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On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do.
Surprised its dyhb also.
And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me!
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On July 28 2026 05:00 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 04:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 28 2026 03:44 LightSpectra wrote:On July 28 2026 03:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 28 2026 01:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 28 2026 01:08 LightSpectra wrote:On July 28 2026 00:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 28 2026 00:19 LightSpectra wrote:On July 28 2026 00:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 27 2026 23:36 LightSpectra wrote:
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But again, infighting only benefited the Republicans insofar that it got Trump through the door by being an outsider that could win the begrudging support of both sides. The overwhelmingly right-wing media landscape did the rest of the work in getting Republicans to fall in line. It's absolutely a problem for Democrats (to what extent is debatable) because there isn't an overwhelmingly left-wing media to do so the same thing for us (nor would a blue-MAGA personality cult be desirable, even if it did win a round or two of elections). And again, you asked why I mentioned it. The reason was to illustrate that infighting wasn't the overwhelming problem it is portrayed to be, the real issues are simplistically intricate. You're correct to point out this difference in media, but your imagination (and reading of my previous posts) fails you in coming up with what (I would believe) would be an appropriate counter for that for people that actually want to bring the best tenets of socialist thought into our societal structure. At the core, is again, a fundamental misalignment between how many people view US politics and the actual mechanisms/systems/etc at play. Behind all the rhetoric, it's about leverage. Obviously a humanist/socialist perspective is never going to win playing in a system designed to accommodate competing factions of the Epstein Class by trying to build their own competing faction of "good Epstein Class people" within that system's rules. On that note, it's worth hearing more about your thoughts on why you believe there isn't/won't/can't be comparable corporate/mainstream/left-wing media that reinforces humanist/the best socialist tenets pressuring Democrats to fall in line? Remind me what that appropriate counter would be? 20 years ago I probably would've agreed with this wholeheartedly, but Republicans have shown they can use their leverage to repeatedly screw over their own voters (not just the rank-and-file either, they have screwed over their own megacorporate backers in the weapons, agricultural, etc. industries) and that doesn't lose them those votes or support. The goldfish-brained swing voters don't remember any of it on election day either, just whatever gas prices look like and whatever the most recent scandal the media was talking about. There could be, it's hypothetically possible, but there just isn't at this time. Right now the strongest force in politics is social media and the ones owned by the far-right (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Tiktok) completely mog all of the other ones (Reddit, Bluesky, the rest are barely even worth mentioning), which are still mostly owned by right-wingers, just not explicit Trump donors. I support revolutionary socialism as the appropriate counter. The specific tactics that includes varies depending on perspective, but it starts in many ways, including with individuals recognizing the fundamental structures of US politics and capitalism. That's been at the core of my focus on leverage in US political history as I've described previously (rather than how you're thinking about it). DSA is not that. But plenty of people I respect the work of think that it could(/must) be. So for those that think there's some sort of better reformist path option, DSA and the sort of uncomfortable infighting (that I would say you rightly/unintentionally point out is part of why the reformist path is a dead end) is the best version of that they're getting. If all of the excesses and corruption of an Epstein accomplice POTUS didn't spur people into revolutionary socialism, then what will? (ongoing) Deliberate and multi-generational efforts ( like those I mentioned) by informed and dedicated workers aligning with circumstances ideally help brought about by those diligent efforts. Nothing will magically 'spur' people into a revolution. Thinking a scandal will change the world is liberal idealism. As you pointed out, the Epstein Class owns the media, the algorithms, and the grocery stores (and in effect, the farms/factories that fill them). They know how to manage public anger and turn it into various forms of "harmless digital noise". The only thing that changes this is a brutal, multi-generational grind. We have to build/ramp up independent survival networks right now so people don't starve when they strike. We don't wait for the system to collapse. We diligently build the collective capacity to protect workers by choking off corporate profits, so that when the system finally fractures under its own greed, the working class has the raw physical leverage to take over instead of the fascists. How do you or anyone think spending a couple pages arguing with Trump supporters about whether AOC is a member of DSA fits into this or your alternative preference (which would be nice to be seen explained)? I don't have any criticisms. It's a fine outlook. I assume, since you said "We don't wait for the system to collapse", you therefore would agree that this multi-generational effort is more likely to succeed if socialists vote for centrists/liberals to keep fascists out of power whenever possible, i.e. the opposite of accelerationism. Correct? You are fundamentally confusing the symptom with the disease. Corporate centrists do not stop fascism. Their policies explicitly manufacture the economic misery, desperation, and cynicism that breeds it. When liberals protect monopolies, bails out banks, and suppresses working-class wages, they lay down the foundations for the next right-wing strongman.Treating corporate Democrats as a 'shield' is a delusion. They are a political ratchet. The right moves the goalposts, and the center locks them into place. Voting for them doesn't defeat fascism, it just enables the slow motion decline of society while their corporate donors line their pockets." I reject accelerationism in part because hoping for a catastrophic collapse without an organized alternative is suicidal. But you are misunderstanding the functionality/meaningfulness of voting as political engagement. It takes ~five minutes once every two years (at least it should in an industrialized country). If a worker decides that pulling the lever for a centrist buys a sliver of defensive breathing room for our independent unions and mutual aid networks to breathe, fine. Do it. If another worker decides the corporate party needs to be starved of votes to break its leverage, fine. Do that. But do not confuse a defensive five minute tactical choice inside a rigged capitalist system with the actual multi-generational work of building working-class power. The latter being how you actually keep fascists out of power. One reason the Democratic establishment constantly drags progressives to the right is because of the exact logic you just laid out. They know they can give you objectively worse, corporate/Republican/lobbyist-written policies, and you will still fall in line because you are terrified of the alternative. You have given away all your leverage for free. By making 'harm reduction' one's political guidepost, you ensure that the center rarely has to concede a single thing to the working class (but for to keep the extraction going ala the New Deal). My outlook doesn't really care about your voting habits per se. It cares about what you are doing the other 364 days of the year. The only way to stop a fascist isn't to vote for a corporate puppet. It is to build the organized, independent capacity to shut down the economy when the state steps out of line. Which if you noticed, there was a bipartisan multi-generational effort to dismantle people's capacity to do that coming out of the Civil Rights Movement when they had a similar version of this discussion and falling in line behind centrists was the prevailing common sense. Which again, led us directly to Trump being president 2x (so far). Even if all your criticisms of corporate centrism were true, that doesn't change the fact that every single thing fascists do in office makes the status quo worse than whatever a centrist would do. Choosing not to vote for the most left candidate whenever possible, even if they aren't very left, is actually what gives away leverage. If a politician won't get votes from the left no matter what they can do (within reason), they're going to instead fish for the votes from the center and right. That moves the Overton window to the right and makes grassroots socialists even more alienated. But probably the most important consequence of this is that people operating the state can use their power to cripple all of the extra-state apparatuses like mutual aid and unions that socialists are capable of building. Right-wingers itch at every possible opportunity to roll out McCarthyist policies to prevent grassroots socialism from happening; centrists sometimes do this, but it's a lot more rare and a lot less vicious. You can see from history that this almost never improves that status quo. It's about as rare as directly transitioning from absolute tsardom to Leninism. And another point about this is: how much multi-generational work do you think you're actually going to succeed in building if you've successfully pissed off 90~% of the population by doing this? I mean, just going by the last election, if you hypothetically didn't vote for Harris: Trump voters already think you're a goddless commie, and the center/center-left folks that finds out you didn't vote for Harris are going to think you're untrustworthy, self-righteous, and an idiot. Not a good position to be in if you're trying to be the backbone that builds the future of society.
You're just ignoring the actual argument to rationalize your fixation on harm-reduction voting. That is part of what I'm pointing out the system is designed to manipulate you into doing. Your theory of electoral gravity is a key part of how the establishment keeps you in this hopeless Hamster Wheel.
Your belief that centrists are less vicious and rarely deploy McCarthyist policies is misleading at best. Who launched the Palmer Raids against socialists? Woodrow Wilson, a progressive champion. Who signed the Smith Act to jail communists? The "best Democrat in history", Franklin D. Roosevelt. Who ran COINTELPRO to assassinate Black Panthers and dismantle the Black Radical Tradition? Liberal darlings JFK and LBJ. Who militarized the modern police state and crushed Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter? Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Who cracked down on students opposing genocide? Joe Biden.
They've managed to confuse you into believing that supporting the people laying the foundations for fascism is the only way to protect yourself from fascism. It'd be funny if it weren't so catastrophic.
You think I am alienating 90% of the population because you view 'the population' as a collection of online pundits/posters obsessed with whether someone voted for Clinton or Harris or whatever (and my general disdain for that kind of engagement). Normal, working-class people do not join movements because of a voting scorecard. They join them because of material reality. When a family is getting evicted and a radical mutual aid network stops the landlord, they don't care who we voted for. When an independent union wins them a living wage and healthcare through a brutal strike, they don't care about our presidential preferences (at least historically, going forward, yeah it comes up). The Black Panthers didn't build the most influential radical movement in modern US history by trying to look 'trustworthy' to moderate white liberals. They did it by feeding children and enlisting armed self-defense in the streets to protect it.The center-left will call us self-righteous idiots on social media? Fine. Let them create their vapid digital noise. While they are laughing/crying on Bluesky about the latest idiotic thing uttered by a Republican and voter apathy (or where/whatever), we will be on the ground building the literal networks of survival. When the system inevitably fractures under its own greed, the working class won't run to the liberals who spent decades telling them to compromise. They will run to the people who actually built the infrastructure to keep them alive. Many of the liberals/Democrats/"vote blue no matter who" crowd will run to join the fascists and call it "pragmatism".
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On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me!
I base it on use of --- which is not really something that you used to see or makes sense to put in the sentence where it was, unless, as I proposed, it was the AI's way of replacing an em dash that it loves using.
I'm not really someone who accuses people of using AI to write their posts willy nilly, pretty sure this is the first time in this thread, this one in congruence with his general posting style, plus the reaction makes it seem like I was correct.
Always possible that I'm wrong.
