No link cuz lib
reminder that he can basically just yell out the office door for someone to press the de-schedule-weed button
Not even just executive order, he could do it by just telling congress he wants it done I bet even a few hold over tea party Republicans would even vote for it. It's a huge business tbh, every state who hasn't done it already has a fairly big incentive to cash in.
nah it could just be exec order if he truly wanted to. presidents can basically tell the justice department to do whatever and it will very likely happen
It is very cool how much of a king the president basically is yet you will always have some lib/con tut tutting you saying that they arnt.
the point was the president has an immense amount of sway, and Ds would fall in line like they almost always do. If it becomes a big enough deal, there is a lot of pressure put on fence sitters with the possiblity of a primary supported by the party even. that would be an ideal situation in terms of how the party should mostly work tbh tho
Super cool how instead of blanket banning cigarettes it's just menthols to hurt black people. Vote blue no matter who though or Trump will come back.
I see a lot of people posting misinformation about this.
YES, the ban of menthol cigarettes targets black people. The push for the ban was led by a black advocacy group called the AATCLC (African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council).
Less black people smoking cigarettes is a net positive and was pushed for by black people. Allowing cigarette companies to continue taking advantage of black communities is a bad take.
And alcohol prohibition was pushed by a women advocacy group as a women's rights issue. Prohibition of any drug doesn't work.
I also take issue with the idea that "a group of self-appointed leaders from a marginalized community asked for this regulation, so it is therefore good."
The conclusion isn't "so it is therefore good;" the conclusion is "so maybe we should consider what they have to say." Maybe this is some ploy to harm black people, but that at least becomes less likely if a black advocacy group is (in part) behind it.
Even with advocacy from Black health experts, I disagree with the logic of a ban on menthol cigarettes though.
I don't think it's a ploy to harm anyone, I think it's just going to make people's lives suck a little more once they can't get menthol cigarettes or flavored blunt wraps.
I agree with all of that. This isn't even a good treatment of the symptoms, much less a treatment of any root causes.
I do think noting who's behind this is still important, though, precisely because it gets to the question of whether there's an intent to harm people or whether it's just a bad policy choice.
You completely missed the point. The point of the post was to show that the FDA's decision to ban menthol cigarettes was not intended to harm black people because it was advocated for by black people. In the example you gave, women's rights groups pushed for alcohol prohibition to stop men from drinking because of alcoholics being domestic abusers.
I think that's not a cynical or maybe just realistic enough view of prohibition honestly. The mass push against alcohol was as a means to alleviate fears of immigrants, working class folks, and Catholics by a predominantly Protestant population who was beginning to lose a sense of control. They did some good stuff like raising the age of consent in laces, but broadly it was a religious movement from the dominant religion and race, attempting to close down establishments that became a refuge of immigrants, union activity, and other "uncivil" stuff.
There was certainly a well-intentioned aspect to it for most members, particularly women, but the undercurrent was always suspect imo, more like it dragged along actual concerned people. Saloons being busted was pushed for by the temperance movement with the help of the police and bosses in order for the latter two to be able to crush the rise in unions and other worker comradery occurring in these places after work.
Fantastic summary of the role of saloons as social institutions of the working class in Chicago from 1900 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5765/
In the statement, now current among those who have studied the saloon “at first hand,” that it is the workingman’s club, lies the secret of its hold upon the vast working and voting populace of Chicago. That same instinct in man which leads those of the more resourceful classes to form such clubs as the Union League Club, or the Marquette Club; which leads the college man into the fraternity, leads the laboring men into the clubs furnished them by the saloonkeeper, not from philanthropic motives, but because of shrewd business foresight. The term “club” applies; for, though unorganized, each saloon has about the same constituency night after night. Its character is determined by the character of the men who, having something in common, make the saloon their rendezvous. Their common ground may be their nationality, as the name “Italian Headquarters” implies; or it may be their occupation, as indicated by the names “Mechanics' Exchange,” "Milkman’s Exchange,“ etc.; or, if their political affiliations are their common ground, there are the ” Democratic Headquarters of the Eighteenth Ward,“ etc. As shown above, the ”club-room“ is furnished with tables, usually polished and cleaned, with from two to six chairs at each table. As you step in, you find a few men standing at the bar, a few drinking, and farther back men are seated about the tables, reading, playing cards, eating, and discussing, over a glass of beer, subjects varying from the political and sociological problems of the day to the sporting news and the lighter chat of the immediate neighborhood. Untrammeled by rules and restrictions, it surpasses in spirit the organized club. That general atmosphere of freedom, that spirit of democracy, which men crave, is here realized; that men seek it and that the saloon tries to cultivate it is blazoned forth in such titles as ”The Freedom,“ "The Social,” "The Club,“ etc. Here men ”shake out their hearts together." Intercourse quickens the thought, feeling, and action.
