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DarkCrawler posted:Honestly I bet they do enough in their personal lives in the case of climate action, though I guess individual zero emissions is a bit harder to do in America. Zero emissions is hard anywhere outside of super small, wealthy, educated places like Switzerland and even then they're still occasionally struggling.
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Nov 21, 2021 19:37
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Zero emissions is hard anywhere outside of super small, wealthy, educated places like Switzerland and even then they're still occasionally struggling. Yeah, I know I'm priviledged in that I live in a place that affords me the possibility (or to get as far as possible anyway).
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Nov 21, 2021 19:42
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Bel Shazar posted:I help run a street medic organization and help organize others in other states. I've funded and equipped what groups i can, where i find general alignment, to whatever extent i can. This week i extended a business trip, in part, to participate in a protest in Paris so that the women protesting would see another man supporting them. I'm doing my best to convince my family to move to Virginia so that we might help tip the scales slightly. I've almost completely removed meat from my diet. Thanks for sharing. That is excellent and I'm glad you're doing real tangible things. I hope more folks are as well.
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Nov 21, 2021 19:44
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How are u posted:Thanks for sharing. That is excellent and I'm glad you're doing real tangible things. I hope more folks are as well. Cant say I hope but I would welcome it. E: oh and apparently i want to abolish all public schools and hospitals according to that one poster but i'm still not sure that's true Bel Shazar fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 19:48
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BRJohnson posted:I think your posts are often informative, but you keep being overly challenging to people exhibiting a very reasonable reaction to the increasingly bleak prospects we face as a species. Your interpretation seems reasonable. Just look at how badly our systems are struggling over just a couple months of quarantines. Climate change will undoubtedly have a much larger impact than COVID will. And that's exactly why I'm being so forceful about it. Our chances to avert these outcomes are running out. It's quite possible that we've already missed our chance to avert the bad outcomes, and now we're running out the clock on our chances to at least mitigate the impact somewhat. The time to Do Something was at least twenty years ago, and the consequences of being late are gonna be heavy - and quite bloody. And the only political movement that's theoretically ideologically capable of tackling these issues head-on, the left, is a pale shadow of what it was fifty years ago or one hundred years ago. Despite a far friendlier political environment than ever before, with much less official suppression than previous generations have had to withstand, much of the modern left seems to have deluded itself into helplessness. The more online they are, the worse it tends to be. When I see people who haven't even considered the idea of the left being a political movement of its own, who think that the only way to get leftist policy is by trying to convince centrist politicians, I get pissed off. When I see leftists doing imitation "demographics is destiny" bullshit or crowing about a lefty silent majority that will surely usher in leftist domination any day now, I get pissed off. When I see leftists act like they don't need to win public support now because they'll have plenty after leftist policy is passed, I get pissed off. When I see leftists who've abandoned all hope of political change and spend all their time yelling at people who still seek to improve things, I get pissed off. And in each and every case, it's because it's so obviously wrong and self-destructive. The left needs to build a movement of its own, and it needs to be able to convince and turn out people. Whether the goal is electoralism, negotiation, civil disobedience, or something more violent, winning the support of either the workers or the military is an absolute necessity. And that can't be done top-down by national figures or media reporting. Other political movements can manage that, but the left fundamentally opposes existing power structures and therefore has no real legal option but to be a populist workers' movement. It has to be bottom-up, by folks all over the country working to convince the people around them, winning the support of local communities, working to meet people's needs and solve their problems the best they can with or without government support. Whether it's climate change or economic inequality, we have to win public support before we can tackle them. I've spent more than a decade watching the left fail to make even the slightest effort to build a genuine bottom-up community-based effort. A movement that should be dominated by workers cooperating and collaborating - not by academics, lawyers, computer programmers, and podcasters picking fights with people on Twitter. Honestly, a decade probably wouldn't be long enough to build that movement into a national political force - which is why it pains me a lot that so many of us refused to start a decade ago! Crap like Occupy was a huge waste of time.
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Nov 21, 2021 20:12
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Yeah, it wasn't like the federal government militarized cities & states so they could destroy Occupy & co-opt its message into weaksauce centrism. drat hippies need to learn how to get the gently caress beaten out of them & teargassed into oblivion before they can call themselves the left & effect meaningful change!DarkCrawler posted:And it's the embrace of the people with the worst opinions on climate change that I really don't understand. Who's doing this? Who's embracing people with the worst opinions on climate change in this thread? Who are you talking about? Because along with "go touch some grass & get a job" posts like this is some content-free, fact-free, and discussion-free strawman poo poo that detracts from conversation instead of enhancing it. vvv Who's doing this? Do you have some quotes or is this just some generalized anxiety you're expressing? Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 20:41
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Willa Rogers posted:Who's doing this? Who's embracing people with the worst opinions on climate change in this thread? Who are you talking about? A lot of people here seem to be willing to embrace Republicans as long as they know them.
