LogFAQs > #962705557

DoomTheGyarados posted...

I mean we've known each other for the better part of two decades, everyone knows who everyone is at this point.

Maybe the thing that you don't realize is that the only things I want the left to learn - to be more hardline, to obstruct like the repubicans do - is probably not the same lessons you are talking about.

The truth, although inconvenient, is out country's circumstances are exactly why keeps so called progressives from winning. Special interests, and their money, exert a huge influence over this country and the common person - trying to merely survive, doesn't have the time to delve through the mire of decades of propaganda. It is far easier to have a pride month than it is to give people a living wage. It is why many powerful people choose that field to do battle. While that is being waged, the rich quietly get richer.

So we get stupid voters. But they aren't stupid through fault of their own really, the system is designed to make them stupid and keep them stupid.

In a world where we are more sheltered it is easier to make excuses for our country, but when you look abroad it is easier to see the shortcomings. Now of course we're like 20/200 or so overall, so that's not BAD or anything, but the rah rah we're the greatest has got some of us wanting to move up the rankings and many too stupid to understand that we're not the bestest.

Lenin said the worse things are, the better they are for socialism, and he was right. Leftists are perpetually in a no win situation because improvements to the very things they care about - wages, employment, healthcare, safety nets - hurt their political position as people become richer and happier with the existing system. The goal for centrists (including the Republicans who know what they're doing) is thus to improve life for the people as that moves them away from wanting to make big changes to the system.

My view is that 2008-2016 was a once in a multiple generations opportunity for the left. The economy is much stronger now, and the desire for major change much lower. That is a good thing if you value the people's prosperity more than your political movement having power.