Try this argument again when a grade school bully has the power and privilege of a health care CEO who makes ~10 Million USD a year off of the suffering of millions.

Hey, let’s not discredit the amazing work that Brian Thompson accomplished as CEO! Before his joining UnitedHealthCare in 2022, their denial rate was 8%. Then, only one short year later, he managed to successfully drive that denial rate up to almost 28%! As the UnitedHealthCare conglomerate served some 122 million Americans that year, you can easily discern that Brian Thompson was directly responsible for ensuring that ~24 million Americans had their claims denied. Imagine how much less UHC would have made for their investors if they had to pay an addition 24 million American’s health care claims!

So before giving all the credit to the board members and share holders, let’s take a moment to understand exactly how hard Brian Thompson worked to ensure some ~24 million Americans went without doctor-approved medical support that they previously were entitled to.

All this data is publically available on Wikipedia, by the way.

It’s almost like a human being can’t have their entire being simplified into a left-or-right political dichotomy.

We’ve been sacrificing underpaid workers, labourers and academics alike, to the stock market for years with such small returns. A single CEO is sacrificed and the line skyrockets.

We’ve been targeting the wrong people.

What if I told you that, when I help others, I don’t do so expecting them to return the favor in the future? It’d be great if they did, I am sure some of them will, and many of them have, but that was never what it was about.

Please go back to the start of this conversation. I did not say we should be learning to understand nazis. Fuck nazis. But your average person who stayed at home is not a racist, secret neo-nazi. A large portion of voters who chose Trump over Kamala are also not voting to hurt others. By and large, voters are uneducated by design, and feeding into that design by calling them all nazi’s is deepening the problem.

I feel for you, because I also know how you get to feelings like yours, but this attitude is one of many problems, and I am approaching it exactly the way I am suggesting we need to: with understanding and discussion. I’m not blaming you. I get it. And that’s exactly my point.

Smug self-satisfaction it is, I see. Good luck.

This is a gross misunderstanding of why it worked for the Republicans. But okay.

I’m not suggesting more compromise and more moderate politics. I am suggesting we stop building strawmen.

The attitude that led to Trumps victory is born of the very belief that the ship sailed long ago. It turns out that when you paint your common man as a villain, their ego is all too happy to oblige. Or just burn out and stay home, calling it someone else’s problem.

I’m not sure why you are so eager to blame your common man when you yourself are quick to point out that billionaires are the problem.

They’ll choose not to vote again.

Is the goal change or smug self-satisfaction?

Right, and that is awful, but it’s ignorant and self-defeating of us to make enemies and play the blame game instead of seeking conversations and understanding.

If you tell people this is their fault and make them into the enemy, they will gladly act as the enemy. And they’ll blame everyone but themselves, a fact Trump has been far too happy to exploit.

Conversation. Understanding. Not creating enemies out of moderates.

Trump won because he appeals to people that we choose to neglect as simply ignorant, uneducated, stupid, etc. We have to accept that these people get a say, and show them that their decisions with Trump were not in their best interest, instead of continuing to insult them while their ego leads them to shoot themselves in the foot to spite us.

Ah, yes, that’s the solution, sow more division.

That this post was made in good faith. The way conversation between the left, the right, and the centrist voters is either dishonest, or shows a horrible misunderstanding of common opinion. If it is the latter, I am wrong about the good faith bit, hence the “I hope I am wrong,” though I am not happy about either outcome.

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies.

From Wikipedia.

The comment I am responding to never denied that there is an influx of tankies here. Instead you said I shouldn’t be surprised to find leftists here, inferring that leftists are tankies. Being authoritarian and manipulating information to manipulate people is not a leftist value.

You can disagree with me all you want. I’ll respect that. I would appreciate if you had better respect than to treat me like I am insane and my statements make no sense just because you disagree.

That is not my experience. I hope I am the one who is wrong.

Authoritarian manipulation is not a leftist value.

Don’t conflate my concern in speaking out against discourse like as “seething and coping.” My goal is to call out attempts to divide and other people for what it is.

And here I thought statements of lemmy.ml being overrun with tankies were exaggurated. Boy your deconstruction of my post sure showed me!

This is a bad faith meme that represents anyone making any form of compromise as a rude, close-minded, genocide supporter, posted by an account that frequently posts pro-China, sometimes pro-Russia propaganda, and hops between Western country-focused lemmy’s pending election cycles.

Just making sure the context for this post is visible.