OrthodoxEaster wrote: Fri Oct 25, 2024 11:06 am (I should know, b/c daily life in my own NYC cultural bubble also probably won't change a ton either way b/c of the presidential election.)

You reckon? I'm not convinced this time. If that lot get in, I reckon the country will be on the end of it from coast to coast.

Years of this shit and impending doom because we are forced to have this ridiculous system that can afford massive amounts of power over hundreds of millions to one person. So much could be prevented if someone just kills that fucker.

Hex wrote: Fri Oct 25, 2024 2:12 pm Years of this shit and impending doom because we are forced to have this ridiculous system that can afford massive amounts of power over hundreds of millions to one person.

The system gives equal power to Biden too.
It’s just that trump has more influence.

So much could be prevented if someone just kills that fucker.

such as?

I don’t want Biden to have that power either! I don’t want *anyone* to have so much power and I think the vast majority of humans on the planet are insane for thinking it’s acceptable.

Do you actually think if Trump was put out of commission that the GOP would win the election? They have no one else that would be nearly as popular

Hex wrote: Fri Oct 25, 2024 2:41 pm Do you actually think if Trump was put out of commission that the GOP would win the election? They have no one else that would be nearly as popular

As popular as trump, no
As popular as Harris, easily

But my question was rhetorical. Feel free to ignore it and not say anything you’d rather not say publicly.

Just flip onto European politics, this interview with Sahra Wagenknecht is pretty great. I find her analysis pretty compelling. Most of what I’ve been reading is filtered through the liberal media. Her actual positions called out as “controversial” in papers like the Guardian are way less so than reported and have a strong intellectual base. Example, her position on immigration is quite sensible and part of a strong antiracist argument. Liberal commentators seem to thing any discussion around management of immigration is immediately “rightwing”. Her argument for it seems rooted in a leftist critique of neoliberal immigration policy. It’s very Germany specific but I think there’s a lot of lessons for other left wing parties. It definitely fits into my “yes, and…” position on politics, appeal to the widest base with headline policies and bring everyone up with you.

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii146/ ... of-germany

Gramsci wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2024 3:25 am https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii146/ ... of-germany

Only good thing here is the stuff about reimbursing country-of-origin education costs for immigrant professionals. She has it all backwards on Ukraine (provocation, proxy war) so any plan she has for "negotiated peace" isn't reliable at all.

How she talks about immigration here is word-for-word the Sweden Democrats programme before they even got into parliament. At the time the political spectrum from radical-left to centre-right positioned themselves solidly against this, declaring that this is not the kind of country that we represent, our vision is different. People can change their mind of course, but in this case it's a capitulation to a position already articulated more than a decade ago, presented as if it's staying true to principle. Not to mention that mainstream political parties over this period have themselves compromised and turned around on this question in various ways, so it simply isn't true that BSW would be the first ones to truly consider these demands.

Also like the Sweden Democrats, while the immigration stance captures most of the attention, a reactionary cultural politics slides by in the background, complete with rhetoric against wokeness and university-educated unpatriotic parasites, etc.

I do love how the Euro-American left-populism arc has taken us from "no these voters aren't actually anti-immigration or social-conservative at all, they are voting for these parties for completely different reasons, let's focus on those", to "yeah these voters are totally anti-immigration and social-conservative, and we need to put those policies front and centre".

kokorodoko wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2024 8:12 am She has it all backwards on Ukraine (provocation, proxy war) so any plan she has for "negotiated peace" isn't reliable at all.

You can deny it all you want, but it doesn't stop it being true.

Curry Pervert wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2024 11:43 am

kokorodoko wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2024 8:12 am She has it all backwards on Ukraine (provocation, proxy war) so any plan she has for "negotiated peace" isn't reliable at all.

You can deny it all you want, but it doesn't stop it being true.

You have no clue and you don't even have a foundation to make judgements from.

There is an ongoing invasion (since 2014, full-scale since 2022) in which you are siding with the invader, and also telling a story that the invader is in fact the one being invaded.