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Cosplay Socialists

You are here: Home / Archives for Cosplay Socialists

Late Night Open Thread: We Are What We Pretend to Be…

by Anne Laurie|  June 25, 202312:45 am| 74 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Cosplay Socialists, social media

… So we must be very careful what we pretend to be.”

Or at least (says someone who shares Vonnegut’s — and Abigal Adam’s, and Dostoyevsky’s — birthday) we should take a considered approach to how we choose to present ourselves. Between the Titan submersible and the Russian coup-or-whatever, I have done a certain amount of self-censorship this week, although perhaps not enough…

The thing about social media is that it has incomprehensibly quickly accelerated the number of social interactions people are having, and the speed with which these grooves get carved.

— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) June 21, 2023

And anyway this whole thing misses the point entirely. He casts it as “the fascists won’t listen to us if we’re mean” when it’s really “you won’t get a critical mass of people on your side if you’re a dick all the time to everybody.”

— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) June 21, 2023

insofar as “eat the rich” is an effective slogan for socialism it is because the emphasis is on “you get to eat!” rather than “we killed the rich!” https://t.co/RccPlOVWCo

— post malone ergo propter malone (@PropterMalone) June 21, 2023

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Late Night Open Thread: <em>We Are What We Pretend to Be… </em>Post + Comments (74)

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Nowhere to Go But Down

by Anne Laurie|  March 29, 20221:59 am| 56 Comments

This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Information Warfare, Open Threads, All Too Normal, Cosplay Socialists

Glem tries to frame it as, "Oh you call Tucker a Russian agent merely b/c he diverges from the consensus and questions war," which no….people call him a Russian tool because he instantly repeats whatever completely batshit conspiracy the Kremlin is pushing that day. https://t.co/c6L8RJbuNq

— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) March 25, 2022

Mr. Trump Putin, who I do not support…

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Nowhere to Go But DownPost + Comments (56)

MLK: from Dreaming to Reality

by MisterDancer|  January 17, 20222:00 pm| 45 Comments

This post is in: Black Lives Matter, Black Votes Matter, Open Threads, Racial Justice, Recommended Reading, Taking Action to Defend Democracy, This Week In Blackness, Your Place Is In The Resistance, Cosplay Socialists, Don't Know Much About History, It's Not Too Late, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, Stuff About Black People Written By a Black Person, There can be no unity without accountability.

Among the most painful bits of Dr. King’s legacy is how so much of it’s reduced to “I Have a Dream.” It’s true that it’s a landmark speech, powerful and moving…

…and always heard out of context of the other, more direct speeches that graced the March on Washington (a March organized by an openly Gay Man, no less – go look up the badass Bayard Rustin, please and thank you!). As if  the marchers just wanted to spend all day on their feet, listening to platitudes and winsome ideas!

I’m not going to dive into that context, I assume your Google button ain’t broke. :) What I will do, is talk about a couple of other works by Dr. King, works that ground him in the realities he fought to overcome, and that echo into these times.

The text for the afternoon will be taken from two works from near Dr. King’s passing:

  • “The Drum Major Instinct,” (hereafter DRUM), which you can listen to here, and read here, and
  • “A New Sense of Direction,” (hereafter SENSE), which you can read here.

I post all this to encourage you to read/listen to the above in full. To underline that Dr. King was far richer a thinker and even rabble-rouser than gets noticed — that the Hoover FBI feared him for damned good reasons. If you chose to read the above docs, and skip the rest of this? HELL YA!

But for those who want more? Follow…

See, Dr. King did not buy into a color-blind society. That wasn’t the context he gave his “Dream” speech under. The context, the fuller context of his work and life’s mission, is made plain by this remarkable passage in DRUM:

 

[…]when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You’re just as poor as Negroes.”

And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white.

And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

Now that’s a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.

And there’s so much more.

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MLK: from Dreaming to RealityPost + Comments (45)

Our Failed Punditry Open Thread: White Supremacy, But From the ‘Left’!

by Anne Laurie|  December 7, 202110:41 am| 128 Comments

This post is in: Information Warfare, Open Threads, Cosplay Socialists, Our Failed Media Experiment

what were obama’s character flaws, too decent and boring a father and husband? being an aloof dork? acting as if the GOP base was less revoltingly racist towards him than it really was? https://t.co/jFbHoI0fcx

— kilgore trout, tucker carlson’s mailman (@KT_So_It_Goes) December 6, 2021

If you normie Dems are gonna insist on electing n… EGROS, it’s no wonder we True Leftists are driven to vote for GOP racists!

the implication is that if americans had elected republicans for president in every election between 1992 and 2016, the republican party would have not become what it has become, and if you want to make this argument, you should make it clearly instead of tap dancing around it. https://t.co/qk99hliGK7

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) December 6, 2021

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Our Failed Punditry Open Thread: White Supremacy, But From the <em>‘Left’!</em>Post + Comments (128)

Late Night Open Thread: QAnon & the White Man’s Burden

by Anne Laurie|  May 2, 202112:59 am| 73 Comments

This post is in: Information As Power, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Cosplay Socialists

Whatever he thinks, that’s what he’s going to think, now & in perpetuity, because he’s incapable &/or unwilling to learn that anything he’s believed never was or at least no longer is correct. https://t.co/mSECPR0oix

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 30, 2021

I call bullsh*t. People juggling utility cut-off dates while trying to feed their kids don’t have the time or the energy to get into fanfic about JFK Jr wearing a Trump skin-suit. But the whole QAnon fantasy canon is catnip for middle-class white people who are certain that somehow they’ve been cheated, or else they too would have high-dollar jobs lecturing the public… which is very much in Senator Sanders’ wheelhouse. Can’t argue his personal success with this strategy, after all. And if it worked for him, why not for everyone?

