Zompist Bboard Again

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:20 amEvery one of the undergrads who stayed home to watch Jake Paul supports trans pronouns. Unlike you, they don't see political affiliation as a way of life. Of course, there are other viewers who do fall in line with the opinions of influencers. However, an influencer being popular doesn't necessarily imply that their viewers constitute a voting bloc.

Except that polls showed Gen Z voting heavily for Trump and I keep reading that young men have turned decisively toward the right over the past decade. Presumably that reflects the influence of reactionary pundits like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate and so forth.

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:39 am Except that polls showed Gen Z voting heavily for Trump and I keep reading that young men have turned decisively toward the right over the past decade. Presumably that reflects the influence of reactionary pundits like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate and so forth.

There is a shift, but it's not overwhelming. IIRC 54% of young men (men specifically) voted for Trump. Many of them are rejecting America's idpol intellectual consensus and very likely the stance of the Democrats on the price of eggs. Once the effects of fascism become clearer, many of them will flip to the other side. This is how voters behave in Democratic elections: they keep supporting incumbents until grievances pile up, when they switch to the other side, no matter how awful. Lots of people who were reactionary when younger have changed their minds after learning more. Even influencers like Adam Something have done it. We may not have to wait for long. We are already seeing Democrats win elections.

The real problem is that both parties officially support the oligopoly. We need a genuine leftist alternative that can consistently address the price of eggs. Even there, socialists are winning Democratic primaries. The danger is that they won't be able to enact their policies, or the policies will backfire because they didn't restructure the economy at a fundamental enough level. The only long term solution to that is for workers to educate each other.

Honestly, the right-wing influencers are only popularizing talking points that circulate in all strata of American society. There is so much intellectual right-wing crap. Have you read the novel Corrections? Americans even give out free copies of Atlas Shrugged like the bible. This might be the deepest problem: How to make American intellectuals sadder so they can see the reality facing them. My hope is that Trump's presidency will do part of that job for us. Of course, many of them are learning the lesson, "I guess people really like fascism." It's these American intellectuals who need to be reeducated or disempowered to prevent them from staging coups like the ones in Listen, Liberal.

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 3:50 pm

Travis B. wrote:According to Wikipedia 35% of the adult population of the US had a bachelor's degree as of 2018. My own highest level of education is a bachelor's degree. If I am one of jcb's enemies of the people as an educated person, so are roughly 35% of the US population. Okay, if he means educated professionals, as I am a decently-paid professional programmer (or software engineer if one wants to emphasize highfalutin job titles), that might exclude part of that 35% from consideration. But still, that's an awfully large percentage of the population to denounce as class enemies. Of course, the Khmer Rouge had similar thoughts.

65% is larger than 35%, and is an awfully large percentage of the population to denounce as unredeemable deplorable bigots.

You forget the fact that Hillary was not speaking of blue-collar people overall when she spoke of "deplorables", so claiming that she was is just feeding into the right's lies. (Yes, Hillary was and is a centrist, but that is another story.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 11:42 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:08 am
Note that I am not of the opinion that socialism can be achieved through party politics in the first place, though, as actual socialism simply cannot be voted into place.

I do think you need legislation that helps or encourages socialism, at the very least. Laws that organize healthcare, for instance, or encourage co-ops or non-profits. Existing laws favor corporations and the wealthy. I agree that a bottom-up action is necessary as well... but it won't get far without top-down help.

What I mean is that within a democratic socialist model, you still need the bottom-up work or otherwise attempting to bring about socialism will get nowhere. Even if a democratic government one day enacted a law that mandated that all enterprises be worker cooperatives, without the worker self-organization the effort would quickly fail because workers would not know what to do with their new freedom.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 11:42 am

Also, if socialism is voted into place, it can be also voted away as well.

As Torco pointed out, this is the case of many necessary reforms.
There are several ways socialism can be protected. One is the constitution: here in France the (communist-inspired) preamble to the 1946 is held to be constitutional; among other things, it states that 'the Nation guarantees [...]healthcare, material security, rest and leisure.' That means that there are a number of things you can't easily vote away. Right-wing governments could do their best to do away with socialized healthcare -- in fact, they did restrict it to a certain extent -- but it would take significant effort.

If one is going for a democratic rather than libertarian socialist approach, socialism would probably have to be written into the constitution to prevent it from being undone as soon as a party more to the right comes to power in the typical electoral ping-pong of democratic politics.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 11:42 am A second one is that socialist institutions are often popular, and getting the political momentum to get rid of them is difficult. As Elon Musk noticed, Social Security in the US is socialism -- and Musk couldn't get rid of him; in fact he didn't even get to try. As I understand, doing so would be political suicide.

