I’m an old school Southern Democrat. I’m Progressive and extremely to the left of modern Democrats. I believe that everyone is entitled to a standard of living and that includes a home and a mode of transportation and a mode of communication and a way to provide for themselves. I hate how the New Southern vision was sabotaged by Reagan and the Republican Party. We could’ve had a more inclusive and diverse South. I’m from the Gulf Coast. When I was growing up the Gulf Coast was the last bastion of Southern Democratic dominance. Republicans have taken over our area and corrupted the minds of our people. Southern Democrats are often seen as a monolith but just like the overall Democratic Party it was a big tent. I believe we can revive the Progressive tradition in the South but it’s going to take effort.
You’re responding to a version of my argument that I didn’t actually make. I never said there was some clean, instantaneous “party swap” in the 1960s. That’s precisely the kind of oversimplification I’m criticizing. The partisan realignment of the South was a long process that unfolded over decades, and different generations, states, counties and individuals moved in different directions at different times.
And no, it is not historically accurate to reduce the entire older Southern population to “people who were racist until the Republican Party gave them a better place to be racist.” Not every Southern person of the Greatest or Silent Generations had the same political beliefs, motives or attitudes toward Black people. Most older Southerners remained Democrats for the rest of their lives, even as the national Democratic Party changed dramatically around them. My own great-grandparents are a pretty good example: they were old-school Southern Democrats who voted for Barack Obama twice. They didn’t suddenly become Republicans because of some racial “party switch.”
You’re also doing something I see constantly in discussions about the South: turning an extremely complicated history into one giant moral explanation for everything that is wrong with the region today.
The South did have public transportation. Southern cities had streetcars, buses, rail systems and other forms of urban transit. New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Jackson, Mobile and countless other Southern cities had substantial transit systems. Their decline involved automobiles, suburbanization, federal transportation policy, highway construction, disinvestment, changing land-use patterns and in some places, racial politics and segregation. That’s a much more complicated story than “Southern racism caused cars.”
And that’s really my objection to your entire argument: you’re taking real historical phenomena and turning them into a single moral explanation for everything. That’s not material analysis. That’s just another kind of reductionism.
There were plenty of older Southerners who were good, decent people who loved their communities, believed in public institutions, supported labor and government programs and remained Democrats their entire lives.
And frankly, I don’t need to pretend my great-grandparents were secretly villains because they were born in the South. They lived through Jim Crow, Katrina and enormous social changes and they still voted for Obama twice. That alone should tell you why I’m resistant to the idea that “old Southern Democrat” can simply be translated into “segregationist.”
You also said I “acknowledge that there was a party swap in the 1960s.” I don’t. I talk about a long-term realignment, not a magical 1960s party swap where every Southern Democrat simultaneously woke up one morning and became a Republican. Those are two very different claims.
And that’s exactly why I think your critique is too simplistic. You’re right that material conditions matter. You’re right that economic structures influence human behavior. But material conditions don’t eliminate individual agency.
Ann Richards, shortly before her death, talked about how the Republican Party’s rise in the South helped separate and ultimately draw away one particular faction of Southern Democrats, which is important because it shows there was never one monolithic “Southern Democrat” bloc to begin with. There were different strands of Southern Democrats, from segregationists and conservative traditionalists to New Deal Democrats, populists, labor Democrats and increasingly progressive Democrats and those groups did not all realign in the same way or at the same time.
I don’t know why you think that I’m trying to debate you or argue with you. My comment was to acclimate you to the website and to Marxism more broadly. You say that my critique is simple and yes my comment is simple because it was written for you to be easy to understand, not as a debate. What good would it be for me to speak in a complex way and then for you to not understand it?
“But material conditions don’t eliminate individual agency.” Yes, they do. Why are you living in a motel right now instead of mansion? Is it because you chose to live in a motel or is it because you lacked agency in the decision? Material conditions create a power structure. The power structure exists to limit or eliminate agency. Other people’s actions are also shaped by their material conditions, even the people who have wronged you. Nobody exists in a vacuum, every person is a creature responding to the system around them.
This is a thought experiment for you. You asked for constructive commentary. If someone wrongs you, imagine the systemic reasons that lead to the person behaving that way. This is not meant to absolve the person who wronged you, nor does it shift the blame to the victim. This is meant to explore systemic structures that cause injustices.
