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“The kind with trigger discipline…”
I’m a noob leftist. Maybe a reformed (reforming?) liberal. I am anticapitalist.
I don’t think a 19th century European necessarily devised the perfect economic system. Maybe we don’t have to be obliged to label ourselves by which 19th century European we agree with the most. There are a lot of people smarter than me who know more than me who disagree with each other, I don’t know if we can move society in my lifetime enough that the difference between anarchism and communism will make a huge public policy difference. I’m more concerned with stopping fascism and working for universal healthcare.
I just want people to have food, shelter and healthcare at an affordable price.
Some call this “Leftist extremism”. =/
Ugh George Soros poisoned Progressivism!
By “affordable” I’m assuming you mean free. Always wanting a handout, of course.
I just want untaxed inheritance, corporate welfare on top of more tax breaks for me and all my friends, unregulated surveillance and data collection of the plebs so I can continue to make even more money (untaxed obvs), exclusive and elite private universities, and a justice system where I can live free of consequence and purchase a judge at a reasonable price because I believe in being fiscally conservative.
Food, shelter, and healthcare are things I’ve just never had to think about really. Although, I would also prefer that if too many people are worrying about those things in my immediate vicinity, they be shuffled around or forcibly moved to a different vicinity.
That way I don’t have to start thinking too much. It’s really unfair when that happens, because it starts to make me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is not something I’m used to feeling, and since I don’t like to think about things, I never stop and think about why somebody else being uncomfortable would also make me feel so uncomfortable.
Logically, the solution is to just put those people somewhere not visible to me, and then complain about what society is “turning into these days” when they slip through the privilege perimeter.
Basically healthcare is free at point of service in the majority of the most functional and healthy societies. It’s not infinite and its rationed by need as opposed to being rationed according to who has the most money. This is ultimately a more valid solution to finite resources than our over complicated system which hands half the money to middle men in the name of managing it.
I agree, and just to be clear I was being sarcastic. I would also guess it’s way more than half the money.
Between health insurance companies, hospital administrator salaries, liability insurance for doctors, and drug patents making most medications unaffordable, I would say it’s pretty easily about 3/4 or more.
I volunteer in a free clinic in a red state that has had the Medicaid expansion for less than 10 years. It provided the absolute bare minimum healthcare to essentially everyone in need, but it still made such a huge difference in terms of patient health outcomes to just offer that bare minimum.
Now the U.S. is targeting that entire program through budget cuts, and in addition, at least in my state, private hospital oligopolies have been ramping down acceptance for months now because they seemed to know what was coming before anyone else.
The argument is that the cost of providing that bare minimum is unsustainable. Even if that were true, and the cuts weren’t actually only necessary to provide another tax break for the wealthy, there are clearly so many other places we could be making cuts to reduce the cost of healthcare, rather than to the tiny amount that goes towards actually providing the barely minimum healthcare coverage to some of the most vulnerable patient populations.
Due to Poe’s Law, I think you really need one of these: /s
Yeah, I thought it was pretty clear, but I guess not. I definitely would have on Reddit but figured it wouldn’t be necessary here
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TERRORIST.
Like … all people?
Every single one
What about people we don’t like?
Why don’t we like them? Is it because they are anti-social? That’s why we have laws. Is it because they are different? Then don’t be anti-social and learn to understand them.
Seems reasonable.
So you want billionaires hoisted up by their figgins as a warning to the rest of the bourgeoisie?? That’s what I’m hearing here.
I think we should have a maximum wealth cap. Set it as an even 1000x the median annual household income. That is the type of money that even the most highly paid wage earners - like anesthesiologists, would struggle to amass if they worked overtime their whole careers, lived like paupers, and invested every penny they made. That would be about $80 million today. Anything above that would be taxed at 100%. And no, I don’t give a shit about your $80 million “family farm.”
