librehab

"Why is it we live in a democracy but our schools and jobs are dictatorships?"

People on the right are not working in good faith. There is no series of words you could say to any Republican politician, or most "regular conservatives," that would make them understand the error of their ways and move to the left. They believe that the way that society is ordered, or was ordered in some imagined past, is the way it must be ordered. And while there may be people in power above them that they are subservient to, they are not at the bottom of the social order either, and they must protect their place in the existing structures of power. The suffering and pain that they inflict on others is not out of a misguided attempt to make the world a better place. The suffering and pain is the point; to keep those that they believe ought to be below them in line, to put those who have gotten out of line back in their place, or to eradicate those who might upset the social order they seek to protect.

And liberals will join those on the right if something threatens their comfort.

"What if I told you that liberals aren't leftists and that there are actual leftists out there, and they're pretty cool?"

"You're not the only one who feels this way."

"It's okay to be angry."

My dad was your typical "centrist" republican and I was raised not to have opinions on things. The idealized man in my home was basically Eco's ur-fascist. All of my communications with friends were monitored. One time I got in trouble for being gay because I wasn't homophobic enough in turning down my friend's advances. That sort of home.

The one thing I'd hammer into my young head is that nobody else knows what the fuck they're talking about, either, and that goes double for anyone who claims otherwise. Just trust yourself to do what's right and it'll be fine. You might make mistakes, you might do the wrong thing sometimes, you might make people upset on occasion, but whatever, at least you're making an effort. The desire to help others regardless of their "worth" doesn't make you weak.

imo there is nothing I could say to my old self to speed up the process. My whole move away from liberalism and into communism was gradual, but also punctuated by several real life moments that can't be instilled in a person through words.

I thought Jon Stewart pointing out right wing hypocrisy would surely change minds, if only I could show it to them. So I'd tell 2004 jimmy that shit doesn't matter, at all. Enjoy the laughs but it's not doing anything

"Isnt it weird how Finland has apparentely never done anything wrong? Remember that one punk looking dude in school who was talking about finnish concentration camps? Yeah look into that a bit. Oh also look into this transgender stuff a bit too, trust me."

Listen, I know it's tough right now, first Bernie drops out and now this dumb bitch can't even win, but I promise you, I promise you.

This is one of the funniest things that happens in your life :feast:

"You're a girl idiot!"

That the bad things that keep getting done by people in power aren't accidents, failures, ignorance, etc. this is how they want things to be. And they will make things as bad as they need to if the price is right and we let them

Also, protesting that is not peaceful is not bad or "hurting their cause"

"get the fuck off of 4chan, it's giving you brain damage and making you unlikable"

"read these articles and books by trans people. you might see yourself in them"

"read more feminist/queer/anti-racist literature so that you can stop being a shithead to the people around you"

i was already on the path towards leftism in high school i dont really think that i needed an extra push towards communism. but i was an edgy, stupidpol-esque asshole and i wish i wasnt. also my life would be a lot easier rn if i'd realized i was trans in high school instead of in my mid 20's

US hegemony was never about exporting democracy, it has always been about clearing the way for western capitalists to exploit other countries.

The Supreme Court is not an effective check and balance on the power of Congress, it's a bulwark against progress.

The Democratic party is also captured by corporate interests.

The democrats aren’t stringing along the centrists and winking and nodding to you, you are the one being strung along

your democracy is a sham, and here's why | halim alrah

Nothing political. I became a leftist aged 14 because of the Great recession hitting my family hard. Material conditions are the easiest way to get radicalized.

I suppose I could tell young Gos about asexuality. That'd spare me some pointless stuff a few years ago. And to not get hooked on sugar, but I doubt I'd listen.

However, I am a believer that the steps made that led me to become the person I am today shouldn't really be changed if magically given the chance to. Despite my bad mental health, I'm not actually unhappy with how I am as a person. Beyond my physical health that is.

Death to America is the correct position and you've got a lot of reading to do to get there

I would have told teenage liberal me to do my homework, wash my hands (gross I know), treat women like human beings, stop gaming, and stick up for people. One of my biggest regrets from my high school days is doing nothing when my friends made fun of vulnerable people. In elementary school I was one of those people, in high school I moved up to being mostly on the sidelines rather than in the crosshairs.

I probably wouldn’t have listened because my parents were already telling me most of these things (on the rare occasions when we actually spoke to each other). The thing that I think ultimately radicalized me as an adult was interacting with democratic party officials in person. So I would tell myself to do that repeatedly in order to quickly learn from experience that no democrat is on your side. Sometimes politicians would even visit our school for like civic engagement events, but they were never democrats, only weird republican candidates who had no chance of winning. This was in a blue area too.

