commenter-thread

Well, if you want to pretend that you can't tell, I'll let you continue to do so.

But I imagine that it doesn't feel better when you do that.

See? Isn't that better than "but nobody is arguing for open borders!"?

So at least the police reform/defund the police faction has been told that they are losers.

Was it a mistake to run a candidate in 2024 that argued for defunding the police back in 2020?

Because if we can't get people to say "holy crap, we never should have run Kamala", I'm going to say that you're making stronger statements than those that would more accurately describe the facts on the ground.

We'd probably benefit from definitions here. "They're engaging in commerce!" is one definition of communication/cooperation but it strikes me as trivial.

Like, if we'd not find it particularly notable for "the global left" to do the things we're talking about when we say "communication/cooperation", we may be doing the thing where we're complaining about humans but saying that it's "the global right" doing it.

You know, the way that kids these days conflate "entropy" with "capitalism".

I don't even think that arguing "hey, we need one billion immigrants" is necessarily a *BAD* play. "The Haitians are making Ohio better. Here's the factory owner praising how they're better workers than vintage Americans!"

But this whole thing about how we have a massive influx of immigrants and use new and novel ways to get them into communities who don't get a vote on it and then pretend that nothing happened when there are objections is, seriously, going to turn off more people than a full-throated "READ THE STATUE OF LIBERTY POEM AGAIN!!!"

Yeah, maybe that play will work. "Open borders?" you can ask with wide eyes. "But nobody is even pushing for those!"

The only thing that the global right seems to agree upon is that "Open Borders" is not a good policy.

Yeah, yeah. "Nobody is arguing for open borders!" but remember this article from just last month? In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning?

As it turns out, the answer is that Denmark's Liberals are against Open Borders.

The answer just might be "abandon open borders as a policy".

Which, you'd think, would be easy if nobody is arguing for it.

One of Leonard Cohen's last poems was titled "What is Coming".

what is coming
ten million people
in the street
cannot stop
what is coming
the American Armed Forces
cannot control
the President
of the United States
and his counselors
cannot conceive
initiate
command
or direct
everything
you do
or refrain from doing
will bring us
to the same place
the place we don't know

your anger against the war
your horror of death
your calm strategies
your bold plans
to rearrange
the middle east
to overthrow the dollar
to establish
the 4th Reich
to live forever
to silence the Jews
to order the cosmos
to tidy up your life
to improve religion
they count for nothing
you have no understanding
of the consequences
of what you do
oh and one more thing
you aren't going to like
what comes after
America