The jokerification is real! However, personally I think it shows how Americans in general don’t understand politics on a basic level. For both reasons that make and don’t make senses, American political education is pretty minimal. Most people don’t even know what “conservatism” and “liberalism” even mean outside of cultural context let alone anything outside of those two points.
I cannot imagine the average American knowing what Communism is. They probably just think it’s what slightly alternative women at their local Starbucks look like.
It’s really saddening that super basic stuff is lost upon so much of American citizenry. It’s not entirely their fault either. I don’t absolve them (or myself) for not knowing about how their lives are impacted by politics but we have a system that rewards them of ignorance of political anything. It’s just so enraging.
So many people have never seen politics “do” anything in their lives so they can’t even point to a thing that they can attribute to their own minimal understanding of politics (aside from some of the MAGA mutants saying stuff like he built the wall or whatever). The donkey blues especially do their best to obfuscate their name on things, whereas the elephant reds tag their logo on anything vaguely connected to their base’s politics. Aside from the police state and war machine, people don’t really think politics do anything.
American politics are devoid of politics which is one of the most political things I can imagine. That’s what gets me putting on the joker face paint
In the US, leftism is synonymous with the democratic party. One of the biggest problems socialists have is continuing to hitch themselves to the Dems, rather than positioning themselves as qualitatively different.
This is a problem kinda baked into the current US left which was largely activated by Bernie who ran in the democratic primary.
We socialists need to find ways to make it clear that we're something else.
you honestly think American's aversion to the Democratic party is because of some vague idea about 'liberals' and 'elites' but they hate actual leftists far more than suited libs and no amount of hand wringing over material conditions is gonig to wrangle culture war away from Americans.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I think your point is that socialists are more disliked than dems.
My main point is that socialism being a "bad brand" in the US isn't a reason to hitch ourselves to the Dems or to try to do Dem entryism.
If you don't think there's a way that US culture war ends or you don't think there's a way of circumventing it (whether thru labor, tenant organizing, electorally etc), then you don't think socialist politics are possible in the US.
I don't have the silver bullet solution.
However, one thing is to be vocal about opposition to Dems and about being socialists ourselves, stating how that matters in relevant ways. Not everyone can do that, but those of us who can should.
I hadn't really heard of Bernie before 2016. When I found out he was a Socialist, I was like, WTF is he doing running in the Democrat primary? They're a different party! They're going to allow an outsider to win their nomination?
And then the Democrats rigged the primary and stole it from him. Well that answered that question. They even argued in court, and won, saying that they were a private company that didn't have to respect the results of any election, they could appoint whomever they like to their nomination. And then they nominated the only person who could ever lose to Trump.
After ww2, communism slowly became equated to the democratic party - leading to the democrat party purging itself until nothing was left except old guard new dealers that capitulated to capital at the slightest hint of red baiting and the new generation of corporate lobbyist clintonite "triangulators" that continues the purge of their left wing even when that left wing no longer exists and they're simply purging conservatives that think rocking the boat by gutting Medicare or social security may sink their popularity
The only button they have is “Purge the left” so they just keep pressing it
I know what you mean. I've just become a doomer about leftism in :amerikkka:
anything bad = communism to the warped, abused american mind.
there's a whole lot of bad right now, ergo full communism is nigh.
Media delenda est
