#sucks that the democratic party is such a failure but

[pinxilla]

The on-going conflict in Palestine should not be a part of your decision this November.

Ok, I usually avoid posting about politics because 1. I am very busy and would rather engage with media that brings me joy and 2. online politics is.... But in light of both the debate and the recent reveal of the overruling of Chevron, pretty much every platform has been overloaded with everyone's thoughts on the matter and now I'm jumping in! Yay!

Now, first thing to clarify: I hold firm in my belief that Palestine has every right to be its own independent state, as it had been for thousands of years prior to the 1940s. The UN and pretty much every nation of significant standing in the global field has failed in protecting Palestinians and upholding international law. Israel has been freely committing atrocities on the U.S' dime and it is disgusting. Frankly, I am ashamed to be a part of the nation that has enabled it. If you are able, please continue donating to vetted charities and continue to speak your mind on the matter. Visibility can be as vital to motion on an issue as finance. However, you should not use your stance on Palestine as a deciding factor in the 2024 presidential election.

The Democratic party has failed on many fronts in upholding the views of its constituents. Despite the thousands of protests around the country to withhold funds and arms from Israel, Biden and Congress have maintained their alliance with a merciless and power-hungry foreign country that has consumed the lives of more than 40,000 people. And Trump and the Republican party would have done the exact same thing. Both candidates support Israel, both are far past their prime and experiencing rapid mental decline, neither are ideal candidates and neither will promote significant progress. But, one of these candidates will allow the same conservative views that fueled the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Chevron v. Natural Resources to turn into federal legislation. And that candidate is not Joe Biden.

I understand that he and the Democratic party's performance the past eight or so years has been incredibly frustrating, but trust me that in not voting or giving your vote to Trump, you will be making it worse.

I have seen several posts circulating with the rough sentiment of "well this was overturned under Biden" "this was passed under Biden" "this/that/the other happened under Biden's administration" etc. and I must emphasize that the President is actually one of the least powerful forces when it comes to the creation, passage, and introduction of legislation. A President can not directly introduce legislation. A President does not have any say on a bill until it reaches their desk, in which case they can pass or veto-- and even if they veto it, Congress can override it. When it comes to Supreme Court rulings, a President literally has no say whatsoever. That's the entire point. Joe Biden is not responsible for the overturning of Roe or Chevron. Those decisions were made by the 6 conservative justices who were notably, not appointed by Joe Biden. One of which, however, was appointed by former President and 34-count felon Donald Trump.

A President's power resides almost entirely through influence and image. And even if it is getting rather hard to tell, having a Democrat in office is still better than having a Republican when it comes to social and economic progress.

To the most recent overruling: Chevron was a landmark in ensuring federal agencies can enforce environmental, workplace, public health, and consumer protections. By overruling its president, the Supreme Courts has justified thousands of cases of the federal government stepping in to *protect your rights*. In the future, it will be much, much harder for federal protection agencies to adequately justify their control over the practices of corporations. Simply put, we are fucked. This is on top of the overruling of Roe v. Wade, which has already put a significant dent in the protection of women's access to health care, as well as damage to every American's right to privacy and autonomy.

Without these cases protecting us, it is incredibly dangerous to have a Republican-- especially one of Trump's... fervor-- back in office. Unfortunately, we are rapidly losing the privilege to vote based on our government's actions abroad. Again: continue donating to families in Palestine, continue speaking out, continue protesting, I will be there with you, but please vote blue in November.

[fairuzfan]

Would you rather have a president that enables a genocide? Or would you rather have a president that vilifies immigrants, promotes facism, dismantles the rights of women and minorities, emboldens white nationalists, worsens the wage gap, defunds vital services, AND enables a genocide?

It's an unfair and unreasonable question to ask. I know. Unfortunately those are our choices for president. It sucks, but it's a 2 party system. And until any change is made where a 3rd party vote is no longer equivalent to not voting at all, it's better to just vote blue for the presidential election. Not because Democrats are the "lesser evil", but because NOT having a Republican president will prevent further suffering of Americans and will lessen the risks of minorities' rights being threatened and revoked.

The president chooses the members of the supreme court who hold lifelong positions and whose legal decisions have decades-long ramifications. Trump picked 3 of the 11 current members who currently hold a Republican majority. It was that supreme court that overturned Roe V Wade and that decision is harming thousands of people today in multiple states.

Biden already nominated one SCOTUS, and in his next term he could appoint 1-2 more Democratic members who would work to protect rather than erode American rights.

The Trump administration was lethal for thousands of Americans for a multitude of reasons, including his failure to properly respond to and then proceeded to politicize the COVID-19 pandemic.

As awful as it sounds, as hard as it is to believe in the moment, ESPECIALLY with the atrocities Biden is perpetuating in Palestine right now, don't believe for a moment that this genocide would be even slightly less cruel under Trump. The difference is Trump's cruelties would extend to Americans as well— especially immigrants.

The point I'm making is the only ethical choice for this election is to vote for Biden, but at the same time that vote is not the same as condoning his actions. Don't let voting be the end all for political action, and I hope you understand why this choice is necessary in an unfair voting system. Please participate in your local elections, Call your representatives. Continue demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end of Israel's occupation over Palestine. And please keep helping Palestinians.

I think it's quite wild to say people domestically haven't been dying under Biden. Hundreds of thousands disabled people have died during the Biden presidency due to covid. I myself only got covid because people around my family stopped masking. Even some of my family members stopped masking because of the CDC thing. There have been countless other things that I'm too tired to list as well that directly contributed to the death of people.

I'm sorry I don't know why you sent this I'm not going to change my mind. I'm not voting for the man that killed people I know and lied to our faces about it.

[snoozy-red-panda]

okay. Thoughts in bullet point form because they are too varied for me to form a paragraph

- it is just a lie that a Trump Republican administration and a Harris administration would be the exact same for marginalized people. for one thing, that is not one single group of people. and it makes me mad when people lie to my face. don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

- it is gross to dismiss people's ethical aversion to voting for Biden or Harris as "just to make yourself feel good about your morals". if you don't have your morals what else do you have? and aiding and abetting an apartheid regime committing genocide is not some little oopsie. nor is it at all comparable to failures to significantly change the status quo in such domestic policy areas as health care. the president has much more power over foreign policy than domestic policy, and a sin of commission of this magnitude is not the same as a sin of omission.

- Harris is not the same person as Biden. this moment allows for opportunity to create greater pressure against potentially the next president. this includes issues like her choice for vice president and the party platform.

- yes Harris was essentially a cop. it is stupid in my opinion to try and split hairs otherwise when she called herself that. but it's worth understanding that any candidate for president (including Jill Stein) is running to be the top law enforcement official in the nation.

- the two parties are not exactly the same. Trump and Vance are not running to give us a second term of Biden. they are running to finish the job and install a christofascist regime full of their worst January 6th fantasies. I am too familiar with the worst impulses of Republicans. Republicans want mass deportations, a return to the 1950s for minorities and queer people and women, and a complete dismantling of regulations on big businesses. they don't believe in climate change, and their views on Israel are in general somehow even worse than that of the average Democrat. there is so much more that I don't have time or room to list but luckily they wrote a book called project 2025. if they win in November it will hurt people in blue states, red states, and outside of the country. and it is not fear mongering to point out obvious and real reasons for fear. don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. and you are naive if you believe things cannot get worse.

- it is a two party winner-take-all system in an electoral college. it sucks. it should be changed. your vote in November still exists in that system. voting third party for president is essentially putting your ballot in a paper shredder.

- no, your vote for president does not matter the same in every state, because we have a horrible system called the electoral college. but I would caution you from believing that your state is "safe". and there will be more on your ballot where your vote will likely matter a great deal.

- not voting is not registered by anyone important as an act which they should pay attention to. not voting registers as silence. it is not the same thing as donating to people in need, protesting, organizing, unionizing, calling your congressperson, or many more proactive steps.

- it is far too possible for Trump to win again and Republicans to control at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress.

- it is very possible in my view to come to the conclusion that it is the most moral choice to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot (which includes so much more than just president!!) without concluding any of those people you are voting for are moral people who deserve your vote. yes this is a conclusion seeing one choice as the lesser of two evils. I do not think that voting makes you morally responsible for all of the actions that your elected officials take unless you hand picked them. you did not choose the choice before you but you do have a choice to consider. I think it is much more truthful and respectful to give a moral case for voting than suggest that you should discard your mortality.

... and post.

[kingsonne-zedecks]

Well fuck.

I guess I just learned the tactic that is going to be used to discourage democrat voter participation.

I just saw a couple of posts on other social media sites talking about "respecting people's decision to follow their conscience in not voting for Biden in the 2024 presidential election due to his actions and stance regarding the Israeli-Palestine conflict."

I cannot possibly understate just how bad faith this stance is. The main people pushing this idea don't care about anyone in Israel or Palestine. They care about preventing your vote by playing to your sense of justice. They care about harnessing that sense of justice to get you to convince other people not to vote.

There is no true moral backbone to this stance. It hides beneath the idea that you can serve your conscience by not voting in a time when every vote counts and Facism sits on the doorstep. I must emphasize that things would be horrifically worse if the Facists were in control of the country. By not voting you would be abandoning your easiest and most essential way to speak out against this.

Its okay to hate the democratic party for not doing enough and for doing bad things. Its not okay to abandon your civic duty at the influence of bad actors.

I don't want to vote for Joe Biden. I am mad that its no support from the Democratic Party for a real primary with alternative candidates to Biden. I would much rather have someone better than Biden. But I would also much rather have Biden than someone worse than Biden and I will vote to make sure that this happens.

If this continues to get pushed you're going to see a big resurgence of arguments how a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. It will claim that voting for a lesser evil is a concession, a statement that you are okay with any bad things done by Biden (or any other candidate where this tactic is employed.) This simply is not true. A vote never has been and never will be a blank endorsement for all opinions and policies of a politician.

Abstaining from voting is not the moral high ground. Its only half a step away from Both Sides centrism.

