this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Yah I don't have solutions for near-term successes because we're now living in motherfucking consequence.
Our liberal appeals, our lefty identity politics, our scolding and appealing and hand-wringing about all the wrong problems to focus on has cost us everything and I have spent the last decade warning everyone that this was going to happen.
But sure, go ahead and keep sharing memes on Lemmy about how bad orange man is, keep reposting witty twitter exchanges and keep deluding yourselves into thinking "any day now, America is going to wake up and DO SOMETHING" while the situation gets progressively worse.
You don't expect some great plan for getting out of "consequence" you try to avoid it from happening in the first place. A lot of us were screaming the entire last decade that we need to mobilize FAST to get grassroots candidates installed in local and state seats, that we need to protest not brands for not being woke, but we needed to protest EVERYTHING and start hoarding and saving money broadly. You lost the left because the left was about scolding the right and not mobilizing people against oligarchy and corporations. You made it about inclusivity and fringe issues when it should have been about workers. Once you secure the workers and production, you can then fix the social issues... I don't understand how you all thought you were going to fix social issues while the elite capitalists were running the show.
Sure though, go ahead and blame the Democrats, blame Obama, blame dumb hicks who have no education or consistent values and just go along with whatever emotional narrative feels good to them at the moment- you know, instead of USING them like the tools they are. We could have done SO MUCH.
Right now, America's remaining middle-class liberal population are like a ripe nest of honeypot ants out in the Sahara. There are massive forces looking at that ripe basket of wealth waiting for any and every opportunity to chop into that nest and start scooping out whatever they can before it's all gone, and it's going fast. That's where we're fucking at right now. The middle-class is being raped and gutted and we're here on the sidelines saying "Is our platform inclusive enough?"
Fuck all ya'll. You were dumb and this is what happens when you're dumb. First you checked out and didn't care what was happening, then when you started to care, you just divided in a thousand splinters arguing about the dumbest shit imaginable for performative Lefty Points that can be redeemed at your local concentration camp for the benefit of feeling smug as you wait for deportation.
It's not an orange man bad meme. It's a liberals ain't doing nothing meme, which is actually a true and valid problem. We have to find ways to sabot the gears of the autocratic oppression machine. As Helen Cox Richardson notes, if you got an artistic bone in your body, get to artting!
Also Knitting Cult Lady did a video ( on YouTube ) about how Orange Man's orange makeup is the same thing as Queen Elizabeth I's make-up (white leaded paint, which, yes, did poison her) to signal that she is a living god. In the queen's case it was a means to get England to recognize a woman as a legit ruler (rather than pressuring her to find a husband to take over).
Orange Man does it because he wants to be a cult leader (which is essentially the same thing), and we don't find his facepaint absurd enough to throw him from his podium or think of him as a clown.
This is how we know human beings are the evolutionary equivalent of a lowest-common-bidder project, the minimum amount of reasoning necessary to build a rocket and touch the moon. Otherwise, we are still brutal animals, and apes as silly as the ones in the jungle.
I don't even take issue with this meme in this post, it's actually closer to reality than anything.
It's the constant, daily "LOOK AT WHAT HE SAID AND LOOK AT WHAT THIS PERSON SAID IN REPLY" or other kinds of fake, delusional satisfaction-porn that we all spread and pat ourselves on the back for that bothers me. I don't mind the propaganda, we need everything we have, but I don't like how it's being circulated in places where it's just reinforcing people's belief that we're actually scoring points.
I feel strongly that if the average LemmyLefty were to see just how strong the country's conservative base really is, and just how tuned-out and apathetic the average American voter is, any how many there really are, they would despair the way I have and sound just as angry and cynical as me.
And then hopefully, after the despair passes, they will start tackling it seriously like the real problem that it is, from a more realistic ground-floor than letting themselves get distracted over every identity-politics hit-piece and emotional appeal designed to make people lose rational thought.
He's wearing the face paint for the same reason 18th century French aristocrats did- because he has syphilis. You have got to be joking with the "divine symbolism" take, he's an intellectual basket case, he's nowhere close to being capable of that level of symbolic ostentation, and neither would his base be capable of making that connection, that's just dumb.
Everything you claim should be done is what Bernie Sanders supported and that got us nowhere.
