If I have one criticism of myself in this video, it is that I was too gentle, too polite. I thought that was the way to go, but it has only lead to the exact same thing I talked about in the introduction: a comments section with Democrats telling me "Yeah, that's why we gotta vote even harder, and if you don't, you have to accept responsibility! Don't be in the middle, Renegade Cut!" I'm not in the f*cking middle, and I'm not advocating for your party or your reforms, if you can call them that. You want to raise the minimum wage by two dollars through a non-binding referendum. I want to abolish capitalism, the police and the state by whatever means the people deem necessary. We're not the same.
You are living in the age mediocrity - You should not be surprised to feel isolated as someone who appreciates nuance and hopes for a different world. thank you for all that you do - I appreciate your path
Most people see kid gloves as a sign of weakness. Then whine and cry if you take them off. Most people don't want a conversation. They just want to be right.
I feel like a lot of times we’re just screaming into the void but at least we’re screaming cuz we want things to be better. Capitalism is legitimately at the root of most if not all problems our societies have. The focus on control/profit and not on improving things for everyone.
I thought this was a bit polite, but I could sense the rage behind the politeness. I thought anyone with a brain could see you are not like them. Excellent work as always.
twitter can be good if you block people and mute words. it's actually really fun if you're just shit posting and laughing at stuff. it is however too addictive which is why I just deleted my twitter. which they make really hard cause you can only deactivate which deletes your account only after 30 days allowing you to reactivate cause they know you're addicted. it took me 3 months to get it deleted
maybe some kind of library (privately own in RU-vid case) is a better place to debate and share ideas than a platform created to share sentences limited in number of characters, encouraging users to use shitty punchlines and more generally to be aggressive to get attention ? RU-vid have a lot of flaws, including the disinformation aspect, but it still one of the best place on the Internet to understand political debate and society a little better.
In defense of Dark Brandon, it was originally a leftist meme that was basically "What if Biden was as cool as Republicans make him sound?" Then when he actually started doing literally anything, there was a semi-ironic sense of "holy shit, Dark Brandon real." I dunno how Democrat Twitter has coopted it, but I think it's a lot of fun.
Dark Brandon is a funny meme. Sometimes he’s actually (accidentally ?) based like when he told people it was Elton John’s fault billions of taxpayer dollars are going to defeat HIV like that was hilarious bc wtf 😂
Democrat Twitter is where the people who really liked the West Wing can post their own pithy one-liners and for that it is to be simultaneously pitied and loathed.
I liked the West Wing when I was younger. But when I watched it again later, it seemed almost like an action movie: good guys and bad guys. Good guys rattling off perfect "lines". The way the music is used to stir sentiment. The show wants the viewer to respond to President Bartlett winning a debate like, "yeah, Bartlett DESTROYED that guy ! Awesome !" Just the same way that, in an action movie, people respond with, "yeah, awesome, he threw the bad guy off a building !" The West Wing is pure fantasy, and really quite silly, absolutely absent of realism. It was sort of comforting in an interesting way, but certainly overrated as well.
There's always Truth central where you can whine non stop about black mermaids and how White folks got it so bad. You're not self aware enough to know how pathetic you are, too mean to be pitied, and not even interesting enough to loath.
It makes me physically ill that media places so much attention on the "discourse" on Twitter. 6% of us are on that site. SIX PERCENT. Why are about 50% of media stories based on what Twitter thinks about anything???
I see some figure saying it's more like 4 percent. Either way, yes, Twitter is not the real world. The fact that I have to say that is indicative to the state we find ourselves in.
The "Colbert fumbling over himself to praise Cheney" bit reminded me of the wretched "Death Taxes and Hillary" song he used during 2016. I could have done without having that dredged up out of my subconscious. I was just moving out of Republican mindsets and into Democrat and light-left spaces around 2014-15 so that was the first election I was out of the right-wing echo chamber, and Colbert was where I was getting a decent chunk of my news at the time. And that song and the entitled arrogance that came with it grinded my gears so badly that I could almost understand why some people jumped ship on Clinton to vote for Trump over it alone. Almost. Also, re: comments about not being a Democrat - there's a surprisingly large number of people in this country who do not understand or believe that political positions left of the Democrat Party exist.
