Time to break free of traditional political ideological labeling and divisions. Time to abandon old, divisive sociopolitical labels like “liberal” and “conservative”.
A new political party based on a vastly, commonly held virtures lends itself to embrace over 66% of Americans, and it clearly embraces progressive principled thinking. In the most ideal American sense of unity, a political party should not be able to be defined or placed as “to the left” or “to the right” of where the Democratic or Republican parties currently are. Just let it exist organically based on present-day principled thinking. The American Progressive Majority.
Originally Posted By u/Atlanticbboy At 2025-03-23 04:38:18 AM | Source
Two things.
One, I would get a gun and find a trustworthy community if I were a leftist or minority American.
As much as I despise guns, if shit gets Gilead bad, you’ll probably be happy to have it.
As for community, if you don’t have one yet, I would recommend joining either a socialist club or a progressive/traditional (i.e. not racist) Christian church. A black church (think MLK), or a pride flag flying liberal Church (think John Brown).
When Nazi’s invaded my country, these were the two communities that actually resisted, by fighting back and helping people hide and escape. In times of slavery, socialism wasn’t yet a thing, so the abolitionists and underground railroad people were progressive Christians. Jesus was the OG socialist and these communities live it.
Totally agree, and fucking thank you for the shout out about progressive Christians! Underground railroad, temperance movement, anti-war protests, civil rights, etc, progressive Christians have always been a driving force for good and that has totally gotten overshadowed by the evil of white evangelicals in recent years
These numbers are bullshit.
Who in their right mind actually believes Americans prefer gun control to: abortion care, legal weed, gay marriage, higher minimum wage, and home ownership.
Like regardless of what you or I want for America, that’s an actual load of shit. Too many people love their guns, there’s literally more guns than people here.
Too many people love their guns, there’s literally more guns than people here.
Loving their guns and wanting better gun control laws aren’t two opposite things you know. They can easily go hand in hand. See Canada to the north. Lots of guns, and better gun control laws.
I’ve made an argument in favor of pretty much the most basic form of gun control, having a license that proves you know how to operate a firearm (kinda like you need a drivers license to prove you know how to drive a car). Even that gets push back. Whoever that mythical person is who is both loving guns and wanting better gun control laws, they’re a minority of a minority.
I’m here to prove your point.
You really want a historically racist government with a history already of using concealed carry permits and pistol purchase permits to disproportionately deny black people and other POC their right to protect themselves to have the power to do it more, and right when we elect the guy everyone calls “Hitler 2: This time it’s personal?” The similar laws that already exist are already abused and not in a way you’d agree with (mostly, there are some states who use those same impediments to just deny everyone their rights instead of targeting POC, except for the rich of course because they’re better than us peons and deserve to protect themselves, if you die you just add to the stats, they don’t care, but if a CEO dies they’ll have to find a replacement, and that could effect donations! But uhh…is that “good?”)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/26/politics/cnn-poll-gun-laws/index.html
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23141651/gun-control-american-approval-polling
It’s not some mythical person that wants it.
We all know that won’t be the end of gun control if we had free training for new gun owners to get licensed. I took Hunter safety before I could hunt as a minor, it was immensely helpful to have such good fundamentals.
Also, should we make people get licensed to vote? Or to be able to say what they want? To practice their religion? How about a “EZ pass” license to avoid random searches in your home? We already normalized it in airports… why not your home to? Don’t worry, it’s for the greater good.
I’m sad that trans rights aren’t on the list there, not surprised with how awful things are but still sad
The only thing with majority support is a narrow majority thinking trans people should be allowed to be discriminated against overtly in jobs and public spaces (but those people also generally don’t think forcing a women to use the men’s restroom is discrimination). Few people will say they oppose protections against discrimination, but “neutrality” is just a polite way of supporting discrimination…
Yeah it’s really sad how the world has almost turned fully against my people. Give it a few more months (at most) and the Democrats will have almost fully turned on my people. This country is a shithole and I hate it
Ignore systemglitch, their comment history reveals clearly how pro-fascist they are. Which means they don’t matter.
