The vote totals were closer to my goals than yours, in my state. How much do you have to fuck around with the math to make Illinois not only go red, but be the tipping point state? That’s a completely unrealistic fantasy, and most Americans are in similar boats.
Were they? Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true. And I must have missed the part of your plan where you tailored it strategically based on state. It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true.
That’s an interesting claim. What you’re telling me is that your strategy delivered Harris a victory in Illinois. Now, if we take your strategy to be, simply, “Be a liberal and vote for liberals because you’re a liberal,” then sure, it was because of liberals like you that she won. But if your strategy is, “Be a leftist, but act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals,” then whether the specific faction you represent was significant enough to determine whether she won or lost the state depends on how many of you there are. And that number is impossible to determine, since they act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals, there is no quality I’m aware of that we could look at that would tell us if that number is 1% or 90% of Harris voters.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct. But if I were to entertain your absurd pretense that you’re not a liberal, that there’s some meaningful distinction between your position and liberalism, then it seems very likely that all your faction accomplished was increasing the margin of victory a bit. Harris would have won anyway because of the number of liberal voters. Furthermore, no matter how much stronger you faction got here, it would continue to have zero influence over the outcome of the presidential election, because Harris is always going to get 100% of the electoral college votes here no matter what. Meaning that your strategy is both ineffective, but lacks even the theoretical potential to be effective.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case the situation of each state is relevant, because of any state should not follow your advice then you are wrong to proscribe it universally. Your argument cuts both ways.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct.
You are just as obviously a fascist sympathizer trying to ensure they stay in power by encouraging leftists to act stupidly.
There’s a difference between strategy and liberalism. But if you don’t understand strategy, then you must be a fascist trying to splinter the left because you’re acting indistinguishably from a fascist trying to splinter the left.
Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same, as if you’re speaking from a script, very uncreative and unoriginal, unable to think on your feet, roll with the punches, or adapt.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.” If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind. Because that’s what leftists do. Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why? The only reason is because you’re a liberal. This might be a new concept for you, but this is something called “evidence” which is important to have when you make claims and accusations.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me. Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions. Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory. If you can get schooled on theory by a fascist, that’s on you.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have. Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today. Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo. Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other, a “secret fascist” or whatever, as well as putting up fronts and pretending you believe something else so that your real beliefs cannot be attacked.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation. Because you can’t actually defend your beliefs, because they’re wrong. Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal. Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything. And yet, you assert that the only reason someone would deviate from that nonsense, incoherent strategy, is if they’re secretly a fascist trying to get the left to act in “silly” ways. If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying. If only there were more people like you in fascist spaces, calling themselves fascists, and telling everyone to set aside their radicalism and fall in line behind whatever the Republican party offers them, then their radicalism would have been diluted and we might have never gotten Trump. That is, if they actually listened to you, which they wouldn’t.
Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same
You’re the one who started assigning labels based on your own bias. If we’re assigning labels based on actions then, no, it’s not a classic line. I am independently observing the fact that your behaviors are indistinguishable from theirs. You are the one who opened that line of logic, it is only reasonable to hold you to it.
If you can accept that I am not a liberal, just simply a leftist focused on effective methods, then I can accept that you are not a fascist, just simply a leftist tragically confused by ineffective methods. Otherwise, we are at an impasse. Either we take each other at our word, or we talk past each other with accusations.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.”
Which would be insightful if it was accurate. Never downplayed Gaza, merely compared the two reactions to demonstrate a functional difference. Gaza is being genocided. Democrats have a bad stance, but MAGA is worse. Neither of us have to power to change policy directly, so I did the best I could with my vote: chose bad over worse. That’s not endorsement of the Democratic stance, it’s an attempt at rejecting the MAGA one
If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind.
Which is a thing I do, to the people perpetuating systemic violence. Complaining about policy to other people equally impotent to change policy isn’t leftism, it’s just ineffective. Calling out actions to those who lack the power to affect those actions does not reduce those actions.
Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why?
Again, I didn’t do that so your permission is fundamentally wrong.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me.
False. Thereb is direct evidence of bad actors trying to split the view by bemoaning the flaws of Democrats, while remaining suspiciously silent about MAGA. Thus, your similar actions are indistinguishable from these fascist enablers. This is not different in any way.
Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
So you claim. Yet your continue to engage in actions that help fascists. Curious.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions.
Hey, me too.
Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory.
And here you are revolting against intellectualism to push a counterproductive action. The evidence is stacking.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have.
Fascists are famously more dependent on labels, name-calling, and baseless prejudice than engaging with the content of the argument (note, you still have yet to engage with the argument, you just keep shouting the thought terminating “liberal”). Yet more evidence.
Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today.
Wrong again.
Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo.
Would you like to support that claim, or is this just more fascist thought-terminating cliche? Don’t bother, I can guess.
Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other,
Sounds like someone’s telling on themselves.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation.
Which ones? I’ll happily do so now if I managed to overlook anything resembling a coherent question in your fash-enabling rhetoric.
Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal.
Again, very wrong. I am a leftist, a real leftist. I care more about implementing leftist policy than online cred. I endorse actions that help the left, like putting the lesser evil in office when good had no chance of winning, in order to make the conditions for meaningful leftist action more favorable. Note I did not favorable, I said more favorable. I do not like the Democrats. I simply recognize that, of the two parties that stand a chance of winning the general election for the near future, they are the less antagonistic.
Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything.
Yet it risks nothing. Your strategy risks regimes like the current one, the one responsible for all the rebuild of the Democrats and many, many more. Or do we not care about systemic violence when it hurts your side?
If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying.
Why would a fascist say to vote effectively against fascists? A fascist would want to identify the biggest threat to their hegemony (in this case the only other party capable of winning a presidential race) and discourage people from voting for them. Oh, that seems familiar. Who was doing that again?
It is impossible for you to be a politically competent leftist, dating what you say. No leftist who made your suggestions could be considered politically competent. Any politically competent person who made those suggestions is obviously trying to help the fascists. Leftists voting third party in general elections hurts leftists, and helps fascists.
So, you really have two options:
Are you really a leftist, you just don’t understand politics or elections at all?
Are you politically literate, therefore definitely a fascist, since that’s the only rational motivation for your suggestions?
Or, will you admit that you might be wrong, that leftist infighting is counterproductive, that leftist theory has been written by many parties with differing views on implementation, that different motivations can result in certain similar behaviors, and that maybe dialectic is better than ineffective idealism.
My bet is you keep cosplaying, but there is a chance you choose truth.
You think I’m a pompous liberal dickhead. I think you’re a sincere idiot who’s helping the left shoot itself in the foot.
We both want the left to win. Our ideas of how that happens differs. So long as we’re at each other’s throats instead of arm in arm against the real enemy, they win.
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Do you think that’s what you’re doing?
From skimming your comment, I believe you said you could cite theory to back up your “vote blue no matter who” position. So please do so. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do this, it’s always just, “it’s obvious” while shutting down any closer examination. Because it is just passively absorbed, unexamined, ruling class ideology.
The vote totals were closer to my goals than yours, in my state. How much do you have to fuck around with the math to make Illinois not only go red, but be the tipping point state? That’s a completely unrealistic fantasy, and most Americans are in similar boats.
Were they? Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true. And I must have missed the part of your plan where you tailored it strategically based on state. It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
That’s an interesting claim. What you’re telling me is that your strategy delivered Harris a victory in Illinois. Now, if we take your strategy to be, simply, “Be a liberal and vote for liberals because you’re a liberal,” then sure, it was because of liberals like you that she won. But if your strategy is, “Be a leftist, but act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals,” then whether the specific faction you represent was significant enough to determine whether she won or lost the state depends on how many of you there are. And that number is impossible to determine, since they act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals, there is no quality I’m aware of that we could look at that would tell us if that number is 1% or 90% of Harris voters.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct. But if I were to entertain your absurd pretense that you’re not a liberal, that there’s some meaningful distinction between your position and liberalism, then it seems very likely that all your faction accomplished was increasing the margin of victory a bit. Harris would have won anyway because of the number of liberal voters. Furthermore, no matter how much stronger you faction got here, it would continue to have zero influence over the outcome of the presidential election, because Harris is always going to get 100% of the electoral college votes here no matter what. Meaning that your strategy is both ineffective, but lacks even the theoretical potential to be effective.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case the situation of each state is relevant, because of any state should not follow your advice then you are wrong to proscribe it universally. Your argument cuts both ways.
You are just as obviously a fascist sympathizer trying to ensure they stay in power by encouraging leftists to act stupidly.
There’s a difference between strategy and liberalism. But if you don’t understand strategy, then you must be a fascist trying to splinter the left because you’re acting indistinguishably from a fascist trying to splinter the left.
Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same, as if you’re speaking from a script, very uncreative and unoriginal, unable to think on your feet, roll with the punches, or adapt.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.” If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind. Because that’s what leftists do. Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why? The only reason is because you’re a liberal. This might be a new concept for you, but this is something called “evidence” which is important to have when you make claims and accusations.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me. Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions. Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory. If you can get schooled on theory by a fascist, that’s on you.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have. Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today. Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo. Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other, a “secret fascist” or whatever, as well as putting up fronts and pretending you believe something else so that your real beliefs cannot be attacked.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation. Because you can’t actually defend your beliefs, because they’re wrong. Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal. Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything. And yet, you assert that the only reason someone would deviate from that nonsense, incoherent strategy, is if they’re secretly a fascist trying to get the left to act in “silly” ways. If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying. If only there were more people like you in fascist spaces, calling themselves fascists, and telling everyone to set aside their radicalism and fall in line behind whatever the Republican party offers them, then their radicalism would have been diluted and we might have never gotten Trump. That is, if they actually listened to you, which they wouldn’t.
