The court is already lost! It's the dumbest argument for Biden. The oldest Republican-aligned justice could easily cling on for another 15-20 years.
I swear I'm getting flashbacks to the mid-2000s Daily Kos strategy of "just elect better Democrats". It's dead, it never really worked except at the margins, it's glacially slow even in the most optimistic scenarios. You have to find a different approach.
Better dems are like AOC or Omar. You get 2 or 3 extra of these better dems every couple years, max. And even they can be suss and compromising.
We have 10 years to abandon global capitalism in favor of socialism and a green, livable planet.
We don't have 10 years, we have 0 years. The feedback loops have already started. Not only is stopping global warming no longer possible, even slowing it down is leaving humanity's grasp as we speak.
We had 20 years left 20 years ago and we only multiplied our carbon emissions since then.
We don’t have 10 years, we have 0 years. The feedback loops have already started. Not only is stopping global warming no longer possible, even slowing it down is leaving humanity’s grasp as we speak.
Exactly, so helping re-elect somebody for another 4 years who pulled out of the Paris Agreement -- disregarding how wholly inadequate it is -- just doesn't exactly seem to me like the right approach to address that.
We can go complete doomerism and say screw it the Supreme Court is a lost cause, but I'm still hoping (probably naively) for a future. Having 4 more years to grow the left under an ineffectual president seems more attractive than daring the universe to fuck you even harder in the ass (and not in the good way).
How to explain...if you were a working class person in Venezuela who suddenly found out you had the right to vote in this election, would you vote for the guy who sent 6 chuds and a speedboat to coup you?
Or the guy who's being Weekend at Bernie's by the entire military industrial complex.
Your supreme court doesn't mean shit compared to how competently your foriegn policy will be executed. Trump is incompetent and that loosens the US imperial grip. This isn't accelerationism, it's internationalism.
This isn't an unreasonable take, but I think the "Trump is too incompetent to do imperialism" theory is overplayed. We did come within hours of war with Iran, for instance.
Plus, I doubt the process on Venezuela was the MIC coming to Trump with a plan and Trump fucking it all up and only sending a few chuds on a speedboat. If anything I can see Trump being more amenable to long-shot, Looney Tunes stuff like that because why not, he can spin some minor fallout.
Exactly, so helping re-elect somebody for another 4 years who pulled out of the Paris Agreement – disregarding how wholly inadequate it is – just doesn’t exactly seem to me like the right approach to address that.
It's not, but the alternative to that guy is also taking bribes from the environment-wrecking slugs who are polluting the environment, so acting like we have to vote Trump out to save Mother Earth is fucking stupid.
It's just perceived faster hurtling. The hurtling is caused by capitalism.
Trump just puts a more open, horrific face on it by tweeting about Bette Midler and saying soldiers are losahs, while Obama is a PR guy who puts people at ease with his intellect and calm demeanor. But the speed of the hurtling did not actually change significantly.
Yeah I actually agree, but it's exhausting fighting libs on Twitter who think criticizing Biden means you're a covert agent for Trump and then coming here and arguing with chapos for even suggesting there might be a tiny bit of utility in placing a checkmark next to a bad man's name in November.
So what's the plan, then?
Electoralism sucks, sure, no one here thinks it's the end-all-be-all. But there's no revolution coming either, so bagging on electoralism without suggesting any real alternative will get us nowhere.
Personally, I'm rooting for rapid collapse. Better for literally everyone who isn't from the US.
That would be ideal, but I don't see the U.S. empire going down without murder-suiciding at least one other country.
Nah, I've given up.
I absolutely see a path to a brighter future for the left under Biden than I do under Trump, but Biden does more damage to his campaign every day than I'll ever be able to make-up with a rational argument to increase the influence of the left in America, so fuck it. This is the 1933 election all over again where the Communists were so annoyed at the Centre Party and Social Democrats that they fucked off from the election and only engaged the Nazis on the street with violence. Guess we know how that turned out.
Roe V Wade is going away, so get your borties in now. If you're in Iran, leave. I'm gonna try to bounce from the USA cuz obviously. There are tons of English teaching jobs in China, although why anyone would want to learn it as the Anglosphere is clearly collapsing is beyond me.
