They were always the real bogeyman, since at least the postwar era.
What with the evil right-wing think-tanks in their ear, helped along by douchey individualism promoted in all the media, using that fucked-up user-pays mentality to justify denying access to education, health services, workers’ and tenants’ rights, even attacking more basic human rights like the right to vote, or the right to a fair trial.
Over the decades their corrosive influence has tainted the polity (and the planet) something vicious.
Complete fucking authoritarian scum, and in my book, the ability to discern that makes a fine litmus for the fuckwit test.
Yeah, I mean I think that since they decided to embrace the religious right for votes (despite already being living proof that in a two-party system you get about half the votes regardless of what you do) they’ve been degrading from evil bastards running everything to evil bastards being confused as their supposedly docile followers go crazy. But if you go back before that, what were they up to? Trying to deny that separate water fountains were racist? Ugh.
Have you chosen to join a party. I joined DSA because I think it’s especially important for progressives to do political work beyond voting and GOTV.
For example, I think it’s helpful to attend and volunteer for community groups responding to locally important substantive issues (e.g. emergency housing, gender violence, immigration reform, local food, etc.).
Without the credibility and experience that comes from community-based work, it’s tougher to align a democratic socialist coalition of local and regional groups to advocate for and win more progressive local and regional policies. It’s also tougher for democratic socialists to win county, state and national elections.
Right now I’m waiting to see what happens with the Greens, which have been a disorganized mess in Missouri for quite some time but seem to be trying to pull it together now.
The Missouri Progressive Party – which has done nothing for the past few years – used to be the ones affiliated with the national Greens, while the Missouri Green Party was something else unrelated. But they’ve petitioned to merge.
I think it can be hard to supplement the political work of GOTV and voting to community work that supports the political work.
The old left just had to organize unions and strike while voting for abolition and suffrage. The union contracts generated economic support for political campaigns.
What do we do to stay housed and fed between elections?
You’ve picked the best of each! But I’m curious, why no party? I understand when people who care about ethics refuse religion. But politics is about relationships mediated by institutions. How do we make political systems, esp. economic systems, more fair?
My state does closed primaries. I’m still hopeful for Sanders, but I still think the solution is to carve a Sanders-shaped cavity into the DC Bubble and start shoving politicians into that hole until they give up and begin to fit.
Same. I’ve been a registered Democrat ever since I first registered to vote, over twenty years ago. And everything that’s happened this year has me seriously considering re-registering as an Independent of some sort. Although, I don’t want my ability to vote in the general hampered by the kind of paperwork snafus we’ve seen so often this year so that may have to wait until after November.
FiveThirtyEight still shilling for Clinton. Warning: patronizing guff:
It’s been fairly obvious for over a month that Clinton would be the Democratic nominee, while the GOP race has been much more dramatic and complex. But what’s remarkable — and distressing for Democrats — is that while Trump has made amazing gains in the GOP race that have culminated in Cruz leaving the race tonight, the Democratic race has remained fairly static, with Sanders continuing to win lower-income, less diverse states like Indiana.
The psychology of Democratic voters continues to look detached from the reality of delegate math. Trump and Clinton are both pretty much presumptive nominees at this point, but Trump is winning Indiana with about 51 percent of the vote tonight while Clinton is taking only 47 percent and could end up even lower. As Trump consolidates Republican support, it’s more apparent than ever that Clinton needs a strong Sanders endorsement to unite the Democratic base.
Sanders will be under heavy pressure to provide just that when Clinton, in all likelihood, officially clinches a majority of delegates on June 7.
i.e. even though you haven’t lost, you have, so stop voting for the wrong person, stoopids.
Basically, this. It’s been a while (too long) since I last rewatched the series, but IIRC, the War of Unification was between the Alliance, a confederation of the Core worlds, and the Rim planets on the edges of settled space. The Alliance wanted all of the colonies to be under their rule. They tended to be aristocratic, richer, more scientifically advanced populations. The Browncoats of the border worlds wanted the freedom to choose their own way of life. As they were the more recent settlements, they didn’t have as many resources but they had plenty of pride and spirit. Several of our Big Damn Heroes were from the Browncoat side, although Inara openly admitted she supported Unification. We find out later during the movie Serenity that the Alliance was experimenting with mind-control drugs that went horribly wrong and created the insane cannibals known as the Reavers. Not to mention the secret attempts to create programmed super-assassins that permanently damaged River’s brain. In the graphic novel A Shepherd’s Tale we discover that the man we know as Shepherd Book was previously one of the Alliance’s Operatives, a spy who infiltrated and killed whoever his masters told him to. Though he appears to have left that behind before the series began. Whew! If I got any of that wrong, feel free to correct it.
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