by liberal japonicus
You know what to do.
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
by liberal japonicus
You know what to do.
Since Bernie isn’t a member of the DSA, I can’t really say why he has consistently described himself as a democratic socialist. He’s a weird dude.
For a lot of the rest of them, though, I think that a lot of what is going on is that it is super hard to get ballot access if you are an independent, and it is super hard to get support from the Democratic Party if you are a progressive, so you need to find a way to jump start that ballot access problem and get some signatures. The DSA has a core of activists that you can mobilize for that, and they are happy to welcome in your own supporters so that they can get some recognition as a growing influence, rather than a fringe party. But all of this means that you are starting off having to embrace the socialist branding in order to gain access to the resources.
There isn’t a Social Democrat party with any structure and membership to call upon.
If it were me, and I was trying to build an outside alternative to the Democrats, I’d probably try to use the Progressive label and get some of those vibes going from the early 20th C. No one thinks of Teddy as a Marxist.
You could probably build that around a core of a few successful Democrat caucusing progressives, but then the strategic question becomes whether to do that as an independent party that works in tandem with the Dems, or as a somewhat contentious caucus within the party that uses the threat of a split to gain more influence.
Regarding various points raised by bc.
First, the phenomenon of people thinking of themselves as having a gender other than that normally associated with their genitals is not just recent, it is ancient. And is recognized and accepted in a wide range of human societies, both historical and current.
In our particular culture, it has been disparaged, and has ended up being expressed in ways that are seen as shameful or risible. Drag shows, cross dressing, etc.
What is different since 2010 is that transgender people want to have the same level of basic civil rights that have been afforded to other groups that were traditionally seen as either abnormal or of secondary status because of their gender. Women, then gays and lesbians.
It has been the pattern in this country to gradually and painfully extend the concept of “person in full” from free white men with property, to all people. The current noise about transgender people is where that is showing up now.
But there is nothing whatsoever new about people identifying as, and living as, a gender other that what their gonads would dictate. It’s been around as long as humans have.
OK, let’s see if we can dial these back to something resembling reality.
I’m at a loss to understand why access to healthcare for everyone is even controversial. Literally every other country remotely comparable to the US has achieved something like this for much less than we spend per capita. And yeah, I know somebody’s aunt in Canada had to wait 18 months for her hip replacement or similar, and I’m sure that sucks. But people in Canada or wherever aren’t going bankrupt because they got a cancer diagnosis.
I’m unclear on what the “housing for all” thing is about. Nobody’s giving houses away, and nobody’s calling for giving houses away. Housing is not affordable for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons, and some people are trying to identify public policy measures to help remediate that. I don’t see the problem. It’s an example of a public response to a market failure, and that seems more than legitimate to me.
“Abolish the police” was popular during the public response to black people getting killed by cops. It was quickly seen as both a bad idea and a political non-starter, and nobody in a position to make anything like that happen espouses it now. Endemic racism and excessive violence toward minorities by law enforcement continues, however.
Basic living allowance is a practical solution to poverty that has been proposed and endorsed by such prominent socialists as Milton Friedman. It’s an interesting idea, it gets kicked around from time to time by people of various political stripes, and it ain’t gonna happen here because we don’t have a culture that would support it.
You lost me with “end incarceration”. Are you talking about efforts to end *mass incarceration*? Those focus on the fact that we have 5 percent of the world’s population and 16 percent of the world’s prison population. And a disproportionate number of those are folks of color. Do you object to addressing that? If you’re claiming that somebody somewhere is calling for releasing every person in prison you’ll have to bring some citations, because I don’t think that particular person exists.
“Free Palestine”. Do you think the Palestinian people have been treated well, or afforded anything like true autonomy?
Abolish ICE is something I am 100% behind. Do we need to manage immigration to the US? Do we need to not simply allow folks to walk across the border without some control over the process? Yes and yes. Is ICE as currently implemented a good way to do that? No. They are a band of heavily armed thugs terrorizing American cities and neighborhoods. Burn it down and start over. Full stop.
Get rid of fossil fuels. Our use of fossil fuels has changed the climate of the world, and that change will endure for hundreds or thousands of years, with in some cases catastrophic effect. We are not in a position to completely end our use of fossil fuels. It will be at a minimum a generational effort to move toward being in a position to reduce that use to a great degree. Our failure to do so is careless, selfish, and idiotic. So “get rid of” is unrealistic, “reduce to the greatest possible degree” is only sane.
“Publicly owned energy”. Where I live, electricity comes from a public utility, owned and managed by the town. We used to generate our own, now we buy most of it from other regional utilities, most of them publicly owned and run. In general our rates are cheaper – significantly so in some cases – than other nearby towns that buy from investor-backed utilities. It all seems like a good idea to me. It probably wouldn’t work everywhere, but if the blessed free market can’t make basic infrastructure available for a rate that is affordable to the population at large, I’m all for the public sector stepping in. Markets aren’t perfect, and sometimes they are even exploitative (imagine that!).
“Abolish the Constitution”. Yeah, not gonna happen, unless your side does it.
In some countries, e.g. Germany, labor has a voting voice in corporate and industrial governance. It works perfectly well. I fail to see the problem here.
Keep those straw men coming!