For more than a decade I only rode a motorcycle in Florida. I even made trips - with a passenger - to Costco. It required plenty of straps and saddlebags and a big backpack, but it was doable to get groceries in it for two people.

This was on a Triumph Scrambler, and I had added a luggage rack etc, so not something you could do easily on a stock sport bike, but you don’t need a big touring bike for this kind of living, either.

The times I needed to haul something big, I rented a truck from a big box hardware store. Saved a ton of money over the years, and only now have a Prius (with a roof rack to haul stuff) because I live in a place with harsh winters. No sidecar yet, but thinking hard about it…

Well sure, the Democrats could kill the filibuster with a simply majority (if they could get 51 senators on board) but they filibuster a lot as well, to prevent some Republican legislation. So I can see why they’re too pragmatic - or cowardly - to remove it. Not the best source/graph, but a source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-democrats-considering-ending-the-filibuster/

As for the parliamentarian: they haven’t been removed in a while, and the one before that also served for a pretty long time…I think the Democrats (again, cowardly or pragmatically) are simply trying not to escalate and make the parliamentarian a puppet of the current simple majority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_States_Senate

I’m all in favor of nuking the filibuster, mind you: which would make the whole budget reconciliation thing a moot point. but I can understand the desire for some in the party to retain it as a tool. Fat lot of good it’s doing us now, of course.

the Democrats technically controlled the chamber.

Correct - technically, but not practically - because they absolutely can’t get anything substantial done with the Republicans and right-wing Democrats, as they didn’t have a filibuster proof supermajority.

However, there was one brief moment when Biden’s party had a 60th vote, which occurred after Senator Al Franken resigned and was replaced with Senator Tina Smith in 2018

That…just isn’t true though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress They had at most 47 votes, right? Also…recall who was president in 2018. Certainly not enough congressional control to override the inevitable veto.

At best their ‘accomplishments’ you mention were limited, while vastly more dammage was done in other fields.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that many of the accomplishments were limited. I’m not saying they are going to save us, and while I want to wrest control from the right-wing leadership in the Democratic party, I’m not terribly optimistic that it’ll happen in my lifetime. IMHO we need more coordination and cooperation on the Left to organize enough to do what the Tea Party did on the Right with the GOP…the major difference is that the folks in power in the GOP weren’t ideologically opposed to the Tea Party, unlike the corporate Dems v. the “Actual Left”, so maybe that’s a fool’s errand, especially given the power structures in place, and the inherently anti-democratic system of government re: SCOTUS, Senate, Electoral College, etc.

Look: I don’t think we disagree all that much: I’m just trying to acknowledge nuance and correct misinformation. So…what do you suggest we do about the Democrats being at best speed bumps to real progress?

When they have a supermajority, like they had not long ago, they are in trouble.

The last true supermajority I’m aware of only lasted 72 days, back in 2009. It’s when the Fair Pay act was signed, Affordable Care Act, and a few different attempts to reform Wall Street. They were certainly not as life-changing as I’d like, but I’m admittedly pretty far to the Left of the average US voter.

The even stronger supermajority before that was in 1965, and that got the creation of Medicare & Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Freedom of Info Act, etc.

The Dems are a weak centrist party, and the leadership is center-right at best, but even so - those two times where they had a supermajority in the Senate gave us some good to at least quasi-good stuff. I’m totally on board for bashing the Democrats, but it’s hard to convey the amount of damage the truly undemocratic Senate has done over the decades, and I think we can’t avoid the reality that there was a lot that got done in that brief period when the Republicans couldn’t stop them. The ability to block legislation in the Senate is just incredible. Things just can’t get passed, unless it’s something the Republicans will agree to - so it’s far easier for shitty stuff to get passed. Unfortunately, there are enough right wing democrats that will go along with the shitty stuff the Republicans propose, in no small part because their constituents actually like it. We’re losing the propaganda war, because those with capital have far more power to wield.

So there’s a lot of problems to fix - deeply undemocratic institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College, the entirety of the GOP, weakass right-wing Democrats, and the voters themselves. Unfortunately, yeah…the interests of Capital have intervened and made sure to cripple Education and control the media landscape, so to get back to my main point, since I’m losing the thread here - I’m agreed that the Democrats are shit, but we can’t ignore reality that when they’ve had actual full control of the Federal government, things were at least going in a decent direction.

Yes, most Democrats aren’t Left enough. Some are trying to push the party to the Left, however.

I think the confusion here is your blanket “they” is conflating the mainstream Democratic party instead of those of us who are pushing this stuff at the grassroots level, e.g. actual progressives/Leftists etc.

