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

  • 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.