In the face of ‘eradication’, one trans activist is preparing to fight – and she’s sick of silence and neglect from her supposed allies. Raquel Willis tells Io Dodds why Republican bathroom bans are everybody’s problem

In the face of ‘eradication’, one trans activist is preparing to fight – and she’s sick of silence and neglect from her supposed allies. Raquel Willis tells Io Dodds why Republican bathroom bans are everybody’s problem

  • UsernameHere@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    You’re all over the map. Like I said, Dems tried to reform campaign finance, but got filibustered. Filibuster bad, *but also filibuster good somehow*? Filibuster is a tool of the minority - ie a directly undemocratic tool. It was undemocratic when Thurmond tried to hold back the hands of the clock and slow the Civil Rights act, it was undemocratic when Republicans blocked campaign finance reform, as it was undemocratic when Mitch blocked Garland.

    Filibustering is a double edge sword. It is bad when you are trying to pass legislation but good when you are trying to block legislation. Even Bernie uses filibustering. So of course there will be flip flopping depending on the situation. Ending filibustering would allow Trump to pass a lot more legislation. That’s not a conspiracy it’s called foresight.

    Filibustering can be ended using cloture with 60 votes. So apparently you consider voting “anti-democratic”.

    You read it, but didn’t comprehend it. The party conflated alternative voting with anti-democratic principles. Open primaries are not a rare thing, but DNC opposition to alternative voting isn’t even though it would peel off more center/moderates who trend republican and isolate extremist voices. Crying about “$hill Stein” whilst demanding fealty and refusing to build broad coalitions (coalitions which delivered strong Democratic electoral results and unified government in the Obama years) is inherently anti-democratic.

    I read it, comprehended it, explained it to you, then you posted a link supporting my argument. You should read your own sources sometime:

    Manipulation and dilution

    Opponents of the open primary believe that the open primary leaves the party nominations vulnerable to manipulation and dilution. First, one party could organize its voters to vote in the other party’s primary and choose the candidate that they most agree with or that they think their party could most easily defeat. Secondly, in the open primary, independent voters can vote in either party. This occurrence may dilute the vote of a particular party and lead to a nominee who does not represent the party’s views.

    Because they effectively didn’t. You can’t in one sentence recognize the role of inflation, then link to a graph championing a single dollar/hr increase while inflation was [2-9% year on year](https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflation-rate-in-the-united-states/). Wages grew in raw dollars, [but were outpaced by inflation](https://www.statista.com/chart/27610/inflation-and-wage-growth-in-the-united-states/). Yet here you are harping about how line went up and therefore economy strong.

    Another bad faith argument. I pointed out that democrats raised wages and called out price gouging. Which is literally everything they can do. You show that you understand wages went up and that you understand corporate price gouging was responsible for canceling out those wage increases, then in the same breath you scape goat democrats for the actions of corporate price gougers. Bad. Faith.

    I’m not even going to bother with a retort to the rest of your comment, because that’s hat genuinely bad faith argument looks like. I listed some political and extra-political activities that the Dems failed to do or take and you reduce that to “it’s not a wrestling match”.

    You have nothing to say because your comments can’t get any more ridiculous than they have already been.

    From your comments, you’re clearly one of the moderates/liberals who are far more comfortable working with the Republican Party than daring to glance left,

    Sorry to break your stereotype of me but I would love for our government to move further left. But I live in reality so I know that for that to happen, voters need to move further left first and as we’ve seen with the 2024 election, voters moved to the right.

    Comfort has nothing to do with it. In order to win elections we have to appeal to more than the left. In order to pass legislation and fix things we have to work with more than just the left. That’s reality.

    Turning our backs on democrats and scapegoating them for the actions of Trump, the GOP and corporations, weakens their chances of winning elections and passing legislation that is in our best interest.

    even as it costs the Dems traditionally [reliable voting blocs](https://www.vox.com/politics/381857/2024-election-black-voters-harris-trump) who for generations came out faithfully for the Democrat party.

    I like how you claim dems are losing traditionally reliable voting blocs by using an article that says the opposite.

    Trump swung the Republicans to populism, the Democrats reacted by pulling toward liberal and moderate elites and middle class. Show the people (not the donor class) what a democracy that works for them could look like, and they might come back.

    Trump swung the republicans to conspiracies and hate that ostracized a lot of republicans. Democrats reacted by trying to earn those votes to prevent fascism from winning another term. The donor class already own our government. The 2024 election may have been our last chance at changing that. But too many people like yourself spread misinformation about the Democratic Party and convinced voters to fuck around. Now we have to find out.

