Why I dunk on David Pakman types despite him being a social democrat

 So, David Pakman is having a bit of a spat with Hasan Piker. Pakman criticized Piker for dressing up like Mao, Hasan's fan base is pissed and is brigading Pakman's social media, and the whole thing is a crapfest. Ya know, real battle of cringe type stuff, one faction too moderate as I see it, and the other too extreme. 

With that said, Pakman released a video explaining why he's not a socialist, and defended social democracy. And I'm gonna be honest, I agree with 90% of the video, with the other 10% being the weird UBI related wrinkles in my worldview that make it unique. However, I also don't really feel like Pakman is a political ally of mine a lot of the time. If anything, I actually do end up siding with DSA, and it's probably good to explain why. 

As I see it, the modern civil war within the democratic party is actually between establishment and anti establishment. Or establishment vs populist. Either way, it's between a faction that dominates the democratic party that is for some iteration of the status quo, and progressives who want to change things to make them better. I said my peace on what this change should look like. It's not socialism, it's actually closer to Pakman's stated beliefs in social democracy.

However, here's the important thing here. Actions speak louder than words. Pakman is relatively establishment. He wasn't a Bernie bro in 2016. He seemed to be supporting Hillary and telling everyone to vote blue no matter who. He did the same thing with Biden in 2020 and 2024. Heck, he actually got to meet Biden. And it's suspected he's been part of a program to push establishment talking points. He's in with the establishment. And the establishment is markedly not social democrat. The establishment is an entirely different ideology that we call "third way." 

Social democracy, New Deal Liberalism, etc, was a compromise between capitalism and socialism. It was the idea that we'd keep capitalism, but heavily reform it to improve things. It's been an effective ideology at solving problems. It aint perfect, as I've pointed out, but even my own ideology is just basically that....with UBI and a more libertarian bend. The point is, we reform capitalism. This was the ideology that dominated from around the 1930s in the US, or post 1945 in Europe, until around the 1980s when we shifted toward neoliberalism with the Reagan consensus. This caused the democrats to moderate and "triangulate" to the center, forming a new ideology that is called by some as "third way", or "neoliberalism" (although that refers to something else), with the democrats being called "New Democrats." If New Deal liberalism and social democracy are a compromise between capitalism and socialism, third way politics are a compromise between social democracy/ND liberalism and the right. 

And when I look at David Pakman, I don't see a social democrat, I see a third wayer. Again, actions speak louder than words. Whatever Bernie called himself with "democratic socialism", his priorities running for office were explicitly social democratic. It was Bernie Sanders who ran on medicare for all, free college, public housing, a green new deal, etc. Bernie did that.  The best he offered on the literal socialism from was worker coops. otherwise he was just running on New Deal Liberal or social democratic policy. And that happens. Demsocs, despite their rhetoric and ideological belief in socialism, end up having many of the same policies as social democrats, with the ideology in practice being indistinguishable in policy from literal leftists. 

Now, that's not to say there arent differences, and Bernie's movement has radicalized since then. And a lot of his supporters ARE socialists, and this DOES lead to cringe takes on social issues (like defund the policy, open borders, etc.), and foreign policy issues (basically implode the American empire), and even economics (go too far into seize the means of production territory at times), and I've had spats with them, which is why I've written articles that show disdain toward them in the past. 

BUT....and this is important, the DSA types do more to advance social democratic causes in practice than most self described social democrats. If anything, a lot of explicit social democrats in America seem to actually seem to side more with that third way establishment side of the spectrum. Which punches left, and attacks progressives for advocating for progressive things, and scolds people for not being "vote blue no matter who", or thinking that the democrats and republicans are closer to each other than the left (which they are, the third way seems more interested in preserving the ideological consensus of the 6th party system than actually advancing progressive priorities). And yeah. Even on those social democratic priorities they purport to have, it seems like they're always making excuses for not actually implementing of them, hand wringing over electability, or hiding behind the same weasel words of "pragmatism", "incrementalism", etc. 

The thing is, these types love to CALL themselves social democrats, but how often do they actually fight for social democratic priorities? And that's the rub, they don't. And that's why I don't like the Pakman crowd much. Seriously, I interact with his audience and they're all a bunch of insufferable third wayers who buy into the establishment's BS, and Pakman actively seems to reinforce that ecosystem. He isn't advancing those priorities. And that's why I dont trust him.

I mean, say what you want about DSA, but read a DSA candidate's platform and most of it is just....social democracy in practice. Even whackjobs like DAC still mostly advocate for stuff I agree with like a UBI, medicare for all, free college, etc. That's not to say they don't advocate for some massive cringe and that they do go too far into the literal socialism aspects of things at times, we can disagree with specific proposals, but if people wonder what has gripped the left to support these guys, I'll be blunt: they're the only ones standing up and doing the work. The establishment of the democratic party can claim to support these ideas in theory all they want, but any time we talk about implementing them, they always make excuses why we can't. It's like they exist to stab us in the back. Pretend to care, but then chew us down. And when we can't get a faction that actually addresses these solutions within liberalism, because the party establishment and its donor class is fundamentally against them, and the DSA are the only ones actually putting in the work to move heaven and earth to get these priorities done, guess what? people are gonna support the DSA. And that's why they support the DSA.

Ironically, I keep hearing Pakman's audience point this out and say we need a capitalist alternative to it. But that's the thing, they've had ten years to actually do this. And they just sat there making excuses for why they can't like a South Park cable guy. It's actually pretty pathetic.

Anyway, that's why, IMO, David Pakman gets so much crap from the online left. He can call himself a socdem all he wants, but when he cheerleads a party establishment that does the bare minimum to advance social democratic priorities and often falls flat on its face even doing that, yeah, people are gonna support DSA. Because our capitalist system as it exists is unlivable for younger people. It hasnt been working since AT LEAST the 2008 recession, we far as Im concerned, many of us never recovered from that, or never got off the ground, and a lot of us know the system is rigged and just want a better shake. And when the establishment doesn't do that, and the DSA is basically advocating for socdem priorities in practice, well...do I need to say it again?

Yeah. If the democrats  seriously view the DSA as a legit illiberal threat to the country, they better get off their butts and offer a new New Deal like I've been calling on them to do since 2016. But Im not even sure they're doing that. Like the right, I suspect many of them are just trying to create a red scare to make them sound more communistic than they are, while pointing out the most extreme behavior to make their case. It really is hard to say.

Either way, my stance on actual socialism should be apparent, I'm not a fan. Worker coops sound nice in theory, but I'm not even hardcore on that. I mostly just want socdem priorities and UBI. And while I support DSA candidates a lot of the time, I don't actually support democratic socialism, but rather, a version of the social democracy Pakman claims to support. I just don't see him as actually doing that in practice.  

Discussing why we DO need a democratic tea party, and what that actually should look like

 So....this is another one of those third way vs DSA civil war posts I've been doing lately, and this one is kinda gonna settle the debate once and for all for me. 

There's a lot of moral panic and hand wringing over the DSA's rise within the democratic party. Now, once again, there are some legitimate concerns there. The most extreme elements of the DSA are, quite frankly, kinda insane, and I certainly don't endorse LITERAL SOCIALISM to solve our problems. But as I said, i got a problem with the moderates too, and keep blaming them for us getting to this point. They've been holding the democratic party back since 2016, and a lot of them are opposed to the idea of ANY leftward shift, and ANY populism, acting like we're "just like MAGA" if we do that. 

