I agree that the U.S. is more selfish and individualistic than even other capitalist countries. I agree that fewer people in the U.S. will respond positively to discussion than they would in other countries.

But some people will respond to it, while no one -- especially not hyper-individualists! -- will respond to variations on "fuck off." I'd rather engage with some people than with no people, because while the former may be a long shot, the latter is a guaranteed loss.

I genuinely don't get how anyone thinks "agree with everything I say immediately or fuck off" is going to accomplish anything. That is exactly the shit we laugh at small weirdo ultra sects for doing.

If you have a specific criticism of me, I'm all ears. But I see nothing wrong with looking at what Mao of all people had to say about how leftists should talk to people. We are trying to get other people to become leftists, aren't we?

To meet a quotation from Mao with a bunch of insults and accusations of racism... I don't know what else to call that but wrecking.

A Biden presidency isn't moderately safe. Internationally, we're supporting a genocide and a dozen other horrible things. Domestically, there has been no notable federal action on women's right and LGBT rights, less than nothing is being done to address our increasingly (under Biden) overfunded and overmilitarized police, Biden put down an imminent strike, we're going backwards on the environment, and a dozen other horrible things. Jesus Christ, Dems are talking about violating international law and denying asylum requests at the southern border, in addition to doing nothing about nutjobs like Greg Abbot trying to close the border unilaterally.

You have to let go of the idea that "oh we can't risk Republicans getting power," because Dems are doing so much of what Republicans said they'd do just a few years ago. Democrats are a speed bump at best; the ride is unsafe whether that speed bump is there or not.

she felt there was no suitable candidates to take over

Yes, a ridiculous and indefensible position. Imagine the ego to think no one else in the country can do your job (where much of the legwork is done by your clerks, anyway). You really don't have to hand it to her, even a little.

I have noticed that parties that are to the left of the other parties

I don't see how this is responsive to the point that Democrats should have sat down with Ginsburg and tried to convince her to retire. There's no excuse for them not only not doing that, but doing the exact opposite.

the question is how to get there from here

Sure, and the answer starts with coming to terms with the fact that the Democratic Party needs to be replaced, or at least changed so radically that it's unrecognizable. It deserves no loyalty and gets no benefit of the doubt.

Anything short of that approach winds up in the same "oh but they're the lesser evil" excuse, which isn't even true (genocide is not lesser evil), and just leads to the rightward rachet effect we've seen for the last ~50 years.

Like I said, this is just wrecking. You are in a tiny group of leftists who are ideologically closer to each other than they are to the vast majority of the U.S. And you are trying your hardest to scream through the screen at one of them over what amounts to "how should we talk to libs?", a topic that every single leftist movement has discussed before.

Edit:

the first recourse for the settler-left stops being "accuse every Black nationalist of wrecking"

You'll find my first response a few comments up, in my first response. I don't treat any disagreement as wrecking.

"Here's an idea that worked real well somewhere else, maybe we should consider that instead of telling people they should be shot" is not book worship.

This country's crimes will never be scrubbed away but with the blood of colonizers.

You realize you're book worshiping quoting a guy who failed, right? It feels good, it feels righteous, but it didn't work. I'm trying to talk about stuff that might work, because it's worked elsewhere. You're just wrecking.

she was being obstinate for precisely the reason you outline, there was no suitable candidates to take over

Come on, you don't believe this. You're saying there were zero suitable Supreme Court candidates available between Kagan and Jackson? Not retiring was an indefensible decision, simple as that.

You're right that Democrats had failed to address the narrow issue of "what happens if a walking corpse is on the Supreme Court?" before it was too late. But don't they have any politicians in their ranks? You know, the kind that can talk to a fellow Democrat and get them to agree to an obviously good idea? Do you think Obama even tried? What's the media's excuse for not running the stories they're running right now against Biden?

it's the sort of problem that can only be addressed by enough people standing up and making their voices heard saying that it needs to be addressed

This is always good, but there are functional parties in other countries. Parties that show some political leadership and don't have to be browbeaten by a bunch of people risking imprisonment and police beatings to do anything decent.

What you are saying sounds a lot like "Democrats can't fail, they can only be failed."

Democrats need to lose this election. There has to be an electoral consequence for openly supporting an active genocide. No, this doesn't mean supporting Trump -- his genocidal rhetoric should get the lowest amount of support possible.