In many of these discussions, to which I have listened and in which I have joined, there has been revealed a deeper insight into the real cause of present evils than is often manifested from lecture platforms, but their remedies are wide of the mark, each bringing forward a theory which is the panacea for all social ills. The names of Karl Marx and leaders of political and social thought are often heard here. This is the workingman’s school. He is both scholar and teacher. The problems of national welfare are solved here. Many as patriotic men as our country produces learn here their lessons in patriotism and brotherhood. Here the masses receive their lessons in civil government, learning less of our ideals, but more of the practical workings than the public schools teach. It is the most cosmopolitan institution in the most cosmopolitan of cities. One saloon advertises its cosmopolitanism by this title, “Everybody’s Exchange.” Men of all nationalities meet and mingle, and by the interchange of views and opinions their own are modified. Nothing short of travel could exert so broadening an influence upon these men. It does much to assimilate the heterogeneous crowds that are constantly pouring into our city from foreign shores. But here, too, they learn their lessons in corruption and vice. It is their school for good and evil. ........
The adaptability of the saloon to the needs of a particular locality is a source of constant surprise and admiration, as it is also a cause of genuine consternation among Christian people who reflect at all upon the cautious institutionalism of the churches.
As with much of the Progressive Era, the reforms came from a place of social order and to some extent social-Darwinism. Poverty was caused by drink, not the bosses, Abuse was caused by drink, not by the patriarchal society, drink was the reason the immigrants are bad and must be "cleansed" and made American or have their kids taken away. Drink caused workers to earn lower wages cause slaking, not the system of wages itself being a shackle upon working people.
https://offtheleash.net/2017/12/19/prohibition-as-class-warfare/
They were joined by businessmen, industrialists, the hierarchy of the Protestant Churches and the descendants of the Southern landed gentry. The Anti-Saloon League, a Protestant church-based Ohio organization that became a driving force in bringing about Prohibition, didn’t get all their money by passing around the collection plate. John D. Rockefeller kicked in $350,000. Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie backed them as well.
Even if it cited actual social-ills, temperance was built upon anxieties over immigration, religion, and class. It is pretty comparable to any other case of concern trolling or using a social issue for one's own ends or protection of the hegemons.
When it's put this way it sounds a lot better. The way I saw it before looked like it was targeting black people to harm them. Still, they should just due away with smokes all together.
I mean growing and rolling your own tobacco is fine and I have no problem with people doing that, but allowing Marlboro to prey on you is pretty fucked up.
I dunno, that's just my take as a smoker and someone who lost a loved on to smoking.
I mean growing and cooking your own food is fine and I have no problem with people doing that, but allowing grocery stores to prey on you is pretty fucked up
How? Tobacco is tobacco and shitty for you no matter where you get it from, also most people don't have a field to grow it in or space to cure it. Any time you buy pretty much anything you're being exploited by one shitty company or another. Any of these arguments can apply as much if not moreso to alcohol and they can freely advertise that and no one is saying we ban booze that tastes good or demand that beer be sold in a plain can with just Beer written on it in a plain font with an image or a destroyed liver and no one seems to have an issue there.
Never said it was good for you, even if it was homegrown, but why are we defending large tobacco companies that knowingly add harmful additives to their cigs and pretty much prey upon the poor with their product? That's what's got me confused here. It feels like people are tripping over themselves to go to bat for Philip Morris. And yeah it's a shitty equivalence because people need to go to the store and by groceries. The grocery store isn't putting rat poison in their food and selling it back to you.
The grocery store itself isn't, but the companies that make the food sure are. How much high-fructose corn syrup is in everything nowadays? What kind of preservatives and flavoring agents and coloring chemicals are added to damn near anything you can buy? Maybe it's not rat poison, but unless you're growing, packaging, and preparing your own food, you have no more idea of what kind of additives it contains than a smokers knows what's in their cigs.
Saying that tobacco companies are no worse or better than the ones selling you processed food that will give you stomache cancer isn't going to bat for them. You're the one that said tobacco is cool if it's homegrown so I don't see how that wouldn't apply to everything else as well.
reddit moment
i don't have strong feelings one way or another but you really thought this was a post, huh?
real bruh moment, not a good look my dude, you just posted cringe, that's certainly an opinion. Piss the fuck off. Do you really think smoking is only okay if you grow your own fucking tobacco? So you need land to grow it and space to cure it and time to do so? Yeah it's the same thing, if you don't hate the product but hate the capitalist means of obtaining it then there is no distinction and you're being a paternalistic moralizer to say otherwise.
You're missing out some of them have that real Necco wafers flavor.
I'm sure you eat processed junk food that has little nutrional value and gives people stomache cancer lol. You probably also drink lol.
