Wildflowers and even better, food > Grass

MAGA is causing the US to enter a new dark ages, with the brain drain beginning. Trump needs to face justice for what he’s done. (Also the election itself is being questioned based on actual analysis of the votes in several states)

I mean, I wouldn’t say that necessarily, because that’s a silly thing to write online

These fucking criminals need to face justice.

We both agree late stage capitalism is running its course to its natural end of fascism and environmental/economic collapse. Also I agree that democratic capitalists have violently suppressed other forms of governance over the past 150 years. And also yes the current capitalist system will make it hard to try anything else.

However, anarchism hasn’t been shown to be sustainable or immune from the same human weaknesses such as greed, distrust, etc. that plague our current system. There will still be those seeking to gain power over others, profit at the expense of anything else, etc. Also independent local regimes have no system to work with each other. Also democracy and capitalism do have the potential to yield sustainable, controlled outputs but they need some stronger socialist policies along with an actual election system that gives the people power over their leaders. Obviously Citizens United needs to be overturned, along with single donation limits, removal of PACs. Mandated ranked choice voting. Full transparency of voting systems. Outlaw this current form of bribery-ehh- I mean lobbying.

Ultimately human greed and lust for power will always be there, and anarchism doesn’t seem to have valid or robust mechanisms for controlling that. Really if we can just control these two aspects systemically, most other things will fall into line.

edit: also the EZLN leader is Rafael Guillén Vicente. CNT FAI: José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange. Rojava leaders: Îlham Ehmed, Mansur Selum, Amina Omar, Riad Darar

For some reason your reply never showed up in my notifications. Anyway, I just looked at these. Rojava has explicitly been labeled not anarchist but democratic-confederalism with liberal tendencies. They didn’t do much in terms of running a country or region since 2011 but I’ll read up more on this.

CNT FAI is a union with at most 1.6 million for a few years in the first half of 20th century, that’s neither an actual implementation of anarchism, nor a scale where it is relevant. However once you get to several millions and last for a long time governing (or whatever you want to call it) in a country is when I’d give it some points.

EZLN like you said isn’t even anarchist. I think you like the concept of libertarian socialism, which I also think has some merits if very carefully implemented. The general concept of local leaders controlling their own territory makes sense for the most part, but the problem is how they all are organized to work together.

I would love to know where it actually worked at scale, because I’m at least decently well educated in history and I’ve never heard of one instance. The key word here is “scale” by the way, it’s important how you define that.

Anarchism sounds great if you’re a college freshman, but in reality that will devolve into even less progress than we currently have. Obviously there’s no perfect solution, but anarchism has never and will never work at any kind of scale that matters. We need to purge the corruption from our current system and heavily reform it, but at the end of the day it’s going to make more progress than a bunch of screaming college kids.

You are wrong. Check out The Climate Denier’s Playbook if you’re curious on Big Oil’s propaganda.

Nah fuck off with all that. First of all, we won’t become extinct. In the worst case scenarios we could lose a few billion over many years but that’s hardly extinct. Secondly, we’re not at the mercy of anything. We literally have the technology we need to make the changes we need right now, but the problem is that politicians are still in the pockets of Big Oil and other industries that will be interrupted. They push propaganda out to the gullible masses that eat it up because it makes them feel special and better than others. We need to change our politics (obviously).

Even with some miracle technology, actually especially with a miracle technology, there will be tons of pushback from Big Oil et al. because it’ll slightly eat in to their profits. It’s pretty much these “Dirty Dozen” wealthy elite that are causing the problems, and they need to be pushed back against hard

That’s just untrue. They believe they’re each others’ fall guy. In reality Trump is owned by Russia (not exaggerating, look up “American Kompromat”), and Vance is owned by Peter Thiel. We can only hope that Trump’s pettiness and Musk’s ego can cause this whole house of cards to implode before they completely dismantle American institutions.

Can he just fucking… disappear? Just take all that money you’ve stolen from contractors, kompromat from Russia, and bribes from Saudi Arabia and just fuck off. He has a deep hole inside and will never truly be happy, which makes me feel great, but that’s a small consolation compared to the destruction of democracy and the entire USA.

All things said and done, this isn’t the worst pick I’ve seen in this hellscape administration. I was fully expecting an Exxon CEO or something. It’s still extremely worrying how easy Jacobs can throw away any scientific integrity for Trump’s loyalty (e.g. Sharpiegate).

The real alternative is to restructure our incentives systems (i.e. capital market regulations), but that’s the absolute last thing that will ever happen. Carbon taxes are a step in that direction but are still just a tiny bandaid on a gaping wound.