I think protesting against the vote of the average Joe in a way that affects the average Joe is quite valid. The politicians got voted for their policies, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just shifted their whole position because of a protests that are expressing quite old ideas. The average Joe has to stand up and vote for people that actually want the change we need.

The pressure regarding queer rights was successful because it became a less and less favourable position to be against those same rights in the public view. Being conservative regarding fighting the climate change is still a pretty favourable position so not enough pressure can be built by protests against politicians alone.

And, one aspect that is overlooked in the discussion, at least in my opinion: People are allowed to be angry at the state of the world and the popular opinions, and express that anger publicly and in the face of the general public. This is a valid thing to do.

Maybe I missed it but it seems the average Joe voted for people that are responsible for what’s going on right now instead of trying to change direction drastically right?

Didn’t Munich famously switch back to windows?

That’s not really true. Without some fragmentation there is no need for standards

Not the person you asked but I’m interested if I’m passing the vibe check

I hate that NATO exists, but I see that it has currently a purpose because other forces would and did overpower countries that aren’t included in a military alliance with mutual support obligations.

I want NATO to be a thing of the past as soon as possible but that doesn’t mean dismantle it and be helpless again. It means we need to get rid of the need for a NATO.

I’m 100% that there would be some esoteric cult microdosing zombie blood to build resistance

Or alternativel: “If you start pooping your children inside eggs before they are born, we want you to abort them”

Yeah that’s true. But the market demands it nonetheless and thus liberals are happy to use public funds to further corporate goals, even if it means that there is also some egalitarian aspect to it.

Yep that’s why the left is losing voters. This is, somewhat funnily, a result of them being partly successful. One of their main programs they actually achieved back then was to make education more accessible to the lower classes. While the education systems still have a lot of flaws, they are more egalitarian than they used to be. Percentages of people with higher education have exploded. (This is of course also driven by market demand and that’s why the liberals supported these policies to an extent making them possible). With this they split their former voting group into academics and non-academics. But they source a lot more party-personelle from the academic portion which leads to a feedback-loop that favours the academics. Since academics tend to have higher incomes and sometimes accumulate a little wealth they’d like to keep, the left depending on these voters looks a lot like the parties that always wanted to protect higher incomes and wealth.

The ones that were left behind by that development are the ones that got turned away from the left.

Actually Piketty writes about this in his book “capital and ideology”. The left has been slowly losing support in the lower education classes which traditionally voted left, this has apparently been going on since the 1960s/70s. They either went to conservatives or stopped voting. Now that there is a new party that claims to actually listen to their concerns (even if they won’t actually solve any of these concerns) causes them to flock to that party. They have been disappointed by everyone in the political system and the populists are using this to their advantage.

Nazis don’t just become the way they are. There are reasons people flock to the far right. Not naming these reasons and being content with “Nazis will be Nazis” isn’t productive.

Politics that consistently benefit the upper classes, while always framing the necessary helps for the weakest as stealing from the lower classes will get you there.

This didn’t just happen, we did this to ourselves.

The long term strategy is to destabilise the CDU by forcing them into unfavorable coalitions. Which they have probably achieved this time. If the CDU looks bad enough in 5 years the AfD might get enough votes so that no government can be built without them

Sometimes though a judge has decided that it is factually correct to call the leader of a party a fascist because he is one

Haja wenn’s so isch will I di ned uffhalde

I mean that’s completely wrong as far as laws go. Socially that’s pretty much true

The problem with this specific law is that it isn’t practically enforceable. You’d need to regularly search people entering this zone, which we will certainly not do.

Law’s only matter if you can expect them to be enforced. Raising prices is easily enforced (because it would be done via taxes which are checked for correctness already).

Ey, hasch du au a Lizens für des Messerle?

The average German household has about 160K to their name, total. Not just cash but total, including cars, homes, whatever. The median is going to be even lower, the average is always skewed upwards in these statistics.

Even for people in the median getting an extra 85k is going to drastically improve their lives. Maybe not life-changing. But go to the 25th percentile and this is going to look a lot different. And that’s not the “poorest” in society.

That’s still suggesting they are worth less than other humans based on their opinions

I’m just going to point out that you are the one even bringing communism on the table and I am happy to discuss it. You brought that up as a response to my comment:

I get that being on the winner side is convenient. I am too. I just see that constantly winning seems to lead the world into a pretty bad state overall where, suddenly, noone is a winner anymore.

And all it would take to not get into the disaster scenario would be some redistribution. Doesn’t even mean you can’t be a winner anymore. Just means you get to win less hard.

To which you responded:

I am still not gonna vote for communism and neither socialism. Good luck with that stuff. It’s isolated to niche internet communities for good reasons.

I wasn’t arguing that we just use the magic communism bullet to solve our problems. You just think that I am arguing that. I was and am of the opinion that we can improve the situation massively by increasing redistribution of wealth.

Edit: And I like the idea of communism in a theoretical way because I think it can be helpful to think about stuff that probably won’t be implemented to get ideas on how the current system could be improved. The idea of distributing economical power more evenly is at core of socialism but it doing that in a moderate way doesnt require a revolution, it can be implemented in our current system. /Edit

Any westoids that never knew communism and think it is amazing can go and remove themselves from the gene pool in my book.

Thinking of people as less valuable to “the genepool” because their opinions differ is the kind of thinking that explains why liberals and fascists are so often political friends.