 dystopian time." You know, we saw Bernie Sanders lose in 2020. We just saw Nina Turner lose. We are dealing with, you know, a pandemic, a housing crisis, a student loan crisis. And every time you tune into the news, and if they're talking about climate change, which is fairly rare, but if we learn about climate change, it's always bad news. This week, we got the IPCC's new report, and it looks really, really bad. So my question to the panelists is, how do we keep people engaged amid all of the doomerism? Because the way that I kind of feel sometimes, and I don't necessarily vocalize this because I don't want to discourage people, but I kind of feel like nihilism is a little bit alluring. And I always feel this instinct to check out. Like every extra loss that we feel, you know, Bernie Sanders losing, Nina Turner losing, I always feel the instinct to check out of politics. And, you know, I fight that. But I know that young people, they also feel that urge as well. And so I try to find ways to keep them engaged in politics that are destructive, try to find ways to get them to channel their anger and disillusionment with electoral politics and capitalism. But sometimes I don't have all the answers, and I don't necessarily think that there's a perfect answer. Hence why I kind of wanted to bring in all of the wonderful people here. Lance, what are your thoughts on this? Like, what's the one thing that you think is helpful in trying to keep people engaged? And not just during election years, but, you know, during off years like now, it's such an open end question. So feel free to take it. Yeah, well, I was hoping I was going to be like the third person. And by the way, the corporations want you to be sad. That's how they win. Don't give in to there. So I'd sound powerful, but instead I'm going to be like, well, take some time, please, to log off like everyone. People use that as an insult. But, you know, sometimes it's nice to, you know, touch grass, touch ass, touch sand, sand is coarse and all that kind of stuff. But it does it does help with the mental health. In terms of what's going on, I'd say maybe we should celebrate victories more boisterously. I don't know if there's a better word I'd use for that, because there are still leftist victories going on all around the world and not just concentrating on Canada, the United States. But if you look at Central and South America, there has been some very good decided pushes towards leftist governments. I know they are problematic. I'm not going to try and open up a whole other can of worms here and get us talking about, you know, geopolitics going on around the globe. But there are still, there are more victories than sometimes people think. And when we just concentrate on the news itself, it's very hyper-commercialized to make us think, well, the vaccine apparently doesn't work 100% of the time. We were promised invincibility juice. Instead, we're getting 97% juice, like what the hell is going on, right? Whereas there's like, we can concentrate on the other good news that places where mass vaccination is happening, like in British Columbia, the numbers are plummeting, you know, stuff like that. Sorry, I'm talking for a while. No, no, I think that that's, you know, that's a great start. I tend to focus on the negative and part of it is, and Sam probably has the same problem, you know, we covered the news and almost all of the news is negative. Like whenever there is a victory, I tend to try to over celebrate it. But oftentimes it's difficult. Do you want to weigh in on this, Sam, because you're the other like news video person on the panel and everyone else is kind of video slash streaming. But, you know, how do you like, how do you deal with this issue? Because I'm afraid just like with videos that I post and covering certain news stories that it's going to turn people off to electoral politics and politics in general. And I'm trying not to do that. But at the same time, you know, I don't want to sugarcoat it. Sometimes maybe we can use demerism to make it some sort of a spark or be the catalyst that, you know, encourages someone to get up and get involved, perhaps join DSA or something of that nature. But how do you deal with this, Sam? Well, it is tough. I mean, there is a thin line, I guess, between, you know, demerism and false optimism and trying to figure out where to draw the line. Things are bad. And we have to recognize that and tell people that. I do think that there is a bit of a problem in terms of, you know, taking a bigger picture that people don't like it. Like Lance, you know, mentioned there are victories happening in South America, big victories, rewriting the Pinochet era, Constitution in Chile, socialists coming to power in Bolivia and in Peru. And it seems like here in the U.S., the sort of demerism popularity or the notion that there is no left, you hear that repeated a lot in sort of leftist media circles, which is kind of odd for someone like me who's kind of been paying attention to politics for 20 years. And, you know, there was no left 20 years ago. I can assure you there's a lot more of something resembling a left today than there has been at any other point in my lifetime. And yeah, someone can counter and say, well, it's not like it was in the, you know, 30s. And, you know, when we had militant labor unions and we had labor unions, you know, a third of workforce in a labor union, sure, we're not there. And we may not ever get there. But like there is an entire left media ecosphere, there's a lot more organizing on the left than there's been at any time in my life. And a lot of, I mean, all of us are here as a result of this new left space that's been created. I mean, when I first started doing this, I was working for a guy named Tom Hartman, who is a progressive radio talk show host. And he was one of the few games in town, you know, 15 years ago. And I was working on RT with people like Abby Martin. And that was one of the few places that you could sort of get anti-imperial leftist news content. And now there's just so many more sources. And I guess, you know, the debate can be had of whether or not that's advanced our goals. But I think it has very much so. So people just joining politics, you know, with the Bernie Sanders, where I can understand how disappointed they are by things. People who jumped in seeing Dennis Kucinich as the best option for the