The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging on the streets and stealing bread.
Anatole France, 1894
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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I commented that exact quote several times on Lemmy, nice to see other people do the same!
It's been one of my favorites for decades!
I encountered it reading Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos. Never read the original
Working class: "Can we have meaningful reform?"
Conservatives: "No."
Liberals: "No 😘 🌈 "
I’m frustrated with the reflexive "both sides are equally bad" response that shuts down any meaningful analysis of what's actually happening in our politics.
I'm not naive about the Democratic Party's problems. They struggle with internal divisions, sometimes cave to corporate pressure, and they’ve made compromises that disappointed their base. But when I look at voting records, policy proposals, and legislative priorities, I see meaningful differences that have real consequences for people's lives.
On issues I care about (healthcare access, climate action, voting rights, ext.) one party consistently proposes solutions and votes for them when they have the numbers. The other party doesn’t just oppose these policies, they fight tooth and nail to undermine them, delay them, or dismantle them entirely. That’s not a matter of opinion. That’s a matter of public record.
When Democrats fail to deliver, it’s often because they lack sufficient majorities or face procedural roadblocks. When they do have power, they’ve passed significant legislation on infrastructure, climate investment, and healthcare expansion. Meanwhile, when Republicans have unified control, their priorities have been tax cuts for the wealthy and rolling back environmental protections.
I understand the appeal of cynicism. It can feel sophisticated to dismiss all politicians as equally corrupt. But that cynicism serves the interests of those who benefit from the status quo.
If you can't tell the difference between someone trying to reform a broken system and someone actively working to keep it broken, you're not offering insight. You're providing cover for obstruction.
Does this mean Democrats are perfect? Of course not. Should we hold them accountable when they fall short? Absolutely. But pretending there are no meaningful differences between the parties just because neither is perfect makes it harder to build the coalitions we need to create the change we actually want to see.
I agree with you that the parties are not the same. The GOP are outright evil puppets of the billionaire class. The Democrats are ineffectual cowards who've made careers out of paying lip service to the right thing, and every now and then doing something helpful if it's convenient for them and doesn't piss off their billionaire donors. A lot of the time that ends up translating to the same results for most people.
I don't buy the "sorry, our hands are tied" line we always get from the left. Dems throw up their hands even when they do have majorities. The first meaningful opportunity the Democrats had to obstruct Trump's agenda, after the left base had been screaming for weeks for their representatives to do something, Schumer rolled over immediately. I can't take this party seriously anymore.
I won’t defend Schumer's choice here. It was a bad call, and the anger from House Democrats and the base was completely justified. You're right that the party leadership sometimes folds when they should fight. They make strategic decisions that feel disconnected from the urgency the moment demands. And yes, Democrats have corporate-aligned figures who blunt the force of reform, but that is also a reality of our current system that we have to work within.
But, sticking to your example, there is a key difference: when Democrats cave, it’s often to avoid causing harm, like a shutdown that would devastate working people. When Republicans cave, it’s to secure more tax cuts, more deregulation, and more authoritarian power. The intent and the outcome are not the same, even if the compromise leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
It also matters that Democrats have factions pushing from within. The anger from House Dems, from AOC, from the base, that’s real pressure that can move things. Republicans don’t have that kind of internal accountability. Their party punishes dissent and rewards obstruction.
And while it's easy to say “they always have excuses,” the reality is that even when Democrats had a trifecta in 2021, their margin in the Senate was literally 50-50. One or two bad actors (like Manchin or Sinema) could tank an entire agenda, and did. That's not an excuse. That's a math problem, and the only way around it is bigger, more engaged progressive coalitions.
So yes, Schumer failed in that moment (and many others). Yes, we should be furious. But walking away or writing off the party entirely means handing power back to a movement that’s not just flawed. It’s actively hostile to democracy, human rights, and the planet. That’s not moral purity. That’s surrender.
Your defense of the Democrats boils down to "at least we're not the GOP." And you're not wrong. I've done my part by voting against the GOP in every election since I was eligible. The Democrats themselves don't even do that. I wish their effort would at least match mine, seeing as it's their full-time job. And I wish you held your reps as accountable as your fellow voters.
I agree with you and like to emphasis on one point you already mentioned. The demcrats encompass everything to the left of the GOP. Because the GOP is far right, everything to the left of it includes center right, conservatives, centrist and liberal opinions, as well as a lot, or most of the left wing depending on definitions.
In my opinion this is one of the major reasons why the democrats seem so undecicive, because there already are so many different world views of people that are forced to be in the same party, because effectively, there only are two of them, and the alternative is straight up fascism.
