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WHY AM I EVEN AWARE OF ONE OF YOUR (NOT EVEN) MAYORS?? WAS RATBOY NOT ENOUGH??
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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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chapotraphouse
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I don't really give a shit about Mamdani, but the flaws in your reasoning here are highly detrimental
It's not about the masses being socialist or not, it's not about "socialist energy," it's about popular energy for positive change. The argument is that popular energy for positive change is being funneled into someone who is a dead end for achieving positive change and may thereby discourage people from working collectively for a better world, which is detrimental to building a socialist movement, rather than discourage them from working specifically with the Dems. Do you know what a sheepdog is? The most obvious example is post-concession Bernie, who threw his credibility and potential to do good into the fire by campaigning for Joe fucking Biden and abusing his campaign apparatus to support the DNC generally.
You can argue that Zohran is not being captured, that he will not be a sheepdog (though you might want to investigate what his group says about the possibility of reforming the Dems), but then argue that and not this absurd sleight-of-hand. Maybe that's true. I don't know.
You're completely misunderstanding and abusing the concept of democracy. What democracy means is that, if the people on the broadest available scale collectively decide to take some approach, they are entitled to. What it does not mean is that the decision that they made was the best decision or that we should not criticize their decisions or the reasoning behind it. To say "well it's their democratic decision" to someone who is not arguing for prohibiting them, but merely saying they are incorrect, is like those awful people who, when they are called out on bullshit they shouldn't do, say "I am allowed to do it." That wasn't the question! No one is contesting that! They are, instead of treating you like some sovereign animal that will do whatever and can't be engaged with, treating you like someone who also wants to do what is right but has made an error. It is a grotesque condescension to act like they mustn't be criticized no matter what they decide.
I will repeat that I don't give a shit about Mamdani. For the purpose of this argument, I'll say that his campaign is cool and good because that's your position. I truly just object to the specific arguments you're using to reach that conclusion. Even if you just want to say "Well, I've met some of his volunteers and I get the vibe that they are ready to move past him if they ever need to," then that's perfectly valid.
This does absolutely nothing to counter what I said. You just exchanged one metaphysical argument for another that functions the same way. The rest is just unnecessary reiteration of commonly known information. Yes, I know what a sheepdog is. I know who Bernie is. I know who Biden is. Do you know what materialism actually entails? Do you know what vibes-based politics is?
You want me to argue something I don't believe so you can have an easier time shooting me down rather than getting into weeds about political reality. He could be a sheepdog. He could be captured. Instead of asking me what I believe, you simply assume and really want to argue with that. You assume I don't know who Bernie is and that I never considered Zohran might not be our Lenin. Once again, I have common sense.
I am not. I'm talking about an organization choosing what to do with their resources. The broadest available scale collectively inside the DSA is the membership of the DSA. Not hexbear bystanders. I'm obviously talking about democracy with a specific context, not the most general applicable definition of the word. Democracy on Hexbear is users being part of decision making. It's not the broadest available group of people on the internet.
I didn't say you couldn't criticize it but your criticism means very little if it comes from a place of sour grapes. I'm not DSA and I'm not particularly dedicated to defending them. However, they formed an organization, set goals, and put in work to achieve those goals. Whether the goals align with my understanding of theory is besides the point. They gained some popular support both as an org and for the candidate they chose to support. Who am I, who have never attempted to join the DSA or influence their decision making process, to come in at the 11th hour and tell them they're wasting time? Especially when my alternative is just another org essentially doing the same thing?
Like I said in the last thread, nobody on this site, regardless of tendency or party affiliation, knows how to bring about revolution in the US. Many, if not most, think it's impossible based on relatively recent history. If it's impossible, then there is no waste of potential because the potential doesn't exist. If it's not impossible, then the usual go-tos (unionizing, mutual aid, protests, third parties) haven't produced anything quickly and results remain to be seen. Therefore nobody has the secret recipe. Nobody gets the affordance of sticking their nose up at those options.
This is horseshit. Potentially productive time and effort being misdirected is not "metaphysical," "idealist," or "vibes-based."
I'm explaining shit you say you already know because you're acting like you don't. If you understand what a sheepdog is, then you should understand that misdirecting popular enthusiasm is a serious concern. That's it, that's the whole thing.
