It’s a situation that I have been expecting for a while, but I wasn’t fully ready to accept it. Specifically it’s one of my LGBTQ friends who honestly believes in the democrats will protect them and their partner. I have tried to make the point that both parties are eroding any sort of civility towards all marginalized groups, but fear seems to drive them more than logical observations. They make the excuse that change doesn’t happen over night and that the left continues to grow and will have meaningful affects down the road. I fundamentally just don’t agree with that idea and vocalize it regularly. More and more it is ending up in a circular argument where I am painted as unrealistic and my rhetoric (leftist rhetoric) is doing more harm than good because it promotes distrust in the only system we have to work with. I try to tell them it’s kind of the whole point. We gotta start somewhere if we want to see a better, more representative system, but they are so hung up on the immediate future while simultaneously saying that my idealistic feelings are shortsighted and I cant expect change in the immediate future… The double-talk is wild, I know.
I am trying my hardest to stop from engaging at this point because on the most basic level we agree on a lot of stuff, but they are just way to wrapped up in the fear mongering of the democratic party. They know that the two party system is broken, they know that something drastic needs to change, but they also think that they are powerless to do anything except choose the lesser evil. It pains me because I am watching them do the same shit past generations have done, where they give up on their ideals for the sake of preserving the current status quo that they benefit from. I am legitimately watching them imply “fuck you, got mine” under the guise of civic duty and I hate it. I want nothing more than to be able to finally say “I told you so” without being a smug asshole about it and ruining our friendship.
Thanks for reading my rant. It’s probably a bit disjointed, but the frustration is boiling over and I needed to vent to the only group of people that seems to understand the hopelessness of being a disenfranchised leftist.
but in the meantime it’s gonna hold together the country
Have you considered that Kamala’s worthless neo liberal economic policy, racist border policy, and hawkish right wing foreign policy will ensure fascism? A vote for for Kamala is a vote for 4 years of stagnant decline and imperial embarrassment that brought about trump in the first place, ripe for a competent fascist to step in
Go on with the downvotes, I don’t care
Libs consider this bravery
Racist border policy?
By voting third party you’re helping the man who built a fucking wall next to Mexico, and you are also helping him deregulate every single industry that’s willing to give him money, creating an economic policy that’s far worse then you could ever imagine. Your vote for a third party isn’t showing any support to anyone whatsoever right now, it’s just helping Trump.
By supporting Dems you’re helping the party that literally helped build a fucking wall next to Mexico, proposed hundreds of millions for expanding it, deregulate every single industry that’s willing to give them money, oversaw the destruction of Roe v Wade, and countless billions on funding genocide and overseas war. The Democrats are trying to create a whole new border agency dedicated to ripping people out of their homes, just to prove how hard they are on immigration. Your support for Dems isn’t showing any support to anyone whatsoever right now, it’s just helping genocide and oppression.
No one helped Trump more than the Democrats. That is on THEM, not us. They Pied Piper Strategy.
They then use Trump as a shield to do their reich wing fascist ratchet effect bullshit anyways - much like you are doing using
Democrats full hearted embrace of genocidal policies and the Bush/Cheney PNAC forever war doctorine and it’s wealthy bribers and fanatical zealots in the military industial complex is helping Trump. It’s complete dismissal / persecution of peace activists, and looking the other way while state after state criminalized LGBTQ+ rights doing NOTHING while they have the presidency and Senate.
The next will be “oh but they need full control” - look at how useless they are in California where they have a veto proof super majority, the world’s 5th largest economy, and refuse to pass a universal healthcare system (Calcare). Look at when Obama had his and said Abortion wasn’t a priority - or the last 50 years that they could have codified it into law.
Obama campaigned on fixing the Bush Chney disaster and then did everything they did and worse .
It took activists going against the DNC and the DC advocacy orgs like HRC to push lawsuits via grassroots to get gay marraige through. The DC orgs are designed to kick the can down the road as long as possible milking the issue …“being pragmatic” while they go to cocktail parties and fancy galas with your donations. We had to force the Deboer vs Snyder issue. to the supreme court. The GoFundMe page, while inactive now, is still up for historical reasons.
The activists forcing the issue of marriage outside of the “pragmatic change is slow” has become a UofM case study (PDF) DeBoer v. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation and Social Reform
Biden can stop the genocide by cutting off the arms flow. The Democrats should have been codifying trans rights into federal law instead of letting the Republicans and their pseudoscience fascists go ALEC cookie cutter across flyover country. was more concerned about making Ukkkraine a burn pit dumping ground for arms and genociding Palestine than the rights of his own people.
But at least Michelle Obama gives hugs and chocolate kisses to GW Bush and Liz and Dick Cheney endoreses Kopmala. They’ll probably rehabilitate Trump at some point down the line when their next Frankenstein’s monster they helped prop up needs civility.
