One Degree wrote:I am not responding to your points because slavery and racism is always used as a reason why communities should never decide anything for themselves. It is an idiotic argument. The world has moved on. You are simply trying to justify why communities should continue to be forced to obey the will of Los Angeles and New York. If I wanted your morality, then I would live in your community. See how that works. If you don't like my morality then stay the hell out of my community because we resent oppression like everyone else. You simply want to decide who the oppressed should be.
You are not responding because I'm using a historical example. I could literally use the same example all over the world.
You also didn't respond to the idea of your neighborhood turning into a gay area and what rights the original property owners may or may not have.
Your example is that jay walking is socially permissible where you live. Same with where I live though technically illegal.
So?
Your argument and lack of any positive platform actually dovetails nicely with the rest of the discussion here. Like the Democrats, you have nothing to offer aside from pouting about how you feel like I'm a tyrant for pointing out that your ideology is completely without foundation. Like the Democrats, you are doing nothing to even try to put together a positive platform that has a direction. Like the Democrats all you have to offer is that things aren't optimal now, so we should just trust your vision that you refuse to elaborate upon or articulate. Like the Democrats, you act like everyone is ignoring you by not engaging you on empty rhetoric with no actual meaning.
And like the Democrats, you are trapped using relitively abstract moral arguments for theoretical conditions that you can't concretely put into words because there is nothing there with which to construct them.
@mikema63
The primaries are difficult to get into. Already from stepped one, you're voting for people that have the DNC machine's prints on them. Some are better than others; but once you've jumped in, the DNC machine has already partially succeeded in pulling you in as the rest of it lurches further to the right.
The GOP had to deal with the Reform Party and the TEA Party. Roger Stone had to destroy the former, the latter was invited into the GOP tent. The Democrats have not had to bother doing either to any modern parties.
Further, we are working at similar but different goals. I don't think the Democrats can be salvaged. Used strategically as a cudgel, as long as the GOP is being played too, but it is what it is.
The mission is to change the zeitgeist; to stop the reactionary turn and move to the left again, for everyone. Part of that is stopping the Dems from advancing to where the GOP was ten years ago; part of it is agitation from the left for its own sake. Because, ultimately, as you said, the DNC is an umbrella organization that is there to shill votes. And there's ultimately only so much such an organization like that can do at all.
Famously, in my circles, the Irish Parliamentary Party died partially because of this. It could kinda-sorta get education bills through, was useless with labour issues, had to suspend parliamentary rules entirely to address land reform, and even then it died partially because it couldn't address specifics. It isn't built to do it. Nor are the Democrats.
Sanders follows in the steps of Michael Harrington, socialists attempting to use the Democrats as a form of entryism. That's putting the cart before the horse though; first the left must demand it. And that's going to be a long, slow, process dependent upon accepting the limitations of the Democratic Party.
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