Dave N. wrote: Wed Apr 23, 2025 1:02 pm One of many lessons the Southern red states will be getting during King Shitgibbon’s second reign. Hopes and prayers for a tame hurricane season!

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2025 ... mp-says-no

What Happens When Everything Becomes a Meme?"And this is a swing here - but what we seem to be left with is an infrastructure of incelism1 - not as some internet phenomenon, but as society’s default operating system. Incelism is a subculture of people who “define themselves as unable to find a romantic partner” which translates into '“resentment and hatred, self-pity, racism, misogyny, and misanthropy”. I think we are seeing some scaffolding of that applied to the commons - isolation, outsourced cognition, flattened identities, and performative grievance become profitable norms. It’s governance and culture via meme, resentment, and algorithm-driven outrage."

Dave N. wrote: Wed Apr 23, 2025 1:02 pm One of many lessons the Southern red states will be getting during King Shitgibbon’s second reign. Hopes and prayers for a tame hurricane season!

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2025 ... mp-says-no

losthighway wrote: Thu Apr 17, 2025 1:58 pm

Gramsci wrote: Thu Apr 17, 2025 12:01 pm

cakes wrote: Thu Apr 17, 2025 8:36 am Chris Hedges recently said that he believes that we live in the idea of democracy, but it hasn't been a real democracy in a while. The election was Corporatists vs Oligarchs. Corporatists want stability and Oligarchs want chaos. Obviously, the Oligarchs won. But it's hard to deny that Hedges' assessment is correct.

I’ve regarded most western democracies as “managed democracies” for as long as I’ve been politically engaged. The whole system seems to act as a great filter to manage the Overton Window of what’s possible. Generally there is a “there is no alternative” position even among the most liberal mainstream media outlets and think tanks.
There is an idea of how our systems are supposed to operate freely. You engage through political parties and work place unions to shape the party which then goes to the country and enters the Marketplace of Ideas. Then the best ideas win and we’re all happy.
This never happens because the Great Filter stops it. So yes, we all live in the idea of democracy.

Not to get all centrist, but a certain degree of inertia can be good. I see both the current Trump presidency (he would have lost the first under popular vote), and Brexit as the result of a voting majority making really bad choices. Some shade of representative democracy can cushion against radical stupidity. We all also know it can cushion agains economic justice, so I won't pretend I have great answers here either.