You made multiple videos about your uncle stealing your soda. I suspect there’s some deeper reasons why you dislike your uncle and you use this as like a simple explanation for a larger beef, but let’s pretend it’s actually all about the soda stealing. What is the solution to “uncles stealing soda”? You go on a diatribe about how narcissism makes people drink other people’s soda. (No offense) I don’t think that moral shaming is going to stop uncles from stealing soda. I think there’s probably a systemic reason why uncles would feel that they deserve to drink the soda of their nephews. In at least one video, you mentioned being opposed to the nuclear family. Friedrich Engels writes criticisms of the nuclear family in a book called ‘Origin of Family’.
Remember, I’m not trying to argue with you. You see how other commenters reacted negatively to your post. I said that you seem like a real person. I’m not doing a “pile-on”. I said that hexbear should give you a chance, metaphorically speaking. I don’t speak for all of hexbear. I can see that you are passionate and in a tough situation.
Your argument about some Southern Democrats not being racist is pointless because “southern” is not the only issue with the label. Hexbear does not support Democrats. Democrats are not socialists. Democrats are people who believe that capitalism can be preserved with social safety nets. I don’t care whether your grandparents voted for Obama when I don’t support Obama.
Democrats are not even the most progressive figures in the history of the South. There were communists in the South. Democrats are not communists or socialists. Democrats are not even left wing, not now and not historically either. FDR is seen as a beloved Democrat figure for his ‘New Deal’ policies. The ineffectiveness of “old school” Democrat policies is that most of the elements of the ‘New Deal’ have been utterly gutted. Minimum wage was a policy created by the New Deal and minimum wage in Mississippi is still $7.25. The purpose of the ‘New Deal’ was to block socialism and look where that got.
I think that it really sucks that you are in a bad situation. My advice to you is that you find a socialist organization in your area, not a democrat organization. Look for either DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) or PSL (Party for Socialism & Liberation). There’s a PSL for Mississippi and a PSL in Birmingham AL. There’s a DSA in Ocean Springs Mississippi and a DSA in Mobile Alabama. These groups all have pages on instagram. There’s some other locations if you google it.
Try to find a socialist organization in your area. See if they recommend other organizations in your area. Try to branch out. Don’t tell them that you’re a Democrat. Say that you were a Democrat and you feel that you are Left of their policies now. Be open to learning new things. Maybe they can help you or you can help them.
You’re confusing material conditions with character. Circumstances beyond our control severely limit our options. I’m living in a motel, working to support myself and my wife and struggling to escape a situation I didn’t choose. But despite my extreme hardship, I haven’t become selfish, bitter, narcissistic or entitled. I believe in personal responsibility and accountability and I refuse to use my circumstances as an excuse to mistreat people. What happens to us and how we choose to treat others are two different things. And I found that struggle and hardship always makes people more empathetic and understanding and when people have narcissistic tendencies it’s from privilege.
My situation is an anomaly, not a universal representation of American life. America is an extraordinarily privileged country by global standards, yet Americans routinely act like oppressed peasants, treating every setback as proof that the system is against them. Some people genuinely have limited options; others have choices they’re unwilling to take responsibility for. Acknowledging systemic inequality doesn’t mean pretending individual agency doesn’t exist.
I also think we need to recognize that privilege and entitlement encourage narcissistic behavior. When people become accustomed to having their needs prioritized, they develop a sense of superiority and an expectation that others should accommodate them. That kind of entitlement isn’t a symptom of oppression. It is a product of privilege itself.
I’ve encountered local communists and leftists who minimized my struggle, dismissed my circumstances and even called me privileged. I was expected to quiet down about my actual hardship because my experience complicated their preferred narrative about oppression and class. What’s the point of claiming to care about material conditions if you’re unwilling to acknowledge someone’s real circumstances because they don’t fit your ideology?
Our social programs and the language of oppression have increasingly been appropriated in ways that leave the most vulnerable people behind while accommodating people who are already privileged. Programs intended to help people in genuine need can become entangled in political priorities, eligibility categories and competing narratives about who deserves compassion. I’ve experienced extreme malnutrition and continue to suffer disabilities as a result, yet I struggle to access assistance or even receive basic empathy for what I’m going through. I’m living in a motel, working to survive and fighting to recover while being dismissed or told I’m privileged. When someone experiencing this level of hardship cannot get help or compassion, we need to question whether our systems and the people defending them are actually prioritizing those in the greatest need or simply prioritizing the people who fit their preferred narrative.
The moment I described the full extent of my own circumstances, I was expected to be quiet about certain aspects of my experience because they didn’t fit the narrative. I wasn’t simply being asked to understand structural inequality. I was being made to feel that I needed to minimize my own hardship to accommodate somebody else’s ideological framework.