Again, with the DSA's most extreme elements, I see a parallel there. I certainly think the left flank of the DSA does represent a similar extremist threat to what MAGA does, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything at all. Again, the big problem with this debate is we got DSA on one side, the third way on the other, and I'm basically just...in the middle at this point. Sure, I lean toward the DSA now given my pathological hatred of the democratic establishment, but as I said, I ain't sold on them either. So let's go back through my history and explain my own line of thinking on this.

Me as a tea party republican

Ya know, back, in the day, I WAS a tea party republican. I mean, I originally started out as a Bush republican with Christian nationalist characteristics, but in my college years, I did move to the center. I was in college during the 2008 election cycle, and it seemed clear the republican party couldn't continue as it was. No one liked it, not even republicans. The left wing criticisms should be obvious, but again, there were people within the republican party who realized that the GOP had to change. it wasn't representing its true ideals any more. It went down the path of Bush era neoconservatism, with its hardcore interventionism that ended up being a failure. And that was the big flaw. No one liked it. NO ONE. Not even republicans. Bush had approval ratings down to like 28% toward the end of his term. That means a good 1/3 of the republican party was turning on Bush, myself included. The wars also represented a betrayal of fiscal conservatism. This is where we get the deficit hawk mindset. I learned in political science classes about how Clinton balanced the budget, a fiscally conservative priority, and then Bush basically doubled it from his tax cuts and stupid wars that were ruining the country. Basically, the republican party was kind of betraying its own ideals and wrecking itself. Then it didn't seem to be doing enough on reducing safety nets, it was bailing out the banks in 2008 (kinda necessary at the time, but seen as a betrayal among hardcore conservatives), and yeah, we just needed a new kind of conservatism. One that got back to its roots. I supported Ron Paul at the time (cringe, I know, but think about it, 20ish year old libertarian...yeah....). I actually flirted with voting for Hillary Clinton over John McCain because of the above, I KNEW she was a centrist even then, and was like "hey, Bill didn't do bad, maybe we should have Hillary?", but then Obama became the nominee and I flipped to McCain...begrudgingly.

McCain went down in flames, Obama won in a de facto landslide. Despite the fears that he would bring us to communism, he didn't, he was a milquetoast liberal himself, but I didn't realize that until around 2011. Anyway, we all knew in the republican party that the republican party seemed to betray its ideals and needed to go back to its roots. And the tea party was the answer. The left frames it as entirely inorganic and funded by big money, and dont get me wrong, it was, BUT...a lot of conservatives did WANT THIS. So we voted for the tea party in 2010, and the first crop got elected in 2011. 

What went wrong?

 However, what we got...didnt make me happy. Quite frankly, I was horrified. Those on the centrist left act like this is the time the nutcases took over the asylum, and use that as a cautionary tale for why we can't have DSA. but let me explain why the tea party was so bad. The tea party...didn't do anything that went against its ideology. That's the problem, it WAS a return to form. We got exactly what we voted for, and given my evolving belief system, I kind if realized that "gee, this is horrible." And that's what I keep saying, it's not that the implementation of conservative ideas was bad here, the ideas themselves were bad. It was looking us in the face all along. Reagan, Bush, the tea party, it was all bad. That whole paradigm was rotten. And I radically changed my views over the next year or so, realizing that this entire reagan driven party alignment had to go. It was time. In 2012, we had Romney run on trickle down economics in the middle of a recession while fronting tea party christian nationalist priorities, and it was just...no. Centrist dems like to look at Bush, McCain, and Romney as the good old days. Those guys are in the tent but progressives? No, that's too extreme, what do you wanna be like the tea party on the left? Yes, actually. 

because, again, it wasn't the implementation of the ideas that were bad, it's the ideas themselves.

The case for a left wing tea party

 So...this is going to be based more in around...2013ish logic, not 2026. But I wanna explain to people how I evolved with this. So....conservatism bad, Reaganism bad. Over the last 2 years from 2011 to 2013, I shifted from being a tea party republican to being a progressive. I skipped right over the uncanny valley of suck, and went straight to the left side of liberalism....the version not seen in this country since the 1970s in a meaningful way. I went full on New Dealer. I researched economic policy, learned how the economy worked on things like job creation with the phillips curve, I learned about keynesianism vs neoliberalism, and realized things worked A LOT better back then. We used to have a country full of jobs that paid well, where the incomes of the poor and middle class grew with the wealthy. Reaganism truly was the end of that. It basically replaced a paradigm of economic reforms that gave us unions, safety nets, regulations, etc. and shared prosperity with "well if we give the rich people all of the money, it'll all trickle down." 

And...I learned about the compromises Clinton made in the 90s. yeah, Clinton, Obama, they represented a form of centrist liberalism that by Obama's second term was wearing thin. Maybe it worked in the 90s during the dot com boom, but in the 2010s, we were floundering. The job creators werent creating jobs. And it seemed obvious we needed a return to form on the left.

But I wanna be clear, that return to form wasn't socialism or communism. I learned from the failures of that. Capitalism won the ideological debate, i dont wanna supplant it. I dont particularly LIKE capitalism, but I do believe it to be a functional system, you just need to reform the crap out of it to make it work. But thats the thing. The centrist dems made compromises to the center the way the eisenhower republicans did in the 1950s. And maybe that was necessary back then. But it isn't now. I knew about political realignments. I mapped out the timeline. 1932, New Deal Era rose, 1968, 36 years later, it collapsed. But then in order to make the timeline work again, since the timing of the theory went off the rails after 1968, I developed the 12 year "dealignment" theory where we didn't fully align into the 6th party system until 1980. 1980 always seemed to be this big "before and after" moment. It was the ascendance of modern conservatism, the ideology that was now, in my view, in decline. And we were now past 2012....32 years later. That means in 2016...we should have a new realignment.

The 2016 moment and what the democrats should have done

And that's the thing, it clicked. It was time. The reagan era needed to go. It was responsible for all of the problems, and the left needed a counter response, not the same old centrist liberalism that was itself ideologically impure and built on unsavory compromises with the right, but a return to form. And that return to form for me was always social democracy or the new deal. 

Again, I wanted to restore liberalism to its former glory, while adapting it to the new age. Secular social morals. A relatively noninterventionist foreign policy (but nothing too crazy). A progressive economic vision. Granted, it wouldnt be exactly like the previous form. That had flaws. Flaws that I also learned the lessons from and didn't want to repeat. I wanted to avoid the wokeness and idpol that seems to divide the country and offer us nothing. I wanted to avoid the big sprawling bureaucracies of the new deal and poison pill compromises of the clinton era that created the impression that government can't do anything right. I wanted to avoid leaning into basically the idea that America was "weak" on foreign policy, just offering a more even hand, similar to what Biden offered. 

My own vision of a new New Deal took shape during Obama's second term. I learned about UBI and how it was actually floated at the end of the new deal era, but didnt pass due to political nonsense. It seemed like we came so close to "getting it" but then we went in exactly the wrong direction.  UBI also seemed to be a functional solution to poverty that avoided the problems of government bloat, compromises, and the evils of communism. It actually seemed to have a uniquely American spin to it, one based on FREEDOM and actually empowering individuals in markets, rather than enslaving them. If anything, given the failures of "job creation", this is just what we needed. And of course, medicare for all was an early ideal vision for healthcare for me, having not fully considered the fiscal consequences. Free college, student loan forgiveness, it all clicked. 