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Nov 21, 2021 20:44
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VanillaGorilla posted:Ron DeSantis is the only other person in the party who seems to have found a lane threading between the Trump base and the GOP establishment. That only lasts until Trump decides to knife him in the gut, though. DeSantis is young enough that I could see him stepping aside for a 2028 run instead. Why risk angering Trump's base when he could become Trump's successor instead?
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Nov 21, 2021 20:57
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Main Paineframe posted:Your interpretation seems reasonable. Just look at how badly our systems are struggling over just a couple months of quarantines. Climate change will undoubtedly have a much larger impact than COVID will. OK I actually eo agree with that. Willa Rogers posted:Yeah, it wasn't like the federal government militarized cities & states so they could destroy Occupy & co-opt its message into weaksauce centrism. drat hippies need to learn how to get the gently caress beaten out of them & teargassed into oblivion before they can call themselves the left & effect meaningful change! He's talking about me, I took exception and still do to severing all Republicans from your life (were it even possible), and the idea that they are all willful fascists. MPFs post explains pretty well why.
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Nov 21, 2021 20:58
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BRJohnson posted:OK I actually eo agree with that. Some of them are only willfully ignorant fascist enablers
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Nov 21, 2021 21:03
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BRJohnson posted:
As do I. If I purged my life of all the Republicans or Trump voters, there wouldn't be many people left. Things that sound good on an online forum don't work too well in reality; you have to engage with people rather than making sure they satisfy a checklist of acceptable viewpoints. That's not to say that I have any tolerance at all for fascists and proud boy types, but they are a tiny minority despite their outsized voices.
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Nov 21, 2021 21:08
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BRJohnson posted:He's talking about me, I took exception and still do to severing all Republicans from your life (were it even possible), and the idea that they are all willful fascists. Oh, lol, I didn't realize they meant "stop letting granny pinch your cheeks till she starts voting Dem." I thought they meant advocating for voting GOP. Given that I've had more fruitful convos talking Republicans into supporting M4A than with liberals busy ventriloquizing why Republicans won't allow M4A to happen, I guess I'm deplorable-adjacent, too. eta: This is why I've thought that transpartisanship should replace bipartisanship as a political utility. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 21:11
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BRJohnson posted:OK I actually eo agree with that. It's not an idea, it is evidenced by all available evidence. You decline to discuss that evidence and the effect these people have on United States, because it would make it pretty clear they are all willful fascists. So they were brainwashed into it by a bad media environment, big whoop, you think Germans post WWI had it any better? Their society coddling their fascist impulses at personal and political level ended up loving everyone over. So in Spain, so in Portugal, so in Brazil, so in Italy, so in Hungary, so in Romania, so in dozens of other examples. Including the United States. The GOP is a political party built on apartheid electoralism, white minority rule in political and judicial matters, authoritarianism, xenophobia and a hundred other absolutely horrific things. Anyone supporting it is a person who agrees with most of those things, which make them a fascist. That they have the type of personality, experiences and influences to make them suspectible to fascism has no bearing on the fact that they are fascists nevertheless of how society should treat them. The left is definitely not going to reform the media scape, education and mental healthcare before taking control so to absolve a fascist because of this factors in the hopes of being able to overcome them is a clearly proven and defined waste of effort, not worth the effects of giving any type of room for the expression of fascist goals and aspirations. Let's not pretend I don't found my views on actual data, if you want it, I can post all the stuff that shows convincing already politically engaged people to literally turn 180 in their views (bare minumum if you want any success on say, climate change) is a monumental task and fails in most cases. Willa Rogers posted:Oh, lol, I didn't realize they meant "stop letting granny pinch your cheeks till she starts voting Dem." I thought they meant advocating for voting GOP. Not a liberal. We can discuss why being a socialist that wants things to happen instead of the smug satisfaction of yelling into the void because you're too scared to cut toxic people off does not make one automatically a liberal. How many socialist politicians have your efforts managed to elected? Or to put it into more context, how many M4A supporting Republican politicians these Republicans have managed to get elected? Is it zero? Because I assume they still voted for Republicans. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 21:20
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Not one of us (ok maybe some of us) know each other past a username, so is it to much to ask to not assume how they spend their energies outside these forums?
