I don’t think you’re wrong. You’re describing the sort of thing that leads to revolutionary conditions. But the problem we have in the US is, given the current status of socialists and fascists and well as just the background radiation of settler colonialism and imperialism, a precipitous decline in the material conditions will probably lead to outright Nazi-style fascism. And that’s not good for anyone, especially folks in Global South. Think about what Trump is doing in LatAm x100.

So us socialists in America have a mission, and we don’t have a lot of time to do it. I think electoralism is one approach - one tool among others in the toolbox. Class consciousness is so low in the US that I think pretty much any approach at this moment is progress. As we build consciousness, then yes, certain methods need to be discarded. But at the moment, I do believe using electoralism in specific ways gives us a lot of “bang for the buck”. Also, I keep a loose grip on all this. I’m not certain I’m right and am open to being wrong. But I am building on what some comrades I know IRL and are much smarter than me - and are much more closer with the people - have done, based on their own understanding of the situation around us.

Where are our DSA comrades?

Howdy.

Any word of regret or did this fit the strategy?

Someone in his administration (with him standing near, yes) made a vague comment about right AND left wing terrorism. Ok. Sure, not something I think is helpful and I guess I’d criticize him for this extremely low stakes thing, but frankly this is ridiculous to think him not immediately grabbing the mic from this woman and condemning her means my thoughts on the use of Mamdani overall should be discarded.

And has he genuinely improved thing in new York

I don’t live anywhere near NYC, so I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that polls as well as anecdotes point him being incredibly popular right now in NYC, so I would assume he’s doing something right. I saw a poll that showed over 60% of respondents didn’t just approve of him, but said he had gone beyond what they had originally expected. That points to someone actually getting things done that people want.

but that would only be concessions, not worthy of being called a step towards socialism

Comrade I’m not having a go at you, it’s just I get tired at seeing this point made. Your typical DSA comrade agrees that you CANNOT vote in socialism (p sure this is even DSA’s official line, not sure but I do know this is absolutely what my chapter holds to and I don’t think we’re particularly radical). The point - one of them at least - is to use elections to develop class consciousness. For the longest time I myself thought this was bullshit. But then instead of just quote-mining Lenin, I tried to take a serious look at the conditions around me as a US American. I do think there is actually fertile ground for revolutionary, socialist consciousness in this country; but it is so deeply underdeveloped. Decades of red scare propaganda has led people who would otherwise be down with socialism to dismiss it out of hand just by its name. That’s the first - but not last - hurdle we have to overcome. I’ve been a communist since 2019. And I’ve had more fruitful conversations with people IRL in the last year than I have in all the years prior to that, and Mamdani and other DSA folks getting elected is probably the biggest reason for that (coupled with the deteriorating material conditions ofc). I believe this is what’s needed now. Inshallah there will come a day when politicians like Mamdani will be our enemies, but that day is a long way off. In the meantime I choose to think dialectically about it and realize just because a strategy would be bad down the line when class consciousness is more developed, doesn’t mean it’s bad now.

And I’m just talking about the national impact of Mamdani. Everything I’ve heard about DSA’s involvement in Mamdani’s election campaign is that it was huge for uniting the working class and helping actual socialist organizers cut their teeth and struggle together. So even if Mamdani ends up accomplishing little, or this current public interest in socialism fades, I would still consider it moving the ball forward.

How was Palestine “sacrificed” by supporting a candidate for NYC mayor?

deleted by creator

But that leads to the country where a kids entire world is their immediate family, the lack of exposure in different degrees to people who arent like you or your parents is detrimental.

Sadly a disturbingly high percentage of American parents see all that as feature, not a bug.

Having space to fuck around is great for kids, but it doesnt add up to much when there arent other kids to do so with.

I vibe with this 1,000%, but so far I have not been able to get my partner to see things this way.

A point I wanted to make but forgot… a lot of liberals get weepy over the idea of Stalin and Mao industrializing their economies and getting people off the farm and into the cities. We will always need folks out there growing food, and I’m genuinely grateful for them (and living out here has made me more grateful). But I think that most people like city life, and having your population go from say 80% rural to 80% urban is a pretty huge benefit to the population writ large.

