Its absurd to me that you think Mamdani is closer to the right of this image than the left.
Really feels like people here have no idea what the soviet union was like and just see politics as a way to show how alt they are rather than wanting practical solutions to real problems.
When people just make edgy memes instead of talking about sane steps towards a better world such as socialized post secondary education, nationalized resources, UBI, full coverage single payer etc.
Its always some nonsense about decapitating people, because thats easy, doesn’t require any real work (as they’ll never do any of those “you first” actions) and allows them to feel suprior for literally working against the goals they claim to support.
No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids want socialism because it has a proven track record of dramatically uplifting the working classes in ways capitalism cannot. We socialists do know what the soviet union was like, we read books, study history, and more in order to try to best emulate what worked well while learning from what didn’t, and adapting it to our conditions. The safety nets you describe cannot stop the imperialist decay of the dying US Empire.
This is a lot of buzzwords with very little to no content.
With so many significant problems with their system, why use it as a base at all as opposed to simply advocating for the change you want to see?
No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids
The previous commenter brought up Mamdani, and they were wrong for thinking Mamdani is a socialist, but they weren’t wrong for observing that reality does not bring you to your socialist utopia dreams within a lifetime, and thus the “bandaids” you decry are necessary to even begin to convince people to be less afraid of the ideas of socialism.
You are clearly letting perfect be the enemy of good, or improved here, because hard line idealist stances do worse than accomplishing nothing; they make the politics you state you support harder to sell people on, and harm change towards that direction.
Mamdani is actually a great example of what the stepping stones actually look like. A real person, making real, socialist changes within a much larger system at a level that people accept and will hopefully grow to appreciate rather than sitting making grungy alt comments on the internet in an effort to put down other people they agree with far more than any other groups.
just because you don’t want to understand what the words mean, doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.
you will find that demsocs like mamdani are relatively common throughout the world outside the US. how it usually goes for us is he will eventually either hit a wall or be forced to by the system.
the kind of change you hint at wanting comes from the bottom up, not from top down from an oligarchical ballot box.
understand what you are doing, and then organize with your fellow workers.
This type of purposefully too vague to be worth while conversation is just irksome.
The idea that your votes don’t matter, despite billionaires bending over backwards to encourage exactly that type of opinion, so that people stop using all of the levers they have (especially given how easy this one is to pull) is ridiculously counterproductive.
Organizing with your fellow workers sounds like a great idea, except that you can’t do so effectively if the ballot box you want to ignore the importance of works to effectively remove your protections and help the ownership class press you.
Even if you think its little oppression vs big oppression, that difference absolutely matters, especially given the cost the benefit analysis which makes voting crazily valuable for literally just showing up and casting a vote every few months.
you will find that demsocs like mamdani are relatively common throughout the world outside the US. how it usually goes for us is he will eventually either hit a wall or be forced to by the system.
This right here also lacks significant nuance. Its once again based on some vague idea that if a solution isnt everything, its nothing. You ever wonder what would happen if there were enough Mamdanis out there?
my brother in christ, we are not discouraging you from voting. we are trying to show you it doesn’t work.
At this level of self contradiction, I can only conclude you are either trolling or arguing just to argue. Saying that something does not work is discouraging someone from doing said thing.
Its also part of everything I previously discussed, pointing out that you think everything has to be a whole solution in and of itself, and that idea is naive, because nothing ever will be.
we have experience with people like mamdani outside the us that you just refuse to accept.
This is utterly irrelevant as you’ve failed to acknoledge me already addressing this point with pointing out just because roadblocks eventually exist doesnt mean you just stop and roll over/dismiss this as not being a part of the solution.
All of this comes from the naive notion that there is just 1 big button that needs pressing before everything magically falls into place.
Its many little buttons, slow changes over time, and people like you, not fighting that tooth and nail, somehow with righteous indignation against anyone pragmatic enough to understand why that is wrong.
i literally cannot be clearer than i am being.
That is because you have little of substance to actually say but wish that you did, so all you can do is use vague rhetoric to dismiss points you can’t argue against.
Mamdani is far better than his opposition, but his policies aren’t gonna bring socialism. I agree it’s better to support him than not because I don’t want people to suffer under worse politicians, but we should use this opportunity to organize and demand more, not less. Whether Mamdani achieves his goals or not, people won’t be able to maintain any gains without an organized working class. The best time to organize was years ago, the second best time is now.
Mamdani is far better than his opposition, but his policies aren’t gonna bring socialism.
See, this is exactly the type of thing that is wrong with the general attitudes of people on this website.
