Spent last night arguing with my liberal friends about Dems failing to pass min wage. Argued from the center left. Said Dem leadership needs to get its shit together and start getting the party in line. Otherwise theyre getting bodied in 2022 and never getting back in. They flipped out on me. Saying I was advocating for them to be just like Trump and the republicans.
Ive genuinely given up on them. I just dont get it. I dont know what to do. We're all queer and disabled. One of them constantly goes to protests and participates in her community. This wasn't even one of my hard left points. Like how the Dems are all psychos. Or the entire system is rigged. It was a genuine good faith argument about how the Dems need to change or we're gonna die. Im at a loss. How can you fix this?
Large portions of the US population has been conditioned to only accept discourse that falls within the overton window of US politics.
Libs seem to think that a better world simply isn't possible and what we have is the best you can realistically ask for.
As far as un-brainworming them I don't know if it's possible. Because they have fully internalized a failing ideology that they consider successful because it wins elections sometimes. But this success is about upholding the status quo, only to be confused and outraged when people don't turn out to help them win again.
The most ridiculous thing I always see from liberals is that they believe that once they win power they think they will win forever. Their stances on "change needs to happen slowly" only make sense if they were to win every time.
Edit: I would like to add that if an abusive relationship was a political ideology it would be Liberalism. They constantly swoon for conservative approval. They cum their pants when a conservative agrees with them. Cry how mean and cruel conservatives are, yet come running back to them hoping that they will be loved. When liberals win, they are always a single moment away of welcoming conservatives back with open arms thinking "this time will be different, they finally care about me."
I mean it has to be possible. Until about a year ago I had liberal brainworms. I managed to break out thanks to the coronavirus and the wealth of online sources for theory.
though im puertorican and theor american. it was a lot easier for me to break out.I suppose so. I had brainworms at one point.
I think however I was never really "comfortable" with my views on many things. For a while I hated both parties but couldn't quite understand why. Liberalism has many contradictions, like how they praise and respect minorities but don't let them have anything.
Communist concepts seemed like either pipe dream ideas or failed ideology to me. But a simple conversation with my past self would have changed my mind immediately. One of the things I point to for people that may be skeptical about if it "works", is that how it transformed Russia into a worldwide superpower that was so effective that it beat America into space and instilled so much fear in western minds that people are still scared of the USSR and it doesn't even exist anymore. Then I point out how Russia is now a capitalist country and its far weaker than it was as the Soviet Union.
Honestly what led me to this point was actually the 2016 election. Trump redefined what was normal for me, but what ultimately shook me was realizing how liberals reacted to Trump. They were in utter disbelief they could possibly lose to him. Their news cycles constantly seemed to be about trying to make you enraged at Republicans and uphold Democrats as saviors of America. As more left leaning ideas were introduced to me I found them to be not only the most moral but the most logical in terms of human beings living together.
When the primaries started, and I saw how they went nuclear on Bernie to the point of flat out lying about him, I saw the Democrats as not much better than Republicans. Because they were willing to resort to the same tactics conservatives use (yet only on the left). I remember most news trying to avoid talking about him at all, downplaying his presence, popularity, and ideas. It was actually getting really amusing how the media machine were realizing they were losing control of the narrative in politics. Then the Democrats blatantly cheated in the Iowa Caucuses. (Im an Iowan BTW)
CNN tried to work with Warren to smear Bernie on alleging that he said "A woman can't win". Then on super tuesday the entire party worked together to pull the rug out underneath Bernie and suddenly you saw all these candidates that didn't want to be president anymore in favor of Joe "I won South Carolina" Biden. The cherry on top was Biden lying in the debate with Bernie and liberal co-workers I knew smiling smugly about winning against him by any means necessary.
When I saw all this, I knew they were not allies. It isn't about Bernie either (fuck him for bending the knee to Biden), its about his policies and ideas. If they fought so hard to destroy these, they are not good people.
Now its a matter of looking at the whole system and realizing it is a broken and antiquated electoral system that was designed to protect slavers (conservatives), and slaver apologists (liberals).
Biggest challenge I’ve run into with family (both Lib and conservative) is that I will never have enough time or access to them to deprogram them. Any conversation I have that seems to make progress will be washed away by the time I see them again. Their cohabitants and the news/entertainment they consume keeps them totally engulfed in their original worldview.
