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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • Sorry to break it to ya Slate (libs), Trump barely got more 18-24 votes this time than he did last time, whereas a lot of young people just didn’t show up for Harris. Everybody knew young people were upset by the genocide, they said they couldn’t vote for Harris because of her policies and surprisingly no matter how much Dem party dorks tried to shame them they didn’t show up, just like they said they wouldn’t. And now everyone is like “gen z is maga” get a grip



  • Yeah well I wish I had a clear answer to the problem you’re correctly identifying. Probably the best way to get around at least the first large chunk of issues, is focusing a lot on education. Quite frankly many liberal progressives, the good ones who would value more highly human emancipation and progress than clinging death-like to private property at the expense of all else, function largely based on enlightenment moralism such as a “categorical imperative”, as well as are hardwired for dualism rather than dialectical materialism (for example.) IMO these out of date paradigms are woefully insufficient for the present task.

    But even among like-minded individuals there are big problems to move beyond. I’m in a group of political activists that go to great lengths to vet its members. It takes a minimum of 4 months of study and discussion to be even considered to join, and activists had often been studying for years before and continue to study once accepted. The group was formed by some organizers who have been working together for decades before splitting from their old group. We are a very democratically run org, that works to influence mass movements and call for the creation of a workers party by and for the workers, in order to establish a worker state to transition to socialism away from capital and private property.

    Long story short we have vicious disagreements despite our collective work, our shared education and frequent comradely discussions. The scope of what we disagree about is narrower, but the disagreements are almost irreconcilable. Personally I think some people could be more introspective, others better communicators, others less dogmatic. Various differences manifest as two distinct factions in conflict, with the rest of the membership left to tip-toe around it, or set up in one camp or the other. And this is a very good group! None of these critiques venture into the sort of interpersonal cattyness, or downright abusive behavior from leaders of other groups. We don’t have those particular problems, but yet problems emerge nonetheless.

    But moving into a more “repressive” period under trump might have the effect of unifying many peoples differences and burying different hatchets. Temporarily. Its a mistake to think that individual ideas or ideology is solely responsible for the difficulties of the left. We exist in a milieu that is hostile and confused, at least some of the hostility and confusion amongst us is part of that influence. Having an external “enemy” to struggle against has a way of unifying differences and replacing important priorities with urgent ones dictated by history. Also things can move very quickly once society reaches a tipping point. Objects in our predictable future may be close than they appear. I hope we can get our act together, and will keep working to try and make that real


  • I don’t think I’m tearing anybody down after the election.

    I’m gonna go a different direction and say that people on the left have to learn to disagree productively. Rather than the old dem party “shut up get in line the adults are talking” progressives should be interested in grassroots mass campaigning. What is needed is a mass movement, and that won’t happen if people can’t make basic democratic decisions in a field of uncertainty and shifting priorities.

    But if I see my fellow progressives going down a stupid path, like the one the meme seems to advocate for, I’m gonna say something. If my comrades want to arm themselves, great! If they want to organize into a worker militia, that’s 1000x better. But believing we can make change happen with violence divorced from politics is as naive as believing we can make change happen with politics divorced from violence. That’s not what the state is.

    I am the last person tearing down anyone. I agree with your point and the urgency of it, but (theoretically) disagreement can be productive and drive discussion, rather than making people more campist and paranoid. Avoiding conflict will not unite the left, but those conflicts will never get resolved or worked through, and they end up staying forever. We need to work past it together rather than acting like we are all bitter enemies judging each other just because we have different priorities. That’s just normal regular politics






  • Disagree. Watch Reds.

    Did you say “do Gladio shit”? Like enlist fascists, virulent anti-communists that they are, to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian populations to then blame on communists in order to crush the influence of socialists in government and justify purges of socialists and communists from every sphere of life? That gladio shit?

    The revolution will not be won by beautiful dead, tears in their eyes, clutching their rifles. It will be won by a political revolution of the working class for the benefit of all. There will certainly be fighting, of which the internationale sings about explicitly:

    No more deluded by reaction
    On tyrants only we’ll make war
    The soldiers too will take strike action
    They’ll break ranks and fight no more.
    And if those cannibals keep trying
    To sacrifice us to their pride
    They soon shall hear the bullets flying
    We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.





  • I agree with a lot of your analysis, but I think a lot of these conclusions are highly contingent on historical circumstance. For example, I think Trump is a lot more unpopular than the current narrative regarding Trump. The Dems do not want to be so wrong about Trump’s chance of winning as they were in 2016. A dynamic that could play out in this election is that many of the groups you identified (and were right to do so) feel so threatened by a Trump presidency (in part because of Dems successful and good organizing against him) causes those groups to unite and keep him out of office. This could lead to a split between the pragmatic republican movement concerned with maintaining the status quo, and the pro-Trump MAGA militants who are not as homogenous of a group as may first appear.

    But feel free to “neener neener” about it if I end up being wrong in a few hours. My point is, things change, a disparate group of different interests can unite into an unbreakable bloc, and vice versa, in a traumatizingly short amount of time if recent years can be a teacher