Political Memes

chatter matters because they’re testing the waters to see what voters find agreeable and/or permissible.

I disagree, but if you define the following, it's possible I might be persuaded to agree (I'm not asking you to per se just saying these are wildly undefined)

• chatter
• waters
• testing the waters
• they

Who enabled it to be a wedge issue?

An excellent question. There are a number of answers. Let's take "it" and "to be a wedge issue" as givens. That leaves us with "Who" which I think we can agree means any person or organization, and then the trickier "enabled".

Wedge issues exist by virtue of the fact that there are two or more differing opinions. Let's take a different example to explore this: the so-called transgender bathroom issue. If all bathrooms were unisex it wouldn't be an issue. But, due to the fact that others have existed in the world before we got to this very moment in time, that's not the case. Bathrooms in public areas were divided by sex long ago and have largely remained so until the last 40 years, say.

Now I don't know anyone who cares what people do in the bathroom, but I do know someone who is very upset that trans people exist and need to use the bathroom sometimes. In a real-world scenario this would probably never come up, like, ever - at all, because they don't frequent public places and they probably wouldn't actually care in practice anyway. I disagree with them, fwiw.

The fact that we disagree then makes this a potential wedge issue between us. Is that issue "enabled"? If so, how? See, I would argue that the "enabled" part of it, is who's putting it into the conversation constantly? Who's making it accusatory, who's driving the conversation into a quarrelsome direction? Well, in this case, conservative media as usual. Now it's a wedge issue because Fox News and 100 other sewers "enabled" it.

The "genocide joe" stuff began appearing regularly when the election was heating up - exactly at the right time, and with maximum impact. It's not a coincidence.

but ironically it looks like Trump may actually be the one to force a ceasefire. Not because he cares, but because he recognizes it’s a loser issue that will quagmire him like it did Joe. I’m under no illusion he’ll improve life there or revert apartheid, but so far he’s willing to make Bibi fold - unlike Joe

Don't kid yourself. That's not the case in any way, shape, or form. Bibi let Trump look like that in exchange for not changing a damned thing and in fact increasing arms and money and reducing any oversight whatsoever. And who in the hell on the right is going to protest that genocide? Nikki "kill them all" Haley? No. What we're seeing with this presumptive cease-fire is exactly what was predicted - post-election ceasefire pending trump win that serves the bloody Likud. Ten seconds of quiet is all you're going to get and then they bring in the developers to create beach resorts for the 1%.

Stop blithely defending this shit, and demand better.

Nobody's defending "this shit", but pretending it's a child's toy where you can just push a button and everything magically happens is idiocy. The browbeating was trying to explain some or any details to a disinterested and ignorant crowd of puffed-up sloganistas with hardly a shred of interest in anything much deeper than a meme. Surprise, it didn't go well because they're complete fucking morons. Now we all suffer. Will they learn? Maybe. But it's too late now.

I’d hope for more than a binary scale from ‘reactionary nativist racism’ to ‘milquetoast liberal’.

Oof, you and me both. Two words: Tom Daschle. That was where I started to understand how bugfucked the DNC operatives are. As a side note, I'm interested in how the legal system looks at technology and why is it federal judges STILL know jack fucking shit about how computers work? In 2025? Well, however it is, it's the same way the DNC knows jack fucking shit about how to communicate and act for the interests of the people who support them. AOC was just 12 years old then.

Winner take all goes brrrrr.

Well you're not wrong there. But FPTP in a national election is something completely different to a city or local election. This is where third parties really show their ass. They have zero presence in the lowest levels where FPTP means 100 people . Win those, okay? Start there. Don't start at the national level and be like "OMG it's so haaaarrd the Dems are mean" start local and build. The Greens have 153 people in local offices, that's something. They should go from there to regional, then state. THEN national. That's just how it works. It's not a grand conspiracy, it's the nature of large organizational communication. Learn it, Live it, Know it.

w/r/t European and Australian political coalitions, I can say they're better, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows. And they're not dealing with the same issues we are at the scale we are. Better, yes, we should get to something more like that, but if you think it's some sort of grand leap I'd caution that politics is still very much in play.

I recognize that the Democratic establishment and leadership is actually pretty comfy with our nascent fascism.

I disagree.

the old guard has failed, and we need a new strategy to meet the challenges of our new and changing realities.

Agreed.

The right has already tacked toward populism, when are you going to wake up to the reality that you cannot browbeat your way to electoral victory under universal suffrage?

Depends on what you mean by "browbeat" and "universal sufferage". Do I think making a rational case for a political position is better than baldface lying and driving giant flags around in trucks? I do. Is that "browbeating"? Because I don't know what to tell you there. Adults need to run things, full stop. What we have with the right is full on prison break batshit frat party smash-n-grab. They're not governing, they can't. It's just horrible things happening for four years while the press looks on.

As to "universal sufferage" if everyone had the vote that'd be great (they don't for reasons) but even then, they stil have to GO DO IT. You can't force someone to change their mind, and if they can't see the immeasurable difference between the currently available choices after making any effort to do so whatsoever, then they have failed. And we all lose.