Stein spoke well and at least said some cool stuff. She spent time denouncing Russia which was unnecessary but whatever I guess. What bothered me about her speech was that its clear she and the Greens have adopted the rhetoric of socialism but don’t seem to grasp the substance. There were no calls for organization or movement building. More of “just elect me and I’ll take care of it” sort of stuff. Her positions were much more radical than a Democrat’s would be but there was no articulation of how she would “declare a climate emergency” and get past the courts for instance.
From what I remember of her in 2016 the rhetoric was sharply more radical this time around which makes me suspicious too. I know people can grow in that time, I certainly have, but it sets off my opportunist sense.
Also pretty much everyone else there or who spoke was insufferable. Lots of hippie and faux revolutionary nonsense. Stein was the only one of the five speakers (also by far the best) who talked about anything else besides Palestine (which is obviously an important issue but it was nearly an hour of clearly unrehearsed speeches reiterating basically the same points about Palestine). Also the place had a lot of Trotskyists in attendance because WSB has gone all in for Stein and all of that also gives me bad vibes and then the fact that the Greens don’t seem to actually be giving any platform for the Trotskyists also seems to be cutting off any potentially Marxist agitation which makes it worse.
Stein spoke well and at least said some cool stuff. She spent time denouncing Russia which was unnecessary but whatever I guess. What bothered me about her speech was that its clear she and the Greens have adopted the rhetoric of socialism but don’t seem to grasp the substance. There were no calls for organization or movement building. More of “just elect me and I’ll take care of it” sort of stuff. Her positions were much more radical than a Democrat’s would be but there was no articulation of how she would “declare a climate emergency” and get past the courts for instance.
From what I remember of her in 2016 the rhetoric was sharply more radical this time around which makes me suspicious too. I know people can grow in that time, I certainly have, but it sets off my opportunist sense.
Also pretty much everyone else there or who spoke was insufferable. Lots of hippie and faux revolutionary nonsense. Stein was the only one of the five speakers (also by far the best) who talked about anything else besides Palestine (which is obviously an important issue but it was nearly an hour of clearly unrehearsed speeches reiterating basically the same points about Palestine). Also the place had a lot of Trotskyists in attendance because WSB has gone all in for Stein and all of that also gives me bad vibes and then the fact that the Greens don’t seem to actually be giving any platform for the Trotskyists also seems to be cutting off any potentially Marxist agitation which makes it worse.
I’ll just be writing in De La Cruz in November.