MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
No politician is owed votes for anything
Every election politicians need to offer things that they will then do when elected in order to attract voters.
When they don't do the things they say they will do, that makes them a liar.
It's amazing how many people fail to understand that when a party loses an election, it's the fault of the party and nobody else.
When they don’t do the things they say they will do, that makes them a liar.
There are times when a promise can't be fulfilled. It has become wildly more difficult for Democratic priorities to pass through the legislative process in the last 25 years as Republicans have used more and more obstructive tactics. I think a very good case could be made that Republicans have tilted the table enough to completely block a Democratic agenda even if they took Congress and the Presidency.
Lisa Murkowski got fucked by her own party literally this week. She negotiated and got legislation passed, only for Trump to basically line item veto it with an executive order.
And I'm so old I can remember when the Supreme Court struck down the line item veto. How can you possibly get an agenda through when there are no rules but what the Roberts court says there is?
When people promise me things and don't fulfill them i consider that a broken promise.
I have no sympathy for Dems who take power and then whine that their hands are tied.
Maybe they should let someone with balls be in power if they want to change things.
What would that look like in real terms?
It would look like a Democrat that tells their rich doners they they are going to be forced to make concessions.
There has been tens of trillions of dollars funneled to a group of less than 5,000 people over the last 50 years.
I think you're giving Republicans way too much credit. Democrats are completely incapable of unifying on anything important, and that's why they don't get their stuff through. They need better leadership if they're going to get anything done.
What would that look like in real terms?
Basically whatever the Republicans are doing, but on the opposite side of policy. Get candidates that people actually like and push popular policy. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden weren't it, neither was an infrastructure bill or whatever it was Harris pushed for. Get people excited and rally the party around them.
The best shot dems had recently was Bernie Sanders, but they sandbagged him in favor of Hillary Clinton.
But no, dems instead prefer infighting.
I largely agree with you. The Democratic party is a disaster. The evergreen tactic of throwing the coalition under the bus in order tack to the middle for some imagined Reagan Democrat vote that doesn't exist is infuriating and the policy that results is dogshit.
The only part I would argue with is that Old Joe ended up with policy that looked a whole lot more progressive than I thought he ever would. I think he deserves a lot of credit for trying. If he could have defended his policy with the voice of a young modern progressive, people would think much higher of his accomplishments.
But yea, I agree with you.
I actually think the lesson is (from listening to lefties, tankies and to dems after the election):
If your strategy relies on votes from the 1% fringes, then you're probably going to lose. If you can't convince normies to vote for you, you're lost.
Both are necessary, is the issue. The normies aren't politically active enough to reliably push a majority of the vote, and the fringe is (by definition) not large enough to do it itself.
You end up with 45% normies and 5.1% fringes, and losing even a little sliver of either means you lose.
Politics in this country is fucked.
But the fringes are fickle, that's what I'm saying, if they are decisive, they will disappoint you. There is a long list of demands that you'll never be able to meet or if you do, you're potentially going to anger the right-wing of your voters and lose more than you get.
Yep. But then the fringes are always decisive, and there's no way around that - so every election we end up playing a game of "Holy fucking shit are we going to get screwed again??" and, as Kamala demonstrated in attempting to appeal to a greater volume of normies with her "Country over party" schtick, there's not really a lot of room for replacing the fringe with normies. The normies are mostly already decided or tuned-out, and trying to pump their votes up gives diminishing returns for the effort at this point - at the expense of the fringes.
Shit's fucked. To unfuck it, we have to address the root causes. But addressing the root causes is hard, unglamorous, and time-consuming, while people - normies and fringe alike - want solutions NOW, so instead nothing is fucking done.
Dear Tankies
My life matters too much to be pointlessly sacrificed so we can throw the election by voting for Jill Stein
Sincerely, a transwoman not in a blue state.
If you're in a swing state, sure, vote strategically. But if you're not, voting for a third party has a lot higher chance of sending a useful signal to the dominant party.
I do feel it would be better if they voted 3rd party tho. We know more about those throw away votes than we do of the non-voting group. Gives the big tent party some solid statistics on how to pivot to get them on board for a coalition. It might also mean that we get more 3rd party election wins on local stuff. Tho I think that last part matters more in blue states. As someone who cannot quite move out if their red state I get what you are saying too. My last congress vote had a standard corporate democrat vs a MTG clone.
Sincerely, a transwoman not in a blue state.
All my trans siblings have my sympathy in this fucking shit-ass time we live in, but especially those not in blue states. I hope you make it out - whether out of the state, or out of this period of fucked up time we live in.
Both, I suppose.
This sounds more like someone with a grudge against America than a fascist. "Eat shit, Americans" isn't exactly a controversial position in most of the world, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
"I'm glad the fascists won so minorities in America can suffer" is a pretty fascist statement to make. Imagine saying "I'm glad Putin won the election, I hope liberasts and Russians suffer"
I'm not agreeing with it, but to translate its more along the lines of "You Americans have spent so long being comfortable and benefitting from the imperialist project of the US and all the death and destruction it perpetrates across the world and have not offered any resistance to their own government in all this time. Liberals have been content to be complaicent in it too as long as a woman gets to drop some of those bombs, for fairness. Now you won't be able to avoid the consequences of the evil imperialist core that all these other countries have been crushed under for over a century and may actually be driven to do something about it, since it actually affects you now."
Which again I don't agree with, but can also aknowledge that its more nuanced than just wishing harm for harm's sake.
Which I could easily see coming from a Chechen so you're kinda proving my point. Also while minorities are going to suffer more, everyone suffers under fascism except subservient rich males of the right ethnicity, so there's plenty of suffering to go around for, say, Zionists and imperialists. They're misguided, but this comment alone doesn't make them a fascist.
I took it more as "these people who benefitted by all the destruction and war the US committed in their names are finally feeling the sting and might actually be driven to do something about it".
"I hope there is a genocide in the US" usually is a controversial position. So is killing all political opponents.