But truly obscene levels of wealth? Like 10,000x median household income and above? If we had a wealth cap, and you evaded it, and secretly collected a fortune 10x the cap? A felony whose penalty is 20 to life.
We don’t let people own atomic bombs. We don’t require you to have an atomic bomb license, or only let really nice moral people own nuclear weapons. We simply don’t let individuals own nuclear weapons, as the risk of such power in a single hand is simply too great.
And yet, we let people amass fortunes that they can use to do far more damage than any nuclear weapon. Someone like Musk or Bezos, completely on their own, can absolutely cause suffering and destruction on the level of a nuclear bomb.
No one should have that type of power. Period. That power should only be obtainable through free and fair elections. We need a maximum wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Having a billion dollars should be absurd as owning your own nuclear bomb.
I wish I could upvote this about a dozen times well said.
We don’t let people own atomic bombs […] and yet, we let people amass fortunes that they can use to do far more damage than any nuclear weapon.
Damn that is very well put. I thought I knew where you were going with that analogy – like that there are just some things we don’t allow people to have. But the comparison of the power of a nuclear bomb and 11 digit wealth is really really good.
No matter what you do with that kind of wealth, it is a level of force that should not be wielded without the consent of the people it will affect.
You know those means of production?
Well I have an idea…
Idk. The kind where I believe that every adult over 18 should be given 80m2 by the government. Apartment, office space, storage space, workshop, lab, whatever.
I believe that you shouldn’t need to worry about a place to live at the bare minimum, and I believe that not having space for people to use and experiment with is one of the main hindrances of economic development (development, not “growth”)
I wish there was a test.
Not a bullshit CosmoBuzzfeed quiz, but an actual “if you answered A on these three questions, you tend towards MarxoCapitalist. Here’s a community full of people who mostly agree with you about political stuff.”
We’d still have Home and Local and All, but it’d be nice to know who my people are instead of needing a college degree to navigate the bullshit everyone says about everyone else.
I don’t think anyone knows what socialism is.
I hope they all vote for Democrats though, in places where FPTP voting is still used
Btw what’s up with all these states up and banning Ranked Choice Voting? Most of them in the past 1-2 years too. I’m not exactly sure of the context, like if there was a bill or a referendum, but with a referendum I would have expected it to say “rejected”/“not adopted”, instead of “banned”. Definitely seems like RCV needs to be really fought for, and seems like the major parties are afraid of it.
It’s almost like it threatens their duopoly power
I agree, but I have to say, the term “duopoly” doesn’t ring the same in this environment where Republicans are frothing at the mouth to mass arrest the Democrats.
Sure, but your conflating the common man who votes that way and who we also prescribe the same labels to with the actual representatives with power. Chuck shumer and Nancy pelosi do not want the Bernie’s of the world getting power. They like being the lesser of two evils because they can do almost as much as the trump admin does and be praised for it when in reality it’s still evil. You really think they want citizens United repealed? The patriot act repealed? Federally elected officials banned from buying investments? Fptp voting changed to ranked choice means independents can win and actual implement change.
It’s a duopoly.
That’s true, I was just pointing out that the Schumer types at the DNC really don’t understand that their Republican “colleagues” are taking active steps to throw them in jail or worse. In this sense it feels weird to call it a duopoly given that the only ones giving any direction the whole time were the GOP, while the establishment Dems were their useful idiots, always following their lead and trying to triangulate their policy and rhetoric between status quo and fascism, you know, to appeal to the “middle” and the “moderate Republican”. It’s absolute madness! And you might say they know what they’re doing, that they planned this like a good/bad cop routine, but honestly… I find it much easier to see them as old stupid out of touch aristocrats with big piles of money going blindly wherever capital leads them, than as scheming double agents, because the latter would imply some actual awareness of their surroundings, which they don’t have! They’re totally blind to the fact that the only logical conclusion to their triangulation strategy with fascists is them in a gulag. It’s plain as day, it’s happening right now under their very eyes, but their priorities are… fighting David Hogg??
