Are there any other leftists here? 👀

[ilumairen]

1 minute ago, Apech said:

 

Part of the process which leads to looking deeper is expressing your opinions and being challenged.  (imo)

 

Then you challenge them, I've got my own challenges brewing.. soo much tea and drama... 

[ilumairen]

1 minute ago, Zork said:

You mean IF people are ready. "When" shows confidence it will happen. Guess what? It won't! We are going the opposite direction for millenia now. And people lack both the knowledge and self inquiry to understand. Those who do, don't bother anyway.

 

Would you like a hug?

[Zork]

8 minutes ago, C T said:

 

In considering within the confines of TDB, I'd say there are many willing individuals who, freed of arrogance, possess both the time and capability to support their views and opinions independently. 

I have seen the complete opposite. And we are both looking at the same threads.

We are different people from completely different cultural backgrounds and environments. Political talk won't unify us ever.

[Zork]

10 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

Would you like a hug?

I am not a tree.

[joeblast]

15 hours ago, ralis said:

 

Actually there is plenty of proof regarding racist remarks on this site. One member used the “n” word within the last week and was allowed to revise without any mod reprimand after his post. 

It wasn't racist, ya intolerant!  It was slang, and in context slang!  And I happened to be quoting Eddie Murphy Raw there, if you took a moment to absorb before the knee flew up. Because it was a very applicable and just as insulting analogue of how the joke was told, and its reflective of how banksters view Plebes.  Just because you have no sense of irony or humor doesnt mean you get to scream appropriation every time someone uses "a word on the bad list."   Thankfully, mods here have a much fairer and clearer head than you do.  Half the "shit" started is from your reactionary stance, and I contend that "things got worse" entirely in response to the way YOU act.  Been here over a dozen years now and there's plenty of us that have watched this happen over and over and over again.  How you think it is that I got nasty with you?  Reciprocating! 

 

So if there's gonna be a respect-check here on Daobums, you're in the top 3 longtime regulars that should be standing in that line there pal.  (I'll probably be in line right behind you for enjoying to poke at those who cant rationalize their stances and reconcile them with reality and somehow hope that a little poking and prodding will spur a modicum of evolution, but ze horse, ee don always like to drink.)  Be a little more respectful and you will see that reciprocated also.

 

15 hours ago, C T said:

 

Enlarge that enough, and it about sums up the full agenda of the current US administration, imo. 

*chuckles*  I suppose more of the movie is going to have to play out before yous accept that Bruce Willis is the deadguy in the movie   The only reason I didnt really have a problem with the military spending is because of the cheapshit pivot designed to swisscheese US Forces alongside the monetary pivot to China that was going to happen with their Hillary plan to finish the Dismantling of America job whose phases have been in the works for 50 years.  If you look at everything past Kennedy....hell even Ike knew...but they were pumping america up to be a nice fat calf to bleed out and then move on, sticking the plebes with the carcass.  America was to become an impoverished nation inside a digital prison under Bankster Planet - like every other nation mostly - except America was going to be the most spectacular failure of them all.

 

Spoiler

Really this sort of reminds me of having watched the Naruto series a few years back, there are so many parallels.  (That's like literally the only full series of anything I've watched, post-2000 lol.)  You have all the smaller fiefdoms historically fighting each other all the while multiple powerful overarching forces conspire to take over the world, lots of whom think they are working with or for each other, and the allegiances unravel as reality comes rolling along - and then we have an orange hair come along who is ridiculed at first, but eventually wins hearts and spoils each of the big entities great plans that they have planned for just this side of forever, there are spectacular wars waged over it, and the orange kid would have failed a thousand times over if not for all the support he received along the way.  The Banksters analogue is that of the mother alien who wants to set up the tree and enslave everyone on the planet to feed her power; people like Clinton or Soros can be equated to beings like Madara Uchiha who thought he was going to be able to make himself a damned good deal out of it all, but then had no role in the mother alien's plans, he was just a tool to be used and crushed when no longer needed.  America's failure would have been the stealing of and unleashing of 9tails (the source of the orange hairs power, which would kill orange hair) as a final-ish crushing blow to the nations.