I said that you can argue that. I don't give a shit and I wouldn't want you to present that argument to me regardless, because apparently me repeatedly telling you that I'm not interested in litigating the particulars of the direction of Mamdani's campaign is not enough.
You are presenting an absurd defense. You said:
Are you telling me that you aren't finger wagging someone for criticizing a "democratic decision"? What could you possibly mean by quarterbacking if not that you don't like someone saying the DSA should be doing something else?
I just mentioned the scale thing to give a complete description. It wasn't meant to be pointed, but I guess I should have been more clear.
I agree that they did their democratic procedure perfectly fine to the limited extent of my knowledge. You might notice that every single thing I said reaffirmed that it was democratic, but that it being democratic did not place people's decision making above criticism (see "quarterbacking").
This is still nonsense. The truth doesn't bend to people's emotional motivations. It doesn't matter if I, for example, am an insufferable ultra or a Trot that just wants to sell newspapers; if I say something true then it is still true. If it is false, then it's not because I have a bad attitude. This framing is worse than worthless because it just functions as a framework of excuses to turn your brain off, which is a pattern I see emerging here.
I can't quite tell the degree to which you're just deflecting outside criticism again (see the bit about democracy) versus armchair criticism. Assuming the latter, I must point out to you that you surely denounce the ACP and you absolutely should. You don't need to be a veteran canvasser and organizer to know that what the ACP is doing is generally terrible, and you can look at their individual actions and conclude in most cases that they are individually terrible. I assume that you also have rightful criticisms of the Soviet Union, despite them not being a cartoonish malignance like the ACP and also accomplishing incomparably more for humanity than either the ACP or DSA.
Experience is a great thing to have, but it's not a prerequisite for having valid criticisms if the organization -- however active and popular -- fails basic hurdles.
This is so absurd. Alright, so when someone firebombs a Walmart to convince the masses to cast off their shackles, will you say nothing? When a tenant union makes city-wide gains for tenants' rights but deliberately excludes trans tenants from the organizing process, will you say nothing? No, you would surely say something, because you know that some approaches are more worthwhile than others, which means that right now you're just contriving excuses to avoid engaging with the criticism directly.
I will repeat yet again that I don't care about litigating on Mamdani, I just think your arguments are toxic. I'll also note for completeness that it looks like I edited my comment after you started writing yours, but I just did it to cut stuff out, so it's not that important.
I know you like to post until the cows come home and I am not about to spend the rest of my day itemizing your post and trying to read my own itemized posts.
Time and effort is not being misdirected. You have a janitor who works in Manhattan that's doing phone banking for Mamdani. You're saying that person is wasting their time, their time could be spending doing something revolutionary instead of phone banking. What should they be doing. Give me an actual concrete example. Just the example, you don't need to quote every sentence in this post, markdown is killing me.
I keep telling you that I'm not interested in talking about if Mamdani's campaign is good or not. If that's all you want to talk about, then I guess I can humor you: Hypothetically, the janitor could be working for literally any socialist third party or independent. That would not produce a won election that term, most likely, but you run into an AOC or Contrapoints problem (not saying those two are the same) where you're making "pragmatic compromises" to "gain power," but you didn't actually gain power, you just became a vessel for the DNC, because if you deviate from their directions more than a little they will fucking smoke you. Power isn't being the person who gets to cast the vote that they were told to by the DNC. Third parties and independents need to glacially crawl over broken glass, but at least when they make progress it's really theirs.
Mamdani has a lot more individual leeway than a Congressperson, of course, so let's see if he is actually able to carry out a positive agenda that is more than a shadow of what he promised, if he gets cowed by the Democratic establishment, or if he gets fucked over and fails despite trying to work against them. As I said, I'm not really invested in divining which of those will happen, I just care about people working from reasonable principles instead of excuses.
This is what I was touching on in my post, the one you called absurd. Our janitor phone banks for a different party and that election doesn't lead anywhere either. Somehow this means that popular energy for change has been preserved and redirected towards something beneficial despite the mechanism for such not describe or seemingly existing. Our janitor works for a campaign that results in them getting duped by a DNC shill or they work for a campaign that admittedly results in nothing but has a book club. I'm not saying that to shit on socialist third parties, I'm okay with leaps of faith, I just don't think it's a position of pragmatic superiority. I don't think it bestows unique authority on the people that adhere to it, so they can come Hexsplain sheepdogs to everyone.