Ep 6: Spot Me, Comrade

0:00:34

Welcome to Left On Red, where a Gen X mom and gay millennial do socialism. Socialist views on news you can use. My name is Scott. I'm Susan. Let's get right into it. Susan, you saw a New York Times article that had a really good headline. What was it? I don't I don't remember exactly what it was, but something like, do Democrats care about unions now? Do Democrats care about unions? Some of them do now. The problem is that they didn't for a really long time. Can I tell a personal anecdote? Please. Alright. So since I'm an old.

0:01:13

In two thousand and one, I was my senior summer before senior year of college. I did an AFL CIO of Union Summer internship. And my bestie from high school, who I won't say her name because she actually has a Wikipedia page about her. Went to go work for the Senate Democratic Leadership Conference. Do you know what that is or does that just precede you too much? I think I know what that is? The DSLC? Yeah. Yeah. But for our audience And so basically, it was, like, a ideological wing of the Democratic Party that was started in, like, the mid eighties that tried to push the Democrats to be more corporate.

0:01:49

Mhmm. And it was sort of, like, I don't remember who the main players were. I something like Dick Gap Hart is coming to my brain. But so they were senators, white guys, of course, who wanted to bring the Democratic Party into the twentieth century by moving away from labor unions. That's specifically one of their sort of reasons for existing.

0:02:09

So it's funny because I went to DC with my friend after my internship with the with you and Summer ended to meet my My bestie who hadn't seen in, like, many years. And she was now an authority. And, you know, we're very different. We've been similar, weird in high school, but she became like normal. And I reached out to me, oh, Susan, you know, we're really the DLC see is trying to move away from organized labor. And she just sort of talks to me like I was like, an idiot. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know if that's a good idea. And so here we are. And that same that fight that we not like a fight. We're she she was like going to school in the south, so she was too polite to fight. But that disagreement we had in two thousand one is a fight that we keep having. Right?

0:02:57

So the Democrats and all their infinite wisdom were like, oh, it's the globalization era. Right? So I went to college in, like, the the late nineties, like, end of the cold war, where everyone's, like, reading Thomas Friedman and they were like, oh, the world is flat, globalization, you know, we're all gonna be like one kumbaya, capital this consumption global society. So we don't need trade unions because what they create is a lot of like inflexibility. They make it very difficult for like countries to like adjust to the new capitalist global capitalist conditions. And, you know, they're very bad for people. They're bad for democracy. They're like they're like kinda like Mafioso for workers. And so I think that that's there's many problems with the Democratic Party, but one of the dumbest things that they ever did was abandon their working class base because they thought it was both electoral, advantageous. So if they wanted to pursue those prosperous suburbs, and also, like, just really good policy. They thought that moving away from organized labor and also undercutting the institutional support for workers and organized labor was good for the economy.

0:04:08

So as with, like, everything that we talk about on this podcast, I feel like we could talk about this for, like, twelve hours and still barely scratched the surface, but I'm gonna try and put in the context of pieces from everything that I'm hearing from what you're saying. The first is some of the stuff that you just mentioned, like, the latter half reminded me of it's this book that I constantly hear referenced, but the name of the author I always forget, but it's something called, like, the end of history. Oh, yeah. Francesuyama. I think we've talked about it a couple episodes. We've talked about it. Well, it's a it's a It's the a great title. And it's end of history and the last man. End of history and the last man. How's that? But it reminds me you know, what you were saying reminded me of that because it's just this constant idea of this is the final shape. This is the final world order. Neither liberal capitalism has won. All of the globe is going to be one big conglomerate and we're gonna be consuming and corporations are, like, our God and that's it. And so I'm constantly seeing that idea expressed in the eighties and nineties, early two thousands. And sort of still now, although that's been breaking a lot like we talked about a couple episodes ago about great power politics.

0:05:20

But the other things that really are striking out to me from what you're talking about and I feel like we need to, like, tease out all of these thoughts is, okay, what is labor? Why is it so important? And what do we talk about when we talk about the organized labor movement? And why did Democrats have a connection to it? Why are they moving away from it? Why are they trying to move back to it now?