Basically, I became andrew Yang before Yang ran for office.

Bernie Sanders: close enough

Of course, I knew I couldnt expect an emerging populist figure to reflect me directly, but I did become attracted to bernie Sanders as a possible 2016 nominee as early as 2014. And sure, he called himself a socialist, but looking at his actual policies, he was a social democrat. That's the thing. Demsocs and socdems are functionally similar on policy. They call themselves different things and have different ideologies on paper, but in practice, they both seem to want similar policies. Anyway I saw nothing nefarious with Bernie's platform, it was just social democratic crap with maybe some worker coops and that's it. big deal. He supported 2/3 of my priorities and 2/3 aint bad...

But then the democrats screwed us...

 The democratic establishment decided we would be having none of that. Remember Clinton in 2008? She's back, and now I'm at an entirely different part of the spectrum. While I think HRC wouldve been good for 2008, by 2016, we were basically on the verge of a realignment and she was just...wrong for the moment. not that it mattered, it was "her turn". We were just white male "bernie bros" who were "sexist" because we didn't want the "first woman president." We "didn't get the black vote." We didn't get that incrementalism is the way to go. I mean, this was a campaign for losers. She had this idea she wanted to be president, and everything else was just a justification around this idea, rather than her running to make peoples' lives better. And the whole campaign basically became a mess of "vote blue no matter who", which pissed me off majorly. And as old time readers would know, I went and voted green that year. 

The democratic party civil war

 The democrats have been in a low key civil war ever since, with me on the progressive side. The centrists remained insufferable and refused to do anything to improve things,and this caused the progressive wing to radicalize into literal socialism. Hence how we got the DSA folks. And even I started realizing the issues with this as early as 2019-2021 when Yang actually became a nominee running LITERALLY on my 2016 ideas more or less, and then these DSA nutcases started screaming deranged crap about how he aint a socialist. Like, wtf? I didnt want literal socialism. But neither did I want establishment nothing either. Anyway, 2020 was a repeat of 2016, Bernie got screwed again, we got Biden, and the centrists did a victory lap which further alienated us.

The Biden era was never something I wanted, really. I believed he did more harm to the progressive cause than to help it. I knew it would end similarly to what it did. Because he was so out of his depth he didnt realize the actions needed to solve the problems of the time, and how his moderation would just not win anyone over. Centrist dems have this mentality that they can win if they just run to the center. But the electorate is highly polarized, the right hates us no matter what, and the left isnt enthused and stays home. We saw it with Obama. Obama had huge numbers in 2008, then the tea party led to GOP dominated control of the house, and the coalition wasnt the same ever since. Sanders could've revitalized it with new energy, but by 2016 it was just so fatigued that it lost to Trump. Which....to go back to the whole "MAGA" problem, represented an authoritarian, fascist turn for the republicans. The tea party wasn't the problem, MAGA was, and while the tea party led to MAGA, they're two different things. The tea party represented small government conservatism taken to extremes, MAGA went authoritarian. It's the difference between someone like me and a literal tankie DSA member. I'm more dem tea party, go back to the roots, extremist DSA is more MAGA, like F the rules lets go authoritarian.  Again, this is why I concede there is a problem with DSA, but they're not the same as someone like me, who was more "liberalism but back to its roots/better." 

And that goes back to the problem here. The centrist dems dont wanna do ANYTHING. They literally work for "capital" as controlled opposition. They foisted Clinton on us when she wasnt right for the moment. They foisted Biden, which ended in disaster. They even foisted him a second time despite him developing cognitive decline and only backed off when it was obvious he wasnt up for the job. And they lost. 

And now, people are sick of mainstream liberals who arent doing anything, so they're voting for DSA.

DSA: the solution but also a problem 

The DSA does offer a possible vision for the future of the country. It basically is an evolution of what Sanders ran on in 2016, but as people point out and as I am aware of, some of those guys take socialism WAY too literally and go way too far. While they are basically offering an economic package I think could be successful at solving our problems somewhat in the short term, between my ideological disagreements over UBI and their fixation with socialism, I do think they're imperfect. Still, when the alternative is...the centrists...well, that kinda puts me in between a rock and a hard place, doesn't it? I dont deny the centrists have a point about the DSA's worst impulses. THey are out of line with the public on their social leftism, on foreign policy, and even their economic vision has too much LITERAL SOCIALISM in it.

At the same time, their economic vision is still....somewhat aligned with mine. And the centrists...well they're just there hand wringing about how we cant do anything like some sort of south park cable guy so....of course I'm gonna support DSA candidates when I think it's productive. 

And let's face it, the centrists' inaction is what got us here. They refused to move left enough in the first place, forcing us to choose between this radicalizing force that's going WAY too far left, and their own vision which is stuck in 1992. Ideally, we'd have something like the DSA but without the socialism, a more social democratic vision if you will. Or....a human centered capitalist vision a la Yang. But again, all this stuff is being crowded out. The DSA are the ones who have organized and who are gaining ground, while the centrist dems remain the villain of the democratic party, as inflexible and lost as ever. 

"DSA" but without the literal socialism

 Despite the problems with the DSA, let's be frank. They are fighting for the little guy. They want medicare for all, free college, unions, higher minimum wages, and other solutions like a green new deal, paid family leave, etc. it ain't all what I want, but at least they're cooking. If we could have a variant of that without the weirdo tankie crap in the background somewhere, then that would be great. A new FDR. That's what we need. And that's why I end up supporting DSA at times despite obviously seeing the problems. As long as they're not trying to dismantle capitalism and democracy itself, I'm fine with them reforming things. I see the threat of them going too far to be down the road somewhere, 10-20 years from now, maybe longer. And lets face it, if they try THAT stuff I suspect it will be highly unpopular and there will be shifts away from them. 

But still, let's not act like we can't have progressive change without the weirdo communist elements, and that's where, if anything, the centrists sound like MAGA. After fighting us so hard for a decade, now they're sounding like they're red scaring like actual MAGA is. And again, MAGA is doing it from a place of fascism. The reason the DSA is here in their current form is because by fighting them, tthe centrists radicalized them. If they just said "okay" and implemented Bernie's agenda, I dont think the actual "socialist" aspect wouldve taken off. But when youre representing an establishment that represents the interests of capital, yeah, these guys are gonna read socialist theory, take it seriously, and radicalize into that. 

Is the criticism of DSA even in good faith?

 This brings us to the final question: is all this criticism of DSA even in good faith? I mean, to some degree, yes, there are problems with the most extreme members and their weird tankie impulses. BUT....also no, because I feel like the centrists are trying to do a red scare moral panic along with the right to push out these ideas entirely by linking them to extremism. The fact that the dems havent bent in 10 years is how we got here, and let's face it, they STILL seem intent on fighting the progressive wing harder than the literal fascists cracking down on our civil liberties, it's disgusting. 

If the dems just adapted social democratic agenda and ran on that, without the bad elements, we wouldnt be in this situation. It's not hard to do. I've been advocating for it since 2014. bernie was LITERALLY doing that in 2016.  But the dems have refused, and would rather smear it than implement any of it, and would rather scream at the clouds about the hypothetical future threat of the most extreme crazies taking over, rather than bend at all. And that's what give it away.

