No, we shouldnt entertain these discussions of "acquiring" Canada and Greenland

 So, Trump seems full stop trying to manufacture consent for these ideas of taking over Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, maybe Mexico? And now even useful idiots for Trump on the left like John Fetterman and Cenk Uygur are like "well we should entertain these discussions, i mean, people didnt want to acquire Alaska either."

....Alaska was for sale. Russia wanted to sell it, we wanted to buy it, the controversy was called "Seward's folly" because it was deemed to be a bunch of useless tundra. We didn't know about oil at that point. And, I get it, IF greenland WAS for sale, I'd be like, yeah, ok I can understand that.

Here's the problem, IT'S NOT FOR SALE! They don't wanna sell it, Trump is the only one pushing this stupid idea of buying it. The thing is, he's trying to go full manifest destiny here for some weird fascist reason (see: Hitler invading Poland, Putin invading Ukraine), and he's trying to drum up sympathy for the idea by having conversations about it and trying to encourage support for it in the American peoples' mind, and uh...yeah. They dont wanna sell. That's that, let it go.

But again, Trump is acting like he's gonna start some major imperialist war of conquest to go full manifest destiny. And it's dumb. You gotta keep in mind, Trump is a strong man. He's the dude who wants tank parades down pennsylvania avenue to stroke his ego. And he has this cave man mentality of OG WANTS LAND AND LEGACY, OG INVADE. (Og is the name of the imaginary cave man in my head whenever I talk in this voice). There's something primal with Trump's instincts here and he's trying to do this primitive strong man thing. 

He doesn't even understand that north america is already an empire, it's just done in a more intelligent way.

America is forged in imperial conquest. In the 19th century, we expanded from sea to shining sea. But we didn't take over ALL the land. Why? We didn't need to. We had enough to prove our point and be the big kid on the block. We had the most fertile land, with the most economic potential, and we built a powerhouse on it. Canada was the cold stuff, Mexico was hot, rocky, and relatively inhospitable with all of the jungles, mountains, and deserts. We're friendly with both nations, and we end up forming positive relationships with them. And with that, we limited the amount of potential threats to the US mainland. Any power would have to invade through mexico or canada, and as long as we're friendly with both, it aint ever gonna happen. They aint gonna come over from the oceans. And yeah, what's russia gonna do, invade alaska? More America! We're ready for that. Then we control hawaii, which gives us functional control of the pacific ocean due to its central location. And yeah. Beyond that, we are allies with, and friendly with, and have military bases in eastern asia, Europe, even greenland, we have an airbase there. We dont control the land, but we exert our military presence, to protect ourselves and our allies, so it's good enough. Yes, we gave panama back the panama canal, but we probably have a special relationship with that too. We could retake it at any time IF WE HAD TO, not that we have to, and trump is just jumping the gun.

And then we have the monroe doctrine. We secure our security, by strongly discouraging foreign involvement in latin america. That's why the CIA is always doing coups down there. We ARE an imperial power, we just dont control it directly. We more stop our enemies from getting influence there. THis is why the cuban missile crisis was a huge deal. Communism came to cuba, they russians started putting missiles there, we didn't like that. So we tried to assassinate castro like hundreds of times and failed, and we tried to invade with the bay of pigs, which...almost got us into a nuclear war, but yeah, the soviets backed down and we came to some agreement. Now we got venezuela controlled by communists aligned with russia and we tend to look at that with lots of skepticism. We do wanna limit foreign influence in our side of the world.

But yeah. This is why what trump is doing is stupid cave man crap. We dont NEED to take over our neighbors to flex our muscles. We already have an empire, we have a whole side of the world where no foreign competitor can realistically touch us. And this guy is started to talk imperialism like its the 19th century again and raw land grabs are up for debate. He's stupid. And dangerous. This is the kind of stuff I warned you guys about when I compared trump to hitler. He's talking like Hitler. Take the sudetenland, invade Poland, invade France, try to invade Britain and Russia. And then overstep in doing so causing WWII and getting beat. But yeah. Trump is cut from the same cloth as that guy. And now he's talking about acquiring Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, and Mexico. He's actually threatening our diplomatic credibility as an excuse to show people his you know what. That's all this is. Weird, primal 19th century...thing...measuring....

Even though we've had the biggest stick since 1945 and we've had it without any competition since 1991. We dont need to do this to prove a point. I mean, this is what his generals told him in the first term. That military parades and the like are a sign of weakness and overcompensating for something and we have nothing to prove. He fired his generals and now hes talking about wanting hitler's generals. He's a fricking moron and a psychopath.

Please, dont entertain this dude's crazy proposals. Again, this is just raw naked imperialism that threatens the sense of relative world peace that we've managed to accomplish. It's better for the American Empire, if we call it that, to operate on soft power, not hard power. Of course, soft power is an art trump will never understand because the dude governs like he has a 75 IQ. Higher concepts beyond raw force just dont come into this guy's head. For the guy who wrote "Art of the Deal", he doesnt seem to understand the art of anything, and he's really, really stupid. 

