presidential elections do seem like a really lofty goal, but history has given us plenty of examples to prove that it’s possible; with mexico being the most recent one with amlo & shienbaum.
i think it’s a testament to the power of american propaganda that a 3rd party candidate won a presidential election in not only one of the largest and most populous countries of the world; but one of the closest possible to the united states and most of americans are still completely unaware that it actually happened and that it happened in our lifetime.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Our media has the vast majority of the voters’ sole attention - they don’t know and don’t care that other options exist. If a presidential candidate doesn’t have equal media coverage to the other 2 parties, they immediately lose more Americans than they would need to win the election.
the media and republican/democrat duopoly are powered by the same source, the american oligarchy; expecting the media to ever give airtime to 3rd party is unrealistic.
it’s self-fulfilling propaganda that we’re inflicting upon ourselves.
Correct, which is why the 3rd part is itself unrealistic. We need to change things from the ground-up at a local level, which will take decades, or overthrow everything and start over, which will lead to a huge amount of deaths regardless of whether or not we even win the battle. Regardless, to win the presidential election with a 3rd party right now, we need the media, and that’s not going to happen, so to put your vote in that hole is the same as not voting.
or you can just jump into it like mexico and the other historical examples have done and witness a dramatic improvements in your lifetime without the huge amounts of deaths.
You seem to understand that the vast majority of Americans simply vote for what they see in the media, meaning that only a candidate backed by the media can win, and you seem to understand that we can’t shift the media with our current government, but you don’t seem to understand that, given those 2 facts, there is no way for us to recreate the phenomenon seen in other countries with a larger proportion of people willing to look outside of their televisions and smartphones.
For a 3rd party candidate to win a modern-day American presidential election, either the media would have to validate them, or tens of millions of Americans would have to, in unison, spontaneously decide not to follow the media that they trust implicitly without question.
the mexican example happened in 2018 and proves that it’s possible without attention from the media and the number of people who didn’t vote in 2024 because of gaza; but did vote in 2020; as well as 3rd party voters combined already exceeds this tens of millions of american threshold.
the elections last week and the popularity of the no kings protests prove that we’re ripe for this sort of change; but we keep repeating this sort of propaganda to such a degree that it becomes self fulfilling prophecy.
we need to change our mindset; not a change in unchanging institutions like the media or the political duopoly.
Oh, so you do think we can overcome the media? I see. From your comment about how most Americans don’t even know about Mexico’s recent election, much less care, I thought you understood that we’re much less tapped into the state of the world than any other country. I wholeheartedly believe that we are far more reliant on the media to do our thinking for us than any other country save for maybe North Korea or China, but even those would be a stretch. I don’t think a success in a country like Mexico, whose citizens clearly have the ability to look beyond the media, could be recreated here, in a country whose citizens would rather cover their ears than listen to news from elsewhere in the world.
I agree that we need to change our mindset, but I also believe that the Americans who are already slaves to the media will never change their ways, and so long as they’re around, the media will control our elections. We need to wait until those people are gone, and hopefully replace them over time with people who are more mindful of politics. Then maybe we can overcome the government through democracy instead of violence, but even if it works it won’t be happening any time soon.
the mexicans didn’t overcome the media. mexico’s status at the periphery of the global north ensured that enough of them had shitty enough material existences that their protests took on a genuine form and it galvanized the public to try voting for morena instead of pri or pan like they had been doing for almost a century by that point.
in fact: it was social media giving attention to these protests that made the younger mexicans aware that they weren’t alone in their suffering and they turned out in droves to vote like they sometimes do in the united states.
“overcoming the media” is another manufactured threshold like that other manufactured threshold of tens of millions of voters and only serves to re-enforce this self fulfilling propaganda when something a simple as basic media literacy will do the trick.
the global north has come to recognize the impact that social media has on the youth and that’s why isreal & the united states now have full control over tiktok and why europe is trying to impose age verification mechanisms on social media.
waiting for some mythical time when people stop relying on the media for change to happen is no different than repeating other fallacies like spoiler-voting or throwing-your-vote-away.
it happened in our lifetime under the same conditions and it’s living and breathing at our southern border… for now.