As a moral stance it doesn't say "Here I am, I am righteous and will not support the unrighteous"

It says

"Here I sit. I do not care if the Facists win." The moral highground of the stance is an illusion. The stance looks in the face of every individual who will suffer and die under Facism and pats them on the head and says I'm sorry you are going to suffer and die, but it was worth it for me to feel good about myself.

The bad actors don't want you to think about these things. They will keep the attention on ever failure of the Democratic party and ask you if you condone them. They will accuse you of approving of these actions and showing them with your vote.

There might be people you trust who become convinced by this and share these feelings in what they feel is good faith. They might be convinced and upset if you don't agree with them. It won't be pleasant.

Please look into efforts within your state to overturn First Past the Post voting. Oregon has put Ranked Choice Voting on the ballot for 2024 and the people will get to decide against the system that let's this lesser of two evils argument exist. Instant Runoff Voting is not the only valid form of ranked voting or otherwise non FPTP voting. Look at your state and check to see if there is a petition to get a new voting method on the ballot. Oregon's legislature placed Ranked Choice on the ballot, but a petition was already in place to accomplish the same thing if they didn't. The same might be going on in your state.

Politics sucks and I wish we didn't have to deal with things like this. But we do. Doubt anything someone says that discourages you from voting.

[softer-fatter-happier]

Non kink post. Sad post about being made to give up my dreams because the world sucks. Feel free to skip sorry I just need to let this out.

So I passed out early last night and woke up to a group chat discussing how the person I’ve been really impressing with my resume and in person meetings was fired today abruptly by the state Democratic Party.

I have a political science degree. I have given LITERAL weeks of my life over the last two years volunteering, running phone banks all of fall of 2022, organizing in deep red counties just to try and get a paid position out of college. The idea was to work my ass off so I could get a 23 job which would turn into a 24 job in the presidential cycle and after that I would be able to essentially choose where I want to go.

The party has said for MONTHS now that they were going to set up a coordinated campaign and hire a bunch of people to win races in 23. I stopped myself from applying for other jobs and stayed at my terrible dead end bakery job because I thought I just had to be patient. Be patient they said we’re working out the details they said. And now they have fired the only guy actively working on this side of the state.

I just I’m devastated because that means that’s not gonna happen. There are no positions. Like I had a dream. Not a glamorous one by any means but it was mine. I wanted to work in campaigns for a few years and get that experience so I could eventually do something in lgbtq+ advocacy (would’ve loved to work for the human rights campaign) I wanted to work long and hard in my little part of my state to help make my state a better place even just if it was a small incremental way. Idk I just thought I could help. I wanted to work and help and I can’t. I just can’t.

I had the earth shattering realization at 3am that my dream, the dream of working and giving my entire self to advocacy and political activism to try and make things better is just dead. I felt my dreams shatter right before me.

I feel like I’ve just been a naive fool this whole time. I feel lost and just sad. But not like normal sad like despair sad. I just… I just wanna help people and make people feel and be better and I just wanna help but I can’t help and I just feel useless and stuck and like I’m a failure.

I’m going to try and go back to sleep. I don’t know if I’ll be able to but in the morning I’m gonna try and retool my resume to apply for either state agency jobs, a healthcare office job or a university office job. I still wanna help people but I guess I just. I don’t know. I feel like I can’t survive and help people at the same time and that just breaks my heart.

Sorry sorry please just ignore this post. I’m fine don’t worry I’ll be fine.

[implausiblyjosh]

“Vote shaming” is so silly because it shows two things.

First, it shows a failure of the candidate. Sorry that Joe Biden sucks ass, and that the Democrats have run almost exclusively on a “well, at least we’re not those guys, am I right?” campaign, so now you feel the need to take on a similar tone. That is a failure of the candidate to run on anything meaningful, and trying to convince other voters to be interested in that failure is sad. You hate to see it.

Second, it shows a failure to understand how voting in the US works. Because of the electoral college my vote has never mattered in the presidential race since I started voting over 10 years ago, as I’ve been voting blue in a solidly red state. I can’t “vote harder” in my situation, and it’s not like there’s a Democratic effort to get more Democrat votes in Texas that I would be undermining by not voting, so your shaming does nothing for me or my situation. Hell, the primary system in the US is so fucked, since the votes are staggered such that states at the end of the line don’t get a meaningful say in their party’s primaries because either the candidates dropped out or the votes just don’t mathematically matter at that point. And this doesn’t even touch the fact that third party votes basically don’t meaningfully split the Democratic votes, they really only meaningfully split the Republican votes.

It all shows a lack of material understanding of the situation. You don’t have an answer for a Blue voter in Red states like Texas and Florida. These places have basically been all but forsaken to Republicans. What do you want them to do if there is no support or effort being made here? How is that shaming going to work for you?

[potroasttheghostdogpontificates]

Time for my first rant about politics here. Warning, long, left, angry, and ranty. Grab a snack if you wanna read.

I've become completely exhausted with the white center left. I'm tired and frankly, over these past four years I've come to despise them. I'm making the express decision to abandon platforms like reddit for political discussion, because even though there are a plethora of actual left spaces, the actually welcoming ones to anarchists and anti-war leftists have been settled and colonized nearly totally by liberals and they regularly brigade them, stirring the pot to run cover for this latest crop of neocon democrat fuckery.

I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a political affiliation before. I expect the fascists to have monster brained takes. I expect neocons to call any dissenting opinion about the status quo in my home country of America traitorous. But here we are. The party I supported for nearly a decade and a half, voting for them in literally every election I've ever been legally permitted to vote in from school board to president, my supposed allies even if they weren't 100% as cool as I'd like them to be; throwing a tantrum at the latest failures of electoralism and ineffective neoliberal governance, but flinging shit in the wrong direction. Four years of this after voting for the guy they told me to, even though I wasn't happy about it, and I'm done. I'm tired of it. I can't anymore y'all. Too much bullshit to swallow from the neoliberal center. I knew Biden was going to suck, but I didn't expect the bastard to be so outwardly hostile to everything I'd like to see.

This administration, the liberals have completely shown their ass. The absolutely vile whataboutisms, hostility, doublespeak, rahrah hyper-patriotism, excuses for genocide, vote and value shaming, needless argumentstion, smug condescension and snippering, and simpering cowardice from them has just made me hostile to them and any space they occupy.

I was one of those leftists. The ones who USED to say: "Well it's liberals. They aren't gonna grill us for food, so they aren't THAT bad. Outreach is important, and they're probably amenable to leftism if we remember to extend the olive branch when they reach out. No hon your aunt with the 'I'm With Her' bumper sticker isn't the enemy".

This administration and the actions and voices of their supporters has changed that, radically. Out of all the things that radicalized me, I didn't expect the most extreme radicalization I would experience would be from the motherfucking "gOoD gUy" party. These people have got me in marxist-leninist spaces that excuse the authoritarian actions of places like China, NK, and Russia, because they seem to be the only ones talking sense about what this administration has done and is trying to continue doing. The anarchist spaces currently have to cut through the chaff of an aggressive liberal infestation to even begin to discuss genocide with a sensible head on their shoulders. But the tankies hate them about as much as I have come to, and their zero tolerance stance has at least allowed a breath of clean air while trying to discuss an actual left position.

I should clarify that this goes BEYOND Palestine, by the way.

Tokens. Get. Spent.

As a nonbinary person of color, I've become disgusted by the white center tokenizing trans people to excuse the blatant fact that the democrats AND the republicans have voluntarily entered into an arms race over who can be more draconian on policing black people and shutting down the border to keep out latin people. There are other marginalized people out there people. Communities that are being made invisible so that the token can be used as a get-out-of-jail-free card, because both parties benefit from keeping them under boot. To the trans people out there who think the dems have our back, baby, they don't.

Remember this line. It was to explain to people of color latching onto right-wing movements to secure their safety the reality of their situation:

I had to learn that as a biracial person, so I don't have to learn that as a queer person. To those who haven't, keep it to breast, and watch carefully. This is how it starts. They aren't coming for you yet because they can squeeze some press out of you. That will pass. It always does. Ask brown skinned latin/south americans. The dems used to campaign on how they're treated so poorly under Trump because of his and his party's racism (they have, here in the US). Trump's successor just called them all vicious invaders in a god damn State of The Union, holding up a photo of a white woman and telling a sob story about her death at the hands of "a violent illegal" to appeal to scared white racists, because he's afraid his genocidal aspirations might cost him an election among his hostaged progressive voter base. If Spike Lee had put that in a movie, Renni Eddo-Lodge would ask him to tone it down a little.

They speak out of both sides of their mouths, saying in one breath that we should all set aside our differences and kingmake THEIR chosen and work together to fight the fascists and how they NEED us to save everyone (when they aren't sure they can win an election). Then in the next, sneer with contempt about how they never needed us in the first place and will win this election without the interference of the "children" who dissent to their spiral into fascism, (when they think they have the election locked up or just won one), which they either see it and love it, or are too smug to see it. They tried that in 2016. They still aren't over the sore asses they got from it, even though they're milking the loss for all it's worth, because they keep pushing absolutely atrocious candidates as if it's their "due", because Trump's existence and a post-Trump world are the only places people like that could even hope to be politically viable anymore as zero hour approaches in America. Biden and Clinton needed that scumbag to win a presidency, which is why the party gambled with him in 2020 rather than hand the nomination to Sanders, the more popular, more left candidate. They'd rather gamble with the only ones who could lose to this guy than cede the fact that the voter base has moved more left than they'd like.

"Sorry idealists but unfortunately, "not genocide" isn't on the ballot this year" isn't a fucking excuse, no matter how many times you say that to me. If it is true, fuck that ballot. If it isn't, fuck you for lying. Also, fuck you, the fuck it isn't. There are plenty of anti-genocide candidates running in this election, it just requires the bare minimum of due diligence from the electorate to find the candidates running. Claudia de la Cruz, despite being absolutely buried by pop coverage of this election to where you basically have to be told she exists or stumble upon her by accident, has what might be exactly what the left wants, or at least I do, as far as incremnetalist progress goes, and what the liberals claimed they wanted during Trump. Anti-capitalist expansion, anti-war, pro-marginalized, anti-fascism. But yet, all the pro-Biden camp has to say about her is "who?" and "oh so nobody then". What a genuinely contemptible, vile thing for a person to say.

