Lol =)

In the last fifteen years, Republicans have been on the attack for everything Democrats do. They don’t pick and choose their battles. They are perpetually aggressive and now they have all three branches of government. No one has to care what suit Trump wears, but any excuse to make fun of him means your side is on the attack.

I think it’s some cultural thing where you wear black to funerals and no one but the bride wears white to weddings. Rules people made up to get mad at other people are bizarre and awful but I’ll use them to attack fascists any day of the week. edit: typo

One day I hope no one cares what people wear to a funeral, only that they show up. In the meantime if making fun of Trump this way contributes to Republicans losing elections I’m all for it.

It takes two seconds to make fun of him for it today. It’s just to exhaust his base of non-MAGA Republicans. Republicans have shown you can be on the attack for everything a person does, for the last fifteen years. Either be vocal or die in silence.

It’s not about shaming Trump. Like you say, he has no shame. It’s about exhausting his base. It takes a second to make fun of him for it.

It’s purely to be on the attack. Republicans showed for the last fifteen years if you’re performatively aggressive against the opposition eventually you get what you want.

You don’t have to hate Trump or his suit color. Just love democracy and socialism and the working class. If this gets some apolitical conservative people to not vote for the Republicans then awesome.

We’re living in a fascist dictatorship. If making fun of Trump for his blue suit makes Republicans lose in the midterms that’s all that matters. Anyone who seriously believes suit color matters at a funeral is living in a state of self-inflicted misery.

It is the US version. 🤷‍♀️

The difference is that ignorance is a real measurable quantity. Stupidity can’t be measured. If you can’t measure it isn’t real. There’s no way to measure general intelligence because we don’t understand what it is.

Knowledge is also a critical component of defeating fascism. The broken education system and lack of knowledge is intentional.

How does this theory apply to say, gay marriage or healthcare in America?

These are the counterexamples to the ratchet effect that demonstrate the theory is false.

What the ratchet effect fails to encapsulate about neoliberalism is that neoliberals are not blocking progress to the left. Neoliberals are intentionally moving too slowly to the left to make meaningful, systemic change.

Democrats move one step forward, Republicans move three steps back. So even though Democrats are moving us forward they do it so slowly that over multiple administrations we move backwards.

Democrats never bothered to codify Roe v Wade. Republicans aggressively pursued Supreme Court appointments. Democrats refused to remove the filibuster when RBG died. Republicans removed the filibuster to get their Supreme Court picks through the Senate.

Side note, it was Democrats for who removed the filibuster for most Presidential appointments, but not Supreme Court appointments. People tend to learn the wrong lesson for this as well. Republicans are bad faith actors. They are going to try to seize power no matter what Democrats do. The Democrats did not bring this upon themselves. Republicans did it.

This distinction, that the Democrats are moving too slowly not blocking progress, matters because it is a core appeal of neoliberalism. If neoliberals completely blocked progress as the ratchet effect claims, people would more readily reject neoliberalism. Instead neoliberalism allows for incremental progress which at a glance can seem appealing. What people who partially internalize neoliberalism fail to realize is that our problems our systemic. Incremental change is too slow to correct criminal justice, wealth inequality, or stop climate change.

In short we need a new meme. I’ve been thinking about two dancers moving slowly to a furnace on the right. Something like:

🚪 💃 🕺🔥

Where the dancer on the left keeps moving one step towards the exit while the dancer on the right takes three steps toward the furnace. This meme could probably use some work though or maybe a different approach altogether. I would definitely would like to hear people’s thoughts.

Leave your house, and interact with other humans face to face.

I do thanks.

You have “theoretical” knowledge, but no real world, interacting with real people knowledge.

My argument is informed by real interactions with real people including yourself.

OK, you’re sucking your own d#$k, and I’m done with it. The “Well, akshully…” thing is a meme for a reason. And not a good one.

Read my argument. It will take a few minutes of your time. Then you will have an informed opinion to critique it.

Critical thinking is a skill. Anyone can learn it. We can measure a person’s ability by giving them tests and throwing a wide array of problems at them.

Smartest implies general intelligence which we do not know how to measure. There is no test. IQ tests are a cultural knowledge test designed to marginalize and ostracize Black people masquerading as general intelligence tests.

Regardless it is not even a case of not having critical thinking skills in all cases. But refusing to apply those skills in certain contexts.

The smartest people can effectively have blind spots where they suspend these critical thinking skills for personal, moral, or ethical reasons that allow them to support amoral, unethical, and rapacious practices or outcomes without consciously choosing to embody these qualities themselves.

edit: Also, even with what you read it should be evident that your critique of my argument is a straw man.

The smartest people DON’T lack critical thinking skills.

My argument is not that they lack those skills, although they could in theory.

My argument you claimed to have read is this:

They demand that you suspend critical thinking.

It is thankfully the vast majority of the time a case of being unwilling. People can change their minds, but it takes time. The better outcomes for society and the planet depended on convincing people to change their minds as soon as possible.

This summarizes the bulk of my essay comment.

TLDR Neoliberalism and fascism are puzzles that can be solved so that people look for actual solutions to their problems. The problem for us is how to reach and educate everyone.

And people still fall for it.’

That’s because it isn’t an intelligence test. The smartest people you know can fall for these ideologies. They demand that you suspend critical thinking. Religion instills this in people and all the fascist has to do is convince a person their ideology falls under that umbrella of suspended critical thinking.

But it goes further than that. Because people need not be religious in order to fall for these ideologies either. There is wide spread acceptance of neoliberal ideas in the Western world that causes a person to reject socialism out of hand. You’ve probably heard socialism doesn’t work at one point or another, but probably heard little to support this thesis beyond the Soviet Union collapsed.

