I also want to point out that the type of organizing work @PocketChads is doing is probably way more important than the messaging we’re obsessing over. The reason the Bolivian coup failed within a year is they had a well organized labor movement that could shut the country down to force free elections. The reason the best we can do is like 5 center left guys in congress is we’re decades behind them on that front. We treat everything kike a messaging problem when it’s really an organizing problem.
That said, it’s not nothing and we do what we can.
Yeah it’s more than that too… I think the protests generate a lot of really strong digital content that can be weaponized really easily… and that digital content generated by the protests creates a virtuous cycle that creates more protests.
If the left owns the streets and the internet we’ll be evicting the Boomers from power very shortly.
@PocketChads your posting on this site over the last few months has been crazy inspiring. The video’s you’ve posted are hard to watch, but I refuse to look away. I’m a fatass who can only walk 2-3 miles at a time without getting awful foot pain that lasts for days who is also a physical coward prone to really ugly fight or flight reactions. I’d be no good to you out there or I’d be there. I am deeply ashamed every single day that I’m not, and those are my weak ass excuses that I recite to myself when it feels extra bad. When we get up and running let us know what we can do to help in Richmond.
I mean the breakup of the system that ruled this country from 1930-1980 really broke a lot of the ways that people organized if I’m understanding what you mean. I mean the labor movement was where this had historically been done, and they gutted that shit.
I mean they were old institutions with a lot of bloat and corruption by that point… a bunch of old men willing to agree to be the last generation in exchange for being able to go into the sunset in peace. At least that’s my read on what happened. The books haven’t really been written that I’m aware of.
I do absolutely agree that this breaking down is a huge driver of how things have gone since. But I’m also aware that trying to capital O Organize is something that’s pretty fiercely resisted by every form and flavor of the establishment, and the only way we got past that last time was to let the gangsters in.
I’m interested in how you guys are planning on spreading this without getting suppressed I guess. I’m just speaking about basic tactics here.
I’m not sure that’s really the lesson here. We got past it by continuing to do it after cops murdered us by the hundred again and again and again for like 50 years, and backing candidates for office from our number. Sure there were those willing to use violence, but I doubt what successes there were have much to do with the eventual co-option by organized crime.
Unfortunately the strike breakers were private… and quickly were working on both sides. Those guys turned into the labor racketeers. From the first day in power they were there because they had been essential to the victory of the movement.
Those gangsters did a lot of work in the beginning. There was a lot of violence to be done. Many factory owners came to the table to bargain because they were convinced that it was do that or something awful was going to happen to them personally.
Basically the side with the most potential for violence changed over from the capitalists to the unions and the capitalists snap negotiated a long series of sort of similar deals.
There are some big exceptions and for some reason (sarcasm) those are the examples they always seem to talk about… but there were unions other than the UAW.
ok, i’m basically on board with doing a project that fits into this, but i think our resources will be relatively small for a long time. i’ve long been scoping flippable red state districts although we should simply grab top-10 list of sam wang’s redistricting moneyball, and do some reconnaissance, identify local forums, fb groups, figure out what they are being targeted with right now.
We’ll see about the resources. I definitely think it’s possible to take advantage of the fact that quite a few of us are good at capitalism to have this thing’s resources snowball. Selling merch on the internet is a real business with incredible economics. Digital advertising is cheap.
OK so it seems like the main things we have to figure out long term are:
Which level of office to focus our resources on, as we have a little disagreement here
How much to focus on primaries vs general elections and negative vs positive advertising
How much we want to be recruiting candidates vs just supporting the ones we find who we like
However, right now we have the GA runoff to focus on and I don’t want to waste too much time thinking long-term as we have very limited time before that race.
I think we should give it 24 more hours to see who all is interested in diving into this 20+ hours a week, then set up a way to communicate privately and go from there. The first step is figuring out which type of organization to start and how to fundraise for it.
I’m going to add @econophile because I’m not sure if he has the time, but he bought the voter roll list for us already.
@suzzer99 is in for money, I have a friend in for money, and we can pool our resources on contacts for friends and friends of friends to solicit more donations. I think we should make some sort of materials before we go asking for big bucks. I have friends who have contact info for some high profile poker pros who likely share our sentiment, so no promises, but I may be able to get in touch to send them some info and ask for a donation. But I want to be able to give them a good presentation of what our plan/strategy are.
We need a lawyer we can trust with expertise in this area, as well.
Once we get going, we can come back here and see who’s willing/able to help us for 5-10 hours a week, too.
They’re breaking the law super aggressively. That only works when you’re on the same side as the cops + your politicians will give you legal cover. It’s stupid even for their side which is why they’re morons. They’re going to do real time now that the postal inspectors are involved.
Yeah I know, but this thread is semi serious. People might think we mean it. I wasn’t kidding when I said our role model might be Roger Stone earlier in the thread. I’ve come away from that because I’ve found a much more effective person’s paper to copy off of, but this thread is not about being nice. This thread is about figuring out how we can fix a potentially game losing (like the end of the species) problem.
Only one side of politics has been really using marketing and advertising to its full potential over the last 30 years even as marketing and advertising reshaped every other part of human life, mostly for the worse I should add. The level this stuff works on is not that top level voice in our heads we all love the sound of so much, it’s much lower down at the habit level. They give that lower level something that makes it feel good, a way to get it, and then as you go about your daily life they send you images of that thing you like to remind you of how much you like it.
I’ve realized very recently that my whole life I’ve watched Democrats desperately plead with Americans to actually think through politics and consider what would actually be good for them. And they never ever do it. That argument just hasn’t worked and isn’t going to.
I have a brother who is semi bright who I haven’t spoken to in a couple of years who, while stupid for my family, is very definitely operating with a slightly above average amount of candlepower. I haven’t spoken to him because I finally gave up on bringing him out of the conspiracy theories he’d been hooked on since the 9/11 truthers. He gets a HUGE dopamine rush out of thinking he knows stuff other people don’t. I get that. He had a very hard time growing up in my family, which sucked for a lot of reasons, but was even more miserable with added intellectual bullying… and that desire to look me in my face and tell me that I’m an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about… I was making it worse. So he threw a drink on me at a restaurant and I felt like that was as good of a stopping place as any, and I’ll probably never speak to him again.
I also have a brother who in terms of IQ and math ability is way fucking smarter than me. Like massively smarter in STEM stuff than I am at anything. Good Will Hunting is a movie so he can’t do math like that, but he actually is a genius and has all of the problems that come with that. He can tell you at length why nicotine isn’t that bad for him. He’s totally impervious to logic on the subject. He’s addicted to it and he’s not letting it go because without it where would he get the dopamine from?
I don’t know how to help people who are getting their dopamine rush from insane right wing content on the internet yet. But I know that every day we don’t at least play back on this bullshit they convert some more people. They’re working hard on kids and you all know it. We just had an election conclusively demonstrate that almost exactly half of the population is already on the tit for this stuff. This is a fucking emergency.