"Love Me, I'm a Liberal"

[IslandDweller85g]

In this song from 1966, Phil Och derides the performative antics of liberals, who are in lockstep with the Democrat party whilst pretending to be "progressive."

I've found that with the recent promotion of Kamala Harris to the frontrunner for the Democrats, the same ol' "election of our lives" rhetoric is being thrown out from 2020.

A Harris win will not end continuous US bombing campaigns.

A Harris win will not free Palestine.

A Harris win will not guarantee food, water and shelter to those living in the US.

A Harris win will not prevent Project 2025's goals from being accomplished. (I'd be open to discuss this point further.)

I feel that I'm living in a different reality when I hear some peers talk about seriously wanting to volunteer for the Harris campaign. Few of these folks engage in mutual aid, even less organize and agitate.

We live in capitalist hell, and while MAGA follwers are brainwashed, so is the "vote blue no matter who" crowd. I hate feeling trapped in the belly of the beast, and wish I could escape meaningfully. Knowing the causes of the pain while I continue to feed the beast in order to eek out existence each day hurts.

 

[astr4]

2 party system is broken

in amerikka your choices are neoliberal copium or straight up fascism.

they need a proletarian state fast but somehow i don't see the working class organizing and making that happen anytime soon

the global north's lifestyle is enabled through the exploitation of the global south. to condemn that would mean to eventually give up their privileges. most privileged people just aren't about that, especially if they already view themselves as disadvantaged or marginalized in another manner.

it's why you see gay republicans and black republicans and female republicans.

 

[amnesia999]

It's no fun arguing with trump supporters because they've already made up their minds and it turns into a waste of time. I really doubt that the elusive "undecided voter" exists in any large numbers. Nobody ever said that re-electing Biden, or electing Harris now that Biden's acquiesced to pressure and dropped out, was going to be the Second Coming of Liberal Jesus. Nobody said Kamala Harris would fix all of the problems in the world, or the middle east, or in the US.

What annoys me about trump supporters is that it's clear that the man's an authoritarian, racist scumbag who wants to remake America in his own fascist image. All anybody has to do is watch videos of him and listen to what he says. The words come right out of his mouth, but people refuse to listen. It's what he's literally saying he'll do once elected that makes this a "vote blue no matter who" election. It's not about "being brainwashed".

(Hell, just go watch his performance at the recent Black journalist's convention and then tell me you want this prick to be president. To make it easy for you, type "trump black journalist event chicago" into YouTube's search box. If you don't want to spend 2 hours watching the whole thing, there are 10 minute long highlight reels.)

 

[amnesia999]

The political ads write themselves.

 

[Pluto]

Unfortunately the standards are not very high at the moment. While there is no possibility of reasoning with extremists, the Trump supporters who would be worth appealing to are those who are feeling desperate for change.

One only has to watch a few episodes of Last Week Tonight to get a feel for the extraordinary levels of exploitation of honest workers across countless industries nationwide. Perhaps these desperate, uneducated people are being further scammed by Trump whose main priority as president was cutting taxes for corporations and billionaires. Maybe the reality-divorced media landscape has contributed towards their radicalisation. Or perhaps their impulse is a political version of a suicide bombing.

If Harris is to avoid repeating Hillary's errors, a few things need to be avoided: 1) demeaning comments about Trump supporters, 2) a fixation on identity politics, 3) lacking a substantive vision of hope for those who are not having a good time.

 

[amnesia999]

the reality-divorced media landscape

Let's get down to brass tacks. The "media landscape" isn't "reality-divorced". It's your Fox News, your Newsmax, and other outlets on the hard right that are divorced from reality -- and more specifically, the commentators that dominate those channels' lineups. Hard news reporters are not the ones causing problems. Even Fox News has one or two hours of hard news on every day, or so I've been told.

demeaning comments about Trump supporters

If the shoe fits, wear it. If you're a trump supporter, you deserve to be called out. (Although calling people either "deplorables" or "snowflakes" is cringe-inducing. Better insults, please.)

fixation on identity politics, 3) lacking a substantive vision of hope for those who are not having a good time.

trump is big on both of those. (You do know why trump likes to go on about those brown people supposedly flooding through the southern border. "They're bringing crime; they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people", wasn't that the quote? It's because it makes all the poor white people in the US, who aren't having a good time, feel better about themselves.)

 

[Pluto]

I don't disagree on any particular point, except that I don't think it's a good idea to blatantly recreate the loss-making strategy of 2016. There's a lot at stake.

To his credit, Bill Maher publicly predicted that Trump would refuse to leave office in 2020. If he is re-elected, it is seems clear to me that Trump is now surrounded by enablers in powerful positions and he would follow Mr. Putin in rigging all future elections.

