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.
Nobody’s waiting. People won’t stop worshiping the media if we just wait for them to stop. We have to galvanize the younger generation into being interested and engaged in politics so that they don’t become just like the lost-cause bloat of current voters. It’s a lot of work, and it will take decades, but yes, it can work. In fact, it’s been working. While everyone I know over 50 thinks that Trump is just a normal president, everyone I know under 20 recognizes him as the tyrant he is. Soon those younger minds will outnumber the older ones who think it’s still business as usual, but that shift still does need to change for us to have a chance at winning a presidential election with an actual leftist.
Mexico was in a tough enough spot that even the older people demanded better, but life’s still pretty good for the baby boomer generation that dominates the American voting pool. They don’t have a reason to protest and organize through tik-tok for change, they like their life and want it to stay the same, government and all. We need our younger generation who, like those in Mexico, only see a bleak future for themselves under the current government, and will do what’s necessary to change it.
But if we’re fixing the system from within the system, that change will only come when one of the 2 parties is indeed leftist. Mexico has a multi-party system, enacted by a government who listened to the people enough to enact that policy, but we don’t - without changing the entire system, we’ll still need to fix one of the current parties to the point where they put forward a real leftist candidate before we’ll see one win democratically. That happens from the bottom, with local elections like the one for Mamdani. Otherwise, we’ll need to overthrow the system to see a leader of our country as good as Mexico’s anytime soon.
until 2018 mexico only technically had a multi-party system in the same way that the united states also technically has a multi-party system with the green, psl, libertarians, independence, etc. parties; with only the two of the parties overwhelmingly dominating the rest of the parties like democrats and republicans do in the united states. the policies that i think you’re referring to were only put in place to give legitimacy to mexican elections and even then they only did it because the americans pushed them into doing it to alleviate criticisms of their support for the pri.
during his first campaign, obama espoused a progressive agenda like amlo did and both politicians proved how effected they were at getting young people to vote, which means that we already know how to get young people engaged. clinton did the same thing back in the 1990’s for the united states, so it also means we’re pretty good at getting young people to vote whenever we feel like pulling that lever; but we chose to appeal to “moderates” instead because they don’t challenge the status quo.
obama’s lower second election results proved what happens when you drop that progressive agenda and sheinbaum proves that the youth will reliably come out to support your party if you don’t drop that progressive agenda like obama did.
i think you’re right in that too many people are too comfortable in their living situations to ever effect change and i also agree that this sentiment is mostly shared by older generations; the same is true to a very large degree in mexico so that’s only part of the problem.
however, the change didn’t come from fixing the system from within one of the dominant parties; it happened when people ditched the “liberal” party that was co-opting progressive movement like the democrats do in the united states and voted 3rd party instead.
this overton ratcheting effect that the democrats enable coupled with their unwillingness to push back against republican voter suppression is the yin to the yin-and-yang of our political reality and that, along with the self fulfilling third party propaganda is the yang that keeps americans vacillating between democrat and republicans with things continuing to get worse for the world.
the american system’s inherent contradictions will be the only thing to degrade people’s material conditions enough to vote third party if we don’ t change our collective mindset and; by then; the world will be in a very sorry state that i’m glad i won’t get to live through.
Damn, I looked into it further, and you’re absolutely right. I knew it was an upset win, and when I saw that there were 4 major parties in the election, I dismissed it as a more variable political system, but it’s first-past-the-post, just like the US. This will definitely change my thought process on what our chances of making real current-day changes to our political landscape would be. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, and for powering through my hardheadedness.
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.
Nobody’s waiting. People won’t stop worshiping the media if we just wait for them to stop. We have to galvanize the younger generation into being interested and engaged in politics so that they don’t become just like the lost-cause bloat of current voters. It’s a lot of work, and it will take decades, but yes, it can work. In fact, it’s been working. While everyone I know over 50 thinks that Trump is just a normal president, everyone I know under 20 recognizes him as the tyrant he is. Soon those younger minds will outnumber the older ones who think it’s still business as usual, but that shift still does need to change for us to have a chance at winning a presidential election with an actual leftist.
Mexico was in a tough enough spot that even the older people demanded better, but life’s still pretty good for the baby boomer generation that dominates the American voting pool. They don’t have a reason to protest and organize through tik-tok for change, they like their life and want it to stay the same, government and all. We need our younger generation who, like those in Mexico, only see a bleak future for themselves under the current government, and will do what’s necessary to change it.
But if we’re fixing the system from within the system, that change will only come when one of the 2 parties is indeed leftist. Mexico has a multi-party system, enacted by a government who listened to the people enough to enact that policy, but we don’t - without changing the entire system, we’ll still need to fix one of the current parties to the point where they put forward a real leftist candidate before we’ll see one win democratically. That happens from the bottom, with local elections like the one for Mamdani. Otherwise, we’ll need to overthrow the system to see a leader of our country as good as Mexico’s anytime soon.
until 2018 mexico only technically had a multi-party system in the same way that the united states also technically has a multi-party system with the green, psl, libertarians, independence, etc. parties; with only the two of the parties overwhelmingly dominating the rest of the parties like democrats and republicans do in the united states. the policies that i think you’re referring to were only put in place to give legitimacy to mexican elections and even then they only did it because the americans pushed them into doing it to alleviate criticisms of their support for the pri.
during his first campaign, obama espoused a progressive agenda like amlo did and both politicians proved how effected they were at getting young people to vote, which means that we already know how to get young people engaged. clinton did the same thing back in the 1990’s for the united states, so it also means we’re pretty good at getting young people to vote whenever we feel like pulling that lever; but we chose to appeal to “moderates” instead because they don’t challenge the status quo.
obama’s lower second election results proved what happens when you drop that progressive agenda and sheinbaum proves that the youth will reliably come out to support your party if you don’t drop that progressive agenda like obama did.
i think you’re right in that too many people are too comfortable in their living situations to ever effect change and i also agree that this sentiment is mostly shared by older generations; the same is true to a very large degree in mexico so that’s only part of the problem.
however, the change didn’t come from fixing the system from within one of the dominant parties; it happened when people ditched the “liberal” party that was co-opting progressive movement like the democrats do in the united states and voted 3rd party instead.
this overton ratcheting effect that the democrats enable coupled with their unwillingness to push back against republican voter suppression is the yin to the yin-and-yang of our political reality and that, along with the self fulfilling third party propaganda is the yang that keeps americans vacillating between democrat and republicans with things continuing to get worse for the world.
the american system’s inherent contradictions will be the only thing to degrade people’s material conditions enough to vote third party if we don’ t change our collective mindset and; by then; the world will be in a very sorry state that i’m glad i won’t get to live through.
Damn, I looked into it further, and you’re absolutely right. I knew it was an upset win, and when I saw that there were 4 major parties in the election, I dismissed it as a more variable political system, but it’s first-past-the-post, just like the US. This will definitely change my thought process on what our chances of making real current-day changes to our political landscape would be. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, and for powering through my hardheadedness.