I’m referring to the politicians here btw, not the voters. I think the voters are really mad at Schumer and the DNC right now, and I think they’re looking for new leadership. In that sense, AOC has risen in popularity recently because she’s been engaging with people directly both IRL and on social media, but I’m not getting my hopes up until I see something real actually happen, and I mean nothing short of seeing the establishment Dems gone. Because even now as the world burns, the DNC is fighting tooth and nail against anyone challenging them from the left. And honestly, it may already be too late as it is, like for the whole country. I hope not, but I don’t have much hope left tbh.
I can’t argue with that angle tbh, they really might just be that stupid lol
It’s really down to the individual as to what they believe the Democrats are really up to. It certainly isn’t helping the middle and lower classes. The bar is so low right now…any change that drags us back to the left at all would be mind blowing at this point.
I’m hoping for someone like mayor Pete in 2028 if we are lucky enough to have a fair election by then, he’s a great speaker and likeable to a ton of people I think. He has a shot at uniting the voters.
“I’m scared of the bad cop so I will put my trust in the good cop”
This is a torture/interegation tactic to manipulate you.
I’m not having this conversation. Good luck.
RCV experiments have gotten a lot of backlash from establishment parties, usually because they lost and they want to blame the “new process” instead of their platforms, policies, or actions.
Yeahhhh, I hate to break it to you but…there’s a lot of them that do not vote blue especially when it counts.
Hillary lost because the DNC ran a corrupt campaign where they ignored the will of their voters.
Kamala lost because the DNC ran a corrupt campaign where they ignored the will of their voters.
Your statements and mine are both true. The first time we didn’t know what a trump presidency would be like. In 2024 we did. I didn’t vote for Hilary over the Bernie snub, but I knew better in 2024.
Despite Kamala being the most centrist thing we could ever elect, we wouldn’t be in a crisis in this country like we are today if she won. virtue signaling, self righteous, no compromise, bite my nose off to deport my neighbor ultra leftists can’t be bothered to use a little empathy. They are too wrapped up in their fee fees about the establishment not listening to them to do the tough thing and minimize the harm. Help the Dems win. elect someone who will respond to pressure.
There’s no excuse for letting trump win and enabling his administration to hurt untold numbers of people through illegal raids, deportation, support of genocide, pulling support from Ukraine, cutting social security and Medicaid benefits, removing narcan from first responders, driving stigma against trans people, overturning abortion laws and criminalizing it, and much more I can’t keep track of or has yet to happen…we had the data from 45. We knew what p2025 was going to do. We still put him there. There is no excuse. This electorate is so embarrassing, they’ve completely lost the plot.
Yeah the brand of leftist that cannot understand two things can be true is so annoying.
Yeah it’s sad human beings have issues accepting doublethink
Nuance /=/ doublethink. We were trying to save people… You’re not a good person if you threw your vote away in spite to send a message. People are suffering and dying because of this.
Exhibit A
Blaming voters for the outcome of an election will never be a viable strategy unless you want infighting.
Are you confused about how voting works? The eligible voters are the ones responsible for who wins in a free and fair election.
Ok so you’re telling us you want infighting.
Because blaming voters for not voting is something that never has gotten people to magically make the “correct” decision.
If someone wants another person to vote for them they have to communicate to and appeal to that person.
Democrata have not seriously listened or helped their voters my entire life, when they feel like forcing the rich to make concessions then people who would benefit from those concessions will vote for them.
Until then you whining about a voting block that has and probably never will show up is only dividing people.
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Where is the bubble that says “imperialism by Russia is fine”?
Ahh yes, the “left party”
I agree we need a third party where leftist policies are allowed to exist
You need a different electoral system then
We could put the dems in the same circle with the left if we paid them enough. Have we tried that yet? Everyone empty your pockets on the table here and lets count.
