There’s a poll showing her beating Vance in a hypothetical 2028 election. It is just one poll but it does show she has reach outside her “tiny district in New York City”. Or it just shows how unpopular Vance is, but I don’t know of any Republican with a better shot so she probably has a decent chance of winning if the rest of the party would get out of her way.
We aren’t more divided then ever, the divisions are just more visible. If you asked your average WASP in New England there opinion on Catholics a century ago they’re liable to say way more vitriolic shit then a new england liberal talking about MAGA. It’s just that guy from a century ago doesn’t have a way to blast their nasty opinion on Catholics to everyone in the country.
Most people throughout history lived in racially, ethnically, ideologically and religiously homogeneous communities and thought everyone living outside that community was a barbarian, heretic, etc. it’s just that they only talked to people in there community too so there opinions on the barbarians never left the community.
leftist can be thought of as just another flavor of authoritarian
Almost all leftists will say the end goal is communism / anarcho-communism. A system in which the workers control the means of production and anyone involved in production gets an equal say in how that production is done. Before this can be achieved the industrial capacity of a country has to be developed enough to easily provide for everyone’s needs. Marx thought that once everyone’s needs were met consumption would plateau and therefore so would growth. Capitalists would then compete for a fixed size pie where the only way to make money would be squeezing workers and automating jobs away, which would reduce the amount of labor needed but cause mass unemployment. This would eventually reach a tipping point where the workers would rise up, seize the means of production and redistribute resources so everyone go there needs met while working far less, and thus relieving the intraclass tension that would tear it apart once it took over.
The problem is capitalism is very good at creating new needs for people and instilling the desire for them in the working class through media and advertising. So the growth keeps going and we never reach that end state.
These needs and desires are built deep within most people living under capitalism at this point so even if a socialist revolution did happen, which is unlikely due to the above reasons, then those desires would still show in the workers choices on production, so we’d still be making f-150s, hamburgers etc.
The only way I think could result in degrowth is a massive re-education program to remove those desires, most likely through an authoritarian media control. You’d need to counteract all the advertising people have ingested, think of how much of your life you have spent watching car commercials. A person would have to watch just as many hours watching videos on how to destructive and environmentally disgusting cars are to counteract all the positive associations ads have instilled in them. Along with replacing ads with environmental psas, media would also have to be mandated to reflect environmental values, driving and eating meat would be shamed and only done by the lazy and cruel.
I’d say this is definitely authoritarian, totalitarian even, but not fascist. I struggle to think of a coherent eco-fascist ideology as fascism is all about ethno-nationalism, national supremacy and expansionism which don’t work with any environmental goals. so I think Eco-fascism is just a derogatory term used by people who don’t understand what fascism is and just think all evil authoritarians are fascist.
What eco fascists are capitalist? Any real attempt at degrowth and ecofascism would be fought tooth and nail by liberals and capitalists. This isn’t like old fascism where the goal is war that is very amenable to capital that can profit off the increased consumption by the state. Degrowth requires a reduction in production and consumption which is a direct threat to capitalist profit motive.
It would also be a direct threat to a socialist regime that draws its legitimacy from increased living standards and consumption, which is what most do. If you liquidate all the capitalist and redistribute all the money that’s not gonna help climate change if all the workers go and spend that money on f-150s and steak.
The hellscape earth would have to become in order for mars to seem like a good option for people is not something we should be aiming for
An eco authoritarian accepts these two premises:
The current consumption patterns of humans, especially in the first world, are unsustainable in regards to meat, travel via cars, home sizes for heating and cooling, etc.
Any reduction in that consumption will be extremely unpopular and thus politically impossible under any democratic regime, whether that regime be under capitalism or communism.
Therefore to achieve sustainability and save the planet and countless human lives we will need a top down authoritarian government to force the populace into sustainability similar to how fascists would force there populace to war despite its inherent unpopularity.
we the working class by and large criticized all of those things whenever they happened
I don’t recall working class at large protesting car centric infrastructure and factory farming. Some niche groups did but by and large a functioning highway system with free parking everywhere and cheap meat have been very popular with the working class.
I agree we need to liquidate the capitalist class but not everything can be blamed on them. If we had socialism tomorrow we’d still need to deal with the fundamental issue of the unsustainability of the consumption based lifestyles that most people in the first world of become accustomed to and will not give up easily.
Barista: Happy Holidays!
MAGA: the left will stop at nothing to destroy Christmas
Israel: literally arrests Santa*
MAGA: …
Rich people can, the top 10% currently account for nearly half of consumer spending in the US. The economy is increasingly revolving around catering to that top 10% and absurd door dash delivery charges are part of that.
Ok, just replace the word “walk” with “drive” and the point still stands for most of the rest of america. In fact it shows even more laziness as driving is much easier.
Who ask for delivery from a store that’s 10 minutes walking?