How left wing are the democrats in Europe

 So, a question arises a lot within the intra party spats between the centrists and the left, how left are the democrats internationally? Progressives will argue that they're right wing in Europe, but of course, the centrists think they're plenty left. So...in Europe, how far left are the democrats?

Well, I can't speak for every country, but I have looked at a few in the past, and I would argue that the democrats are CENTRISTS by European standards. Europe seems to have a diverse spectrum of political opinions, ranging from the alt right and fascism, all the way through social democracy, and even, at times, having far leftist parties as well. 

To see how this works in practice, let's look at a few examples I'm familiar with.

First, the UK. The UK has two major parties, and a bunch of smallish parties. The two major parties are the conservatives, or the tories, and the labor party. The conservative party has been the largest one in recent decades, and in a lot of ways, the UK has mirrored the US's politics. Instead of Reagan, they got Thatcher. Instead of Clinton, they got Blair, and in 2016, they went in their own "MAGA" style direction with brexit and the like.

However, British politics are a bit different, and I would say the overton window is a bit different. Boris Johnson, for example, seemed like a mixture of both Biden and Trump. Yeah, he had the nativist spin that Trump has, but he also had his own "build back better" style initiatives, and he even called it that, where he did some things with infrastructure and job retraining. It wasn't amazing or anything, but his tenure in office seems to be a weird mix of what I would consider to be Biden and Trump style policies. Like, if you split the difference between them, or did one of those AI generated programs to mix Trump and Biden into one person, you get Boris Johnson. It's kind of weird.

But then you have labor. And labor, to me, actually came off as pretty hard left under Corbyn. Like imagine British Bernie Sanders. That's Jeremy Corbyn. The labor party reminds me more of our greens than they do our democrats. They talked a big game about like all of these measures to create jobs and infrastructure, but people didn't really buy it. it seems like they just werent hitting. A lot of the old labor base went more MAGA as we shifted from unions 50 years ago and people up in scotland to nativism today. So we're seeing a realignment to the far right in a way where a lot of people are shifting from labor to Johnson's nativism. Like really, hate to say it, but a lot of people REALLY dont like immigrants. And that seems to be the overriding concern for a bunch of people. And the left in the UK kind of has the same kinds of issues ours does, where you got all these younger up and coming centrist types living in London who are relatively wealthy and obsessed with scoial justice issues. Like, you've had that strain in labor since Blair in the late 90s, who basically mirrored Clinton's win. So you do have similar paths taken between the US and the UK there.And in recent years, with Corbyn having been exorcised from the party, the labor party is trying to move back to the center. 

Still, if I were to give a direct analogue to the third way democrats, I would say the "libdems" are closer. The liberal democrats are a smaller third party that had a lot more support in the past, but collapsed in recent years and now only gets like 4% of the vote. But yeah, the democrats tend to mirror that more than anything, although third wayers do exist within the labour party too and are fighting for control of it. Still, I would say all in all the overton window is a bit to the left of America's. If I had to rate the conservatives on a 7 point likert scale, I'd probably give them like a 5, as they are kind of moderate conservative you dont get here. You get some nativism and nationalism, but you also get some infrastructure and green initiatives too. They're what I'd call center right. Kinda like a fusion of the democrats and republicans. I'd say that labour is more like a 2-3. 2 under corbyn, 3 post corbyn. And then the liberal democrats are 4s. For reference, I'd say the third way dems here are 4s and the republican party is a 6, starting to trend into "7" territory, which isnt good because I deem 1 and 7 rankings to be kind of dangerous extremes that are incompatible with liberal democracy. 

This brings us to the next one. France. France has three major factors. They got front nationale, let by marine le pen, daughter of the infamous marie le pen. Basically these are alt right MAGA types. Imagine MTG as a presidential candidate. That's Marine Le Pen. She's so scary that the two other factions ended up forming an uneasy alliance to keep them out of power. They're like a 6.5 on my scale. 

The two other factions are Macron's centrist faction. These guys are centrist neolib types, true third wayers. American centrists love him. They're 4s. And then they had a third faction with Melenchon, I think his name was. He seemed to be in charge of some marxist/communist type of party. Looking him up, he seems more socialist, but not radically so. So I'd probably consider him like a 2. With that said, so far, I'd say:

US overton window- 4-6

UK overton window- 3-5

French overton window- 2-6

I mean, in Europe you tend to have a greater spectrum of ideas overall. You got a conservative party, with conservatives as crazy as ours, you got socialists and hardcore progressive types. And then you got moderates in between. I'd say american democrats and their flavor of corporate centrism is more aligned with Europe's center. They're more center than right, but yeah, I'd say that Europe has left wing options that the US doesn't.

