#fatalist leftist

[malwaredykes]

the untapped Enemy Of The State Potential is one of boones best funniest traits tbh like ok since im in charge of Awesome Flawless FNV Remake Available Exclusively On My Beautiful Mind im rewriting boones personal #journey arc primarily by expanding on it because i mean yeah fatalistic thinking and the question of agency vs authority and having to live with having done something inexcusable and The Denying Of Closure are good themes but to me theyre not enough here. that lack of closure about something that really intrinsically can never entertain the idea of closure is all well and good, but... lets keep going lets put a pin in that. lets turn once again to boones potential for becoming wanted by the ncr government. boone i know you want to go apeshit. its time to admit that its always been about the system youd been conditioned into never questioning and which you continued to mentally cling to as you felt there was no other purpose or direction to your existence in the wake of all the disastrous events in your life. but its time to develop a grasp on your agency as a human being boone. and yes some of that is going to make you feel worse because, Well. The Complicity. bitter springs. but you know what, it is also freeing and the right thing to do. release your inhibitions feel the rain on your skin. youre already there just look around you. youve cut the ropes that held you back, now its time to rip and shred the ropes that still are wrapped around you. its there. youve physically gotten out. and its time to evolve. "now if iiiiii were to assassinate the president 🤔" i know you want to. im not saying you should but i know youve thought about it before. "guess that settler was well-connected" yes isnt that fucked up i know you think thats fucked up. and oh your friend the courier just did something fucked up at mccarran and all these ncr soldiers and staff are trying to shoot them? of course its the courier youre defending when faced with the immediate choice i mean if its between "fuck the ncr. die" and "fuck the person im ride or die for because theyre a force of destiny that entered my life to change it one way or another and now i care about them deeply. die" well of course youre choosing the path of Leave My FACKING FRIEND Alone You Beasts. but of course the situation doesnt have to be this immediately dire. it doesnt have to stem from an immediate danger to your new object of loyalty. we dont have to let it go down this particular route. no need to have something this drastic happen. you can reach this conclusion simply by giving into the desire youve repressed for years to go apeshit at the ncr government and every arm of its hegemony. that bubbling rage? that "if i let this fester inside me im gonna do a fucking murder-suicide about it"? that in a certain timeline you do in fact end up doing a murder-suicide about? thats not just hateful desperation. thats a feeling, hitherto bottled up and unrefined and volatile, that you should allow to breathe and photosynthesize and grow into something beautiful and true and let it blossom and bear fruit. boone, there is no need to feel alone and helpless and directionless in your unfulfilled desire to cut the umbilical cord.

so. enough rationalizing things as rotten spots and necessary burdens in an otherwise inevitable righteous system, you knowwwww thats pure bullshit. my advice, do some reading. reading is fundamental, and luckily for you, you literally know a very literate anarcho-communist. i can guarantee you that you could walk up to arcade and be like "👉👈 hi gannon soooo i want to get into critiques of capitalism and of the military, and into anarchism and other leftist theory. i want to know about Other Ways to run things. could you give me some recommendations? for books and essays and so on. thanks" and he would be like "boone, yes. Absolutely. yes. i will prepare a reading list for you. gosh." and youll be given a stack of books, with notes and a directory. however, if you two are currently on really bad terms to the point where he doesnt wanna talk to you at all, hey, theres other followers of the apocalypse that would be happy to help. providing education is literally one of their main things. either way, youll finally feel vindicated about things that used to make you feel like you were just going insane. boone you werent going insane you were in fact being onto something. baby that time you saw an ncr military police on the strip facing away from you and there was a loose brick on the ground and it was calling to you like the green goblin mask? that time you were at camp forlorn hope and folks kept saying shit like "that red beret is looking good soldier" and you didnt respond or even look at them because you were focused on containing the urge to grab them by the shoulders and start shrieking? well you see those are actually instincts that tell us you have potential. you have the power to end these patterns. you want to. you need to. thats where you should go. theres a world of ideas waiting for you to tap into and be liberated by. you have nothing to lose but your pitiful pension (you can even keep the beret like who cares). there is so much you can do. its not about allegiance or moral debt or soothing personal guilt, its about doing the right thing. there are so many paths in front of you. also youre trans. like, that one also isnt just you going insane, its real and its right and its you, you are transgender

