#white leftists really really REALLY need to think about how they talk about Black democrats

[lesbiandarvey]

.

[mariacallous]

i think the white cis male bernie bro demographic who keeps saying she "didn't turn out the base" are just mad that they aren't really the base. the base of the democratic party always has been black people + jewish people + lgbt people and not edgy white guy "leftists" who like talking about how we need to be nicer to trump voters.

[qqueenofhades]

Once you get offline, Biden’s doing ok with everyone but Republicans and racists. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty big voting bloc, but it should be manageable. More unfortunately, Harris is. Not popular. With anyone. Like, we’re talking Dan “To not have a mind is being very wasteful” Quayle levels of dissing. You can blame some of it on sexism and racism, but enough women and people of color have jumped on the “Kamala’s letting The Team down” bandwagon that there’s got to be more to it than this. Any thoughts?

Yeah, uh, I don't think that's fair OR accurate, and deserves quite a bit more reflection and pushback than is implied here (since your question frames it as thinking there MUST be something wrong with her and invites me to expand on it). First off, I am not comfortable comparing the first female vice president (AND female VP of color) to empty suit Dan Quayle, and especially when there's such a disparity in their background, social perception, and accomplishments, not to mention their role in the administration. So:

"You can blame some of it on sexism and racism, but -- " Okay, but how much? Are we actually assigning a weight to that and taking it into consideration, or hand-waving it aside in search of the "real" cause? Online Leftists are already disposed to irrationally dislike Kamala because of the "she's a cop!!!" business that went around during the primaries, which was likewise inaccurate and misleading, but showed how women, especially women of color, are often treated in white leftist spaces (including by leftist-identifying women). That very much WAS down to sexism, racism, and perceiving her as "shrill" or "there's just something I don't like about her." Okay, what is that? WHAT is the thing you don't like about her? Would you notice it in a male politician? Would you critique it in a male politician? If the answer is any part unclear, this needs more work and is in fact reflective of that dynamic, whether or not anyone is aware of it or thinks that's the reason why.

No, seriously. If someone professes that they "just don't like" Kamala or "there's something about her that rubs me the wrong way" or whatever else, my immediate next question would be "Why? What don't you like about her?" And keep drilling down through whatever excuses about "unlikeability" or "personality" or whatever else is offered. If this can be persuasively articulated in a way that a) exposes a substantive policy reason, b) can be differentiated from what any male vice president or other person in her position would do or what should be expected of them, and c) isn't just about "offputting vibes," then sure, we can have a discussion about that. Otherwise, yeah. That's not convincing me that it's anything other than the constant, long-running, ever-present discomfort with seeing a powerful and accomplished woman of color, who started her career prosecuting sex criminals, was the first Black woman in the Senate, and is now the first female vice president, actually state her issues and own her role.

"Enough women and people of color have jumped on the 'Kamala Is Letting the Team Down' bandwagon that there must be -- " Really? Must there? First of all, it's damn near impossible to find any Online Leftist who's willing to give Biden accurate credit for his accomplishments -- see the "Biden is bad and uninspiring and anti-trans but we should I guess vote for him anyway" rhetoric which is the closest they can possibly get to acknowledging it. (None of which is actually true!) When that's the case with the top of the ticket, it's orders of magnitude easier to project that irrational dislike and distortion onto "shrill" or "dislikable" Kamala. So who are these "women and people of color" who don't like Kamala? Are they in the room with us right now? Do they actually care about/vote for the Democrats, support their policy accomplishments, and realistically understand the progress that's been made and what remains to be done, or do they want to use Kamala as yet another convenient stick to beat the Democrats (since they won't give them accurate credit to start with?)

Even if this was true, sexism and racism somehow magically wasn't a factor (which uh, it is not) and Kamala had some terrible personality defect that was unique to her and her alone and not any of the far worse vice presidents there have been in the last 20 years alone: what is this kind of question intended to accomplish? Are we supposed to fear that by voting for Biden, we might vote for Kamala as well? Well, she was on the ticket last time too, and they won the election. Don't know what else to tell you.

[chokovit]

I'm gonna rant and vent

I'm gonna rant and vent about people I consider my brethren, my comrades, and my peers. I'm 100% not interested in debating or arguing with anyone at all so don't expect that if you message me.

I fucking hate election year. Every 4 years it's the same god damn song and dance and every other election it's worse and worse. And I'm not talking about some shitty pat ourselves on the back, circle jerking feel good about yourself garbage where I preach to the choir and we all sing "Yeah I feel that way too!"

I'm talking about Leftists, specifically, American Leftists (as I am American this will be therefore be from the point of view of one and my grievances will henceforth be specifically about "AMERICAN" Leftists so foh with your "That's an american centric view" shit).

I'm gonna preface what I'm about to say by stating the obvious. I am a leftist. Whether you fucking like it or not, whether you agree with me being one or not, I am. I don't hate leftists, as hard as this rant will make that easy to believe. I'm just very bothered by trends I see among them. They bother me because, unlike conservatives, I actually want leftists to "win". I actually want us to succeed. But in case your world view is black and white to the point you need me spelling it out for you, yes I am a leftist, I agree with leftists, and I am absolutely repulsed by Conservatism.

Now let me get into the meat and potatoes of what I want to bitch about. Basically, in the past, whenever I saw people bemoan that leftists are largely signal virtuing, morally uptight, jerkasses I thought of it as nothing more than the typically reactionary pant shitting rhetoric we've come to expect from Right-Wing discourse. And to be fair, back than, in the early-mid 2010s it probably was. But now? I don't fucking know anymore, it really does seem like at the very least a worryingly large amount of leftists think they're a part of some clique or social group and don't understand both the implications and power of their own standing. Particularly and most especially when it comes to voting. Let me tell you something, something really fucking important. You have nothing, you are nobody, and you are mostly powerless to do anything at all...EXCEPT for one thing, and that's voting. Yes, you can call your senator and congressperson but even thats only really gonna work if your congressperson or senator is one that'll even consider your interests. Do you think people in Lauren Boebert's district feel confident calling her to complain about trans issues? Yeah no. Every single fucking vote, every single god damn one matters and you can fuck off with your "both parties are the same" and "voting doesn't matter" bullshit. One party is waging a culture war on our entire nation, one party wants to make sure you're following a rigid social hierarchy, one party wants to turn Christianity into state law, one party wants to drape everything in repugnant Christian Nationalism and it's not Democrats.

Yes, yes it sucks that we can only pick from the two. No, no voting third party is not an option, we do not get the privilege of living in a country with a multi-party system. The DNC and the RNC both respectively own the two whole halves of the media industry in the United States, and no I'm not making that up. As cool and based as you think you look here on tumblr preaching about how we'll all vote for some super sick Ultra-Commie Socialist Dream party it's not going to happen. How many people will be inspired by you organizing on tumblr? in public even? on campus? Do you know the statistics you'd need? 2020 had an election turn out of 154 MILLION people! over 81 Million of them voted for Biden, and 74 Million of them voted for Trump! Now let's do a hypothetical, and lets be god damn realistic about it okay? REALISTICALLY, you and your lefty friends will never, ever, in all your attempts and rhetoric and debate, will ever be able to convince a MAGA Trump supporter from 2020 to vote for the Green Party. It will. Not. Happen. So that 74 Million? That stays, you get none of that. But, you could probably convince Progressives and Liberals who voted for Biden to do so (you know, if you actually want to shut the fuck up for 10 seconds and stop crying about how much you claim you hate them so all your friends nod and clap at you for being a super cool edgy leftist). So okay, let's be REALLY optimistic, let's say you convince like 20 million of those people who would've voted for Biden to vote for you, lets be even more optimistic and say you started with a base of 2 million people. I want you to keep this in mind that 2 Million people alone would be a record for the green party. In 2020 they had a popular vote of 406,000, literally less than half a million. But I digress. You're at 22 Million people, now lets consider people who didn't vote in 2020. That's 80 Million people, but, BUT, that's not a big pool of 80 million for you to grab from. We need to consider statistics first. Out of that 80 Million only roughly 30% of them didn't vote specifically because they either were undecided or didn't like the candidates. Therefore your actual pool of candidates interested in voting for you is 56 Million people. If you were only able to convince 20 million Biden voters, chances are you'd convince even less undecided voters. Realistically you should only get a hairs fraction of voters but, I'm trying to make a point here so lets say you get the largest share of Undecided Voters, somehow you're just super cool and based and you convince 30 million to vote for you. Not you have 54 Million votes. Congratulations, you have made US History by being the most voted for third party in the history of the US. You have beaten the previous record set by Jo Jorgensen in 2020 by a whopping 52 Million Votes (yes, really, that's the most a third party has ACTUALLY ever gotten before, just shy of 2 million votes). Despite your epic feel good win, the Orange piece of shit running against you, who has been galvanizing his base and everyone from the most fervant of maga's to your needle dick co-worker you kind of get along with despite voting republican for "fiscal" reasons, has surpassed his previous record by a little bit, he only really pooled in about a million more....which is 75 Million voters. Which is over 20 million people more than you.

Now I get it, I hear you barkin' big dog, we don't decide elections on popular vote, it's decided on the Electoral College. My point here is showing you how unfeasible third parties really truly are. This isn't a movie, this isn't like someone's gonna make some grand speech and everyone claps and comes to their senses and all of a sudden votes for "the right candidate". No, for a party that's NOT Libertarian to get even 10 million people to vote for them would be a historical precedent. And you don't need me to tell you that 10 million people is not nearly enough people spread across 50 states to make up for the electorate you'd need to win an election.

So why is this important? Why is it important we vote against republicans instead of voting for whatever helps us sleep at night, makes us feel good, and makes us look super "in" with our buddies online? Uh, because republicans will continue to do the things they're doing so long as they see it as a means to make themselves electable. Sure, some people say "well it's not MY fault it's the dems faults for not being GOOD enough for me to vote for them" and to that I say pbbbbth, you fucking KNOW better. You KNOW better, because you're a leftist, how dangerous fascism is, how bad and poisonous and terrible Traditionalism is. Consider this, another hypothetical okay? Everyone is so disgusted by the perils of conservatism they unite, as they did in 2020, to vote against them. They do it again in 2024, They do it again in 2028, and a 4th time in 2032. You've now had two full term presidents in the United States, will that make the conservatives go away? no. But will it swing the pendulum back? Yes! YES IT WILL! Politicians only give a shit about one thing and thats GETTING ELECTED. And if those mother fuckers start to realize that conservatism is an UNWINNABLE position, than they will, at the least, begin to abandon Conservatism as a platform for their party.

