Post is from Xitter, so I copied it below

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even basic steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of “mistake” but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don’t really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of “converting” the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

Link: https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1854107107743682797

  • Riskable
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5517 days ago

    Liberalism. (noun) a political orientation that favors social progress by reform and by changing laws rather than by revolution.

    What they’re saying is that revolution is the only option.

    • @stoly
      link
      English
      2517 days ago

      And the ability to revolt ended somewhere around WWI when the number and types of mass killing machines increased dramatically. Anyone who attempts it now will be taken out by someone flying a drone from a secure location.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1217 days ago

        I’ve been saying the same damn thing to all those who said something about a civil war. What are your peashooters to a fucking unmanned drone, controlled from hundreds of miles away, that will bomb your ass???

        • @stoly
          link
          English
          7
          edit-2
          17 days ago

          And yet if you say that those people become tankie level angry at you because it’s all symbolic anyway. The sort of person who yells at a minimum wage employee over an inconvenience is too much of a snowflake to actually put their life on the line.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            517 days ago

            Oh, yes. Those 2nd amendment morons always forget we don’t have just muskets and cannons anymore. Your little AR rifle, and realistically, any other weapon you can even conceivably get your hands on, is NOT going to stand up against a military machine gun in the current era. They don’t NEED those machine guns though, because they will, as we said, just bomb your stupid ass from however many thousands of feet in the air, while they laugh at you for even thinking you were going to do something.

            • @stoly
              link
              English
              217 days ago

              When I feel mean, the story I tell involves some dude under a mountain on Colorado shedding a single tear as they drop the bomb in your house.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            -217 days ago

            You can tell when the liberals are really frazzled when their arguments are so lost in hyperreality that they don’t even make cursory sense anymore.

            Absolutely delicious.

            Let me guess, next you’re going to call me a Trump supporter 😂

            • @stoly
              link
              English
              216 days ago

              No, more like edgy teen.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        616 days ago

        A revolution doesn’t have to mean a sort of military coup, what we would have to attack is their sources of capital, the flow of wealth flowing upward. Something like general strikes and mass unionization to put control of capital back into the hands of the working class.

    • Rozaŭtuno
      link
      fedilink
      English
      216 days ago

      This is the usual case of Americans using political words differently from the rest of the world (like libertarian instead of ancap).

      When Americans say ‘liberalism’ they really mean ‘neoliberalism’.

        • Guy Dudeman
          link
          English
          -1217 days ago

          When you figure out how to win against bunker busters and knife missiles, let me know.

          • @Olhonestjim
            link
            English
            1917 days ago

            When monsters arise, you fight them. Not because you can win, but because they must be fought.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              3
              edit-2
              17 days ago

              With fear as their foundational strategy, those that “go bump in the night” have always known a quiet truth:

              We have always been the ones who “bump” back.

              Find your path or stay in the lane they give you. You choose, fellow citizens. ✊🏼🖖🏽