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

I'm sending this to you as a fellow Brit so I'm assuming you have been following all the post office stuff that's come out over the past year and I can't help but see the similarities between the way the locals turned on former sub-postmasters overnight, shouting and verbally abusing them in the street, throwing bricks through windows and destroying their property and the speed at which a lot of leftists turned on Jews the moment it was publicly acceptable to become monsterous without consequences.

I'm trying not to be fatalistic about it but (and I'm only speaking from UK experience) it does seem like the majority of the population are just champing at the bit for the opportunity to become violent bigots and October 7th and the war since then, the lies from the Post Office, COVID, has given a huge swathe of people who until now have had to be "anti-racist" and "pro-peace" the opportunity to get out all of their frustration and desperation to cause harm on a new target who has been declared "fair game".

I don't think humans are inhertantly bad but I think there is certainly a degree of people who want to cause problems just waiting for the right opportunity to mobilise normal people into violence by redefining their violence as just and worthy against people deserving of the pain and suffering. And people don't ever seem to ask why and how it could happen. We always focus on the instigators but never on why regular people seem to be radicalised into hatred overnight. It's really kinda scary.

I'm hoping a reasonable government might slowly help reduce the amount of hate in this country but I don't know if I have the energy to get excited yet 😭

I haven't been following the post office stuff very closely but I do know the general outline of what's been happening. Unfortunately, you're bang on when you say that once people think they have an acceptable target to vent on, all bets are off and the veneer of civility just disappears. And the problem with that is it's really hard to put a lid back on and get people to take a step back and think rationally once they've indulged their worst selves. The Tories have certainly not helped in that regard absolutely, and like you, I can only hope that things might improve somewhat now that they're gone.

[night-dark-woods]

leftists stop being fatalistic and misanthropic and acting like wanting to have children is insane or morally wrong challenge, difficulty level: fucking impossible apparently.

shit sucks now in unique and new ways and we are far more aware of far more of it than at any other point in human history but you people are indistinguishable from doomers convinced the world is ending and the planet is irreparable. shit has always sucked and people have always lived and had children despite it and that isnt a BAD thing you people are tar pits. i also dont think its more dangerous or "doomed" or "living in a fantasyland" to have kids now than when the child mortality rate was above 50% for most of human history. like. can you people shut the fuck up.

[clandestinegardenias]

Look, I understand the desire for a revolution. I do. And it’s possible I might be convinced that we need one, at some point. I am open to the idea that I might be wrong!

But…literal Marxist theory posits that the way you get to a communist society is by working your way through a democracy. That’s the first STEP. Then you move to democratic socialism, then socialism, then communism. Anything that moves us away from a democracy (as I’m concerned another Trump presidency would, that man wants to be a dictator so bad) is a step AWAY from a leftist agenda. Because sure, maybe you get your ‘glorious revolution’ if Trump is president because he literally makes living conditions so unbearable that it triggers widespread revolt but from a critical Marxist standpoint you’d be revolting to get back to a democracy so you can start at that step all over again! This is a big reason theorists posit socialism/communism in the Soviet Union fell apart; too big a change too quickly and skipping steps in between.

We also have to consider that getting to the point of full blown revolution would mean catastrophic levels of suffering for people with lower socioeconomic power—POC, the queer community, folks in poverty, people with disabilities, etc.