Genocide should be red line, not one you compromise with or use Trump as a shield or comfort blanket. And if the Democrats have an issue with people not holding their nose for the unpteenth time because the abusive relationship has gone too far then that is on the Democrats. Simple policy things that they are fully in control of that can change NOW. Kamala Harris has shown no remorse for genocide. She has shown every intention for continued support of genocide.
Then there’s this whole firced Red Scare 3.0 evil Russia / China bullshit they stsrted in 2015 too. Probably a new Lavender Scare to accompany it is why they look the other way o LGBTQ rights under attack. They can fuck off with that. Russia and China are economc competitors they are not our mortal enemy. They want resources? Make a deal rather than spend trillions in saber rattling and arms races. Idiots going to get us all killed.
If they lose then that is on THEM not us. We tried a last gasp of saving the party from itself in 2016 after DECADES of playing the hold the nose lesser evil game. No more. Don’t blame 3rd parties. That’s the fault of Democrats becoming the party of Bush and Cheney. That’s the appointed the son of a CIA director with Cheney, who is now oh so cuddles with the Democrats. So that’s all moot, they became Bush and Cheney anyways - and they will become Trump lovers next.
The Democrats will never move to the left again. You must realize this.
If Trump wins - he is term limited. Most likely the Dems will recover a branch in 2026 effectively lame ducking Trump. Then in 2028 you get a non-incumbant election with the dems set up like Obama 2008 was. Even if they do they’ll squander it and learn nothing.
nice counter arguments
Jesus fucking christ you are dumber than a doorknob. Go back to reddit where they pretend to give a shit about civility. An ad hominem isn’t “when someone insults you” you massive dumbass, you fool, you bufoon. Go back to school. An ad homimen is when you tie the character of a person (in your case that would be “poor”) to the quality of their argument (in your case your arguments are also poor, though this has nothing to do with you as a person,) as a way to discredit them instead of refuting them. “You are an idiot and therefore your argument is idiotic” <- That’s an ad hominem!
In case you’re wondering this also isn’t an ad hominem, though it’s a fallacy of some kind. Insulting you is just an insult, you hollow log of a person. Learn what fallacies are and eat shit and die
man up
Kamala isn’t perfect
Kamala is happily enabling a genocide and wants the American armed forces to be “the most lethal” in the world.
and then you have 4 years to organize and vote for a better party
I heard this before 2012. And before 2016. And before 2020. I no longer buy the argument.
Go on with the downvotes, I don’t care
We here at hexbear can’t downvote. You probably will get/have gotten some downvotes, but they haven’t been from hexbear.
I heard this before 2012. And before 2016. And before 2020. I no longer buy the argument.
You failed to organize. The 4 years were given to you, and you (as in the commies living in the US) failed. Time to practice harm reduction and avoid Trump. I’m not from the US nor do I live there, so there’s not much I can do.
Kamala is happily enabling a genocide and wants the American armed forces to be “the most lethal” in the world.
And Trump wants to do both that AND a genocide inside the country towards LGBTQ people, women, and black/Hispanic people in general.
Which do you prefer?
EDIT: just now, browsing Lemmy, I came across this article to further prove my point https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/17/trump-wins-elections-outcomes-stakes
We here at hexbear can’t downvote.
And that’s my bad for not knowing it. Sorry.
If it’s because of the implied gender, I’m also sorry and should have chosen a better expression. If it’s for the meaning, think again. Not everything is perfect in life and sometimes you need to make compromises. Learn now before it’s too late
Which do you prefer
I prefer the reality where liberals like you grow a spine and understand that genocide is a red line that you can never excuse without selling your soul. The people who Biden is killing are real people with experiences, emotion, families, internal lives, dreams, and soul. They aren’t NPCs or numbers on a screen to be weighed against in some demented cost benefit analysis. To ignore their plight is to ignore your humanity. The hypothetical continuation of the genocide does not excuse your support for the current actually existing genocide.
I’m sick of arguing with people about electoral politics, so let me just ignore most of your response and address only the end, because maybe I can make a positive difference to your worldview there.
The issue with the phrase “man up” is not only that it implies your interlocutor is a certain gender. That’s a bit of an issue, sure, because assuming men are the default humans is pretty misogynist. However, the real misogyny of the phrase is much more insidious than just assuming everyone is a man. What the phrase “man up” does is inextricably tie strength of character to manhood and masculinity. And that’s misogynist tripe. Womanhood and femininity have as much strength inherent in them as manhood and masculinity. Men are not morally stronger than women, so exhorting someone to moral strength by telling them to be more like a man is full on misogyny. Yes, it’s the type that’s so normalized in our culture that you can be forgiven for not seeing it, especially if you yourself are a man (which you may or may not be, I don’t know). But please, excise the phrase “man up” from your vocabulary.
and the whole country is on the tipping point of becoming a fascist regime.
