Yep yep yep. You heard it here. The defining feature of the American conservative movement for the past 50 years has been its insistent that principles matter more than power. Just principled af and completely uninterested in power, that’s what everyone says about conservatism.

Handed out over 100 DSA flyers to libs at No Kings NYC and I cannot put into words how eminently winnable these people are for the left. I expected a mostly positive reception, got a universally positive reception. Anyone saying this is an anti-left thing is way out of touch.

I can explain it in 73: “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” —Richard Nixon

Recruited a number of people to DSA related work or the organization outright. Fairly wide sentiment of frustration over not knowing what to do next from people I talked to. Couple people noted that it seemed performative and were excited to plug into long term campaigns.

This is the right way to approach these big liberal-organized protests. Join up, have a strong principled message, tell anybody who tries to water you down to fuck off

i believe we made the right decision by endorsing this event and mobilizing to it. in the future i think we can do so in an even more coordinated fashion, being even clearer about our socialist politics. There are millions of people at these rallies across the country.

!!!

The thing is, even if it was from the leadership, the millions of ordinary people who are actually filling out the ranks are just your local middle-aged people in the habit of voting for the most left-liberal candidate the Dems offer and feeling frustrated about it. Go get them.

every report back from DSA comrades who went and flyered indicates that many attendees were receptive to socialist messaging and eager to have an org to plug into as a next step. lotta people out there are aimless but open to more radical politics. we just gotta go organize them!

“British food is the best.”

I think we should all m collectively agree that if anyone says this and doesn’t immediately follow up with some idea of the mechanism we use to make a general strike happen, they forever forgeit their right to having their opinions taken seriously.

Not an insightful point but far and away the most cynical human on earth. Pathologically and consciously dishonest, cruel, playing to the cheap seats, all somehow mixed with Yale lawyer Well, Actually smarm.

genuine lol but its pretty widely known in environmentalist circles by now that if you just allow beavers to build dams they do it in exactly the places you'd want to do it to restore wetlands. extremely consistently.

Fascism was always, from its inception, a petulant, rebellious stance against liberal humanism.

Been seeing a lot of QTs of this. Haven’t seen anyone unpack the work “poorly historicized” is doing.

And correcting that perception does involve actually talking to the people who think that!

Trumpism is a far more accurate representation of what conservatism has been throughout history than what we consider to be mainstream conservatism. The 1945-2015 period where conservatives merely pursued right-wing goals within liberal parameters is a fluke in historical terms.

Pretty incontestable IMO that what he's describing is an ingroup that explicitly shares--and frequently vocalizes--the assumption that they are smarter than everybody else, not an ingroup that actually is smarter than everybody else

This person claimed that no one disputes Hitler was bad, and the replies are full of his followers disputing that Hitler was bad. You really can't understand modern fascism without grasping this trick they've learned of saying stuff they simultaneously believe and know is false.