If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The “you must vote the lesser evil” is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can’t just sit back and complain about the rigged system like “but muh first past the poll voting” as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Love shit like this because you all lack the same fundamental goddamn knowledge.
It’s up to the states who goes on the ballot. There are only three political parties in the United States with enough support to get on all 51 (50 States + DC) ballots. Those are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Libertarians. The Libertarians are just as fascist as the Republicains, but they don’t have the guise of Christianity to cover it up, so they get pretty few votes. Beyond those three, It is entirely dependent on the state who you get to vote for. I, for example, get four choices in my state. The big two, the libertarians, and the Legalize Marijuana Now parry. The latter is a small party who’s soul goal is getting marijuana legalized. Wanna vote for the Green party? Tough shit. I suppose write ins are an option, but there’s roughly 200,000,000 people who vote, so good luck convincing even half of them to write your name down without a party supporting you.
In other words, “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a mindset. For a lot of us, it’s literally the only choice.
It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
768 votes wth is wrong with Americans bruh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Tehreek-e-Insaf
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The “you must vote the lesser evil” is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can’t just sit back and complain about the rigged system like “but muh first past the poll voting” as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Shittiest take on this community by far.
Love shit like this because you all lack the same fundamental goddamn knowledge.
It’s up to the states who goes on the ballot. There are only three political parties in the United States with enough support to get on all 51 (50 States + DC) ballots. Those are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Libertarians. The Libertarians are just as fascist as the Republicains, but they don’t have the guise of Christianity to cover it up, so they get pretty few votes. Beyond those three, It is entirely dependent on the state who you get to vote for. I, for example, get four choices in my state. The big two, the libertarians, and the Legalize Marijuana Now parry. The latter is a small party who’s soul goal is getting marijuana legalized. Wanna vote for the Green party? Tough shit. I suppose write ins are an option, but there’s roughly 200,000,000 people who vote, so good luck convincing even half of them to write your name down without a party supporting you.
In other words, “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a mindset. For a lot of us, it’s literally the only choice.
Removed by mod
It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
This comment was reported. I’m not seeing any issue but the reporter can dm me and point it out if I’m missing something.
People just report whatever they disagree with, I guess.