Edit: lol be mad fascist. Every time you comment on someone being trans, on immigration, sanctuary cities, etc, you show exactly the piece of shit you are. We can all tell.
it’s wild that only 55% of you guys want a fairer health care system
It’s because the phrase “Medicare for all” has been propagandized. If you instead asked if people wanted “affordable medical treatment and preventative care for themselves and others”, I’m sure that number would be much higher.
About 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, why should healthy people be penalized more because of them?
Penalized… how? Do you think overweight people getting healthcare harms you somehow?
How is Medicare funded? Healthcare costs are a lot higher for obese and overweight people.
Health insurance costs mostly come from profiteering. The cost savings of not having middlemen more than makes up for needing to pay for people with special needs.
That’s why it’s always always cheaper in countries with public insurance.
Sure but we are very far from being able to have a nationwide public insurance system.
Okay, but we’re talking about having a nationwide public insurance system.
The fact is, even if you don’t do anything to encourage healthier lifestyles, public insurance is cheaper. You’re being penalized right now by your private insurance carrier who is profiteering off of you. Abolish those middlemen and you save money, regardless of public obesity.
If you follow U.S. politics, you know that’s not happening anytime soon.
You’ve heard of an ouroboros?
What about it?
I agree with almost all of these but some of these numbers were definitely pulled out of someone’s ass
Especially the one about same sex marriage!
90% of the US don’t want more gun control laws. As a percentage that would be saying that every state in the US except Texas wants more gun laws … it’s not right.
I consider myself liberal, but would never support taking away someone’s rights. Own all the guns and even a fucking tank if you want … but you will go to jail if you harm someone with them.
We were given the right to have firearms for the exact situation that is happening now.
but you will go to jail if you harm someone with them.
So after the suicidal maniac goes on a killing spree at the local elementary school and wipes out a chunk of the next generation, then you send them to jail (and take their guns away? You didn’t clarify that part)
Guns are a hobby. They should be a privilege you earn, and one you have to work to keep (don’t get in trouble with the law, keep your registration up to date, etc).
The solution to our current situation isn’t to go out and kill people, it’s to fight legal battles and go out and vote when the time comes. A civil war doesn’t guarantee we’ll end up with the country you want even if the MAGA army is crushed. It’s going to cause immense death and destruction, and it will open us up to attack from our adversaries. It will almost certainly ruin your life, mine, and everyone you know and love.
But even IF a real civil war is inevitable, getting guns and fighting won’t be a challenge. Trump has very few allies in the rest of the world, but democracy does. NATO would not just sit and watch while a nuclear power goes through such a destabilizing event, especially when Trump’s ties to Putin are so well known.
Your statement is false. Guns are NOT a privilege in the US. They are a constitutional right. Full stop. I didn’t even read the rest of your post
Your statement is false. Guns are NOT a privilege in the US. They are a constitutional right. Full stop. I didn’t even read the rest of your post
lmao, I think you should go make an appointment with an ophthalmologist before you try to finish reading my post.
The 2 biggest demographics of growing gun owners are women of color and trans people.
The idea that we should disarm the working class to further concentrate weapons in the hands of militarized forces who are known for abusing their power with impunity is just moronic.
I think the 50501 movement is more tepid centrist neo liberalism and thats the last thing we need here. We need real leftism. You dint fight the far rught with the right leaning center you fight it with leftism. And karl marx one of the fathers of modern leftist thinking said it best/“ any attempt to disarm the workers should be frustrated by force if necessary” the government acting like a nanny state and prohibiting things deemed dangerous by those at the top is never effective. Drugs and alcohol prohibition onky made things worse except for those profiting from exploiting prohibition
Yes, Dems need to give up on gun control. My wife and I are lifeling Dems and just bought each other handguns and range time for valentines day. We feel we will be needing guns
Gun control doesn’t mean no access to guns. Things like violent offenders or people who have been medically determined to be unfit not being able to buy guns counts as gun control. If you think it should be illegal for domestic abusers to own firearms, you are for gun control. Now, you may not think there is an effective way to have proper gun control and not affect your freedoms, but that’s a different thing.