This, i've spent so much time talking to coworkers about labor value and class warfare and most of them agree. But then a week later they're showing me Biden's new cat and saying "we just need to give him time, he just started after all". Its like they only listen to the last thing they heard.
This is such a good point. I’ve had good progress with my friends who I live with, who I talk to every day. Some are genuinely really interested in communism now. But if you’re only seeing someone a few times a month, it’s really difficult to convince them of anything. Propaganda works 24/7, and it’s not easy to compete with it. Less so if someone isn’t willing to think against the grain already.
Same here, my mom will be agreeing with me on stuff and then a week later text me like “the Democrats are being communists” or something like I give up
At this point I'm like 90% sure the US needs to fall apart kinda like the USSR did.
Yeah it would be absolutely terrible for the already marginalized people in the US but honestly I don't really see another way.
:ted-texas:
edit: failing infrastructure, collapsing standard of living, botched coronavirus response, climate change, geriatric leadership, rising massve income inequality, multiple debt crisis (student, medical, rent), increased reliance on corps vs gov, violent uprisings, etc
There's probably not going to be a "big one". If you look at history, most large powers don't just suddenly collapse within like a year or so. It usually takes decades, even generations or centuries. Rome for example, the Eastern Roman Empire lasted for a long ass time after the western portion was gone. The peak of the British Empire was in the first half of the 20th century, and it's still a pretty major world power, albeit, a shadow of its former self. There wasn't just One Big Thing, it was just a slow decline over the course of decades.
If you're expecting "the big one" to come along and then the US is gonna be fractured and irrelevant on the world stage within like a couple years, I doubt that's gonna happen.
Yeah. It's never just one big thing, it's multiple pieces of the machine failing individually until the body finally collapses.
Get a gun and/or get the fuck out of this country while you still can. Things are probably not going to get better here.
This is what happens when you don’t have an ideology. They think Republicans are bad because they bend and break the rules, not because of their beliefs.
So to them, Democrats doing everything possible to get something good is the same as Republicans doing whatever it takes to get something bad. Just bring the Muslim ban to a floor vote like adults!
I really don’t know if you can get people to see through their defensiveness because it as sad when you realize there is no one in politics with the will to make things better. There might be a few, but they don’t have much power and also haven’t been willing to use every tool.
I think maybe the most useful argument is historical rebellions and disruption of the political process that history considers good. Things like the American Revolution, underground networks opposing Nazi Germany, and the Emancipation Proclamation (this was a pretty large overreach from the president but inarguably the right call). FDR also bent the rules a lot to get the New Deal done.
This is what happens when you don’t have an ideology.
If only that were the problem...
I think it's tough to have conversations around hot button issues where they've spent the last week getting talking points from mainstream media and politicians. These stupid arguments are fresh in their minds and they're more willing to take a stand against them because they just saw people whose opinions they value for whatever reason do the same.
For example, I recently got into a similar argument with somebody about the minimum wage argument and they kept talking about the Parliamentarian and how the Byrd Rule clearly states it's illegal to add a minimum wage increase to a bill in reconciliation (it's absolutely not illegal and the Parliamentarian can easily be overidden). If we had this same argument two months ago they probably would have agreed with me, they probably wouldn't have even known about the Parliamentarian or the Byrd Rule, and we could have had a productive discussion about the dire need to raise the minimum wage.
As for how we cure american insanity. That's a tough one haha. There are some pretty bad things deeply ingrained in the american psyche. I think the old-school promoting class consciousness is still a great route. I tend to get the most traction bringing up the fact that wages have been stagnant or close to stagnant for a long time while the cost of living continues to rise, and the only people who are increasing their wealth are extremely wealthy, the pace they're increasing their wealth is absolutely astounding. It's stupid, but once you place the person you're talking to into the category of people getting screwed over, even if they're PMC, suddenly they start to feel like they're on the outside of capitalism looking in.
Yeah when there have been talking points going around, it can help if you address those first - for example "People keep talking about the Byrd Rule and the Parliamentarian's ruling and act like it's a law, but it can be overruled at any time, and has been overruled before"
Similar to how just saying "contrary to popular belief" makes anything 50% more believable. You're allowing them to shed a belief guilt-free.
Do said friends of yours know about the means-tested $1400 stimulus check potentially being snatched by landlords/debt collectors? Even my lib mom who usually gives Dems much more credit than they deserve acknowledged that that was bullshit. Set aside the pussyfooting around the minimum wage issue, that alone should be enough to sink Congressional Dem majorities in 2022.
