Heaven forbid your kids should be as informed about the world around them as possible before they have to go adult in it. Or are we just afraid conversation with them over this topic will wind up showing how irrational a position you hold, and how much of an insensitive monster you are?

That's the real fear - they're afraid of friends & neighbors finding out and ostracizing them, further proving their diminutive empathy levels don't allow them to even know what a true friend is.

Heaven forbid the wage slaves get a day to do something they might actually want to do besides making their absurdly rich masters even more so.

pelosi + co aging out just means a new crop of corporate democrats take over. the machine does not depend on individuals and there's plenty of young ghouls waiting in the wings.'progressive' is pretty much branding at this point. someone can call themselves progressive while supporting weapons shipments to a genocide and opposing medicare for all because it's 'not politically feasible'the label does no analytical work at all.

All true & reasonably fair. I guess I just have been trying to allow some room for having to work within the system as it currently stands, but I do also fear the corruption of the well-intended is real & potentially permanent. I've been hoping the addition of more progressives would help counterbalance that - and am still waiting to see if that plays out, but you may well be right in that there is no return from the dark side.

i'm an anarchist

Oh, cool! I've actually kinda begun looking at that community a bit closer recently as what little I've gleaned from posts I've seen seems to more closely fit my perspectives than other alternatives (you can see I'm just not "getting" the .ml left). Just preliminary starting to pay them more attention at this point, but definitely interested.

when i said 'organizing and dual power building' i'm thinking of things like mutual aid as entrypoint. the idea that building networks where people can take care of eachother outside the market both meets immidiate needs and builds the relationships to make future organizing possible.

Yep, that's what I'd like to see, too. I'm curious how the inevitable bad players are prevented from using/abusing/destroying such idealist constructs, tho. I admit my life has made me perhaps a bit too cynical, but I just don't see those sorts of initiatives surviving long-term against the high proportion of ill-willed people out there.

the ELI5 version

Okay, I asked for that. That's more than little too vague to help. I guess I'm looking for something concrete & just detailed enough to be able to picture it in action. What I was trying to avoid was a high proportion of theory. I'm someone who needs to see it working first, then get to know "how," and finally the "why" of how it works after that.

i could recommend reading material

My patience for reading heady stuff of late seems to be tied to my level of understanding and strength of interest. I like it concrete, to-the-point, with just enough detail to get the idea without being too wordy (which I know seems at odds with the way I write ::shrug::) It's just the way I structured my information intake over the course of my life while trying to teach myself about the world at large). That's the best way to get through to me. If you know of anything like that, please do share!

Finally, it's well past bedtime for me. I'd really like to thank you for this conversation. I can be very thick-headed, and appreciate you sticking with me through it. Unfortunately, I've GOT to get some sleep as I've been up over 36 hrs at this point with only a couple short naps, and I just can't do this stuff anymore like when as i was young.

Thanks again so much! Good night.

Few things ever are with them.

I'm actually not mad about tankies themselves. It's their arrogant & intolerant attitudes that frustrate me. Instead of politely considering where I'm coming from, and explaining why they think I'm wrong, they just condescend and block/ban. I've found it next to impossible to have open-minded & fair exchange of perspectives with them, which makes me wonder how TF they ever expect to change the mind of people like me.

I'll admit at this point I have a fair amount of disdain for them, but mainly because they've earned it after numerous run-ins.

Way to illustrate my point. I tried to be fair and honest & you give snark in return. Well, you get what you give, but I'm sure that's the point - you prefer not to have actual conversation with someone of a different mindset. It feels good (momentarily) to tell yourself you're "better than them," but really it's just cowardice. It takes maturity and true self-confidence to open yourself up to someone different than you & meet them halfway to honestly & open mindedly discuss things. Too difficult for a keyboard warrior who feels safer condescending because they might expose themselves to being proven wrong about something.

To be able to say the phrase "8 in 10", of course you have to exclude Trump. I bet you could get pretty close to two-thirds of respondents who want him removed as well, tho.

progressives need to get bigger inside the democratic party before they can leave, but the democratic party structurally prevents them from getting big enough to matter.

The DNC certainly puts up a hell of a fight, yet more progressives are set to take up positions within the party. There are a good number on ballots across the US, and it's inevitable the number will grow this November. I get the pessimism - really, I do - but I think it's possible to overcome the power of the DNC establishment, especially as a number of them (like Pelosi) age out.

the right wing takeover of the republicans was because we have a politics where money speaks louder than people. that's why i don't expect a left wing takeover of the democrats will work either.

