I dedicated 5 years of my life to the political revolution and at the end I was wrung out. I’ll expand on my conclusions later but as it stands now, I’m a non-practicing Left Accelerationist.
edit: When I described myself as a “non-practicing Left Accelerationist,” I meant that I had largely lost confidence that meaningful structural change in the United States could be achieved through ordinary reform. I believed that major change might ultimately follow some form of systemic collapse or revolutionary political transformation. I did not mean that I supported political violence, terrorism, sabotage, or deliberately causing such a collapse. I have written explicitly against political violence in the past, including in a 2017 essay I published.
I just finished watching The Irishman. It was surprisingly informative about the history of the labor movement and unions in the US.
It got me thinking about pensions. No one in the progressive movement ever really talks about how pensions have disappeared. Companies basically don’t offer them anymore. They were such an essential part of the promise of the middle class 60 years ago, now they’re gone and no one even brings it up. It’s just a forgone conclusion that we would never be able to get them back. Pretty depressing.
This week has been exhausting, I'm exhausted and I didn't do much coverage of the lead up to the big DNC vote on superdelegates that's happening in a few hours.
I feel like the progressive movement has been diminished dramatically in the last few months and tomorrow could be a really big blow if the reforms don't pass.