0:05:40

Labor is basically just workers like you and me, but organized. So in an organization, workers got together at their workplace and said, we shouldn't be negotiating with the boss individually. We are powerful when we act together. We are so much stronger in a union. And so they join a union. They form a union, I should say. And through that action, they become this much larger entity that's so much more powerful has all of their collective energies and in the twentieth century was extremely political. Right? Like, all of these great things that we have today, like, the five day work week or the eight hour work day holidays, all of these things that we can look to that protect us from capital are labor one reforms. Those are things that labor unions fought for in one because it was essentially the first time in the United States and actually probably globally that working class people got together formed a larger collective and fought for something in one.

0:06:51

Why is this so important? Well, we talked about it a few episodes ago in terms of, like, what is the working class or what makes up the working class? And it's essentially this group of people that have to work for a living. And so they produce the value that turns into profits for the boss. Those people are really critical to the socialist project because we are the only people that have both the ability due to our position in production that we essentially produce and ultimately our actions control the economy. And the incentive, we don't benefit from the production that we create. Right? We don't see all of the profits. We just see a small slice of wages to overthrow capitalism or make a change and usher in socialism. And organized labor is essentially like they're very close to the highest point of that which is all of those workers developing some level of class consciousness gathering together, being in a union, and then taking action to advance our interests and push forth the interests of the working class.

0:08:02

And now Democrats, I think as anyone can see the clear as day, have veered really far away from it, like you just described, went all in on this neo liberal vision and kind of abandoned, not just, you know, when they abandoned unions, they didn't just abandon infrastructure and certain institutions. They abandoned the working class. They said we wanna go in with upper middle class people who are probably still working class, but trying to culturally or aesthetically differentiate themselves. They said we wanna go in with people with lots of education who don't see themselves as working class. And we wanna alienate people who see themselves as working class. And we have this like bizarre world today where Republicans who pursue destructive, hateful policy are a lot more appealing to people in the United States without a college degree because they sound populist. And democrats who aren't really so much better, still corporate, still pursuing the liberal policy, but still also pursue marginally better policy for poor working class people. Don't do as well with those uneducated folks. Because there has become this like, eliteization of the Democratic Party. How are they, like, now thinking back to, okay, maybe they're gonna be back with labor unions is a question.

0:09:22

And the final thing I'll say before I throw to Susan is, like, In New York, it's really different because we do still have a fairly strong labor movement in the state. Just for your knowledge, listening, labor union density. So, like, the percentage of workers and unions in America is I think at an all time low right now? About eleven percent, I think. About eleven percent so that sucks. I mean, ideally, it should be a hundred percent. But in New York, it's fairly high. Right. About twenty five to thirty percent Which is phenomenal and speaks to the power of labor here in New York, but also as a result, they are much more powerful politically. Democrats in New York If labor unions say jump, some of them will say, okay, how high?

0:10:08

Not all of them. The other way around is also true though as well. Because unions also wanna keep in the good graces, of politicians. So politicians will tell them jump and the unions will say how high. Right? So that's another discussion that we don't have to go into right now. Yeah. But that kind of turned that, like, sort of, like, made the dynamic nationally, which is labor a lot of labor leadership spent so much time getting in the good graces of certain politicians. Some political leaders that hated them so much and did everything that they could to reduce the power of unions that were in this difficult situation now where density is at an all time low and democrats are just now beginning to think maybe we should be nice to and support unions again. Yes. So I wanna step back a little bit more, like, historically.

0:10:52

I think that another one of these original sins was NAFTA, not because, like, I'm anti free trade because I am. But because NAFTA was this idea that the future was through free trade and free investment and that the Democratic president like Oakland can make it happen. And I read this paper by economist who tragically killed himself a couple years ago, Alan Krueger, who looked at the way that con congressional members who came from Union dense districts were the most likely to fight against NAFTA. And I think that part I mean, I don't have any evidence of this because I don't you know, I've never not done the black box research where I go and look at actual debates, but I think a lot of people in the Democratic Party were were like, we can't have our own freaking congress you know, members and senators giving us hard time about these really important free trade agreements just because they've got some lousy organized unions labor and unions inside their districts. And then that changed a lot of the calculus. And of course, we know now that really, really not a good idea from like a Democratic legitimacy perspective to pass NAFTA without thinking about the needs of workers. Right?