AND any US dictatorship or similar government has an entire industrial military complex to back it up. A successful revolution would necessitate either getting that military complex on board, in which case you often end up with a military dictatorship (you can imagine how well THAT goes) or beating it which…I’m sorry, even the entire civilian population of the US cannot do. The military is light years more advanced than it was in Marx’s time, rebellion is so so so so much more complicated. It also sets a precedent for violent exchanges of power that tend to set countries up for a decades/centuries long tailspin of military coups in which the people with the most gun power (again…usually not vulnerable groups) win control.

I’m not trying to be a fatalist, here. I actually think fatalism is a tool of the oppressor and we have to fight against it tooth and nail. I’m just trying to logic out what will happen if Kamala/Walz lose and Trump/Vance win. What does that really look like? What is the next step, the next outcome that will lead us to a better place? And I just cannot, for those reasons above, see a Trump presidency leading us anywhere good. That IS what we will get if people hold out on voting for Harris as a form of protest. I’m all for protest!!!!! But it needs to be in a different avenue, because you have to consider the real life repercussions not voting will have.

I mean, what are the options? What happens if people protest by not voting? (...this assumes you don't start from the position that Harris and Trump will be literally NO different in office, which, well, that's another post)

1. Harris wins regardless, but a signal is sent that people to the left aren’t appeased and democrats need to do more. How effective this would be in moving actual policy is debateable, and it also puts the moral onus/responsibility conveniently on others just so you can feel like your hands are clean while simultaneously risking a worse outcome. Not cool.

2. Trump wins. Far more likely because, as we saw in 2020, the country was nearly evenly split on Trump vs. Biden. Current polling shows more or less the same with Trump vs. Harris. If the left stays home, the likelihood Trump wins skyrockets. So, what happens next?

2.A. Trump wins, but the world doesn’t end. He doesn’t do anything too terribly awful. The left has ideally signaled they will only vote for a Dem if they are liberal enough. I seriously doubt Trump won’t do anything too terribly awful though—look at what his first presidency did!!! Look at Project 2025!!!!! So. Other option.

2.B. Trump wins and the world is on fire. He strips away womens’ rights, queer rights, he tanks the working class and worker protections, starts a war, starts a dictatorship, whatever. He already started a lot of this during his first presidency. In this case, either…

2.B.1. This is still not enough to trigger a revolution. Vulnerable people are hurt and die at a far greater pace than under a Democratic presidency. We go on as before, fighting to regain key protections. Perhaps the Dems put forward a more liberal candidate to try and beat him next time, if democracy still exists, but likely? We end up with a conservative centrist anyway.

2.B.2. Trump does trigger a revolution. All I can see is how many vulnerable people would suffer and die. The military HAS to be involved and either takes control of government (terrible start to socialism!!!!!) or kills revolutionaries en masse and the rebellion fails. If civilians somehow defeated the US military, which is an astronomically low possibility, then we set up a more liberal democracy...how, exactly? With all the conservatives and moderates still in our country? Honestly, HOW. Kill them? Try and make them ‘see the light’? That happens via education, not a civil war. We could try and go straight to communism but theory and history show us that doesn’t work—you have to work your way towards it through democracy.

It is SO much more efficient and would put so many fewer vulnerable people in grave danger to start by keeping the democracy we already have by voting in Harris and THEN working on our protests to shift the needle towards democratic socialism. We’ve seen that these protests CAN WORK!!!!! They got us Biden dropping out!!!!! Harris picked a VP far more appealing to a liberal mindset than many of her other top options! WE ARE ALREADY SHIFTING THE NEEDLE. Keep it shifting, don’t give in to fatalism, and remember that you have to go through the steps to have an actual, stable, reliable socialist or communist republic. Vote.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Anon, I'm not sure how it's new news to you that I'm Jewish. It's like the third word in my bio. I've always been obnoxiously, pointedly, outspokenly Jewish.

It also SHOULDN'T be new news to you that you can be Jewish + not support the Israeli government (and not have any control over anything they do, seeing as I am not Israeli!) + not be cool with rising antisemitism... all at the same time.

But since it is new news to you: congrats! You've learned a thing!