If the democrats ever regain power, changing the voting system to allow for a 3rd or 4th party to actually emerge would be a saving grace, but unfortunately, the above mentioned composition will likely prevent them from it, even when in power. And on top of that they will have their hands full with the debt crisis.
Democrats CONTINUE to enforce and support the unpopular, treasonous, ineffectual leadership. We can talk about Schumer's bad choice all day long but it means nothing if he is never ever ever ever ever "held accountable" for it. They literally stuck an old fossil with cancer in the DNC chair versus the clearly obvious choice that gets things done and excites the voters. He literally ran a PRO-TRUMP Democrat to unseat McConnell when all the energy was behind Charles Booker.
Young voters and progressives do not believe in anything you say because there is no will to back it up. They get stabbed in the face over and over and over and over and over again.
As for the good policies that Dems enacted? They're easily dismantled or else undermined by administrative excess, handing power back to the GOP. Case in point: FEMA and the Lahaina fire relief. FEMA swooped in to help house the displaced; to do this they paid $9000/month in rent to anyone that would help house the victims. All of our rents went up ASTRONOMICALLY because FEMA far exceeded the market rate, leading to more homelessness even for those NOT displaced by the fire. Landlords got RICH AS FUUUUUCK on the taxpayer dime.
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From my detached non American (but still a citizen of the planet so likely to get fucked hard by the way Americans vote) point of view, seems like Americans are continually letting perfect be the enemy of least bad. "Well since Democrats are kinda bad in these instances maybe we should just go fully fascist theological doom cult. That will force the Democrats to improve, or kill us all."
American here....I think it's actually more the opposite. Everyone is being told to vote for the lessor evil and no one is getting what they want. That's what caused all this to begin with imo... The Magas torched their party trying to get something different to happen politically (not to excuse them or anyone). This is all on the 2 party system, if we make it out of this I think ending that system is one major change that will need to take place to avoid repeating the cycle. Basically, we lost our Republic a long time ago when Congress stopped representing us and became owned by billionaires.
Ive always put it in the very crude fashion of "They are both going to fuck us, but one of them spits on it and goes in gentle the other one wants us to struggle."
It's called controlled opposition. The Democratic party has a lot of passionate, honest people, who want to make the world a better place. But they're funded and directed at the highest levels of leadership by a group that secretly wants to make the world a worse place.
And the way they accomplish that is making sure the passionate honest people lose. Kamala Harris was bragging about drilling for oil and staying quiet about Gaza because either she or the people giving her advice wanted her to lose.
"Both sides bad" is the party's intended messaging strategy. And it's a lie. But it's a lie people are falling for and repeating.
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Most of three Democrats in Congress are hardly liberal
Leftist. Liberalism is a right wing ideology.
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Think of the kids.
But don’t do anything.
"No kid should ever have to sleep on the streets, so we made it borderline impossible for them to physically do so. Hopefully their bootstraps figure out someplace they can sleep, because we sure as hell didn't. You're welcome."
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Holy shit! There’s a bunch of poor homeless kids that are starving!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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"No kid should ever be able to sleep on the streets"
Saw a guy sleeping under a bench with a similar design as this one, checkmate.
There is so much going on in that image. Layer after layer. It made me kinda dizzy.
I knew the threads would be cha0s. I was hoping someone would comment about the image itself. And wow. Hell of a comment. :]
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Aww they put kid sized sleeping areas on the bench!
Ok, but the people at Covenant House aren't the ones who decided to put the anti-homeless architecture in place.
Most charities are just scams. And yeah they might do some good, but charity is a symptom of failure. We are byproduct of our environment.
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Most of the -ism's get you here. The only one that doesn't: Peppa Pigism
An angle grinder would make short work of those "arm rests."
Is that just a weird perspective, or is that bench just an inch or two off the ground?
Perspective. You can see the leg on the right side through the bench.
We got a figure out a way to remove first past the post.
There are really at least 3 groups, not liberals and conservatives.
There are progressives, neoliberals, and fascists.
Progressives believe the government exists to help all people.
Neoliberals say people should not be descriminated against, but wealth segregation is fine
Fascists are, well, fascists.
This post isn't very region specific but I assume you're talking about the USA.
Steps:
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Vote DNC, Promote DNC, Volunteer DNC
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DNC ammends constitution to reverse the Citizens United Decision, removing money from politics.
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DNC ensures fair districting and proportional representation
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People now have the power to enact real meaningful change
Simultaneously:
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Promote FairVote, educate people door to door and on the streets, buy ad space if you can
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Protect local broadcast infrastructure and donate to forums where people discuss these issues to keep them running
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Utilize Artwork to get people's attention on these issues.
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