0:11:59

We've talked a lot on the show about a just transition. You know, if we move away from fossil fuels like what we had to take into consideration the needs of the fossil fuel industry workforce. Well, there wasn't a lot of needs of the industrial workforce that was gonna get replaced by free trade agreements -- Mhmm. -- whether that was NAFTA or it was like a transpacific partnership or general sort of ratcheting of the rules under the WTO, the World Trade Organization, or there's all kinds of alphabet soups of various acronyms like the ending of the multi fiber agreement, which allowed for, you know, unspeakable amounts of volumes of textiles to come from China to flood our domestic market. So shine is not an accident. It's a politically designed you know, set of conditions that allow for really cheap, potentially toxic Chinese made goods to come into our consumer markets.

0:12:51

And so I I think that the this, like, blind faith in capitalism for as the politically correct choice, both to lead to electoral victories and also for the health of our nation has really hurt the democratic party, it's hurt working people, it's hurt the power of unions. It hurt the transformative power of unions. And, you know, I was I don't remember who I was talking to. I think it was Eric Blanco shared with me recently that forty percent of uni members still vote in Republican. So, you know, it doesn't there's no guarantee that if you're in a union, you're necessarily going to vote for democrats even though democrats tend to protect the interests of workers much much better, which is still wants to say great. It's just comparatively better. Yeah. That tend to is doing a lot of work.

0:13:38

And, you know, I know we're over time for the second. I feel like we could be here for, like, again, two full days. We need, like, labor experts in the room to talk about it. We'll get it. We'll bring him in. You will.

0:13:48

But the things that that, like, you said that, you know, continue to make me think. One, you talked about the transformative power of unions. We mentioned the lowest union density. We should also mention and you can look it up online to hire the union density at any stage in American politics. The higher the average wage or the lower income inequality was, and the lower union density, the higher the income inequality. Unions literally make the society more equal, more just. That's one really important thing to take away.

0:14:17

And then two, keep talking about NAFTA. It's so so mind boggling that here in the United States, we won so many worker protections, wage increases, so many ways to fight against and regulate capitalism and pull ourselves towards a more just society. And all of our politicians woke up and said, not only are we gonna sell every single American worker out, but we're gonna do it by exploiting millions and millions of workers overseas. It is literally the worst of every possible world so that instead of having to pay American workers a just wage and give them good and fair and safe working conditions, our own government decided to side with capitalists and allow those capitalists to underpay and abuse Mexican workers in Mexico or Chinese workers in China. And it's so frustrating to think about but Here in New York City, we had industrial production, including textile and Cylianna's told me, alright, about how your father when you first arrived to the US was part of that, you know, production of clothing and apparel, which you don't you don't have that at all anymore. My father was a furrier. And there is still a small fur industry in New York run by a lot of Greeks, but it's much much smaller than it is now. Even until the mid nineties. Yeah. It was here. Because the United States government decided let's exploit workers overseas for American profits. And let's leave American workers in the dust. Right.

0:15:44

But the flip side of this, which we don't have time to talk about, is that they're like Americans can consume more And we'll talk about the American consumer, I guess, on another show. Yeah. Us. The American consumer. Love to consume. I'm not making pointing any figures. I do love to consume, you know, contradictions and all that. Now we're gonna give you some like whiplash. Talking about a strong industrial economy. Strong work workers movement. Yes. We are so happy to bring you the meathead minutes.

0:16:31

So here on left at on red. We are we love strength training. And we want to encourage socialists, the socialist curious, people on the left to Basically, take back physical culture because for some reason, it's really dominated by the right. People like Marjorie Taylor Green doing those awful keeping pull ups If you're in any, like, workout or training forum, you're just gonna end up seeing a lot of don't tread on me, flags. It's gonna end up getting all right pretty quickly, and we reject this idea that the right owns physical culture.

0:17:11

Socialists can be swagelous. There's a lot of folks in this space already. There is a guy I really like on TikTok who's called the Swoleteriate. And, you know, I kind of I I kind of don't love the way some people on the left do this, which is often like a fascist worked out today? Did you like, I don't know. That feels kinda annoying. Like And no shaming. Yeah. No shaming. I'm also, like, I'm not you're not gonna go fight someone in the street tomorrow because you benched a lot more today.

