Super Tuesday open thread

@WWTH

Crimes? Are you fucking kidding me?

I mean, yeah. I don’t know how OP meant it, but pretty much everyone with any power in the US government is a criminal in my eyes. Including Sanders for that matter (Afghanistan vote), the difference being that he’s still relatively very good and has genuinely transformed his behavior on foreign policy since then. Compared to him, Warren has always been much more of a hawk and shows no signs of changing. And compared to her, the majority of Congresspeople are absolute monsters. Sliding scale of severity.

I do always love how half the Sanders base denies that there’s an issue with toxicity, but the other does some version of “she had it coming.” It’s very reminiscent of gamergate.

An incredibly diverse group of populists campaigning to reform the government so everyone can have healthcare, educational opportunities, decent wages and workers’ protections, hopefully not die in climate catastrophe, etc. is reminiscent of a bunch of gamers on the internet harrassing women and because they didn’t want them in their video games? This feels incredibly unfair and reductionist.

If you want me to say that some Bernie supporters are assholes, I will. If you want me to say that our anger is unjustified like GG, that our goals are frivolous like GG, that we (as a group, more than any other campaign or liberal movement) punch down, then I have to disagree.

But if she didn’t have the plans, she would be pummeled for that too.

She would, but that’s literally what’s happened to Bernie this entire election cycle, whereas she also got a lot of praise for “having a plan for that”. All of the candidates got shit on and all of them got praised. Joe Biden gets shit on all time, I just don’t particularly care because he deserves it. It’s honestly really hard for me to compare the candidates on a gender basis in terms of treatment when they (the three in question) are all so different in terms of policy and messaging, and those differences work as confounding factors.

Most all of the criticism and praise going towards the candidates has depended on the politics of the person sending it. Obviously, corporate media has its own politics though, so the feedback most people hear is incredibly slanted. I actually feel like Elizabeth Warren has gotten a lot of positive mainstream coverage, from what I’ve seen, but I guess I’m curious to see how it would have changed if she were a man.

Revolution sounds nice in theory, but revolutions are violent, disruptive and rarely succeed. A revolution will kill a lot of the people that the left, at least in theory are fighting for.

I feel like Bernie’s messaging — identifying as a socialist, calling for political revolution — and his not insignificant amount of genuinely radical supporters cause people to forget that at the end of the day he’s still a liberal. He’s not calling for actual revolution, or for workers to own the means of production. He’s just calling for social democracy, which isn’t incrementialism either, but rather for the US to start resembling literally the entire rest of the Global North. It won’t solve all of our problems, not even close, but it’s a start. For me, and for a lot of people, this is already a concession. He is the compromise candidate.

@Psiana

Revolutions are only happening when people get really desperate. Social democratic reforms are a way to prevent that from happening, just like FDRs reforms could.

So this is how I read what you’ve said. If I have misinterpreted, I apologize, and I’d love if you can clarify. I read this as, “Given the choice between 1) letting capitalism run fully unrestrained so that enough people suffer so badly under it that they will be desperate and want revolution and 2) trying to improve people’s lives in smaller ways, option 1) is better.” I strongly disagree. To me, this shows a willingness to sacrifice the most vulnerable people in the name of revolution.

There are already people, including many children torn away from their parents, in concentration camps. There are already people not getting the healthcare that they desperately need because of the cost of healthcare in the United States. I believe we should help those people as much as we can, however we can, not just let them suffer and die and then use their deaths as talking points.

@Surplus, the least loud and annoying way to send amber alerts to people’s phones would be not to send them at all. No one is delighted when their phone starts blaring at them in the middle of the night, whether they are outside of their home or currently moving or whatever else. However, the various provincial governments in Canada have decided that the irritation to their residents is appropriate when balanced against the increased potential to locate an abandoned child as soon as possible by contacting everyone immediately. I agree with them.

@Viscaria
I can’t clarify what Psiana said because I don’t know exactly what they were thinking, but I interpreted them differently. I thought they were saying that the reforms were good because they prevented people from getting desperate, which is bad. I could be misreading and you could be right, but that’s what I thought they were saying.

the least loud and annoying way to send amber alerts to people’s phones would be not to send them at all.

I know you can disable AMBER alerts on iPhones (and probably android too, but I don’t have as much experience). On iPhones it can be disabled in settings or is automatically muted if your phone is on Do Not Disturb.

