According to who? Because I was here, and that’s exactly what happened. Pretending a bad plan had merit doesn’t make it so. You are allowed to be done with the Democratic party, but that won’t make anything better. Just look around you.
Declaring your refusal to vote certainly is not hard work, and unsurprisingly it wasn’t even remotely effective. It was literally based on not voting, not actively doing anything, and it paved the way for policy to get exponentially worse, so to be honest it was objectively worse than “literally nothing”.
You don’t get credit for trying when everyone pointed out to you repeatedly that what you were trying wasn’t going to work, and was in fact going to make things worse.
As do I, but that has nothing to do with anyone doing hard, necessary work. I’d call the Uncommitted movement about the farthest thing possible from hard work to give good options a foothold. It was people doing literally nothing and pretending that would somehow improve anything.
If the “practical left” is just voting for the less-bad, while shitting on and shunning the people trying to do the hard work because the magical Fairy of Good hasn’t yet shown up to establish that foothold with a wave of the wand
No one is doing that.
Which is why the practical arm of the left promotes the Dems. Not because they are enough, or even good, but because of the two options they are the less overtly fascist. We don’t vote blue because it’s sufficient, we do it because it’s necessary to slow the descent enough for sufficient methods to take hold. Neo liberal democracy is a farce, but it’s a farce with a bad outcome and a catastrophic outcome.
We vote for bad to stave off catastrophe, so good can actually establish a foothold. Didn’t pay off this time unfortunately, now good has to be fantastic to even slide a toe in the door, and it’s a steep uphill battle at that. You’re right, fascism is definitely more prominent in the MAGA right, our job is harder than it had to be, but so it goes.
Silver lining, I guess we can lean into accelerationism now. Not my first choice, for the sake of those less financially stable than myself, but not really much option now. Send it, sure, might as well at this point. I would’ve preferred building a viable labor movement under the “stationary” part of the ratchet cycle, but we’re here now. If we’re playing the hand we’re dealt, sure, accelerationism.
Hell, even I Robot, a movie that should have had a female lead, turned Calvin in to a supporting role to put a man in the lead.
That’s exactly the point, arbitrarily changing the characters is unsatisfying. I, Robot should have been about Calvin.
I eat kiwis with the skin, still wouldn’t eat the strawberry leaf
You must be a crewman on the Sargossa
How to Combine Documents in Microsoft Word
I always suspected
It’s definitely harder after college, but not impossible. You’re just going to have to put in a bit of effort. The two best recommendations I can make are:
getting involved in some kind of hobby that’s either inherently social (board games, team sports, etc.) or puts you together in the same place with other hobbyists (I’ve done a lot of socializing at rock climbing gyms, despite it technically being a solo thing)
working a job that forces you to socialize in small doses (hospitality, customer service, etc). Being thrust into micro interactions dozens of times a day makes it a lot easier to approach people in casual settings.
Probably because the US is now the aggressor?
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
Uh, we all knew it was awful when Biden/Kamala did it, but we also knew it would get even worse under Trump. But then we got “Both sides are identical, it can’t possibly get worse under Trump”. And now, here we are. Clowns to the left of me, fascists to the right.
If the only people who know about the protests are the ones in them, what good are they? The whole point of a protest is to be seen. The fact that we’re not seeing them is a valid critique against their efficacy.
I meant this one specifically. Ukraine is next
Organize. Unify our message, develop platforms to educate, inform, and coordinate action. Quit with the purity tests and infighting.
Fill local offices with leftists so they can build their resumes and demonstrate their capability, and the intrinsic popularity of leftist policy. Elevate those leftists to higher and higher offices, to continue that demonstration at higher and higher domains, until they permeate all levels of government.
But that will take time.
In that time, we need to mitigate damage. That means electing Lesser Evils in races where no leftist has sufficient popularity to win. Petition the Lesser Evil relentlessly, leverage our organization to force their hand when possible, constantly trumpet a unified message on every platform we can. We don’t yet have the popularity to do more than that. Once we do, circulate the signal and rush to unified action.
Disparate individuals fighting amongst themselves while they complain to each other might as well be nothing. Spoiling the vote with 3rd parties in races they can’t win might as well be nothing. Protest abstention might as well be nothing. Fascism marches in lockstep, disorganization cannot defeat it. Not at the soapbox, not at the ballot box, not in the jury box, not with the ammo box.
Organize, organize, organize. And mitigate damage in the meantime.
So all we have to do is leap towards fascism every other term to get baby steps to the left? Doesn’t seem very sustainable.
Is it really “voting against genocide” when they voted against all the arms shipment pauses that are now being overturned? They voted against an administration, that administration lost, and now the winner has hit the ground running making the genocide immediately worse. What’s “objectively more moral” about increasing arms shipments to genociders?
And how, precisely, did “holding the Dems accountable” work out after 2016? Did they “learn their lesson”?
I generally don’t get haircuts before and during winter, but once it heats up again I keep it short.