Democrats are all upset over Mamdani because he’s a Democratic Socialist? Why? I don’t get it. What’s wrong with being a Democratic Socialist. It seems like a good thing to me. I thought Democrats embraced socialism.
Democracy and Capitalism are inextricably linked in American politics. ‘Democratic Capitalism’ is the predominant social and economic culture.
Changing the capitalism part is as revolting as changing the democracy part.
And that’s without trying to disambiguate Social Democracy from Democratic Socialism.
I thought Democrats embraced socialism.
Democrats, the party and politicians, no. Not even close. As much as Fox News would love you to believe that.
Democrats, the voters, much more so. The majority of people in the US are like you. When presented with actual socialist policies, they’re on board. But most people are also not engaged enough in politics to recognize that the Democratic party doesn’t actually believe in socialist policies, they just vote for “the left”. Or, they do recognize it, but feel that they have no better options.
I mean, if all you do is vote on election day, you don’t have better options.
Look at the track record of nationalized industries. It’s not good.
Ah yes, the famous failures of… libraries, fire stations, social security, medicare, USPS, and VA hospitals.
The Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force. Coast Guard. Police. Highway construction.
1 word: pluralities.
America is a capitalist nation. The Republicans openly support it. The Democrats less openly support it.
Socialism breaks the mold, it evens the playing field for everyone - people part of the establishment will always oppose it.
There’s nothing preventing capitalism from being socialist, except right-wing propaganda.
Capitalism is a (very powerful) financial tool for societies. It can help them prosper or it can be abused and turned to fascism.
The key is to keep the Capitalists out of government to prevent legislative capture by corporations.
Look at the Scandinavian countries to see successful social-democratic countries that have embraced capitalism without frogmarching into fascism like the US. Sure, they’re not without their problems, but I’d rather have their problems.
America is a capitalist nation. The Republicans
openlyrabidly support it. The Democrats lessopenlyrabidly support it.
For generations, Americans have been raised to believe that socialism and communism are the same thing, and that they’re not only bad policy, but actively un-American and evil.
Liberals hate progressive more than they hate the GOP. But this way Democrats keep saying every election is the most important election in our lifetime. They still expect the vote blue no matter who, so Democrats want nothing more than to have the progressive fall in line.
I hate it here. I want off this ride.
Helping people is woke.
There again. What’s wrong with being woke?
Woke. Look up the definition. It means being aware, awake, tuned in to reality.
That can be unappealing to many people. Mostly ignorant, lazy, arrogant, selfish people who haven’t had the need to consider the existence of well-being of any other person but themselves and MAYBE their direct family in their entire lives.
Hope that clears things up!
Right, but that’s not the general social understanding of what the word means. Trying to save “woke” from the cultural connotations it gained after becoming a word known to the mainstream is a lost cause.
That’s EXACTLY what the general understanding is. You just need to think about it for a few seconds.
Some people just don’t want to or even have the ability to think and just parrot what their peers say, or they’re just bigoted pieces of shit and this lets them get away with it.
Anyone complaining about “woke” is a bigot. Call them out.
You are misunderstanding me.
Sure, perhaps that is definition used by those who adopt the term.
The problem is that the culture outside this small group has agreed that the term refers to people who are insufferable and holier-than-thou.
I know people who care about these sorts of things. They talk about social inequality. They vote for politicians who want to reform the system. They work in nonprofits to make the world a better place. They attend conferences to learn about the newest discoveries in intersectional studies.
None of them call themselves “woke”, or use the word at all. Why? Well because the word and its cultural associations are cringy. They want to be seen as sensible, reasonable people who have realistic solutions to real problems - using the word “woke” would undermine this goal. It doesn’t matter what the actual, literal definition of the word is - simply using it would undermine their credibility, since it would indicate a lack of social acuity. It’s like someone using the term “retarded” to refer to someone with a developmental disability. Even if they use the word in a completely kind and clinically appropriate way, their general credibility is undermined because polite society has determined that it is an inappropriate word to use.