Oh I'm sorry, maybe I'm wrong and you know something I don't. Did it work out the way they hoped it would?
Pretty safe to say that multiple parties made significant mistakes in the rise of Hitler.
Yeah obviously that's what I'm saying, what else could I possibly be saying by criticizing the left "strategically" sitting out an election because "this will show those centrists" has some historically pretty negative outcomes for the left?
You absolute fucking chowder brain.
Electing Von Hindenburg is what got Hitler appointed Chancellor. He never won a fucking election.
Hindenburg is the closest thing to a Biden-esque figure we have.
The only hope in Weimar era Germany was confronting Nazi freikorps and killing them all, which the SPD refused to do.
There was no electoral way out of fascism.
You have no power in Bourgeois national elections. It literally doesn't matter.
The idea that Trump is some Hitler-esque figure is a fucking fantasy, and the idea that 4-8 years of Democrats who are identical to Bush Era Republicans in outlook is a "good environment" for the left is just plugged into a fantasy of there being time for some 40 year electoral project of incremental Socialism. That's not a thing. It's never happened, and it never will.
The challenge before us is figuring out what the fuck we're going to do, and how we're going to organize people.
If you're running back to Bourgeois mechanisms to convince yourself you're "doing something," you're not. You're giving up to play with a busy box instead.
Roe V Wade is going away
Imagine thinking that a woman can get an abortion safely and easily in the vast majority of America
If they overturn it, it's just going to be illegal in states where it's already fucking impossible to get an abortion. It's going to be legal in states where it's not.
Maybe, maybe not. There's been a greater shift to federal police power under the Trump administration with DHS goons showing up in any city they feel like. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some executive order to close all abortion clinics enforced by federal boots.
I have no idea, I'm just saying we shouldn't expect what we had in the past to return because the opponents we're facing now are more radically ideological than before. Before, conservative politicians didn't give a fuck about abortions, it wasn't a conservative issue until conservatives lost the cultural war over segregation. Conservative politicians just played it up to cater to Falwell and his "Silent Majority" while Phyllis Schlafly wormed her bigoted ass through the GOP turning them into anti-abortion true believers over decades, finally living to see Trump win before dropping dead. Before, I don't think most conservative politicians had an honest intention of banning all abortions for everyone forever, but I think the new GOP is more far more radical and does actually want to ban all abortions for all people for all time.
I don't know, though, nobody does I guess.
There’s no maybe maybe not here, man. The Supreme Court is not gonna bless jackbooted thugs closing abortion clinics. That’s why they’ve always done it quietly.
The Supreme Court is not gonna bless jackbooted thugs closing abortion clinics.
How do you know? Because that's what has always happened in the past?
Because the US doesn't oppress like that. It's always been about fucking over swaths of people while maintaining a veneer of respectability. We aren't descending into fascism--we're dealing with a more overt fascist than we normally tend to see. The Supreme Court always aims to appear respectable so when they further overturn Roe v. Wade, it's not going to ban abortions. It's just going to make it a state decision again.
Muh suprememeye coruto nooooo not the Ruth Vader Ginsberg that’s her third stroke of the week
I am sure Ruth has another four years in her. No need to worry. I hear her cancer has eaten the other cancer. That only leaves about three cancers, give or take. I am sure she will be fine.
Who the fuck outreached to all these libs? Maybe phone banking was a mistake lol
Idk we've got a progressive bisexual governor deputizing state officers into federal officers to give protestors harsher sentences after the mayor of a progressive city couldn't get his riot cops to stop punching people in the face. Dems go full fash the second they think they can get away with it, the supreme court will be no different
We need at least one post about the Shining Path or something every time we see a liberalism on main
I have no idea what the problem is. Seems like OP and the original person who made the comment here both agree the situation with the supreme court is futile? What gives? I don't see why this was triggering
It sucks absolute ass, but -- as much as it pains me to admit -- it's a legitimate argument. See my earlier comment: https://hexbear.net/post/22390/comment/164253
If you expect a nascent left to make gains in America with a Supreme Court against your very existince then you're seeing a viable path that I'm not.