Instead of putting forth ideas of what the Democrats should be doing, you should instead explain to your LGBT+ friends and those with disabilities how what they have been doing so far in 2021 fails to meet the barest expectations of people who aren't conditioned to expect less than the bare minimum, who aren't used to being marginalized and backstabbed. People aren't about to forget that the Georgia special elections which (just barely) won the Dems their Senate majority were won in part because Biden promised another $2000 lump sum to every American.
Get them to remember (if they're old enough, that is) what happened to the Democratic congressional majority in the 2010 midterms, the aftermath of Obama's and Pelosi's leadership they squandered their majority. We can blame sabotage by the GOP and by Koch-funded campaigns against the ACA ("death panels" projection) all we want, but it was ultimately the Dems who sold out to the insurance companies and castrated a flagship bill that was supposed to introduce a single-payer health insurance system. It was Obama et al. who chose to adopt the hybrid Romneycare model. We can't forget that Obama had the billionaires and bankers responsible for the 2007 housing market crash - and the auto industry executives - by the balls in 2008-2009 and chose to bail them out instead of prosecuting anyone besides Bernie Madoff. Not everyone took the Tea Party propaganda and reactionary distortions of these betrayals at face value, but they sure as hell remembered these betrayals of "hope and change" when deciding whether to vote or who to vote for in 2010.
Longtime Dem voters who do so out of a bitter sense of obligation and learned helplessness will accept the same sorts of excuses we heard in 2009-2010 that we're hearing now and will continue to hear until 2022. "But Joe Manchin!" features echoes of "But the blue-dog Democrats!" Let's also not forget that Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the "pay-go" rule that imposes an artificial budgetary constraint on new spending bills (requiring cutting equal funding from something else to add that funding to a program), not any Republican budget hawk. The Senate Parliamentarian is a new excuse that I don't believe the Dems have used in living memory, but the Parliamentarian is so easily overruled by at least one of Biden or Harris (the VP is also "president of the Senate" according to the 1789 constitution) that to blame the Parliamentarian - which is a relatively new unelected position (20th century!) not often taught in grade-school civics - is to indirectly blame both the president and the vice president.
Like Obama's "hope and change", Biden's "healing the nation" rhetoric was always an empty platitude. Your friends, clearly arguing from a position of learned helplessness, may hear neoliberal Dems say "Biden owes you nothing" in response to those "naive" enough to demand better and say "Duh! Of course they have the power to say he owes us nothing with impunity, we voted for him as a form of harm-reduction/damage control to keep the fash out of power and we had no choice but to do that because he was the only viable option to defeat Trump."
Voters not keeping up with the daily political spectacle, who hear about obscure bullshit technicalities like the Parliamentarian and correctly intuit that these excuses are mostly bullshit, having naively interpreted these platitudes and associated election promises at face value and turned out in droves last year expecting a more responsive approach to the economic/public-health crisis than what Trump had to offer. These voters not constantly tuned in to the latest gossip/spectacle on blue-check Twitter or CNN/MSNBC, they expected a meaningful and swift change from this administration and congress, they expected the Democrats to have enough power to unilaterally use executive and legislate power to do what needed to be done. They heard Biden and Dems say that they would "listen to science" unlike Trump and assumed that would translate into the dramatic WWII-style mobilization that would be necessary to combat covid effectively, rather than the same sort of quarter-assed response they've been putting forth to deal with the longer-term existential threat posed by climate change.
Put simply: It's not just a matter of Monday-morning quarterbacking here which your friends object to. The historical precedent of the 2009-2010 congress supports that argument and you should consider framing it as an "is" statement rather than a mere "ought" statement, e.g.
If Dems continue falling short of the specific expectations that Dems encourage voters to set for them, then those voters (who actually expect something materially substantial in return for their votes) won't turn out for Dems enough for the party to keep either of the House or Senate majorities.
I'd be curious to know if said friends can explain why conditions now aren't sufficiently similar to conditions in 2009 to yield the same sort of 2010-style upset in 2022, without invoking the Supreme Court. (See the response to this comment below regarding what the Dems could have done but didn't in order to reduce the GOP's ability to pick replacement justices.)