It's really easy to get up on your high horse and claim that leftist identity politics is the problem instead of looking at the systemic failures of American democracy. Lobbying, Gerrymandering, media outlet control, anti-intellectual propaganda, voter disenfranchisement, an underfunded education system, the electoral college, a packed supreme court, etc.
This isn't a case of 'if you can stop being righteous and just hate gay people for a moment we could have had universal health care.' This is a case of the democratic process unravelling in its end stages as the popular candidate lost the vote four times in the seven presidential elections.
Imagine if Bernie just gave up the first time he lost an election, he would have bowed out in 1972 when he only got 2.1% of the vote in a Vermont Senate special election.
Instead he's been bang on consistent with his views for going on 60 goddamn years now. The rest of the left could learn a lot from that.
Never forget that thousands lined up to vote for Bernie during covid, putting their health at risk and he ultimately... dropped out.
Real leadership quality there. I'm sure his candidacy would have been enough to stop the fascists.
Joe Biden.
What's really sunk is this widespread, infectious binary thinking. It's not even natural, it's a product of media and propaganda.
If you all think "focusing on workers" as a priority is the same as "hate gay people" then we have no hope. It means our minds are not capable of holding simultaneous ideas or making priorities anymore. It fucking sucks and I don't know how to explain things anymore to people in ways that don't trigger this kind of "all or nothing" "love or hate" "black and white" thinking mode, and it's getting worse.
You wanted equality? Then you should have looked at how the average dumbass white, straight american views it... as a secondary issue. Then used their primary issues to leverage our society to the issues we wanted to see. Now we lose everything because we couldn't work with the problem we had and instead tried to solve all the problems at once. It's dumb and sometimes I want to give up and let you all have the fascist hellhole nightmare you all seemed to secretly want so you can continue to be victims of the establishment and not have to get off your asses and DO something for your community.
That's a little hypocritical of you to call this "widespread, infectious binary thinking" when I was pointing this out in your comment, not advocating for it.
You're faulting liberals for stifling class warfare through engaging in identity politics, when you said so yourself that it doesn't have to be either or.
Identity politics isn't the enemy of class warfare, it's corporate interests, lobbying, and billionaires, and they want you to do exactly what you are doing now, which is to get liberals to gatekeep each other while they laugh at low tax rates.
I was saying that you pointing it out in my comment was the binary, black and white attitude. I say: "We on the left have been tackling this problem wrong, most American's don't care about the issues we keep hitting them with." To which Lefty Clone #409687 says "How can you hate marginalized people so much you're willing to turn your back on them????"
It sounds exactly the same to me as "You want to help children in Gaza? How can you empower anti-semitism???" In that, one has nothing to do with the other. It's an artificial binary used to keep us from getting anywhere. Yah, we did too much scolding and identity politics and abstract worries that people don't see... Covid should have been our wake-up call that people's minds have changed or melted out their ears, we should have focused on issues that average americans actually care about, we should have leveraged their selfish worries and used their fear to fight the system that wants to send us all to camps. Then we could have done better and pushed our desires for a just and equitable world back on stage and got that shit protected... we were even making progress on it for a little while. Then everyone started falling for the same distractions.
Uh... Just force 99% to work like slaves, pretend there's scarcity by not allowing health or food to some humans to spur the shit out of the parents, while they are looking away, teach them and their kids and their kids continually that there's scarcity and we have to work insanely much to survive. Then be offended when equality, the literal core issue, that you are all treated like trash by a higher hierarchy and for no reason.. there are maybe 40 people you need to conquer but nah, focus on your fucking status game, focus on fucking if a guy wants cock???? Then say wow, so you care so much about blah blah? Literally the objective of equality is no it is cool that you hyper focus but also oops solve problems solve health solve happiness solve productivity solve fucking not burning the boreal and slaying the entire human race... Equality isn't a secondary issue.. its a root issue.
It was always going to happen. The universe is Entropic, and this is how that manifests. There is no escaping decay, our fathers had a good run.
It's kind of like the difference between dying at 35 because you didn't tie your shoes and tripped on your front steps, versus dying at 85 shaking your fist at the world and saying "I did all I could do!"
If nothing else, I am beyond angry what they did to NASA and the 50+ missions that just got scrapped. I wanted to see the surfaces of other worlds if nothing else at all.
You fundamentally misunderstand entropy and what that word is used for