As I've said before, functionalism and conflict theory tend to dominate my analyses sociologically. Functionalism looks at the legitimate reasons for behavior. Pointing out some members' tankie impulses is a legit black mark against DSA. But then the establishment also serves big money and dont want change. Which view becomes dominant for me? Conflict theory. because if they really cared about implementing those ideas WITHOUT tying them to extremism, they would. But they dont. Instead they scream about tankieism and red scares while rejecting all of it. And that makes me turn on the centrists as well, since I've had enough with their BS.

Support DSA for now, but keep an eye on them

 This leads me to my ultimate conclusion here. As supporting DSA candidates helps advance a progressive agenda, without significantly negative consequences, then we should support them. But if they do start going all stupid with their more brainrotty ideas, well, there's always the centrist wing to offer a counter balance. 

We dont worry about roasting to death when the heat aint even on. The argument here is that if we turn the heat on it might eventually get too hot and kill us. But we're freezing now. As I said before, eventually, progressives become conservatives as their agendas are implemented, and I have no doubt that some day, I might be conservative again if the left goes too far left. But...as I said about why socialism never succeeded in "democratic socialist" traditions in the past, normally, socdem policy makes people comfortable enough where they wont desire socialist change. And we just gotta trust the hopefully the american people will step on the brakes long before the DSA types become a serious threat to the country. I honestly think they will. Most americans dont want literal socialism, they just want an economic system that works better. If those changes happen under capitalism, then I believe most would be placated, and the desire for further revolutionary change will disappear. 

Just a rant about how messed up this society is

 So...this isn't a problem with just this human society, but it's a problem of many human societies, including a lot of modern ones, and lately, ours.

So...basically, I feel like we're all slaves. i've said it before. But yeah, we're basically bred to be slaves to make rich people richer. That's, btw, why all of the sudden people are hand wringing over millennials and zoomers not having kids. They want people to have kids, so we have future workers, to make more money for the rich people. They'll say it's because of retirement funds, blah blah blah, but that's nonsense. Given the increased technological efficiency of our economy over the past century or two, we very clearly can fund a world where people can live well, and not have to work at all. If anything, we literally had to create consumerism in order to perpetuate this work based system well past its actual necessity, for the primary reason that the ruling class feared a world in which we didn't have to work. 

And on that, we're basically brainwashed more or less from birth to be wage slaves. We're always told we gotta work hard or we'll be miserable when we get older, and then a lot of us work hard and are miserable anyway. And that's kind of what got me going on this journey. I'm part of that "lost generation" that worked hard and succeeded in school and "did everything right", only to get screwed by the system. Of course, my education also helped me mentally break out of the system and leave "plato's cave." Leaving Christianity caused me to also challenge many underlying aspects of capitalism, and while I remain a capitalist for pragmatic reasons, yeah...I have long since abandoned the "work ethic." 

And that's the thing, our whole society is some weird bioshock infinite esque nightmare filled with constant propaganda about working hard, and don't you wanna work hard? You love work, right? You dont love work? What's wrong with you. You're immoral, you're lazy, blah blah blah. We're literally a society of wage slaves brainwashed into this, and we act like it's perfectly normal when it's not. 

And normally, you could say, okay, there's the conflict arguments for why we do things, but at the end of the day, there's still functionalist justifications, we do need SOME work, we're just WAY too overkill about it. We do need some capitalism, communism basically was a failure and made everything worse. At least we have FREEDOM. Ya know? if you step out of line in a communist society, they end up putting you in a camp, that's bad isn't it? Yay capitalism and yay freedom.

Except...now we got this current administration doing a red scare and trying to label people who criticize the system as fricking terrorists for just...criticizing the system and daring to offer solutions. And then they turn around, invoke LITERAL communism and say WE are the ones who wanna put everyone else in camps! I can't speak for the FAR FAR left, and the literal communist apologists, as I do believe some of them ARE authoritarian and potentially dangerous if left unchecked, but let's face it, I dont trust this administration to not just call ANYONE left of center a terrorist and to throw us all into camps. it seems very obvious that the point here is to criminalize dissent and thought crimes, not to actually keep us safe from the actual bad people. If anything, this administration seems to be the "bad people."

Ya know. For a while after leaving the faith, I wasnt super patriotic. A lot of it had to do with this weird paradox. If we truly value freedom, we wont make people worship the flag or whatever, the idea of nationalism and jingoism seemed really dumb, and I hated the whole saluting the symbol stuff. but in a sense, I kinda had the proper interpretation of "American values", which is that we have the freedom to live as we want, and if we want a nation where we all just sit around praising the country and dear leader, we would be north korea. because that's what THEY do. Ya know, the literal COMMUNIST country. But...we don't do that. We're AMERICA. You have the right to dissent. You have the right to criticize. You have a right to your opinion. FREEDOM. That's the whole point.

Except...now we're doing away with that. And this whole system feels cruel. It feels messed up that we're born onto a planet we didn't ask to be born on (at least not consciously in a way we remember, we could go into weird metaphysical theories of reincarnation on that one), we're basically slaves to this system, we're brainwashed into loving work, and heavily discouraged from stepping out of line, and when Americans do start waking up and we start seeing movements toward improving things, some ###hole tries to criminalize it and claim WE'RE the bad guys! Like, wtf? This crap just seems evil to me. 

I hope to god this administration doesn't succeed with its authoritarianism, because crap is about to get BAD if they do. And that just makes the whole thing worse. We have a society where we can improve things, but because a handful of rich people with all of the money want things a certain way, it ends up working that way, and then when they start losing the propaganda war, they start just imposing raw force to coerce people into line. Like, thanks, I hate it! Wtf America? I don't even recognize this country any more under orange man. We really are coming out full stop as being the evil empire. it's messed up. 

Again, for all of the talk that the right has of american values, it seems to ignore all the good stuff. Democracy, rule of law, checks and balances, freedom. And it seems to double down on religion and work ethic, all the worst parts of so called "western values."  They support the evil stuff, they ignore the good stuff. And then they call us evil because we lack the proper social conditioning (read: brainwashing). Idk, this world just seems so cruel right now. 

Trump building enemy lists and fascism

 So, kyle Kulinski covered this, but yeah, the Trump administration is building terror blacklists of popular left wing media figures, and it's scary as fudge. They're literally treating the left like radical Islamic jihadists, at least that's what they're saying. And it's disgusting. Look, we have free speech in this country, and there's a reason I'm darned near absolutist on protecting it. Any law that the left makes against the right, the right can do against the left, and we're seeing that now. DSA is now a terrorist organization in these guys' eyes. Zohran Mandani is a terrorist. A lot of groups like Code Pink and Black lives matter are terrorists. Anyone left of center is a terrorist. And yeah, we talked about David Pakman last night punching left at DSA, and Kyle said why is he doing that? He'll put Pakman in with Hasan in the gulags too. And Pakman IS...basically, on a list too. 

This is scary. It's full on red scare stuff. McCarthyism. but let's go deeper, this is fascism. This is why I'm suddenly "blue no matter who" in 2024, because I kinda realized after January 6th and how fascist the Trump campaign was shaping up to be that his second term basically would be something like this. And while, again, he can't criminalize free speech directly, putting people on terror lists does account for that.

