#real democracy

[aichatgpt]

Gandhi - "First they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then you win."

#gandhi #best books #global warming #political #elections #real democracy #vote #voting online

[archiephd]

So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.

[...]

Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities. What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us? This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land? We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it. We seek nothing but total liberation.

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective

#indigenous action #2024 elections #voting #on one hand i think if one opponent is a mask off fascist white people have an obligation to vote against them As The Least We Can Do #but if that's all we're doing? that and bullying other people who see a futility in participating in a colonial institution of 'democracy'? #sorry but um. shut the fuck up #if we spent half as much energy on direct action to support each other in ways that help people REGARDLESS of who wins what election #as we did on yelling at Other Leftists about voting i think we would get a hell of a lot more actual shit done #and sure as hell help more actual real life people who we claim to be helping by yelling at other people to vote #i'm talking to me here like #our current blue harm reduction candidate actively supporting a genocide should make you feel like maybe this shit doesn't fucking work #because it doesn't <3 #harm reduction as the least we can do needs to be a call to action via vote AND actual action or it's not a call to anything at all #the least we can do needs to be motivating AND convicting #it's the least we can do so fucking do it. it's the least we can do so if that's All you do sit the hell down or stand the fuck up #for people who the status quo serves it needs to be the ballot AND the bullet or our ballot means fuck all for real liberation

[decolonize-the-left]

Thinking about Project2025 and how it's at every level and branch of government. How entire cities are now under their thumb.

How Biden is saying "Israel has a right to defend itself" while calling Cop City protesters terrorists for not wanting a more deadly police force to be trained. But didn't stand with rail workers when they demanded better treatment when it was freezing and trains were being derailed.

How an epidemic on par with HIV ravaged the globe and Biden allowed pharma companies to exploit the world with price tags after promising it'd be public access.

Thinking about how in all this Israel and the USA are said to test tactics and weapons on Palestine.

How the USA stands with Zionists and how many people have told me, a native American, that Palestinians are in the wrong.

How the last 75 years don't matter. Only the last 2 weeks.

And real fucking talk?

For all the "progress" liberals pretend we made how are we here?

Americans and several of the Allied countries would not hesitate to conduct Manifest Destiny 2.0 and have blatantly stated as much.

Americans are saying things that my great grandmother heard about reservations and then later about native liberation. They're saying things the pilgrims told us before that. We're animals. Savages. That we are to blame. That when we die out it'll be because we didn't fight hard enough. That we don't deserve to even be here.

And you know what, I would hope this post would reach some of them but I genuinely feel as if liberals are as far gone as MAGAs are.

They will read this and just go and on and on about how bad the other guy is.

How justified they are to keep voting blue. Just like MAGA's whine until their privileged lives being "ruined" by "woke lies" justified them voting for Trump. Just like Israel is justified. Like every fucking war criminal ever has been.

BUT

I implore you to STOP trying to fucking justify everything! Nobody fucking cares about the reasons you use to support a genocidal war monger who's legacy before this was signing one of the most racially marginalizing bills in US history.

How about you try justifying taking a fucking risk, instead?

People in Palestine are being bombed every fucking day and you want to twiddle your thumbs about NOT voting for the guy who said it was okay and for what? Because your life might not be as comfortable as it is right now? That's your concern from your home with a roof?

Call me a fucking conspiracist but I haven't been wrong yet: Biden is a fucking Project2025 plant. And him and Hillary both have done nothing but make the democrats more and more conservative by catering to the "centrist" votes for decades.

Now we're here. They've compromised so much and want to look so "fair" that a genocide is being paid for on American tax dollars and what are liberals tellings us, what are they saying? ITS JUSTIFIED???? AND TO VOTE FOR BIDEN AGAIN

Y'all are so worried about everyone voting blue to avoid republican fascists that you don't even CARE how bad the people youre voting in are. You haven't even noticed the fascists you put in office yourselves.

You forgot your boundaries.

And isn't it funny how rad/fems and TERFs got mainstream around the same time? You know, the white supremacists based ideology that seeped into the mainstream because nobody was critically consuming or gatekeeping what was "empowering to women" for fear of being 'cancelled'?

Why? Cuz if you hate them you hate women. Just like if you criticize america then you're an anti-american Russian/spy/plant. Like if you support Palestine then you hate Jewish people. If support BLM then you obviously hate white people.