If you can't keep a single law you enact on the books longer than 7 months because the Surpreme Court rules them unconstitutional, you're never going to see progress -- even if we used Juche necromancy to ressurect Karl Marx and elected him president.
offer an alternative that doesn’t result in the fruitless death or imprisonment of your comrades
read a single book of Marx
We're roughly in the same position the far right was in the 1960s in terms of electoral influence.
It's taken them decades of gerrymandering, court packing, thinktank creating, politician bribing, astroturf movement creating, and elite level organizing to create this neoliberal consensus. It did not just materialize out of nowhere.
You have none of their power, money, or influence, and you think you have 40 years left to engage in a useless electoral project of incremental Socialism? A project you're just assuming they're going to let happen right under their nose?
What you want is for someone to validate the fucking fantasy that there's a kumbaya, easy way to do this. As if we don't have the entire 20th century to use as data points to know this for certain.
The left project going forward is going to be brutal and nearly impossible. It may occasionally involve electoralism, but it is not an electoral project. You cannot elect your way to socialism any more than you can ask your enemies to put a gun to their head and pull the trigger. It's not going to happen.
Electoralism and peaceful protest are methods of elite pacification. They are busy boxes offered to you so that change can be coopted and safely eliminated or made meaningless.
The fact that our current situation is really bad, does not change the fact that that's a dead fucking end.
Literally, whatever you think the odds are of a successful revolution, even at sub 1%, it is more likely than "electoral victory." Which is something that has never happened ever, anywhere, let alone in the imperial core, let alone in a country as historically hostile to the working class as the United States.
There is none, you are defeated.
You do not understand. There is no lever you can pull right now that will end this hell.
You are marooned on a desert island. You can try to build a raft, and brave the stormy seas, but there is no other way out.
You have to build the "alternative," it doesn't exist currently. And no one knows how to do it.
But playing around in the fucking sand cannot change anything. It never, ever will.
This will be a problem for leftists no matter what, unless we literally abolish the Supreme Court.
Why are you talking about electoralism lmao.
The left in America will never win unless it drives out the Supreme Court justices at gunpoint
If we're enacting laws, we're packing the Supreme Court. They both require the same amount of control, actually enacting laws requires the House so more control.
Not gonna happen again until the left is big enough to control congress and the presidency.
Of course. Though as far as the SCOTUS is concerned we just need the Senate and presidency.
That's why the "conservative SCOTUS for the next 50 years" argument is bullshit. Whoever controls the presidency and Senate can do whatever they want with the SCOTUS, no matter what the last guy did.
Whoever controls the presidency and Senate can do whatever they want with the SCOTUS, no matter what the last guy did.
This would require court packing, and court packing would require both houses of Congress plus the presidency. And while it's technically a possibility with that, it would still be a long shot.
Court packing doesn't need the House. It's literally just nominating a new Justice and having the Senate approve.
That's just nominating a Justice, and it requires an opening.
Court packing is increasing the size of the Supreme Court to create those openings. Increasing the size of the Court can be done by statute, but passing a new statute requires control of both the House and Senate.
Realistically it's going to be way harder to get Dems on board with court packing than it is with about anything else.
If we're relying on Dems, we won't be passing any meaningful laws anyway.
Or picking any decent SC justices, from a left perspective.
Although I guess Sotomayor is actually pretty cool.
Obama threw is a bone in exchange for one of the most massive wealth consolidation scandals in history.
Dems are shit overall, but they could easily come up with something like marijuana legalization, which would have an enormous impact on ending mass incarceration. They already have a vote scheduled on it in the House, and at the local level Dems have passed it a dozen times over. It's not ridiculous to think about Medicare or All, either, although that's probably at least 4-5 years off.
Dems are shit overall, but they could easily come up with something like marijuana legalization, which would have an enormous impact on ending mass incarceration.
Biden would veto it
It’s not ridiculous to think about Medicare or All, either, although that’s probably at least 4-5 years off.
Biden would veto it
Biden doesn't actually believe in anything. If he ever did, he's too senile now to still believe it. What he's saying now isn't what he believes -- because he doesn't believe in anything -- it's what he thinks will get him elected.