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One of them can actually pass policy unfortunately
Edit: I’m not saying I agree with their policies dumbasses. I want the left to pass policy. But until the left understands how to become politically effective and build coalitions we’re stuck in this quagmire forever
They keep saying that but…
Well, compared to the other one which one would you say passed more policies?
Republicans without a doubt pass more policies.
Democrats pass policies that funnel money into corporations, but fail to pass meaningful policy that helps the majority.
We clearly need different leadership than the Duopoly.
I’m not doing a good job communicating what I’m trying to say and I take full responsibility.
To me the Dems are liberals – or republican lite with sprinkle of some progressive social policies.
I know the left is constrained to building its coalition within the big tent that is the democratic party. But when I look at the way the left goes about building power --especially when looking at the nature of online discourse – I get the sense they are not interested in building effective power or accomplishing their goals. It feels more like verbal mental masturbation 99% of the time.
what if im pro imperialist but anti capitalist?
Fuck you?
Trolls usually vote for Republicans
Remember, Republicans are the proletariat, at least at the bottom, and they are the reactionary forces that you eventually will need to adopt if you would want to see a better day. They are the reactionary elements of capitalism in crisis. They are those that were left to their own devices to fester in agony due to liberalism.
Nah i voted for harris. the democrats are imperialist and capitalist
Then you’re neither a leftist nor a Democrat.
The leftist thing depends on if imperialism in their eyes brings about egalitarianism.
The old “let’s put socialism in the name” trick
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Like the CCP? At least rhetorically.
nah the ccp sucks, at least if youre not chinese.
i think the ccp is necessarily tied to the chinese racial identity - they try very hard to promote unity between chinese people, its not in their interest to expand their borders and include outsiders in their democracy.
what makes the usa special is that they dont have to be unified by the illusion of race. exploiting racial divides from within tarnishes that for short lived political gain.
the current flavor of imperialism practiced by all of these is to keep other countries ‘conquered’ in their own borders and use capitalism and corruption to exploit them in perpetuity. the usa and europe and the saudis too.
its naieve to think that if we were to stop , someone else wouldnt just swoop in and quietly take the reigns. as things are most of humanity will remain wage slaves or literal slaves forever, having any societal progress they make be wiped out through clandestine interference.
and if we stop doing THAT, we risk some shitty dictatorship developing advanced weapons like nukes or bioweapons, or conquering their neighbors themselves.
whatever global sphere can somehow create a better social order thats capable of scaling to include all of humanity without having any of them be forced into some form of slavery, SHOULD conquer the world.
Right now, nobodys really close to that. but it should be the goal. and if anyone can “win” even by the current shitty practice of imperialism, at least it means war can be avoided down the road.
Nah bruv, this is bullshit. I’m straight up a centrist. It’s just that anyone who isn’t goose-stepping fascist swine is “leftist” these days. Shit has just moved so far right, it’s fucking insane. Back in the day, repubs would agree with me about minding your own fucking business and let people live the way they fucking want. They’d agree with me that you need to pay for shit, instead of just charging it to your kids. Which also means you need to prioritize shit, and it better nothing be for fucking moneybags over there. Bring back fucking Eisenhower-era taxes, FFS. Those cunts used to believe in free speech and freedom FROM religion. There used to be some common ground. These days? Fuckem. They can all choke to death.
Never ask a Lemming what kind of leftist they are, or what is the best Linux distro.
Well, um, whatever kind you use and whatever kind you are, of course.
That’s your favorite distro of linux now, but what previous operating system do you come from?
What if he’s a Gentoo user? He’ll mock me for using Archlinux, I’ve got to play this hand carefully so as to not blow my cover. There’s always the chance he’s a Mint user and I have nothing to worry about, but then, he could be one of those users that says ricing is a waste of time, who uses his OS professionally, but then, he might be a Fedora user… how do I approach this issue without seeming like a pleb?! Based Stallman, help me!
NixOS
How about that vaporwave aesthetic of Garuda Dr460nized edition?