In which case you should remind them that the congressional Dems could have used the same filibuster powers from a minority position to block Trump's SCOTUS nominations, that the GOP used to block progress when they were in the minority from 2007 to 2010.Remind them of the evidence that within recent memory (Obama and Trump admins) the GOP has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to secure every advantage possible and to mostly play for keeps in pursuit of conservative/reactionary policy goals regardless of setbacks, while the Dems haven't typically demonstrated much willingness to do likewise for the sake of pursuing progressive policy goals. Raise the question, why is this the case? Ask them what Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer stand to gain electorally by behaving this way, if they don't stand to lose electorally.love yr comment but re the supreme court the democrats wouldn't have been able to filibuster since the republicans removed that option so they could appoint Gorsuch and subsequently Kavanaugh and Barrett. Instead you could blast the dems for being cowards who didnt eliminate the filibuster when nominating Merrick garland, with the excuse that republicans would use that against them. Which they went ahead and did anyway lol
Postscript/additional thought regarding the is-ought distinction: it's a useful step, when talking to working-class liberals who might vote Dem, to frame discussion on the basis of the behavior of that party as an objective (politically exogenous) factor the same way they might frame discussion of the GOP's behavior, instead of framing discussion of Dem behavior as if they were a subjective factor (politically endogenous; i.e. subject to direct influence from the working class, from ordinary voters). My use of objective/subjective here is meant to draw attention to the fact that the Democratic Party works for the enemy of the working class and is therefore an element of objective conditions, rather than a part of the subjective conditions for revolution/change that workers can influence.
Put more simply: manipulate the frame of the discussion such that people aren't talking about Dems like said Dems are on "our side" or capable of being on "our side". This is another reason to avoid "Dems should do X" rather than "Dems will/won't do X".
Trump was not the problem. He was a symptom and a means of reification. Republicans are cruel because their constituents revel in it. Democrats are weak for the same reason. The very idea that Democrats ought to be strong reeks of nationalism and closed-mindedness to most of them.
You don't weasel. You just state what you believe and make that overton window bigger.
arguments over fiscal policy becomes a lot more fun once a lefty says the solution is to seize the means. Libs don't know how to handle it (true in reality to).
Wouldn't that usually get responses like "that's communism!" or "that's not possible, you need to be more realistic"? Having to answer thought-terminating cliches like those doesn't strike me as very fun.
I admit I haven't tried it at the local dem party office, but a lot of libs seem pretty willing to nationalize big tech companies if you talk about the level of public power they have as platforms of communication. You'd be surprised how agreeable they can be if you lay out some logical benefits. Libs slurp up "logic" like crazy.
I think it's very easy to convince an educated liberal of the material benefits of progressive, if not transitional or revolutionary policies such as public and democratic control of industry. The obstacle these people can't get past is the question of their feasibility. Even the most carefully-crafted and scientifically-devised revolutionary Marxist program for such a person will at first glance appear to be every bit as utopian as the most ultraleft anarchist/radlib political demands.
A well-meaning educated liberal technocrat might say something to the effect of:
"This policy would have the intended effect of [insert one of: lowering poverty/income inequality; improving living standards/human happiness; lowering GHG emissions/output of pollutant particulates; improving scientific/tech development; undoing quantifiably observable racist/sexist/etc. outcomes; and so on]. BUT [and it's a very big but] it's not [one of politically/economically feasible], at least not so quickly or immediately. Progressive Democrats [or insert center-left/social-democratic party here] are doing their best to do what's possible; compromise with reactionaries and corporate interests is unavoidable."
The problem a good conscientious educated progressive has, is that their ability to conceive of what's possible is bounded by capitalist realism. For this person it's not a matter of whether should XYZ be done, but whether it can be done. And if we suppose this person is familiar with the history of attempted socialist and communist revolutions, they will immediately cite the inevitable capitalist retaliation (capital flight; trade sanctions; reactionary coups/counterrevolutions) as an inevitable result of trying to accomplish policies outside of what capitalists will allow.
They might not realize it's the result of retaliation by international capitalists - they may understand that dispossessing capitalists or simply raising their taxes too high is an inevitable recipe for poverty - but may have been taught by some university economist that such poverty is a natural reaction to attempting socialist policies like expropriation of industry from private capitalist ownership, every bit as natural as a Jenga tower collapsing under the force of gravity when the bottom pieces are removed. These people have to be shown that this is the result of human behavior rather than the "natural" forces of the market. They have to be able to figure out that capitalist wealth isn't all but fucking untouchable and completely out of reach.