Now you can be less of a piece of shit who sends concern-trolling anons to random Jews on the Internet!

I can't do anything more about I/P than any other random American. The thing that I CAN do something about is the antisemitism on Tumblr, in US leftist spaces, and (especially) in fandom. When people in spaces that I actually inhabit (unlike Israel!) are being horrible people and trading in violent misinformation or ignorance, that affects me personally. And I can speak to it. Personally.

Maybe it's selfish, maybe it's self-protective, but I have the luxury and privilege of being able to focus on the issue that affects me *in my actual real life* -- you know, like random strangers sending me hatemail for being a Jew who exists on the Internet -- and that's what I choose to speak about. This is also not new news.

People making the spaces I inhabit in my actual, real, daily, Jewish-ass life unsafe to exist in affects me in an actionable way. I/P does not. I cannot do anything to solve I/P. I promise, a foreign government does not give a shit what's on my blog. Or yours. But you know who cares when someone I follow posts something antisemitic? Me. That's a me problem. That's a problem I can actually do something about.

Am I being fatalistic about the utility of protesting the Israeli government by saying that nothing any of us does will change their policies? Maybe. But I have literally no belief that I/P is going to be resolved in my lifetime.

That said, I am not an expert in I/P! I know exactly enough to know that my opinions and my voice are not necessary! And I wish that more US Americans -- again, because that's what I am; I am not Israeli -- took the tactic of going "I don't know enough about this to be of help to anyone right now."

You know what super doesn't help? Acting like I/P is fucking Infinity War. It should not be your hot new fandom.

You know what also doesn't help? Going after random diaspora Jews. I don't need to continuously either atone for daring to be Jewish OR traumatize myself with gore to prove that I'm A Good One.

Again, maybe it makes me selfish, but I've been blogging exactly the same way since 10/7 as I have been for the last 13 years. Mostly fandom, sometimes calling out antisemitism. That's it.

I didn't post grueling, trauma-porn posts from Ukraine, I don't post them from Myanmar, I don't post them from Sudan, and I don't post them from Gaza. I post exactly the same amount about antisemitism *as I always have.* It is not a statement on I/P. It's a statement on antisemitism.

I have never been a sharer of images of dead bodies or injured people. I'm not going to objectify Gazan suffering, and I am not going to objectify the victims of 10/7. I don't want or need to see violated bodies to understand that what's happening in Gaza is wrong.

And I don't need to apologize for or deny my Jewishness to say that what's happening in Gaza is wrong. It is wrong. I've never said it ISN'T wrong.

I'm sorry that learning about the Second Intifada was too much for you.

I'm sorry that I/P is more complex than tiktok told you.

I'm not sorry for being a Jew in public.

And I'm NOT sorry to have blocked you after your shitty message.

Let the door hit you on your way out.

[turtlemagnum]

there's this post on here that really rubbed me the wrong way where the OP really condescendingly and fatalistically declared that having literally any self defense implement at all is worthless because both they can fail and when they dont, they'll just give the person attacking you a weapon. and i think that they made a couple of very spurious assumptions and setting aside that it was just phrased in a very absolutist, unnuanced manner. first of all, the argument presumes that if something can fail, it must fail, not examining why something would fail. they even tried to de-legitimize pepper spray "because it can blow back in your face in the wind", which assumes very specific environmental conditions and extrapolates the fact that it's just entirely useless simply due to the fact that it's not useful in Literally Every Circumstance. and honestly with pepper spray specifically, i cannot see any reason why you wouldn't carry it if you lived in an area where self defense might be needed since even in the worst case posited where the attacker takes it from you, it's almost certainly not gonna be fatally harmful to anyone involved assuming nobody has a serious pepper allergy. i can 100% understand apprehension about carrying a gun, but with pepper spray?

