inevitable but still sucks. what's everyone drinking tonite? i've got a Lamplighter IPA

  • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I think the main takeaway for me is: I don't really care if someone is a Democrat or a lib or whatever. I think the focus for radicalization should be less based on ideology and more about reaching the people who would materially benefit from socialism. I don't think this contradicts any of the points you made or anything, just kinda my two cents.

    I'm in "TRUMP COUNTRY" myself, and you're absolutely right about the dems and their outright disdain for rural folk. I just usually put it more in terms of class than ideology.

    • OhWell [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Thanks for the reply! Nice to meet another southerner down here. Have lived my entire life among rural folk. Libs absolutely hate us cause we all talk as if we're from the movie Forrest Gump and we come from "red states", as if everyone who lives down here votes Republican based on those stupid colored maps.

      The south has the highest poverty in the country and is really ripe for socialism if there is a place anywhere in the US that is begging for a left populist movement. Problem is, our Democrats absolutely fucking suck. I have lived in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana and in all three of those states, I noticed that Dems don't even bother running house district candidates outside the big cities. The cities are their strongholds. They abandoned the rural areas. My house district race right now is between 2 Republicans, as it has been every year since I moved to this place. When I lived in Florida, they didn't put up any house district candidates there outside the big cities. It was a race between two Republicans. They just hand these state elections to the GOP, then they complain and smugly talk down about people in said "red states". My favorite retort they give people online is "well vote more! Vote better Democrats!"

      My family worked in shipyards and seafood and my grandparents could tell you how 50 years ago back in the 70s, the Democrats actually fought for unions and workers rights back then. They actually had some kind of healthcare and their unions were strong. The GOP began to really hurt them in the 80s but the real betrayal according to my grandparents, was the Clinton years of the 90s. That's when the Dems began to entirely abandon the southern states and leave them for the GOP. The book 'What's Going On In Kansas' is a good breakdown of that and the red wave of the 90s when the GOP started taking over those states. The Dems don't believe in a 50 State Strategy, Howard Dean was made out to be crazy when he pushed that idea to them in the 2000s.

      Everything always goes back to the class war. In my state, most of the voter turnout for governor, senator and other state elections comes from older people and middle class income households. Libs have created this narrative that the "white working class" voted for Trump, when in reality, most lower income households don't vote at all and Trump got his biggest support from the middle class and the higher ups on the the wealth ladder, which makes 100% sense.

      • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, I hear ya comrade. Libs always blame the sticks for their woes, despite that the suburbs are the traditional Republican strong holds. What's cool is most hicks I know hate the Democrats right fucking back, lol.

        For good reason.