Blue no matter who, right?
1d 13h ago by lemmy.zip/u/favoredponcho in politicalmemes from lemmy.zip
And this is why she didn't deserve to be considered for the race. She's only in it for herself. She doesn't care about anybody else. She played dirty politics while Graham Platner refused to do so. It backfired on her big time, so she's taking her toys and going home. Selfish bitch.
Yeah, I don’t understand how people looked at “Susan Collins, but Older!” as a better option than Planter.
She's 'vetted and battle-tested' according to the DNC.
The DNC only likes corporate bootlickers that are completely out of touch with constituents.
battle-tested
In the second world war, maybe...
as in old as schumer, and a toe-ing the line for ISRAEL.
apparently janet mills isnt a any better, she is just more wishy washy than collins.
She’s only in it to make sure that Democrats do not gain power in the senate.
If she had won and retired after one 6 year term that would mean that those 6 years would be wasted and she would have no seniority position of power.
They’re afraid of Platner because he’s young and would be able to accumulate seniority and power over the years.
to make sure anyone left of center right dont gain power.
they probably only allowed bernie because he was a useful shield to deflection criticism form the AIPAC-senators. there was another vet that tried to campaign as a dem, i think the presley guy but he was snubbed by the DNC, because it calls out thier support for the MIC.
she went all in for a datacenter to be built in maine apparenlty vetoed the ban on datancenters, schumer decided to endorse her over graham.
Seems a lot of people have only seen his tattoo or heard about his reddit comments. I encourage you to watch some of his long form interviews or campaign events. The guy is demanding real change from the neoliberal norm and so threatens their sovereignty over the party, I'd be surprised if they ever endorse him.
Whether or not you're from Maine, if all you've seen is his controversies then you're in a specific news echo chamber that does not want to share his policies.
A lot of people really can’t take nuance in scandals and individual negative attributes. There’s things about ME that suck that I’m glad don’t get exposed online. Might come up if I run for office, which I’ll have to deal with.
I can honestly say until Graham, I had no idea there was a format of the pirate skull-and-bones symbol that had direct Nazi connections. I respect those who know the details of history better than me.
It'd be rough for me if I ran for major office no doubt.
Specifically about the tattoo: I grew up orthodox Jewish and went to school (a yeshiva) across the street from a Holocaust museum and used to go there all the time. I did not know what the toten kopf was until Graham Platner got called out in it. I'm also into tattoo culture and have come close to getting a similar style skull because it was cool and piratey.
I get it... And if I lived there and had to vote I would absolutely do more thinking on it, but my view from afar is why can't we just find people to run with these campaign platforms who don't have Nazi tattoos? It isn't that hard.
I think one of the issues is, to have these people that grow up into roles where they choose to shoulder a lot of responsibility, see the world's faults, and act beyond their station to resolve it...you kind of need a complex character for that. Someone who didn't just grow up in a poor environment, saying no to every opportunity (because they're all offered by evil crooks) to finally come out as a competent legislator with big social media presence.
We're very lucky to have waitresses turned Senator like AOC, but those perfect, morally unblemished stories of zero to hero are hard to come by. Hence why a lot of noir stories about a detective getting justice for the marginalized (anyone playing Mouse, PI?) will emphasize how morally grey they act. A lot of people are working to fight fascism because they want to recognize how they've unknowingly contributed to it (not necessarily by voting for Trump) and want to amend their mistakes.
To give an example: I haven't contributed to fascism. I also don't personally know people hurt by it. While I consider it a civic duty to fight, at times I struggle to develop motivation to do risky, above-and-beyond actions that may take up a large part of my day for low gains. That might be different for someone who's either been hit hard by it, or feels direct responsibility for it, eg by joining the army.
Context matters a lot. He got the tattoo with military buddies in the early 2000s, in Romania.
It's not very hard to imagine a group of drunk 20 year old men picking a skull tattoo because it "looks badass". There was almost certainly a language barrier with the tattoo artist and back then we didn't all have computers in our pockets to access all the world's information.
Really not that hard to belive they saw a skull as a skull. It's a relatively obscure symbol even in the modern day.
Hell if I ran for office I'd make a lot of people uncomfortable minimum if my personality flaws cropped up. Sociopathic tendencies, overt bloodlust, worshipping a violent pagan god, wanting to raid and pillage mega churches, wanting to commit crimes against humanity, bigotry against random ass groups, none of these are good by most folks standards. But I am a minarcho-socialist since I think it's the best path forward, also I just really fucking hate people telling me what to do and wish to butcher those who dictate without reason.
remember, the tea party was a hostile take over of the GOP. The only way the old democrats go down is with a similar hostile take over.
