As shitty as it is, this country 1. Isn’t designed in such a way that would allow a third-party candidate a genuine chance of winning and 2. Has too many centrists that will vote for Biden regardless. Trump has repeatedly garnered heavy support in Republican polls, so they’re pretty much almost all in on him. Splitting the blue vote between Biden and whoever else will only lead to a Trump victory after which we might not even be ABLE to vote in 2028.
I’m legitimately having a panic attack. These airheaded anarcho-kiddies are genuinely going to land us all in camps.
biden’s doing literally nothing to stop states from criminalizing lgbt people’s existence
their fears about a trump presidency are valid but i wish these libs would stop putting their hopes in the DNC when its clear they have zero interest in running a candidate that isn’t complete dogshit
So what you’re telling me is that the only way to prevent trans genocide is for Democrats to win every election for every seat, forever? And then you just hope they don’t decide to compromise across the aisle out of fairness like they do constantly when in power or form a Democratic Anti-Trans caucus that pushes for it just like DFLA has done with abortion?
Yeah, that all seems like a feasible and robust strategy with long-term stability.
This precise argument is what broke me forever from national level politics ie “voting the lesser evil” for president stuff. Matt Christman made this argument years ago on Chapo (I’m not saying he did it first but his way of explaining really stuck in my brain). Basically as you said something like “if the Trump and the Republicans are the fascists, and the only way to beat them is to vote for the Democrats every 2-4 years, and if we ever lose an election then it’s over, then we’ve already lost!” Something to that effect. Which obviously he’s 100% correct about.
The other thing that convinced me, and it may have been Matt or the other boys, unsure, was the observation that if the democrats truly truly believe that Republicans are an existential threat to the Democratic Party, the country and the world they sure don’t act like it. Meaning that when they have power they never do actions necessary to reverse the harm of Republicans. So in that scenario, how is voting for the “lesser evil” who either is lying about their belief about Republicans or is too cowardly to act or doesn’t want to act, etc. actually any different, besides the timescale of [bad thing]? And the obvious conclusion is… if the Democrats are serious, if you believe their claims, yet they do not act when given full power, then it doesn’t actually matter which one is in power. The genocide that Biden decided to fully back has really driven a nail in the coffin of any semblance of “lesser evil”-ism.
we need a strong republican party
-biden, pelosi, several others
you can’t fucking use “they’re fascists” rhetoric and then valorize reaching across the aisle. who the fuck are you reaching towards Neville?
My personal tinfoil is that they know exactly what the fuck they’re doing, and trying to normalize Americans identifying as fascists in casual parlance so the elites can start getting Italian-style neofascists into the White House. Would line up with that Freudian slip from one of the State Dept.'s talking heads a few weeks back about “tailoring values to policy” regarding Amerika’s multiple on-going genocides rather than the other way around.
“Ash why is hexbear the only trans space you visit?”
I see this sentiment a lot here and it seems like a no brainer that this is that place not just because it is explicitly trans positive, but explicitly revolutionary in its politics. Any space that is not sufficiently radical will always let the ladder pullers lib up the place and carry water for fascists and bigots.
I think the one thing I knew about Harris before the 2020 primaries was that she was particularly cruel to transwomen in her jails. Like she made a point to be, so much that it was a scandal in a country this transphobic.
The courts ordered her to provide trans health care, said it was ‘cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment’ to deny services. She fought with every tool available, delaying and appealing to a higher court when told no. Using TERF language that trans healthcare causes irreversible damage and that inmates can wait until after they are no longer her problem. [2015]
“There is no evidence that irreversible treatment is immediately necessary”
“the record demonstrates that the Defendants will be irreparably injured if the district court’s order stands and surgery goes forward”
Her explanations changed over time. From ‘no comment’, to ‘the law is forcing me to do this’, then ‘it is unfortunate my staff did all this, I was actually fighting this injustice and despite being in charge was powerless to stop them’.
https://theappeal.org/incarcerated-transgender-womens-lives-must-matter/
(CW: transphobia)
spoiler
When Kamala Harris announced her run for president on Jan. 21, a reporter asked her about the 2015 case of Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, a trans woman incarcerated in California’s prison system who petitioned prison officials to grant her request for gender affirming surgery. In 2015, Harris was California’s attorney general and her office filed a request in federal court to halt a court ruling that ordered Norsworthy’s surgery, arguing that “there is no evidence that irreversible treatment is immediately necessary before this appeal can be heard.” Nearly four years later, Harris didn’t answer the question about Norsworthy. In response to the reporter, Harris replied “it was an office with a lot of people … and do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote? Yes, I do.” Harris then added that she “worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/j7lo2d/collage_created_with_the_photos_of_black_males/
CW: reddit link
Collage made out of black men Kamala Harris kept in prison past legally necessary for free prison labor. I remember seeing this one float around lefty reddit before the 2020 elections
Just spent 15 mins making 15 comments, a new record, what’s your excuse for not brigading?