LFS
Windows 2000. I feel like that’s reasonable. It was honestly pretty solid kit.
That was not my experience with 2000. Either 98 or XP (post-SP2) were more solider, from memory.
I think you might be confusing Windows ME with 2000.
Windows 2000 was built on the Windows NT kernel which was business focused so absolutely rock solid.
Windows 98 was a good jump in stability from the 95 kernel bit still very prone to crashing.
I agree XP was good but it was the successor to 2K so built on it and I moved to Linux as soon as the 2K directx support would have forced me to move to XP which wasn’t as lightweight.
For clarity there were two development branches within Microsoft at the turn of the millennium: one that was based off windows 3.1 (and became 95, 98 and ME) and one that was based off windows NT 3.1 which was solid as fuck and eventually became 2000 then XP.
Edit: Here’s a decent graphic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions#/media/File:Windows_Version_History.svg
Oh shit, I think you’re right!
Now that a stretch my memory back decades, I seem to recall I never extensively used 2000, it was ME.
I agree XP was good
I seem to recall something about XP not being good at the start, and it wasn’t until about SP2 that it reached it’s famed quality. But now I can’t seem to find anything about it.
Ah the naming was terrible in fairness… Windows millennium edition and windows 2000. I mean c’mon like. Haha.
And yeah I was gone by SP2 but I remember my gaming friends holding tight to that for as long as they could. There were even various really lightweight editions of SP2 that you could download if you had the balls to install a hacked together operating system from some randomer on the internet. And they all did.
Different times!!
Edit: also what’s up Dave on the far side of the world!
What kind of leftist are you and what is the best Linux distro?
anarcho-communist, arch
Left libertarian, NixOS naturally.
Post-left anarchist, Arch obv
I don’t use Arch but that wasn’t the question
I also don’t use Devuan but said Devuan is the best distro
Dishonor upon you and your family!
Huh, they’ll name Linux distros anything these days…
That is just the english translation, the distro is maintained and developed by Klingons and it invades off the tongue far more naturally in Klingon.
Hanna Montana is the best distro
Socialist, Guix
ancom, devuan
Dictionary Anarchist - BotaOS(the name I give when I recompile a kernel on anything that I am running for more than a few weeks).
Currently based on Pop.
Me: a disillusioned Liberal who runs Fedora, because I’m a basic bıtch and I ain’t got time for this shit anymore.
Fedora is the Todd Howard meme of Linux: it just works
Same brother. I was once a Gentoo using anarchist but now I spend more time getting stuff done and less time tweaking my setup.
Slackware is the the only answer
What kind am I?
Not a neo liberal or a Tankie.
I’m in-between. I’m caring enough to not agree with Conservatives and want a change to the status quo. I’m educated enough to know how the world actually works and that things can’t be free and other people won’t do stuff for free. Capitalism has its place, but needs to be highly regulated.
marxist-linuxist
Arch Communist
Gentoo-manist
Debian-syndicalist
Fedoralism-Maoism
Manjaro-syndicalist
Nixos-georgist (?)
Social-Debianist
“You leftists sure are a contentious people”
Anti-Conservative
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whatever-the-fuck-kind-of-stupid-noise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Also, those who insist on political purity tests reveal themselves to be temporarily-inconvenienced-dictators-in-waiting.
While I am totally in the “bind all and protect all” camp and really against the “in group protect, out group rules” and I think conservatism is often in practice “protect me and rule others”, I am not sure if I agree with it being called conservatism.
I think fundamentally the hierarchy in right wing politics imply an in/out group. But just like conservatism is a form of right wing political views, so you could argue that the hierarchical political views are a Form of “in group protect, out group bind”.
Whatever you want to call it, is part of conservatism, I believe. But I don’t like to call it conservatism, so it feels like we are defining two related but different things with the same name, which will be confusing and could be used by e.g. “progressive” capitalists to claim that they aren’t conservative and therefore not “in group protect, out group bind”.
