I wonder why AOC capitulates so much

I would simply not become ensnared by the One Ring. Skill issue

It's so weird because it's like congratulations - you made it to national - you almost certainly stepped on a ton of people and went into substantial debt to get here - your character is already compromised at this point and you're so used to wheeling and dealing that no matter how sincerely held, any suffocating ideological belief in the world of tomorrow cannot react, cannot influence you under the weight of every rationalized action against it you've taken to get there. And even if, EVEN IF you still have your convictions about you - congratulations - you're in the company of Bernie Sanders, and similarly will only be relevant as a gadfly that quietly loses their primary after failing to secure any long term loyalties to the decided not nice people who cut the checks to get you there.

If you think you can win that game you're just very stupid. It's like taking a faustian bargain thinking you're the guy that's gonna out lawyer the devil. Maybe man, but you won't like the price.

It's good to be skeptical of reform attempts, but we also don't want to fall into this trap:

Gramsci shows that one of the main historical concerns of the Catholic Church has been to control the reading and the diffusion of Christianity, blocking the rise and spread of popular, autonomous and base level interpretations and thereby saving the purity of the historic doctrine... Many Marxists act the same way. Their biggest worry is the purity of the doctrine. Every time that historical facts challenge the doctrine or show the complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory, they deny that these elements are part of the story of Marxist theory and doctrine. This is, for example, what doctrines of betrayal are built on.

The "complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory" in the imperial core is that there has never been a successful socialist revolution here and there are no significant prospects for one currently. The most notable "revolutionary" movement in the U.S. right now is what, the PSL? No one has cracked the code of how to build socialism in the imperial core. It's not a betrayal to experiment with other tactics when revolution has failed (or never started) in your local context. It's also not a binary choice; you can support the most revolutionary group available and still do reform work to pay the bills, for example.

The touchstones for me are to not lose sight of the end goal (socialism, not kinder, gentler capitalism) and to be ready to move if a mass movement you weren't involved in takes off.

i fell off bleeding

The balancing act of capitulating on the little things so that they can achieve some important thing breaks down with the realization that the important thing is "people in power ask for my opinion".

:boromir-i-care-not: