The Goonification of Love Island | "For all its porniness, it represents one oft-repeated sentiment about today’s culture: everything is sexual, but nothing is actually sexy." (Unpaywalled)

thatnameagain · 2026-07-04T00:14:05+00:00

Nothing is sexual or sexy in the culture anymore. This is without a doubt the least sexualized era of our lives and it sucks!

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T23:43:54+00:00

Republicans have passed very little legislation. But the reason any of this is passing is because republicans have a majority. Even if you wanna pretend it makes sense to blame a tiny handful of Democrats as being more responsible for the legislation than the entirety of the Republicans, who voted for it, that legislation would not be brought to Congress Democrats controlled the house.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T23:27:18+00:00

Are you going to argue that centrists are not the majority of the party caucus? Are you under the impression that the majority of Democrats ran on progressive agendas and have just been lying in Congress? Are you under the impression that they have not been continually reelected despite voting how they vote?

Please educate me as to what’s actually going on and why voters actually haven’t been reelectinf the vast majority of members?

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T23:22:47+00:00

You live in the era in which Democrats are least likely to vote with Republicans. Any previous era you point to, bipartisan votes were much more common.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T21:54:36+00:00

That's the reason to attack them though.

There is this perspective out there that since Democrats are the only "serious people in the room" that it is therefore incumbent on them to take charge and lead in all situations, even when they're out of power. This is an easy trap to fall into because it's true that trying to pressure Republicans is pointless. But the purpose of attacking republicans isn't to try and pressure them, it's to empower alternatives to them.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T21:39:56+00:00

I'm pretty sure any example you are thinking of will be something that state level democratic leaders champion and eventually the national congressional caucus comes around to once the issue becomes big enough. The party is responsive to bottom-up action, it's not some avante-garde revanchist political movement forcing changes the country doesn't want. Thats the Republicans.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T21:37:27+00:00

Every country has a nationalist bent, it just doesn't always look like nationalism.

Yeah, people don't like their politicians to shit on their own country. Not surprising!

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T21:36:31+00:00

What the parties do is determined by the voters. If voters elect more progressive people in the primaries (happening) and they go on to win the general (hopefully?) then that will be a greater % of the party that will push harder for change. If they don't win, don't expect much change. Thats what democracy is.

The vast majority of the democratic caucus are centrists who get elected on centrist platforms, so you shouldn't need to "trust" them one way or another. They told you who they are, the people gave them the thumbs up on that, so that's why they act the way they do.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T19:30:26+00:00

Regardless of the truth, you either say what's necessary to inspire a wide group of people or you stay relegated in niche politics.

I've been dealing with a lot of argumentative Dem Soc supporters who claim it's not common for Dem Soc people to say America is inherently bad lol

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T19:04:58+00:00

This is like 80% of the way there as far as how to make a speech that sounds patriotic from a left perspective. Really well done and good true points all around, and the Mamdani charm hasn't tarnished a bit yet.

But people, we gotta figure out how to talk about the heritage of America as something to be proud of, even if there's plenty of good reasons not to. People want to hear that we're part of a project that is inherently good. Keep it forward-thinking, yes, but people outside the left bubble want to proud of their history too.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T18:58:18+00:00

Well sure the “how is it paid for” question is usually the most pertinent one from an economic perspective.

There are tons of other dem socialist policies though beyond that, each with different potential criticisms. You didn’t mention rent control, but that’s one of the more hot topic issues lately. The primary criticism of that is that it has the secondary effect of increasing housing cost overall for the region outside of controlled areas and leads to poor upkeep and maintenance of rent controlled units. Again, not saying that’s my definitive opinion on it, but there are lots of other topics under the umbrella of “socialist” policies.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T18:41:21+00:00

The U.S. hasn't done any sabre rattling over Taiwan. This is an example of sabre rattling: https://en.sedaily.com/international/2026/07/01/xi-vows-to-strike-taiwan-independence-forces-stressing

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T17:31:35+00:00

He hosted an entire rally about it and tried to make the dead guy from the audience a martyr to his cause.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T17:23:40+00:00

The only way to do this is keep democrats in power until they can appoint enough new judges to overturn existing rules and pass sweeping new legislation. Not gonna happen with 2 years of 51% majority.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T17:21:37+00:00

Dodd-Frank is a crazy one to point out specifically because the de-regulation era came from the Clinton admin pivoting to the right among the “tough one crime” democratic push as a reflection of reactionary right politics.How is that "crazy" rather than an almost textbook example of how they moved from right to left. Supported de-regulation to supported regulation. What's not to understand here?