I am not sure if I agree with it being called conservatism.
Yes, Wilhoit, if I’m understanding his treatise correctly, addressed this point:
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
The corollary label could be “Anti-Establishment”. Perhaps, “Anti-Authoritarian”.
I don’t know what the best term is, but I fairly certain conservatism is probably one of the worst. I think tribalism and anti-tribalism would be a better starting point while that was a meaning already too.
I think tribalism and anti-tribalism would be a better starting point while that was a meaning already too.
On this, I agree.
However, I propose that the “Anti-Conservative” label, with all of its flaws, has more utility in presenting its economic and political implications within the admittedly linguistically absurd political discourse in my country (U.S.A.).
I think, there, we have a disagreement. To me, it would sound like you reject the republicans specifically in a us political discussion, a position that I wouldn’t be interested exploring, because of how strong the tribalism in us politics is. I would just assume that you are supporting the democrats. While with the understanding of the conversation, I would assume you aren’t supportive of any of the us political party and vote for the least bad option.
In other words, I wouldn’t want to explore your political position if you use that term as I would assume I understood. Consequently I would misunderstand your position. And I think others would do the same.
If someone would identify as a conservative, they wouldn’t take you seriously anymore, as they would understand it that you reject them, even tho in practice they would agree with you on a lot of stuff and you aren’t necessarily rejecting them.
😅 My apologies, I’ve been re-reading this reply many times and I’m not following your argument against the utility of using the “Anti-Conservative” label for myself if someone asks what is my political position (within the United States)?
Is your thesis that “Anti-conservative” is not specific enough?
My apologies!
For a conservative™ (the way most people use the word), hearing “anti-conservative”, probably makes them reject you immediately as from their pov, you reject them.
For a left wing person, hearing “anti-conservative” probably makes them assume that you talk about conservative™ and not conservative as you mean it.
So in both cases, you don’t have the conversation that you want if you want to promote your political stance, as you kinda encourage them to not engage with your political stance.
Also, those who insist on political purity tests reveal themselves to be temporarily-inconvenienced-dictators-in-waiting.
I hope this isn’t about leftists refusing to support biden/kamala in the US.
You didn’t have to support them. You just had to use your brain and choose the lesser of two evils. Like which one of these people is more likely to illegally deport me for exercising my first amendment rights? I think you’ll find the answer to that question soon.
a vote is an offering of “support” by it’s very nature.
The problem with “lesser of two evils” was that it traps you in short-term thinking.
In 2020, the lesser of two evils would have actually been Donald Trump. Looking back with 20/20 vision, it’s unambiguously clear that between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, voting for Donald Trump in 2020 would have been, on the whole, a better outcome for the country. Voting lesser of two evils in the short term gave us the worst long-term outcome.
How can this be? Because Biden winning in 2020 guaranteed that Trump would win in 2024. Biden was never going to hold Trump accountable. He was never going to push through meaningful reforms that could prevent a second Trump term. Every vote for Biden in 2020 was a vote for a Trump 2024 presidency. And I knew this at the time, and held my nose and voted for Biden anyway.
And Trump winning in 2024 is far worse for the country than Trump winning an election in 2020. The first Trump term was incredibly disorganized. They didn’t know how to govern. They had four years out of power to figure out what went wrong and how to do it right a second time. If Trump had won in 2020, then he wouldn’t have come in on a second wave, with complete control of government and Project 2024 and its organization behind him. Trump in 2024 is vastly, vastly more dangerous than a second Trump term in 2020 would have been.
But “lesser of two evils” is meant to be a thought-terminating command. We’re not supposed to ask what lesser evil we’re supposed to consider. Are we only supposed to look at the immediate evil, or the long-term evil? Because by default, just using “lesser of two evils” simply causes you to myopically focus on only the election in front of you.