I took "Death, Taxes and Hillary" a different way. I mean, no one likes death or taxes, so by extension... That was when Hillary was considered to be an inevitable conclusion to the Presidential race. Now, that video's only gotten more hilarious. Also, it was one of the few creative things that show did. I stopped watching it after a few weeks of lackluster, non-stop Trump jokes. Colbert used to be cutting edge on the Colbert Report, then on the Late Show, he got really lazy. Probably tired from counting his money.
It's not surprising, we've got decades of red scare propaganda saying that the far left and far right are the same thing and centrism is the way forward.
You’re definitely not alone in that. Americans don’t like a coronation. That arrogant certainty is why she lost- not because people jumped ship to Trump, but because they stayed home. Trump got fewer votes than Romney in 2012. Leftists and liberals in 2016 just weren’t motivated, they were turned off AND they felt their vote wasn’t needed, horrible combination
As a European, Democrat Twitter is fascinating to me because it's just such a quintessentially American phenomenon? On this side of the pond, every country has like five prominent parties with the exact same milquetoast neoliberal-to-mildly-social-democratic policies, plus one or two smaller "leftist" parties pretending that they're different (even though they're not), and usually one right populist party that pretends it isn't fascist (even though it is). That last one is typically the only one anyone gets excited for. Since the DNC is just a more neoliberal version of our mainstream parties, it's utterly bizarre to imagine anyone being really into it? Like, the Democrat motto may as well be "sit still, look pretty, and do as little as possible". They roll over for the GOP constantly, and drag their feet on even the most popular, no-brainer, common sense reforms, like implementing socialized healthcare. And yet, since they're still better than the alternative, Democrat voters have convinced themselves that there's something cool and radical about vocally supporting politicians whose most positive trait is that they may as well not exist. "Hey, at least they're not out there advocating for torturing LGBTQIA+ people and pretending the Earth is 6000 years old!" is literally the only hurdle those people have to clear. That's terrifying. It's like acting that plain flour is delicious because the alternative is rat poison.
That's because plain flour and rat poison have been our only two options for well over a generation. A large portion of the American population believes that the only thing to the left of the Democrats is Stalin, and the only thing to the right of the Republicans is Hitler. People are excited about the Democrats because they genuinely believe that going any further left than the Democrats would put half the population into gulags. Unless they're Republicans, then they think that Democrats already want to put people into gulags.
The issue is, that, well, compared to rat poison, plain flour is delicious, in a "to not be in pain is better than to be in pain" sort of way, and those are the only two realistic options for the time. Because the way we built our political system has rendered all other parties but the main two irrelevant, so to fix that, you either need a revolution, or you need to gain enough control of one of the two major parties to have the power to change the rules. And since the rat-poison party is partly toxified by a belief that we've abandoned the true meaning of our nation's slave-owning oligarchical founders and we should return to that time, that means there's only one party you can support on the national level. So it's a weird and irritating "feel free to endorse democratic socialists at the local or state level, but until/unless something changes at the national level, it's play with the guys who only do the bear minimum, or let the guys who hate everything keep tearing stuff down until it becomes untenable."
As a non-American I think a lot of the fascination with Trump comes down to, "How can this guy get away with so much for so long out in the open and yet 34% of Americans would still vote for him?" Another part isn't political, just personal. He really is an atrocious excuse for a human being.
It's that whole "big tough guy who speaks his mind with no filter and looks like he knows what he's doing because he lives so lavishly." That's pretty much the MAGA crowd. And now they've become conditioned to believe that any legal investigation into Trump is a political scheme.
