Justice sensitivity is a good motivator for resisting fascism. Also for causing arguments at family board games nights.

I think you’ll find that was after you baselessly attacked me.

None of that justifies the extreme response you had to a criticism of Democrats. One that I feel is quite valid and from your responses it kinda feels like you don’t disagree.

All I’m saying is don’t be so prejudiced against people who criticize the Democrats. We’re not all that minority you’re talking about.

And to paraphrase you: a year long fight? Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up. It’s been 8+ years of centrists accusing progressives of being responsible for everything wrong with the Democrats and Republicans. With things exactly like your comment that kicked this whole thing off. So I’m sorry if this past year has been hard with the asshats from ml, I would urge you not to perpetuate that behavior yourself. Chances are you’re doing it to someone who’s been dealing with it a lot longer than a year.

IMO, you shouldn’t be so quick to apply that particular extreme version of a lefty to everyone who criticizes the Democratic Party. That’s a minority you’re describing. Most lefties voted for Clinton, Biden, and Harris. Unless you want to dig into history to lobby the same criticism at Clinton supporters who voted for McCain. There’s always people who don’t make sense who do stuff like that. Plus many people who were Bernie supporters in 2016 were never really lefties to begin with. I’m not saying that as a “no true Scotsman” thing, just that Bernie attracted a wider range of people fed up with the establishment and some of them would not have self-identified as a leftist.

It’s quite prejudiced to just blanket assume everyone to your left is this extreme version you’ve concocted. And before you say you don’t do that, remember how aggressive you were to me when I gave you zero indication that I fell into your little lefty box.

Look, maybe it’s the autism acting up again but I legitimately don’t see it. Can you help me see where it turned to lefties before your comment? The OP is about Elon, a right wing figure, with the narcissist’s prayer excusing his behavior. Very clearly a criticism of a specific right winger.

Then this comment:

“Trump won’t even be that bad, you LIBERALS are just fearmongering!” God. It’s going to be a long [insert period of time here]

I read that as a pseudoquote of a hypothetical right wing voter. Complete with the way they spew “LIBERAL.” “Trump won’t be that bad” isn’t a common lefty position I’ve seen, most of us voted against our own conscience specifically to keep Trump out.

Then the dino comic that, arguably, could be considered a depiction of your hypothetical lefties. But with the context of the comment it replied to I interpreted it more as a Leopards Ate My Face depiction of Republican voters voting against their own interests.

Then you entered with what appeared to me to be a hard turn towards blaming the far left for what’s happening on the right.

The things you were replying to were about Republican voters? You made it about Democratic voters.

You make some wild assumptions to argue against and it’s exhausting. I think you should read back your replies to me and make note of all the times you just assume something and then throw it at me as an attack.

You conveniently left out the part where you threw the first stone at left-leaning voters who lobby criticism against the Democratic Party:

bUt ThE DeMoCraTz DidN’t dO EnOugH fOr tHe WOrKinG cLaSs!!

I responded to that by pointing out that the thing you stated to mock people who hold that sentiment is actually true. (But now you’ve pivoted and actually think it is true? I can’t figure your stance out at all.) You didn’t say anything about nonvoters, no one before you said anything about nonvoters, I was the one who pointed out that nonvoters were a problem by claiming the Democrats foster voter apathy. Does that seem like something a nonvoter would say? But you proceeded to launch an attack against me regardless. And when I pushed backed you kept attacking based on assumptions.

For example: You started throwing out insults about my participation in the political process based on, again, assumptions.

Well, you weren’t entirely wrong but you are pretty ableist. You’re right that I don’t go to meetings. I’m autistic and cannot contribute very well socially. Turning it on for work drains me to the point where I can’t muster anything else for being around people. I can’t understand speech very easily in noisy environments, and even when I can understand I don’t interpret the same way as other people. So instead I research candidates locally and nationally and support in other ways, mainly by donating to progressive primary campaigns. My representative is a pretty safe progressive seat so I don’t usually donate to them, but I do donate to progressives for other local and state offices, I donated to Bernie in 2016 and 2020, and I’ll usually look for other key progressive campaigns in other states to support.

And we do disagree on one thing: I perceived the 2020 primary as a planned, concerted effort by the party to flood the field in order to drown out the fringes, and then drop and push everything towards Biden leading up to Super Tuesday. That’s not even getting into suspicions of both parties using media outlets to push propaganda. I’m still waiting for a primary where the DNC operates in a way to actually let the public form opinions rather than engineering it to push their preferred candidate. As far as I can tell the last time that happened was Obama in 2008 and the party has worked hard ever since to make the primary a farce.

Lol, you wanna square this “oh I’m on the same side as you” with your immediate attack on me based on nothing but your assumption? Because I can’t figure out what in my original response you disagree with if what you say here is true. You just immediately went full neoliberal attack on any criticism of the Democrats, so frankly I don’t buy your bullshit here.

8 years is how long the Democrats have been openly and unashamedly thumbing the scale in their primaries (starting in 2016) and the start of the progressive movement, it’s not a competition.

