General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 74

Dom, it aint just the whities that are going to die. Every war in the history of war has shown us who suffers the most during times of war--the poor, the impoverished, and the non-privileged. If we keep this in a strictly American context, 10s of millions of poor and working poor--white, black, and Hispanic--will die, and 10s of millions more will be displaced, and 10s of millions more will see qualify of life decrease.

I'm a risk adverse person by nature when it comes to outcomes for other people, so if I'm going to take a chance on fighting a war that does those things to people that aren't me, I need the guarantee--not the chance, the absolute guarantee--that the socialist society that moves into place in post-war America is actually a socialist country and isn't perverted by people for their own gain at the expense of the very people they were fighting for int he first place. And there is literally no chance you can guarantee that.

 

Ok, ya that's fine. I'm not saying that's a wrong opinion. I think the points Eric made are valid as well, that in the short term that could mean Trump, who could also have a long and lasting impact on our society. I think we all just need to agree there is some middle ground here.

 

I would call someone murdering me now as a murderer, yes.

 

They don't "underestimate" it, there's just zero proof it would do what you think it would do. Democrats losing presidential elections has not changed the trajectory of the party to the left--it has done the exact opposite. See: 1980, 1984, 1988, and the resulting shift in Democratic policies. On top of that, they were explicitly rewarded for moving back towards the center--they won! You can't get a major left wing political player into the fold, whether it's as a serious 3rd party or a reimagining of a major 2nd party in a 2 party system when there aren't the voters there to support it.

Funny thing is the Democratic party has begun a shift back to the left as it has become more feasible to do so, but people are are still stuck on what they did in the 90's. Or they very, very incorrectly judge what exactly led to the ACA and what it does/why.

 

That doesn't answer my question. The morality of someone killing another person who is oppressing them isn't the same as someone who indiscriminately murders another.

 

Maybe because there hasn't been a break between the '90's and now, and there are still communities who are experiencing the policies of that same era.

 

There has certainly been a break between the 90's and now. And yeah, that's because between the 90's and now there was 8 years of GOP control and another 8 of transitional Democratic control that has, believe it not, made some changes to those very policies. I understand you're revolutionary, but governing doesn't always move forward in leaps and bounds, especially in today's polarized climate. It's unfortunately no the 60's anymore where one party or the other gets total control and an obvious mandate to do more or less what they want. And until you improve leftist turnout during the midterms, you'll never get that for the left really.


On a related note, I really wish we had a parliamentary system of government.

 

Good for you. I'm a black person in America. I do not say this to silence you, I say this to convey the relationship between the black body and capitalism, which is terror and violence. This is embedded in every layer. If you think you can vote in a million Obamas to alleviate the situation, you are wrong. The point at which we begin to grasp the true state of our existence in this country is the point at which violence is unleashed. I look at Nat Turner, the Black Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the riots, the destruction of private property, etc., not as unfortunate accidents, but a moral expression of righteous violence. If I think there's a chance, any chance, at liberation, I am for it. Your psychology affords you time and calculation; my psychology says I'm on borrowed time.

 

You act as though the democrats were not complicit on multiple levels of those eight years. Either way, Obama is a Clinton democrat. Here were are in 2016 and we have another democrat pushing a trade deal that will further the immiseration of workers. This is understood. It isn't that he isn't radical enough, I never expected him to be, nor did I expect the congress to pass legislation beneficial to workers or protecting black people or anything of that nature. My point is that the actual content of what was achieved wasn't left. It has the shape of a left-wing reform, but the content was reactionary. You can ascribe this to whatever phenomena you like that absolves the democrats of any responsibility, like voter turnout or Americans just being too damn conservative, or republicans being obstinate, but it isn't borne out when you look at the facts. And I agree the left does have to turn out. But never for democrats.

 

Ah, so if there's "a chance, any chance, at liberation", then you are for it. This explains why you refuse to accept that there's any chance of liberation without mass murder and/or death and socialism, for it would mean you'd have to participate in the system if you give it any leeway of having "a chance" at being used for liberation, because as you said, if there's "any chance", you'd be for it.

I'd also say you're extremely foolish if you assume socialism, and the amount of death it would take to get there, is the path to liberation for black people. Not to say there's no chance it is, there certainly may be a chance, but that assumption is built on a lottttttt of wishful thinking--probably moreso than assuming it can be done without such a cataclysmic event.

And I'll just say your conclusions are not always the facts you present them to be, but rather personal conclusions that take acquired knowledge and research and view it in one light, when there are multiple lights in which it is viewed by the very academia you often quote.

 

Dom can speak for himself on this issue, but I'm curious why you haven't expressed the same sense of moral disgust with @ErictheHypeMan saying "Do I want the US to kill people? No, in a perfect world we would not have to. But we live in the real world, and sometimes hard choices need to be made to maintain global security and prevent the rise of fascist regimes." This is advocating "the murdering of people . . . in the name of trying to stop other murders," (although considering the types of choices hes defending, "in the name of trying to stop other murders" is a very suspect justification) yet I don't see you questioning whether he should be allowed in this thread or whether a productive discussion is possible with him.

 

@Dominick I'm not asking this question to incite anything, but I'm curious(and don't think you've posted about it) how you feel about the overwhelming support (at least among the voting population) of Hillary, as well as her support from prominent African American leaders, as well as others such as Trayvon Martin's mom.