the thing about a normal person's self defense is that it's very different from what most of the Capitalized Self Defense Industry likes to think of it as, since most of that industry is based in law enforcement and military shit. even with a gun, the goal isn't to kill someone, it's to prevent them from doing harm to you or those around you. having a gun can absolutely backfire, especially and particularly if you're untrained, but pepper spray is pretty much perfect for an untrained normal person because it's simple to use and has minimal risks to everyone involved and yet still acts as a sufficient deterrent to prevent real harm from being done. yes, it's not literally perfect, but it's a tool and no tool is. electric saws, as far as i'm aware, usually don't work very well in water; that doesn't mean electric saws are fucking useless y'know

i think the original post also operates on the assumption that violent people are always going to be more competent than you, which is frankly a laughable assumption given how violent people are just, y'know, people. if violent people were innately more competent with things like weapons and fighting and such, average cops, feds and soldiers wouldn't be so dogshit at actually using their weapons. there's this old military saying, "if you lock a soldier in a room with 3 ball bearings he'll have broken one with the other and lost the third". i think that's pretty relevant. the kinds of people who would do something like attempt a robbery or just start a bar fight aren't mastermind john wick badasses, they're literally just some guy who very well could be untrained, unfit or just generally incompetent. which isn't to say Literally All Of Them would be like that, i just think it's important to be realistic about how people are just people, meaning they're just as flawed as you and me, y'know?

and to further elaborate on the "self defense implements are tools like any other" thread, i think it's important to remember that that applies to guns too. i understand that a lot of people don't like guns, and in my opinion even more people are some combination of too untrained, too generally incompetent or just too much of a dickhead to be a responsible gun owner. yes, some people shouldn't have guns, in much the same way that some people shouldn't drive and some people shouldn't be allowed unchecked internet access. that doesn't mean that literally nobody should be allowed to have them, and that doesn't mean that they have no practical use. to be blunt, i wouldn't be surprised if that OP was some kind of fed trying to make the generally leftist population of tumblr less able to defend itself. yes, not everybody should have a gun. yes, if you don't think it's right for you, you probably shouldn't have a gun. but to be blunt, guns are perfectly valid tools for self defense and anyone who says otherwise is either naive or trying to sell you something. i also think it's worth noting that from what i've heard from people whose experiences i trust that've actually survived violent self defense encounters, most situations that'd require a gun are resolved simply by making any would-be aggressor aware of the fact that you're carrying.

[tkrr]

So tired of the moralizing, simplistic bullshit that people have been passing off as leftism since the 1960s. Leftism should be about community. It should be thoughtful and empathetic, not preachy and reactionary. And it definitely shouldn’t be as abjectly fatalistic as it is; even back in the 60s, I don’t think the fatalism was this pervasive.

I saw someone a while back point out that a lot of “leftism” is just anticapitalist libertarianism. It certainly seems to me like a lot of young leftists think justice can be achieved by ripping up the social contract and robbing those they deem to be the bad guys blind.

[dgr-maestro-en-progreso]

Pedagogy of the Oppressed and its Comments on Propaganda

As I continue to chug through Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", one of the most notable and informative sections of the book has been my most recent read. This section of the book, which can be read near the end of the books third chapter, dives deeply into the process of investigation of a community's "thematics" (code for the various key aspects, contradictory struggles, and overall parts of a society) and how to craft an educative program for, and most importantly with, that community.

I'm no expert, and this section of the book, similar to the book as a whole, has showed me so. So far, this has been the most difficult portion of the book to digest. There are so many different philosophical and pedagogical concepts used in intertwined fashion in this section that, for my current stage of development as an aspiring teacher, it is very hard to keep up. Since I will be working on an overall breakdown of the books teachings as the point of culmination for this specific project, I'm just going to reflect at my experience so far.