And that's it, isn't it. That's what it all boils down to.

White supremacists are and have been manipulating & gaslighting us en masse.

You know your friends that learned to gaslight an audience with therapy speak? The one that makes you afraid to call them out cuz they're better with words than you and could just as easily turn everyone against you if they use enough buzzwords?

That's the tactics white supremacists are using.

"I must be quiet so I don't say something wrong and look like a bigot" "if I speak, I may say the wrong things" "I may say the right thing the wrong way"

They have made you AFRAID to speak against genocide!!! Wake the fuck up!!!!

They aren't event trying to hide it! The IDF made a post that straight up says "you are an anti-Semite if you speak against Israel"

WHICH IS JUST STRAIGHT UP UNTRUE!! So may Jewish people have come forward against Israel and against Zionism and to support Palestine!

Israel's government is Zionist and that is not an inherently Jewish trait! Making you you believe otherwise is part of the propaganda and manipulation so you Stop speaking up. You can support Jewish people and Palestinians both.

Israel and the USA want you to believe that it is one or the other and that's not true.

The only people who benefit from trying to make you choose between which humans get to live are the white supremacists who cheer when this rhetoric starts to normalize conversation about which people are more worthy of living than another.

You have been gaslit into supporting genocide.

Gaslit into going down a white supremacist pipeline.

Gaslit into giving your silent consent.

Snap out of it.

#liberals #democrats #usa #current events #real talk #biden #pelosi #congress #analysis #USA politics #politics #democracy #free palestine #bernie sanders #cornel west #claudia de la cruz #leftists #reblog #decolonization #lgbt #capitalism #Ojibwe #native american #solidarity

[toongoonharmony]

#republican katamari real #na an na man a na na na #katamari democracy #katamari #king of all cosmos #katamari damacy #we love katamari

[sapphixxx]

Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

#Signalis #Didn't include everything because this is already very long #But there's a lot to add to this kind of reading from other former Eastern Bloc states that go beyond a kind of braindead #Simplistic Authoritarianism bad communism bad freedom good type of view common in the English speaking world #That go more into well what is authority and how does it work and how has it remained durable and violent before during and after the cold #The Romanian movie Bad Luck Banging is very good for this in expressing how things have been more similar than different #Under monarchy fascism communism and liberal democracy over the last 150 years there #replika joker voice maybe the real monster is SOCIETY #op #quality content

[hotvintagepoll]

[Not accusing you, just coming here to sob lol XD] Noooooo why did you allow for Jeremy to be murdered like this! :,( He had such a hard fight last round and it was such a deserved and close win, now he's being ripped to pieces! My poor darling! </3

Because someone had to go up against Toshiro Mifune, and this is the way I wrote the bracket for the final rounds. (If it wasn't Jeremy it was going to be Gene.)

#i suspect some memes are at play for why toshiro sweeps SO consistently against such a wide variety of men. tbh a lil disappointed in that #so once again quietly asking people to vote for real and not just because hashtag toshiro sweep. but you know. #c'est la vie. democracy #asks

[blackwolfmanx2]

Real Talk:

Voting knowing the elections are rigged is tantamount to gambling for the money you've lost. The odds are not in your favor fam.

#blackwolfmanx2 #ancap #libertarian #real talk #conservatives are morally bankrupt #democracy is not freedom #voting is a scam #voting is slavery #election season #statism #authoritarianism #right wing statists #right wing idiots

[elbiotipo]

It's also funny that in Victoria 2, if you play as a developing nation outside of the great powers (say, Argentina) and if you implement liberal laissez faire economics, your economy goes to absolute shit. The only good way to play Victoria 2 is with state capitalism or a command economy, because otherwise the invisible hand of the market screws you.

If the Liberals get in charge of Argentina, it ruins the country for generations. 10/10 excellent realism.

#cosas mias #there is no real representation in either Vic2 or 3 about the conservative-liberal-nationalist-progressive generation of 80' #which were a bunch of racist conservative oligarch authoritarians who also wanted to develop the country in their version of liberalism #there is something similar in Vic3 with Brazil but it was a phenomenon in all Latin America #the eurocentric oligarchy who wanted Progress but by imposing capitalist liberalist ideals and supressing democracy and socialism #and also lots of racism. lots of it.

