• Knightfox@lemmy.world
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    36 minutes ago

    All it needs is a start point to make it fairly accurate. If you’re not from the US the politics of the 1700’s and 1800’s are actually kind interesting unlike the slop we got after something like 1975. Hell, as a point of intrigue, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was at least “interesting.” At the time the parties maintained much of their core belief (Democrat = big Fed, Republican = small Fed), but the implementation was split by North vs South. This led to some interesting situations where anti big Fed Republicans in the north votes for big Fed regulations while pro big Fed Democrats in the south voted against big Fed regulations. US politics used to be interesting, hell even as recently as 2012 we had situations where Republicans were trying to find avenues for conservative value illegal immigrants as a means to bolster their ranks, but all that fell through because the existing rank and file couldn’t stomach illegal brown people taking jobs they didn’t want.

    Now US politics seems to be Fascist vs not Fascist while there are no true alternatives.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Folksy fascism. He was the “plain spoken” proto-Trump. Some worshipped him with a similar cult-like fervor.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    My parents, both life-long democrats, voted for him. I didn’t understand that, and I was only 15 at the time. Four years later, when I got to vote in my first Presidential election, I voted for Mondale. I’ve voted Democrat ever since in an attempt to balance out the Fascists.

    The thing is, the Dems never pleased me either. I’ve realized in recent years that voting for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. There should be a better way.

    • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      We have two parties that are shifting to the right and prioritize the rich at every turn. And yet, somehow, we’re supposed to keep pretending that voting is going to fix anything in this country.

      Voting is a bandaid and we’re bleeding out at this point.

      • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Well, you shouldn’t just be voting. You should also be campaigning, researching, and even running for election yourself

        • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Yes I’ll do those things with all the time I have that is definitely not spent on maintaining food/shelter and sleeping

          • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            Oh, cry me a river. Change is not effortless. It can even start in your own workplace, you can put in the effort to unionize so that you have more time.

            The amount of people with no time at all is very very slim. You don’t need to devote all your time to a cause. A day off or 2 a month would already be quite good. And even a few times a year is sufficient to help

            • kadu@scribe.disroot.org
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              4 hours ago

              Both of you are correct. You’re not wrong: people often complain about the political landscape but take no action, and use excuses like “I have no time and absolutely no way to make time, so somebody else is going to have to magically fix things for me!”.

              But you also need to recognize that the US is a state with such a sistematic failure that you’re asking that a lot of people sacrifice the little time and energy they have for a cause that, in reality, would require decades of targeted collective effort, which immediately makes things less appealing and gathering a critical mass becomes significantly harder.

              • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                Yes, things take time. I understand that I’m asking that, because that’s what I’m asking for. People to not just talk, but act, consistently pushing the issue and politicians who support it through decades to insure that not only do the issues get successfully dealt with, but also so that they continue to remain dealt with. I’m aware it’s unappealing to people, but I believe that they need to grow up and do it anyways because progress will not happen otherwise. Instead of just hoping someone else will do it for them and blaming everyone, people should take action themselves.

                • Econgrad@lemmy.world
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                  1 hour ago

                  I agree completely. Let’s connect and get to know each other for future union and third party organizing.

      • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        The reason why we keep moving to the right is because people on the left are not voting. The right controls all three branches of government because of the way the country voted, why would the left move away from where they think the votes are being cast?

        • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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          4 hours ago

          This is a conscious decision on the part of the two major parties to move the Overton window to benefit their wealthy backers, not savvy politicians “responding to market conditions”.

    • BanMe@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      While I am not thrilled with the Dems, if you get progressive enough dems, they will institute ranked choice voting, which is the path out of a 2 party system. GOP has never done this.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        This. The only way out is an evolution of one of the two existing parties due to the probabilistic nature of FPTP. Step one is short-circuiting media, and establishing a working class unity against the rich. Need blue collar voters united to start pushing for constitutional changes state by state.

        • Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          Boomer Blue collar workers are somehow convinced that the Republican Party is their best friend. Fucking rubes

          • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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            4 hours ago

            White Boomers grew up in and received the full benefit of the American Golden Age. Conservatives offer “the good old days” and most Boomers can’t understand those good old days came from The New Deal and other 1930s legislation which conservatives put to the torch.

      • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Sure, they’ll do this just as soon as they enact universal healthcare, or federal maternity leave, or get money out of politics. Any day now …

        • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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          4 hours ago

          The DNC will never do anything that might break their Duopoly on power but Town and County elections often have Democrats who would. Not enough but it’s a start. Actual grass roots elections at this level can move the dial.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      There should be a better way.

      More parties and coalitions to govern. Of course in the US there’s lots of regulation that makes that all but impossible, so such laws have to change, some of them retroactively.

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      The better way is to build up political momentum locally, and then keep taking every seat you can

      Luckily, there’s a back and forth swing in political momentum as well, and right now progressives are making huge strides

  • Aneb@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    What I read from this graph, Reagan was the last great president, he truly made America great again.

    • Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      For those that don’t know, 1971 is when President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of U.S. dollars into gold for foreign governments. The final abandonment in 1971 moved the U.S. to a pure fiat money system, where the currency’s value is based on government decree rather than a physical commodity like gold.

      Reagan slashed taxes for the wealthy and introduced the whole idea of trickle down economics.

      These fuckers have been stealing from us for half a century.

      • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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        4 hours ago

        The Currency’s value is not based on government decree but they do have the ability to alter it by changing the money supply though the value can change independent of their actions. Frankly, having a fiat currency that represents a portions of that nations economic output makes alot more sense than something like precious metals but the guardians of that fiat currency in the US have class interests that stand at odds with most of the country and the use of the US dollar as a reserve currency was a temptation that America couldn’t handle.

      • Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Rebranded the idea of trickle down.

        The concept has existed since the late 19th century; it was formerly called “Horse and Sparrow Economics,” as the horses eat the whole grains, and sparrows peck their meals from the horseshit.

        • TheBenCommandments@infosec.pub
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          1 day ago

          Dems have always had a messaging issue, but undoing that rebranding would be a step in the right direction.

          That’s a striking mental image. And it’s becoming increasingly obvious that’s exactly what’s happening—we get to pick the scraps out of the billionaires’ shit.

    • rhombus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I despise this website. It is so wildly misleading, especially since most of the graphs don’t actually radically change until the 80s. There is no one thing that caused everything/could fix everything, it was a lot of policy changes and deregulation through the 70s and 80s.

      • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        No, all those graphs tell very different stories and even if they did, it wouldn’t inherently mean the transition to fiat was the problem.

        • BeeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          people who don’t understand currency crack me up. it’s like pretending the value of specie was tied to the value of precious metal by fiat makes it special.

          • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I get why it’s so hard to understand, economics (even when studied) isn’t really a science and a lot is based in vibes.

            Bitcoin is a fascinating example of a modern day commodity based system. Theoretically there is a finite amount of bitcoin that can exist, meaning there is a limited supply that controls the “market”. And as we can see in the bitcoin market, commodity has its own problems (most notably people don’t really want to spend it).

            There are even some research done in the space, I’m not familiar with the Cato institute, but there write up here seems like a decent explanation of gold vs bitcoin - https://www.cato.org/blog/how-bitcoin-system-unlike-gold-standard

            • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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              10 hours ago

              IMHO economics has been gradually becoming more of a science since the 1970s. We just haven’t changed monetary policy since then, so crypto is the most isolated petri dish we’ve got.

              • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Good to know, most of what they were saying didn’t sound too far off, but only skimmed it. I’m not a huge crypto person to begin with though, so I may just shrug off some of their bias.

  • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    As much as we could put it all on him, and he has a lot to do with it, it’s not just him. It’s the corporations that took over.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      you can always go back further, but it’s clear that Raegan was a pretty significant stepping stone in general enshitification.

      • Ron@zegheteens.nl
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        7 hours ago

        Reagan was the result of the masterplan setup during Nixon. Check “The brainwashing of my dad (2015)”, it’s on YT in full length

        • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          again, I’m sure you can go further back, then further back…

          fuck I’m not exaggerating that with enough dedication I could trace those philosophies to the dawn of humanity…

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      The “some metric” is also on the wrong axis, since it’s clearly showing time on the horizontal.