ToastedPlanet

The rule of law means that no one is above the law, not even the president. If the president is above the law then we do not have the rule of law. Being labeled a felon is the idea of a punishment, but since there are no consequences to this sentencing there is no punishment.

At least imposing a fine would have been consistent with precedent. At that point it would have been an issue with our laws being to lenient. That would have been a much more easily remedied problem than doing away with the rule of law, a founding concept of modern western civilization.

The rule of law was dead when the Supreme Court ruled presidents have immunity for core constitutional responsibilities and presumed immunity for official acts in Trump v. United States. This is another nail in the coffin.

If this is the lesson a majority of people learn we will be ruled by fascists for more than the next four years. Refusing to exercise power is self-defeating and will not inspire any revolutions. If we let things get worse they will get worse, because there is no floor to how bad things can get.

The same is pretty much true with my family as well. However thanks to the internet we have access to a larger subset of people than just our families.

It isn't a system we should want to continue anyway. Immigration should be an opportunity for equality, not indentured servitude.

That's the thing. It's not enough to only be against something, although we still need to do that too. We have to be for something. We should definitely pick things we would be happy with too.

Thinking back to school, I had an ethics teacher ask the class what we thought the meaning of life is. The consensus from the class was whatever we believe. Then our teacher asked a follow up, in that case, what do we believe it means. No one had an answer.

We need to decide what we believe is important to us, what we value, and then figure out the most useful strategy to making that reality. We want to dismantle hierarchies, but that means thinking about what our lives would be without those hierarchies.

Right now, people are being told to imagine a world without certain groups of people, on the false promise that the elimination of people will improve their lives. We need to get people to imagine a world without certain classes of people. The elimination of class will give us economic freedom so that we will have the means to improve our lives.

Put a hold on that popcorn. It's not a civil war. Elon and Trump are in agreement. What's happening is some MAGA supporters are going through the five stages of grief. They seem to be somewhere around anger and bargaining. Trump conned his supporters like he conned his employees before them. Now Trump supporters are working their way to accepting Trump was always going to enrich himself and billionaires at their expense.

Now would be a good time to start pulling people away from MAGA. People need an alternative. Taking the wealth of billionaires as well as the source of their wealth would be a good start. Not to mention systemic change to our government's institutions.

There can more than one lesson to learn from an election. Democrats need a populist narrative to push a progressive and socialist agenda. Leftists need to learn to exercise power and keep fascists out of power. The only way to get the DNC to stop being neoliberal is to co-opt the party the way MAGA did to the Republicans. Not voting lets the fascists win and allows the Democratic Party to shift to the right.

We had the ability to stop Trump's second term, but we failed to counteract the spread of accelerationist propaganda and impress the need to exercise power on the behalf of underprivileged people. No amount of fuck ups from the Democrats and their consultants justifies refusing to use our only tool to win political power during elections.

Only if we assume the only way to convince people of anything is to brainwash them as children. I would like to give people more credit than that. People can be convinced that they're wrong, but it takes time. To that end, it's useful to be vocal sooner rather than later.

With 4B in South Korea I think it was bad from the start and not a case of co-opting. With people championing 4B in the US it's a case of it's still new, but unfortunately has roots in a bad movement. Hopefully 4B in the US will reject the terf aspect of 4B in South Korea, but that will take work.

And socialists too! =)

The main issue is that 4B in South Korea specifically is a manosphere esq movement for woman. It ends up with the same reactionary bent to it as it is not about equality but separation. It ended up with terf rhetoric as well.

Here's some articles to read:

https://www.them.us/story/how-4b-actually-leaves-trans-people-behind

https://time.com/7177557/4b-us-women-resisting-patriarchy-essay/

Shepherd, who is trans, notes that the many South Koreans participating in 4B have developed hateful anti-trans, anti-gay views, given the “bioessentialist ideology” that places immense import on child-bearing as a marker of womanhood. “Korean women aren’t transphobic or homophobic, I have friends there and they love me and my transness,” he adds. “I’m saying that the most stalwart members of the 4B movement, those who champion it the most passionately, usually fester in queerphobic forum spaces like Womad. This wasn’t intentional in the creation of the 4B movement, but a separatist movement based in biological essentialism is a movement that can very readily foster that environment.”

To clarify when I refer to leftists I mean, from left to right on the political spectrum, anarchists, anarcho-communists, communists, socialists, democratic-socialists, social democrats, and progressives. Of people with these political positions probably democratic-socialists, social democrats, and progressives were among the leftists that voted for Biden in 2020 in the greatest numbers.

Authoritarian communists or tankies are not leftists, but red fascists. They occupy the same position on the political spectrum as fascists and of course didn't vote for Biden. Both red fascism and fascism are the same in that they both build hierarchies and then start killing people at the bottom of those hierarchies. The fascists build racial hierarchies. The red fascists build ideological hierarchies. Neither qualify as leftists because leftists want to deconstruct hierarchies.