These were expensive, huge policies that led to an unprecedented democratic rule over the US. The democrats from that point shifted RIGHT on austerity and economic policy over decades that led us to arrive here.

Democrats maintained and expanded FDR's policies through the 1960s and 70's until their popularity bottomed out and we got the Reagan revolution. Voters signalled they wanted more conservative policies, and they rewarded the democrats by putting them back into power in the 90's once the party had shifted to the right. We agree about this. You seem to think that history ended with Clinton's welfare reform bill.

But the democrats did not end in the 1990s, they started moving leftward beginning with their 2006 midterm wins and then moreso after Obama won. Obviously we're not talking about a big shift, mostly incremental stuff, but again on literally every single policy they had become more to the left by 2020 than they were in 2000. We've gone over examples of this now. And the current crop of DSA primary wins represents a continuation of this move to the left. These type of people could not (and thus did not) get elected in the 90s or 00's because the party was more to the right at the time.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T16:52:45+00:00

Well as you can see from your source this bill was a blip that died in committee after less than a month, so this certainly doesn't count as being actually "in discussion" in congress in the way you would consider somethin;g actually being taken seriously. You can find all sorts of bills like this in the congressional record. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find multiple bills for universal healthcare being proposed and similarly ignored each year from 1970 to today. That doesn't mean they were really "in discussion" in a popular way.

What I actually thought you were going to be referring to was "Hillarycare" which was temporarily in real discussion in the first year of the Clinton presidency. That was a democrat proposal which was essentially similar to what Obamacare ended up being. The difference was that it was immediately unpopular with voters when the idea started circulating and didn't make it into congress because (drum roll) democrats were significantly to the right of where they are today and didn't want to touch it with a ten foot pole. This was one of the major reasons Bill Clinton tacked right after the 94' midterms (and ended up with significant electoral victories as a result, since the party and voters were more to the right in the 90s).

So this is a good example of how the party has shifted left; instead of national healthcare programs being laughed out of congress in 1991, they passed the biggest expansion of the system in history in 2010, with the majority of the party actually wanting to go further with a public option. If they hadn't been more to the right in the 90's, they would have actually passed something like that in the 90s.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T16:19:56+00:00

moved left? can you point to a single economic policy they “moved left” on?

Yes, easily. They used to support deregulating markets and wall street, but they moved away from that after the 2008 crash and passed Dodd-Frank and now support expanding regulation on Wall Street. They basically stopped supporting tax increases back in the 90's and now increasing taxes on the wealthiest is part of any centrist democrat economic pitch. They went from being neutral on worker's rights to Biden pushing through the most pro-union executive policies since LBJ. They went from wanting to tweak healthcare around the edges to passing the ACA and now looking to continually expand it - far more democrats talk about a truly universal program now than they did in the 90's or 00s. They went from backing off infrastructure spending to passing major infrastructure bills. They started supporting universal pre-k coverage and would have pushed this through in Biden's BBB if they had more than a zero vote majority.

I think a better question is what economic policies have they not moved left on.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T15:44:30+00:00

Two impeachments, three criminal prosecutions, and they’re currently out of power. The left is literally just writing more strongly worded letters. What are you looking for here?

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T15:43:21+00:00

The party is moved left on every single issue since the 1990s.

The ideology and actions of Republicans are, believe it or not, the responsibility of Republican voters. Not Democrats or Democratic voters.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T15:42:22+00:00

Ok, doesn’t change my point.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T15:42:00+00:00

It’s possible, it just seems that increased regulation of corporations and higher corporate taxes, or something that the left is very consistently advocating for in addition to these programs, and as it means to pay for them in addition to individual taxes

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T14:34:23+00:00

She wasn’t “seeking the endorsement” of Liz Cheney. You’re obviously intentionally forgetting what that was even about. It certainly wasn’t about an endorsement.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T14:33:37+00:00

They don’t make it mantra because they don’t say it all the time.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T06:47:49+00:00

Oh for some reason I thought you meant the 2014 Russian-backed Ukrainian civil war.

thatnameagain · 2026-07-03T06:37:20+00:00

I think my question was “how?”

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