Of all the things you could critique DSA on, this is the hill you’re going to die on? agony-consuming

DSA deciding to do a mask mandate at this event is unequivocally good and based. Shut the fuck up, you fucking dipshits.

Imagine being this much of a fucking goddamn crybaby about masking. Eat shit, you ableist fucks.

One of the biggest lessons this pandemic has taught me is the astounding number of people for whom leftism is really just performative, and that when push comes to shove, these people will make the biggest fucking stink about having to do something even mildly inconvenient for even a single fucking event or context and show themselves for who they really are.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I still can’t fathom why people get so pissed off about wearing masks. I’ve heard tons of explanations but they just slip off my mind. Like just… don’t catch a shitload of respiratory viruses and con crud! The horror!

    • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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      1 year ago

      My partner was fucking healthy before her first and only COVID infection. Also if one includes those “at risk” (old, chronically ill, cancer surviving, diabetic, too young to vaccinate, etc), it’s like 50% of the human population.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I still can’t fathom why people get so pissed off about wearing masks.

      For the same reason they threw a fit about seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Its a generic “You can’t tell me what to do!” impulse that runs rampant among American libertarians.

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I mean I don’t want it to be the norm forever, at least not outside of big events where it makes sense, but with covid still going around in waves…

      Plus, the way to not have to wear masks in the future is to actually wear them when there is a pandemic and actually tamp down on that shit

      At this point I believe it’s just cognitive dissonance, everyone said it was time to stop masking, and repeated a bunch of thought terminating simple explanations as to why, and the mandates all dropped, so it was normalized. Accepting that they should still mask at conventions now has implications for what they should do day to day, at the store, and what they should have done over the past year or two, so they reject the new thing instead of doing some self refelection

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Masks should be required at conventions even if we magically made all covid disappear today. I don’t want your cold, your flu, or your strep either!

    Ironically the pandemic has taught me that disease spread is actually much more possible to manage and prevent and we simply choose not to. With a couple years of dedicated effort that isn’t even that difficult as a society we could pretty much eliminate contagious disease. Imagine never getting the flu, or even a cold again. This is the world that capitalism keeps us from.

    • beef_curds [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I’ll never travel again without a mask on the airport/plane/train. It fucking sucked to get the crud while I was on vacation, and it was like 50/50 whether I’d get something.

      Airports and conventions are like these big petri dishes where everyone tracks in their bugs from all corners of the world and then take them back home. It’s wild that any of them don’t require masks. Convention crud was a meme before covid, and it sucks.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Oh god I know. I got sick so often when I flew. The only time I’ve left North America in my whole life I spent half of the week I was in London in bed sick. It was awful. Never again.

        And I got con crud a bunch of times, too. In fact the only time I didn’t get Con Crud was when I was staffing a kissing booth and we were all swigging vodka between kisses for sanitation reasons.

        🫦 kissing booths are not sanitary eww I was young and dumb. If you’re going to do a kissing booth have, like, plastic wrap or something to use as a sanitary barrier. 🫦

        • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          fucking love to bring a baby to the hospital for severe respiratory distress as a result of viral infection, and then multiple followups and CT scans after the respiratory distress and every time, the medical staff see our masks and are like damn, do you want us to wear a mask? Hold on I’ll go get one

    • penitentkulak [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, influenza B was eradicated locally even with our very performative COVID measures, zero wastewater detection and no confirmed local cases for months on end. Stayed that way until mask mandates were dropped.

  • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This is the coolest thing the DSA has done, that I know of at least. Masks are fucking awesome. I haven’t gotten sick since I started wearing them. Also they hide my face so people cant see me laughing at them and muttering to myself.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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    Dear leftists that don’t want to mask to protect others (including the vulnerable), please post your sad faces on Twitter so I can at least get a little satisfaction from this pandemic and all the suffering I get from your selfishness.

    Even in 2020-2021, during the fucking mask mandates, I had to stop doing heaps of shit I enjoy because you dipshits can’t follow simple requests to save lives. Go watch a film? Nope. Coffee shops? Gone forever. Gyms? None for me. Mass transit and food shopping? Yes because I have to, but fuck I’m terrified. Work? Sadly yes but you fucking need to put the fear of death in me.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The vaccines reduce the chance of becoming infected moderately, but they don’t prevent infection. They considerably reduce the chance of severe symptoms requiring hospitalization, and the risk of death. However they only reduce the chance of Long Covid, and it’s unclear by how much they reduce it.