I expect that from conservatives, but not democrats. Oh wait. And yet, leftists tired of the decades of compromise with the viper that is the center are "politically uninformed" or "unengaged/uneducated voters just doing what the tv tells them to do" because we say Biden as a president has been far worse than we anticipated and has moved to the right of Reagan and Eisenhower in terms of policing and Israel, to where it should be unteneble that he is allowed to occupy the nomination that claims to be left, as if their complete snow-blindness (and I choose that word very carefully) for candidates other than what the Democrat Party Brass feeds them is anything other than political laziness.

Liberals have shown me that for all their fluff about caring about the downtrodden, about doing what's right, it's smoke. Add a qualifier to every stance they have: "--until/unless I can justify it".

They bitch and moan about social media like TikTok as if it's a bastion of misinformation (it is, like all social media) but don't challenge hegemonic media even when they blatantly lie, and no, "just Fox" doesn't fucking count anymore, when multiple outlets have gotten their nuts nailed in scandal, ESPECIALLY regarding Israel (Not a peep when CNN literally reversed the x-axis on a graph to drum up white fear about crime that actually wasn't being reported, for example). No eyebrows raised when TikTok and only TikTok gets limitations put on it to "protect users from disinformation", when literally a few years back the founder of Facebook was getting interrogated by the state for getting caught selling personal information to the highest bidder for profit and having literally zero interest in curtailing the storm of lies being circulated by the platform.

Social media limitation without information and privacy protections and reforms is propaganda effort, simple as, and the fact that TikTok has a lot of young people, the demographic that skews the furthest left and TikTok being the platform that has been sharing most of the horrors happening in Gaza without a spin, should make people concerned when it amd only it is being targeted for "misinformation". The government is targeting the social paltform most outspokenly against what it is doing and getting its fingers into it to silence it. I don't even use TikTok, but I'm old enough to know what a damage control narrative looks like from a politician.

When the dems have, without prompting, threatened to sic the FBI on pro-Palestine protests to "investigate ties to Russia and China" that shows us that the dems are perfectly content to get authoritarian when you don't make shit easy for them. Pelosi walked that shit back, AFTER she got called out for it, but remember the old adage: "When someone tells you who they are, believe them". No one prompted that outburst from her. That's her true face. Sure she dressed it up in cute weasel words about how "they'll be subject to due process and it's just an investigation" blah blah blah, but anyone who has even a working understanding of McCarthyism amd protest strategy should tell you why you shouldn't ever EVER cooperate with that. McCarthy "just wanted to make sure" too. It just so happens that "making sure" under a hierarchical government involves being arrested, (and considering our police force, brutalized in the process) scared shitless, threatened, detained (and as long as they like to) until they've decided they can no longer politically survive the jailings/deaths. The byproduct of this rhetoric is of course you don't need to try someone as a traitor to treat them like one and kill a protest, so you get the dual benefit of authoritarianingly(?) kill a protest of your government and pretend you're a just government of the people. Don't buy it. Accusation will be enough to kill a protest stone dead if you spook enough people, because all of our lives are already dangling by a thread. It's risking enough to take time off work when a few hours of pay can determine eating or going hungry for a week for far too many people in this god-forsaken country, it's a deatb sentence to be tried as a criminal. It worked for McCarthy, don't let these milquetoast posh versions of Reaganites pull the same stunt. At least McCarthy had enough sack to be an evil bastard publicly instead of simpering when interrogated.

"I'm against racism..... until I can justify it" "I'm against war.... unless I can justify it" " I'm against draconian borders..... unless I can justify it" "I reject genocide.... until I can justify it". "And we'll kill you if you resist enough".

Makes em seem a lot more honest when you put it that way.

I hate how cowardly they defend this shit. I hate that I have to add parentheses to highlight the obvious to points I make that no leftist would actually make, on the off-chance that some miserable Biden campaign social media quote-doctors me into a republican.

They pretend that they're the politically engaged, they're the "big picture" "adult" voters, or, even more egregiously, that they're the empathetic ones.

If you keep a rabid dog loose in your yard, you save a shit load of money not having to build a fence. Controlled opposition is manipulation.

Single-issue is fucking rich, considering the only defense they can angle for this guy at this point is "but trans people though!" As if any of the bones they toss will actually make the situation for trans people better. It's liberal identity politics at its absolute pathetic.

Trans people can join the army again! (If they can survive the rampant bullying, sexual assault, and white supremacy in the armed forced that no one in authority has any intention of addressing and face no threat of repercussion for that failure because the US increases their budget every year with no regards to stopping for any reason)

If trans kids get misgendered or their pronouns disrespected at school, they can sue! (Provided they have access to the means of effective legal representation and aren't under a judge who is not amenable to their side of the issue, which is unlikely due to the inroads of privilege necessary to become a judge in the first place ensures that a frighteningly big percentage of them are white, upper-middle-class and above, conservative, and isolated from the community at large.)

Good news! Trans people won't be discriminated against in hiring! (Until the EO times out because let's face it, they aren't gonna draft an amendment to enshrine that federally any time soon, and also ignoring the fact that a majority of hiring discrimintaion happens under the table and in secret, and is facilitated by at-will employment practices and allowances, AND a majority of trans-discrimination in the workplace happens after hiring, when trans people start to publicly transition where they face bullying or firings). Do nothing about the plethora of anti-trans bills worming their way through the legal system on this country, meaning the trams community has a literal ticking clock over them. (Unless they help the republicans pass them like in West Virginia). Do nothing about homelessness being a death sentence that is nearly impossible to escape or seek aid for, even though the trans community is disproportionally homeless because of bigoted families disowning them. No, they won't ever ever be allowed to go to the doctor or safely access transitionary care without a shitload of front-loaded privilege to financial stability that only some have.

We did it! Trans people saved. Now vote for us. Because we burned the black vote bridge with our vicious policing practices even after pretending to side with them during the 2020 protests, and the hispanic vote bridge with our scapegoating of them and our draconian border, migrant, and asylum policies, and the arab vote bridge with our blatant spreading of misinformation about a genocide facing their people and families. Screw the poor, black people, arab people, hispanic people (but only the brown ones, if you don't have an accent or melanin we won't be able to tell and will let you do as you please), leftists, protestors, and trans people (eventually) but we aren't gonna bite you trans people. Vote. Do it. Do it now. You don't wanna see what will happen to you if you don't. Oh no not us. Just an associate. We won't stop them if they come for you. Give us all the authority over you so we can prevent it. We'll do it this time, we swear.

"You're a single issue voter, like a loser" says the liberal to the person who opposes genocide regardless of party (it's a pretty big fucking issue, no?) But this is the person who sees the state of affairs and says "but trans people" without even asking them what they need to survive. How dare you dangle their lives for political gains because you're too cowardly to fight your own battles. My fellow trans people, don't swallow this. All they're doing with their "buying time" is allowing the situation to decay unseen for a few more years, after which, it will be too late to stop things becoming catastrophically bad unless we literally fight for our lives.

If you've read this far, you've already been here for days. Took me a while to organize my thoughts in downtime between work. So one final point so we aren't both here for weeks.

I can't stand the sneeringly condescension if liberalism-as-default as a method to defend their position. They bite back on leftists who don't support the center as "well there's no leftist on the ballot right now. Why do you always 'pull this' during election season instead of a ground-up movement over time?? Bring me a leftist and I'll vote for him." Or my favorite, "what are YOU doing about it??" I hate this counterargument for multiple reasons. Let's have some fun with formatting and list them.

It tacitly admits that the speaker doesn't support anything for an ideological reason. They support people who can "win" neoliberal electoralism and nothing more. They care about winning. Doesn't matter who does or for what reason. They support the establishment, for better or worse.

This is also taking as read the idea that they will not support leftism in any meaningful capacity until it reaches hegemonic status, despite (or perhaps because of) it needing support from multple sources to get to that point at all. A Catch-22 from someone who is basically saying "I refuse to cooperate with you until you get me to cooperate with you and you become the default which requires me cooperating with you". They won't help the left get off the ground, even though it needs them at least out of the way to do so, but will say they will get out of the way once it does get off the ground. This is why the left says the liberals hold progressives and leftists "hostage"

It demands the left do the work of justifying and legitimizing itself to compare to THEIR chosen default, while admitting they have zero intention of doing the same. Liberalism is default. Therefore, the left has to justify itself, the liberals don't, and anyone who asks them to is being disingenuous or unfair. They demand legitimization from their opposition, and won't give it.

They are admitting they have been ignoring leftism and only pay attention during election season, because it threatens their hegemony.

They are ignoring the fact that the reason the left raises so much stink during election season is because the candidates claiming to be left and what the center champions as what leftists supposedly want have yet again slid right to win said election. The left is sounding the alarm bell as it happens. It's not the left's fault the center is choosing, yet again, to ignore it.

They're pretending that the center and right won't unite to kill the left if it ever DOES get that far, even without them (more than likely because that would include themselves in the ranks, and that's a bad look when trying to high-horse a political discussion with a leftist). This includes party formation or any sort of on-the-ground organization like protests. The left will be killed stone-dead unless the center starts putting its money where its mouth is, because the center will be the one holding the knife. They know this. They don't want you to. Ruins the surprise.

They're demanding you fix the problem they made while also refusing to compromise with you to do so. "We've done nothing and we're all put of ideas" has gone from a derogative to an accusation. Liberals have shown themselves to be painfully bad at media analysis.

It's a blatant trap to bait out organizational efforts from psy-ops to break them or infiltrate them. Chances are higher than you might think that someone asking you how you organize is a cop trying to insert operatives into the ranks to disrupt. The liberals trying to ask "well how are YOU organizing?" are doing the oppressors work for them, even if unintentional.