At the moment, that's NOT what's happening. Instead, we have Conservatives emboldened by 40 years of Reagan Rhetoric slowly shifting the pendulum ever more right. They've been doing it for 4 god damn decades okay, and you think 1 term from a dem president is going to start shifting it back? Fuck. The Fuck. Off. Dems are, from a global perspective, a centre-right party. When and if they do anything to "shift" the pendulum left, it's going to be shifted less to the left and more toward the "centre". Right now THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT!!!! YOU WANT THAT!!! HAVING THE PENDULUM FARTHER AWAY FROM THE RIGHT IS A /GOOD/ THING BECAUSE RIGHT NOW ITS DANGEROUSLY FAR TO THE RIGHT.

This shit doesn't make me liberal, this shit makes me pragmatic. I DONT. LIKE. CONSERVATIVES. I'm guessing if you've read this far /YOU/ probably don't either (or at least you claim to). But I don't hate them because they're rhetoric is bad, because they act like bigots or say mean/offensive things. I hate them because I genuinely hate their ideology, I hate their beliefs, I think everything they want for you and me and society at large is a fucking POISON to us as a modern, progressive society. And that's for obvious reason, they don't WANT us to be a modern, progressive society. If you've hated conservatives this entire time because of any "shocking" or "apalling" things you've seen or heard from them or that MSNBC or your lefty friends have shown you (including me) than I'm sorry but you're hating them for the wrong reasons. I mean, not that it isn't valid to hate someone for being a dick head. But your repulsion, your disgust should run deeper than that. You should be terrified and stop at nothing to want to crush Conservative ideology from the grip it has on American society. The vast majority of conservatives want to kill you, do you understand that? Whether that's because of their bigoted views, or because of LITERALLY CENTURY LONG WORTH OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST LEFTIST AND SOCIALIST VALUES they see you as a threat and want you dead. As much as they point and ridicule "libs" and "liberals" like you do, the liberals will be fine. It's YOU who won't be, it's YOU who should be hating them the most. And from what I see, you don't. Because if leftists truly felt threatened by conservatism they'd be stopping at nothing to rid it from our system. Instead, Leftists are more concerned with policing themselves, more concerned with having some super cool "hot take" on whoever the current president is. Leftists are more comfortable being the edgy outcasts, and if they're successful, they're not outcasts anymore. Fuck that. I haven't claimed leftism my entire life since I was 13 (I'm 30 now) just cuz I wanted to be edgy, and different. I didn't want to "look smart" and prove some "moral superiority" over people. You can do that shit with literally any political ideology. I claimed Leftism as my political ideology because it is, to me, the most pragmatic to ending universal suffering. And with that, I want leftism as an ideology to prevail and succeed. Not remain in the fucking shadows, ever caught on the side-lines of a worsening tug-o-war between Liberals and Fascists.

And most importantly of all, I want this to succeed, it NEEDS to succeed. And to do that we MUST unify, divide, and conquer. Yes, that means at least for a while we have to unify with Liberals. Our battle right now should be with the scourge of Fascism. The Soviet's didn't turn their guns mid-way through fighting the Nazi's cuz "erm actually the Allies are cringe too" no, they fucking united against a common, worse enemy. In fact, let me dive into the Nazi's cuz there's an interesting tid bit here. The Weimar republic, pre-Nazi rise, was composed of like 3 "left" wing parties. Needless to say by US standards all 3 of these parties would be considered left of Democrats but I digress. The refusal of all 3 of these parties to unite and caucus together created fractions in the political system of Germany at the time. This made it way fucking easier for the Nazi's to come in and sweep things up afterwards. There's many reasons WHY they were fractured, but those are beside the point of what I am trying to say here. It's like, that one part from Sun Tzu's Art Of War that people actually remember: "Divide and Conquer" with political division, the Nazi's easily just swept in and destroyed them. Do not forget, Fascism is an inherently authoritarian ideology. It is therefore organized and demands rigid conformity. If we do not unite, we will be easier to break apart and fall victim to it's clutches.

Finally, and lastly, I think this last part just comes from our horrible education system in the US. I understand many people probably didn't take Civics in high school, to those people I am sorry. As there's no way you could get how our system works because the system itself failed to educate you. If you did take civics in high school, or god forbid college, than you fucking know better. YOU! WILL NOT! CHANGE ANYTHING! IN A MEASLY 4! FUCKING! YEARS!

I know what we want, I know because I share a lot of the same values as you, even if I don't share your methods. I also know them because I've been reading you people post about them for the better part of like 15 years! NOTHING YOU WANT TO SEE IN GOVERNMENT, NONE OF THE CHANGES YOU WANT TO SEE HAPPEN! NONE OF THEM ARE GONNA HAPPEN IN ONE PRESIDENCY! Need I remind you that the current state of affairs has been shifted to the Right over a process that has taken FOURTY! FUCKING! YEARS!? and you think somehow that you'll just come in with some super cool epic revolutionary spirit and change shit in a couple years? That's not realistic! IT's just! NOT! But that doesn't mean we CANT change things. Yes, it does mean we have to change things slowly, it DOES mean we have to play the long game. But guess what, the Conservatives have been playing the long game since that shit bag Reagan leaked poisonous venom from his gunshot wound in DC. In fact they've probably been doing it longer, from 1965.

You wanna know if things can get worse? You already know the answer to that, yes. Yes things can get worse. Yes a society can advance forward, only to move backward. This literal exact fucking thing happened once in modern history, and it took 3 major super powers to defeat it.

Leftism isn't a fucking club, it's not a circle jerk for all of us to feel good about ourselves for being intellectuals and morally upright people. It's a fucking political ideology, that's it. It's not one of your fandoms. So no, you don't need to spend all the energy spent arguing with and debating with every other leftist and YES I know how that sounds coming from me. As much as this rant will have you assume otherwise I don't really spend much time debating other leftists. Mostly because a good chunk of leftists are way too reactionary to give me a charitable and honest platform. Anyone you disagree with is a fascist. And yes I've ACTUALLY had people call me this before. You dilute the term, you HELP the fascists this way. Fascism is a very specific evil, it's not just people who disagree with you. Sometimes, you will feel uncomfortable about the views other leftists have. That's normal. That doesn't mean they're "Liberal" or "Fascists". Again, this isn't a little pow wow where we sit around and agree with each other and get super psyched together about our favorite piece of political theory, and than if someone says something we disagree with we just kick them out of the circle. That's not how that works. That's not how any functional political movement succeeds. Right now, you and I have ZERO seats at the table, we don't exist on the grand political spectrum, as much as the GOP tries to fear monger that we do. So yes, we will have to unify sometimes with people we don't like. We will have to agree to disagree and come together for a common enemy.

I know this will change literally nobody's mind but I just really needed to get all of these thoughts out. I want them out and I want people to read them so that they can at least SEE the perspective of leftists outside their fucking echo chamber. Our division is NOT conducive to our success. We are going to /FAIL/ because the pendulum will keep going to the right. It'll fail cuz we are more concerned about making a choice that makes us feel morally vindicated than one that is pragmatic. I have nothing else to say anymore. Fuck Americans. Fuck all of them. Fuck all the American Conservatives. Fuck all the American Liberals. Fuck all the American Leftists. And Fuck all the undecided pieces of shit who couldn't decide whether or not they want to vote against fascism or let it slip on in. Fuck all of you, you uneducated, feel-good, self-satisfying, non-communitarian, individualistic, pigs of society. I sincerely wish I was born in literally any other country because at least than I wouldn't have to deal with being around some of the most inane, vapid, superficial fucking human beings on the planet. American Society is a god damn joke. Only above Israel. And that's not a bar you should be proud of.

[frankbelloriley]

I find non-Latinx pundits talking about the Latinx vote incredibly frustrating, and before I got into it: yes, I'm going to use this term that is frustrating not because of the letter at the end but because it generalizes a large swath of people that share nothing in common except an oppressor from a European peninsula at one point in history, as it was made by LGBT and nonbinary youth who felt that Latino and Latina did not appropriately include them, not by white intellectuals as some people falsely claim, and if you have a problem with me using Latinx to be inclusive to all genders of people, please go fuck yourself.

Okay, maybe I am more angry than frustrated. Anyway.

On the Latinx side, yes there are those who have deluded themselves who think when the right talks about "Mexicans" they are not referring to them but to actual criminals and illegals and are willing to hear and help them out to convince them that they are not all like that. It's important to look at the percentage of Border Patrol officers who are Latinx. There's both the flawed logic of "if we are the ones to get the illegals out, then we will be accepted of white people" and the historical precedent set by Irish immigrants in the late 1800s becoming police officers and fireman in the Northeast as their way to ascend closer to the ruling class.

That's one aspect. Another aspect is there are Latinx immigrants who are fleeing leftist governments explicitly because they are leftist governments. Cubans are the poster child for this, but more recently, Venezuelans are coming here to get away from Maduro. If they were left-leaning but thought the governments went too far, they would stay where they were to try and work with what they had. These immigrants want nothing to do with any politics that are left of center. Yes, some of them are like a certain co-director of animated superhero movies whose ancestors were wealthy at the expense of others and whose property was forcibly taken by the others, but however, some of them were actually oppressed by these leftist governments and now have trauma that the American Right has developed a well oiled machine at triggering in order to get their votes. As I've said on here before, I really do hate how Cuba is talked about in the American political landscape. Bernie Sanders got flack from both sides for saying, "Castro gave his people healthcare and taught them how to read, but we cannot forget the atrocities he committed against his people," which is the stance that you, as an American, need to internalize and hold in your head. I hate that the American Left touts Cuba as this leftist gold standard when it comes to public healthcare and then willfully omits Castro's atrocities, and I hate that the American Right held up Castro as a boogeyman and then willfully omits the United States's role in Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship that created an environment that would allow Castro to violently come to power. Both sides forget about the Cuban people at heart, and it's just a football in a political argument to them.

And then going off the fact that the GOP is very good at triggering the very real trauma caused by authoritarian leftist governments, the Democrats completely take the Latinx vote for granted and do nothing. They take that bloc's vote as granted as the Black vote, but the major difference is that Black voters can point to the LBJ's Civil Rights Acts as material things the party did for them, whereas no such legislation exists for Latinx people. In fact, many older Mexicans vote Republican out of loyalty for Reagan giving amnesty to immigrants. The two Democratic candidates in recent memory with any Latinx voter outreach worth a damn were Beto O'Rourke because he's from Texas, and Bernie Sanders. Democrats love to conveniently set aside that Berne Sanders destroyed a full field of candidates in the 2020 Nevada primary, and it was because of his Latino outreach. He started reaching out in 2017 with a strong ground game message of, "hey, we're here for you, and no matter how the election shakes out in a few years, we're going to be here for you afterwards." He understood that how the typical Latinx voter sees the Democratic Party as only caring about them when there's an election and then abandoning them when there isn't. Biden's Latinx outreach in 2020 was completely nonexistent, and I imagine it was the same in 2024, and Kamala chose to inherit all of Biden's people. They did nothing, so they got nothing.

