I can believe that a lot of what we call laziness is really something else, but I’m not in the maximalist “lazy does not exist” camp. Whatever your goals are in life, you need at least some ability to buckle down and do those necessary things you’d rather not do. All else being equal, some people are better at that than others.
no puns
A lot of that had to be karma farming
Bernie had plenty of problems, but he would have been a significant step left of the party and he came pretty close to winning the 2020 primary. It’s easy to forget the unique circumstances that allowed Democrats to pull off the fix: a highly popular former president to coordinate the drop out, a Republican opponent with an unprecedented ability to rile up the Democratic base, and Covid hitting right before Super Tuesday. Without any one of those things, I’m not sure they could have slipped in Biden. Imagine if that primary had played out in, say, 2004.
You can also look at local elections – progressive District Attorneys, for example. They’ve ran (and a number have won) as Democrats, but significantly to the left of the mainstream Democratic candidates in their cities. And they’ve won by specifically appealing to voters who are moving left faster than Democrats on criminal justice issues.
It is a morally greater objective to turn these people around, and more practically achievable, than undermining its opponent.
The task is to build a mass movement to the left of Democrats. Are you going to have better luck building that out of the many Democrats who are disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of their party? Or is it going to be easier to bring in the folks cheering seig heils at Republican events?
The DNC cannot be entered and changed into a working class party because they too get their base from the bourgeoisie.
I think this is too pessimistic, especially in light of how bad all other options are for the left. Party bases change – Democrats used to be a lot closer to the working class, and (decades ago) delivered major policy improvements. With a lot of jobs re-proletarianizing, who’s to say the party base can’t shift back?
The biggest barrier to such a change is campaign donations, of course. But Bernie showed you can fund even a major presidential campaign through small donors, and we’re also at the point where corporate Dems have more money than they can effectively use (see the Harris campaign).
How are you defining mass parties?
When did they stop working, and why?
Your idea is that… any politics with roots in the 20th century are irrelevant?
When exactly did everyone on the planet wake up and decide history doesn’t matter?
this guy pointed out trump would be worse for Palestineans
You realize Trump has already pushed Israel to accept a ceasefire/prisoner exchange, right? That’s an actual, material improvement in the situation in Gaza compared to Biden. Democrats who are still trotting out “Trump will somehow do an even worse genocide” are giving away they game that they don’t even care enough to keep up on the news.
I say this as someone who think Trump should be in prison, too.
It’s functionally no different than a dollar bill.
In the case of communist ‘money’, I think we would cease using money to kill our neighbor.
Seems like a big difference to me
Nonsense – people frequently help others even during disasters, wars, and other precarious times.
Doesn’t sound like they live in a bubble, then.
the Republicans fixed the DMV here by running it like a business
Any details?
We’re not talking about hanging with friends and interrupting a conversation to call out them out over ethics. We’re talking about people coming to you and engaging with you directly on this topic. It’s hard to imagine a scenario more conducive to changing someone’s mind, but you do have to put in effort instead of just dismissing them.
“I empathize but don’t think you have the best approach” is not hostility. It’s a disagreement.
Do you expect to convince a lot of people you’re right with this approach? If you want to get a lot of people to agree with you, it’s not enough to have all the right ideas written down somewhere. You do have to educate and persuade, that’s just a fundamental part of any social movement.
None of the vegans I know in real life are as hostile as some vegans get online. Probably a majority of vegans I see online (or in interviews, articles, etc.) aren’t hostile. The hostility is coming mostly from vegans who think it’s a useful tactic to get others to agree with them.
It’s a whole other discussion about how effective that tactic is, or who it’s effective on. But it is definitely a choice, because there are tons of vegans out there who choose to present their ideas differently.
$30 per quarter pound
The second sentence of the article gives $30 as the unsubsidized price of one pound of hamburger meat, not 1/4 pound. You have to read it more carefully if you want to get into the details.
Setting aside the details for a minute, how would a subsidy of only pennies on the dollar even be plausible? One purpose of agricultural subsidies is to stabilize prices; pennies on the dollar can’t do that.
That said, price-wise, real meat will have to become very very expensive before lab-grown meat will be competitive.
At least in the U.S., meat production/pricing is heavily subsidized.
“Essentially no different” is overselling it. “A lot less difference than there should be” is better.