Often this doesn't happen until immiseration happens to them, or if they're fortunate enough to directly observe their preconceived understanding of what's possible completely fall apart in front of their face, in the course of witnessing or participating in people's struggles, e.g. the BLM protests last year which brought the question of police defunding into the Overton window. A lot of bullshit-unlearning has got to happen, and bearing witness to hard-won partial successes resulting from active working-class struggle, especially that might have been previously inconceivable according to the prior model of what's "politically feasible", that can force such a person to at least begin to re-examine their (not entirely conscious) assumptions about what's economically or politically possible.
Cubans, Vietnam and China have done it and wildly exceed their peers and neighbours.
China v. India, Cuba vs Haiti and any colonized banana republic.
Make the argument on your terms where they are clueless by comparison. Talk about white supremacy and imperialism.
Honestly, and I'm sure this isn't the answer anyone wants, but I don't think you can, not with any kind of logical argument anyway.
It's an emotional pathology I recognise around me too, people who consciously or unconsciously have realised that the political system has nothing to offer them so to make the situation tolerable have decided to simply root for a team.
A lot of other working class people I know here in the UK have basically done that. They don't actually like the Tories but are so sick of everything in life kicking the shit out them that they just want to feel like they're on the winning team for once. It's basically sports team glory supporting for people who are basically black-pilled on politics of any kind.
I'll say this though; as much as I find it stupid and repugnant when people seem to support the Tories for that reason I understand it on some level. Why you'd do it for the consistently losing team like the Democrats is genuinely beyond me.
But to get back to the original point, I think the only way those people break from that pathology is either in their own time when it makes them feel worse rather than better or if you give them some sort of alternative and in a two party system that's incredibly difficult. It might be better to just let them be stupidly blue no matter who while trying to subtly divert as much of their energy away from electoral politics entirely on community and single issue stuff outside the party political spectrum entirely.
so to make the situation tolerable have decided to simply root for a team.
Ideology as a team sport is liberalism. This doesn’t only apply when we’re talking about leftists. Literal liberals do this as well. One could call it the Party Personality
I don't know your friends but if they're getting defensive like this over shit as petty as "I want your party to win, the way they're acting in congress will ensure they will lose and I agree that that would be a bad thing" means they probably are radicalizing right now. Otherwise they'd have confidence (completely unearned, mind) that the Dems are going to do the right thing and win enough support in 2022 and 2024 and they'd just say something like "Yeah I agree, but don't worry AOC and Pelosi will work it out in time for the midterms." Wouldn't be surprised if they start asking about DSA or whatever after 2022 midterms.
Things are so dire for the congressional dems, I saw some good analysis that for the midterms the Dems will have to match the best performance of the party in power for the 2022 midterms for them to hold onto majorities in the senate and house. Last time was 2002 for the GOP, right after 9/11 and they had that wave. If the Dems don't meet or exceed that performance they will lose the majority - even if they perform the 2nd best in the last 40 to 50 years. They also have a trifecta, right now, the mood of the country is for radical (relative to neoliberal centrism anyway) action and complete overhauls of the way politics is done at a national level - no more filibuster, stimulus checks out the door quickly and without means testing, admittance of DC and Puerto Rico, breaking the taboo of prosecuting former presidents, the mood of the country is for radical action and the Dems hold all the levers of power and have nothing to hide behind. So, if they're not doing their utmost to win favor and win people's votes, they will have no one to blame but themselves. Not that they won't try, I guarantee they'll be blaming voters for not voting for the Dems hard enough without something in exchange.
Lol I wish. I don't think that's likely to happen in 2022 though. If there's a countdown on the lifespan of the Dems it's still at least 10 years, if not longer (at which point it's difficult to have any meaningful foresight). The Dems also have historically thrived locally when they're the minority/opposition party; losing power means their expectations to actually do much are lowered and they can credibly convince more people that they actually want the power to change things despite the reality.
Assuming increased radicalization resulting from Everything Still Somehow Staying the Same and Getting Worse Simultaneously, we could be looking at the Dems going the way of the Whigs within the next couple decades, but only if the Dems start to lose their ability to devour social movements, and only if they lose their ability to credibly platform sheepdogs like Bernie Sanders or Jessie Jackson. That's been their key to surviving since the Southern Dixiecrats' pivot to the GOP in the 1970s. Securing the Black vote in the wake of the destruction of radical/revolutionary orgs like the Panthers, securing women's votes after women's lib/2nd-wave feminism was fully metabolized by the liberal feminism of the 1980s-1990s, that has added decades to the Democratic Party's lifespan. Biden would have eaten shit if not for his surrogates' ability to redirect anger at police/DHS agents towards anger at Trump, for their ability to capture much of the frantic energy from the BLM revival and covid crisis and sublimate it all into Voting the Orange Fascist Out.
