No, she can fuck off.
The oligarchy is killing us, and spinning language won’t change that. Meanwhile, ‘woke’ just means ‘social empathy’, which is ironically the solution to many of the problems the oligarchy is causing (and they’re not shy about this – Musk recently said empathy is bad).
We need more ‘woke’, not less. And being butthurt that the fascists are using ‘woke’ as a slur against us is childish and easy to ignore if you’re not too simple to get it.
Fuck this. I’m woke and proud of it. We all should be.
Fine. Then come up with a plan to educate conservatives. Because this thing where the state legislates new norms (e.g. bio men in bio women’s sports) is NOT making sense to them. They are freaking out because they don’t understand it. And we can’t just make laws to make them accept it.
From their perspective they are losing their country. We can laugh and call them backwards, but that won’t help. There HAS to be a plan that is better than, f-you wake up.
Fuck conservatives. They don’t need to be educated, they need to be beaten. There are more people left of center than right, we just need to prove we’re actually going to fight for them. All of them. Not 80% and then we’ll start to strategize on how many “urban” voters we can lose to pick up white suburbanite conservatives.
They don’t need to be educated, they need to be beaten.
You cannot educate someone who refuses to learn, especially those who reject reason and knowledge. They support fascists because they worship force. They will continue laying waste to everything around them until their murderous shitshow is comprehensively defeated. Throwing sweet reason at them won’t achieve that.
That’s why I get impatient with those who suggest that the way forward is to tinker with the voting system, or to amend the Constitution some more, or to educate the populace. The fascists are at war with us right now. We need to pick our collective ass up off the ground and resist by any means necessary and stop pretending that the system is going to save us, or (like the DNC) that Trump will eventually piss off enough people that the Democrats can win another election, despite all the rigging and voter suppression.
This is an existential situation, the building’s on fire, now’s not the time to be talking about redecorating.
Just to drive this point home for the quiet listeners at the back of the house, I’ve had very long conversations with conservatives (I’m in a red area) who actually get more distrustful the more you relate to them. I’ve been told to my face that nobody cares that much about other people, and I was clearly only pretending to in order to make them listen to me. That it was obvious, because nobody cares that much. That empathy can only be manipulative, and is never real.
It took me years to understand this isn’t a contradiction, but that since they can’t imagine caring that much, I must be fake.
My whole outlook changed once I realised that. It’s insane, but many people literally can’t envision caring, and they think you’re fake and just want recognition for doing so.
Several of these surveys take on a different meaning once you realise there are fundamentally different perspectives like this.
e: and this is one of the biggest divides with conservatives. Simple word choice will not bridge this gap.
I’m not sure about this. People with money spent a lot to tell everyone that these things are problems. If we spent the same amount of money to say the opposite, opinions would differ.
That’s a big problem that switching from ‘oligarch’ to ‘king’ won’t solve. Using different words is a very simplistic answer, when what we’re fighting here is not a language barrier but a wide cultural one.
The real issue is complex and multifaceted: conservatives have been highly propagandised through increasingly insulated media bubbles to the point that now there’s very little that can penetrate them, and switching up a few words will not get them to listen. They’ve been taught to be distrustful of facts and reality, and to believe that compassion is weakness.
I don’t know how to fix this, but watering down our language will not help. That’s been tried many times, and it always backfires.
And from personal experience, even if you find common ground and get them to recognize something is bad, they’ll sit back down in front of Fox News and revert to the norm before any of it matters. I had a “law and order, national security” type conservative acquaintance who right after the Trump classified documents story broke said Trump should go to prison for it (he also had to add that Hillary Clinton should go too). I’m certain he voted for Trump this time around. And he’s had nary a peep about the multiple war plans chats. They aren’t gettable if you just find the right issue or use the right words. If they’re going to change it’s going to happen on their own and over a long time.
There has to be a relentless flow of propaganda to keep them spun up. We need to shut that down.