The demand for organization of politicial ingress into hierarchical electoralism while ignoring the truth that for organization of that level to even get off the ground requires a degree of privilege and legitimization that the left has been barred from accessing outside of violent revolution, while also quietly admitting they don't intend to give that to them unless they take it, and they will resist them taking it

And that's it for now. Rant over.

Jeez did you get all this way? I'm impressed. And thanks for hearing me out. As a reward, if you feel slighted by my words, here are some verbal face pets to ease my point and position.

No, I don't vote shame. If you do vote for the dems, either because you support them ideologically, vote tactically and genuinely believe they are a good option, don't vote, or vote third party, you won't get any oushback from me. I'm an anarchist. I believe it's your right, completely and fully, to do whatever you want with that vote of yours. If you want Biden to represent you, go for it. I do not. Under any circumstances. If you vote tactically or genuinely believe in them to protect queer people or stop the onslaught of the right, if you believe that neoliberal electoralism will help us, I don't think you're evil, I believe you're misled. I feel upset on your behalf that you've been lied to. No, I don't think you're unintelligent, young, gullible, or naive. I believe you've been lied to. You can't be "enlightened" or whatever you personally call being woke if you've never seen what the truth looks like. I don't blame a propagandized people for being propagandized. You don't blame a person for believing a lie. You get angry at the liar for deceiving them.

If you think Trump might be worse, you're probably not wrong. He's an ugly kind of neoliberal, the kind that has melted into a fascist. But if you think he DEFINITELY will be, I genuinely believe you to have not been paying enough attention. Will he be better? Absolutely fucking not. No way in hell. See? There's that clarification and emphasis that I have to do to prevent bad-faith characterization that will happen anyway again. But if you can't recognize Biden as a lateral move at best, I honestly don't trust you. Sorry, but I don't. Shit's bad out here for more than white queers. Please remember that. The LGBTQ community is not a hegemonic white one. Liberals don't have a target on your back, yet, but that's because it's easier to shoot at us first. The cops Biden and Harris like putting on the streets won't ask me my pronouns before they gun me down. They're gonna see my afro-textured hair and skin-color first, and go off that. They're gonna see me at a protest and declare me a dissident before they even ask me about my bisexual spreadsheet. Solidarity is important, because they're coming for us all. Avoid class reductionism AND neoliberal identity politics. Both poison the well.

To all the white trans people who are fucking scared, I see you. We're all scared. I don't mean to diminish this fear or disregard it, because I get it. These bastard hegemons at the top think they can push and pull us using the fear they themselves create to turn us against each other. I remind you not to fear. If they could have destroyed us they would have succeeded long ago. I have zero faith things will even be in a staid equilibrium under Biden's next term. Mutual aid will survive literally anything these bastards can throw at us all, but we must remember to stay true to our values and communities and remember solidarity to the allies. We will get through this like we have everything else, I promise. I stand with you. I intend to fight for you if I have to. Most everyone on the left will. Electoralism for neocons like Biden and what the dems are trying to shove down our throats will not, remember that. Vote, if you want, but don't trust them to save us. He thinks protecting your pronouns in school are enough but won't expand hate crime laws. He's jerking us around.

And that's it. Here's some genuine literal face pats to thank you for hearing me out. Go with peace and happiness and love. Love strong and live your truth. And fuck these god damn liberals. Solidarity, support. We're gonna get through this, together, like we always have, without their help.

[redtechnocrat]

Ranked Choice Voting is popular. While not wonderful (approval and range voting is subject to less manipulation and paradoxes), such an option needs to be put in place. First Past the Post voting sucks balls, and allows plurality. I've seen approval with built in ranked run off as a decent medium.

There probably should be proportional voting as well.

Both ways avoid spoilers and still a variety of choice. Our two oligopolistic parties is hardly democratic and on most issues the two parties are Indistinguishable despite the highlight of small differences. Both serve the oligarchy for the most part, since forever, from post war consensus to DLC era and beyond corporatism.

Sortition should be put in to counter faction and manipulation as at least a share of representatives. It's telling that despite being concerned with faction the founders and framers didn't even consider it despite a long history in Ancient and Medieval republics (Athens, Florence, Venice...in Venice the complex mix of sortition and election for Doge produced a very stable republic, the supposed concern of the Framers)...because their explicit goal was to preserve minority rule. Madison is actually explicit on who the minority being protected is -- the wealthy. He didn't mean racial, ethnic or philosophical minorities as his words are twisted today to justify his model. Read the Federalist papers. Confirmed by reference to background (Shays Rebellion).

We use sortition and civic duty to fill juries. A policy jury and or civic service in government would be equivalent..without the means lawyers use to shape juries aside from a basic review of fitness as in Athens.

It'd be nice to have people with a direct experience of material conditions and life of the common folks having input and shaping of policy and not overwhelmingly millionaires who have no idea what it's like to live on the medium income, or SNAP. Also a variety beyond mostly lawyers and a few businessmen's me a smattering of doctors and other rare professionals...and a single bar tender.

Also, finance, lobbying, etc would be utterly ineffective here.

Gerrymandering needs to be outlawed post haste. People should pick their representative, not vice versa. And it's basic factional politics undermining the general good which even by Madisonian logic is acid and pernicious.

And this is without even discussing finance reform, equal time advertising...much less regulation of advertising to reflect facts. We forget that in most languages, advertising is termed propaganda, which it exactly is. Political ads are worthless empty rhetoric at best, demagoguery at worst. Or lobbying. Campaign finance is at best legalized bribery.

The failure to have these sort of reforms to reflect actual population views, distortion form lobbyists and finance is why voting is so ineffectual.

It's the bare minimum and I advocate non-voting alternatives, and building dial power, etc. But being ineffectual means it's also not hurting anything and may do some harm reduction (e.g., Christ isn't going to do radical reforms, but at least he won't make sayz transgenders worse off). It can't be all we do, but it's a start.

[qqueenofhades]

Protip, Bernie! If you mean Joe Manchin (who absolutely fucking sucks and should not be called a Democrat by any reasonable standard), THEN FUCKING SAY JOE MANCHIN!

Look, I know we are all beyond pissed with Manchin and Sinema and the way they might actually get away with single-handedly tanking a vital piece of Biden's agenda. AT LEAST THIS YEAR. Because you know what an actually helpful and productive messaging strategy in an election year might be? "We need to elect more and better Democrats to the Senate so they can reform or abolish the filibuster -- literally every single member of the caucus except You Know Who has come out in support of doing this -- and keep our House majority so a) things don't grind to a halt and b) Kevin Fucking McCarthy doesn't become speaker." But yknow, that would interfere with Bernie's aim of throwing red meat to his legions of Online Leftist hordes, who will take this as further vindication by their God-Emperor not to bother voting for the Evil Morally Impure Democrats in the midterms!!!

Look, Bernard. This isn't the 2016 OR the 2020 primaries, where you wheel out there and deliver stock lines exactly like this, to position yourself as the noble outsider from the Washington party establishment, when, uh, you've been a senator for over 15 years. And you are, by golly gee, STILL A SENATOR RIGHT NOW! If you think The Democrats (aka Joe Manchin) are "failing to help working people," then why don't you know, uh, GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT IN YOUR OWN WORKPLACE?

Like. I am grateful for how far left you helped to shift the mainstream Democratic platform, and I can guarantee that I have the exact same policy priorities and general views as you do. But this is why you drive me crazy, man. You get to pose as the privileged outsider making hay about how the Democrats are only a teensy bit better than the Republicans and then... never.... DO anything about it except stuff like this. Come on, man. If you're gonna (again, fucking deservedly) bash Manchin for being a failure, don't lump in every single one of your colleagues by association, and have the integrity to actually say what you mean.

Sheesh.

[theabigailthorn]

Hey Olly, I’m pro free housing, but i often get stuck on how it would work? Like, how would who gets what housing be decided? What if everyone wants to move to a beach town but all the housing is taken—do people get on some kind of wait list? Should housing be run by the govt, or should it be generational, like you bequeath your housing? Idk when I think about a system where you apply to the govt for your housing and it gets approved or denied, I worry about corruption/tankie shit. Any thoughts?

I get this a lot, and in the first instance I think it’s often framed in a pretty unrealistic way. I very much doubt everybody would suddenly want to move to a beach town because people put down roots wherever they are and have connections and jobs there.

That said, obviously people will want to move sometimes, just like now - so you’re right to think about how that would work! I can imagine that a local council, or some public body under local democratic control, would have a list online of all the properties that are currently empty. If you're looking to move you can browse the list, pick one you like, and apply! If more than one person applies for the same house then we can have a lottery system (unless it’s got special features that one person needs, like it’s on the ground floor and they can’t do stairs, in which case we can let them take priority there). Once you get the house you can pick up the keys and move in! You would be responsible for maintaining it, so once every so often someone from that local body will come round and say, “Hey, you need to clear the gutters or install some fire doors or whatever.” Once you’re done you give back the keys and move out! The important thing to realise is that whilst not everybody will get their first choice house - that is already true of the current system. No rent, no mortgages. The house is not owned by anybody and so it cannot be sold: homes are no longer the sorts of things that can legally be commodities.

Won’t there be corruption and people moving their friends up the list for the nicer houses? Almost definitely! Again though - real estate corruption already happens under the current system. At least this way nobody dies of homelessness and nobody amasses fortunes on the backs of other people’s misery.

Won’t this mean every estate agent and landlord is out of a job? Yup. But we will also be creating new jobs! Someone will need to administer that list, manage applications, show people round properties, inspect them... Seems like estate agents have a lot of transferrable skills that will be useful! Their new jobs will be much more stable since they won’t be conditional on the fluctuations in the housing market! Let’s make sure they’re unionised with pensions and decent wages while we’re at it!

But people won’t take care of the houses if they don’t own them! It’s hard to think of anything that has more evidence against it than this. Private renters already take care of housing which they don’t own because they live there. My landlord hasn’t set foot in my flat for three years: I do all the cleaning and repairs and I make it a home. The owner does zilch!

But what if someone wants to come into my house and just live there? Same thing that happens now if you rent, you have a right to privacy so you can tell them to leave? I don’t own the flat I currently live in, but I can control who comes in - even the owner is required to give me notice.