left on like the wings of a debate stage being ridiculed. You know, there might be a little bit more optimism to the situation. But I guess there's a perspective here. And, you know, I bring that perspective and try to tell people, you know, what I'm saying. But at the same time, the IPCC report and the situation with climate change, and the enormous task in front of us, it's hard to repel the doomerism. You just, we just have to lie and wait like for an opportunity. I mean, there's been doom throughout history for the left. Like it's kind of the default situation for us. Yeah. That reminds me of something that Vosch said after Super Tuesday in 2020. Basically, you were talking to your audience and I was tuning in and you told them, look, Bernie Sanders, you know, he got blown out. This was before he was out of the primary, I believe. And, you know, you were saying losses are kind of just like an inevitable thing. This is part of the process. And if you're going to be engaged in politics, you have to kind of expect this thing. You have to acknowledge that this is going to happen. And especially if you're a leftist, and I'm paraphrasing what you said, of course, this isn't verbatim. But, you know, if you're a leftist, you kind of have to expect that you are always going to be the underdog. This is the perpetual state of your life if you are fighting for the good thing. And I've tried to like use that message, but, you know, make it my own. But I felt like it was really hopeful. Do you have anything like to add with regard to that message, Vosch? Because I felt like that was one thing that I tried to use to like keep my nieces and nephews who were like old enough to vote for the first time for Bernie Sanders engaged after the primary. You know, I'm varying success, right? Some of them don't care at all anymore, and they're that limited when it was gone. But, you know, some of them are still engaged in politics. Like, what's your overall take on this? Like, what's your advice for the youths, Vosch? Yeah, unfortunately, and I don't think this is exclusive to the left, but I do think it's a problem. I think there's an unfortunate narcissism in left-leaning activism among some groups that reminds me a little bit of the logic of conspiracy theorists. If you set aside all the irrationality of a conspiracy theory, the underlying emotional core of it is that there's some broad truth people accept, but you're the one who knows what's really going on, and you're part of some epic battle against the establishment that be, and that ultimately all of this, all this knowledge you have as part of a narrative where you are part of the underdog overthrowing whatever system and whatever they believe, QAnon, anti-Semites, they all have their theories. Now, of course, leftists are the underdog in virtually every sense politically, but our fight for civil rights isn't a narrative. A lot of people get it in their head that like, oh, like in 2016, they realize, oh my god, you know, you're right, we are being screwed over by the oligopoly, and then Bernie Sanders makes them aware of this, and then they get super doomed or six months later when he loses, and it's like, you're an infant, you've dipped your toe in this, can you tell me any point in history, any group of left-leaning people who you would think like, accomplished everything they wanted, or hell, any group of ideologically motivated individuals at any point in history, can you ever think, in all of human history, do people who get involved in politics ever die happy? No, we never do, so stop expecting that your life is going to be part of some three-act arc where we overcome all the problems that you were made aware of in your lifetime. It's not going to be, you're going to set yourself up for misery if you focus on things from that narrative perspective. So don't, it's not, that's not how it works, okay? People, tens of billions of people have died throughout human history thinking that they were facing the end times, watching their civilizations collapse, their ethnic groups being exterminated, plague ravaging their land, famine, drought, sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong, but the narrative of recognizing injustice and then overcoming it singly in your lifetime, it's a fake narrative. Latching on to it will only worsen your mood in the long term, but there is a solution, and it's a very simple one, okay? Focus on yourself. Make yourself the kind of person who is good at advocating for the things you care about. That's what you need to focus on. Your day-to-day process, the thing that you adhere to, the thing that you base your mood around, isn't what you see in the news that day, it's how effectively am I acting as an agent for my own will? So stay happy, stay healthy, stay educated, and when the time arises that you may be useful to some service or cause, go for it, and that's what you should focus on. And if you do that, you'll be an infinitely better advocate for your ideals than somebody who engages in the opportunistic, bandwagoning of hitching a ride to whatever movement they think might have a chance at passing over the crest, realizing it won't, sinking into depression for six years, and then riding the next one. It is an ineffective and counterproductive cycle. Focus on yourself, and by being good to yourself, you can be good to the world. Yeah, I love that point. It kind of goes back to Lance's point about touching grass and whatnot, and I made this point a couple of weeks ago on my program. Every once in a while, we have to recalibrate, I feel like. And I think that's a great point, Vosch. You're kind of alluding to this idea that we all in some way suffer from main character syndrome. I mean, we're all podcast hosts and news show hosts, so certainly to a degree we experienced that. But I think a lot of people visualize the beginning of their political journey as the start of all of politics, when in actuality you're jumping in and you're trying to continue a movement. One thing that really bothers me is there's this sentiment that goes beyond demerism. It really is disempowering where people will think, you know what, democracy in America is flawed. Therefore, there's no reason to participate. Now, is democracy flawed? Absolutely. I think that we need to do away with the electoral college. I think that we need to end gerrymandering and remove our first pass, the