Many people have partially internalized neoliberalism without considering it’s implications and accepted those flaws as virtues. For example, a core principle of neoliberalism is that our societies’ institutions, whether they be political or economic, are near flawless and beyond reproach. According to the neoliberal it is not the systems that need to change, but the people leading the systems.

This walls people, who have accepted this idea, off from the majority of progressive and socialist policies which call for systemic change and wealth redistribution respectively. And it leaves them open to a relevant fascist idea. Rather than only changing the people running the system, change the people living within the system. This of course means genocide in the form of mass deportations and when that fails to be feasible mass executions.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, THEY have fucked you over.”

This is a much easier idea for a population, that has been living under neoliberal rule since 1981, to accept than the alternatives. Alternatives that would inherently involve restructuring society to be more inclusive both politically and economically. Such as but not limited to abolishing the electoral college, amending the constitution so that representation in Congress is proportional to the population, the redistribution of billionaire wealth through both taxation and mandated worker owned corporations. These ideas are workable alternatives to fascism, but they are a fundamental restructuring of our society.

Beyond the inherent opposition from the owner class, military industrial complex, Republican Party, the right-wing infosphere the challenge is resolving the partially internalized neoliberal ideology in people’s minds. To even begin to rethink a person’s relationship to society in terms of work, government, and other people, a person has to understand that these are up for rethinking. Another prevalent neoliberal idea is that we live at the end of history and all social, political, and economic problems have been solved.

If you benefit from the neoliberal society enough it can be trivial to ignore the people who have fallen through the cracks. But under a casual examination it becomes evident that injustice is still prevalent all over the world and that history did not end because politicians said it did. Even under the worst projected outcomes of climate change there will still be people. But unless a person fully internalizes that this neoliberal narrative that we live at the end of history is false, it can be difficult to see the impetus to meaningfully and rapidly change society.

Thankfully, the challenge is not be to be intelligent enough, as we don’t even understand general intelligence enough to measure it. Even a rejection of fascism after fully internalizing the ideology and its self-destructive implications, while necessary, is still insufficient. In addition to a rejection of fascism, the challenge is for enough of the population to have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to full internalize neoliberalism as a sales pitch for the scam that is late-stage capitalism and reject it. This is what it takes to even have the open-mindedness needed to fully internalize socialism and progressivism as viable solutions to our problems.

On a side note, the idea that intelligence determines success or failure of a population with fascism is derived from our cultural obsession with intelligence. Everyone knows if you’re a ‘genius’ and make a breakthrough for a corporation like Google, Facebook, or Amazon you make it rich. The only reason we care about being rich is because we know that all of our needs will be met in this society. The reason we know that is because we live in a capitalist society that only cares about profit for the owner class. So the only a main reason we care about intelligence is because we live in a capitalist society where if we make our corporate overlords wealthier we can have a slice of the pie.

So I explained the essence of the problem. But now here’s the problem. Maybe I’ve successfully convinced you or someone with this argument. Or maybe you’ve solved the fascist and neoliberal puzzles yourself. However you got here, to these conclusions, the challenge becomes an issue of scale. How do we convey this understanding to a national population of 340 million people and global population of 8 billion people before the fascist death camps are in full swing and/or climate change gets us. This is a logistical and educational problem that needs to be solved as soon as possible. edit: typos and clarification

The MAGA movement is a cult. Don Jr, the eldest son of the cult leader, is telling the other cultists this author is excommunicated from the cult. Thus the cultists know to ignore anything relating to this topic and can continue their blind devotion in peace.

The fascists will do what they want either way. They only use laws when it is convenient for them to do so.

What the fascists wanted was to be legitimized by bipartisan support of their bill. They wanted the Democrats to consent in advance. To take the next small step willingly.

Chuck Schumer has handed the country over to the fascists in exchange for nothing because he serves the same billionaires.

There wasn’t a sudden realization from Schumer that flipped his opposition on Wednesday to his support on Thursday. That was his obvious cover to try to hide the billionaires he serves. Don’t fall for it.

Whoever controls the messaging can blame the other party for the shutdown. Democrats don’t bother to even have a narrative let alone control one. They fight in a strictly performative way. So no matter what happens Republicans can always blame Democrats and without an alternative view point pushed people who aren’t politically engaged are more likely to believe Republicans.

The ten Democrat Senators who voted for the CR do not care about winning. They care about raising their donors’ stock portfolios.

The Democratic strategists predictably have both learned nothing from this losing this election and are planning on shifting the party to the right. Accelerationism is useless. There was no leverage over the Democrats, instead they are going to chase after moderates and conservatives who voted. If we are lucky enough to have another election, please vote and encourage other people to vote.

The ratchet effect is incorrect because it fails to describe the actual dynamic at play. Neoliberals move one step forward while fascists move three steps back. A fascist power grab followed by a neoliberal’s incremental changes appear to the causal observer as the ratchet effect.

The solution is not to disparage the democratic process, thereby denying ourselves the chances of ever getting progressive or socialist agendas implemented. But to recognize it is nonviable to ever allow fascists to win. Especially when you only have neoliberals to replace them with.

I should have come up with this sooner, but it really takes seeing the sword of Damocles overhead that is impending fascism to not give a shit what others think of you.

It is not useful for Harris to call the genocide a genocide because it would hurt her chances of being elected. If Trump is elected instead of Harris, the genocide will continue until all Palestinians are dead.

Since we want the genocide to end before all Palestinians are dead it is not useful to demand that Harris calls the genocide a genocide because that hurts the chances of the genocide ending while Palestinians are still alive.