Then be pissed, because Trumpism was never going to go away on it’s own, and is only going to get worse and more powerful with time.

"We demand ranked choice voting! And we will continue to vote for you as long as it’s not implemented, and we want it implemented so that we can stop voting for you!

…why don’t more politicians support ranked choice voting?"

The problem is that we already had, “Things are bad,” and that’s what generated the threat of fascism in the first place. Voting for more “things are bad” will just keep growing fascism until it inevitably wins. The only way to avert fascism in the long term is by pushing for things to actually be good, and that won’t happen as long as people keep supporting the “things are bad” people as the only alternative.

What we need is to acknowledge that “things are bad” is not a viable alternative and not something we are willing to accept or vote for. That means either forcing the Democratic party to change or building an alternative from the ground up, because regardless of how difficult those things may be, they are the only things that could possibly avert fascism. Voting for the lesser evil has a zero percent chance of success, it’s a total dead end. We have to try things that at least have the potential for success rather than sleepwalking into fascism.

The hating Israel ain’t looking too bad either lol

It’s my understanding that Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych in 2014. Does this count as an “overthrow”? If the US Congress were to vote to remove Trump from power, which I believe is legally possible in the US, would that be an “overthrow”?

Lol after a bunch of armed men stormed the capital? Yes, it does, actually. A better comparison would be if Jan 6’ers succeeded, prevented Biden from coming in and forced Congress to authorize their actions.

Your sources curiously omit the fact that Ukraine banned numerous opposition parties. I don’t see either side as being genuinely democratic, but I also consider that somewhat beside the point. The real point is that neither government operates in the people’s interest.

Every year, another Ukraine slips away from the US’s sphere of influence because there’s only ever money available for war. And the reason for that is because the military-industrial complex is a mechanism for funnelling public funds into private hands, where it can eventually end up in the hands of the people making the decision. What I want is to put a stop to that and spend money on schools and hospitals and infrastructure and that sort of thing. I’m not particularly picky on where or how or why, if they want to develop in foreign countries to uphold geopolitical influence, fine, if they want to develop domestically to win support, cool.

There are countless ongoing crises that are far more important than whatever’s happening in Ukraine, but everything gets ignored unless they can be addressed by dropping bombs on people. And I’ve had enough of it, I have zero patience for it, and above all, I don’t trust my government enough to follow their lead anywhere.

There’s clearly enough evidence to say that Ukraine is at best a “flawed” democracy, and that’s by the standards of bourgeois systems. But even if it wasn’t, even if they were fully in the right and it was as black-and-white as the media pretends it is - it still wouldn’t really matter to me. I have bigger fish to fry at home, get these rulers out, get them out for good, and maybe then I can think of following whoever got them out over to dealing with Ukraine. Until then, the specifics don’t really matter.

continuing a long-standing agreement with an allied nation that happens to be their most important ally in a specific region of the world

Lol the Zionism is revealed.

Germany was Italy’s ally in WWII so I guess that makes their participation ok.

Just a sling of insults and drivel, if you can’t keep it together and discuss it like an adult then we’re done here.

Sometimes a game being a little unbalanced can make it more fun.

That “one single issue” being literal genocide, yes. I swear, it’s like I’ve been transported into some satirical work critiquing the two-party system, you’re literally a self-parody. “One single issue,” christsake, the Holocaust was “one single issue too.”

we’d be in the same situation, experiencing the same set of circumstances, whether Republicans or Democrats won?

Yes, we would be. Just on a different time scale, perhaps, but the conclusion is inevitable either way. The only chance of averting that conclusion is by demanding an alternative.

Idiots usually stand by mistakes without admitting fault. That’s how they remain idiots.

I won’t admit fault when I’m correct, that doesn’t make me an idiot.

that clearly is not fascist

Lol, right. The people who were actively supporting genocide, holding alleged migrants in concentration camps, increasing the already bloated military budget to an all-time high, and trampling our rights with the continued use of mass surveillance, “clearly not fascist.”

Even if they weren’t, where the fuck do you think Trumpism came from? The status quo produced him and continuing to sleepwalk towards decline while shutting out any actual leftist vision makes fascism inevitable. The only possibility of preventing it is by forcing the democratic party to change, or replacing it altogether, even if it means making a “tough decision” and accepting the risks of a Trump presidency. Tactically, as well as morally, I made the correct decision and I will stand by that until the day I die.

Being an adult means accepting when you need to make tough decisions and sacrifice.

I did. Trump will be worse for me, but as any halfway decent person would understand, even death is preferable to committing genocide.

Being an “adult” in your mind means completely obliterating your conscience, becoming a twisted, evil being with no remorse, no concern for the lives of others, and engaging in the worst crimes imaginable.

No thank you, I will never become that, if I live to be 100, I will remain a “child.” And you’d better get that fact through your thick head before you blow another election because you refuse to believe that anyone could actually stand by their moral convictions.

Growing plants to eat kills fewer plants than growing plants to feed to livestock which you then eat. The “plants’ rights activist” argument is invalid.

I used to have a job processing used laptops from offices and you would not believe how many people put Apple stickers on Thinkpads and other non-Apple products. I guess for a lot of them it’s like saying, “I’d rather be using a Mac,” or it was just to be silly, I have no idea.

Yes, that’s precisely why I didn’t vote for either gradually escalating fascist.

The situation in Ukraine is complex, while the situation in Taiwan is purely hypothetical and can be dismissed without further comment.

In Ukraine, revolutionaries overthrew the government and banned opposition parties. Then, other revolutionaries decided they didn’t like that so they overthrew their regional governments and tried to break away. The pro-Western side pretends that the revolutionaries they backed were completely organic and represented the popular will, while the pro-Russia revolutionaries were purely Russian proxies - and the pro-Russia side pretends the exact same thing but in reverse. The reality is that both sides have some degree of genuine popular support.

