77
This one included.
Alright, well "expecting them to do the bare minimum" isn't a winning strategy either. Expecting people to do things they've demonstrated they won't do doesn't make any sense.
And if neither party supports that reform, do we just keep voting Democrat until the end of time?
This mentality is what the Dems keep applying and it doesn't work. Trying to shame people into voting isn't an effective message. You can argue that it should be, but what matters is how things actually are and how a party can act most effectively based on that. It's either adapt or keep railing against reality and lose.
Personally, I don't draw a distinction between economic and social issues, because solidarity between oppressed groups is vital for building collective power necessary to confront capitalism economically and laws that make people more vulnerable also affect us economically. But admittedly there are people who do view them as separate issues.
This sort of thinking is why Democrats keep repeating the same mistakes. Any sort of criticism, even if it's constructive, is treasonous. It's always someone else's fault.
Organizations either adapt or die. Rejection of criticism is a suicidal, accelerationist position. When people are so concerned with deflecting blame that they're incapable of performing an honest, frank assessment of which strategies work and which don't, then you are destined to fail no matter whether its a political party or anything else. If you'd prefer the Democrats keep doing things that don't work because you're afraid of them losing face, then your perspective is worthless.
That depends on what your goals, methodology, and material conditions are.
If you have static and predictable demand for something, like, everybody needs enough food to eat and a roof over their heads, then the state can effectively plan for and deliver on that. When you have something that just needs to be done for its own sake, then introducing a profit motive isn't necessary or beneficial, and can lead to enshittification and cutting corners. There are also "natural monopolies," like for example cable where it doesn't really make sense to build another set of cable lines so the consumer is going to be left with one choice anyway, and it would be better for that to be run by the state where there's at least some democratic input on how things are done. There's also what's called "externalities" where for example building a train line makes an area more accessible and brings value to the surrounding area, beyond what can be captured by the line itself - and conversely, there are negative externalities, such as a factory putting out smog or dumping chemicals, that will lower the value of the surrounding area but the factory won't bear the brunt of the costs. There are also natural resources where the supply is inelastic so taxing them doesn't make the economy less efficient, as the Nordic countries do with their oil.
There are situations where private industry can make sense. Like, say people want plushies made of different anime characters. There's no real reason for the state to run that. There's a low barrier to entry, and different companies can use different methods to predict which character will be in higher demand and whether people will want higher quality or lower price. Or with cars, they can design different models balancing all sorts of factors from safety to performance to aesthetics.
There's also many cases where a state doesn't have the freedom to implement whatever system they want. Some states are rich in natural resources, but they are owned by foreign corporations that have owned them since colonial times. If they try to nationalize them, or even tax them, it would be beneficial to the economy but it could lead to sanctions, coups, or invasions. But generally the people in the country don't benefit from those situations and the relationship is parasitic.
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
In the US, socialism has historically been shunned and not represented in the political sphere, to the point that the right started using "liberal" derisively and associated the term with socialism. Internationally, the term retains more of its original meaning, for example, in the UK the "Liberal Democrats," are more like libertarians.
Liberals are generally conservative, meaning they support the status quo or gradual change. US "conservatives" are sometimes more accurately called reactionaries or regressives, because they don't just want to preserve the status quo but to actively roll back progress that has already been made.
Because leftism is a very broad term, it's difficult to define exactly what leftists believe in an uncontroversial way, but generally speaking leftists support radical change away from capitalism.
You know you're cooked when Bill Kristol is going around like, "Hey, shouldn't you be running a more progressive campaign to turn out more voters?"
The democrats' message this cycle was literally, "Trump doesn't actually want to do anything about immigration, he just wants to campaign on it. We're the ones who are actually going to build the wall, he's all talk," and now they're all suprisied that they lost a bunch of Latino votes. Who could've predicted this?
Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin, and Jacky Rosen are all women who won senate races in states Kamala lost (WI, MI, NV). There's also Ruben Gallego, a Hispanic man who's winning in Arizona. So your "simplest explanation" is that these sexist, racist bigots were fine with voting for women (one of them a queer woman at that) and minorities for senate but not for president (for some reason) as opposed to the idea that Kamala Harris was just an unpopular candidate. That's not the simplest explanation, it's just the laziest.
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Obviously, the main reason for record turnout in 2020 was COVID.
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Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn't even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was "untested" to put it mildly.
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The economic situation was different.
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Regardless of to what degree he was responsible, under Biden the US got entangled in foreign conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine.
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It's not that there are 10 million commies that liked Biden but not Harris, it's that us commies believe that you can win over the working class by appealing to material interests.
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Biden didn't campaign with fucking Dick Cheney
1
Genocide in a Teapot
(lemmy.ml)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19534199
Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.
The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.
In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:
If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.
If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.
Fascism is wrong.
Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.
As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.
Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.
However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.
In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.
Thank you.
-3
Genocide in a Teapot
(lemmy.ml)
Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.
The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.
In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:
-
If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.
-
If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.
-
Fascism is wrong.
-
Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.
As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.
Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.
However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.
In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.
Thank you.
23
Trump's foreign policy doublespeak
(lemmy.ml)
President Trump kept America out of new wars and brought thousands of brave troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and many other countries. Joe Biden has undermined our military readiness and surrendered our strength to the Taliban.
When Trump pulls troops out of Afghanistan, it's "bringing thousands of brave troops home," but when Biden does the same, it's, "surrendering our strength to the Taliban." He brags about "keeping America out of foreign wars" while at the same time bragging about assassinating "the world's number one terrorist," Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was an extreme act of provocation.