 

 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, sean said:

 

 

So I think at least one crucial component is, maybe just an apophatic way of restating what Steve already said so beautifully: Stop turning away from the pain in this world.

 

 

I had to chuckle at the irony of "Stop turning away from the pain in this world" when juxtaposed with the human & child trafficking that has been taking place.  Or is it that you need to get to the later point in the movie to understand that Bruce Willis is dead, too?  I dont have any 6th sense, Sean - I'm just laying things out clearly - the kiddie shit is all true, and if that's all true, then the lot of you are being massively uncaring towards them, because the people who program the media are in on it and dont want the plebes to know.  The people "you" trust...

 

Job #1 for Trump is to dismantle those networks and the people who have been running them, its a worldwide international operation and that's why things are slow rolled.  Literally everything else is secondary - we all saw the weaponization of the IRS, DoJ and other gov agencies , the weaponization of media platforms...Soros didnt say "there was going to be no conservative voice on the internet and media by 2020" for nothin, that was truly their intent - and after they took care of the right, you know darn well they were coming for nothing short of full compliance from left right and center, and this ultimately would have meant that no real implementation of actual leftism could ever take place on planet earth ever again - you already see its perversion from actual leftism.

 

I'm glad you at least view Trump the wrecking ball as a positive on those dark aspects (the ones you will allow yourself to see at least,) but until you come around to facts on the dark shit going on, how deep it is/was... *holds up hands*  its kind of a big part of the equation at this point in time and cant be ignored any longer.  I caught a lot of shit a couple years ago when I first started pointing this stuff out and nobody was ready to see it, but now that its all making its way onto the news and things are finally coming around...I'm not normally the type to say atodaso, but...man, I dont say shit just to get a rise out of people - if its not truthful, then the entire essence of that "game" is 100% lost.

Edited July 27, 2019 by joeblast

[ralis]

The topic at hand is "are there any other leftists here." Please stay on topic!

[ilumairen]

2 minutes ago, Zork said:

I am not a tree.

 

Hmmm.. you were beginning to seem rather "rooted." So thanks for clearing this up for me, and please do forgive my apparent confusion. 

 

:walking away now, sorry for the short derailment:

[Pilgrim]

9 hours ago, sean said:

 

Biden's a creepy piece of shit. 😆 I'm much further left than Bernie but IMO he's the only viable center-left option. He's been fighting this fight for decades. Though I'm not holding my breath that he won't be thrown under the bus by shitlibs again.

 

Regardless, while I participate in electoral politics, I also think it can be an entangling distraction.

 

Join a local democratic socialist, anarchist or communist group and meet real people. Decide for yourself if their ideas resonate with you and if they feel like good folks. Ask for book recommendations. There's a long, deep history to all of this. Find ways to get involved. Start small.

 

I said, "there's a better and much more magical way forward than hitching to the reactionary Trump dump-truck." I mean that but I'm finding it difficult to unpack entirely in a soundbite.

 

Maybe a first step for anyone still under this absurd Trump spell is to simply recognize how much of a boring, tried, dead-end it is.

 

It's the exact same story Republicans have been hawking for decades except now incoherently rambled by your retired, senile, grandpa. Throw in some slightly raised volume on the same old, lazy, racist dog whistle bits Reagan deployed, thus cleverly hijacking a philosophically rudderless corporate media financially dependent on spectacle.

 

Trump is not a unique Republican.

 

He's merely the churlish face of it Republicans usually hide behind closed doors. When Republicans (or even most Democrats) disagree with him, it's generally on tone only.

 

Trump's demonic policy positions are nearly all entirely conventional, demonic, Republican policy positions. If there's anything unique about Trump, it's not that he pushes much beyond Republican-standard plagues. It's that he breaks with decorum and "says the quiet part loud." It's that he flagrantly galvanizes his supporters around their most crass, cruel, ignorant and delusional instincts.

 

In a way, I actually appreciate this about Trump.

 

While presently it can certainly feel like Trump's "won the day", I also see that the spell of sham respectability cast by decades of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama "polite murder" style politics is fracturing in his wake. People seem to be waking up a bit and finally seeing, starkly, that the emperor has no clothes and indeed never did.