What I find ironic is that he frames this stuff as "anti western." Again, I consider myself a defender of western civilization, but what is it about western civilization that's so great? it IS democracy, it IS rule of law, it IS our constitutional rights and freedoms, all of the things this administration hates. When this administration talks about western values, they basically mean the judeo-Christian worldview (with emphasize on "judeo" given the Israel worship), and the protestant work ethic. Ya know, all the crappy parts. 

And again, it isn't even as easy as "dont be a flaming tankie communist" either. Because, again, David Pakman is a "media enemy" according to Trump. Basically, they're trying to criminalize half the country, anyone left of center. 

This is fascism. This is basically, our enabling act moment. it's not as in your face as that since we DO have constitutional protections, but he's trying to go that way. It's scary that we're in this moment. This is authoritarianism, this is fascism. And let's not mince words about it.

Like, I get the whole thing of "oh, you shouldnt call them fascist, this is hyperbolic." NO! THIS. IS. FASCISM! Like, full stop. This is LITERALLY hitler. im not just invoking Godwin's law here, I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. I'm not trying to cry wolf. THE WOLF IS HERE! FOR REAL! 

This is scary. if this keeps escalating, how long until these guys start throwing all left wingers into camps? And again, we're talking liberals too. We are literally getting to the point of "first they came for the X". Except, we gotta point this out because if we don't, as the adage goes, eventually there will be nothing left to speak up for us. 

This is scary. This is perhaps one of the scariest moments in America history. This is perhaps the greatest constitutional crisis since the civil war, if not ever. Really, we never had someone who flat out wants to turn us into a dictatorship before, and this guy has congress and the supreme court behind him, and his checks and balances are minimal. I honestly cant wait for the mid terms so we can at least restore some checks and balances, and I kind of expect Trump to try to steal those through some authoritarian plan. Like really, this is some psycho crap, and either we're all gonna end up in a gulag some day, or perhaps we can turn this around. Idk. Things look kinda scary right now. 

Let's have a frank discussion about the DSA

 So...David Pakman put out a clip ringing the alarm bells about the DSA taking over the democratic party. He framed it from the perspective that he's a social democrat, but that these guys are literal authoritarian socialists and tankies and we are playing with the same fire the republicans were with the tea party, and then MAGA. 

I have mixed views on this. On the one hand, I absolutely opposed literal socialism beyond like worker coops and crap like that, and maybe having the government take over a handful of industries like healthcare where severe market failures exist. I'm still on the "capitalist" side of the aisle. I also dont like all the tankie crap you sometimes get from these groups. Those ideologies are disgusting and have no place in the overton window. 

At the same time, the centrists of the democratic party...suck. The reason why the DSA got the support they did in the first place is because the democrats are TOO centrist, TOO worthless, TOO unwilling to fight for things. Originally, it seemed like DSA style candidates like Bernie were just...social democrats. Many mainstream "socialists" like AOC and Bernie are just advocating for New Deal type policies. And I've been supporting those guys since, quite frankly, they align with me more than the moderates, and a lot of them dont seem dangerous.

Still, having been in online social circles that are DSA adjacent, and having even left some of them because they got too extreme and too toxic, I've watched these guys radicalize in real time over the past 10 years and yeah, some of these guys need to "touch grass" to put it lightly. As i always say, I dont think anyone wants ACTUAL socialism and ACTUAL leftism. They just want a better shake. I do believe we need a transformational economic agenda for the 21st century, but that agenda needs to remain within the realm of liberalism and reformism. And some socialist types....don't want that. 

It's kinda stupid. The online spectrum has gotten to a point where the liberals are die hard insufferable centrists, and even the likes of david pakman kinda suck for me, he was a die hard biden bro. But at the same time, again, I'm not for LITERAL socialism. My own agenda is equivalent to Yang's "human centered capitalism" with a more leftist flair. UBI, medicare for all, free college, student debt forgiveness, a housing program, a shorter work week. many of those proposals are supported by DSA candidates. And that's fine. one of the reason I vote for a lot of DSA types is because what they actually propose...is social democracy. For all of the utopian rhetoric, their actual policies are moderate. But yeah. I have been noticing there is something much darker behind that. Like that this movement has been radicalizing and runs the risk of further radicalization into authoritarian communism. Like Pakman mentioned Hasan Piker dressing up like Mao. I mean, F Mao. I don't like Mao. I dont like Lenin, I dont like Stalin, I dont like Castro, or Xi, or the Kim family. I'm not a communist. 

But...again...at the same time....these "democratic socialists" seem to be running on social democratic policy, policy that I largely support, even if I do have some differences. And the mainstream centrist democrats with their moral panics over this stuff...they're LITERALLY USELESS. So...idk. This puts me in a hard spot. Ideally, we would just have a faction of progressive democrats who want large scale social democratic or New Deal type policy without calling it socialism. or UBI without calling it socialism. But in a lot of ways, the left has become so polarized it feels like a choice between the DSA and the centrist craplibs who dont wanna do anything. 

So...I kinda end up supporting DSA candidates...because the dems wont step up. 

Again, I keep saying it, but FDR did the original new Deal in part to stop us from electing literal fascists or communists. The democrats had to move left to make the system work....to stop those who wanted to overthrow the entire system. And that's the problem, the democrats AREN'T DOING THAT! So people are driven to DSA types because they're the only ones standing up, and that's the reality.

Is the DSA a long term threat, like the tea party/MAGA became? Perhaps. Populism is like fire. It's useful when controlled, but when NOT controlled, it can burn everything down. We need left wing populism, we need fire, but we also need a licensed pyrotechnician to actually utilize it properly, ya know, like Rammstein, but for politics. Fun fact, ya know Till had an accident in his early days with the pyro that sent a few people to the hospital?  Then he got his license and now he does even crazier shows safely.

The democrats need to be like Rammstein, full of fire, but responsible with it. 

And..btw, I think centrist democrats are mostly fine on social and foreign policy. Abolishing the police, prisons, and borders is NOT gonna play well with the general electorate. neither will excessive wokeness. I do think we can swing the populace to the libertarian center left, but yeah, the leftists go way too far with it.

And on foreign policy, eyah, we should be less interventionist, but we should do it the Biden way. biden MOSTLY had an ideal foreign policy. You can argue that he wasnt good enough on Israel, but honestly, I dont think the public really cares about that either. Most of the reason the left at large is turning on Israel now is them influencing our elections, and manipulating Trump into wars. I dont think most democrats are the "FREE PALESTINE, GLOBALIZE THE INTIFADA" types. And it would be a tactical mistake to assume that they are.

Even on economics, I think that while the public DOES want a more progressive turn, and a more progressive turn is necessary, we gotta be careful with how we frame it. The public doesnt have a set ideology, if anything theyre just bouncing between the two parties hoping one of them does something. And while the dems need to be the ones to ultimately fix the problems, again, I think it's a mistake to assume that the public wants LITERAL socialism. I think we can sell social democracy to people, and heck, even my policies, as "anti work" as I am (a cardinal sin in the eyes of the american public), can probably be sold if we can convince the vast majority of people of them. But again, LITERAL socialism is a whole different animal altogether, and I think these guys would be in for a rude awakening if they tried to push that.

