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In some areas, you do need to actually deliver incremental improvement. People would be placated by that.
Specifically areas that most impact people’s lives directly.
I worked at a call center from 2017 - 2018, I made 20.50 an hour and rented a two bed two bath apartment near work for 1095 dollars.
Fast forward less than 10 years and that job now pays ~21.50, and the apartment now costs ~2050 dollars.
The plan to change that is what, supposed to take a decade or two (presuming Republicans don’t sabotage it) and bring the cost down like 10%? How much home building needs to happen for this, can we rely on public-private partnerships to genuinely build at scales that solve the affordability crisis in a reasonable time frame? How do we prevent the usual bullshit of most new apartments being “luxury,” how do we deal with the issue of effective price fixing by RealPage?
We need real actual progress and to manage to safeguard it from a hostile political force. Democrat centrism is simply woefully unequipped to do that, not even from a strictly policy standpoint, but from the raw inefficacy of starting from a compromised position and then having to cede more ground, and then having that remaining ground potentially fucked by Republicans four years later.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On June 23 2025 11:41 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +In some areas, you do need to actually deliver incremental improvement. People would be placated by that. Specifically areas that most impact people’s lives directly. I worked at a call center from 2017 - 2018, I made 20.50 an hour and rented a two bed two bath apartment near work for 1095 dollars. Fast forward less than 10 years and that job now pays ~21.50, and the apartment now costs ~2050 dollars. The plan to change that is what, supposed to take a decade or two (presuming Republicans don’t sabotage it) and bring the cost down like 10%? How much home building needs to happen for this, can we rely on public-private partnerships to genuinely build at scales that solve the affordability crisis in a reasonable time frame? How do we prevent the usual bullshit of most new apartments being “luxury,” how do we deal with the issue of effective price fixing by RealPage? We need real actual progress and to manage to safeguard it from a hostile political force. Democrat centrism is simply woefully unequipped to do that, not even from a strictly policy standpoint, but from the raw inefficacy of starting from a compromised position and then having to cede more ground, and then having that remaining ground potentially fucked by Republicans four years later.
Exactly.
In my retail gig I was quite friendly with an auld fellow, he got on the housing ladder as a single income earner from said gig. He is aware of which way his bread is buttered and bemoaned that others couldn’t do that now. He’s not one of the myopic ‘kids these days are just wasting money on lattes’ type. He’s seen it change for the worse.
And they just can’t, like good luck with that one today.
It’s hard to sell incremental improvement when you’re in a worse spot than your parents, and theirs.
Aside from anything else, there would be a big macroeconomic boost if the average person wasn’t subject to onerous house price rises. They’d have more discretionary income to spend well, everywhere else.
I think you can afford to go safe in other areas, you probably have to go radical to make a dent here. So long as there’s a big profit incentive in housing you’ll have these issues. Doesn’t matter how many you build.
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On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran?
Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to.
Luigi is more of a method of calibrating someone’s more compass for me. Luigi has been an enormous net positive for human lives and an important step towards working class people remembering why they have weekends.
As the phrase goes: Look up rather than left or right. Nothing matters more than that IMO
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends.
Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures?
It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything.
If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure.
It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit.
I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful.
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On June 23 2025 12:11 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends. Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures? It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything. If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure. It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit. I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful.
Plenty of articles you can find touch on the topic of claim approval before and immediately after Luigi doing us all a solid.
Also, even just having a conversation happen more often in society is an enormous net positive. I implore you to explore the details of how his company was run and who he was as a person.
There are easy models that can be built to show how many people would be alive today if xyz insurance companies reduced their profits xyz amount. I don’t claim to know where the morally ideal cutoff exists. But I can see when it’s totally busted and anyone in his position knows what’s going on. It’s too evil. You’re letting him hide behind the job title if you don’t see him that way.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On June 23 2025 12:13 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 12:11 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends. Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures? It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything. If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure. It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit. I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful. Plenty of articles you can find touch on the topic of claim approval before and immediately after Luigi doing us all a solid. Also, even just having a conversation happen more often in society is an enormous net positive. I implore you to explore the details of how his company was run and who he was as a person. There are easy models that can be built to show how many people would be alive today if xyz insurance companies reduced their profits xyz amount. I don’t claim to know where the morally ideal cutoff exists. But I can see when it’s totally busted and anyone in his position knows what’s going on. It’s too evil. You’re letting him hide behind the job title if you don’t see him that way.
Not, I’m not. He’s just some executive. There’ll always be someone else to spring up in their place unless assassinating health insurance CEOs becomes commonplace
Shooting one of them is going to do shit all in the medium through long term, which is all that matters really.
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On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives.
Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power.
Ok you got me I was just joking.
Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition
Many apologies on forgetting this
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On June 23 2025 06:36 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 01:21 oBlade wrote:On June 23 2025 00:42 hitthat wrote:
The nobel peace prize candidate bombs the certain middle east state because another middle east state bombed it first for being nuclear state candidate.
I can't believe how dumb it is. Someone could guess that US president that criticized former warhawk policies should took the lessons from former mid east wars into heart, but nope. It joined the potentially most dangerous of them all.
Congratulation, Team America. You learnt nothing. Why is Iran potentially the most dangerous war of them all? I hope I marked the important part of the picture enough I am happy to answer any more questions on the matter.
Iran's control of land opposite the Strait of Hormuz (which I'm sure a rational level-headed regime like them would never do anything stupid with) is not that different than the threat of Saddam controlling all oil that precipitated the 1st Gulf War (the Persian Gulf is the big lake looking thing the strait you circled goes in and out of).
On June 23 2025 09:47 Billyboy wrote:
If they did not get it, they will get another shot. Mossad seemingly knows more about Iran than the IRGC, the number of ultra high level targets they took out so quickly is pretty unheard of.
Not only that, they probably don't need to blow up the stockpile per se. The facilities are what enrich the materials and let you improve and develop what you have. And eventually get warheads or miniaturize. Even if they moved what they had to any old unmarked barns and the trunks of people's cars, if they can't enrich further because they don't have any facilities left, that's the ball game. They can whittle away the stockpile as satellite/other intel comes in.
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On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this
I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences.
Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another.
You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such.
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Get this Oblade, you're just going to have to believe me on this, but the persian gulf is to the left of the stright, and the indian Ocean where it connects to the rest of the world is on the opposite. If they block it off that means all the Persian Gulf oil is cut off. Thats a fifth of the global oil supply right there, 90% of Japan's oil, a healthy portion of China's oil.
And another crazy thing if you look at the picture the Iranian part looks different than the Iraq part, thats because Iran is filled with mountains everywhere. There isn't going to be a gulf war style war of maneuver possible It would take months of brutal fighting to get anywhere.
If you're openly threatening their leader with assassination and are openly talking about regime change than going through with your threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz is perfectly rational and reasonable to do.
BTW if being against public assassinations is what turned you against the only realistic path to get anything done in the country you were never really a part of the team. You can't place yourself diametrically opposed to the majority of the population and the entirety of the political infrastructure from the start and then wonder why no one takes you seriously. If you want to join the losers in the corner you're free to do so, but everyone else is free to judge you for that.
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On June 23 2025 14:12 Sermokala wrote:
Get this Oblade, you're just going to have to believe me on this, but the persian gulf is to the left of the stright, and the indian Ocean where it connects to the rest of the world is on the opposite. If they block it off that means all the Persian Gulf oil is cut off. Thats a fifth of the global oil supply right there, 90% of Japan's oil, a healthy portion of China's oil.
And another crazy thing if you look at the picture the Iranian part looks different than the Iraq part, thats because Iran is filled with mountains everywhere. There isn't going to be a gulf war style war of maneuver possible It would take months of brutal fighting to get anywhere.
If you're openly threatening their leader with assasination and are openly talking about regime change than going through with your threat of closeing the Strait of Hormuz is perfectly rational and reasonable to do.
Okay so we've agreed them blocking 20% of the world's oil is roughly of equal strategic significance to Saddam trying to take over 20% of the world's oil.
Why was Saddam such a threat? Because he had one of the top... 4? Armies in the world? And could just roll across the desert with tanks and soldiers and control things. Why was the US able to clear this up? Because it's the US and Schwarzkopf went pew pew and blew up all the tanks. (This, by the way, is non-negotiable for the US. They can't go into any war where they will face real long-term degradation, and short term one-sided obliteration of enemies is preferred. Because the US needs strategic flexibility around the world and actually only has about one army's worth of army, which has 10 armies worth of money and equipment, when what it really needs is to have at least two armies with less money and an actual industrial base that can support wartime action.)
You're telling me the US can't just Desert Storm Iran if they "block" the Strait of Hormuz because it's central Asian mountains, like Afghanistan, not flat desert like Arabia.
I'm certainly willing to agree that the encumbered ground of mountainous terrain makes land invasions more difficult than the First Gulf War. But I also don't recall what part of Sun Tzu said "Control global oceans by hiding in the mountain."