 

This shared experience of so many, now staring into the unmistakable, unmasked face of American evil is, at the very least, an opportunity to reevaluate and revitalize social values and boundaries.

 

There's no "one weird trick" if only we all did that will save us from our present-day dystopian hell-world to "immanentize the eschaton" 😄. In fact, not to sound hyperbolic, but I think our avoidance of annihilation as a species is far from guaranteed.

 

The "hard pill" of a leftist perspective is a kind of bleak, depressive-realism. Things are really bad, we have very little power, we lose constantly, unbearably beautiful people we deeply love are beaten, jailed and murdered. I think it all demands a widening capacity to presence more and more emotional pain. 😬

 

Behind the vulgar spectacle of smirking politicians, idiotic pundits and inane advertisements for shit we don't need is an incredibly grim, real-life horror movie. It's crushing to see the depth and scope of it.

 

The least fortunate of us are victims in the worst scenes of the horror show. Those outside of it generally try their best to avoid the pain of acknowledging it even exists. "This is fine." Others, whether they like it or not, seem naturally cursed with a deeper capacity for both seeing and "holding" this pain. Many people are driven at least a bit mad when exposed to too much, too suddenly. (Hence why some lefties can come off a bit "unhinged." We've seen some shit.)  There might be a decent shamanic or Kundalini analogy one could make of all this.

 

So I think at least one crucial component is, maybe just an apophatic way of restating what Steve already said so beautifully: Stop turning away from the pain in this world.

 

Don't harden your heart to the suffering of those less fortunate and more vulnerable.

 

I think an indication you're doing this "correctly" is that you'll probably cry more often. And experience more rage. Fun, right? I think this may be the price of admission, if you haven't already paid it. But it's through this, if you can bear it, that I believe you'll also eventually find yourself laughing and loving and creating more. This heart-broken-open place is the foundation from which I hope and believe that we might reenchant this floating world.

 

Anyway, fuck, I hope none of this sounds like life advice. Jesus. I'm not qualified for that shit. 😂

 

Sean

 

Not sure weather to hit Lol, thanks or a yet to be produced button that says wow!

 

Lots of material in this reply. As far as the pain and widening to it been there done that in spades not an issue.

 

Have been among the disenfranchised not knowing where the next meal is coming from or when I could get a bath or even wash my clothes.

 

I literally do cry over the plight of the homeless having been homeless it effects me deeply and I do not turn from it but have even recently done what I could to help a homeless woman.

 

A short story. I went to a convenience store a woman I had seen many times with her belongings in a rolling suitcase was standing in thenthreshold not panhandling but trying to stay dry as it was raining like crazy.

 

I asked her if she was alright she said I am okay, I am just homeless.

 

I replied I understand, are you hungry? Why not come in a get a sandwich pick out what you like? it’s my treat.

 

She replied no, no I am fine so I let her be.

 

The rest of the night I was a wreck reliving my own homeless days.

 

The next day I got community leaders involved to see if they could help. The lady disappeared. 

 

The problems with this nation vex me sorely. No one should be homeless without work and the ability to lead a reasonable life.

 

The whole description of polite politics is spot on and yes everyone since Ford in my lifetime has pretty much been a shit bag.

 

The way you write reminds me of 3Bob but far more coherent. It also reminds me of stuff I saw growing up in the early 1970’s 

 

 Hard to believe a 43 year old who was only 4 years old in 1980 knows how to talk like this.

 

This type of talk is pretty old and is route indoctrination, I recognize it, my cousin in her 60’s does it also.

 

Lots of my old Hippie friends and free thinkers now mostly dead due to old age and massive drug consumption used to talk like this.

 

Don’t get me wrong this is just like saying I recognize country music or Rap when I hear it.

 

Could care less what music folks like.

 

Biggest thing I see with this mentality though is this,  it can point out everything that is wrong but never offers a solution.

 

It also never does anything.

 

Surly if the things that are wrong can be pointed out in a public discussion so also can the solution.

 

You are very spot on about the things that are wrong and have described them better than anyone.

 

Is the far left as you represent it wrong?

