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Can the "leftists" in the room start pushing actionable rhetoric?
I agree that we should do something about the oligarchy too.
Maybe the liberal leaders that keep hogging the mic every local protest should give directions to the largest group of protesters in American history.
I dont know, I think there is nothing but dead air from the liberal side. Its gross. More messaging for the DNC comes from nobodies like me then from the party itself. Sure I might be more authentic but ffs Im just one dude.
I watch the news cycle and you can basically tell when the GOP are gearing up because its just dead silence on the platforms I visit. Now, not "dead silence". There are your typical memes, news articles, and reposts but never anything from the dnc itself. No top down messaging; no platforming small creators; no baiting of the right. What the DNC has done is made these strile online environments where the right can constantly come in and, basically, disturb the peace.
It has become so insane that now the far left is doing it too. Show me one leftist who will get in the same beat down brawls they do on this site, do that on Facebook, Twitter, or Truth. They cant because they've been expelled from those places.
Im ranting too much and getting to in my own head. This is just what I see.
The DNC is rudderless and has no media strategy. Their only media guys think they need to turn right wingers into left wingers and it just doesn't work. If trump didnt flip you, youre never leaving the right.
We need to take the DNC over from the inside. We need to primary all of them.
Primary elections in general have a ridiculously low turnout rate, and that's the first place the battle must be waged.
I am also weary of Bernie's endless calls to do this or that while not specifying any way of doing it. I certainly don't expect him to do anything more, he's already made a much larger impact than most individuals ever can or will. But that entire tour with AoC kind of felt like only half of a useful thing. We all know it's a problem. We all want to put a stop to it. But nobody knows how, that's what's missing. What do you want us to do, Bernie?!? Vote in the primaries, I guess? Would be nice if the next steps were included in the message to take action. Like an instant macaroni box whose instructions just say "You must make the macaroni!", it feels a bit silly.
Damn it, now I am going to put on a Bernie voice and shout “you must make the macaroni!” next time I’m making some mac and cheese.
If he said what needs to be done, he'd be imprisoned immediately for inciting violence against the president, and for planning a coup. Until he has troops on his side, he can not tell you what actually has to happen.
We already know what needs to be done, we just aren't allowed to talk about it.
The Tree of Liberty is thirsty.
Hear hear. When I look at the state of American democracy from outside, what I find really distressing is that it's not just Bernie; no mainstream person or organization with national reach is giving concrete advice and/or instructions on how to depose the oligarchy, so you have people's energy going to angry tweets and meaningless parades.
But how would they go about it? The system is so entrenched. Anything socialist is considered 'commie' and anti-american, a sentiment carefully cultivated since WWII. The two party system that relies on huge donations means the oligarchy has a huge input in politics no matter which party wins. The only thing that's being decided is which oligarchs will rule.
There's just no way to turn this around until things get bad enough that they can't hold the floodgates anymore. America is (fortunately for the little man who would suffer the most) still far from that.
what I find really distressing is that it’s not just Bernie; no mainstream person or organization with national reach is giving concrete advice and/or instructions on how to depose the oligarchy
What instructions are you looking for, exactly? Like, what are the instructions that 'should' be handed out at this point?
There's no simple, easy, or quick solution to this, and since the election, things have gotten considerably worse on the 'possible solutions' front. Calls to organize and seek alternatives to oligarch-controlled resources are the groundwork which orgs constantly call for but no one fucking heeds. So what're the instructions that will provide the solution that those calls haven't?
There's no simple, easy, or quick solution to this, and since the election, things have gotten considerably worse on the 'possible solutions' front.
Yeah of course, which is why someone needs to be out there convincing people to do the things that aren't simple, easy or quick.
Calls to organize and seek alternatives to oligarch-controlled resources are the groundwork which orgs constantly call for but no one fucking heeds.
That's why I qualified my remark with "mainstream". I'm talking Bernie-like figures who are widely known and respected by liberals. Unless I'm mistaken that segment of the population still thinks elections and phone calls to Congressmen are going to fix this.
So what're the instructions that will provide the solution that those calls haven't?
As I said above the problem is that the right people aren't providing those instructions, but also: strike, strike, strike. I'm getting past the point where I can make authoritative-sounding statements, but I find it really weird that what is arguably the strongest weapon in the working class's arsenal is barely being talked about. Yes I know groundwork is necessary for that (though I'd argue it's not nearly as much as commonly thought), but still someone needs to get the conversation from "strike? But my job/insurance/whatever!" to "how do we make it possible," and at least from my position outside America I haven't heard of anything on this front.
I get this feeling when I watch Jon Oliver. Jon's really good at identifying the problem, demonstrating why its a problem, and making you kind of upset about it.
God forbid you ever watched Jon Oliver back to back because you'd go mad with the immediate understanding that you live in bizzaro world.
So, it would be nice if HBO had a second show which was more like myth busters where people championed each of the problems Jon pointed out and left the viewer with a clear understanding what they can do or at the least, what can be done.
I do think that "the system" (not any particular person or group of people, but the more abstract social meta-organism) is evolved, all systems are, to integrate and channel possible destabilizing forces into neutralized or even system-reaffirming forces. The system does not "platform" people who would legitimately threaten the system as a general rule. Jon Oliver is a pressure release valve, if he was to propose solutions that threatened to alter the system too much (systems see significant alterations as akin to death), he would be deplatformed organically. Again, I must stress that it is not an actual person or organization explicitly setting out to do this, like some sort of shady Comedy Central Illuminati. It's just the same as how our body has a bunch of independent organs and cells that all work together without exactly trying to or knowing that they're doing so.
Unfortunately Bernie is largely the same sort of thing. We can be assured of this by the fact that he is influential. Almost without exception, the more influential someone wants to be, the more pro-systemic they must be. In Bernie's case he may not even realize how pro-systemic he is, he likely sees himself as more anti-systemic. But he is anti-systemic in the same way as a white blood cell is anti-systemic - that is, not at all, and only in appearance without inspection of the bigger picture. I suspect this is why he ends up not proposing any clear course of action. His role, although again I think he is unaware of this, is to create the sense that establishment dissent exists and is possible, that change and reform is possible. I say this without taking a stance on whether it is actually possible or not. Both in a system where it is possible and in a system where it is not possible, there would still be a flag bearer for that possibility regardless of its actual existence.
What I mean to say is that the system self-selects for the type of people who acknowledge problems but not the type of people who make proposals to fix them. It wants to appear to be investigating the desires of its constituents while not actually doing so - the system only cares about its constituents in so far as its constituents lead to the system's well-being as a whole. The system does not intrinsically care for its constituents well-being. So while systems do indeed evolve and legitimately investigate ways to improve their own well-being, they will only appear to investigate ways to approve the well-being of their constituents, if they can help it.
All just my impressions of course, I hate talking in an authoritative voice about my ideas, but it's better than prefacing every sentence with "I think", "it seems like", etc.
He does try to give a solution. It's just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen. Sadly, that is just the way it is. Same with Bernie. We actually can't make the solutions happen. But both are raising public awareness, which "can" impact policy. So I guess watching and listening is what we can do.
...and if nothing else, documenting what is being done, if it will ever come to a point where it can be turned around.
There's a reason the Nazis paved over and planted fucking trees on as many concentration camps they possibly could before they got overrun.
Yeah I love it when he provides solutions.