The thing is that only works when enough of their constituency also feel like they're making enough money to be comfortable. With the wealth of the country being concentrated into fewer and fewer people, that also means there are fewer who feel that way. That, IMHO, is a significant part of the reason why progressives have started seeing so many successes of late.

Nonetheless, I'm interested in hearing what alternative approaches you feel would work better. Up until the next quote, you've been very vague about what you mean, so thank you for the next bit:

a workers party isn’t going to emerge from inside the democratic party. it’s going to emerge from the kind of organizing and dual power building that creates enough independent capacity to make electoral politics secondary rather than the primary terrain.

That does indeed seem extremely ambitious, and I'm curious how you see that coming about short of a full-on revolution. I'm assuming "tankies" are well-versed in this, but I am not, and that may be the source of the problem. Unfortunately, being less educated in this area means I likely can't just dive into reading the literature I've occasionally seen recommended. The way my mind works requires an overarching summary for me to build my exploration of the subject upon - without the groundwork, it can quickly become all too abstract for my mind to put the pieces together.

So, got any ELI5-level explainers? Please & TY.

i don't think it's as simple as 'covering bases' to be going up against a well-resourced party structure on its own terms and expecting change. to me that is an unrealistic expectation.

There are weaknesses in most structures, you just have to find them. The right-wing takeover of the USA has demonstrated this, even if it did take them decades to accomplish it.

i'd rather see challengers running under a different party, i just have zero confidence in the democrats at this point.

There have been other parties for quite some time. They're lucky to have even 1% of the population's awareness, however. America's electoral system virtually guarantee it'll stay this way, which is why I see disrupting the Democratic party from within as the more likely to be viable approach for the time being. We can work towards progressives splitting off into their own party at some point, but they need to get bigger first or they'll lose and take their reputations down with that loss.

They are trolling. Plz don't feed them.

do you think i'm not being honest or open?

Honest? Sure - to the extent that most people's limited self-awareness allows.

Open? When you said:

tbh swaying comfortable imperial core people was never really at the forefront of my motivations, so i think you're safe.

That came across as preemptively dismissive, as if you assumed I was pro-capitalist and thus not worth bothering with.

The fact is capitalism is all I've known, but that doesn't mean I'm enamored of it. My life path has been... unusual, in some significant ways that both give me broader view of things than most, while also having limited my education about them. I've had to figure out a lot of things on my own, which inevitably means there are significant gaps in my knowledge. But it also means I've come to some conclusions about things that most people never think about, or are (self-)aware enough to realize.

When I engage I try to speak what I know, and remain open to mulling over the responses if they contain something I don't, or hasn't considered. All I ask is that the same mindset be utilized in return so that an open exchange of information and perspectives may flow from it. This is how people come to understand one another, and that's all I really want to do. If I learn something that helps me improve my understanding and perspectives on things, then all the better.

Hence the "pilot" part - they attempt to steer people's trust to the highest bidder.

You should close this page.

This thing has been beat to death already, so no problem. Done.

WTF are you even talking about? Please point out some examples of this supposed behavior.

Reevaluate what, specifically? I'm always thinking and reevaluating things. The goal of participating in conversations like these is to gather more info for said reevaluations.

One might say you initiated the "nastiness" that with that "quote," which seemed to imply I'm thoughtless - something readily disproven by simply reading this entire series of threads.

I'm on board with that, but I don't see why the two approaches are mutually exclusive. I don't see the harm in covering the bases.

They "pilot" people towards the highest bidder - it's right there in the name.

Lazy condescending bullshit. We are forced to make decisions every day which rely upon conclusions made up to that point. There's nothing preventing those conclusions from being reevaluated again for later decision making. That is the whole point of this discussion, for example.

literally just had the same reaction that i could have got from some maga dude, right down to the misgendering in this exact thread. i really hope you can appreciate that this isn't a new experience for me either.

Try to remember everyone's unique. I can't answer for that person's response to you, but I hope you can see mine are different.

But, yeah - I fully get where you're coming from. I'm the "black sheep" of my family because I'm not on board at all with their right wing crap, and after many years I pretty much instinctively expect the worst out of every Republican because they rarely deviate from the hive mind. Yet, I still wait for them to dig their grave first before being dismissive of them because I always try to treat people how I'd like to be treated and that's with fairness & understanding.

i don't see what benefit there is to participating inside the democratic party in any way. certainly not in voting for it; we don't even have a popular vote.

The progressives taking up more spaces within the party of late show why. You really need to focus on the primaries - work towards keeping the corporate Dems from getting the nomination & we can change things from within. Unfortunately, I'm not really aware of any other credible approach available to us short of an extremely unlikely full-on revolution - but at least there is a path towards change if we work it hard enough.