Why would I, a red fascist hate this?
People have been making your argument for decades. Every single fucking election it’s widely claimed we’re on the “tipping point”, people everywhere said it last time with Trump, and what did he do when he got into power? Largely just continued the status quo of making everything gradually worse.
If anyone thinks voting remotely matters and they want change, they should vote third party. But as always, I don’t think voting will change anything no matter what.
Take half the fucking effort you put into this “Vote for genociders or get fascism” shit and put it into organising or direct action.
people constantly claim we’re on the tipping point because we are. Project 2025 has planned out every single step to ruin the country for everyone but the 1%, and if Trump can’t make it, someone else will. Last time Trump was unorganized and still caused massive chaos (Jan 6? Mexico wall anyone?). Republicans need to only win once to turn everything for the worse, and you are literally helping them. You had 4 years to get people to vote third party, and you failed. Now is time for harm reduction. Vote blue, especially if you’re in one of the swing states, and help everyone out like a true commie.
Take half the fucking effort you put into this “Vote for genociders or get fascism” shit and put it into organising or direct action.
I don’t live in the US, it was your (as in the commie people living there) job to organize, I just care about people’s well-being in general and recognize Trump’s distopian hellscape.
Kamala isn’t perfect, nobody is, not even you, but it’s currently the best chance America has.
Trump did bad things. So have the Dems. And sincerely describing someone who actively supports genocide as “not perfect” just shows what a disingenuous lib you are. Your version of “harm reduction” has, for decades, done nothing but emphasize and prolong the harm.
I don’t live in the US either. I just care about people’s wellbeing in general. You should recognise that literally wherever on the planet you live, that organising and doing direct action would be more productive than telling people anywhere that voting matters. What a fucking waste of political energy.
people constantly claim we’re on the tipping point because we are.
That’s what they said the last time and the time before that and that and that and that and that and that. There’s alwys something that makes it so we just have to accept this rotten dog of a candidate. If the rule you followed has brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
Furthermore whenever the dems do win, what is said of the left? “Oh turns out we didn’t need them at all!” What happens when they lose? Then it is the fault of the left. We were on the tipping point last time as well and the dems have had 4 years to do something about it, you failed. Why should we vote for someone who will do nothing to take us back from the alleged brink we’re at?
You had 4 years to get people to vote third party, and you failed.
The country was on the precipice of destruction last election and the one before that and so on. The dems have had decades to pull us back from the alleged brink. They have now had 4 years in power, yet here we are once again. You failed. The dems are looking to lose to Donald Trump, yet somehow we failed? The dems lost a massive lead to Donald Trump, you failed. If you are a realist, then accept reality.
Why should people vote for a party that constantly cries wolf, yet never does anything about the wolf apart from copying the wolfs’ policies, working with the wolf, calling for bipartisanship with the wolf party, bragging about how much more wolf-like they are than the wolf party and so on?
There’s plenty of people voting third party or voting uncommited or abstaining from voting. Seems to me it has worked out completely well. I can imagine it’s hard to understand when you are only ever thinking about the current election and never what happened in the past or what the future brings, but most things aren’t done in a few years. I’m honestly impressed with how these movements are developing, considering the amount of ratfucking they’ve been subjected to.
Vote blue, especially if you’re in one of the swing states, and help everyone out like a true commie.
You really do not understand politics, do you?
Kamala isn’t perfect, nobody is, not even you, but it’s currently the best chance America has.
Did you think you had something here? “Nobody is perfect” is the dems ole-faithful. You can’t go pobodys nerfect about genocide.
man up
Trump has a very high chance of winning, and the whole country is on the tipping point of becoming a fascist regime.
Check
Can you please use your brain
Check
I can’t believe you just came in here and roleplayed the exact lib mentality that the thread has been about…
Libs really don’t have any self awareness.
Go on with the downvotes, I don’t care
For what it’s worth, Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes, so peddle your Reddit tripes somewhere else please. Also, you do care otherwise you wouldn’t mention it.
More and more it is ending up in a circular argument where I am painted as unrealistic and my rhetoric (leftist rhetoric) is doing more harm than good because it promotes distrust in the only system we have to work with.
As much as I hate conservatives, you can at least level with them on the front of not trusting their government. They end up as hypocrites and fall in line with any real challenge to American hegemony, however, you can at least get them to admit the system doesn’t function well for everyone.
Cut ties with everyone who watches corporate media (i.e. regularly ingests Western propaganda) during campaign seasons. Don’t waste your sanity on people participating in synthetic social hysteria.
You can probably talk to them again a month after the election - especially if their preferred capitalist oligarch “wins”.
Honest question: How do people reconcile their approaches to these situations with what Combat Liberalism instructs? Because Mao says fuck your discomfort and yell at people.
