreign interference in present day America, is like maggots in a zombie - they’re not what made it a zombie and there would be no maggots in it if had not already been turned into a zombie.

Go check who owns most of the Press in America - it ain’t foreigners.

Go check who owns most of the Social Media in America - it ain’t foreigners.

The rot not only predates Social Media, but the very Social Media that accelerated it is American-owned.

I’m sorry but you’re just being a useful idiot when you parrot the very deflection propaganda of the local power elites that I mentioned in my last post.

After the 1974 revolution that overthrew Fascism Portugal had a couple of decades of being quite Leftwing during which it massivelly invested in Education, including tertiary education, so the generations now in their 50s and younger almost universally learned English language at a school and include a large proportion of people with higher degrees.

There was also a period in the 80s/90s with some investment in adult education and that coincided with the fast growth of personal computing around here.

Then add to that that fixed Internet is quite cheap (a TV + unlimited 200Mb fibre + fixed phone line monthly packets costs around €45 and recently some even cheaper and faster providers have entered the local market, so for example I pay €15/month for 1 Gbps fibre) and almost universally fibre, possibly because unlike in countries like the UK the incumbent telecom operator in Portugal for whatever reason didn’t really manage to or tried to block the replacement of older internet access technologies with Fiber (I was living abroad at the time, so I don’t know for sure, but the period with maybe the only half-way decent non-crooked government - led by the guy who now heads the UN - kinda overlaps with the time with fixed Internet started spreading, so maybe they actually did some proper, Northern-Europe quality legislation around data access infrastructure which yielded a far more competitive market than you see in places like the UK).

I suspect some or all of these things explain why in this specific domain Portugal looks a lot more like smaller Northern European countries than it’s tradition of being a Chunk Of South-America in Europe would lead one to expect.

That a sleazy criminal crook like Trump got elected and that he gets away with doing what he does is 100% the fault of the American system, the American elites and the American people.

No amount of foreign interference would be able to even wobble this building if it wasn’t already rotten from the inside down to its foundations.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and if it wasn’t him, it would sooner or later be somebody else like him.

So please stop parroting the Neoliberal version of the “blame the foreigners” self-excusing nationalist propaganda that deflects from the 100% local people who are most to blame for what’s happenning, the deserved punishment for their actions at the hands of the common citizens - this shit would never have happenned without decades of pillaging by insiders, subversion of the guardians of Democracy like Courts and the Press, widespread ridiculous amounts of Nationalism switching of people’s critical thinking about their country and the purposeful stupidification of the populace.

Next to the sleazy greedy assholes and a culture normalizing and even applauding sleaze and greed in America, the impact of even the most influencial of foreign states - Israel - is tiny.

From the very start the entire purpose of the gig economy was to evade employment legislation and thus treat workers the same as they were treated in the 19th century before they fought for and got legally enshrined worker rights in the 20th century.

If Trump’s America invades Heard Island (the penguin island he imposed tariffs on) it might even get a win.

Then again, it would probably piss of Australia.