The second major issue is that Trump has indicated that censoring climate change research and supporting the fossil fuel lobby is one of his top priorities. This, combined with the demise of democracy and the US' global position of cultural leadership, points to an existential situation for humanity and the wider ecosystem.

With this in mind, winning is important. To that end, there's only a limited number of commentators whose views I truly respect. Pete Buttigieg, Jon Stewart and Bernie Sanders are among them. Buttigieg appears regularly on Fox News, diplomatically representing sense and reason. Jon Stewart is willing to criticise both sides of the media. Bernie speaks openly about the fundamental economic injustices that have given rise to all the political dysfunction that we see.

 

[Blurry_Buildings]

The bottom 20% might as well be living in a third world country with no functional difference. For the homeless specifically who are ignored because they are addicted or mentally ill, a street to sleep on in the US or Bolivia is just a street to sleep on. Trailer parks and half collapsed homes from the 1920s aren't much better.

The lower working classes are doing well enough that their lives are marginally better off with the current policies, and considering how badly things have gone in south and central america, they seem terrified of losing what they have. It makes sense that they see foreign relations as a zero sum game when all they hear about is how its some other nation's fault that the city is dying.

Buttigieg appears regularly on Fox News, diplomatically representing sense and reason

I go to south bend a lot, he did a great job with the bike lanes and fixing a lot of urban decay as well. I'd rather have someone who is honest about being somewhat moderate like him than some wealthy elite who says they'll do things that aren't possible.

 

[IslandDweller85g]

2 party system is broken

in amerikka your choices are neoliberal copium or straight up fascism.

they need a proletarian state fast but somehow i don't see the working class organizing and making that happen anytime soon

the global north's lifestyle is enabled through the exploitation of the global south. to condemn that would mean to eventually give up their privileges. most privileged people just aren't about that, especially if they already view themselves as disadvantaged or marginalized in another manner.

it's why you see gay republicans and black republicans and female republicans.

To your point about privileges and marginalized groups, exploitation is a word often devoid from the political establishment's stump speeches, even those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The neoliberal copium is extremely depressing, and it's not going away any time soon. Poverty in the wealthy western countries is seen as a privilege as well, and so many more folks are going to be in poverty.

Refugee numbers will continue to swell from climatic impacts which will trickle down to affect socioeconomic policies. I worry about the feedback loops of these changes, how can the glue of the panopticon provided peace stay together when the crop losses are back to back? Wet bulb strikes? Historic flooding? To think wage slavery will have been preferable to the future baked in by the decisions of a relative few fossil fuel fanatics who shaped globalist society as we know it...

 

[IslandDweller85g]

It's no fun arguing with trump supporters because they've already made up their minds and it turns into a waste of time. I really doubt that the elusive "undecided voter" exists in any large numbers. Nobody ever said that re-electing Biden, or electing Harris now that Biden's acquiesced to pressure and dropped out, was going to be the Second Coming of Liberal Jesus. Nobody said Kamala Harris would fix all of the problems in the world, or the middle east, or in the US.

What annoys me about trump supporters is that it's clear that the man's an authoritarian, racist scumbag who wants to remake America in his own fascist image. All anybody has to do is watch videos of him and listen to what he says. The words come right out of his mouth, but people refuse to listen. It's what he's literally saying he'll do once elected that makes this a "vote blue no matter who" election. It's not about "being brainwashed".

(Hell, just go watch his performance at the recent Black journalist's convention and then tell me you want this prick to be president. To make it easy for you, type "trump black journalist event chicago" into YouTube's search box. If you don't want to spend 2 hours watching the whole thing, there are 10 minute long highlight reels.)

To clarify my critique of liberals, I use the word brainwashed to describe folks genuinely excited for Kamala's run, and who will shame people for not voting.

Fascism is essentially at our doorstep and white supremacists are embedded at every level of the political establishment local and Federal. January 6th would have been successful if the MAGA cultists were more organized, you think they'll peacefully back off even with a Harris win in November?

For the past 4 years, Trump has been building up the lie that 2020 was stolen and that "they" will try to steal this one too. Even with a relatively peaceful transition of power, there is no way that the Project 2025 agenda will be staved off. It's like asking how fast you want to be ran over.

Voting will not stop the tensions that have been fanned from bursting into even more and worse acts of political violence.

I never said a hypothetical better than Harris or Trump candidate would solve our most pressing issues, but that's exactly the problem.

The world that has been set up is unsustainable at so many levels. No matter who the president is, they cannot relate to the proletariat. The cost of living continues to increase while the quality of life decreases.

But this worsening quality of life succeeds because ultimately we have all been brainwashed into the cult of capital. And this is a hell of a death cult.

Until there are structures of lateral working class power built (including solidarity across unions, from the starbucks workers to the electricians) we have no power to fight back against the status quo that fills so many lives with misery.