The way it works in the UK - very well by the way - is that simply being caught with a gun is enough to get you thrown in the slammer. Consequently crims don’t go around armed, and for the most part the police don’t need to be armed either. It was a real shock to me the day I walked through Heathrow and there was a pair of armed officers walking around; I think that’s the first and only time (off-screen) I’ve ever seen a gun. If the police need armed backup then they have to call for a specially trained squad.
The only other armed units are the Services. We don’t have any “militarised forces that abuse their power”, afaik.
Guns for sports are allowed but there are extremely strict regulations around them.
Shootings here are extremely rare. Of course they still happen, no solution is 100%, but it’s close, and a hell of a lot closer than the bizarre American fetish that the ultimate solution to gun violence is more guns and more guns and more guns, absolutely flying in the face of all the facts.
That Onion article entitled “No way to solve this, says the only country with this problem” is spectacularly on point.
Extremely strict regulations means the rich can have them freely and poors have to jump through multiple hurdles.
The working class should never be disarmed.
works great in australia too! so now you have 2 examples in real life that prove that argument invalid
I would rather bring back the days of the wild west where everyone had a revolver on their hip than go to a point where only the wealthy the police and other state sponsored actors sre permited to have weapons. “Any attempt to disarm the workers should be frustrated by force if necessary”
Whatever you want to believe meanwhile you all across the pond and down under still bow to monarchs and are taken to a court if you protest during coronation so keep believing that youll be just as free without the means to defend yourselves from tyrants when you’re already living in a full on class dictatorship and lacking any sense of true freedom to begin with.
America is a class dictatorship, too, just with more shootings. How many people who aren’t millionaires are making decisions in the White House? Why is the president, a felon, allowed to run, let alone be elected? How many times have charges or convictions been wildly different for the rich versus the poor and middle class?
Your desperate clutching of guns without restriction, no matter how obvious those restrictions should be there, is utterly absurd and has yet to be used for the purpose the second amendment is purported to exist in spite of the numerous times it would make sense. (Are you okay with domestic abusers being allowed firearms? That’s gun control.)
Did drug prohibition work? No it didn’t the black market will always exist and prohibition serves to increase demand and further the disparity between the wealthy and the poor.
rich people will always have guns. But sure take them away from poor people so you can sleep better in your delusional sense of security so when someone gets their hand on a gun youll be defenseless and even if the gun fell out of their hand in a struggle for your life you would still be defenseless because you’re clueless and definitely have no idea how guns work.
Its funny people make this out to be a political policy issue that conservatives support when conservatives were the first ones to pass a bill restricting gun ownership. And then the people who want to take away guns consider themselves leftists what a joke, youre not leftists you’re neo liberals who have been deluded into believing the left would ever stand for the disarming of working class people.
Right now they are trying to ban “assault weapons” or anything with a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds in my state and luckily that it is so very unpopular even though my state is a blue no matter who very progressive state. Ever since the united healthcare ceo was shot i think many people with true leftist leaning sentiments see that taking away guns from the laborers is a stupid short sighted thing to do.
Cars kill more people than guns, are you going to support the banning of personal transportation too? Guns will always exist, you cant nerf the fucking world and advocating to do so id so childishly asinine it’s ridiculous beyond compare. I’m sure thst making it so that police and rich corporatists are the only ones with guns will make you feel a whole lot safer if you just stick your head in the sand in regards to extrajudicial murders of civilians by police. Lets just make them even more powerful!!!
