yeah, the primary is really reflecting the two factions inside the party: 95 year old centrists who can no longer walk or speak, vs fake leftists who turn into raging right-wingers at the first opportunity, but maintain "populist" cultural signifiers. A big part of the party is backing the 2nd strategy apparently.
No one heard of him until maybe a couple months ago. I don't think he has DSA connections or anything. Went directly from some extremely obscure local office to Bernie endorsement and liberal media circuit. Seems very artificial to rise so quickly, with no apparent difficulty, and no opposition from Dem establishment.
White collar jobs are way less likely to drug test, fwiw. Entry level still might, for anything above that it's very uncommon, outside of specific roles.
In addition, isn't Hamas reasonably popular in all of the countries that are (supposedly) sending forces? Certainly when compared with Israel, or their own governments? Seems risky to even ask their soldiers to do that.
sitting on your couch jerking it is more productive
Yeah, based on your tone I kinda suspected that's what you were proposing.
If you wanted, instead of protesting, to have a strike at a strategic workplace, or do sabotage, or block a port, or have a general strike, or even an insurrection, then those are at least somewhat actionable. You can find historical examples, even current examples, and study what they've gotten right or wrong, and how their context is similar or different from yours. You can start thinking through how you can get from your current circumstances, to that goal, and then what could be next. Start thinking about the material conditions you're in and what possibilities actually exist and how you can potentially, in some way, intervene in the course of the class struggle.
And if you decide your next step is "find two dedicated local comrades" or whatever, that's a completely valid starting point. Reading could be a starting point. Getting your personal life together could be a starting point, I don't know your life. Unproductive criticism is unfortunately not a starting point, unless you find a way to make it productive.
And maybe you'll decide conventional protest has some role in this process, and maybe you wont. I gave my opinion above, but I don't really know, and that specific tactic isn't really the important point. The important part is thinking through questions of strategy materialistically and scientifically, instead of emotionally and impressionistally.
You're not wrong about thinking we're in a bad situation and not accomplishing what we need to. But put yourself in your historical context. Communists have chosen one of the most difficult causes in human history. We've been at this for hundreds of years, we've faced unimaginable defeats and losses, but we've also learned some hard lessons and made at least a few important advances. And right now, that process is still in motion, and we all have to figure out what to do and how to do it. Picking one specific thing not to do is completely insufficient.
wasting the time and energy of millions that could be directed towards more revolutionary actions
Again, like what?
"X is useless" and "X is useless, do something useful instead" are equivalent: neither one gives any indication of what should be done.
Like imagine you're talking with some local comrades, and they want to do "X", and you tell them that's a waste of time. You can see how their obvious question would be what to do instead? And if you regularly gave that type of non-actionable criticism they'd probably start viewing your input as non-productive and start to disregard it.
I wasn't intending to agree or disagree until you elaborated more. But I will say that describing a problem without any attempt at a solution is usually not productive.
Personally, I think most protests have no chance at actually accomplishing their demands, but are still useful to attend to find people and orgs active locally.
Fadhel Kaboub would suggest that in order to fully exercise monetary sovereignty to benefit your own people, you will first need to achieve food and energy self-sufficiency.
This makes sense, but I do find additional questions as I think through it. Why is national-level self-sufficiency the criteria, why not a self-sufficient bloc of mutually balancing economies? And why are food and energy categorically different from other necessities: metals, medicine, microchips, fertilizer, agricultural equipment, commercial trucks, plastics, etc?
yeah, the primary is really reflecting the two factions inside the party: 95 year old centrists who can no longer walk or speak, vs fake leftists who turn into raging right-wingers at the first opportunity, but maintain "populist" cultural signifiers. A big part of the party is backing the 2nd strategy apparently.