…well they are backwards, they’re only about one-third of the electorate, and they will never ever vote fascist-light; meanwhile there’s another unrepresented third of the electorate just waiting for anyone to offer them something worth voting FOR…
We don’t need fucking conservatives to win anything in this country. I’m sick of cowards acting like they just won by 10%. They barely won this election, barely won control of the house, and the main issue in the election for independents wasn’t trans people or minorities, it was the economy.
The economy sucks for ordinary people because the ultra rich have been raiding it since COVID. And everyone, even conservatives, know that’s true. Americans hate these big corporations. Slotkin and her allies know that, and that’s why they’re trying to distract from it.
It’s disgusting how ready some of you are to throw your own neighbors under the bus so you can try to win over a couple fascist votes… Who will never vote for you. You will never win them over. They aren’t going to believe that you suddenly hate gay people and minorities. You will just look like a dishonest weakling to them, and they’ll be right.
We will win the next election by targeting independents with an economic message. If you want to lose then go ahead and make it about “woke” like a complete coward.
“The hell is a dang oligarch?”
“Means hillary can tell you what to do”
Why the fuck is everyone pretending they’re too stupid to know what an oligarch is? Just a couple years ago they said it all the time in reference to Russia
They’ll pretend they’re stupid so they can continue on with believing they’re not horrible people, but they know
Woke means understanding we live in an oligarchy in my mind. MAGA calls people sheep while complaining about them being woke in the same breath. They don’t even understand the language they use.
They don’t even understand the language they use.
They don’t have ideas. They just use words as pretexts for bullying and oppression. They worship force.
Woke is not weakness!
It’s funny, because the “Wake up, Sheeple!” line used to be what conservatives screamed at liberals for failing to understand their latest Ayn Rand inspired diatribe.
Then liberals adopted the “Wake up!” phrasing to describe structural racism, the enormous socio-economic cost of the Military Industrial Complex, and the inherent class warfare of privatization schemes. That caused “Woke” to fall out of fashion with the right.
Now it’s totally lost any context. “Woke” just means being visually queer coded or insufficiently religious. Its barely more than a slur.
specifically it was used by AA people in the start, now it has been co-opted by the right wingers and perverted, much like they did with “punisher”
Slotkin is the new Sinema and can GFY, but there is a component to this that does deserve some discussion.
If you look back on the past 10 years of the Democrats climbing hills for issues, I think it’s out of sync with the majority of people. The staunch fight for identity politics is not what people seem to want or need right now, and they need to understand that. Maybe there was a time when this was what their constituents wanted, but no longer.
Now they need to be really fucking strong on fighting the billionaires, pushing back against the front to vast majority of the country that has no wealth, and finding ways to make that flip around so that the wealthy who are imposing the enshitification of the lower and middle class are held accountable for doing so.
Forget the current struggles we’re forced to dread living through, and give people a clear plan and the hope that you’ll actually be attacking these things when elected. Seems pretty simple.
The staunch fight for identity politics is not what people seem to want or need right now, and they need to understand that.
They’re paid a lot of money specifically so they don’t understand that…
The entire reason for the culture war is to distract people from the fact that the wealthiest are fighting a class war.
You think she can’t understand because she’s not able to. It’s a willful ignorance, and require lots of money for that cognitive dissonance
Who do you think are the voices who are really strong against billionaires? And who are the voices who are the strongest in support of this “identity politics” bogeyman? Because it’s pretty much the same people. This idea that the Democrats running interference for the rich are using wokeness to do it is just bullshit. The same people saying stop wokeness are the ones who also don’t want to talk about wealth inequality.
There’s no secret plot to distract with identity politics, just rich centrists chasing the golden age of Clintonism and white people thinking the only policies that should really matter are the ones that affect them.
Sanders and Cortez are literally doing a tour right now AGAINST the Oligarchy bullshit.
Crockett, Porter, Durbin, Duckworth, Warnock, Kaine, Gillinrand (shocker) have all pushed bills to raise the ceiling on taxable income for Social Security, and higher tiered taxes exponentially for wealthy earners.
What in the hell are you talking about?
And would you consider either of them to represent the anti-woke strain of the Democratic party?
