PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
Hexbear’s resident machinist, absentee mastodon landlord, jack of all trades
Talk to me about astronomy, photography, electronics, ham radio, programming, the means of production, and how we might expropriate them.>
We’ve got wildfires burning in November. I had to pull out my duct taped box fan air filter contraption. Fortunately, rain should be coming in a few hours.
Just soldered together a replacement throttle for my co-worker’s e-bike. I hope I got it right.
People are asking for some transparency on how this decision was made, so here’s my perspective.
Due to the racist origin of the term “The Dunk Tank,” the decision was made that the community absolutely needs to be replaced by something which doesn’t trace back to a carnival game titled “Hit the Coon.”
Since we were re-naming / replacing the community, It was also considered a good time to reconsider the purpose of it. It served as an outlet for catharsis, but also has a misanthropic element to it, which, unchecked, leads to a smug self-satisfied “everyone is stupid but me” mindset.
The arguments seemed reasonable to me. I didn’t make much input. I didn’t find much to object to. I was under the understanding that c/gossip would be more-or-less the replacement, but that would focus more on significant public figures instead of the absolute bottom feeders of Twitter and Reddit. This was more or less the consensus among people in the discussion, so I don’t think it is fair to lay everything at the feet of CARCOSA
So this was basically me:
I still think the changes were reasonably justified. I think they probably could have been communicated better. I also think we would be in a better place if the discussion thread remained constructive, rather than spiraling into a tornado of accusations and innuendo. That discussion was a fiasco. Decisions at the administration / moderation level could have been more transparent, but instead of discussing that we went straight to assuming everyone had an ulterior motive.
In particular, it seems like sometimes the argument being made is “democracy is good and worthwhile, but Western countries aren’t really democratic”, and other times the argument is “actually democracy is an illusion and not worth aspiring to in the first place”.
The first is pretty much it. The second is not something I have ever heard in abstract (only, perhaps, that specific “pro-democracy” movements do not have a liberatory foundation). The main problem is that Democracy means different things to different people. In practice, it is pretty much a meaningless term unless it is carefully defined in context.
To the Bourgeoisie, democracy means the freedom to enter markets. To the Liberal, democracy means a subset of society (citizens without a criminal record, for instance) get to vote for representatives, and a greater or lesser degree of civil liberties exist to engage in electioneering. To the US Founders, democracy was a framework for landowners and speculators to organize society without organizing the state around a bloodline. To the Marxist, democracy only exists to the extent that workers are able to decide how society is organized - what work shall be done, who is going to do it, how is it going to be done, to what degree, for what reasons, etc. Democracy itself literally translates as “rule of the people.” The means by which the people rule (which of the “four boxes,” for instance) is not included in the definition. The statement “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun,” will make a Liberal’s stomach churn, but it is not a fundamentally anti-democratic principle. The question is, who’s holding those guns? Who are they being pointed at?
In the United States, we conflate electoralism with democracy. We’re “democratic” because we have elections. The fact that we have two parties to choose from makes us more “democratic” than countries with a single party political system (ignoring the fact that Congressional approval routinely sits between 10-20%, while many one-party systems enjoy much higher public approval). The fact that we are a largely technocratic society where any decisions not being made by the administration are being made through bureaucracy or in the board rooms of private firms, rather than by the public, is irrelevant.
Very important to note that all the motherfuckers playing the identity politics card about Bernie and his campaign in 2020 are the FIRST to throw trans people and latinos under the bus. First in line to blame Kamala’s loss on her being a woman.
Please see the announcement: https://hexbear.net/post/3856299?scrollToComments=false
