TreadOnMe

I like how they pretend that they were doing something before, and then they also pretend that voting is doing something.

This is horseshit. The fact of the matter is that we don't really know what a second Trump presidency will look like, or what particular foreign policies it will bring, because Trump is incredibly ideologically incoherent, even among right-wing nutjobs.

Yes, yes, jettison literally the most (and in my experience, at this point, only) active part of your coalition (specifically the liberal gay and trans people). That is good incrementalist strategy, and not an indication of future political intent or spinelessness.

Yes let's go talk to 'Cubans' (are you really Cuban if you haven't lived there in 60 years?) in Florida, who have completely mythologized their actions and suffering at this point.

Also, dude literally has an American flag in the background of his picture, very not serious person

Oh no, you're doing better than us economically? Time for a backstabbing!

I wonder how long it will take for them to actually make back as much money as they lost. You know, actually be 'profitable'.

Look, all I'm saying is they missed a PRIME chibi in a giant hat moment, and I am incredibly disappointed.

What you are asking for is a vastly different thing than 'I want the government to stay out of my business unless I am harming someone'. Every worker council constitutes an aspect of government, and if their judgements are legally binding, an element of the state. All of those determinations can and should be made by the workers directly involved in their production, however enforcement of those decisions and arbitration of those conflicts may require the use of the state apparatus.

Mostly you just seem confused.

Not to dogpile further, but you are, like most liberals (of which a libertarian is just yet another flavor of), getting into the weeds of policy without even figuring out the basics of even simplistic political philosophy, because so much of it has been taken for granted in your life.

Let's take this seemly simple statement "I want the government to generally leave me alone as long as I am not doing anything to harm anybody."

This is impossible, the statement of an idealist constitutionalist, which has no bearing on reality whatsoever. Why is this? Well, because someone has to define what constitutes 'harm'. If it is not you, then someone else will, which means that you can't leave government to passively sit. Well then, who can dictate what constitutes 'harm'? Of course the people who agree to the constitutional contract. Ok then, at what point do you get to decide your constitutional contract? What happens if two different constitutional agreements definitions of 'harm' are at odds with each other? Who is the arbiter then? How is that arbiter decided? What if there is a disagreement with the arbiter? How is that conflict settled? Even this seemingly simple statement is fraught with issues.

These are things that can and have been argued and in some cases 'solved' by liberal bourgeoisie democracy for centuries to decades at this point. However libertarians, especially 'leftist' libertarians, get so caught up in policy that they have no structure for actually figuring out very real basic political and social science issues. I'm not saying ML theory has it 'solved' but it's foundations, such as "The state apparatus exists to monopolize violence, all other aspects of it are secondary, the key is appropriate that violence for the betterment of the industrial working class, the only class that can hope to transition us out of the necessity of states as it is the only class that is likely to effectively replicate the means of production and bring about an ideology, culture and production basis for universal post-scarcity, which will dissolve the need for a state to monopolize violence" has a better understanding of what the state does, how it actually functions, and what is likely necessary in order to dissolve it as a human institution.

There are tech libertarians that also believe their ideology and technology will bring about this post scarcity society as well, but they, as a bourgeoisie class, do not actually replicate the means of production, and have far more material incentive to engage in and profligate M-M market conditions which do not lead to lessening of global poverty, post scarcity and the withering of the state, which is why despite being nominally 'progressive' they are prone to strong ideological reactionary backlash.

To expound on @[email protected]'s point, ideology is not, nor ever has been a linear progression.

Not to harp on it but ideology is primarily informed by material conditions, and our general awareness of the state of ideology is primarily informed by the media.

So what does this mean?

By my just talking to people and attending every advertised meeting I know of, there are more leftists in the U.S. than there have ever been, and to be sure these leftists are more ideologically coherent and informed by deteriorating conditions than ever before, with many of them never even stopping at socdem (as they were too young to ever be actually ideological Berners). However, because their ideology is informed by material conditions, they are not cavalier in proselytizing those ideological beliefs, because they know that the fascism is coming/already here. The ones that are more cavalier are often more cavalier because they do not have a choice to hide and be mentally sound (transitioning people in particular).

However, from the outside it would appear as though these people do not exist, as they will not get interviewed, and if they do they will usually be cautious on what exactly they say on camera. To be frank, in any ad hoc leftist meeting I have attended, even in deeply conservative areas, MAGA communists are an absolute minority, but they are not cautious because they are (for lack of a better term) pretty much all morons who do not care who records them or what they say on camera, because their beliefs are not usually informed by material precarity, but more by personal conviction.

The issue is that solid comrades are often waiting for a direction to be pushed into.

It's because nobody is anything at 14. It's quite literally politics as aesthetic. Literally never trust teenagers to be consistently principled on anything going into the future, because those principles are purely ideal.