I want to be clear, I think it’s totally okay for DSA to spend time on electoral campaigns. I even think it’s good actually even if some members still believe in the idea of voting their way to socialism. I just think they need to act more democratically and in a more coordinated fashion.

They need to do more than activate members though. They also need to engage members in the actual practice of running a party and making decisions together in a cordial and democratic way. People in the US generally have almost no experience doing anything like that which is unfortunate because it’s a necessary precondition for any kind of vanguard party.

If DSA becomes something akin to say the Sunrise Movement where members are just volunteers and staff run the whole thing then it’s not going to legitimize any sort of future vanguard. This is a real risk because frankly most people joining DSA have more familiarity volunteering and running liberal non profits than they have experience with the real participatory democracy of a vanguard party. So yes it’s great if DSA can attract more members. However that’s not sufficient for it to be a meaningfully stepping stone towards socialism.

DSA isn’t exactly a political party though as much as I wish it were. That said, I think it’s still good people are joining. There are a lot of political lessons people will never learn unless they actually get involved in organizing work.

The problem is that DSA and Zohran are not actually organizing for anything other than getting Zohran elected. They do not work hand in hand nor are they likely to once he’s in office. This is pretty much a universal issue across all of DSA high profile elected officials. That often means DSA is used as a pool of eager volunteers for a campaign but nothing more. It also means that when the pressure to capitulate is particularly acute, DSA elected officials have a history of betraying some of DSA’s core values. AOC and Jamal Bowman are key examples here but it happens at the local level too. This all unfortunately means that people are never brought into DSA because candidates aren’t proud and open about their membership. It also generates a lot of internal strife within DSA which causes a lot of good organizers to burn out and leave the organization. Neither of those things is good for the development of the socialist movement.

Just to be clear though this is meant as a constructive critique. It’s not unique to Zohran and it’s been a problem in DSA for years. They might resolve it but I’m not entirely sure they will or if Zohran’s win will help. That said, I still like DSA and Zohran. It’s pretty cool seeing a sex pest cretin humiliated by some social democratic muslim guy from queens. Even if this isn’t a stepping stone to socialism, I think it’s fine to celebrate. It’s kind of like watching cops pepper spray themselves or billionaires getting crushed in a wildly unsafe submarine. It just reminds you that the people with power are vulnerable and that’s always a good feeling.

The squad was born in the original Trump administration so it shouldn’t be that surprising to see a return of these kinds of progressive candidates.

WhyTF do we even have primaries then! If they are not going to play by their own rules of their special little club, let’s just extend Ranked Choice Voting to cover the general and scrap the primaries altogether!

Because the US doesn’t really have a true democracy. It’s always going to be weighted against the actual interests of the people. The more success candidates the Zohran have, the more the established politicians will stack the deck against them. The good thing is that the more the game is rigged the more obvious it all becomes.

Honestly even if the only difference between Zohran and Cuomo is that no women get sexually harassed by the NYC mayor I think that’s a win.

Yes exactly! I have to wonder how many people on hexbear picked up Lenin after watching Bernie get screwed.

Let social democrats celebrate. They’re not really hurting anyone. This isn’t 1919 and they’re not currently standing in the way of a successful revolution. If you start stewing in petty resentments now it’s not going to serve you or anyone else. Save those feelings for when it matters.

That would be nice except as it stands Americans are getting pushed out into the pacific to drown. The balance of power between working people and wealthy elites has to shift before any meaningful progress is possible.

Why not? Based on Iran’s history, I think it’s highly improbably they would use nukes offensively. They have every reason to want to develop a nuke. It’s likely that they even have the capacity to make one. Even then, they’ve refused to. All evidence points to the fact that they genuinely want peace. All of their responses to either American or Israeli attacks have been very limited. Even their allies all seem primarily interested in self defense.

While the government may not be to your liking, having nukes is not going to prevent organic resistance. In fact, having a real deterrent against foreign military intervention ensures that the people of Iran can focus on fighting for their personal freedoms and not their very lives. In the past there have been real protest movements in favor of social reform. Now though? Iranians are demonstrating in defiance of Israel and in support of the Iranian state.

To be clear, I’m not exactly a fan of nuclear proliferation. However, in a world where the only country to ever use nukes as a weapon and their genocidal proxy are aiming to obliterate your country, having a nuclear deterrent makes everyone safer.

It could be the business was borderline insolvent and cash from the checks acted as a short term loan from Walmart.

That or he was trying to create the create the illusion of cash flow in order to get the business to qualify for certain kinds of loans. The money from the loans he could subsequently embezzled. Then if the company went bankrupt the creditors would be at a loss.

If you end up integrating LLMs in a way where it could impact patient care that’s actually pretty dangerous considering their training data includes plenty of fictional and pseudo scientific sources. That said it might be okay for medical research applications where accuracy isn’t as critical.

I think you might be underestimating the number of democrats that are also war hawks who want to bomb Iran.

It really depends on how far both sides are willing to escalate.

Israel appears to be emboldened for a variety of reasons. Nobody is stopping their genocide. Hezbollah is on its back foot. Netanyahu sees political gain in a war with Iran. Trump is reckless enough to not reign Israel in.

However, Israel cannot wage all out war without the backing of the US. Iran knows this which is why I think their responses to past Israeli attacks have been fairly measured. These attacks are a serious escalation though and it’s hard to say how Iran may decide to respond.

If they seriously think the US is ready to back Israel in an all out war then we’re going to face consequences globally. Iran has the capacity to obliterate much of the middle east’s oil infrastructure, which the US is heavily invested in. That could cause energy prices to spike and create all kinds of downstream havoc for the global economy.

Haha speak for yourself. Understanding the underlying mechanics makes it obvious what comes next and I kind of wish we could just skip that part. 😅

Part of the problem is that even the Soviet perspective on what happened during Stalin’s time in power is in question. Khrushchev clearly lied about the extent to which Stalin was a brutal dictator. I suspect he did that to distance his own government from the brutality of the decisions the Soviet government was forced to make in order to survive through WWII. Capitalist countries were happy accept that narrative because it aligned with their desire to portray socialism as an abject failure equivalent to fascism. As such, by the time the Soviet archives were opened up for academics to research what actually took place during Stalin’s reign, the narratives concerning him were already set in stone.

I remember looking it up and it was about the same as Europe but higher than the US.

CBT is useful as a way of addressing all sorts of issues someone might be dealing with. It’s very common for therapists today to incorporate aspects of CBT into their practice regardless of the client. It’s not just something used to treat severe mental illness.