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
      13·
      20 hours ago

      You do know that post history is public, right? And yours reads like a DNC bootlicker who exclusively comments in political threads whilst using the entire logical fallacies toolbox to take down heterodox lefties who refuse the “country tracked right” narrative that exonerates the DNC’s failure to read the room economically whilst refusing to get off the corpo/donor money teat. Limiting dark money is a step, even if cynically performative because it hurts the RNC more than them, but they still (like you it seems) accept the core premise of Citizens United that money does belong in politics.

      You either build, or destroy. You choice is pretty clear imo.

      Sorry to break your stereotype of me but I would love for our government to move further left

      Fuckin lol, X to doubt. This you?

      I would love for our government to move further left. But I live in reality

      And there it is people. Dare not dream of better, accept the scraps your political masters demand you accept with gratitude.

      • UsernameHere@lemmy.world
        3·
        19 hours ago

        Like I said. I want our government to move left. The only difference between me and you is you aren’t actually trying to improve anything. You think that by spreading misinformation about democrats (all of which I called out and you’ve had no response to) you will somehow move the Democratic Party left. At least that’s the bad faith argument. In reality what you are doing is handing the government over to the GOP by doing their work for them. But you know that because you’ve made it pretty clear that you’re doing it intentionally.

        You either build, or destroy. You choice is pretty clear imo.

        Right and as I’ve shown, you’re spreading misinformation about democrats and in the process you’re helping the GOP. So it’s pretty clear you’re not building anything.

        Fuckin lol, X to doubt. This you?

        Yeah, and this was also me from the same post, sharing sources from the article in the meme:

        So the writer came to this conclusion after reading [this](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html) other article that came to it’s conclusions from this:

        I examined the data from the most recent[ ](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp)[World Values Survey](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp) (2010 to 2014) and[ ](http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/survey-2008.html)[European Values Survey](http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/survey-2008.html)(2008), two of the most comprehensive studies of public opinion carried out in over 100 countries. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on a spectrum from far left to center to far right. I then plotted the proportion of each group’s support for key democratic institutions. (A copy of my working paper, with a more detailed analysis of the survey data, [can be found here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fOGwtRUF-y-98IcDs-3YYrtREl8GbaoH/view).)

        Basically two surveys from over a decade ago that survey people across the planet. Not in the US…

        In other words the writer is trying to present their opinion as fact.

        Gee, I wonder why you would leave out the context. Then again, you don’t even read your own sources so why would you read mine.

        • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
          1·
          4 hours ago

          And like I said, I am tired of this blowhard v blowhard retort trading walls of text. I’m doing this for free, and you’re clearly committed to your path.

          I will though take back the build or destroy, because while I disagree with your premises and approach that we can intelligentsia and market research our way out of authoritarianism/fascism by making moderate appeals, you are building outside Lemmy, albeit your online comments is only serving to reinforce alienation and the navel gazing elites perception by dunking on leftists/progressives. Not everyone who disagrees is a troll/accelerationist - I went to your comments to understand your positions better, and saw the pervasive infantilizing tone, nitpicking, and picking fights without standing tall on anything until challenged. And you doggedly took any challenge to the bitter argumentative end, like we have here, unless your opponent gives up.

          I will however push back on your mischaracterization of me as a troll/GOP shill however - I’m challenging the party’s comfortable narratives because they refuse any meaningful feedback except a bi-yearly electoral acid test. I want them to do better electorally and deny the GOP any space, and that starts with recognizing problems, criticism of errors and mistakes - especially repeated mistakes, shutting out the voice of the people in primaries, and turf wars over district races. “My way or the highway” is a road to ruin, unless you’re willing to wield the fascist tools necessary to enforce that political elitist reality. Build a coalition by including the wings and enforcing that unity from the moderate Dems to support the whole party (and vice versa), not throwing trans/gay/migrant/etc rights under the bus because messaging basic human decent to D+0 districts is harder than it should be.

          That’s the work I expect the party to do if it wants to be a big-tent left wing party that domineers over the left wing political landscape. If it’s more comfortable ceding space rightward to the Overton window, because leftists ‘have no other choice than us’ don’t be surprised when voters see the cynicism and abandon the party. Like over 10 million of them did recently, and gave us Trump again. Otherwise reform the voting structure to permit a coalition that works together, instead of enforcing orthodoxy.