What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

Heh. You're not alone!

creating a vacuum that will be filled by all of the people who already have all of the capital and all of the connections

history has tried to tell us over and over you can't both let those people keep breathing and also let them continue to have access to their money and friends

xp nina didn't live long enough to pen "old, gifted and suppressed"

... just to live it i suppose

I believe that change is 100% possible. I also believe that the more violent that change is, the more violence will be visited upon marginalized communities and, once the dust settles, the people who will be better off will be White.

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

i believe you are right. i believe violence is both cyclical, like abuse, and an political end in itself that consumes others.

i also see some of these qualities in capitalism, that peculiar quality of being both a means and an all-consuming end. and when i look at the history of capitalism, i see that it, for the entire time it has existed, has been specifically violent against Black lives.

it is as important to me that change be as non-violent as possible as it is that change depend on capitalist oligarchy as little as possible.

history has tried to tell us over and over you can't both let those people keep breathing and also let them continue to have access to their money and friends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin#Judicial_executions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot#Purges_and_executions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini#Suppression_of_opposition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_the_Class_Ranks

What makes you think that this will stop at all of the people you think deserve to die, given how this scenario has played itself out in literally every society that's done it?

when i look at the history of capitalism, i see that it, for the entire time it has existed, has been specifically violent against Black lives

This is a copout to keep from admitting the culpability of White European societies for the violence they committed against the various nations of Africa and carried with them into their colonies. If you blame "capitalism", you can foist it off on an economic system and the people in that system are off the hook.

The problem is people. The problem will always be people. Every system you can think of will be bent to hurting the less-fortunate. That is the way humanity is.

seems like a false binary is being imposed here...people itt aren't proposing a revolution per DJP's examples. We are advocating radical changes from inside the system which are contingent on rejecting as "immoral" the liberal status quo.

xp how about “racial capitalism”

I love the "human nature" argument, it whips every time

I'm not surprised an ILX-level debate on the post-Marxist fallacy of separating race and class is happening again.

i think that very often, people on the left honestly don't know if they're ultimately advocating for change from inside the system or not.

look if we think these examples of revolutionary terror are bad are we obliged to support the former monarchies? if not why not

xp this is actually true

seems like a false binary is being imposed here...people itt aren't proposing a revolution per DJP's examples.

o rly

fuck reforming your genocidal slave state

― Your original display name will be displayed in brackets (Left), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 3:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

... you like it how it is?

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 3:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

[...]

xxp of course not I want it gone

― Your original display name will be displayed in brackets (Left), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 3:31 PM bookmarkflaglink

I was saying boo urns

I’m one person

And?

Are you saying you shouldn't be taken seriously, that you don't mean what you write and that you aren't trying to influence thought or bend the shape of the conversation when you join in? Are you just full of shit or are you serious?

Because if you're full of shit, fuck off and let the adults talk.

What makes you think that this will stop at all of the people you think deserve to die, given how this scenario has played itself out in literally every society that's done it?

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

i don't think anybody deserves to die, djp. more to the point, i don't decide who lives and who dies.

i know what these people did. i know there are a lot of people on the left who would like to do that some more. they are called "tankies" and i do not talk to them, will not work with them, do not have common cause with them.

i don't talk to republicans either.

the problem may be "people" in general - and I don't the root cause of racism is "people", I think the problem is, specifically, _White_ people. White anti-Black racism didn't start with capitalism, and i don't expect it to end with capitalism. i also don't believe it will end, _ever_, under capitalism. ending capitalism is, to me, a necessary but not sufficient step in addressing White dehumanization, violence, and abuse towards Black lives. ultimately, as a White person, I cannot, _will_ not, _ever_ end anti-Black racism. I am too embedded in systems of privilege to ever be able to do that.

i have a tendency, djp, a tendency towards pessimism, to fatalism, to seeing the possible negative effects of any change more than i can see any positive effects. i have had to work, have to work, very hard to open myself up to change. it terrifies me. i have a lot to lose. you certainly have more to lose than i do, are at greater _risk_ than i am. everything you're saying is true and correct and honest. you have an absolute inalienable right to it.

i'm willing to take certain risks. i do what i can to protect other vulnerable people, to protect people i care about, but you're right not to trust me. you shouldn't trust me. i'm White, I'm not going to do a better job at that than any other White person. at the same time you do _deserve_ more, not just more than you have, but more than you can even _hope for_ under the current way of doing things in america. you have the right to give that up, to decide to do without, to, well, _compromise_. i do a lot of compromising myself. i'm just not able to compromise everything you are.

I love the "human nature" argument, it whips every time

It's not 'nature' per se, but given our record as a species it's only fair to assume we'll fuck it up again and again.

