All of these were fought for with literal blood well before any liberals decided it was in their interest to push legislation. Don't delude yourselves by thinking the libs did these things out of the kindness of their heart.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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I don’t disagree, but I think it’s pretty clear Lawrence is using the American colloquial definition of liberal rather than the academic definition.
Even if you use the academic version it makes sense. Liberalism is the default ideology in the USA. The majority of the population at any point will be Liberals.
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Not really. Civil rights absolutely, social security, kind of, the activists didn't create the idea but they gave muscle to the labor movement to the point that FDR got elected in the first place and had the momentum so sure, clean air act and clean water act, you must be joking, those were just liberal government things. The things from that end of the spectrum are actually really good examples of why having a functioning government is a good thing even if it means "electoralism," meaning it can't all just be people in the streets fighting. You need both sides of the equation: The vigor and blood to push things forward, and then the paper and system to lock it in. Without either side of that, it doesn't work.
More to the point, stop shitting on people who did good things. If you live in America, you benefit from all of the things on that list. Look for enemies elsewhere. This is the left's favorite thing, to turn its guns exclusively on its own side, and it's super good at it.
Yes, eco activists died for a lot of those movements too.
The point isnt to "turn guns on [our] own side," it is to remind people that these movements and legistlations rest on the shoulders of giants, just like most everything else in our society
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I think this type of thinking ends up being quite self defeating.
We should evaluate all politicians as vessels to carry out the will of the people.
When you consider them as such, not as people or entities to assign blame, as your goal is to be pragmatic, you look at their incentives and track records instead.
I think leftists often have this self defeating problem of being unable to stomach the fact that they will not get their ideal politician, and there will be no sudden uprising.
As a result, they often will criticize the politicians closest too them too loudly, ending up supporting "both sides" notions that cause voter apathy and let quite literally fascists win instead.
What I am saying is that we have to be pragmatic.
Particularly for the US, people have to realize that yes, while the DNC sucks, the democrats are the only practical, realistic way for people to actually end up winning.
Its long, slow, and no fun at all, but people have to support them publicly, and acknowledge their faults in ways that don't dissuade voters from voting for them. They then must also vote in increasingly progressive candidates in primaries and local politics.
Anything else is simply grabbing a foot gun, because this imperfect system is very slow, and won't change over night.
Yeah. This whole thing where voting for someone is "falling in line behind" them is very weird to me.
Politicians are not your friends. Even ones I like, I don't really look at as that I am "allied" with them. I'm just inputting that I want them in charge more than I like the other person; it's sort of the last stage of the process of trying to control what my government might be in a position to do to me or do to other people in the world (for good or bad, often for bad).
Do these people go driving and decide whether the transmission "deserves" to be in third gear or second gear or whatever? Do they set "red lines" about when they will and won't touch the steering wheel? Dude, the government is often terrible. Refusing to give any input to it until it gets better on its own seems guaranteed to be self defeating.
It's literally terrifying how many people in this country don't grasp this concept.
You cannot get hung up on punishing a political party over a single issue while holding the door open for fascists. You cannot bank on a 3rd party candidate that CANNOT under ANY circumstance win. You have to elect the best option that most closely aligns with your ideals, then reform that party electorally. It's been done numerous times throughout American history and conservatives just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party.
That's it. That is the way within the system we live in.
The only other option is flat out revolution and not only is that unlikely to happen, but history has shown us that without a clear plan for what happens after a revolution things can easily be worse as the void gets filled by other grifters and criminals.
I'm really not sure what's going to happen in this nation going forward with so many people that simply don't get this.
I mean, I think it is part and parcel of them thinking it's safe for someone else to do their thinking for them. I definitely won't say all of this "well we can't be VOTING or anything, what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish?" mindset is maliciously engineered and injected into the discourse, but some of it is.
I would add to your prescription for what we have to do instead, vocal activism and direct action for what an actually good solution would be, supporting candidates like AOC or Mamdani, and then if the only choice that emerges at the end of that on the ballot is between "everyone dies" or "policies that are really not ideal," we vote for that second thing and keep fighting otherwise.
One of the reason I am suspicious of all the "anti-electoralists" on Lemmy is that they spend very little energy on all that stuff, as far as I can tell. Some of them actively are complaining about AOC and Mamdani, and saying that good leftists can't support THEM, either, because (insert various bullshit). That is a lot more of a red flag than just the sort-of-plausibly-confused idea that voting for establishment Democrats is a bad thing.
Yeah, I mean on Reddit I would assume the people even against AOC/Mamdani are conservatives/Russians/bots trying to divide and conquer. But on Lemmy it almost seems like it really is just fabulously ignorant people. I say that not only because there's a lot less bot/conservative activity on Lemmy, but also because I see a lot of comments from clearly real people that seem to think that in reality we can just magically skip to a situation where an ultra left government can materialize out of thin air if they personally want it badly enough.
