I used to work at a place where an entire department was like that. They'd always have Jordan Peterson's latest talk/show/podcast on in the background, MAGA merch, etc. They'd always have the facial expression of an inmate mugshot. And they'd always be super short with people. One of them made a point of saying the N word as much as they could.

Any time I had to interact with them I'd dread it. I can only imagine how terribly it would have gone if I had dared say anything political in earshot of them.

two-party system, political system in which the electorate gives its votes largely to only two major parties and in which one or the other party can win a majority in the legislature.

Canada is a two party system, because they fit the definition, the majority of the legislature is controlled by the main two parties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_Canada

Of the 338 seats, 81% of them are held by either the conservative or liberal party. The other parties have no shot of winning a majority, or taking away any significant number of seats from the big two parties.

If he does become a true dictator, I wouldn't be surprised by him dying of old age. The fascist he hands his power down to however, they might see the fate of kings.

In my experience, experience with one distro is experience with them all. 90% of what you are familiar with will be either similar or completely the same. So definitely give LMDE a shot.

I'd personally recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. After distro hopping for a bit, it has personally been the best one for working right out of the box, both for my games and for my peripherals.

I like the UI, it's about at my tech level/needs. I have little to no complaints about it, which is as good as it gets.

Don't worry, I've been playing plenty of Linux factorio for the last few weeks to make up for it.

I made a similar switch around January or so. I haven't really notice much of a change in the bill.

It wasn't a particularly high bill to begin with, and I haven't really compared the actual price per kwh.

So overall I'm still pleased even if it hasn't been noticeably cheaper. All my power is on renewable, and my bill hasn't gone up.

Fascists hate art so this 100% tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5DqmTtCPiQ

In my experience, the liberals lose games like that 9 times out of 10. Either they kill a liberal and doom themselves, or they kill a fascist and then lose the game anyways because the deck is stacked.

What this would actually look like in effect would be if Biden had Trump assassinated by their own rules, either Biden would get impeached by the republicans + a few breakoff dems, or it would start a precedent of political assassinations in the U.S., which would end with a lot of blood.

Either way, it will be a disaster. I don't want to be a doomer, but I don't see a way to salvage this shit show.

Easier said than done when the dems don't control congress.

Well, I disagree. Lesser-evilist ideology that calls for sacrificing the Palestinians today

I'm not calling for the sacrificing of Palestinians.

Enforcing a red line is the only possible way to ensure long-term security.

You don't have long term security with this approach. Because Trump won't give a flying fuck whether you force the DNC to act better. Trump is your security risk.

If you say it won’t work, then I may die trying, but I’d rather do that than resign myself to death the other way and be complicit in my own demise

Allowing Trump to get power will be what makes you complicit in your own demise.

I understand the situation and I’ve made my decision and I’m not going to change it, unless they come to the table.

They will never come to the table in time. You'll/we'll be dead before then.

Maybe I don’t have any bargaining power in the first place, in which case what I do is irrelevant.

The only power you have outside of protesting and activism is voting in the primaries and general.

We have the power to reduce harm in the general election, but not to stop all harm. Either Biden or Trump will win, and there will be harm regardless. Voting 3rd party doesn't stop that.

There wasn't enough political will to vote for a better candidate than Biden in the primaries, so there sure as hell will not be the political will to vote for a better candidate in the general.

I'm bi, so chances are I'll be next on the chopping block after you if Trump gets elected, so believe me I can empathize with your position. Trump will make the genocide in Palestine worse, and on top of that probably start a new one here. Biden isn't going to get either of us killed.

Bargaining with the useless police while your family is getting murdered isn't helping anyone. The negotiation table doesn't mean anything, because the negotiation table will take too long. By the time it works, the mob boss will already have you dead.

No, it will be on the hands of the people who voted for Trump, not mine.

If there is a mob boss threatening to kill your family, and you fuck around trying to negotiate with the useless police to do something, and during that negotiation the mob boss kills your family, it is absolutely on you.

You wasted your time negotiating when your family was getting killed. You can't just stand back and doing nothing while people's lives are in danger.

The only viable long term strategy for minority groups is to band together and draw a red line that the democrats cannot win without meeting, and that red line means opposing the Palestinian genocide. I believe there’s a famous poem about what happens when the government starts picking people off and you do nothing, because you are not part of that group. We will be next.

I am well aware. And telling people to vote 3rd party is equivalent to doing nothing, and letting the Palestinians go first. Because no matter how hard you tell people to abandon the DNC, at best you can only hope for people voting for the closest candidate to them, which means that Trump wins.

And the SCOTUS just ruled that Trump is immune from persecution for "official acts". How much do you want to bet your life and your trans brothers and sisters lives on your/our deaths being "official acts"?

Your guilt tripping is meaningless to me, it will not get me to abandon my commitment to solidarity and to opposing genocide.

I implore you, please continue your opposition to the Palestinian genocide. But Trump will make their lives significantly worse in addition to the queer community.

