...oh. oh sweet jesus. This is the Democratic Socialists of America? The people I thought I might feel at home with and was planning to finally hook up with soon?
...I hate everything right now.
Voter registration for your local Democratic Party will yield better results in better company. It's a grind, but it's something to do besides wait for things to get worse.
yeah. I was attracted because it seemed like the local branch was doing actual canvassing and phone banking for local Dem candidates at least. last I looked, anyway.
but if they're fucking spoilers. NOW.
and racist tankies, awesome!
Individual DSA chapters are better or worse, but there's nothing useful to be done through it that you can't do better either on your own or directly supporting a Democrat, IMO.
Chicago DSA is a victim of their own success to an extent. My progressive alder won with their backing in 2019, as did others. Now that the people actually interested in governing have power as Democrats, only the ragey radicals stuck with the DSA.
It’s possible to get a group of people who would really like drastic change together to work for incremental change but they’re not going to *enjoy* working with the system, unless they turn out to really be people who enjoy working with the system, in which case they will probably change orgs
DSA groups that aren’t spoilers are groups that, as you say, back Dems in most situations, which means that what you really get from being part of (non-dysfunctional) DSA is the sense that your literal comrades agree with you more on how things theoretically should be
And that isnt worth that much
But at some point people are gonna divide into “it’s better to make real change” and “I like my fantasies more then reality” and therefore “reasonable” DemSocs do in fact notch-filter out to basically just a meeting point where tankies and institutional libs intersect and learn to hate one another
I think what most sticks in my mind in an annoying “this is very juvenile to still bothered about” way from the 2016 primary where a former friend, in terminating the friendship because I was going to vote Dem even if it wasn’t Bernie, said I “used to be cool”
The hidden variable here is race, because your median white leftist is often a covert racist and open sexist anyway, and then follows that down a rabbithole of positions that only someone with no skin in the game can take.
(But Mr. Cat, are you not a glows-blue-under-fluorescent-light white fellow yourself?
Yes, but I listen attentively to people who are not, because I care more about outcomes than my vanity *and* because it has been of direct material benefit to do so.)
