Explanation: Roman Emperors, both by the nature of men in power and the needs of the job, generally made a lot of fucking enemies, both contemporary and in the recollections of history.

Antoninus Pius is a rare exception, a man who came to power by uncontroversial means (being chosen as a successor by Emperor Hadrian for his integrity), ruling through a period of uninterrupted peace, prosperity, and legal reform, having few vices and living a simple and unextravagant life, and then handing power over to a well-regarded emperor (Marcus Aurelius, and, less importantly, his adoptive brother Lucius Verus). By the recollections of those who lived after his rule, his mildness and attention towards public good and infrastructure was highly regarded, and in his personal life, Pius was likewise uncontroversial, and his adoptive sons and their tutor remembered him as a kind man who enjoyed the simple pleasures - fishing, comedy, theatre, watching boxing matches.

We love Emperor Pius in this house!

Hell In The Pacific, hands down.

Explanation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Beethoven)#Dedication

Beethoven originally dedicated the third symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, who he believed embodied the democratic and anti-monarchical ideals of the French Revolution. In the autumn of 1804, Beethoven withdrew his dedication of the third symphony to Napoleon, lest it cost him the composer’s fee paid him by a noble patron; so, Beethoven re-dedicated his third symphony to Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz – nonetheless, despite such a bread-and-butter consideration, the politically idealistic Beethoven titled the work “Bonaparte”.[25] Later, about the composer’s response to Napoleon having proclaimed himself Emperor of the French (14 May 1804), Beethoven’s secretary, Ferdinand Ries said that:

In writing this symphony, Beethoven had been thinking of Bonaparte, but Bonaparte while he was First Consul. At that time Beethoven had the highest esteem for him, and compared him to the greatest consuls of Ancient Rome. Not only I, but many of Beethoven’s closer friends, saw this symphony on his table, beautifully copied in manuscript, with the word “Bonaparte” inscribed at the very top of the title-page and “Ludwig van Beethoven” at the very bottom … I was the first to tell him the news that Bonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, “So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!” Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be recopied, and it was only now that the symphony received the title Sinfonia eroica.[26]

An extant copy of the score bears two scratched-out, hand-written subtitles; initially, the Italian phrase Intitolata Bonaparte (“Titled Bonaparte”), secondly, the German phrase Geschriben auf Bonaparte (“Written for Bonaparte”), four lines below the Italian subtitle. Three months after retracting his initial Napoleonic dedication of the symphony, Beethoven informed his music publisher that “The title of the symphony is really Bonaparte”. In 1806, the score was published under the Italian title Sinfonia Eroica … composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo (“Heroic Symphony, Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man”).[27]

Joke answer: Style

Real answer: Horsepower originates from the potential sustained work of a (more-or-less) average horse of the 18th century. A horse at full speed is outputting more-than-one-horsepower - at a gallop, they’re outputting 10 horsepower or more.

Explanation: Despite enduring myths on the subject, the Soviet military was not short of small arms in WW2.

My stamina wrt this discussion has run out, but I want to thank you for the quality and civil debate.

An internal takeover—if possible—would be ideal, yes. However, the reason the Tea Party was so successful was because the GOP was open to change and the Tea Party had billionaire money behind them.

“the GOP was open to change”

I hear this line all the goddamn time, but it was just not fucking so. It was forced to accede to change by large amounts of its base demonstrating electoral activity, both in primaries and in the general, despite a desire to limit the radicals of their base from influence.

The billionaire money is correct, though.

Rather than the Tea Party I’ll talk MAGA because frankly I was way too young to know anything politics during the age of the tea party. The left’s equivalent of Trump is/was Bernie, but let’s face it: Is Bernie far to the left as Trump is far to the right?

Their respective distances measured relative to the average American voter? Yes.

Bernie’s tendency to fall in with the establishment heavily contrasts with Trump’s willingness to say screw the establishment and say whatever he wants about whoever he wants.

what

Christ, man, do not tell me that’s what you think strong leadership is.

Now if I’m wrong and young voters are indeed incapable of patient and sustained activity even with strong leadership (which Bernie has been trying to be but is not), then America is screwed either way because moderates can’t fight fascism.

Looking for a leader to save us is exactly why we’re in this fucking mess, man.

Very true, so make those promises. Say you’ll make healthcare and energy dirt cheap, tax the rich and give that money to the poor and middle class, expand social welfare, make it so people won’t need expensive cars to get around, etc etc. The right will hate your guts for it, but giving a shit about what the right thinks is a recipe for failure.

Okay, the next step is - you’re asked ‘how?’