Voting is a negotiation, and the party can change who it runs or how they act based on the actions of voters.

That's exactly what I've been saying. If the establishment democrats get trashed in their primaries, the party will shift, just like the GOP shifted towards the MAGA crowd.

This is exactly what I've been saying.

The mathematics of the situation are irrelevant, it is a game of chicken and they will flinch before I do. It’s their job to win us over, and if they can’t do that, they will lose and it will be their fault.

They didn't flinch in 2016. They didn't flinch in 2020. They're not gonna flinch this time.

They ran with Clinton and Biden despite knowing how hated they are. You may be willing to play that game of chicken, but you're not the only voter, you need everyone else to play it with you. Not everyone is willing to play that game of chicken, which is why 3rd party candidates don't win.

Your strategy is a losing one.

Except that a third party could enact voting reform to get us out of this situation permanently, something which is impossible otherwise.

Could. They could, but they also could find that they quite like power and keep it the way it is.

And no, it is not impossible otherwise. I've already shown you how actual leftist candidates can gain power within the DNC (unless I got you confused with a different user).

. If a third party gains enough strength, they could at least leverage an endorsement in exchange for concessions, while at the same time challenging the belief that they’re useless.

The key word there being "if". It's a gamble, and it is likely to result in Trump getting installed as president. When he kills gender affirming care programs, the blood of trans people will be on your hands. When he kills renewable energy programs and environmental protections, the deaths caused by the resulting heat waves/air polution/industrial runoff/etc will be ok your hands.

You are quite literally gambling with peoples lives.

But it’s an incorrect ideology

It's not. It's the natural, mathematical result of a FPTP voting system. If two candidates are close to each other on a hypothetical political map, and if everyone votes for the candidate closest to them, then the candidate farthest away wins.

Take this graph. If a 3rd candidate was running, and whose policy positions were at (-0.75, -.5) and Clinton at (-0.5, -0.75) then Clinton gets half the votes they otherwise would, and the same goes for the new 3rd candidate.

This is what happens when people just vote for whoever is closest to them. They split the vote. You cannot avoid this unless the system is changed, because this is the natural result of FPTP voting, a two party system.

and one that’s going to screw me over sooner or later, so I can’t accept it

It's already screwing you over. It's been screwing you over since you were born. And it will always continue to do so until the system is changed.

Because even if some 3rd party magically gained prominence, either the DNC or GOP would die, and we would be right back to two parties, and your options again limited.

Which will not happen. Millions of people are not going to suddenly change their two party voting behavior, as it has been established for well over a century at this point, because the system itself is the problem.

You are gambling with peoples lives if you vote 3rd party.

The DNC has literally testified in court that they don’t have to abide by the results of their primaries because they aren’t real elections. They don’t even have to hold primaries at all. The primary process is a joke and people who want genuine change won’t be allowed to win, it’s a dead end.

Yet the candidates I named won their congressional seats.

There is, actually. Ditching the party and moving to a new one, for starters.

And that's how you get the spoiler effect, and another round of fascist SCOTUS appointments for the next few decades, a fascist president, project 2025, etc.

At no point have I indicated that was acceptable either.

First, because they weren’t pushovers, if the party had tried shenanigans to stop them there was a real possibility of people defecting from the party en masse, and even of violence at the convention.

I think this overstates where things were at when Trump first got nominated during the GOP primary in 2016. If Trump had lost that, they just as easily could have voted red anyways. Republicans have been doing it for decades, they use their geriatric & evangelical blocs to strong arm their nominee to the presidency regardless of who it is.

Second, because the things they wanted weren’t really all that contrary to what the rich donors wanted.

Sure, but a lot of the time DNC candidates do things that the rich donors hate. Biden's cap on insulin prices is a good example of that. There will always be pushback on good policy. Complaining doesn't get us anywhere.

The Democratic base is much more weak willed and willing to go along with whatever to stop the right.

This is only really relevant for the actual elections. This effect isn't nearly as strong in the primaries where it counts and is needed.

And election reform is directly contrary to the interests of the establishment, and the aim of prioritizing ordinary people over the rich goes against the interests of the doners. They’ll crush any internal movement in that direction

Look, either we work within the system to make things better, or we have a violent revolution. There isn't much of a middle option. And I can pretty much guarantee you that a violent revolution would be the worse option given that it is a militarized police state with citizen tracking out the ass.

If every single leftist wins their DNC primary, the DNC doesn't have much of a choice but to run with them. That's how you get better candidates like AOC/Summer Lee/Jamaal Bowman, etc. They aren't perfect by any means, but they are a hell of a lot more to the left than the DNC is. And I can tell you the DNC fuckin hates having said candidates within their party. But they suck it up and deal with it.

It is very much possible to get more candidates like that, but it requires focus on the primaries, just like the MAGA crowd did.

In a country where 1/3rd of the country is either fascist or a fascist sympathizer? No thanks.

But is it going to be common place?