Lol and you and I voting third party leads to that outcome how exactly?

Of all the terrible things happening, I think it’s people’s hopelessly terrible understanding of politics that makes me the most depressed right now.

Edit: I don’t like how negative this comment is so I want to add some possible solutions. Change requires collective action. Individual votes are insignificant to the point of meaninglessness.

There are three main strategies I can see to create a force for progressive or leftist change.

1. Change the political system so that third parties become viable. This is tough because the duopoly doesn’t want it, and without a party where is your base of power? So I don’t think it’s particularly viable on its own—but there are orgs that push for this, and they have the advantage of being nonpartisan and can appeal to many people of many political persuasions. So if you want to make this your priority, tap into some of those organizations. But this also means ignoring pressing crises of today in the hope that reforming the electoral system will allow us to address them in the future. But of this there is no guarantee—it’s just as likely a fascist party will gain from your efforts as a leftist one.
2. Achieve a takeover from the inside of the Democratic Party. This is basically how the republicans went from conservatives to fascists. It might be the easiest of the three—but that doesn’t mean it will be easy. It means people need to set aside their distaste for democrats and the system and put a lot of effort into attending local meetings, voting for delegates, etc. It also has the drawback that the system itself has a tendency to corrupt reformers and bring them in line with its logic.
3. Create political power outside of a direct political party. Personally I think this might be the best approach if your goals are to radically transform society. There are many directions one could take, organizing with DSA or another org that makes endorsements, union organizing, mutual aid, etc. Basically you want to organize a mass of people who can sway society by acting in unison to either impose costs or benefits on those you wish to influence—or to directly enact or disrupt programs yourselves. The downside is that this is very very difficult and it may take years of going nowhere to organize enough people to really have an influence. But because the other two operate within existing systems of power, it has the greatest potential to bring about large transformations in society. But only if you put in the work and enough people join you.

It’s common for prejudiced people to not believe they’re prejudiced. And sometimes this leads them to criticize other, more (or sometimes merely differently) prejudiced people. So this isn’t too surprising. Like most people (yes, including us!) he recognized some harmful ideas in society but couldn’t see their influence on himself clearly.

Never heard of this one before. Good tip!

Cowards.

What is meant by identity politics here? I feel like this term is so nebulous as to be almost meaningless.

Maybe, maybe not. That’s an untested theory. Though I do think communists tend to overstate the power and influence of the CIA and other western sabotage. They certainly had an influence but they were not solely responsible for every single domestic problem the PRC and USSR had. Many were clearly attributable to their own policy decisions.

Classic reactionary take, now we must fight to the death.

Doesn’t this also include airports or did I get that wrong?

Maybe I’m too dumb to get it lol

Who gives a shit. Marx is dead. He doesn’t have any opinions on what’s happening today. Maybe we should stand up for our own opinions instead of wildly speculating that a dead man would agree with us?

Ironically from the messages Vance seemed opposed but he was too chickenshit to say so outright.

Because the economic conditions of the modern world allow for tyranny and the people haven’t figured out that we need to unite and overthrow the tyrants to build a better society.

I’m afraid not.

Truth, justice, and the American way!

I’m saying the reason people might get called a tankie is not because they support Gaza. In fact, I’ve never seen that accusation in relation to this conflict. Rather, it’s because tankies support countries like Israel in other conflicts. So it’s almost the exact opposite of what you say. Campism is the problem here because it forces them to defend the indefensible.

By the way, tankie is not just a pejorative for leftist. It’s a term created by leftists to criticize members of the movement who are perceived to have abandoned the core goal of human liberation that being a leftist has always been about. Maybe some liberals use it wrongly sometimes but it was never about them.

You seem confused. People get called tankies for being in favor of the guys with the tanks, not the ones being blown up by them.

Your tax dollars at work! Do we need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Nah we need to save that money to tear down what little we have.

So you think people just happened to decide on a narrow range of positions that are highly convenient to the ruling powers in society?

Modern propagandists have realized it doesn’t matter if the truth is out there—you just need to make your narrative the loudest, most available, algorithmically boosted option and most people won’t put in the effort to question what you put in front of them.

Free will is an illusion and this completely ignores the near monopoly they have on the media and information people are exposed to.

Also, this isn’t saying they cause all problems, just a lot of them in our current society.

But that never happened. We never decided that. No one even asked me. Again, I never opted in and there’s no realistic way to opt out. I’m far more afraid of the state than I am from my neighbors, and if I had a real choice, I would opt out immediately.