Anti-oligarchy and “identity politics” are not two camps in the Democratic party. The same people who are against focus on the oligarchy are the ones who are against focusing on “identity politics”.
There is no “anti-woke”, because the only dipshits who believe there is “woke” in the first place are Fox News enthusiasts.
Stop buying into all this drama, my God.
You’re the one who just made an argument to listen to the centrists and stop doing “identity politics”. You’re the drama!
Never said anything like that, but it’s obvious where your mind with it 🤣
and people pretending to be on the “left” but often use woke.
class war vs culture war. she doesnt want that.
more like, people like her is chasing the same money the gop are chasing, which megadonor moneys.
Did you actually read what she said? It’s a lot closer in message to what you just said than I think you might have expected.
I did. Her target is all wrong. She’s focused on some culture bullshit, and ignoring the real issue which is a full out fucking class war. She literally is trying to divert people’s attention away from the billionaires who own her ass. Fuck that.
Except she’s saying a different word polls better, not that we need to focus less on them.
I don’t see how saying a different word is more effective is the same as drawing attention away from the topic, or how saying Dems need to do better about avoiding being seen as ineffectual is an issue.
She claimed the word oligarchy doesnt resonate and it absolutely does. You are just buying into Slotkins pro business, pro aipac, manipulative narrative.
You’re being duped, ricecake. Snap out of it.
I’m really not.
I get that you prefer the word oligarchy. That’s fine. I’m not sure I feel strongly that we call them oligarchs or if we compare them to monarchs in our messaging how they’re bad.
I’m just not seeing how a disagreement on verbiage without a difference in content makes someone as awful as people seem to be reacting.
Its about who she is.
You keep trying to frame this narrowly and we all need to keep an eye on who people are with their actions, what their record is, and who is paying them.Slotkin is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and a member of the New Democrats Coalition. She’s also far right as zionist supporter as they come, and she’s already chair on a committee on terrorism and intelligence-- as a jr senator elected 2 months ago.
The new democrat coalition is what the blue dog dems became, and inherited the members of that group. They are extremely pro business and anti immigration, and deficit focused (aka, republicans)
Remember the blue dogs? Their brand became so toxic they had to rebrand as new democrats. But its the same well funded group that is always for tax cuts for the rich, but shuts down anything for the people based on a vague deficit/fiscal austerity argument. They consistently block any advancements on health care, citing cost even though the CBO says it would save money and propel the economy-- but limit the complete market control of health insurance companies. (new democrats work for them, never us)
https://theweek.com/articles/713180/why-blue-dogs-destroy-democratic-party-again
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/blue-dog-democrats-arent-making-sense-on-health-care-reform/
I’d urge you to actually read up on the new demcrts coalition and the problem solvers caucus and tell me how either one are good for the democratic party. Those are the only two caucuses Slotkin identifies with.
I’m not trying to frame it narrowly. The headline is misleading click bait. Everything you say could be 100% true and it wouldn’t change that she didn’t say what you’re saying she said.
I really don’t care if you want to make it about segments of the democratic party. You’re going to be hard pressed to convince me that suggesting a different word for criticism inverts the criticism, even if they are already on an intelligence and terrorism committee (which I have no idea how that relevant to anything).
Argue she’s awful if you want, I honestly don’t care, but that doesn’t make her statements in this case pro business, pro oligarchy, or anything particularly interesting.
And yes, I’ve looked at her voting records and donors. I don’t like everything I see, but it’s mostly fine, and definitively better than the other candidates.
sinema was poison from the very moment she was elected.
If you think your salvation is in the neoliberals that enabled their opposition into getting us here for 50 years, you’re almost as deluded as Trump’s legion of useful idiots.
The DNC would rather lose to the Fascists than move to the left. The former keeps their shared bribe gravy train running which is the point, fighting their bribers would not.
The DNC either needs to be stolen by a populist leftist as Trump did with the RNC, or get comfortable because if the choice is fascist or neoliberal as it has been for half a century, we will continue to find new depths to descend to until total system collapse.