In any case, a civil war broke out between them, and after numerous ceasefire attempts fell apart, with cities in eastern Ukraine being shelled by artillery, the pro-Russia side requested Russian assistance.

Now, I don’t think either side is fighting for anything meaningful, it’s just about who gets to put their flag where. The Ukrainian people will suffer more or less equally under either government, but they are suffering much more in this pointless destructive war.

The only reason it’s any of my business is because my government supported the overthrow of the previous government and helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections, and is now providing military aid to said government. If we had simply stayed out of there from the start, I don’t believe any of this would be happening.

As for Russia, while I’m not fond of their response to the situation by any means, to really condemn them I would need to suggest an alternative course of action. If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process. Perhaps the best approach would have been to simply spend the money they’ve spent on war on a mass relocation effort allowing ethnic Russians in Ukraine to relocate within Russia, although I don’t know that that’s realistic or that anyone would agree to that. Or perhaps Russia should have simply rolled over and accepted this expansionism. I don’t really know, it’s not really my business.

Of course this whole mess goes back to Lenin giving Russian territory to Ukraine in the hopes that the ethnic Russians would be a stabilizing force on Ukrainian politics and would help build a bridge between Russians and Ukrainians. We are now living in the miserable future where that failed and backfired tremendously. Ideally, the USSR wouldn’t have collapsed and we wouldn’t be here in the first place. But no use crying over spilt milk.

All I know is that I don’t want to be involved in it. If the Ukrainians want to fight Russia they can knock themselves out, more power to 'em. But if nothing else I can’t see how it’s possibly worth the cost when we have people here losing their food stamps.

If that’s what being an “adult” means, then I pray that I die a “child.”

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti will go a long way towards understanding my politics.

China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.

“Seems to aspire to” “seem to want to” those are just other ways of saying that they aren’t doing it, that there’s nothing that you can point to that’s in any way comparable to what the US has been doing for decades, if not since it’s conception. You’re just speculating about what you think might happen and saying that that hypothetical possibility makes them as bad as a country that’s actually done that and worse.

It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.

Sure. But those communists have often had vastly different approaches. China saw extensive changes both economically and politically in the 80’s and different leaders have differed on their approaches since then.

So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don’t think that’s true in the US, or other western democracies.

You’re right, it isn’t. In fact, the US constitution doesn’t say anything about political parties at all. That doesn’t stop our political system from being dominated by two parties, because of the way things are set up.

The Chinese system operates off a different set of assumptions than the US system does. But the assumptions that the US system makes are fundamentally incorrect. So I don’t see a reason to just broadly dismiss the entire Chinese system based off of it being described as a “one-party state.” I for one, would prefer to live in a system where only the Democratic party existed and the Republican party did not. But moreover, I don’t think you could accurately answer basic question about how the Chinese system works. Like, walk me through your picture of how someone becomes a mayor in China. Do you even have a picture?

Look, my politics are pretty simple. I see my government doing all this fucked up shit and I hate the people doing it, I want to get rid of them, ideally have them face justice, and then bring in new people who hopefully we won’t have to do the same thing to. But apparently I’m not allowed to want that? Apparently I suddenly have to answer for every alleged bad thing anyone around the world has ever done. And I’ve been entertaining that crazy idea quite a bit more than it really deserves. Without getting into details, I can tell you that my own family was very negatively impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody I know has been negatively impacted (certainly not to the same extent) by China not having sufficiently democratic mayoral elections, or anything else China has done.

And again, I have absolutely no idea what purpose condemning the Chinese government is supposed to serve. I’m trying to solve problems that affect my own community. And if you think I have a moral responsibility to help liberate the Chinese people from their government, I mean, that’s insane. Again, there’s nothing I can do to bring down the Chinese government from the outside and even if I could I can not imagine any scenario where that would help the Chinese people.

I mean, if anything, shouldn’t I prioritize, say, Saudi Arabia over China? How about before we go around taking aggressive actions against a government that the people overwhelmingly approve of, we just stop giving weapons to a literal monarchy? Like, I’m not even saying we overthrow them, just stop aiding them. If you want me to ignore my own people for the sake of people all around the world, I’m down, it’s just that even if “Liberate Chinese people from the government they support” would be way, way down my list even if I put it on it. Why shouldn’t it be?

Genuinely, why shouldn’t it be? At a certain point, shouldn’t I be questioning your motivations for constantly trying to redirect my justified anger and my own government towards my government’s enemies?

“chinese hacking”

Christ, have you heard a single word I’ve said this conversation? Yes, China does hacking, Russia does hacking, the US does hacking, everybody does that kind of stuff. The difference is that China is generally limited to the kinds of bad things that every government is guilty of, whereas the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like. You keep coming up with this tiny trivial stuff to compare to things like the occupation of Afghanistan, which makes me think that you simply don’t comprehend the scale of suffering that that entailed.

Sources like CNN and Wikipedia refer to China as a one-party state. I guess I’ll accept that this description is probably accurate, until I see news of China having national elections involving at least two competitive parties.

Actually, China has nine political parties.

It’s kinda funny to say that in comparison to New York City, because you brought up Mamdani as if he had already been elected. In fact, he only won the Democratic primary. It’s just that the Democratic party is popular enough in NYC that it’s been more or less assumed that he would win. Of course, the incumbent Cuomo was also from the Democratic party, and yet there’s significant ideological differences between them.

You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not. Is that how that works? Should I be thanking the Republicans for making the US a democracy instead of “one party state?”

It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard. A one-party system doesn’t mean that the leaders of the party pick out who they want in each position and they run unopposed.