Which leads me to my final point. I am curious about the amount of Latinx would-be voters simply stayed home. I'm a Puerto Rican who grew up with parents who regularly said, "eh, both parties are about the same, they just trade times when they're in power," and that is rooted in the island's politics. Things are currently changing with the (re)emergence of an Independence Party, but the during my parents's time and 99% of my life, Puerto Rico was ruled a Statehood Party and a Commonwealth Party, one wanting to make the island a US state and the other to keep it a commonwealth. Both are corrupt and indistinguishable. The previous Statehood Party governor was up on stage at the DNC to announce support for Kamala, and the current Statehood Party governor candidate is a Trumpista. Similar candidate goofiness exists in the Commonwealth Party. I would argue this is a feature, not a bug, in the US colonialism of Puerto Rico because it's not outwardly disenfranchising an island of people (although they still do that as they cannot vote for US President) but it does turn off people to the democratic process entirely and that helps the United States. This is a very skimmed over version of the political revolú that is Puerto Rico that much smarter people can talk about (look up Bianca Graulau), but my point is: I grew out of the "both parties are basically the same" mindset, but I understand why other Puerto Ricans would believe that when they saw Kamala stand next to Liz and Dick Cheney, and they, in return, chose to sat home.

Admittedly, I have more explanations than solutions to all of this. My primary solution would be to actually care about Latinx people, specifically for Mexicans to care about Puerto Ricans to care about Colombians to care about Panamanians and so on and so forth except for Cubans because they view themselves as white so you can leave them with the oppressors (that is (mostly) a joke, but you get my drift). And my problem with that is my problem at large when a simple majority chooses that man: I do not know how to convince other people to care for other people. My other solution is for the Democratic Party to actually give a shit about Latinx voters all year round instead of pretend to give one once every four years.

[spiderywigglerodstuff]

tw: uspol, abuse, long post

I never talk about politics here for more or less my own sanity and the general vibe of my blog, so don't feel a need to read this at all lol, it's about voting

I have had this awkward don't ask don't tell sort of situation with my mom ever since I was almost put into conversion therapy on the -suspicion- that I was homosexual. Out on my own, well into adulthood, this remains. I only maintain contact with her out of a (perhaps misguided) desire to remain in touch with at least one parent as my dad is out of the picture. She obviously is conservative to the point of worshiping Ted Kaczynski and thinking the catholic church is too liberal.

It is unsurprising that, given this leaning, she has attached herself to the reactionary bullshit trump train that many disenfranchised and misguided folks have before her. Lately, however, as things somehow keep getting more and more insane, she has become convinced that I am a bot, being spoonfed by the liberal media how to think and who to vote for. (Ironic considering she parrots headlines from the 'church militant' and it's derivatives)

I immersed myself in geopolitics from a young age like a lot of millennial wieners, only really becoming truly 'aware' after 9/11 happened and I began to look into the details. Almost nothing is ever as black and white as you are told. I will not pretend that I am as informed about the world as I could be, but I make a consistent effort to stay as informed and knowledgeable about the world and it's people as possible given my resources and time.

Discussing the evils of America and beyond is not the point of this post and would fill a library. What I wanted to talk about today is voting and usamerican politics. What is the truth? Is voting to cause the least amount of harm as a self-labeled far leftist the worst thing possible? Probably not, at the least if I can cancel out my mom's vote. I see a lot of hopeless / never vote stuff, and the possibility that 'blue no matter who' and 'voting means complicity' sort of things (not just on tumblr) could be sponsored propaganda is just insane to me. So, what is the truth? Should you vote or not? Is it all pointless? Especially pointless as I scarcely believe in anything remotely close to what the """left wing""" democrats do? I think yes.

Even if it's pointless.

If just to cancel out my mom's vote in some sort of 30 year streak of rebelling against my parents, so be it. With that logic it will be back to effectively not voting though, so.. back to square one. (Hopefully with Harris as president though tbh)

(Art by John Brosio)

[preston-t-umber]

That's an awful lot of words to spend on the fact that the Democrats are a more ideologically broad coalition than the Republicans. That isn't really something that can change. It is also easier to find yourself breaking promises if you have highly ambitious affirmative policy goals, versus "cut taxes and appoint conservative judges; occasionally take a bit out of the social safety net". The that the Democrats are mistreating you by not being as close to the center as you, but also betraying the Left...that's the problem any ideologically broad political party is going to have. As an side, the Democratic party is also not responsible for the phenomenon of political messianism, does not have any kind of monopoly on the same, and is not somehow unique in disappointing people with revolutionary political goals.

Regarding the issue of bigots: saying "the Democrats talk too much about bigotry" doesn't actually mean bigotry doesn't exist, or won't be important to a political party whose most loyal voter base is black women, and whose other most consistent voter bases are largely members of various minorities. I don't know why you'd see that as some special pointed criticism of you, or really of anyone else. As far as winning goes: you need 50 percent plus 1. You put forth the proposition that Trump's obvious unworthiness means that if Democrats would just stop the speech that shows they hate (somebody), they'd destroy him in a landslide. Do you actually have an affirmative evidence for that theory?

Which specific policies are national Democrats embracing that you think shows they hate white people, or men? I gotta say, sometimes I feel excluded in lots of left-wing spaces as a white dude, but I can't think of any novel innovations from Uncle Sam that make me feel that way - and as you have pointed out in the past, a dude like me was always seen as acceptable to send into the meat grinder of war, as a more acceptable target for carceral and capital punishment; I guess next to those things like, idk, child support laws seem pretty tame.

You mention a bunch of other policies, but in a bunch of them, well, Democrats *have* either done things, or said they would. Can you blame a liberal for looking at the border security rhetoric, then seeing the GOP House choosing not to take any of the compromises on offer and thinking, "huh, they are lying, because if it was really so important they'd be willing to give Joe Biden the win". You again try to immunize yourself by saying that people like me just lie and accuse all our opponents of bigotry, but again, if party A is willing to basically concede to party B's position to get more funding to border security and party B throws a fit, then why should supporters of party A who were skeptical of party B's attitude not start wondering about the sincerity of their opponents?

I'm still just...wondering what the positive vision is here. You feel like Democrats hate white men, even though that's really some online leftists and certain academics who do; you feel like Democrats are overly apocalyptic in their language (the post chain we are commenting on has people implying they think Democrats are totalitarian for depicting a cat eating the snake on a Gadsden flag); you dislike the fact that Democrats point out that the GOP stops them (incidentally...until this reply I don't think I've really brought that subject up? It's just something you started ranting about without any connection I can see other than you being very frustrated by Democrats) - even though the entire reason to do that is so that the voters will know whose fault a thing is, since it is in fact in the voters hands; you hate Hillary Clinton for...being unsuccessful? Doing the super normal politician thing of, yes, playing inside baseball? You compare how Democrats to talk about Project 2025, an update of a plan from a fairly influential think-tank who themselves brag about getting their policies enacted in the Reagan administration...to a bunch of campaign promises from the far-left of the party?

They know they're authoritarian, and they're proud.

[dhaaruni]

I think what I really hate about leftist messaging is the complete lack of understanding of how humans work. Like, yes, student debt should be cancelled, and college should be free, but the way to get there isn't to yell on the internet at some 40-year-old who's given up a lot to pay their student loans and is frustrated (unjustifiably or not) that other people won't have to go through that.

Yeah, and moreover only like 32% of the country even has a Bachelor's Degree and our demographic still completely dominates the media and discourse. Free college is well and good but so many people can't or just don't want to go to college because academia just isn't for them but still want to be able to feed their families and take care of their kids.

Someone put it like this and it really clicked with me: a white guy who makes $50,000 as a bricklayer votes like a white guy who owns a plumbing company and makes $200,000 a year and not like the white male adjunct professor who makes $50,000 a year, who votes like a white male software engineer who makes $200,000 a year, and that's all education polarization. Like, for white people, everything else held constant, (sexuality, gender, etc.) education is the deciding factor, more so than income. The fact that Democrats represent like 90% of the districts where the average income is over $100,000 should tell you that!!

Like, that's also why people like Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, Democratic senators in red states (Hillary lost Wisconsin and Biden won it by like 20,000 votes, it's NOT a blue state) who serve alongside a Republican senator, run on bread-and-butter economic issues like strengthening unions and increasing the minimum wage and lowering drug prices, and don't talk about abortion beyond saying they're pro-choice and almost never talk about immigration. Wisconsin and Ohio are thousands of miles from Mexico but talking about immigration still makes them lose voters! This excerpt from the latest David Shor article made things click for me:

A white person in Wisconsin or Ohio who votes for Baldwin and Brown, especially when they don't vote for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, votes for Baldwin and Brown because they make THEIR life better, and when Democrats seem to be prioritizing people that aren't them, they go, "I should vote for Republicans since at least they care about my identity as a white person and don't make me the butt of the joke all the time." This isn't me condoning voting Republican since obviously poor Black women overwhelmingly vote Democrat despite generally facing more censure than white people, this is me saying that's the mindset you need to understand in order statewide elections in states that are >80% white, which again, Democrats have to do so we don't end up with 40 Senate seats and 150 House seats by 2025.

(And no, the answer is not for Democrats to stick to their guns and lose elections.)

[evilelitest2]

What is the dirtbag left? People keep talking about it but I have no clue what it is

Oh this answer is gonna suck.  Good question as always though.  

