ThereRisesARedStar

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You could post that on the DSA internal forums no problem. Is the subreddit a dsa official platform?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

And the "seeking" options are "masc" or "femme" or "both"

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children)

NYC DSA is a black mark on the organization. They are also doing it at a zionist nightclub

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

My PSL local showed up for 2 weeks before the election and didn't know how to talk to voters at a public event DSA was tabling weekly at. (So twice before the election, and they stopped coming when it was over) It made it a lot harder to actually have conversations with folks because they were already turned off.

I'll be real, if anyone is trying to run a 3rd party presidential candidate I immediately assume they're not worth taking seriously. I'd rather they just talk about their politics directly or through other campaigns rather than the presidential shit, it is an immediate red flag.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago

Dmitry Loza

I actually did some research on this a while ago, apparently soviet ammo used a more powerful explosive and that was why they detonated so frequently. So there was a trade off.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago
  1. Misgendering, sexual harassment
    spoilerI have to do a lot of interacting with the public as part of a socialist thing, and I've realized the hotter I look that day the more people go out of their way to misgender me.

So they're failing at making me feel bad about gender but I still feel icky because its literally just so fucking overtly trans coded sexual harassment

  1. I need to find a social space to use for dating but ugh, I've gotten so picky, except the folks whove made me picky are comrades and I don't date comrades! Ugh! I have a partner but sometimes there are aches that are outside their wheelhouse.

  2. Does anyone else get a really weird mix of dysphoria and euphoria while looking at Chappell Roan in drag? I'm trying to sort out my feelings there but getting swamped by "pretty gender-non-conforming lesbian ahhhh" when I try to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Doing things besides canvassing for democrats? Lots of chapters aren't interested in being a dog for the democratic party, and the national vibes are growing more skeptical as evidence mounts against the viability of change through democrats.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

after the revolution, begging the revolutionary gen alpha-ers to just shoot me instead of sentencing me to a late 2010s DSA convention roleplay

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think you're dismissing quantitative changes because you haven't seen qualitative changes yet. I understand wanting to wait for qualitative changes to not be skeptical, but as Marxists we also understand that qualitative changes are an accumulation of quantitative changes, and there is very clear evidence of quantitative changes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

dialectical materialism posits that qualitative changes occur through the accumulation of quantitative changes- for example, adding grains of sand will eventually produce a pile of sand- I think this runs contrary to what they're trying to argue though, so maybe I'm incorrect in what they're referencing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How do you stop the right factions from doing that? Stay out of the fight because the right factions are terrible? Like, 2/5s of the DSA right now is a way of deradicalizing folks back into supporting the democrats. It used to be almost all of the DSA, like how CPUSA is captured by democrats.

I think people are disillusioned by bourgeoise democracy and don't understand that the DSA has an actual democracy because they see DSA being shitty and assume it is irrevocably captured. The right faction aren't that connected to the democrats, it is more of a "notice me senpai" relationship where some of the leadership want NGO positions, and the right leadership's hold of their membership is really tenuous because they aren't actually invested in organizing their membership, they're interested in mobilizing to prove that they're good mobilizers to democrats, putting them at a massive long term disadvantage which we're exploiting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Most of the actually existing demcent parties weren't 'very democratic' by liberal standards. There was usually political education that was required for even basic entry (outside of provisional) unless you were engaged in direct militancy and then on top of that you were still usually beholden to the party bureaucratic structuring, that would affect how votes were cast. Organizations aren't perfect, they're people.

I def support political education as a requirement for vanguard/center purposes, but that isn't what this is about.

Context matters, when you are attempting maintain an anti-imperialist leftist org in the imperialist core, you have to maintain political cohesion and the only way to do that is through some level of top-down party control. Otherwise ultras (whom may or may not be feds) will come in, and they will ruin your shit (CPUSA specifically comes to mind).

Isn't CPUSA another example of an org that claims to be demcent but is just cent? Isn't this not a good example to use? Feds got up high in the internal structure and used their cent against them.

Most of the principled leftist orgs I know are in siege mode and focused entirely on education and getting people into places where they can be educated. Good or bad, that's where it's at atm. Honestly, I'm surprised the CC isn't in full control of the party management in the PSL.

PSL just straight up isn't in the illegal period. And even during the illegal period, the bolsheviks didn't enter "siege mode" If you're in siege mode now, what is PSL going to do when shit continues to get worse? Does PSL foresee a period where there is less political repression in the US than there is now?