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Nov 21, 2021 21:22
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I live in the Charlottesville area and know someone who was affected by Fields' car attack, and even I don't think that everyone who pulls the lever for the GOP is secretly a fascist. I get where this is coming from but it's a really hyperbolic viewpoint that glosses over a lot of reasons why someone might vote GOP. This is not to make excuses for GOP voters and what they excuse at all. I've never liked the GOP since I started following politics 20 years ago. No one is going to be won over to socialism or communism by conducting purity tests for "sinners" who have ever voted GOP in their lives. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 21:27
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I live in the Charlottesville area and know someone who was affected by Fields' car attack, and even I don't think that everyone who pulls the lever for the GOP is secretly a fascist. I get where this is coming from but it's a really hyperbolic viewpoint that glosses over a lot of reasons why someone might vote GOP. Especially, as we've discussed, given the Democratic Party's embrace of "former" Republicans & war criminals. Don't talk to granny over the holidays but be sure to vote for Charlie Crist next year! Say, wasn't that Colin Powell funeral lovely? 
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Nov 21, 2021 21:31
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DarkCrawler posted:It's not an idea, it is evidenced by all available evidence. You decline to discuss that evidence and the effect these people have on United States, because it would make it pretty clear they are all willful fascists. I'm just going to set aside the expediency of which we need to gain some sort of power due to factors I'm sure you're aware of. I'm not a Christian, but the idea that human beings can change or be redeemed sounds like a much better way to start a movement than writing off a significant and hard to define slice of the populace. There literally isn't the social appetite or numbers of informed active folks like us to perform some surgical purging of America's original sin. If that many people are that unreachable, you want to tell them they're opfor and THEN fight like hell? The only kind of massive flashpoint that would generate your support seems something akin to civil war, because I don't understand how that leads to timely electoral power holy poo poo it comes off as if you've never met a human being.
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Nov 21, 2021 22:01
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I live in the Charlottesville area and know someone who was affected by Fields' car attack, and even I don't think that everyone who pulls the lever for the GOP is secretly a fascist. I get where this is coming from but it's a really hyperbolic viewpoint that glosses over a lot of reasons why someone might vote GOP. I don't think they're secretly fascist, I think they are openly fascist. As evidenced by their vote and eager support for a fascist party. If A) Are you a member or supporter of a fascist organization Is too much of a purity test for whatever leftist path you have, good luck. That honestly is the only answer I can give, I'm not being snide. A former Republican, obviously, is no longer a Republican. You need no effort to convert them out of white nationalism or any other awful ideology unless they went too far to the right even for the Republicans (and holy poo poo that is pretty far). Willa Rogers posted:Especially, as we've discussed, given the Democratic Party's embrace of I don't give a gently caress about the Dems, I am talking about the left. Cut off both racist grandma and Charlie loving Crist. Answer to what I actually wrote instead of bizarre invented caricatures derived from your own head. BRJohnson posted:I'm just going to set aside the expediency of which we need to gain some sort of power due to factors I'm sure you're aware of. You're again answering to what you think I wrote, and not what I actually wrote. Surgical purging? Civil war? No, those are, again, things you have to do when nations choose your path and the faecists gently caress things up for everyone. Do you want to discuss any of the myriad examples I mentioned and how the situations are horribly similar? I am deeply familiar with human beings and what your approach leads to. We can use United States as an example too. The number of unreachables seems to be somewhere between a third and 40%. Societies have dealt with shutting up larger numbers of fascists out of society until they stop being that. If you disagree that the GOP is a fascist party, that is something that can be also evidenced. You and I seem to disagree whether or not supporting a fascist political party and fascist politics makes one a fascist. If you don't think it does, I think we have to agree to disagree. Human beings can change or be redeemed. It is just very unlikely in the case of fascists unless they're forced to. Again, the evidence for this is plenty. I like places where that forcing is done by societal conventions instead of brutal wars. I'd like to think the latter is not necessary for the former. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 22:15
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Wouldn't that include every Democrat too? They don't sever from the Republicans either in actual politicking or in their personal lives.
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Nov 21, 2021 22:22
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DarkCrawler posted:I don't think they're secretly fascist, I think they are openly fascist. As evidenced by their vote and eager support for a fascist party. I know, and neither am I. To me, though, a lot of this is a consequences of the political system in the US, which squeezes the entire political spectrum into two binary choices.