It’s so strange to hear this self-defeating propaganda not more than a week after a demsoc was elected mayor of the financial capital of the fucking world after a record-setting billionare spending spree against him.
presidential elections do seem like a really lofty goal, but history has given us plenty of examples to prove that it’s possible; with mexico being the most recent one with amlo & shienbaum.
i think it’s a testament to the power of american propaganda that a 3rd party candidate won a presidential election in not only one of the largest and most populous countries of the world; but one of the closest possible to the united states and most of americans are still completely unaware that it actually happened and that it happened in our lifetime.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Our media has the vast majority of the voters’ sole attention - they don’t know and don’t care that other options exist. If a presidential candidate doesn’t have equal media coverage to the other 2 parties, they immediately lose more Americans than they would need to win the election.
the media and republican/democrat duopoly are powered by the same source, the american oligarchy; expecting the media to ever give airtime to 3rd party is unrealistic.
it’s self-fulfilling propaganda that we’re inflicting upon ourselves.
Correct, which is why the 3rd part is itself unrealistic. We need to change things from the ground-up at a local level, which will take decades, or overthrow everything and start over, which will lead to a huge amount of deaths regardless of whether or not we even win the battle. Regardless, to win the presidential election with a 3rd party right now, we need the media, and that’s not going to happen, so to put your vote in that hole is the same as not voting.
or you can just jump into it like mexico and the other historical examples have done and witness a dramatic improvements in your lifetime without the huge amounts of deaths.
that is until the americans reverse it… again.
You seem to understand that the vast majority of Americans simply vote for what they see in the media, meaning that only a candidate backed by the media can win, and you seem to understand that we can’t shift the media with our current government, but you don’t seem to understand that, given those 2 facts, there is no way for us to recreate the phenomenon seen in other countries with a larger proportion of people willing to look outside of their televisions and smartphones.
For a 3rd party candidate to win a modern-day American presidential election, either the media would have to validate them, or tens of millions of Americans would have to, in unison, spontaneously decide not to follow the media that they trust implicitly without question.
the mexican example happened in 2018 and proves that it’s possible without attention from the media and the number of people who didn’t vote in 2024 because of gaza; but did vote in 2020; as well as 3rd party voters combined already exceeds this tens of millions of american threshold.
the elections last week and the popularity of the no kings protests prove that we’re ripe for this sort of change; but we keep repeating this sort of propaganda to such a degree that it becomes self fulfilling prophecy.
we need to change our mindset; not a change in unchanging institutions like the media or the political duopoly.
Oh, so you do think we can overcome the media? I see. From your comment about how most Americans don’t even know about Mexico’s recent election, much less care, I thought you understood that we’re much less tapped into the state of the world than any other country. I wholeheartedly believe that we are far more reliant on the media to do our thinking for us than any other country save for maybe North Korea or China, but even those would be a stretch. I don’t think a success in a country like Mexico, whose citizens clearly have the ability to look beyond the media, could be recreated here, in a country whose citizens would rather cover their ears than listen to news from elsewhere in the world.
I agree that we need to change our mindset, but I also believe that the Americans who are already slaves to the media will never change their ways, and so long as they’re around, the media will control our elections. We need to wait until those people are gone, and hopefully replace them over time with people who are more mindful of politics. Then maybe we can overcome the government through democracy instead of violence, but even if it works it won’t be happening any time soon.
the mexicans didn’t overcome the media. mexico’s status at the periphery of the global north ensured that enough of them had shitty enough material existences that their protests took on a genuine form and it galvanized the public to try voting for morena instead of pri or pan like they had been doing for almost a century by that point.
in fact: it was social media giving attention to these protests that made the younger mexicans aware that they weren’t alone in their suffering and they turned out in droves to vote like they sometimes do in the united states.
“overcoming the media” is another manufactured threshold like that other manufactured threshold of tens of millions of voters and only serves to re-enforce this self fulfilling propaganda when something a simple as basic media literacy will do the trick.
the global north has come to recognize the impact that social media has on the youth and that’s why isreal & the united states now have full control over tiktok and why europe is trying to impose age verification mechanisms on social media.
waiting for some mythical time when people stop relying on the media for change to happen is no different than repeating other fallacies like spoiler-voting or throwing-your-vote-away.
it happened in our lifetime under the same conditions and it’s living and breathing at our southern border… for now.
It’s so strange to hear this self-defeating propaganda not more than a week after a demsoc was elected mayor of the financial capital of the fucking world after a record-setting billionare spending spree against him.