Kalit posted:

So not even 1 specific example when you were insinuating that a lot of conservatives in Portland are just as much of a threat as Reinoehl?

TheDisreputableDog posted:

Yeah a modicum of googling shows this “peaceful yoga medic” also had military sniper training, was discharged for going AWOL, constantly posted “slay my political enemies” diatribes, owned a bunch of guns, and recently went to fight for a Kurdish terrorist group. He’s basically a living, breathing red flag.

DarkCrawler posted:

America, by and large is not a democracy. It is a rotten system with white minority rule on its center, where only power-hungry bastards who build political machines of patrimony and influence-peddling remain in power or those who exploit the hate the existence of such a system eventually breeds, be it those on top of the electoral math or not.

But it seems that the left largely refuses to recognize what it takes to triumph over such a system, and at least on the elected level engages in a fantasy of American democracy where simply saying the right things gets you power because Americans are deep down nice folk who will vote for social democracy as soon as we'll figure out the right buzzwords to use.

Why isn't the left using the literal hundreds.of millions in campaign funding to build machines of its own? Engage in patrimony and influence-peddling? Bribe the voters and key figures? Print out propaganda?

It is not like there isn't a historical precedent for this in America specifically, for engaging and organizing.large immigrant or immigrant-descended populations into their orbit through labor organizing and party control over critical subsections of urban areas:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall

Yeah, they were corrupt as all heck but show me any leftist movement that achieved anything and didn't engage in the same.

There is the rural version for contemporary example, and the far right has that on lock. Far left can do the same, only with union halls instead of churches and internet instead of talk radio.

Hate and fear, and this time with good cause (though when did the left in America not have one?) . If the FBI had not spent the budget of my own country literally waging war murdering the Black Panthers, civil rights organizations and associated groups, they would have been this for African Americans. And despite some of the rhetoric here, Biden ain't LBJ (a true bastard to the core) and whoever is running the FBI ain't Hoover. Times have changed and so has the face of the potential movement that could be raised by leftists playing it dirty.

There is only playing the game, or setting the board on fire and smashing your opponents' face in it, and leftists in America don't seem to be willing to do either. It is this bizarre mix of cynicism where shitlibs have made everything impossible but also almost buddhisr-kind of universal love where each and every Trump supporter isn't clearly a piece of poo poo.

It keeps astounding and fascinating me endlessly.

the_steve posted:

Are you seriously going to pretend that the cops don't ignore right-wingers who are every bit as/more dangerous than he was?

They took the fucker who shot up a black church to Burger King on the way to prison for gently caress's sakes.

And no, I'm not going to give you a detailed list of people from Portland because I don't loving live anywhere near Portland, and unless they manage to get some sort of national profile, none of us are ever going to hear about them no matter how many red flags they've got flying, so gently caress off with that disingenuous attempt-at-a-gotcha bullshit.

Ravenfood posted:

Having a tacit understanding that the police won't show up and murder you in a driveway with an almost comical excess of force because you killed someone helps keep you from running from the police.

After all, we are comparing this situation to a kid who wished he had a gun so he could shoot alleged shoplifters, then later got a gun, brought it to a place with alleged shoplifters and then shot said alleged shoplifters. Surely if we're treating both the same the cops should have just murdered Rittenhouse too, right?

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

We have apparently cured dwarfism.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1461799019169165313

(You have to get treatment by age 5, it costs $899 per week, and you need to take it weekly for a year)

Decon posted:

*Vaguely gestures at the entire series of events on 1/6*

It's not specifically Portland but pretending like cops don't treat RWNJs with kid gloves in the post 1/6/2021 world is trolling, willful ignorance, or something similar enough that, well, either of those terms is fair play in my book.