Ok before we can get into the dirtbag left, I want to talk about the major factions of leftist in the United States, and I am discounting Moderates/Centrist/Blue Dog Democrat's, I am specifically focused on people who support actual left wing policies.  Roughly speaking they can be broken up into the following groups though each group is a lot more complicated than I am implying here

The first and most dynamic faction are the progressives, people who are focused on the rights of marginalized people.  Sometimes they are called “identity Politics”  They are further subdivided into a bunch of specific interest groups, but their main unifying argument is “society is specifically persecuting towards certain groups and we need to address that” 

Civil Rights, who focus on the rights of African Americans 

Feminists who focus on the rights of women

The Queer Community, who are focused on the rights of Gender and Sexual Minorities (Gay people, Trans people, Non Binary people, Bi people, intersex, asexual ect

This group is really divided within itself but lets not get sidetracked

Groups focusing on the rights of Latin Americans, both citizens and immigrants

Groups focusing on the rights of Muslims/Middle Easterners

Groups focusing on the rights of Jews/Combating antisemitism

Groups focusing on the rights of Asian Americans

And finally groups focusing on the rights of the disabled 

The next major group is the labor movement, who focus on the rights of workers, focusing on things like Unions, increasing the minimum wage, addressing the wealth gap and very New Deal FDR policies, and tend to be anticapitalistic or at least Social Democrat.   

Environmentalists, who want the world to not die

Anti War advocates

Pro Education/Pro Science anti Fundamentalists' people who just want good goverment.  

And some post modernists thrown in because why not?

The two main groups that make up the left are the first two, the issues of Identity Politics and Class, and there is a LONG history of these two groups having trouble le working together.  One of the major issue is that a lot of poor whites would happily welcome a lot of leftist social policies, but vote conservative if they believes those policies will help black people, even if it hurts their own best interest.  I mean take the New Deal, which was among the greatest economic period of US history and was popularly supported by most Americans.  However a lot of poor whites supported it because Latinos and Blacks were not allowed access to most of its benefits.  ANd once the Democratic Party started to pursue desegregation and women’s rights, these poor whites abandoned the party which gave them a future and voted for policies that hurt their own best interest because of their extreme bigotry.  Which is the most frustrating part of American History.   

And among a lot of Democrats (mostly centrist) there is this idea that the best way to win elections is to stab marginalized communities in the back in order to win Republican voters.  When Bill Clinton won in 1992, he did so in large part by abandoning a lot of leftist principles, he embraced Third Way style Liberalism and deregulation (which led to the 2008 crash thanks Clinton) but he also happily supported Right wing ideas about trying to keep crazy radicals minorities from advancing too far in politics.  Basically try to rebrand the Democrats as “we aren’t as crazy as the Republicans, but we ditched all of that lame uncool parts of politics that makes your family uncomfortable”.  

So the Dirtbag Left (there term not mine) was like “Hey could we do this...but for communism?”  And like most bad things, its origin is with Nazis.

The Dirtbag Leftist are Marxists who think the best way to win Trump voters over to the left is to combine Socialist style economic/welfare policies with conservative styles attacks on “Free Speech” and “Identity Politics.”  The “nicer” version of these guys basically say “ok we win them in with the economic policies and once we implement that, we can work on the other issues”.  The cruelr version of that basically want a socialist state...for white straight men and nobody else.  

This happened because some communists were looking at how the Alt-Right was radicalizing apolitical young men and were like “wait we can do that too”  

See if you have ever had the misfortune of being in Nazi/Red Pill/Gamergate style spaces you will notice that they actually share a lot of the left’s complains about the status que.  They dislike both parties, they don’t like capitalism, and they think our current consumerist way of life is souless drudgery.  So some communists were like “What if we found the exact same demographic as these guys but tried to turn them to communism instead of Fascism?”  Which sounds like a good idea but here is the problem

The type of people who become Nazis had to already be bigoted anti intellectuals in the first place.  All you have done is given some of them Marxist Rhetoric rather than Nazi Rhetoric, they are the exact same toxic people.  And in trying to cater to them, you have allowed them to infiltrate's your movement.  

The other quality of the Dirtbag Left is that they think that the Centrist Democrats (Clinton, Obama, Biden ect) are a greater threat than the conservatives, and that if the Far Right and the Far Left can team up to destroy the center, the radicals can work out their issues.  Which has never worked ever in human history but they keep trying.  

Initially the DIrtbag Left was basically vulgar leftists who wanted to down play the issues that trigger conservatives (Abortion, minority rights, feminism, being nice to people) in order to get them to support their social/economic policies, but it quickly became co-opted by the Alt Right themselves, and now they are basically just advocates of a Herrenvolk style social state.  Or really...they are what would happen if the Nazis actually tried to combine Nationalism with Socialism.  

And  while they aren’t a large group, like the Alt-Right they are really really prominent online and are constantly engaged in wide spread harassments campaigns that are basically find/replace Gamergate harassments campaigns.  They attached themselves pretty hard to Bernie's Sanders campaign and did a really good job in ruining his chances in both primaries, and then attached themselves to Tulsi Gabbard’s fucking toxic campaign after that.  At this point they are basically just Alt Rightists with a socialist brand reskin.   Sometimes called the Red Brown Alliance

[thestraightmutt]

Everyone, I’d like to announce that I’m tired.  I give up.  I surrender. It is better that we remain as one nation and it makes sense that we cave to those that are loudest.  If we join the left then maybe it will abate them. We will be whole again.  I mean, a dictatorship isn’t THAT bad, Ayn Rand really didn’t know what she was talking about anyway.

I will now join those I thought were my enemies.  I will cross the aisle and join what I USED to call “the mob”. I’d like to apologize for everything I’ve ever said and done in opposition to their ideals.  

I want to now explain to you what it is I believe now:

~I believe America is at fault for everything and is evil: America invented slavery.  We also started WW1 and WW2.  

~ I now believe that the dems and reps SWITCHED: it was the repubicans that owned slaves and Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat…or he owned slaves and kept them in his top hat…(I believe it depends on the conversation you are having at the time…which makes sense).

~ I now believe that if you are gay, you can never be bad:  You are innocent of ALL crime.  If you are gay or bi or trans you are only full of love and peace.  If you force yourself on someone else that is NOT rape.  YOU are the victim because they didn’t like it.  If they don’t like it, then they are homophobic and transphobic and evil.  YOU are always innocent and good.  

~ Abortion can happen ANYTIME: if a social justice warrior “kills’ someone, that’s not murder (this is war after all), its just late term abortion and that’s ok.  But if someone on the right kills anyone then that’s murder and should be given the death penalty even though we don’t believe in the death penalty.

~ I also believe in prison reform that will allow terrorists and traitors and EVERYONE free from prison…unless we put them there for any reason on this list.

~Even with all those convicts free, I believe that there should be no cops at all.  The police don’t protect anyone and if your house gets broken into or if you’re in a situation where you need the police, then you are elitist and privileged.    

~ “Free speech” is violent and evil:  Now that I’m a leftist, I can say whatever I want (see? SO many benefits to just giving in!), but no one else can.  

~ Silence is also violence: you might as well do what I’m doing and just join them!  You can’t win!  Save yourself the grief!

~ All men are rapists and boys are just future rapists: Women need to rule the world because we’re just better.  Men are useless unless we want them for sex when WE want it, but if we change our minds after wards, we can call him a rapist and never have to see him again. He’ll be behind bars where all men belong.  Little boys also need to understand that they are nothing compared to girls.  That even if a girl treats him like garbage and abuses him, well, it not abuse because he’s a guy and stronger, but girls can be just as strong as men.  And if a guy stands up for himself (in ANY way) then that’s abuse.

~ BUT men can be women: Men are only redeemable if they wear a skirt and put on make up and castrate themselves and inject themselves with hormones.

~ Capitalism is evil: Only the companies that signal the CORRECT view points are exempt form this and little shops don’t matter, they only exist for us to burn down so that we can prove our point.  

~ Education is useless: What’s the point of going to school and/or learning a trade to work in society when I can just burn down the businesses that would’ve hired me?  I don’t need to spend thousands of dollars when I can just buy a matchbook and a bottle of whisky.  Its society that OWS me anyway, I shouldn’t have to do anything.

~ A black republican is NOT black: Don’t they know that ALL blacks should be democrat?  That’s like…logic 101.  How dare they talk back to their masters how could they NOT thank the party that freed them from the slavery of the republicans!  How ungrateful!

~ You are also not gay or anything if you’re a republican either because, again, logic 101.  How could you not surrender yourself as pawns the left cares for the lgbt+ community more than anyone else, you’re just rude and fake.

~ You are racist and entitled because you’re white: You could be homeless, and because you’re white you are entitled and privileged and you deserve to be punished.  That’s just fact. 

~ We should ban ALL guns:  only the government and WE hitlers youth the Left should have guns…but the govt should only have guns after a leftist takes over and there are no more elections.

~ We only talk to INTELLECTUALS:  Now that I’m smarter because I’m a leftist, I will no longer read or watch anything the right agrees with or puts out.  You all are still elitist trash, but I’m an intellectual and will only associate with other people who only use 4 and 3 letter words when faced with any kind of opposition.  Swearing means you’re smart and badass.

~ businesses have a right to not serve you if you don’t wear a mask, but they do NOT have a right to not serve you if they don’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding because it goes against their religious beliefs.  Even if they recommend other business to be nice, they are full of hate.

~ right leaning capitalists are greedy scum that only see money BUT Right leaning capitalists will refuse business to black people…because they were the ones that came up with jim crow laws because it was the republicans who owned slaves.  (We, the Left, can always have it both ways)

~ I believe that working hard, thinking scientifically, and being on time is only a white trait and that is NOT racist.

Now that I’ve declared myself a social justice warrior and declared war on America and all those that oppose these view points, i want to make clear that if anyone fights back against us its because they don’t see us as human and they are the evil party  They really should just give into us and lay down and die for us.  We are also always correct.  Even if we’re wrong, we are correct. 

Work cited:

https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333

https://time.com/179/men-are-obsolete/ (so it said men were good for nothing but sex....and then it back tracked because if you confuse the reader, then you are not accountable for any misinformation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7nUBYFKnr0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idw83kGmwzw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMSTDsMXoD8

check out the #walkaway campaign and read their stories...

[quakerjoe]

Look Up the word SOCIALISM. Please. It has fuck-all nothing to do with guns.

I ran across this comment:

“I am for gun rights.. does that make me less socialist?”

Are you fucking kidding me? There are really people THIS stupid. This is why America is about to collapse like the Soviet Union did. It’s not because we were outspent like they were, it’s because we’re suffering under TWO pandemics right now- Covid-19 AND TOTAL FUCKERY because far, FAR too many people are just that ignorant.

As a veteran, I was trained to use firearms. They’re tools for hunting and killing. End of story. Want one? I’m all for it! Everyone who’s willing to put in the effort to train and get a license for one should have one if they really want to. I’m all in, hoss.

However, when you’re equating having a killing tool that makes it way too easy to put someone to death with alongside a political style of governance, you’re a fucking idiot. Only in #Murica do people have this issue. By my account, the 2nd Amendment should be shit-canned. It’s outdated and nobody takes it seriously anymore. How so?