Yes, you get it and said it all in far fewer words than I needed.

No, it’s rich petite bourgeois who were raised in a nicely built house their dad either built or paid to have built and have never had to deal with trying to fix some fucking stupid-ass electrical system some sub-functional farmer in the 1960s jerry-rigged to add a 240v outlet for the dryer

lol yes you are largely correct imo but I’m striving to be magnanimous instead of arguing all the time like I did before my Reddit account got banned. I’m open to the idea of some folks just loving that life, even if I have a hard time seeing it myself.

Grant was slandered for decades by the “Lost Cause” southern-sympathetic historians who had a lot of sway the field for a good part of the first half of the 20th c. Most recent, sober analysis of Grant places him solidly in the average to above-average category.

Something like 40,000 US Americans die every year because we do not have universal healthcare, and the capitalists just say that’s the cost of having a fReE mArKeT in healthcare.

PSA: if you get a spam text message about your opinions on Israel, do not reply. As satisfying as it might be to go off, that is only helping them train AI to respond people asking LLMs about Palestine. Just delete it and move on.

Watch Israel attack Turkey and just see how much NATO (including Estonia) is united and focused on deterring threats.

Well put.

More or less. I mean it’s not the only thing but it’s important. People think national debt = national deficit and that’s just not true. The US govt issuing debt is a choice that is not necessarily related to the deficit. In theory, the government could run a $40T deficit and not issue a single bond. But if you do that then you’re putting way too many dollars out there and you might wreck the dollar’s value, so they issue debt to “soak up” all those dollars. Treasury debt is just US dollars that are “locked up” out of the market. Interest payments are the enticement to not release those dollars like a Noachian flood that would crash the value of the dollar (because of supply and demand) relative to other currencies.

As an aside, I recommend for those comrades here who are economically-inclined to read up on MMT. I know that’s a bit controversial and I may get someone here yelling at me about how MMT violates Marx’s notions of money but there really is no way to understand the material basis for how nations with sovereign currency act.

While I appreciate the kind words that Russia, Mexico, China et al direct towards Cuba… ultimately it’s all just words (yes I know China is helping out with solar power, that’s cool but it’s not enough). No one seems to be applying even a modicrum of pressure against what the US is doing to Cuba right now.

I don’t think the situation is comparable to Netanyahu, though. The blockade continues on because gusanos have influence in the Republican party, and because Democrat politicians don’t want to look “soft” on long-time “bad guy”. That’s pretty much what’s kept the blockade alive for decades. The blockade is terrible and inhumane of course, but the Cubans have learned how to adapt.

But everything that’s happened since the start of Trump’s second term really has been a huge leap in cruelty, and Rubio is at the center of all that. Cuba is going through another Special Period (and from what I have heard, in some aspects it’s even worse) and by all accounts Rubio is the one who is driving it. I recall just before the attack on Venezuela, there was a foreign policy expert on the American Prestige podcast who was saying that Rubio specifically was going after Venezuela in order to get to Cuba. I brushed that off at the time but in hindsight I think that was largely correct. One of the very first things the US did to Venezuela was stop their flow of oil to Cuba.

If Rubio was not SoS, and it was just some dumbass Trump sycophant instead, of course the blockade would still go on and maybe even more pressure applied, but I do not think many of the worst actions that have occurred happen without Rubio in the driver’s seat.

Yeah Speaker is correct, it’s just slop for kids. On top of that, the little girl is kind of a jerk to the bear and we don’t usually let our kids watch things like that.

This is silly, the show is no way propaganda unless you consider any sort of acknowledgement that Russia exists to be propaganda.

(But lowkey, just between us comrades, the show is kinda shit and I don’t let my kids watch it. Russian animation has fallen very far from its glorious Soviet days)

I honestly don’t know what to make of Trump embracing this whole “TRUMP 2028” thing. He’s only doing it in memes, not something he actively brings up. While I hold to “when people tell you who they are, believe them”, this also smells like something some folks on his social media team think is “funny” because “it makes the libs mad”.