A hostile takeover backed by all the right wing media. The tea party was working but grass roots. The established Republicans might have regretted it but nothing about the tea party was organic except the absolute nutters that got elected.
The Tea Party was not "grass roots". It was 100% AstroTurf. They were created by Republican strategists and funded by conservative donors.
Holy shit his John Stewart interview. Wow.
Nah, don't forget he gleefully went to kill brown people in an armed invasion. Fuck that sociopathic sicko.
Yeah I know a ton of people that joined in 2001 after 9/11 to "protect" the US. Their subsequent military experience radicalized them against the military complex and American exceptionalism.
Didn't radicalize him at all - he did several tours and keeps bringing it up as something positive.
Like I said, typical sociopath. He'll say anything to get you to listen, pretending he's left wing he's made a huge platform for himself. Don't fall for it.
You're either trying to ragebait or haven't actually looked into him and his history at all. Either way you're wrong, its very obvious he is not and never has been sociopath.
Either you're right and he hasn't changed and is lying for votes.
Or he has changed and actually is going to implement his platform.
Either way getting Collins out of office is the better outcome. If he actually follows his platform that's even better.
I'm leaning towards he intends to actually follow his platform based on how poorly the DNC is reacting to his primary win.
Several times in fact
This was the primary. That's when you root out as many shitfucks as you can.
Anyone still calling themselves Republican is in bed with fascism at the very least. Vote against them in a way that ensures they lose in a FPTP system.
Anyone still calling themselves Repiblican
…can't spell. ;-)
sorry, can't resist playing with typos, but I'm being silly, not giving you shit :)
REPTILIANCAN.
Repiblican't
Schumer still hasn't even endorsed Mamdani because he's more concerned with representing Israel than representing New York.
Get AIPAC out of the US! And money out of politics. Schumer is a spineless turd who does not represent the American people.
Two party system is terrible and both options are ridiculously bad, but you are crazy if you think that they are the same.
Should we break the system and make a new one? Yes. Will you do anything like that? For 99% of people the answer is no.
So if you are doing nothing to change the system, at the very least you should do what you can within the system (ie voting)
Anyone who says "both sides are terrible so why bother" but does nothing except online bitching, is just letting the people who are voting decide the future for them. If you are doing nothing to fight the system, at the very least use your rights within the system to choose the least awful option.
Most people affected by The Great US Empire can't even vote because they aren't citizen of the empire. They just get to hear the bombs falling or see the news about why everything gets expensive due to carrier group politics.
So yeah: Those who can vote probably should. It will probably not help much. But maybe it does help a bit to stabilize world trade a bit when the "democrat" imperialists instead of the republican imperialists win the next election.
Does who she endorses matter even in the least? Would anyone pay any attention to her endorsing someone?
No, it's just more evidence of who these losers really are.
I was gonna say, I feel like for AIPAC crowd, not endorsing him is kind of an endorsement.
Vote blue yes. But do a quick google search or something before blinding voting.
Hmmm, just another cuck’n funt.
Schumer backed=> funny how that refusal swings around and becomes an endorsement anyway.
Lowkey, I love watching our resident political purity testers encounter a progressive-populist with a literal SS tattoo XD
He doesn't have it anymore.
Are we really dragging someone for not endorsing totenkopf man?
Are we REALLY still dragging him for getting an ill-advised tattoo as part of a military group thing many years ago, one that he didn't know the meaning of at the time and has since publicly and emphatically denounced and is having covered up?
Because if so, we're either arguing in bad faith, credulous idiots that blindly swallow the media narrative, or both.
Platner has faced increased scrutiny surrounding now-deleted posts he made on Reddit where he dismissed military sexual assaults, questioned Black patrons’ gratuity habits and criticized police officers and rural Americans. Other posts showed Platner using homophobic slurs and making anti-LGBTQ+ jokes between 2018 and 2021.
Were those accidents too? He's clearly a scumbag with a pattern of shit behaviour. What good has he done to show he's changed, other than say so? Why would anyone believe what an ex-nazi says?
Yeah, I hadn't heard about those. That DOES change things quite a bit 😬
Now do Collins voting record
He has said they were mistakes and he regrets shit posting online.