Also, there was one communist in my school. He was an acquaintance, but I would tell teenage me to spend more time hanging out with him.

use deoderant

Using inclusive language doesn’t mean you’re inclusive unless it aligns with your actions

i was never a liberal

I would probably just tell myself what I naturally did, but I would emphasize it's importance because I think it would make the transition a bit faster.

"Pay attention to why things are not working and learn from it."

This is something liberals refuse to do. They do not allow themselves to learn. I naturally found myself becoming more radicalized because I realized how broken the electoral process and political discourse was. I started seeing the news as laced with propaganda. Increasingly, I noticed that going left was never a viable option presented as a mainstay platform. Starting from an apolitical stance to being a leftist took a span of a few years, but what is wild to me is how stupid the mass populace of Americans are by simply not paying attention to the fruitlessness merry-go-round they so passionately ride on. I noticed particularly from the Democratic party that their entire political philosophy is contradictory. Republican philosophy actually makes more sense... its just pure evil. In a way I view Democrats as just "soft" Republicans that believe the same things but they are troubled by their conscience.

Anymore the conclusion I have reached is that liberals are deep down fascist, they just don't understand politics well enough to realize it.

You’ll never find a job or a career that makes it feel like you’re free under capitalism.

30/70 is good enough. Spend 70% of the time finding the people you blossom up with and keep 30% as acquaintances even if they are flawed, you will live life in proximity and seeing how they change is quite important to understanding what kind of political action works.

If you apply one set of standards, then you ought to apply it at first uniformly. If people don't talk about torture in the US, then they don't really care that torture is bad, they care about who it hits (not them, but the "other", the cruelty is the point) and that they are allied with the people doing the torturing.

Also: Don't try to convince people that can't be convinced, try to find out who to talk with matters. Of course you can explain, but you can't change minds, for that people must experience different social or material relations and events. I.e. be bullied by 70% of their co workers to join the union that is striking and join the strikes.

Finally people who are privileged and don't have to work for their money and come from privileged families have fun applying moral standards to your actions that they themselves won't follow. I.e. as student telling everyone how bad it is to work for bad corp and then working for one of the worst property companies on Earth.

You never actually did the work of thinking about and reconciling your politics, you just found a comforting rationalisation with enough contrarian window dressing to not look into the contradictions.

Also you aren't smarter for having one view or the other, it doesn't work that way

A ton of things (Let's say I'm talking to 6th grade me)

This list is mostly not-particularly-political

• Start fucking lifting. Bullies and fascists are one in the same, get strong and they will back down without you needing to throw a single punch. But take up some boxing so if you have to, you can publicly humiliate them and get them to back off. Plus bodybuilding will make you like the way you look better and give you some much needed confidence.

• Oh my fucking God learn how to dress. Again, this is a matter of getting people to respect you so you can at least be better socially well-adjusted. Just follow some fashion guides on /fa/ and then order some stuff off of Uniqlo that actually fits you.

• Speaking of which, get a non-vidya hobby that you love. It can even be vidya-adjacent like coding. This will give you something to talk about, and will help you with learning to relate to others and learn to be less awkward.

• See if you can get therapy in middle school, it WILL save you a FUCKTON of grief. The school counselors are ableists that probably only got these jobs so they can passively bully neurodivergent kids (to show how bad it is, one "counselor" suggested to me and my parents that I should just silently put up with the bullying I got.). With that being said, still when you follow tip number one, kick the bully's ass.

• You're bi lol. There's this guy you will understand, let's call him Dave. Ask him out.

• When you get to college, just major in bioinformatics and minor in art. Saves you a world of trouble.

• if you're going to lurk on 4chan, just stick to the hobby boards. /r9k/ will give you a latent amount of baseline depression. Stop calling people "normies", it's not funny and makes you look like a dork.

Stop going to r\cth that place is full of libs

• Go get therapy. It's not as dangerous as you imagine and your life sucks because you're not going.
• Don't go to law school. You might have some pretentious fantasy of becoming rich and important but in reality you're going to end up a burnt-out dropout because of the dissonance between your leftist morals and becoming part of the system.
• Don't waste your time doing respectable politics. It will make you a burnt-out cynic. Join something radical or take the grill pill.
• You're bi and that's cool. Go have fun
• You can be a pretentious little prick at times. Chill the fuck out and stop being such a nerd.