post electoral system, because I don't want there to be a two-party system perpetually. Having said that, though, democracy has never been just this thing that you establish and as perfect as it is. In the United States of America, at least, I don't even think you can argue that we were a real democracy at the beginning. But as we grow as a country, you keep adding to that project. Each generation, in my opinion, contributes in their way to democracy and further enhancing the democratization of the United States. It's never perfect. Trying to stop people before they check out once they jump in and trying to change their expectations for the better so that way it's more appropriate. I think that's a really important thing. Demon mama, did you want to jump in here? Because I know that when I tune into your stream, you do a really good job at mixing up very, very sad political issues, heavy topics. But then there's always this sense of camaraderie between you and your chat and you'll cool down with video games. What do you think is the best thing to keep people engaged? Because basically, this is my thing here. I get people, like I'm the boring news guy and people tune in during elections. And once they're there, I try to stop as many people as possible from leaving and keep them engaged. But that's not necessarily something that I'm not going to have a 100% success rate. So in your opinion, what do you do to keep people engaged and stop them from being a political nihilist? This is such a tough question to answer, but if you want to share your thoughts just in general. This is something that I've been thinking about increasingly over the course of my career as a streamer and over the course of my involvement in politics. I've been interested in politics for a very, very long time. And I've come to this position where I believe in a very, I don't know, organic form of politics. I think that it's good and well for us to be informed on many topics to the greatest degree that we can. And of course, we have to sort of select those carefully. But I think one thing that there is a hunger for and that we're lacking is connecting that in a real way to people's lives, the day to day moments of their lives. I think, especially here in the United States, a lot of our politics centers around these checkpoints of an election or a bill that might pass. And a lot of times we spend sort of just digging into the details of such a thing when, long after we've cast our votes or decided on our representatives or whatever, and there's nothing really we can even do to touch that thing. I like to focus and I've been increasingly focusing on things that people can touch. And this is incredibly true right now as we're talking about climate change and we're talking about COVID and some of these other just, I mean, they're dooms. They are apocalyptic scenarios that are so large that they're things that humans have grappled with through all of history. And I think that one of the ways that we do that is by taking the focus and turning it sort of like tuning the focus a little bit closer to us saying, okay, so who am I connected to? Who do I know? How can I make sure that these people are going to be okay? How can I make sure that I don't see neighbors starving or that my family isn't hungry? What are the things that I can do? Who can I connect with that will help me lift myself up and that I can help lift them up? And I think this is something that I've been increasingly interested in. One of the reasons why my stream is so community focused, and I focus on encouraging people, we do community events on my discord all the time, specifically for the goal of getting people to meet each other and build actual social bonds because and it's limited. There's only so much that a content creator can do a content creator doesn't I mean, ideally doesn't run like a church or anything like that or movement. You know, there's there's only a certain level, but people are shockingly alienated right now people are shockingly atomized. They are they find themselves almost sometimes blindsided. I know that happened to me where it's like the circumstances of life had me moving after a job after job and it's like suddenly I don't know anybody around me I don't know who do I know I could connect with people on the internet and then sometimes you connect with people who are near you and you can build these these sort of networks. And I feel like that like rebuilding these connections rebuilding like material connections between people is just so incredibly important right now and I've done two sort of big streams recently focusing on how we can actually do that. How do people visualize their relationships? How do people visualize their participation in politics? And I'm a little different in that I think, you know, I mean, I do cover electoral politics, but I'm probably the most doomer on this panel about like the electoral aspect of things doesn't mean I don't think that you should vote or that you shouldn't be informed on it. I really really do. But I think that a lot of people get into the habit of watching things unfold when there are things that they could be doing in their life right now even small actions that could be building a better political foundation for the world that they want to see happen. Something that I think about a lot as like a small offhand example of this is something like gardening. And that seems like such a small thing. But learning a skill like that, a skill that can be shared with the community, if more people actually do that, they're not just themselves, but their community becomes stronger. They're sharing a skill that can keep people alive. And if you can encourage people to pursue those types of skills to talk to each other, one of the reasons why my discord has a huge creative section that is specifically designed for people to share information about how to make art, how to make things themselves, how to teach each other, like how to use the tools that they're doing. The reason why I believe in that is because I think that people take those things off the internet and then they put them into the world and the world changes. It is a direct one to one thing. And I think that really is something that defeats demerism. I think that we've gotten into a state where we're very much politics is a spectator sport. People have heard that term before, but