A lot of tech workers in San Francisco. They get paid enough that the $20 in fees doesn’t mean much and lazy / overworked enough to not go and get it themselves.
I assume door dash makes most of there money of those customers, rich / upper middle class people in big cities, as those people are the ones willing to pay the outrageous fees they charge.
Not if they’re salaried (payed a set amount per year) which most devs are. At least that’s how it is in the US if you don’t have a union contract.
I guess one good thing will come of this porn panic in England.
Still think there’s a lot better things the labour government could be doing with their massive majority.
I agree that continuing to farm animals ethically solely for the excess products they produce is an achievable, sustainable and ethical goal we should strive for.
If the meat would be wasted anyway then it’s fine to eat. Better us eat it then the maggots. The goal shouldn’t be to just stop people from eating meat, it should be to reduce the amount of animals being bred to serve our taste. If a farmer can only sell the meat after the animal has lived a long life, eating a lot of food that they have to provide, they’ll be less likely to breed them as it wouldn’t be profitable.
It presumably would’ve happened in ancient India as vegetarianism started catching on and cows became sacred.
Even if it didn’t, we’ve never reduced our fossil fuel consumption on a global scale either, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible or that it isn’t something we should / have to do.
I think you overestimate the difficulty of it, especially for vegetarianism where you can get all you need from eggs and dairy. Anecdotally I have been vegetarian for 2 years and have never taken supplements and am very healthy, just ran a half marathon in 1:40 which wouldn’t be possible if I was anemic from b12 deficiency. An even larger example is the hundreds of millions of Indians who are vegetarians and have been for millennia, long before supplements existed.
You also underestimate the difficulty in a meat based diet. Every diet requires planning and intentionality to make it healthy. Meat based diets require you to pay far more attention to the amount of fiber you’re getting. Because of this many people who eat meat are not getting enough fiber, 95% of Americans, which leads to intestinal issues and cancers, which is why vegetarians tend to have better health outcomes as noted above since their main source of protein, legumes, are also high in fiber.
As for the efficiency and accessibility it takes far less resources to make b12 with bacteria then with cows/chickens. It wouldn’t take any logistical or scientific innovation to do it either, we know how to make it with bacteria, and it is far more shelf stable and transportable than meat. In general meat production is extremely wasteful and destructive putting aside the ethical arguments. Cows are one of the top sources of greenhouse gases and the demand for them is causing vast tracts of the Amazon to be burned to create new pasture land. If you ask any environmentalist worth there salt what’s the best thing you can do for the planet they’ll say eat less/no meat and drive less/not at all.
How is big pharma less trustworthy than big agriculture? The meat industry is extremely consolidated. Also b12 isn’t patented and the methods to produce it are widely available, there’s no reason it could only be produced in the first world.
For the ethical argument it is valid and depends on your own ethics / philosophy of whether plants / fungi suffer and feel pain. Either way though eating meat is still worse because cows , chickens etc. eat plants to produce meat. Due to trophic loss they consume far more calories and nutrients from plants then they produce in meat, thus killing more plants then is necessary to feed a human. If you want to minimize plant suffering then you should be vegan.
For the existing cows, I’m not advocating for, nor entertaining the absurd idea of outlawing meat eating tomorrow and having to deal with current stock. The cows that are already here are for the most part already doomed to a life of suffering, the best we can do is stop breeding them so we don’t bring more suffering into the world. The best way to stop that from happening is lowering meat consumption which will cause meat producers to stop breeding to deal with the lower demand.
No but a vast majority of people can, so vitamin a deficiency is not a concern for the millions of people living healthily on plant based diets. And again for those that aren’t able to synthesize it they can take synthesized retinol supplements without needing to eat meat.
I didn’t lie, all the articles I read and my understanding when I posted the first comment was that b12 was the only vitamin you can’t get from a plant based diet. Most of the articles don’t mention vitamin a because the precursor is common and it is not a concern for the great majority of people on plant based diets. Your comment made me research further to discover that carotene is technically just a precursor.
Your resorting to pedentry to avoid trying to refute the fact that most dietary experts agree that a plant based diet can be just as healthy, if not more so then a diet with meat.
You can get vitamin a from carotene which is common in a lot of foods, notably carrots. Even if it wasn’t , same with b12, this is the 21st century, we can synthesize any vitamin , either chemically or with bacteria, without harming animals.
I agree somewhat but that could also be an asset. People’s trust in mainstream media is near an all time low, that includes fox and friends. Yeah maybe 25% of Americans take it as gospel but most don’t trust it and think it’s detestable. AOC could turn their hatred of her into an asset, just like trump rode the cnn hate train to the presidency in 2020.
Trump has proved that the message “look at how all these billionaire backed media elites hate me, that means I’m speaking for the little guy against this rigged system” is effective and seems to negate any pressure the media tries to wield against it. And with AOC the message would actually be coherent as she would actually be helping the little guy instead of betraying them at the first sign of a shiny gift like trump has done.