[goldiipond]

the word terrorist has lost pretty much all meaning to me because 90% of the time a white person says that word its used as a shorthand for 'nonwhite people resisting oppression'

#skye's ramblings #im soo fucking tired of seeing zionists spout their genocidal bullshit on literally any post abt palestine. im soo fucking angry #ive been trying not to have a meltdown on here but every day this continues i get more and more pissed. how many more people have to die. #we protest and scream in the streets and give anything we can spare and fucking nothing changes bc western democracy is a fucking scam #daily reports of brown children slaughtered and people will smirk behind the safety of their screens and smugly tell you they deserved it. #my native aunts and cousins who are still suffering from the effects of colonialism watch as the descendants of people who took everything #-use their tax money to send more bombs to an illegitimate state that is doing the exact same fucking thing in real time. i want to scream #god dammit im so fucking tired. i will never lose hope but god damn. i am so tired of white people feeling entitled to fucking everything

[mondaymelon]

interest check !!

#★ ˎˊ˗ melonrambles! #just a real quick poll #since im thinking of doing stuffs on kofi or smth #please answer 💖💖 this is a democracy <33 #also prepare for something silly because WE REACHED OUR FOLLOWRR COUNT ASJJDIWKDJ MWAH ILY GUYS

[gay-impressionist]

macron just. bypassed the french parliament YET AGAIN to pass the law adding two years to the minimum age for retirement.

it's a thing that happened.

#FUCK HIM #FUCK THIS GOVERNMENT #for real the parliament should vote a motion of no confidence and make the government resign #bc what the fuck #how is this a democracy #he uses the 49.3 loophole way too much to even pretend not to be authoritarian #he bypassed the parliament about a dozen times if not more #whereas previous presidents almost never used the 49.3 #also what's the point of having a constitutionnal right to demonstrate and strike if the government never takes notice of it #the country could be on fire and macron still would not care #this is not normal #i am BEGGING members of parliament of all sides to come together and show they're not puppets that can be silenced at the president's will #if they don't revoke the government for *this* it's setting a very dangerous precedent #all presidents will be able to bypass parliament as they please knowing that they will be no consequences #it's not even about whether you agree with his policies or not tbh #it's about the president overstepping his role #upthebaguette

[i-am-a-fan]

hey. uhhhh

so. Mk the delivery boy somewhat equal to heaven, right?

since his fight with azure, how equal are they now?

#you don’t need to vote #you don’t need to reblog #i never actually go back and look at these polls imma be so real #lego monkie kid #lmk #monkie kid #speck rambles #lmk mk #lmk season 4 #specks democracy

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: The Truth About Christmas | Real Time with Bill Maher

Finally, New Rule: Praise Jesus, it's a Christmas miracle. For the first time in the 21 year history of this show we are on in December, which gives me a chance to explain to everyone something I've always wanted to expound upon in this show.

You know that whole thing about Jesus being born on December 25th? Well it's a crock of shit. Now, this is not an attack on Jesus. Although, he was a nepo baby. But also a revolutionary philosopher with a beautiful message. As to whether he's a God, that's up to you.

But if the subject is "Gods born on December 25th," we have enough of those for an entire Jeopardy category.

He was the Egyptian god who took the form of a falcon. Who is Horus?

He is the god from ancient Persia born bearing a torch. Who is Mithra?

He is the Greek god of rebirth. Who is Adonis?

He was the fertility god in Cleopatra's time. Who is Osiris?

This Greek deity was known for having a good time. Who is Dionysis?

So you may be asking - those are all real by the way, I think that was the problem, they think I'm making this up but I'm not - why do all the gods want the same birthday? Well, because December 25th was a pagan holiday coming a few days after the shortest day of the year, when primitive peoples noticed that the days were starting to get longer again, and so a cause for celebration.

Cut to:

And that's the story of Christmas. A holiday I love by the way. The tree, the presents, the music, the Christmas memories with my sister and our cousins filling the bong with eggnog. It's the only time of the year it's okay to put alcohol in milk. Christmas is fun if you just accept it's pretend time. Like a Hollywood wedding.

Yes, I love Christmas and always have. Just don't try to make me take it seriously.

And that is what has been going on a lot lately here in America. We have a new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who says America is actually a Biblical Republic and that he's even got a flag picked out that hangs outside his office, and which also could be seen in the mob on January 6th. Mike also says, "the separation of church and state is a misnomer," and congresswoman Lauren Boebert concurs saying she's, "tired of this separation of church and state junk." So too Marjorie Taylor Green, who says, "I say it proudly, we should all be Christian nationalists."

