Honestly feel this way. He died not too long after the Bernie 2020 campaign ended and when Covid was still in full swing.
Honestly in a way he was lucky because he didn’t get to see all the fucking bullshit that came later (e.g. Biden, “the pandemic is over jack!”, Gaza, etc.).
But his death kind of symbolized the start of the “blackpill” era for lack of a better term.
If by the left you mean the collective optimism of electoral twitter leftists then sure. Idk I was one of them but I’ve spent the time since then retooling my understanding of history and the material base of the society in which I live. The concepts of imperialist exploitation and the US being a settler country were just alien to my understanding of the world in 2020 when I wanted to tax the rich to get Canada-style healthcare.
something that never existed cannot die
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I sometimes feel we are in a blackpill era then I remember the sum total of ‘leftism’ in 2004 was Dennis Kucinich
there was no leftism in the US for my entire life, before 2016 any critiques of capitalism would be met either with anger or blank stares. it was an incredibly fringe position to be a socialist. there’s still no organized left but anti-capitalist rhetoric is infinitely more common among young people today than it was when I was growing up. so I wouldn’t say the left has died, I’d say it’s struggling to be born
I miss him a lot. COVID, then Bernie losing, then Brooks (and Graeber) passing, then BLM getting completely coopted by the Democratic party without hardly a fight, followed by four years of the Biden administration steadily ratcheting everything to the right like a boa constrictor. Completely wiped out all of the optimism that had been built during the Trump years. We’re in a very sobering era. But the hope will return soon, as Brook’s favorite succdem says, you can cut down a hundred roses but you can’t stop the spring
Love being a zoomer and entering everything right as it falls to hell.
I don’t know about the thesis of this post, I tend to think things were dead much sooner, BUT let me hijack this thread to hate on his majority report replacement Emma.
Emma has bad superlib politics (with some welcome exceptions like trans advocacy) and is very thin skinned. Emma can’t get through more than one or two sentences without stammering in a way that is evocative of gagging. Not good for a news presenter in what is primarily an audio medium. We’ve all heard of faces made for radio, she has a voice made for the silent era
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, we all miss Mr. Brooks
Matt Lech is working on her, the lib is visibly but gradually receding
Comrade, I like Matt Lech a lot but it has been years. Maybe she has improved on some things, but she’s coming from a place of bad instincts. Backing Warren in 2020 is a mistake Matt Lech can’t erase from your history
No argument here, but it’s a visible change. I wish the libs in my family moved that far in 4 years
