I don’t get a sense of optimism from anyone here I’d characterize as “leftist” or “progressive” or “radical”. I think some people think it’s important to fight, even if you think you’re going to lose. Me? I agree with that somewhat, but think it’s possible to make a tiny slice of the world a little better than it would have been if you weren’t there and that’s not too bad.
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I’d agree with you that a peaceful road to a better future is unlikely. The powers that be spend our resources on arming people to enforce their privileges and advance their interests. It’s not for show or ceremonies. We know they’ll use violence against us because that’s what they’re already doing, here and around the world.
I’m with you and Emerson in this regard.
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Old = wise was probably more true a hundred years ago than today, not because of mortality rates or anything, but because the rate of cultural change has increased so much since then. It’s entirely possible we’ll all be blithering idiots long before our actual dotage because we simply won’t understand the world properly. Look what Facebook has done to boomers. What will the next Facebook do to us?
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I think some people believe that it is important to “fight” in the right way, even if it almost guarantees losing. (And I’d argue that this is the mindset of anti-filibuster Democrats). I might think it’s wildly optimistic to believe there’s even a sliver of a chance while taking too many options off the table.
It is important to fight the right way.
What’s the right way?
WIthin the law and grounded in truth.
“Within the law” is very irritating to me, but I do respect “without hurting anyone”. “Grounded in truth” is good.
In my obsession with walking LA - I’ve basically become a USPS letter carrier the last few months. Surprisingly the body adjusts. My feet are never sore any more. But my back is still a bit tweaky.
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What is truth?
There’s a mass shooting thread to resurrect, right?
This thread?
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This is very much the story of the last 100 years, in the United States, particularly.
Lol democrats, let’s play the if the GOP game.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1374178853401329664?s=21
For sure.
Not sure anyone has actually reckoned with even what TV and movies have done to us. Like not just on the Fox News dimension but in terms of how much it suppressed other activities and how much it instructs us on our behaviour. I quite often look at people in relationships and feel like they’re playing out what they’ve seen on TV and that is not surprising. We’ve all had orders of magnitude more relationships modelled to us on TV, in terms of seeing the intimate inner workings of them, than any of us have had in real life.
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You say that but I don’t see much in your posting besides magical thinking about how all of humanities problems are caused by capitalism. Capitalism is just another dumb ism with strengths and weaknesses like the rest. It’s obviously been perverted and corrupted towards the interests of the powerful, much like the systems that came before them and the system that will inevitably come after this one collapses.
There’s also an awful lot of magical thinking about your opponents, the very wealthy (I know it’s not the upper middle class because come on dude we’re both card carrying dues paying members and nobody has told you any more than they’ve told me conspiracy wise) are some unified bloc instead of just being a group of humans selected mostly at random and given huge amounts of power.
I don’t want to hear you tell me about how awful capitalism sucks. I know it sucks. I grinded my way up through it and finally made it to a pitifully tiny ledge that I’m now sheltering in… and contrary to every meme on the internet about how the second you start paying grownup taxes you turn into a Republican the experience of climbing up that treacherous economic slope (as a cis gendered caucasian male no less) was profoundly radicalizing. I know I got lucky. Very lucky.
So I don’t need a speech about how bad capitalism is. If the above personal experience wasn’t enough my degree’s in econ. Which brings me to the problem. There are some very fundamental things that you have to account for when you’re modeling the society you want to build.
I need to know exactly how the monopoly on violence is going to work. If you haven’t answered this question, very specifically, you haven’t even turned in a viable option.
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