I don’t see a single “Yay Joe Biden” post in here, and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for one. I also don’t see any of #2. I don’t give a shit about his candidacy hurting Joe Biden. I care about it hurting ME!
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As @Tee_sea, @fuzzyfungus, @Gendun, and others have pointed out already, this sounds incredibly naive.
Does the news of today even reach his ivory tower?
I greatly admire Dr. West, and most of his platform is admirable. He should be be promoting it every chance he gets (although not as a candidate for president).
edit: I’m embarrassed to admit I fell for West’s public image as a progressive, without keeping track of what he really stands for. Thanks to all here who helped educate me.
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The Tea Party advertised itself as grass-roots, but was totally astroturfed and funded from the top in a way no progressive grassroots movement could ever hope to be. So not a totally workable analogy.
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The test favored by homeschooled kids, those in Evangelical private schools and racists in general.
The SAT for all its faults is generally culturally neutral. Success is usually a function of community wealth, school and personal resources devoted to prep. Top schools will generally overlook poor Verbal and Essay scores if Math scores are at the top. It comes in a version for people who are not native English speakers.
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Tell me you’re racist without saying you’re racist.
I’d never heard of this West fellow, but I have to say nothing in this thread is endearing me to him. He seems very out of touch, like an intellectual who hasn’t read the news for the past thirty years. I wonder what his positions on the Savings and Loan crisis and the identity of DB Cooper are.
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I say we take them at their word that they want to do what they say they want to do. At the end of the day, while it’s happening, it hardly matters the “real” reason for wanting to deny trans kids gender affirming care, because they are hurting children who are already marginalilzed. THAT MATTERS, even if it’s not the “real” goal. The reality is that they can come up with a variety of other, LESS GENOCIDAL, tactics to divide people. But they settled on the genocidal one.
Both can be true - that people are out to entrench their own power and they are transphobic (or racist, misogynistic, etc, etc) assholes.
And frankly, my patience is wearing a bit thin of the “well, the destruction of the other isn’t their REAL goal” arguments… Well, yes, it fucking is their real goal. They are showing us that on a daily basis. Does the hoarding of wealth play a role in that, most likely, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not also seeking to destroy specific communities while they are protecting their own wealth and power. People aren’t so one-dimensional that they’re not able to do two things are once…
But it matters what they are doing right now… We need to fight back against that, right now. Stop “well-actually” fucking genocide, dude. Imagine standing outside the fucking gates of the camps, and saying “well, actually, the nazis just cared about their own power and wealth”… it’s a bullshit argument, because they are doing BOTH. THAT MATTERS.
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Cornel West hasn’t been a leftist in a long time. He’s praising DeSantis, he’s praising Russia, he’s no more a leftist than Kanye West, and the entire point of his campaign is to peel off votes from Democrats so Trump can get back in the White House.
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I was unaware of this. I just came across an interview West did with Gavin McInnes and Candace Owens. West was supposed to represent the left in the discussion. Holy shit. I don’t think we need to worry about West drawing any progressive votes from Biden. The jaw dropping moment for me was when they were talking about fascists in the US, and West said the Klan were Fascists, which of course prompted Owens to point out that the Klan were Democrats, and all West did was nod and say, “Yes, they were.” Jesus. I know they were Democrats. THAT DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS NOT THE SAME PARTY. ALL THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS SWITCHED PARTIES AND ARE NOW REPUBLICANS! The Klan still exists today, and they sure as fuck aren’t voting Democrat. West could have pointed all of that out. Did he? No. He just nodded and said, “Yes, they were.”
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Maybe he’ll suck the “protest votes” from the Libertarian Party, which (I believe) is now in control of the neo-Confederates from the Mises Institute.
eta: More cynically, he’s the new replacement after other right puppet groups had too much exposure.
Anyone who can say that DeSantis is “defending the classics” in education… wow.
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Recently, I saw this
in which the speaker mentions that the school that wanted to ban Michelangelo’s “David” was using a curriculum from Hillsdale College.
So while the ideal of basing a curriculum on “the classics” may superficially appeal to some-- “yay, 9th grade geometry is based around proving everything, and reading Euclid” rather than being dumbed down", the reality is just sad…
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Isn’t that Option 2?
Hillsdale “College” is a large christian-right lobby group/think tank that happens to have a few students.
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Of course. They exist to carry out the demands of movement conservatism, and any side effects (might produce the kind of student that Union Theological Seminary might consider brilliant) are completely beside the point.
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I’ll totally get behind Dr. West for President! Who’s with me?
Ya know, I think I’ll pass.
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He is either incredibly nai:ve or does this to show everybody how awful the US election system. Which we already know.
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We’ve already done it in Maine. Ranked choice voting and a Green Party Senator who was formerly a Green Party governor.
And it’s also worth noting that we ended up with Minitrump LePage because of a Democratic “spoiler candidate” who refused to drop out despite the Green candidate outperforming him 2:1 in both the polls and election. But apparently it’s absolute madness to suggest that a party candidate should drop out- that’s reserved for them rabble rousing minor parties, even in states where they win.
FWIW, I know people in both Green and Libertarian parties, as well as the DSA who ARE out there every day working on local and state level stuff. Just because you don’t see them until we need someone to blame doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
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