 

I do not think it is and the far left is an odd term.

 

I do not think it adequately describes something that on all appearances is a radical departure from the current world climate.

 

The way you are writing has more than a hint of the old but I Also sense something new.

 

I sense the pressure of a younger generation circling back and picking up where the older left off and we’re ineffective.

 

Who says you have to unpack it in a soundbite?  

 

Why not just take your time and unroll it here on your site?

 

There are more people willing to learn and evaluate than just myself.

 

I gave up on people like my cousin, the old original hippies and others because though they could talk really well that is where it ended and usually devolved into rhetoric and politics.

 

Politics are poison as far as I am concerned and a way to manipulate the masses.

 

When you say 

 

“Join a local democratic socialist, anarchist or communist group and meet real people. Decide for yourself if their ideas resonate with you and if they feel like good folks. Ask for book recommendations. There's a long, deep history to all of this. Find ways to get involved. Start small.”

 

I will not because I do not think I will hear anything of the caliber you are saying.

 

I would much rather hear / read what you have already digested and have concluded.

 

The reason for this is you are the first person identifying yourself as a leftist who has ever in my experience Pointed out the glaringly obvious issues with the elite of both parties.

 

You condemn Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump all with the same correct brush stroke and by goodness I agree. 

 

So please do continue this is interesting and not the same ol my party your party blah, blah, blah.

 

I freely admit I voted for Trump and not because I thought he was the best thing for our country but as you say as a reactionary vote to be free of the onslaught of Obama era policies like having the IRS take money out of your tax return  if you do not carry health insurance which only got more expensive and provided less.

 

That nonsense alone was enough for me to never vote for anyone who intended to further those types of policies.

 

Fact of the matter we are wealthy enough and technologically advanced enough that there should be no hunger, no homelessness and no lack of medical care but capitalism is not getting us there.

 

Democracy is a failed experiment the world over.

 

Socialism I fear is just reducing all to poverty and promoting elites once again.

 

From what I have observed a Representative  Republic does not work either. It winds up corrupted because only the extremely wealthy IE: Elites who do not represent the masses always do the same thing, the logical thing they represent their own class and by shear money alone make it impossible for a person who is a part of the masses to ever yep you guessed it represent the masses.

 

Our Representative Republic has been subverted by capitalism, Via legalized entities called corporations which have been given the status of persons without consequences for any actions and has becomes a broken Democracy of sorts and is falling into a nihilistic dysfunctional form of  socialism which is just another form of thinly disguised monarchy which I define as rule of the elites.

 

Where am I going with this?

 

One simple conclusion.

 

It is human nature for a ruling class to take hold, exist and protect it’s power and ensure its continued elevated position at all costs.

 

This has always been the case and is just hidden by different ideologies of governing until the masses suffer enough and revolt, happens pretty regularly throughout history.

 

The whole thing is rather droll.

 

We live in an age of undeclared Empires that have learned how to placate the masses and put controversial puppets like Obama and Trump in place to give people an outlet to blow off steam that would otherwise build into revolution.

 

The thing that shocks me most is the degree of controversiality of people like this. The low caliber of their cultural personality lacking all dignity and decorum and making a Mocary if the office of the President of the United States.

 

For an Obama or a Trump to have ever played the role of president and the things that have come from it tells me one thing.

 

The members of Congress come across as a pack of idiots as well.

 

The pressure of the people is getting very high and the elites are doing there best to put relief valves and distractions in place.

 

Relief valves IE: Obama and Trump.

 

Both are only possible in a country that I suspect will have  a revolution well within the next 50 to 75  years. 

 

What is the solution? Search me I’m the one asking.

[Zork]

1 minute ago, ilumairen said:

 

Hmmm.. you were beginning to seem rather "rooted." So thanks for clearing this up for me, and please do forgive my apparent confusion. 

 

:walking away now, sorry for the short derailment:

Absurd question require absurd answers don't you think?

[ilumairen]

1 minute ago, Zork said:

Absurd question require absurd answers don't you think?

 

Yes, it was absurd of me to ask if someone expressing apparent angst would like a hug.