“A well regulated militia...”

Let’s stop right there. When this was written, children, there was no standing army in the new USA. At best, each state was, in theory, expected to raise their own militias and even then, they owned their own weapons that they had to buy themselves (and we’re talking the same rifles they also used for hunting with). A British Regular of the time, a professional, well-trained soldier, could fire 3 rounds per minute. A yokel from some Colonial/State militia? One. Maybe two at best. Training was nothing less than lax back then and it was insanely expensive. 

To the point- if you want to join a state militia, i.e. the National Guard, then fine; own a gun. In the more modern sense, if you want to join a branch of our fine armed forces, then you’ll train and you can have a gun. No problemo. Once you’re discharged and leave, you can transfer your training creds and easily get a civilian license to own and operate one. Easy-peasy. Right?

But no. Not in #Murica. Here, people no longer read and deteriorated cognitive skills only let too many yokels retain what they want to hear, like NRA talking points on FOX fuckin’ “News”. These selfish cunts are so wound, stupid and bent on being free-range ammosexuals. What the fuck are they afraid of? I’ll tell you.

Smart people.

The whingers on the far right... motherfuckers one and all... with their bibles in one hand and guns in the other... They fail to know what hypocrisy is here. Be that as it may, they’re scared of smart people. They know that more often than not, they’re ability to have an intelligent conversation is rather stilted and smart people can kick their asses when it comes to how politics work, what Jesus actually said in that bible they never read, and how viruses work for that matter. These wank-socks need their guns to make them right in an argument.

To compound things, these knuckle-dragging, inbred, mouth-breathers are mostly a bunch of “nigger haters” and they know that the “Justice” system will continue to jail the Black Community for the most minor infractions, essentially re -instituting slavery while they can literally go into Federal property, armed, take it over, vandalize it, and then leave scott-free. Precedence has been set. They can shoot Black people with little to no repercussions. Precedence has been set.

I could go on and on, but I’d like to bring this question to your attention: What the unholy fuck does that have to do with socialism? Eisenhower was not only a president but he was a general during WWII and his policies were very socialist. By today’s standards, the man would be what right-wing fuckwits would call a “radical leftist”. So would Abraham Lincoln.

Capitalism, as it stands today, un-regulated and un-tethered, has done what for the USA? Massive class warfare and overwhelmingly unfair practices by the top financial elites? Yep. All the rules of olde that were put in place after the Great Depression that were designed to keep that from happening again have been dismantled since Reagan’s time and mostly by the GOP while the Democrats say and do little to nothing about it and they’re only getting more complacent about it. I’m not saying that Capitalism is bad; far from it. However, if it is left to its own devices, it will work like a cancer, not like a working form of governance. No system is perfect, but Capitalism is the most vulnerable, especially in a nation with a base in democracy like the republic that the USA used to have and doesn’t anymore. Once disinterest and complacency set in, the rich and powerful will swipe democracy out from under you like a table cloth without a care as to how many dishes they break or how big the mess will be; you won’t see it coming and you’ll be the one left having to clean up after. The food and drink will be gone along with the silverware, but the mess is all yours to enjoy. You know- like NOW.

Switzerland has a government a lot like ours. It’s a Democratic Republic. “Everyone owns guns!” Um, true to a point. Men do. Women do. BUT. They’re all trained. Come legal age and graduation from high school, you’re in the army, Fred. You do your bit for country and then when you get out, you keep your gun. NO AMMO. Repeat- NO AMMO. That’s all under lock and key where you, as a reservist for life, would go to train periodically.

Chicken-shit fuckwits in #Murica are too fucking scared and/or lazy to join the armed forces or law enforcement. BUT they still want their guns without having to earn the right or privilege. THAT is what pisses me off. No “militia” skills, but boy they’re fast and happy to endanger everyone else just so they can sit out in the woods with their friends, shoot beer cans and have circle-jerks around the ol’ campfire while talking about race cars and titties and swapping jokes about how many “niggers” it takes to do something.

It’s not just a redneck stereotype; it’s the real deal. Those industrial-grade gun fuckers out in Michigan who thought it’d be just fine to “occupy” the capital while armed make the rest of us who earned the right and privilege to have firearms look bad. You also know damn well that there really aren’t BLACK people acting like these infantile taint-barnacles either. You don’t see hordes of women packin’ heat on the way to the clinic for a routine checkup, do you? They ought to, especially when there are anti-abortion fucks out there ranting about shit they know nothing about, spewing their lies by twisting biblical verse when in fact the bible is NOT anti-abortion. It is only mentioned ONCE, and the verse is FOR abortion. Imagine a woman coming in for a pap, palming a .357 on her way through a crowd of these ignorant cultists who think they’re doing “the lord’s work”...

All of this shit isn’t particular to any form of government except for American-style “democracy” where uninformed opinions are now given the same merit and weight as that of a well studied, well informed fact. Anyone who wants to “make America great again” would have noticed that the policies in place that made us a world power to begin with were all backed by SOCIALIST principles, providing a regulated and more fair framework on which the gears of capitalism were attached to run like a smooth, well tuned machine. Today, that framework is shot to pieces and the whole system works more like the junk drawer in your kitchen.

Today, #Murica has a framework made of PLUTOCRACY, welded together with FASCISM and let’s not forget that it is painted in Red Socialism for the Wealthy, White Supremacy, and Blue, sunny-skies of Nationalism that keeps the masses proud of this country because of what we were, not who we truly are. Those days are far gone; days when the NRA was FOR GUN REGULATIONS and were all for proper education, safety and training, in an era where SOCIALISM built our infrastructure, rich fucks were taxed heavily to keep them from gaining too much power over the masses, and we were on the rise in industry, sciences, and education.

Today, smart people are feared, intelligence is out of fashion, and pride in how stupid and ignorant one is has become the national pastime. As a nation, its people are arrogant and endlessly selfish and too stupid to know to punch up when punching down is easier because Americans, in general, are lazy. Even worse, they’re offended by everything while BEING one of the most offensive people to wander the Earth.

Don’t believe me? Keep an eye on the comments to this post...

[somerandomg33k]

I still don’t know who to vote for?

This election is going to be a weird and frustrating one. It is the first presidential general election where I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist. And this election in the darkest timeline has a Fascist as the incumbent. But the candidate that is opposing Donald Trump is Joe Biden. Almost everyone's last pick in the primary. The only worst candidate during this primary was Michael Bloomberg, who was trying to buy his way into the election. Possible to take votes away from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but that is damning with faint praise that Joe Biden is better than Michael Bloomberg.

The most likely results of this election are either the continued reign of a dictatorial Fascist, causes and continuing chaos and mayhem, or just straight up Neo-Liberalism. We are going back to a normal under Obama, which was terrible as well. Just not as awful as under Fascism. And we won't fix the problems that allowed Trump to rise to power. Since those are core systematic problems that the current Democratic Establishment is not interested in correcting. And the Republican party is just worse as they are OK with Fascism. Some of them want Fascism.

And let's not forget, serval people have very good personal reasons not to vote for Joe Biden. Joe Biden helped co-wrote the 1994 crime bill. In some issues, he was to the right of Regan on drug enforcement of the Drug war. He was always the most conservative Democrat in the Senate during his time there. He voted against busing 19 times. That is why many Leftists say that Joe Biden is Republican-lite. He is just the 'correct' color for Liberals and is the candidate the Democratic party chooses. So yea, there are two Republican tickets this election. The difference is one is not Fascist. Liberals know this. They are just in denial or flat out refuse to believe it. Because boy, don't say that Joe Biden and his running mate are anything but Progressive to them. Because they really hate that. "I think it is unfair to Joe Biden to judge him by International standards. I would prefer that he is judge by American Political standards," one Liberal said. Why can't Liberals admit that America's Political standards are shit?

Liberals have to believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are progressives because they can only think of voting for progressives and progressive causes. They can't accept they are voting for a Conservative on the Democrat ticket, because they would have to admit that the Democratic party has moved towards the right as has American's Overton Window. Joe Biden is against Medicare 4 All. On that issue, he is to the right of Boris Johnson and other conservatives of the UK and Canada. Liberals have to believe they are voting for progressives on the Democrat ticket. Because if they didn't, they would lose faith in the whole Ameican Electoral system as well as Reform. It is almost like Capitalist Realism. People can imagine the end of the World before they can imagine the End of Capitalism. Liberals probably have an easier time visualizing the end of the World before they could imagine a different system than the current governance of Liberal Capitalist Democracy.

Let's not forget, something we already know, that Joe Biden is a bit creepy. He is a Patriarch and treats women differently than men. Whenever he meets families at the White House who have sons and daughters, he would say to the sons, "You have a critical job. You got to protect your sister from all of the boys. That is something my Dad told me." The women must be protected, and it is the men who must do the protecting. Joe Biden has a habit of creepily smelling women and girls' hair and touching their bodies on the waist and shoulders. Serval women have said that Joe made them feel uncomfortable. And this was all before Tara Reade allocations.  #IBelieveTaraReade.

As for Kamala Harris, she did put trans women in men's prison, which resulted in one of them getting killed. "Kamala Harris couldn't do a thing." Is something Liberals need to stop saying. What they really mean is, "Kamala Harris choose to uphold an unjust system by blindly following rules instead of using her power and influence to change them." She attempted to block two Trans women's requests to get gender confirmation surgeries. Which, as far as I know, she hasn't really made amendments for. She wasn't good about slowing down The New Jim Crow. She was fierce to Sex Workers too. One of my comrades said, "As a trans woman and a Sex Worker, how should I feel about voting for Kamala Harris." She increased convictions for things like merely drug procession. She also wanted to jail parents for truancy. She has been called the Democrats Top Cop. Someone who is "Tough on Crime." Just like how Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were in the 90s. And that still has devastating effects on Black and Brown communities.

So many people have many good reasons not to want to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And Liberals want to think that they simply "have their flaws." Again, I think it is just all to make it easier for them to be excited to vote for them. All of those issues, including their voting record on increasing Military spending too, are "merely flaws." And they will also shame people into voting for Biden/Harris with, "It is the lesser of two evils." Which again, is more of an indictment of the system we have. "But we have an election, and we should all vote." So we can't talk about changing the system right now during an election. So when can we talk about change this entire system? And Just like with 2016, "A vote for a third party or a no vote is a vote for Trump."

Further shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris. "Do you want four more years of Trump?" FUCK YOU AND SHOVE THAT DISINGENUOUS QUESTION UP YOUR ASS!!

