That’s a good point, and a great quote. One thing I’ve come to realize in recent years is that everyone is responsible for their own actions, and should be held to the same standard regarding them. Blaming “leftist purists” for the calamities of the current administration is to let Trump, his supporters, and enablers off the hook.
Everyone is responsible for their own vote.
One thing about blame is that it’s not zero-sum - in fact, it is of infinite capacity. Just because something is someone’s fault, that doesn’t mean it can’t be equally someone else’s fault as well.
By this logic, we shouldn’t put any blame on the Uvalde police who stood by and did nothing for 70 minutes while the gunman was killing students and teachers.
…after all, the responsibility is on the person who committed the evil.
As I said, everyone is responsible for their vote (or lack thereof). My reading of the OP was that it singled out “leftist purists” for their failure to prevent Trump’s election, while letting the people who voted for him off the hook.
It read kinda like “well, we know the right wing are a lost cause, and are in thrall to Trump, but not enough people on the left made the choice to stop Trump.” The truth is we all have the choice to vote as we do.
The blame for the shooting is on the shooter. Police, however, have a duty to act in a situation like that. The blame for their failure to act is on them.
In theory, true - but as the saying goes, politics is the art of the possible. It’s easier to convince leftists to vote for a Democrat than it is to convince MAGATs.
Besides, when you lose a battle, you don’t blame the enemy. They’re not the ones who failed.
Agree. I’m a left leaning moderate. Pretty far left leaning. I of course voted for Clinton and Harris, both good picks.
The only people to blame are those that voted for Trump.
Earth, Hitler, 1938.
I did a thread similar to this a while back, and based on the responses, I realized that this phenomenon was overwhelmingly coming from online and social media spaces. Leftists that don’t inhabit that space aren’t really aware of what you’re talking about, all the younger online millennials and zoomers who preen about their moral superiority in sitting out the election.
Honestly I don’t really know what the real-life proportions are, who the “real” leftists are at this point. I would prefer them to be the type that I see on this board. But for practical purposes it’s whoever is out on mass media carrying the banner.
In the mid 20th century it was whoever owned the airwaves, and now it’s idiot kids on TikTok who collapse everything into one omnicause and then somehow decide that only Democrats or liberals have agency in this equation, that right-wingers are simply to be taken as a force of nature to accept. Their rallying cry is “Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same”, but you know this is a lie because they overwhelmingly attack Democrats. And they get a tremendous amount of forbearance because of their youth and identity. If they were white cis-het people in their 60’s they’d be dismissed as psychotic cranks with severe information-processing deficits (which many seem to be).
So while you may have a point, do be clear that there are different kinds of leftists, and the ones who hear you on this board aren’t the ones you’re yelling at.
Really? So in a genocide, the blame doesn’t lie with those conducting the genocide, but rather those victims who failed to resist it?
Who’s talking about morality here? I’m talking about practicality. Blaming the bad guys for being bad is an exercise in futility. You can’t change the enemy, you can only defeat them. You can, however, change yourself.
OK, we’re up to 31 posts now, and I’m still not seeing any numbers.
Again, how many of these folks were there? If you can’t even answer that, maybe you should find a different target for your ire.
Firstly, no-one is owed a vote. The DNC didn’t do enough for it and Biden should have dropped out. And if people sitting out means that Trump wins, then my vitriol goes to Trump, Republicans, the media, Trump voters, and then the DNC, in that order.
Left-leaning people who couldn’t hold their nose to vote for a platform they hate, are a way way distant cause of annoyance.
Secondly, this is, once again, learning precisely the wrong lesson. Look at Mamdani’s popularity and success. Then look at the popularity of corporate democrats like Schumer. Or the popularity of arming and funding Israel? Instead of lecturing Americans to come to where democrats are, how about democrats meet the electorate where they are, and with candidates with actual passion and conviction?
^^
This is something true. My son is very far left, but so far has voted Dems.
Democrats continue to not learn that moving more right every election, kissing up to corporate interests, and backing israel and genocide with wild abandon, don’t get it.
I will continue to vote Democrats, but I wish they would get their heads out of their asses and give us more than, " hey we’re better than trump/republicans. Seriously, right now they are better. How long will that be though? They move farther right election no matter how immoral, unpopular it is.
I don’t not blame the left. It’s the mealy mouth, craven, corporation Democrats who do the same shit over and over despite evidence to the contrary.
That “autopsy” was a joke and just proves they refuse to learn to be their own party rather than rethuglican lite. So frustrating.
And OP has no fucking clue.
Could use a lot of edits but my break is over.
Hillary knew.
And Bill Clinton did.
On Epstein Island.
She knew where he was.
Those two, collectively, share most of Trump’s sins.
Why the Fresh Hell don’t you grasp that the term “neoliberal” means nothing.
…uh, this very thread? The entire purpose of the OP is to blame and attack those who are further left who refused to vote for Kamala Harris.
It clearly is not interested in the practical answer, which is to try not to alienate these people and run candidates they feel they can vote for.
This thread is about assigning blame, so it makes perfect sense that people are trying to direct that blame in the appropriate direction.
Those who refused to vote for Kamala Harris over left wing issues aren’t blameless, but neither is Harris or the rest of the Democratic party by refusing to take them seriously.
And none of them are worthy of more blame that Trump, those who helped his campaign, and everyone who voted for him.
Until blame is assigned, ya can’t really work on fixing the problem.
If I were psych ops for a hostile nation/entity, I’d be flooding social media with extreme “far left” posts to influence, demoralize, and confuse.
Bingo.
WTF? Bingo? No. The way this actually plays out, and the way this is playing out here, is some marginalized group of people on the left (marginalized because they are on the left, and possibly also for other reasons) gets saddled with blame for the failure of a centrist (at best) candidate. And then the space gets flooded with self-identified “moderates” (is that what we’re calling people to the right of Liz Fucking Cheyney these days? Moderates!?) shitting all over the very same group of already marginalized leftists. Fuck that shit.
Donald Trump won because we have built a society in which fascists have been empowered to promote fascism and to reward fascist sympathizers. And, also, because Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, failed to attract enough votes to defeat him.
Blame here lies with those who have power and agency within our fascist-fomenting system and chose to exercise that agency in a way that results in a fascist candidate being elected, not some already-marginalized “left”.
The past few posts have hit on all of the possibilities for people who do not support the Democrats:
– Low information voters who falsely assume that the mainstream Democrats in the past have had as much a thorough grip over power as the Republicans do now. Whereas the closest they have come is some times when they controlled the Presidency, had so so control over the courts, and had the legislature beholden to their own conservative members. And even that much control was only the case for a couple of years out of the past 45+.
– The bots or other bad actors,
– The illiberal, who do know that Democrats control has always been spotty, but that they should have ignored the rule of law as much as the GOP is right now. And then they just would have attacked the Dems for it instead of appreciating it, because illiberals want to skirt liberality only when they are the master.
Sometimes there’s a motte and bailey argument that combines several elements. It’s the Dems fault that they could never get a firm majority because they don’t say the right words, but its also their fault for not producing any results when they don’t even have a majority.