Adding on to everything you’ve said, the people most likely encountering these topics for the first time usually are adolescents. I feel it helps my patience trying to keep that in mind when talking with them, since it makes sense that they may not have encountered the topic before.
I agree, having that and high taxes on the wealthy were part of the reason the US had such high levels of prosperity for the average citizen back in the olden days. The whole country should be getting connected via high speed rails, I feel. It would open up jobs for people living in more rural areas as well.
The fix is multifaceted I feel, everything you said is spot on for the issues.
I feel a fix requires Universal Basic Income and Housing, along with mental health support. A minimum level of support would at least help a lot of these people to be able to get off the ground or at least live with a modicum of dignity.
Universal Healthcare would help at least with health issues that people out on the streets face.
They chased the money and they lost. Trump had less funding and he won. Aren’t you interested in asking why?
Functionally that was their gamble. Chasing money is a current issue of our system where money and land matter more than people, power-wise.
Trump specifically had more direct funding than Harris since money was also being spent trying to pick up close Senate seats. I don’t think this includes all of the tactics that went in to drive the vote for Republicans such as Elon’s personal PAC, paying people to register to vote, gerrymandering efforts, added barriers for mail-in ballots, or even the fact that people were allowed to legally gamble on the election.
Another question. If it is possible to win with less funding, why do you consider it a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation?
There was lots of specific issues that factored in, but Democrats being beholden to not pissing off the Israel PACs was a big issue. Some of the same PACs that make very misleading ads against politicians that didn’t say they were specifically pro-Israel. Ads so misleading that you question how it’s legal to make those kinds of claims. And PACs so organized that they can tell their donors who to send their donations to directly and their donors listen repeatedly.
I think it is possible to be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” if you’re at risk of losing a large enough percentage of voters with either choice you make. I think they could’ve done better if Biden stepped in a year before and demanded America lead operations/prevented Israel from attacking indiscriminately and land grabbing. Well that and if many of the greedy politicians didn’t look at this as an excuse to make an arms deal.
I think they were damned for letting Biden dictate Harris’ Israel/Palestine opinion. Harris wasn’t going to follow in Biden’s footsteps in Israel, so she should have made it clear how she was going to get a resolution brought forward.
In hindsight it should be easy to see that they were only damned for what they did (backed a genocide), and would not have been otherwise. Too many people can’t get past their bitterness towards abstainers to consider how this outcome was an unforced error on the part of the DNC, and are seemingly content to repeat the same mistake.
Personally, I don’t blame abstainers, I blame the propagandists that preyed upon people. Many of the Democratic and Republican politicians are owned by money. It’s the reason these corporate Democratic leaders are not backing Mamdani, since he’s both progressive and not lock-step pro-Israel. The corporate Dems and Republicans specifically are the ones at risk of their funding/seats to another corporate politician if they were not condemning Mamdani.
All this to say, change needs to happen from both within the Democratic Party and outside of it as well, such as by changing the voting system locally to get more politicians like Mamdani.
Imo it was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation for Democrats; which is exactly what Republicans, Israel, and bad actors crafted the situation to be.
If the public stance was not Democrats being 100% for Israel, then they believed they would have lost the election because of the political PACs and donors flipping to fund the opposition.
Given how much money the lobbies that were pro-Israel were pushing into the campaign trail, any candidate that didn’t take that stance in a close election was for sure at risk of losing their donor vote.
I still think Democrats should have done more, such as saying they would fully step into the situation to prevent the loss of more lives for both Palestinians and Israelis. It also didn’t help that Biden was pro-Israel and expected Kamala to be lock-step with his stances while on the campaign trail.
I agree that we should be doing multiple things at the same time here.
I’m in favor of championing leftists and progressives and pushing back against Dems that are acting in their own self interest. For sure the corporate owned Dems and Republicans that are propping up arms for Israel need to go and for those wanting to throw minorities under the bus.
It sounds like the backlash is at least working and making its way to him. The California capital started flying the trans flag a few days ago.
The voting system needs to change.
