Stolen from Trillbillies, "the memories make the man, and honestly the man sucks. Let's convince him he was a maoist in his youth firebombing buildings"
usually dementia takes your recent memories first... so his psyche is doomed to return to McCarthy (if it can ever be said to have left McCarthy in the first place)
See, this would be a much better rhetorical argument (but still shit for material reasons) than anything I've heard from fhe libs. But of course it would never occur to them, because it would rely upon the idea that the cloistered, absurdly privileged, increasingly demented bulwark of the capital class were anything except infallible symbols of superirotiy they shared in.
Out of all of 's smug thought-terminating cliches this one has got to be the worst. Everything they agree with is "common sense" and everyone who disagrees with them lacks it. No need to critically analyze anything you believe, even for two seconds to consider whether or not this """"common sense"""" actually makes sense at all (why would you need to get rid of the GOP to push the Democrats left? If the Dems had no actual competition and thus no pressure to win your votes wouldn't they just do whatever the hell they felt like doing??? Never mind the idea of "voting out the GOP" as if half the country wasn't firmly entrenched red districts). No, I'm always correct, so if you disagree with me you lack common sense.
The “yeah but X is hard” cliche is certainly reddity. Claiming authority over what counts as common sense, well I’ve heard that from all types of people. Heard it plenty in the Southern US arguing with conservatives. Anyone might whip that phrase out when, upon being pushed to justify a political view in the mildest way, they realize they have only a gut feeling or simple programming passed from their parents.
The first step is to convince everyone that we need to hand over our only bargaining chip, immediately. Only after that point can you start making any demands.
See, there are other options on the table, they just don’t like the implication of those options. It’s about maintaining this illusion that the Democrats are a real political party built from member consensus and not a de facto official state party. Any realistic pressure path would require acknowledging the nature of the beast.
Okay let's pretend for a minute this works. You go, vote, the fascists are all out. The dems are now alone, ready to be moved to the left. Then you tell the Dems, alright pal, it's time to move to the left. But the Dems just say "lmfao no". So what's up?
What does he mean by "force", armed leftist insurrection against the remnants of fascism, aka the Democratic Party?
Is there some reasoning that led them to this conclusion? What was that reasoning? What was the evidence that convinced them that this is the order of operations that will work?
"I dont know what happened all those other times, obviously if we push them to the left they'll fold to our pressure, i cant seem to recall what i had for breakfast"
I'm starting to see what people used to mean when they said to look at past movements and "listen to your elders" in regard to protesting and social change.
We repeat the same cycle every 8ish years where an entire age group comes of voting age, and ignores everything that happened before they were 18. It's why we aren't allowed to use Biden's whole record to criticize him or establish a pattern of being a racist, lying sex pest. It's why they still stand on the sidewalks with pithy signs with Harry Potter quotes on them and call it protest.
the Democratic party claims all victories fought by leftist grassroots movements and the Democratic voters believe it, and say tjat all of the strategies that won those battles are too extreme.
What does he mean by "force" them left? The only way to force them to do anything is to threaten to withhold your vote. If we voted out all the GOP and the Dems didn't want to move left, the very next election this guy would be saying "you can't withhold your vote or else the GOP will get back into power". So when is it ever time to force them left??
It’s not just remembering history from before two years ago, sentiments like these betray a deeply flawed understanding of political power.
The problem isn’t that liberals will genuinely believe this process which has never happened in the history of humanity will bear fruit, but that they can’t see the flaw in starting out by reifying the status quo before building a power base against it.
If you like a toxic guy and want to change him, first you have to give him everything he wants and then he will start to love you and become a nice boyfriend.