Hey Robert I'm thinking about taking your advice and taking a couple of days off substack because I have a podcast with the potential Congressman on Wednesday and I have a post for tomorrow done so I'm going to just let it ride. Any books that you might recommend?
I'm surprised to read that only 6% of the left identifies as socialist. So 94% of the left wants basically the same thing and can't pull it together? That doesn't look good. Still, we need to push to find people across the spectrum who are willing to play well with others.
I'm confident that it CAN happen. It's going to take time and dedication and those are two things that, obviously, are scarce resources.
I think the 6% number actually proves something important: most people on the left are not socialists. They're not asking for the government to own the means of production. They're asking for capitalism that still works for ordinary people.
The problem is that we've spent 30 years treating every criticism of corporate power as socialism and every criticism of government as right-wing extremism.
Americans overwhelmingly agree on more than social media would have you believe. Most people want affordable housing, affordable healthcare, wages that keep up with productivity, functioning infrastructure, competition instead of monopolies, and politicians who answer to voters instead of donors.
That's not socialism. That's the basic promise of a healthy republic.
The irony is that America's strongest periods weren't built on pure laissez-faire capitalism or centralized socialism. They were built on regulated markets, aggressive antitrust enforcement, strong labor participation, public investment, and private innovation working together.
The left won't save itself by moving further left. The right won't save itself by moving further right. America gets stronger when both sides stop treating compromise as surrender and start treating problem-solving as the job.
Most Americans aren't asking for a revolution. They're asking for a system that rewards work more than speculation, citizens more than lobbyists, and families more than political tribes. The fact that we've turned those goals into ideological warfare is probably the real problem.
Well I’m reading a bunch of Space Westerns & Fantasy as well as a dive into The Federalist Papers, which I haven’t read in 55 yrs or so. “The Pursuit of Liberty,” by Jeffery Rosen, Ty recommended that one. Blaze Ward, writes snappy SciFi series that are just plain fun. Snarky dialogue & ripping plots. & a very English fantasy series by Mark Hayden. The cultural stuff is almost incomprehensible but it adds to the fun. Pure escape. Very little redeeming intellectual merit.
DJT is a bomb-throwing self-aggrandizing idiot. Until the chaos threatens folks making $150,000.00 a year, they will continue to support dear leader. PERIOD!!! The Civil Rights Movement had a great strategy that worked. Lawyers, judges, and politicians buried whatever the Civil Rights movement accomplished. Make it make sense!!!
I don't agree with any of those things but what about the stuff in an hour on the backyard? What about these things that we need to start figuring out in order to focus on moving forward? The points I made in this quick 10 minute teaser podcast are almost everything that we need to consider if winning in 2028 is something that we want
A great strategy trains the lowest members of the organization. Commitment is the key. The Civil Rights Movement had folks filling out their wills in case they were murdered in the streets. They taught non violent behavior and made certain that everyone on the team understood what non violent behavior was.
democracy is really working well and kamala is still speaking and they really assessment their genocidal joe campain well and will return to power to continue propping up wall street. this is your capitalism working as it has for the past century while you go around being a sucker for it
If your argument is that Wall Street has too much influence, we agree. If your argument is that government has never been captured by powerful interests under socialist systems, history disagrees. The problem isn't the label. It's concentrated power, whether it sits in a boardroom or a bureaucracy.
But, you've confused criticism of socialism with a defense of corporate oligarchy. Also. They're not opposites. I can oppose Wall Street bailouts, corporate welfare, regulatory capture, and socialism at the same time. The fact that so many people think there are only two boxes to choose from is part of why nothing gets fixed.
If a billionaire-funded politician calls themselves "the left," that doesn't magically make their policies left-wing any more than calling yourself an intellectual makes you one.
I'm arguing that people should judge political movements by incentives, policies, and outcomes, not marketing slogans.
The fact that questioning the label is controversial says a lot about how effective the branding has become.
First time here, Rxan, and the initial thing I always do is find out more about people's credentials. What is your background as an 'investigative journalist,' please? (Critical Thinking 101.) I just can't find it, but then I avoid social media.
Thank you for letting us comment. You make a lot of good points, many which have been made already by others, about the "Big Tent" party. The fact that everyone who is trying to flee overfed and abusive capitalism is forced to go to the one *other* party, is a problem. We eventually must have more parties -- parties that can serve as transactional buffers and instruments of nudging the mainstream into positive change. Like the rest of the developed world?