But I want to own a house someday so I can sell it and getta tha mon-ey! Tough titties I’m afraid. You don’t get to amass wealth at the expense of other human beings anymore.

I agree that the current housing crisis is a problem, but can’t we just introduce strong pro-tenant regulations? The housing market and the housing crisis are the same thing. That’s the point. Consider that every regulation you introduce will be challenged and eroded by the most rich and powerful people in the world. We have tried for over a century to regulate our way out of the housing crisis and it’s been a miserable, deadly failure. It’s time to cut the Gordian knot and realise that we will not solve the housing crisis until we do to landlords what Thatcher did to the miners: absolutely remove them as a political force.

But who will build new houses if nobody can sell them for a profit? We have a free healthcare system, don’t we? Why not a housing system too? It’s not perfect of course, and it’s vulnerable to privatisation by the backdoor, but if a job needs doing the government can pay people to do it - that is a thing that can happen.

But I already paid half my mortgage! Now you’re telling me my house isn’t an asset anymore? Admittedly, that sucks. But hey, at least you don’t have to pay the other half, and now you live in a society where you will never go homeless!

Won’t wages go down once people no longer have to pay rent or mortgages? Maybe. Sounds like a good reason to join a union and have robust minimum wage laws for everybody! But even if they did - if your living costs have just been reduced by half cause you aren’t paying rent anymore and there’s now zero chance that you will end up on the streets, you could lose some wages and still be fine.

But people won’t go to work if they don’t have to pay rent! Absolutely right. Would you still go to work at your shitty job if you had free housing? Would you maybe go half as much, and spend the other half doing something you actually enjoy? If your boss harasses you or makes your job miserable, aren’t you now in a much better position to say, “Screw your job!” Guaranteeing free housing puts a massive amount of power in the hands of workers and would expose just how coercive capitalism is! Suddenly, if rich people want their floors cleaned or their coffee served - well they’d better pay the person doing that job properly or it won’t get done. All the people who actually keep society running in low-paid shitty jobs are suddenly able to demand the respect they deserve. Every pro-worker party should be demanding free housing: it’s hard to think of a move that would benefit the working class more than taking away the threat of homelessness used to keep them in line.

Won’t banks be in serious trouble if mortgages suddenly aren’t a thing? Probably. Some might go under. They will not get bailouts - if bailouts are required they will go directly to the employees and customers, who, remember, have all just had their living costs massively reduced because they have free housing now. They will not end up on the streets because homelessness won’t exist. 

This is ridiculous! For most of human history housing was not a commodity. There is more empty housing now than homeless people. The fact that people find it difficult to imagine an alternative now is a function of Capitalist Realism, but a lack of imagination on their part isn’t a moral or intellectual failing on mine.

I’m a foreign billionaire and I bought loads of property in your country so I can leave them empty to inflate my assets/launder my money that I got from doing crimes. Now you’re telling me I’m going to lose everything cause you’re confiscating those properties and letting people live in them?! Get rekt lol

[queen-mabs-revenge]

nah sorry, that's just a bit too much lib shit for me.

protip - bernie is infuriating not bc he's not strictly calling out the 'bad apples' in the dem party, but bc he's completely capitulated to an absolutely irredeemable party of capitalist criminals as exemplified by the entire career of joseph robinette biden.

calling the absolutely fucking ghoul horrorshow of not only not stopping the big angry dem catchphrases of Kids In Cages and No More Wall and Believe Science but actually continuing and doubling down on them a 'disappointment' is just peak fucking liberal behaviour.

sit there and get frothy over a tax credit that literally had a 6 month sundown period and has now thrown all of those kids it 'lifted out of poverty' right the fuck back into it, while ignoring the fact that the policies of this fucking rotten criminal administration have actually increased living costs and thus the precarity of working class people in the past year so that those precious kiddilywinks are now going to be even more food and housing insecure.

get your whole vote scold on while ignoring the fact that the president capitulated most of the supposed recovery plan to the rotating villain of the moment instead of actually acting like a fucking party leader and whipping party members by like...oh idk visiting states of said senators? doing groundwork to actually help the people in their constituency who are suffering? actually doing the work to make it so that holding the position of being a block on legislation is politically unviable? you know...like a president?

but if you actually focused on that then holding this Vote Blue fuckflag would become completely untenable bc it would become very fucking clear that the democratic party, like the republican party, literally has turned its back on the working class, but is using the bureaucracy of the legislative system as a 'oh our hands are soooooooo tied' shield while people are fucking dying! because they are serving the interests of their class! which - pRoTiP - is not the fucking working one :D

you know why bernie is so fucking annoying? not bc he supposedly threw a fit about not getting his wah wah candidacy (which lmao if you're still fucking blaming hilary 'pied piper' clinton's loss to a fucking reality show host on bernie....y i k e s). it's bc he knows that the democratic party is full of the worst fucking scum imaginable, was literally fought against by the entire dnc+friends who in 2016 ruled that they were a private organization and did not need to have a democratic process to choose their candidate, and has seen joe biden's whole career and the actual blood and emiseration that he has caused and still took a whole movement of people who sacrificed their money and time to the ideas he was running on and turned it over to the mercy of the same people who had ruined their lives in the first place -- in the face of an actual global pandemic.

and you know what -- working class people do fucking know how to do the job of these criminals better. they're doing the fucking labor of keeping whatever skeleton of this society is limping along going, and they know what to do to fix it because they're the ones actually moving the fucking joints of the beast. people getting angry because they see the truth of the violence that both parties have and continue to do to working class people while they line theirs and their corporate benefactors pockets aren't some woke online filth hoards doing their keyboard warrior shit. these are people who are seeing the truth of the systematic failure of this capitalist meat grinder and are fucking infuriated. posting a tweet doesn't preclude a person from organizing offline. and likewise, people who see that the democratic party is literally going to suck the marrow from the bones of anyone who actually wants to see change and refuse to give their energy and time and/or vote to their oppressor aren't a terminally online larping mob. they're literally doing the logical thing with their time and energy. the fucking democrats are owed nothing but vitriol as they give nothing but misery.

the democrats and the republicans are both two fangs in the same vampiric mouth. the democrats are actually worse today than the democrats of the past and that's saying something -- they are functionally the mid-century republican party and pretending that because they've co-opted phrases from actual radical organizers that they are better now is fucking laughable. especially in a world in which since reagan they've had all the levers of governmental power several times and yet still there is no law protecting abortion rights, more fossil fuel contracts continue to get meted out, various crime bills still got passed, the wealth gap has skyrocketed, the rate of food and housing precarity has steadily increased, the compensation of labor to production has stagnated, labor relations rights continue to be weakened while deregulation of corporations continues to be strengthened, the military budget has only grown....need i go on?

it's fucking hilarious to imagine that the answer to the rising tide of fascist ideology is this shit-for-brains liberal milquetoast technocratic system-preserving creating-the-conditions-for-misery-and-fascist-reaction bullshit that the democrats are peddling. that voting for what got us to this point is the answer to the violence of the far right. it's fucking baby brained shit to try and scare monger about fascism while literally ignoring the conditions of misery that the capitalist parties have created that have been the coals in the forge of this turn to fascist ideology.

it's deeply unserious to act like the word socialism, and the rise people turning to socialist organizing is a temper tantrum of people who Won't Just Vote. literally cop the fuck on. the word socialist isn't a little red scare tactic anymore because working class people can genuinely see that there is no solution to oppression in the house of the oppressor. i know that to people who are either served well enough by the system as it is (you know, just with a few tweaks here and there) or who have no faith in the ability of the working class to effect change that that concept seems like a larp, but i think that says more about those people than it says about the people who see that this system is not only a dead end, but a breeding ground for misery, violence, oppression, and fascist reaction.

continuing to pretend like Voting Blue™ is the how adults deal with the complete failure of capitalism and the parties of capitalism to deliver a livable existence for the working class of the world and the world itself is either self-serving or self-delusional.

[laundryandtaxes]

I have absolutely 0 love for the Democratic party but I gotta say it's categorically unfair to say that a failure to agree among "Democratic leadership" is why we don't have an infrastructure bill. For one thing, actually disagreement in Congress, and even among members of one party, is a good thing- it is literally the whole job of the legislature to debate solutions to our collective problems and to work towards solutions specifically through that debate. For another, Joe Manchin is not a member of the party leadership lol, he's just a man with a seat after an election where the party underperformed, and his elevated importance is largely due to the party's own failure to win more seats. Likewise, people complaining that Biden hasn't, for instance, raised the minimum wage seem to be forgetting that we don't have a king on purpose. I actually really don't want to live in a system where the head of the executive branch can just swipe his pen and, say, ban a bunch of previously legal firearms like Trudeau, simply because he personally believes it's the best thing to do. That's insane and sucks ass. This ~~democracy~~ isn't much and it isn't honest, but it was really not inevitable that it would just not function. It WAS inevitable that it would be undemocratic- the Senate exists for that reason, on purpose, although tbh I think it's kind of a stupid body in practice, and every conversation about how the electoral college is broken conveniently leaves out that SOMEBODY actually thought it was a good idea, and all of our complaints about it are acrually about it functioning literally as intended- but what we're looking at with conversations among congressional Democrats is called the legislative process lol, not just petty infighting. You might be more accustomed to seeing it if it wasn't for stupid party line voting legislators who can neither think for themselves nor even represent the will of their constituents rather than their party. Damn legislature is straight up broken. This post brought to you by late night bard cider

[bamf-jaskier]

A long ramble of thoughts about the history of chaos on the continent and why Fringilla’s use of forbidden magics is pretty neat

So one thing not too many people knowing about the Witcher is that magic is called Chaos for a very specific reason: it is the opposite of Order. In Sword of Destiny, Borch tells Geralt that Chaos is the aggressor and Order is endangered and needs protecting. Chaos is what mages/elves/witchers/sources/etc can channel in order to produce magic. 

