We’ll have to fight like hell or we won’t have a country anymore

You might be a daft fucking idiot but at this point as long as you get out and vote for someone who isn’t a fascist, I could be convinced to share enough drinks that we forget our differences.

The racists and bigots (Heritage foundation and plenty of others) have been working on this shit literally since Reconstruction and we’ve been able to rebuff their insane ideas for over a hundred years. Then, after 4 years of insanity under Trump, culminating in a global pandemic, Jan 6, and election denialism, we get Joe Biden.

What steps do you think would be appropriate to take as the most powerful leader in the country in 2021 to help the country heal and avert future calamities like these? From the top of my head I can spout off a long list but accountability for Trump and those who enabled him are at the top of the list.

Why didn’t Joe take decisive action to fix our broken political system? Why did he allow Merrick Garland to slow roll the “investigations” for 4+ years and ultimately do nothing? How could he and Kamala run on a campaign of, “save the country from the fascists” and yet do nothing to save the country themselves? The Supreme Court ruled, during Joe’s term, that the President has absolute immunity for any actions taken as president. How could Joe’s administration get this kind of power while facing down a planned fascist takeover and DO NOTHING?

You’re coming at me like I’m “blind and stupid” while suggesting that Joe was the second coming of Christ in America, and I’m here to tell you that he simply did not perform his constitutional role to do everything in his power to maintain the Union. I like the guy, but he fucked up.

Project Nazi 2016-2025? Bruh, who controlled the government 2020-2024? Clearest troll yet. Unreal.

Stop rejecting the facts simply because they are unpleasant.

I am righteous in my displeasure with Sleepy Joe and the larger Democratic establishment that enabled MAGA to thrive. Are you so blinded by your hatred for MAGA that you’re unable to objectively evaluate the results from the election?

Look, I would have voted for 4 more years of Joe in a heartbeat, I voted for Kamala; but a majority of Americans voted for our current path. I do not think this is the best path for our country, but I also won’t pretend this happened in a vacuum. The Democrats steadfastly refuse to consider their own failings, and that includes lining up behind Joe Biden when his administration was polling in the gutter.

Fascism isn’t looking great but Americans clearly aren’t willing to vote for democracy on its own merits when the democratic leaders don’t have a policy that resonates with voters.

Tl;dr it’s not because I’m fascist that I call Joe sleepy, it’s because I demand better from our leadership. If that gets under your skin then you’re part of the problem.

Lmao I’m a MAGA? You’re a clown. 🤡

So we agree, rich douchebags took over our democracy while Sleepy Joe sat back and did NOTHING to stop it. Jan 6th? Trump sees no consequences. Numerous other indictments for Trump? No need to rush. Musk buying votes in PA? Seems fine.

All the while Joe sits around insisting he’s strapped in and ready for another term. He got elected on the premise that he would be a 1 term president then decided he was comfy, in spite of incredibly clear polling numbers showing that his policy was remarkably unpopular. Then Kamala picked up the mantle and when she asked what she would do differently? No notes.

Policy-wise Joe was better than most but politically he gave away the country to the fascists.

Sleepy Joe is a big part of the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. I say fuck him, he had his chance to earn a better nickname.

5x the property tax rate for all vacant housing?

“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.”

Given the strong presence of the privacy community on Lemmy, I have to say that I’m a bit shocked to hear so many in these discussions chiming in to support voting transparency.

I’m on board with the idea of using ring signatures to validate the legitimacy of a vote and moderating spammers based on metadata.

Or, for something (potentially) easier to implement, aggregating vote tallies at the instance level (votes visible to your instance admin and mods) and federating the votes anonymously by instance, so you might see something like:

• lemmy.world: 9 up, 2 down
• discuss.tchncs.de: 3 up, 4 down
• Etc

Up/down votes are the method of community moderation that sets Reddit apart from many other platforms. If the Lemmy community is trying to capture some of that magic, which is good for both highlighting gems AND burying turds, radical transparency isn’t the path to get there.

In fact, I’d argue that the secret ballot has already been thoroughly discussed and tested throughout history and there are plenty of legitimate examples of why it would be better if they were more secret than they are today.

Many people have brought up the idea of brigading, but would this truly get better if votes are public? Is it hard to imagine noticing that an account you generally trust has voted and matching their vote, even subconsciously?

For those who feel that they aren’t able to post on Lemmy because downvotes make you feel sad, my feeling is that if you make posts in a community and they consistently get down voted to oblivion, you’re in the wrong place. The people in that community don’t value your contributions, and you should find another place to share them. This is the system working as intended and the mods should be thankful that such a system has been implemented.

The last point I’ll make is about the potential for a chilling effect - making users less likely to interact with a post in any way due to a fear of retaliation. Look - if you’re looking for a platform where all of your activity is public, those are out there. Why should we make Lemmy look just like every other platform?