i mean they don't have any bargaining chips to work with even if they win the senate because of the Electoral College.
i guess the question now becomes: what do leftists do if the election is contested, if anything at all?
we know chuds will go balistic at the thought of democrats trying to "steal the election", and we already know they're willing and able to commit to violent action. i'm not even talking about the QAnon types or fash, just the regular chuds (although obviously this line is beginning to blur). i cannot imagine a situation like the brooks brothers riot happening in 2020 without actual bloodshed.
liberals - well, they aren't exactly about street action, but they show up to protests. they won't actually do anything, and the past 4 years has shown that trying to radicalize them is like pulling teeth, but you can mobilize them and get them out in the streets.
both groups of those people on a national scale demonstrating against each other is the most obvious powder keg ever.
so the catch 22, at least from my perspective, is this - leftists obviously should be organizing against potential reactionary insurrections in the wake of civil unrest if not just for mutual aid and self-defense in our communities. but also - leftists don't actually owe anything to biden or the democratic party. i'm already visualizing the struggle sessions 2 weeks from now where the entire front page of my twitter feed is people arguing about if whether or not fighting chuds in the street is supporting biden's contested election or something. no easy way out i guess.
i could be completely wrong and the "powder keg" in my head just turns out to be liberals and MAGA hat kids getting into shoving matches outside local city halls across america, but idk, if there was any year where we know things are already ready to pop off, it would be 2020.
If there is an actual attempted coup, it would be like the "Kornilov affair", meaning that a) all left groups should fight against it, and b) assuming we win, left groups will look strong for fighting it, and libs will look weak for not preventing it in the first place.
Realistically though the US left isn't big enough, organized enough, or armed enough to even overcome Chud militias, never mind whatever elements of the military and police side with Trump.
Drawing from history, the best bet is something like what Mao did. He didn't fight the Japanese head on, but waged an effective guerilla war mostly independently of the Nationalists while building a political and military base. Sub in the libs for the nationalists and trumpists for the Japanese.
How do you even fight a coup in a country this big? Which elected official would I even yell at? The capitol is further away from me than Moscow is from Berlin.
a lot of the industrial base is in large cities, russia actually had a similar analog for this, after all they are very similar to america in terms of population distribution. the revolution began in the far spread out cities, mostly the big capitals like petrograd, moscow, and so on. cities like vladivostok even created revolutionary councils but the whites controlled the rural areas and quickly crushed them with american help due to how far away it was from the large metro areas in western russia. so if you live in say, the great plains and maybe the south, shit will probably not look so hot. but the pacific and east coasts would likely light up quickly and organize separately. the heartland would likely be the base of reactionary forces, especially the rocky mountains.
the soviets won the civil war by spreading their control outwards from the cities and into major, important rivers. the mississippi would be a big deal just like it was in the past civil war.
now, if its a simple coup that doesnt escalate into civil war, you can expect america to be very similar to latin american / western countries that had been couped, actually. coup followed up by massive civil action which either escalates into full blown fascism or a delayed ousting and leftists taking over.
The big difference though is that Russia had a combat party - the Bolsheviks, (together with an even larger Social-Revolutionary party making very similar demands) who enjoyed very wide-spread support among the armed forces. Socialism was "in the air" as well, for lack of a better term, as much of the populace supported some sort of hard leftist reforms. None of this exists currently in the US. Arguably the armed forces part will never exist.
i kind of want to post this as an actual question in /c/electorialism or main but i also dont know if i phrased my comment clearly enoyugh to generate discussion.
libs (or at least lib-adjacent people, obviously not the brunch kind) have been doing a lot more fighting than the right. remember the right pretty much didnt do shit while there were still millions of people marching in the streets, and even as it was dying down the right's biggest victory was killing two random people in a small town in wisconson. since then they have not killed one person, and actually lost two guys.
depends - the bourgeoisie really want stability right now and even the opposition faction (primarily energy) has been brought into the democratic tent with the promise of bailouts. we might see the political class unify for the first time in our lifetimes, lol.
orrr, the dems think they have unity, call on the military, and the whole country devolves into a civil war immediately and the democrats become immediately irrelevant again.
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They'll put on quite a show, but definitely not much of a fight.
They will definitely fundraise off of it
RIP my inbox on Nov 4th.
They won't even put on a show.