 

WTF is wrong with me??? We're here to dig into our trenches, be outraged on behalf of others, and argue dagnabbit. Guess for a moment I forgot... 

[Zork]

1 minute ago, ilumairen said:

Yes, it was absurd of me to ask if someone expressing apparent angst would like a hug.

Angst????!!! Hahahaha!

I have less than 60 pulses a minute right now. What makes you think i am anxious?

[ilumairen]

3 minutes ago, Zork said:

Angst????!!! Hahahaha!

I have less than 60 pulses a minute right now. What makes you think i am anxious?

 

This did:

 

31 minutes ago, Zork said:

You mean IF people are ready. "When" shows confidence it will happen. Guess what? It won't! We are going the opposite direction for millenia now. And people lack both the knowledge and self inquiry to understand. Those who do, don't bother anyway.

 

 

[ilumairen]

17 minutes ago, ralis said:

The topic at hand is "are there any other leftists here." Please stay on topic!

 

My father called me a "bleeding heart" for as long as I remember; to him I was leftist. 

 

You made comments to me about the patriarchy and fascism and Hitler; to you I'm clearly not.

 

As for myself, I just find this all a bit confusing... and don't identify as much, except for being one of those pitiable warehouse workers y'all seem outraged on behalf of.

[ralis]

5 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

My father called me a "bleeding heart" for as long as I remember; to him I was leftist. 

 

You made comments to me about the patriarchy and fascism and Hitler; to you I'm clearly not.

 

As for myself, I just find this all a bit confusing... and don't identify as much, except for being one of those pitiable warehouse workers y'all seem outraged on behalf of.

 

Please explain the context?

[Earl Grey]

1 minute ago, ilumairen said:

 

My father called me a "bleeding heart" for as long as I remember; to him I was leftist. 

 

You made comments to me about the patriarchy and fascism and Hitler; to you I'm clearly not.

 

As for myself, I just find this all a bit confusing... and don't identify as much, except for being one of those pitiable warehouse workers y'all seem outraged on behalf of.

 

The politics, the philosophical roots, the history, the ideology, and the identity of the Left all seem to have their own divergent paths and yet also overlap. By the politics, I mean in how it is executed and murdered by bureaucracy and human nature, by roots, I find that it is a subject for a lot of ruminating and dialogue, the history in how it has been understood, interpreted, and implemented makes it seem like it is a very different beast (Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism are all quite different), and the identity, especially today, is certainly dressed in something new now that social values are being correlated to class struggle and worker's rights such as race, sex, and the impact of technology.

 

In short: our contemporary values, technology, and context make it hard to retrofit into the original context, whereas the original context should probably be reframed (at the very least) and reimagined for the changing world. 

[ralis]

9 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

The politics, the philosophical roots, the history, the ideology, and the identity of the Left all seem to have their own divergent paths and yet also overlap. By the politics, I mean in how it is executed and murdered by bureaucracy and human nature, by roots, I find that it is a subject for a lot of ruminating and dialogue, the history in how it has been understood, interpreted, and implemented makes it seem like it is a very different beast (Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism are all quite different), and the identity, especially today, is certainly dressed in something new now that social values are being correlated to class struggle and worker's rights such as race, sex, and the impact of technology.

 

In short: our contemporary values, technology, and context make it hard to retrofit into the original context, whereas the original context should probably be reframed (at the very least) and reimagined for the changing world. 

 

Excellent point! Since the Russian Revolution circa 1917 there has been much propaganda here in the U.S. that equates socialism with communism. The argument is a false comparison.

[Earl Grey]

10 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

Excellent point! Since the Russian Revolution circa 1917 there has been much propaganda here in the U.S. that equates socialism with communism. The argument is a false comparison.

 

Remember those old 1950s and 1960s exams in some colleges that essentially had you using a red pencil to color in all the communist countries on a map and reciting the domino effect Churchill warned about? 

 

I would say the dominant view that colors the way people perceive the Left is McCarthyism and that actual witch hunt. That was atrocious, and sadly many people in America now have 21st century McCarthyist lens for framing and understanding the Left. 

