PMs change and lol we're all gonna die (but brexit will never end)

Lets not have that argument & assume I didn’t mean communism

Plus I’m about to fly and I don’t want to miss a big fight when I can’t join in

I'm absolutely not arguing with pom, totalitarian states are obviously a special kind of horror that is undoubtedly worse than states that only enforce their totalitarianism thru poverty and socialisation

Plus there’s tons of Americans on this fight and I don’t want to be sitting here annoyed knowing I missed a big fight I started myself

Incidentally, I assume I'm the only person itt who has lived under actual communism.

xp

― pomenitul, Monday, 12 August 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Were you a toddler when ceausescu got done?

BrainWorms threads (Centrist, Leftist, or anything else) surely have to revolve around actual people we know, rather than abstract.

I have a colleague who thinks Jess Phillips and AOC are the same because "ballsy". And that the UK would unite around Tom Watson in a wave of remain fervour. Its a reasonasble start, but in both cases the breadth isn't going to touch whatever continues to deliver on the Conservative brainworm thread

Isn't technocracy the idea of government by experts? With one or two exceptions I'm not seeing much genuine expertise in these fantasy Cabinets.

I had a conversation yesterday about a friend of a friend, who voted 'Lexit', who had another friend who refused to talk to him after the referendum and was a gung-ho Remainer. This woman, the Remainer, went off to Finland for a while and then came back saying she now supported Brexit having read, wait for it, "The Strange Death of Europe" by Douglas Murray. I thought, wow is it that easy to flip one of these Remain fanatics? Why did they support Remain in the first place?

But they fantasise their expertise. Technocracy is really that fantasy.

Its the apppearance or illusion of, surely? "They got this", that yellow and blue poster with the woman with headscarf flexing a bicep. Notepads, pencils, conference calls, colleagues in Stuttgart, brainstorming, shirt sleeves rolled up, the task at hand. The outsourcing of thinking

Ultimately it is a love of stationery. The love of notebooks but the abscence of anything to write in them

Lol otm

Kafka as utopia

Difference between AOC and Jess Phillips, in a nutshell: I have never seen Jess Phillips offer solidarity to a female BAME politician.

BINGO

I'm sure it's a problem in a lot of places but it does feel like british political culture runs almost entirely on schadenfreude & spite, and it's created a nation of ppl totally unprepared to have to do anything beyond mockery

I want an economic system that belongs to everybody not just a hateful exploiter minority

xp the brits mainly

Were you a toddler when ceausescu got done?

A bit older than that. I have memories of the revolution and the couple of years that led to it.

*led up to it, rather.

I read your politics threads because I live close by, but I get this sense from these threads too. It’s hard for me to understand what you all actually want as opposed to what you want to mock. I am an earnest recovering American though.

I imagine we might all want different things. Apart from Maggie Maggie Maggie Out Out Out.

tbf I've got even less idea what the posters on US politics thread all want.

cheaper healthcare iirc

failing that, the unredacted muller report

/mueller idec

Come to the Canadian politics thread, a model of laser-like collective focus in that we hardly contribute to it at all.

All these white centrist politicians would hate AOC if she was from here and in the shadow cabinet.

unless ilx is full of shy tories and lib dems who are quietly tutting at the uncouth discourse the only significant fault lines here afaict are soft brexit v remain, scottish independence, and the best location for the giant pit. I think the vast majority wld be pleased to see labour win the next GE.

Who is in favour of soft Brexit?

Caught in flagrante delicto.

"It’s hard for me to understand what you all actually want"

Tories to die in death camps

my enthusiasm for the EU is ever-waning but I'd still pick EU membership over the softest brexit deal, even tho I suspect it's not viable esp over the long term

I’m pro abolition of london

wow sorry to hear you hate multiculturalism and the enlightenment

I had no idea London was a noted haunt for major Enlightenment figures.

I'm sure it's a problem in a lot of places but it does feel like british political culture runs almost entirely on schadenfreude & spite, and it's created a nation of ppl totally unprepared to have to do anything beyond mockery

There is a lot of truth in this but i guess you have to balance it against Labour being the largest political party in Europe, the excellent get-out-the-vote mobilisation at the last election, the boom in grass-roots campaign volunteering, etc. Between election cycles, the ability to effect change through participation in politics seems incredibly remote and hopeless, though.

Just attend a local ward meeting for proof of that :/

Tl; dr what do I personally want? A change of government.

Longer: why do I personally want a change of government?

Besides the glaringly obvious reasons (racism as policy, Priti Patel as Home Secretary, Brexit crashout aimed at blaming foreigners which will in no way end badly), I want:

- a government who won’t dedicate a whole department to far right causes like letting the Bloody Sunday soldiers get away with murder
- w government who will properly fund the NHS (and hopefully repeal the Health & Social care act)
- a government not marked by years of spiralling hate crime statistics
- a government who care about homelessness
- a government who aren’t gleefully pursuing the daily persecution of the poor or disabled

Tbh I feel like I bang on about some/all of this stuff all the time?

Is Corbyn’s Labour a wonderful flawless government who will enact all of the above? No, ofc not. Would they be the most likely party to pursue many/all of the above in power? Yes.

As to the pervading level of despair and “spite”, well that’s what you get when the media collude with the government to give them the softest possible ride and drag Labour over the pettiest shit. Not to mention people itt suffering all kinds of shit due to the inactions of the government and having to live in a country where people still, still! fucking get out of bed and vote for them.

I leave you with

nothing but respect for MY all-female unity cabinet pic.twitter.com/6rWJvBV9rC

— Beth Desmond (@languesbians) August 12, 2019

Missing: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.

I have been improved by the pain of a lifetime of hopelessness. while many still slumber in despair I am frolicking in the energy of a newly awakened belief in a tomorrow and after-tomorrow; of sudden sentience and prescience of a future, of near adventures, of seas open once more, and aims once more permitted and believed in. I feel my spirits buoyed by the thawing wind and am filled with wanton tenderness to expend on problems with a prickly hide, occasionally even local ward meetings.

…he said, throwing his arms around the horse's neck.

I just want to see a mountain of tory skulls, and then take a good shit into every single one of them. And then have a picnic next to one of the McD lagereis where the melts are toiling in forced labour sweatshops... all a load of bollox of course but one of the joys of being a space-cadet is the capability of spending more time in your imagination than you do in grim-ass reality!

Sometimes I worry this next election is the last chance for many of us*, won't even be able to look when that next GE exit poll is announced.

* probably sounds a panicky and hyperbolic but idk...

the horse is my union

I'll admit this isn't quite how I pictured it:

https://exploringyourmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/nietzsche-and-horse.jpg

Looking at this and I like it over here:

Today in Hong Kong a protest against police violence completely shut down an international airport. This is extraordinary. pic.twitter.com/yt5MOUpVhe

— automnia (@aut_omnia) August 12, 2019

ctrl + f “abolition of london” not found

XR were planning to shut down Gatwick with drones at one point but seem to have thought better of it.

Good to see Diane Abbott criticising stop and search as a policy, particularly when Lou Haigh has been Well Actuallying Priti Patel on whether the new police powers are strong enough and questioning why we aren't building more prisons.

xp easy on, Jordan Peterson, I’ve got some nice shiny callipers to distract you in that thread over there

there was someone very good on R4 yesterday talking about the history of s+s turning police into an occupying force and being counterproductive and pointing out that stop + search had a 5 % success rate last time out and the bbc presenter countered with some quote from a right wing think tank about it being a popular policy with the great british public etc.. unbelievable level of scrutiny.