ETA: Psiana clarified while I was writing and I didn’t notice until after posting. It sounds like I interpreted correctly, but my apologies if I was wrong.

@Lesley

It also definitely originated in bonafide Leftist circles

Oh, sure. Wasn’t claiming the dirtbags invented the term last month. Just that I find it’s use… odd. Like how virtue signalling is a real thing that people do. But it’s also not a real thing, and fuckfaces use it as a politically correct way of calling someone a ‘n*****r lover’. I mean, if ‘the right’ (and their shitty enablers across the spectrum) didn’t coopt ‘leftist’ language for their bullshit, they’d only communicate in angry grunts at this point

@Perry

How many episodes of Chapo have you listened to?

0, and plan to keep it that way

you talk about searching for an explanation of PMC that doesn’t involve class reductionism

Oh no, it’s not hard to come by an explanation of PMC that isn’t gross. It’s not that deep a concept. The issue is finding how Elizabeth Warren personally was the candidate of the PMC specifically and why… whatever it is she’s doing in that vein is particularly bad. I’ve not gotten a good answer to ^that. But, hey, maybe I’m only hearing the dinguses

Are you saying the scholarship isn’t genuine because it’s unsound conceptually, because you haven’t engaged with it, or because you disagree with leftist politics and therefore discount all of our scholarship?

Neither. I think this kind of class analysis has some problems. Not to the level conceptually unsound, that’s a bit much, but problems nonetheless. Now, I do disagree with ‘leftist’ politics, but discounting all of an ideological bent’s scholarship is only something I do with nazis and their ilk. And, again, not that deep a concept, not sure what all i’m meant to engage with

call me a Bernie Bro and accuse our movement of being infected with misogyny

I don’t think you’re a BernieBro. 1stly, cos that’s not a term I endorse, mostly for feministy reasons (SandersStan is better). And 2ndly, while I obvs think you’re wrong on a lotta things, you’re not being that much of a shit imo. A lil… passionate, but whatever

The movement is infected with misogyny tho 😛

when I disagree I’ll try to be as respectful as I can

Happens

He is the compromise candidate

Now, on that we agree

https://twitter.com/nationalparke/status/1236031139623690240

Are you fucking serious the hill?

@Ooglyboggles
Yup, some idiot brought a swastika flag to a Sanders rally. Not sure if it’s because they want to compare him to a Nazi or because he’s Jewish, but either way it’s highly antisemitic and assholish.

Explaining how leftists feel about Warren doesn’t exactly look great as a response to charges of sexism in the left. I absolutely agree with WWTH that if Warren and Sanders swapped genders, they’d be closer in popularity, or perhaps Warren would be the one leading and Sanders dropping out. I think a lot of people get caught up in ideology and miss the fact that people generally don’t think along hard ideological lines. Biases due to various axes of oppression, including gender, are very real and consequential. It makes me wonder, as much as I would have preferred someone else, like maybe from “the Squad”, for the left to rally around (I know, age limit, lack of relative experience, etc. but still), I also have to deal with the fact that, if this is the Democrats’ overall reaction to an old grumpy-sounding white-passing man, it would only be worse if it were someone not fitting that description.

For me, the comparison to GamerGate was a clear sign to back off on any desire I may have to argue about this stuff here. That’s just beyond the point where I think this can be hashed out through continued discussion. I think a lot of us are mourning a little here, not just for Warren dropping out, but also due to Biden being very likely to be the nominee at this point. On top of that is a progressively more openly authoritarian party that will respond to losing by at least impeaching the president immediately. Who the hell even knows at this point what a Democratic president actually needs to do in order to accomplish anything?

If you want me to say that some Bernie supporters are assholes, I will. If you want me to say that our anger is unjustified like GG, that our goals are frivolous like GG, that we (as a group, more than any other campaign or liberal movement) punch down, then I have to disagree.

I made the comparison because the tactics are identical. Not because the ideology is. But I’m not talking about being an asshole. I’m talking about rape threats, death threats, doxxing, coordinated pile ons. That is, harassment. Enough people have reported having this happen to them that I can’t dismiss it as outliers, or the targets lying or exaggerating. Maybe the GG comparison feels unfair, but when the rhetoric is so similar, it’s alarming.