It’s a toxic sort of “grievance politics” that’s developed on the right wing since 2016. MAGA is all about spite, and revenge. They’re not FOR anything. They’re just AGAINST whatever the democrats support by default. I can’t imagine going through life like that. It’s gotta get exhausting after awhile.
I'm a democratic socialist and I am a big fan of this channel. The more I learn the more I see the big picture and I have started to loath "Democrat Twitter" and the like, precisely because I can see all they ever do is use the "hey, were better than Republicans, right?" pitch to get votes. Nothing fundamentally changes in this country precisely because of how delusional BOTH sides' "fans" are. Like you said, Republicans are worse but that doesn't exactly give me any sense of pride voting for Democrats. Love the channel!
I didn’t realize how much of my automatic feed was “Democrat Twitter” and now I can’t stand it. Hopefully the algorithm doesn’t try to throw me down the right wing wabbit hole lol
Fellow Demsoc, though not American and I agree so much of the low bars average American "Democrats" gave on, that being better than literally a bunch of reactionary conservative lunatics. Yet what the discourses happening in America will ripple every square meter of land on this planet. It's really tiresome to argue that almost every single problem on this world would somehow ends up in Capitalism's exploitative, oligarchic/plutocratic, and greedy, tactless nature and we need to combat this somehow... "BUT NOOO~~ How about xyz, We require healing! Reconciliation!" In the name of all that's holy... We absolutely need to have a grip on ourselves than doing this binary partisan bullsh*t "discussion"
BrooklynDad is an awful person. I live in Indiana, and when abortion's legality was being debated here, thousands of us marched in the streets to defend it. And yet, he sat comfortably in New York, tweeting out vitriol directed at my home. It was very obvious that his blanket statements about us were made with no research as to what was actually happening here. He lumped us all together as conservatives, and gave us a figurative middle finger on Twitter, despite the fact that the majority of the state was against an abortion ban. It was the epitome of a Democrat move.
Hey a felloww Hoosier! The first protest I attended was only 48hrs after the SCOTUS leak in Indianapolis... Over 500 people showed up in less than 48hrs!! Thousands more showed up in Monument Circle to the follow up protest about a week later once people had time to get off work. There are plenty of Hoosiers who are pissed at that decision. Shout-out to the local Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) chapter who helped organize both of those demonstrations!
"The problem with American politics is that every issue of consequence ends up as a matter of throne room intrigue which the public has no control over. And people develop these Renfeldian attachments to judges and bureaucrats and rule books and the timing of swearing in ceremonies so they can feel like powerful insiders when the average rioter smashing a bank window has a better understanding of the role of the public in the political process." -A tweet I saw once and half remember
I vote Democrat, but that's out of harm reduction. I'm to the left of Dems. They'll use me for my vote and toss me under the bus, as Bill Clinton did. No love lost either way.
Exactly why I vote for them - harm reduction. Tried to explain this to my mother the other day who “doesn’t understand” why I “turned democrat”, even though I’ve repeatedly told her that I’m not a democrat. Explained to her that being gay in America, I effectively have no choice if I want to have, you know, rights, protection, and my marriage since Republicans sure aren’t in support of any of it. Politics is a sport to her, which is sadly what it is to a depressingly huge number of people that have no (white) skin in the game either way.
Democrats aren't "harm reduction" to anyone paying attention because "harm reduction" doesn't exist; the duopoly is unified in global Fascist imperialism, for example, the NATO escalation in Ukraine intentionally provoking Russia, the illegal destruction of Libya, the bombings of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc., and so on. There is no such thing as "harm reduction" in establishment politics, that's like saying supporting Strasser in 1930s Germany would be "harm reduction" compared to supporting Hitler.
@@tgs7515 this is why many people "don't like politics." I'm glad I guess that they have that privilege of not having to care, but "liking" it isn't even within the scope of our work in investing in them.