Ya know, social democrats often ask a question, why did leftist movements never shift to actual socialism in social democratic countries? The answers are two fold. First of all, social democrats did a good enough job at dissuading people from revolutionary action. People were comfortable enough under social democracy that they didn't want full blown socialism. Second of all, it's because the logistics of transitioning to socialism are tricky. Replacing the entire capitalist structure with something else entirely would require massively transforming our economy on a level even most socdems wouldnt attempt. And again, when we see countries do it, we see the actual communist ones that didnt work. For all the talk of "democratic socialist" theory, I have yet to see an actual demsoc offer a convincing pathway of how to get there, other than just nationalizing everything. And that's obviously bad. Like, we've seen some push "universal basic services" instead of UBI. And here's why i dont like that. You give people cash, you let them buy what they want in the market. You let supply and demand do its thing. You have the state do individual services, suddenly theyre telling you what food to eat, where you can live, etc. You're not giving power to people to do what they wanna do, you're giving that power to the state And that takes away peoples' freedom. Again, you can justify this with some policies like universal healthcare, free college, maybe even a public housing program. But ultimately we shouldnt need to axe the entire free market to make that work. Free college still means some institutions will be private. Public housing still means the private market is available. hell, even Zohran Mamdani's socialist grocery stores still compete with capitalist enterprises. And public option healthcare would leave the private market to exist if people want it.

We dont need a government monopoly on things to fix things. And I can get behind M4A, dont get me wrong. Canada has a decent healthcare system in a country that is still capitalist. The UK does too. So, on healthcare, I COULD theoretically go full state monopoly. I tend to advocate more for a public option these days than M4A, but...I'm not opposed to M4A in principle. As I keep saying, I support a public option primarily due to costs. Still, I could see a public option being a convincing alternative ideologically given my stance on other things as well. But yeah. I don't want socialism.. I dont want communism. I just want progress. 

Now, again, DSA is weird. I know a lot of the DSA people have brainworms, but most of them, running for office, are running on socdem priorities, and I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to that. And I would support DSA candidates in their current form. BUT...I did notice Platner had some tankie reddit history. I also notice some candidates like DAC are also way more extreme than just social democracy. They might have to back away from such statements running for office, but their history is their history, and some wonder if these candidates really are that extreme. And obviously is Hasan is literally cosplaying as a literal communist dictator, uh..that's bad. 

Like, again, actual communism bad. But if youre running on socdem policy, that's good. And if the socialists are running on progressive socdem policy that the mainstream dems refuse to support, they have no one to blame but themselves when they get in a moral panic about the DSA taking over their party. it isnt like this wasn't entirely avoidable. If the dems dont wake up and actually move left, they might lose their party to DSA types, and that is totally the democrats' fault. Because I've spent the past decade watching these guys run centrists and tell us to get ####ed every election cycle, and now that the left is starting to win they're freaking out about a hostile takeover. In the current environment, that takeover might actually be welcome. Again, because the establishment of the party is that fricking useless.

But...again, to come back around to why Im writing this...I get it. I get why the dems are kind of concerned. Because again, the DSA is like fire. A little bit, that's controlled, can be useful and cool. But if it gets out of hand, it burns everything down. There is a risk long term that if the DSA is allowed to keep radicalizing for long enough, we COULD see a similar trend to what the GOP has done over the past 15-20 years or so. But I would honestly hope that the dems would get some balls and triangulate back to the left before that happens. I think for now, if we vote for DSA candidates, we're MOSTLY going to get socdem priorities. But if they DO entirely take over and get their way, well that CAN be dangerous. So we do gotta keep our eyes on them, but I also do think, in the mean time, we also kinda need them to pull the dems back to the left in the first place. because let's face it, no one else is, and this moment does call for economic populism.   

The education problem is not a problem with democracy, but oligarchy

 So, on the tail of me making my arguments in favor of majority rule, Vaush basically came out and said democracy is dumb, 40% of americans are irredeemably dumb, and we can't have a functioning democracy as long as this problem exists. And I have a few things to say about this.

Yes, 40% of the country is dumb and irrdeemably dumb, however, their stupidity was planned by the oligarchy. We were toying with free college in the 1960s in places like California, but Ronald Reagan (yeah, THAT one, he was a governor back then) was opposed to it because he feared an educated working class and believed higher education had to be selective who it let through. he also REALLY hated hippies and saw institutions of higher education as a place where they gathered and organized protests. Like imagine the free palestine protests of 2024. Imagine if Trump basically said, we're not gonna have free college because universities like columbia had protesters protesting. Yeah. Basically that, but again, it's also a deeper issue. Again, the ruling elite in this country seem to fear a working class that's 1) educated, and 2) has time on its hands. That's why we work so hard, and we're all so dumb. The institutions are set up to MAKE us dumb. 

And going back to reagan, the reagan revolution realigned our politics around the moral majority types who themselves live in an alternative reality, and they gained power and influence, and spread their ideology far and wide. And then the fairness doctrine was struck down, once again by reagan, and this gave rise to a far right media environment that blatantly misleads the public. So the right has been pumping poison into our collective brains for decades by this point. Cut off access to education, pushed religion and BS like creationism and anti climate change narratives, and changed the media landscape to reflect their priorities. And then the population just are up all that propaganda, and here we are with 40% of the country so fricking dumb that they dont know what way is up and if you tell them they'll say its down and gravity is fake news. 

In a way, breaking democracy is very much in line with the conservative MO. Their stance on government for a while has been "well it doesnt work so we shouldnt have it", but it's broken...because they broke it. They literally sabotaged it and then said "it doesn't work!" And that's the same issue with democracy.

I've long been a supporter of free college. Part of that is because I believe that to have a strong democracy, we need a strong informed citizenry. Many people see college as a path to a job, or social mobility, and dont get me wrong, those goals are important, but I ultimately think that really REALLY makes me pro free college more than anything is the fact that we need a populace educated enough to actually utilize democracy properly. The stupidity problem has been on my radar for a while, quite frankly, it's been on my radar since I left Christianity in 2012 and I understood "the cave" as it exists. And keep in mind, I want people to get out of the cave, and the best way to do that is to give them an education. 

Moreover, I wanna make another argument. Remember what I said about the tyranny of the majority arguments and arguments against democracy. Who benefits from oligarchy, the alternative to democracy? Wealthy and powerful, not people. Who benefits from a "republican" form of government over a "democratic" form? Why, the "republican" party. The argument for the senate and how we cant trust the will of the people gives an outsized influence on a minority of the country that primarily skew conservative. The electoral college primarily skews conservative. Al Gore would've won in 2000 and Hillary Clinton would've won in 2016 if we had a more democratic form of government. And I believe in the modern era if we actually unleashed actual democracy, the republicans would struggle to win future elections. Their coalition has been on its way out for a while, its aging, it's losing numbers, it kinda relies on unfair institutional advantages to force de facto minority rule on people, because if we let the majority decide that would just be bad for....reasons that dont make much sense. 

So....that's the thing. The really really stupid people are still a minority of the country. Now, it's still scary the republicans got a coalition as robust as it is, and to go back to vaush, it's terrifying the republican party is still a viable party in the trump years at all. And that was somewhat of a miscalculation of mine back in 2016. Honestly, I thought if people experienced Trump back then, that they'd never want him again, but theres enough people who are dumb enough to actually like him. It's only around, like, 42% of the country or so, but Trump's coalition is viable in part because he can still win over swing voters and democrats can still depress their own turnout from their own suckage, so they manage to win anyway. 