Your example about the motel and the mansion actually illustrates my point. I didn’t choose to experience Katrina, lose my family and our wealth, have my vehicle break down or find myself in an area where transportation is a serious barrier.
Americans love performing the role of oppressed peasants while politicians and society placate them, creating a self-perpetuating club of privileged, enabled people who make excuses for one another, validate each other’s entitlement and then treat people experiencing genuine, devastating hardship with condescension and indifference; meanwhile, people like me are expected to endlessly extend them empathy, understanding and grace that they refuse to extend to us, even gaslighting us by insisting we’re more privileged than they are, because apparently facing extreme adversity with dignity, strength and personal accountability while having far less than they do somehow convinces them we’re doing better than they are, rather than exposing how deeply they’ve confused privilege with victimhood.
Even leftists who claim to champion the oppressed become visibly dismissive, uppity and disgusted when confronted with the reality of my suffering, revealing that their compassion often has more to do with ideological narratives and solidarity and empathy with the privileged majority than with actually standing beside people enduring extreme hardship.
My uncle’s behavior exposed the mentality of a user: he felt entitled to most of my Pepsi after asking for a sip, then went and bought himself a fresh one while leaving me with what was left of mine. But the soda was only a small glimpse of a much bigger pattern. He benefited from my father’s wealth when it served him, then abandoned and shamed my father when that wealth disappeared. That’s the real issue: being happy to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s generosity while refusing to show loyalty when that person no longer has anything to offer you. You can analyze the systemic influences behind someone’s behavior all day long but that doesn’t erase the selfishness of taking from others when it’s convenient and abandoning them when the benefits run out. There’s a difference between understanding a person’s circumstances and making excuses for a pattern of behavior that treats other people as resources to be used rather than human beings deserving of reciprocity and respect.
I love this comment because you wrote so much and said so little. Your comment proves me to be correct. You have a bunch of tiktoks that say that societal problems such as sexism, racism, etc are caused by moral failure. I pointed out that societal problems are caused by systemic structures.
You could read your entire comment on your local news stations and then go on to run as a Republican, or Democrat. This is because your comment is not a real critique of society, but empty populism.
Re-read this quotation in the voice of JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or Stephen Miller. I know you like to do accents, try it out. The quote would still function in exactly the same way, empty populism. Honestly, it sounds like Ben Shapiro. Try Ronald Reagan’s voice, who popularized the “welfare queen” narrative. The reason why this works is because the whole paragraph means nothing. It’s a fictional story.
I’m not a Christian. I don’t follow the bible. I’m using this quote as an example of how “character” is entirely subjective and therefore not a good way to critique society. Some people would say that it is bad character to be petty about how much soda was drank after you offered to share your soda. This bible passage would suggest that if someone drinks your soda, you should offer them more soda. Character is subjective.
Every person believes that they have good character and other people have bad character. Trump believes that he has good character. No person goes around and says “I have bad character and I like to do bad things”. If your worldview is “I’m against people who have bad character”, then you stand for nothing. That means nothing. “I’m against narcissism” means nothing. It’s like people who say “my politics are common sense”, it means nothing.
You don’t know what is going in other people’s minds. You don’t know who is a narcissist. Narcissism is immeasurable and immaterial.
Your situation is not an anomaly. You exist in a society and you are a product of the society that you exist within. Marx had a concept called ‘reserve army of labor’, which is how he explained unemployment and underemployment in a capitalist society. The concept is that unemployed people exist as a threat for the capitalist to impose on employed people. The capitalist threaten the worker “If you don’t work for less pay, then I’ll fire you and you’ll end up among the homeless.”
US is not just privileged, but imperialist. The reason that the US has more than other countries is because the US takes advantage other countries, something that the Democrat Party has historically enabled. The imperialism created the privilege, the privilege did not create the imperialism. US is an imperialist country but also has exploited underclasses withing it.
Your thinking is all backwards. As I said in my past comment, “The selfishness is the product of the action, not the enabler of the action.” Selfishness exists because of capitalism, not capitalism exists because of selfishness.
I like that you have tiktoks that say you are against sexism and toxic masculinity and all that stuff. The anti-drug video was ignorant, drugs are just medication and if you’re angry that people self-medicate in a country without access to healthcare, that’s just ignorant. It’s like you’re taking a math test and you somehow arrived at like 80% correct answers but the mathwork that you did to arrive at the answers is all wrong, so the teacher says “see me after class”, because it seems like you just copied from someone else instead of arriving at the answers yourself.
This entire comment is a perfect example of what I was talking about: you keep trying to force me into a political box that I don’t fit into, then acting shocked when I don’t accept the labels you’re assigning to me.
