DoubleShot

Building off some good discussion in the other thread today. I’m thinking about how can white Hexbear users can be better here, and in leftist spaces, AND when we engage with the broader BIPOC communities? What are we doing wrong, and what can we do that’s better?

And I 100% get that’s it’s not on marginalized folks to explain it to us. I do. It’s just, at this moment I’m trying not to get overwhelmed with feeling like it’s just not possible to make the world better. Not even get us to socialism, just getting things to be a tiny bit better. I don’t know what else to do. So I’m reaching out to my BIPOC comrades with an open hand. If you feel like sharing, please do.

For the white folks, we need to be better. We do. It may not be comfortable to hear, but we do. Maybe we’re not as bad as the libs and the chuds on this but that’s not a valid measuring stick. Come on.

I have 2. The People's Republic of Walmart is one. Maybe I feel this way because I work in the industry and I'm a little familiar with central planning techniques... but I just thought it was all fluff with little substance. I felt like more than one chapter was just "Walmart and Amazon do central planning so it's possible" without getting into a lot of the details. Very little about the nuts and bolts of central planning. Throw in a good dose of anti-Stalinism when the man oversaw successful central planning... I just didn't get anything out of it. Might be OK if you want a real basic introduction behind the ideas of planning but honestly I bet like 95% of you already know more about it than you realize.

And I love Graeber but jeez, I couldn't even finish Bullshit Jobs. It felt like a good article that was blown out into a book. Maybe my expectations were too high but I felt like he spent way too many pages getting into minutiae about what is/isn't a bullshit job without actually making a broader point.

Of course the US Senate is incredibly undemocratic and was set up to cement the power of the wealthy against people wanting to do stuff. It sucks. But at least I can understand the rationale given by people who would defend it. The 13 colonies were distinct entities, and the Senate was structured (on paper) to represent the interests of these distinct entities.

But every single state other than Nebraska has a "House" and a "Senate". And as far as I can tell, the Senate district boundaries are completely arbitrary. So what's the point?! No state other than maybe ones like CA or TX could have distinct subdivisions. It's either pointlessly redundant with the state House or broken up by a weird map that only serves to gum up the works (though I guess that's the point).

There in no excuse in 2023 for a form of government other than everyone's vote counting equally (with a possible exception for overweighting the votes of marginalized peoples, but that's such a far out possibility there's not much point in bringing it up). I can explain in detail how the Cuban electoral system is way more democratic than the US to an American, and they will just shut down and insist our system is more democratic regardless.