And unlike the GOP base, the Dem base is not satisfied with “It’ll work, trust me.”

You’re left with “Losing your base who thinks you’re a liar and/or a shitwit” or “Losing the swing voters who will get bored and tune out of any real explanation that’s solid, or else find the soundbite against it more compelling than that egghead stuff”.

Yeah absolutely. I guess my fundamental assumption going into this is that civic detachment can be fixed by the knowledge that politics is important and can do good things for you rather than being a slew of lesser evils who promise to screw you slightly less than the other guy. I mean it works the other way so maybe?

The only way that works is by immense education on civic matters. The idea that the Dems just forgot to lie about being good is absurd. Many of the left-wing detractors on Lemmy, where the average commenter is more politically informed than the average voter couldn’t name jack fucking shit about the Dem platform in 2024.

Narratives are more powerful than facts, and certainly more powerful than party platforms.

Are you sure about that? If that’s true then American democracy is frankly hopeless, but the only evidence I’ve seen for these claims is Democrat leadership statements that I haven’t seen backed up by evidence.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656636/democrats-favor-party-moderation-past.aspx

From what I know progressive policies polled without being explicitly labeled as such tend to get broad support from all demographics and across the political spectrum. For example here’s a poll about universal healthcare.

Which should point out how useless polling on policy is for predicting electoral support. People will say they support a policy, but the moment it’s actually proposed, find some little detail to justify to themselves why they shouldn’t support it when it could actually happen.

Sadly, this is why party support is far more useful for predicting electoral results. Including of ballot initiatives.

That aside there’s no need to restrict your sight to Dem voters when you’re trying to build a new party; you can go after independents, non-voters and even Republicans if doing that won’t dilute your platform.

Dems form the leftmost demographic of the American electorate. And polls of independents continually and repeatedly confirm that.

You’re not going to get better numbers for progressive policy looking outside of the Dem Party. If your view is that a progressive party is the way forward, and can attract a large number of people, to the point of challenging the current two-party system, you have to square that with the facts, which would seem difficult.

Among white people, not among minorities themselves.

Would you be open to evidence challenging this?

Many of those are dedicated Republican voters who should be excluded from the calculation entirely. If you’ll go after those voters, it should be exclusively through media efforts without compromising on your core platform, because otherwise you’ll repeat the same mistake as the Dems.

I’m not saying we should ‘go after’ those voters. I’m saying those are primarily the votes the Dems have lost in the past ~30 years.

Yes, but Dem support among minorities has been falling and falling hard.

Yet as pointed out by your own source, 2020 had some of the strongest Black support on record for the Dems. You point to a systemic problem inherent in the basis of the party itself. If so, we should see a decline from whenever you think is most appropriate to peg the main change at; instead, we see a sharp drop without movement towards the problems you point as plaguing the party (correctly point at as plaguing, in my opinion, but incorrectly weighting their importance), and, indeed, despite moving left considerably in the past ten years thanks to the influence of Bernie and Berniecrats.

The the pre-existent party apparatus and brand recognition are very attractive, but the price you’ll pay is a bunch of gerontocrats who will keep demanding concessions so they keep you in the party and giving absolutely nothing in return, which among other things will lose you legitimacy with your base (see: Bernie and AOC) while dampening the speed of expansion of both your political base and footprint within the party.

Considering that the DSA rescinded its endorsement of AOC over [checks notes] acknowledging antisemitism, and that Bernie’s reputation was strong for some 30 years, I’m gonna go and hazard that the machinations of The Party™ are not the primary culprit here.

It’s very easy to provide stronger leadership than the DNC. I mean they passed that godawful budget how many days ago? Just not playing yourself in favor of the enemy is enough for a start, and most sane people should be able to guarantee that.

God, if only getting and keeping sane people in leadership was that easy.

We absolutely need a massacre (metaphorically, for the sake of my personal FBI Agent) of Dem leadership, but whether starting from a clean slate entirely, or trying to revitalize the Dem Party, there’s no way to guarantee good leadership will replace them.

Also you should be producing results through the process of building up your base since you won’t win the whole government all at once. That’s what I meant by saying that trying to take over the DNC will lose you legitimacy with your base; the process of achieving national recognition should give you enough of a track record for people to know what kind of operation you’re running.

That’s not how Americans vote or how they recognize success, man. If it was, our situation would be considerably easier.

The ol’ meme-uno reverse

I believe so, from the Catch-22 adaptation (2019) I still need to see.

Not to my knowledge, though there was a great deal of effort put into ferreting out spies by using common shibboleths, especially during the European theatre in late 1944 and 1945, when German commandos were using American and British uniforms to infiltrate Allied lines.