Organizing for independent socialist politics including rejection of all Democrat entryism, continuing to agitate to keep common working-class people's expectations raised and organizing them to keep pushing back against reaction from liberals in governments all the way down to the local level, that's what will enable the slow death of the Democratic Party, its wane into Whig-like irrelevance.
I don't know what the 2nd step is, but you have to get them to stop watching cable / broadcast / local "news" first, otherwise whatever they learn will be drowned in the deluge of distraction and garbage analysis.
One way to fight the influence of corporate media without requiring them to unplug completely is to get them to read something like Manufacturing Consent or Inventing Reality. Hell, get them to watch one of the yellow Parenti videos on the subject.
Show them the bias and it'll be hard for them to unsee, even if they're still watching garbage.
"the pill comes in 7.62x39mm cartridges, and is applied with this handy applicator."
It takes a long time to change most people's ideology. Most people don't even know what they think, they never actually examine their own ideology. Getting someone to even stop and say 'Why do I think this way?' is a win.
For the politically active, ideology is wrapped up into their being, and by attacking their ideology you are attacking them personally. Or at least that is how it feels for thrm. You just gotta go slow. I tried convincing my Hilldawg friends/family in one go to vote Sanders and that was a total failure. But they are being slowly radicalized and talking shit about capitalism.
You can't bombard people with negative energy. My family always say 'Biden is really surprising me and doing good stuff'. Instead of instantly telling them why they're wrong, I try and say 'Ya he's doing some really good stuff, and if he just did this little bit more it would be so much better.'
Like the stimulus only lasting for a year - I mean how fucking ridiculous is that? Infuriating just thinking about it. 'We're gonna make people not miserable for only one year. Then it's back to soul crushing poverty'. Showing they have the ability to lift people out of poverty whenever they want but limiting it to a year is truly psychotic. But saying this to libs will just turn make them ignore you. You gotta make it sound like you have some skin in the game.
You can’t bombard people with negative energy.
I have found precisely the opposite, but only with one topic, and making it very clear just how bad it is going to be.
Climate Change.
I've found the opposite with climate change. It is too big for a lot of people to comprehend and the measures a sufficient climate policy would need to take are too radical for them to imagine. All their lives they have been told that the scope of politics is to make small adjustments to the status quo and now you're telling them that everything will change. This makes them easy targets of climate deniers who offer them an easy excuse to ignore climate change either by claiming it is all a hoax or the far more incidious form of denialism where totally insufficient measures like a mild emissions tax and subsidies for electric cars are presented as a real solution to the crisis.
I dont think youre really explaining how much climate change is really going to fuck things then. You should read up on the Permian Extinction and really try to burn the image of the world portrayed as that into your speaking. It is a hard (and I hate this term) black pill that has to be swallowed when done this way. Like its not just that 50% of species or however many fungible terms humans have created to categorize the world die, its 99% of all individual life will perish if global warming continues, and the only actionable moment for doing anything to considerably stop that was 10 years ago, we have to be violent, now, or never.
Most people don’t even know what they think, they never actually examine their own ideology.
Fun fact, by the time I had come to fully understand the material implications of my old neoliberal beliefs, I ended up drawing revolutionary conclusions and becoming a Marxist within a year. Bernie and Trump (not to mention experiencing gentrification and talking to working-class people) had a bit to do with that, but when you successfully compel a working-class liberal to look at the foundation of their beliefs, to make them recognize what compromises they're making, that's laying the groundwork for a later epiphany.
Effective Marxists can plant seeds in people's heads, including those of currently ideologically-committed people who wouldn't even conceive of drawing similar conclusions or taking revolutionary politics seriously.
This why you should toward the 50% of Americans who do not vote, and who are disproportionately working class.
Bernie leaned hard on this approach and the results were underwhelming. I'm not convinced we should rely on it going forward. Some people really do just want to grill, or are so alienated from politics that they're never going to reliably do even minimal things like voting, or will talk your ear off about politics but never actually participate in anything.
The people most likely to be politically active are the ones who are already politically active. There are plenty of unenthusiastic Democrats out there who can be radicalized -- most people here are radicalized libs -- and we'll have more luck focusing on them.