I couldn’t run as a Democrat and I couldn’t run as a Republican. Conservatives call me a liberal and liberals call me conservative. Both sizes attack me. Both sides unite against me when I actually start criticizing structural problems. That’s the funny part.
And to be absolutely clear, I would NEVER run as a Republican. The fact that you can read what I wrote and conclude that I could just go run as one says more about your political framework than it does about mine. Republican politics are fundamentally incompatible with what I believe. But so are plenty of contemporary Democratic positions. That’s the point you’re repeatedly missing.
You also keep using the word “moral” as though I’m making some grand theological argument about good people and bad people. I’m not. We’re talking about common sense, social responsibility and the consequences of people’s choices. Saying that some behavior is destructive isn’t the same thing as declaring somebody spiritually evil.
And the drug argument is especially funny considering that opposition to widespread drug use isn’t some a right-wing position. Even Lenin and Stalin understood the political usefulness of intoxicants in terms of social control and pacification. Then there’s the passive-aggressive little “Since you’re good at accents” routine.
And your “welfare queen” comparison completely misses the history you’re invoking. Republicans gutted, restructured and appropriated welfare into a system designed around political and tribal selectivity and business interests.
Most importantly, your entire argument assumes that recognizing individual responsibility means denying structural conditions. It starts on the individual level. Good people make good societies. Bad people destroy good societies.
I can tell that someone has accused you of being a Republican before because I haven’t accused you of being a Republican. Yet, you have a whole response prepared as if I did.
I’m not saying that you belong in the “republican box”. I’m saying that the “narcissism” narrative that you described in your tiktoks fits into every box, because it’s populism. Populism is shit that people say to be more popular, but doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Take the phrase “common sense”, for example. Tell 10 different people, “I believe in a common sense solution to health care”, and each person will think you meant something different. Republican says, “I believe in a common sense solution to healthcare, which means keeping the government out and keeping your private insurer.” Democrat says, “I believe in a common sense solution to healthcare, which mean affordability and keeping access to your private insurer.” Berniecrat says “I believe in a common sense solution to healthcare, which means medicare for all to bring healthcare access to all uninsured people.” All of the people believe that their healthcare policy is “common sense” because the phrase “common sense” doesn’t mean anything.
So look at your usage of the word “narcissist”. Again, you could tell 10 different people “I think that there are too many narcissists” and most of them would agree with you but they all interpret the sentence in a different way. Republican says “I think that there are too many narcissists, which means that too many entitled people are receiving welfare from my taxes.” Democrat says “I think that there are too many narcissists, which means that Trump supports only care about themselves because they are against government policies that help people.” Berniecrat “I think that there are too many narcissists, because the billionaires are hoarding wealth while everyday Americans are struggling to make ends meet.” The word “narcissist” means something different to every person.
I gave Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” campaign as a historic example of Republican’s anti-entitlement rhetoric. Reagan’s campaign used the messaging to spark a moral panic about alleged welfare abuse. I’ll give you some examples from my real life since I live in the south and I’ve talked to maga chuds. A few months ago, there was an contamination of the city water supply and there an advisory sent out to not drink the water. Some guy told me “I hate that people are complaining about the warning to not drink the water. Those people are narcissists.” This guy thought that it was narcissism to expect the city water to be clean and drinkable. I’ve also had many people tell me that wanting to increase the federal minimum wage is narcissistic.
If someone introduces themselves to you and the first thing that they say is that they are against “entitled people”, that should be a massive red flag; it usually means that they are a chud. In the 80s and 90s, Republicans were obsessed with ‘tort reform’. Tort reform means preventing people from suing businesses for having dangerous practices. If a business hurt you and you tried to seek restitution, Republicans wanted to stop that because they want to protect the capitalist class. The reasoning that Republicans argue though is that lawsuits would cause the business to raise prices for everyone and therefore someone who seeks restitution for damages is “narcissistic” because then everyone would pay higher prices at the business. You may have heard the famous case where an elderly woman was injured by being served boiling coffee at McDonald’s. Coffee should never be served at boiling temperatures.
The word “narcissism” means many things to many people. The word “narcissism” is a subjective value judgement. Every person thinks that a different group of people is narcissists. By proclaiming that your worldview is anti-narcissists, you are not placed into 1 box, you are trying to fit into every box. Pursuing a world without “narcissism” is not a real goal because “narcissism” means different things to every person.
