I'm an old school Southern Democrat. I'm Progressive and extremely to the left of modern Democrats. I believe that everyone is entitled to a standard of living and that includes a home and a mode of transportation and a mode of communication and a way to provide for themselves. I hate how the New Southern vision was sabotaged by Reagan and the Republican Party. We could've had a more inclusive and diverse South. I'm from the Gulf Coast. When I was growing up the Gulf Coast was the last bastion of Southern Democratic dominance. Republicans have taken over our area and corrupted the minds of our people. Southern Democrats are often seen as a monolith but just like the overall Democratic Party it was a big tent. I believe we can revive the Progressive tradition in the South but it's going to take effort.
I was hoping for a conversation, not a pile-on. I still believe there is room for different kinds of progressive and Democratic traditions, including Southern ones and I would have much rather had a thoughtful discussion about that.
I watched your tiktoks. I can say some constructive things about them. I think you won't mind because you posted your real name on hexbear multiple times.
Many of your videos focus on the topic of "narcissism". In a lot of your videos, you talk about grievances and societal problems, such as sexism, racism, etc. In the videos, you posit that these problems are caused by "narcissism". I think you mean selfishness.
The theory that you propose in the videos is that the society problems are caused by "narcissism", which I think you mean selfishness or moral failing. I would like to propose that you take this idea and imagine it upside down. Instead of bad human behavior causing material problems, the material system is what causes bad human behavior.
A company is selfish if they withhold your pay. They withhold your pay because it benefits them materially. The selfishness is the product of the action, not the enabler of the action.
Why does this distinction matter? You can't create a society that forces people to not be selfish. You can make a society that doesn't have the mechanisms which enable selfishness. As long as the bourgeoisie continues to exist, the bourgeoisie will try to exploit the proletariat. As long as wage labor exists, then wage labor exploitation exists.
I would also say that morals are subjective but exploitation is objective. Whether someone is "narcissistic" or selfish, is immaterial. Whether someone commits exploitation is measurable. Working towards a society without exploitation is a material goal. Working towards a society without "narcissism" is an idealist goal. I'm putting "narcissism" in quotes because the word seems too much like psychiatrist language.
The 4 minute video about beards being a sign of toxicity was funny.
About the "southern democrat" thing. You acknowledge that there was a party swap in the 1960s. The thing you don't really mention is why there was a party swap in Southern US in the 1960s.
In the 1960s, the republican party adopted a policy called 'Southern Strategy', this meant being racist against black people. The thing that made Southern Democrats change to be Republicans was appeals to racism. This means that Southern Democrats cared more about being racist than progressive prior to changing parties. If a more racist party existing is what caused 'Old Southern Democrats' to switch parties, that would mean Old Southern Democrats were racists. When you say "old school Southern Democrat", people are hearing "democrat plus segregation", It wasn't just Dixiecrats or Strom Thurmond, it was the entire South that was segregated.
Lyndon B. Johnson, in the 1960s Tennessee said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Southern Democrat voters in the 1960s switched parties because they decided that hurting black people was more important than helping themselves.
The truth is that the economy of the Southern US has always been propped up by an underclass of labor. There was slave plantations prior to the so-called abolition of slavery. After the abolition of slavery, the underclass of labor in the south was Jim Crow Segregation, Prison Labor, and undocumented immigrants.
I'm not saying that you are racist. I know that you've said that take on certain labels because you had family members that you liked who taught you about certain people. This might be hard to hear, you need to apply criticism to your own beliefs and labels when you learn new information. You don't have to feel bad. You don't have to apologize to anyone. If your beliefs and labels have contradictions, you should correct yourself. You don't have to tell anyone that you corrected yourself.
Idols should be people who accomplished good things, not because they said good things. We read Lenin because he accomplished a successful socialist revolution, not just because he said good things.
You made a few threads about the South not having public transportation. Have you considered why the Southern US doesn't have transportation? The South doesn't have public transportation because of segregation. The city planners in the South made areas hard to navigate so that black people would be separated from white people. That and the car industry makes profits forcing every person to drive a car.
You can't just say that it would be good for the South to have public transportation and expect it to manifest from that. You have to explore and address the material reasons why the South doesn't have public transportation.