 

In college, we had an anarchist collective and free library and I only needed to go there and spend time with them to know that I was in good company. They always fed us, asked how they could be supportive to anyone, including those with higher tax brackets because they saw others as equals and peers rather than someone whom they could alienate themselves from by race, sex, income, class, or religion.

 

Their treatment of people was a far cry from my days at an elitist international school in Southeast Asia for spoiled rich kids and expats where people stole each other's property out of boredom because they didn't need the money, they enjoyed the thrill of making other people inconvenienced if they were rich or crushing the lives of those of us on scholarships or funded by our foreign governments' tax payers and therefore without a lot of money to waste. 

Edited July 27, 2019 by Earl Grey

[ralis]

13 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

 

Remember those old 1950s and 1960s exams in some colleges that essentially had you using a red pencil to color in all the communist countries on a map and reciting the domino effect Churchill warned about? 

 

I would say the dominant view that colors the way people perceive the Left is McCarthyism and that actual witch hunt. That was atrocious, and sadly many people in America now have 21st century McCarthyist lens for framing and understanding the Left. 

 

In college, we had an anarchist collective and free library and I only needed to go there and spend time with them to know that I was in good company. They always fed us, asked how they could be supportive to anyone, including those with higher tax brackets because they saw others as equals and peers rather than someone whom they could alienate themselves from by race, sex, income, class, or religion.

 

Their treatment of people was a far cry from my days at an elitist international school in Southeast Asia for spoiled rich kids and expats where people stole each other's property out of boredom because they didn't need the money, they enjoyed the thrill of making other people inconvenienced if they were rich or crushing the lives of those of us on scholarships or funded by our foreign governments' tax payers and therefore without a lot of money to waste. 

 

I grew up in the 60's with an imminent threat called "The Red Scare" which is a crowd control technique. Living in that kind of fear of imminent nuclear attack, commies are living next door, socialism will reduce everyone to poverty with a dictatorship. That same fear is still an undercurrent here in the U.S.

 

If it weren't for socialist movements here in the U.S., Civil Rights, Voting Rights, social safety net programs would not exist were it not for progressive left movements. 

[Earl Grey]

51 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

I grew up in the 60's with an imminent threat called "The Red Scare" which is a crowd control technique. Living in that kind of fear of imminent nuclear attack, commies are living next door, socialism will reduce everyone to poverty with a dictatorship. That same fear is still an undercurrent here in the U.S.

 

If it weren't for socialist movements here in the U.S., Civil Rights, Voting Rights, social safety net programs would not exist were it not for progressive left movements. 

 

Brent Staples had a wonderful essay talking about the progressive left in the NYT a few months ago. Feminism, ethnic studies, labor rights, and the power of institutions are hallmarks of the contemporary characteristics of the Left, but not traditionally. All those social movements in the 1960s in particular are starting to look a lot like today's, but without the optimism that died around 1965 that Hunter S. Thompson eloquently described in his wave speech in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was also a sign of him being critical of the Right.

 

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…

 

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

[…]

 

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

 

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

 

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

 

 

If the original focus was on the proletariat in Marx's view, it came to sudden realization that so many cross-sections of societies and resulting complexities means that one ultimately can't ignore gender, race, religion, immigration policy, and other variables when seeking to accomplish Leftist ideals. The modern era I have seen has focused so much on the individual parts of the puzzle that people still have the audacity to call it Left when historically, we can see very quickly once people get what they want, say racial groups or other interest groups like some Feminist groups (because there are many factions within Feminism, not one big lump, for those who don't know), they abandon everyone else.

 

What Brent Staples referred to was for American women's suffrage and how the movement was empowered by working class and black women. Once suffrage was achieved, black women still couldn't vote and many of the Feminists who supported them were not interested in racial equality, as Staples stated that they got what they wanted but didn't feel any compelling reason to help the black Feminists vote as Jim Crow laws still prevented them from exercising what was their right to vote. Let us not forget that the labor class Feminists were also cast aside and the original Feminsm that Staples criticized was essentially middle class and elite white women promoting the ideal.