Merely bringing up all of these complaints are being associated with supporting Trump. Another by-product of the binary way of thinking with the Two-Party system and First Past the Post voting. Liberals have 'accepted' Biden/Harris is the ticket. And they honestly wish we do too. And since we are vocal with our complaints, they hate us for not 'accepting' Biden/Harris is the ticket. They hate us for not 'accepting' the way the system is as it is. "I have accepted all of this. Why haven't you?" This can explain how so many Liberals would go "URG" at the thought of Joe Biden as President back in January during the Primaries to skipping to the polls to vote for Biden for the General Election. "Well, he won the primary." "I get to vote Trump out of Office" is more what it is about and not how great Biden is. They tell themselves how great Biden and Harris will be as a recon.

And with all of the shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris, instead of voting for the Green Party or not voting, it completely ignores the fact we did vote for Hillary in 2016. She 2.8 million more votes. But it is the Electoral College that gave Donald Trump in the win. Plus, in Washington State, my state, four of the Electors didn't vote for Hillary Clinton when they were 'supposed to.' Washington State is likely to go blue again. So I don't know if it is essential for Me to vote for Biden/Harris. The fivethirtyeight poll from Sept. 22 shows Washington voting for Biden at 58% vs Trump at 36%. A 22 point difference. I think I can safely vote for Howard Hawkins and feel like I didn't help Trump win. But that won't be what Liberals think.

Now with all that said, Donald Trump is still a Fascist wannabe Dictator. He is almost the worst. His administration is just letting massive amounts of people died because of Covid-19. He is encouraging people to shoot BLM protestors. He told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," at the first Presidential Debate.  He said there wouldn't be a peaceful transferal of power because there won't be a transferal, but a continuation. Donald Trump has sewn doubts about voting by mail. He will doubt any kind of election results where he doesn't win. So Liberals argue we most vote in such high numbers to show that it is the will of the people they want him out of office. To which he can easily say "Fake News." He did doubt the 2016 popular vote results claiming 3 million "illegals" cast fraudulent votes.

Another convincing argument is we most show that Trump's ideas can't win elections. Because if it continues to win elections, more people will adopt Trump's views and policies. It is sort of convincing. But since a Qanon supporter will win a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming a rising star in the GOP Party. The GOP Party has backed Trump throughout his time in office, Trump's views and policies will continue whether he wins or not. Even if Trump loses, we are not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Trump base will still be here in this White Supremacist CisHetro Patriarchal Ableist country of the United Corporations of Imperialism. Who will always vote for the GOP and are not going away. Many Democrats will even speak highly of them. Nancy Pelosi prays for the Republicans. Liberals believe having an opposition is part of a functioning Democracy. Will the GOP no longer be Fascist? I doubt it.

"We have to get rid of Trump at all costs." I understand that urge. But the system gave us Trump and protected him. So how is voting and participating within the same system supposed to help? I know that Liberals think voting is very powerful because "So many people had to fight for their basic right to vote." And that is all true. The GOP only wins because of dirty tricks like gerrymandering and voter suppression. Hence, Trump is encouraging his base to watch the polling stations for "suspicious people wanting to commit voter fraud" and "rig" the election. It is straight voter intimidation and is happening already in Virginia. Part of the convincing reason to get Trump out of the White House. Biden will not encourage White Supremacist of all types to commit acts of violence against "The Radical Left terrorists" and "Antifa."  Antifa is not an organization; it is an idea. Even Biden got that right.

Knowing how terrible Trump is, brings me back to Biden and how bad he is. Not as bad. Trump and Biden aren't the same. Trump is a Fascist while Biden is a Neo-Liberal, and Neo-Liberalism isn't Fascism. Neo-Liberalism just leads to Fascism, as we have already seen with Trump. I simply see Neo-Liberalism worse than how Liberals see it. Not enough to make a false equivalent, but still. Remember, if Trump loses, he could pull a Grover Cleaveland and run again in 2024. Imagine that.

What bothers me the most about Liberals changing their opinion of Biden, by the mere fact he won the primary, is that Biden is granted votes from Democrats and Leftists. I am sure Democrats do love old Uncle Joe. There were a lot of memes from the Obama years. And many Liberals just love Obama. Even though they fully well know about his War Crimes. It is that acceptance that I don't have in me. "Well, he is the candidate. So I will support him to get rid of Trump." And what makes it worse, Biden isn't really offering anything as well. He is against the Green New Deal. He is against Medicare-4-all, even during a Pandemic. What is Biden/Harris offering? Even Biden, when asking these questions and about his record, says, "If you are questioning whether to vote for me or not, you ain't black."

So Leftists will get nothing and will receive all of the blame for of Trump winning if we don't vote for Biden. "If you are questioning whether to vote for Biden or not, you must want Trump for four more years."

Remember, I live in Washington State. A super blue State. If I live in any battleground state, even within a ten points difference, I would vote for Biden/Harris. But since Biden is ahead by 22 points in my state, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, I am considering voting for a third party. Howard Hawkins of the Green and Socialist party is closer to my position. I would prefer there is no State at all and no President at all. Especially no single person having that much power, especially being the 'leader of the "Free" world' by virtue of being the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism. If the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism is the 'leader' of the 'free world,' then how come the World doesn't get to vote in this election. The UCI, Imperialtopia bombs the hell out of the middle east so much, I think the middle east has a right to have a say in our elections.

I do have to acknowledge those platform holders, people with a Youtube channel, a Podcast, or have a large following on Social Media, feel the need to tell people to "to out and vote. Vote as if your life depends on it because for some, it actually does matter." Although for some people, much won't change materially for their lives, like the impoverished and the disabled. For some, it is life or death. For others, it is a shit show, regardless. But platform holders want Trump out of the White House. They don't know who lives in what state. They don't know if their audience's votes matter or not. Since they are speaking to a vast audience, and they must keep it simple, they have to say, "VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!"

But, I am thinking, if they acknowledge that some votes are more important in some states than others, they will have to admit the whole in the United Corporations of Imperialism is unjust. Votes are weight more heavily in some states than in others. The whole system has to change. But that can't happen in a year. However, folks can vote on Election Day. So, it is easy to encourage people to vote instead of organizing to abolish the Electoral College. It would take too long to do it. It would take a lot of effort. So even bother trying. Liberals would rather pretend that isn't the case and just badger and shame people into voting for a candidate they have 'accepted' won the primary, even though Biden was one of the worse candidates in that field. Everyone's tenth or so pick.

With all that said, vote for whoever you want to or whoever you feel comfortable voting for. I won't vote shame anyone. Except if you vote for Trump and the GOP. Then you are a Fascist because you are voting for a Fascist and the Fascist party. Pure and simple.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 25, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Trump’s refusal Wednesday to commit to accepting a loss in the November election with a peaceful transfer of power continues to make waves. Today the New York Times reported that military officers are worried that Trump will try to drag them into a contested election. But while people are rightly frightened about Trump’s increasing authoritarianism, it’s important to understand that he is deploying these particular threats about the election to create an impression that he has the option to control the outcome in November. He does not have that option.

Trump and his cronies are trying to create their own reality. They are trying to make people believe that the coronavirus is not real, that it has not killed more than 200,000 of our neighbors, that the economy is fine, that our cities are in flames, that Black Lives Matter protesters are anarchists, and that putting Democrats in office will usher in radical socialism. None of these things is true. Similarly, Trump is trying to convince people that he can deploy the power of the government to remain in power even if we want him to leave, creating uncertainly and fear. By talking about it, he is willing that situation into existence. It is a lie, and we do not have to accept it.

For his part, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recognizes that Trump’s repeated threats not to leave office are both letting him convince us that leaving is his choice, rather than ours, and keeping the media focused on him when we should, in fact, be talking about real issues. Biden is refusing to give the idea oxygen, reminding reporters that it is a “typical Trump distraction.” “I just think the people in the country are going to be heard on November 3,” he told them. “Every vote in this country is going to be heard and they will not be stopped. I'm confident that all of the irresponsible, outrageous attacks on voting, we’ll have an election in this country as we always have had, and he'll leave.” He said: “I don’t think he’s going to get the FBI to follow him or get anybody else to enforce something that’s not real.”

While the Senate voted unanimously yesterday to commit to the peaceful transfer of power in January, it was actually Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, who gave Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power the dripping disdain it deserved. Speaking to reporters, Baker defended the mail-in ballots that Trump is saying will invalidate the election, and called Trump’s suggestion that he wouldn’t leave office peacefully “appalling and outrageous.” Baker said he would to do everything in his power to defend the results of the election.

“A huge part of this nation’s glory, to the extent it exists as a beacon to others, is the peaceful transfer of power based on the vote of the people of this country,” he said.

Trump responded with an insulting tweet, but one that suggested he was deliberately stoking the story to try to get free media coverage.

This makes sense, because there are signs that Trump and the Republicans have a real money problem. We know that the Trump campaign has run through close to a billion dollars, leaving him and other Republican candidates short of cash for the last weeks of the campaign. At the same time, Democratic fundraising in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has been unprecedented. The squeeze showed clearly in three highly unusual appearances by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the Fox News Channel begging for donations.

Two new ploys to advance Trump’s reelection, one claiming to address healthcare concerns and one claiming to address coronavirus concerns, reveal both the campaign’s attempts to construct their own reality and to do it on someone else’s dime.

The president has repeatedly promised his own healthcare bill to replace the Affordable Care Act that his administration is currently trying to kill. Under criticism for trying to end the law that protects people with preexisting health conditions from discrimination in buying insurance—the ACA will come before the Supreme Court a week after the November 3 election-- Trump on Thursday abruptly signed an Executive Order affirming that “it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions.” The Executive Order is toothless; if the Supreme Court overturns the ACA, the Executive Order will mean nothing.

But Trump also suggested that he might be willing simply to keep the law and call it his own. “Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well,” Trump said of the law that continues to provide coverage for more than 20 million Americans. “What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it — the individual mandate.” “We’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party,” he said.

Trump also announced he would give $200 toward the cost of their medicines to 33 million older Americans. That’s $6.6 billion dollars that he will be putting in the pockets of key voters just before the election. Apparently, his plan is to take money from Medicare under a rule that allows the Medicare to test out new programs. Authorization for such a shift in funding usually requires a lengthy approval process, and the new program needs to be cost neutral. Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of Harvard Medical School's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law told NPR’s Sydney Lupkin: I think the administration is pushing the envelope in terms of classifying this as a demonstration."