As soon as elections stop being just one vote per individual we can actually vote our conscience. New York City has Ranked Choice voting, so does Alaska and Maine. Ideally having STAR, Ranked Robin, or Score voting would be best as the first two are better versions of Ranked Choice voting.
Incrementalism is what sorta helps to get us out as well. By that I mean changing the voting systems like New York City did which helps make it easier to get more leftist candidates in office.
Changing the DNC requires the majority of new voters to continue being left/progressive on issues and could take another decade.
Changing the voting system in our cities and states is the best chance to pull politics left and to actually allow third parties to take root. The last thing we want really is for the spoiler effect to happen, where our preferred candidate(s) and safe candidate lose to the least preferred candidate.
All the more reason to pass STAR or Ranked Robin voting, improved versions of RCV, once he’s out of the governor’s office.
Newsom specifically would never would have won reelection for the governor’s race under ranked choice voting.
Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.
I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.
I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.
I think his ideas can reform a capitalist system. It’s probably one of many ways his ideas get off the ground. The big thing was changing the system, it’s not necessarily all about how you get there.
What do you mean? A reformed and reforged system is a new system.
I could give you a multi-hour long breakdown of my views but something tells you’re not interested in a long-form dialogue here.
I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.
I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the vibes in the room was exactly like you’re opening some of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.
While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give me a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.
I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long, due to several authoritarians co-opting his message. I have no clue why it’s not required high school reading at this point, since I feel it’d go a long ways towards helping more people get curious about improving and changing the system for the better.
I think you’re right to be wary on waiting for time alone to save us. I think implementing ranked choice style of voting matters to prevent slipping further. Furthermore, pivoting to make blue states actually more progressive is what we need to do.
I believe blue states have held back on doing more because the belief was that we needed to pass the reforms federally for funding purposes, but I believe now we need to do the opposite. We need to remove the debt limit for blue states, implement progressive reforms, and only then will other states want to follow our lead.
Each blue state should focus on implementing Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, Universal Healthcare, free public colleges, and expanding public housing options. For instance, I think many private apartments could be bought by the government for at cost and turned into publicly owned apartments that are not rented out for a profit.
I’m talking about the electorate fam, the voters.
Demographic changes is the only thing going to change the Democratic Party. Either we wait another decade plus for the boomers and Gen Xers to hopefully not make up the majority, or we change the voting system away from First Past the Post. I’m strongly in favor of the later there since that is something we can do to get progressives in power this decade.
I will add that I would appreciate it if you gave me credit here. I’m trying to have a dialogue with you about this since these issues do affect all of us and I am personally trying to change things for the better through breaking down walls.
I mean let’s be real here, why are we treating the Dem politicians like some collective that always acts in one uniform way and are all powerful to enact change? The reality of the situation is there is a lot of nuance, there is real difficulties in trying to enact change. There are barriers to getting legislation passed. I don’t like the reality of the situation as much as you don’t, but that’s why I feel we need to change things for the better.
Do I think lots of current old guard neo-liberals sign checks to fund the military without blinking, if it lets them keep their cozy job, uncontested? No doubt. Are there real people working within the Democratic Party to bring positive change? Of course.
Let’s not kid ourselves with sweeping generalizations though that don’t take that hard look at the harsh reality. Bringing positive change federally looks objectively bleak, Red states hold a lot of power and the fact that left leaning people are leaving these states in droves just concentrates the power in these states.
My point is that the Democratic Party is changing, albeit slowly, by virtue of the electorate itself changing. If you want faster change, then we’ll need a new voting system in each state like Alaska and Maine have done. That’s how we get more progressives like Mamdani in power and third parties as well.
Teaching them about logical fallacies and how to spot them may be the best defense against these types of personalities imo. Many influencers that you’re concerned about try to prey upon these fallacies, so teaching your kids to spot them can help them to realize those people are full of shit.
Curating their content a bit to include more people you want them to be like can help as well, at least then they can have good people to look up to.
If your kids think you have their best interests in mind, I feel they’re less likely to push back and more likely to respect the boundaries you put down.
Severance goes so hard, every episode is like a movie level of quality
My only issue with Hanlon is that many bots are out there and ones that have bad intent. IRL I think it applies, but various populated online spaces I feel differently about.