I’m not convinced the most extreme comments you see online seeking to split up leftists are in good faith. It’s relatively easy for people committing espionage to pretend to be leftists, push their agenda, and then seek to divide and conquer.

I’m not saying there aren’t real people out there saying these things, but I do believe many of them have bought the narrative of bad faith actors that were disguised among them.

The same exact thing happens on the right, but it’s more so just spamming their bad faith rhetoric with bots in their case. Since their goal is just to convince the least checked-in person to disengage or believe their side a bit more by seeing their side first.

The frame is mostly enforced by top donors and the ones that do not want to rock the status quo, namely the Baby Boomers in Congress that are still benefiting from the current status quo.

That’s not to say Democrats wouldn’t fix some or many of the problems, but the very structure of the Federal Government makes positive change a big task. The fact that about half the states have been sold on a lie by the Republican Party contributes greatly to the problem. Republicans can say government doesn’t work, then when they get in office they actually break the institutions. They then point at those institutions they broke and say “See it’s busted!” as they actively had a hand in defunding the system.

Really, I feel the Democratic Party within blue states need to step up and implement the federal positive change they sought, but at the state and local levels instead. The only way Blue states will convince Red states to change at this point is by showing how their progressive policies work for them, and will in-turn work for us.

Namely, Blue states need to be tackling the housing crisis, creating well paying government jobs, investing in healthcare for all programs, providing more public housing options by potentially buying up private apartments, breaking up big monopolies, buy out the energy utilities to provide energy not-for-profit/actually implement energy system upgrades, and even implementing a statewide Universal Basic Income program.

That’s the thing, people didn’t care about it till it had a well known person’s name actually attached to the piece though. It was submitted as just a toilet with a signature from an unknown person, it wasn’t originally known that it was from Duchamp.

To me, it feels like there are a few important questions Duchamp poses:

• Does art have worth on its own without the artist? Without Duchamp, the piece may well have only been recognized as a toilet with a signature.
• Is the artist an integral part to the meaning? I feel like in this case the answer is yes, because it was recognized for more than it was perceived because it became known that it was from Duchamp.
• What is the difference between a tool and a piece of art? Namely, where do we draw the line?

I feel that argument struggles in the context of this post though, where the labor is adding a signature onto a toilet. A similar amount of labor went into people typing up their prompts as went in from someone that’s well known adding on a signature. Now, I say this as someone that thinks AI art is wasteful since it uses up so much water and electricity, and is mostly done unethically since the art sourced was mostly done without consent or fair compensation.

Dracula’s always been the ultimate baddy

I’d say the issues can be fixed, but who knows if it happens really. I’d say a major problem is the same issues can appear elsewhere if other countries don’t take proactive steps to avoid the our issues. Things K-12 education needs to be well funded and free to all, even college education should be publicly funded. Implementing government restrictions on social media influencers and media companies that don’t adhere to something like the Fairness Doctrine. Splitting up monopolies or big conglomerates that try to take hold. Willingness for the government to go into debt to fund the future via more public transit options, nuclear power plants, and more public housing.

The Christian Bible ultimately is about telling the story of a kind and caring God, and that we are made in God’s image. The early Israelite God, in the Torah and Old Testament, by comparison, was more focused on adhering to strict rules, traditions, and collective punishment for lapsing in the early Israelites commitment to the rules and traditions.

I do agree that there are parts of the Bible which were added where the authenticity of the author was forged. For instance, many of the books attributed to Paul were not written by him, yet they were made to sound like they were his instructions. Most notably, the whole section about women not being allowed in leadership positions in the church. Hierarchies were not inherently parts of Jesus’ teachings at all, but it’s how the early Christians chose to organize themselves. It’s how they maintained aspects of the patriarchy as well.

Some people would agree with you that the Bible should have kept being added to. In some ways that’s seen among some Christian faiths, although few add to the Bible itself for those stories. For instance, with Catholics there are the Saints which followers of the faith learn about, not generally all of them but one(s) that align with the aspects of their faith they care most about. Such as a focus on education, feeding the hungry, healing the sick and injured, etc.

Hell doesn’t exist in the Bible, it’s something later Christians thought up as a moral basis to keep people following the rules and to show up to their specific church services. I mean the church was even selling indulgences for a long while there which was a way of buying yourself a space in heaven, which goes against what Jesus talked about.

Jesus came to fulfill the 10 Commandments and spread the word of God being a loving God; not the ritualistic laws of the early-Israelites.

I’d say the book has meaning, but the lens in which one applies when reading it matters. There’s the text as it’s written, there’s the perspectives of the respective authors, and then there is your own lens being three main ways of reading it.

I think the biggest issue is people that are Christians in name only that pick up a Bible and call themselves Christians without even knowing the teachings of Jesus. The types that think what you do on Earth doesn’t matter so long as you believe, so they go on to do near the exact opposite of Jesus. A short comic about this: Supply Side Jesus

Adding on to everything you’ve said, the people most likely encountering these topics for the first time usually are adolescents. I feel it helps my patience trying to keep that in mind when talking with them, since it makes sense that they may not have encountered the topic before.