It's important to note that magic DID NOT EXIST before the conjunction of the spheres so it's pretty strongly implied that before the conjunction Order and Chaos were one and the Conjunction split them apart, leaving Order vulnerable and Chaos in the hands of living beings to manipulate. When the conjunction happened, no race (humans, elves, werebubbs, etc) knew how to use magic but eventually most of them found a way to use chaos. 

What is interesting is that we are told that Witchers/Mages/Elves all see magic differently but we are never told how. It is mentioned briefly that mages "pervert" magic by the Elves but we don't know what perversion of magic looks like to the elves because it is subjective to their own worldview. However, looking at the earliest human tribes on the continent, the Dauk and the Wozgor we can get some idea of the difference between human magic and elf magic. Both groups were very influenced by ritualistic group magic as well as worship of the gods. Many of these gods such as Melitele are still worshipped. 

The Dauk were more into fertility and harvest, think early Beltane Midsummer stuff, while the Wozgor primarily worshipped Lilit with Blood Sacrifices. So we see humans are in a group-mentality when it comes to magic and summoning, they pull power from the earth and pool together their magic to create spells. At this time, elves and humans were not considered enemies so group-magic and more nature-esque magic is accepted by the elves. This is also supported by the dryads and elves seeming to prefer druids who still use magic group-magic today.

So now we start to get into when the philosophical schism on magic happened. Clearly, at some point, humans started working on less "group/nature magic" and on more individualistic magic. By the nature of chaos it is consuming so as more humans began working on individual magic, they became more power hungry. I had a theory that it was human's use of individualized magic that led them to leaving the nomadic tribe mentality and instead moving to more Nordling-Like culture where they live in one place and fight with other tribes, eventually building cities, colonizing, and in general taking the standard course of human history. So now humans have magic. And they have POWER. 

So you get mages who are fighting for their tribes, their groups and eventually kingdoms like Novigrad begin to form. Now the Brotherhood was formed in the 8th century by the Novigrad Union which was a group of druids, mages, and priests who signed a non-agression pact to stop the raids and warfare that were so common for centuries. However, the Union fell apart due to difference in views on magic while the Brotherhood stayed together. 

The Brotherhood is now sort of the ruling party on the continent, it's the only power really left after the Union. It's not its own Kingdom so it can technically be considered neutral. This puts a lot of responsibility on the Brotherhood and the Northern Rulers are overwhelmed by the number of monsters. Previously, humans were so focused on killing each other they couldn't really organize and do anything about the monsters but now that society is developing it's a real problem for trade and travel. so they create the first Witchers in Rissberg. However, once they find out that the Witcher don't have the same magic aptitude as mages, they are discarded as failed experiments.

This is where is gets interesting again for me. Because Witchers actually can cast magic as strong as mages, they elect to use signs but Witchers can pool their magic together in order to cast more powerful spells. So what was the difference between mages and witcher that had the mages deem Witchers as failures? I am theorizing that Witchers channel chaos whereas mages manipulate it. 

The way I describe it in my fic is that Witchers act as a conduit for chaos, think of it like sucking up magic into a straw, the Witcher is the straw, they bring chaos in it's purest form into the world. Then, once the magic is in our realm, they shape it into the spell or form they desire. It's similar to how elves and ancient humans used magic. This is why the elves don't call a Witcher's magic a perversion but a mage's magic is. 

I'm theorizing that Mages on the the other hand bring magic in through almost a mold. When a mage summons chaos, that chaos can only be used for the very specific purpose that they want in that moment. It ties into their philosophy on willpower. What you desire is the magic you have. So a Witcher could begin to cast an Aard and then halfway through change the sign into an Igni and it would work fine. However, a mage can't begin to cast a portal and then change it into a lightning bolt. But this is also the reason mages are so powerful, their magic is specific. It is decided and the willpower behind it makes it a stronger spell.

NOW FINALLY we can begin talking about forbidden magics. So I'm not going to get into the First and Second Ages of the Witchers but just know that Witchers are now off on the continent doing their own thing and monster hunting, creating their own culture, etc. The Brotherhood does NOT care for this. They can see control slipping from their fingers so they and they are worried other mages are going to experiment the same way they experimented to create Witchers but this time they will make something even more powerful. Something that could topple their power. 

The Brotherhood begins to ban magic that could be used to manipulate the natural order. The main three banned magics of the Brotherhood are Goetia (demonology), Necromancy and Ancient Magics. Now demonology was actually practiced by the Wozgor and many think that Lilit was actually a demon they summoned. Necromancy and Ancient Magics both have the potential for abuse but not more so than any other form of magic. However these are all powerful magics. But it's not just BANNING magic that creates censure with the brotherhood. It's the stringent guidelines of how to perform magic even though we KNOW there are multiple ways to channel chaos. The Brotherhood also creates a system with the court that also creates censure because courtly expectations now place an emphasis on respectability and governance and how you should hold yourself, etc. Being a mage becomes a lot more restrictive and a lot less experimental.

So we have to ask ourselves, what does Fringilla do that causes her to be considered abhorrent, In Tissaia's words: "I will defend our way of life, The Brotherhood, The Academies, the order that we have built up over centuries, you've rejected it all Fringilla" 

So here's what we KNOW Fringilla has done: Forced Mages in Servitude until they decide to serve the White Flame (of course Fringilla says it isn't servitude but Triss disagrees), Practice Necromancy, Demonology, and Fire Magics She specifically says the phrase "most of us came from Aretuza and Ban Ard" so here's what we have to consider, how did Fringilla get them there, she can't have kidnapped everyone and as well if u know some spoilers from the book then there are plenty of mages that voluntary work for Nilfgaard. 

Fringilla works with ANYONE who has chaos, not just people deemed worthy by the Brotherhood. In addition, she works will all magic, no limitations. In many ways, Nilfgaardian magic is returning to ancient magic. If you watch the battle at Sodden, the mages perform a lot of life-force spells. I have a theory that those types of spells are MEANT to be performed in groups and since they aren't, the mage withers and dies. 

Also, listen, in another world Nilfgaard could be the hero. If they didn't show Nilfgaard being generally evil like killing everyone and sacrificing mages and stuff they actually have good reasoning? Cintra is objectively terrible. They literally almost killed off an entire race? The Genocide of the Elves is very much brushed over and honestly Cintra should have been overthrown ages ago. Also Nilfgaard has policies of cooperativity and community and honestly if they didn't so morally bereft acts their society has a lot of potential. 

Fringilla is returning magic to how to was pre-brotherhood where it's groups of loosely defined mages doing what they want. She is also trying to break of the individualistic mindset of most mages which I think is interesting because it goes against the very soul of how mages perform magic. It's like Tissaia said, Fringilla is rejecting centuries of tradition. In any other world, Fringilla would be the Katniss to the Brotherhood's Capital. If Nilfgaard wasn't cast as so brutal they would literally be considered a revolutionary force trying to oust a genocidal dictatorial system (Cintra). Granted, many people have compared Nilfgaard to either being a Roman Empire or Soviet Russia analog, both brutal totalitarian or imperial regimes which probably is part of the reason Nilfgaard is so brutal. I am suggesting that in another universe, Nilfgaard could be instead of an imperial-religious-type regime a more revolutionary force. 

Perhaps an AU where Nilfgaard teams up with Cintran Rebels and arrives at the city to help Cintran Freedom Fighters tear it down and then allows Cintra to rebuild on their own terms. Basically, I’m talking about the overthrow of the monarchy system present in most of the continent. 

I would really like to see an AU where Fringilla is a revolutionary figurehead trying to work to establish a democratic system in a monarchal society while going against centuries of magical tradition. I think with the addition of magic and complexity of politics not the continent there’s just so much to think about here. 

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

The New Nihilism

It feels increasingly difficult to tell the difference between—on one hand—being old, sick, and defeated, and—on the other hand—living in a time-&-place that is itself senile, tired, and defeated. Sometimes I think it’s just me—but then I find that some younger, healthier people seem to be undergoing similar sensations of ennui, despair, and impotent anger. Maybe it’s not just me.

A friend of mine attributed the turn to disillusion with “everything”, including old-fashioned radical/activist positions, to disappointment over the present political regime in the US, which was somehow expected to usher in a turn away from the reactionary decades since the 1980s, or even a “progress” toward some sort of democratic socialism. Although I myself didn’t share this optimism (I always assume that anyone who even wants to be President of the US must be a psychopathic murderer) I can see that “youth” suffered a powerful disillusionment at the utter failure of Liberalism to turn the tide against Capitalism Triumphalism. The disillusion gave rise to OCCUPY and the failure of OCCUPY led to a move toward sheer negation.

However I think this merely political analysis of the “new nothing” may be too two-dimensional to do justice to the extent to which all hope of “change” has died under Kognitive Kapital and the technopathocracy. Despite my remnant hippy flower- power sentiments I too feel this “terminal” condition (as Nietzsche called it), which I express by saying, only half-jokingly, that we have at last reached the Future, and that the truly horrible truth of the End of the World is that it doesn’t end.

One big J.G. Ballard/Philip K. Dick shopping mall from now till eternity, basically.

This IS the future—how do you like it so far? Life in the Ruins: not so bad for the bourgeoisie, the loyal servants of the One Percent. Air-conditioned ruins! No Ragnarok, no Rapture, no dramatic closure: just an endless re-run of reality TV cop shows. 2012 has come and gone, and we’re still in debt to some faceless bank, still chained to our screens.

Most people—in order to live at all—seem to need around themselves a penumbra of “illusion” (to quote Nietzsche again):—that the world is just rolling along as usual, some good days some bad, but in essence no different now than in 10000 BC or 1492 AD or next year. Some even need to believe in Progress, that the Future will solve all our problems, and even that life is much better for us now than for (say) people in the 5th century AD. We live longer thanx to Modern Science—of course our extra years are largely spent as “medical objects”—sick and worn out but kept ticking by Machines & Pills that spin huge profits for a few megacorporations & insurance companies. Nation of Struldbugs.