I do believe that there's a generational shift happening that is trying to find its way. Problem is, every damn time we try a label on, it's immediately demonized by the right's machine (Thanks, Rup, you bastard).
The young look at Europe and mistake "democratic socialism" for "socialism." The former is simply capitalism with a lot of popular input and extremely strong guardrails. That's how it should be, and we can design a political system tailored to *our* needs, as opposed to small EU nations.
Capitalism has been a horse out of the corral for a very long time. Some of our countermanding system has performed to saddle it; much has neglected the duty of harnessing capitalism or even exulted in and benefited from the wildness. That's destructive as hell. It just takes longer. In the event it's reparable, it usually takes extreme measures, as in FDR's personal income tax on the wealthy. The ricochet is harsh and enemies are made.
You are 100% correct in that Dems need branding. The problem is, it always gets pulled toward the Center, and that is somewhat stagnant at this point. And "socialism" is too scary to use in almost all campaigns. It's used carelessly to express a legitimate need that can't be ignored any longer.
We must solve this, and the DNC and DCCC don't help. Where is the damn "autopsy"? Where is our discussion of our problems? It must be center stage and look like solutions or else it weakens us profoundly. We can't let the right continue to demonize us. It's poison on a weakened media.
Your continued discussion of the "where do we go from here?" thing is welcomed. One cautionary: please do not cite the Manhattan Institute, led by Betsy DeVos, and birthed by a former head of our CIA? That is a thinktank that has its own agenda.
Thank you for the time you took to talk about this problem!
Hi S.A., Thanks for that thoughtful response and the time you took to write all of that out. Those kinds of comments are rare now because most online political discourse has pretty much devolve to people throwing tribal grenades at each other. I want to give you a complete answer and I'll do my best.
To answer your question directly: I’m not a traditional investigative journalist in the traditional career path sense. My background is actually in business administration and management, with an M.A. in Political Science. Both degrees are from the University of Delaware in Newark. Most of my life was spent building businesses while independently studying politics, history, economics, media systems, psychology, and institutional behavior obsessively for years. I moved to Washington DC in 2022 for an interesting opportunity within the political infrastructure working as a very strategic component in a much bigger system and after about 18 months I needed to leave because it made me so jaded and that's one of the reasons that I need to write on substack privately now ( something I started in the fall of 2025, and just started engaging with readers last month. I wanted to take a lot of my work, polish it up, and format it for substack and I did my best to build a credible Foundation so if somebody wants to dive down the rabbit hole, they should get a good sense of who I am.
What I’m trying to do now is combine that with writing, commentary, and evidence-based analysis outside the typical partisan ecosystem.
I probably should make that clearer publicly, honestly. However, even the detail I've given above is such a small part of the whole story and I'd rather talk about that outside of the comment section. I haven't decided how much I'm going to disclose when I start my podcast on sub stack which will be a weekly live feature that I teased today a bit….
But… what pushed me into this space is EXACTLY the broader issue you’re describing: beyond feeling… a knowing that both parties, media institutions, and even many ideological movements have become trapped in branding, tribalism, donor incentives, and reactionary politics instead of structural reform. Trump accelerated many of these fractures, but I believe he created few (maybe none) of them. In many ways he exposed weaknesses that were already there, and if you know his bankruptcy background, and a lot of bankruptcy backgrounds of billionaires in this country , who become Wealthy by bleeding the beast, it would make sense as somebody that is really anything but your traditional (R). Bernie Sanders felt the opposite result.
I also agree with you that Americans confuse “democratic socialism” in the European sense with centralized state socialism. Most successful societies are still fundamentally capitalist. The difference is whether capitalism is restrained by strong guardrails, labor PROTECTIONS, functional healthcare Systems, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY anti-corruption mechanisms /campaign finance limits/nstitutions that prevent wealth from swallowing democracy.
Where I diverge from parts of the modern left is that I how I view branding and messaging. They matter far more than many activists want to admit. If a label instantly alienates half the country before policy is discussed, it becomes politically self-defeating whether the underlying ideas have merit or not. Republicans understood emotional branding decades before Dems and they played dirty long before Dems, who are very bad at it.
