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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Left-wing scrutiny of the Squad and particularly Representative Ocasio-Cortez has steadily veered from constructive criticism and needed pressure to a kind of caricaturish vitriol.

    Jacobin is clearly panicked by the possibility that the Outsider Left might not actually inherit the Democratic Party’s mantle, but seems unwilling to ask why or to suggest a solution.

    This op-ed consists of hand-waving apologetics that glaze over AOC’s often neoliberal voting record with feel-good references to, for example, the legacy of the failed Green New Deal, and it reads like an excuse.

    Perhaps Jacobin is merely attempting to convince itself, but an injunction to think of “the health of the socialist and broader progressive movements” feels pathetic at the end of an article that’s largely failed to defend the socialist Wunderkinder against the leftist critique that they’re all just regular old Democrats now.

    It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days.

    Is it really, though? AOC and her ilk further their careers by happily selling their politically-profitable, “socialist” personas to a tragically hoodwinked outer-left constituency that’s just hopeful for meaningful change.

    See ya at the next Met Gala, AOC.






  • Ok, good for you, but that’s beside the point.

    This article is reactionary, leftist apologetics for yet another “socialist” politician who’s being publicly called out because her political actions don’t really line up with her professed progressive views.

    She’s clearly a decent enough politician, and yeah, she’s willing to compromise, but she’s also 1) disingenuously representing herself as something that she’s not, or 2) not self-aware enough to realize that she’s a social democrat and not a democratic socialist.

    Either way, her behavior doesn’t line up with her professed leftism, but does increasingly align neatly with standard, neoliberal Democratic policy. She’s become a part of the establishment, and got there by riding the anti-establishment, socialist sentiment in young people. Not sure how that could be considering anything but problematic.



  • It absolutely is hero worship any time someone is put on a pedestal and their flaws are ignored.

    That’s what the author of the linked article has explicitly done. He waves away the fact that she consistently defers to Democratic Party leadership—except for occasional, “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion” that she’s a hard-line leftist—and then holds her up as the face of progressivism.

    If that’s not hero worship idk what is.

    Edit: spelling




  • Yup. It’s too easy to be “Christian” these days, which breeds complacency and corruption in a hierarchical religious system (which, by dint of its hierarchical structure and opportunity for abuse of religious ideals, already breeds complacency and corruption).

    When you legislate (bastardizations of) your religious precepts into law, at no point do you have to consciously “choose” to be Christian, at no point do you have to make the hard choice between, say, holding to your faith or having an abortion because you’re really, really not ready for a kid. It’s just not an option, and you’re forced to do what your Church says, which seems…un-Christian.

    Idk. I’ve been trying to workshop this thought—that living in a religious society results in half-baked, hypocritically-“religious” abominations that end up in office—rather than thoughtful, intentional participants in a diverse and thriving society that understand why they choose to live in one way and listen to their neighbors explain why they choose to live in another.

    The goal would be to use that approach to get Christians voting for legitimate freedom of choice, but idk if it’s even worth it at this point, it seems pretty impossible to sway them at times.

    Looking back at the early days of persecuted Christianity (Roman times) it seems like people were legitimately drawn to these communities because they looked out for each other in a way that others didn’t. Christians have come a long way from that, in a bad sense, and I wonder if the lack of (actual) persecution plays a part in that.





  • Idk, I counter the “God created Earth” argument with the Biblical injunction to Noah and his descendants to be good “stewards of creation” after the Great Flood, which usually works to end that line of flawed reasoning, at least.

    E.g., “God created the world, yes, but he gave humanity dominion over the Earth and trusted us to govern it well. We’ve been given 10 talents (aka gold coins), and when the Master returns we better have used the first to earn 10 more rather than bury them like the frightened servant or waste them like the prodigal son.”

    Maybe I’m too participatory, but you can sway religious peeps by arguing using the same framework they do. Worked pretty well on my Catholic parents, although they still question the “degree to which humanity is responsible for global warming,” meh.

    The efficacy also be dependent on which denomination of Christianity you’re arguing with, though, since the argument kinda relies on exercising free will and choosing to be responsible as part of the effort to go to heaven, which might not play super well with crazy predestination theology…

    As for the echo chambers, yeah, idk what to do about that.