Edit: I got the thread locked, how you like them fuckin apples
I felt a wave of intense anger bubble up and decided to get a sandwich instead
Don’t bother getting mad, judging by the responses I’m getting these people are political toddlers
unfortunately you have to vote for him if you prefer to keep personal liberties we enjoy.
I mean look at this goofy shit
Just off the top of my head, while Biden was in office we’ve seen porn essentially banned in some states, various types of vaping, consideration of a menthol cigarette ban, the House passed a TikTok ban and Biden has encouraged the senate to pass it so he can sign it, and we’ve seen ‘free speech’ completely eroded to whatever degree it existed with a clown show in congress of Nazis grilling libs over pro-Palestine protesters whom they both agree are “antisemitic.”
Biden sure does love personal freedoms
I hope “anarkiddy” becomes the new “tankie” and all the MLs in the audience have to put up with being called it. It’s only fair that we swap once in a while.
Hey, this is totally off-topic to the thread, but your mentioning being an ML reminded me that I’ve been meaning to ask you: Where did you get that imperialists need to actively under-develop the countries they exploit for it to be imperialism? My leftcom buddies insist that even if they are contributing to the development of a country’s MoP, they can still be doing imperialism. I broadly agree with you but don’t have the, uh, theoretical competence that you might have.
Not the person, but for a leftcom (and even more strictly applied ML theory) imperialism is when you have a different ‘economic zone’ that applies to another country. Essentially it is when you have ‘rules for thee but not for me’. The classical mercantile imperial model develops the extractive industries of a colony, while the actual processing industry exists at home. You use cheap labor in the colony to extract the materials, refine them back at home, and then sell them back to the colony, rather than developing the colonies ability to feed and educate itself, and then also develop it’s means of production. Instead, MoP is developed mostly for the benefit of the colonizer. This is also maintained through different labor laws applying to these different zones, which are then enforced with extreme prejudice, which is the hallmark of imperialism. This is laid out in Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’.
Now, what leftcoms usually miss imo is the part where it is an outside force that is enforcing this through violence. For example, many leftcoms believe that what China is doing is ‘imperialism’ especially since it often relies on creating differently taxes economic zones within areas of Africa (or more pedantically saying that the communist party elites have sold out the proletariat of China to the highest bidder on the international market). While there is an argument to be made there, I think the important thing to note is that China does not (or at least hasn’t yet) enforced their deals in Africa with military force, but instead through long term structural development deals where they develop the infrastructure of country on the cheap (because excess construction labor is something they have in abundance) in exchange for these economic zones where their population can immigrate to and work. It ultimately a win-win imo, and looks fundamentally different than previous versions of imperialism. Additionally, despite ‘selling out their proletariat’ the Chinese Communist Party has demonstratively not given up their control over the means of production and it’s development. Wether you agree with it or not, what is happening to them is not ‘imperialism’, it’s something else.
Capitalist development (i.e. investment in equipment and materials) is where the tendency for the rate of profit to fall comes from; as the amount of fixed capital increases in the system (machines, infrastructure, education, etc) the less labor is needed to produce the same quantity of commodities. As labor is the source of all value, reducing the labor inputs actually reduces the value of the physical output of the system.
Underdevelopment is a tactic whereby this process is undercut by deploying counteracting factors to reduce the rate at which profit falls, chiefly superexploitation of the workers and immiseration of the population. Instead of investing in fixed capital to extract resources and reduce the need for human labor (i.e. development), imperialism sidesteps the problem by using military and police instead.
Within the imperial core the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is also counteracted because the resource colony cheapens the elements of constant capital, industrial inputs, and consumer goods. Even better, underdevelopment increases migration away from imperialized nations towards the core, increasing the surplus army of labor and allowing for the creation of internal colonies of superexploited workers within the imperial core itself! This allows for further capitalist development within the imperial core without reducing the rate of profit because, while labor inputs decrease for the core workers, they remain constant or increase for imperialized workers.
… at least, that’s as much as I understand. Still need to read more theory.
Wouldn’t be the first time an ML would be called an anarchist considering State and Revolution was derided as too anarchist by other bolsheviks when it was made