Some major differences between the Commonwealth-country parliamentary system and the US's system:
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The US constitution originally ratified in 1789 was not designed in anticipation of the emergence of rival political parties, or the "factions" that Washington warned about close to his death in the late 1790s. The parliamentary system first developed in the UK, especially post-Peterloo, has a specific system built in to allow multiple parties with sufficient ideological/policy overlap, none of which enjoy majority representation by themselves, to form a majority coalition. The US system's first-past-the-post/majoritarian method for deciding elections, in combination with a starker separation of executive/diplomatic power from legislative power, one which divides the roles of a prime minister into the roles of house speaker and president. It's also worth noting that the US's equivalent to a House of Lords, the Senate, is still significantly more powerful than the House while the longer 6-year term period for senators means a bad senator can't be so easily recalled either through the regular election process.
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There is no such expectation among US representatives and senators that members of a party must vote alongside the party line. "Maverick" senators such as Joe Manchin are not usually subjected to harsh internal party discipline or threatened with expulsion or recall for consistently voting against the party line, unless they consistently vote in opposition to the interests of capital. House members are more likely to be "primaried" as punishment for deviation but all voters in their district ultimately decide whether this de-facto recalling happens, rather than party membership.
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The major US parties, the Democratic and Republican Parties, aren't really political parties in the conventional sense. Voters registered to vote Dem or GOP aren't members of those parties. Common partisan voters don't pay dues to the parties they vote for, and most don't attend local or state-level party meetings and enjoy the same sort of internal mass democracy one might expect to see inside, for example, the UK's Labour Party. True membership in either of these parties, if such a thing exists, is limited to high-ranking party bureaucrats (at the state level if not the federal level), almost always upper-middle class if not members of the ruling billionaire class who give or receive millions in donations to party candidates or to the party itself. These two ruling parties have are functionally private organizations, and leading Democrats have openly admitted such to be true for the Democratic Party - that they reserve the right to choose their candidates if they wish. This is why there appears to be not much more than the flimsy pretense of internal democracy in party primaries.
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Furthermore, the Democrats (and to a lesser extent the Republicans) aren't bound to follow their national party's program, or as they call them here in Yankeeland+Dixiestan, their "political platform", as implied in point 2. These platforms are decided at the quadrennial convention held after the conclusion of a presidential party primary, usually a consensus centered around the stated (though often not actual) policy goals of the primary's victor, with some nominal non-binding concessions to popular losers (e.g. Bernie). On a more local scale, Republicans in states dominated by Democrats are allowed to pursue policies further left than you'd expect their national party to allow in a Parliamentarian system, which is is why we see Republican Massachusetts governors like Charlie Baker who are nigh-indistinguishable from the likes of Biden or Cuomo. Furthermore the same is true - even more true! - for the openly right-wing and milquetoast Democrats in GOP-controlled territory who often take positions against those of national Democrat voters in order to win their local elections (Beto; whichever loser they ran against McConnell in 2020; not to mention Joe Manchin himself).
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The national parties are much more decentralized, functionally federations of state parties bearing the same party banner. This is because national elections (usually presidential ones) are decided by state elections, taking more on the federal character of something like an EU parliamentary election than the national elections held in the UK or Commonwealth states. This is a vestigial consequence of the early late-18th/early-19th-century conception of the US as an EU-like federation of multiple semi-autonomous ex-colonial states. The state election system is specifically designed to ratfuck smaller 3rd parties with internally-democratic membership and structures (Greens, PSL for example, as we saw last year), forcibly divorcing the legitimate primary system from the internal democracy of a corresponding party precisely because of the duplicitous character of the Democratic and Republican parties. Being registered as a Green voter on a state election commission allows you to vote in a Green primary but is functionally independent from whether you're actually a member of the Green Party for the same reason this artificial separation exists between registered Dem/GOP voters and actual Dem/GOP party members.
TL;DR: there is so much more working against internal democracy (or even internal coherence) within the national "parties" in charge of the US. The US system is a clusterfuck compared to the Westminster-style party system, whose net result is almost invariably the diffusion of accountability that keeps the heat off party leaders. The entire US system has multiple layers of obfuscating bullshit like this that makes it really hard for regular voters who aren't rooting for Team Blue or for Team Red to figure out who's to blame for policy failures in the routine partisan and factional shitstorms resulting from regular finger-pointing and scapegoating.
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