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The article reads that way until you get half way through it and realize that it’s a few sellouts shilling for dollars. The second half outlines that democrats

The article reads that way until you get half way through it and realize that it’s a few sellouts shilling for dollars. The second half outlines that democrats are the ones who are actually proposing wealth taxes to begin with. It’s a classic outrage based clickbait article format.

ChatGTP 3y ago
Good point!
EA-3167 3y ago
It's Jacobin, they have a massive agenda and despise "liberals" as they call them. It's a classic case of extremists who think their greatest enemy is the moderate faction of their party, rather than the other party.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  It’s frankly a shame we’ve gotten to the point where the other side is an enemy. Washington and Adams strongly believed parties shouldn’t exist in America because of this. Jefferson manipulated the situation to his advantage and won, enshrining the enshitification of American politics in just the way Washington and Adams feared it would.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    I'm too much of a cynic to believe that this was anything, but inevitable. It's not as though countries with many parties or no parties are somehow less divided right now. And frankly when one party led to what we saw on 1/6, and that party is doubling down on that ideology, it's hard to frame them as something other than an enemy. I've never felt that way about the GOP until quite a bit into Trump's presidency, but the feeling has stuck. At some point we're beyond both civics and civility.
  - finite_depth 3y ago
    [dead]
  - poulsbohemian 3y ago
    You aren't wrong, but let me offer a nuanced perspective... in the absence of a party, people would congregate together anyway. For example, this is a non-partisan campaign year, and yet the people who have one set of values are all lining up behind certain city council and school board candidates, because their values align. That's the part that I think a lot of apolitical / people who feel disenfranchised from politics miss - at a local / state level, political parties are mostly just your neighbors. They aren't ideological per se, they just care about their community and want to band together with people who they believe share their common views. The existence of political parties is just a natural extension of a desire to "find your people."
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      In Japan this is what happens, there is effectively a one party rule which contains factions. Japans politics are terrible though.
      - poulsbohemian 3y ago
        Consider this - in Germany, are the Greens and the SPD really that different? In Canada, are the Liberals and New Democrats really all that different? In many countries what happens is that these slightly nuanced parties end up in coalition governments anyway. Which could be a good thing as a party can be formed around a single issue and can strongly advocate in coalition for that issue. In the US, both dominate parties are actually coalitions that would be separate parties in other countries. It isn't perfect, and these factions sometimes have serious disagreements, but within the Dems we generally believe we are stronger together. The Republican party is going through a serious reckoning between its traditional base and a more extreme wing. It won't surprise me if Democrats go through something similar in about another decade as Gen Z comes of age and wants to push their agenda faster than the traditional moderates within the party.
- profunctor 3y ago
  Liberals are not a moderate part of a socialist faction. They critique the democrats like they critique republicans because neither are in any way compatible with socialism.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    I hope that from context it was clear I speaking about the Left/Right divide, not pretending that there's a socialist mainstream in the US. The DSA has what, 90,000 members?
    - finite_depth 3y ago
      [dead]
    - jtode 3y ago
      The mainstream was extremely socialist in the 1930s. I wonder what sort of conditions prefaced that shift...
      - EA-3167 3y ago
        Some sort of Great Depression? And then I assume the downswing after was catalyzed by the miserable failure of socialism in the context of the USSR, PRC, Cuba, and other countries. Combined with the astonishing associated death tolls, I'm guessing that took the shine off the ideology. Plus it's harder to sell people on one extreme without another extreme like fascism to play off of. IMO that's why extremists are always so focused on moderates; opposing extremists justify and enhance extremism, but the existence of moderates threatens their attempts to frame matters in purely Manichean terms.
        jtode 3y ago
        Funnily enough, we are once again faced with a choice between rational socialism of the kind that was implemented in the USA in the 1930s, or fascism of the kind that was implemented in various other places in the 1930s. At that time, America rejected Fascism and chose Socialism, and they prospered for the rest of that century, though by the end the process of dismantling the source of their own success was well along.

ChatGTP 3y ago

Good point!

EA-3167 3y ago

It's Jacobin, they have a massive agenda and despise "liberals" as they call them. It's a classic case of extremists who think their greatest enemy is the moderate faction of their party, rather than the other party.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
It’s frankly a shame we’ve gotten to the point where the other side is an enemy. Washington and Adams strongly believed parties shouldn’t exist in America because of this. Jefferson manipulated the situation to his advantage and won, enshrining the enshitification of American politics in just the way Washington and Adams feared it would.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I'm too much of a cynic to believe that this was anything, but inevitable. It's not as though countries with many parties or no parties are somehow less divided right now. And frankly when one party led to what we saw on 1/6, and that party is doubling down on that ideology, it's hard to frame them as something other than an enemy. I've never felt that way about the GOP until quite a bit into Trump's presidency, but the feeling has stuck. At some point we're beyond both civics and civility.
- finite_depth 3y ago
  [dead]
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  You aren't wrong, but let me offer a nuanced perspective... in the absence of a party, people would congregate together anyway. For example, this is a non-partisan campaign year, and yet the people who have one set of values are all lining up behind certain city council and school board candidates, because their values align. That's the part that I think a lot of apolitical / people who feel disenfranchised from politics miss - at a local / state level, political parties are mostly just your neighbors. They aren't ideological per se, they just care about their community and want to band together with people who they believe share their common views. The existence of political parties is just a natural extension of a desire to "find your people."
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    In Japan this is what happens, there is effectively a one party rule which contains factions. Japans politics are terrible though.
    - poulsbohemian 3y ago
      Consider this - in Germany, are the Greens and the SPD really that different? In Canada, are the Liberals and New Democrats really all that different? In many countries what happens is that these slightly nuanced parties end up in coalition governments anyway. Which could be a good thing as a party can be formed around a single issue and can strongly advocate in coalition for that issue. In the US, both dominate parties are actually coalitions that would be separate parties in other countries. It isn't perfect, and these factions sometimes have serious disagreements, but within the Dems we generally believe we are stronger together. The Republican party is going through a serious reckoning between its traditional base and a more extreme wing. It won't surprise me if Democrats go through something similar in about another decade as Gen Z comes of age and wants to push their agenda faster than the traditional moderates within the party.
profunctor 3y ago
Liberals are not a moderate part of a socialist faction. They critique the democrats like they critique republicans because neither are in any way compatible with socialism.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I hope that from context it was clear I speaking about the Left/Right divide, not pretending that there's a socialist mainstream in the US. The DSA has what, 90,000 members?
  - finite_depth 3y ago
    [dead]
  - jtode 3y ago
    The mainstream was extremely socialist in the 1930s. I wonder what sort of conditions prefaced that shift...
    - EA-3167 3y ago
      Some sort of Great Depression? And then I assume the downswing after was catalyzed by the miserable failure of socialism in the context of the USSR, PRC, Cuba, and other countries. Combined with the astonishing associated death tolls, I'm guessing that took the shine off the ideology. Plus it's harder to sell people on one extreme without another extreme like fascism to play off of. IMO that's why extremists are always so focused on moderates; opposing extremists justify and enhance extremism, but the existence of moderates threatens their attempts to frame matters in purely Manichean terms.
      - jtode 3y ago
        Funnily enough, we are once again faced with a choice between rational socialism of the kind that was implemented in the USA in the 1930s, or fascism of the kind that was implemented in various other places in the 1930s. At that time, America rejected Fascism and chose Socialism, and they prospered for the rest of that century, though by the end the process of dismantling the source of their own success was well along.