 

The parallel to that in current Progressive circles looks at 4th Wave Feminism, which started around 2006 or 2010 and was focused on social media and tech, which again, as some authors in the sites Jezebel for Fourth Wave Feminism and The Root for black politics argue, is "mainly white insufferable privileged women telling brown women what to do with their bodies and completely ignoring the complexities of being black or brown or yellow and red". 

 

Not to bag on Feminism or whites by making those illusions, for I reference them to show that we are in an ahistorical cycle here where the parallels to the original suffrage movement in America and today's dialogues on Feminism are hard to overlook when pointed out, and what I speak to here is don't lose sight of the greater goal of a greater community and stronger bonds. Yes, gender rights are important, ethnic studies are important, the role of technology and globalization are very important, the environment is important--but again, those are only parts of the greater puzzle for what is the modern Left and its historical roots in pragmatic egalitarianism. And when those complexities themselves become part of the puzzle, say for example ethnic studies and race relations comes to the forefront, one can't ignore labor rights, Feminism, or the other categories I mention--they all play with each other because they can't be ignored or isolated, and oversimplifying each complexity only serves to subtract from overall improvement in all of them.

 

In short: all of those groups and interests are in it together, whether they like it or not, and so to be on the Left, whether contemporary Progressive Left or historically philosophical Left, one must maintain awareness and sensitivity to achieve overlapping aims, or find the barriers erected from willful ignorance and compartmentalization worse than power structures.

 

What I describe, by the way, has been part of a conversation I had where the most negative responses came from people in race relations and Fourth Wave Feminists whose understanding was limited to at best a class in college and club they joined and more often social media memes and groups. The people who had the most positive dialogue that was engaging were the people who actually were well-read in these matters and deeply involved in the community for a long time, not just a passing trend to follow in university or the online mob. 

 

And if it wasn't already clear, online dialogue and the complexities of the people one communicates with online are important to consider as it's easy to misunderstand what was said, which I am pretty sure some will immediately conclude what I quoted here as racist or misogynist without actually asking me what the point of what I'm writing here is, and that point as stated above is "We're all in this together and so it is in our best interest to know more about each other's complexities beyond just labor, gender, or race and more."

 

Edit: 

 

I will also point out that this is from a primarily American context, but I will include the Philippine context later on and possibly Tanzania for other examples of complexities, for those are my strongest and longest experiences with discussing the Left in contexts outside of the West, particularly American. 

Edited July 27, 2019 by Earl Grey

[joeblast]

50 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

I grew up in the 60's with an imminent threat called "The Red Scare" which is a crowd control technique. Living in that kind of fear of imminent nuclear attack, commies are living next door, socialism will reduce everyone to poverty with a dictatorship. That same fear is still an undercurrent here in the U.S.

 

If it weren't for socialist movements here in the U.S., Civil Rights, Voting Rights, social safety net programs would not exist were it not for progressive left movements. 

is the point of excluding the right from a conversation just so you can make all sorts of wild extrapolations without ever having to answer for them?

[sean]

6 hours ago, Apech said:

If you want me to sign up to anarcho-communism which is basically the wet dream of over privileged middle class kids - count me out.  I want genuine change to the left which gives people dignity, a decent standard of living, healthcare and otherwise lets them do what they want.  I want new models of living which emerge from today not some nineteenth century failed rhetoric.

 

I'm picturing my poor, black Marxist friends eye-rolling out of their head at the "privileged leftist" meme in 2019. We're attacked from both ends on this. When we figure out how to not die and pay our bills we're "champagne socialists". When we're poor and struggling we're lazy whiners just looking for a handout.

 

It sounds like you and I want the same things. I believe that the terms I use can still be living maps of where we're going and that renouncing them instead of updating them is part of why we never get there.

 

Sean
 

[Chang]

27 minutes ago, joeblast said:

is the point of excluding the right from a conversation just so you can make all sorts of wild extrapolations without ever having to answer for them?

 

I think that we have to face the fact that Socialism is a form of insanity and that its adherents are sufferers. Socialism, like Liberalism always ends in financial and moral ruin. This happens again and again whensoever the Left comes to power but they always return like the proverbial bad penny tub thumping for social justice, equality and cultural and racial intergration which they deem entirely possible and beneficial if they are only given the power to bring it about. After all they are the good guys on the Left, all the villains being to the right. Of course we have to forget about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and all the others.

