The US really needs white people to step the fuck up and sacrifice themselves for the disenfranchised.
Stop relying on PoC to fix this shit the whites created.
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Yeah, white people definitely need to step up and do their part to fix the issues they caused but… nothing. You’re right. I was reading about rad women from the Black Panther Party and should have thought better before making that statement.
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Is it within the scope of this thread to ask, blue sky thinking here folks, what could we do to change/fix/replace the system in the US?
Constitutional Convention?
Bloody Coup
Bloodless Coup
Civil War
State by State referendums?
Workin’ the system from the inside?
Secession?
Mass migration elsewhere?
Many things will work, just within different parameters. Faster solutions are going to be riskier and are more likely to require morally distasteful means. The safer, cleaner paths are going to be slower. You also have to do the cold hard math on how much damage is done by acting slowly.
Let’s say hypothetically we have a bloody revolution, which does a certain amount of damage, but what if just working within the system and doing things nicely is too slow to save us from climate change?
Our government was intentionally created in such a way that action would be taken slowly and after much consideration. That was a great idea until the world started changing too fast.
A Constitutional Convention would make things worse give how the Right-wing control the majority of the state legislatures. If you want to push for that then help get people elected to the state legislature.
State by State referendums seem to be working since they’re pushing for the voting compact that would award votes based on the popular vote.
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My sad, pessimistic answer: Corporations hold too much power, and our society is not shifting away from a place where money = power any time soon, so it will not be until real unfixable damage is done that our society attempts real change. Only once our former coastlines are 30 feet under water will a corporation even consider that it is a good idea to lower emissions. Even after that point, solutions to global warming will be commodified and the blame will be shifted onto a scapegoat, and companies will advertise themselves as your savior by selling you solutions.
At least in America. Other countries could affect real change right now, and might help their own countries in a non-Capitalist driven way.
It’s darker than that. They won’t try to solve climate change to make the water go back down. They’ll just shift to selling boats. Then only after they’ve made all the boat money will they try to push back the water to sell something else.
If there are no problems, there’s nothing to sell. This is the main problem with capitalism that demands never-ending growth. People already have everything they need. Without creating new problems, you can’t sell new solutions. If the state solves all the problems then there’s no more growth, just sustainability.
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Right, and they won’t make less toxic smog, we will get Spaceballs Air in a Can. And respirators.
The system is fundamentally screwed up, and I think there is actually only one solution towards massive change:
General strikes until every law is rewritten to take away corporation’s power.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we’re actually gonna get folks to do a general strike again because corporations have spent years demonizing and ruining unions to make people hate the very concept of strikes.
I’m really starting to think unless there is a second blue wave with real teeth in two years that the only solution is violence, which will not happen or will end badly because most liberals bought the lie that guns and violence are always bad period and you’re in the moral wrong if you fight.
It will end badly because the state and its police are heavily militarized using weapons and arms/armor that normal citizens can’t get. Even if the left went and “gunned up” we still would accomplish nothing and lose everything.
I don’t think it’s a matter of armament or even training it is a matter of attitude and conviction and willingness to face death that much of the left lacks. But I have been roundly shouted down in this forum before on my opinions on that matter so I won’t get into it again.
See also: bulletproof backpacks instead of gun control.
No corporation has the public’s best interests at heart. Not one.
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I mean… The ones named Public Benefit Corporations might have an argument.
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You’re not wrong. There is a lack of a desire to fight to the death to help the downtrodden. You’re correct on that front.
But ignoring that arming ourselves and fighting is a losing prospect is a failure to accept reality. Until the thing that we need to fight isn’t the government itself with the military police state behind it, fighting is not the answer. Unless you know of a way to get around literal tanks that civilians have access to.
Interesting read:
On the one hand, I like how FiveThirtyEight separated the Democratic Party into six “wings.” On the other hand, a part of me thinks that their definitions have as much to do about age as they do about ideology. Are the “Super Progressives” just younger members of the “Very Progressives?” Are the “Progressive New Guard” just younger more “woke” versions of the “Progressive Old Guard?”
Regardless, this made for an interesting read.
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Eh. Problem is that the democrats are a coalition of “anyone who doesn’t want the republican bullshit.” They will eat their own and subdivide on individual talking points once they have power. I feel like that’s almost guaranteed. That’s something fascists and republican politicians in general get. They are way better at the all or nothing rhetoric game. In reality I genuinely wish we were debating the specific merits of AOC’s green deal, but we’re not. For the time being, just don’t lose sight of the end-goal.
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Look at the tactics used by Middle Eastern insurgents, particularly in Afghanistan, since the 70’s through today. You can build anti-armor munitions from steel pipe, copper sheet and commercial grade explosives.
Are we back on violent revolution in the states?
Think the troubles and you’ve got the right idea, not the same, but it’s the closest I can think of.
Car bombs, mortars and, just plain old people with guns vs the state. The only reason the side that isn’t the state doesn’t lose immediately is because the harder problem is trying to find them among the regular people.
Precisely. People think Civil War II will be a stand up war like the 1800’s when really it will be The Troubles or the Iraqi Insurgency or the Mujahadeen against the Soviets. I would even venture to guess that like those situations sympathetic nations would provide military aid.
I think that may raise the question: at what point does right-wing terrorism’s rise actually mark the start of the American Troubles? Because it’s been something that’s been slowly bubbling up for a while now.