I agree, having that and high taxes on the wealthy were part of the reason the US had such high levels of prosperity for the average citizen back in the olden days. The whole country should be getting connected via high speed rails, I feel. It would open up jobs for people living in more rural areas as well.

The fix is multifaceted I feel, everything you said is spot on for the issues.

I feel a fix requires Universal Basic Income and Housing, along with mental health support. A minimum level of support would at least help a lot of these people to be able to get off the ground or at least live with a modicum of dignity.

Universal Healthcare would help at least with health issues that people out on the streets face.

They chased the money and they lost. Trump had less funding and he won. Aren’t you interested in asking why?

Functionally that was their gamble. Chasing money is a current issue of our system where money and land matter more than people, power-wise.

Trump specifically had more direct funding than Harris since money was also being spent trying to pick up close Senate seats. I don’t think this includes all of the tactics that went in to drive the vote for Republicans such as Elon’s personal PAC, paying people to register to vote, gerrymandering efforts, added barriers for mail-in ballots, or even the fact that people were allowed to legally gamble on the election.

Another question. If it is possible to win with less funding, why do you consider it a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation?

There was lots of specific issues that factored in, but Democrats being beholden to not pissing off the Israel PACs was a big issue. Some of the same PACs that make very misleading ads against politicians that didn’t say they were specifically pro-Israel. Ads so misleading that you question how it’s legal to make those kinds of claims. And PACs so organized that they can tell their donors who to send their donations to directly and their donors listen repeatedly.

I think it is possible to be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” if you’re at risk of losing a large enough percentage of voters with either choice you make. I think they could’ve done better if Biden stepped in a year before and demanded America lead operations/prevented Israel from attacking indiscriminately and land grabbing. Well that and if many of the greedy politicians didn’t look at this as an excuse to make an arms deal.

I think they were damned for letting Biden dictate Harris’ Israel/Palestine opinion. Harris wasn’t going to follow in Biden’s footsteps in Israel, so she should have made it clear how she was going to get a resolution brought forward.

In hindsight it should be easy to see that they were only damned for what they did (backed a genocide), and would not have been otherwise. Too many people can’t get past their bitterness towards abstainers to consider how this outcome was an unforced error on the part of the DNC, and are seemingly content to repeat the same mistake.

Personally, I don’t blame abstainers, I blame the propagandists that preyed upon people. Many of the Democratic and Republican politicians are owned by money. It’s the reason these corporate Democratic leaders are not backing Mamdani, since he’s both progressive and not lock-step pro-Israel. The corporate Dems and Republicans specifically are the ones at risk of their funding/seats to another corporate politician if they were not condemning Mamdani.

All this to say, change needs to happen from both within the Democratic Party and outside of it as well, such as by changing the voting system locally to get more politicians like Mamdani.

Imo it was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation for Democrats; which is exactly what Republicans, Israel, and bad actors crafted the situation to be.

If the public stance was not Democrats being 100% for Israel, then they believed they would have lost the election because of the political PACs and donors flipping to fund the opposition.

Given how much money the lobbies that were pro-Israel were pushing into the campaign trail, any candidate that didn’t take that stance in a close election was for sure at risk of losing their donor vote.

I still think Democrats should have done more, such as saying they would fully step into the situation to prevent the loss of more lives for both Palestinians and Israelis. It also didn’t help that Biden was pro-Israel and expected Kamala to be lock-step with his stances while on the campaign trail.

I agree that we should be doing multiple things at the same time here.

I’m in favor of championing leftists and progressives and pushing back against Dems that are acting in their own self interest. For sure the corporate owned Dems and Republicans that are propping up arms for Israel need to go and for those wanting to throw minorities under the bus.

It sounds like the backlash is at least working and making its way to him. The California capital started flying the trans flag a few days ago.

Reddit Link (Yuck Reddit though)

The voting system needs to change.

As soon as elections stop being just one vote per individual we can actually vote our conscience. New York City has Ranked Choice voting, so does Alaska and Maine. Ideally having STAR, Ranked Robin, or Score voting would be best as the first two are better versions of Ranked Choice voting.

Incrementalism is what sorta helps to get us out as well. By that I mean changing the voting systems like New York City did which helps make it easier to get more leftist candidates in office.

Changing the DNC requires the majority of new voters to continue being left/progressive on issues and could take another decade.

Changing the voting system in our cities and states is the best chance to pull politics left and to actually allow third parties to take root. The last thing we want really is for the spoiler effect to happen, where our preferred candidate(s) and safe candidate lose to the least preferred candidate.

All the more reason to pass STAR or Ranked Robin voting, improved versions of RCV, once he’s out of the governor’s office.

Newsom specifically would never would have won reelection for the governor’s race under ranked choice voting.

Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.

I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.

I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.