I SO share your frustration w/ DNC’s inability to conduct a serious public autopsy after repeated failures. A healthy political movement MUST criticize itself openly without treating dissent like betrayal. That’s why I wrote this piece in the first place. It's it's inevitable so I started.
And regarding the Manhattan Institute point: fair enough. I actually think people should critically examine ALL think tanks, left and right. One thing I try to do is pull data, arguments, and observations from across ideological lines without fully outsourcing my thinking to any institution. Everyone has incentives and blind spots. My goal = trying to triangulate reality underneath narratives.
Why aren’t you in some leadership role trying to steer the country or party ? It seems we need people who are thinkers and can clearly articulate the problems. Something we are seriously lacking.
Thank you for the compliment, Jo. I never considered public service but it has been occurring to me lately that one of the most certain ways out of this chaos and corrupt country that we currently live in, is for people that never thought they would run for office... Try to get involved in running... I would consider it but I would certainly need help for my subscribers to figure out the best way. I am about 6 miles from the capitol so I'm in the right location
I'm so sorry, Rxan . . . I got behind in my email and missed your extremely helpful response. Surely all of your readers will appreciate this personal detail. You have an impressive resume! You should do well on Substack, given enough time.
I was into my bank yesterday and the young woman teller said she watched a number of Substacks. It's going places, and interesting, intelligent people want to be along for the ride. (Long story as to why we got on the subject, but it made sense at the time. ;)
Looking forward to more of your thoughtful screeds!
Well that's good news. I am ironically on it because I don't like social media and have been pretty invisible and pretty handicapped by the fact I can't crosspost to other platforms, but the reason that I picked Substack was because of the caliber of people I found. The fact that readers actually engaged meaningfully and do so after reading things was a welcome change for me... Those 15 second videos really rub me the wrong way and every platform rewards of people that posts them..
I posted something yesterday it's part of my narrative verse reality series called the Doom generation. I think you would like it... Explored why Gen-Z approaches politics the way that they do.
The mix is the message. The reactionaries are tight, on message & corrupt. The left changes, morphs & is never the same.
Viva la diffèrence
Resist
Avance la Lucha
Hey Robert I'm thinking about taking your advice and taking a couple of days off substack because I have a podcast with the potential Congressman on Wednesday and I have a post for tomorrow done so I'm going to just let it ride. Any books that you might recommend?
I'm surprised to read that only 6% of the left identifies as socialist. So 94% of the left wants basically the same thing and can't pull it together? That doesn't look good. Still, we need to push to find people across the spectrum who are willing to play well with others.
I'm confident that it CAN happen. It's going to take time and dedication and those are two things that, obviously, are scarce resources.
I think the 6% number actually proves something important: most people on the left are not socialists. They're not asking for the government to own the means of production. They're asking for capitalism that still works for ordinary people.
The problem is that we've spent 30 years treating every criticism of corporate power as socialism and every criticism of government as right-wing extremism.
Americans overwhelmingly agree on more than social media would have you believe. Most people want affordable housing, affordable healthcare, wages that keep up with productivity, functioning infrastructure, competition instead of monopolies, and politicians who answer to voters instead of donors.
That's not socialism. That's the basic promise of a healthy republic.
The irony is that America's strongest periods weren't built on pure laissez-faire capitalism or centralized socialism. They were built on regulated markets, aggressive antitrust enforcement, strong labor participation, public investment, and private innovation working together.
The left won't save itself by moving further left. The right won't save itself by moving further right. America gets stronger when both sides stop treating compromise as surrender and start treating problem-solving as the job.
Most Americans aren't asking for a revolution. They're asking for a system that rewards work more than speculation, citizens more than lobbyists, and families more than political tribes. The fact that we've turned those goals into ideological warfare is probably the real problem.
Well I’m reading a bunch of Space Westerns & Fantasy as well as a dive into The Federalist Papers, which I haven’t read in 55 yrs or so. “The Pursuit of Liberty,” by Jeffery Rosen, Ty recommended that one. Blaze Ward, writes snappy SciFi series that are just plain fun. Snarky dialogue & ripping plots. & a very English fantasy series by Mark Hayden. The cultural stuff is almost incomprehensible but it adds to the fun. Pure escape. Very little redeeming intellectual merit.
