• Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    The problem is if you believe this entirely then there’s no mechanism to affect parties. Which is easy to disprove.

    The overarching reality is that the parties are affected by things: culturally there’s been a long period (150 years) of slowly unrestricting people with lots of resistance. Then there’s also a economic right wing drift for decades, largely along capital accumulation lines.

    I buy the idea that the parties are hard to affect but the idea they are impossible to affect seems ahistorical.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        16 minutes ago

        ?There’s several ways to affect politics

        1. Corruption - largely the higher corruption is the more advocates to lower taxes for their donors. This is driven by capital accumulation.

        2. Bottom up struggles - largely if a number of states do a thing the federal politicians will pick it up. Voting rights, marijuana legalization etc fall into this. Realistically this is probably the way to pick up votes.

        3. Media driven - Trump is primarily influenced this way with scares, fear, bullshit. The last 40 years are driven heavily by media scares funded by right wing billionaires. Factual information sometimes breaks through here: I would argue the obamacare ban on pre-existing conditions was the outcome of a media cycle. Usually these are bad rather than good.

        4. Personal affectations of politicians. Cheney’s daughter caused him to be sensible on gay rights, McCain’s stance on torture was a result of his time as a POW. George Bush’s daddy issues about Iraq lead to millions of people dying. If enough people shoot at trump I do see him passing gun legislation (not encouraging it, just speculation)

        • Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world
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          13 minutes ago

          Indeed politics is a tea kettle in the Lagrange zone between the earth and the moon.

          But I was suggesting methods for affecting political parties.