Pretty much. I can't let the Repubs win by just sitting it out, and the Dem bus is the closest current bus to the place I want to get, so it's the only choice available. I hate it though, because they don;t actually FIX anything the Repubs do, they just make the slide slower for a while. Fuck.
Since you've started taking the channel in a slightly different direction, I've noticed that your scripts and delivery are a decent deal less dry. I am very much a fan of this change. It's comforting to hear you being hardly able to hold back laughter at some of the things you have to talk about. Helps me feel assured that I'm not crazy for thinking that so much of what's going on today is fucking wild.
Something that's annoyed me is that sometimes I've seen Republican figures tweet things that are demonstrably false, and all of the replies are libs just posting unfunny boomer memes about how the GOP is bad instead of actually explaining how what this person said was false
It doesn't matter. It's the same with communist/socialist stuff. All the people have already chosen their side and nothing will change their minds. You can spend your entire life online debunking false claims and maybe you'll convince 10 people to change their world views.
Caelan Conrad on their channel (in a video on COVID misinformation) explained that a generally better way to debunk lies isn’t simply to present more accurate info, it’s to deconstruct the framework of the argument and address it piece by piece. (I’m paraphrasing; Caelan’s explanation is much better, so I recommend that instead.) That being said, it’s not wrong to provide better info. A few people will listen to that. Still, libs aren’t particularly good at it. 😂
@@Tetragrammaton22 oh no, you can change people's minds it's just the exact location of GOP misinformation and using facts to beat it is not a tactic that works
Democrat twitter is easily one of the most insufferable parts of the platform. This vid definitely provided some enjoyable vindication of that feeling.
Moderates are very often allies to right-wing causes, even if they don't really want that to be the case - their unwillingness to be uncompromising and actively push for things to be done is exactly the buffer regressive/conservative politicians want and need.
Thank you for this video. Democrat Twitter made me nauseous during the 2020 election cycle... nauseous enough to drop off Twitter for good. Brooklyn Dad is the worst and I wish he wouldn't use the name Brooklyn at all because he ain't it.
"Trying to guilt someone into voting doesn't work." This this this this this. Not just with voting, but I believe trying to guilt/shame people into doing anything is a losing battle. Shame is not a motivating emotion.
Also, guilt and shame isn't something that can be forced on someone. If you try make someone feel shame, unless they already deeply respect you, the only emotion you'll evoke is spite.
I've seen many leftists talk about their narrow escapes from alt-right pipelines, but let me tell you, I spent this video squirming while waiting for the Pod Save guys to pop up and cringing at my past.
Yeah there's a small number of things that will cause Democrats to rush to praise a "good" Republican. I'm 36 and I've literally never seen a moderate Dem praise a left leaning politician literally no matter what they do. It interferes with their "were the only actual adults in the room" energy.
Our Democrat candidate for governor was a Republican and describes herself as "aggressively centrist." Feels exactly like the Simpsons election scenario where both candidates are the same.
Man, the same thing happens in Hawaii! Because it’s such a blue state, & anyone who tries running as a Republican usually looses their race, (with the exception of certain areas like rural or rich areas of the islands), most Republicans would to run as fake Democrats, like Tulsi Gabbard! (Hell, for the longest time I thought she was a Republican because of her stance on many issues & was shocked to find out she calls herself a Democrat!) But ever since Trump happened people have no problem running as Republicans which is kinda crazy to see! And because it’s such a blue state, a lot of people think that because the Democrats have run the state for so long that electing Republicans can actually change things for the better!
Was that that Treehouse of Horror one where the aliens Kang and Kodos take the forms of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole? Iirc one is asked at a debate what differentiates him from his opponent and he admits "either way your planet is doomed!" Then when they're outed as aliens, an audience member says he'll vote 3rd party, and he's ridiculed. In the final scene where humanity is enslaved under Kang's rule, Homer states "Don't blame me, *I* voted for Kodos!"
It's always shocking to me how much that binary party view shapes reality and minds. Here's for wishing you the best of futures, thank you for your hard work!