Fascism is the union of business and state to accelerate metastasis at any cost, let’s say we even have another free election, and best case scenario we elect another neoliberal, I can’t respect your opinion or consider it informed if you truly believe the Neoliberals will once back in power do a thing to meaningfully reign in the capitalist’s governmental capture or redistribute their Ill gotten wealth.
If the Neoliberals somehow get back into power in 4 years, they’ll leave the table set for the fascists to march again in another 4. Affirmation ribbons are leaps and bounds better than scapegoats, but you can’t eat affirmation ribbons, nor can you live in them. Our mass homeless population, our murder for profit confidence scheme we call American Healthcare, our education system at every level in utter ruin, these are not partisan issues because they would cost big corpo exploited profits to fix, and so both parties protect the status quo from us, the people that suffer and die under them. Fascists point and laugh at you, but neoliberals just shrug and go “market forces, amirite 🤷?”
Oligarchy is why we have Trump. There probably isn’t hope, but if you refuse understand big corpo is the enemy of the people and the cause of all this stemming from the Reagan Revolution, then not only will you burn in the fires of fascism, you’ll burn ignorant as to why and how to boot.
Grrr that hard left who wants to feed the hungry and house the homeless, and pay for it by taking money from people who won’t even feel it, wow so radical.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) has urged her Democratic colleagues to stop attacking the “oligarchy” on Thursday, arguing that the word did not resonate with most Americans
Everyone believes that their politics are the politics of MOST Americans, but reality is more complicated than that. I’m not sure that anyone can say what most of the roughly 260 million voting age Americans think, about much of anything, really. Yes, polling can give us some insights, but polls are inherently flawed.
The fact is, the American people are complex. They believe many things, and some of the things they believe contradict other things they believe; and just because an American thinks a certain way today, that doesn’t mean they’ll think that way tomorrow. Plus, we just have such a large and diverse populace, spread out across fifty states. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to point to any one American and say, “that person represents most Americans.”
If I had to guess, I’d say that most Americans don’t give a rats ass about oligarchy or kings. If they could live their lives the way they wanted under an oligarchy or a king, they’d be fine with it. Kings, oligarchs, emperors, despots, who gives a shit, as long as the price of eggs doesn’t go up too much. I think what matters to most Americans isn’t semantic, philosophical or ideological, but material. I think most Americans would be perfectly content to live under a king, if under that king they were able to live a decent, middle class life.
But, that’s just my guess. Again, it’s hard for anyone to say what most Americans want or think or believe.
Sounds like a moron who needs to be primaried.
Just another clueless asshole.
Was looking for this. One of the many many many problems the US has is spineless cowards terrified of trying to fix the underlying problem because every single election they ever have is always “the most important election in history”, that if they can just keep the bad guy out this once they can fix the systemic problems in their democracy later. And yet, the Democrats won in 2008, 2012, and 2020, with a congressional majority accompanying four of those years, and y’all did nothing during that time to fix matters.
So many people will say “this is a gross oversimplification, they do lots of progressive things” while ignoring the world around them.
The fact we had to invent a political term for them is enough to tell me that we need to abandon this fascist supporting party.
Literally, the opposite of what they should be doing. And saying Americans are too stupid to understand a word like “oligarchy” isn’t a good look, either.
“Dem senator is a compromised lackey”
Yeah, no shit. That’s the problem.
If anybody wanted to read the article (ha! yeah, I know) she’s not saying we should lose ‘woke’ ideology or stop attacking ‘oligarchy’. She says the opposite of those things, which was phrased by mediaite this way for clickbait reasons.
What she’s saying is to use the word “kings” instead of “oligarchy”. Which I get. Sure - do that. Makes sense. Same argument, same vitriol, more punch.
As for the ‘woke’ part, she said:
Detailing her plan, Slotkin – a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – argued that the Democratic Party needed to lose its “weak and woke” reputation and “fucking retake the flag,” adopting a “goddamn Alpha energy” inspired by Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell.
She’s mad as fuck and doesn’t want to explain why people need to be treated with respect - it should be a given and we don’t need to explain it.
