pastalicious [he/him, undecided]

And for the doomers, even if he doesn’t win, we had him on TV talking about being a socialist and describing his platform to great applause, and we embarassed the Democrats effort to defeat him in the primary, showing how popular our politics are. The struggle is, itself, valuable.

Thing is, DSA had like 7,000 members throughout then 90s, 00s and early 10s. Since then elections that put socialism front and center have driven those numbers up above 70,000. I can say the chapter near me hasn’t spent any energy on elections this year, instead focusing on buying and forgiving medical debt and putting people on a picket line so local workers didn’t have to be there for 72 hours straight without any breaks. The fact that the primary was covered so widely and people were clapping for an avowed socialist is not nothing. But we should still temper our expectations.

My lib parents are all about “optics” and remaining peaceful. They also loved some news article of a protester in Kansas with a John Brown sign that just says abolish ice. Libs have zero analysis. They have zero critical understanding of history. How are you going to celebrate the invoking of John Brown, a guy who famously beheaded slavers in Kansas and whose last boldest violent campaign probably led to the civil war and the emancipation of the slaves… and also claim that’s no place for violence?

The one near me had a really huge turnout and was blocking traffic all over the lib’est area during peak brunch hours, so that’s kind of funny. Saw tables for food not bombs, some worker thing associated with Kshama Sawant, and a bunch of people wearing local DSA chapter shirts. Lots of Palestinian flags too. Some people I talked to had earlier in the day been protesting a potential future ICE facility in a nearby town with immigrant rights groups and prison abolitionists. These protests aren’t going to change anything and we have to stop centering nonviolence as the highest virtue. But it seems like a good thing that people are meeting and talking to each other in physical reality… anything that defies the gravitational pull of social media.

But absolutely don’t let libs use this little afternoon field trip as a chance to pat themselves on the back. More people go to sports bars to watch the football game every week.

I’ll never forget seeing Avatar Way Of Water with my in-laws and they are absolutely moved by the emotions of the movie. Then the next day I’m explaining why California may have opposed water desalination plants to because it kills a lot of fish and they instantly reply “fuck the fish”. I’m sorry but good slop is still slop and it doesn’t reach the average burgerlander in a meaningful way.

I thought she already did this last year. She’s becoming the Bolsonaro of voting for bad faith antisemitism definitions.

I mic’d up a Supreme Court justice once, one of the bad ones but I was dumb and didn’t know that until I googled the name later. I could’ve saved the country if I knew wonk nerd shit a little better.

Lain blew me away when I saw it twenty years ago. Does it hold up?