Pragmatic Leftist Theory

I was invited here to participate in discussion. But when I visit, all I see is a bunch of anti-tankie posts from a prolific anti-tankie, an Atlantic smear article about DSA from months ago, and a few genuinely good discussions. Let's get those numbers up, and start drowning out the "based" memes.

As of today, the most divisive and urgent issue du jour, is about the government shutdown, and the legislative drama surrounding it. People are angry.

There are a lot of people directly affected by the shut down. I know someone who is basically working for free at her govt job because she's scared she will lose her job completely. A department of 20 workers, reduced to a staff of 4 temporary slaves. She doubts she will get back pay, but hopes she will. Many of her coworkers will not. My friend doesnt think about it like that, but that is def one major pain point in the middle class.

I'm willing to bet the dem house legislature is just gonna fold with no healthcare demand, which is a seriously pressing issue for workers who rely on ACA.

Back of the napkin, about 45% of ACA recipients are at or below the poverty line. ACA subsidies cut off below 65k indiv/130k fam.

That bracket would include many government workers, except govt workers receive healthcare. 65k is like barely middle class in the US, with housing costs, soaring energy bills, etc.,

Interesting and tragic how the shut down is just a way to divide the working class over material issues, especially the working poor vs the middle class.

I checked the sidebar and it doesn't say.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/56344021

Cookies and Fascism

The Republican base is an increasingly unsteady partnership of tech-bro, white nationalist, red-pill MAGA nuts, and salt-of-the-earth conservative types who vote R because that's what their pappy did.

This community exists explicitly as a byproduct of leftist infighting, which was very possibly engineered by malicious parties to divide and conquer.

I say, let's flip the script.

As the current administration becomes more unsavory, conscientious old-school blue-collar conservatives and libertarians are finding the pill harder to swallow.

Leftist policies are extremely popular, even among the "right". It's Leftist terminology that sours the deal. The American people have been submerged in anti-left propaganda for a century, at least.

There is a massive opportunity to fracture the right by introducing a third party that mimics right wing terminology to promote a leftist message. 'Murica is about Freedom and Jesus. We can define Freedom, and dive into the teachings of Jesus we were talking about, after the election.

Or never. Voters don't typically peruse their representatives actual voting record. All they really care about are soundbites, and it's not hard to hit the right notes.

Honestly I think that if we're clever about marketing, we can peel off a significant portion of the Right's base. Hopefully, a couple cycles can bury the alt-right shit and replace the Republican party with the Patriot Party, or whatever.

Ideally, savvy leftists will figure out the ploy, and pile in once the scale starts to tip. But it has to start with the blue-collar Right. The Republican party is enemy number 1, the Democrats have enemy-of-my-enemy status until the Patriot Party (or whatever) is established and displaces enemy number 1.

On an unrelated note, here's a fun game:

Describe a leftist policy in the most right-wing language possible. Try to guess what it is in the comments! If your description stumps the commenters, you win 1,000 Internet points.

Text:

It’s generally the lack of parallel institutions run by workers which sabotage such attempts. Revolutions are generally not powerful enough to do anything but take out the current power; this pretty invariably means the second-most powerful group takes over the role of the overthrown power, or the near-seconds squabble amongst themselves over it. Since dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes tend to systemically crush every alternate power base they can get away with crushing, that generally leaves only those they cannot crush - most often religion in societies which have not experienced a deep secularization, the military, and economic powers in just about every society (in the SovUnion at the end of its life, for example, this was the bureaucracy; whereas we are more familiar with it being capitalists and other private economic actors). So ‘theocracy’, ‘junta’, or ‘something amenable to the economic elite’ are most often the results.

A libertarian socialist society will emerge when low-hierarchy institutions have considerable support and deeply established roots during a time of upheaval - such as Rojava taking advantage of pre-existing Kurdish revolutionary institutions which were largely socialist or socialist-sympathetic to lay the foundation of the autonomous administration, once both the Syrian government and Islamist forces had exhausted themselves in the area.

Building parallel institutions now sets up the stage for tomorrow's victories.

I'm no lover of firearms. In normal times, I think firearm proliferation makes for a nervous and violent populace. These ain't normal times though.

I'm a pasty white man, I can, and do, blend in with crowds dominated by Trump supporters. I have basically no social media presence (tied to my actual identity) to betray my political inclinations. I don't really have to worry about being scooped up by ICE, I'm more likely to be recruited if anything.