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Nov 21, 2021 22:24
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Bear Enthusiast posted:Wouldn't that include every Democrat too? They don't sever from the Republicans either in actual politicking or in their personal lives. They do, but I feel like if you truly believe both sides are the same, it's not going to be a very fruitful conversation. Like...an actual infrastructure week is a pretty stark difference, and I don't know, not dying in droves to a suicidal hell-pact with a rampaging virus to a degree that even the Spanish Flu thinks this new kid has some chops. Do Democrats suck? Yes. Are they the same as Republicas? I don't believe they are. That I why I think taking it over, based on currently un- or misused resources, demographics of available non-voters, and the available strategies evidenced by U.S. and world examples, make it the best strategy for the left. If some Republicans are converted by a mutual aid program, cool. Nobody is asking for people to be asked their political inclinations on a food drive But you won't know which ones, so don't waste a time one them because that seems to be a vanishingly small number according to all data I can find of political realignment in the United States. EDIT: I think I misread your point a bit. I don't think not severing ties with fascists is a sin in and itself. Severing is simply something useful everyone who isn't a fascist can immediately do. F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I know, and neither am I. To me, though, a lot of this is a consequences of the political system in the US, which squeezes the entire political spectrum into two binary choices. Again, not unique to the U.S. but the choice is a pretty stark binary. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Nov 21, 2021 |
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Nov 21, 2021 22:31
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DarkCrawler posted:I don't think they're secretly fascist, I think they are openly fascist. As evidenced by their vote and eager support for a fascist party. Republican voters support Republicans -- the actual policies that Republican voters support is all over the place. Most of them support fascism only incidentally, via supporting Republicans. A vote for a party does not mean you support every crime committed by that party, and the only logically consistent endpoint of the argument that you own every crime is to not vote at all. I don't care at all if you want to poo poo on Republicans for voting that way, the reason this matters is because plenty of people would dump the fascism for something else that appeals to them. It's not the fundamental basis of what makes an "American conservative." Can you convert avowed fascists? Nah, not usually (unless they're an apolitical type who just loves them some "action for action's sake" nonsense). Can you convert people who don't really give a poo poo about politics but bought some fascist lines? Of course.
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Nov 21, 2021 22:35
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Republican candidates are increasingly mascots for the id of Republican voters, crazy hate-spewing spiteful monsters more interested in falsehoods and platitudes than policy. While this is obviously monstrous, it is interesting that Democrats rarely have firebrands and when they do half the party hates them for rocking the boat. I don't know what the solution is but it isn't a coincidence that leftists frequently say they don't feel any kind of connection to Democrats: its because the candidates have all the vibrancy of cold meatloaf.
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Nov 21, 2021 22:55
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Society forcing fascists out before they take power is something like Greece outlawing the Golden Dawn and laws against fascist symbols. America is pretty resistant to anything like that.
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Nov 21, 2021 23:13
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DarkCrawler posted:
This is some coooooomically privileged posting. I have severed every connection with the fascists in my life beyond ones I literally cannot. Since you know I have to work in the US of A. I've got more than one friend however who lives with a fascist parent that will become homeless should they sever.
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Nov 21, 2021 23:29
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Direct action is now a requirement and there's no way around it.
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Nov 21, 2021 23:45
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^^^ This tooMendrian posted:I don't know what the solution is At the very least people on the left needs to grow some self respect and stop voting for the Manchins and Sinema's of the party. I'm not even talking about the generic dems who are just weak and spineless (though I don't vote for them either). I'm talking about Democrats that show open hostility towards progressive principles. gently caress them. Let them loose and try again in a few years with a new candidate that might suck less. If centrists become radioactive ~maybe~ the party will start putting forward better candidates just out of pure self interest. Though to be honest I suspect that they would simply let the Republicans win everywhere and murder everybody before they seriously embraced a progressive agenda.
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Nov 21, 2021 23:50
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HonorableTB posted:Direct action is now a requirement and there's no way around it. What do you mean by that? What does direct action mean to you? Strikes? Protests that shut down city centers and highways and such?
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Nov 21, 2021 23:53
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How are u posted:What do you mean by that? What does direct action mean to you? Strikes? Protests that shut down city centers and highways and such? General strikes, crippling infrastructure and transportation through occupation, and a legitimate face to the movement that diverts attention away from the rest.
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Nov 22, 2021 00:13
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Republican voters support Republicans -- the actual policies that Republican voters support is all over the place. Most of them support fascism only incidentally, via supporting Republicans. A vote for a party does not mean you support every crime committed by that party, and the only logically consistent endpoint of the argument that you own every crime is to not vote at all. I don't care at all if you want to poo poo on Republicans for voting that way, the reason this matters is because plenty of people would dump the fascism for something else that appeals to them. It's not the fundamental basis of what makes an "American conservative." It doesnt mean you endorse it... it absolutely means you are supporting it.