Again, lesser of two evils gave us this outcome. We would have been far, far better off now if the liberal third of voters in 2020 just refused to vote for Biden. Because again, a Biden victory in 2020 guaranteed a Trump victory in 2024. And Trump in 2024 is a lot worse than Trump in 2020 would have been.
Before reflexively recommending people vote for lesser of two evils, you should first ask, “have my previous judgments of the lesser evil actually been correct?”
Or maybe support someone who isn’t one of the two evils
I keep doing this hoping the centrists will get the message and enact PR or else risk losing to the Big Bad which threatens us all. But so far I’ve been disappointed…
I only have my one measly little vote. They determine the entire platform and what policies get proposed. It’s so unfair. I just want to vote for the representative who actually represents me without risking fucking feudalism. I’m not even asking for direct democracy here…
Our (U.S.A.) best option for that in recent history was Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election.
Thats still one of the two parties
Bernie is certainly a diamond in the rough - but don’t ignore that rough.
He is an independent as a Senator. But you’re correct in that he ran as a Democrat in 2016.
Here you are protecting conservatives that have a vested interest in the genocide of palestinians.
the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
it’s a nice sentiment, but you really need to have criticisms of the political economy if you want to address the root cause. the reason “the law” doesn’t protect everyone is because the law is set up to prioritize the will of people with money and property over everyone else. I think the more common through-line is anti-capitalism rather than “anti-conservatism”.
I think the more common through-line is anti-capitalism rather than “anti-conservatism”.
I will concede that this clarification makes sense if one regards capitalism and conservatism as de facto interchangeable.
Personally, I like the “Anti-Conservative” label as defined by Wilhoit because it more accurately describes my own political position within the specific constraints of voting and engaging in political discourse as a U.S. citizen.
Personally, I like the “Anti-Conservative” label as defined by Wilhoit because it more accurately describes my own political position within the specific constraints of voting and engaging in political discourse as a U.S. citizen.
So as someone who doesn’t actually want to address the systemic mass inequalities, because it might require something other than voting, got it.
What a vapid and obtuse thing to say.
What other actions do you want me to take, other than organizing and voting?
Shall I run for office? Shall I take up arms against the government? Should I abandon my family to do those things? I will have to in order to be remotely successful at either.
On the latter, I am not a combat veteran. I wouldn’t know where to begin, and I’m not inclined to throw my life away easily.
Furthermore, I believe wildcat strikes would be far more effective at dismantling the machinery of disenfranchisement, subjugation and oppression than armed revolution.
Shall I run for office? Shall I take up arms against the government? Should I abandon my family to do those things? I will have to in order to be remotely successful at either.
Start by being honest with yourself about what the problem is. That’s why I raise the point that the political economy is at fault and won’t be fixed by simply purging the people you see as engaging in wrongthink. Personally I organize with like-minded people and do direct actions.
The original work you quote talked a tough game:
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whatever-the-fuck-kind-of-stupid-noise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh.
which you immediately walked back:
within the specific constraints of voting and engaging in political discourse as a U.S. citizen.
If you really think that out-groups should not be getting ruled over by in-groups, then you really need to recognize that US hegemony has been the most powerful ‘in-group’ in history. Workers in America get paid more not because their work is more valuable but because money can flow freely over borders while people cannot. Labor aristocrats are the workers who are given a small share of the spoils from the rest of the world in exchange for their political inaction. Capitalism is wildly authoritarian and much of what you take for granted as ‘constraints of US political discourse’ are predicated on the US’s hegemonic role within that system.
This entire line of argument seems like you’re trying to pose as if you’re maximally defiant against the status quo, but you also want to continue being anti-communist.
Furthermore, I believe wildcat strikes would be far more effective at dismantling the machinery of disenfranchisement, subjugation and oppression than armed revolution.
Revolutionary organizing has been far more effective, historically speaking.
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The kind that got chucked off reddit for being mean to Trump, Musk and Netanyahu.
