I think you’re interpreting this as me saying that we need moderate candidates to appeal to people who voted for Trump but I actually agree with most of what you wrote. I don’t think just any old leftist would work but my point is there does need to be some strategy or effort to widen the coalition, not just do everything the core voters want maximally.

For me, ideally this means left policies but maybe packaged in a slightly more palatable way. One thing that makes Trump appealing is that he’s been successful at convincing low-information voters that he’s some kind of reasonable, common-sense businessman. I don’t think this would exactly work for us but the point is that the persona and energy of the candidate is extremely important.

The left and right are not fundamentally symmetrical and cannot use identical tactics and expect similar results. Most crucially, the right can align with the wealthy and powerful in society and use their wealth and control of media to allow a minority coalition to win power. There is no equivalent strategy the left can pursue. Our only strength is that we want to help people and we are more accepting of diversity, which allows us to create mass movements more easily. But that’s really the only way we’re going to ever make real progress, and that means building a very large coalition that at minimum includes moderates, traditionally disenfranchised people, etc. We cannot win with just the base, it simply won’t work.

Username checks out lol. Many things are possible even if they don’t feel like it at the moment. And all things end sooner or later…

To be clear I’m not saying their behavior is harmless or excusable. But we fundamentally have to reach at least some of them, I just don’t see a way to stop what’s happening otherwise. I don’t like it but that’s the reality of the situation.

Maybe one way to avoid it would be to come to some kind of detante where the federal government more or less ceases to be the main seat of power and the states become far more autonomous. I’d be open to this but it doesn’t seem very popular or likely given that fascists won’t want to weaken their grip on power over blue states.

I think this is certainly true of the Republican Party. But ignoring republican voters is political suicide. There are too many of them. They must be reckoned with, one way or another.

I was not talking about Spain though. I was talking about the US where we use Fahrenheit.

Now you know how things work in the US if you somehow avoided this your whole life.

The US lol. Not sure if this is satire but in case you don’t know high 20s F is like -2 or -3C.

We just need a little more climate change and I can really go crazy with mangos and bananas and all those.

Frost limits what plants you can grow more than maybe any other factor, so I dream of such things. My area is so close, our winter lows usually only drop to the high 20s but there are so many tropical plants we still can’t grow.

And we’re just as or maybe hotter and drier than Spain too. It’s a harsh climate but we have good soil and with irrigation many things are still possible.

Do you get frost where you are?

Because the economic conditions of the modern world allow for tyranny and the people haven’t figured out that we need to unite and overthrow the tyrants to build a better society.

Maybe pixelfed? Never used it but I think it’s more or less designed for this purpose, and it’s on the fediverse.

Wait why didn’t they turn it on? When they upgraded I assumed this issue would be fixed.

It’s heavily censored by the admins who subscribe to a highly authoritarian ideology. It’s very misleading because it’s not in the rules anywhere but a frank discussion of any issues relating to the governments of China, Russia, or several other nations aligned with them will be labeled “bigotry” and you will be banned.

I won’t participate in any .ml communities anymore, sorry. It’s not possible to have an honest discussion of reality there.

If it was hosted elsewhere I’d be interested.

I planted mine already but maybe it was a mistake. We’re past the chance of frost but experienced gardeners are telling me the soil is too cold still. Also it was hailing torrentially yesterday lol. We’ll see how it works out I guess.

It’s a small garden so if they don’t make it I can always try again.

But that never happened. We never decided that. No one even asked me. Again, I never opted in and there’s no realistic way to opt out. I’m far more afraid of the state than I am from my neighbors, and if I had a real choice, I would opt out immediately.

I think there can sometimes be tension between these two ideals, as with any two disparate goals but I think they are often more aligned than people think. Freedom from terror and violence is an important freedom as well.

Social contract theory is statist propaganda. Even before I knew anything about politics or political theory I was so confused by this idea.

It’s just there to create an illusion of consent for state oppression. Even though there’s no realistic way to opt out, and we never even decided to opt in in the first place.

What kind of crazy contract is that?

This is just not in any way accurate. Free speech means the government cannot penalize anyone for speech with specific narrow exceptions. Deporting them for such speech is obviously penalizing them. Laws or no, this is unconstitutional.

How exciting!

Not to diminish your accomplishment since growing fruit in containers is very difficult but for a Californian with hundreds of these that I never end up using this is a little funny.