Your defense for why people should have guns is happening right now, and yet all those guns aren’t being used to solve the problem. So clearly guns aren’t the whole solution. But keep clinging to that hope that guns will solve all those problems you list, while ignoring all the problems unfettered access to guns cause.
As for your spurious prohibition comments, both drugs and cars are regulated. So are you saying gun control is a good idea or not? Pick a fucking lane please!
okay i’m pretty happy over here without guns and i hope to never ever ever be close to one in my life
people are crazy and i don’t want people around me to have access to that ever
I agree with every single one of those except for the taking away my guns part. The second amendment is vitally important for the exact reason of what we are going through right now: the overtaking of the US government by oppressive fascists.
It doesn’t say anything about taking away guns. It says gun control laws. These often include things like a waiting period to purchase a gun if you don’t have your concealed weapons license. Or bans on people owning guns if they have previous convictions for assault/battery.
The first they try to do to prevent crimes of passion. Basically if someone finds out their spouse is cheating on them and they find out, they don’t walk into a pawn shop, walk out immediately with a gun go shoot the person they cheated with, their spouse and then themselves. Instead the hope is that they walk into the pawn store, buy the gun, they tell them they can come back in 5 days and pick it up. And hopefully in 5 days they will have calmed down enough they have found a better way to deal with the situation. States like Florida had these rules for handguns because they are easier to conceal while shotguns and rifles you could walk out with same day. Desantis I believe changed the gun laws recently though, so idk what they are anymore. I’ve bought guns in Florida and Tennessee, and I always thought laws like that were reasonable.
Waiting periods are ineffective, especially against their other supposed use, suicide prevention. The likelihood of suicide (in the applicable suicidal people) is highest the day the sale completes and remains elevated for months. Besides, everyone has a bottle of [redacted] at home and a [redacted] within 5min of their house they can go to, and that second method is more effective than guns actually. (Redacted because suicide ain’t cool kids, seek professional help if you’re considering.) Also they don’t significantly impact crimes of passion, if the guy can’t get a gun he can still go OJ on them as well, and then there’s the whole “he probably still wants to kill them next week if he wants to today” thing. It can help those instances, but often it doesn’t. And though you mentioned it (which is rare), afaik all states that have them do so on all applicable gun purchases not just first time which is clearly ridiculous, if someone already has one the waiting period is useless. Furthermore it can also actively cause harm, think for instance a woman escaping her abusive husband and taking the kids to her mom’s. If he has guns or even just a bat, and she has nothing but police 11+ min away (natl avg response time to emergencies), she may need a gun to stop her soon to be ex from family annihilating like Chris Benoit, and artificial waiting periods (artificial because it’s not that they do additional background checking, the NICs clears and then your 3-10d wait begins) could prevent her from doing so and allow the husband to murder them.
Previous convictions already do come into play, but only felonies or misdemeanor domestic violence convictions. Frankly that’s sorta fair (except I don’t think non-violent felons should be barred, actually). I want to agree because assault and battery sounds bad even at the misdemeanor level, but in reality that could be anything from “beats Asian people up for fun” (looking at you Mark Wahlberg, he prob shouldn’t have one) to “spit on a cop one time while blacked out.” Like, yeah, spitting on cops is bad and stuff, but I don’t think it’s bad enough to warrant loss of rights for life, and I say that as a (not cop) that has been spit on, fuck that guy forever but he should still keep his rights, we were kids, we fought it out, it’s fine. Both of those count as assault, for instance.
You say waiting periods are ineffective but there isn’t evidence of such. You say a bottle of pills is not effective but evidence shows otherwise. Sites I see say you are 45x more likely to die from attempting suicide with a gun than with pills.
I never said a bottle of pills is not effective, just that it isn’t statistically as effective as guns (though more easily/widely available), and I’m right, and your pic actually says some of that itself. (And do I need a source for my claim that OTC medicine is more commonly owned than guns? I think it’s fairly self evident.)
