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is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by WhyEssEff@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

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Like, yeah, they can 'get away with' ending soft power. They can 'get away with' extrajudicial killings. They're operating off of pure machismo right now. They're getting drunk on their vices. They're stripping masks where masks wouldn't be advised to be stripped. I feel like I understand now that Fascism is, in part, an expression of weakness. They wouldn't be doing this unless they were scared. It's too volatile. It feels both too late on a power-level and too early on a popular-level. Never mind the ticking time bomb that is AI data centers. It feels like, and I'm sure this is cope, there is a timer on their ability to run the circus much longer.

My first instinct here is to doubt myself, intellectual pessimism and all. In that vein, maybe this is just revolutionary optimism, but we're at the point where it feels like there is a palpable anger brewing in the basement. I don't know. Maybe Palantir works as an anti-communist panopticon and we just death spiral forever. I don't want to lose hope.

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[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago

I think you're being delusionally optimistic about the ability to grow the progressive representation in the government. We got a boost to the DSA in the first Trump term, and the Squad, which maxed out at 9/435, that's 2%. The Congressional Progressive Caucus went from 68 to 96 in two elections, and then likewise plateaued. The path to victory there is something seven (7) times that jump. I think less than 4% of the electorate are socialists, and I doubt as much as 25% are progressives. But let's set that aside.

The money issue only highlights the BIGGEST problem in our election system. Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which literally EVERY other issue flows.

I agree with something synonymous to this on a core level: money pervades and corrupts everything. There's just context that makes my structural analysis different.

Power follows money, money does not follow power quite as much. Economic power is the basis for political power, and always has been throughout the history of civilization.

America has always been an oligarchy. It inherited that orientation from its colonial precursor, its government was deliberately set up that way by the founders, and it has found ways to remain oligarchic, from the resistance to Reconstruction to the Red Scare to Dominion ballot machines and expanding primary seasons today. We may have had a brief few decades (from universal adult suffrage and the New Deal) where it got a little bit less oligarchic, then found ways to return.

The rich and powerful will never allow you to simply vote away their wealth and power. As soon as they see what you're aiming to do, they will put more safeguards in against what you're doing. This is why the largest upheavals in American history (Revolutionary War, Civil War) were largely two different elevated classes contesting for dominance.

There is no incentive for entrenched congresscritters to approve of campaign finance reform that actually works instead of making the whole thing more byzantine. You are trying to fight corporate interests by flinging yourself against a wall propped up by corporate interests and also the American political inertia. How do you expect you'll make it happen by working within the existing system, with a large majority of voters who are centrist to reactionary, and who have vested interests in preserving the global functions of capitalism?