it's very much so when everything is deferred, when all of politics is sort of viewed as deferred across these big milestone events of an election or whatever, when there are things that you could do to be making your community, your particular political context, even if it's an online political context, stronger, more powerful, more capable of directly influencing the world around them. And I think that's incredibly important for defeating demerism. I think that's a really great point because politics is everything. So you're not going to fully detach politics from your life, but you can kind of dissenter it and distract yourself for lack of a better word. I think that that's really important because like for me, I got to the point where I would basically base my entire mood on the outcome of a political election. And that's so unhealthy, which is why I think that like Lance's recommendation of touching grass and touching ass, whichever you prefer, if not both, maybe it really is important. And Lance, you do a lot of good distraction streams. Like you do a movie night on the serfs. Did you want to add anything to this? Because I think that's actually a really constructive thing to say for younger people. Yeah, I will add this. If you are actually doomer about the current state of things and I can understand why like, keep in mind, what was the scene in 2016, like pre 2016, before the Bernie Sanders runs right before everyone was galvanized before everyone suddenly thought that saying like, oh, I'm a social Democrat or I'm a Democratic socialist was something that was acceptable at the dinner table. And not something that would have your parents be like, communist, excuse him or anything like that. Right. Like all of a sudden it was like, everyone was talking about this and hey, wait, are we interested in theory? And are we going to read about this stuff? And now we're all united. And, and then there's this old man who's galvanizing all of us. And he's getting us all excited about all these ideas that yes, all the money is being funneled to the very rich and the working class are getting fucked over and we don't have any more unions anymore. We don't have any more worker co-ops anymore. And everything is fucking terrible. And they're pointing the finger at things that don't matter. They're pointing the finger every day at the immigrants. So yes, it's the people from across the pond that are going to attack us. That's the real problem. Meanwhile, the people who are fucking us over are right here. And it doesn't matter if it's in Canada or America. So people can become united. People can come together and get galvanized and do, like, I would say decisive action. We just need to be inspired and, and do something about it. Yeah, there is a positive frame that you can put on the doomerism and sure there are, you know, people who, who use it for, you know, benefit to get views, to get clicks, whatever. But, you know, the, the sort like sudden rise in it, you know, does reflect people's expectations of what the government should provide for them and what sort of material interest should be met. People are getting this doomer feeling because their expectations have increased and their conditions have not increased and the gap between those things is, is disheartening, especially not just in the near term and now, but especially in the future. As you look at a world that's going to be changing due to climate change, it's only going to get worse. So like people weren't really despairing that much in, in 2010. I don't remember. I mean, we were legislation was the debt ceiling stuff. That was what's going on. And it sucked. And, but there wasn't this like, it's kind of was like, oh, well, this is just kind of the way it is. This is politics in America. There's no left. There's Democrats and Republicans. But I think that, and it's not just Bernie, it was the material conditions on, on the ground after the financial collapse that was never resolved. And people just kind of getting eviscerated with, you know, not their wages not going up and having to fill out their credit card to make ends meet and then going to debt. There are all sorts of reasons and Bernie comes along and articulates these things. And I think a bunch of young people suddenly like, oh, we can have better things. We can organize our society in a different way. And when that didn't happen immediately, because Bernie wasn't elected and even if he was, it wouldn't have happened. Let's face it. It turned into this like, well, well, you're not meeting our expectations that have rapidly increased. And I mean, there's theorists who have written about this, Davies and other people like how revolutions are started and stuff. But I don't see a revolution anytime soon. But the fact that you're getting this, you have to, you have people's expectations of what society should look like have to be there. And you can look at the entire neoliberal project has been an effort to lower people's expectations of what the social contract should be, what government should provide to you. And it seems like we're finally starting to like chip away at those ideas and start developing new ideas of what we're owed and what as citizens of the US of what our lifestyle should be like. Yeah, that's really important perspective because things are different now than they were. Things now that are being discussed weren't even discussed at all, like Medicare for all, for an example, like we don't have Medicare for all yet, but we have shifted the Overton window. Sorry. The health care debate in 2009 when Obama came in was an absolute nightmare where you had people like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson who as bad as Joe Manchin is today, and I can't stand the man, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman were the foils and they were far, far worse. You wouldn't see these guys advancing a $3.5 trillion framework. I guess it is right now. We'll see what it is at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. I'm not sure. I just had a little bit of a different perspective. Oh, sorry, sorry. I think there's a little bit of a delay. I apologize. If you want to go first, go for it. Oh, sure. No, I'd be happy to, but then yeah. I just want to say I think the main character syndrome hit it on the head. I think that there's an incredible degree of counterproductive