I'm probably going to vote for some non-genocidal presidential candidate with no chance at winning, then vote for Democratic congresspeople. If enough people do this the message will be "the votes are here, but not if you're going to do all the things you say we should be terrified of Trump doing anyway." Democrats holding at least one house of Congress will also (minimally) impede Republicans and prevent idiot lib pundits from writing "maybe everybody just wants fascism?" articles.

Hopefully this will open space for a significantly more left candidate in 2028, the way Hillary eating shit in 2016 opened space for Bernie to be the plurality favorite in 2020. Between that and libs finally taking the bad stuff Biden is doing seriously once Trump is in office, maybe we'll shift a few things in a slightly better direction.

And that's just the electoral piece. Beyond that, working on genuine harm reduction projects, trying to unionize your workplace, joining political organizations left of the Democratic Party, and trying to persuade people that Democrats are a dead end are all good things to do.

This isn't a complete plan for getting to bare minimum improvements on issues like climate change, healthcare, imperialism, etc. (and note how that standard is never applied to Democrats), but my thinking is it can open up avenues to those improvements that aren't currently available.

Unless I'm missing something though, neither the president nor congress can force a judge to retire, short of impeaching them.

What does it say about a party if it can't get members on their deathbeds out of positions of power? What does it say about a party if members on their deathbeds don't do this on their own?

A competent party should be preparing younger members to take the reigns, cultivating the mentality that members shouldn't cling to power until they keel over, and should remove members who stick around too long. It should shape the rules of the institutions of government to do this as well.

Democrats never did this, and haven't come close to taking these questions seriously for decades.

...I think we're talking about different things. I said we can bring people to the left of the Democratic Party. I think you read that as bringing the left in to the Democratic Party.

I wasn't suggesting entryism, I was suggesting we can get people to realize the Democratic Party is never going to provide any real improvements.

Right now the choice is Biden or Trump for the next term. It sucks, but that is what it is.

This thinking has locked us in a rightward spiral for the last half century.

That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. “How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?”

I trust you know the definition of insanity.

Say you're right, and there is no difference between going to jail in 2024 and being enslaved on a plantation in 1824 (what "slavery" means to people in the U.S.). Simply saying that does not work.

Our comrades must understand that ideological remolding involves long-term, patient and painstaking work, and they must not attempt to change people's ideology, which has been shaped over decades of life, by giving a few lectures or by holding a few meetings. Persuasion, not compulsion, is the only way to convince them. Compulsion will never result in convincing them. To try to convince them by force simply won't work. This kind of method is permissible in dealing with the enemy, but absolutely impermissible in dealing with comrades or friends.

Here, we aren't even trying "a few lectures or meetings" and then giving up on people, we're shouting a hot take at them and then telling them to fuck off (or worse) if they don't immediately abandon their long-held beliefs. What is the point of reading all this leftist theory if we just ignore it?

But yes, I think there are some significant differences between modern incarceration and the U.S. conception of slavery (antebellum south chattel slavery). That doesn't mean prison conditions are fine, or that it's OK to coerce prisoners into virtually unpaid labor, or anything like that.

This is just defeatist.

Fifteen years ago there was no significant organization left of the Democratic Party. The growth in leftist numbers and organization since then has been enormous. Why are we suddenly at the point where there can be no further movement?

Arguing with them doesn't accomplish anything either

Believing that we can't change people's minds is defeatist. All I'm saying is that meeting "I don't think Democrats want to enslave the homeless" with essentially "kill urself" isn't going to change minds.

shit takes on the colonized and enslaved

I'm not the one disagreeing with Mao here.

Did not expect the wholesale rejection of Mao on Hexbear today.

It's worth noting that Mao's point (which is apparently tailism!) has been echoed all over the place (see "we can never stop explaining"), and that nothing the U.S. left has tried worked either. I put more weight on things that have worked somewhere than on things that have worked nowhere.

Would be the one thing he could do that would potentially restrict the power of the president, too.

Sticking to the actual facts, both Republicans and Democrats are doing fucked up shit.

You're right, and you're right that we should point that out, too.

What I'm saying is that we should stick to the bad things Democrats actually do, not exaggerate. There is no need to exaggerate because Dems do plenty of horrible shit already, and exaggeration doesn't persuade people who don't already agree with you.

We're talking about politics -- do you honestly believe no part of that conversation involves how best to get people to agree with you?

Communists must listen attentively to the views of people outside the Party and let them have their say. If what they say is right, we ought to welcome it, and we should learn from their strong points; if it is wrong, we should let them finish what they are saying and then patiently explain things to them.