US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5644

On April 09 2026 01:15 Jockmcplop wrote:


Exactly my point.
When he ran for Labour leadership and was in 'insanely bad faith' mode like all centrists and progressives, he claimed he was a socialist, claimed he wanted to completely rebalance the economy to redistribute wealth to the poor etc.
Then he got power and just stuck with tory conservative policy on most things.

On April 09 2026 01:24 WombaT wrote:

Starmer mostly campaigned from the (slightly left of) centre and sensible governance

Which never especially enthused me personally but we’ve broadly got what was sold

On April 09 2026 01:26 Jockmcplop wrote:


You obviously weren't paying attention.
When he campaigned for Labour leadership, as I said before, he positioned himself as a slightly more sensible Corbyn. A complete redesign of the economy was a part of it.
He literally said the words "I am a socialist", multiple times.
The entire campaign was a bucket full of lies aimed at the left of Labour because they had such power in those internal elections.

On April 09 2026 01:24 WombaT wrote:

Starmer mostly campaigned from the (slightly left of) centre and sensible governance

Which never especially enthused me personally but we’ve broadly got what was sold

On April 09 2026 01:13 KwarK wrote:
The fundamental issue here is one of Trump’s leadership. He has completely failed to make the case for war, both internationally and at home. The entirely worthwhile goal of the end of IRGC rule in Iran was only going to be achieved by a land invasion, something which the US is absolutely capable of doing. The superiority of US forces is not a question here, we saw that in the air war and the rescue operation. If the US puts a million men in Iraq then the writing is on the wall.

And at that point the IRGC feels real pressure. They know they’re going to end up hanged in the town square for the January massacres. There’s no strategy that can save them there, in a pure test of arms they lose, and they lose absolutely. In that scenario they can’t leverage the strait or missiles or play for time, they’re deeply unpopular and without a local monopoly of force they cease to exist. They can impose costs on the world but America has already gone all in, imposing costs and saying you’ll remove them under certain conditions is a negotiating position that doesn’t work against an all in adversary.

But that’s not what happened. Not only has a substantial US force not crossed into Iran, mobilization of one hasn’t started. The IRGC know that there’s no military threat, that they just need to focus on internal security and play for time with imposing costs on the world. The US has outlined their win condition for them, survive and wait.

And at this point, after all that has happened, after all the threats and declarations of victory, I think it is too late for Trump to pivot to a real plan. It’s too late to mobilize and commit to a full ground war. Too many countries have been alienated, too much economic pain has been inflicted, the message is lost.

And that’s why this is solely a crisis of US leadership. In January after the massacres the case was right there, waiting to be made. You fill the strategic oil reserves, both domestically and abroad in China/Japan etc. You keep the public message laser focused on those massacres, you know the strait will be closed, you don’t care, your mission is just, you’re prepared to pay the cost. The closure isn’t something Iran is doing in response to Israeli strikes, Israel isn’t even involved, this is something the IRGC is doing in an attempt to escape accountability for their crimes against the people of Iran. You flood the region with interceptors, you redeploy naval assets, both yours and those of your coalition partners (because you built a coalition this time). And then, after months of prep, you start moving troops to Iraq.

Nothing to do with nuclear enrichment (dealt with in 2025) or Hezbollah (being an Israeli proxy wins you no friends). The message is clear and has been repeated daily for months, you’re not at war with the people of Iran, you’re prosecuting the IRGC for crimes against humanity. And you will succeed, it’s not in doubt, the US military is deployed for full occupation. There’s only 20 million barrels coming out the gulf daily, the world could easily stomach 6 months of interdiction with filled up storage. The US leads that, releasing oil and gas from storage at previous prices, but Japan etc. have substantial storage capability as well. IRGC loyalists know that it’s over and flee to Russia because it’s not like they’re going to defeat the US Army.

But none of that happened. Trump spent the months after the January massacres threatening to invade NATO and then announced war with Iran at random one evening. Since then he has insulted every US ally, declared this to be a religious campaign of genocide that nobody can get behind, spiked costs for people all around the world, and has yet to make any kind of credible threat against the IRGC regime itself. The US people don’t even know why they’re at war, they don’t believe in it, and given this is a war against an objectively evil regime that’s an absurd failure. This is the worst of all timelines, Trump is the one US President who could start a war with Iran with the full resources of the US military, economy, and alliance system behind him and then lose the fucking thing.

On April 09 2026 00:57 LightSpectra wrote:


I read through the entire conversation chain. It was you saying Democrats are genocidal

Do you think a general strike in a country of ~350,000,000 is going to succeed or fail based on the ~5 left-leaning people in the TL.net politics megathread?

I don't know what city you live in, or even if you live in the USA at all. Since you have repeatedly insisted you participate in grassroots socialist activities, you can confer with them about the best way to participate. Realistically I expect you to be shitting on anyone working for a strike, like you decided to shit on Mamdani when you realized he wouldn't be a divisive figure among Democrats.

“The next major national action of this movement is not just going to be another protest,”

“It is a tactical escalation. It is an economic show of force.”

On April 09 2026 01:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Basically Hanlon's Razor? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

On April 09 2026 01:27 KwarK wrote:

The British public is substantially more right wing (or Daily Mail propagandized if you prefer that) than anyone on the left wants to admit. People go “where did all these right wing politicians come from”. They came from the electorate. They were voted in. After years of Boris Starmer really is as good as Britain deserves.

On April 09 2026 01:33 WombaT wrote:

Indeed.

I think it’s outright lunacy to think some socialist revolution is currently possible in a country to the right of most equivalent nations and who’ve elected a Fascist twice, but people can be simply wrong as opposed to malicious

On April 09 2026 01:43 GreenHorizons wrote:

Socialist revolution is necessary in the US (I think everyone here actually agrees and accepts that), that doesn't mean I don't also accept the real probability that I can earnestly work the rest of my life toward it without it succeeding in my lifetime. That has basically always been a recognized part of practicing revolutionary socialism understood through the Black Radical Tradition.

You guys set up these imaginary strawmen in your minds to kick around and chuckle among yourselves, and it's just disappointing of some pretty low standards in this context.

On April 09 2026 01:43 GreenHorizons wrote:

Socialist revolution is necessary in the US (I think everyone here actually agrees and accepts that), that doesn't mean I don't also accept the real probability that I can earnestly work the rest of my life toward it without it succeeding in my lifetime. That has basically always been a recognized part of practicing revolutionary socialism understood through the Black Radical Tradition.

You guys set up these imaginary strawmen in your minds to kick around and chuckle among yourselves, and it's just disappointing of some pretty low standards in this context.

On April 09 2026 01:29 Manit0u wrote:


Sadly, this reasoning is a bit flawed. Sure, US has top notch military but it's designed to deliver surgical strikes at long ranges. US army is incapable of conducting a protracted ground war. Especially now that the modern battlefield has changed and it's all about swarms of cheap drones (which US doesn't have because they slept for 4 years of Ukraine war). They don't have the specs for that, nor do they have enough ammunition stockpiles (as seen by them having to dig deep into reserves just after a month of combat).

Another thing that has to be noted is that Iran is pretty much un-invadable. That's why they've been doing what they've been doing for so long. Putting boots on the ground there is a lost cause from the onset because of the geography and Iran preparing for this very scenario for decades now. They can hide in the mountains and underground tunnels forever and wage guerilla warfare if need be. Almost all of the country is mountains and deserts, nightmare environments for any offensive military operations.

Yet another thing is that the whole "bomb them to stone age/into oblivion" is also a strategy that has proven to not work long-term. Ukraine has had pretty much all of its energy infrastructure obliterated, they've been bombed daily for 4 years now, do you see them giving up? And they've been bombed much harder than the US is bombing Iran because Russia can produce more ballistic missiles in a month than the US does in a year.

It all wouldn't be a problem if Iran would be some remote theocracy that could just be left to its own devices. Unfortunately it's situated in a way that it can target a lot of infrastructure that's critical to the whole world and it's easy for them to exert pretty much total control over one of the 2 key bottlenecks in the region (and their allies can shut down the other one as shown previously with Houtis blocking the way to Suez canal).

On April 09 2026 01:48 Billyboy wrote:

People do not want USSR, China, Cuba or Venezuela like you do. They don’t pretend that China is not genocidal or that any of those leaders actually were interested in socialism in any real way.

Until you actually discuss how your version of a revolution would create something different than has existed, no one agrees with you.

What people agree with is that the US government and system is fucked. But they want to keep the democracy part. Basically they want Nordic socialism and you want USSR socialism. It’s a drastic difference that you purposely ignore.

On April 09 2026 01:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Why do you think everyone here agrees and accepts that a socialist revolution is necessary in the United States?

On April 09 2026 01:50 LightSpectra wrote:


Expecting someone to have some consistency with things they have previously said isn't what "strawman" means. Your gaslighting would make more sense if you were doing it in real life, it doesn't work in a forum where it takes seconds to go into your post history and see you updating your beliefs.

Like, it was just last month you were insinuating that people who didn't use their guns to resist Trump were cowards. Do you think we just forgot that?

On April 09 2026 01:50 LightSpectra wrote:


Expecting someone to have some consistency with things they have previously said isn't what "strawman" means. Your gaslighting would make more sense if you were doing it in real life, it doesn't work in a forum where it takes seconds to go into your post history and see you updating your beliefs.

Like, it was just last month you were insinuating that people who didn't use their guns to resist Trump were cowards. Do you think we just forgot that?