With that said, i'd like to focus on one more country, which is going to have elections soonish if I'm not mistaken, this being Germany. 

Germany has had a pretty strange path. After WWII, they banned nazi parties. But in recent politics, the AFD is having a meteoric rise, and despite basically being fascist and anti democracy, they're not being dissolved. I do track the german elections for some german friends of mine, and to my knowledge, AFD, the far right fascist, MAGA, alt right type party that I'd consider a 6-7, is in second place.

The party with the most support is the Christian Union party, which has two factions. They're a more bog standard right wing party akin to like...the nikki haley level republicans we have here. You know, establishment, sane, but still kinda evil? Yeah. I'd be inclined to give them a 5 based on my own research, but I've been convinced by a german friend they're probably closer to republicans than i think. So maybe 5.5-6? 5.5. let's say 5.5.

Beyond that, they got several other major parties. You got the FDP. They're kind of libertarianism, or "classical liberal?" Still, they lean kinda ordoliberal in practice, making them relatively moderate. They try to frame themselves as between the Christian Union party and the social democrats, so they're basically extremely enlightened centrist and third wayish. I would actually say democrats are kinda like these guys in a way. 

From there, you got the social democrats. So, they're socdems, so like a 3-3.5. You got the greens, who are more like a 2.5. They're more obnoxiously socially progressive and seemed to be doing a lot of that metoo stuff with rammstein last year, although my german friends like them and think they're pretty based. I'd probably be more aligned with the socdems though. The greens kinda have this weird annoying leftist vibe that the social justice types have here while the socdems seem a little more establishmenty? Yeah. I'd probably either support SPD or greens in practice depending on the election cycle and platforms. If I dont just go for the UBI party (yes, they have one, but it's tiny and electorally irrelevant). 

Basically, looking it up a bit, SPD basically has its origins as a leftist party that wanted to remain pragmatic, which appeals to me greatly. As you guys know, my own ideology is driven by a balance between ideals and pragmatism. The greens on the other hand, come off as being formed by like social activists and the like and that's why they kinda got that vibe I dont like. Leftist activists can be an annoying bunch at times, and they lack the practicality SPD has. So yeah. I'm definitely more aligned with SPD, even if SPD is maybe going a little too far to my right. Still, they're the closest major party, with the greens being #2. 

Then you got "the left." No, that's what it's called. "Die Linke", the left. They're said to be a direct descendant of the communist party of the GDR and are very far left. Like extreme left. They seem popular in Eastern Germany especially. Heck, former East Germany is a hotbed for a lot of political trends related to extremism. They support communists, they support fascists (they're big AFD guys too), and heck, to go into the next party, you got a weird mix of both.

So yeah, this is a new development, but apparently "Die Linke" has had a schism in recent years and you also now got a new party called the "BSW". They seem to be AFD on social issues but Die Linke on economics. So basically this weird nazbol type party, or alternative, what you get from WOTB or Jimmy Dore these days. Ya know, some weird red brown alliance? Yeah. Im not big on them either, but they're what you get when mindless populism runs amok. Think like RFK voters here. They end up being kinda moderate and being this weird alliance of left and right populists who dont know what they're doing.

I guess if you're nostalgic for the old soviet union or GDR, it makes sense though. And if you look at the modern political landscape where some people are very nativist and anti immigration while being very left populist, it makes sense. We could see this taking off in the US I think if we had a multiparty system. In a sense, RFK's coalition seemed similar to what these guys were going for. 

And yeah. That's the german political spectrum. Theirs is the most diverse at all, ranging from like 1.5-6.5, getting just about the whole spectrum. Where would the democrats fit into that? Probably with the FDP. Socdems are a bit further left than the democrats ever will be. And republicans are basically Union for the establishment brand and AFD for MAGA. 

Bernie supporters are probably mostly socdems and greens, with the more tankie types being linke and the more weirdo WOTB/Jimmy Dore type people being BSW. 

But yeah, all of these factions are ignored in the US, so i'd generally say that our politics these days is like FDP vs AFD these days, with SPD and Union supporters existing but largely being suppressed by the more dominant factions of the parties.

As such, where would I classify the democrats by European standards? once again, they're dead center. They're definitely not "right" unless you're like a 1-2 on the spectrum yourself. But they're not left either. They're literally as center of the road as you get.

See, was that so hard?

 So, I know I'm flexing the democrats and their upholding of institutional norms, but yeah, Kamala Harris, as VP, and also the losing candidate of the 2024 race, just certified the election for Donald Trump. 

I dont like Trump. I dont think he should be president after what he did today, 4 years ago, when he was in a similar position. If you wanna know why I take the hard anti trump stance now that i didn't in 2016 and 2020, January 6th 2021 was a huge reason why, and a huge breaking point for me.