This is taken from the issues page of Trump's campaign website, and there are several more statements relating to foreign policy, frequently and boldly contradicting each other. It's a perfect example of the "If By Whiskey" tactic. So what's actually going on here? Well, to understand the reasons for this equivocation, we need to analyze the foreign policy positions of Americans.
Broadly speaking, people fall into one of four camps: Idealist Hawk (liberals), Idealist Dove (libertarians), Realist Hawk (nationalists), and Realist Dove (socialists).
Idealist Hawks believe that US foreign policy is driven by benevolence and spreading freedom, and the fact that it repeatedly fails to do so (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc) is explainable by a variety of excuses. Generally, they are more interested in current events and easily persuaded to support intervention based on seeing a bad thing happening, without a broader analysis or explanation of the situation or how things have played out historically.
Idealist Doves also believe that US foreign policy is driven by benevolence, but they see that as a bad thing. They are generally right libertarians or hold libertarian values, they see war as another example of wasteful government spending as it tries and fails to improve people's lives, which they generally don't see as a valid goal in the first place. Being idealists, they are still rather easily duped into supporting war and militarism, often, they will support a "night watchman state," with police and the military being the only legitimate functions.
Realist Hawks are nationalists who believe that states pursue their own material interests and are right to do so. They are incapable of distinguishing between the state's interest and their own. Some few are rich enough to actually receive benefits from US foreign policy, but most just root for America in the same way that they might root for a football team.
Realist Doves, which I am a part of, do not believe that US foreign policy is not grounded in benevolence and does not benefit the people it claims to be helping, but also (generally) that it doesn't benefit the majority of people at home. We see it as being driven by and for class interests, and are opposed to the class it benefits.
Trump's foreign policy equivocation, and his "America First" slogan allows him to appeal to both the Idealist Doves (libertarians) and the Realist Hawks (nationalists). He can't consistently take any line on any specific thing. If by Afghanistan, you mean a disastrous nation-building exercise, wasteful government spending, and endangering our troops for the sake of helping foreigners, then of course Trump opposes it. But if by Afghanistan, you mean exerting American strength, intimidating Russia and China, and weakening terrorists to keep America safe, then of course Trump supports it.
In reality, to the extent that Trump has coherent beliefs at all, he is a Realist Hawk, a nationalist, and his record reflects that. But part of the reason he was able to get anywhere was because he was able to triangulate and equivocate well enough to dupe anti-war libertarians.
Unfortunately, in American politics, the conflict is generally between Idealist Hawks and everyone else. This is part of what allows the nationalists and libertarians to put aside their differences (the other part being that libertarians are easily duped). Realist Doves are not represented anywhere, the Idealist Interventionists consider us Russian bots along with everyone else who disagrees with them on foreign policy (regardless of how or why), the Idealist Doves are extremely unreliable, and the Realist Hawks may see the world in a similar way but have diametrically opposed priorities.
tl;dr: Trump's halfhearted antiwar posturing is an obvious ruse that only an idiot would fall for, but painting everyone skeptical of US foreign policy with the same brush helps him to sell it and to paint over ideological rifts that could otherwise be potentially exploited.
7
What is Soulism? Soulism, also known as anarcho-antirealism, is a school of anarchist thought which views reality and natural laws as unjust hierarchies.
Some people might laugh at the idea and say it's not a serious ideology, but this is no laughing matter. If these people are successful, then consensus reality would be destroyed and we would return to what the world was like before the Enlightenment. What did that world look like? Well, you had:
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Ultra-powerful wizards hoarding knowledge in high towers, reshaping reality to their whims, with no regard for the common people
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Bloodthirsty, aristocratic vampires operating openly, and on a much larger scale than they do today
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Viscous, rage-driven werewolves terrorizing the populace, massacring entire villages with reckless abandon
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Fey beings abducting children and replacing them with their own
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Demons and angels waging massive wars against each other with humans caught in the crossfire
Fortunately, out of this age of chaos and insecurity emerged a group of scientists dedicated to protecting and advancing humanity by establishing a consensus reality and putting a stop to these out-of-control reality deviants.
Before, if you got sick or injured, you'd have to travel across the land through dangerous enchanted forests seeking a skilled faith healer or magical healing potion. But with consensus reality, easily accessible and consistent medical practices were instilled with the same magical healing properties. Once, if you wanted to transmute grain into bread, you had to convince a wizard to come out of their tower and do it, and they were just as likely to turn you into a newt for disturbing their studies. But thanks to consensus reality, anyone could build their own magical tower (a "mill") and harness the mana present in elemental air to animate their own "millstones" to do it! These things were only made possible by consensus reality.
Now, I'm not saying that this approach doesn't have it's drawbacks and failures, and I'm not going to say that the reality defenders have never done anything wrong. But these "Soulists" want to destroy everything that's been accomplished and bring us back to the times when these supernatural reality deviants were more powerful than reason or humanity, and constantly preyed upon us.
So do not fall for their propaganda, and if you see something, says something. Anyone altering reality through belief and willpower, or any other reality deviants such as vampires or werewolves, should be reported immediately to the Technocratic Union for your safety, the safety of those around you, and, indeed, the safety of reality itself.
Thank you for your cooperation.
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Objection
joined 6 months ago
But I've been repeatedly informed that the democrats are secretly pro-Palestine and were only pretending to support Israel to win over Zionist voters. Now that Biden has nothing to lose, why isn't he doing anything? Could it be that all those people were full of shit?