In other words, your theorycrafting seems to be disadvantaging attackers while not applying equal considerations to Iran and its own "military" - basically, you are assuming Iran having a mountain means it can close Hormuz with impunity just because it also says "Iran" behind that line on the map and it's hard to attack a mountain. Yeah it's hard to huge move armies through mountains. That also applies to Iran, which doesn't have a good army, and can't control its own airspace. The US has marines, paratroopers, and 3 of the world's top 5 air forces. If the US army invaded Iran, they might be vulnerable to asymmetric warfare like... suicide drones. Wow. That sounds pretty bad. Until you realize every Iranian soldier with a remote controller would have been helicoptered, cruise missiled, or air struck out of existence by that time already. tl;dr: It's not advised to rely on mountains to blockade a body of water unless you somehow teleported the mountain into the water.
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On June 23 2025 08:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 07:45 LightSpectra wrote:
Yeah, that's my perspective. If we imagine a spectrum where positive values make the world better and negative values make the world worse, where Trump is -10 and Bernie Sanders is +10, and 0 is a hard maintenance or the status quo, then people like Clinton and Biden are still on the positive end of the spectrum. We could debate if they're closer to +9 or +1, but they certainly are way higher than every Republican would be. If someone refuses to vote for a +5 because they'll settle for nothing lower than +10 and thus passively allows the -10 to win, they're sabotaging their own interests. This is generally my perspective as well, though of course I'd like a president to be as close to +10 as possible. From conversations with other TLers, I've learned that not everyone believes the Democratic nominee is even on the "plus" side though, and/or that the lesser of two evils is not a persuasive enough argument for all, and/or that a few tiny "plus" presidencies still can't create enough momentum to balance out the very extreme "minus" presidencies (which can slowly shift the Overton window and/or general political power to the right - like how three straight +1 terms wouldn't be sufficient to beat/override one terrible -10 term).
This is the real issue. Biden was barely on the plus side, if even at all. From the left-wing perspective he fully supported genocide (perhaps not in words, but definitely in actions). And if people don't draw the line at genocide, then where would they ever draw a line?
The problem is that American politics didn't allow for a shift against genocide. Trump and Biden both supported it, just that Trump supported it way harder. There was also no indication that Harris would've turned the ship around either.
So progressives are absolutely right to be so harsh towards the moderates. But they're also absolutely wrong to argue that moderates are wrong for voting Biden/Harris. Because at the end of the day these were the only realistic alternatives to Trump. Other votes didn't matter, and were actively harmful to the cause of stopping genocide.
Someone with a more strategic mindset might say: what if Harris would've stopped the genocide, but she deliberately withheld that information during her campaign because her priority was to win the elections and she thought campaigning against Israel would've lost her the elections?
But someone with hindsight could then say: she lost anyway. Great job!
This is why I completely understand that so many of us progressives are really really pissed at moderates. If every strategy is a losing strategy, might as well go balls to the wall and take some risks.
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Ahem. Care to lookup the Iraqi Iranian war? Want to make the argument that the Iraqi military was so great compared to the Iranian again? I guess after Iraq had not won anything from Iran despite being supported by the West and the Soviet Union, then had been cut off from the USs teat and bombed by daddy bush, what was left was the 4th best army in the world. Also, your argument that Iran has to be stopped because Iraq had to be stopped is flawed. A) Iraq didn't attack 20% of global oil, he attacked Kuwait. That's a difference. B) Iran has not cutoff anything as a reason to attack them. They might do that as a consequence of being attacked.
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On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why?
It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union.
They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all.
Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red.
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On June 23 2025 12:11 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends. Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures? It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything. If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure. It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit. I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful.
United Health is facing a ton of pressure since the assassination (notmurderTM).
https://www.newsweek.com/unitedhealthcare-struggling-recover-luigi-mangione-2073305
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On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red.
While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them.
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On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them.
There are a lot of reasons, some overlapping, some mutually exclusive, some somewhere in between. A preference for centrist politics is just one of them, not the end all be all.
But it's also critical to not lose sight of the fact that social democrat policy (socialist even more so imo) is categorically better for workers than centrist policy.
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Just like Houti's have been wiped out by the billions of Saudi weapons and equipment, hundreds of air strikes from Israel and later US and are completely neutralized and have had 0 influence on global shipping, so shall Iran who are obviously just a bunch of dum dums fail to fuck up shipping through a much more narrow and easily blocked strait.
Mountains, meh, hellicopters and cruise missiles taking out individual Iran soldiers with drones, pew pew pew, done.
I mean it worked so good for Russians, they sure fucked those Ukrainians with their non existent navy in the Black sea up, so it's going to be a cakewalk for USA under the brilliant minds of Trump and Hegseth.
Sea mines aren't a thing, right, and it's really, really easy to remove them.
Great analysis as always!
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Trump on the verge of becoming an actual republican President and killing millions in useless wars.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/740286543641575467/1386459437459439627/iran.png?ex=6859c879&is=685876f9&hm=2a80776fe790319a9109041caa2168ab8ae0f9aa3f0fe87b3081bedadbd50dbc&)
