starting every single doom binge election coverage watching democracy now first has helped me immensely with the fear and the anxiety comes from learning how far apart democrats are from reality and the seemingly insurmountable hurdles we have to overcome to bring them closer together.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We can't bring the Democrats to where they need to be, they serve their donors, and their donors would rather the Democrats lose than shift left. The DNC cannot be infiltrated either, it sustains itself purely from its donors, and as such needs establishment figures that prop up the system with fundraising, while radicals are cast aside.

This is why theory is important.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i agree that theory matters and that the dnc cannot be changed.

i use "democrats" to distinguish the people from from the dnc and i've learned that democrats mostly align with all leftists views but american indoctrination prevents them from learning and that's my biggest source of anxiety.

i also agree that you can't bring democrats to where they need to be because "you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink" is true and this is one of those hurdles that add to the anxiety; there doesn't seem to be a way around it since it requires appeals to reason in a reality that uses pleasure, emotion, and social ostracization to combat that reasoning.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It isn't "American indoctrination," the ideas held by people are largely determined by their social relations and material conditions. Understanding how people come to their conclusions and the beliefs they hold is a fundamental aspect of theory, because it illuminates how we can change those beliefs.

Liberals generally want the same things Leftists do, but don't understand the systems around them, their trajectories, or their weaknesses, and thus not how to overcome them or what needs to be done.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

you and duckduckgo just taught me that "american indoctrination" is the wrong descriptor since it's already a well known phrase that describes something else; i used like i used my dnc/democrat distinction, it was my own personal shorthand until now.

what i named "american indoctrination" (as of 30 minutes or so ago) described my impression of modern day zeitgeist of the american middle-to-upper middle class. those two classes mostly share similar material conditions and usually do not have social relations with anyone outside of those two sub-classes. (they also tend to ostracize the lower middle class and working poor). the french used to call them petite bourgeoisie and most are not by american standards but they unquestionably are so by global south and empirical periphery standards; they're also the democrat's most loyal voters and most of the ones in that latter upper-middle-class category are republicans.