I phone banked on two Sanders campaigns. This didn’t start with Trump or even in most of our lifetimes. Both parties, and yes most voters of both of them, would rather set the country on fire than have anything resembling economic equity or someone having their basic needs met without a subjective judgement of “deserving” it. We could have ended homelessness inexpensively at any time under any administration, we could have made prison rehabilitative, it would have literally saved the country money to invest in both, yet I’ve heard more Democrats and Republicans speak of such desperate populations as the problem instead of the society that put them there.
This collapse was a choice we made over and over again.
Yeah I think there is a lot of harm coming from that none-altruistic sentiment of having to “deserve” anything good in this world.
Just like the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or how the saying goes and of course the capitalist propaganda myth of the “dishwasher to millionaire” thing.
It all links the basic need of money in our society (=to be able to exist) to personal effort, and as we judge ourselves very harshly by that standard, we are even worse to others. Especially because we never see their full picture, only pieces of the puzzle they call “life”, and we fill it up with the worst projections because that’s just what we presume: the other people made this or that because they are dumb or evil - the first thought I observe in conservative or extreme right minds in my vicinity. And maybe more people in any political spectrum, don’t know.
And maybe that is telling a lot about myself as well, maybe I project all that onto the society I observe.
But either way, without altruism we will never reach that Star Trek life without money and with so much unity ^^
I live in a caucus state.
Till the day I die, I will never forget sitting in a classroom during the caucuses (they use schools for the caucuses and break us up into groups for the caucus debate that’s supposed to occur) as the small number of leftists made our cases for Sanders and pleaded with the Neoliberals there to ordain the DNC’s chosen bribe taker to just stop and think.
Not a single neoliberal in any caucus I attended ever said a word beyond their bribe taker candidate’s stock statement. They scowled at us like WE were their enemy there to inconvenience them, voted for their corrupt stooge, and left.
And I still voted for their bribe taker in the general out of harm reduction, as I did with Harris, the latest meet the Fascists in the middle let the poors die in the streets or when they get sick hey here’s Liz Cheney endorsing me “good guy.” We did this to ourselves. And the capitalists on Wall Street are the main villains, but we by and large had to be receptive to “well you could be rich someday too!” instead of standing with our worst off neighbors who needed help for their confidence scheme coup to work.
A surprising number of people switched to Trump after the DNC and DWS stabbed Bernie in the back.
I didn’t follow them, as I still felt responsible for what my vote does today, but that did make many so hopeless they only saw any long term salvation in accelerationism in lieu of any other place to put their hope with two oligarch captured right-wing parties being our only “choice.” I lost hope for a decent future too, but Im a sucker for the starfish parable of minimizing the current harm as much as I have the power to do, even with no rational hope of anything getting better in my lifetime.
Looks like the accelerationists of total societal collapse got their way. Timber!!!
“Accelerationism” is the only viable “ism” when the government is designed to be responsive to the needs of the money rather than those of the people and the media is nothing but propaganda for the obscenely wealthy.
There’s no way to fix the system from the inside. The only way out is through.
