And all we do then is replace one group of fascists, with a slightly different one who still want to kill most of us. And have completely fragmented and crippled any opposition to them in the process.
To be blunt, following your strategy in WWII would have just resulted in the US joining the Axis.
So you feel there is no significant difference between Donald Trump and the Republicans being in power and somebody like Joe Biden and the Democrats being in power?
I disagree. I feel that regardless of what ideal you feel the Democrats fall short of, the Democrats in office cause far less damage than the Republicans do. So I feel that helping to oust Republicans and put in Democrats is worth working for.
This is a delusionally distorted comparison. Hey folks, you have a choice: on the one hand, you can simply remove Hitler and the Nazis, and on the other hand, you can just sit around arguing while they do their deadly deeds!
In real life, of course, removing Nazis from power is nowhere near that simple, and arguing against Nazi policies in no way impedes efforts to work against Nazis.
Sheesh. I think @Little_Nemo may honestly believe that when he quarrels on a messageboard he’s actually accomplishing something to bring down Trumpism, while when other people quarrel on a messageboard they’re just wasting time and effort so he must berate them.
I don’t know why you would think that when I’ve never said anything to indicate that.
I didn’t start this thread to win people over to opposing Trump and the Republicans. I’m assuming most of the people here are already committed to that goal. As am I, despite accusations otherwise.
What I’m discussing here is how to best communicate with people elsewhere who are not committed to voting against Trump and the Republicans and how to best motivate them to joining us.
And the only even slightly practical idea you seem to have on that subject is “hey, if you happen to encounter a Republican who plans to vote against Trumpism, don’t start directly personally attacking them about their other Trumpist beliefs”, which everybody here already agrees with.
You pretend to be talking about constructive strategies for actual activism, but it’s all just dogmatic tone policing to give you an excuse to scold people.
And yet, everything you’ve said seems to indicate that.
Have you noticed how many allies you have here? How many people you’ve brought around to your way of thinking?
I’m betting you haven’t.
I think you’re either at zero … or … less.
Kudos.
I understand now! So the end justifies the means, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So simple! Good thing reality isn’t complicated and messy. I look forward to betraying my friends with a clear conscience now that my noble purpose has been shown to me.
I can assure you I’ve noticed the hostility that’s been directed at me. But the cause is bigger than me.
And the reason I started this thread and continue to respond instead of going off and starting a new thread is because I don’t need to talk to people who already agree with me.
I’ve said you shouldn’t swear at people or direct personal attacks against them when they disagree with you on an opinion you hold. I don’t see that as a betrayal.
Something that could be done in an old-school telephone booth, I should think.
No, I feel that your plan would just replace Donald Trump with some other Republican if it did anything at all, while cratering support for the Democrats.
That’s I feel it’s important to make the message that the problem in not just Donald Trump and his administration. The Republicans in Congress and in the Supreme Court have condoned and enabled Trump.
There’s also the obvious issue that we can’t vote Trump out of office in 2026. So we should focus on the congressional elections and make the central issue of this election removing Donald Trump from power.
I acknowledge that if we remove Trump we just put Vance into the presidency. That’s not good. But I feel impeaching and imprisoning Trump will put Vance on notice, especially when he doesn’t have a friendly congress to protect him.
And if Vance follows Trump and does as bad, then we move on to Vance and impeach him next.
Which we won’t do by driving away most of the supporters of the Democrats like you want.
…this is so fucking stupid.
And I’m back to trying to figure out if you are trolling or just delusional. And its back to trolling for me.
Because I’m brown. And the Ku Klux Klan ALSO hate me. Why would I, as an individual, choose to “say nothing” instead of telling them to “fuck off?” They hate me. And they are almost certainly aligned with the Hitler-loving people and the Nazis. They would welcome an invasion with open arms.
And if they told me they wanted to “fight the Nazi’s” I’d assume they were lying.
No.
No we don’t.
The numbers don’t work.
It’s what you tried to do last election, and you lost the House, the Senate and the Executive. It’s a failing strategy because firstly it assumes you can deal with these people in good faith: but you can’t. They are scumbags because they are racist and sexist and transphobes and liars. Secondly because it assumes you can make up the numbers in a way that matters. Thirdly, whether you admit it or not, it involves making concessions. “Yeah, I’ll vote for the Dem. But you got to do something about who can use a bathroom first.” And conversely that means you end up pushing away your base.
And that’s the big one. You take them for granted. You just expect them to come out and vote for you. You assume you’ve got them in the bag.
The last election was the first election that I remember where voter suppression wasn’t foregrounded. I suspect in 2024 we would have seen the biggest nationwide effort to suppress Black and marginalised votes and that barely hit the news. Every single election its often the marginalised vote that pushes the Dems (or the “left” in other countries) over the top.
But over the last four years you had Biden stand proudly at the State of the Union pledging not to “defund the police”, but to fund them. The Dems happily funded and materially aided the genocide of the Palestinian people. They largely stayed silent on trans issues. Right now they don’t commit to abolishing ICE.
And yet: people like you just assume you are going to get their vote even if it means fighting red tape for months just to get their name back on the voter rolls, if it means standing in line for hours in the heat with no water. If it means walking for hours because the polling places have been reduced.
You ignore these people to try and court the racists and the transphobes and the misogynists. And you wonder why you lose.
You are asking everyone here to hedge their bets on the worst people in the world. That’s a losing strategy best exemplified at what happened at the last election.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to find racists who will vote against Trump just so I can call them names. But if I’m in the same room as an obvious trans-hating-asshole and they ask me to shake their hand? I’m going to tell them to fuck off. Because I think it’s more important to fight for what I think is right. That should be the baseline. And instead of trying to “convert” the right-leaning, trans-hating arsehole who has already said they are voting against Trump, you build a coalition of other people that want to fight for what’s right and build a coalition of the people they are fighting for.
Yup. Being an obvious appeaser who refuses to stand up for your allies because you’re worried it might make it more difficult to concoliate your opponents is not a good look.
It’s been said before, possibly in this thread as well, that it’s instructive to look at classic union-organizer tactics. They divide their potential recruits into four categories, from most to least receptive: 1) activist supporters, 2) passive supporters, 3) undecided, and 4) opponents.
Their advocacy focuses on trying to change 2’s to 1’s and 3’s to 2’s. When they encounter a 4 they don’t start verbally abusing them, but they don’t waste time trying to recruit them or persuade them into agreement.
You get a lot further by showing that you courageously stand by your allies than you do by appearing afraid of insufficiently appeasing your adversaries.
LOL, “conciliate”, sorry.
YMMV, but in my 25+ years as a Doper, I’ve never formed the impression that Dopers as a whole respond positively to being scolded.
Maybe it’s time to declare victory and ask that the thread be closed.
Also, associating with such people too much is bad idea because they might well be the ones who convert you. Lots of people ended up sucked into the far Right because they thought they were immune to propaganda and just being “ironically” racist or whatever. Then in a decade or two it wasn’t a joke anymore.
I’ll point out - again - that I have no interest in conciliating my opponents or appeasing my adversaries. I want them to lose.
As kaylasdad99 observed “I’ve never formed the impression that Dopers as a whole respond positively to being scolded.” This is true about people in general; they don’t respond positively to being scolded.
So using your system, what’s likely to happen is you’re dealing with a passive supporter and you scold them for not being an activist supporter? Is your scolding likely to move them from being a passive supporter to an activist supporter? Or is your scolding likely to move them from being a passive supporter to being undecided?
Passive supporters are your allies. You, as an activist supporter, should be standing up for them not scolding them.
Who is doing that??? Where are my “dozen examples”???