Trump's tariffs are very unpopular, yet that didn't stop them from happening.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 11:42 am Conversely, when socialist measures are voted away, well, often of course it's corporations and right-wingers and the rich doing their things. But democracy works and sometimes things are voted away because they don't work. Getting back to France again, yes, most of the nationalized companies were sold away, which is a pity. But then again, forcibly nationalizing every large company wasn't the right approach; ultimately it didn't help much so of course that approach lost the election.

Mitterand and Le Parti socialiste showed the limitations of top-down attempts to bring about socialism within a democratic model. Nationalizing the major industries is not going to bring about socialism, it will just replace private capitalists with the state, which can as you mention easily be replaced with private capitalists once another party comes to power.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 9:53 am Nationalizing the major industries is not going to bring about socialism, it will just replace private capitalists with the state, which can as you mention easily be replaced with private capitalists once another party comes to power.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 3:52 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:08 am Also, if socialism is voted into place, it can be also voted away as well.

Of course that's true, but then again, socialism introduced through some other method than voting can be taken away through some other method than voting, too.

A socialist anarchy, a socialist state with free elections, and a socialist dictatorship might all be turned be turned into something else in one way or another. It doesn't make sense to criticize a system on the grounds that it doesn't have fail-safe guarantees against being replaced by something else, because no system has that. There's simply no reliable good-things-forever system.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 10:17 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 9:53 am Nationalizing the major industries is not going to bring about socialism, it will just replace private capitalists with the state, which can as you mention easily be replaced with private capitalists once another party comes to power.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 3:52 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 9:08 am Also, if socialism is voted into place, it can be also voted away as well.

Of course that's true, but then again, socialism introduced through some other method than voting can be taken away through some other method than voting, too.

A socialist anarchy, a socialist state with free elections, and a socialist dictatorship might all be turned be turned into something else in one way or another. It doesn't make sense to criticize a system on the grounds that it doesn't have fail-safe guarantees against being replaced by something else, because no system has that. There's simply no reliable good-things-forever system.

The key thing, though, is that electoral politics within a liberal democracy are fickle, and if socialism is to succeed it needs to have a firmer basis than normal legislation that can be undone with a simple majority vote by elected politicians. Democratic socialism in practice would require both worker self-organization from the bottom up and socialism to be written into the constitution.

It was mentioned in this thread that things like universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery could be voted away. The matter, though, is that both at least here in the US are written into the constitution, and the latter was also the outcome of a bloody civil war that firmly cemented it in place. They are not like ordinary legislation that can be as easily undone as it can be enacted.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:09 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:01 am It's nice that he won, but keep in mind that he was up against a corrupt, incompetent sexual predator. Socialists in the USA can't count on being the main alternative to someone like that in every primary.

You are minimizing the amount of work his enthusiastic supporters did. They knocked on a lot of doors. If you watch street interviews, you will find that people liked his policy of rent control. They weren't just voting out the other guy.

The fact that he won at all is heartening. And yes, all that knocking on doors is essential. Conservatives learned that lesson back in the '70s: start small (e.g. school boards), organize, press the popular parts of their program.

It's almost amusing that the right-wingers can't draw blood by attacking Mamdani as a socialist— since he is one. They have to call him a communist. So far as I know his big fat communist idea is making bus fare free.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 5:31 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:09 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:01 am It's nice that he won, but keep in mind that he was up against a corrupt, incompetent sexual predator. Socialists in the USA can't count on being the main alternative to someone like that in every primary.

You are minimizing the amount of work his enthusiastic supporters did. They knocked on a lot of doors. If you watch street interviews, you will find that people liked his policy of rent control. They weren't just voting out the other guy.

The fact that he won at all is heartening. And yes, all that knocking on doors is essential. Conservatives learned that lesson back in the '70s: start small (e.g. school boards), organize, press the popular parts of their program.

It's almost amusing that the right-wingers can't draw blood by attacking Mamdani as a socialist— since he is one. They have to call him a communist. So far as I know his big fat communist idea is making bus fare free.

I was personally rather heartened that Mamdani won the Democratic primary. Even though I have the nagging suspicion that he may really be a social democrat, just the fact that he has gotten so far makes me feel optimistic that moving the Democratic party left may just be possible.

Not to ruin anyone's good mood, but any comments on the Supreme Court's ruling today on nationwide injunctions by district courts? It's been bothering me all day and distracting me from my personal writings, so I could really use some insight right about now.

MysteryMan23 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 7:46 pm Not to ruin anyone's good mood, but any comments on the Supreme Court's ruling today on nationwide injunctions by district courts? It's been bothering me all day and distracting me from my personal writings, so I could really use some insight right about now.

There's nothing good to say about it; it's obviously a move against the rule of law. If Democrats come back to power, I predict that the justices will injure themselves in their rush to undo the decision.