True, we’re suffocating in the mire generated by our rule of sick machines under the Numisphere of Money. At least ten times as much money now exists than it would take to buy the whole world—and yet species are vanishing space itself is vanishing, icecaps melting, air and water grown toxic, culture grown toxic, landscape sacrificed to fracking and megamalls, noise-fascism, etc, etc. But Science will cure all that ills that Science has created—in the Future (in the “long run”, when we’re all dead, as Lord Keynes put it); so meanwhile we’ll carry on consuming the world and shitting it out as waste—because it’s convenient & efficient & profitable to do so, and because we like it.

Well, this is all a bunch of whiney left-liberal cliches, no? Heard it before a million times. Yawn. How boring, how infantile, how useless. Even if it were all true... what can we do about it? If our Anointed Leaders can’t or won’t stop it, who will? God? Satan? The “People”?

All the fashionable “solutions” to the “crisis”, from electronic democracy to revolutionary violence, from locavorism to solar-powered dingbats, from financial market regulation to the General Strike—all of them, however ridiculous or sublime, depend on one preliminary radical change—a seismic shift in human consciousness. Without such a change all the hope of reform is futile. And if such a change were somehow to occur, no “reform” would be necessary. The world would simply change. The whales would be saved. War no more. And so on.

What force could (even in theory) bring about such a shift? Religion? In 6,000 years of organized religion matters have only gotten worse. Psychedelic drugs in the reservoirs? The Mayan calendar? Nostalgia? Terror?

If catastrophic disaster is now inevitable, perhaps the “Survivalist” scenario will ensue, and a few brave millions will create a green utopia in the smoking waste. But won’t Capitalism find a way to profit even from the End of the World? Some would claim that it’s doing so already. The true catastrophe may be the final apotheosis of commodity fetishism.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this paradise of power tools and back-up alarms is all we’ve got & all we’re going to get. Capitalism can deal with global warming—it can sell water-wings and disaster insurance. So it’s all over, let’s say—but we’ve still got television & Twitter. Childhood’s End—i.e. the child as ultimate consumer, eager for the brand. Terrorism or home shopping network—take yr pick (democracy means choice).

Since the death of the Historical Movement of the Social in 1989 (last gasp of the hideous “short” XXth century that started in 1914) the only “alternative” to Capitalist Neo-Liberal totalitarianism that seems to have emerged is religious neo-fascism. I understand why someone would want to be a violent fundamentalist bigot—I even sympathize—but just because I feel sorry for lepers doesn’t mean I want to be one.

When I attempt to retain some shreds of my former antipessimism I fantasize that History may not be over, that some sort of Populist Green Social Democracy might yet emerge to challenge the obscene smugness of “Money Interests”—something along the lines of 1970s Scandinavian monarcho-socialism—which in retrospect now looks the most humane form of the State ever to have emerged from the putrid suck-hole of Civilization. (Think of Amsterdam in its heyday.) Of course as an anarchist I’d still have to oppose it—but at least I’d have the luxury of believing that, in such a situation, anarchy might actually stand some chance of success. Even if such a movement were to emerge, however, we can rest damn-well assured it won’t happen in the USA. Or anywhere in the ghost-realm of dead Marxism, either. Maybe Scotland!

It would seem quite pointless to wait around for such a rebirth of the Social. Years ago many radicals gave up all hope of The Revolution, and the few who still adhere to it remind me of religious fanatics. It might be soothing to lapse into such doctrinaire revolutionism, just as it might be soothing to sink into mystical religion—but for me at least both options have lost their savor. Again, I sympathize with those true believers (although not so much when they lapse into authoritarian leftism or fascism)— nevertheless, frankly, I’m too depressed to embrace their Illusions.

If the End-Time scenario sketched above be considered actually true, what alternatives might exist besides suicidal despair? After much thought I’ve come up with three basic strategies.

1) Passive Escapism. Keep your head down, don’t make waves. Capitalism permits all sorts of “lifestyles” (I hate that word)—just pick one & try to enjoy it. You’re even allowed to live as a dirt farmer without electricity & infernal combustion, like a sort of secular Amish refusnik. Well, maybe not. But at least you could flirt with such a life. “Smoke Pot, Eat Chicken, Drink Tea,” as we used to say in the 60s in the Moorish Church of America, our psychedelic cult. Hope they don’t catch you. Fit yourself into some Permitted Category such as Neo-Hippy or even Anabaptist.

2) Active Escapism. In this scenario you attempt to create the optimal conditions for the emergence of Autonomous Zones, whether temporary, periodic or even (semi)permanent. In 1984 when I first coined the term Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)

I envisioned it as a complement to The Revolution—although I was already, to be truthful, tired of waiting for a moment that seemed to have failed in 1968. The TAZ would give a taste or premonition of real liberties: in effect you would attempt to live as if the Revolution had already occurred, so as not to die without ever having experienced “free freedom” (as Rimbaud called it, liberte libre). Create your own pirate utopia.

Of course the TAZ can be as brief & simple as a really good dinner party, but the true autonomist will want to maximize the potential for longer & deeper experiences of authentic lived life. Almost inevitably this will involve crime, so it’s necessary to think like a criminal, not a victim. A “Johnson” as Burroughs used to say—not a “mark”. How else can one live (and live well) without Work. Work, the curse of the thinking class. Wage slavery. If you’re lucky enough to be a successful artist, you can perhaps achieve relative autonomy without breaking any obvious laws (except the laws of good taste, perhaps). Or you could inherit a million. (More than a million would be a curse.) Forget revolutionary morality—the question is, can you afford your taste of freedom? For most of us, crime will be not only a pleasure but a necessity. The old anarcho-Illegalists showed the way: individual expropriation. Getting caught of course spoils the whole thing—but risk is an aspect of self-authenticity.

One scenario I’ve imagined for active Escapism would be to move to a remote rural area along with several hundred other libertarian socialists—enough to take over the local government (municipal or even county) and elect or control the sheriffs & judges, the parent/teacher association, volunteer fire department and even the water authority. Fund the venture with cultivation of illegal phantastice and carry on a discreet trade. Organize as a “Union of Egoists” for mutual benefit & ecstatic pleasures—perhaps under the guise of “communes” or even monasteries, who cares. Enjoy it as long as it lasts.

I know for a fact that this plan is being worked on in several places in America—but of course I’m not going to say where.

Another possible model for individual escapists might be the nomadic adventurer. Given that the whole world seems to be turning into a giant parking lot or social network, I don’t know if this option remains open, but I suspect that it might. The trick would be to travel in places where tourists don’t—if such places still exist—and to involve oneself in fascinating and dangerous situations. For example if I were young and healthy I’d’ve gone to France to take part in the TAZ that grew around resistance to the new airport—or to Greece—or Mexico—wherever the perverse spirit of rebellion crops up. The problem here is of course funding. (Sending back statues stuffed with hash is no longer a good idea.) How to pay for yr life of adventure? Love will find a way. It doesn’t matter so much if one agrees with the ideals of Tahrir Square or Zucotti Park—the point is just to be there.

3. Revenge. I call it Zarathustra’s Revenge because as Nietzsche said, revenge may be second rate but it’s not nothing. One might enjoy the satisfaction of terrifying the bastards for at least a few moments. Formerly I advocated “Poetic Terrorism” rather than actual violence, the idea being that art could be wielded as a weapon. Now I’ve rather come to doubt it. But perhaps weapons might be wielded as art. From the sledgehammer of the Luddites to the black bomb of the attentat, destruction could serve as a form of creativity, for its own sake, or for purely aesthetic reasons, without any illusions about revolution. Oscar Wilde meets the acte gratuit: a dandyism of despair.

What troubles me about this idea is that it seems impossible to distinguish here between the action of post-leftist anarcho-nihilists and the action of post-rightist neo-traditionalist reactionaries. For that matter, a bomb may as well be detonated by fundamentalist fanatics—what difference would it make to the victims or the “innocent bystanders”? Blowing up a nanotechnology lab—why shouldn’t this be the act of a desperate monarchist as easily as that of a Nietzschean anarchist?

In a recent book by Tiqqun (Theory of Bloom), it was fascinating to come suddenly across the constellation of Nietzsche, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, et al. as examples of a sharp and just critique of the Bloom syndrome—i.e., of progress-as-illusion. Of course the “beyond left and right” position has two sides—one approaching from the left, the other from the right. The European New Right (Alain de Benoist & his gang) are big admirers of Guy Debord, for a similar reason (his critique, not his proposals).

The post-left can now appreciate Traditionalism as a reaction against modernity just as the neo-traditionalists can appreciate Situationism. But this doesn’t mean that post-anarchist anarchists are identical with post-fascism fascists!

I’m reminded of the situation in fin-de-siecle France that gave rise to the strange alliance between anarchists and monarchists; for example the Cerce Proudhon. This surreal conjunction came about for two reasons: a) both factions hated liberal democracy, and b) the monarchists had money. The marriage gave birth to weird progeny, such as Georges Sorel. And Mussolini famously began his career as an Individualist anarchist!

Another link between left & right could be analyzed as a kind of existentialism; once again Nietzsche is the founding parent here, I think. On the left there were thinkers like Gide or Camus. On the right, that illuminated villain Baron Julius Evola used to tell his little ultra-right groupuscules in Rome to attack the Modern World—even though the restoraton of tradition was a hopeless dream—if only as an act of magical self-creation. Being trumps essence. One must cherish no attachment to mere results. Surely Tiqqun’s advocacy of the “perfect Surrealist act” (firing a revolver at random into a crowd of “innocent by-standers”) partakes of this form of action-as-despair. (Incidentally I have to confess that this is the sort of thing that has always—to my regret—prevented my embracing Surrealism: it’s just too cruel. I don’t admire de Sade, either.)

Of course, as we know, the problem with the Traditionalists is that they were never traditional enough. They looked back at a lost civilization as their “goal” (religion, mysticism, monarchism, arts-&-crafts, etc.) whereas they should have realized that the real tradition is the “primordial anarchy” of the Stone Age, tribalism, hunting/gathering, animism—what I call the Neanderthal Liberation Front. Paul Goodman used the term “Neolithic Conservatism” to describe his brand of anarchism—but “Paleolithic Reaction” might be more appropriate!

