PugJesus

[sweating]

Jesus Christ.

Peaceful protests won't get rid of the regime. What they're good for is connecting, organizing, demonstrating opposition is a viable size to uncertain bystanders who fear being part of a tiny minority and getting crushed, and generating enthusiasm for further, more 'strategic' work.

"What do you have for me, doc?"

"Let's see... we have opium, tincture of opium, cocaine, opium extract, and laudanum."

"What's that last one?"

"Opium dissolved in liquor."

Explanation: While much of Christian Europe was splintered and only beginning to recover from the immense civilizational collapse of the Roman Empire, the Islamic Golden Age was flourishing, bringing new organizational and material technologies to Muslim-ruled societies. It was not all sunshine and rainbows, but the writings of contemporaries show that it was more than just abstract academic knowledge - a broader culture of public works and public good managed to take root and improve the living conditions of many, especially in the cities.

Much of antiquity, even, was transferred to Western Europe by Arabic translations of Greek and Latin works - scholarship of the Islamic golden age had become much more developed than the still-recovering societies of Western Europe, which only began to regain some measure of parity with the Muslim world in the 1300s.

Christians: "What do you think about our holy text?"

Muslims: "No comment."

~30% goes directly to the rich as individuals. Probably a good 5% goes to wastage on defense, on Eisenhower noted.

Another significant percentage goes to corporations which then reroute that money in official and unofficial benefits as befits the owners of private fiefdoms that are, nonetheless, not directly counted in the net worth of rich individuals.

Security theatre.

Bad design on his part, really.

Oof ow ouch my old bones

Odd fellow, YHWH.

A general strike is a massive commitment for a country that hasn't had one since 1946, and, for that matter, would seem to me to be a tool for acquiring more concrete demands.

On the whole, I generally dislike timetables. There are years in which nothing happens, and weeks in which years happen, as the saying goes (Lenin, I think?). There will be moments to be seized as time goes ahead, and there will be unexpected setbacks, and trying to constrain either to a timetable will damage efforts - either by overcaution/underutilization of the moment, or by sapping morale from not reaching timeline 'goals'.

More generally, I would say that, going forward, the two most important aspects are agitating for unionization and shifting safe and moderately-contested seats to progressive challengers by primary participation - assuming, of course, that elections matter going forward, which is... not as certain as I would like it to be. Midterm elections are unlikely to mean much - even a sweeping Dem victory would ultimately not do much more than unfuck the budget going forward - due to the Trump regime's reliance on extralegal methods of rulemaking and enforcement. I think my opposition to third-party votes going into the 2026 midterms has more to do with how immensely shitty the only big third parties in the US are.

I would say that the focus up towards 2028 should overwhelmingly be towards the support of extant progressive politicians (in the hope of cinching the nomination in the Dem 2028 primaries) and work towards progressives in local elections to help the progress(ha) of those politicians to higher office, and that a progressive success in 2028 is both more valuable and more likely, as progressive demographics which are harder to get out during midterms are more likely to vote during a presidential election - if there is an electoral victory available, it is here.

However, I must qualify this with personal experience in closely following local government: many of the issues in local government are not clear-cut progressive-conservative split issues, and many of them are founded on immensely fucked legal and economic knots. This is not to discourage progressives from running, only to warn that local politics often have a much more technocratic, bureaucratic, and personality-oriented tint to them, and that decisions made, even from a progressive position, may not do much to convince people of progressivism itself. God, you ever been in a town hall where folk are arguing over recycling because the only recycling company in town is a fucking joke, so you have folk who are progressives arguing for abolishing recycling, and local conservatives arguing that it's good for local businesses, and vice-versa on both sides? Insane shite. Doubly so when municipalities often run on a shoestring budget.

Point there is just that there is that progressives going into local government should be aware of that much more detail and compromise-oriented bend - many of the precepts we work on are concerned with national or state-scale government; there are fewer opportunities - though certainly not no opportunities - for strict progressive policies.