However, lawyers are lawyers, and there are loopholes.

just saw this: https://youtube.com/shorts/HMIAYzdWHkQ? ... C9i5S7gfEe

National Park visitors aren't squealing on the sites, but are praising the hard work & pushing back against Trump&co.

Zompist wrote:Do they still think that, now that Trump is sinking the economy? Is it going to create manufacturing jobs when the Republicans are creating economic uncertainty, cratering our exports, undermining the safety net and government support for science, alienating our allies, getting into wars, undermining democracy, and undermining unions? (And that's all assuming Trump continues backing off on his absurd tariffs. If he doesn't he's likely to cause an actual depression.)

I'm not sure, because I don't work there anymore. Sadly, I think that some would follow Trump off a cliff. Others would be more sensitive and persuadable.

I don't think anyone here is anti-worker— you're barking up the wrong tree. But just as you object to the Democrats playing Republicans Lite in the 1990s, a lot of us object to Democrats playing Trump Lite today. The GOP's version of populism is not pro-working-class.

I know that the Repubs are just doing fake populism. I don't want the Dems to do more centrism ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9afwZON8dU ) or play Trump Lite, I want them to do real populism ( https://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/15 ... ights.jpeg ) or socialism instead.

The fact that he won at all is heartening. And yes, all that knocking on doors is essential. Conservatives learned that lesson back in the '70s: start small (e.g. school boards), organize, press the popular parts of their program.

They also learned to not rely on the mainstream media to promote their views, and it's easier to just create their own news network (Fox News) that they directly control.

Leftists should learn from this lesson. The mainstream media is full of comfortable, complacent people who are used to taking orders, and are too cowardly to step out of line. Expecting them to not passively repeat capitalist propaganda is foolish.

malloc wrote:All my representatives and senators are fanatical Trump supporters who wouldn't dream of listening to me. Perhaps you've heard of Josh Hawley, among the most conservative people in the senate.

An idea: Create a fake persona and email address to go along with it, and email him about how you, a lifelong republican, are afraid that medicare cuts are going to close your local rural hospital and affect your ability to spend your retirement going to church with your grandkids.

Raphael wrote:Do you always react like that when people are basically agreeing with you? When and where did I do "apologetics for classist neoliberals"?

You haven't, but other people have when I express my disappointment with the current Dems, and tell me how my expression is actually helping Repubs win, so I need to stop doing that and only cheer on the Dems, no matter how classist and neoliberal they are, because at least they're better than the Repubs.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 4:47 pm

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 4:38 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 3:52 pmNo they're not. Did you attend the No Kings protests? If not, attend the next one. Have you written to your Congresscreatures? If not, go do it. These are not "daunting" to do.

All my representatives and senators are fanatical Trump supporters who wouldn't dream of listening to me. Perhaps you've heard of Josh Hawley, among the most conservative people in the senate.

They can't listen to voices that are silent.

Jeez, for once in your life listen to actual activists. They say write to your red state representatives. They do look at what pushback they're getting, they need to know that their policies are opposed, and blue state people cannot do this for you.

Exercise some common sense: you don't send Josh Hawley the Communist Manifesto. But you can certainly complain about the economy shrinking, threats to Medicare, rising budget deficits due to GOP tax cuts, etc. Hell, complain about AI if you want.

(It's also fine, and actually good, to keep to one issue. Or write multiple letters.)

Indeed, banning AI state law for a decade is mentioned in the OB₃, despite it supposedly being a budget reconciliation bill. That surely outrages you enough to write about it to Josh Hawley, who wants criminalise use of DeepSeek.
I have never been to the US and have no US citizenship, which is why I write to Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Kaja Kallas among others, but you can.

Regarding Josh Hawley, I think David Schraub got that one right. Schraub is politically a Liberal Zionist, so I have my disagreements with him, but a recent Bluesky post by him about Hawley is spot-on, IMO:

Josh Hawley trying the ol' Susan Collins "I'm going to vote exactly like a reactionary Republican but furrow my brow as I do it" move will really test just how gullible the media is about that play.

(They will fail the test).

https://bsky.app/profile/schraubd.bsky. ... qaukxdns25

Deleted doomposting from malloc.

I told you before, malloc, stop insulting and denigrating the resistance that's already ongoing. If you refuse to help in any way, you are complicit. In any case, stop posting about it.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 10:06 pmDeleted doomposting from malloc.

I told you before, malloc, stop insulting and denigrating the resistance that's already ongoing. If you refuse to help in any way, you are complicit. In any case, stop posting about it.

