Schmoo @ Schmoo @slrpnk.net

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5

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494

Joined

2 yr. ago

Perhaps acting as if Arab Americans are a cohesive voting bloc rather than a sea of individuals making individual decisions is a mistake. Quoting Rashida Tlaib as if she's part of the problem is ridiculous.

The time didn't go anywhere, we did.

Try 18 years ago, when Aaron Swartz left.

If you were to point a spectrometer at something brown like a tree trunk you would see wavelengths corresponding to red and green light. That's what I mean when I say brown only exists in our perception; there is no wavelength of light corresponding to the color brown.

Except it isn't "real" in the sense that it doesn't correspond to a specific wavelength of light. It is impossible to produce a brown light; the closest you can get is amber. The color brown is context-dependent and only exists in our perception. To display brown on a screen you have to use orange, desaturate it, and make sure it's darker than its surroundings.

If you pull up a solid brown image on your phone and hold it against a darker background (you may need to turn off the lights), you will see orange.

I used to be interested in the things Andrew Yang had to say back in 2020, especially with regard to UBI, but I'm really put off by him now. His whole schtick is a libertarian technocratic utopian fantasy. The expansion of welfare while simultaneously sucking up to oligarchs is just a way to preserve the capitalist status quo. He wants to breathe new life into the machine that's exploiting us and destroying the planet.

His vision for the future is basically just the UN as depicted in The Expanse.

What's your goal in confronting those who criticize the Democrats? You can't shield them from criticism by wagging your finger at people with legitimate grievances and insisting that they're helping Trump win. Again, if you want to play the blame game it can go either way; you can blame the leftists who criticize Democrats or blame the Democrats for failing to address the concerns of their own base.

Trump and his cronies have been drowning in criticism since he first entered politics and he's able to shrug it off like a minor annoyance because he's done the work of building a strong base of support. He appeals to both the material and immaterial interests of his base and is responsive to their desires (to the dismay of anyone with any semblance of sanity).

Meanwhile the Democrats treat their base with contempt, never responding to their concerns, and abandoning them like so much garbage when they thought it was strategically prudent. They make themselves vulnerable to the kind of propaganda you're talking about by refusing to engage in even the slightest appeal to those who critique them from the left.

The left is in a slump right now and has been for some time. Decades of repression have been successful in preventing mass movements (ones that challenge the status quo, at least) before they start. We can break through, but it will take a lot more people realizing that they can't achieve their political objectives by working within the system, and then overcoming their apathy and hopelessness enough to take collective action.

A lot of people are stuck in the apathy and hopelessness stage right now, but I see rising revolutionary potential. More people are waking up, and the mass movement that finally breaks the siege may be on the horizon. Don't give up hope.

I’m blaming the people that tipped the scales and got Trump elected.

You acknowledge the influence of billionaires and foreign governments on our political process, yet you still place the blame on progressives for criticizing Democrats for refusing to challenge those billionaires. Why?

The progressives are the Democrats' true base, so if Democrats are unpopular with their base and are receiving criticism from them, it's on the Democrats to respond to that criticism and appeal to their base. If you absolutely must play the blame game, place the blame on those who had the power to do better and didn't. You can be frustrated about the way people vote all you want, but it isn't going to change their minds. Only the Democrats had that power, and they refused to do what needed to be done.

Is that the guy who was drunk and returning to his hotel room when the gravy seals mowed him down in the hallway? That video was so irredeemably fucked up that if I remember correctly the cops actually faced consequences. I don't think I ever heard if those consequences stuck though.

The only answer is mass movements. If you can't beat them with money you have to beat them with numbers. We have to continue the slow process of building dual power from the bottom up by engaging in mutual aid and taking into our own hands what the Democrats refuse to.

Money is power in this country, but at its core it's only an abstraction of labor power. Unions can win elections and even run their own social programs if only more people choose to fight. Existing unions need to radicalize and more radical unions need to form.

If the strategy of compromising with the right, appealing to moderate voters, and sucking up to corporate donors is so effective, why did it fail miserably at stopping the fall to fascism? Are you of the same mind as the Democratic leadership, that Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign?

You're making the same mistake that right-wingers make, blaming the powerless for the actions of the powerful.

control of corporate donors and the media makes the DNC extremely strong

You seem to be a bad listener, because you got it backwards. The DNC doesn't have control over corporate donors and the media, corporate donors and the media have control over the DNC. They're not actually weak, their supposed incompetence is a choice. They're not actually incapable of winning elections and passing good policy that helps the people, they're unwilling. The interests of the Democratic leadership and the interests of the people are misaligned, and they only appear weak because they misrepresent their values and goals.

But ideologically, while not communist, I don't see how that structure can't be considered socialist.

It's not that it can't be, I just personally don't consider a state socialist unless it is a functioning democracy that enacts what is at least an approximation of the will of the workers. It becomes obvious this is not the case when a state is hostile towards workers who attempt to organize.

Only because the very concepts of ownership and the collective-individual dichotomy are necessarily vague and subjective. China considers themselves socialist because they equivocate the people with the state. If the people are collectively represented by the state and the state owns (some of) the means of production, then at least transitively the people own (some of) the means of production.

As an anarchist I don't believe the state adequately represents the interests of the people, nor do I think it could even if it were radically democratic and egalitarian, though I would still certainly prefer that to the existing status quo. Somewhere a line must be drawn arbitrarily and I prefer to draw it on the other side of authoritarian state control.

Socialism isn't when the government does stuff for the people, it's when the people take matters into their own hands and do stuff for the good of each other. Even if a state behaves in the most benevolent way possible, it is not socialist unless the workers have collective ownership of the means of production.

Reminds me of this:

Not sure if this is real, but you know you've won at life when you can submit something looking like this and still get hired.

They're socks with grippy material on the bottom to keep you from slipping. They give them to you when you're admitted to the hospital. The implication is that they were sent to the psych ward and put on suicide watch.

The problem is that meaningfully helping others often requires self-sacrifice. Solidarity is a shift in perspective, to extend the self around others and act in the collective interest.

It's not exactly uncommon for systems set up to oppose something to end up supporting them instead. See the ADL covering for Elon and condemning those opposed to genocide as antisemitic. In theory the ADL should be opposed to fascism, but because Israel has become fascist they found themselves on the same side as those who had been and would be their oppressors.