I feel like there are some seriously stupid people here who cannot understand sarcasm.
It’s DEI or something
Helping people who aren’t me is woke.
Every transaction has two sides.
If a politician says we can’t afford something, what that really means is they see they would be paying for it, not being paid for it.
In short, current admin is corrupt.
The main potential problem of democratic socialism is that it can fuel a sort of populist policies, where politicians promise all kinds of benefits to the voters. The politicians who promise and implement those things only get the benefits (votes and power) and never have to answer for the problems (e.g. inefficient and expensive structures that were perhaps not needed at all) they create. It’s always the cleanup crew (the politicians who are responsible and implement austerity) who get the blame.
Like almost all things in this world, democratic socialism can also be great if it’s implemented well. For instance, well-funded and well-planned public schools can be awesome for the whole society, both the poor, the rich, and everyone in between. But that requires skill, intelligence, hard work, all of which are scarce resources.
Nothing.
Swede here, if we compare the two political parties in the US to the Swedish political spectrum, the Republicans would be far to the right of even Sverigedemokraterna, the Democrats would be center-right.
What the US calls the left side of the political compass is nowhere near the actual left on a proper political compass.
The US badly needs a new voting system, the current one promotes stagnation and I can’t see it ever having more than two realistic choices again.
I wish we could add a progressive party, labor party, and the like. The two party system is broken.
Compared to Germany, the republicans are far right like our AfD… Your ICE is the dream of the AfD.
And the democrats are more “economy-liberal” instead of actually liberal. Also, they contain much of the CDU (conservative) energy, a bit of green party energy and a bit of SPD (social democrats) energy…
I totally agree with you. I’d like to add that, as I understand it, Mamdani ended up the democratic candidate because of the voting method (ranked choice).
I think this is precisely why current political interests are so opposed to changing the first-past-the-post method for ranked choice voting. Let alone proportional representation.
It also shows how effective and necessary it is to change the voting system! Imo this is what the ‘no kings’ movement should focus on above all elseYeah FPTP is increadibly harmfull to a democracy, it will effectively remove any small parties over time, it will also promote results manipulation like Jerrymandering.
Get rid of FPTP and smaller parties will pop up like crazy all over the US.
The DNC are just republican lite, madini upsets thier status quo, aka center right, so not even on the left. the voters may support DS, but the politicians dont at all, all that money that comes with being like the gop is too god to miss.
Mamdani is being excoriated because he doesn’t support one particular donor class. I dare not mention who these people are for fear of being wiped off this platform. The Z word seems OK enough.
unless your on a world instance, which they are pretty “pro-zionist or nazis” talking about israel/gaza,etc. your free to talk about aipac and israel.
You’re on Lemmy dawg, you can talk shit on AIPAC and Zionism.
From the perspective of Democrats mamdani risks actually bettering the status quo for the working class. They fear this because democrats primarily represent the interests of their rich donors who have a lot to lose if the working classes conditions are bettered. Not as many profits to be made if you have to pay your workers more and can’t charge exorbitant rents. He is also upsetting the unconditional support for Israel that the Democratic party has settled upon.
From the socialist/communist perspective people like Mamdani are complicated. They can be good in that they often genuinely want to improve the conditions of the working class and often do but are limited by their decision to work within a system designed to oppress the working class. They can only do so much. Democratic socialism is just capitalism with a welfare state. Its great for the workers within the democratic socialist nation but this form of capitalism is only possible through exploitation of a working class abroad, typically in the global south.
He might like do a thing that helps the peasants… Or even hurt the parasite.
Who knows but when you end counter this many enemies on both sides, you know this bro is going the right way. NYC politics is a corruption galore though. He is about to finding out how impotent that can make him. Hope fully he can do something to kick off a wave across US.
People haven’t gained the full class consciousness yet but post covid fuckeninng has shook the normie to the core and they asking questions that make daddy very uncomfortable