 

Unfortunately the zeitgeist in the West is presently Left Wing and Liberal so our decline is particularly marked at present. There is some hope however as more and more of us start to see the light. Unfortunately for the likes of Sean and Apech there is little hope, for having eyes they see not and ears they hear not.

 

This is a Seans thread so in all fairness he can exclude the likes of me should he so wish. It grows both tiresome and irksome attempting to enlighten the Left and is hardly worth the effort.

[Apech]

23 minutes ago, sean said:

 

I'm picturing my poor, black Marxist friends eye-rolling out of their head at the "privileged leftist" meme in 2019. We're attacked from both ends on this. When we figure out how to not die and pay our bills we're "champagne socialists". When we're poor and struggling we're lazy whiners just looking for a handout.

 

It sounds like you and I want the same things. I believe that the terms I use can still be living maps of where we're going and that renouncing them instead of updating them is part of why we never get there.

 

Sean
 

 

I hope we share some things.  Perhaps I was being a little harsh but most of the people I see who call themselves anarchist and/or communists are Antifa types who when you pull off the black balaclava turn out to be spotty students who live with their parents.  They are LARPing basically and to no good end.

[ilumairen]

2 hours ago, Earl Grey said:

 

Remember those old 1950s and 1960s exams in some colleges that essentially had you using a red pencil to color in all the communist countries on a map and reciting the domino effect Churchill warned about? 

 

I would say the dominant view that colors the way people perceive the Left is McCarthyism and that actual witch hunt. That was atrocious, and sadly many people in America now have 21st century McCarthyist lens for framing and understanding the Left. 

 

In college, we had an anarchist collective and free library and I only needed to go there and spend time with them to know that I was in good company. They always fed us, asked how they could be supportive to anyone, including those with higher tax brackets because they saw others as equals and peers rather than someone whom they could alienate themselves from by race, sex, income, class, or religion.

 

Thank you for the sharing.. but there are things I'm more confused about than I was before. 

 

Such as how do you believe Mccarthyism applies to the way people view the left? And what people?

 

And (even more puzzling to me) how is anarchy leftist?

[Apech]

15 minutes ago, Chang said:

 

I think that we have to face the fact that Socialism is a form of insanity and that its adherents are sufferers. Socialism, like Liberalism always ends in financial and moral ruin. This happens again and again whensoever the Left comes to power but they always return like the proverbial bad penny tub thumping for social justice, equality and cultural and racial intergration which they deem entirely possible and beneficial if they are only given the power to bring it about. After all they are the good guys on the Left, all the villains being to the right. Of course we have to forget about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and all the others.

 

Unfortunately the zeitgeist in the West is presently Left Wing and Liberal so our decline is particularly marked at present. There is some hope however as more and more of us start to see the light. Unfortunately for the likes of Sean and Apech there is little hope, for having eyes they see not and ears they hear not.

 

This is a Seans thread so in all fairness he can exclude the likes of me should he so wish. It grows both tiresome and irksome attempting to enlighten the Left and is hardly worth the effort.

 

 

Chang!  I was waiting for you to show up.

 

Actually I've got a very open mind.  I follow (as in watch not adhere to) everyone from Ben Shapiro to Novara media and I get something from all of them.

 

My main value as a cultivator (an ageing one at that) is to left alone to do/believe/practise what I want without interference.  But I recognise outside of that, that society has its own evolution which is expressed by politics.  The course of this evolution is like a great river fed by many streams and impacted by major forces which despite the posturing of politicians are outside their control.  I mean things like the Industrial Revolution or even the 2008 financial crisis - which are like resets to society which need response and adjustment.  In fact I would say that 2008 and the response of austerity/using public money for bank liquidity determines our current politics.  You can't blame people voting Trump when they have been screwed through the Obama years.

 

I think the things that will determine our future politics are IT, AI and climate change (man made or no) - these forces will revolutionise how we work and live.  What we need to do is think of ways to live in harmony with these larger forces while preserving our welfare and freedom.