Moaning, calling the majority of people fascists for having pragmatic plans, joking about revolution plans youll never attempt, much less succeed at all are severe forms of idealism.
You will literally never magically go to sleep one day in capitalist land, and then wake up in socialist land. That just is not how it works.
All the people who think they remember reading some historical account where that happened clearly missed a lot of information, because no societal change like that happens that quickly. Even for changes that appear quick, what is often missed are the huge amounts of smaller events that built up to those events, and the stepping stones.
Everyone on this site seems to utterly refuse to acknowledge this and seems to want to lambaste any idea that deals with the reality that socialist rome cannot be built in a day.
Anything that isn’t a full measure to them, might as well literally be the same thing as trump, and that’s just absurdly counter productive and naive.
Mamdani is bringing socialism, but slightly, and with digestible measures which should change public opinion. It’s not all or nothing. Small change is good change too.
Others should do so as well. In so doing people warm up to an idea rather than the fringiest, cringiest people thinking that shrieking at the general public will magically lead them to change their opinions and accept massive differences immediately.
I agree it’s better to support him than not because I don’t want people to suffer under worse politicians,
In case it was purposeful, I want to add that it should be “not only because”, because, and this is another problem I have with many of attitudes here, right now matters! People who are alive and living right now matter! Their lives and shared experiences matter!
It’s absolutely not ok to throw away their lives for some idealistic hail mary you (general you) think will save the world, particularly when doing so wouldn’t even work.
but we should use this opportunity to organize and demand more, not less.
I am cautious about using the word demand, because it implies that you have leverage in a way I think many lemmy users think they have leverage, but they absolutely do not.
I think too many lemmy users think that protest voting does anything other than setting them back, not realizing that 2 party systems love the rocking back and forth where one party can just outright benefit the rich, and the other can campaign on cutting some of those changes back. Any allowance for this hurts the cause.
Instead, the only areas they have leverage are in electing people like Mamdani through primaries, local and state politics. They can apply leverage by changing what the average member of the party closest to their views looks like to start a progressive shift.
Whether Mamdani achieves his goals or not, people won’t be able to maintain any gains without an organized working class.
I think they will, because there is something to be said for changing the uncaring persons passive opinion on what has been marketed as the devil for too long. The average person notices that NYC does better with Mamdani, and the next time some big media source rages on about how socialism will ruin us all, they think “meh, thats probably not true”.
Its absurd to me that you think Mamdani is closer to the right of this image than the left.
Really feels like people here have no idea what the soviet union was like and just see politics as a way to show how alt they are rather than wanting practical solutions to real problems.
When people just make edgy memes instead of talking about sane steps towards a better world such as socialized post secondary education, nationalized resources, UBI, full coverage single payer etc.
Its always some nonsense about decapitating people, because thats easy, doesn’t require any real work (as they’ll never do any of those “you first” actions) and allows them to feel suprior for literally working against the goals they claim to support.
No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids want socialism because it has a proven track record of dramatically uplifting the working classes in ways capitalism cannot. We socialists do know what the soviet union was like, we read books, study history, and more in order to try to best emulate what worked well while learning from what didn’t, and adapting it to our conditions. The safety nets you describe cannot stop the imperialist decay of the dying US Empire.
This is a lot of buzzwords with very little to no content.
With so many significant problems with their system, why use it as a base at all as opposed to simply advocating for the change you want to see?
The previous commenter brought up Mamdani, and they were wrong for thinking Mamdani is a socialist, but they weren’t wrong for observing that reality does not bring you to your socialist utopia dreams within a lifetime, and thus the “bandaids” you decry are necessary to even begin to convince people to be less afraid of the ideas of socialism.
You are clearly letting perfect be the enemy of good, or improved here, because hard line idealist stances do worse than accomplishing nothing; they make the politics you state you support harder to sell people on, and harm change towards that direction.
Mamdani is actually a great example of what the stepping stones actually look like. A real person, making real, socialist changes within a much larger system at a level that people accept and will hopefully grow to appreciate rather than sitting making grungy alt comments on the internet in an effort to put down other people they agree with far more than any other groups.
just because you don’t want to understand what the words mean, doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.
you will find that demsocs like mamdani are relatively common throughout the world outside the US. how it usually goes for us is he will eventually either hit a wall or be forced to by the system.
the kind of change you hint at wanting comes from the bottom up, not from top down from an oligarchical ballot box.
understand what you are doing, and then organize with your fellow workers.