Kalit posted:

I never stated or insinuated that right-wingers can't be as dangerous as Reinoehl and/or cops don't sometimes ignore them. I was insinuating that Reinoehl was much more dangerous than stereotypical conservatives in Portland who own guns/have some history of violence/talk about a civil war. So you can gently caress off with your disingenuous attempt at putting words in my mouth

If Rittenhouse wouldn't have turned himself in, went on the run for a week trying to hide from the police, gave an interview to a news outlet (i.e. something like OANN) about how his bullet sparked a civil war, and this exact same federal task force scenario played out, I can't imagine too many people here would be outraged by it.

I know I wouldn't be outraged, because like Reinoehl, I figured Rittenhouse would rather go down guns blazing than get arrested. Hell, a number of people would probably think it's a better outcome since if they managed to get Rittenhouse arrested, they figured he wouldn't get convicted and would walk (like what just happened).

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

We have apparently cured dwarfism.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1461799019169165313

(You have to get treatment by age 5, it costs $899 per week, and you need to take it weekly for a year)

Kalit posted:

I never stated or insinuated that right-wingers can't be as dangerous as Reinoehl and/or cops don't sometimes ignore them. I was insinuating that Reinoehl was much more dangerous than stereotypical conservatives in Portland who own guns/have some history of violence/talk about a civil war. So you can gently caress off with your disingenuous attempt at putting words in my mouth

If Rittenhouse wouldn't have turned himself in, went on the run for a week trying to hide from the police, gave an interview to a news outlet (i.e. something like OANN) about how his bullet sparked a civil war, and this exact same federal task force scenario played out, I can't imagine too many people here would be outraged by it.

I know I wouldn't be outraged, because like Reinoehl, I figured Rittenhouse would rather go down guns blazing than get arrested. Hell, a number of people would probably think it's a better outcome since if they managed to get Rittenhouse arrested, they figured he wouldn't get convicted and would walk (like what just happened).

YanniRotten posted:

You absolutely should not be posting if you are under five years old.

Gumball Gumption posted:

It really is wild how d&d is supposed to be the facts and logic debate sub for politics yet it's far more happy to let people wander in and just go and make up a bunch of hypotheticals in their head that make them feel comforted and treat them like facts.

Gumball Gumption posted:

It really is wild how d&d is supposed to be the facts and logic debate sub for politics

quote:

A chill place where you can come in and have a nice chat among friends.

Kalit posted:

So not even 1 specific example when you were insinuating that a lot of conservatives in Portland are just as much of a threat as Reinoehl?

DarkCrawler posted:

America, by and large is not a democracy. It is a rotten system with white minority rule on its center, where only power-hungry bastards who build political machines of patrimony and influence-peddling remain in power or those who exploit the hate the existence of such a system eventually breeds, be it those on top of the electoral math or not.

But it seems that the left largely refuses to recognize what it takes to triumph over such a system, and at least on the elected level engages in a fantasy of American democracy where simply saying the right things gets you power because Americans are deep down nice folk who will vote for social democracy as soon as we'll figure out the right buzzwords to use.

Why isn't the left using the literal hundreds.of millions in campaign funding to build machines of its own? Engage in patrimony and influence-peddling? Bribe the voters and key figures? Print out propaganda?

It is not like there isn't a historical precedent for this in America specifically, for engaging and organizing.large immigrant or immigrant-descended populations into their orbit through labor organizing and party control over critical subsections of urban areas:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall

Yeah, they were corrupt as all heck but show me any leftist movement that achieved anything and didn't engage in the same.

There is the rural version for contemporary example, and the far right has that on lock. Far left can do the same, only with union halls instead of churches and internet instead of talk radio.

Hate and fear, and this time with good cause (though when did the left in America not have one?) . If the FBI had not spent the budget of my own country literally waging war murdering the Black Panthers, civil rights organizations and associated groups, they would have been this for African Americans. And despite some of the rhetoric here, Biden ain't LBJ (a true bastard to the core) and whoever is running the FBI ain't Hoover. Times have changed and so has the face of the potential movement that could be raised by leftists playing it dirty.

