Didn’t he also shut down the office that was investigating him because he was about to go to prison if they completed their investigation?

Wait is that really something he’s floating or are you joking about this? Because I honestly can’t tell anymore…

Wait what, when did anyone mention swastikas? I must have missed that part of the conversation. What I saw is that they said punks wore mickey mouse shirts. Which is a completely different thing.

I’m not here to defend .ml as an instance, I think it’s garbage and most of its users are disingenuous trolls and accelerationist edge lords who would rather see the world burn with no plan to rebuild after rather than contribute in any meaningful or reasonable way to any sort of productive discussion whatsoever.

That being said, I’ve seen JoMiran around on different threads and they don’t act like the usual .ml user. There’s a couple others too, but they’re very much the exception rather than the rule over there. That’s all I’m saying.

And I never listened to the sex pistols, but there are plenty of punk bands who hate nazis, and honestly the punk ethos is diametrically opposed to fascism, so that weird subgenre of nazi punk is not only an oxymoron, but they’re also just a bunch of posers appropriating the aesthetic and not really punks. They would get chased out of any regular punk venue. Call it gatekeeping if you want but nazis are not punk, even when they try to call themselves that.

Man. We could have avoided the whole war in Iraq, and maybe gotten started on some climate action.

Anyone got a portal to that parallel universe?

Or maybe the one where Carter beat Reagan? Or the one where Oswald missed and we never got Nixon?

You know I hate tankies as much as anyone else, but I’ll honestly say JoMiran is one of the few .ml users who doesn’t seem to be one.

As in, they’re actually capable of rational thought/discussion and has some decent takes from time to time, which a tankie would be utterly incapable of

SC reform can’t happen until 2029, so no it doesn’t belong in tier 1 on pragmatic grounds alone

So protest every time they betray us. Let them know No Kings applies to democrats too. They don’t get a pass just because they offer us placating lipservice.

Additionally, continue contacting your representatives to voice your opinion on upcoming votes, and your displeasure when they let you down. Make notes of any congresspeople who vote against the interests of their constituents. Primary the hell out of anyone standing in the way of the things that need to happen.

There are ways to call a vote to the House floor without going through the Speaker, so the SML is the more important battle anyway. If we can get someone to replace Schumer, that will still be a huge success even if Jeffries becomes Speaker.

As someone who was a small child at the time.

Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck that’s fucked up.

Mississflippi came true!

Yes, this needs to be said more often.

Progressives are not being ideologues. We feel intensely passionate about the things we stand for because we know what the consequences will be if we fail to act.

People who can’t imagine what it’s like to make informed decisions don’t understand this, so they project and assume we’re just playing some game of political campism, when that’s not what this is about at all.

So there is hope.

Yes and the odds are stacked against it at that

Yeah, that’s why if we had incentivized it more starting several years ago, we could have made more progress by now. But we did the opposite.

I saw an article where a psychologist basically said the mind of the average maga voter is similar to the mind of an internet troll, and I was like… yeah that tracks…

I’m not saying that I personally want a moderate republican government. I’m saying if moderate republicans can make a comeback within their party and the party as a whole abandons maga extremism, that can help shift the overton window a little back towards sanity.

I still wouldn’t vote republican. But I’d rather have the main political debate be between progressives and a center-right party, rather than what it is now which is largely between centrist dems and the far-right.

I feel ya. Yeah, it’s a concern. I wish there were an easy answer. Some cartoonishly simple solution, like just surrender and let go of that tree root and then suddenly a giant bird swoops in and catches you and carries you to a nice safe deus ex machina.

But this isn’t a fiction novel, and real life doesn’t work like that. There are despicable, hateful people in the world and in this country, and those people are exploiting otherwise legitimate grievances to twist the minds of large numbers of vulnerable people. They lie to them about some overly simplistic solutions to complex problems, that they have no intention of following through with, and then once they win their trust and have them thoroughly deluded with an entire system of “alternative facts,” then they twist their minds further through fear-mongering used to stoke hatreds, and empty flattery used to inflate egos. It’s a dangerous concoction and some truly vile people have seen that and used it as an evil means to evil ends.

I don’t have a simple solution to that. It’ll likely take generations to heal, if we can even start the healing process. If we can’t even do that, it’s only going to get worse. Unspannable chasms have likely already grown.

Some victims of mass manipulation may be redeemable if we break the hypnosis, but I don’t have a clue what kind of proportion that is. Is it a vanishingly small percentage, or the vast majority of their base? I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to. I won’t pretend to have any better answers than this. I wish I did.

For now let’s just hold onto a little hope and see how the next session of congress goes. See if our political leaders will provide oversight and accountability. Fix what’s broken and use our systems to address the underlying problems at their roots.

If they can’t or won’t do that, then I don’t know what to tell you. Stock up on whatever you might need to protect yourself and your loved ones? Build trust and community among your neighbors, if you live in an area where that’s possible. The rest is what everyone needs to decide for themselves…

The line isn’t even that blurry. There are caucuses. The progressive caucus has over a hundred members in the next session of congress. The “New Democrats,” i.e. fiscal conservatives, have slightly more, for now.

There may be some in between but they need to make up their minds because this is the battle for the soul of the Democratic party, and if the progressives can’t act quickly, 2028 isn’t going to go so well, and as I’ve said before, we’re running out of time.

The moment for bold climate action was years ago, but now we have to scramble just to manage the catastrophe as best we can to minimize the damage it’s going to cause. If you think this is merely about “conflict theater” then go home, if this is a game to you then stop playing. We’re running out of time.

Why? Is being a corporate-sponsored centrist just a ruse that he plans to shed once he has the gavel?

Yeah I get it, that’s an important symbol. But is it really worth two more years of status quo leadership? Now, at the time when there’s both a means and a need for a bold push for progressive policy?

We’ve already had plenty of historic victories this election. And everyone who broke barriers isn’t focusing on their identity right now, they’re focusing on the work that needs to be done. Is Jeffries onboard with that, or is he only going to stand in the way? That’s the difference.

For what it’s worth, I’d support somebody like Wes Moore for the presidential primary in 2028. So let’s not make this about Jeffries’ identity. It’s about his policy, and his donors.

But yeah, if the speakership is already more or less set in stone, then I agree we need to focus on the battle we can win, and that’s the senate majority leader.

Yeah, if this doesn’t work we’re gonna need a blue teaparty to get anything done.