However, we didn't try him for it properly, he ran again, and he won fair and square, so now we're giving it back to him.

WAS THAT SO HARD, REPUBLICANS? You guys threw a hissy fit over losing and quite frankly, it wasnt just embarrassing, it was criminal. But, you know what? You won, and outside of a few weirdos who are in their own little world online (looking at you, r/somethingiswrong2024), unlike you, we actually can admit it and say "I hope we do better next time."

And because your candidate is basically a fascist lite, I hope there IS a next time and that this doesn't come back around to bite us. But if we didn't do it, well, we'd be no better than you, so what more can we do here?

Anyway, country is yours now, don't screw it up too bad. Hopefully, you'll just govern like normal terrible republicans and not pull that night of the long knives style crap on us. We do have to worry about that given who we just elected. We'll be back in 2028.

Why "equality feels like oppression" to the idpol people

 So, yesterday, I posted a rant about identity politics. More specifically, I posited the argument that for the idpol driven, equality actually does feel like oppression. Now, this is something they like to throw at the rest of us, but I'd like to throw it around back at them, because I feel it's especially true for them.

Identity politics portrays a narrative. It is a struggle for equality, a struggle for justice. It allows people to portray themselves as a member of a persecuted group, and act as if the system is against them. The identity politics thing is also a bit of a circlejerk. It's a bunch of weird social hierarchies that are totally inverted from how things are viewed in the real world, where in their eyes, the top of the hierarchy is who is MOST oppressed, not the least. The people who fit in the most oppressed groups are given the most attention, showered with the most praise, and told how brave they are for being oppressed. In a sense, it is a hierarchy, because these guys have this thing where the more unequal you are, the more special treatment you need in order to make yourself equal. The more your say matters, the more people have to listen to you, and to shut up in your presence, and yeah, it's one of those things where you either love it or hate it. If you're one of the mentioned groups, you have a higher chance of loving it, if you aren't, you probably hate it, like me. Because as a white male, bottom of the totem pole. I'm told to sit down, shut up, and listen to everyone else, and it pisses me off, because I'm not one for social hierarchies or shutting up in the presence of others. I'm for giving my own opinion for better or for worse. I'm like a strong drink, not everyone is gonna like me or hate me either, but some probably like me, and others probably think I'm too strong for them. Whatever, don't care. 

Anyway, this little informal hierarchy is also why the entire thing falls apart after a while. You start getting fights between groups about who is more oppressed, and they start accusing the other side of being some flavor of bigoted "ism" or that they're "not allies" or arguing over who has it worse and who is more oppressed.

I've listened to a lot of people in Latino and Asian communities for years now. Like, Andrew Yang, being asian, super popular among Asian voters. A lot of people who are into him are so because he's Asian. And they go on about how hard it is being Asian, and this kinda makes me cringe as Asians are typically considered more privileged or anything, but that's exactly what they seem to hate. In the mayoral race, they ended up getting in these "who has it worse" spats with black voters who liked Eric Adams. And a lot of the asian voters have a falling out with the identity politics stuff, specifically because they get displaced by black voters going on about how they have it worse (and generally being a much bigger minority bloc of voters). And the same dynamic seemed present with Latino voters this year. I've heard it straight from the horse's mouth. That Latino voters end up getting in the same spats with black voters that Asian voters did, and because they're not really the most privileged minority in these weird left wing social hierarchies, they end up becoming disillusioned with the entire thing and go toward Trump. In a sense, after a while, identity politics starts to eat itself. And any time the paradigm is threatened, like a cornered animal, the most ardent supporters end up feeling threatened, and they start using language like "we're throwing them under the bus." The fact is, these oppressed groups like the attention, they like being the center of attention, they like everyone kissing up to them, and when it comes to being treated just like everyone else, it literally does feel like oppression.

Heck, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of these groups don't WANT real equality. They just wanna feel oppressed, they want to get social media attention, and even when real equality comes, they end up moving the goalposts and shifting to the next thing. Take the Shelby Lynn thing with accusing Rammstein of sexually abusing her (well, okay, propositioning her after it being implied that they put something in her drink). That became a real huge social media "thing." Everyone was witchhunting Till Lindemann, everyone was making him out to be a bad guy, and what was his big cardinal sin? Well, he didn't drug anyone, that's for sure at this point, I'm fully convinced the "victim" basically got too inebriated by their own hand, although I'm not sure the exact details. Some say it could've been alcohol + depression meds. Others say alcohol + med withdrawal. The toxicology report seemed to imply she had pot in her system, so she could've had a "green out." Any of these explanations work. But yeah, out of this, we got this entire crapshow about how women are mistreated by rock stars, and rock stars having sex with fans is bad, and blah blah blah. It used to be, women were in the kitchen, had no say over their sex lives. Marital rape was legal until the 90s, and we've had a pretty prudish society sexually until the 21st century. But then these hyper feminists started seeing this sexualized culture as its own form of oppression, and now everything has to change around them. So they tried to do this huge crusade against the rock industry, with Rammstein being the face of the "abuse", and quite frankly, it's ridiculous. We started having weird crap about how the age of consent should be like 25 or even 30, and it's like, come on, REALLY?! Give me a break. We're going backwards from my more old school progressive stance and being more socially conservative because apparently sexual liberation is too oppressive now. Really? it's like they make crap up as they go along.

