You’re right of course. This is part of the reason there needs to be a viable workers party, to educate and uplift the consciousness of workers to counter the lies of the GOP and the criminal negligence of the Democrats.

Sorry to break it to ya Slate (libs), Trump barely got more 18-24 votes this time than he did last time, whereas a lot of young people just didn’t show up for Harris. Everybody knew young people were upset by the genocide, they said they couldn’t vote for Harris because of her policies and surprisingly no matter how much Dem party dorks tried to shame them they didn’t show up, just like they said they wouldn’t. And now everyone is like “gen z is maga” get a grip

“These bonobo monkeys must become Rhodes scholars” is a more believable headline

Racial equality is a communist plot and that’s why communists are good actually

I agree with a lot of your analysis, but I think a lot of these conclusions are highly contingent on historical circumstance. For example, I think Trump is a lot more unpopular than the current narrative regarding Trump. The Dems do not want to be so wrong about Trump’s chance of winning as they were in 2016. A dynamic that could play out in this election is that many of the groups you identified (and were right to do so) feel so threatened by a Trump presidency (in part because of Dems successful and good organizing against him) causes those groups to unite and keep him out of office. This could lead to a split between the pragmatic republican movement concerned with maintaining the status quo, and the pro-Trump MAGA militants who are not as homogenous of a group as may first appear.

But feel free to “neener neener” about it if I end up being wrong in a few hours. My point is, things change, a disparate group of different interests can unite into an unbreakable bloc, and vice versa, in a traumatizingly short amount of time if recent years can be a teacher

So you’re looking at a criticism of liberalism, from the left of liberalism. Namely the socialist left, I am assuming. Socialists can be very critical of liberals, as liberalism is a part of the establishment, and has a long history of caving to right wing framing of issues (since the right wing is also (largely) liberalism, albeit “classical liberal.” In this case critical of the “its not practical” preconception that gives ground (literally) to the perpetuators of this genocide.

Way to stay on message

No she committed to do everything in her power to end the war. Very different. Sometimes “splitting hairs” isn’t just semantically, especially when it is political. Tell People.

I understand how politics works, and I can understand some of the many complications and consequences involved, but words have meaning, and meaning conveys truth.

So if you want to represent the nuanced, complex (one sided) world of real politik, then that is certainly a good exercise. “in my power” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, especially since she’s committed to, let’s say, bend the truth quite a bit with this sentence.

But skepticism alone isn’t analysis. I think by saying this she is trying to lure over “Uncommitted” conscientious objectors who are on the fence and may withhold their vote. But by not speaking strongly enough, she will never reach the vast majority of those people. This assurance feels empty to me. She’s not an ardent supporter of Palestinians, but who can see the future? Events are rapid and things change, "We exist in a context, all that.

But there are disadvantages to people only taking political action by way of their votes, and maybe this is one of them.

I hope she wins. But if she doesn’t the dems will blame those same voters, along with Greens (which, whatever) and any other third party voters instead of coming to grips with their many many failings over the last 8 - 10 years.

The genocide in Gaza.

Right I was just joking. I’ve seen a lot of cases of this, not as pronounced as “husband loses his shit over wife’s vote” but def the situation where two young people fall in love, have kids, and then the guy becomes very conservative whereas the woman is like normal-conservative where maybe she doesn’t have all the right “takes” but she has a shred of common sense and maybe even decency to realize that women bleeding out in ERs due to complications from a miscarriage is not just cruel and pointless but unsustainable if certain theories of historical development are to be trusted.

you get into these things when you’re younger.

What, chauvanistic conservativism?

Anarchist socialist antifa liberal democrats have infiltrated MAGA, die mad about it

He’s a fucking Vanderbilt, he’ll be fine

Putin seems to make implicit threats every time he opens his mouth, and I’m sure Musk’s “I’m a very dangerous crazy loose cannon billionaire” that is such a huge part of his public image, even – maybe especially – with heads of state, went over extremely well with an actually very dangerous guy who tames loose cannon billionaires as a part of his actually very dangerous job.

As long as you don’t mind me doing some lollygaggin

We all have our part to play in making the world an amusing place, dagnabbit

Normalize tactical use of “dingdong”

Excuse me? Can you give me more details about what you are trying to say?

I love this so much.

I didn’t really have the time or energy to go into the supporting logic, for as you’ve just demonstrated its a very involved argument that involves a lot of oft ignored history of the period after the crushing defeat of the German working class uprising (1923, '24) but before the Nazis took power in the wake of the Reichstag fire ('33, '34). Which honestly I’m not great on anyway, I appreciate your insight, slight factual correction that just makes the point even more urgently, and any book recommendations!

So while we are providing clarification and context to the uninitiated, I dug out Trotsky’s definition of fascism from 1932 since we are being so adamant about properly defining it:

At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie [the small business owners basically MAGAs], and bands of the declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat [working poor who are so exploited and disillusioned they defy their own class interests]; all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. […] And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. […] When a state turns fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the forms and methods of government are changed […] but it means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat.

In my opinion, wrt building coalition between liberals and communists, there tends to be a real failure by all parties, Marxist communists and liberals alike, to orient the alienated individual within the class or ideological milieu. Liberals can really only see the alienated individual; whereas commies, who claim to be materialists, can view the class/ideological superstructure, or sometimes reluctantly the individual, but almost never both at the same time. Mfs never read/don’t understand Theses on Feuerbach and it shows.

Which is to say liberalism and communism can’t really be allies, but individual liberals, who we might call progressives, more concerned with rights and human emancipation than preserving private property, can be won over to the demands of class struggle, especially as the conditions of struggle introduce sharp contradictions into their lives and the lives of the people around them. At this point the demands of their class outweigh the explanations furnished by their ideology and alliances can be forged between members of the fractured liberal or social democratic workers, and the communist/socialists who (hopefully) have prepared the field of struggle for the intensifying conflict.

Tldr: noone has a monopoly on being insufferable and maybe we could try not demonizing each other for like 15 seconds and see each other as rational people doing our best, reacting to rapidly changing conditions, that will result in pretty serious lose/lose final consequences for libs and commies alike if we can’t resist the actual fascists together.

But now I’ve been led away from the topic of the post article, proving that we are doomed to become what we most strongly condemn.