As I mentioned upchain, multiple groups can be at fault, and chronologically the buck ended with the voters. The voters failed to hold their noses and work with the lesser of two evils, so now we’re stuck with the greater one until that orange fatass croaks and we have to deal with the post-collapse chaos.

If you aren’t actually trying to change anyone’s mind with that point, then why are you making it?

Honestly I often wonder that my self. Well, I know the answer in this particular instance of me, in this thread. I saw something I had an opinion on, so I shared it. The ensuing “argument” is basically more of the same, with the added bonus of being a sort of emotional pressure release valve.

But in general, why do we (as human beings) bother with the verbal arguments and rhetorical sparring? People changing their minds on something is rare, so logically speaking it’s a waste of time. Some sort of emotional fulfillment? Vain hope? Because the alternative is violence and we’re supposed to be better than that? I certainly don’t know.

Now what are you going to do to convince those for whom genocide was a bridge too far?

[…]how do you expect to change their minds?

I’m not. Because, generally speaking, people don’t really change their minds. They just look to confirm their own biases. Its the big reason republicans have such strong support despite being the worst party by every metric except hate. It’s also the reason Harris was never going to back down on her support for Israel. Well that and AIPAC, with them around even I wouldn’t wholly denounce Israel no matter how much I’d like to. Besides if genocide is “a bridge too far,” then why, pray tell, do they support more genocide?

Hooh boy that’'s a lotta text, but I think I more or less get what you’re getting at, so I’m going to have to try real hard not to breach the civility rules here.

I get that the Gaza genocide is terrible, I get the feeling of powerlessness over it, I really do, I’m feeling it right now, I also get wanting to do something about it, but in regards to this particular election, there was nothing that could be done, especially not by the time Biden dropped. The options in this election were simple: More genocide, or less genocide. There wasn’t a no genocide option, unfortunately. If there was, I have full confidence that option would’ve won. But there wasn’t. Harris was never going to change her stance. So: More genocide or less. If one didn’t vote? More genocide. If one voted third party? More genocide. If, god forbid, one voted for trump? Believe it or not, more genocide. The only way to get less genocide was to vote for Harris. After that is a long and hard road: Running progressive local and eventually state candidates, organizing community awareness events, protests, etc. all with the express purpose of redirecting democrats to the left.

Your blaming the wrong group.

Multiple groups can be at fault. (As a mostly unrelated aside, if I were to blame a single entity, it would be Rutherford B. Hayes). And TBH, Leftists who failed to hold their nose are probably the least to blame, they’re just the last ones in the line of responsibility. Ultimately Harris bears the most responsibility (at least recently) for her failure of a campaign.

You might consider why that is.

Care to enlighten me? I’ve never been the brightest tool in the shed, so from where I’m sitting it’s a pretty easy case of less genocide vs. more genocide.

There’s rarely, if ever, a legal basis for an interim government. Just like there’s no provision in the constitution for replacing it, this is basically how it’s done. And honestly I’d rather Biden keep the reigns for a little while at least. Harris is the obvious choice there, but she’s a too right wing for my tastes.

I guess you’re probably right, but honestly I’m not sure I can put my faith in a group that can’t even hold their nose over an elementary application of the trolley problem.

Yeah leftists really aren’t going to help here. There will never be a leftist revolution in the US. Hell I doubt there’ll ever be a serious leftist political movement at all. The only remaining hope I have is that the democrats will decide that preventing Trump is more important than high-roadism. But even that is an exceedingly slim hope.

Too late to prevent now.

Wow, someone more cynical than I am.

Democrats refusing to give power now will forever destroy Democracy.

That’s historically not true. Many interim governments do dissolve successfully after fulfilling their purpose. I’d expect such an interim government to last a decade, two tops while the constitution and judiciary is unfucked.

We have likely lost not only the electoral college vote this time around, but even the Popular Vote. It’s a blowout. There’s no excuses on a Democracy perspective.

As I said upchain, democracy really isn’t at the top of my priority list right now. Preventing 3-4 additional genocides is.

I expect that most Republicans, despite voting for Trump stupidly, also care about Democracy.

Yeah no. The median republican voter only cares about furthering their hate, and seeing the people hey don’t like hurt. Remember “He’s hurting the wrong people!”?

Sure and while they play around, those genocides I mentioned will still happen. And when their regime collapses, the chaos will kill even more people. This must be prevented.

