if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.
I get who you're talking about, and I've encountered those tiresome people. The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest. This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
Avoiding those outcomes while attracting is steadily growing number of protesters, with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment. Way too big to ignore and within reach of overwhelming numbers.
Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
> Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.
ACA is garbage. It was created by the Heritage Foundation and started off being called Romneycare. It has worked terribly, and required what is an unconstitutional (in many opinions) fine for people who fail to be able to afford insurance.
The only reason anyone has any pleasant feelings about ACA is because a Medicaid expansion was passed at the same time. Of course I would prefer nothing. ACA stopped the momentum for M4A, as it was designed to do. Forcing the vote was a litmus test that Democrats purporting to understand this failed.
The ACA is not good. But it's an awful lot better than what we had before.
The problem is in the old days we had a fake "insurance". This wasn't a problem with cheapskates, but with how the industry worked. Companies would offer a plan for a little while, only let healthy people in, premiums were reasonable. Then they would offer something a tiny bit different, give it a new name. As time went on the people on the old plan would develop health problems, premiums were calculated based on what THAT PLAN had to pay out, so premiums went up. Healthy, jump ship to the new one. Not healthy, you can't. The old plan would soon go into a death spiral and you would be uninsured.
Thus anyone with a chronic health problem was stuck.
And they're trying to bring back the old days. Allow other health insurance to be sold, the healthy people will jump to it and the ACA will death spiral.
We did get the unexpected result of exposing the large number of people with "insurance" that was basically a scam. A lot of people didn't know they had policies that had insanely low limits or the like. I'm thinking of a post from back then, a student health plan that had gone up like 10x, "where's the difference?" And a bunch of people who couldn't understand even when I pointed out how the cheap version was effectively worthless for anything that needed more than a doctor's visit.
I appreciate you stepping in to be the perfect example of the kind of thinking I'm talking about. People like you are the real enemy of progress and we are very thankful that you are so politically irrelevant.
And your style of thought processes is why the Overton Window is so extreme to conservative to the point of fascism.
I remember WHY the Heritage foundation put together their plan. It was cause Hillary Clinton dared, as first wife, put together a plan for single payer. Republicans howled at it nonstop with complaints of government death panels, and you guessed it, China.
That was also back when republican thinktanks actually put together plans. Terrible ones, sure, but actually had plans, rather than "concepts of a plan" (trumps own words).
Of course, Romney ran with it. It was, as you guessed it, terrible for Massachusetts. And surprise surprise, when the black guy speaks for it it turns into extreme hyper-communism... but it was really just garden variety racism by republicans. But now, we have for-profit insurance death panels.
And no, shlant, when your form of "compromise" entails in a one-way ratchet and your control is whether its slow or fast and not reverse, its not a compromise. Blow this shit up. Plenty of us are done with your idea of compromise oro 'reaching across the aisle' ala obama. It has never worked, since Reconstruction. Just gets worse and worse.
> This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
That's largely a consequence of police being badly trained though. See stuff like Gracie Breakdown for a small glimpse of how horribly badly trained. Now, the people who complain about the violence are also the people who scream defund the police and want to ban body weight restraint, leading to cops only having ultra violence left as a tool. It's a pretty bad downward spiral of stupid.
> The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest.
It's strange to ignore all of the actual criticisms, such as that they are protests with absolutely no demands, and that they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms. The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean. It was consciously concocted as an alternative to fighting the "oligarchs" as Sanders constantly said, because Democrats support oligarchs.
> with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment.
It's not. They're just faithful movement Democrats walking together in the street trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump." They're a mockery of protests, they're just extremely ineffective marketing.
They wouldn't be tiresome if they were easy to answer for you. Accusing people of just complaining about people and things not being "perfect" is a sign of somebody who doesn't even have a dishonest argument to make, so they're resorting to making no argument at all, and instead calling you a snob.
> they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms
Ah yes, the tried and true "they are paid protestors" shtick. Yawn.
> The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean.
It's very simple - Trump acts like a king, wielding his power however he wants while ignoring any checks and balances. People are very much against that for obvious reasons.
> because Democrats support oligarchs.
curious what your thoughts are on Elon Musk and DOGE
> trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump."
Yea there's no reason why anyone would have legitimate issues with Trump as a president.. He certainly doesn't provide new ones on a daily basis
Every socialist I’ve ever met has conceded that capitalism is a great mechanism for wealth generation. Just not for much else humans might value in their societies.
Yet despite that many residents in the wealthiest nations report increasing levels of unhappiness with the state of things. While there are other factors that play into this, it doesn't seem that wealth generation itself is a direct vehicle to the things people value / make them happy
Yea people report that. And then you let them go to Ghana for a week and you'll see their perspective shift real fast. That people have no historical perspective isn't an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for education. And the thing with education is that it's done by the state. So really it's the state that is failing capitalism, not the other way around.
What are those other qualities? And how would we foster them?
We've tried communism. That ends up with millions starving, artists and scientists brutally murdered, and human flourishing basically being utterly destroyed PLUS all wealth being destroyed. That's what communists need to concede.