I get immediate Bush era flashbacks from the anti-Trump memes. I'm violently hurled back to a time when biting political commentary was "man talk bad." Instead of, ya know...the war crimes. Not to even mention the weird obsession with objectifying Sara Palin *shudders*
The Democrats won't comment on Republican war crimes because they also do plenty of war crimes. They'd rather people just not think about war crimes at all.
Did you see how AOC just totally roasted Greg Abbot on Twitter😭😝 , I mean he still passed the feed trans children to lions bill 😞, but he was so mad.😂😂🤣😂
I still tell people I'm a democrat just because its easier than trying to explain how skewed our country's definition of "left" and "right" actually are or that both parties are. And I'll completely lose anybody with "both parties are actually neoliberal".
This makes me recall the recent video from Innuendo Studios: The Alt-Right Playbook: The Cost of Doing Business. Democrats EXPECT you do vote Democrat because you are fighting Racists, Nazi's, and the like on the Right. However the Democrats lean on Moderates instead of listening to Progressive voices (which we should all be more Left Leaning imo). This is ofc because PAC's get their money in on the Democrats. There is a lot we need to change to make this country a better or more true Democracy, and we aren't going to do that if Moderates and Dems alike don't get that kick in the ass they need to get over their money issues amongst other issues.
“Maybe the Democrats will be a little more willing to take criticism and listen to someone giving them advice, even if that someone is well to the left of their party platform” … as the screen pauses on a Blue Wave tweet that says “No. We won’t.” 😂😂😂 I hope that was intentional, if not what a hilarious accident
Thanks for this as I found it very cathartic given that I spend far, far too much time on Twitter which is fine as long as I'm just enjoying astronomy, wildlife & pet related content but whenever political discourse inevitably seeps into my feed, I discover myself almost powerless to prevent myself from starting to type out replies thus willingly jumping to my doom in a pointless exchange with random folk to meaninglessly virtue signal or vent anger or whatever it may be & it's always worst when you're within a comforting echo chamber which by design, of course, you will be Hopefully this will help me keep my hands on the steering wheel of my own sanity.
Dark brandon is the meme of the proletariat - co-opted by the bourgeois as always. But the Dark Brandon Acolytes will not falter. No more bourgeois malarkey.
@@reco5able Faust had all the worldly pleasure and success in exchange for his soul, Twitter has never given anyone anything but misery at the cost of peoples valuable life, social media doesn’t need to exist, it would be better if it never existed, including RU-vid.
"You're not black if you don't vote for me" made me almost not vote. Oh and Nancy and Chucks kneeling with the Kente cloth. Lol, did that actually happen? 🤣🤣😒
I'm a registered Dem, only because in the state I live in it's the only way I get to participate. That said, while I try and do my very little bit (being disabled and poor can be limiting) to move the window to the left, if the choice I am given is to vote for 'the lesser of two evils' I'm going to do that, not because I think the person isn't evil, but I'm still mitigating as much harm as possible while we come up with better options.
Same, unfortunately. I live in a swing state with closed primaries. It kills my soul each time I go vote for one of these gremlins but I’d really like to keep having access to abortion
I’m so glad none of the democrats I know IRL are like this. I’m an ancom and I almost always find lots of common ground with Democratic-voting people my age (especially if I keep communist jargon to a minimum)
I knew when I clicked on this in my sub feed I would be subjected to massive amounts of psychic damage. And I was right. Leon, you're more powerful than most for looking into the void to make this one.
I’m surprised you didn’t talk about the BlueMAGA hashtag that pops up from time to time, since that pretty much is the distillation of everything that’s wrong with democrat Twitter.
This video rings very true to me, but I also can't help but think that if Hillary Clinton (spit on her name) had won in 2016 the Supreme Court would not currently be in the state it is an bodily autonomy would still have its fragile protection. The status quo sucked ass, but since it wasn't protected we ended up with something worse. I have to admit I was wrong not to vote for Clinton that year.
