If you’re going to start a war, you better know for a fact that you can win. Trump thinks he knows, but he doesn’t know shit.

The US has a terminal disease: hubris. This is what it’s like to live in an empire in decline.

This is what Trump wants. He wants the market to drop and/or a recession. Why? To force the Fed to drop rates back to essentially zero. Once that happens, expect a blistering turnaround in the market. Everyone and their great aunt will be borrowing money at ultra low interest to buy stocks. The stock market will explode, maybe crypto, too. Inflation will skyrocket. It will be nuts.

I expected better

Then you’re a fucking idiot.

I hope things improve here in the US, but at some point there’s really nothing else to do but leave. There’s a point where the US simply becomes a lost cause. I don’t know if we’re there yet, but I don’t feel like things are heading in the right direction.

Every group of people need to have autonomy and independence, and the right to self-govern. No people should have to fear violence and repression from another group.

I’m sure they matter to you.

They do. The question is: do they matter to you?

Particularly the concerns of charlie kirk

I don’t know why you keep bringing up Charlie Kirk. I know next to nothing about him, I don’t listen to him. I don’t know, or care what he thinks about, well, much of anything, really.

And your wing of the party has made it crystal clear that they are uninterested in helping anyone poorer than the “good billionaires” they toady up to.

It’s not my wing of the party. I don’t have a party, which is why I said I wanted to build a new Leftist movement: one that is interested in the concerns of the working class people. But, what folks like you don’t understand, is that most working class people are not concerned about whether or not trans women are allowed to participate in women’s sports. They are concerned about paying their rent, feeding their families, affording medical care, and other day-to-day, material issues. I choose to focus on those issues. You can focus on whatever you want, I don’t care. My new Leftist movement won’t include people like you, because you’re not helping anyone, and I don’t think you care to. You would accept widespread harm, so long as you could go on performing as a social justice advocate.

I have nothing more to say to you. I’m really not interested in reading another one of your vapid, banal responses about Charlie Kirk, or whatever other nonsense you might come up with. I’m going to go actually try to make the world a better place.

I’m not the one deflecting. You never answered my question: should the concerns of non-trans people also matter to the Left?

Yes, this thread is about trans issues, specifically the question of whether or not trans women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports. Do you realize how privileged you have to be for that to be a major concern? Poverty, destitution, illness, these are problems that millions of people face everyday, yet you won’t even acknowledge them because “that’s not what this thread is about.” You’re no Leftist.

I don’t side with charlie kirk regarding trans people, for one. Discussion’s about trans people.

When did I even once mention trans people?

If I dare to disagree with you and charlie kirk, I need to have a solution for every last one of the world’s ills?

When did I even once mention Charlie Kirk?

Is that all you think the Left is? Trans issues? There’s nothing more to the Left than matters pertaining to trans people? You do realize that there are many billions of people on the planet who are not trans, and that their concerns matter as well?

How do you know that you’re to my left? You don’t know me. What makes you so far left, anyway? Are you a Marxist, anarchist? What? You wanna gate keep the left, let’s do it. Give me your specific socioeconomic, sociopolitical ideal, and details about how you think it can be achieved. I’m dying to hear about your grand plan to change the world and usher in utopia. Come on, we’re all waiting for you. The future of humanity is in your hands, your plan had better be good.

No, dingus, I don’t.

That’s not true. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop. Just stop.

I say that to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

It is a significant challenge. We absolutely do need to change the culture, and I think that is best achieved at the local level. I think it’s a dead end trying to change the culture from the top down, I think we will have much more success building from the bottom up. But, that will require being heavily involved in our communities. That is a tricky proposition for many of us, because some of us live in pretty conservative, even reactionary communities. There’s no easy answers here.

One possibility is for leftists to all move to the same state or states, to concentrate our power, to make us less diffuse and spread out. That’s a pretty drastic plan, and probably not feasible for a lot of people, but it’s one possibility, I suppose.

It’s asinine, and that’s why we need a new Left in the US: a Left of people who actually want to build a society in which the highest possible health and well being is achieved for the largest possible number of people, and who are willing and able to learn and adapt, to find the most effective methods for achieving said society, even if it means compromising and being pragmatic. A Left that is measured by results, rather than performative social justice advocacy.

such an obviously stupid hill to die on

The Left in the US would so much rather die on the hill of perceived moral superiority than achieve any of their goals. And, thus, here we are.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 45 percent say they want their party to become more moderate, while 29 percent say they want the party to become more liberal, and 22 percent say they want the party to stay the same.

These words are meaningless. In many countries, to become more liberal is the same thing as becoming more moderate. It’s confusing to me because liberal and moderate mean one thing in the US and something else in the rest of the world. And I live in the US! After all these years, I still don’t quite understand what people mean by liberal, moderate, and conservative. Liberalism is an actual ideology with an actual definition, Conservativism is an actual ideology with an actual definition.

So, what do the American people want? If it’s some kind compromise between actual Liberalism and actual Conservativism, what would that look like, specifically? Which aspects of Liberalism do they want, and which aspects of Conservatism, and in what proportions? And what about ideologies other than Liberalism and Conservatism? Why are those two ideologies our only choices?

Oh wait, I already know the answer

Neoliberalism is the center, of the spectrum of acceptable political opinion they had established, and tried, but ultimately failed, to maintain.

To be clear the neoliberal technocrats never lost power. They are Republicans and Democrats both.

That was true in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. However, the Republican party became less and less neoliberal through the 90s, and by the early 2000s the Republican party had been taken over by the neoconservatives. There is overlap between neoliberalism and neoconservatism, but they are distinct ideologies. Then, in 2016, the Republican party was taken over by Trump, who is neither a neoliberal nor a neoconservative. Trump doesn’t seem to have a guiding ideology. Trump is a useful idiot for multiple groups (Christian conservatives, silicon valley tech bros, far right accelerationists, and foreign powers), all of whom are vying for control of the federal government, for various reasons.

The neoliberal technocrats didn’t deliberately steer toward the reactionary side. When the ship was moving more to the right, it was when reactionaries were in power, and thus “steering the ship.” In 2000, Al Gore, who is very much a neoliberal technocrat, was supposed to be president, but he lost in a kind of mini coup to George W Bush and the neoconservatives. The neoliberal technocrats wouldn’t take back power - control of the ship of state - again until 2008 when Barak Obama was elected president. They would of course lose control once again in 2016. They would regain control in 2020, but quickly lose it again in 2024. It is likely, I think, that the neoliberal technocrats have lost control of the ship of state permanently. I don’t think they will ever steer it again.

Extreme conservativism is not meant to be within the acceptable spectrum.

The acceptable spectrum is supposed to be centered around neoliberalism. Neoliberal technocrats have sought to steer the “Ship Of State” through narrow waters between “Revolution” (the far left) and “Reaction” (the far right). Neoliberals might be willing to steer, from time to time, nearer to reaction than revolution, but the intent is to stay as close to the neoliberal center as possible. Here’s a graphic that the neoliberals came up with to illustrate the concept.

Obviously, the neoliberal technocrats have failed, and the US federal government (the Ship Of State) is now nearly completely captured by various far right reactionary groups. But the mainstream media, in general, is still operating in the mode of neoliberal, centrist thinking. Which is understandable, since that’s the mode they’ve been in for more than half a century.