0:17:42

And also a lot of them will do this thing like, I'm a leftist guy that lifts. Like, okay. Congratulations. There's so many of us, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. There's no need, you know, when we say we wanna take it back from the right, we also mean we do not want it to be like braggadocious competitive. Toxic. Yeah. It's a good, healthy, positive thing that people should do, and we wanted to encourage you to do it in a healthy positive manner. It's it should be inclusive, it should not be shame based, and it it should be democratic. Right? So in an ideal world, at least my ideal world, there'd be squat racks on every street. They would be publicly owned, so build public squat racks. And, you know, other other forms Yeah. Other other yeah. Bill public bench presses. Bill public deadlift platforms. Yeah. Public easily accessible cardio. And this goes into, like, also, like, the need for public space.

0:18:41

I do enjoy one thing about the gym, which is I enter this, like, very large room and basement and it's just me and, like, several dozen other people who are all here for the same activity. And there's kind of like a little bit of camaraderie. Like, I have not spoken a word to some of these guys I see on a regular basis, but I know exactly who they are. I know when they're working out. And I see them on the street sometimes in the neighborhood and we like do a little head nod and smile. And every now and then one of them, I'll like go up to them and like do a little dab. Because it feels like we kind of know each other. We kind of have this like unspoken friendship. We're doing the same, like, very physical human activity working on our bodies. We're doing it in kind of, like, funny, strange environment where we just go to this, like, place filled with a lot of metal And, you know, it's a very humbling experience because you're doing it, you're struggling, you're sweating, you're not always having the best time. It's not necessarily like an easy effortless thing for you to do, and it's very equalizing in that manner.

0:19:47

I wore a lot of Bernie swag in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty before the pandemic shut gyms down and people will come up to me and talk to me about my about my Bernie sweater. That's such a good point. I wear AOC shirts at the gym. Right. It's a place to organize. Yeah. It is. People love the AOC shirt. I I'm shocked with the type of people that will come up to me at the gym and be like, oh, AOC. She's so cool. Wow. Thinking I'm like a campaign worker or something because it was the exclusive campaign worker shirt that someone gave to me. I think it's not that they know that. But, yeah, people will give me positive comments about AOC. I'll wear, like, the local socialists shirts like Zagron's campaign shirt, or Tiffany Kiban. And those don't get as many comments. Nolan's name is as famous as Aviso.

0:20:36

If people wanted to ask you, it's a way to create opportunity to not be, like, infringing on your privacy in a gym to be, like, oh, what's this about? And it's So we'd break the ice. Yeah. Because at the gym, you're probably likely to ask someone how many sets do you have left? Take your time. Me. And so it's like, It's a weird place where certain social barriers break down. So with the exception of very exclusive expensive gyms like Equinox, most gyms are places that are multiracial, multiethnic, multilingualistic, and very working class. They're very unique spaces. You see that kind of like integration that you don't see in a lot of other spaces.

0:21:14

I did not come to this thinking that we were gonna say all of this, but I am like now thinking of my head, oh my god. The gym is this, like, proletariat, perfect utopia. That's so true. You're right. The gym is so integrated by race and age and gender. I see a lot of women. I see a lot of older folks and younger folks. There's a few trans folks that go to my gym. And It's integrated.

0:21:41

I feel like because it's physical. It's so funny that we came into the segment. Thinking, oh, the right has this, like, enormous monopoly on physicality or exercise. Because the more I think about it the more equalizing and humanizing exercises. It's something where you're working on your body. Everybody has a body. There's always imperfections. You get, like, naked or semi naked or you're wearing clothes that are very revealing. I'm, like This is still almost talking about himself here. No. You know what I mean? You can wear whatever you want. You can wear whatever you want. But what I mean is, I don't know. I feel like that breaks down so much of social barrier and projection and makes you very vulnerable in some way. And so I feel like there is some level of vulnerability that me and you are at the gym working out and struggling. And, yeah, I can't imagine why it's not the most socialist place on Earth now that I'm talking about it.

