QuietCupcake [any, they/them]

(it’s a vegan cupcake, in case you were wondering)

  • 3 Posts
  • 512 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 28th, 2022

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  • I am also not an expert (would it be inappropriate to @ping a Muslim comrade to ask?) but @Maeve@kbin.earth is correct in saying that Shi’a Muslims believe that it is the direct descendants of Muhammad who are the divinely guided leaders of Islam. The first being Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law and the first Imam who is the figure that was at the center of the Sunni-Shi’a divide. Sunnis do not accept that leadership was meant to stay in a hereditary line through Ali’s family. They generally see the early succession as a matter for the Muslim community to decide. Which meant that back at the time of the division, Sunnis saw Abu Bakr as the first caliph.

    Edit to add:

    the schism that divides Shi’a and Sunni Muslims occurred relatively soon after the founding of the religion, like a century or two out.

    Less than a century or two! The issue of succession that defined the split was essentially immediately after the death of the prophet Muhammad.


  • That doesn’t really address what I was wondering though. First of all, Bernie wasn’t successfully elected, for all the reasons you pointed out. But as an already-elected mayor of one of the largest and most politically and economically significant cities in the US, Mamdani (or a hypothetical actual socialist) has a fair amount of potential power to accomplish good things already despite the media control.

    expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize literally any inconvenience ain’t that hard.

    It’s not as though they didn’t try to do that with Mamdani already, because they tried to prevent his election using media control and failed. I realize they could ramp all that up, but he’s already in there doing some good things with the OP being an example, and I think there could be room for a lot more that bourgeois media control alone wouldn’t be able to prevent or squelch. And at some point, more drastic measures would have to be taken. I was just thinking about how far it could go before that happened, again despite media control. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t and never did think Mamdani would end up doing more than any typical socdem working within the capitalist structure, but I get very curious about where the potential lines are.


  • I guess it’s going to be tolerated as long as the damage to them is less than the damage which would be caused by removing him, and thus delegitimizing the remaining perceptions of democracy in the states

    It makes me wonder just where that boundary is and how much he could feasibly do before it was decided, public perception of legitimacy be damned, that he must be taken out. That’s not to say I think he’ll ever actually even begin to approach that line, being the social democrat that he is. But when positive material gains like this are achieved, small as they may be in the grand scheme, I can’t help but wonder how much more might be possible within the given bourgeois framework before the ruling class deemed him or any hypothetical elected socialist too much of a nuisance to be worth maintaining the facade of democracy and just take him out.

    Great comment btw.







  • Yeah. doggirl-cry

    I often wonder which of the hexbears whose posting I loved but who disappeared, actually only changed names and maybe posted less frequently, which of them simply moved on from the site, and which of them had irl events (either good or bad) that superseded their continued input here. It’s especially noticeable when I read years old threads and see names (some of whom I might have forgotten about otherwise) that hit me with a rush of nostalgia and think “damn, they were such an awesome poster! I wonder what ever happened to them…”