The purpose of Marxist socialism is to have an objective view of society ie materialism. 400 years ago, the world was dominated by an economic system called Feudalism. Feudalism meant that there were peasants and feudal lords. The feudal lords owned the land, this is where the word ‘landlord’ comes from. The peasants worked on the land and then the feudal lords took a portion of the crops from the peasants. Exploitation is a use of power to extract value. The feudal lords had power over the peasants by owning the land, peasants were not able to acquire land, and the feudal lords extracted value from the peasants by taking some of the crops. The capitalist economic system operates in a similar way, though Marx considered Capitalism to be less exploitative than Feudalism. The capitalist class exploits the working class by owning the means of production.
Were the feudal lords motivated by narcissism? Did the peasant class recognize “individual responsibility”? Did the peasant class use drugs as a form of medicine or escapism? These are nonsensical questions. The answers to these questions do not matter. Feudalism did not end because people stopped “narcissism” or recognized “personal responsibility”. Feudalism ended when the Feudal Lords did not own the lands anymore, ie taken from them. Capitalism will end when capitalists do not own the means of production.
Additionally, I was not mocking your accent/impersonation videos. I think that impersonations are funny, in a good way, as long as you aren’t making fun of ESL people. Impersonations of famous people, such as presidents, is a fun party trick.
I’m not going to go into detail about how the US anti-drug laws were racially motivated and then in the 1970s, the US forced its drug laws onto the entire world through the United Nations. Your anti-drug video was not about how drugs are harmful, you were mocking people for using drugs and declaring yourself to be a better person than them. It was a punching-down video. If you’ll notice, I wrote “if you’re angry that people self-medicate in a country without access to healthcare, that’s just ignorant”. People in the US do illicit drugs because they can’t go to a regular doctor or psychiatrist or therapist. I don’t know why you would bring up the USSR as a counter-example, when the USSR had public healthcare. In your video, you’re just saying that other people deserve to suffer because you say that you suffered, and that’s just ignorant.
I like modern China (PRC) and I don’t agree with all of their drug laws. PRC only made marijuana illegal in the 1980s and they did that because the US told them to do it. I’ve seen multiple articles from Chinese news agencies say that people die from Marijuana overdoses, which is not a thing that happens. PRC has 50,000 km of high speed rail and healthcare. I think if you asked most illicit drug users in the US if they’d rather have drugs or healthcare and 50k km of high speed rail, they would choose the latter. If US wasn’t a hellscape, less people would do drugs. The same applies to other forms of escapism such as video games. US people complain that China has more restrictions on video games. If people in the US had the same material benefits as people in China, then people in the US wouldn’t want to play video games so much.
If you have questions about the history of drug use in the United States, post a question or questions in !askchapo@hexbear.net
There is an actual definition of narcissism and what I’m describing fits that definition. American society is deeply narcissistic since the Reagan Era and it transcends political lines and philosophies. And no, this wasn’t “punching down.” I’ve gone through extreme struggle myself and still never turned to drugs. That was literally the point of my video: hardship can explain someone’s behavior but it doesn’t automatically excuse every choice they make. I’m talking about personal responsibility from the perspective of someone who has actually had to practice it, not someone looking down from a comfortable position.
In my experience on the Gulf Coast the people society labels “homeless” and “misfortunate” are still higher than me on the socioeconomic ladder. That was literally the point of my video: hardship can explain someone’s behavior, but it doesn’t automatically excuse every choice they make. I’m talking about personal responsibility from someone who has actually had to practice it.
In my experience on the Gulf Coast, the people society labels “homeless” and “misfortunate” are always still higher than me on the socioeconomic ladder. That’s part of what I’m talking about when I call modern society narcissistic. People who have family connections, community connections and people willing to bail them out can repeatedly fall apart and still have a safety net, while people like me who have had to hold everything together through extreme hardship are assumed to be privileged simply because we managed to keep going.
That mentality transcends political lines. Both sides can become so focused on whoever they think is the most deserving or most victimized that someone in an extreme situation like mine can be completely overlooked. Then when I point that out, I’m somehow called privileged for not fitting the expected narrative of what a struggling person is supposed to look like. That’s the narcissism I’m talking about: a society so wrapped up in its own narratives that it can look directly at someone who is genuinely struggling and still make the situation about itself.
It’s masked elitism. People convince themselves they’re defending the marginalized while quietly dismissing and attacking those who are genuinely struggling. It’s about deciding which people are “worthy” of empathy and which ones aren’t. If you don’t fit their preferred image of poverty, they assume you must be privileged, even when your actual circumstances say otherwise. That isn’t solidarity; it’s looking down on people while pretending to look out for them. I’m expected to shrink my own suffering just to fit someone else’s narrative, then somehow be treated as privileged and above people who are objectively in a better position than I am.