0:22:36

So we have wrapped this up because we could do a podcast that's only about being a meathead, but we'll come back to meathead a minute later and, you know, just we're here to say, we encourage you on your fitness journey. No one is in the wrong place. You're at the place you need to be and that if you wanna DMS on Instagram or send us an email about your fitness journey. We're not personal trainers, but we love being meatheads. Like, we can talk about traps and isolating your lats and, like, various quad and, like, you know, diagnosing knee pain rehab. Like, we We talk about it a lot. Okay? We talk about it a lot.

0:23:14

There are at least three large New York City DSA group chat dedicated to exercise and fitness. Yeah. And it's been one person in there who I only met through that and I saw her Just a few weeks ago, we all went to the spot together. She said it was one of her favorite group chats because of the energy that we had in there. So yeah. So send us any questions you have, we'd love to answer or, you know, nonprofessional advice. And if you're in New York City, do you guys I can't hardly hear Encourishment.

0:24:26

Now we're gonna move on to something that I've been LLing about for a while now, which is, I think, sometime on Saturday, a friend of mine was, like, yo, is Trump gonna get arrested on Tuesday? And so I like to call that Arrestmas because I saw that somebody had created an Arrestmas Christmas tree where they had put, like, caution tape on their Christmas tree, a bunch of pictures of Trump and jail. And, like, I just wanna talk about phenomenon on this sort of liberal obsession with Trump, proceduralism, criminal investigation, and sort of why we understand why it's so popular, but also why it's politically just a dead end. I would love to hear your take on it because the two instant thoughts I have in my head about Donald Trump and arresting him is, one, I support it. You know, I I really I I'm thinking of what happened in Brazil where they elected Lula, this famous socialist party icon over there, and fairly soon after the election, and so he defeated the fascist jirbal scenario.

0:25:33

Soon after the election, they did their own January sixth. They did a lot campier than we did. So that's off to Brazil. Actually, I take that back. I think America's January six is campier. But shortly after, Lula had basically every single person at those riots arrested. And I was like, oh my god. This is how you deal with an attempted coup. So thinking about that and making that connection, yes, I think no doubt we should arrest Donald Trump and I'm glad all the January six rioters were arrested too.

0:26:06

But the other thing I have is, yes, exactly what you just said, Susan. Like, I feel like Liberals are obsessed with Donald Trump and Donald Trump's personal petty crimes and making sure he pays for them and I never understood exactly where this comes from. I don't know if it was like a righteousness thing and they're so upset that he is like embarrassed American institutions I don't know if it's because they just love the idea of arresting people or, you know, punishing people with the legal system. Why do you think what's your take?

0:26:36

We talked a little bit in an earlier episode about how the Supreme Court wants to hide behind legal proceduralism to make really big political moves like student debt forgiveness Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're gonna be like, oh, yeah. They're they're making this particular legal argument. And I think that there is I didn't go to law school or anything like that, but there's sort of like a a liberal obsession with the law. Right? Which is that the law will solve political problem. Mhmm.

0:27:05

And so, yeah, Trump can definitely the federal government investigators feel free to bring it up on treason charges that would require quite a lot of, I don't know, courage, but this whole, like, oh, the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, by, like, investigating potential, like, disclosures. Like, it's all the level of legal specificity is really I guess, obscure. Right? It's not something so obvious. And so they're really hoping that a prosecutor will work his procedural magic And then the problem of Donald Trump will go away. But it's just it doesn't work better. It's also interesting that they're allegedly arresting or indicting or whatever him for the Stormy Daniels payments, which is funny because, I mean, I guess that's illegal too and, you know, get arrested for it. But I feel like that's really low on the list of things. Exactly. He should be punished for. So it reminds me of that proceduralism stuff.

0:28:07

I'll also say, you know, both of us identify as abolitionists and I don't really think anybody should be in prison I'm a Christian and I believe that there is forgiveness for every single human being. I don't really think prison is conducive to human flourishing, or societal flourishing. I don't really think it ever makes sense to put someone in a a cage for years and years and expect anything positive to happen to them or the neighborhood that they come from. The neighborhood that they are then released back into with no resources, no support, no job, a mark on their record that will prevent them from getting those things. I don't know how we expect anything to come of that other than more destruction, more pain, more tragedy. So my position on that is pretty clear. Still want Donald Trump to get arrested. We've only to make those AI images more actually true to life.