*track record

This is a copout to keep from admitting the culpability of White European societies for the violence they committed against the various nations of Africa and carried with them into their colonies. If you blame "capitalism", you can foist it off on an economic system and the people in that system are off the hook.]

i want to say that this is like saying that if you blame "fascism" for the third reich you foist the violence they committed on jews/gays/minorities off on an ideological system and the people in that system are off the hook. but honestly it's making me think more deeply about the relationship between capitalism/colonialism and violence. i think it's pretty clear that ideological systems like capitalism drive a lot of violence - on the other hand violence has an independent life to it that isn't so easily linked to an ideological system. it does sort of have its own internal sustaining logic. i think that's a good reason to mistrust revolutionaries.

on the other hand, have we really come to the point where taxing rich people and defunding police is equated with revolutionary violence? because that's absurd.

I am a moderate; I do think some ppl probably deserve to die for the misery they've inflicted, but I do not nominate myself for the selection committee.

most revolutionaries I know (who are, it should be said, very far from an all-white lot) would be fine with merely jailing them forever and relieving them of their money

Quiet Revolutions have been known to work, sort of.

I would file 'taxing rich people and defunding police' under that category.

DJP I’m serious but I don’t represent everyone. or anyone else. obviously

I know “death to america” is marginal enough within most of the USA to be dismissed as unserious but it’s actually quite a popular position elsewhere

on the other hand, have we really come to the point where taxing rich people and defunding police is equated with revolutionary violence?

I have never said this. I believe I am on record as being enthusiastic about taxing the fuck out of rich people (including myself), draining money out of police departments, and forcing accountability to the communities they serve upon police departments. If I'm not on the record, that is where I stand.

Where I also stand is that I believe that unless these changes have both race and class concerns at the center of their implementations, they will help mainstream White people and those deemed acceptable by mainstream White people and fuck over everyone else. I still probably would come out ahead in that scenario. It would still be wrong.

DJP I’m serious but I don’t represent everyone. or anyone else. obviously

I know “death to america” is marginal enough within most of the USA to be dismissed as unserious but it’s actually quite a popular position elsewhere

I didn't say you were unserious. YOU said you were unserious by responding with "I'm just one person". You are the one underselling and undercutting your own positions and words; I'm taking what you're giving me.

personally think that any form of radicalism that points to incarceration as a legitimate form of retribution is misguided

xp thanks for that clarification, completely agree

iirc

There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?

What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

good quote shame he couldn’t apply the same wisdom to the genocide he supported in his time

DJP you made a good critique of bernie style social democracy above, doesn’t this say something about what the US fundamentally is or can be while remaining the US

This is why I don't trust revolutionaries; not because their end goals are things I disagree with but their methods will be used and warped to hurt me, my friends, and my family.

This is why the next American revolution (if any) has GOT to be nonviolent.

The problem is people. The problem will always be people. Every system you can think of will be bent to hurting the less-fortunate. That is the way humanity is.

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Thursday, August 20, 2020 10:34 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not well versed in this stuff, but has there ever been a truly egalitarian society that worked (like no elites) beyond the village level?*

in place of incarceration or death, everlasting shame and humiliation would be a great, and effective, substitute.

both tools recently proven to be utterly ineffective

i didn’t say it would be easy!

Shame finally died on January 2017.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BlackandwhiteWeirdCock-size_restricted.gif

Come back, shame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUdtjkqUHFE

we can have a peaceful revolution whenever carey mulligan wraps up her take on "new york, new york"

This is why the next American revolution (if any) has GOT to be nonviolent.

I believe we are on the same page here but it bears explicit statement: “nonviolent” does not mean “absent of violence”. It means violence is not a tactic you use. You invite violence upon yourself in order to turn public opinion against the perpetrators of said violence.

(Otherwise, you are advocating for people to vote. This is important and necessary but it’s not a “revolution”.)

I believe we are on the same page here but it bears explicit statement: “nonviolent” does not mean “absent of violence”. It means violence is not a tactic you use. You invite violence upon yourself in order to turn public opinion against the perpetrators of said violence.

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

to build on this, non-violence is not something that just happens on an individual level. it requires organization, discipline, and leadership. the left doesn't have any of those things right now. i would be extremely glad to listen to and learn from the expertise and wisdom of the leaders of the democratic party, have been for the past four years, but none has been forthcoming. nothing but circling the wagons, keeping us out. i don't know why, but i suspect it has something to do with their wanting to get paid. so instead of listening to ted wheeler, i listen to jo ann hardesty.

to me, what inspires me is something like the hawaiian revolution. that's what i'd like to see, if not nationwide, than at least implemented in more states than just hawaii. and what was pivotal to me was that the elites of the hawaiian democratic party made sacrifices to support radicals whose ideals they didn't always agree with.

the left doesn’t have organization, discipline and leadership? there are a couple of groundbreaking protest movements i know of that might want to take issue with that statement

it has some of those things but it needs a fuckton more

not to mention material support