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Print Story I'm in Chinatown, baby.
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By gzt (Wed Jan 03, 2018 at 03:06:41 PM EST) gzt, work, politics, bleh, schweddy balls (all tags)
My fridge kind of broke over the weekend. The freezer is still at fridge temperature, the fridge is a little warmer, and I've been leveraging the fact that it's extremely cold outside to take care of the frozen goods. I also pressed a mini-fridge that was unused into service.

Politics are miserable at the moment. I hope youth on the further left who got involved with party politics starting late 2015 realize that involvement with party politics generally has a horizon longer than the next year's election. Entryism is a longer term strategy as you can't expect a party to change when everybody actually involved in the party is opposed to it. People doing stuff with the party have been involved for 10-50 years. Of course, it's a bit rich for me to talk about this because, well, I'm not involved in any parties at the moment (either Democrat or DSA or anything). I just know enough to know that at the local level there are very few people involved no matter what locale you're talking about. Listening to some Bernie folks talk about going to the Democrat convention reminded me of this.

Not that electoral politics are going to result in the sort of changes we desperately need in society. It's also a bit rich to think that electoral politics have drastically changed things in this instance - Trump is much in the vein of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush. He differs in degree, not kind. The results from him will be worse because he has the excesses of all three, but this is what the GOP has been for as long as we all remember. And a lot of people are aware of this - they remember the nuclear brinksmanship of Reagan, how the Dead Kennedys they grew up on called Reagan a fascist all the time, how Bush personally killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with his lies... There are real differences between Obama et al and this strain of thought, but not enough.  A big part of that was Obama pandering to a Right that would not be impressed no matter what he did, but he also really believed it was "right" to do so.

WORK:

sucking right now. not getting anything done. ugh.

OUTSIDE WORK:

Reading Marx's Capital at the moment. Pretty decent. Figured I should read it someday since it's important in world history. Also hanging out on Twitter a little to see what's going on in political discourse and it's all just mostly stupid. Also amusing to look back and see, ah, this guy, he supported the Iraq War and was even a cheerleader for it. Lot of silly stuff.

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I'm in Chinatown, baby. | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
important to push the old people out, imo. by the mariner (4.00 / 1) #1 Thu Jan 04, 2018 at 01:09:51 AM EST
the democrats have been hot trash for at least since the clintons came around and they weren't good before that either. people who like the democrats now and wouldn't like, say, a DSA oriented democratic party represent basically none of the electorate and they tend to vote republican a lot.

a lot of the problem with the democrats is that they occupy a position that should be filled by an actual left party, maniacally clinging to demographics whose interests they clearly do not serve through the most transparent bullshit and the advantage of existing organization and funding. and this is very clear from looking at the way their fans talk.

there's no gradual path to fixing that situation and in any case there isn't a lot of time. barring some billionaire suddenly deciding he's a leninist, i don't see a way to do this that doesn't alienate the existing democratic elite (a group of people who are universally reviled anyway, a bunch of bags of money that can appear on tv or use excel).

as for "well, they called reagan a fascist too," reagan appointments to the supreme court are responsible for the situation today where police can murder citizens on video and get away with it.

The DKs weren't wrong by gzt (2.00 / 0) #2 Thu Jan 04, 2018 at 08:56:55 AM EST
The point was meant to be that Trump isn't a break from the past but rather a continuation and it's been known for quite a while that this is what the GOP is about.

[ Parent ]
more about the dems by gzt (2.00 / 0) #3 Thu Jan 04, 2018 at 10:03:20 AM EST
a lot of the problem with the democrats is that they occupy a position that should be filled by an actual left party, maniacally clinging to demographics whose interests they clearly do not serve through the most transparent bullshit and the advantage of existing organization and funding. and this is very clear from looking at the way their fans talk.

This is also clear from the way they are trying to fight so hard for suburban Republicans rather than shoring up their traditional base. They're trying to get people in new demographics! I think a good part of this is, of course, the people with money in the party - who of course go back to representing their class interests rather than what they used to think was right. Perfect illustration: liberal tech bros who suddenly veer towards conservative tax policy once they make their millions while still telling people that,  yeah, gay marriage or whatever, I'm totally liberal, but I have to fund both the GOP and DNC now because, um, it's how it works when you have a company worth billions or something.

[ Parent ]
eg zuckerberg is more or less neoconservative now by gzt (4.00 / 0) #4 Thu Jan 04, 2018 at 10:05:37 AM EST
not even neoliberal. and don't let's get started on google.

[ Parent ]
that's not the demographic i had in mind. by the mariner (4.00 / 0) #5 Fri Jan 05, 2018 at 05:32:32 AM EST
i was thinking of racial minorities, particularly the astonishingly cynical campaign hillary ran against sanders wrt race, even after running a previous primary campaign against a black man right out of the atwater playbook. they smear sanders as having a problem with black people because of a campaign stop were blm people grabbed his mic, where if they had tried that on hillary, they would've been shot.

class interest is absolutely the right lens to view the whole thing. this is why well-off liberals in media, social or otherwise, are so infatuated with a race/gender-only form of left-looking liberalism that sees oppression in society as primarily a question of manners and interpersonal interactions. this works out great because there's never a question of class interest or imperialism, no one has to think about what wealth in american society is based on. so you can make a million on uber for hemoglobin beverages or youtube ads, not producing anything of value, without giving a single thought to how that works.

"i'm growing the pie." well, it's a blood pie.

[ Parent ]
I'm in Chinatown, baby. | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)

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