this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Yeah, no, we suck at this, like I said.
This conversation is not winning the culture wars. This is the exact purity argument that keeps the left from power.
Find me a solution and I'll take it. But the solution can't be to keep doing what we're doing.
This convo isn't infighting, even if it isn't very productive. Neither of us are denouncing any leftist ideologies and we won't be voting against the left if I'm reading you correctly.
You are correct that something needs to change, and that thing is how we communicate with people. Deceit isn't necessary. It's the things you described that I had already described earlier that you for some reason then said was ineffectual before then suddenly supporting it when you were the one saying it?
I'm not sure I follow.
My concern is consistent: the way the left communicates, does propaganda and pushes issues is weak, fails to control the narrative and is further undermined by atomized, nuanced positions and infighting.
The right has learned to push a more cohesive narrative in a social media landscape, largely by allowing themselves to be inconsistent and focusing on winning small arguments at every opportunity until one sticks, at which point they all rally behind it.
The left sucks at that. Nobody will suspend their pet issues, nobody will poke at the mainstream to see what works, nobody will drop their short term goals to focus on the popular narratives for the chance of deploying impactful politics on those goals later.
I find this negligent in the current political landscape, and it's letting the far right run away with converting dissatisfaction into votes, even on issues where the left clearly has the strongest argument.
You really seem to think that the left just needs to win and is skill issue failing by not being strong enough. As an American who is currently living with the consequences of thinking "we just need to get good and vote better," pursuing that strategy is a dead end.
The right wing wins because that is its ONLY goal. You will always be at a disadvantage because of natural human disagreements that you can NEVER get rid of. You can't beat them at their game because they have fully surrendered themselves to WINNING, WINNING, and more WINNING.
It's clear that you'll never accept this fact, because it's much more convenient to think you can just work harder.
Well, as a not-American whose left wing actually secured a government, you are wrong. Winning is the ONLY goal, because when you win you get to do things and when you lose you do not get to do things. And if you're not doing things you're just talking online and I genuinely have less depressing stuff to discuss online if that's the only goal.
I also fail to see how finding that we need to work harder is convenient. From where I stand it's a pain in the butt.
I have taken many things from US cultural imperialism, good and bad. I am not taking cushy leftie defeatism the-system-won't-let us nonsense. Every American I've met is simultaneously convinced that any change or victory is impossible and also that the revolution will be immediate and violent.
Screw all that noise. The left wins when it deploys a winning strategy and engages in politics to secure more power than it loses over time.
Yeah, I get that. A big issue in America that makes leftism seem so impossible is just how tied up anti-leftist sentiment is with American national identity. Capitalism and a hatred of marxism is ancient, with most of the most powerful unions of the progressive era being staunchly anti-communist. It is illusory, as it is innately tied to our imperial identity, which is why dismantling it in the American psyche is so important.
For the record, I was fairly invested in promoting institutional power until recently, holding onto the fleeting hope that liberals would be willing to work at all to save their own system, and leftists would wise up and use what tools they had available. Now that America as a nation is irrevocably toast, I hope to weaken the tribal identity. I only seek to use the tools I have available, and national institutions are not one of them.
However, my real goal is simply survival. I can't get rid of Trump, so I only have to outlive them.