But that's not the case for my wife or neighbors. This administration can claim credit for inspiring my enthusiasm for the Second Amendment.

And I think that's not an uncommon position for leftists. We are, largely, in the awkward position of feeling conflicted between our distaste for mindless gun violence, and the very real threat of a fascist administration. This leads to some apprehension towards the whole firearm acquisition process.

Just do it. I went into a gun shop today for the first time ever to buy an AR-15 because it's a popular and reliable platform, and I had my reservations. But it was quick and easy. I did my research and knew what I wanted to buy, and I was in and out in 20 minutes. Still gotta wait 5 days to actually pick it up, but it was a surprisingly simple process.

If you're on the fence, just do it. Do it now, get some range time in, learn to use and service your weapon. Be ready when shit really hits the fan. Don't wait to prepare until it's too late, who knows what kind of obstacles may be erected in the near future.

Personally I went with a Ruger 556 because it's highly regarded at a ~$600 price point. If you have a bit more budgetary restriction, Palmetto State Armory has options under $500 that are still pretty well reviewed.

But if you're intimidated by the prospect, don't be. It's really very straightforward, at the end of the day a gun shop is a business and they want to make a sale. Especially if you're a minority, get a firearm and learn to use it.

I could see the process being a bit more complicated if you're trans, personally if your ID reflects your birth sex I'd bite the bullet (no pun intended) and crawl back into the egg on your application for simplicity. No need to complicate your personal safety, though !trans_guns@lemmy.blahaj.zone can probably offer more targeted service.

Just do it. It's surprisingly simple and you didn't want to be caught unprepared when it's too late.

Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20250824220020/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/08/dsa-mamdani-losing-elections/683970/

The issue on here, on Lemmy, where we're speaking, is that many leftists don't care to make a strong distinction between 'flawed liberal moderates' and literal fascists. A constant refrain on here is the idea that things have been getting worse since, apparently, the inception of liberalism itself, and steadily spiraling towards fascism, so what does it matter if fascism happens today or twenty years from now? Electing non-fascists just puts off the inevitable. And, for reasons both personal and philosophical, I find that an immensely repugnant way of thinking, not to mention strategically and historically unsound. "Trump is worse than Harris - so what?" Fucking people suffer because of it, millions, including many whose lives will be ruined or ended, and for no gain to marginalized folk anywhere.

I came back from a family reunion discussing the very real threat of ICE against my relatives. I spent the past week struggling with my health insurance over recent policy changes (a dive I'll have to take again soon, since nothing was resolved, for better or worse - gotta love the run-around). I've had half-a-decade of mental health progress unraveled by six months of this administration, and all while I watch foreign affairs get worse and worse under the influence of the wannabe fascists who were elected. And then I come on here to blow off steam, and I find many people who claim to be leftists and who so 'boldly' stood against the anti-fascist coalition candidate in the name of 'solidarity' proceeding to express no solidarity with anyone who's suffering or going to suffer under this regime, either under the banner of "Things will get so bad that they'll HAVE to get better" (accelerationism) or "They're Americans mostly, so they deserve it anyway" (some weird form of campism).

I'm further left than 95% of Americans. I'm further left than 95% of Democrats. But because I have the audacity of regarding harm reduction as mandatory and not optional - a position which I take on abstract policy, but which is also strengthened by my own uncertain future under this fucking regime - I'm a turbolib, a shitlib, a moderate, a conservative, a fascist, a genocide supporter, and a Zionist.

Lemmy is the fringe, and while I definitely point to issues like Leftists choosing to abstain and let the greater evil win, I do so not because that's the biggest problem in society in general (in the broader situation, leftists could've saved us in 2024 - but so could a dozen other fucking groups that screwed the pooch in 2024, the DNC et co highest on that list second only to the actual, literal fascists), but because it's a problem that, on here, still meets with a resistance to acknowledge that it was a bad fucking move that millions of marginalized people are going to pay the price for - only a few of whom are those who fucking sat out and let fascism win in this country.

I find celebrations of that repugnant, and, for that matter, exhausting.

Aren't current affairs and the potential of being told to fuck off and die on my kitchen floor of a chronic disease exhausting enough without having to add people on my nominal left cheering the whole fucked situation on, because they bizarrely imagine the oppression of marginalized individuals as some kind of blow against the oppressors?

Fuck me. Guess this is really just a rant.