self-centeredness. Imagine if you could anthropomorphize the history of American progressivism. You somehow had some 250-year-old organism who was responsible in all ways for all progress made in this country. Imagine from the perspective of that individual watching somebody enter politics in 2016 and then after two years of being involved, this doesn't work. Nothing's going to work and then drop out. It's like, okay, we would have nothing if everyone throughout history had had that attitude. Nobody ever gets clean wins if all the union organizers back in the beginning of the 20th century had been as willing to give up because of the seeming insurmountability of their opponents that we would have nothing and our workers would have nothing. I mean, they had bombs dropped on them. We have people, and I don't want to get into, this isn't like a millennial sensibility thing. I think a lot of it is just that we don't have a very strong existing infrastructure for sort of a means of effective engagement. That, and I think people are more and more making politics their personality, which is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because the needs towards change in a political system and the needs to define yourself as a person do not always coincide. When you try to make them the same thing, that's going to lead people to make personality-driven political decisions and politically-based personality choices. Both of those can be really, really destructive. Politics is slow, arduous, gradual, messy, and often counterproductive. Personalities are the fanciful whims of whatever you think you are at the time. That's great and that's how it always should be. But there's not much personality to be had in, yep, politics is slow struggle, and we're just going to keep at it for decades and decades enjoying small victories and suffering small losses forever. People don't like that. It's not exciting. People want to get involved almost to a parasocial extent with the political happenings of their time period, and it just leads to people making really bad decisions. That's a great point. Do you want to jump in? Yeah, I actually have some sort of disagreements with both Sam and what Vosha said here. So the first one that I was going to respond to was the idea that people have asked for more and then gotten less. I actually don't think that's true. I think people have asked for less and still gotten less. I think that the average, and this is somewhat anecdotal, but I would love to see a broader scale look into this. But I think that people have been lowering their expectations. I remember when I was younger, most of my peers were like, yeah, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to get a house someday. Nobody thinks that now. People I know, even my peers, some of my peers who were doing well sometimes feel lucky to have an apartment because of how rough things are right now. So I think that people have continually lowered their expectations and found that the answer is still lacking. When it comes to politics, there's this sort of trite saying, but that I kind of like to keep in mind, which is do not wait to strike until the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking. And I think that that is a good way of looking at politics. I think a lot of times, we're sort of lulled into this constant waiting period. We're waiting for this, we're waiting for this, we're waiting for this. And that's one of the areas where I sort of disagree with Vosha a little bit. I don't really think that you can separate personal and political in the same way. Political movements are often very organic and very messy. They are sometimes flashes in the pan. Sometimes the energy that arises is almost unpredictable, like we have with something like the George Floyd protests and stuff. And they're going up against a system that is very cold and calculating. But the thing is that we don't always have to wait on that system. And again, that's not to say that there's no need to participate in when the chance comes to vote. It's just there's all this time and all this energy in between. Something that has really shaped my outlook on politics was living through a couple of disasters. When I lived in California before I started streaming, we lived through one of the worst wildfire seasons. I mean, only now surpassed by this wildfire season. And we had our power just shut off. Like, one day we just got a phone call and they said, hello, your area has been selected for a power shut off in order to prevent forest fires. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't contest it because the state has given the power to the power company to make that call, and they did. And then our power was gone. The power for our entire town was gone, and nobody was ready for it. We didn't have power. We just lost. I couldn't watch streams. I couldn't research anything. I couldn't do my job. And there was no recourse. The only recourse was to try and solve the problem. And we ended up talking to our neighbors. We ended up finding out who had a generator. We ended up actually solving issues that arose when that infrastructure was taken away at last. And we didn't wait for anything. No aid came. We never got aid from the government. We never got aid from any of the local political parties. That aid just didn't come. And when COVID hit here in Seattle, where I live, I was involved for a long time with this incredible mutual aid group that's organized by some anarchist collective. And it was incredible. And they did that exact same thing. There was no, there was all of this fighting back and forth in Congress. All of this, is the money going to come? Is the money going to come? They put up a Google sheet, and they orchestrated at the last time that I was working with them, which was some time ago, admittedly, I know that they've raised a lot of money, $300,000 worth of groceries and groceries delivery to people who were so in need of food that they were searching Facebook for groups that would be able to give them food. This wasn't like a party that was giving food to its members. This was people who were running, who were out of food, and they were looking for it. And they put food into the mouths of those people, giving those people another day to live. I think that changing our focus to that sort of politics, a politics that can be a bit more accepting of people's sort of