So there’s sixty comments on here so far, most of them railing against her but I don’t see it. I think she’s been misinterpreted, deliberately, in the case of the mediaite headline writer.
Nah, this headline gets it right by ignoring Slotkin’s transparent spin
Slotkin voted for the Laken Reilly act and hasn’t ever said shit about the CIA being held accountable for torturing people, so she doesn’t want to “fucking retake the flag” in any way that isn’t just a new reign of terror for brown people
The negging about the word “oligarchy” (which she was happy to use against wealthy Russian assholes who support Putin up until very recently) is continuing a very long tradition of her being against whatever AOC is doing at the moment. She can’t come right out and say “I don’t like her policies” because those are popular and that would be political suicide, so she’s just focusing on AOC’s rhetoric and playing to Republican talking points about progressives being the out of touch ones.
Slotkin is a toxic divisive piece of shit who’s bad on policy, bad on politics, and drags the whole Democratic party’s image down whenever she wants to advance her own career.
I’m not seeing that from this article, but you seem to know a lot about her - what are some other things she’s done?
Off the top of my head - she said she’s more than “just an AOC,” said Rashida Tlaib was supporting terrorism when Tlaib asked the Biden administration to stop funding Israel, said multiple times in interviews that the Green New Deal could never pass because it had controversial ideas like universal healthcare, said multiple times in interviews in 2020 during the height of the George Floyd protests that she would never ever support defunding the police, and on and on. She constantly signal boosts Republican talking points about progressive lawmakers and progressive policy ideas to tear them down and only then turns around and says “Hey Michigan, if you don’t want to deal with a Republican party that went completely insane around 2020* I guess you’re stuck with me!”
*I forget the exact details, but MAGAts purged their party’s leadership for some “say the quiet parts through megaphones” types and then there was some sort of scandal with their finances, so MIGOP has been a barely functional shell of itself for a few years now
What she’s saying is to use the word “kings” instead of “oligarchy”. Which I get. Sure - do that. Makes sense. Same argument, same vitriol, more punch.
It does not make sense and is not the same argument. She’s part of a New Democrat Coalition campaign to absolve corporate interests from any responsibility for their lobbying of congressman for whatever filthy outcome they want. She doesnt care about doing the right things, she wants boycotts stopped, and to keep the public busy attacking figureheads.
Do you consider yourself an informed person when it comes to how the system works?
Look how desperate you are to derail anything about Slotkins odious caucus memberships with an ad hom attack.
New Democrats coalition, buddy. Explain why Slotkin is a member of that caucus (AKA the blue dogs) and how the work of that caucus is good for voters. After that we can talk about her other caucus memberships and votes.
What she’s saying is to use the word “kings” instead of “oligarchy”. Which I get. Sure - do that. Makes sense. Same argument, same vitriol, more punch.
Still don’t agree with that. Oligarchy is a very specific thing that we are currently living in. We don’t have a king, not even by the most new-speak of definitions.
Detailing her plan, Slotkin – a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Also hard pass. The CIA should be shuttered they will never be able to provide solution to the problems of capitalism, because their number one goal is to secure “US Interests Abroad” meaning, prop up the oligarchy.
Well you can argue the words or the pronunciation thereof but I don’t think you’re on the right side of that one. Language is central to reality and you’re talking about a wide swath of people’s reality where oligarch has little meaning but king has a lot.
As for CIA-bad, no argument there but CIA-bad-therefore-anyone-who-worked-there-bad I’d also disagree with. We gotta have someone to run and if she’s progressive and firey, I’ll take it. If the left wants to primary her for someone else, fine - so long as they can win. But in most cases they don’t have anyone.
Thank you, Lemmy is looking like a slippery slope back into Reddit today with everyone just screaming at the headlines without knowing the full stories or context.
Thank you, Lemmy is looking like a slippery slope back into Reddit today with everyone just screaming at the headlines without knowing the full stories or context.
Have you read the article? You should it pretty short, and the Headline absolutely gets it right.