The other major problem with the Traditionalist Right is that the entire emotional tone of the movement is rooted in self-repression. Here a rough Reichean analysis suffices to demonstrate that the authoritarian body reflects a damaged soul, and that only anarchy is compatible with real self-realization.

The European New Right that arose in the 90s still carries on its propaganda—and these chaps are not just vulgar nationalist chauvenist anti-semitic homophobic thugs—they’re intellectuals & artists. I think they’re evil, but that doesn’t mean I find them boring. Or even wrong on certain points. They also hate the nanotechnologists!

Although I attempted to set off a few bombs back in the 1960s (against the war in Vietnam) I’m glad, on the whole, that they failed to detonate (technology was never my metier). It saves me from wondering if I would’ve experienced “moral qualms”. Instead I chose the path of the propagandist and remained an activist in anarchist media from 1984 to about 2004. I collaborated with the Autonomedia publishing collective, the IWW, the John Henry Mackay Society (Left Stirnerites) and the old NYC Libertarian Book Club (founded by comrades of Emma Goldman, some of whom I knew, & who are now all dead). I had a radio show on WBAI (Pacifica) for 18 years. I lectured all over Europe and East Europe in the 90s. I had a very nice time, thank you. But anarchism seems even farther off now than it looked in 1984, or indeed in 1958, when I first became an anarchist by reading George Harriman’s Krazy Kat. Well, being an existentialist means you never have to say you’re sorry.

In the last few years in anarchist circles there’s appeared a trend “back” to Stirner/Nietzsche Individualism—because after all, who can take revolutionary anarcho-communism or syndicalism seriously anymore? Since I’ve adhered to this Individualist position for decades (although tempered by admiration for Charles Fourier and certain “spiritual anarchists” like Gustave Landauer) I naturally find this trend agreeable.

“Green anarchists” & AntiCivilization Neo-primitivists seem (some of them) to be moving toward a new pole of attraction, nihilism. Perhaps neo-nihilism would serve as a better label, since this tendency is not simply replicating the nihilism of the Russian narodniks or the French attentatists of circa 1890 to 1912, however much the new nihilists look to the old ones as precursors. I share their critique—in fact I think I’ve been mirroring it to a large extent in this essay: creative despair, let’s call it. What I do not understand however is their proposal—if any. “What is to be done?” was originally a nihilist slogan, after all, before Lenin appropriated it. I presume that my option #1, passive escape, would not suit the agenda. As for Active Escapism, to use the suffix “ism” implies some form not only of ideology but also some action. What is the logical outcome of this train of thought?

As an animist I experience the world (outside Civilization) as essentially sentient. The death of God means the rebirth of the gods, as Nietzsche implied in his last “mad” letters from Turin— the resurrection of the great god PAN—chaos, Eros, Gaia, & Old Night, as Hesiod put it—Ontological anarchy, Desire, Life itself, & the Darkness of revolt & negation—all seem to me as real as they need to be.

I still adhere to a certain kind of spiritual anarchism—but only as heresy and paganism, not as orthodoxy and monotheism. I have great respect for Dorothy Day—her writing influenced me in the 60s—and Ivan Illich, whom I knew personally—but in the end I cannot deal with the cognitive dissonance between anarchism and the Pope! Nevertheless I can believe in the re-paganaziation of monotheism. I hold to this pagan tradition because I sense the universe as alive, not as “dead matter.” As a life-long psychedelicist I have always thought that matter & spirit are identical, and that this fact alone legitimizes what Theory calls “desire”.

From this p.o.v. the phrase “revolution of everyday life” still seems to have some validity—if only in terms of the second proposal, Active Escapism or the TAZ. As for the third possibility— Zarathustra’s Revenge—this seems like a possible path for the new nihilism, at least from a philosophical perspective. But since I am unable personally to advocate it, I leave the question open.

But here—I think—is the point at which I both meet with & diverge from the new nihilism. I too seem to believe that Predatory Capitalism has won and that no revolution is possible in the classical sense of that term. But somehow I can’t bring myself to be “against everything.” Within the Temporary Autonomous Zone there still seems to persist the possibility of “authentic life,” if only for a moment—and if this position amounts to mere Escapism, then let us become Houdini. The new surge of interest in Individualism is obviously a response to the Death of the Social. But does the new nihilism imply the death even of the individual and the “union of egoists” or Nietzschean free spirits? On my good days, I like to think not.

No matter which of the three paths one takes (or others I can’t yet imagine) it seems to me that the essential thing is not to collapse into mere apathy. Depression we may have to accept, impotent rage we may have to accept, revolutionary pessimism we may have to accept. But as e.e. cummings (anarchist poet) said, there is some shit we will not take, lest we simply become the enemy by default. Can’t go on, must go on. Cultivate rosebuds, even selfish pleasures, as long as a few birds & flowers still remain. Even love may not be impossible...

[freakscircus]

i don't know who to talk to about this but i respect you a lot so i hope you don't mind my rambling. i'm a 17 year old girl in the united states and the more i think about our government the more frustrated i get. it's not even a matter of "x needs to happen to make it better," i think the government is inherently corrupt and broken and i have no faith in democracy as an institution. i feel like we need to get rid of everything entirely but i don't know what to do with these feelings. idk

17 yr old girl still: for clarification, i've felt this way for a while but i'm only acknowledging it now because i've been reading about like garrisonian abolitionism and how they believed the constitution is inherently flawed and the government is run by immoral people and so all government participation is corrupt and supporting a corrupt system... and it's how i feel to a t. fixing the government is a waste of time because america is inherently immoral... idk if i am just crazy or what to do

this is totally not crazy and completely 100% understandable. i think we all struggle to come to grips, especially these days, with the fact that the government we grew up trusting and believing in is not actually what it seems to be. i apologize for the personal political tangent i’m about to go on here, but for me this break came as i was continuously frustrated with the cruelty and suffering that could either by stopped by or was even fostered by the state. to me it made no sense that democrats, the seemingly liberal and rational compassionate party, sat around posturing while people died from lack of healthcare. stories about people being evicted because of medical bills or rationing insulin seemed completely ridiculous in a “”first world”” country that was wealthy enough to be spending billions of dollars on defense and weapons for “protection” but didn’t care about its own citizens wellbeing. as i got older, i started looking into works critical of capitalism and realized that at the heart of it all, the system wasn’t broken but working exactly how it had to in order to benefit the wealthy and powerful in this country. there’s a reason we can afford enormous “defense” spending but we “can’t afford” stimulus checks. we don’t get jeff bezos and other billionaires without stolen labor and resources. for example, amazon not paying taxes while elsewhere schools are closing and governments claim to have no money to reverse the seemingly permanent austerity we live in these days. the stock market hits records constantly but when was the last time the economy was good for everyone? why do so many top democrats have wall street and huge corporations as enormous donors with a ton of leeway? it all seemed very corrupt and rotten.

this is when i started reading about communism/socialism/anarchism. i had to unlearn a lot about what i was taught about all of this, as we are taught negative things for a reason. it really seems to some people that the choice is what we have now, or an authoritarian state complete with bread lines and factory work for the one party. which of course is not what communism is and many argue that communism the way karl marx intended does not look like anything we have seen yet because we need the capitalist powers that be to no longer exist to meddle and to suck up the world’s resources. ANYWAY reading more about anarchism and socialism made me realize that a better world is possible. i honestly do not trust the state and i think things get corrupted easily. i hope i am wrong and i hope without capitalism involved, a state could be more compassionate. however, i really loved the idea of small democratically led communities that existed without a centralized state. i think this pulls us away from corruption, isolation, overcommodification, and many things that make us sick and feel like our needs are not being met. but realizing a better world is possible in theory made the idea of scrapping it all not feel like such a hopeless failure.

however, the socialist revolution or the erasure of our current status quo will not happen overnight and isn’t happening anytime soon. really makes you feel frustrated and powerless right? my advice to you would be to take a break from theorizing about fixing absolutely everything before our system collapses in on itself. instead, i honestly find that the best thing for that frustration and powerlessness of living under this crumbling empire is to realize that on a small scale, people are doing so much good. i would get involved and look into mutual aid groups (not charities necessarily, but  community centered mutual aid groups like food not bombs run by locals for locals in a very compassionate way)  and see how they are changing their communities independent of the local or federal government. even picking a candidate that you think can give you any glimmer of hope (like me and bernie who i canvassed for in february when things seemed so much brighter lol) and do some grassroots work there. organizing on a local level for leftist groups even independent of politics and just for making people’s lives better can also really make you feel like good is still possible. even changing the life of one or two people who have been crushed by the callousness and unkindness of our system can really restore your faith that something can improve, even if its not our federal government. hope you don’t mind MY rant and hope this offers some insight into how i deal with the exact same feelings you have.

[goddamnfight]

Convicted felons don't deserve the right to vote. Your party is really desperate when you need votes from felons to win. Sucks to suck

First of all, I’m sure that not all convicted felons are democrats. Secondly, I’m not a democrat because America’s 2 party system is massive failure.

However, mostly importantly, convicted felons absolutely deserve the right to vote because they are American citizens. All American citizens deserve the right to vote. The majority of convicted felons are black people or latino, often who didn’t deserve to be convicted of a felony, especially since certain acts typically committed by those minority groups are considered felonies, whereas other acts of white collar crime are not considered felonies. Possession of Crack (or rock style cocaine) is punishable as a felony, and is almost likely to be smoked by non-white people, whereas cocaine in its powdered form is typically used by white people and it’s not punishable as a felony.

No one NEEDS convicted felons to vote to win an election, but convicted felons absolutely DO deserve to vote. Also, think about what you’re afraid of: if there are enough people who are mostly nonviolent people convicted of crimes, to sway an election, we definitely have too many people imprisoned. Are you scared your poor little racist vote will matter less when all black and Latino citizens are allowed to vote?? Scared of losing your privilege wittle baby racist? Strap on your diaper cause I will live to see convicted felons allowed their right to vote in my lifetime.