The Best Things On The Internet is an occasional column in the soon-to-be relaunched New Matilda magazine.
This is an oldie but undeniably a goodie… all the ‘action’ from the Democratic Socialists of America’s annual convention in 2019… and by action, we mean masterly inaction while twisting oneself into knots in an attempt to please absolutely everybody about absolutely everything.
If you’re not familiar with the video, it’s routinely pointed to by right-wing nutjobs as evidence that if the Socialists ever got control, everything would collapse. Which is obviously rubbish. Things would be undeniably more stable, and much nicer… they’d just take a little longer to get done. And by little, we mean forever.
It’s also a lesson in what might happen if you leave a live microphone in the middle of the crowd, and encourage people to use it to make ‘points of order’ or ‘points of privilege’ or ‘points of information’ or… just watch the video.
The efforts of ‘James Jackson, he/him, from the Sacramento DSA’ is particularly noteworthy. He’s on a mission to ensure that the hundreds and hundreds AND HUNDREDS of people in the auditorium (it’s actually just over 1,000) ‘keep the noise to a minimum’ so that it doesn’t trigger his anxiety. With mixed results.
The video is 12 long minutes of demonstrating how to peddle furiously while getting allllllllmost nowhere, but it’s worth sticking it out till the very end, because there’s a hella punchline.
Over to the DSA….
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