This is from a series of tweets originally posted on Bluesky.
The fundamental problem for the Democrats is that they want to be in charge. This is the cause of their issues. And I mean that in a different way than saying they’re power-mad and that is their issue. The reason that the Democrats’ ambition is a problem is that they can’t be Republicans.
The core of the Democratic Party are people who would vote with Republicans if they personally could win office that way, but for a variety of reasons, they couldn’t. This is the Joe Manchin model. Usually, it’s because a Republican was already there. That’s why their ambition is a problem.
If they weren’t so ambitious, they wouldn’t need to go to a different party to try to get elected. The thing is that you can’t just do the Republican thing and get elected, the Republicans already have that constituency. Even if you’re more charismatic, you can’t beat their machine w/o your own.
To build that separate machine, Democrats have to make promises to people who wouldn’t vote Republican ever, as that’s the only constituency remaining to get. But every time they do that, it makes them vulnerable, because they don’t want to do that type of thing, not really.
The Democrats exist in a place where the party’s core is constantly fighting with its base because it needs to attract its base in order to win but it doesn’t actually agree with its base in any measure. It’s vulnerable because any time it starts to lag, it has to abandon what it really wants to do
That’s why you see Harris doing what she’s doing now, and why Biden ran his campaign and presidency that way. They are fairly confident they’re going to win, so they don’t need to make any more concessions to their base. Harris probably called Trump a fascist cause she’s in a spot of trouble.
And as long as this remains the case, and the government does not support a multi-party system (which it never will sans revolution), the Democratic base will never get out from under the core (talkless of the left getting out) because the core has all the resources.
If the left ever mounts a serious challenge, the Democratic core can easily co-opt it because the left will generally be starved of resources. Of course, this is by design. Instead of electing a committed leftist, you elect a Democrat who made compromises that they fully intend to break ASAP.
And while you can read this situation as the base & the left having some amount of influence, this is a similar level of influence as “voting with your wallet”. You can shout as loud as you want for things and refuse to vote for Democrats. If you go too far left, they will just sandbag you and lose.
They would rather sandbag you and lose than be “too socialist” because, fundamentally, they’re of the capitalist class. And that’s why they have the ultimate power in this situation. Maybe their success relies on you, but if they decide not to play, you get nothing.
I think I’m wrapping up here, so let me say this: most Democratic voters understand this innately, and most leftists do, too. The difference is the response. Committed Democrats are cowards, so they follow wherever the core leads, hoping for protection. Leftists get mad at the game being rigged.
Ultimately, like everything is going to be for a few weeks/months in my world, it’s luxury politics vs. joy politics. Most people in the world, certainly most American voters, have luxury as their highest ideal. That’s because propaganda has told them luxury = happiness. Democrats don’t want to work
Democrats want to be assured that they don’t have to do anything for their world to be good. They want it taken care of and to not think. If you read Marx or any other socialist philosopher, you’ll know that the Good World we want is not one where no one works.
The world we want is one where work is spread evenly enough that everyone has a space for joy. And the conservatives cannot stand that, because it means they do not get luxury.
Reprise. I will eventually write a more focused piece on luxury politics vs. joy politics as it’s the latest evolution of my thinking on conservatism vs. socialism. I do want to clarify one point here. Near the end, I said “the Good World we want is not one where no one works.” That could imply that the other side does want a world where no one works. And wouldn’t that be a good thing, too?
This is a deception. To figure it out, you need to kind of expand the question. When I say that the Good World is not one where no one works, what I’m also saying is that I acknowledge that I may have to do work in order for the world to be good. When people say that they want a world where no one works, what they are saying is that they do not want to have to do any work. This becomes dangerous because the concept of who really constitutes “the world” can shift. If you are focused on not working, you might decide that other people working extremely hard is worth it if it means that you do not have to work. Other people suffering is worth it if it means you do not have to suffer. And that is the essence of luxury politics, the essence of conservatism.
The lie that conservatives tell is that you can achieve a world without hardship. A world of ultimate security and immediate gratification. And they do build this world. But only a very few get to live in it, and everyone else is in varying stages of suffering and toil. And to them, that is okay, because what they want is to build a world of luxury. They want a world in which they can claim to be growing tons of crops by themselves because they have dehumanized and instrumentalized people the way that we instrumentalize machines.
As an aside, I’m broke as hell right now. I don’t bring it up for pity. I bring it up because my car needs to go to the shop. Now, technically, I have had the money to take my car to the shop over these last few months. I could have saved things here and there, gone without, and taken my car to my shop. If I had a problem with my body that had a similar cost, I would do that. But my car is just a machine. It would be bad if it breaks down (and it probably will now that I’m jinxing it) but I can afford to neglect it more than I would myself or my relative because my car is simply an instrument.
Is it clear why instrumentalizing people will destroy society? And that is what luxury politics wants.
Luxury politics tells you the lie that the world will be better if you achieve luxury: stop needing to work, stop needing to acknowledge others, instrumentalize as much as possible. Joy politics understands that joy, real joy, comes out of satisfaction, not gratification. It doesn’t come through work itself, but it is found in the space where there is no work because work is done. Luxury is a game of pretend, that’s why it isn’t joy. It’s a person looking over at the heap of vegetables that have been harvested and smiling while pretending they don’t see the army of slaves behind it. Joy is knowing that no one suffered to produce what you have, no one was ignored, because unlike what Nietzsche says, it takes effort to ignore. The powerful make you believe that they simply didn’t see you, but the truth is, they are forcing themselves to avert their eyes. They are pretending not to see you, and they are always telling themselves “don’t look down”. Luxury is not joy and it never will be, no matter how much they try to tell you it can be the same.
You have to choose. Do you want to doubt yourself forever? Do you want to burn yourself up trying to remind the world that you’re better, that you deserve your luxury? Or do you want to enjoy your life? You have to choose.