The Trump campaign is also planning a taxpayer-funded advertising blitz, costing at least $300 million, to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic. According to Politico’s Dan Diamond, the ads will feature interviews between administration officials and celebrities. The ad campaign was conceived and begun by Michael Caputo, the top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services before he stepped down last week for medical leave after an infamous Facebook rant.

Caputo claimed in his video that Trump has personally demanded the advertising campaign. "The Democrats — and, by the way, their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government — are dead set against it," Caputo said. "They cannot afford for us to have any good news before November because they're already losing. … They're going to come after me because I'm going to be putting $250 million worth of ads on the air." The White House says it is not accurate that Trump “demanded” the campaign.

To pay for the ads, Caputo requisitioned $300 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and $15 million from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But he sidelined the Ad Council, which is a nonprofit consortium of advertising companies that since World War Two has worked on a nonpartisan basis with the government on public health or social issue campaigns. Instead, Caputo hired his own business partner to make the videos.

Josh Peck, the former HHS official who oversaw the Obama administration’s advertising campaign for HealthCare.gov, told Diamond that officials in the Obama administration were never featured in videos, and that the Trump administrations Covid videos sound like they are about more than Americans’ health. He said: "CDC hasn’t yet done an awareness campaign about Covid guidelines — but they are going to pay for a campaign about how to get rid of our despair? Run by political appointees in the press shop? Right before an election? It’s like every red flag I could dream of.”

Trump’s challenge to the outcome of the election is a sign of his desperation, but it is no less dangerous for all that: as they say, a cornered rat will bite the cat. While Democrats and a remarkable number of Republicans are speaking out against Trump, and while teams of lawyers are fighting his lawyers in court, ordinary Americans also have a crucial role to play in this moment. It is up to us to reject Trump's fictions and reclaim the national conversation from the anger and hatred and fear Trump is stoking.

It is time to reassert our core American values so they dominate the public realm, demanding of our representatives a free and fair vote for everyone, a free and fair vote count, and a government of our own choosing.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[qqueenofhades]

One of the most surprising things I learned recently is that Bernie doesn’t do well with Black voters, and I was wondering if you knew why that is? I feel like his platform is fairly popular so I just wonder why he fails to win their votes?

It's because Black Democrats a) like actual Democrats, and b) also don't have time to waste with empty moral posturing when they are intimately aware of how public policy and progressive (or reactive/reactionary) politics affect their everyday life, in a way that a lot of privileged white Bernie Bros were utterly unequipped to consider (and indeed, attacked the Black Democrats for "not knowing what's best for them," which is not paternalistic or racist at all!) Black Democrats also know how important voting is, because of the obvious fact that they were disenfranchised, had their political accomplishments totally dismantled at the end of Reconstruction, had to literally fight through dogs, gas, guns, and screaming white supremacists to exercise their vote and win their civil rights in the 1960s, and are consistently targeted today by white Republicans attempting to gerrymander, restrict, penalize, or otherwise eradicate their rights. Black Democrats don't vote for empty performative politics, they vote for results. Bernie is great at one, and very bad at the other. Three guesses which.

Elderly Black Democrats in South Carolina allegedly "saved" Biden's 2020 campaign (after Bernie had done well in the EXTREMELY white Iowa and New Hampshire primaries; the ordering of the primaries and the excessive prognostications attached to Uber White Midwestern/New England Results is dumb, but anyway). And that was because Black Democrats have good reason to like Biden. He spent eight years willingly supporting and never upstaging the first Black president, he picked the first Black/Asian woman as his vice president, he put the first Black woman on SCOTUS, he has spent years championing their concerns at an actual tangible and legislative level, and they know that they can trust him. By contrast, Bernie is one of those leftists who dismisses all other kinds of oppression as secondary to the class struggle and thinks that racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. are all inferior injustices to economic injustice. And yes! Economic injustice is very much a thing! But if you go around telling marginalized communities to their faces that their many, many years of lived experience with racial oppression isn't as "real" as economic injustice, and/or that racism will magically be solved by economic redress and you don't need to do anything else about it, don't be surprised when that is not a winning message.

Besides, and as noted: Bernie has spent fifty years in politics and achieved nothing really meaningful (unlike Biden, who has also been in politics for fifty years and has real and significant legislative accomplishments as senator, vice president, and president). His policies are on-paper progressive, but Black Democrats and Black people in general aren't a monolithically progressive voting bloc, and have other concerns and issues that intersect with their support (or lack thereof) for him. There are very few Black people who can afford to take their vote for granted, or to vote for somebody who hasn't demonstrated any interest in going through the legislative process to achieve real results, and instead spends most of his time talking loudly to left-leaning white progressives and cultivating a "Only I, Great Bernie, Can Solve Your Problems" political mentality, which then spills into sore loserdom and was an issue in both 2008 and (most visibly and unforgivably) in 2016.

Basically, in my view, Bernie mostly exists to be the totem for a certain subset of privileged white leftists to club the Democratic Party over the head and set impossible standards of what they "should" be doing, which in turn actively undermines support for the Democrats and helps nakedly fascist Republicans win more elections. And despite nominally running as a Democrat, he in fact is not a Democrat (he sits as an independent) and makes no effort to court central Democratic constituencies. Of which, and obviously, African-Americans are one of the greatest parts, due to consistently voting to get this country out of the mess that fascist white people keep trying to plunge it into. Any candidate who does not understand that, and does not make serious efforts to do so, likewise should not be taken seriously. Therefore, no matter how mad it makes his frothing internet stans (who likewise are not serious people with actual political opinions), the Democratic party apparatus has no real need to humor him and his self-aggrandizing constant talking about things that he never, ever actually does shit about.

[sharpened-fantastic]

what are the reasons to vote for Biden? because you're out here talking about how we shouldn't vote green/abstain from the presidential, but can you please tell me what exactly would be different about a Biden presidency vs a Trump one? besides that a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them. Joe Biden is just as bad as Trump on nearly every level and if he miraculously wins the gen, the DNC will be left unchecked. I'm curious on who that helps!

Hey! A genuine thank you for sending a full, non-anonymous ask. 

However, the biggest thing to remember is that having a democrat in the office will lead to policy changes and will change how our country is shaped for literal decades to come. 

Yes--Biden is a shit head, he would probably continue a lot of the racist and outright idiotic policies that Trump either put in place or continued from previous presidencies. I wish it weren’t true but that’s a simple fact. I agree that this sucks dick and makes me not want to vote at all.

One BIG thing is having a leader, regardless of political views, that has literally any political experience other than “accidentally got elected for four years as president”. Even compared to other presidents, even other republicans, his approach is overly militaristic, explicitly fueled by monetary gain, and he refuses to bend to even feign concern or duty towards American citizens. His open xenophobia (that has literally been UNPRECIDENTED, even to other politicians sharing his beliefs) has allowed greater mobility and reach for hate groups, and has let other politicians feel more comfortable in presenting non-coded, upfront, racist policy. It’d be one thing if it just showed the American public “oh wow, all of these places were racist the whole time”, but elevating literal concentration camps (yes, those did exist during the Obama era) to “let’s use abandoned warehouses to strip kids from their families, live in conditions we legally don’t let a lot of animals live in, and give them marked psychological scarring!”, among other things (I’m gonna put references at the end of this I’d hate to be talking purely out of my ass).

Trump is also horrifically undiplomatic--severing or straining our ties to other developed nations--, overemotional and unprofessional constantly on social media, and speaks positively on radically bigoted and backwards groups.

I think you’re giving Trump a lot of credit by saying he and Biden are equally bad. Both racist? yes. Both made bad policy decisions? oh yeah. However, Biden is still left enough that the democratic party accept him, the republican party has been squabbling since 2016 that Trump is too right-wing for republicans. Let’s have a president that even pretends to condemn Charlottesville or the dozens of other explicit hate crimes across the country. Let’s have a president that has better tax policies, or maybe even pays their taxes at all! Sure, they’re both bad! It’s a shit situation we’re in! But would you rather be trapped in a room with a child throwing trash, or a child setting the room on fire? 

Oh and one other big thing, I don’t want Trump choosing the supreme court for an entire generation, thanks.

Who knows, that’s up to you I guess, and if you don’t wanna vote I can’t stop you, I mean, it’s punishment enough that you’re gonna have to live with your decision. 

Here’s the biggest thing to remember: voting isn’t fair. It’s a broken system that supports those who abuse it, and those who abuse it are shitty people that don’t deserve that power. HOWEVER, refusing to vote only allows those who support people who abuse power to become more brazen in their racism, disregard for the American public, and signals to republicans “we give up! we swear we’re gonna have a revolution one of these days, but until then, you choose who’s in office!”

Biden is the wrong choice for presidency, but he’s our only choice. I don’t support Biden, I support voting, and I refuse to support letting Trump have another minute in office just to “radicalize leftists”. Not to be rude, but I think anyone who’s gonna get radicalized in this direction has been radicalized, but there are plenty of centrists that were taught “racism is bad” in grade school, but are getting a ton of support from the “racism can benefit you” crowd.

Ok, I’ve held off from the caps lock and stupid italics and bold for long enough, but “a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them.”?! 

Are you fucking kidding me???

I don’t think anyone should have to think on having their political ideologies shifted while hundreds of Americans die due to lack of access to basic necessities, having their families torn apart, and while the future of the country burns in the background. Trust me, regular republicans do enough heinous shit to radicalize me and the majority of my group, you just normally need to dig ever-so-slightly deeper than surface level to see it, and providing that information to people is something I’m willing to do to get Trump out of office.

I really hope that I’m misreading what you said there, because holy hot fuck is that the most disgusting thing I’ve heard all fuckin month.

But here’s the biggest thing! VOTING IS SO EASY TO DO. PLEASE JUST DO IT. DON’T ACTIVELY ALLOW TRUMP TO WIN. I KNOW IT’S MUCH MORE DIFFICULT IN SOME STATES COMPARED TO OTHERS, BUT IF YOU DO HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE I WILL BURN YOU TO THE GROUND IF YOU THROW IT AWAY. 

Sorry, this was way longer and more of a rant than I intended. TL;DR--

Both are bad, but saying that Biden is “just as bad” as Trump is flat-out irresponsibly ignorant

One has political experience. That’s it that’s the bullet point.

