Patrick R

author, dilettante, wage-earner, nonentity.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

In the past six hours, Israel has bombed three different countries. 🇵🇸🇱🇧🇮🇷

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

cannot decide what makes me angriest about the Final Fantasy MtG set. do i hate it because it sort of makes me want to play MtG again or because it sort of makes me want to play Final Fantasy again?

[Daniel Haqiqatjou @Haqiqatjou]

Fact: Hamas has killed over 4.5 million people in the Middle East and displaced 38 million more since 9/11.

Oh, sorry, I meant the US and Israel.

[🥷🏾 @Jayydagoon]

How Philadelphia finna look after tonight

[William M. Razavi @WMRazavi]

“Have we all read our Thucydides?”
Joe Sacco, War On Gaza

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

@Poeleveny TLC's "Waterfalls" being the prime example

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

"I'm curious what you'd think if you revisited [FF XI], now that so much has changed. It's unthinkable but the Dunes are empty, and have been for much longer than they were full--the game is faster, but practically a solo experience today. Like walking through a digital ruin."

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

says it all, really

[i moved back to @readwithcindy @_withcindy]

Really scared for other CEOs' safety right now 💔 Specifically
Erhardt Preitauer (CareSource), Kim Keck (BlueCross), Lisa Erickson (Medica), J David Joyner (CVS), Joseph Zubretsky (Molina), Andrew Witty (UHG), David Cordani (Cigna), Mark Bertolini (Oscar), Jim Rechtin (Humana)

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

@nise_yoshimi I've read Lin Yutang, yes

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

oh fuck I just wrote the first two chapters of a third Zeroes on a whim

[Nick Cruse 🥋 @SocialistMMA]

Whenever you start to feel bad for liberals never forget how they made and sold merch based on Kamala Harris talking down to anti genocide protesters

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

i thought we understood that the agreement was that we praise your culinary traditions and you vote for who we want you to vote for >:I

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

@tom_m_b comment from the wild: "you know there's a white woman in brooklyn reading about how much of the black vote went for trump and screaming the n-word"

[Patrick R @sunspeakgreen]

neither surprised about the election results last night nor the falling of the masks today

[Wyatt Reed @wyattreed13]

Libs are bringing back the joy tonight

[Wyatt Reed @wyattreed13]

Libs are bringing back the joy tonight

[A Left-Wing Account ™️ @PushDemsLeft]

Voters begged Kamala to listen, but she was too busy speaking.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Jon Bois @jon_bois]

here's someone who's taken as much grief from as many sides as anybody and just won again because she's ideologically consistent and her voters know exactly who she is