It’s the second method that is actually more effective statistically than guns (actually it may be the only more effective method widely available lol. And again, nobody out there kill yourselves, it’s bad and uncool).
As to waiting periods not being effective in curbing suicides, research into california’s (then 15-day) waiting period showed the potential is highest the day the sale completes, and remains high for a couple months after when they already have it. As in “suicidal man goes to buy gun, gets told to wait 15 days, waits 15 days, gets the gun, and goes home and does it, or doesn’t, buuuut then next time he feels suicidal he already has one and then he does it.” 15 days isn’t really long enough to get people out of suicidal ideation, it likely isn’t even enough time to get them to their first therapist apointment.
Nah, I read your words as saying it doesn’t matter if you have a gun because everyone has pills at home. And I was saying pills aren’t nearly as effective. (Must have been a miscommunication) In your next example you saved a person from committing suicide, and gave them more time to think/work out a better solution. 15 days later will he commit suicide? Maybe. But he didn’t commit suicide 15 days prior. You walked him back off that cliff by taking away the cliff for 15 days. It’s about hope I guess. You hope they get better in time.
Yet according to California often they don’t find a solution within 15 days, they sit stewing on it until they’re able to get the gun. Most suicidal people aren’t just having a bad afternoon (or a bad 15 afternoons), y’know? It’s usually months/years.
Sure it can slow them down and they may suddenly see the error of their ways within that 15 days, and I’m sure that has happened, but it can also stop someone who needs to protect themselves from a stalker/abuser and I’m sure that has happened as well.
Honestly the only way I can see it helping is if they let their plot to harm themselves or others slip and someone does something about it like an adjudicated IVC within those 3-10 (it’s no longer 15) days, which is unlikely, but I’m sure that has happened as well.
You’re going to hand over your guns without making a fuss the microsecond that the gestapo knock on your door, and you know it.
The liberal gestapo or the conservative one?
Yes
Then why didn’t they fucking vote for it?
Because none of this was an option. Genocide Joe didn’t do shit about any of this and kamalacaust promised the exact same thing.
Be all that as it may, but sweet fuck all percent of you actually vote, so what difference will it make?
None of this was an option in the voting booth. Genocide Joe didn’t do shit about any of this and kamalacaust promised the exact same thing.
People here talk about republicans being delusional but the dems are just as bad.
Lol. This was exactly what I was going to post.
You’d want to avoid using the word ‘progressive’ because it’s already become a shorthand.
People will vote against things they want (ACA) over terms they hate (Obamacare).
Drop the anti-gun arguments; they aren’t based on reality.
I think you need to somehow get money out of politics or these majorities will continue to be divided.
Which will never happen unless at least 1 of the 2 major parties is co-opted and taken over by people who specifically want to eliminate Citizen’s United, put a strong, enforceable cap on private political donations, and block corporations from donating to campaigns.
A 3rd party is never going to be successful enough to accomplish any, let alone all of that. Republicans will never get money out of politics because it benefits them too much. It hurts the Democratic Party overall, but it directly benefits the Vichy wing of collaborationists leading the party, so they won’t back campaign finance reform unless the Democratic Party is wholly overtaken.
Our entire US system is set up to make it so that it is essentially (literally) impossible for a third party to win. This article gives a decent basic overview of why: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4947662-why-a-third-party-presidential-candidate-can-never-win/
How we vote is controlled at the state level. We don’t need federal reform to change how we count votes to make 3rd parties able to participate without a spoiler effect.
Alaska has passed these reforms, so can your state. Unless of course your state representatives don’t support democracy.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
Alaska is better than the rest of the country in that regard for sure. Not sure it is good enough to fix the problem entirely but definitely definitely better than how the rest of the country does it and certainly worth watching to see how it impacts things. Article did not mention more 3rd party representation but even just the racial/ gender balancing is a big improvement
as long as you don’t start passing anti FPTP voting laws in democratic states first, you’ll be fine, you do it in democratic states and you lose votes, overwhelmingly.