Generally, as I mentioned, I don't think and didn't say that the guy is AI or posts exclusively AI written stuff, in this case tho, it seems like the case to me.
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On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me!
Just wait until you read the post rofl.
On July 28 2026 06:50 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! I base it on use of --- which is not really something that you used to see or makes sense to put in the sentence where it was, unless, as I proposed, it was the AI's way of replacing an em dash that it loves using. I'm not really someone who accuses people of using AI to write their posts willy nilly, pretty sure this is the first time in this thread, this one in congruence with his general posting style, plus the reaction makes it seem like I was correct. Always possible that I'm wrong. Generally, as I mentioned, I don't think and didn't say that the guy is AI or posts exclusively AI written stuff, in this case tho, it seems like the case to me. I wasn't sure Jankisa used AI, but the second he used the triple hyphen, it cleared all doubt in my mind.
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On July 28 2026 07:07 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! Just wait until you read the post rofl. Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 06:50 Jankisa wrote:On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! I base it on use of --- which is not really something that you used to see or makes sense to put in the sentence where it was, unless, as I proposed, it was the AI's way of replacing an em dash that it loves using. I'm not really someone who accuses people of using AI to write their posts willy nilly, pretty sure this is the first time in this thread, this one in congruence with his general posting style, plus the reaction makes it seem like I was correct. Always possible that I'm wrong. Generally, as I mentioned, I don't think and didn't say that the guy is AI or posts exclusively AI written stuff, in this case tho, it seems like the case to me. I wasn't sure Jankisa used AI, but the second he used the triple hyphen, it cleared all doubt in my mind.
The entire tangent on whether AOC is a member of DSA or you use AI has been totally asinine.
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On July 28 2026 07:18 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 07:07 dyhb wrote:On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! Just wait until you read the post rofl. On July 28 2026 06:50 Jankisa wrote:On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! I base it on use of --- which is not really something that you used to see or makes sense to put in the sentence where it was, unless, as I proposed, it was the AI's way of replacing an em dash that it loves using. I'm not really someone who accuses people of using AI to write their posts willy nilly, pretty sure this is the first time in this thread, this one in congruence with his general posting style, plus the reaction makes it seem like I was correct. Always possible that I'm wrong. Generally, as I mentioned, I don't think and didn't say that the guy is AI or posts exclusively AI written stuff, in this case tho, it seems like the case to me. I wasn't sure Jankisa used AI, but the second he used the triple hyphen, it cleared all doubt in my mind. The entire tangent on whether AOC is a member of DSA or you use AI has been totally asinine. Jankisa did admit fault and apologize (before pivoting to the AI that is), but Sermokala has said
AOC is not a DSA member.
AOC is not apart of the DSA.
You have no evidence AOC is a member of the DSA.
So before we close the asinine tangent on the banal topic of "Will AOC give a statement on the DSA platform," I dare Sermokala to justify his posts.
Sermokala, have you obtained the private membership rolls of the DSA, or did you obtain this information from a news article that you are relying on? Did you hack their website, or burgle their offices?
Sermokala, do you personally possess clairvoyance or telepathy or otherwise psychic abilities that allowed you to come to this conclusion?
You seem so confident that "AOC is not a DSA member" and "AOC is not apart [sic] of the DSA," that I would like you to justify or retract. You brought up the tangent along with Jankisa, so you had better post on it or apologize and withdraw it. What's it going to be?
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On July 28 2026 06:50 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2026 06:35 Fleetfeet wrote:On July 28 2026 05:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:
oblade and dyhb getting a windows 95 case of bsod when asked who won the 2020 election is the funniest thing that has happened in this thread.
« Our little cult says something, reality says something else, we get a massive cognitive dissonance, we don’t know what to do. Surprised its dyhb also. And the AI-assisted writing stuff is a stupid accusation. If you think they're less human and more AI prompt, just stop engaging them and go converse with chatgpt. It'd be of equal value. They've seemed plenty human to me! I base it on use of --- which is not really something that you used to see or makes sense to put in the sentence where it was, unless, as I proposed, it was the AI's way of replacing an em dash that it loves using. I'm not really someone who accuses people of using AI to write their posts willy nilly, pretty sure this is the first time in this thread, this one in congruence with his general posting style, plus the reaction makes it seem like I was correct. Always possible that I'm wrong. Generally, as I mentioned, I don't think and didn't say that the guy is AI or posts exclusively AI written stuff, in this case tho, it seems like the case to me.
Yeah fair enough. My primary objection is that it slants ad-hominem rather than a substantive argument. It could be true, it could not be, but either way it's kind of a waste of time to go over.
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Canada11590 Posts
I am highly annoyed with how the emdash has become the shibboleth for identifying AI writing. It is a perfectly serviceable punctuation mark for humans that I think is very useful—especially for writing interruptions in dialogue. And I actually used to use a double hyphen -- to represent an emdash when writing on forums as I couldn't remember the shortcut on the keyboard. Now I just google search it and copy paste it (or have one at the bottom of a long document so I can copy-paste it) because I refuse to lose the emdash to the bots.
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