First off, something that immediately intrigues me, and I often recognize myself as reacting somewhat negatively to, is the rejection of the value of propaganda in this section, as well as the book overall. "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" seems entirely against the very notion of propaganda. While I understand that propaganda as an umbrella term that is often associated with the likes of brain washing (both by our society and the book), to say that propaganda can't be effective for a good reason seems like a slight stretch to me. Propaganda is, yes, how many people have been lead to a fatalistic view of society and their condition, as various television shows, radio broadcasted music, and podcasts have normalized the very "nature" of oppressive existence under Capitalism as "the natural direction of human nature". If propaganda were only to be associated with the material that has led our social conscious to be okay with the current state of things, then I would understand the negative stigma behind it. However, propaganda can also be interpreted as tenant union pamphlets, distributed manifestos and lists of demands of a striking workforce, and election campaign distributed materials of socialists running for office. In a world ran by social media, an ever-growing dependence on quick bites of information, and every politically-charged podcaster having a newsletter, the necessity for propaganda on behalf of any true humanist, leftist, and socialist seems undeniable.

I preface this next statement by acknowledging my naiveté: I haven't struggled much in my life; I haven't gone through a lot of the things that someone like Paulo Freire has. That said, I think it unproductive to dismiss propaganda for justifiable and humanist causes because of its "brain washing" capabilities. I may have the luxury of being able to sit down and digest theory and try to put it into practice, but that person who wants to unionize and just needs to be pointed in the right direction might not. Propaganda could get that person to the things and organizations they need.

I plan to expand on this subject further once I finish the book and write my larger piece. Have a good one!

[yeetspace]

I think my favorite (/s) brand of "leftist" is the one That just kind of touts moral superiority without any sort of actual adherence to the reality of the situations given. Like yes it would be a better idea to choose the candidate that doesn't want to actively kill people, but also the system at large actively is going to oppose your decision to say otherwise and will choose one of the two that are of the two that will get chosen that we know will get chosen. That's not fatalistic that is literally the systems that are actively at work above us making sure of those things.

To say to people who are disabled, who are POC, who are lgbtq, that them choosing to vote for the person that DIDN'T ACTIVELY say they want to make things worse simultaneously here and in Palestine, the thing Trump did, makes them a bad person? That's fucking ridiculous.

They're the type of people that go on to tiktok and shit and get mad at artists for not having the perfected art style that is just their personal opinion because their personal opinion is "the only correct one".

And I'm addressing that kind of person here now if you happen to come across this, I get that you want a better option. I get that you want it to be different. We can do that but not if you actively go against everyone trying to work towards something better for the sake of "but it's not good now".

How the absolute fuck would things be better if the person who actively is aligned in their goals of wanton murder and absolute rampant violence with the greater whole of the Congress that has solely been the cause of all of these things at the end of the day? As opposed to again, of the two we know will be available as the systems at large will actively obfuscate the third party, That didn't actively do that and doesn't want more death. I fucking despise that I have to say it multiple times over but it's not fatalistic it is the fact that the systems at hand that we cannot change YET, because of the militarily powered government that will actively kill us for doing as such right yet.

But also actively putting a null vote into someone that will not end up being in the final running and eventually leading to a lack of percentages towards the candidate that doesn't want more people murdered overall?

You can't make a cake without making recipes step-by-step first. you can't just materialize a cake and then think about making the eggs and the flour and all that. You never get to see the cake if you don't try and fix the fucking dishes that are rusted, The busted sinks, The malfunctioning oven or the dirty floors because the people who run the kitchen refuse to fix them. It is not the fault of the people that want to try and work with the conditions they have right yet to work within the given confines that if not worked within will equate to being fired (fired in this respect being killed by the fucking government ATP) fix the things going on rather than whine and be angry that things are not the most pristine they can be to act from there. It is only a matter of moral high grounding marginalized people who actively are going to be hurt directly if anyone other than the Democratic candidate gets elected at this point. It is fucking ridiculous that this is a hot take.

[somerandomg33k]

Am I wrong?

Is there something wrong with me that I just accept that I am an insufferable fatalist leftist?

[everythingshinesunderthesun]

Seeing people talk about politics leading into the election really drives it home that Mexicans are only ever a talking point.