If Democrats win the Senate and are looking for a midterm boost, it's realistic that Biden could "evolve" on marijuana legalization the same way Obama "evolved" on LGBT rights. These people are pandering, not making lifelong commitments.
The LGBT rights the Dems are pushing don’t significantly impact capital. The US state didn’t decide to enslave a tenth of the population for shits and gigs. If it was allowed to significantly impact incarceration rates Marijuana legalisation would cost private prisons (massive dem donors btw) hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Do you really believe the US Democratic Party is capable of going against US capital in general and their donors in particular to that extent?
Do you seriously believe the US Democratic Party would pass legislation that would cost their donors (private prisons & health insurance companies) Trillions of dollars?
Just like republicans stopped trying to repeal Obamacare after Trump took office, you'll see Dems give up on marijuana legalization and the Green New Deal. These policies are too popular to be passed. The two parties intentionally lose the culture wars so they can rail against the other side when they are trying to win your vote.
even if we used Juche necromancy to ressurect Karl Marx
the only people to talk about Marx on this website are smooth brained reactionaries who don't know anything about him.
with a Supreme Court against your very existince
I'm 12 and don't know about the bourgeoisie
"All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. "
This isn't a new phenomenon
that battle is already lost. literally no way to win this cycle.
let's move on or figure out how to do triage instead of pretending we can win battles already lost.
The trouble with that is there isn’t a “not a fascist” candidate on the ballot. Biden literally did rallies with the Klan and from the wars started during Obama’s presidency alone his hands are stained with the blood of millions.
The USA was the OG fascist empire. Its been fascist since before there was a word for it. US style “Neoliberalism” is at best a redefinition of the in and out groups and at worst just rhetorical cover for more white fascism.
I think harm reduction advocacy and voting in US presidential elections is less effective than agitating and voting for socialist candidates as a recruitment/publicity/radicalisation exercise. According to their 1850 Address to the Communist League this was also Marx and Engels view.
If you do want to do harm reduction voting in US presidential asking “Which candidate aligns most closely with my values?” doesn’t really get you anywhere because no one who isn’t a horrible fascist is ever allowed anywhere near the US levers of power (possible exceptions being Debs & FDR for varying values of “allowed near” & “not a horrible fascist”).
If you instead ask “who’s going to hurt the least people?” Then I think the answer to who’s the harm reduction candidate pretty clearly becomes Trump. Trump’s rhetoric is vile but (much to ideological fascists chagrin) he’s very clearly a massive lazy grifter and he only follows up half heartedly on like 2% of it. His extreme sloth, arrogance and selfishness have put him in conflict with the US imperial war machine. Despite the MIC chomping at the bit to start a war with the DPRK, Venezuela, Iran, and now Venezuela again, Trump hasn’t started any new wars and has even intentionally and otherwise, deescelated existing conflicts and reduced the US imperial presence & infrastructure around the globe. Clinton has made it very clear she would have pulled the trigger on at least two of those three and Biden is publically criticising Trump for not already having done so.
If we take the past two decades as our rules, a new US imperialist war generally means 1-4 million people either murdered directly by US munitions or one step removed by disease/starvation/exposure from direct destruction of infrastructure, that number again horribly maimed, and 10-40 million people “displaced” into a world that has never been crueler towards refugees.
From a harm reduction perspective Trump hasn’t done anything that remotely compares to that.
The USA was the OG fascist empire. Its been fascist since before there was a word for it.
This has always been a fascinating point for me because what is fascism but the class collaborationist rule by the petty bourgeoisie at the behest of the bourgeoisie? And what was the United States but a country of petty bourgeoisie? People who could set up plantations and play merchant in the Americas, but could not compete in Europe. Our founders even had the same infatuation with the Roman empire and the Yeoman that the fascists of Europe did. Our only gripe with Hitler and Mussolini was that they declared war on us. We did lebensraum and enslaved a whole race. We are a fascist country, we just didn't do it as rapidly as Nazi Germany.
I’m not sure I understand this bit
Electoralism can’t simultaneously not matter, while also defining the core ideology of someone who does the minimum to participate.
Would you mind elaborating?