Must be a conspiracy by Dark Forces!

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Late Night Open Thread: QAnon & the White Man’s BurdenPost + Comments (73)

Late Night Clown Show Open Thread: Earth Soil Amendment Day

by Anne Laurie|  April 23, 20212:49 am| 58 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Assholes, Cosplay Socialists

Today, you hand-delivered a message to essential workers who had to clean up your crap – a message of supremacy in action on #EarthDay which is supposed to center indigenous people and essential workers. Your performance is what’s bullshit. You owe those workers an apology. https://t.co/vO0bdHhinD

— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) April 23, 2021

Self-righteous white people parading with their matching pink wheelbarrows, for a much-photographed stunt that will be blamed on ‘Democrats’. Thanks for nothing, jagoffs!

oh, the poop leftists were extinction rebellion? the anti semitic group that also cost jeremy corbyn in the UK? lol.

I guess they were attempting another hunger strike by loading their usual lunches into wheel barrows.

— Bernie supported ethnic cleansing in Nicaragua (@TheRosesAreOver) April 22, 2021

IIRC, the two-hour-‘hunger strikers’ in Nancy Pelosi’s office were a different batch of self-righteous wankers, but I’m sure there’s some membership overlap (when they’re not feuding with each other)…

I was wrong, it’s the same ‘movement’:

I forgot how extremely funny this all was. https://t.co/362I8t15wp

— Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 22, 2021

Late Night Clown Show Open Thread: <del>Earth</del> Soil Amendment DayPost + Comments (58)

Late Night Cherishing My Grudges Open Thread: ‘Leftists Didn’t Get Biden Wrong… ‘

by Anne Laurie|  April 18, 202111:24 pm| 109 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Proud to Be A Democrat, Assholes, Cosplay Socialists

Leftists Didn't Get Biden Wrong. They LIED About Him. https://t.co/WqQbRDOfmg

— Spandan @ Reclaim the Fight ?????? ???? (@reclaimthefight) April 15, 2021

The junior senator from Vermont has been quite cordial with President Biden, so I’ve done my best to avoid paying attention to some of his… most fervent supporters. But the mainstream media’s usual gang of idiots is busily platforming the concept that ‘true Progressives’ have beaten and terrorized poor senile Uncle Joe into meekly adopting their extremely correct ideas, which is toxic bullsh*t. Repub-supported / Repub-supporting bullsh*t!

With Joe Biden running a near-flawless presidency that is capable, progressive, and popular, his leftist and socialist detractors, who spent an entire year hounding him as a milquetoast moderate, have a new strategy: claim, as Donald Trump did for the spread of COVID, that “no one could have predicted” that Biden would turn out to be a progressive president, that his lean-in economic progressivism is a surprise, and that they made him do it.

I, too, have a new message: they’re full of it.

I am old enough to remember a February morning in 2020 when the socialist writer Anand Giridharadas appeared on television with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, with the topic of conversation focusing on just what was turning so many Democrats to a populist socialist candidate like Bernie Sanders. Sanders, who was swimming in campaign cash, was riding high at the time from performing well in Iowa (where he still lost), New Hampshire, and Nevada, and his supporters were crowing about how quickly – not whether – he would clinch the Democratic nomination for president and make the rest of us “bend the knee”.

A smug Giridharadas then declared that the “mass movement” Bernie Sanders was leading was so historic that it was messing up people’s ‘mental models’ as the ‘establishment’ – read Joe Biden and his allies – was in disarray in their desperate attempts to stop the renaissance man, Bernie Sanders…

Biden would, however, go on to win the presidency by proudly brandishing his anti-socialist credentials, earning an unprecedented 81.2 million votes while he was at it. The fundamentalist left’s deep antipathy towards Kamala Harris could not keep her from becoming the first Black, Asian, and woman Vice President, either.

Even after Biden won the presidency, they kept up the naysaying and hounding during the transition, pummeling the then-President-elect for failing to nominate leftist sycophants to prominent positions in his upcoming administration.

Despite it all, now that President Biden is implementing the policies he laid out during the campaign and brocialists tried to claim he did not really believe in, they find themselves between a rock and a hard place: do they keep whipping up outrage among an increasingly small, fringe group of political activists against a president who enjoys a 95% approval rating among Democrats, or do they try to become relevant and somewhat mainstream? When you get this much wrong in this short a period of time, attempting to rebrand yourself as a surprised moose isn’t exactly… well, a surprise…

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Late Night Cherishing My Grudges Open Thread: ‘Leftists Didn’t Get Biden Wrong… ‘Post + Comments (109)

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