eke out posted:

bad optics

Skex posted:

The argument is that liberalism was created as a moral defense of slavery, which seems particularly odd since [b] there wasn't really any philosophy or ideology prior to it that even questioned whether slavery was moral or not. ]/b]It was liberal democracies that questioned the practice in the first place and where it was ended.

Cerebral Bore posted:

This might be the lowest point of your already abysmal level of reading comprehension. Congrats, I guess?

Skex posted:

I mean come on it's not like Communism has any better record on this stuff, The USSR was not a place of tolerance and acceptance of difference, nor was it particularly environmentally conscious either. In fact it turns out that pretty much every system that concentrates power in the hands of a few eventually suffer from the same short sighted tyrannical situations. The problem is concentration of power, not what the economic system or political system per se, it's just that most political and economic systems tend to concentrate power into the hands of those who are willing to abuse it and even those who start with the best of intentions eventually end up rationalizing abuses of power in service of themselves, they decide that either "it's for the greater good" conveniently ignoring how the those actions always result in them having more power to abuse.

Skex posted:

I don't understand why it is that "leftists" don't seem to grasp that there is a force in human motive that has consistently been opposed to any change no matter how good it is and that short of just straight murdering them all it's often necessary to make compromises with them in order to gain any improvement in the human condition.

Majorian posted:

Like hell they don't. Offer, or threaten to withhold, appointments, threaten to strip seniority, get up in their faces and screech at them, threaten to endorse a primary challenger, etc. At some point you have to call Joe Manchin's bluff and say, "Oh, you're going to threaten to jump ship to the Republicans, lose your seniority, and probably get taken out in a Republican primary? Be my guest." The Democratic leadership doesn't have any leverage like that over senators because they choose to never exercise it.

Majorian posted:

I would strongly recommend that you read some Russian (and Chinese and Cuban and Vietnamese and...) history and take the time to contextualize where these Communist states' concentration of power arose from. Because the Russians didn't need Marx to prefer autocratic, sometimes tyrannical rulers.

theflyingorc posted:

This is like saying that when playing chicken, you'll always win if you never swerve.

I also think Manchin, specifically, might WIN a Republican primary.

theflyingorc posted:

This is like saying that when playing chicken, you'll always win if you never swerve.

quote:

I also think Manchin, specifically, might WIN a Republican primary.

Typo posted:

dictatorships are literally written into the dna of those cultures

Willie Tomg posted:

If I meditated for a week on how to best inflame the most organized and militant sects of the american right wing while doing nothing whatsoever to empower the people who'd necessarily resist them I sincerely could not do better than "Opportunity Grants for black entrepreneurs as a response to police brutality"

Gripweed posted:

If the scope of your political imagination doesn't include actually winning, why would you even care about or be passionate about politics? If you genuinely don't think that in your lifetime you could see the policies you support being put in place to change the world towards how you want it to be, why on earth would you be posting about the Democrat primary 8 months before it even starts?

BrandorKP posted:

Yes he has hosed up pretty bad on this. I thought he'd break in the other direction. He may yet, but it's not going to happen in this primary.

But that second question (socialism and democracy) is the interesting one anyway. It's also not new. It's from Germany in the thirties. Many of the fault lines in these threads aren't new and the arguements certainly aren't. Where do you stand on that one?

theflyingorc posted:

I think it's going to be very difficult to do more than incrementalism even with a very good result in 2020, even if we get President Bernie, because of the goddamn poo poo that is the US Senate right now. The biggest tactical mistake the Democrats have made was not burning down the filibuster in 2008, which was the window where we could have done some cool things - if we didn't have the filibuster.

theflyingorc posted:

By what method. If the government assumed the debt and paid it off, probably not that bad. If he just declares "THERE IS NO LONGER CREDIT CARD DEBT" then it would probably explode the economy

theflyingorc posted:

I think it's going to be very difficult to do more than incrementalism even with a very good result in 2020, even if we get President Bernie, because of the goddamn poo poo that is the US Senate right now. The biggest tactical mistake the Democrats have made was not burning down the filibuster in 2008, which was the window where we could have done some cool things - if we didn't have the filibuster.

SKULL.GIF posted:

bootlicker

Trabisnikof posted:

This is a definitions issue of sorts. USDA ERS uses economic activity to determine size, while I was pulling from USDA Census of Agriculture by acreage.

So under the ERS definition there are 27,828 "Low-sales small family farms" that are over 2,000+ acres because they gross less than $100,00 a year. That accounts for at least 6% of all ag land in the US and at least 34% of all "low-sales small family farm" land.

Which is a vastly different kind of farm than the less than 50 acre farm that the majority of "low-sales small family farm" owns.

Majorian posted:

You're not even going to get incrementalism if you don't highball your demands. Again, the Obama years proved that.

Majorian posted:

I would strongly recommend that you read some Russian (and Chinese and Cuban and Vietnamese and...) history and take the time to contextualize where these Communist states' concentration of power arose from. Because the Russians didn't need Marx to prefer autocratic, sometimes tyrannical rulers.

e to be slightly less dickish, but come on dude

Pembroke Fuse posted:

This is some Sonderweg mixed in with good old Orientalism. Russians/Chinese/Cubans/Vietnamese are incapable of non-authoritarian political systems because... culture... genes... innate inability to become civilized?

joepinetree posted:

Incrementalism had never worked. Every progressive policy ever enacted in the us is the result of starting with a bold policy. We have Medicare not because people sat around and thought that would be a good first step, but because there was a real chance of passing universal healthcare. Timid first steps are smothered in the cradle, not emboldened over time.

Not to mention the magnitude of the crisis we're seeing. The gulf is in the process of becoming a single endless island of sargassum, even the paltry protections of the ACA maybe gone soon, and the next recession may take years to fix given the dependency on the gig economy. Technocratic half measures won't help with any of that.

Pembroke Fuse posted:

This is some Sonderweg mixed in with good old Orientalism. Russians/Chinese/Cubans/Vietnamese are incapable of non-authoritarian political systems because... culture... genes... innate inability to become civilized?

quote:

Also, the issue isn't Marx... its rather Marxist-Lenninst vanguardism (the form of Marxism that incidentally ended up becoming dominant in and dominating all of these states).

Majorian posted:

In Russia's and China's histories, they were best able to make those great leaps forward (to steal a phrase) under autocratic rulers.

Typo posted:

Majorian posted:

I'm not seeing where autonomy of the individual for everyone is guaranteed under liberalism; I'm also not seeing how it isn't guaranteed under socialism.

Majorian posted:

It’s almost as if the way that “socialism” played out in the 20th century has more to do with factors like the Russian Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, the Bay of Pigs, the American savagery in Vietnam, etc...

Majorian posted:

It’s almost as if the way that “socialism” played out in the 20th century has more to do with factors like the Russian Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, the Bay of Pigs, the American savagery in Vietnam, etc...

Typo posted:

while we could argue all day about the history of socialist states in the 20th century, one cannot help but think if someone is trying to argue for "socialism guarantee people's rights and freedoms", that casually bringing up Stalin and the Great leap forward might not be the best 'tactic" to convince a reader of one's correctness.

Majorian posted:

There’s a reason Peter the Great and Stalin are always in the top three most beloved Russians, whenever one news source or another runs one of those silly surveys.