forjusticethunders
forjusticethunders's JournalThink incrementalism is bad? Try outcrementalism
Where you stay outside the systems where power is distributed and achieve absolutely nothing.
I'm way to Obama's left but I appreciate and admire him.
But I've always appreciated even in my more emoprog moments the historic level of opposition and hatred he's faced, and how much he's gotten done in the face of said opposition. There are a few things I could certainly nitpick on, because I'm a far lefty and he's not. There are things I wish he could have done more aggressively or faster but that doesn't stop me from being able to appreciate how great a leader he's been on every level.
Hell, I use his speeches and cadence to improve my public speaking and I try to emulate how he tries to get across complex issues to the public. I'll never be the kind of orator he is and I'll probably never be speaking on the big stages he does, but that's one way he's managed to inspire me.
I am going to miss him. Greatest president in the last 50 years, easily. Top 10 all time at a minimum.
What's scary is the lack of empathy in this thread.
Not even a crying child will make people think "gee maybe we need to chill", no it's just the same old excuse-making and whining and abdication of responsibility. "Oh don't bring your child to see your favorite politician" - like what the fuck? I guess if I go to a Trump rally and get my black ass kicked it's my fault right? "Oh you can't prove it was Bernie supporters" (yeah they weren't chanting his name before they attacked that little girl)". I would call these people "childish" but that's an insult, I think "degenerates" is a better word because they have degenerated from what a responsible citizen and a responsible voter should be.
This isn't just about Bernie though; this is the kind of thing that we see with all these angry fringe ideological movements who reject the hard work needed to build consensus and move society to your side (though with the angry fringe right the ideology itself directly hurts too many people to ever build a coalition around).
The Professional Left needs to go back to the drawing-board. Tear the ENTIRE fucking edifice down, start over. Embrace pragmatism, compromise and coalition-building, even if you disagree with a given politician, even if they're too neoliberal for your tastes, with a strong enough coalition built by the above, you can move them to where you are. But screaming at people doesn't work. It hasn't worked for 50 fucking years. Screaming at mothers and children DEFINITELY won't work. (and this isn't just Bernie supporters but the campus activist set, even though I agree with both of their ideological positions!). The problem is though that a lot of (mostly upper middle class white) people are getting rich off producing the ideological equivalent of clickbait designed to channel outrage and energy into screaming at people and not building movements and characterizing everyone who disagrees as Eurasia or Eastasia depending on the day. This is what leads to a bunch of grown men screaming at a little girl and ripping up her sign and making them cry and not feeling a shade of remorse. Because they have been taught to dehumanize their ideological enemies, even if they're little girls who don't care about the ideological shit and think a woman President would be an amazing thing (which it would be). We know where the dehumanization of your ideological enemies leads. We know where that shit leads. It needs to stop.
What is even more amazing is that we know where this leads and we don't even try to be sensitive to anything that even hints at that. We've already had a SD threatened by a Bernie supporter. What happens if someone is hurt or killed by a Bernie protester at a Hillary rally? What if some unhinged fanatic actually hurts or kills a SD supporting Hillary? I'll tell you what happens. You better move to Sweden or Canada, because leftism is DEAD in America for another 50 years. Every left-wing populist movement would be compared to it. But I don't think the most fanatic Bernie supporters care, because virtue signaling is more important than winning, because touting "principles" and staying pure to stroke their own ego is what they're really in this for.
It depends on the size of the UBI
But it doesn't matter because as long as the UBI is big enough to ensure that every possible worker can have food and shelter, even baseline food and shelter, the UBI is a death warrant for capitalism. Either labor can negotiate every inch of profit away from the capitalist class that isn't used to keep the business running (because every worker can strike indefinitely), or the capitalists can automate, have the productivity of the robots taxed to possibly make the UBI larger (or just provide more and better public services the general population can take advantage of) and still have to pay the few human workers left even MORE money.
Capitalism as we know it can't work without any prisoners of starvation, and the UBI potentially legislates them away.
The Dems didn't abandon the white working class
The white working class abandoned them. White workers voted enmasse to sacrifice their children to the Moloch of racism. That came BEFORE, not after the Dems became more corporate and is a primary reason why that happened.
There was a contradiction between the Democratic Party as "the party of the working person" and "the party of white supremacy" and that contradiction was resolved by the exile of the latter, but by getting rid of so many white working class people, it weakened the power of Labor to resist corporate power.
So for white workers, the choice is clear - are they going to get on the intersectional bus to feed their families, knowing that they're not in the driver's seat anymore? Or are they going to whine and pout and vote to be pillaged even more?
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Member since: Thu Jan 28, 2016, 04:01 PM
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