ATS1312
There would be little point of having any interest in politics if this was true.
I beg to differ. The Climate is Changing, we need to pump the breaks on that. On the Concentration Camps. On everything we see.
Acknowledging the Accelerationists are in power is not the same thing as siding with them.
Incorrectly assuming there is nothing we can do lets the fascists win.
Agreed. But assuming that the only thing we can do is Vote? Is just as useless. Go actually help a person today.
Everyone should have voted for Harris in the last election.
Agreed. And the Party should have let Bernie win the 2016 Primary. But continuing to talk about them as though they are current day issues is as absurd as pretending Trump is some kind of Populist.
Giving up cultural capital to the fascists is a needless ceding of ground to fascists. We should celebrate what American has gotten right while still criticizing what American has gotten wrong.
Have you actually read "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn? Or are you just referencing Grade School fairy tales with "what America got right"?
I'm worried that by "refusing to cede cultural capital" that all you're doing is cosigning the same roots of fascism that made Trump inevitable.
I'm worried you're not prepared to actually address the criticisms of people actually harmed without tone policing the critique like you're a Kamala staffer, and find it escalate from there:
https://www.therednation.org/the-red-nation-podcast-3/
This is why the indigenous didn't swing for Kamala, by the way.
But the only way socialists candidates can even win an election is for people to fill out ballots.
Sure, I'll vote. Again. But whether I come alone or with friends depends on whether the party allows a platform worth voting for.
The Acceleration is already locked in, and denying it is Liberal Fantasy. Now if we wanna pump the breaks? I need your help getting tools to build a movement.
Looking back at the failure of Kamala is not how to convince anyone. At all. Ever. Its a great way to get written of as a useless Liberal that can only be trusted to fill out a rigged ballot.
If you wanna dissect Kamala's failure, build a strategy to do better in that environment? Let's go, I'm down. But wallowing in "Kamala should be President" is how you get treated like a dirty lib.
Come join us in reality. The "Glorious Past" was fucking terrible too.
Well, different rhetoric for different locales.
This has been fun!
Next time let's explore how you might bring up some Appalachian history that isnt being taught.
Those people ate out of Bernie's hand on his fox news town hall.
At that pivot, sometimes before? I like to come out of the closet as a raging Leftist, and promising that I hate Liberals more than my audience does. "I want you to have a fair shot, even if you've been told I'm the devil." I need a context where that won't get me shot to pull that out.
"Capitalism just means that everything is owned by those elites that don't f#$king live here." Is one of my favorite lines. It goes well with calling the person in front of me "my neighbor because I can look you in the eye."
See, when that pivot point hits, the conservatives I've known all either laugh it off or get angry. It's not "Oh wow, I actually agree with these points!", but "Ha ha, that's a neat trick, like asking someone for Pen 15" or "This damn dirty crypto-liberal is trying to trick me with his mind games!"
Practice helps. So does being a stranger that's visibly working class. I suspect you've run into a wall for being known and as a "hostile" for being a "liberal". My best success comes from when I can get around that, one on one. Got a former coworker who still goes to that evangelical church, but watches Democracy Now every day.
But also... Yeah, that happens. Sometimes it makes people question their ideas, sometimes we're sewing seeds for someone else to water. And that's okay.
In a very real way, we are talking about Christian-style evangelism.
But you're argument is an excellent example of how to be politically ineffective so I'll keep dismantling it. People need to out grow this mindset of preserving their personal moral purity in order to be politically effective. Instead they'll need to learn how to analyze what strategies are the most useful.
You're spending time pressuring a post-anarchist voter to vote. Im a walking contradiction, but you won before this conversation started.
I'm spending my time asking you to pressure the Democratic Party for a coherent platform. At the point in the election cycle where they could actually have something workable for the coming elections.
They Democrats are our best electoral hope. Its time they took this seriously. If I promise to vote, can I ask you to demand the party infrastructure actually function?
This idea that we should only support democratic socialists like Mamdani and Bernie is ridiculous and is definitively accelerationist.
Are you familiar with the concept of "kayfabe" from American pro-wrestling? I need the Corporate Democrats to fear ALL of us walking away so they don't do... Exactly what they're doing to Mamdani anyway. 😓 that didn't work.
But when it comes down to it? After the primaries, we still need to hold our nose and think of the Climate and all people first, for any even-marginal slowdown. Results matter.
With that out of the way? The Democrats have a chance to actually be a part of real change, real success, and to build a real future for the party and country. But they're refusing. It is maddening.
Did you see the way Walz alienated the indigenous voters? I'm deeply curious about what response you get from Palestinian-Americans grieving their families. To absolve Democrats of their inability to message coherently when we need it most? Is simply unacceptable.
Some part of me wishes for a Local that could run as a Republican as a DSA member, and get entrenched that way. I would knock on so many doors for that person. The Parties have switched before.