0:29:02

But here's other thing too is that Donald Trump is the highest polling Republican candidate, potential for the nominee. Of precedent. Right? Like, that's a problem that you organize and respond to that problem. That's true. You have to make arguments about why that's not good and make them in a convince way to a wide range of people. You don't just say, oh, d a, Alvin Bragg is gonna catch him.

0:29:27

I remember when Eric Schneiderman, that's a former attorney general from New York State when he was brought down on his charges, which I've already forgotten because my memory is short. He resigned because a lot of women he had sexual relationships with, reported that he had extremely brutal and abusive. I didn't even know if you could call him relationships at that point, sexual encounters. Okay. Yeah. So he was awful person, sexual assault and just, you know, totally cancelable. But I remember somebody said to me, I'm so disappointed because I was really hoping he would take down Trump, you know, tax returns. So I was like, are you for real? Like, that's that's the concern right now? And then other people come to me, they're like, Tisch James, they wanna criticize her to me. And I'm like, oh, what's going on? Then, like, why isn't she doing something about Trump? Right? So there is this liberal fantasy that our prosecutors will solve the problem of Trump.

0:30:25

But Trumpism is a problem that is far beyond one individual. It's not something they can be solved by indicting somebody, putting them in jail. It's something that, you know, reflects a deep suspicion with our political institutions, distrust of political leaders, many, many Americans being alienated -- Mhmm. -- by our political leaders and by the voting process normal democratic processes don't speak to a lot of Americans. Trump is plane spoken. He's funny. He is like a great entertainer. He's very camp. Yeah. And, you know, he appeals to sort of like old fashioned ideas about masculinity, that appeal to many people. I'm not saying that they're legit. I'm not into it. But, you know, where's what do what do democrats offer? Like, just It's ironic because Donald Trump is not a physical man. I don't think work out or has any sort of, like, masculine features. Yet he continues to bully everybody in a way that's No. That's that's the masculine. That's the toxic masculinity, which is cruelness bullying.

0:31:34

I'm gonna use the f word, fascism. I know we don't love it. And the way I made this connection really truly is embarrassing, but I'm gonna tell it to you all. I play a lot of strategy games on my computer and one fairly newly released game was Victoria three, and it simulates the nineteenth century economic, industrial revolution, and political revolution. And one of the things is it simulates like the rise of fascism later in the game.

0:32:03

And a user on Reddit wrote about how he was so astonished that his country became fascist because The fascist political party had such an extremely small percentage of political support, but they just got into, like, some coalition of power and then arrested the leaders of the other political parties and then became powerful. And it's funny that he was complaining, how is the fascist party able to do this? They only have twelve percent of the vote. And everyone in the comments was like, this is literally how real life fascism works. That this minority comes into very aggressive power, arrests the leaders of other parties or uses force.

0:32:42

And I'm bringing it back because it made a lot of this stuff click for me, which is that Donald Trump and his supporters want to essentially do exactly that. Which is I think one good reason why we should want him and others to be arrested and why I take it back to Lula's you know, Lula's actions of arresting those cool leaders, which is if there's people that want to dismantle your government or take over your government and take power by force, these are dangerous people and they should in fact be some form of force should be used against them to keep them out of power. So I do agree Donald Trump should be arrested for that reason. I sympathize with Liberals who wanna get rid of him in that manner. Because, yes, he and other people like Ron DeSantis are in fact dangerous. They don't care about democracy or the political process. And so I don't know Susan, I think I agree with you. We should organize constantly and create a mass base to build the world that we need. I think that's the only way we can do it, especially we're talking about labor earlier. It's the only way we can get to socialism. But I will also say, I do think when there are people that threaten, basic democratic institutions, whatever little of them that we have in this country we do need to take forceful action to remove them from power. Well, luckily, it doesn't matter what I think because the grand jury's gonna meet again. So will we have arrestments? Stay tuned. Right. We'll definitely talk about it. Yeah. We will. But in the meantime, in the meantime, you can always learn about and consider building that mass movement of working class power by Join the DSA joining the DSA.

0:34:26

The Democratic socialist of America. Check us out. Google join DSA. A link should come up. We got decent SEO. Alright. It's been fun talking again. Our two meatheads are gonna sign off now. And, yeah, solidarity forever. Solidarity folks.