No, no. It’s not like that. But seriously, if I wanted to have a chat about firing a US federal officer through the impeachment process, and I kept using the word ‘impeachment’ when I really meant 'impeachment and conviction", I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors, now would I?
I… do not consider Democrats and “the left” to be synonyms
OK, fair enough. However, and I quoted this above, you also mentioned a want for a “big tent” party. Were you perhaps referring to the US Green party? I naturally assumed you were referring to the Donkeys. So I guess I’m still confused by what you meant by “the left”, in the context of also referring to to a “big tent” party in the US?
So let me ask you a couple of follow up Qs…
In the context of your OP for this thread, besides Donkeys and donkey lovers, who exactly are you referring to as “the left”… and why in the world would these others non-donkey’s want or care if the Donkeys had a “big tent party” thing going?
Are you referring to what these people actually do (I guess in this context what the Donkeys put in their party platform and actually follow through on when they have that possibility) -vs- what these people spread as their propaganda (aka messaging, even if, as some have suggested ITT, such propaganda should basically be in the form of a bait-and-switch)?
I mean the true far left is full bore communism right? Which would be lovely if it didn’t have to be administered by people.
The people who get power in any system end up being the problem. Capitalism is having the same problems now that technology is eroding the leverage unions gained for workers a century ago now.
So I totally get where you’re coming from obviously. You know that because of the conversation we had the other day. I feel it too.
Thing is the problem isn’t an individual one. The problems are systemic. The best thing you can do about systemic problems isn’t tilting at windmills in your personal life, it’s working to change the system…
So donate and phone bank for the candidates you care about. Convince other people to convert to your views so that they do the same thing. Vote. Protest if you’ve got the time…
And let yourself off the hook for your infinitesimally small individual contribution to a massive systemic problem. To really dial back your issues as an individual you’d end up homeless, and homeless people have basically no say in reforming the system, which is the whole game.
You’re doing more for the situation by participating in society and doing your part to change it than you would by opting out IMO. It’s never going to be perfect.
Still thoughts like these haunt me, which is why I devote actual energy into trying to figure out how to make a living making the world better. We live in a capitalist world, so figuring out how to build an entity that does good and turns a profit would be pretty damned cool.
The particular ideology of the modern left evolved out of internecine academic squabbles and then transitioned very successfully to social media and progressive circles, but it’s really poorly adapted to actual politics. It’s so unhealthy (but also very telling) that you have internalized this sense of being supposed to do something, but can’t articulate what the something is. Not eat lunch? The whole point of structural problems is that they are structural and require solutions that are politically or otherwise coordinated across a big segment of society. You’re definitionally not responsible for failing to solve a structural problem by yourself!
Your invitation to join the team at Kroshopkin.com is still open!
We’re primarily organized around turning labor, workers, owners, managers into just people, but environmental concern seems to pretty much have 100% correlation. Like the employee owned T-shirt company providing the unstuck shirts (still in the works - waiting for more art samples) is very conscious down to sourcing their textiles.
LOL no. That’s just warmed over Cold War propaganda.
This is exactly why Donkeys like yourself shouldn’t refer to yourselves as “the left”. By any logic, “the far left” is subset of “the left”. So, when you folks reference “the left”, you are referencing at least a set union of the set of Donkeys with the set of Communists. So, the thread title could alternately read “Should the Donkeys and the Communists compromise on social justice issues?”.
But that’s not at all what you folks intend to mean, now is it? What you kinda maybe intend to mean, using your own wordage, is “the left”, excluding “the far left”, now isn’t it?
So, again, I’ll ask the same damn Q: If you intend to refer to the Donkeys, why not just say “donkey”? Why muddy the waters with this vague and misleading “the left” crapola. OTOH, if you intend to refer to others, who aren’t Donkeys or it seems aren’t Communists… how about spitting out who these others might actually be?
Note: I’m not “coming at you from the left” here, or coming at you at all ideologically. We pride ourselves as being in the ~99 percentile of politically knowledgeable interwebers. We don’t say “impeachment” when we really mean “convicted”, because we actually know something about what we’re talking about. I’m coming at you in that same spirit… we shouldn’t be talking about “the left”, when we really and simply and obviously mean just “the Donkeys”.
This is just like the ACers and the word “anarchist”. It was really important to the ACers to call themselves “anarchists”, not because of their ideology (of which they had none)… but because they felt the word sounds “cool”. Just like certain Donkeys think the phrase “the left” sounds “cool”.
100% this and it deserves a complete requote. Mass incarceration is an institutional problem. You can’t solve it without either voting it out of being a revolutionary. The problem of too much single use plastic (and most environmental issues) is a people problem. Just do your best. That’s your vote - much better than a vote!
So define the left for us since you’re so great a defining what things are.
Goddamn is this a bad post. You need to define your terms as badly as anyone else in the thread.
The standard political science perspective on left vs right is a horseshoe with communism at one extreme and fascism at the other. A lot of posters on this board, myself included, are strongly in favor of economic systems like they have in Scandinavia. That’s left in the US. Going further than that is where shades communism starts to be what you’re talking about.
Nothing you do is going to fix anything other than what you do, and maybe the a few people around you and jeez it’d be amazing if you did something that affected dozens or even hundreds of people. Quit being so grandiose! You’re not changing the system other than by being a tiny part of the collection of people doing things in a little better way.