Or take 2016 with Hillary Clinton. She literally ran on the idea that people were too sexist to vote for a woman president, and even now, in the aftermath of Harris losing, one of the key explanations I constantly hear is that Americans are too racist and sexist. Elizabeth Warren also weaponized this stuff against Sanders in 2020. Hell, going back to Hillary, they weaponized it in 2016. The whole point of bringing it up WAS to weaponize it, to portray a narrative that anyone who didnt like clinton was an evil sexist and to portray her campaign as some feminist struggle to become the first woman president. 

Never mind the fact that based on statistics available at the time, 92% of people WOULD. Like really, we're so equal and progressive that to me, it's not much of a mile stone. Like, sure it hasnt happened yet, but if the right candidate ran on the right platform it could happen. It's just that clinton wasn't that person, and harris...well....let's face it, 2024 was a really bad year for democrats. I mean, I covered the entire election cycle polling wise and it was always a losing battle in retrospect. In reality, I think both lost because they just offered something the american people didn't want. 

But again, for the social justice minded, it's the narrative, it's the struggle. They dont want equality. They dont wanna be treated like everyone else, like it's not a big deal. Because if they do that, they have nothing. They can't win on these issues. If they win, their grift is over. So the struggle is eternal, and even if we are actually there, we have to keep pretending to struggle.

And it's the same with the LGBT+ community post 2024. I remember the arc of this over the course of my life. In the 1980s LGBT+ people were demonized and left to die with the AIDS crisis. In the 1990s, things shifted a little more in their favor, but it was still looked down upon. Still, shows like Roseanne, in retrospect, helped a lot (they had gay characters which helped ease americans into accepting it). In the 2000s, it just...stopped being a big deal as we got past the peak moral panics of the religious right, and people became more accepting, especially in the late 2000s. In the 2010s, things REALLY shifted, and we basically went from being still relatively conservative when Obama took office, to legalizing this stuff in 2015. We WON! But we couldn't take the W.Again, because it's not about winning, it's not about progress, it's about the eternal struggle. It's about the perception of being persecuted and the attention that it gives people. It's about the power in social communities, and social justice politics really elevated this stuff to a toxic degree.

And since then, we regressed. I don't think it's because Americans arent socially progressive push comes to shove. I believe the center of gravity is in our favor, push comes to shove. But it's because this toxic brand of politics sabotaged them, and now they're back to struggling against trumpism, which, btw, IS a real threat, and we DO need to counter that, because the narrative of the left has become toxic, and any good will that the left got 10-20 years ago is now gone. Specifically BECAUSE they pull this crap. 

Like really, the majority of americans reject this stuff. BUT...because these communities are insular, and because they are so in their own little world, they start freaking out at the idea of change, and are doubling down screaming that anyone pushing for positive change is throwing some vulnerable minority under the bus.

As far as LGBT+ rights go in particular, I can't think of many examples of this behavior. Most progressive left communities are very pro LGBT+ rights. Maybe a little less so on trans stuff. I think that we are overstepping a little bit on that, and the public just "isnt there yet." But our goal is to find ways to get there. Not by castigating people or attacking them for lack of purity, but through explaining the issues in ways they can understand, and helping them understand. We CAN support LGBT+ rights AND lay off the social justice crap. That's what I've wanted all along.

Honestly, here's my honest take on a lot of the social justice stuff. In the 2010s, we had it all. We had abortion rights, we had gay marriage, we were moving in the right direction. We were WINNING. Were things perfect? No. But I believe that the moral arc over the course of my life until the modern era has been mostly steps in the right direction, and we had already won on most issues. 

What caused us to regress? IDENTITY POLITICS. This in your face crap with the social hierarchies, the same stuff I'm talking about, is actually driving us backwards. Because it's framing the issues on literal conservative strawman terms in ways that it's undoing a lot of social progress and leaning to the rise of trump. In a sense, progress is like building a tower. Say you finish building the tower, you say, okay, now what? Well, let's move onto other things. 

But then people come around, knock the tower down, and say now we have to build it again because evil people who wanna knock down the tower again. Did we have to knock the tower down? No. But because these guys love building so much, they dont know what to do with themselves in an era where the tower is completed, that they send society backwards, so that they can rebuild the tower. 