 

I'm not advocating for mass murder. But, I also understand that threats to capital and white supremacy are met with deadly violence. The demand being made, which is difficult to even articulate in terms of the traumatic violence that occurs daily, is too central to the current relations of power within this country. When has any power structure ceded power without violence? Perhaps I'm a pessimist. If one looks at the history of liberalism, liberals and the party to which they belong, one sees little more than blood, betrayal and continued violence. It is so much a part of the party that, in a singular performative act, which demonstrated legitimacy, the last democratic president watched a black man with intellectual disabilities be put death. You separate this out. You may not even see it as relevant, but therein lies the problem with liberalism. They see the acts of individuals as isolated and predicated on political calculation and projects, which ostensibly make the world a better place. I see the reproduction of the conditions of oppression and the coronation of their ideology as drenched in black blood. That is the cost of those calculations and projects. Your insistence on appealing to the project misses the point, which is that the conditions for this project is genocide, is suffering, is sexual assault, is patriarchy. You refer to me as though I am some sort of sociopath, I am merely offering up a realistic image of power struggles. You choose blindness. You say we remember too much. We need to stop, play along in our own destruction, and things will not be so bad. Because you are committed to the structure, and I want nothing more than for it to be torn down. Your commitment is personal as well. It is that your very being and the ideology that you buy into are constituted by these relations of oppression. Your commitment blinds you and, thus, a magic trick in which your being, and I'm using you here to stand in for many white liberals, is moved into the realm of ethical. It is immoral that they might die in struggle. They're good people. The same with business owners. But, in any other situation, this shift to the ethical wouldn't hold. You would understand that the destruction of the slaveowner or the grand dragon is commensurate with their captives relationship to them. Their performance, as people, is irrelevant. And this is not advocacy for the mass murder of liberals, but the teasing out of our relationship to them and the degree to which the destruction of this world would destroy them, categorically, as people. I feel similarly towards many of those within the socialist movement when I have similar discussions, so I understand that socialism isn't a cure-all, but, at the level of the socioeconomic, which within that contains a slave relation for black peoples, the destruction of capitalism provides the space for us, for once, to truly grasp our existence and move towards freedom; and what is substantial about Marxism in this regard is, there is the right to self-determination embedded within its ideological practices that reinforce that right multiple levels that space.

But, I just want to draw attention to this entire conversation as a sort of microcosm of what I'm trying to say. There is moral outrage about my positions. Here we have a nation built on genocide, that two months from now will celebrate the birth of a nation that has only known being murderous. And this continues to be the case, at home and abroad. And for what? Profit, shoring up white supremacy as an element of that, geopolitical positioning, and so forth. I am here talking about liberation and the violence that occurs because our liberation means the privileged, and the white primarily, lose everything. This is the moral positions liberals choose to take, and this is the psychology and logic that permits them to submit others to violence for the coherence of their world.

 

There is a generational divide, just as there are with white democrats. Overwhelmingly, the older black middle-class supports Hillary. Part of that middle-class is the clergy. Both of these figures are poles of attraction within the community and confer legitimacy upon Hillary. Similarly, polls show the support is largely survival drive; that is, Hillary, with help of the black petty bourgeois and the elites within the DNC, positioned her as the best option against Trump. It is important to point out that they aren't a monolith and there is plenty of differentiation, but the narrative is too complex to explore for white media. For example, black people have a lower opinion of capitalism than their white counterparts. How that translates, like everything, is contingent a number of political factors. But, we saw the emergence of an independent movement of the younger generation from the old guard that is beholden to the DNC in places like Ferguson and here in Baltimore. They were telling tnem to stop, don't riot, don't cause problems, there are channels through which we can navigate for this to get better, and they were shouted down. Baltimore is overwhelmingly democratic with black leadership, who corroborate the ideology of white supremacist capitalism. They lack legitimacy and are seen as uncle toms, and rightfully so, because they've chosen to exist as assistants to our oppression.

 

If Trump actually gets to debate Bernie because Hillary won't...that'll hurt her badly and probably help both those guys.

Interesting to see what's going to happen.

 

I don't know why we keep letting the socialist/communist hijack this thread when they have their own sub.

 

what? lol. make a liberalism thread then lol this "general"

 

Domino theory: forum edition

 

It would just be nice to sometimes talk about politics and not have to also talk about why it doesn't matter because we should be socialist.

 

This is the general politics thread, it's literally here to discuss anything related to politics

 

Trump saying he won't debate Sanders (gasp!)

Trump says he will not debate Sanders - CNNPolitics.com

 

Not surprised, it does him no good. He gets plenty of free media regardless

 

Oh no other people in the thread disagree with your shitty status quo politics what a fucking travesty, let's just sequester them somewhere else, that's an effective idea

 

I tried to start a conversation about Bill Clinton being a rapist. No one wants to talk about that. Either way, it is called a critique for a reason. You drill down to the core and dismantle ideas. It is an election season, and much of the critiques are pertinent to the choices available, as well as their efficacy, which leads to broader conversations regarding the legitimacy of the system we are using to determine policy. The default status is to accept and argue within that framework, and many more people discuss it on those terms, so imagine how I feel when people are basically regurgitating persperctives they've borrowed from HuffingtonPost or MSNBC.

 

I personally believe that arguing within the current framework is the most productive form of discussion, as that is the system we have right now. You can argue all day about how the US would be so much better if it was a socialist utopia, but the fact is we are not. And we are not going to become one anytime soon. People arguing within the current framework are not sheep, they are just being realistic and understand the way things are.

Also, to be honest I do not like the way I have been treated in this forum. I have been very respectful this whole time, yet, because I have a different opinion, I have been called delusional, morally bankrupt, etc. It really doesn't make for the best discussion. So I won't be posting here anymore, but I hope some of you are more open to people with a different opinion in the future.