There is only playing the game, or setting the board on fire and smashing your opponents' face in it, and leftists in America don't seem to be willing to do either. It is this bizarre mix of cynicism where shitlibs have made everything impossible but also almost buddhisr-kind of universal love where each and every Trump supporter isn't clearly a piece of poo poo.

It keeps astounding and fascinating me endlessly.

quote:

So no electoral path left? I'm not trying to be callous, but if there is no way for the left to win through democracy than the only path left is revolution, and that's definitely too much to ask of people who largely can't even call a fascist a fascist if they are related to them

Kraftwerk posted:

Yeah I support this. The liberal centrists already achieved all their political goals ages ago, they have absolutely zero incentive to work with the left except when fascists and conservative reactionaries are on the brink of seizing absolute power. I thought maybe they could be reasoned with and the overtures to Bernie etc meant Biden shifted to the left. But the events of the last 2 months have broken any confidence I have in centrist suburban liberals as allies.

I still think the left has a severe messaging problem in that they can’t penetrate to groups of people the GOP currently have a stranglehold on with religion, nationalism and ethnic/cultural grievances. No political revolution can take place without the urban working and rural classes joining alongside you. The left needs to reach these people and activate them into their service but I have no idea how we can bypass the catnip that the GOP provides them with courtesy of MSM and RWM. This remains the sticking point of the entire project.

The only strategy I can think of is a loose coalition of ideologically aligned mutual aid organizations who advocate for and protect the interests of their local communities. As described above. As it stands a lot of red states with poor people who vote GOP already have tightly knit communities and support groups to help their members cope with life in impoverish communities. They’re ever present in places like WV, the Florida panhandle and places like Alabama. The left just needs to co-opt these groups and put them in service of socialist goals.

I think at this point the democrats no longer care if they win or lose because Trump is gone and it’s likely DeSantis or someone else is going to take his place. The GOP are back to being the party they were just before Trump won his nomination albeit with a larger coalition thanks for the new political awakenings many people on their side developed thanks to Trump bringing them in.

The future left coalition is going to resemble the one FDR and LBJ had. You need the chuds. You just gotta give them something more valuable than what the southern strategy provides. The current political realignment has put the Rockefeller republicans in the Democratic Party and made them the majority. We need to steal back the rural working class in southern states to win back the kinds of congressional majorities required to control the govt and shift the discourse to the left. We gotta thread that needle so we include PoC and the LGBT communities of all stripes and gender identity. So the big question is how do we put together people who hate eachother in the service of advancing class warfare? How do we undo the southern strategy?

That’s the answer. You answer this question and the centrists and right wingers are toast. At that point either the political system is cowed in our favour or we’ll have enough revolutionary fervour needed to overthrow the system.


But one thing I want to be absolutely clear on is that the left must be categorically ruthless, power hungry and un-afraid to engage in unethical and duplicitous behaviour in the name of achieving power for its political objectives. In this I believe the Bolsheviks of 1905-1917 era have the roadmap for this. It’s not enough to be a bunch of intellectuals discussing stuff in academic forums. We need people who are basically gangsters and criminals in our service to do the dirty work for us while providing some semblance of plausible deniability to the overall movement.

Kalit posted:

I never stated or insinuated that right-wingers can't be as dangerous as Reinoehl and/or cops don't sometimes ignore them. I was insinuating that Reinoehl was much more dangerous than stereotypical conservatives in Portland who own guns/have some history of violence/talk about a civil war. So you can gently caress off with your disingenuous attempt at putting words in my mouth

If Rittenhouse wouldn't have turned himself in, went on the run for a week trying to hide from the police, gave an interview to a news outlet (i.e. something like OANN) about how his bullet sparked a civil war, and this exact same federal task force scenario played out, I can't imagine too many people here would be outraged by it.

I know I wouldn't be outraged, because like Reinoehl, I figured Rittenhouse would rather go down guns blazing than get arrested. Hell, a number of people would probably think it's a better outcome since if they managed to get Rittenhouse arrested, they figured he wouldn't get convicted and would walk (like what just happened).