I don’t bring this stuff up because I want Sanders to fail, or I hate poor people, or I’m a PMC or whatever. I want the left to succeed and this kind of shit doesn’t help. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to fix an issue that’s driving potential supporters away if you genuinely want Bernie to win and then be effective when he’s President.

@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger

Got to make the one Jewish Candidate out to be the “Bad Jew:tm:”

And oh great on top of antisemitism, they’re just going out and whitesplaining to Nina Turner.

https://twitter.com/thedailyangle/status/1235760412735541248

Can they hear themselves speak?!

@WWTH

Genuine question — what is the mechanism for assessing the epidemic of rape threats, death threats, harrassment? To be honest, rape threats are the only thing in that list need no further explanation, but something like harrassment is actually pretty vague. For example, doxxing someone is not the same as sending them 20 rat emojis on Twitter, still they they can both be reasonably classified as harrassment. Who are the people receiving them? Harassing a random person who makes good faith criticism, harassing a powerful politician or media figures who propagandize, and harassing another regular person who harasses you are also all different.

Also what is meant by these things “have been reported”? Is it just word of mouth? That’s part of the reason why I don’t know what to do or how to fix this, I’ve literally never seen this happen, but keep having people tell me it’s right under my nose.
It’s really difficult to be helped to succeed when the conversation jumps from “emojis piss me off” to “there’s an unspecified but critical amount of rapists and predators online that also want single payer, spend x amount of time rooting them out before we can fight for these policy issues”, and the people who spearheaded the accusations against us in 2016 had material interest in our policy goals not succeeding.

Politics aren’t defined by rhetoric, it’s defined by life and death policy consequences in a way that anything in the video game community is not. GG rhetoric is alarming to me as well, but even more alarming for me, is the outpouring of material human suffering that will continue if Biden gets the nominee. There was never any way for that comparison to be applicable enough to be helpful.

I don’t have one master list. It’s been a drip, drip, drip of people talking about receiving threats over the years. Anyone who follows the social media of any progressive woman who isn’t on the Bernie train will be familiar. I’m honestly shocked that people are acting like this is brand new information or need a list to be convinced.

And by the way, I was ready to move on from this because even after all the toxic shit I’ve seen from this particular segment of Bernie supporters, I still definitely want him to win over Biden.

But people keep doubling down, dismissing the issue, denying it happens. So I keep responding.

I’m truly disgusted that on a feminist site, we’re doing this. It’s feminism 101 that just because people belong to a group you identify with, doesn’t mean harassment allegations are false.

That’s part of the reason why I don’t know what to do or how to fix this, I’ve literally never seen this happen, but keep having people tell me it’s right under my nose.

I mean, really? Just because you haven’t personally seen harassment, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. You could try just believing people who say they’ve been harassed.

@WWTH

I’m not arguing that incrementalism is preferable to larger, more radical reforms. I’m arguing that when the choice is incremental change or nothing, the former is preferable.

This is my view as well. I describe as “Go for what you want, but take what you can get. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

Over and over I see self-described radicals reject any improvement to an issue on the grounds that it is not a complete, instant solution to the issue, with the result that nothing improves, such as rejecting legislation that would get millions more people health coverage because it doesn’t get everybody health coverage. The result is that nothing gets passed, and the radicals get to feel righteous while the people that they claim to be helping go bankrupt or die.

Interestingly, enough, you can find this mentality a lot with right-wingers as well, notably the “pro-life” movement. Show them a policy that is proven to reduce abortions, and one of the common rejections is “I don’t want to reduce abortions, I want to eliminate abortions.” (Which of course they can’t, but that doesn’t matter because the pro-life movement’s goal is not actually stopping abortions but punishing and controlling women, though I expect I’m preaching to the choir on this subject.)

Related to this is the other big issue I tend to have with ideologies claimed as radical, what I call the Single Axis of Oppression. You see this a lot with radfems and sexism, or Marxists and class. There is a single Axis of Opression that is the ONLY bad thing in the world, and thus the ONLY thing that must be opposed. Other forms of oppression either do not exist, which means that efforts made to combat them at taking away from the True Struggle, and so must themselves be opposed, or those other oppressions are actually symptoms of the One True Oppression and will go away once it is defeated… which means that efforts made to combat them are taking away from the True Struggle, and so themselves must be opposed.

(Consider, for example, how the “feminism” of TERFs seems to consist entirely of attacking trans women, and their hostility towards an questions of intersectionality.)