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Nov 22, 2021 00:20
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readingatwork posted:^^^ This too Of course the dems would. They have the same donor base as the republicans. We’re not the constituents, we’re the product. US politics are basically pro wrestling at this point, and in pro wrestling, the money program is mostly in a protagonist’s chase for the belt when it’s being held by an eminently despicable cartoon bad guy that cheats at every opportunity. The DNC establishment and the donor base they share with the RNC long ago figured out this business plan. The DNC doesn’t want to have to effectively govern and deliver on promises, they want to lose dramatically to a cartoon villain, cry shenanigans (or racism, or sexism, or whatever), and get back in the hunt (and ensuing fundraisers). There’s less than no money to be had in “The orange gasbag we spent four years painting as the final boss of fascism is out, we control the executive and the legislature, but you still can’t have nice things because…” Republicans don’t have this issue of course because their stated platform lines up with the actual interests of the shared donor bases. Democrats have to mask it with platitudes, wearing kente cloths at photo ops, or other empty, zero-cost gestures.
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Nov 22, 2021 00:23
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Sedisp posted:This is some coooooomically privileged posting. I have severed every connection with the fascists in my life beyond ones I literally cannot. Since you know I have to work in the US of A. I've got more than one friend however who lives with a fascist parent that will become homeless should they sever.
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Nov 22, 2021 00:28
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I hope this isn't against the rules, seems relevant. DSA posted:“Transformational change in society does not come from moral righteousness or a checklist of policy positions, but from growing and wielding power. It is therefore imperative that we organize the largest possible number of people to join DSA and work together with broader coalitions united around common goals.”
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Nov 22, 2021 00:38
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Vorik posted:I don't think that's tone policing and he's right. This forum is full of prospective revolutionaries who don't seem to ever actually do anything other than make tens of thousands of posts on a dead "comedy" forum. There was a prominent online leftist who ran for office and his rotten online leftist brain caused him to piss away everything in a single term lol. But even that guy at least had the fortitude to leave his room, so I respect him far more than the countless screeching leftists on these forums who have been doomposting for over half a decade now with no sign of stopping. These dudes are going to be posting "dems bad!" in the last few seconds of their sad existence as the next government sponsored kyle rittenhouse takes aim before splattering their brains on the pavement. lmao! Hasn’t Tiny Toese suffered enough? probably not but don’t go out and shoot him and post about it For what it’s worth, I have recently tried to contribute to something larger than myself that aligns with my own beliefs, including an electoral campaign and efforts organized by that elected office. She’s fighting off a recall in a deep blue city right now, so I’m a little cynical at the moment, personally. mawarannahr fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 00:41
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Things are about to pop off in Waukesha. Someone drove through a parade and cops say shots fired (probably at the driver) https://www.the-sun.com/news/4115816/waukesha-holiday-parade-chaos-in-wisconsin/
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Nov 22, 2021 00:42
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wtf, they went after the grannies.quote:"Witnesses on the phone just told me several members of the “Dancing Grannies” were hit and are not moving," she says.
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Nov 22, 2021 01:05
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Willa Rogers posted:wtf, they went after the grannies. Joke take: Does anyone know Mike Stoklasa's current location. Serious take: Holy gently caress, what the gently caress is wrong with Wisconsin, just... in general now?
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Nov 22, 2021 01:07
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HonorableTB posted:Things are about to pop off in Waukesha. Someone drove through a parade and cops say shots fired (probably at the driver) "Holiday Horror" Willa Rogers posted:wtf, they went after the grannies. But she was just walking home from our house
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Nov 22, 2021 01:07
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readingatwork posted:^^^ This too If the Dems keep losing to right-wing opponents, they're not going to move left, they're going to move right. To force the Dems left, they need to start losing to left-wing opponents. There's no better way to demonstrate that the voters want a leftist than to run leftists who do a better job of ousting centrists than the opposing party does. But that's not going to happen as long as leftists are thinking solely in terms of what can we do to get the Democratic Party to start giving us leftist candidates to vote for.
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Nov 22, 2021 01:22
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Main Paineframe posted:If the Dems keep losing to right-wing opponents, they're not going to move left, they're going to move right. To force the Dems left, they need to start losing to left-wing opponents. There's no better way to demonstrate that the voters want a leftist than to run leftists who do a better job of ousting centrists than the opposing party does. So simple just start a third party that is able to challenge entrenched power bloc with support from the media. And then make sure if they lose you vote for dems anyway. Like you either need to accept that Dems losing is while not good certainly nesscary to building an alternative party or accept that running third party is a doomed prospect.
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Nov 22, 2021 01:28
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