It's not about 'hanging with the cool kids because soc-dems are sooooo annoying'. This isn't high school. It's about getting people who are interested into revolutionary education that acknowledges and understands the role of revolutionary defeatism, and the current and past revolutionary proletarian history of the U.S. And most socdems, and even baby leftists I know are not ideologically willing (and likely will never be willing) to sacrifice imperialism (particularly moral) if it comes at the cost of material comfort, which it always does, because that is not why people join the DSA.

  1. You're going to eventually have to talk about imperialism with not-particularly politically developed social democrats.

  2. "It's about getting people who are interested in..." to do what?

, I've seen how this works time and again, writ small. I don't have much hope for it writ large.

Literally be a historical materialist about it. The july 26 movement and the bolsheviks both emerged from and participated in less disciplined orgs, they didn't exile themselves. Can you name a successful vanguard of a movement that isolated themselves like US sects do?

 

I'm noticing a lot of people taking "you should read more about this, here are some book recommendations" as insulting their intelligence.

This is relevant because most USians lack a political education.

 

If you can't find a leftist book club, make one! And pick a book that resonates with your personal experiences, it will resonate with others too!

Or an essay!

Or a comic!

Or a show!

Or a movie!

I've started one with some friends and it is the most catharsis I've had in years. I also am involved in an org too, so it isnt just the "oh cool im actually doing something" itch being scratched. I think it has something to do with doing intellectual labor in a non-atomized setting. The fact that the book is marxist and is allowing us to articulate profound feelings we've always had about society and our place in it is a major bonus.

 

I've seen too much of this. No, the nazis and the Soviets were not equivalent.

Do. Better.

 

It is 2023 and DSA can't get its act together about apartheid being bad.

Christ.

 

spoilerWho's name is scratchy

 

So, you know the grand strategy 4x thing, explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. Kinda problematic. But I love them as a genre, and I love systems programming, sooo... been up to a little something something in my spare time. Look out for something in a few years! I have a schedule and I'm mostly sticking to it!

Wanted to run the premise and broad design brushstrokes by people for the good old ruthless critique.

Premise: Space setting, only humans, a bunch of terraforming ships got sent out after capitalists threw a tantrum at losing control of most of earth(okay, the mobs may have also been at their door, sent out colony ships and launched the nukes, earth cleanup efforts may or may not work out so the survivors are hedging their bets by sending out terraformers.

Terraforming ships get where they're going at a relatively slow pace, by the time they've gotten settled in, dysfunctional but much more powerful capitalist states form an encirclement around earth who they're still fighting on and off. Some of the other terraforming ships that flew only a relatively short distance away are now their vassals.

Throughout the game these powers try to establish an exploitative relationship with the player society and other societies, following the 4x paradigm (basically how players discover and interact with city states in civ6 but with much less whitewashing)

Players interact with other periphery countries in a more collaborative than expansionist way, although forming federations with various levels of centralization would be an option with very friendly countries, and countries that have been puppet dictatorshipped can be annexed(or left autonomous, and which decision the player makes will impact how they're viewed diplomatically)

Basic premise setting done, the core mechanics will be played with:

Explore: it is a two way street. If you know about someone, they probably now know about you. New planets to inhabit are terraformed, the rare planets with already existing ecosystems are much more valuable for scientific research. (And must be protected from the capitalists and there shortsighted profit motive) Part of the game will be limiting intel on your society by killing or capturing explorers in the early game, setting trade protocol and enforcing borders against spy attempts in the middle and late, some late game stuff I haven't figured out yet

Expand: there is a lot of space that can just be used more efficiently. Building tall is always an option, viable wide playstyles are mainly "we've adapted our society to live in desolate places that are too expensive for the capitalist bastards to dig us out of"

Exploit: all the resources that are extracted are either organic and recycle themselves once consumed with proper ecological management, or non-organic and need to be recycled. No infinite mining. Build options for "we can be a little irresponsible in the short term as we transition to a more sustainable system" and "we should do this the right way from the start" with the former being a little min-max-y but with a serious danger of being trapped in a destructive cycle that punishes the player.

Exterminate: capitalist powers are genocidal, to varying extents that suite their goals. No player options for being evil for the lulz, the worst you do is pack up colonists from the imperial core and send them home

I have more thoughts but I feel like I've rambled enough tonight (I had like, literally something with only a trace of alcohol but I have absolutely no tolerance)

Please let me know what you think, I'd really like to make a grand strategy game with explicitly communist themes, and I know the genre is kind of inherently unsuited for it but I'm trying to make it as least muddled as possible.

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