I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
I was obviously getting worked up, because i'm 90% sure you were saying something completely different, but I'm fine with leaving it at tentative agreement at this point. I do not think voters should take any blame for an electoral system that has completely failed them, and I was very passionately making that case. Maybe I misunderstood your first comment, but:
spoiler
This is what I was reacting to. The idea that the rise of the NSDAP is entirely the fault of the KPD for 'splitting the ticket' in a country boiling over with populist sentiment due to the long deteriorating economic conditions and rife with division for more than 20 years. To say that the German population was feeling desperate and angry is a massive understatement, and while it's fair to point out the clear miscalculation of the KPD in hindsight, it flies completely in the face of what the sentiment and conditions in the country were at the time, and where the sentiment is here right now.
I only railed on this so hard because it's clear, to me at least, that democrats are losing -not due to an environment of propaganda- but because the political center is hollowing out due to a similar deterioration of economic conditions and a failing democratic system. I don't consider the core issues of that failure to be 'pet issues', and I think by addressing them as such is a big part of the reason democrats find themselves increasingly alone in the center right. Far from 'asking them to lose', begging them to come to the left is the only way I think they will be able to win without trying to capture the reactionary sentiment of the right. Addressing the economic and democratic crisis is the only way they could possibly win, and the only way to (maybe) fix some of the failures people are feeling.
A blip on a shear cliff, and pales in comparison to the immense growth of wealth in the form of capital. Musk didn't buy twitter with a pile of cash from years of profit.
They're definitely not. They are foundational to the problems in America today. The KPD's obsession with the SPD specifically and settling the scores of the past was a pet issue.
Agreed.
Agreed.
I'm not really trying to say "blame." Like I said, most of the failure I think is a failure of media and education that failed the voters. You were the one that invented the idea that we had to "blame." You also seem to be sticking implicitly, without really addressing it outright, to the idea that it can either be the voters' "fault" or else the party's "fault" but not both, and because I said that who won the election is partly a result of who it was that people voted for, you are still lecturing me sort of an infinite length about how it is the party's "fault" that they got not enough votes, as if that's not something I agree with already.
I have no idea why you keep repeating this or explaining it to me over and over again in different ways. For variety, would you like to try predicting what my response will be, to this message where you're explaining it to me again?
That's not what I was getting from your other comments:
You have a lot of theories about why the dems lost, but none of them seem to be touching the point I was making. I was being more pointed with identifying where the electoral shortfall was. But i'm glad you agree.
Yea, maybe I interpreted some of your characterization of the election as attributing blame, and I don't really think that's an unfair interpretation:
I think you and I disagree on what the most important takeaways from this election are, but I'm fine with letting it lie.
Wait. Are you telling me that I have a different opinion than you about why the Dems lost? And you found that whole concept confusing, to the point that you had to reboot and repeatedly just explain your entire thing, from start to finish, including getting more and more strident about explaining to me the things I did agree with even when I told you I agreed with them, and interpreting me disagreeing with you in any respect into wild mischaracterizations of what I was saying, repeatedly and even after I explicitly explained that I believed the opposite of those mischaracterizations?
Well, I’m terribly sorry. In the future I’ll strive to be better about “touching the point you are making” when I say things, so you won’t have to be disturbed by the concept of reading something you don’t already agree with. I can understand how that could be discombobulating and might make you start hitting the bold and all caps to just say over and over again what you think to the person you're talking to. That sounds super productive, and like a gateway to an enjoyable and enlightening internet experience.
It is absolutely sending me that you just figured this out. Like that was the big mystery that you finally cracked, in this whole conversation, that finally made it make sense to you.
I think that would be best. I wish you the best in all your future endeavors.
You kept claiming that you agreed with me "100%" - the only allusion to a disagreement up until two comments ago was the qualifier of 'pretty much' 100% - but it wasn't until just now that you say you disagree with the main thrust of my point. I clearly picked up on it, I don't think I would have gotten so animated if it was clear that you agreed with me as you claimed.
Yea, good luck to the both of us.
Okay, I'll work on my solution for better conversation on the internet. I think I've spent enough time aiming to help you with reading comprehension for today.
I said, "The Democrats can be ghouls who need replacement or foundational reform" and you spent like a short story's worth of words screaming at me that the Democrats are ghouls who need replacement or foundational reform, and then when I tried for like the 10th time to express to you that you can calm down about expressing that like a street preacher shouting on a corner an inch from my face, you apparently heard "I agree with you about 100% of what you say and have no disagreement with anything" even though you had previously picked up and explicitly disagreed with the part where I said that propaganda and media also had something to do with it.
You seem like you are doing literal backflips to avoid the conversation of whether that propaganda is happening, in favor of just shrieking at me that the Democrats carry some blame for losing the election, no matter how many times I attempt to express that I, also, think that.
I have literally no idea why you are that way. I hope you come out of it someday. Let me know if you do, and we can talk about the propaganda thing.
I was saying AMERICA needed reform, that democrats are bleeding voters because they've lost faith that foundational reform is possible.
It is happening, but even if it wasnt I think the material conditions would be doing the same thing anyway. I don't think its the reason dems lost. A clear difference, I now know.
I'm telling you they carry all the blame. That even if the cards were stacked in their favor they'd still lose, if they don't propose foundational change.
Idk how else I could have communicated that without any less emphasis, but 'shrieking' is a bit hyperbolic.
I hope dems come out of it someday.
I had no idea 100% meant less than 100%, this is news to me.
I edited my comment to explain a little more. I'm honestly lost even trying to talk to you. Last message.