FYI, the kiwix foundation makes offline versions of wikimedia resources (though at pretty wide intervals, depending on the site, annually) which you can download via torrent and browse with a ZIM viewer. I use this as an offline resource on my home LAN, and have used other kiwix downloaded resources to train a local LLM without spamming the real internet: https://library.kiwix.org/

“We progressives will hold the free world hostage analogous to a gun unless you give us what we want.” Cool strategy, giving in to terroristic threats is deep in the American ethos and I am sure won’t alienate anyone and quickly bring us to a progressive utopia.

That’s what I’m saying, I support a progressive in the primary. But I’m not willing to start painting Newsom as the devil, because if he’s the nominee, I’m not gonna want to go to people I talk to and say “Well, I know I said he’s the devil, but now you have to support him.” This isn’t hard. I don’t know why there’s so much arguing about telling people to not burn a bridge in case you’re backed into a corner to vote for the lesser of two evils.

1. I’m mid 40’s
2. I have been a progressive my whole adult life, I canvassed for Bernie, I’ve been doing this for longer than many people on this platform have been able to vote. I worked for a labor union (SEIU Local 1000 in CA) and have spent countless hours and dollars promoting progressive causes. I was marching against the Iraq war and have never stopped.
3. The majority of my adult life has been under the oppressive thumb of Republicans because progressives and liberals will do anything to justify not getting out and voting for the person with a D in front of their name.

This isn’t theory, this is real experience. Already digging “your” (not you, just the general opposition to this thought) heels in and declaring that if a progressive doesn’t win we can’t support the winning democrat is so self-defeating it makes me wonder if much of the online progressive left are Russian ops. All I’m saying is “this may be the guy, why turn him into the microblog-headline enemy” now when we NEED people to get out and go to the polls when the chips are down if he’s the guy.

Or not, whatever, there comes a point where it gets too depressing watching progressives angrily take the high road to dystopia. I’m so tired of arguing with people whose side I’m on. I never get yelled at by conservatives, even those I disagree with to their face. A progressive will accuse me of being a fascist within the first 10 minutes of meeting me. The progressive cause is self-defeating, and it’s sad to watch.

No one likes the 2 party system, it sucks. But in the 2 party system, that’s the deal, you vote for the Dem or it’s a +1 to the R. I don’t like it either, but demonizing the Dems at this point to get people to stay home hands it to the R’s. This rhetoric becomes dangerous. Saying you don’t like the game doesn’t mean you can sit it out without consequences.

There’s a flow here.

1. Push for progressives in primaries.
2. Get behind whoever gets past the primaries.

If you spend all of part 1 poisoning the well on how terrible Newsom is, a lot of people will simply stay home if he’s the nominee when it gets to 2. I hope 1 happens. If it doesn’t, I hope all this rhetoric doesn’t make 2 fail. This dangerous purity testing is what leads people to stay home instead of voting for “less bad.” Even the suggestion of “be ready to vote for Newsom as a last resort” is too much for a lot of people, and THAT is how we get more Trump. This absurd copium fantasy that Harris/Newsom wouldn’t be better than Trump is just a way for angry people to sustain the outrage that warms them at night, but real people across the planet are hurting.

It would mean he does crappy AI things and doesn’t upend all our international climate agreements, gleefully enable hostile foreign powers to oppress their people while gloating with AI generated videos, send the gestapo into American neighborhoods, profiteer from hostile foreign powers, pardon crimes from his friends in exchange for cash, and lots of other things. You are letting perfect get in the way of “less bad”.

Politics in America is basically team sports, and language matters. “Newsom is bad” and “Khanna is better” are 2 different ways of speaking that have 2 different outcomes at the ballot box. It’s time to not let outrage stack the deck against us.

No, I think progressives need to push the party to the left, we need to get more progressive leadership into the DNC, and progressive results will grow the base to keep it sustainable.

But the language and outrage at this stage poisons the view of candidates, and in a general election, having people say “why would I vote Newsom when I just spent 3 years thinking what an awful corporate shill he is” makes people stay home, which hands the victory to the fascists. And there’s a lot of people out there whose entire living is outrage farming for superchats, and it moves the needle.

If it’s Ivanka vs. Newsom, you vote Newsom. This isn’t a game.

Running corporate centrists set the board up for a loss, demonizing them and getting people to stay home is how we executed the loss. It wasn’t a sure bet, and the fantasy that Harris would be as bad as Trump only exists in the minds of people NOT victimized by the gestapo and people who make money keeping progressives glued to their streams giving tips.

There is a spectrum. Trump/Maga/Conservatives are the worst and are actively marching us towards fascism. Corporate Democrats are the second worst. They’re not making the change we need and are prioritizing the wrong people. Progressives would be the best.

We have a 2 party system. If you spend cycles looking at #2 and saying why you shouldn’t vote for them, you hurt everyone. If the choice in this 2-party system is #1 or #2, you vote for #2, you swallow the medicine and take the pill, you tell yourself it’s a vote against #1.

Newsom wouldn’t be the best candidate, but all this psy-op crap about demonizing a Democrat front-runner is how you get the progressives to stay home and hand Trump (or his ilk) a third term. Low voter turnout for the left has to be fought. Sitting back and smugly criticizing why Democrats should do better literally killed Ukrainians, Palestinians, and American protesters. Getting people out to vote down-ballot is how we make the change we want and actually push to get a voting system that allows minority candidates to have a shot.

Yes, that’s the current consensus. Only the auto-update infrastructure was compromised, and it was a shared hosting compromise.

Just to be clear, N++ wasn’t compromised, the shared web host running the auto update infrastructure was. They responsibly disclosed it and shared safety steps. I don’t know if it is time to bail on them yet.