I'm being fatalistic, and admitedly writing this to vent more than anything, but it's hard to keep a poisitve outlook while people keep repeating the exact same excuses they used to avoid taking political action back in 2016. "Both sides are just as bad. It doesn't actually matter what we do." Meanwhile Trump's going on a press tour talking about how he wants to displace millions of immigrants, but I guess that doesn't matter anymore. Immigrants aren't the "trendy" issue. It's not cool to care about them anymore.

Biden's a terrible leader and what he's doing in Palestine is unconscionable. I can't blame anyone who wouldn't vote for him, but I can blame you for having no other plans. It's your fucking country, you piece of shit, and for some god forsaken reason you of all people have been deemed worthy of a voice, a modicum of power that has the potential to alter the lives of millions. Is using it too difficult for you? Is it too hard to put TikTok away for fifteen minutes so you can do something useful for the world around you for once in your life??

I keep expecting the least out of american leftists, yet every time they manage to surprise me with their apathy and incompetence. It truly is despair inducing.

[qqueenofhades]

hey i just wanted to say i really enjoy your posts. i'm a 30-something who works in reproductive health care in pennsylvania, and while i often feel pretty bad about our government, i still think voting is essential.

i get really frustrated with a lot of the people around me who seem to almost delight in being fatalistic. dems just might be able to secure a majority in our state house which, along with a pro-choice governor, means we could finally secure some protection for abortion access instead of just constantly praying the gop doesn't reach a veto-proof majority. and when i share this with my friends i either get silence or, literal quote, "that would be absolutely incredible and by absolutely incredible i mean in keeping with the barest sliver of hope for the future but i guess it's a low bar" and it's like????? hey fuck you???

anyways, i like how you balance optimism and pragmatism and seem like someone who doesn't just want to smoke week, play mariokart, and talk about how every candidate sucks.

Thanks, this means a lot to me. I have been cavilling in the lonely Tumblr wilderness about elections, voting, the necessity to do it, the toxic and useless "Progressive Online Leftist" culture, why you need to support Democrats, and so forth ever since at least 2016. As you might expect, this has not always gone down well, but I am stubborn.

Also: yes, this election wasn't a blue wave, but yet again, I'm astonished at how fast the goalposts changed, and suddenly the best midterm results for an incumbent president in recent history were Actually Bad. The almost universally-expected Republican red tsunami didn't happen at all, and while they may scrape out the House in a tight race (let's hope not the Senate too), that is hardly the barn-busting result that everyone was crowing about. Their craziest and most dangerous candidates, in the places where they had the chance to do a lot of damage, almost universally lost. Democrats even made pickups in places where they weren't expected. They held their own and made it exponentially more likely that we can stagger into 2024 without going full fascism, and that is important.

I know the nihilist millennial/Gen Z culture tends to make everything as bad as it can be at all times (and don't get me wrong, it is indeed very bad), but just being Edgelord Darko at all times to show how cool and cynical you are... eh, it just doesn't appeal to me, it never has, it never fixes anything, and is as much a self-serving fantasy as the Republicans' Big Lie. In both cases, it conveniently excuses the person from having to do anything to actually help the world and the state of things, if everything is already fucked anyway, and I'm definitely not cool with that.

[protoninspector]

are there any real and credible positive leftist projects anymore in north america or europe? i feel very fatalistic about things these days. hopefully something more constructive will come out of the global south and not get uhhh interfered with

[obiternihili]

there's a certain poster here that i keep hearing is a reactionary

before his personality change he seemed like

so there's a personality type that finds esoteric grimness/the noun form of sardonic funny, not in a haha way, but in like a Russian humor we're all going to die, oh i love you so much i want to kill myself, cheers to the economy you were a great friend, type of way

it's not left or right wing

but if you don't read it with the layer of sarcasm/irony it engenders you come out thinking that personality type's advocating for universal genocide

when in truth it's just a kind of nerd who's deeply uncomfortable with the state of things and what you're reading is something between a curse against the demiurge and whatever you call that displacement thing that people do when they're reading about really difficult bullshit, like titoism, central asian pannationalism, imperial Chinese omnicides, background death cults operating in weird political theaters unlike the american one, etc