DJT is a bomb-throwing self-aggrandizing idiot. Until the chaos threatens folks making $150,000.00 a year, they will continue to support dear leader. PERIOD!!! The Civil Rights Movement had a great strategy that worked. Lawyers, judges, and politicians buried whatever the Civil Rights movement accomplished. Make it make sense!!!
I don't agree with any of those things but what about the stuff in an hour on the backyard? What about these things that we need to start figuring out in order to focus on moving forward? The points I made in this quick 10 minute teaser podcast are almost everything that we need to consider if winning in 2028 is something that we want
A great strategy trains the lowest members of the organization. Commitment is the key. The Civil Rights Movement had folks filling out their wills in case they were murdered in the streets. They taught non violent behavior and made certain that everyone on the team understood what non violent behavior was.
democracy is really working well and kamala is still speaking and they really assessment their genocidal joe campain well and will return to power to continue propping up wall street. this is your capitalism working as it has for the past century while you go around being a sucker for it
If your argument is that Wall Street has too much influence, we agree. If your argument is that government has never been captured by powerful interests under socialist systems, history disagrees. The problem isn't the label. It's concentrated power, whether it sits in a boardroom or a bureaucracy.
But, you've confused criticism of socialism with a defense of corporate oligarchy. Also. They're not opposites. I can oppose Wall Street bailouts, corporate welfare, regulatory capture, and socialism at the same time. The fact that so many people think there are only two boxes to choose from is part of why nothing gets fixed.
he’s saying calling corporate shills cosplaying for votes as ‘the left’ is inherently fallacious
it’s like me saying idiots have a branding problem because they post articles online and call themselves intellectuals - absurd, isn’t it?
That's actually the point.
If a billionaire-funded politician calls themselves "the left," that doesn't magically make their policies left-wing any more than calling yourself an intellectual makes you one.
I'm arguing that people should judge political movements by incentives, policies, and outcomes, not marketing slogans.
The fact that questioning the label is controversial says a lot about how effective the branding has become.
First time here, Rxan, and the initial thing I always do is find out more about people's credentials. What is your background as an 'investigative journalist,' please? (Critical Thinking 101.) I just can't find it, but then I avoid social media.
Thank you for letting us comment. You make a lot of good points, many which have been made already by others, about the "Big Tent" party. The fact that everyone who is trying to flee overfed and abusive capitalism is forced to go to the one *other* party, is a problem. We eventually must have more parties -- parties that can serve as transactional buffers and instruments of nudging the mainstream into positive change. Like the rest of the developed world?
I do believe that there's a generational shift happening that is trying to find its way. Problem is, every damn time we try a label on, it's immediately demonized by the right's machine (Thanks, Rup, you bastard).
The young look at Europe and mistake "democratic socialism" for "socialism." The former is simply capitalism with a lot of popular input and extremely strong guardrails. That's how it should be, and we can design a political system tailored to *our* needs, as opposed to small EU nations.
Capitalism has been a horse out of the corral for a very long time. Some of our countermanding system has performed to saddle it; much has neglected the duty of harnessing capitalism or even exulted in and benefited from the wildness. That's destructive as hell. It just takes longer. In the event it's reparable, it usually takes extreme measures, as in FDR's personal income tax on the wealthy. The ricochet is harsh and enemies are made.
You are 100% correct in that Dems need branding. The problem is, it always gets pulled toward the Center, and that is somewhat stagnant at this point. And "socialism" is too scary to use in almost all campaigns. It's used carelessly to express a legitimate need that can't be ignored any longer.
We must solve this, and the DNC and DCCC don't help. Where is the damn "autopsy"? Where is our discussion of our problems? It must be center stage and look like solutions or else it weakens us profoundly. We can't let the right continue to demonize us. It's poison on a weakened media.
Your continued discussion of the "where do we go from here?" thing is welcomed. One cautionary: please do not cite the Manhattan Institute, led by Betsy DeVos, and birthed by a former head of our CIA? That is a thinktank that has its own agenda.
Thank you for the time you took to talk about this problem!
Hi S.A., Thanks for that thoughtful response and the time you took to write all of that out. Those kinds of comments are rare now because most online political discourse has pretty much devolve to people throwing tribal grenades at each other. I want to give you a complete answer and I'll do my best.