There isn't a fantastical technological nerd rapture coming, younger Ulysses. And even if there was, it would be the stuff of nightmares for everyone involved, even the alienated isolated vampires ostensibly having the most to gain from their own misrule of the planet.

I'd just tell him that this is my ideology:

Not much, I became a communist at a pretty young age. I guess I would say that you're not wrong for thinking the world is shit and the current system sucks, and your therapist sucks for saying that's not true.

which past version though, honestly i'd be tempted to tell him to buy bitcoin or something i dunno. i trust my teenage self, he's a good kid, he just needs to get off 4chan and talk to girls i think. maybe he should beg his parents for a treadmill.

Read Zinn. Read Parenti. Read Fanon.

I was raised conservative so my journey was a long one, but by the time Obama was elected I was ready for the new new deal that he would certainly be leading the nation through, now that laissez-faire capitalism is so thoroughly discredited. I wasn't a true believer with Obama as an individual. I just thought that was the inevitable conclusion of those events. And I thought we'd be living in social democracy by now, though I didn't know the term, and I thought I'd have guaranteed healthcare and be able to take a train somewhere by now. Knocking that fantasy out of my brain would have taken about six years off the journey. Around 2014 was when I really gave up on the dead end democratic party and realized they just didn't want to do any of this stuff.

"There are no uncorrupted institutions. Everything in the government is regulatory capture."

"Racism never died, its not in the past, you're thinking racist things right now but nobody framed anything less than "KKK burning crosses and shouting n****r" as being racist so you didn't know."

"Transgender and transvestite are not the same thing you goober."

"You're stuck right now thinking that what you consume is maximum expression of your politics, beliefs, etc. Even after realizing this, you will still find yourself doing it."

"Telling people the correct thing isn't a magic spell that breaks them out of bad thought. Food, water, shelter, medical care, family, community are the driving forces behind the beliefs that you and your neighbors express. When those aren't being met, bad thoughts flourish. When those are met in surplus, bad thoughts wither."

"All the 'correct' ways that you are supposed to live your life so that you will get the 'good stuff' don't work. Maybe they worked in the past, but they don't work now. Hard work doesn't pay. Your bosses aren't to be trusted, no matter how nice they are in the moment. College doesn't mean a stable and moderately well paying job."

I was born poor and conservative, I grew up with poor black/hispanic people and even my close friends were in poverty. It still took a very long time to break what my parents were telling me versus what I was seeing. I feel like what would of changed my mind quickest was having more interactions with rich people, I never really experienced people outside of my class until I was past 18.

They don’t see Joe Lieberman as the problem, they see YOU as the problem.

I don't think anything would have helped - as in, trying to talk sense to old me. I came to being on the left as a last resort. I needed multiple personal tragedies coupled with years of mounting evidence in order to see what had been in front of me the whole time. As I've stated in the past, it's crazy how far left I've drifted considering by any measurement of our cultural paradigm I've supposedly "made it."

That being said, I do wish my eventual acceptance of leftist perspective would have happened sooner. Mentally and emotionally, I'm the most free I've ever been since I went hog out Dirtbag Left only to then further read texts and theories and listen to voices who have either in the past articulated, or are now articulating, our exact challenge as proletariats. Knowing this I don't "need" good liberals to win because I know no such thing exists. These constructs around us are all bullshit and I can see through them.

I find solace in the struggle and the stories I read here. This is where I find my sanity. Well this and a few swigs of whiskey.

honestly nothing "political". I cant imagine a timeline where I dont become a full communist by senor year of high school. I probably would say "gods not real. demand to go to a psychiatrist, go on a hunger strike if you must. you're bisexual and nonbinary, get a tumblr account. lie to your parents. dont come out until you move out. dont trust any white person ever they will all betray you ." edit I thought of a political one. "obama sucks look up Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki "

Read Parenti, Lenin, Marx, and Engels. Learn about the Bolshevik Revolution, Cuba, China, Vietnam, the Black Panthers, etc.

Obama will disappoint you. Bernie will disappoint you. AOC will disappoint you. Every Democrat will disappoint you. Join a Marxist org.

Probably would have told them to be trans mostly, since I was already on my way to reading theory and becoming a communist

"a liberal democracy will lead to the best outcomes for everyone, because it means everyone has a voice and can participate in decision-making" – that's a causal claim, you are claiming "if A, then B will follow" – and therefore it can be investigated empirically

but we have lots of examples of so-called democracies where poverty doesn't get solved, so the causal claim must be wrong

people think liberal democracy is the system that empowers the people. ok, well, look at liberal democracies, are the people thriving materially? are they able to effectively use the democratic system to get bread and healthcare?