Looking at the situation objectively without hope or optimism, though, wouldn't you agree that things look pretty bleak? One can have hope and even faith that something will intervene to stop Trump, but I simply can't bring myself to believe in such things. I realize that sounds utterly grim but sometimes horrible things happen with no way out. If science fiction has taught me anything (apart from the dangers of AI), it's that dystopia is lurking around every corner. The future portrayed in 1984 or even Warhammer 40K (it's more fantastical elements aside) is far more likely than the world getting better.

If my perspective bother people here, I will keep it to myself. I apologize for ruining the good vibes here and if you need them to function in life, I will accept that.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 9:09 am

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 10:06 pmDeleted doomposting from malloc.

I told you before, malloc, stop insulting and denigrating the resistance that's already ongoing. If you refuse to help in any way, you are complicit. In any case, stop posting about it.

Looking at the situation objectively without hope or optimism, though, wouldn't you agree that things look pretty bleak?

thats like looking at murderers, while pretending that police and other things won't stop murderers.

or looking at jugglers juggling chainsaws, while ignoring little details like gravity.

One can have hope and even faith that something will intervene to stop Trump, but I simply can't bring myself to believe in such things.

you don't believe that humans exist?

I realize that sounds utterly grim but sometimes horrible things happen with no way out.

if horrible things happen, then you cope with it. you try to prevent it from recurring. you do not say "please sir, can I have some more?"

If science fiction has taught me anything (apart from the dangers of AI), it's that dystopia is lurking around every corner.

Cautionary Tales are not True Life Documentaries.

The future portrayed in 1984 or even Warhammer 40K (it's more fantastical elements aside) is far more likely than the world getting better.

I think we found the one thing more dangerous than Quisling, Lindburg or Chamberlain.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 9:09 am If science fiction has taught me anything (apart from the dangers of AI), it's that dystopia is lurking around every corner. The future portrayed in 1984 or even Warhammer 40K (it's more fantastical elements aside) is far more likely than the world getting better.

Perhaps you should ask Scotty to beam you over to my place so that we can have a chat about all that in person.

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 9:09 amThe future portrayed in 1984 or even Warhammer 40K (it's more fantastical elements aside) is far more likely than the world getting better.

The system described in 1984 has almost nothing in common with MAGA/Trumpism, or with contemporary right-wing populism in general.

There are so many differences that it isn't practical to list them, but for one thing ... in 1984, Big Brother is a symbolic figurehead who probably never existed; the system is maintained by a cadre of malicious but highly competent bureaucrats. Trump, by contrast, is a very real demagogue who has forced most of the competent bureaucrats out of his government and terrified the rest into submission. It's entirely possible that Trump's whole agenda will go down in flames because there's no one left at the helm with any fucking idea what they're doing. If Trump manages to trigger a financial crisis, lots of people will get hurt, and I'm not rooting for it (although I'm not totally immune to schadenfreude), but the point is, it is not something that could happen in Oceania, which pretty clearly does not have a bond market.

Orwell's models for authoritarianism were: the Soviet Union, fascist Germany and Italy and so on, and (to a lesser extent) the British Empire. The nightmare of his book is that he described a system that was stable and could last forever. At the time that he wrote it, that seemed plausible, but obviously, history didn't turn out that way (one of zompist's recent blog posts even alluded to that), and Trump's America is very, very different. It's practically defined by instability and by a mercurial would-be strongman with a fragile ego whose policies often change according to his whims and whoever happened to flatter him most recently.

I'm not trying to be pedantic—I realize that people sometimes use 1984 as shorthand for "Generic Very Bad Dystopia"—but, man, citing it (and ... Warhammer?) really does make it seem like you've decided you want to be scared and demoralized and you're not really looking at where the world is actually headed with a very critical eye.

Dune wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 1:41 amThe system described in 1984 has almost nothing in common with MAGA/Trumpism, or with contemporary right-wing populism in general.

Sure but note that I never equated the current situation with 1984 but merely said that 1984 is more plausible for our future than anything positive. Even if you consider the conditions in 1984 incredibly unlikely to pass, they still feel more likely than the world improving at this point.

Orwell's models for authoritarianism were: the Soviet Union, fascist Germany and Italy and so on, and (to a lesser extent) the British Empire. The nightmare of his book is that he described a system that was stable and could last forever. At the time that he wrote it, that seemed plausible, but obviously, history didn't turn out that way (one of zompist's recent blog posts even alluded to that), and Trump's America is very, very different. It's practically defined by instability and by a mercurial would-be strongman with a fragile ego whose policies often change according to his whims and whoever happened to flatter him most recently.

Maybe so, but Trump and other right wing populists have figured out the secret of retaining power indefinitely. Despite his utterly terrible record and constant scandals, Trump has only gotten more popular over the years, increasing his vote count with every election and making massive inroads among more and more demographics. Similar figures like Orbán and Putin have retained power for decades at this point and will die in office.