I have to assume some of these people are literally underage and we all have pretty wild concepts about what's possible in reality, especially the complex parts, when we're that young. But some are clearly grown ass adults. It's alarming.
I think it is (at least) two populations.
There are clearly people who are just walking typing Dunning-Kruger effects with bad political opinions, but don't show any kind of signs of being employed to spread disinformation and honestly seem self-consistent and high-effort about it in a way that makes it seem a little unlikely that they're being fake about it.
But then, also, there are people who constantly spread the same little handful of talking points, don't really seem to be putting much effort into making it believable and don't seem self-consistent about it or even to be reading stuff that people reply to them with, sometimes make weird little errors which clearly indicate that they're not from the US even though they care deeply about US politics, and so on and so on. That second population, I think it's safe to say are deliberate mass-scale propaganda. It's different on Reddit (and a lot more transparent, and they have populations of them like the pro-Israel propagandists who are not present on Lemmy), and to be honest I am also a little surprised that they have elected to spend effort on a tiny platform like Lemmy. But it seems obvious to me that they have done. And some of the nature of what they like to push makes it particularly interesting (as does the concordance that a lot of them seem not to be US-based which is very interesting to me.)
Or we could actually work to build up our own communities and set a real workers party up. Otherwise we are at the whims of fascists and fascist lite
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They are vessels that must be driven toward change under the threat of force, sure
Thats in an ideal world, but its not practical for the US in particular because their system only allows for 2 parties.
In fact, many systems boil down to that due to first past the post forcing people to vote strategically instead of for the party that best represents them.
In reality, people have to vote strategically and then use internal party politics such as primaries to shift the party to a more progressive place.
Threatening to make them lose only means the worse party comes into power and rachets everything backwards far more than leaving them in place.
Thats in an ideal world, but its not practical for the US in particular because their system only allows for 2 parties
I dont mean electoral force, I mean popular resistance.
Even 'working within internal party politics' involves the use of force, because capital is constantly doing the same.
"In reality", democrats are beholden to the same forces of capitalism as the Republicans are - pushing them 'to the left' will always involve a threat of force greater than the threat posed by capital.
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Don’t delude yourselves by thinking the libs did these things out of the kindness of their heart.
No, they did it because their lib constituents wanted it in large enough numbers that they had to represent the will of their constituents. Because liberalism builds and conservatism destroys.
So instead of posting useless, divisive bullshit to demonize lib legislators, let's get together and work against the fucking fascists.
I suggest learning about the ratchet effect and how it influences modern politics in america. Liberalism and leftism are two different things. Liberalism, in america especially, is a right wing ideology that seeks to act at the "rational" party. They will not act unless, as you said, their constituents make it clear they will lose their seat without said action.
Democrats fight progressives more than they fight Republicans. The ratchet effect was coined for a reason. I've seen it for over 10 years as a voter.
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I'd be curious to see a similar list for the Reich. Like a legitimate one though, where they actually try to list what they're proud of. At the moment I can only think of a list containing a bunch of "cut taxes for the ultra wealthy."
"fucked the middle east"
"revoked abortion rights"
"let millions of f****ts die of HIV"
"biggest prison population in the world - can I have a 'hell yeah' for modern slavery?"
If memory serves me right just about everyone in Congress supported the Iraq War both times.
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It used to be "beat the Nazis," "got the railroads built," and things like that. There is value to having some conservative values in government. The problems with America actually don't have a lot to do with partisan politics; it is that the right wing turned into Nazis, and the "left" wing of the establishment politicians turned into Roman senators too busy getting blowjobs to realize that people are starving in the streets and can't afford their insulin.
I would actually be fine with Republicans of the John McCain / Dwight Eisenhower mold in government. If we could get rid of Mike Johnson and Nancy Pelosi (ideally by just dumping them into the Potomac), and have it be AOC and Adam Kinsinger, I'd be fine with that. The MAGA people are more overtly evil, but it's not even really a party thing.
I remember seeing McCain on TDS before the 2000 election. He was fucking sharp then. Somewhere between then and 2008, he went off the rails and/or made a deal with the devil.
Yeah, 100%. I feel like maybe he lost his mind because of trying to become the president. Hunter Thompson talked about it, he said he saw it happen to a few different people, he compared it to a moose during mating season, just losing his mind to go after the goal.
Maybe being embedded into a party that became so depraved took some kind of toll on him... having to deal with Sarah Palin. My God, I can't even imagine. But yeah, whatever it was I 100% agree, something happened to him.
