Progress makes us realize how far behind we still are. But we still need to make progress, we can’t just do nothing and pretend it’s fine.

Your two party system is broken

We know this, but that doesn’t prevent voting blue from being the best route to changing it

Well do you want it to happen faster?

You have to shift the Overton Window to democratic issues and then we’ll actually have a chance to vote in better ones

That isn’t the point of that discussion, and it’s obvious to everyone that it is the case

Ok but some people are really dumb and it is not obvious to them

pride parades

The news is the only thing that cares. I’ve never seen one.

media being changed

Often done for diversity’s sake at the cost of quality, yes. This is executive meddling and generally doesn’t work as intended.

Folk who just want to mind their own business, aren’t allowed to anymore

You totally are, just avoid media hype.

I don’t even think you’re necessarily wrong, but I’m arguing that in the absence of media amplification and/or existing bigotry, this would not be a problem.

I’d like to think I apply it fairly, although note that there’s a difference between “those people were mean, but you have to stop feeling sad” and “those people were mean, but you still have to treat them like they’re humans.”

White Panther

This idea is like nitroglycerine

He spends a lot on “normal” help for the city, but people don’t know this because they don’t read the comics.

Kill him. Kill and eat him now

If you’re still bigoted towards gay people I don’t want you on our side tbh and if you’re now on the right I don’t think you were centrist in the first place. General “you,” of course.

People who never even cared about whether someone was gay or not now has a strong negative association

Or they can be a big boy and suck it the fuck up

and Trump gets the fight going faster so we can get to democracy faster?

How exactly do you think authoritarianism will lead to a collapse, and how will that collapse lead to democracy somehow winning out? Allowing fascists to take over just means we now live in a fascist society. When Germany turned fascist, they didn’t magically break up and become a shining example of democracy. It took serious external pressure for that to happen. Revolutions usually just change the power structure among those who were already in power-- they don’t suddenly grant power to the little guys. Even if, by some miracle, the US went full Nazi and didn’t just stay that way but somehow immediately collapsed, and hundreds of thousands died in a giant civil war and/or WWIII, and we don’t nuke each other off the face of the planet so hard it’s unrecoverable, you expect democracy will be the result? Why? How can you be sure?

TL;DR: Voting for a fascist won’t cause a collapse and a collapse won’t result in democracy, with any degree of certainty.

PLEASE actually think these things through instead of just throwing out ideas like this, because if people start to actually believe this we’re going to be in an INCREDIBLY dangerous situation (moreso than we already are!) and the entire world will suffer for it.

If we’re right I hope you step up to accept your blame in this

That’s not how it works in practice. When a candidate wins, they’re established as a benchmark for what’s popular. This means candidates are more likely to be close to their position, but a bit left or right. This is called the “Overton Window” and it establishes what people talk about politically on the national stage.

When Trump got elected, he started expressing opinions about LGBTQ people, vaccines, etc. Everyone was then forced to argue around those points for 4 years. When Biden was elected, we started talking about unions, corporations, Israel and Palestine, etc. If you take a look at the EU, they’re talking about things like corporate gatekeepers, universal healthcare, and banning Nazi rhetoric.

By electing people who are progressively more and more to the left of the current democratic candidate, we can shift the Overton Window to begin talking about things like housing, UBI, corporate monopolies, etc. But it’s a gradual process, so we have to be persistent but accepting if it doesn’t all happen immediately.

Like his many attempts to push back against corporations? Or do those not count?

I’m not participating in that system

No, this is a lie they tell themselves. Not voting isn’t not participating, because participating means making a choice for who will be president, and doing nothing is a choice. Not voting is equivalent to saying “I don’t care” or “I like both candidates equally”. People who don’t vote are participating, they’re just saying that they don’t care who gets elected.

The idea that “it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn’t know what it’s talking about” is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around.

I see the people you talk to aren’t familiar with politicians?

mdn

Yeah blocking users is pretty useful. Whenever I see a user post something horrible or massively annoying I look at their last few comments. Usually those are equally bad so then I block them and go back to whatever I was looking at.

It’s reassurring to see that sometimes it really is just that someone has been misled, and that given the right opportunity they can change.