Now I know it may seem like this is just a few crazies, but I gotta tell you, dumbass Republicans who believe horrible ideas are like ants: there's always more that you can't see.

And in in fact, these ideas are no longer the fringe. According to a recent survey, over half of Republicans are either adherents of Christian nationalism or sympathetic to it. And they agree with statements like: "The US government should declare America a Christian Nation," and "Being Christian is an important part of being truly American," and "God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society."

I'm sorry but I don't want anyone exercising their dominion over me unless I pay them and we've established a safe-word.

Boebert says, "The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church." Well, no and no. Neither one is supposed to direct the other. That's what separation of church and state means.

Republicans, Jesus fucking Christ. First you stop believing in democracy - Senator Mike Lee said it, among others. Trump lives the idea every day, and here we have the Speaker of the House saying it. And now Republicans also don't believe in the separation of church and state? Does anyone in that party remember what fucking country you're living in?

We're the place that stakes so much of our greatness on being the first to specifically prohibit having a state religion. There are dozens of countries that have an official religion. There's 13 where being an atheist is punishable by death. Four have "Islamic" right in the title of the country.

And maybe that warms the hearts of the TikTok crowd who lately have found heroes in Hamas and Osama Bin Laden. But that's not us. That's not what we do here. I get it you kids like to switch things up. But I can only handle one side at a time being ridiculous about religious fanaticism, and right now I've got my hands full with Mike Johnson.

Because Mike Johnson has the power to actually make laws. And I don't want my global warming policy decided by someone who is rooting for the end of the world so we can get on with the Rapture. And who once filed a legal brief before the Supreme Court arguing that what he called "deviant same sex intercourse" should be a crime. Even the lesbian stuff?

Mike thinks God personally chooses, raises up our leaders, which is a very dangerous thought, because then when you lose an election you think it's just another of God's tricks to test your faith. Like fossils. Mike says, "We began as a Christian nation." We didn't. Did you miss that day in home school, Mike? If you don't know that the pilgrims came here to get away from the Church of England then you don't know, literally, the first thing about our country. Mike says, being a Christian nation is, "our tradition," and, "it's who we are as a people."

It's not. We're the people who have a First Amendment which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." And we have an Article Six which says, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office."

So, I take these people at their word when they say that they think we should be Christian nationalists. But then they have to take John Adams at his word when he wrote, "the government of the United States of America is not an any sense founded on the Christian religion."

But I still love Christmas!

--

Introduction The rising influence of Christian nationalism in some segments of American politics poses a major threat to the health of our democracy. Increasingly, the major battle lines of the culture war are being drawn between a right animated by a Christian nationalist worldview and Americans who embrace the country’s growing racial and religious diversity. This new PRRI/Brookings survey of more than 6,000 Americans takes a closer look at the underpinnings of Christian nationalism, providing new measures to estimate the proportion of Americans who adhere to and reject Christian nationalist ideology. The survey also examines how Christian nationalist views intersect with white identity, anti-Black sentiment, support of patriarchy, antisemitism, anti-Muslim sentiments, anti-immigrant attitudes, authoritarianism, and support for violence. Additionally, the survey explores the influence Christian nationalism has within our two primary political parties and major religious subgroups and what this reveals about the state of American democracy and the health of our society.

==

Freedom of religion and freedom from religion are the same thing.

#Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #Christmas #separation of church and state #secularism #christianity #christian nationalism #christian nationalists #mike johnson #christian nation #John Adams #First Amendment #Article Six #democracy #religion #freedom of religion #freedom from religion #religious authoritarianism #religion is a mental illness

[is-this-a-twink]

Faeder-type male Ruff from Real Life

#birds #real life #twink democracy #submission

[clamsjams]

oh okay so when I ask if melissa would be omega roiers alpha drag persona in the discord months ago i get fucking crucified, but now everyone’s doing it and no one bats an eye

#this is real btw i need to find the screenshots #i made a google forms poll for every characters secondary gender bc ppl were divided #so i decided to let democracy decide #i wonder where that went #qsmp omegaverse #qsmp #unreality #i guess #qsmp roier #qsmp melissa #posts from the ocean

[latinashepard]

and when i fuck up todas las boletas de milei en el cuarto oscuro

#that's real democracy