I’m neurodivergent and messages are significantly more accessible to me, especially in a work context.

I struggle to take in audio information, so if it’s important then messages are much better because I can refer back to them. If it’s not important, it’s not worth the interruption because messages also don’t take me out of my workflow because it’s asynchronous so I can read and respond when I’ve got a moment. A 5 minute unscheduled call is significantly more disruptive to me than an hour long scheduled meeting.

No matter how many times I tell my boss all of this, I get at least one unscheduled no context “do you have a minute to chat?” every single day and it’s effect on my productivity is very problematic.

Excuse me? I’ve voted for 3 people in a row that I didn’t believe deserved to be the nominee, let alone president. Every time I voted against them in the primaries because I didn’t believe they stood a good chance in the general, nor would they be good for the country while in office. For Kamala, I didn’t even get the opportunity to vote against her in the primary but I did vote for uncommitted delegates over Joe Biden. Every time, I voted for them in the general even though that vote was coerced through a corrupt system that refuses to let me vote for someone who actually represents me.

8 goddamn years of listening to high and mighty people like you telling me how everything that’s happening is my fault even though I voted against what was happening at every turn. Fuck off.

I mean… they didn’t though. That’s why they struggle to win in the general even though their platform as stated is good for the populace. When they don’t actually follow through on that, people have a hard time believing them even though they’re clearly the lesser of two evils.

The Democrats foster their own worst enemy: voter apathy. And it doesn’t help that they also foster extremism in the opposition party and then turn around and try to extort the American public with it.

I completely agree that was the only winning option. I also believe the DNC would have thumbed the scale in Kamala’s favor and she probably would have won the primary despite better options. If the DNC cared about winning the general they’d stop interfering with elections. But while that would have royally pissed off a lot of us on the left, a lot of us still would have begrudgingly voted against Trump.

Had Kamala at least gone through a primary first and then carried any semblance of momentum into the general rather than unexpectedly starting cold, she might have eked out a victory.

“The Mountain’s out.”

Sorry about the rant, I have a lot of feelings here.

Realistically, we all have this inherent bias and no one in my life has had their lives improved by Biden. Not a single one. I’m not upper class, my family is stable lower middle class now but we grew up very poor on food stamps and money is still a constant struggle for all of us. I’m glad that apparently people at the bottom have benefitted under Biden but I frankly don’t believe it.

Unions in my city are always fighting tooth and nail to get livable wages and most don’t succeed. I know many people in lower paying positions at my company who left and moved because they tried to get a livable wage and failed, so they went elsewhere because the only way to get any semblance of a good wage anymore is to quit and start anew. Everyone I talk to has suffered under inflation since 2020, without exception.

Again, if some people have benefitted that’s great. But I just haven’t seen it. What I have seen is year over year the C-suite giving themselves 10%+ raises while the rest of us get increases under inflation. That’s not Biden’s fault directly, but he sure hasn’t done anything else to make it any easier on us.

Didn’t do shit for student loans despite using that as a carrot for both the general and midterms, then claimed he was doing so much when all he was doing was acting in accordance with policies passed by previous administrations.

Didn’t tell the truth about his cognitive condition until well after the primaries, meaning Americans didn’t have a choice in the primary and Kamala’s candidacy was hamstrung from the start. Therefore we got Trump 2.0. I’d bet money she could have won the general if she wasn’t a nominee by default (I’d’ve voted for someone else in the primary, but I think she could have won it).

I’m not smug, I’m tired of my government actively working against my interests and then holding up nothing to pretend they’re on my side.

I’m very happy you can be so blase about our utterly broken country. Great job.

I reject this rhetoric that makes him look like a hero “bypassing” hurdles in order to… do the bare minimum required of our government by law. I refuse to let my standards stoop that low.

It’s exhausting for sure. And this thread has all their usual rhetoric, complete with confident assumptions that anyone criticizing their king must be a “MAGAt.” It’s just so utterly incomprehensible to them that anyone can exist to their left, even though the US has no left wing parties.

I’m getting really tired of neoliberals cheering for basic mediocrity and acting like it’s murder to criticize Biden. They’re just an extension of the Democratic Party that is entirely unwilling to address the fact that simply not doing bad things doesn’t make you good.

These are not accomplishments. This is not the promise that got me to vote for Biden despite not believing he would be a good president, nor that his primary run was above board. I want a president that actually works to better the lives of the people.

And while we’re at it, I’d like a fair primary without DNC bullshit.

I’m so sorry. My wife and I are trying to conceive and after two years of trying we got a positive. Then another a few days later. We were aware that we shouldn’t get our hopes up, but despite that how can you not? We were so excited.

Then the spotting started. Then another test still showed positive but it was so faint. It turned into desperately trying to bargain with the universe and convince ourselves that these signs didn’t point to the obvious. But the obgyn confirmed it a few days later.

For us it was only ~2 weeks after the first positive, and I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to lose it later on. I’m still devastated. We’re still trying, but I’m not sure how much fear is going to be mixed in if we manage to get another positive.