this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
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No sweetheart, America uses first past the post voting. Voting third party is straight up just throwing your ballot on the trash.
Then everyone should be voting third party. This 2 party system is going to lead to a complete shutdown of our ability to govern and it has already made the US into a phony democracy. Peoples willingness to participate in it and just accept it is why the country has gone to shit. Because most of the people in the US can't think outside their narrow worldview of bipolar red vs blue tribalism.
Yes, in a perfect world everyone would vote 3rd party.
But this is reality, and the only viable choices are Trump and Biden.
The system is designed to enforce a two party system. If you and people who agree with you start to vote third party then the party you disagree with the MOST gets an advantage. It's called the spoiler effect.
In order to get rid of the two part system you have to get rid of first past the post voting.
This video explains the whole thing pretty well.
Yes, first-past-the-post voting results in a two-party system; however, it doesn't dictate which two parties are in power. Dominant parties have dropped out of favor in the past and been replaced with a new two-party pairing. Its been a while since the Whig party was an option.
duverger's "law" is, in fact, not a law at all. it's a useless tautology.
We are talking about reality vs the ideal.
The ideal would be what you say, having more than 2 options.
The reality is we do not have that system. We have exactly 2 choices because of our voting laws and system.
If you want to talk about voting 3rd party let's first get the system changed so that even works. I want it too, but blindly ignoring how FPTP voting and the electoral college works so you can feel better isn't helping anything.
Put another way. We have a trolley problem. We have 2 tracks and both will cause some harm, but one does WAY more than the other. But you are saying you won't even acknowledge there is a lever because you would rather be off down a nice grassy trail to a beautiful town on the lakeside. Yeah, that's great, I would too, but the tracks don't go there yet. We have to build the rail to get there first. And arguing about it doesn't change the reality we are stuck in.