personal weirdness and their personality and their organicness, politics that is willing to engage with that, at face value without judgment, and move forward with that organic assumption built in, I think is very, very powerful. And I think we should focus on that more personally. I kind of see common ground not to be a fence sitter here between you and Vash. I think that there's common ground on that particular statement because I do think that your personality, I think there are some benefits to that being linked to politics, but I do see how it can become something that's problematic. I mean, perhaps it depends on the personality. I mean, we can all think of individuals who are very problematic personalities on the left. Who I won't name, but it just kind of depends on the situation and perhaps the personality, but Vash, I'll let you weigh in on that. Oh, no. I just think that in a lot of ways, we should treat our political engagement with the kind of steadfast and tenacious involvement that we would say a job, not that to say that we need to commit eight hours a day to it or anything like that, but that as a part of our interest in and willingness to contribute to a broader collective goal, we make it something that we care about, we treat it as such, and we do so with some degree of seriousness, but we do so with the understanding that the responsibilities were taking the effects of our actions. They extended beyond just us. They're not just a reflection of our personal willpower, our personal wishes. I'll give you an example. Okay, Biden. I don't like Biden. I've never liked Biden. I didn't like voting for Biden, but I did vote for Biden. If I had considered a vote, an extension of my personality, a reflection of my personal interest and identity, then I would have simply not voted or would have voted for a third party candidate or something. But I don't. I consider it a stark and utilitarian choice about who is the least terrible person who has a shot at being in there, so I cast a vote for Biden. A lot of people turn it into this big identity thing, that they're not the sort of person who would vote for Biden or they're not the sort of person who would look at what's going on in the world today and continue to invest time and energy into it because things are going so poorly that it's easier. It's emotionally easier to just withdraw. And that's what a lot of people are doing. They're withdrawing. They're saying, oh, this just doesn't work. It's never going to work. We're doomed. They kind of just want to cross their arms and smirk as everything else falls apart. And I think this is a horribly counterproductive attitude. There are people who have done a lot of good in much, much, much worse circumstances than what we're dealing with today. I mean, obviously, I'm a live streamer, so I've got nothing to complain about. But even broadly, left-leaning people today in this country probably can't hold a candle to what the left felt back at the beginning of the 20th century or how the left felt back during World War II. Or like, for example, when America refused to take Jews that were being sent out from Germany prior to their execution, I can imagine how being a leftist must have felt at that time, like seeing all of that happen. It's always been a process of suffering. But they still did good work back then. So if all of them, they'd thrown their hands up, ah, nothing but a revolution will fix this. We never would have gotten anything. But that is a very personality-based decision. It's a product of an emotional fallibility, an over-emotional investment into what's going on and a need to withdraw to shelter your own emotions. That's why after Bernie Sanders lost, they didn't have much of a problem endorsing Biden right after. It's not because I didn't love Bernie because I wasn't disappointed. And it's not because I like Biden. It's because it was never about how I felt. So it was an easy choice for me. I mean, it sort of is, right? I mean, voting is sort of how you feel. I don't think I take that view where people who didn't want to vote for Biden somehow put their personality above what was good for the country at the time. Because it treads awfully close on scolding powerless people on what they should be doing in a system that does not provide them any options and has completely eviscerated them. And ultimately, the people who are sitting on the fence or didn't want to vote for Biden because they're too left of Biden is a very insignificant portion of the electorate and not really driving any of the bats or their lack of participation isn't really what's responsible for what's the engine of destruction that's happening. No, but that's kind of a deflection, right? It's a significant portion of the left. The discourse about Bernie or Buster not voting for Biden was super present online. It still is super, super present online. Is it a huge part of the electorate? No, but we're talking about the mentalities of leftists here. And yeah, the person thinks that not voting is a preferable choice to voting for Biden. I'm okay scolding them for that. I mean, we're at the probably the sort of, and I don't know, maybe there's more influence of that sort of sect of the left, but Biden still prevailed in the election despite, you know, whatever, how many people held their nose up or didn't hold their nose up and chose not to vote. Can I respond to that Mike? Yeah, thanks. Do you want to jump in? Yeah, I just wanted to say that I, Sam, I'm totally on board with a diversity of tactics. I think that's very, very important. I think that you should have people doing mutual aid. You should have people doing unionization. You should have people doing worker cooperatives, all that kind of stuff. But in terms of harm mitigation, I think that's also incredibly important because if we don't engage in those kind of tactics or even better yet, you know, try to get progressive or leftists into office, then we see that ground to liberals and conservatives, and they dominate those arenas. And trust me, they are very invested in maintaining the levers of power, getting in there, making sure they stack the courts with judges, making sure they stack the courts with supreme judges. So it just haunts us for years to come. So the left can't kind of like stay by the side and be like, I'm going to do like a fourth party or I'm going to do some kind of a, I don't