But this is the time to pressure the Democrats for a platform worth voting for in 2026 and 2028 - what are you doing? This isn't maximizing their success.
But you'll argue against voting for candidates who aren't fascists in future election. Even if that means the fascists will continue to genocide the people you pretend to care about. No thanks.
Again, I voted the same way you did. It was self defense. I'm pissed off at Democrats for using this to consistently concede towards the Right for decades, but I don't have the power to create a better choice. And further, I felt that every piece of rhetoric to bring comrades with me? Was taken from me by the liberals who wanted my vote.
How much of this was media "dissonance"? We really should unpack. Not to declare blame, but to prepare for it next time.
Comrade, we've been arguing from what is actually two sides of the same position. I'd rather focus on what's next than what's past for its own sake, and that's how you came off to me.
I'd rather focus on what gets people excited - Mamdani, rn.
If I may be permitted a moment to disappear up my own asshole: I just deleted several paragraphs unpacking something I'm going to describe as "post-anarcho-nihilism."
The Acceleration is locked in - just look at Texas flooding again. Again again. Use anything and everything you can for collective human dignity and survival.
And even I vote Blue, holding my nose the whole way. But sometimes I'll fall short in bringing sources of valid, quality info to my community about when its time to bring them to the ballot box for a holding-action on that deepening Acceleration.
What do you suggest we do better next time?
Simply searching 'Mamdani' by user 'PugJesus' comes up with:
Thanks for the tutorial.
And yeah, I'm falling into an old pattern of arguing with people I agree with. Im actually arguing against a real Liberal I see elsewhere, but don't have the standing to argue against without social consequence.
Damn. My bad comrade.
Cynicism. The idea that these people are ready to be our comrades with just the right phrasing is, unfortunately, insanity. The core issue is not misinformation, or the wrong policies - otherwise you would be right, there is hope. The core issue has been the development and cultivation of sickened values over the past 70 years that are directly contrary to functional politics.
100% real. But a LOT of them have this double think about the older values too. The values they act on come from a cultivated fear that's been maintained so long its seeped into the whole ass person. This is the core of what Fascist Movements look like, unironically.
They need cult-deprogramming. Which means extracting them from their entire current cultural context, and replacing it. This is easiest with an online-only dudebro that'll probably end up a mass shooter if we don't. But a whole community? A whole Trump-worshipping church?
The "Republican Jesus" memes never escape Liberal circles. They need someone they can recognize as their own to call them out. I won't be happy until there's protests outside of Megachurches calling the Pastor a "Grifting Antichrist", telling the Parrish to Repent this Sin.
I suppose I can't speak to that. My experience is overwhelmingly with poor, rural, religious conservative America.
My experience is varied. Some of the rural folk, but also the men who think they're above that, and think Trump will cut their taxes. Evangelicals too.
I've even gone off on some religious nut to "repent his following an Antichrist," which spooked him enough to make him leave.
1984 had it fucking right, man. The level of people to engage in doublethink is overwhelming.
Calling them on that outright rarely does anything, unless we can get someone else to follow up with the same until we wear them down. And they blow up every single time.
Alright, but many of them take a perverse pride in poverty, don't work three jobs, and quite explicitly love the elite. Like, the level of idolization of rich folk who share their dogwhistles that goes on is insane.
See, my first instinct is to call those elites they love? Manipulate Liberals. But that takes work and deep cultural access and context to discern, and I rarely have that.
Elite hate isn't a smokescreen for something more nefarious - step back, take in the full view of their position, and it is literally just that - hate for elites. The issue is that the 'elites' they despise are people who make them feel 'lesser' intellectually.
This is why I usually start with a frame of hating Liberals. Out loud. 5-10 minutes of "sounding like Tucker" to get them nodding along. Invite them to learn. Whether they do or don't, make them feel smart for even nodding along... And then switch the frame when we hit a natural pivot point. It doesn't work every time, but they at least walk away respecting me for not being an elitist Liberal.
And the worst part is, many of these people are not stupid, inherently. But they've been raised to see incuriosity about their preconceptions as a virtue. They will simultaneously express what a BADASS REBEL they are by meekly submitting to conservative social norms and what a GOOD UPSTANDING LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN they are for meekly submitting to conservative norms. And if you point it out, they see no contradiction. Which, in practice if not principle, to be fair, I suppose there isn't.
Crystalized as "conservative is the new punk rock" in more recent years. I see that.
This is where I talk about being good neighbors. When my neighbor hurts, it hurts me. And if I can look you in the eye? You're my neighbor. I owe you some basic respect simply for you being here. How can I help, neighbor?
I'm ready to make him fight for this, even as I agree with him that those chemicals are an issue. Just not the issue he thinks they are.
The more time he sinks into this, the less he has to throw disabled people off of bridges.