I guess I always read that poster as having that personality type

or somehow missed the times he genuinely nazi posted

and like to be fair that's the core of the whole "darkly hinting" bullshit of the alt right, but leftists do it all the time too

maybe i just never interacted with him when he had a mask down and was just being himself in a specifically political context, saying his beliefs outright. something idealists tend to do more than fatalists

not sure if it's moot now tho

[somerandomg33k]

Lot's have happen in the last two weeks. Like someone actually took a shot at the Jerk.And is this upcoming election a lost cause? Am I an insufferable fatalist leftist? All this and more on the Patron show of Social Justice Alchemy. Come and join us.

[tanadrin]

@zvaigzdelasas

The point isn't that the end of capitalism is the end of contradiction (unmarxist framing). The point is that with the end of capitalism then we can actually meaningfully start working through other contradictions.

yes, not all people who are critical of capitalism are critical of it in this way, but this is not a much better approach IMO. "nothing else can be fixed until capitalism is ended, even though fixing capitalism won't fix everything" is still pretty fatalistic, and also just... obviously not true. even capitalist countries have made massive strides in worker protections and civil rights and general prosperity in the last century and a half. obviously i think a lot of that is down to good work by leftists, but none of this required ending capitalism. i don't expect future progress to require ending it either.

might be worth a shot--but saying "we can't do anything until we end capitalism" seems on its face to mean conceding a lot of opportunities for progress that are actually worth fighting for. this word "meaningfully" here is smuggling in a lot of assumptions which i think are very badly supported, and which seem to lend credence to my feeling that the fixation on ideological purity has become a first-order concern, and a lot of self-described communists have substituted the idea of making people's lives materially better with simply emphasizing a marxist aesthetic--outcomes are a secondary concern, or even totally irrelevant.

like if tomorrow there was a referendum on a UBI here in germany, i would go out and i would vote yes on it, because i think that would make people's lives a lot better. and i suspect that the orthodox marxist would say "yes, but that's not really meaningfully resolving the contradictions of capitalism" or w/e, because it's just papering over a layer of redistribution on a flawed socioeconomic system, and like... i don't fucking care! it still actually makes actually-existing lives actually better! it's worth investing your time and energy in--as, in fact, are many things, even within the framework of fallen bourgeois liberal electoral politics! and if we can't make anything better until the far-off day when we vanquish capitalism forever, we're abrogating an enormous responsibility to give a shit about the things which are tractable now.

and sure, i worry that under the present political system all political reforms may be rolled back by a reactionary turn--but uncertainties about future political outcomes don't vanish under alternate political structures. hell, given the extremely mixed record of revolutionary situations in general, if anything i would be a lot more worried about the actual anti-capitalist revolution--it could mean a socialist utopia, or it could mean the friggin' khmer rouge. more likely, it would mean something in the middle--but it would not actually put all contradictions to bed forever, no matter what the much-vaunted Theory claims.

noting permanently insulates politics against reactionary backlash, or old bad ideas making a comeback or new bad ideas being invented. the hope that everything will be Changed on some fundamental level when capitalism goes, but not at all before then, is metaphysics and not really politics or economics. we will always have to do the work. no amount of revolution will render us saved.

abolishing capitalism is not going to give your life meaning, or make environmental problems easy to avoid, or end political conflict, or end all forms of greed and exploitation and oppression, or fix your hairline, or bring about world peace, or finally see all the wicked punished and righteous rewarded, or end death forever

there are a lot of good things it might do! i'm broadly in favor of giving it a go. but if you talk about capitalism in a way that makes it the pandaemoniac avatar of all suffering in the world, i think that's pretty unreflective and shallow politics