Unless I'm missing something though, neither the president nor congress can force a judge to retire, short of impeaching them.
What does it say about a party if it can't get members on their deathbeds out of positions of power? What does it say about a party if members on their deathbeds don't do this on their own?
A competent party should be preparing younger members to take the reigns, cultivating the mentality that members shouldn't cling to power until they keel over, and should remove members who stick around too long. It should shape the rules of the institutions of government to do this as well.
Democrats never did this, and haven't come close to taking these questions seriously for decades.
...I think we're talking about different things. I said we can bring people to the left of the Democratic Party. I think you read that as bringing the left in to the Democratic Party.
I wasn't suggesting entryism, I was suggesting we can get people to realize the Democratic Party is never going to provide any real improvements.
Right now the choice is Biden or Trump for the next term. It sucks, but that is what it is.
This thinking has locked us in a rightward spiral for the last half century.
That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”
The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. “How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?”
I trust you know the definition of insanity.
Say you're right, and there is no difference between going to jail in 2024 and being enslaved on a plantation in 1824 (what "slavery" means to people in the U.S.). Simply saying that does not work.
Our comrades must understand that ideological remolding involves long-term, patient and painstaking work, and they must not attempt to change people's ideology, which has been shaped over decades of life, by giving a few lectures or by holding a few meetings. Persuasion, not compulsion, is the only way to convince them. Compulsion will never result in convincing them. To try to convince them by force simply won't work. This kind of method is permissible in dealing with the enemy, but absolutely impermissible in dealing with comrades or friends.
Here, we aren't even trying "a few lectures or meetings" and then giving up on people, we're shouting a hot take at them and then telling them to fuck off (or worse) if they don't immediately abandon their long-held beliefs. What is the point of reading all this leftist theory if we just ignore it?
But yes, I think there are some significant differences between modern incarceration and the U.S. conception of slavery (antebellum south chattel slavery). That doesn't mean prison conditions are fine, or that it's OK to coerce prisoners into virtually unpaid labor, or anything like that.
This is just defeatist.
Fifteen years ago there was no significant organization left of the Democratic Party. The growth in leftist numbers and organization since then has been enormous. Why are we suddenly at the point where there can be no further movement?
Arguing with them doesn't accomplish anything either
Believing that we can't change people's minds is defeatist. All I'm saying is that meeting "I don't think Democrats want to enslave the homeless" with essentially "kill urself" isn't going to change minds.
Did not expect the wholesale rejection of Mao on Hexbear today.
It's worth noting that Mao's point (which is apparently tailism!) has been echoed all over the place (see "we can never stop explaining"), and that nothing the U.S. left has tried worked either. I put more weight on things that have worked somewhere than on things that have worked nowhere.
Would be the one thing he could do that would potentially restrict the power of the president, too.
Sticking to the actual facts, both Republicans and Democrats are doing fucked up shit.
You're right, and you're right that we should point that out, too.
What I'm saying is that we should stick to the bad things Democrats actually do, not exaggerate. There is no need to exaggerate because Dems do plenty of horrible shit already, and exaggeration doesn't persuade people who don't already agree with you.
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