Haha, and I am a pineapple! Please believe me!
Do you doubt the apology? It's available online.
If it’s a Nazi tattoo, then yes, I’m dragging him until he’s dead and buried. Maybe I’m an old fashioned European, but there’s no coming back from a Nazi tattoo. We got a few million bodies, ours and yours, rotting in the ground because of that fucking shit.
He can cover it up. He can make up excuses. He can cry in the corner every night for all I care. He’s still a piece of shit with a Nazi tattoo.
I can’t understand how he’s getting a pass for this?
Can you really not do better than a guy with a Nazi tattoo?
I'm not going to fault someone for not knowing an extremely niche detail about the nazis. In fact, it's a little weird how detailed the knowledge is coming from people that supposedly hate nazis.
It’s probably the third most recognizable Nazi symbol, after the swastika and the double lightning bolts. There’s even a comedy sketch about it. You might have seen it. The punch line is “are we the baddies?”.
It's a skull and crossbones. You're talking about whether a person has sufficient familiarity with Nazi symbolism to distinguish one of the several skull and crossbones designs Nazis used from one they didn't. I personally wouldn't have spotted it as a Nazi symbol but that's because I'm not especially fascinated with Nazi symbolism.
Yeah of course Nazis are bad but if you're so unwilling to acknowledge that people can grow and change (completely ignoring the fact that this particular guy very clearly didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo to begin with) then sorry but you're also a fucking problem
All I’m hearing is excuses. Does it come across like he’s really sorry he made his body a billboard for hate for two decades?
It sounds like he’s sorry he got found out.
But anyway, that’s where we are. The options for the citizens of Maine are Mr Nazi tattoo vs the perpetually concerned enabler. Either way they will have the representation they deserve.
I don’t think I’ll change your mind on this (and that’s okay) but I want to throw my two cents in here because I’ve done a lot of research on this because of the moral dilemma the media is exploiting to smear him.
I’m not living in Maine anymore, so I thankfully don’t technically have to wrestle with this dilemma, but yes, he does in fact seem sorry to me. I say this for a few reasons.
Reason number one. He got it blasted over with a shitty coverup instead of dealing with the time and travel it would take to get it removed. Maine doesn’t have as many businesses that do that, and there would still be evidence of it for a while during that process and probably after. As such he got a pretty mid coverup instead. He’d rather have a shitty tattoo than the original piece or the scars from removing the original piece. As someone that has been very picky and careful with the tattoos I’ve gotten, I’ve got to give a little respect for just doing whatever it took to disappear that image from his body.
Reason two is more personal to me. A trans woman at a town hall of his near where I grew up I think put it best. She said something like “I’ve changed a lot from a person I didn’t like, so I believe you are capable of, and are working on, the same”. I know so many trans people that have turned their whole ways of thinking around and bounced back from being really hateful people, and if I believe they are capable of that change, he is too. Hell I even know a few trans people with fully blacked out tattoos because they got a bunch of ink they don’t like anymore.
Finally is my frustration with single issue voting. I think people are within their rights to have “a line” where they won’t vote for someone based on their stance on a single issue, but I also agree with another commenter about what is essentially “harm reduction voting” while working to dismantle things more. His current anti-corporate, anti-oligarch, pro-union, pro-working class politics do a lot more for HIS CONSTITUENTS than his opponents. In the end he doesn’t have to convince you he’s sorry unless he is on your ballot. I grew up with the type of people he’s attracting, and for them the biggest appeal is his working class politics. That is what the lobster industry workers need. It’s what the logging industry workers need. It’s what the service industry workers in a state fed by tourism need. He doesn’t have to convince people sitting comfortably a world away removed from the communities he operates in. For many rural Mainers seeing someone with his history put in the work he’s putting in, and showing proof of growth, acts as an amazing example to people that fell into the right wing cult generations ago and have only been more indoctrinated since.
So yes, it sucks folks in this country have to choose between corpo scum and “Nazi tat guy”, but if you look at the people that are actually going to see his name on their ballot, he is a far, far better fit for them and more realistically represents them in both current politics and previous indoctrination. Many far right, pushing libertarian, Mainers are a small nudge away from looping around to far left politics. They are all very pro personal liberty, pro privacy, pro working class, even to a point of being accepting of queer folks’ desires for the same things. He is, love it or hate it, a huge improvement for the people of Maine.