No they'll put on a show alright. West wing x SNL.
They'll burn him so bad he will have to resign.
i mean they don't have any bargaining chips to work with even if they win the senate because of the Electoral College.
i guess the question now becomes: what do leftists do if the election is contested, if anything at all?
we know chuds will go balistic at the thought of democrats trying to "steal the election", and we already know they're willing and able to commit to violent action. i'm not even talking about the QAnon types or fash, just the regular chuds (although obviously this line is beginning to blur). i cannot imagine a situation like the brooks brothers riot happening in 2020 without actual bloodshed.
liberals - well, they aren't exactly about street action, but they show up to protests. they won't actually do anything, and the past 4 years has shown that trying to radicalize them is like pulling teeth, but you can mobilize them and get them out in the streets.
both groups of those people on a national scale demonstrating against each other is the most obvious powder keg ever.
so the catch 22, at least from my perspective, is this - leftists obviously should be organizing against potential reactionary insurrections in the wake of civil unrest if not just for mutual aid and self-defense in our communities. but also - leftists don't actually owe anything to biden or the democratic party. i'm already visualizing the struggle sessions 2 weeks from now where the entire front page of my twitter feed is people arguing about if whether or not fighting chuds in the street is supporting biden's contested election or something. no easy way out i guess.
i could be completely wrong and the "powder keg" in my head just turns out to be liberals and MAGA hat kids getting into shoving matches outside local city halls across america, but idk, if there was any year where we know things are already ready to pop off, it would be 2020.
If there is an actual attempted coup, it would be like the "Kornilov affair", meaning that a) all left groups should fight against it, and b) assuming we win, left groups will look strong for fighting it, and libs will look weak for not preventing it in the first place.
Realistically though the US left isn't big enough, organized enough, or armed enough to even overcome Chud militias, never mind whatever elements of the military and police side with Trump.
Drawing from history, the best bet is something like what Mao did. He didn't fight the Japanese head on, but waged an effective guerilla war mostly independently of the Nationalists while building a political and military base. Sub in the libs for the nationalists and trumpists for the Japanese.
How do you even fight a coup in a country this big? Which elected official would I even yell at? The capitol is further away from me than Moscow is from Berlin.
a lot of the industrial base is in large cities, russia actually had a similar analog for this, after all they are very similar to america in terms of population distribution. the revolution began in the far spread out cities, mostly the big capitals like petrograd, moscow, and so on. cities like vladivostok even created revolutionary councils but the whites controlled the rural areas and quickly crushed them with american help due to how far away it was from the large metro areas in western russia. so if you live in say, the great plains and maybe the south, shit will probably not look so hot. but the pacific and east coasts would likely light up quickly and organize separately. the heartland would likely be the base of reactionary forces, especially the rocky mountains.
the soviets won the civil war by spreading their control outwards from the cities and into major, important rivers. the mississippi would be a big deal just like it was in the past civil war.
now, if its a simple coup that doesnt escalate into civil war, you can expect america to be very similar to latin american / western countries that had been couped, actually. coup followed up by massive civil action which either escalates into full blown fascism or a delayed ousting and leftists taking over.
The big difference though is that Russia had a combat party - the Bolsheviks, (together with an even larger Social-Revolutionary party making very similar demands) who enjoyed very wide-spread support among the armed forces. Socialism was "in the air" as well, for lack of a better term, as much of the populace supported some sort of hard leftist reforms. None of this exists currently in the US. Arguably the armed forces part will never exist.
i kind of want to post this as an actual question in /c/electorialism or main but i also dont know if i phrased my comment clearly enoyugh to generate discussion.
libs (or at least lib-adjacent people, obviously not the brunch kind) have been doing a lot more fighting than the right. remember the right pretty much didnt do shit while there were still millions of people marching in the streets, and even as it was dying down the right's biggest victory was killing two random people in a small town in wisconson. since then they have not killed one person, and actually lost two guys.
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depends - the bourgeoisie really want stability right now and even the opposition faction (primarily energy) has been brought into the democratic tent with the promise of bailouts. we might see the political class unify for the first time in our lifetimes, lol.
orrr, the dems think they have unity, call on the military, and the whole country devolves into a civil war immediately and the democrats become immediately irrelevant again.
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I feel cursed... :elmofire:
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Afraid so :cursed:
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