know, I'm not voting just to show that I don't care about this process. Like we cannot let that ground simply be controlled by conservatives and liberals be my point. Well, I'm not against, I'm not saying people shouldn't vote. I think, I mean, look, I mean, I'm a communist. I don't think the Democratic Party is ever going to get us to a situation where we need to go. But I do recognize, and I don't agree with people, okay, I do recognize that you can still improve the lives of millions of people by electing Democrats over Republicans in certain situations. And I don't subscribe to the belief that like, it's necessarily counterintuitive or counterproductive to any sort of anti capitalist struggle to settle for electing Democrats in the short term. Otherwise, like what's the point of fighting for things like Medicare for all, which isn't socialism or anything. And you could argue would delay whatever kind of heightened contradictions that could lead to a revolution or whatever down the road. So I don't I don't really buy into that. But at the same time, I think that voting is the least effective type of politics you can engage in or the least impactful or important type of politics you individually can engage in. And I think that yet we play so much importance on it, mainly because we all are kind of political commentators and reporters. So, you know, we operate in this scene around elections all the time. I just I mean, to me, we shouldn't focus on the too hard. It's just, it seemed like so many people were making the objectively wrong choice. You know what I mean? It'd be like, it'd be like flushing after you take a shit, you know, that's not a huge part of my brain, like, telling people they need to take a like flush after they take a shit. But if I if I realized quite suddenly that all the people around me didn't do that, it would it would it would suddenly become a much bigger deal to me, you know, I don't know, it just feels like pretty straightforward, you get Biden and whatever, even if it's the least important thing, it's still something you got to do. It's not to me so much of an issue because like the online left represents a huge voting block because it doesn't. To me, it was more of an issue of a sort of misplaced or misguided accelerationism, because even if a leftist doesn't vote for Biden, like to me, it's not so much the vote I care about. It's that they're the type of leftist who doesn't see a difference between the kind of harm Biden could do versus the kind of harm Trump could do. And that to me suggests the existence of a whole other host of issues, which may be significantly more concerning than their actual singular vote, you know, like that that could lead into a whole bunch of other stuff, like people saying Biden is worse than Trump or people underestimating the threat of fascism in this country or people who think that Trump was better on foreign policy. And it gets like this whole like the like a branching web of bad ideas. I think there's too much hyperbole on the left. And I do think that that's a problem. Like there are many people online who will say there's zero difference between Donald Trump or Joe Biden. And there's some people who even self identify as leftists who will argue that Joe Biden is worse than Donald Trump, which is if you're a leftist, I don't think that there's an argument there. Having said that, though, I do recognize that, you know, times are tough, like Dumerism is the subject. And for me, I like, as a podcast host, I feel like I made a different political calculation than I would have if I wasn't a podcast host. So like after Bernie Sanders lost, I was very like, fuck Joe Biden, like I'm so I'm so done. I'm not going to vote for him. Fuck him. Like on Super Tuesday, I was also like that was a very like my dad died on Super Tuesday. So I see Bernie Sanders losing my dad died so at that point emotionally, I was like so irrational. I was like, you know what, I live in Oregon, it doesn't matter what I do and fuck Joe Biden. I'm not going to vote for him. But then as time went on and Trump became more authoritarian, and I heard different perspectives, I thought, you know what, I can't just like, you know, hold my nose up in the air and say, you know what, I'm leftier than thou because I didn't vote for Joe Biden because I live in a swing state because at the same time I'm telling my viewers, well, I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden, but you definitely should if you live in a swing state. So it's kind of like this like, there's this fakeness to it, right? And that's how I felt like I felt like it wasn't fair that there's this expectation that, you know, my swing state viewers support Joe Biden so we could stop Donald Trump, but I don't have to do that. I don't have to feel gross, you know, about holding my nose. And it was it was Vosh's video where he was talking about Bernie or bust and I shared it on Twitter and I got a lot of backlash because they were like, oh, well, how can you share this video when he's doing these ad hominem attacks calling people dumb fucks? I'm like, honestly though, when he like said dumb fuck, like something like clicked to me, I'm like, oh, yeah, I am being kind of a dumb fuck here. And I should probably stop putting my emotions before everything. So basically long story short, like what I try to do is acknowledge that like people are people, and we should have a diversity of tactics as Lance was saying. And, you know, we should, I don't know, just try to try to do our best to keep people engaged. Like I had like in 2016, for example, a lot of folks hated Hillary Clinton, myself included, like for my mom, she registered to vote for the first time in her 60s for Bernie Sanders. And then after that, she's like, okay, well, I guess I'm back to being a political, I'm not going to vote, I don't care enough. And so voting for a third party for her, like for Jill Stein back in 2020, I'm like, well, look, if that's going to keep you engaged, and you vote and then you vote down ticket for other Democrats, you know, the Senate, I think that that's perfectly fine. So like finding ways to keep people engaged is important to me, but it's not a perfect science because everyone is so different. Like a lot of people were probably turned off by Vosh calling everyone dumb fucks, but that actually resonated with me somehow because I'm a fucking weird