But...to some degree, this is also a skill issue for the democrats. How badly do you have to suck to lose to Trump not just once but twice? I mean, Jesus Christ. We've beaten to death how we got here, but in general, mismatched priorities and low voter enthusiasm is a huge reason. And as far as im concerned, thats one of the reasons the dems cant consistently win either. Because voters genuinely think that they suck. And even I think they suck. They suck. And they need to stop sucking if we want them to actually win consistently. otherwise people are gonna give the stupid party a chance again when it's out of power. No one likes glados, and when people dont like glados, they vote for wheatley, and that's how we got here. 

But again, is any of this the peoples' fault as a whole? No. I mean, again, all of this is a result of oligarchy. The dems not being responsible to the people is due to oligarchy. The republicans dumbing people down is oligarchy. And the alternative to democracy is more oligarchy.

If we want to unscrew this country, we need democrats to win and pass an agenda thats popular. And from there, we gotta start deprogramming people through education. Maybe it'll be too late for the older gens whose minds are made up and whose brains have turned to jello because of watching fox news and alex jones all day.  But...we gotta start undoing the damage. I do believe our system of government is salvageable. But it does require the democrats to actually govern properly the next time they take power. And at the end of the day, we need MORE democracy, not less. 

And yeah, I just wanted to double down on that idea.  

Discussing the idea of abolishing the senate and "tyranny by the majority"

 Okay, so...the DSA's take on eliminating the senate has gotten some waves recently, and I wanted to discuss the issue myself, after having a debate about it. I would say I'm SOMEWHAT in support of it, but I also do understand there are some valid reservations, and wanna work through all of that. I ain't ride or die on this idea, heck, given steep political opposition I kind of see it as some long term thing that's never gonna happen similar to actually ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegals the RIGHT way (as in, super majorities and passing a constitutional amendment), but idk, i do think we should at least discuss the idea as I don't think it's as bad as people think it is.

Why we have the senate in the first place

 So, while conservatives love to revere the founding fathers as if they were demigods or prophets who could never be wrong, they were people too. High minded people, but themselves fallible, and subjected to the biases of their times, and the biases of things like their social classes (which is actually relevant here). 

The constitution itself was passed out of compromise. Their main goal was to get all of the states on board. For the legislature, there were two primary plans for it. You had the "virginia plan" that was based on population and favored large states like virginia and pennsylvania at the time, ya know, where the real population centers were. But some also feared that this would disenfranchise small states, like, say, new Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut, etc. So we also had the "New Jersey Plan", a plan for a legislature that ended up representing all states equally. Basically, we passed both plans. The virginia plan became the house, the new jersey plan became the senate. This is civics 101. 

Discussing the "tyranny of the majority" 

Speaking of civics 101, I feel like when I argue with people online on this, they parrot civics 101 answers without thinking about what they mean. Like, a commonly held belief is that we need the senate as a way to offset the tyranny of the majority, the idea that the masses will make dumb decisions and we need checks and balances on them. Heck, a lot of aspects of our system were implemented because the founders didnt trust the people to make good decisions. People are uneducated, driven by passions, and the founders wanted to slow possible change and progress. So...they implemented a lot of weird wrinkles in our constitutional system, like the electoral college for electing the president, the senate existing and senators originally being chosen by the governors of each state, with no input from the people. And yeah....they didn't actually make our system democratic. "it's a republic" as the dudebros who support this line of thinking say. 

But, I look at things like this: if the people aren't making the decisions, who is? If we read plato's republic, he basically has three main forms of government, i mean, its technically 6, with good and bad forms of each one, but Im gonna boil it down to three: rule by one, rule by a few, or rule by the many. 

Rule by one is obviously bad. That's a dictatorship. And people are fallible and we need checks and balances to ensure more people have input than just one. But at the same time, let's say we dont trust the masses. What does that leave? Well, it leaves the rule by a few. An oligarchy. A term we hear a lot in this populist era of ours. Heck, any time the word is uttered these days I read it in Bernie Sanders' strong Brooklyn accent. Rule by the few. And the idea is that these few know better than the masses. is this true? Well, it CAN be? But also...no. 

 Virtually every problem of the modern day i would argue is called by oligarchy. Money in politics, corruption, the GOP having an outsized influence on our elections despite being a minority. And that's the thing. In the modern era, what do these "checks and balances" do? Well, it takes power out of the hands of the people and ensures that rather than getting the tyranny of a majority, we gotta suffer a minority's viewpoint instead. Conservatives get far outsized influence over the government. We can have the people choose a democrat for president but the republicans still win because of the electoral college. The majority of people might want more progressive policies, but a minority ends up holding us back because institutions like the senate give an outsized influence to rural people and their preferences. The house was capped at 435 members, with massive district sizes intentionally designed to dilute the impact of cities and preserve the rural vote. As one person I debated recently say, basically, these institutions are DEI for the rural vote. So instead of having the majority have their views heard, we get a minority. And is that any better? No, it's not like these guys are oh so enlightened and know better than us. They're not technocrats, they're basically a bunch of undereducated hicks with dunning kruger, to be blunt. Even if they were technocrats, we've seen the "technocracy" make a come back under Trump...do we really trust ###holes like Peter Thiel or Elon Musk to be oh so enlightened and to make decisions for the masses? NO! They're gonna make decisions that improve their own pocketbooks. Like, again, we keep having this idea that the masses are stupid and we need these enlightened technocrats to guide us to a prosperous future. Again. How is that working out for us? We're being outmaneuvered by our intellectual lessers. We're putting power in the hands of wealthy oligarchs looking to enrich their own pocketbooks. How is this helping us? How is this benefitting us?

Also, let's not forget, this brilliant idea of the founders is what gave us Donald Trump in the first place! While Trump DID win the popular vote in 2024, he lost it in 2016. Clinton actually won the popular vote by 2-3 points. But because "oh we can't trust the majority to make good decisions" for some reason, we ended up electing the stupidest and most "anti American" president we've ever had in terms of the spirit of our institutions. And the dude IS going in the direction of tyranny. LIke, if our constitution wasnt so robust and had such strong protections on free speech, we'd basically be at the enabling act stage of losing our democracy. I mean, NSPM-7 and this red scare stuff Trump is trying to do over democratic socialists is basically that. 

Even for the founders. Did THEY have everyone's best interests at heart? Well, I mentioned class biases, so let's be frank: no. They designed a system where only white male wealthy landowners could vote. And IMO, I think this really gives some insight into their priorities here. Like in the modern day, the US was designed to constrain the masses because if the masses actually had power, they might actually vote away the wealth of upper classes. I mean, they werent gonna give slaves the ability to vote, not only would the southern states not go or it (although we did do the 3/5ths compromise where they counted as 3/5 of a person so they got a boost to their population count even with them being disenfranchised), but could you imagine giving slaves the ability to vote for their own freedom? I mean, it would never happen.

But when we think of modern capitalism, and even the economics of the late 1700s, it's the same thing. Clearly, this economic system benefits some at the expense of others. Well, we can't have a system where those who DONT benefit can vote to, you know, make the system fairer, can we? I mean, think about that. We got a system set up by wealthy aristocrats who lived in existential fear of the masses voting away their property rights and privileges. ANd just like, we couldnt have the literal slaves voting for their freedom, the wealthy aristocrat types today, the real power wielders, the wealthy people who break the system through unlimited campaign donations, who lobby for changes that benefit them, and who basically sometimes run stuff directly in the trump administration, like Elon Musk running DOGE, they dont want the masses voting away THEIR privileged either. They dont want to make the economic system fairer, because then they wouldn't have anyone to exploit, and they might lose their wealth as much of it is redistributed to the masses. 