Honestly, I'm not saying things are perfect. Even in the 2010s, regressive jerks existed. But....they were losing. It felt like WWII in April 1945, you know, where the allies could tell they were winning and the nazis could tell they were losing. The battle wasn't won yet, but imagine just....giving up, letting the nazis retake Europe, and now we have to storm normandy AGAIN. That's what this crap feels like to me. We could've won. We could've moved on, but because people would rather focus on the struggle, and because the struggle needs to be never ending, they just end up undoing progress. It's like sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill, and then when he's done, it goes back down. People need their rock. They dont wanan just rest. They dont wanna be like "now what? we accomplished this great thing." They wanna struggle. 

So they plunged the country into the darkness of the trump era just to keep themselves relevant. And now that it's clear that most americans arent feeling the struggle, they're starting to scream that we're throwing them under the bus. Simply because we wanna downgrade their concerns, treat them like everyone else, and focus on other things. Because for them, equality does feel like oppression. They dont just wanna be treated like everyone else, they wanna be pandered to personally. They want the social recognition, the love, and even, to some extent, the hate. It's literally the same mentality as the "war on christmas" people. 

And let's face it, the rich and the powerful love this. And this is where my head is REALLY at. This entire culture war thing...is literally a psy op by the rich. Like I mentioned building towers earlier. Like, okay, imagine that we have another tower of economic progress, and we call it babel. The wealthy see people starting to organize to fix the economic system, and because that threatens them, they confuse the people, like god in the bible. Remember how he basically made them speak all different languages and cause chaos? Same thing here. The entire paradigm of culture war, at least as its portrayed, is one of grievance. For republicans, it's about society moving away from christian values, and how they dont like that, and it's scary, and they fear persecution. They also dislike the wokeism, because it's yet another threat to their religion and their percieved order of things. Those guys are the real conservatives btw. So they have these weird traditionalist views that are actually a minority, but because we all dwell on this stuff, become very powerful. And then we have the left. For me, I came to the left as a "new atheist", a secular humanist. And it seemed clear that we were winning. But then wokeism came along and we started losing again. For me, I just see through it all and I'm like "ugh, really?", but a lot of people live for that kind of struggle. Honestly? I think we already made most progress we needed to, and 10 years ago, we had it all. Now Trumpism IS a threat to our values, and it IS fascism, and we DO need to oppose it,. but...if you ask me, this could've all been avoided. In some ways, we had to go backwards, in order to stop people from building that tower of babel. And I knew it all along. And in some ways, "wokeism" is a psy op to get us away from that economic fight. Which is where the so called "class reductionists" like myself come into things. We see this struggle for what it is, and we're done.We wanna focus on economics. And sure, we do support the same socially progressive positions we always do, but we wanna stop focusing on this woke bullcrap, which is just persecution porn at this point. 

Look, there's no reason why we can't be economically progressive and a bit socially progressive too. We should fight to retain the right to gay marriage. We should try to expand trans rights. We should try to get abortion rights back. Not for politically cynical reasons, but because it's the right thing to do. But we need to drop this obnoxious, in your face, social justice nonsense, and focus on rebuilding what we lost in this era of trumpism, and from there, only make mild incremental changes. We won most of the rights, and if we play our cards right (or stop playing them so badly), we can win again.

But we have to WANT to win. And that's where I really dont like these guys. because again, to me, we already won most of this a decade ago. We lost ground because we messed up. I want to stop us from messing up, so we can move on from this. I dont value this struggle. I dont wanna participate in struggle. I wanna move on from struggle so we can move onto the next thing, not keep milking this bullcrap again and again.

And yeah, that's my view on this.

Dear niche identity groups, not everything is about you!

 So a common narrative I keep hearing these days among the social justice left is that they fear that the economic left doesn't care about them enough and that we'll throw them under the bus and blah blah blah. 

And I'm just gonna say, STFU. As a 2016 Bernie Bro, a "class reductionist" if you will, someone who does care about economics first, and social issues second, not everything is about you. The moral lesson of 2024, and 2016 while we're at it, is that your toxic brand of politics isn't welcome any more. And what was it that you self righteously lectured to us all the time? "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." 

That's what this is about. For almost a decade now, identity politics has had a "privileged" position in the democratic electorate. It has been the center of conversation, the ethos that holds the left together. But not all of us have been happy about that. This kind of politics is great if you're one of those groups and you get off on the oppression olympics, the same way the right screams persecution any time you tell them Christianity shouldnt literally dominate society. But it's quite clear that you're losing the country. Why? Because our needs are not met. Not everything revolves around you. Not everything revolves around social justice. Not everything revolves around the wants and needs of 0.6% of the population. You know what I'm saying?