Republicans did create the EPA but then they destroyed it
Nixon, at this point, would be a progressive Democrat. He was an absolutely legendary piece of human garbage, but he did care about the country and attempt to do big good things for it sometimes, in a way that most of the campaign-contribution-fueled crop of ghouls that are "congress" today do not. Reagan and Clinton really redefined the whole scope of what even being in charge of the country was supposed to mean.
I was genuinely surprised when I read that Nixon intend to "declare war on poverty" and end it by wanting to propose a bill for UBI. He was convinced by several positive studies for UBI presented to him, iirc. But it just so happens that an influential economist breaking grounds at the time, who goes by the name of Milton Friedman (the man who (in-)famously coined the phrase "greed is good") convinced Nixon to abandon the idea. Although I don't remember the exact arguments on how Nixon was convinced to abandon the idea of UBI.
Yeah. He actually kind of meant well. He was hampered by the fact that he was a flinty-hearted vindictive psychopath. But he did a bunch of stuff which there is literally no way to explain other than that he wanted to do something good for the [white] [Republican] [pro-war] people of the country [as long as they were nice to him at all times which is what he deserved].
He did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great.
Let me tell you a thing that is not often mentioned, which I think contributed to the rise of the American right we see today. In the us, unlike in Europe where freedom was economically tied to the rise of lower classes in their struggle against landowners and aristocracy, the notion of freedom implied a freedom from the norms of the majority. This is the old "frontier myth". Then the prairie was settled, but that myth was entrenched. Then the internet came and opened up an unlimited and unregulated space for these cults and alternative views, and since the technological dynamics constantly drives everyone away from pain and towards pleasure, that is confirmation of existing beliefs, the "echo chambers" mushroomed. Because of historical baggage, the US was predisposed towards eccentricity, in a way. On top of this comes the fact that Congress has always had a very very low approval rating. It is epitomized by the representatives who read the phone book out loud, or filibuster, from the podium in order to sabotage the passing of legislation. At salaries paid by the taxpayer!! Then there is the annual shutdown ritual over the raising of the debt ceiling, which could have been avoided by switching from absolute numbers to a percentage of GDP. But it is a ritual, like the knocking on the door of the British parliament. So they keep it. But it adds an impression that they do nothing, that everything is jammed and that no representatives from different parties ever talk to each other over coffee, and that "hate" remains even after the cameras are off.
2nd time liberals illusory truth effected what Radicalists praxied.
Stop spreading misinformation @cm0002@lemmings.world.
Didn’t realize the black panthers did all this lol
Not just them. I’ll probably make a more truthful meme than this post humous false accreditation. But without Black Panther's bloodshed, there wouldn't be civil rights. Liberals scared off their belongings and their families next relented for 1,2,4,5,6&7. 8&9 were indigenous bloodshed, 3 was quite Reganomics. Liberals really really didn't want women to vote. It took Stonewall deaths to get there.
Stonewall was decades after women won the vote so that part is a bit puzzling.
Overall I don’t find your retort to be any more accurate than the meme.
But the bigger issue is that successful political movements usually involve huge numbers of people, often in coalitions that include diverse ideologies and tactics. Attribution of the movement’s success to one group or person is very difficult to prove—and it seems likely to me that every part of the coalition contributes in various ways.
People on Lemmy often love to say that MLK didn’t matter and it was all due to the black panthers or Malcolm X or some other more controversial figure. But I’ve never seen any real historical evidence to support this, and I have no idea how such a thing could even be proved even if it was true.
Anyway this tribal bickering is kind of pointless. I care more about where people stand on the issues and the actions they are taking than how they label themselves. There are effective agents for change who might think of themselves as liberals. Others might label themselves leftists. But I usually find that the most effective actors recognize that they should put such labels aside and cooperate with anyone who shares their goals. Even when, at times, there may be tactical disagreements.
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But ignorant chodes in their parent's basement keep telling me Democrats have never done anything of value.
Do your homework, folks.
Tbf, democrats were the ones opposing many in that list... but they also weren't 'liberal' back then either.
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Can't hear you because I'm rolling my coal you liberal wanting some clear air and water like a sissy you are. America!
Aside from the conflation of liberals and leftists, this is mostly incorrect about the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. The Clean Air Act was passed under Johnson, but major Amendments that expanded the regulatory power of the federal government were passed under Nixon and Bush (the first one). The Clean Water Act was signed into law under Nixon, who also pushed for the creation of EPA. Republicans are shit on the environment now, but it used to be a way more bipartisan issue, and Lawrence O'Donnell apparently doesn't know that.
Ironically that works just fine as liberalism under the ideological definitions and reflects the modern reality that American conservatives are no longer liberals and have outright embraced fascism.
Now are these liberals the same as what people now jerk knee think of when reading liberal
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