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

I agree with all of your points up to "playing the game". We're not going to vote our way out of fascism and white supremacy; they must be defeated by force. The system is rigged not only to perpetuate white supremacy but to frustrate the left and to channel our revolutionary energy into feckless, don't-upset-the-applecart parties that only serve to bolster capitalism/the system itself.

If the left is to build a viable "base" for itself, I think the key to that is mutual aid and dual power structures. By 'mutual aid' I mean helping all of the people the system leaves on the outside and doesn't give a poo poo about : minorities, immigrants, the poor, the homeless. By 'dual power structures' I mean that as capitalism continues to crumble before our very eyes, the hope is that the left's mutual aid institutions will replace the mechanisms of the state. I don't know if this makes any sense at all but there can be a middle path between "participating in a rigged, lovely system" and nihilism. It's not an easy path but it's preferable - in my view - to placing our hopes in a corporate party to maybe throw us a couple of crumbs if we vote for them.

Fister Roboto posted:

OK but that's not what happened so I don't see how the hypothetical scenario you imagined is relevant.

Seriously what is your point here? Are you trying to say that the cops gunning down Reinoehl was justified? If you are then you're wrong, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.

FlamingLiberal posted:

Then you have the guy in Portland who shot a Proud Boy and the cops just executed him in his driveway to the delight of Trump

Kalit posted:

if the cops who shot first honestly thought they saw a gun and/or him reaching in his pocket/waistband

Kalit posted:

I admit, part of why I tried to correct it (while loving up myself and including what I thought was fairly factual about him firing at least 1 shot, which is unknown) is because I get annoyed at people praising Reinoehl as a hero, even though I don't think this was FlamingLiberal's intent. And then it got sidetracked from there.

For your question, it depends on what you mean by justified. Should it have happened this way? From all we know, absolutely not. But given all the extreme circumstances of Reinoehl/that incident up to that point, if the cops who shot first honestly thought they saw a gun and/or him reaching in his pocket/waistband, I can understand their perspective even if I don't agree with it. There seemed to be no good outcome of that situation.

Kalit posted:

if the cops who shot first honestly thought they saw a gun and/or him reaching in his pocket/waistband, I can understand their perspective even if I don't agree with it. There seemed to be no good outcome of that situation.

Kalit posted:

So not even 1 specific example when you were insinuating that a lot of conservatives in Portland are just as much of a threat as Reinoehl?

Jaxyon posted:

Remember the time you got caught lying about reinoehl shooting at police and just blew past that and never mentioned it again?

Kalit posted:

I admit, part of why I tried to correct it (while loving up myself and including what I thought was fairly factual about him firing at least 1 shot, which is unknown) is because I get annoyed at people praising Reinoehl as a hero, even though I don't think this was FlamingLiberal's intent. And then it got sidetracked from there.

Kalit posted:

Kalit posted:

Maybe you should do a better job at reading my posts on this very page?

Kraftwerk posted:

Yeah I support this. The liberal centrists already achieved all their political goals ages ago, they have absolutely zero incentive to work with the left except when fascists and conservative reactionaries are on the brink of seizing absolute power. I thought maybe they could be reasoned with and the overtures to Bernie etc meant Biden shifted to the left. But the events of the last 2 months have broken any confidence I have in centrist suburban liberals as allies.

I still think the left has a severe messaging problem in that they can’t penetrate to groups of people the GOP currently have a stranglehold on with religion, nationalism and ethnic/cultural grievances. No political revolution can take place without the urban working and rural classes joining alongside you. The left needs to reach these people and activate them into their service but I have no idea how we can bypass the catnip that the GOP provides them with courtesy of MSM and RWM. This remains the sticking point of the entire project.

The only strategy I can think of is a loose coalition of ideologically aligned mutual aid organizations who advocate for and protect the interests of their local communities. As described above. As it stands a lot of red states with poor people who vote GOP already have tightly knit communities and support groups to help their members cope with life in impoverish communities. They’re ever present in places like WV, the Florida panhandle and places like Alabama. The left just needs to co-opt these groups and put them in service of socialist goals.

