the institution*

Conservative catholics have plenty of reason to not bow to Trump, and no real reason to. They know better than to hop on a sinking ship.

Definitely. The problem is that America isn’t special. It might’ve been the dominant empire for most of our living memory, but every empire falls, and given the alterations being made to the military, it’ll become capable of separating into multiple nations in the long run. That won’t happen overnight and won’t be caused by leftists, but they have no reason to stop it.

The long term strategy that American leftists failed to use for years was a local one. The local leftist politicians suck at appealing to local issues rather than the bigger picture, and your not wrong about it.

Yeah, I get that. A big issue in America that makes leftism seem so impossible is just how tied up anti-leftist sentiment is with American national identity. Capitalism and a hatred of marxism is ancient, with most of the most powerful unions of the progressive era being staunchly anti-communist. It is illusory, as it is innately tied to our imperial identity, which is why dismantling it in the American psyche is so important.

For the record, I was fairly invested in promoting institutional power until recently, holding onto the fleeting hope that liberals would be willing to work at all to save their own system, and leftists would wise up and use what tools they had available. Now that America as a nation is irrevocably toast, I hope to weaken the tribal identity. I only seek to use the tools I have available, and national institutions are not one of them.

However, my real goal is simply survival. I can’t get rid of Trump, so I only have to outlive them.

I guess you have a point about getting caught up in the American context, where so much imperial power and wealth can be leveraged to keep leftism from ever gaining an institutional foothold. It’s probably the major difference between America and elsewhere, as they even work to kill leftist institutional power abroad. Sorry

You really seem to think that the left just needs to win and is skill issue failing by not being strong enough. As an American who is currently living with the consequences of thinking “we just need to get good and vote better,” pursuing that strategy is a dead end.

The right wing wins because that is its ONLY goal. You will always be at a disadvantage because of natural human disagreements that you can NEVER get rid of. You can’t beat them at their game because they have fully surrendered themselves to WINNING, WINNING, and more WINNING.

It’s clear that you’ll never accept this fact, because it’s much more convenient to think you can just work harder.

It’s not a problem of moral purity, but simply being another standard agent of the system. All efforts by well meaning activists in my country failed to resist being another pawn, or not gain substantial power. Capitalism effectively neutralized left wing threats by keeping the working class unwilling to question power. Bolder action with more urgency was necessary, but team blue held everything back.

Now that the liberal democratic order is dead, the rules are different, and bolder action is necessary for anyone to hold power. The threat level is higher, with state violence escalating faster than even I expected. You need to utilize violence to have any chance of resisting fascism, even if it’s the “non-violent” mass movement strategy of MLK Jr (although i doubt we have enough time for that)

The problem with “real political power” is how the power itself can do the thinking for you. Your tribe or ingroup as an inhuman entity has no desire for anything but winning. If you’re not careful, it convinces you to take the realist path to victory.

You’re not wrong, but the game leftism needs to play isn’t gonna look the same as right wing ideologies. It can do things the right wing can only maintain off of hype, which is enough for the right to ascend, but not to maintain.

The biggest thing leftism can do is kneecap systems without the systems ever fully getting rid of them. It was heavily co-opted and redirected by liberalism, but with liberalism dying, it can reassert itself.

I’m sure the opportunistic tankies will waste a lot of time and energy, but anarchy is the real way forward. It probably can’t serve as a status to be reached, but as an ultimate check on the power of whatever system is in control. It needs to assert people as goal of society, not the means. Organizations cannot be seen as allies ever, only monsters to restrain and keep watch of forever.

I’m afraid some ideas really are just easier to accept. In every field I’ve studied or worked in, people very rarely accept unfortunate truths, instead believing that which is easier to stomach.

For example, you believe that leftists just aren’t “trying hard enough,” when the reality is that leftism doesn’t have access to the same tools that its opposition has. Fascists, tankies, or liberals can use the powerful forces of group identity and hierarchy to win. At the end of the day, they all function as similar machines that seek to gain the most amount of power and control for themselves as possible. They inevitably entangle with national identities, bureaucracy, religion and cultural values in whatever way they need to.

Social media is not the problem; you’re just blaming technology because it’s easier than thinking leftism is uniquely unsuited to take control in this ecosystem. It has the “authenticity” every system markets, but it can’t just allow itself to become a competitive machine without just becoming Marxist-Leninism. It can free people from the machine, but the machines compete better with each other by mechanizing us.

It’s not about morals holding leftism back, but morals being incompatible with welding power over your opposition. It’s the will to power of societal constructs making everyone’s lives hallow and miserable. Our happiness is instrumental in forces larger than ourselves and always has been. Our freedom isn’t at war with other people’s freedom, but the success of things that aren’t individuals.

it’s great, because they really are saying the opposite of the truth often enough that people take it as common sense. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy, yet democracy creates the stability capitalists crave. They want a free lunch; constantly trying to get rid of the foundations while expecting to be properly sheltered.

it’s because fascism is easy, simple, and feels safer than stepping out of learned helplessness

Every variation of God is unworthy of worship. Maybe if they stop pretending to be real I’ll care.

oh fuck. def creepy

i can’t tell if this is oddly wholesome or straight up creepy

eye is pronounced “I” in English I’m afraid

iz a cute kitty 🥰

lucky! I’m full nocturnal rn, and it sucks trying to do things with my other people

Desire is the source of all normative understanding, especially what you think is right and wrong. A desire to avoid the future suffering is why one would starve themselves of any pleasure.