Not Lemmy specific. There was US legislation related to the word being deemed offensive fifteen years ago (given the slow nature of Congress, it wasn’t a new sentiment then, either): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa’s_Law

Fair enough that plenty of insulting words could be cast as abelist: but my guess is that a word like “idiot” is old enough that most folks called that in a medical context aren’t around any more. Maybe I’m wrong though: plenty of folks do push against saying things like “crazy” in an insulting manner.

Exactly. 15 people in Gitmo is still a moral stain on the nation, but at least some semblance of progress was made. Not fast enough, still terrible, etc.

Trump is vowing to make that - just numerically - 2,000 times worse than the current numbers. And that’s just looking at raw numbers, not even getting into the ethics of the people themselves (do we really think they’ll be even half as rigorous as the shit level of rigor for former/current prisoners if they’re trying to capture thirty thousand people?).

Unfortunately they’ve backed down already: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/world/americas/colombia-us-deportation-flights.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU4.SJeu.KLeSKsinK61Z

But… I’m not okay with giving up one group, nor excusing genocide. We must be having two different discussions, because I got the impression you were advocating for simply rolling over and giving up.

What I was getting at is that participating in an immoral system, only inasmuch as wasting a little time to vote for a lesser evil, can help us achieve our aims when taking action outside the ballot box. It’s easier to fight genocide against one group than genocide against many groups, right?

It’s only “demonic” if voting is the only action you take to flight fascism. The reason to vote for the lesser evil, IMHO, is that the less evil option tends to be easier to fight.

Are you suggesting we should just go for a speedrun through the list, then?

There’s no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I’m living like a king. It’s a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.

However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.

So there’s a line, but it’s far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I’m careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.

What’s the cutoff?

Is there a succinct way of articulating why we can’t do both? (e.g. vote for the lesser evil while also doing all the mutual aid and whatnot that we can?) Does it boil down to the argument that voting makes people less likely to build said alternative power structures?

I’ll watch the video when I have time, but communicating an actionable strategy I think is essential to folks in crisis.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

• some guy who doesn’t know much about “Real Communism”

Communism doesn’t argue people are all equal in abilities: but instead it argues that people’s needs should be met, regardless.

This doesn’t mean we all should live in the same identical brick huts, either. We just shouldn’t be so barbaric that we let people starve to death in a gutter, even if it’s because of their own failures.

That’s correct in my eyes, too. I’ve done everything I can to stop the genocide, short of getting a plane ticket to go and fight, and I do all I can to donate to groups like Doctors Without Borders to improve the material conditions on the ground to the extent that it’s possible.

It’s honestly disgusting that so many people don’t even recognize it as a genocide. Again: my only point is that we all need to reflect on how to contribute, even in small ways, to improving things on the ground there. I’m not the original person you were arguing with, I just wanted to interject that self reflection is always a good thing, even if you come out thinking the same way as before. Sometimes there’s a slightly different answer though, or a better understanding of the actions of others, which helps future decisions. Nuance isn’t easy, but it’s important to actually making effective change in the world. That’s been my experience, at least. Take it for what you will!

My point was that we should all reflect, and not just assume that we’re correct all the time.

Nowhere in my comment did I suggest we should only focus on the worst major political party in the USA, nor am I defending the idealized image people have of the states. American exceptionalism has always been terrible propaganda, and the only silver living I’ve seen from this trump era is that more people are aware of how shit most US parties are, and the depths of the myths we’ve been fed in this nation.

I’ll disagree that the other options are 100% as morally bankrupt as trump’s group of billionaires and conspiracy theorists, but if you’re talking about Democrats I’d argue they’re only nearly as morally bankrupt, so it’s far from a defense of the party. Maybe 90% as morally bankrupt? 95ish?

You should reflect because it’s the correct thing to do.

What vote would have - even slightly - reduced Palestinian suffering in the short term. What would reduce it in the long term? Have new actions or moves by Israel changed what you thought months ago? Has the incoming administration signalled moves that will change the trajectory, relative to the current admin?

These are all things we need to reflect on

Biden should do something cool, since he’s thinking about preemptive pardons…

I really wonder why you get offended by “We should try to minimize the use of psychatric drugs, where therapy is a viable alternative”?

What you said here wouldn’t ruffle nearly as many feathers, because IMHO in your other post you buried the lede.

It’s definitely good to say that we need better access to therapy, and to improve societal conditions, since many people would be healthier with those instead of drugs. We’d all benefit!

Then there’s proposals by hardcore wingnuts like RFK that…are unreasonable to the point of doing outright harm. You just got confused for the latter, I guess. I wasn’t sure about your first comment, either.