Comment

The Bob Cesca Podcast: Non-Mandate Mandate

16
The Ghost of a Flea9/14/2021 2:38:33 pm PDT

re: #200 Belafon

I don’t know about you, but I have often had to accept help from people that I otherwise wouldn’t have anything else to do with.

As for the Lincoln Project, their members have stated more than once that their job is not to dictate the Democrats agenda, and they have resisted doing that when they would have had the opportunity. There have been no “If the Democrats would only do this” related to policy; it’s only been in how they think it would be better to do more direct attacks on Republicans.

I am definitely a “work with Stalin” guy. When we’re truly on the other side of this, we can evaluate what it means to be an ally. But we cannot win with only Democrats. And I’m not beyond a few thanks every now and then, and a few less “but you started this” especially with those that have apologized.

My point is that we’re never going to be on the other side of this.

The only leverage the “reasonable” conservatives have is their own monstrous creation.

Their ideas don’t work, their plans for the future don’t work. Their plan to defeat the current fascism is to continue doing the things that create fascists.

You keep imagining that I’m stating a preference that has to do with my virtues and my choice of affiliation, when what I am saying is that it makes no strategic sense because those allies want stupid counterproductive things that will make the war go on longer.

Teaming with Stalin meant millions of soldiers who…let’s get callous here…were put into a meat grinder by their leader because that’s what the Allies needed—meat to throw at the Nazis until the logistics were strained to failure. The price of teaming with Stalin was Eastern Europe becoming Soviet colonies…which—also callous—wasn’t really that bad a price all things considered, Western Europe had no need for those people because they got cheap labor and captive markets from their colonies.

Teaming with “moderate” conservatives doesn’t get us many voters, only gets us those voters under conditions that alienate other voters, and the “price” of those voters is to continue policies that make the world worse in ways that will create more instability and thus more reactionaries, but also further empower institutions and people that already have so much wealth they are effectively beyond the law. It’s not that people won’t be held to account for what they’ve done in past, it’s that they’re demanding a future where they can’t be held to account ever.