This is a pretty naive take. The remaining dregs that passed for democracy here were extinguished a few hours ago. There’s nothing even resembling a democracy left here. The only elections we’ll have now will be show elections, if even that. Therefore, definitionally, we can no longer save democracy through democracy.

But if I’m being honest saving democracy in the US isn’t really all that high up on my list of priorities at this point. We’re facing down an exacerbated Gaza genocide, another in Ukraine, then Moldova, and domestically, the genocide LGBT people in general, and trans women in particular. Not to mention the inevitable murder of Trump’s political opponents and journalists critical of his regime. We’re pretty firmly into the “any means necessary” zone.

E: minor word choice change to reduce repetition.

E2: Fix typos and spelling errors

I mean, there’s also hope, however slim, that Biden and Harris say “Fuck no, Trump will not be president again” and exercise some raw power to keep Trump out, or for Harris to engage in the same kind of legal fuckery Trump did. But, of course, Democrats are spineless by nature so neither of those things going to happen in all likelyhood.

E: forgot a space

Capital. A Capitol is the building where the legislature presides.

Microsoft abuses their de facto monopoly to engage in gross invasion of their users’ privacy, and continues to try to wrest their users’ control of their system from them by altering system settings after updates, and making some settings nearly impossible to change. And that’s to say nothing of MS’s attempts to turn their operating system into and advertising platform.

That particular statement wasn’t directed at Grayox specifically, it was more about a particular subset self-identified communists on the internet, including (some of?) the lemmy.ml admins, and many users of lemmygrad and hexbear. The ones that correctly identify that the USA is bad, but then prop up the likes of the Soviet Union, the PRC, the DPRK, and even Russia (which doesn’t even claim to be communist) as paragons of good, when often times they’re worse than the US.

Capitalism does not self regulate[…]

Correct, hence “In theory” and “nonsense” in the words surrounding that phrase.

You should try reading Marx and Lenin’s actual writings[…]

I certainly would like to read at bare minimum some of Marx’s works, but ADHD is really not conducive to being able to read even mildly long texts, like I couldn’t even get all the way through Einstein’s Why Socialism?.

There are multiple free audio recordings[…]

Audio is even worse on that front, as I’ll end repeatedly tuning parts out and have to go back and listen to those parts again, which just isn’t good for motivation.

[…]you seem very earnest[…]

I like to think so at least. I just don’t like when people fall into the “A is bad, B opposes A, therefore B is good” trap.

Humanity must escape the all powerful driving forces of the profit motives Capitalism enforces[…]

Agreed. Wholeheartedly.

That process if it is to take place will appear extremely authoritarian to those who value profit above all else.

They may attempt to paint it as such, but it need not actually be so. Even if that process were to take the form of a violent revolution (which, to be clear it doesn’t need to.)

Alright, firstly, I think you’re mistaking me as advocating for capitalism. I’m not. Whilst I’m not a fan of labels (they’re so easily contorted away from their original meanings by those seeking to undermine the ideologies they describe), I believe “Socialist” would reasonably describe my beliefs.

Secondly,

[…]authoritarianism isn’t the end goal of ML.

I think you’ve got that backwards. Marxism-Leninism starts with democratic means, then implements an authoritarian regime.

[…]can you tell me what the end goal of this system even is?

No, because there isn’t one. Capitalism actively punishes any form of forethought or long-term planning.

[…]The end goal of Marxist-Leninism is a classes society where each person contributes what they can to society and receives back what they need to live a fulfilling life. They are extremely different.

In theory, maybe. Just like in theory Capitalism self regulates through competitive pressures, or whatever nonsense it is that Capitalists spout.

I’m more concerned with actual effects, and empirical evidence than hypotheticals. Authoritarian regimes invariably turn oppressive, one way or another.

lemmy.ml is run by marxist-leninists (hence the .ml), which is an explicitly authoritarian ideology, and for the record trading one form of authoritarianism for another is not a worthwhile improvement.

I’d rather my worker’s rights didn’t come with a side of authoritarianism, but maybe that’s just me.

It’d be dead easy, actually. Don’t even have to actually ban it: For image generating models, every artist whose work is included in the training data becomes entitled to 5 cents per image in the training data every time a model generates an image, so an artist with 20 works in the model is entitled to a dollar per generated image. Companies offering image generating neural networks would near instantly incur such huge liabilities that it simply wouldn’t be worth it anymore. Same thing could apply to text and voice generating models, just per word instead of per image.