inevitable but still sucks. what's everyone drinking tonite? i've got a Lamplighter IPA

  • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    We're so fucked and the democrats are so damn useless. Just an unbelievable amount of bad shit is going to happen because of this.

    Like I'm not even asking for the democrats to be socialist, as there's zero expectation for such, I just want them to actually wield power against the Republicans for once.

    • OhWell [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Liberals have historically always sided with fascists at the end of the day. Their entire ideology revolves around a blind faith in upholding the system and a belief in the status quo. That's the simple way to explain why the most they offer is band-aid solutions to problems instead of real change.

      They are scared shitless to wield power. The Obama years were full proof of that.

        • OhWell [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          100% agree, which is why it's so absurd to me when people argue that we can radicalize them. They care about property rights more than they do human rights.

          A good example of their band-aid solutions to problems can be seen with how they yell at us "we need to do better! We need more POC cops and more female CEOs!", the recent Star Wars Squadrons game has a full diverse Empire in it (the bad guys!). Stuff like that is all they are concerned about, or they think some mild reforms to law enforcement and healthcare is all that is needed.

          At the end of the day, they believe in the system and status quo. Capitalism will be nice and fine once it's diverse, according to them.

          • Funicio [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            Do you mean we shouldn't bother radicalizing liberal politicians, or working class people that happen to be liberal? I'm pretty sure a huge portion of us were once members of the latter group, although sometimes it takes an event in your life or an internal, personal insight to make the turn into leftism. If we won't radicalize liberals, and we won't radicalize conservatives, who do we have left to radicalize? Purely the apolitical people, who will tend to think like liberals due to our education system?

            • OhWell [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Over 40% of the entire country's population does not vote. What makes you think they would think like liberals based on our education system? Said education system differs state to state. I just so happen to live in a state where our public school systems were run like prisons and are proof that the school to prison pipeline is real (and I lived through it, it was radicalizing for me). On the flip side, if you're in the middle class or higher up, you get access to better education growing up than some poor bum like me who grew up in poverty.

              There's a lot of pissed off people in this country disillusioned with the system and angry at the government. These people just so happen to be poor too and lower class.

              Libs at the end of the day believe in the system and the status quo. Go ahead and waste your time if you want them to smugly talk down to you and tell you how you just need to keep voting Democrat to make change happen. I've been hearing that bullshit my whole life and everyone I know who DON'T vote, has also been hearing it and noticed that their lives aren't changing for the better based on voting for Team Blue.

              Democrats have completely abandoned the deep south, which just so happens to be where I live. Those "red states" as they smugly call them, used to have strong labour movements, unions and workers rights. All that has been stripped away as Democrats abandoned those states and allowed the GOP to gerrymander them unchallenged. Even worse, is that the Dems in our states like where I live, usually are DINOs and more in line with a politician like Joe Biden. These are the working class people we would have a better chance radicalizing. They are not liberals. They have been stabbed in the back one too many times by Dems to ever trust them.

              At the end of the day, it always goes back to the class war. The class war is real and we're in for a rude awakening of naked class warfare in the near future under a Biden presidency.

              • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                I think the main takeaway for me is: I don't really care if someone is a Democrat or a lib or whatever. I think the focus for radicalization should be less based on ideology and more about reaching the people who would materially benefit from socialism. I don't think this contradicts any of the points you made or anything, just kinda my two cents.

                I'm in "TRUMP COUNTRY" myself, and you're absolutely right about the dems and their outright disdain for rural folk. I just usually put it more in terms of class than ideology.

                • OhWell [he/him]
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                  4 years ago

                  Thanks for the reply! Nice to meet another southerner down here. Have lived my entire life among rural folk. Libs absolutely hate us cause we all talk as if we're from the movie Forrest Gump and we come from "red states", as if everyone who lives down here votes Republican based on those stupid colored maps.

                  The south has the highest poverty in the country and is really ripe for socialism if there is a place anywhere in the US that is begging for a left populist movement. Problem is, our Democrats absolutely fucking suck. I have lived in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana and in all three of those states, I noticed that Dems don't even bother running house district candidates outside the big cities. The cities are their strongholds. They abandoned the rural areas. My house district race right now is between 2 Republicans, as it has been every year since I moved to this place. When I lived in Florida, they didn't put up any house district candidates there outside the big cities. It was a race between two Republicans. They just hand these state elections to the GOP, then they complain and smugly talk down about people in said "red states". My favorite retort they give people online is "well vote more! Vote better Democrats!"