        Up to date vaccines help a great deal, but they’re not a silver bullet. You still run the risk of long covid.

        Whereas if two people are wearing properly fitted N95 masks and one of them has Covid the risk of the other contracting Covid is very, very small.

  • FuckYourselfEndless [ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Solidarity, friends. It’s hard out there. Might as well get used to trying to push the buttons of anti-mask dipshits. We at least have the truth on our side. They just have ‘convenience’.

    • Juiceyb [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      They don’t even have that. If you’re a “leftist” it’s always been required otherwise you’d get mysteriously killed by two guys on the street. cmnd-marcos-pog

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I don’t consider someone a leftist by default if they can’t even be bothered to care enough about other people to wear a fucking mask, even if it’s mildly inconvenient to them. disgost

  • asparagus9001 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I know DSA is very inclusive and pro unity but one could argue it’s a bit of a stretch to even call their community and audience “leftist” to begin with

    I’m really not trying to be a wrecker here but when your main political project is in US electoralism, for the slate of candidates that have been out there… ehhhhh

    • macabrett [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s a fair and valid criticism of the DSA. They hold some generally leftist positions, but overall they’re in line with the “progressive” wing of the democratic party.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      one could argue it’s a bit of a stretch to even call their community and audience “leftist” to begin with

      Sure, but you could say that about any electoralist outfit. They’re still a powerful organizing body and they’ve proven successful at influencing policy by sheer weight of numbers. If you’re going the electoralist route, I’ve seen much worse.

      for the slate of candidates that have been out there…

      Half the motivating force behind the DSA is the fact that mainstream candidates do suck. Cultivating younger and more radical leadership, then promoting those leaders to high office is a major motivating factor in the movement.

      If the only thing that comes out of DSA is a new generation of experienced organizers and leaders, I’d call the community a success.

        • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          That’s what happens when you don’t have a ton of money and leisure time to throw at a project. Not really a DSA issue so much as a general organizing challenge.

    • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      there’s a lot of radical people within DSA, wouldn’t be surprised if this is was because of pressure from them. There’s a movement trying to do a hard break from the democratic party from my understanding, don’t know how big or likely it is to happen though

    • jabrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      If enough people use a title then that’s what that title means now, even if we hate it and don’t think it should be

    • NotARobot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The new elected majority to the NPC (highest body in the org) are of the left/marxist side of the DSA. Now of those you have a lot of neokautskyists and the like but they deserve a little more credit than berniecrats.

        • NotARobot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          More likely than before, but like long term; definitely not within the next 2 years. I think this convention was a swing in the direction of people who want a clean/hard break but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.

        • NotARobot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I honestly don’t know a whole lot about neokauts (I think they are also pro-lenin? Whatever the politics of cosmonaut magazine are) but from what I have seen the organizational strategies they’ll push for are much better than that of “berniecrats”.

        • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          If this was about Marxist Unity, calling them Neo-kauts is kinda unfair to them. It’s more like “Kautsky’s writings have things we could learn from, but he was a renegade and Lenin was right about him.” They’ve explicitly said this.

          • NotARobot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Fwiw I only refer them as neokauts because I see a lot of them identify as such on twitter. But yeah I looked up their onboarding school and they make their members read more lenin than they do kautsky. That might be too revisionist for some people here’s taste but I think them, red star, and even b&r making up a left-majority steering committee is a good thing.

  • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I am always kinda suspect when someone doesn’t want to use protection of any sort. Rubber gloves, safety goggles, seat belts, masks, whatever. Even if you take it off the moment you leave or whatever, it’s just kinda weird when someone asks you to do “the safety thing, even it just a for a little bit” and people bug out

  • Biggay [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I hate wearing masks but its not fucking hard to do if youre just glad handing a bunch of people in an air conditioned space. As you long as you arnt doing hard work in the sun/humidity theres very little reason to get mad at masking.