To answer your question directly: I’m not a traditional investigative journalist in the traditional career path sense. My background is actually in business administration and management, with an M.A. in Political Science. Both degrees are from the University of Delaware in Newark. Most of my life was spent building businesses while independently studying politics, history, economics, media systems, psychology, and institutional behavior obsessively for years. I moved to Washington DC in 2022 for an interesting opportunity within the political infrastructure working as a very strategic component in a much bigger system and after about 18 months I needed to leave because it made me so jaded and that's one of the reasons that I need to write on substack privately now ( something I started in the fall of 2025, and just started engaging with readers last month. I wanted to take a lot of my work, polish it up, and format it for substack and I did my best to build a credible Foundation so if somebody wants to dive down the rabbit hole, they should get a good sense of who I am.
What I’m trying to do now is combine that with writing, commentary, and evidence-based analysis outside the typical partisan ecosystem.
I probably should make that clearer publicly, honestly. However, even the detail I've given above is such a small part of the whole story and I'd rather talk about that outside of the comment section. I haven't decided how much I'm going to disclose when I start my podcast on sub stack which will be a weekly live feature that I teased today a bit….
But… what pushed me into this space is EXACTLY the broader issue you’re describing: beyond feeling… a knowing that both parties, media institutions, and even many ideological movements have become trapped in branding, tribalism, donor incentives, and reactionary politics instead of structural reform. Trump accelerated many of these fractures, but I believe he created few (maybe none) of them. In many ways he exposed weaknesses that were already there, and if you know his bankruptcy background, and a lot of bankruptcy backgrounds of billionaires in this country , who become Wealthy by bleeding the beast, it would make sense as somebody that is really anything but your traditional (R). Bernie Sanders felt the opposite result.
I also agree with you that Americans confuse “democratic socialism” in the European sense with centralized state socialism. Most successful societies are still fundamentally capitalist. The difference is whether capitalism is restrained by strong guardrails, labor PROTECTIONS, functional healthcare Systems, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY anti-corruption mechanisms /campaign finance limits/nstitutions that prevent wealth from swallowing democracy.
Where I diverge from parts of the modern left is that I how I view branding and messaging. They matter far more than many activists want to admit. If a label instantly alienates half the country before policy is discussed, it becomes politically self-defeating whether the underlying ideas have merit or not. Republicans understood emotional branding decades before Dems and they played dirty long before Dems, who are very bad at it.
I SO share your frustration w/ DNC’s inability to conduct a serious public autopsy after repeated failures. A healthy political movement MUST criticize itself openly without treating dissent like betrayal. That’s why I wrote this piece in the first place. It's it's inevitable so I started.
And regarding the Manhattan Institute point: fair enough. I actually think people should critically examine ALL think tanks, left and right. One thing I try to do is pull data, arguments, and observations from across ideological lines without fully outsourcing my thinking to any institution. Everyone has incentives and blind spots. My goal = trying to triangulate reality underneath narratives.
Stay in contact. Please
Why aren’t you in some leadership role trying to steer the country or party ? It seems we need people who are thinkers and can clearly articulate the problems. Something we are seriously lacking.
Thank you for the compliment, Jo. I never considered public service but it has been occurring to me lately that one of the most certain ways out of this chaos and corrupt country that we currently live in, is for people that never thought they would run for office... Try to get involved in running... I would consider it but I would certainly need help for my subscribers to figure out the best way. I am about 6 miles from the capitol so I'm in the right location
I'm so sorry, Rxan . . . I got behind in my email and missed your extremely helpful response. Surely all of your readers will appreciate this personal detail. You have an impressive resume! You should do well on Substack, given enough time.
I was into my bank yesterday and the young woman teller said she watched a number of Substacks. It's going places, and interesting, intelligent people want to be along for the ride. (Long story as to why we got on the subject, but it made sense at the time. ;)
Looking forward to more of your thoughtful screeds!
Well that's good news. I am ironically on it because I don't like social media and have been pretty invisible and pretty handicapped by the fact I can't crosspost to other platforms, but the reason that I picked Substack was because of the caliber of people I found. The fact that readers actually engaged meaningfully and do so after reading things was a welcome change for me... Those 15 second videos really rub me the wrong way and every platform rewards of people that posts them..
I posted something yesterday it's part of my narrative verse reality series called the Doom generation. I think you would like it... Explored why Gen-Z approaches politics the way that they do.
I saw that and will be reading it when my life calms down. Thanks!