The fact is, you've scolded us for a decade now. You threw US under the bus for three elections in a row, telling us to STFU and to sacrifice our concerns on the altar of white male liberal guilt, and that we're bad people if we vote against our economic interests in order to support YOU, and people are tired of it. They're not gonna do it. If anything, a lot of people are like "screw you, IM gonna vote for Donald Trump, F your feelings", because you really do leave people with that kind of bad taste in their mouth.

I wanna remind you, I dont support Trump. I spent 2024 OPPOSING Trump. But...the democratic brand....sucks. It's sucked for a while. And a lot of us have known it for a while. And a lot of us have been kind of keeping our feelings to ourselves, and even if Ive been vocally "anti woke" from the get go, even I voted for harris this time, believing trump was dangerous enough to oppose outright, even if it did empower the lesser evil party.

But that party is still the lesser evil. The dynamics havent changed since 2016, and that's the problem. And you know what? Social justice obsessed liberals, you ARE the problem. You ARE half of the problem holding us back. Obviously the other half is the democratic establishment, the donor class, what have you, but THEY have been using your politics as a cudgel to bully the rest of us into supporting them, by arguing that WE are throwing YOU under the bus if we dont give your politics our complete undivided attention.

The fact is, you tried to bully us into supporting you even if it's against our interests, and it's failing. And now democrats wanna drop the "wokeness" crap and shift toward being a little more moderate. Maybe making some minor compromises here and there. And you're screaming about it.

Again, what have you been self righteously quoting at us for years? That when youre accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression? How does it feel to be just another person in the democratic party? Oh wait, you dont like that? THIS IS WHAT THE REST OF US HAVE BEEN FEELING FOR A DECADE NOW!

Look, I'm pro LGBT+ rights. And honestly? I have no intention of backing down from it. Reframing the issue away from YOUR toxic brand of politics, sure. But all I really advocate for is a little reframing. I'm not actually interested in "throwing anyone under the bus." i'm just tired of people screaming about this and making constant topics about this because people are finally pushing back against their nonsense. Again, you guys have been asking us to sacrifice OUR concerns for a decade now. Telling us that we cant have nice things and blah blah blah privilege. Doesnt feel good now that the shoe is on the other foot, does it?

I've said it from the get go, but politics is coalitional. It is up to the politicians to make a coalition that wins elections. The social justice left has been cynically dividing americans by race, gender, and sexual identity for a while, and allying with the economically conservative upper class in doing so. And selling US out. ANd it's quite clear that the democats are suffering at the ballot box for it. The autopsy is clear, as it turns out, my own brand of politics isn't that unpopular after all, so now we have to decide what comes next.

I dont think it makes sense to "throw anyone under the bus". What makes sense is we gotta stop mindlessly pandering to people on social issues and have an economic platform. That doesnt mean we'll be selling out social issues. We need you guys to win too, and we need to actually appeal to your interests. But, we gotta do it in a way that makes more sense. Again, more pro liberty framing, less obnoxious in your face social justice nonsense. 

The democrats gotta actually be progressive. Be the party of FDR. But with social progressivism this time. It just depends what it looks like. I just encourage a less obnoxious in your face version that outright alienates people, and one that focuses on defense, and on preserving rights and liberties. 

Almost no one actually wants to go full right on like LGBT rights or something. ANd those who do generally arent very welcome on this side of the aisle either now. We just gonna drop the obnoxious over the top pandering on this crap. That's all. 

Eulogizing Jimmy Carter

 So...Jimmy Carter finally died. I mean, gosh, I thought that dude was gonna live forever by this point. He was 100 years old. he went into hospice like over a year ago, where most people arent expected to last for long, and he went on for like a year and a half there. Crazy. But yeah, it was finally his time to go, and he went. RIP to one of the greats.

And I do mean that. I don't think the guy's perfect. He was the dude whose presidency killed the New Deal era for good. He was anti McGovern in 1972, being an establishment good old boy. And he wasnt exactly the most competent in office. Heck, his presidency most closely mirrors...Biden's. 

And on that front, let's be honest. Carter, much like Biden, wasnt the most progressive guy in the world. he was an establishment good old boy after all, but...he was the last new deal era democratic president. And despite leaving office in his 50s, he lived so long he literally got to watch history repeat itself in 2024. 

I mean, that's why I was backing Biden. Because I could tell that 2024 kinda had these 1968/1980/2016 vibes. And that ain't good. Carter was, quite frankly, too honest. That was his biggest fault. He leveled with the American people and told them to wear sweaters during an energy crisis and instead of doing their civic duty, what did the american people do? Throw his ### to the curb and replace him with the one who told them they could do whatever they wanted. Ya know, the same they did to Biden after COVID and inflation. And fearing a similar 1980 style moment from Trump, where the parties would realign in favor of Trump and progressivism would be dead for another generation, I backed Biden.