                  My family worked in shipyards and seafood and my grandparents could tell you how 50 years ago back in the 70s, the Democrats actually fought for unions and workers rights back then. They actually had some kind of healthcare and their unions were strong. The GOP began to really hurt them in the 80s but the real betrayal according to my grandparents, was the Clinton years of the 90s. That's when the Dems began to entirely abandon the southern states and leave them for the GOP. The book 'What's Going On In Kansas' is a good breakdown of that and the red wave of the 90s when the GOP started taking over those states. The Dems don't believe in a 50 State Strategy, Howard Dean was made out to be crazy when he pushed that idea to them in the 2000s.

                  Everything always goes back to the class war. In my state, most of the voter turnout for governor, senator and other state elections comes from older people and middle class income households. Libs have created this narrative that the "white working class" voted for Trump, when in reality, most lower income households don't vote at all and Trump got his biggest support from the middle class and the higher ups on the the wealth ladder, which makes 100% sense.

                  • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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                    4 years ago

                    Yeah, I hear ya comrade. Libs always blame the sticks for their woes, despite that the suburbs are the traditional Republican strong holds. What's cool is most hicks I know hate the Democrats right fucking back, lol.

                    For good reason.

        • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          This is well said. When I first realized that the dems hated us more than the fascist, it was like a jimmy neutron brain blast for me.

          • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            Democrats hate Sanders types not because of the threat to capital, as these folks aren't capitalists but are PMC, and in turn its the threat to their personal grift within the democratic party that upsets them.

            • OhWell [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Dems hate Sanders cause they hate the left.

              Every time libs moan about Sanders, they mention "populism" and "the cult of personality".

              As for their hate of populism, they really just fucking loathe poor people in general. And as for the cult of personality, they seem to ignore entirely that they built cults of personality around Obama, Hillary, RBG and now Joe Biden.

              They absolutely hate the left more than they do fascists. If you lurk on r/politics, that's a good insight into how libs minds work. They spend so much time talking about "anti-Trump Republicans". These past 4 years, they have managed to make John McCain and Mitt Romney sound like heroes. Fucking JOHN BOLTON became one of their favorite people after he spoke out against Trump. Because they believe in the system and status quo, they want the other side to agree with them and reach across the aisle. They aren't obsessed with The West Wing for nothing. That show is how they wish government worked.

              It also ties into how easily they whitewashed Bush. They were never angry about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor were they mad about how he handled hurricane Katrina (Louisiana is a RED STATE, fuck everyone who died and those of us who nearly drowned). Libs were just mad that it wasn't Team Blue doing those things.

              • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                Nah all of the stuff you're talking about is just internal DNC talking points. These folks just spend too much time watching MSNBC. It's all just political hackery devoid of beliefs, they want to win over former republican voters so they can't just shit on those people.

                The reason DNC staffers hate Bernie is because he wasn't going to include them as insiders. Paul Krugman wrote about this after the nevada caucus among other related think pieces.

                There are certainly some ideologue liberals out there, but those folks work for the cato institute and don't exist anywhere else in the broader realm of american politics.

            • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing for me with Bernie. The old man wasn't even really a threat to capital, but seems like they wouldn't even grant any concessions. I guess the have no reason to.

              But I also think the insurgency of Bernie was a threat to the usual coronation of lib elites. I dunno. It might not matter much, but it's kinda fascinating to me.

              • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                I guess what I'm saying is there's a difference between Jeff Bezos not liking Bernie and Neera Tanden not liking Bernie. The former is because of his threat to capital, the later is because he'd end a huge part of the DNC consultancy grift.

                • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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                  4 years ago

                  No, I understand what you mean, sorry if I was unclear. My only thought on it is that for someone like bezos, why not support Bernie. I could imagine if the grossest abuses of capital were limited, you could stave off the guillotine and whatnot. I only mean that Bernie is a soft reformer type dude, not so much a threat to capital.

                  As far as neera tanden, Killary types, totally agree. We, the great unwashed, just aren't really in their tea party lib world or whatever, and if those people were beholden to us as a donor class...I honestly don't even know what that would mean.

      • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        It's not even about fighting fascism, you'd think they'd want to fight for their own personal power but they don't even do that.