There are a lot of people here who pat themselves on the back for their lack of education and understanding.
This from the guy who insta-pivots to ad hom attacks on anyone who tries to dig into Slotkins caucus membership and voting record, and then runs away.
So we’re all stupid huh? Your boos mean nothing to us, rowrowyourbot, we’ve all seen what makes you cheer.
Trolls are so tiresome.
I for one, greatly appreciate all the comments on this thread that arent pro Slotkin trolls. You give me some hope that the voters of the dem party (or what the dem party should be anyway) have some hope of getting this country back on some sort of track, and flushing the filthy slotkins and republican fascists down the tubes bak into the shameful silent background where they always belonged.
Man I figured this was paraphrased because I can’t trust a headline nowadays even if it used quotes but nope. Used those exact terms in that way. Says to retake flag energy. Fuck that nationalist shit. Definately need to redefine patriotism around the constitution and civil rights but sure as shit not around the flag. The flag is a symbol of the ideals that should be respected not a thing itself to respect.
First, if patriotic imagery works when it comes to campaigning why shouldn’t they do it? Why not adopt winning tactics?
Second “ She said Democrats should stop using the term ‘oligarchy,’ a phrase she said doesn’t resonate beyond coastal institutions, and just say that the party opposes ‘kings,'” wrote Wren, who reported that Slotkin was planning to deliver a series of speeches in the coming months about her plan.”
that sounds a lot more like suggesting we don’t talk over the heads of the voters than suggesting we shouldn’t confront the problem. Do you take issue with this?
I think after decades of the term “oligarch” being used in popular culture and nationwide news coverage, people in the “forgotten middle” know what oligarchy is. She’s doing the exact thing “liberal elites” get accused of doing all the time which is insulting her constituents’ intelligence.
its just chasing the ignorance and redefining. They have assigned me to woke that is all about trans and such as opposed to realizing we don’t have a free and fair and functioning system. Maybe they can get other times of voters but talking to dumbed down will alienate my kind.
Kings are single actors. Oligarchy is a group which includes corporations. She is part of a pro business caucus and she is one of the worst zionists in the party. Can you stop trying to whitewash her? She is a monster who needs to be removed, not understood.
You think kings are singular actors? Have you ever studied any real life monarchy closely? That’s an inaccurate claim.
Im not trying to whitewash her I am addressing the errors in your comment.
Stop trying to claim moral high ground we are not arguing here. You made an extremely ignorant comment that was completely incorrect and all I am doing is pointing that out. You shouldn’t be this proudly incorrect
just say that the party opposes ‘kings,'”
This is incredibly dangerous
It argues that a pseudo King like Trump is the problem. That is a lie. It is the oligarchs who prop up dictators like Trump who are the problem
This is an issue of systems, not of individuals. She’s intentionally trying to individualize a systemic issue. This is because she serves those oligarchs and is protecting them by attempting to scapegoat Trump.
We must reject this
Patriotism is bad don’t redefine it abolish it.
National pride can be a powerful motivator towards doing good. The belief in a nation as a group of people working towards a common goal is fundamental to collectivism.
When patriotism turns into nationalism, that’s where it becomes toxic.
National pride absent something like a colonizing force always has an out group and always abstracts the interests of real people to the interests of the elite of the abstract “nation”.
What if the out group is fascists and kings?
A king is kind of in group by definition
Spoiler alert.
It won’t be.
You don’t need “nationhood” to be anti-fascist and anti-monarchy.
I think patriotism is fine if your espousing a good functioning system. Patriotism for patriotisms sake is the issue to me. Its like every time I see a god bless america sign I want to get a sign that says americans be deserving of gods blessing. Your country is not good because of the name of your country but if your country is good if its actually free and equitable.
bye felicia
Slotkin just made herself part of the problem.
seems like she was always the problem, shes probably being prodded by said oligarches, probably russia too to make noise.
And you’re the problem
Outsider opinion: There are two sides who haven’t voted for you, one side who says they’ll vote for you if you change, and another side who says they’ll never vote anything but red. There seems to be an obvious vote to go after.
