finding most of the chapo eps either really boring/depressing (i cba to listen to some dude promote his book about “refounding the American Republic”, fuck off) or just not that funny these days. need something to listen to that will make me laugh about the awful shit going on. any recs? is trueanon good?
I’m not all the way through it, but I thought the last episode was pretty good. He’s literally doing democratic socialism, saying that democracy needs to be extended to the workplace and the economy generally.
Obviously, I’m not a demsoc, but I think it’s good for them to have more of a voice when they aren’t attacking more radical leftists (which he didn’t as far as I saw).
it just looks like repackaged bernieism to me and we all know how that went. The promotional materials seem to praise the founding fathers as well.
You’re talking about promotional material when I am telling you that I listened to the actual interview and you are wrong with your vibe check. He said that he finds it credible that the first American Revolution was the Civil War and that even with the subsequent progress made by various suffrage movements, even by Athenian standards, American “democracy” is aristocratic and performative (and it’s his core argument that America is not a democracy!)
ok fair enough. i still have some misgivings abt his credentials and cba with a book promo episode but that sounds better than i assumed it would be.
Yeah, I think a basic mistrust of someone who writes for the Guardian (etc.) is a reasonable place to start at, I just don’t think Chapo would have on a DNC ghoul to pitch their audience on “107 Days” and instead thought that this guy’s takes on how America is not a real democracy and we should make it a real democracy were worth sharing, even if he’s more libbed up than we are in many ways (though the way that he spoke about workplace democracy and such makes me think he’s at least a solid demsoc). I also agree with you that some of the pandering wordings were gross, but to put it in context it might be worth revisit Frederick Douglass’s “The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro,” where he starts off with pages of jerking off the Founders but then excoriates them and everyone else in a way completely unheard of in modern America’s mainstream political discourse. It’s at least true that the demonic Founders were somewhat progressive in their revolution for their opposition to monarchy and opposition to explicit, codified theocracy, and I think it’s fair enough to recognize things like that so long as you maintain the context of slavery, opposition to “unfettered” democracy, patriarchy, etc.
Yeah I was listening to this ep while running errands and found it interesting if not humorous. Useful little bits to use against liberals who think their vote might be defending democracy.