This type of purposefully too vague to be worth while conversation is just irksome.
The idea that your votes don’t matter, despite billionaires bending over backwards to encourage exactly that type of opinion, so that people stop using all of the levers they have (especially given how easy this one is to pull) is ridiculously counterproductive.
Organizing with your fellow workers sounds like a great idea, except that you can’t do so effectively if the ballot box you want to ignore the importance of works to effectively remove your protections and help the ownership class press you.
Even if you think its little oppression vs big oppression, that difference absolutely matters, especially given the cost the benefit analysis which makes voting crazily valuable for literally just showing up and casting a vote every few months.
This right here also lacks significant nuance. Its once again based on some vague idea that if a solution isnt everything, its nothing. You ever wonder what would happen if there were enough Mamdanis out there?
my brother in christ, we are not discouraging you from voting. we are trying to show you it doesn’t work.
we have experience with people like mamdani outside the us that you just refuse to accept.
please just look up the things you don’t know instead of pretending we are not saying it. i literally cannot be clearer than i am being.
Honestly the best thing Mamdani will do is fail at making fundamental change and encurage people to reject electoralism
At this level of self contradiction, I can only conclude you are either trolling or arguing just to argue. Saying that something does not work is discouraging someone from doing said thing.
Its also part of everything I previously discussed, pointing out that you think everything has to be a whole solution in and of itself, and that idea is naive, because nothing ever will be.
This is utterly irrelevant as you’ve failed to acknoledge me already addressing this point with pointing out just because roadblocks eventually exist doesnt mean you just stop and roll over/dismiss this as not being a part of the solution.
All of this comes from the naive notion that there is just 1 big button that needs pressing before everything magically falls into place.
Its many little buttons, slow changes over time, and people like you, not fighting that tooth and nail, somehow with righteous indignation against anyone pragmatic enough to understand why that is wrong.
That is because you have little of substance to actually say but wish that you did, so all you can do is use vague rhetoric to dismiss points you can’t argue against.
Mamdani is far better than his opposition, but his policies aren’t gonna bring socialism. I agree it’s better to support him than not because I don’t want people to suffer under worse politicians, but we should use this opportunity to organize and demand more, not less. Whether Mamdani achieves his goals or not, people won’t be able to maintain any gains without an organized working class. The best time to organize was years ago, the second best time is now.
See, this is exactly the type of thing that is wrong with the general attitudes of people on this website.
Moaning, calling the majority of people fascists for having pragmatic plans, joking about revolution plans youll never attempt, much less succeed at all are severe forms of idealism.
You will literally never magically go to sleep one day in capitalist land, and then wake up in socialist land. That just is not how it works.
All the people who think they remember reading some historical account where that happened clearly missed a lot of information, because no societal change like that happens that quickly. Even for changes that appear quick, what is often missed are the huge amounts of smaller events that built up to those events, and the stepping stones.
Everyone on this site seems to utterly refuse to acknowledge this and seems to want to lambaste any idea that deals with the reality that socialist rome cannot be built in a day.
Anything that isn’t a full measure to them, might as well literally be the same thing as trump, and that’s just absurdly counter productive and naive.
Mamdani is bringing socialism, but slightly, and with digestible measures which should change public opinion. It’s not all or nothing. Small change is good change too.
Others should do so as well. In so doing people warm up to an idea rather than the fringiest, cringiest people thinking that shrieking at the general public will magically lead them to change their opinions and accept massive differences immediately.
In case it was purposeful, I want to add that it should be “not only because”, because, and this is another problem I have with many of attitudes here, right now matters! People who are alive and living right now matter! Their lives and shared experiences matter!
It’s absolutely not ok to throw away their lives for some idealistic hail mary you (general you) think will save the world, particularly when doing so wouldn’t even work.
I am cautious about using the word demand, because it implies that you have leverage in a way I think many lemmy users think they have leverage, but they absolutely do not.
I think too many lemmy users think that protest voting does anything other than setting them back, not realizing that 2 party systems love the rocking back and forth where one party can just outright benefit the rich, and the other can campaign on cutting some of those changes back. Any allowance for this hurts the cause.
Instead, the only areas they have leverage are in electing people like Mamdani through primaries, local and state politics. They can apply leverage by changing what the average member of the party closest to their views looks like to start a progressive shift.
I think they will, because there is something to be said for changing the uncaring persons passive opinion on what has been marketed as the devil for too long. The average person notices that NYC does better with Mamdani, and the next time some big media source rages on about how socialism will ruin us all, they think “meh, thats probably not true”.