person. But it worked for me, you know, and sometimes we need to be shaked. Other people, you know, you approach them more, you know, softly and in a more, I don't know, personable way, it just, it kind of depends. But I'm rambling at this point, even though I think you wanted to jump in as well, I'll give you the last word on this before we move on to the next segment. This is a topic I think is like super, super interesting to me. And there's the whole touching on the whole Bernie or bus thing. I mean, I think people are prone to be very emotional online in general. They state their sort of unfiltered thoughts into Twitter. And it could be hard to figure out what people are like actually going to do with that for the record. Like I made my own like videos against the Bernie or bus position because I think it doesn't help anything. I wish that people would view voting as a strategic chore as a thing that you've got to do because you want to set up the ground for being as easy as possible for you to get what you want. But that's kind of like, that's a hard sell when our entire, our entire political system tells us that like voting is the number was like the mark of your American identity. There's so much of that emotion that is infused in making elections the sort of center of your personal politics. And I think that people feel a lot of disempowerment. I think that there is a sense that like, yeah, I did the things I'm supposed to do that I've been told I was supposed to do my whole life and it hasn't done anything for me. I'm still sitting here with no power in a mountain in California or whatever, whatever name what it is. If you want to go about COVID or whatever, name 100 different things. And I think that disempowerment is like sort of the underlying factor that inspires a lot of these like bad conclusions because people conclude that they're disempowered and they don't know why they're disempowered. They don't know what it is that's disempowering them. I really like that that Vosh was talking about like the sort of like old lefty politics and I think it brings up something or at least I would like to highlight something about like older leftist politics in America specifically is that it was based around bonds. Leftist politics in the past was based around a union or your community or the company town that you lived in. You would your farm, your friends farm, these things that where people had very real connections and they could make that connection up to the next level up to whatever next level of politics there is. They go, we need this president in here because our union will suffer, our community will suffer if that guy gets elected. I think it becomes easier to sell people on strategic votes and on voting as a block as opposed to voting as like a personal expression if they see their voting in the context of a community of their vote laying a sort of foundation for this network of bonds that they have. I really, really fixate on alienation and the separation that a lot of people have these days because I think it influences a lot of our politics. I also think that we have to start thinking about how communities are formed in a different way. I don't think we're ever going back to a union based politics. I don't think we're ever going back to like party based politics in the same way that we used to. I don't know that unions are going to have like a big comeback. It'd be really interesting if they did. I think unions do some really good stuff. But what I think we can start doing is we can start building structures. I'm very interested in building things. But I think we can start building structures and building communities that allow people to autonomously help one another in the right direction. Those people's bonds will drive them in a better direction than the direction that the society does. If we look at the trends in employment, if we look in the trends in general well-being over the last like 10 years or so over the Trump presidency especially, people work all the time and our workplaces are increasingly are increasingly alienated in and of themselves. You do jobs online working from your own home. You don't know any of your coworkers. You work a gig job. You can't know any of your coworkers because they're all just random cars through an app. How are you going to build a sense of community? How are you going to build a sense of solidarity? We all recognize solidarity is vital to the politics of the left. Solidarity is like what the underlying factor of left politics. But how do you do that? We need to figure that out. We have to figure out how we rebuild solidarity, actual solidarity. How do we build bonds between people again that will inspire their politics? If we can figure out how to reconnect people, how to make people understand their context, they will be more interested in politics. And they're more likely to be willing to make a strategic vote on something like Biden if they're truly convinced that they're not powerless, that they can go, oh, yeah, whatever, vote for Biden, sure, whatever, check it right off. I don't even think it has to be a matter of suppressing your emotions. I just think we have to change the emotional context. Say, yeah, it's not a big deal to vote for Biden. We're just doing a strategic vote. Now let's get back out there and let's do this thing with our online community, with our IRL community, with our physical household community or our town community, these things that give you a sense of feeling of political power because you can actually impact something around you as opposed to sort of just like throwing your metaphorical paper airplane in the direction of Washington DC and hoping to hear back someday while your power is still out. And I understand why people feel so doomer. I understand why they feel so disempowered. And I think it's because like one of the things that has, that distinguishes the modern left from the left of the past is that the left of the past went through the Cold War era and got all of their bonds systemically destroyed, you know? Like, I mean, seriously, we're talking organizations that have been broken and collapsed through strike breaking, through union busting, through deregulation has completely shattered the bonds that were there. And we need to do that. We need those bonds. Those bonds are the foundation of everything else that comes after that.