Wandering Adventure Party

@callisto @jsl @cstross I am characterizing him as the president whose policies were the most to the left of any US president ever. I think the hate he got from the left was a massive own-goal. Doubly so since the left blamed him when the courts struck down the student loan cancellations. Are you saying that you prefer the current orange disaster? Are you an accelerationist?

@samantha42 @jsl @cstross The issue is not unique to the UK. In all countries the left is always prone to fragmenting into internecine war. In particular the Weimar republic had proportional representation when Hitler got elected. I wish people would care to actually study history and learn from the places that has avoided this(so far)...

@cstross I@jsl@hachyderm.io Leftist policies in general are very popular, if the left would just stop the self-harm, they would win easily. Media bias can only do so much, it is not all powerful. Jeremy Corbyn in particular was a much too easy target, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine

@callisto @jsl @cstross No, the left was always going hard after Biden, the more left somebody are the more they are criticized by the left. Even when he forgave the student debt, they claimed it was his fault the courts struck it down and gave him no credit for even trying.

@cstross @jsl As I said, if it turns out to be true THIS TIME, it will be a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Assuming what you're saying is true, I would guess that Labour's leadership must have seen what happened to the most left-leaning US president ever and decided to overcompensate in the other direction. In the current situation I would recommend you spend 95% of effort on warning about reform and the remaining time on whatever labour is doing.

@cstross @jsl ' I submit that it's not "purity" to oppose Tories in pink ties, it's realism.' If that turns out to be true this time, we'll have a case of "the boy who cried wolf", the rhetoric is always the same no matter what. This sort of behaviour was annoying enough when it only brought tory misrule, now it can very well bring in actual fascism, just like it did in 1932.

@cstross Cheap excuse to deny the left's own agency. The left can't stop billionaries from spending their own money. What the left can do is to stop sabotaging themselves. If they can do that they will win. The left has been screwing themselves over for more than a 100 years though, this is not new.

@cstross why not study the countries where the moderate left actually won? E.g. Scandinavia, the moderates were very brutal in excluding the nutcases. Lots of bad blood on the left to this day.

@cstross The problem is not the billionaires, in a democracy it's the most numerous who win, not the richest. The reason the left almost always loses is purely self-harm and splittism for instance: https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3mfcdb62pp22r the left has been doing this to itself since the 1917 March revolution. Fix the left instead of going "booho billionaires rule both parties". Hitler himself won in large part because of "nach Hitler kommt wir" ideas of the communists.