I think at this point the democrats no longer care if they win or lose because Trump is gone and it’s likely DeSantis or someone else is going to take his place. The GOP are back to being the party they were just before Trump won his nomination albeit with a larger coalition thanks for the new political awakenings many people on their side developed thanks to Trump bringing them in.

The future left coalition is going to resemble the one FDR and LBJ had. You need the chuds. You just gotta give them something more valuable than what the southern strategy provides. The current political realignment has put the Rockefeller republicans in the Democratic Party and made them the majority. We need to steal back the rural working class in southern states to win back the kinds of congressional majorities required to control the govt and shift the discourse to the left. We gotta thread that needle so we include PoC and the LGBT communities of all stripes and gender identity. So the big question is how do we put together people who hate eachother in the service of advancing class warfare? How do we undo the southern strategy?

That’s the answer. You answer this question and the centrists and right wingers are toast. At that point either the political system is cowed in our favour or we’ll have enough revolutionary fervour needed to overthrow the system.


But one thing I want to be absolutely clear on is that the left must be categorically ruthless, power hungry and un-afraid to engage in unethical and duplicitous behaviour in the name of achieving power for its political objectives. In this I believe the Bolsheviks of 1905-1917 era have the roadmap for this. It’s not enough to be a bunch of intellectuals discussing stuff in academic forums. We need people who are basically gangsters and criminals in our service to do the dirty work for us while providing some semblance of plausible deniability to the overall movement. I am even more convinced than ever before that there needs to be a “dark side” to every well intentioned political movement.

I think that MLK would never have been as successful as he was if not for Malcom X working in parallel with him in the same general direction but with separate goals.

Likewise I do not believe Irish independence was possible without the IRA.
I do not believe Indian independence would have been possible under Gandhi without the work of Subhas Chandra Bose.

Every peaceful liberal political movement needs someone else who works independently but in the same direction who provides the stick incentive while the more polite and kinder face of the movement provides the carrot.

Byzantine posted:

The Bolsheviks won because Russia destroyed itself in the World War.

readingatwork posted:

Kalit are you a conservative? I’m not mad, I’m just fascinated because I thought the last of the conservatives fled DnD back in the Obama years.

Kalit posted:

If you think my arguments/thoughts are similar to a conservative, that would really surprise me and lead me to suspect you never interact with any. I'm not a conservative and I've hated cops my whole life. However, that doesn't mean I think they lie 100% of the time/am always outraged at 100% of the things they do because context/situations aren't all identical.

readingatwork posted:

Kalit are you a conservative? I’m not mad, I’m just fascinated because I thought the last of the conservatives fled DnD back in the Obama years.

Kraftwerk posted:

The future left coalition is going to resemble the one FDR and LBJ had. You need the chuds. You just gotta give them something more valuable than what the southern strategy provides. The current political realignment has put the Rockefeller republicans in the Democratic Party and made them the majority. We need to steal back the rural working class in southern states to win back the kinds of congressional majorities required to control the govt and shift the discourse to the left. We gotta thread that needle so we include PoC and the LGBT communities of all stripes and gender identity. So the big question is how do we put together people who hate eachother in the service of advancing class warfare? How do we undo the southern strategy?

That’s the answer. You answer this question and the centrists and right wingers are toast. At that point either the political system is cowed in our favour or we’ll have enough revolutionary fervour needed to overthrow the system.

