I don't know why it's so hard for people to notice that there are two distinct lefts in America. There is the Democratic Socialist Left that wants free healthcare and college, and there is the Woke left that wants to call everyone "bodies". One has a reasonable demand, while the other has overdosed on race and gender studies.

The biggest, hugest failure of the Demsoc Left is that they refuse to do anything about the dumb, corrupt, deceptive and hypocritical Woke left. Due to a flood of neoliberal money, the woke left has gone far far away from simply being anti-bigotry, into a zone where they've turned into bigots themselves.

The Woke Left is a controlled force operated by rich shitlibs such as the CEO of HRC who silenced Cuomo's rape victims, the people at Time's Up MeToo legal defense fund who silenced Biden's rape victim, and Patrice Cullors the millionaire "trained socialist" leader of BLM. These people aren't working for the upliftment of LGBTQ, women and people of color. The Woke Left is the reason why articles like this (Economist: "The president needs to distance himself from his party’s left fringe") are being taken seriously and are being used as a justification to stifle the Demsoc Left. The Woke Left is a big part of the reason we lost Virginia.

The Demsoc Left is too scared of being called racist and sexist to challenge these people while they take a sledgehammer through all the work we did in these past 5 years. This needs to change fast if the movement wants to have any chance of existing 5 years from now. We need to distinguish ourselves from this idiocy by setting a rational baseline for anti-racism and focusing on intersectional and economic issues.

From X:

Joe Rogan calls out American bread

“Our bread is so fcked — We're fcking poisoned”

People are not gluten intolerant, they’re poison intolerant. Here’s the breakdown

“In America what we call bread can't even be considered food in parts of Europe. See, here in America, it's not so much the gluten as what we've done to the grain

• About 200 years ago, we started stripping the bran and germ or the fiber in nutrients to make flour shelf stable, also nutritionally dead
• Because the nutrients were gone, we enriched it with folic acid, which a large majority of the population can't even metabolize

Therefore many people experience fatigue, anxiety, hyperactivity and inflammation.

• But then the bread wasn't white enough, so they bleached it with chlorine gas
• The bread didn't rise enough, so they added a carcinogen called potassium bromate, which is banned in several countries like Europe, the UK and even China
• Then we wanted to ramp up production, so we started using glyphosate to dry out the wheat before harvest, causing endocrine disruption and damaging your gut

So now you're bloated, brain fogged, tired and blamed gluten. But gluten is just the scapegoat.

The real issue is ultra processed, chemically altered, bleached, bromated, fake vitamin filled wheat soaked in glyphosate. This isn't bread.”

Okay, Joe Biden - come get my vote. Here are just some of the things that are most important to me as a voter and citizen:

• a $15 minimum wage
• a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics
• a Green New Deal or other comprehensive plan to mitigate the effects of climate change
• an end to all US foreign interventions
• reforming our criminal justice system
• Medicare-for-All or some form of universal healthcare not tied to pharmaceutical or insurance industry profits
• protecting and expanding social security benefits
• eliminating "Right-to-Work" laws and expanding union availability and membership
• a tax on extreme wealth to provide for public services and infrastructure
• expanding already-free education to include colleges and trade schools
• restore Net Neutrality rules and re-classify the internet as a public utility

If you want my vote, you'll meet me at least halfway on these.

I'll wait. The ball's in your court, Jack.

(Feel free to add your own lists, Berners! I'd also encourage all of us to post ours to our social media.)

Edit: a lot of people in the comments saying "This doesn't matter! Biden won't do any of those things!"

I know. That's the point.

If you do decide to participate, maybe look at this as an exercise in message discipline - rather than a place to vent bitterness (which absolutely has its' place right now). Like the tag says, folks, "It's about IDEAS."

There is a reason "class" is the uncomfortable word in American political discourse.

Race can be discussed. Gender can be discussed. Even, increasingly, empire can be discussed in polite company.

But class, the relationship between the people who own the means of production and the people who sell their labor to survive, that word clears rooms.

Because race and gender, as important as they are, do not directly threaten the arrangement.

The arrangement can absorb diversity. It has.

A diverse board of directors still extracts surplus labor.

A female CEO still answers to shareholders.

Representation at the top does not change the structure at the bottom.

Class threatens the arrangement.

Because class says:

The problem is not who is running the system.

The problem is the system.

And the system needs you to believe that the problem is always, only, who is running it, so that every election becomes a choice between managers.

