I will never get why some people are opposed to that notion, just so we can hear some nazis scream at the people they hate, because BOTH SIDES!!
I think the Steve Shives video I posted up thread gets at the heart of the issue of why the far left isn’t a threat like the far right…
Yglesias makes it pretty clear in the article that he’s one of them.
Getting what you want through the subjugation of others is fascism. Full stop. I don’t give a shit whether what you want is billions of dollars for yourself or billions of dollars to fight climate change - we don’t do that on the broken backs of other people.
It’s interesting to read Matt’s bio & follow some of the links. Child of privilege in Manhattan - where his parents and grandparents were writers & communists- but also were executives at Merck.
Went to the Dalton Prep School- which feeds Harvard & has numerous famous alumni in the arts. And where there were huge abuse allegations & Jeffery Epstein famously taught & allegedly started his - uh - influence peddling based upon knowledge of others private lives involving minors.
His vision of progressivism is bounded by the Upper East Side of Manhattan & trust fund preservation.
Edit:
Something is wrong with this story.
I spotted that comment and stopped reading them after that. I’m so tired of my existence being debated, especially by people a bunch of assholes who likely don’t even view me as human. We’re about a year out from an election and already trans people are already being attacked by fascists and thrown under the bus by “allies” (TYT). I am not looking forward to the coming addition of nearly unavoidable political ads targeting queer people.
Realistically, you are correct, this is almost unescapable. For what it’s worth, you don’t stand alone. But betrayal by “friends” stings. As for me and mine,
Hang in there.
There’s plenty of young 'uns I talk to in Central Texas and oh are they pissed.
It’s not going to be a simple cakewalk for the fascists.
But we’ll have to fight for every single inch of progress and diversity-equity-inclusion.
Feel free to carry around voter registration cards, and blatantly ask everyone who you’d love to see voting if they are registered to vote, or if they know someone who hasn’t yet. You can find voter registration cards at most public libraries and some county admin offices. Or contact the League of Women Voters in your area to find out where to get those cards.
It really is a stupid piece. Yglesias is another zentrum liberal who’s under the impression it’s still 1992. His argument can be summed up as: “The way to be a good progressive is to stay real quiet, be patient, and for gosh’s sake don’t make the Dem establishment feel bad about their retrograde positions and compromises with Republicans and other bigots on civil rights and social justice. As always, the wise leadership of the Dems will eventually, somehow, do the right thing on their own without this uncivil pressure and hectoring. We’re all reasonable people here, and besides, there’s no problem that isn’t really about economic anxiety at its base, right comrade?”
Honestly, that BS wasn’t true in 1992, either.
It would seem so, but remember that a lot of neoCons started out as Trotskyists. Yglesias isn’t quite as far to the right as them, but he’s a lot closer than he’d care to admit (and was even more so back in 2003, when he supported the invasion of Iraq). Just because he wore a red diaper doesn’t mean he also wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Kathy is spot on.
Election rules greatly matter, especially with what strategic voting methods are incentivized.
Borda is truly truly terrible – it fails all sorts of criteria.
IRV (what FairVote hijacked the name of the broad category of RCV to refer to), is better than FPTP, but not actually that much better (it is after all, instant runoff – so roughly equivalent to what you get out of runoff elections). It fails the key criteria of monotonicity and participation. Basically, you can make a candidate do better by voting lower for them, or even not voting.
I’m a fan of approval. It’s not perfect; no method is. But it’s simple to explain (vote for everyone you like), simple and transparent to count (add up all the ayes, take the max), has few spoiled ballots, and has good enough results. Importantly it does incentivize votes that aren’t lies – you shouldn’t ever need to disapprove someone you like more than someone you approved. A very effective strategy in almost all cases is to figure out the two most competitive candidates, and approve the one you like better, and anyone you like better than them. If the polling data was good, and everyone did this, you can only get a Condorcet winner (should one exist, of course).
(Multimember districts and PR is another whole thing that can help a lot. But the single-winner case is obviously more studied, and is important to handle.)
I know it must be exhausting. It enrages me to read that shit. It’s clear they these chucklefucks did not take away any lessons from history…
Me neither.
Probable also headlines by David Brooks:
Where Has the America Of My Imagination Gone?
Both Sides Are Bad, But Here’s Why Your Activism Does The Exact Opposite Of The Thing You Want
Can’t Even Get A Decent Bagel In This Town Anymore
The Republican Party Used To Mean Something Back When Bush Was In Charge (it meant bombing people, but at least it meant something)
The Status Quo: Why It Must Never Change
The Status Quo: Why Does It Keep Changing?
A Harrowing Tale of Fecundity: An Accounting of Terrible Restaurant Service
It takes a little more pizazz to remain a dissident these days
Contemporary surveillance apparatuses laugh at the Stazi and their sample of all the typewriters sold, or the Czech secret police in the 19th centuries with their cross referenced social graphs, or the inquisition in Avignon with their paper spreadsheet approach to same.
All they need to do is intercept/ask nicely and Apple, Google, Arsebook, Shitter, your ip, your phone company, Weibo, will provide.
That seems like a recipe for dealing with extra shit for no benefit, yeah.
Good article.
Their translation of rittenhaus was spot on. 
