That’s the charitable interpretation. The less charitable one is astroturfing aiming to further destabilize “the west”

I can understand looking back to them for some useful stuff. “Commieblock” housing served a purpose at the time, for example. They brought huge masses of people into an urban environment with indoor plumbing, electricity, and climate control, which were not a given in their previous living situations. They were meant as an interim solution to last a few decades. For what they set out to do, they were a great success. The only problem was that the followup to better options was never done.

But the Leninist/Maoists can never leave it at pulling out successes like that. It’s almost always “America bad”, “Holodomor isn’t real”, or “Cuba only sucks because of sanctions”.

Fuck man, even Marx and Lenin don’t cotton to the common tankie arguments about all non-socialist movements being the same.

This is why I pull largely from my half crazed redneck version of leftism. Cant make an authoritarian out of someone who doesnt listen to aurhority outside of his fucken clan. I will listen to cops and be polite because I dont want the dumbfuck gorilla with a gun to shoot me. Makes it harder to spread the ideas of militant unions.

Is what we’ve been doing in the US working very well? Maybe the democrat party should look at why nobody is fired up to vote for them, even though the alternative is people like trump. It should be very easy to appeal to normal people, but even with cartoonish opposition, the democrats can’t bring themselves to much better. All I’m saying is you’re asking some tiny minority of the electorate (socialists) to introspect, when you’re better off asking the same of the people and parties that actually have power.

This post is about you, you idiot.

What do you think happens if I do that?

You’re not a “raging leftist” if you vote for Biden. At least vote PSL or Green use a brutal domestic terrorism campaign as leverage to blackmail politicians into overturning first-past-the-post as part of a multi-prong strategy that, even as extreme as you are, still includes a pragmatic hedge in the form of a vote for the lesser of two evils

Of course nobody should be terrorizing anyone. What I’m riffing off of is a perspective someone shared that basically you don’t protest with a vote for a loser, you protest by agitating for systemic change.

In the meantime while the broken system is in place, you feed it a minimally shitty input.

Do you think being incredibly stupid is a prereq for being a raging leftist or something?

“Sadly” it’s not a given?

Please tell me you don’t mean to imply that protecting women from the dictates of long-dead ignorant men is only good if a woman is doing it?

Nothing’s wrong with it, the post just said “the man preventing people from being punished”, emphasis mine.

I see a lot of people saying “go vote” and not making any effort to understand why non-voters stay home. A lot of the comments here are great examples of that.

That kind of dogmatism is common on political issues, of course, but that doesn’t make it reasonable.

And I understand that people feel strongly. Who wouldn’t? That’s why it’s even more important to try to discuss things. Or not. Sometimes flame wars are entertaining, if not productive. Depends on one’s mood.

Thank you for your perspective. It’s nice to know that you think I couldn’t possibly be a real human being just because I’m a financially impoverished minority in these United States and sick of being told that I need to vote for someone else’s option time and again because it’s the best possible option. Every time the leftist majority makes a decision I want, they don’t look for concessions to bring me in. They just beat me over the head with fearmongering.

If you want voters, appeal to them. I’m not responsible for the message put out by the party not convincing me.

Removed by mod

I wonder how many get this reference.

it is not politics and won’t save you, get you infrastructure, or stop a bullshit war. Not ever.

–

Not ever.

That shit was only possible thanks to “both sides” horseshit keeping turnout low and results close.

You are part of the problem.

If Al Gore had won Florida outright, there’d be no recount, no Brookes Brothers riot, no 5-4 decision cancelling democracy, and quite possibly no September 11th attacks. Plus eight extra years of giving a shit about climate change instead of openly funneling no-bid contracts to a third-gen oligarch’s decrepit oil-baron vice president.

All of that evil came from one fucking state being within 500 votes. A situation caused by inane “douche v turd” denial that politics matter, god dammit.

Valid emotions behind a stupid decision don’t make it less stupid.

It’s like someone who keeps pointing out “Yeah, but we’re also running low on food!” on an spacecraft that is almost out of air.

True, these are both problems, but one is a MUCH bigger immediate threat and needs to be solved before we can spend time on the other, and doing nothing simply isn’t the correct option.

* 50 years or more

Not that I’m disagreeing with your thesis as applied to the modern day, but pre-Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats were the racist party. There was a massive sea change during the era of Nixon, when the Democrats decided after quite a bit of heated internal debate that they couldn’t possibly stomach depending on the support of the segregationists, whatever the cost, and the Southern Strategy scooped all the for real lynch-mob enthusiasts all up for Nixon. Except for Carter’s brief flirtation with actual human decency, which the US isn’t okay with for some reason, the Democrats got accustomed to losing elections for quite a while, until Clinton decided to make a pact with the neoliberal bastards since all the actual progressives were so ground down into not-voting-land that they weren’t even worth appealing to anymore. That worked and that set the tone which has continued to the modern day of slight steady progress under Democrats versus absolute naked fascism under the Republicans (accelerating year by year to its current breakneck pace.)

Side note, if you want to have your heart broke a little bit, read Hubert Humphrey’s speech at the DNC in NINETEEN FUCKING FORTY EIGHT, where he calls out the Democratic party for their acceptance of racism:

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

He was still around in 1968, in the literal bloody battle, inside and outside the convention hall, for what the Democrats were going to be. They never fulfilled their promise completely, and they still haven’t, and that year it cost them the presidency, just like it did in 2016.

I say this 1,000% agreeing that Biden has represented a big step forward and accomplished some genuine impressive things, and that voting for him in November is an affirmative good thing and not just a way to prevent Trump’s end of the world. But the Democrats had to be dragged kicking and screaming by their progressive wing into doing good things, just as they have to be now on Israel among some other issues.

The difference is that they can be dragged into good things, which is enough. And they’ve done pretty much all of the progress the country has made since 1976; I’ll fully agree with you there.

I agree. The problem is getting a new voting system to be implemented. Neither of the two parties want third parties to get a decent shot at dethroning them, so the two parties right now, are not going to willingly go for a new voting system since the current one ensures that they only have one rival during elections.

It doesn’t benefit either party, so neither is going to agree to change it.

Yes ok but still…

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

Don’t worry I understood your comment was satire but honestly it’s not far off from the tankie I was arguing with.

Is this some kind of new annoying bot? I refuse to believe a real person could be this stupid.

I mean the fewer people vote, the more power those who do vote end up having.

Your country’s youth didn’t vote? Enjoy the regressive concervatives that the old people elected taking away minority rights, reproductive rights, LGBT rights.