You’re the one who started assigning labels based on your own bias. If we’re assigning labels based on actions then, no, it’s not a classic line. I am independently observing the fact that your behaviors are indistinguishable from theirs. You are the one who opened that line of logic, it is only reasonable to hold you to it.
If you can accept that I am not a liberal, just simply a leftist focused on effective methods, then I can accept that you are not a fascist, just simply a leftist tragically confused by ineffective methods. Otherwise, we are at an impasse. Either we take each other at our word, or we talk past each other with accusations.
Which would be insightful if it was accurate. Never downplayed Gaza, merely compared the two reactions to demonstrate a functional difference. Gaza is being genocided. Democrats have a bad stance, but MAGA is worse. Neither of us have to power to change policy directly, so I did the best I could with my vote: chose bad over worse. That’s not endorsement of the Democratic stance, it’s an attempt at rejecting the MAGA one
Which is a thing I do, to the people perpetuating systemic violence. Complaining about policy to other people equally impotent to change policy isn’t leftism, it’s just ineffective. Calling out actions to those who lack the power to affect those actions does not reduce those actions.
Again, I didn’t do that so your permission is fundamentally wrong.
False. Thereb is direct evidence of bad actors trying to split the view by bemoaning the flaws of Democrats, while remaining suspiciously silent about MAGA. Thus, your similar actions are indistinguishable from these fascist enablers. This is not different in any way.
So you claim. Yet your continue to engage in actions that help fascists. Curious.
Hey, me too.
And here you are revolting against intellectualism to push a counterproductive action. The evidence is stacking.
Fascists are famously more dependent on labels, name-calling, and baseless prejudice than engaging with the content of the argument (note, you still have yet to engage with the argument, you just keep shouting the thought terminating “liberal”). Yet more evidence.
Wrong again.
Would you like to support that claim, or is this just more fascist thought-terminating cliche? Don’t bother, I can guess.
Sounds like someone’s telling on themselves.
Which ones? I’ll happily do so now if I managed to overlook anything resembling a coherent question in your fash-enabling rhetoric.
Again, very wrong. I am a leftist, a real leftist. I care more about implementing leftist policy than online cred. I endorse actions that help the left, like putting the lesser evil in office when good had no chance of winning, in order to make the conditions for meaningful leftist action more favorable. Note I did not favorable, I said more favorable. I do not like the Democrats. I simply recognize that, of the two parties that stand a chance of winning the general election for the near future, they are the less antagonistic.
Yet it risks nothing. Your strategy risks regimes like the current one, the one responsible for all the rebuild of the Democrats and many, many more. Or do we not care about systemic violence when it hurts your side?
Why would a fascist say to vote effectively against fascists? A fascist would want to identify the biggest threat to their hegemony (in this case the only other party capable of winning a presidential race) and discourage people from voting for them. Oh, that seems familiar. Who was doing that again?
It is impossible for you to be a politically competent leftist, dating what you say. No leftist who made your suggestions could be considered politically competent. Any politically competent person who made those suggestions is obviously trying to help the fascists. Leftists voting third party in general elections hurts leftists, and helps fascists.
So, you really have two options:
Are you really a leftist, you just don’t understand politics or elections at all?
Are you politically literate, therefore definitely a fascist, since that’s the only rational motivation for your suggestions?
Or, will you admit that you might be wrong, that leftist infighting is counterproductive, that leftist theory has been written by many parties with differing views on implementation, that different motivations can result in certain similar behaviors, and that maybe dialectic is better than ineffective idealism.
My bet is you keep cosplaying, but there is a chance you choose truth.
tl;dr.
You think I’m a pompous liberal dickhead. I think you’re a sincere idiot who’s helping the left shoot itself in the foot.
We both want the left to win. Our ideas of how that happens differs. So long as we’re at each other’s throats instead of arm in arm against the real enemy, they win.
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Do you think that’s what you’re doing?
From skimming your comment, I believe you said you could cite theory to back up your “vote blue no matter who” position. So please do so. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do this, it’s always just, “it’s obvious” while shutting down any closer examination. Because it is just passively absorbed, unexamined, ruling class ideology.
For the record, my position is largely inspired by Lenin’s “Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?”