Firefly7 [any]

Thank you for the recap!!

On the topic of the 2028 presidential election, I agree that it would be very hard to win, but if PSL is anything to go off of then running a candidate is a great way to have people listen to your ideas when you go door-to-door, and to get your message out there.

Not a DSA member but afaik: the NPC moved a bit further left, there’s now a slim majority of ML/trot/maoist/anarchist, with a few members in between the left and right wings as well. Beforehand the right and center held an outright majority on the NPC and the left passing anything required someone from the Bread and Roses center caucus to chip in. As other comments mentioned, an antizionist resolution made it through. AOC censure resolution didn’t get to be voted on in time, but I think it’s fairly likely given the new NPC composition.

super interested in how they pulled this off. Uber drivers sound like they’d be very difficult to organize for a variety of reasons

Bernie was a much larger threat, and it was internal to the Democratic Party. Stopping Mamdani here would require obvious inter-party collusion against him, which would hurt both national parties in the long run, over an admittedly large threat but not a Bernie-level one

I’m excitedly awaiting nyt or the atlantic or whoever to publish an article about how, if only there had been a united moderate front, Mamdani could have been stopped. Just imagine the title: “How Ranked Choice Voting propelled Mamdani’s success— and how it could have foiled his campaign.”

I don’t think the repubs would want to make a show out of helping Cuomo/Adams to defeat Mamdani. Especially when they’re trying to attack every democrat by tying them to him. As far as they’re concerned, every democrat is a socialist, and Mamdani only proves it. I’m sure the nyc bourgeoisie would prefer a united front against him but I think the democrat and republican parties both know it’d make them look bad.

This is the Democratic primary race. It’s ranked-choice, final results for this vote will be out on July 1st, but Mamdani is expected to gain over Cuomo from 2nd-ranks if anything, and Cuomo already conceded the primary to him. This is considered the Big Thing because most NYC residents are dems and so the dem primary is basically the mayoral race. That might be different this year as the (widely disliked) incumbent and Cuomo will be running as independents in the general mayoral election in November, and we might see a centrist bloc coalesce, but I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the (D) appearing by Mamdani’s name.

Edit: the general in November is not ranked-choice, so the centrist/conservative vote will be split 3-way. I’d be very surprised if Mamdani lost

It could happen in the general, but in the primary the 3rd ranked candidate (Brad Lander) has cross-endorsed with Mamdani

edit: also Cuomo conceded the primary

Iran could do both parts of this, and has in the past stated a willingness to close Hormuz and to make comprador states pay. It’s probably the biggest card it could play. If it does go through with it then basically every country will be at least a bit upset with it, but it’s certainly not out of the question if the US enters the war.

Talking trash about the PSL means they’re a bit less likely to face repression for his actions. it serves to separate them from him, which is good for us if we like PSL

edit: I realize now that this wasn’t what the person you’re replying to meant. Talking trash about the PSL means he’s possibly a hexbear user because this is one of very few internet spaces to combine the type of humor that the article notes with the type of userbase that would attack PSL from the left.

Labour is actively cheering on and implementing the transphobia. Kier Starmer has directly said that trans women aren’t women.

Even with everything tanking, it’s impressively bad investing to lose 100% of your investments on a <15% overall stock market downturn.

Measuring the data in this way actually skews it in favor of the cybertruck, because the ford Pintos have each had a lot more road-time and thus more fire likelihood. So likely more than 17x worse

9am -> 9pm workday, 6 days a week.

You’re right, it’s new posts on your dashboard since you last opened it

I’m not studied on this but I think you hit on the most major parts - the capitalists want immigrants for cheap domestic labor, and benefit from those immigrants being in a precarious socioeconomic position. At the same time, they want to maintain the divide between the imperial core and the global south, which requires that capital be far more mobile than the working populations are allowed to be. If you allow too few immigrants in, then there’s a labor shortage and worse domestic investment prospects; If you allow too many immigrants in, it becomes harder to maintain the heightened rate of exploitation that they are subjected to, both here and elsewhere.

Immigrants are turned away and deported to manage this balance, and as part of the superstructure- the turning away of immigrants is a necessary part of maintaining the myth of American exceptionalism, which in turn keeps the empire running and keeps workers worried about the ‘national interest’ that just so happens to always align with business interests

To respond to your extra thoughts -

You’re hitting the mark on there being issues with referring to any social problems as “rational”. What would be best for everyone in the long run would be the abolition of all bigotry: even the most privileged people in the world would likely live happier lives if society was truly rationally-structured. So it is not rational for anyone, in the long run, to act bigoted.

I do think though that there’s an incentive to defend one’s social and economic position which manifests itself in an irrational emotion that serves a “rational” purpose: keeping yourself, at least temporarily, ahead of others. While it may be insulting to say that X bigotry is rational, I think it’s just plainly true that most, e.g. racists, are racist because they benefit from racism, rather than because racist ideas have been maliciously imposed onto their psyche. Even those with a nebulous material connection to racism can benefit psychologically from indulging the feeling that they’re better than those other people.

I think when people say that people who uphold oppressions are rational, they’re using shorthand for “oppressions are often perpetuated by people who benefit from their existence.” They don’t meant to say that they’re good.

Similarly, the broader values we inherit from capitalist society serve in a sense to justify our economic system and our hegemony. We think of our country as uniquely “free,” full of “independent” people, because that lubricates our existence within a society based on fierce competition. It justifies the individualizing nature of capitalist competition and hierarchical relations, and it also invents a criteria on which we can decide other nations aren’t worthy of our cooperation.

As much as we’re repetitively advertised to to accept capitalist values, I think a greater amount of our acceptance of them comes from our (“rational”) desire to fit in with our societal structure; our desire to not feel guilt when we benefit from the oppressions enabled by a society built on competition at all levels.

I disagree with your opinion about ads being about memory and pure repetition - many of them are trying to be memorable, but we can tell with most ads that the company is trying to create a brand image more than a purely-memorable experience. Your argument is not very far removed from the “emotional inception” argument that the author makes a good case against wrt bedsheets and gas.

I also don’t think it has to rely on tricking anyone. If you see an ad that ties X product to relaxation, you don’t need to think “other people will be tricked by this into associating X product with relaxation” to want to buy it to signal that you’re a chill person. All you need to think is “other people will understand that I mean to associate myself with the message of relaxation when I buy this”.

I think Roderic Day was correct to add this essay to his otherwise-about-communism site because it shows yet another area in society where we assume people are acting irrationally when really they’re just following their interests - the narrative of irrationality being used to deny the support many people have had for their own communist governments. He has a couple good essays on “brainwashing”, and this was filed under the tag that he also put on those.