I'm not a Democrat, but I often vote for Democrats and I'm likely going to continue to do that for the immediate future. As much as I would like to move past the binary I don't think that is truly feasible while we have first-past-the-post voting. We desperately need ranked choice voting, it's the only way we are going to be able to move past that binary in a real way. It may not seem like the most urgent issue facing us, and perhaps it isn't (I'm looking at you, campaign finance) but it is one of the most dismissed critical issues out there. Also...twitter is a cesspool. I don't understand how anyone tolerates it.
I got so giddy seeing that you're an anarchist I had to rewind a few times to hear what you were saying. I was doing a snoopy dance! Since I was 15 or 16 I've said just that and I've had the same conversations and looks from others about this stance.
Agree with all except Dark Brandon memes. If they drop corporate PR and Advertisements and instead go for grassroots and community based PR and Advertisements I think thats a minor improvement. Also it's kinda funny.
I made the mistake of working with the Democrats on a campaign and man they do not walk their talk. For people who love pretending they care about the worker, they're so quick to treat them like robots. I absolutely hated especially having them spam tweets from these accounts in the work chat.
I vote blue because of my options. But I also push and vote for progressive in primarys. The battle is long and sadly some fights may last the life time of the incumbent we are trying to push out. But it is not impossible, it can be done and we have to fight and vote in every election.
Oh man, good luck with this. Even engaging with a leftist on youtube whose comments are full of liberals and democrats, it's like talking to a brick wall.
Yeah... We're a lot of Anarchists and Communists here at this channel. I cant find anyone as rightwing as a lib in these comments, and it feels like home.
Do you get a lot of shade when you tell people you're an anarchist? I don't really get much reaction from people when I tell them I'm a communist but I don't share it around much.
Thank you. Although the floating Twitter icon on the left side and the Joe Biden skeleton on the right side were generated through AI, there were about 40 (not exaggerating) more "hand-crafted" steps to making this particular thumbnail. I used GIMP, Photomosh, and a few other art applications. I even used my video editing software (Vegas Magix) for this, even though it's a still image. Making the thumbnail is genuinely my favorite part of putting a video together, and I'm glad people like it.
Long time viewer, first time post. As a Social Democrat who is registered with the Democratic Party and is moving towards the left ever so slowly, I appreciate you mentioning the hypocrisy of “vote blue no matter who” as well as these Twitter personalities faults. Can you do a video about the recent rise of the Right in Italy and how it correlates to the rise of fascism back in the 1900s?
The 'weaponing of dark brandon' is already happening in a weird way. I had deranged internet forum users start shout at me in a rant about how dark brandon wouldn't save me. (I was mocking cryptocurrencies). Really weird moment, as it wasn't related to what I said, I'm not American, and not a fan of Biden. (Also the first time I ever interacted with somebody over dark brandon memes basically, I had seen them but only in a vague passing way not in a 'actually being used by leftwingers' way).
Ok this is the third time I have fallowed a RU-vidr based on the political statements they make not knowing what they self-identify as in the political spectrum only for them to mention that they are in fact a anarcho-communist. I never gave much thought to what I should identify myself as but this pattern likely suggests that’s maybe what it should be going by.
I was recently talking about the Bush Jr. administration and the Iraq war, and my conservative acquaintance responded by...criticizing Hillary Clinton? I didn't even know what to say other than, well yeah. But apparently I can't criticize one without implicitly supporting the other, even though they were on the same side on the exact issue I was discussing. It's like many people stop listening as soon as they put me into a category.
There is a difference between being a democrat and being a registered Democrat. Being registered means you can vote in the primaries. Same with registered republicans. I would be independent but I want to vote in primaries
The two primary political parties in the US are basically a cartel, a duopoly that prevents competition of ideas. Both hegemonic parties aught to be disbanded to allow a multiparty system that would more adequately represent the political spectrum.