If you made it this far, thanks for hearing me out. Like I said at the start I am no longer living in Maine, but I’ve forced myself to sit and think on this as if I was, because I had an initial knee jerk reaction to the tattoo and Reddit comments coming to light. After a lot, and I mean A LOT, more thought, I was able to find my willingness to give second chances big enough to give him one. That leap of faith felt very similar to the second chance I gave myself when I realized I needed to transition for my own sake. I was set up to become yet another generic white dude contributing to corporate rule and that felt completely wrong for me. In a weird way I see the same disillusion in Platner, tho I don’t think he’s trans lmao.
I think there are long term conversations to be had about if second chances should allow for a seat at the decision making table, but for now he’s a better choice for the people of Maine. Also the fact he’s getting smeared by both democrats and republicans kinda says all it needs to lmao.
Seriously I have no ill will towards you, and it’s really okay if you don’t change your mind. You don’t have to vote for him, so your conscious is clear. This is the moral degradation of the US on full display and we shouldn’t even be at a point where we have to make these comparisons and decisions, but here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m dragging him until he’s dead and buried
there’s no coming back
He’s still a piece of shit
I can’t understand
Both it is 🤦🏻
I know what I wrote. Is nazism just a joke to you guys? That would explain the situation you’re in right now.
Some people say and/or do stupid or even reprehensible things but later regret them and take steps to become better and do better.
Rather than castigate him for the mistake born out of ignorance (which is worlds away from KNOWINGLY getting a Nazi tattoo) of his past, you should emulate him and do better rather than stubbornly clinging to your "he DEFINITELY meant it and that means forever" bullshit.
Okay he became better. I still don't want him in public office.
I do, we are so starved for progressive voices that I will support an ex Nazi that talks about taxing the wealthy improving like for the working class.
I’m all for giving people second chances and empathy and shit. But I’m not blind to the fact that the only time people really want me to forgive someone it’s when Nazi tattoo white boy wants to run for senate for the supposedly non-Nazi party.
I’m all for forgiving him as a person. Sure we all make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean I think someone who (in the very very very best case) got peer pressured by his military buddies into getting a fucking Nazi tattoo is a good choice for a senator.
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that, if you guys had not descended into a tribalism death spiral, would have been an instant political career ender.
I’m all for giving people second chances and empathy and shit.
Doesn't sound like it
But I’m not blind to the fact that the only time people really want me to forgive someone it’s when Nazi tattoo white boy wants to run for senate for the supposedly non-Nazi party.
How COULD you be blind to something you made up yourself?
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that, if you guys had not descended into a tribalism death spiral, would have been an instant political career ender.
On the contrary. This is the kind of thing that only became an issue at all because of a smear campaign by the Neoliberal party propaganda machine, leaving out important details and making up details that were never true. Just like you're doing right now.
This is the kind of thing that only became an issue at all because of a smear campaign by the Neoliberal party propaganda machine
And here is the tribalism death spiral at work.
You guys used to stand for something. And it sure as fuck wasn’t “Nazi tattoos are ok if they are on my guy”
I agree! Voting for the democrat with a stupid tattoo would be a grave mistake! Let's make sure the republican wins so the fascist in the white house retains power!! I AM VERY SMART! /s You don't like him, you don't trust him. Fine. You don't live in Maine. Its Susan Collins vs Platner. Vote him out in 2032 then. But to say a tattoo makes him worse than a Republican is just childish (or disingenuous, which I think is more accurate in this scenario)
Nah, you dialed me in wrong. You gotta hold your nose and vote for totenkopf man. I’m just sad you are this fucked up.
I didn't know who he was but the articles I can find on him make your claims rather unbelievable.
I hate it when they don't cite the original words. It may sound bad, but why not cite him if that's true? I have been misled too often.
Weird that you choose to question the idea he'd make racist and sexist posts but not the idea that he somehow didn't know one of the most widely known symbols of Nazism. Anyway, here are some of them: https://www.advocate.com/politics/graham-platner-homophobic-posts
Yeah, hadn't heard about all the other stuff.
That DOES change things quite a bit 😬
Yes? I'm not a fan of platner, he probably will suck shit in office. At least he's mouthing progressive noises, though, and he's the dem nominee.
For all the vote blue bullshit I get, it only ever goes one way so fuck the dems.
It's okay, just put her on the list of traitors against humanity and we will pick her off when the revolution comes.