If anything, I'm happy to be proven wrong on that one, and the autopsy seems to show a rejection of do nothing centrism and the democrats' current brand of weaponized incompetence. If anything, the people seem angry that the government isn't doing more, and the mood of the people seems more in line with my own than with Trump right now. Trump was just the vehicle to express their rejection of the Biden administration's worst attributes.

But yeah, back to Carter. Carter was the kind of dude who was too good for this world. He was one of the most moral presidents we ever had, but that's also why he was such a bad president. He tried to see the best in people, he was too trusting of others, he was too honest with the American people. if you wonder why all politicians are lying scumbags, look no further than Jimmy Carter. He was the honest one who told the truth, and people didn't like that. 

And after he left office, he spent his life building homes for the homeless well into his 90s. I remember that pic of him like 5 years ago when he was a young and spry 95 looking all beat up because he fell doing it. Like dude? A bit old to still be working, right? But he did. I dont think he stopped that crap until he was like 97-98 or something. 

Basically, this guy was the anti Trump in a sense. And mostly in a good way. Instead of being a corrupt lying scumbag, he was the most ethical guy you ever met. If Jesus did come back as a second coming and ran for president, he would probably be that president. You know what I'm saying? So yeah. He aint perfect in my eyes, but he's better than just about everyone else. RIP Jimmy.

Weighing in on the MAGA civil war

 So, MAGA keeps F-ing around and finding out. MAGA has been in turmoil today as the protectionist wing of the party is at odds with the tech bro wing.

Elon Musk basically shot his mouth off about how he likes hiring H1B workers because Americans are too stupid to work a lot of tech jobs, and MAGA is pissed off about it. After all, "making America great again" was supposed to be about nationalism and ending immigrant labor at the expense of the American worker, right? Right?

This is why right populism is a bunch of nonsense. You're literally supporting the same trickle down economics that made you poor in the first place. These people in charge of the trump administration don't care about you. They're millionaires and billionaires, they're robber barons. At the very least, they don't care about you, and at worst they mock you and despise you. I'm not kidding. Apparently there was a video of some rich frick that came out literally mocking the rest of America for not being able to afford fancy Christmases like he can. And of course he's in with Trump too.

They don't care about you. They hate your very existence. Trump said it himself, he didn't care about you, he just wanted your vote. You guys voted for him anyway. We warned you. 

Here's the reality of rich people. They dont create jobs to give you a good living. They create jobs to make themselves more money. They pay you the least money possible and then they mock you for it. And that's why Elon LOVES immigrant labor. It's about being able to get some poor and desperate sap from the third world to work for him, and have their immigration status tied to their job. That makes them more exploitable. That makes them able to get more out of workers while paying them less. They dont wanna train americans. These frickers oppose the same universal college education I'm for because they dont want their taxes to go up. Then they dont wanna train people. Then they say you're too stupid to hire. Then they hire immigrant laborers. Why do you think I became so anti work and anti jobs? It's because I RECOGNIZE this fact. I went through this after graduating college. I didn't have experience, and i needed a job to get experience, and I needed experience to get a job. And apparently im just supposed to work for free until I'm worthy to be paid a wage for what I do. They wont train me. That costs them money, and yeah, the system is dysfunctional. 

No amount of paint jobs will fix it. It's rotten to its core. The only solution is to shift the well being of the working class away from jobs and toward universal income and services like healthcare. That's all we can do, without moving away from capitalism.

After all, jobs dont exist to give you a check. They exist to make rich people money. Never forget that. They dont wanna hire you. They hate the idea of having to pay you a decent living wage, and healthcare, and to give you proper training. They're laughing at you behind closed doors going on about what a sucker you are for voting for Trump. And to be fair, you are. Not gonna sugar coat it, I admit I got an elitist streak in me myself from an intellectual standpoint, but unlike them, im trying to fricking help you guys. I'm trying to wake you up where you realize what the problems with the system are and how to fix them. 

Look, I know democrats arent great, but if you cared about jobs and worker rights and protectionism, you shouldve voted for Biden, he did everything for MAGA that they said they wanted. Bringing the manufacturing jobs back, full employment, worker rights and improving paychecks. I know he wasnt perfect. I know he wasnt as progressive as I would have liked, but given MAGA is a more right wing type movement, Biden actually governed in line with MAGA's purported priorities. And you guys voted him out of office, bravo.

Hope you guys learn this lesson in the next four years. Trump is not your friend. Elon Musk is not your friend. None of these rich fricks associated with trump are your friends. You just elected a class of brazen robber baron oligarchs who believe in trickle down economics/social darwinism, and you're about to find out that none of that helps you. It actually really REALLY hurts you. Tariffs hurt you. Their policies are all about making your life worse while enriching their billionaire donors and friends, and you guys elected him. Have fun with that. Hopefully you'll learn next time. If only someone could've told people this ahead of time. Oh wait, they did, and no one listened.