Until we fix the disinformation, nothing sane is going to work. Things are only getting worse.

The democrats make the mistake of presuming that the people to the left of fascism are committed enough to defend democracy that they wouldn’t need to be courted like primma donnas.

Democracy in the US is failing because we have idiots on the right willing to vote for a fascist criminal conman, and idiots on the left willing to stay home and watch it happen while pretending to hold some moral high ground.

If you didn’t vote, now you get Trump 2.0. And you inflicted Trump on the entire planet. Here’s your red hat, and may you enjoy the consequences of your actions.

But sure, let’s keep blaming Harris, the one person that spent the last 3 months straight putting in 18-hour shifts working her heart out to try to keep this country in one piece.

Fuck her for being a centrist with moderate policies and not bending to the delicate will of the highly refined palates on the left - the voter segment that live their political lives by the refrain: “I want my cocktail with 4 olives. If it’s 3 olives, I send it back. If it’s 5 olives, I send it back.” Harris’ cocktail only had 3 olives, so now we are all fucked.

You’ll let us know how Trump’s cocktail tastes, your majesty. Ask any of our non-male, non-white, or non-straight brethren if they appreciate how you sold them down the river for a missing olive. Ask our allies in the EU, the people on the front lines in Ukraine, our partners in Asia - Taiwan. And don’t forget to ask the people of Gaza, once Trump lifts all limits on bombs and triples the shipments to Israel.

Don’t forget to ask a teacher how much they are going to love Trump’s destruction of the department of education, or a doctor or nurse how much they look forward to Trump’s changes to healthcare. Ask anyone under the age of 20 how much they look forward to what Trump is going to do the EPA and international climate change accords. Let’s all take a moment to enjoy the upcoming 4 decades of a far right Supreme Court deciding what’s to happen with our rights and dignity as people.

Thank you so much for your work, and let us all keep blaming Harris for not being more perfect when it was time to bring you your cocktail.

Lemmy is a bit of a darkweb corner. It’s growing fast from Reddit users, but redditors are not particularly known for being the best form of the online argument either.

Like anywhere else, I’d say pick your communities carefully. And accept that a platform that is in shift and growth has a lot of potential for weird encounters. Try not to take the bad experiences too personally.

I’m a mod at /truenews @reddit

It’s hard to keep a healthy news sub because of so much polarization, and so much subpar stuff that’s called “news”. I can point to 2 successful examples that handled it differently.

At truenews https://www.reddit.com/r/truenews/We simply ask for quality sources. You can read the sidebar for the rules. Basically we demand that all news posts are actually from reputable news sources. We provide an explanation of what that means and tons of valid examples. Then we mod to remove non-valid sources, and work with posters to help them understand the rules. If a user is having trouble getting used to the rules, we ask them to stick to the 2 dozen recommended sources we provided.

Another example is neutralnews https://www.reddit.com/r/neutralnews/This is a very clean sub because it went a very strict way. Not only are all posts expected to be from valid sources, but any comment is expected to contribute something useful (so no jokes or venting), and all claims in comments have to be substantiated. This sub is very hard to moderate and it can also be hard on participants because so many comments get deleted until users get the hang of the rules. But the benefit is that it enables real discussion from any angle of politics because people are blocked from repeating party lines and memes, and instead have to argue their point with sources. Some of the most useful political discussions I’ve seen have happened in this sub, due to the requirement for good faith arguments with sources.