I don’t really think that there’s a clear coalition that’s different enough to warrant the massive undertaking (and it is a massive undertaking) of trying to start a new party from scratch.

To go for a more progressive coalition - and make no mistake, a more progressive coalition is most popular with white college educated liberals, not minorities - does not seem to have a strong argument for itself considering that even as it stands now, most Dem voters want the party to either remain as is, or become more right-wing. Vile as that is.

In the media, as opposed to amongst political junkies like us, the Dems are already strongly associated with minority issues, and it is overwhelmingly not minorities which have failed to turn out in recent elections for Dems, but white middle and working class voters. Minorities, including in the most recent election, have been the staunchest supporters of the Dems and their most reliable voting bloc both in terms of turnout and in the terms of percentage of the vote gained. The Dems, for that matter, abandoned the working class in the 90s, it’s true, but despite moving back towards a more pro-labor position in the 30 years since, has not meaningfully regained working-class votes. This is not purely a Dem issue - all across the developed world, pro-worker policies and worker support have been increasingly decoupled from electoral results.

The sad truth is that I don’t know that there is a solution, in terms of forging or rebalancing current coalitions. IF, and I would like to emphasize that this is a very uncomfortable if, we still have free and fair elections in the coming years, I don’t think that there is a different coalition possible that would put us in a place better, polling-wise, than the margin-of-error victories we’ve had the past decade-and-a-half.

The promise of strong leadership is a nice idea, but the issue is twofold here - first, that, if the primary issue is lack of strong leadership in a party, that is still generally less of a disadvantage than building the vast political apparatus in a country of our size for a nationally-viable party from scratch. Second, that guaranteeing strong leadership is nearly impossible - the ability to convince people you’re a strong leader, and the ability to lead well, have very little overlap and very few ways to discern the difference until they’re already in the driver’s-seat and returning results of one sort or another.

Please don’t mistake this as me saying that there cannot be a third-party movement which has some form of success. Both third-parties as a threat/negotiating tactics, and third-parties as a potential replacement for one of the two parties, are viable options to work at, at this point in time. But at the end of the day, I think the most viable option is to do what the Tea Party did to the GOP. Leadership is fragile. Easily replaced. Organized and motivated, beyond a simple voicing of grievances or enthusiasm for a single candidate, factions can take over and steer the parties to which they belong. But it requires patience and sustained activity, neither of which the lynchpin of non-moderate voters in the Dem Party, young voters, are good at. It took the Tea Party 6 years to overtake the old guard of the GOP, and even then it was a near-run thing. And only now, some 15 years later, is the takeover complete.

The Dems must move left - for the good of the country. But moving left will also not deliver the Dems electoral success. We can and should perform that takeover, but it also should be understood that a suddenly-progressive full-throated Dem Party will not result in a string of clear victories. The voters most in need of convincing, and most capable of being convinced, white working and middle-class voters (and increasingly, Hispanic voters of the same economic positions whose voting patterns become more similar with white voters every passing year), simply are not going to respond to sound left-wing economic policy. Nor, for that matter, will they respond much to sound or unsound right-wing economic policy. They only listen to promises, in the form of sound-bites, and only offer support or opposition insofar as the vagaries of their own economic situations allow for it - as filtered through their favorite news org, of course. Since news orgs get more views from FUD than rational analysis or positivity, and since people are notoriously bad at judging trends and time, it will almost always be a backlash against whatever policy was most recently implemented. And since it is much easier to tear things down and sabotage them than to implement them, this almost always benefits conservatives.

Until that fundamental civic detachment is fixed, no amount of new coalitions, candidates, or parties will bring the American left reliable electoral victory, beyond the fucking coin flip that the Dem Party offers now. And to spit out a lot of blood, sweat, and tears just to end up at Square 1 will disillusion a lot of the folks involved in it.

What issue is there, though, which would create a different coalition than the one already-present in the form of the Democratic Party?

Electorally crashed and burned. Though if you want to start replacing the current two-party system with a new two-party system, now would be a great time to get the gears moving.

The success of the Republican Party was only possible due to the fact that the Whigs had already crashed and burned, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmOw-jplSMk

Bread. I miss fresh bread.

Forget giving radio to the Romans. Let’s give energy drinks to legionaries.

Explanation: A corvus is an ancient Roman naval boarding device of the kind shown, basically a bridge with a nail in it put on a warship. I think it’s got some dark horse energy in this matchup, I’m betting on the corvus as the winner 🙏