shazbotter

> This is an undeniable truth.

Well, I disagree. What evidence do you have to demonstrate that a) this is true and b) it's so unassailable that one could not deny it?

Because it sure reads like, "I have a worldview. I will assert that it is true and talk down to anyone who does not accept my worldview as truth." It's a way to paint your discussion partner as an intellectual lesser, while adroitly dodging critique. You'll have to do better than just asserting something is true because you said so.

Good thing I'm not a communist or I might be upset. You keep moving the goal posts all over the place. I was just saying I'm not a tankie, lol, and you've pivoted to philosophers.

But what about Bookchin, Kropotkin, or the people of Rojava? Bakunin? Thoreau?

Yes. Of course it failed. It also succeeded several times. I'm not a communist, though. (I do have communist friends, however.)

Most of my communist friends are not authoritarian communists (aka tankies). A tankie is a very specific type of communist who believes in central autocratic power and a single party.

I think you'll find most modern communists tend to prefer a worker led democratic government. And people like myself prefer a syndicalist democracy without a central government.

I consider tankies my opponents, just like I consider all authoritarians my opponents.

I'm old (50s), I don't want a strong any of those. I especially, however, don't want a strong executive because I don't think decision making should be strongly centralized.

I'm a syndicalist anarchist, who believes communities should be primarily bottoms up driven, democratic, and cooperative. I argue we don't need any of those branches to be strong.

I'm not a tankie, and if you think all leftists are tankies you definitely need to refresh some definitions.

Unless you are saying, "I have nothing in common with the narrow subset of leftists that are tankies" rather than implying I'm a tankie then, sure. I guess you could make that case.

You have to stop thinking it's us or them. You have to stop imagining that somehow any of this is ok because my team or your team did or didn't do something.

I certainly hope I've been clear that this isn't some D vs R conflict. Both parties are at fault, both parties own some blame, but the situation today is not ok. It was also not ok under Biden, Trump 1, or Obama. We should be looking at ways to get the working class to look past our differences and securing more of the pie for ourselves. We should be reducing the power of the executive, no matter who is sitting in the seat. We should be focusing on the wellbeing of all.

Stop making a team sport, or at least correctly identify that you have way more in common with me (a working class anarchist) than you do with the people in power.

It's absolutely not the case. The US is an empire with increasingly dictatorial power centralized in the executive. Clinton increased prison populations and increased police power. Bush increased executive power during his post 9-11 presidency. Obama regularly enforced U.S. policy at the end of a drone strike and shut down U.S. domestic agitation. Biden increased police funding and continued to sell surplus military equipment to cops. He also shut down a workers strike. Trump is a symptom of a general slide towards dictatorial policy. If it wasn't him this time it would have been one of the next 5 presidents from either policy.

Trump is doing some fucked up shit, but he doesn't get to be able to do that without decades of groundwork from both sides of the aisle.

Yes. The Supreme Court affirmed this in Texas v Johnson. It is an act that expresses a political view through a symbolic act. It might be offensive to you, but "I find it offensive" is not sufficient defense to stop political speech.

And the left did not get their way for sixty years. The left is predominantly socialist, communist, anarchist. Democrats are not a leftist party. The left hasn't held many political positions in the US. But we on the left hate the democrats as much (or more) than folks on the right. We also tend to be broadly supportive of individual freedoms (most of my leftist colleagues are anti gun control, for instance.)

Newsom is a fucking nightmare. Willing to burn every minority community alive if it gets him 5% at the ballot box.

Obama also engaged in dictatorial policy... Just because two people have done it does not make it "not dictatorial".

Or, using logical constructs - "A therefore B" is not made invalid by "C therefore B".

It's an executive order that contravenes existing legislative and judicial precedent, sets penalties, and is expected to be unchallenged. It limits free speech by fiat because a single man wants it to be so.

It's clearly dictatorial, you'll have to demonstrate why it's not an act of a single person dictating policy.

Most of the comments here suggesting the UK it's evil have been downvoted. It's clearly still uncomfortable for a lot of people.

You realize that being gay or being non binary are considered pornography to some legislators?

Until we can decouple those things, banning porn has the effect of criminalizing LGBTQ lives.