Sedisp posted:

Yep that's correct. There is no national electoral path out of here and material conditions haven't deteriorated enough to generate uprisings.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

I don't think there's been a realistic national electoral path for a real left government in my lifetime, no. I don't think that necessarily means violent revolution or bust but if we're really going to get anywhere with things like labor power, I think it would necessarily require dismantling a lot of the system as it exists from the outside rather than trying to participate in a system built to defeat you

icantfindaname posted:

I mean, I don't think the third party left should run presidential candidates, just at the local/state/congressional level. The strategy of being a pressure group within the Dem party seems like a complete and total failure. Who knows if the BBB act will even pass, but it's already cut down to like 90% tax credits and subsidies for health insurance and various other private sector interests. The remaining 10% that could plausibly be labeled social-democratic is maybe they'll lowerthe price of insulin. But probably not

If running third party at lower levels isn't an option (and it should be pointed out, this is the "legitimate" option that if you asked a normie liberal they'd tell you to do), and running within the Democratic Party isn't an option, what's left is basically extralegal means

I think there's pretty decent opportunity to run third party at the state level. Like take India Walton, on the one hand you can say she lost 60 40 against a write in candidate. But on the other hand you can say she won 40% of the vote as a socialist against a Dem machine on the Dems own strongest terrain

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

I agree with all of your points up to "playing the game". We're not going to vote our way out of fascism and white supremacy; they must be defeated by force. The system is rigged not only to perpetuate white supremacy but to frustrate the left and to channel our revolutionary energy into feckless, don't-upset-the-applecart parties that only serve to bolster capitalism/the system itself.

If the left is to build a viable "base" for itself, I think the key to that is mutual aid and dual power structures. By 'mutual aid' I mean helping all of the people the system leaves on the outside and doesn't give a poo poo about : minorities, immigrants, the poor, the homeless. By 'dual power structures' I mean that as capitalism continues to crumble before our very eyes, the hope is that the left's mutual aid institutions will replace the mechanisms of the state. I don't know if this makes any sense at all but there can be a middle path between "participating in a rigged, lovely system" and nihilism. It's not an easy path but it's preferable - in my view - to placing our hopes in a corporate party to maybe throw us a couple of crumbs if we vote for them.

BRJohnson posted:

First, who do you mean by leftists? Is it political leadership, somebody with a D next to their name? They are caught between barely existing, and not being able to do poo poo or reach who they need to.

So we are the leftists.

quote:

What group do we use to organize? Who will direct our manpower and resources? How will we spread this message to build our coalition of the common man? Seems its not the Democratic party. The consensus seems to be anybody in power is already compromised or otherwise unwilling to aggressively pursue the critical changes that we need to make as a country and world.

quote:

If we were to achieve this movement exclusively with the people you already consider allies (or potential allies), is it enough to get us anywhere before we are put down? We all agree that America has fascist racist tendencies and a boner for nipping what we're talking about in the bud. That movement sounds like it's bound for the losing side of a race war the state will join (against us).

quote:

Unions are indeed a great place to work this effort, but they will undoubtedly include a lot of republican leaning folk. We need to also capture some of this rural labor who are desperate and angry and don't have a lot to lose. Our policies will help them and they should be helped. This is a personal grassroots conversation, not one anybody at the top can sell. We need these people and if we as individuals who have the circumstance to do so work them, we can get some of them. Show them that their worst tendencies are being stoked that they might support their own exploitation (and ours obviously).

quote:

Most comfortable middle class dems with a lawn full of rainbow blm flags aren't going to go get their face bloodied for labor, they have too much to lose. Long abused lower class Americans are ripe for it though, but many of them are as of now our political enemies. That's critical in order to prevent massive worker organization, and if we cannot change it I do believe there is no way forward.*

quote:

Amongst so many calls for action and sacrifice I don't see how you can simultaneously write off so many people that we frankly need.

quote:

Who here is related to GOP senators? Dude actually having enough of a repoir with somebody that you might reach them is part of grassroots bottom up action. Screaming at and severing from anybody caught up in our long cultivated culture of racism/fascism isn't sacrifice, it's selfish. At least be so passionate and relentless in your attempts so as to make THEM sever. Not all of them will.

quote:

Of course you can elaborate on what and who you think is truly and unreachable racist and fascist, but my interpretation is "more people than we can afford to write off".