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[Rolan7]

It's like they say:  "Always let perfect be the enemy of good".
If progress is slow and complicated by the realities of real life, why even have it at all?

[Culise]

Progress?  Why vote progress, comrades, when accelerationism shall build a better future?  The only way to create a proper post-capitalist state is to support Trump and build a utopia with the best of hypercapitalism and cronyism.  The invisible hand, not of the market, but of the megacorp shall provide all.  We shall move forward only by stepping backwards.

[Dunamisdeos]

Uhoh, someone brought a problem with the Democratic party to the conversation, like their friendliness with big banking, or their tendency for avoiding economic issues by saying nothing and blaming the GOP, or their utter historic inability to connect with anyone in a rural or poor community on a non-social issue.

Time to passive-aggressively discredit it, and insinuate that the poster secretly hates progress and worships Donald Trump. What a coincidence that everyone who disagrees with me is an ignorant regressive *swirls wine glass*.

I'm sophisticated and clever.

[Culise]

Me?  Ah, it's probably me because I cued it into Rolan's serious comment on progress.  No, I actually only recently learned of the idea of accelerationism and found it amusing to snark on.  My apologies if my joke offended you, and my apologies if I was late to that sort of joke.

But then again, I don't make any pretensions to being sophisticated or clever; I don't pretend to be anything other than an idiot and a fool.  Well, I'll still take the blame in either case, since Dunami and I are the only two being passive-aggressive right now.

[SalmonGod]

I just liked it.  Because I'm cynical as fuck.  Humor and frustration go hand in hand for me as a matter of survival.  And it won't ever change until enough people feel the same to invest in alternatives.  And I don't see less-obviously-or-frequently-as-horrible-as-the-other-guy as automatically meaning good, especially when the comparison to be made is against cartoon villainy.

[smjjames]

The Democrat problems with connecting with rural people on various issues seems to be a more recent thing

[redwallzyl]

Everyone knows that the Dems have a economically right faction. This is not news or some kind of shocking revaluation is what I'm saying.

[Rolan7]

Uhoh, someone brought a problem with the Democratic party to the conversation, like their friendliness with big banking, or their tendency for avoiding economic issues by saying nothing and blaming the GOP, or their utter historic inability to connect with anyone in a rural or poor community on a non-social issue.

Time to passive-aggressively discredit it, and insinuate that the poster secretly hates progress and worships Donald Trump. What a coincidence that everyone who disagrees with me is an ignorant regressive *swirls wine glass*.

I'm sophisticated and clever.

That's even more exaggerated than *my* sarcastic post
The Democratic party has problems.  As a party in the USA, they do tend to be indebted to big corporations.  That's just how the system works - it *shouldn't*, and the Democratic base (and thus their candidates) are desperately trying to change it, but it's kinda what we're stuck with currently!

Accelerationism is like defeatism, to me, and I'm not sure what the endgame is supposed to be.  Democracy has problems.  It's still "The worst form of government, except for all the others".

Progress?  Why vote progress, comrades, when accelerationism shall build a better future?  The only way to create a proper post-capitalist state is to support Trump and build a utopia with the best of hypercapitalism and cronyism.  The invisible hand, not of the market, but of the megacorp shall provide all.  We shall move forward only by stepping backwards.

To be fair I guess, accelerationists might have a point in that there will probably be blowback from Trump's presidency.
But... isn't it likely to be back towards the establishment options they had before?  With even more "right to rule", now that people have seen the error of a purely-populist candidate?

I don't get the idea that this will support progressive ideals at all.

[smjjames]

What is this accelerationism? I think I've heard of it before though. *wikis it*

Pretty sure both left- and right-accelerationism would lead to a technological singularity as they both try to transcend in different ways.

Everyone knows that the Dems have a economically right faction. This is not news or some kind of shocking revaluation is what I'm saying.

Well yeah, of course. It's a big tent party.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah I sort of went overboard on the sarcasm :3

It's hard for me to choose between the GOP and the DNC. The GOP is the Doctor Doom style of outright giddy evil, and the DNC is basically Elysium. Each election for me it's "which one of these will hurt my family the least".

[MrRoboto75]

But I thought latveria did fairly well for itself under DOOM.

At least, it always gets worse when he's not in power.

[Rolan7]

Aside, I like to imagine that future generations of schoolkids are going to be very confused as they study ~200 years of Democrat vs Republican, and are expected to understand how little that has to do with literal democracy versus representative republic, of which we are the latter.

Because full democracy is both infeasible and, in my opinion, a bad idea.  It leads directly to tyranny of the majority, even if they are the 51%.

[SalmonGod]

Without ever looking up a formal definition or article on it, I'm pretty sure it's the idea that if things keep getting worse at a slow pace that people just continually accustom themselves to the "new normal" and never work up the motivation to work against the decline.  Until someday when each person finds their own quiet moment of reflection where they look back and they all of a sudden realize that things have become really, horribly aweful on a massive scale.  So accelerationists believe that the answer to this is that if there is no popular will to resist a bad path, to push things rapidly down that path to get a reaction.  The hoped for end result is that action happens sooner rather than later, and we don't go down that path as far as we would have otherwise.

It's kinda the same idea as boiling yourself to death by raising the temperature to a point that it kills you, but so slowly that you don't notice until it's too late vs a sudden spike in temperature and you jump out of the tub screaming and address the problem.

Look at the environment.  Environmental collapse has been a background noise to our lives for decades.  We hear horrible news all the time, but it's all this nebulous "this is really going to suck one day" kind of thing that doesn't motivate you to drop what you're doing and make any sacrifices NOW as if it's really a crisis, right?  But it's that very thing which will make it such a horrible crisis eventually.  Some drastic event needs to kick everyone in the face before they'll really do anything.  In the meantime, mass extinction will roll right along.

To be fair I guess, accelerationists might have a point in that there will probably be blowback from Trump's presidency.
But... isn't it likely to be back towards the establishment options they had before?  With even more "right to rule", now that people have seen the error of a purely-populist candidate?

I don't get the idea that this will support progressive ideals at all.

I can only hope the blowback is issues-based rather than party-based.

[Rolan7]

That's an apt description, as I understand the movement.

Ecology is a compelling argument, too.  IMHO it's probably the issue where we're destroying our future the most, and it's only getting worse.

I tend to disagree on most other issues.  Social issues have been, despite my cynicism, getting ever better year by year.  I'm okay with slow progress.
And for economic issues, I rather simply am hesitant to grant more power to the Right.  Even as some grand keikaku that ends in, uh, riots or something.

[smjjames]

To be fair I guess, accelerationists might have a point in that there will probably be blowback from Trump's presidency.
But... isn't it likely to be back towards the establishment options they had before?  With even more "right to rule", now that people have seen the error of a purely-populist candidate?

I don't get the idea that this will support progressive ideals at all.

I can only hope the blowback is issues-based rather than party-based.

Maybe both? Both parties are showing signs of fracture and trying to change and there likely will be some blowback towards the Republicans since they're reaping the whirlwind as it were.