The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

You literally said the opposite just a few posts ago.

One of those is a quote about Obama's legacy which I write is destined to be terrible.

The other is a quote about Bernie's legacy. And Bernie's legacy would have been quite different if he had been willing to call Obama Uncle Tom.

The conflict you are trying to point to is non-existent.

“ It would have been like the fable where the kid blurts out that emperor has no clothes. And Obama would have that label hanging over him the rest of his life.”

Having had a chance to reflect .....

I'm being criticized for using a racial stereotype.

Obama supporters weaponize this. Their man can act in a manner which conforms to the Uncle Tom stereotype and they want to give him immunity on the grounds that using stereotypes is politically incorrect.

That's the Democratic establishment playbook. Identity politics with neoliberal economics for their wealthy donors.

Maybe someday, people will start caring again about policies and their relevance to the experience of the struggling class?

Regardless ..... Obama's legacy is toast. Failing on climate change is going to destroy many legacies.

nutsack fighting the Obama supporters

It

Yes, but I was mentioning something a little more immediate to lead to possible change in the economic direction. Most poeple, especially the younger, are going to care far more over the stresses of finding a job to pay for food and gas as opposed to environmental policies of paper straws and .20 cent grocery bags. Thats what the rich privileged boomers get to think about all day.

I think a serious and fast economic collapse, whether is an AI collapse and mass layoffs or w/e, will be things that people will collectively care about enough to look at least look at things from a different perspective

...from there, you may get some newly born socialists and your Bernie Bros as opposed to Maga and it might be easier then, for folks to adopt some of your more rigid envirnemtal ideas in a room full of anti cap socialists than here in 2026.

That's why UBI is an essential part of the solution.

Yes, but your ideal UBI is cashless. It would also be essential to have UHC, retirement plans, funded Fire and Police and Transportation and clean water and education and infrastructure and titty bars.

You could certainly do all of those things without money in a video game or maybe in 500 years from now in the US, but transitioning into a more socialized system that ensures those needs is going to be an important first step then jumping right into a cashless world and just hope that all the allocations and free labor is going to miraculously pan out. Which it clearly wouldn't.

I mean, the frog in boiling water is at play here with how people think and are willing to transition if you at all interested in having public support.

Most of human history was cashless. We'll be fine without it.

Well that just clearly doesn’t follow.

NutNut is getting nuttier and nuttier almost by the hour. He literally can't maintain a consistent position for three posts in a row.

And somehow he thinks that using racial stereotypes HELPS his Great Cause.

I think it's unseemly to publicly engage and thereby enable unwell people, so I shan't engage him further for the foreseeable future.

I hope you get better soon, NutNut!

Humans have been around for ~ 300,000 years. When did cash appear ?

What inconsistency are you trying to invent now?

We can discuss this when you're feeling better.

Lay down for a while. Listen to some pleasant, relaxing music.

We'll still be here after your much-needed rest.

Take good care!

I think we would be better served to evaluate whether the Uncle Tom label fits Obama.

Yes ..... it's a racial stereotype.

But does the shoe fit ?

I feel great

Cashless societies work in the social arrangements that humans had (from what we can gather) during most of that period.

Also just in pure form of your argument, I don’t think we want to deduct from past human history to what is normative on the present. For the vast majority of human history, we didn’t know about special/general relativity. Does that mean that special/general relativity is something that we should reject? Possibly, but it doesn’t seem like the fact that we lived most of human history without it is a reason to reject it.

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Cash is not comparable to science and nature.

I think people have a failure of imagination.

They've only ever personally known a society which orbits around money. So the idea of a society without money is beyond comprehension.

For what's it's worth, a minor role for money in the future is still possible.

But a world in which a person has money and has the freedom to spend it without regard to the environmental consequences of that spending is rapidly coming to an end. And that's the role money plays today.

Money will only continue to exist if it is detached from the freedom to pollute.

I don’t think it’s apples to oranges, but if you really want an exactly symmetrical comparison I would formulate it this way:

If it was true that all societies historically had a form of currency, and we only introduced societies without currency in the last few thousand years, it would not follow from that we would be fine if we reintroduced currency.

You're completely ignoring that the current societal norm is unsustainable.

Money was instrumental to human advancement. Historically beneficial. No argument about that.

What makes us intelligent (in theory) is the ability to recognize when circumstances change. If you can't recognize that .... well, it doesn't speak highly for your intelligence. Either that or you are indifferent to civilization collapse.

Now it’s a different argument so I would have a different response. It’s not that I’m ignoring an argument that you had not yet made.

Nut, if you don't want politics to be subsumed by identity grievance, maybe don't insist that political figures call each other out as race traitors.

It's not a different argument.

You're arguing that getting rid of money is not realistic because it has existed consistently for the last several thousand years. It's a perfectly "normal" argument on your part. Most people agree with you.

But most people don't comprehend the consequences of the status quo. They don't comprehend tipping points in which systems that have thousands of years of inertia transition from beneficial to disastrous. They don't have a clue about the delicate nature of our dependence on the version of Earth which is tipping out of the historical consistency which has coincided with the era of money.

Money is a very big deal in human civilization. But there are natural forces which are more profound and we will be forced to navigate them.

People associate money with survival. They need to eat and they exchange money for food at the grocery store. But currency has a very regular historical record of becoming worthless as the societies which support them go belly up. You can try eating a hundred dollar bill ...... but it's not very nutritionally valuable.