Does the senate prevent or preserve tyranny?

And with that, I wanna leave the discussion on this here somewhat. The people who advocate for preserving the senate see it as a bulwark against tyranny, but what if it actually preserves it? What if it actually is there to protect the wealthy from the masses? 

As a matter of fact, let's go even further. As I said, a lot of the nastiest and worst elements of this anti "tyranny of the majority" type system is giving power to a minority, who in the modern day is looking at taking us down a path of authoritarianism if they cant maintain their power. You got the electoral college giving Donald Trump power. You got the senate which gives an outsized influence to a minority of rural voters. The house districts are too big, giving more influence to rural voters, you got gerrymandering, giving influence to the republican party. 

And when DSA types start FLOATING ideas like this, you got these guys talking about waging war against communists on our own soil, arguing for larger defense spending. Mike Johnson LITERALLY said that. You got NSPM7 in which anything that goes against republican party orthodoxy is considered "left wing terrorism", with Stephen Miller going on about how were gonna use the power of the government to crack down on left wing terrorists. We got Trump outright calling for the jailing of democratic socialists. We got the mass militarization of the state under trump, and we got trump building what amounts to concentration camps to deport "illegal immigrants", but, again, if we read about the history of Germany's enabling act, this sounds a lot like THEIR playbook. How long is it going to be before Trump decides to weaponize the military against US citizens and throw people in the camps? Like, holy crap, this is what we're on the precipice on as a country, and we're worried that abolishing the senate MIGHT lead to tyranny and gulags one day as Mike Johnson was rambling about? The real tyrants of the American system are the right.I'm not saying we should necessarily let the DSA off the hook, thinking about the long term consequence of their rise, we COULD be in a situation decades from now where they offer a similar threat that the right does today, and some of their proposals flat out SHOULDNT be considered (like making the president and judiciary subservient to congress, I think that's a terrible idea as we're supposed to have 3 coequal branches of government checking and balancing each other), but yeah, right now, the biggest threat to the american system of government comes from the same right that's virtue signalling about saving it from the evil communists. if anything, the narrative of evil communists is a pretext for THEM to get power and do all kinds of tyrannical and F-ed up things to US. 

But what about the filibuster?

 The filibuster is, these days, often seen as the last line of defense to shut down what the opposing party is doing. However, it isnt an inherent constitutional part of the senate. It was a rule they enacted. originally, the filibuster was related to speaking rules and how youd need 60% of the senate to vote to make a guy stop talking, allowing people to just keep talking for hours, and hours, and hours. Like Strom Thurmond who spoke for 24 hours straight, or Cory Booker who more recently spoke for 25 hours straight. But somewhere along the way, we just decided to have like an auto filibuster that stops the senate from doing anything without 60% of the senate on board. This wasnt how it was originally supposed to work, and this change has been rather negative in the modern era of GOP obstruction. Mitch McConnell if I recall was one of the first who weaponized the filibuster in a way to just shut down ALL legislation. And he did it to Obama, while acting like he was just preventing overreach or something. It was about sabotaging democrats. And now, we got the democrats using it to stall the republicans. This CAN be a good thing in the sense that Trump is failing to change the rules with his "Save America Act", which would heavily restrict voting, but it's also been a thorn in democrats' side. The reason Obamacare never had a public option was the filibuster, and the reason Biden was so ineffective was because of it as well.

So it has its ups and downs. BUT....let's also consider another point. If we werent so concerned about tyranny of the majority, I doubt we would be at the gates of tyranny from the right in the first place. If the democrats could govern more effectively, they'd probably do a better job maintaining voter support. If we didnt have the electoral college, Clinton would have won in 2016. And again, if Biden were more effective, maybe we wouldnt have had Trump rise again in 2024. So we wouldnt be in this situation. We're in this situation because we're like Weimar Germany, with weak ineffective left wing parties losing the support of the people, and a strong right looking to take power by any means and implement whatever authoritarian BS they want. yes, the senate is a check on the trump administration's current power, and their failure to abolish the filibuster is saving us right now. However, we also likely wouldnt be here in the first place had we had a more effective government that worked for the people. 

Moreover, I'll be blunt. When democrats retake power in 2028, and we hopefully have a house, senate, and presidency all run by democrats, if we wanna preserve democracy, the democrats gotta RUN WITH IT! They gotta pass their own bills to ensure we cant get a trump again, or we're....gonna get a trump again. And I dont mean bills that disenfranchise people, but bills that make it easier to vote. That actually DO gut the republicans' institutional advantages. And unlike the right, the left will make us MORE democratic. Quite frankly, the whole screams about "tyranny by majority" seem quaint when the other party that benefits from those advantages seems to be trying to take us down a dark path of fascism and permanent minority rule. We wanna give voters MORE power, not less. And these guys crying crocodile tears over "tyranny of the majority" can quite frankly cry over it. But you know what? To make that happen, we need the senate, and we might need to axe the filibuster ourselves. And that's where we're at, btw. I mean....either WE win, or THEY win. I dont doubt that Trump would scrap the filibuster in a second to pass the save act if not for a handful of senators like Thom Tillis who are stopping him. So let's face it, abolishing the filibuster is like that loaded gun on the floor between a hero and a villain in an action movie. Whoever gets to it first wins. And I would actually argue, we might literally need to axe the filibuster just to ensure our republic actually continues unimpeded. I'm dead serious, that's where we're at. If the democrats can't make use of their next blue wave to actually reform the system to safeguard democracy, the next wave of republicans might actually succeed at ensuring permanent minority rule instead, and possibly the actual open persecution of the political opposition. 

Conclusion

All in all, whether you're for or against abolishing the senate or not, it's kind of one of those wish list ideas that would never actually happen because the checks and balances of the system are so massive that i cant see a scenario in the foreseeable future where this actually happens. We'd require supermajorities across all levels of the government so discussing it is mostly academic.

You can argue either way on it, but I will say, I dont find the conventional arguments in favor of preserving it as actually convincing. if anything, the more i delve into it, the more I kind of feel like these ideas were intended to disenfranchise the people in favor of an unaccountable minority looking to preserve their own privileges and wealth. 

Moreover, when I think about the threat of tyranny in the real world, I am FAR more scared of the modern republican party, who is the primary beneficiary of the institutions staying as they are, as they seem to actively be moving in the direction of tyranny. It's kind of ironic for Mike Johnson screaming about democratic socialists wanting to abolish the senate and how leftism leads to tyranny and gulags when these same people would probably literally stick leftists in literal concentration camps to preserve their own power if they could get away with it. 

Like really, the virtue signallers on the right who talk so strongly about preserving America as they understand it are the ones who are the biggest threat to it, if anything. And they're basically to the point of arguing they're destroying the country to save it. In reality, they're just saving their own hides and hiding behind institutional screwery to impose minority rule on the country, claiming that the masses cant be trusted with power, only they can. I mean....if you find that convincing I leave that up to you, but I ask, "what bullcrap is this?" 

And yeah, that's how I see it. Also, for the love of god look up the enabling act of 1933 and compare and contrast it to how the republicans are acting right now in 2026. The historical parallels are creepy. I dont think they'll be able to pull it off due to our checks and balances still being a bit more robust than germany's back in the day, but the trump administration is clearly attempting to "go for it" here, and that should alarm us all.