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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • Hey champ, here’s a tip; instead of writing, “lemme rephrase,” halfway through your comment, you can just delete the portion that’s poorly phrased! That way, instead of having to read (what I’ll generously call) a paragraph of word salad, people can start at the part that’s (again, generously) coherent! Also, you might want to look up, “what does a hyphen do,” or, “when to use commas vs. periods,” because you write like an AI that was trained exclusively by ESL students and stroke victims.


  • Yeah, this is common on all issues. Political hacks are adept at turning things into partisan issues with branding when we all agree on them. Ask a conservative if they like Socialism and they’ll say hell no, but ask them if they support labor unions, minimum wages, social security, UBI, etc., you’ll find lots of support.

    It’s the same with guns; gun control is a scary plot by the left to take away your guns, but sure, they support reasonable measures universal background checks, permits, and restrictions in certain large-capacity weapons. Just so long as it’s not gun control!




  • …OK, that still would have a far-left opinion in American politics. It’s not like the country was divided between socialists and communists back then. Hell, it took the Great Depression just to get the moderate socialist reforms of the New Deal passed, and even then, its opponents thought it was communism.

    Like, I don’t know what to tell you. I understand your point; you think anything that doesn’t involve the abolition of private property isn’t left-wing. But even pre-Cold War, even pre-McCarthyism, even during the Coal Wars, that position would be the far-left of American politics. I’m not trying to be a dick here, but when I, or the author of the article, or most Americans, are talking about, “the left,” we’re definitely not working from your definition.


  • I mean, fair enough, but there’s no point in America history where abolishing private ownership wouldn’t be considered far-left. I understand that compared to international standards or across the broader spectrum of political theory, the American left has never been particularly left-wing. When I say the Democrats are slightly center-left or center-right, I’m comparing them to themselves 30 to 40 years ago. Since 1980, they’ve slowly compromised their principles to the point where they can’t be considered, “left,” by any modern political metric.



  • Well, there’s a reason I said, “generously,” slightly left-of-center. It also depends on the Democrat. There’s enough of them that care about labor to get the PRO Act through the house, but not the Senate. I don’t think it would be unfair to call someone like Gary Peters center-left, given his strong pro-union track record, but someone like Schumer or Pelosi, who are squarely on the side of Wall Street and big tech respectively, are just conservatives masquerading as left-leaning centrists.


  • Even if what you’re saying about Schumer is true, it would still be gross incompetence to achieve this goal in the manner that he did. Even if you believe his whole, “Musk wants a shutdown,” argument, he allowed every single House Democrat, even those in vulnerable seats, to put themselves in a vulnerable position by refusing to fund the government, then threw them all under the bus by saying, “actually, funding the government is just too important.” Why would he damage his own party like that?

    Let’s be real here; the stock market has been tanking all week because of the tariffs, it would have gotten even worse with a shutdown, and Schumer takes a shitload of money from Wall Street. The day before the vote, his donors started telling him how important they think funding the government is, he caves, and the stock market makes a decent comeback the next day. He sold out his party to the donors, and gave Trump a huge win in the process.



  • I agree with a lot of this article, but it doesn’t really acknowledge the reality of the Democratic leadership’s obstruction. The party is, generously, a slightly left-of-center organization that prioritizes stifling their own left wing over defeating their far-right opponents. They’ve successfully held off two of Bernie’s presidential runs, redistricted Bowman out of his seat, and Pelosi has spent so much time and effort undermining the squad (and AOC personally) that it borders on pathological.

    I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Bernie in this article, and beyond that, he’s just too old to be in the Senate, much less the standard bearer for the entire left, but the Democrats have spent decades making sure there’s no viable alternative. We need to move past Bernie, but we need to build an actual progressive movement that can get past Democratic obstruction to do that, and for now, Bernie is still the de facto leader of that movement.






  • Yeah, I think that’s about it. I think Russia has been encouraging oligarchs and mobsters to make contact with prominent Americans they thought they could influence, and a lot of those connections went nowhere. When Trump started winning the primary, Putin probably realized he could use him, so he had some oligarchs cut a deal. But this KGB agent’s Facebook post about making direct contact with Trump, recruiting him as a spy, and giving him a codename, as well as his claim that he may be assassinated for sharing this? It seems like it’s either some sort of disinformation campaign or just some old man embellishing a story for attention.