All of american society is set up to sitfle your voice. You can be uncomfortable and yell at them but every other person they know, all of the media they consume, and every interaction they have throughout the day is set up to reinforce you’re just a crazy hippy or something and the correct answer is to consume and subjugate.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it but the best that you can hope for is they brush you off and then encounter some especially stark contradictions in the next few hours that makes them consider what you said might have a point.
But then the 6 o clock local news, 2 hours of pr8metime TV and then every late night show is gonna try to convince them that’s just some weird coincidence.
But that brief moment where they thought “huh this sure seems exactly like what that looney lefty of a friend of mine described earlier” is about our only on ramp and it’s important that idea is planted before they encounter a contradictions and some chud tells them its because of immigrants.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read Combat Liberalism, but I thought the context of that was for disputes between people in the same party or organization. If it’s someone who’s a friend but otherwise isn’t struggling alongside you to build communism, I’m not sure what the point of being super insistent on ideological correctness would be.
I haven’t read Combat Liberalism (and should), but FWIW I think I’d say Mao’s circumstances naturally were also very different in context- it’s one thing to say it in the global south, in genuinely brutalized and colonized countries where the masses can be receptive on some level, and another to say it in the heart of empire, surrounded by all those who have benefited from or see their lot as tied with that of the empire (also with a lot of colonized peoples- but even then with varying degrees of similar issues).
I’d say Mao was right, anyways. Fuck the discomfort… but then also we are all only human. We can yell all we want, I’ve stuck my neck out and gotten into arguments myself, but end of the day we know we’re swimming upstream, perhaps even trying to swim up a waterfall- not to say it can’t be done, nor to support defeatism, but our energy is finite, self-preservation on some level is valid (supporting the genocide however is wholly invalid and those who do will deserve what they get), and picking and choosing our fights is not only valid, but can be the better strategy (finding receptive audiences, using our energy elsewhere or going where we can actually contribute) than butting our heads up against a wall. If seeing industrial genocide cannot successfully appeal to someone’s humanity, nothing will- perhaps the material conditions in the future will be such that they will come to us all the same, or perhaps they will be worn down further still, but what can be said to those supporting, even if due to “lesser evil” bullshit, such atrocities?
It’ll only take a few minutes (for real, it’s less than 1000 words)! Link
Thanks! Having read it now it is- interesting. Good and unquestionably principles everyone should seek to follow, yet also of course a call to constant self-crit and what I’d call irreligious, tangible, revolutionary virtue.
I’d never really considered such behaviors liberalism, but it’s food for thought (and I don’t disagree with it). Of course, considering all that is listed, there is no one who doesn’t err or who will not err in due time, but it’s a means of bettering yourself, society, and protecting the integrity of the revolution or of any org, I suppose. It’s definitely something that will be sticking with me.
We live in different times than Mao. I don’t have an answer but it is that which should inform your praxis, not book worship, as it were.
Combat liberalism is more of a list of Mao’s personal grievances in the human condition/behaviour under the label of liberalism than anything else. It’s a short text written in the context of instilling party discipline then anything else.
There’s a uniting theme in all of the behaviors he highlights of a sort of moral flippancy, of regarding a decision as basically indifferent and then just picking the option you want instead of picking what is best. It makes sense to call this self-entitled version of freedom, where you are not obliged to act rightly but merely fulfill some set of requirements and then have free reign in the rest of it, “liberalism,” because that is exactly what many liberal moral frameworks look like, especially the more politically-involved ones (like social contract theory).
Yes, there is a theme that is about subordinating personal advancement (a more liberal tendency) to development of the cadre / party (a more revolutionary tendency). But it is still very focused on that attempt to assert discipline over the cadres/party. Some of the advice is actually toxic to follow in other contexts. For example, I know many proto-MLMs that really take the “you better tell everyone when they are wrong instead of talking about it secretly, that is liberal and advancing yourself” thing to heart and they criticize the crap out of each other to allegedly create “unity” but it actually makes people hate each other. They completely miss how to develop constructive political education in the party because they are interpreting Combat Liberalism as Mao’s Guide to Party Behavior, but it isn’t even that. The meaning of that line is really more like, “hey you behind-my-back shittalkers tell it to our faces so we can hash it out and minimize factions” and not “you should focus on criticizing in full membership meetings and never air a criticism privately or sit in it for a while”.
Mao does not actually say yell at people and burning all available bridges in self-righteous fits of anger instead of searching for ways to interact constructively with people is closer to being what he regarded as liberalism, being that it can be described as “venting personal spite”. That segment, like most of them, only applies to intraparty affairs, but that’s why I said “closer to”. All he says about extraparty interaction is that you should continuously agitate and propagandize.
This is me in my relationship right now. It’s tough. 😔 Don’t have a lot to say, except I empathize.