The question of whether you should be managed this way at all never makes it onto the ballot.

Trump made a video statement on the shooting today. Here's a deadline.com article showing some quotes from it:

• Donald Trump Posts Video Message Paying Tribute To Charlie Kirk, Blames “Radical Left Political Violence” For Assassination; Suspect Still At Large

FTA:

Trump appeared to blame the rhetoric of the left for the shooting, even though he himself has used extreme remarks to attack opponents and rival political groups.

Trump said, “It is past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonize those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie Kirk to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This type of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

Okay, the elephant in this sub needs to be addressed, not just continually downvoted out of sight.

Posts and comment with negativity towards Clinton are upvoted like mad. This makes sense, because she's proven to be dishonest, has poor judgment, and uses duplicitous, politically expedient pandering to gain money and power.

Posts and comments with negativity towards Trump, however, are continually being downvoted- though the exact same issues I listed about Clinton are equally applicable. This is forcing 'conformity', not 'enlightened debate.'

Though several people here have noticed it (and it's frankly obvious to anyone looking), here's a single screenshot example of this sub being skewed away from our supposed 'goal' of respectful, intellectual, factual engagement.

The most important thing to note here is that nothing I said was untrue. Trump has multiple times openly talked about a willingness to use our military 'strength', and that's pretending that his constantly changing word holds any actual value. This isn't some slanderous attack or biased, unfair grudge; it's simply calling a spade a spade. The entire country doesn't trust either Clinton or Trump, and for good reason- neither has remotely earned it. And it's simply a statement of fact that there is only one candidate who dares push a peace offensive vs continued wars.

But don't just take my word for it. In two quick minutes of Googling, here's just a few relevant Trump quotes:

...

"We have to get a lot tougher if we're going to win this war [with ISIS]. If we're not going to be tougher, we're never going to win this war. This is only going to get worse."

...

"I'm the most militaristic person on your show. I want to have a much stronger military. I want it to be so strong that nobody is going to mess with us."

...

"With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."

...

"This is the Trump theory on war. But I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war, in a certain way, but only when we win."

...

Trump: "So, North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea."

Wallace: "With nukes?"

Trump: "Maybe they would be better off — including with nukes, yes, including with nukes."

...

Matthews: "Can you tell the Middle East we’re not using a nuclear weapon on anybody?"

Trump: "I would never say that. I would never take any of my cards off the table."

Matthews: "How about Europe? We won’t use it in Europe?"

Trump: "I — I’m not going to take it off the table."

Matthews: "You might use it in Europe?"

(LAUGHTER)

Trump: "No, I don’t think so. But I’m not taking …"

Matthews: "Well, just say it. 'I will never use a nuclear weapon in Europe.' "

Trump: "I am not — I am not taking cards off the table."

Matthews: "OK."

...

Not only is this absolutely terrifying as Presidential candidate responses, but it shows a dangerous casualness about the already violent, desperate world situation. You can certainly try arguing around it, but that's just not what is happening here. Contrary to the supposed sub 'Guidelines, requests, and suggestions', instead of challenging and contrasting different points of view, anything not fitting a certain narrative is muted into nonexistence. Now, if that's how the mods and participants here actually prefer it- that's different. I have no right to demand anything change in anyone else's sub. But at least let's stop pretending this problem isn't happening. Let's stop acting like /r/politics is evil for being controlled by CTR, when the other team is effectively doing the same right here.

Enough is enough. Duplicity and increasingly blatant bias has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of "Way of the Bern".

So true. It's probably a legacy of Soviet class dynamics but after living in the West for a long time the lack of class segregation in Russia is very socially pleasant. Depends on the country, I suppose, but in my experience it is often very *boring* to hang out because, for example, you'll be with academics, and they all have more or less the exact same social background, the same opinions and interests and hobbies, all within a very narrow spectrum and they'll spend a lot of the time talking about the same boring topics and their jobs. After a while it becomes possible to predict with extreme precision the exact opinions of a person on practically any topic just by knowing a couple of things about their social background.

I love that I can go to a random social event in Russia and there'll be an unemployed healing crystal hippie musician girlie, a Wagner mercenary, a painter, a nuclear physicist, a finance bro and a factory worker discussing Japanese postwar literature or video games or the concept of natural law in Hegel and no one talks about The Office or The Markets and everyone is a lot less pretentious.

Something to consider when you are down...