As far as bad presidents go, Trump has been fuckin record breaking

Trump goes on overemotional, uneducated rants on social media, refuses to speak against extremely open, literal hate speech groups, and is straining America’s relationships with all other developed nations

There are some differences in their policies, again, both are bad, but this is not the time for black and white thinking please 

A radical president radicalizes people in both directions

I can’t even properly express my distaste for the comment “a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them” I am literally praying that I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying right now, holy fuck

IF YOU CAN VOTE AND YOU CHOOSE NOT TO, I’M MORE ENRAGED AT YOU THAN PEOPLE WHO STILL THINK THIRD-PARTIES CAN STILL WIN, BECAUSE AT LEAST THEY GIVE ENOUGH OF A SHIT TO ENGAGE WITH DEMOCRACY. 

Ok references (sorry they’re all in the wrong order and of varying quality): x x x x x x x x x x x

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

OK Bookchin

There is perhaps no modern thinker who has done more to damage the term “anarchism” than Murray Bookchin. Beyond all the physical repression over the centuries, by both capitalists and communists, the right and the left, Bookchin’s piece “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm” stands as the most notable instance of ideological sabotage against anarchism.

Even the title of the piece is a lie. The only reason this “chasm” exists, is because Bookchin and his followers have been harping about it for the last 20 years. Additionally, individualist and social anarchism share a long history of tolerating each other, if not working together. Bookchin conveniently ignores that fact that many individualist anarchists were members of the First International, right alongside social anarchists, and even Marxists. There may have been tension between these groups, but there was no chasm, as there was no chasm until Bookchin created one.

Bookchin starts by going through the history of individualist anarchism, making sure to label them as terrorists pretty quickly out of the gates.

“individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.”

This is patently false, as shown in the work “The Anarchist Beast” by Nhat Hong. If Bookchin knew what he was talking about, he would have known that the drive to label anarchists as terrorists was going strong since likely before the 1880s. Yes, some individualist anarchists were terrorists, but anarchism had largely been stuck with that label already. The deeds of terrorists are not what established the label, it was the fear of those in power, and their need to discredit anarchism.

“Despite their avowals of an anarchocommunist ideology, Nietzscheans like Emma Goldman remained cheek to jowl in spirit with individualists. “

Here, we see Bookchin using Nietzsche like his name is some type of slur, in addition to using him to discredit Emma Goldman. Goldman did far more to advance anarchy in this world than Bookchin ever did, and often did it side by side with more social leaning anarchists. Where is the chasm then? Of course Bookchin wants to dismiss Goldman away, as her very life disproves his thesis here.

“The period hardly allowed individualists, in the name of their ‘uniqueness,’ to ignore the need for energetic revolutionary forms of organization with coherent and compelling programs.”

Moving past the 1800s and early 1900s, Bookchin moves on in time, suggesting that social anarchists in the period past that had “compelling programs.” What were these programs exactly? Allying with the Stalinist red fascism in Spain and getting murdered? While individualist anarchists may have been focused on smaller scale actions, the larger scale actions of the social anarchists of the 1930s ended quite literally, in fascism. I would hardly call that compelling or coherent.

“These trendy posturings, nearly all of which follow current yuppie fashions…”

It is at around this point in the piece that Bookchin abandons his delusional version of history, and moves on to mere ad hominem attacks and mere complaining. Bookchin is the last person who should be complaining about anything fashion related! Look at his hat! Bookchin constantly looks like how he thinks a worker should look like, and could absolutely deal with some sense of fashion other than his self-styled “assembly line chic”.

“the 1990s are awash in self-styled anarchists who — their flamboyant radical rhetoric aside — are cultivating a latter-day anarcho-individualism that I will call lifestyle anarchism. Its preoccupations with the ego and its uniqueness and its polymorphous concepts of resistance are steadily eroding the socialistic character of the libertarian tradition.”

Here, Bookchin attempts to coin individualist anarchism as something he created, a “lifestyle anarchism”, if you will. He claims lifestyle anarchism erodes the socialistic character of anarchism? So be it! The socialistic tradition in anarchism is what has led historically to anarchists buddying up to, and later being murdered by, socialists and communists. If erosion of this socialistic character is what it takes for anarchists to stop thinking that leftist traditions have their best interests at heart…Erode away!

“The ego — more precisely, its incarnation in various lifestyles — has become an idée fixe for many post-1960s anarchists, who are losing contact with the need for an organized, collectivistic, programmatic opposition to the existing social order.”

What Bookchin does not realize, is that this type of collectivist, programmatic “opposition” has become ingrained in the social order itself. Mass politics, with its programs for social change, has become part of the status quo. The system itself would much rather have people mimicking its structures and playing within its rules, as opposed to the infinitely diverse forms of resistance available to all individuals at any moment. The state understands how to deal with the same dogmatic resistance it has faced for centuries. It is not prepared for outbursts of individuality, fluid and innumerable in their scope.

“Lifestyle, like individualist, anarchism bears a disdain for theory,”

Yes! We do! We disdain those who fetishize thought, while cowering from action. Unlike Bookchin, who spent his life writing dozens of books, and many more pieces outside of them, the individualists see the world as their parchment upon which to write. Action is worth more than a million words, and also the most effective way to breed more action. People have been theorizing about the same things for centuries now, to little effect. It has been those who commit themselves to enacting theory, rather than steeping themselves in it, who have made the strongest stands against rulership.

“The price that anarchism will pay if it permits this swill to displace the libertarian ideals of an earlier period could be enormous.”

And here is where we see that Bookchin is not interested so much in opposing rulership, as he is using anarchism as a method of control. As evidenced above, Bookchin cares more about anarchism as a static ideology, than as a fluid attempt by people to not be ruled. He is concerned with anarchism as a monolithic entity, because as a singular and dogmatic ideology, anarchism becomes another box in which to contain people’s ideas, and thereby control people’s actions.

“Thus, instead of disclosing the sources of present-day social and personal pathologies, antitechnologism allows us to speciously replace capitalism with technology, which basically facilitates capital accumulation and the exploitation of labor, as the underlying cause of growth and of ecological destruction. Civilization, embodied in the city as a cultural center, is divested of its rational dimensions, as if the city were an unabated cancer rather than the potential sphere for universalizing human intercourse…”

Bookchin also attempts to attack currents of thought like primitivism and anti-civilization, but really just proves that he does not understand the critique these strains are making. Anti-civilization ideas are generally not “anti” technology, so much as they are insisting on an honesty about technology. The technology that exists, exists because of a globalized system of coercion. As anarchists, we need to be critical of this system, and understand that without coercion modern technology would simply not exist. Those who critique technology often do not oppose technology itself, but the manner in which technology is produced. Bookchin’s claim of “antitechnologism” is either a misunderstanding, or a purposeful falsification.

It is also worth noting that Bookchin again vulgarizes primitivism and anti-civ ideas by equating civilization with cities. He dares not address something like Fredy Perlman’s idea of civilization as the roots of all hierarchy…as simply rulership. Instead, Bookchin shows his cowardice by addressing anti-civ ideas with a meme level understanding of it, avoiding those who have thought deeper on the subject.

“Lifestyle anarchism must be seen in the present social context not only of demoralized black ghettoes and reactionary white suburbs but even of Indian reservations, those ostensible centers of ‘primality,’ in which gangs of Indian youths now shoot at one another, drug dealing is rampant, and ‘gang graffiti greets visitors even at the sacred Window Rock monument,’ “

And, of course, no old white man rant would be complete without some statements that just end up sounding like a confused racism. Bookchin actually attempts to claim that lifestyle/individual anarchism is responsible or related to the severe marginalization of people of color?! I believe that responsibility lies with capitalism and the racist structures it has created, not some individualist spectre.

“Social anarchism, in my view, is made of fundamentally different stuff, heir to the Enlightenment tradition…”

Finally, Bookchin comes clean, after the thinly veiled racism, and comes forth with an admission of his true forebearers…the archetypical “old white dudes” of the Enlightenment. Bookchin’s anarchism is not rooted in a simple desire for “no rulers”, but tied up in the liberal white supremacism of Enlightenment ideas.

“it describes the democratic dimension of anarchism as a majoritarian administration of the public sphere.”

Bookchin cannot rid himself of statist ideas, as he goes on to talk about his notion of Communalism. Bookchin does not stop to think “What if the majority does not want to administrate anything?” To him, anarchism is just another system of rulership, albeit a “majoritarian” one. Anarchism to him, becomes less about “no rulers”, and more about “everyone rules”.

“The sovereign, self-sufficient ‘individual’ has always been a precarious basis upon which to anchor a left libertarian outlook.”

Clearly, Bookchin does not believe in any sort of “bottom up” egalitarianism, or else he would not be so quick to dismiss the individual. Free and empowered individuals make up free and empowered societies, and should absolutely be the basis of liberty. One cannot force a system onto people, and then call those people free, no matter how inclusive the system.

“Democracy is not antithetical to anarchism; nor are majority rule and nonconsensual decisions incommensurable with a libertarian society. “

Any sort of rule…Any sort of nonconsensual decision is antithetical to anarchism. Here, again, Bookchin shows his desire to control others in the name of freedom. He literally attempts to reconcile the very tools of the state with anarchism!

“That no society can exist without institutional structures is transparently clear to anyone who has not been stupefied by Stirner and his kind.”

Again, his blatant statism is laid bare. Is “institutional structures” not simply another name for “rulership”? Of course, given the many societal blueprints that Bookchin created in his lifetime, it is clear that Bookchin saw himself at the helm of, or at least a theoretician of these “institutional structures”. Bookchin is incapable of rejecting these structures, because he views them as instruments to be used in ruling over others.

“Certainly, it is already no longer possible, in my view, to call oneself an anarchist without adding a qualifying adjective to distinguish oneself from lifestyle anarchists.”

And again, Bookchin shows that he is the one attempting to dilute anarchism, by attempting to add qualifiers and appendages to it. If anarchism can be obscured by adjectives, then its true meaning of “no rulers” can be watered down and even changed into something else.

“Mere opposition to the state may well unite fascistic lumpens with Stirnerite lumpens, a phenomenon that is not without its historical precedents. “

Bookchin finishes with a bit of classist flair, using the same terms that Marx used with disdain when talking about the underclasses of people. Bookchin, the “good worker”, must berate and chastise others. In a fit of workerism, Bookchin then plays the card common to leftists, and sinks to claims of fascism, putting to rest the notion that he ever had any real argument to begin with.

This final cry of “fascism!” truly shows Bookchin’s true designs here. He is willing to use the threat of fascism to scare those who might not be convinced by the piece’s end into complying. This final statement perfectly illustrates the authoritarianism masking itself as anarchism that Bookchin exemplifies.

“Follow my ‘organized’ and ‘coherent’ plans, or you are a fascist!” he cries.

OK Bookchin…