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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • Well, I doubt he blames himself for anything that’s occurred, and I certainly don’t think he’s going to become a socialist or anything like that. He does seem aware that 40 years of free market capitalism without any pushback from a real progressive party on behalf of the working class has created the conditions necessary for Trump, and that’s more self-awareness than I’ve seen from Nancy Pelosi. That being said, I’m sure this newfound progressive streak will boil down to, “let’s raise the federal minimum wage so we can get back to capitalism as usual.”


  • He’s an old-school Regan conservative who writes a column for the New York Times. He also does a weekly PBS news segment; it used to be with this even older liberal named David Brooks (Mark Shields, what a dumb typo), but he retired, and now it’s with a young liberal who’s so moderate they barely even disagree.

    Funny enough, I actually don’t think he’s being contrarian. He was on PBS Newshour for their election night coverage, and he seemed shook. The next day, he commented on Twitter something to the effect of, “maybe the answer is that the Democrats need to pick someone that makes people like me unconformable.” I think he’s watched his economic outlook completely win American politics over the last 40 years, only to find the prize at the end was fascism.



  • You’re right, but the nuance you’re discussing is not what’s being discussed here. Listen to this bit:

    “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” said Joseph Paolino Jr., DNC committeeman for Rhode Island. “I’m going to look for a chair who’s going to be talking to the center and who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day.”

    Or as one DNC member from Florida put it: “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”

    These speakers aren’t distinguishing between socially left and economically left, and reading between the lines, it is very clear that the member from Florida is talking about dropping support for trans people (in a thinly veiled and very offensive way, I might add). They lost the working class because they don’t have a working class message, but they’re blaming the social policies for their loss.

    There is an argument to be made that the way they are approaching socially progressive issues is hurting them. Kamala Harris telling the ACLU that she supports transition surgery for migrant detainees painted a very large target on her back for a policy that would have effected a very, very small number of people. That probably should have been a, “pick your battles,” moment for her.

    If the argument was, “We’re not going to focus on trans people in sports for now, because a lot of people still don’t support that, but we’re going to talk about how Medicare for All helps everyone, and we’ll make sure that gender affirming care is covered,” OK, there’s a case to be made for that. But what they’re actually saying is, “Well, the economic policy is set by the donors, so there’s nothing we can do about that, but the trans stuff seems to be costing us more votes than it’s winning us, let’s drop that.” They’re trying to jettison the progressive groups they think aren’t helping them instead of building an agenda for progressives to rally behind.


  • As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.

    From the bottom of my heart, fuck these people. They’ve moved so far towards neoliberal policy positions that they no longer have an economic message to give their working-class base. In the absence of a coherent economic vision for the party, they keep doubling down on, “identity politics,” to keep the the Obama Coalition happy; they have nothing to unify their base, so their only option is to take up any position that is important to the demographic groups that make up the party. Now that this strategy has been thoroughly and decisively defeated, their reaction isn’t to return to the progressive economic policies that won them these groups in the first place, but instead to figure which minorities are, “unpopular,” so they can abandon them. What a bunch of stupid, shortsighted cowards.



  • Lots of good advice here, but I would just add, start with your interests and work out from there. You like puzzle games? Portal is a great physics puzzle game, so you might like that. It’s also a 3D platformer, so you’ll find out if you like games with a lot of running and jumping. It’s also technically a first-person shooter (not in the sense that you shoot enemies, but you do shoot a portal gun at walls), so if you don’t like that aspect of the game, you’ll know that FPSs aren’t for you.

    Doesn’t have to be the type of gameplay either. You like designing things? Maybe try the Sims or Animal Crossing. Like horror movies? Maybe start with something simple but creepy, like Limbo. Detective stories? Something like Strange Horticulture might be up your alley.

    The most important thing is to look around and see what catches your interest. Read some reviews, watch some gameplay footage, and find something that’s right for you. Don’t just say, “I’m going to do video games now,” and buy a Call of Duty or Dark Souls because, “gamers,” like them.