Not accurate. This is not a prohibition issue. This is focused on limiting the way that capitalists can manipulate people with advertisements and snake oil. Cigarette companies have spent decades saying that menthol cigarettes are more healthy for you. I don't think that any drug should be advertised, but in the US we have drug advertisements on television.
You may say that "We're all adult, we can do we want," but this is naive. This is the same kind of thing that liberals say about wage labor. Liberals say "We're all adults. You don't need a union to protect you." Doing what you want to yourself may be okay, but profiting by exploiting people is not okay. Cigarette companies exploit and manipulate cigarette users in ways that the user may not even understand. Cigarette companies should be obstructed in any way possible.
Being against prohibition does not mean being against business regulation.
This is focused on limiting the way that capitalists can manipulate people with advertisements and snake oil. Cigarette companies have spent decades saying that menthol cigarettes are more healthy for you. I don’t think that any drug should be advertised, but in the US we have drug advertisements on television.
You can ban all of that without banning the actual sale of menthols.
Anyone who smokes knows that menthols are worse for you. The urban legends about the added fiberglass or switching to menthols when you have bronchitis to make yourself cough out more crap are both hella common in low income communities where people smoke. Considering how little advertising there is for nicotine nowadays, I must have missed the period where they advertised that menthols were healthier. If anything, the people that smoked them liked them because they were harsher but had a flavor.
Either way, it's been seen over and over that prohibition doesn't work. Ban menthols. People will find a way to dip their cigs in VaporRub or something. Ban vaping. People learn to make their own vape juice and sell it. Ban alcohol and people will brew their own. And then people will get sick even worse than they did from the original substances because these modifications will be completely unregulated.
I agree that smoking shouldn't be banned and that propaganda isn't a mind control ray, but fucking hell did cigarette advertisments work well. They worked so well that even though they're mostly banned, the effects are still rippling through our society via generational transmission.
Cigarettes have lore to them in working class communities. Everyone has a brand they smoke and it becomes a part of your identity. More than anything else I can think of except maybe a car. I know dozens of people with Camel Cash stories they got from their grandparents and shit.
So yeah, the marketing worked insanely well. It helped that the product was addictive, but I really don't think it would have been the same without the pervasiveness of the advertisement and branding.
I fully agree in that it's more of a generational thing and working class association moreso than outright people "falling for advertising" that has been illegal for years that seems to be the angle being peddled a lot in this thread. My smoking habit came from being a cook and that's the only way you can get breaks. I'd never defend smoking but a lot of people here seem to to be using the same late 80s just say no kind of logic towards smoking or acting like adults who made a decision knowing the consequences were manipulated by tobacco ads that were outlawed before most of us were born, smoking is bad and Id prefer not to but the moralizing here is sickening
This is not a prohibition. It's a business regulation. Make your own menthols if you want.
Alcohol is already extremely regulated in very similar ways. There are very strict guidelines on how alcohol is made and sold.
You already admitted in another post that you oppose the ban because you smoke menthol cigarettes yourself and don't want to be inconvenienced. You don't care that cigarette companies exploit people. You don't care that cigarette companies prey on black communities. You just don't want a tiny inconvenience in your life.
Read the article by the FDA. According to their research, the ban of the sale of menthol cigarettes is predicted to prevent the deaths of 633,000 people, including 237,000 African Americans. To you, a tiny inconvenience is more important than the lives of 633,000 people. Then you say that it's entirely their fault, as if it not possible that people were deceived, manipulated, and exploited.
This is a liberal mindset to think that consumption of a commodity is simply a relationship between the consumer and the commodity. The commodity is a relationship between the consumer and the producer. You are doing commodity fetishism. The menthol cigarette sale ban breaks this relationship. You can still roll your own menthol cigarettes.
I talked about this in another thread. Having tobacco companies exist with a profit incentive is bad, since this means they will always want to go out of their way to get as many people addicted to nicotine as possible, since this increases their profits. Hence the marketing, hence the very existence of menthol cigarettes, hence the handing out free samples of menthol cigarettes to kids in black communities in the 50s/60s. This is just scratching the surface of the evil shit tobacco companies have done. Without this profit incentive there simply wouldn't be nearly as many people using tobacco products. I'd expect a socialist society to still have smokers, just a lot less without the incentive to expand the customer base. In the meantime, though, it makes sense to curb tobacco use wherever possible, because it is still killing people today. Full prohibition would likely fail, but policies like plain labels have been shown to work, and I suspect banning menthols will also help, so there's plenty of room to reduce harm.
I agree with this. A socialist society would still have cigarettes but without the need for profit there wouldn't be advertising or marketing to grow their customer base. I think cigarette use would be near zero in 2 generations. Similar thing with vapes.
Cigarette prohibition would work as well as alcohol and marijuana prohibition have worked. It's totally beyond the pale of reasonable policy suggestions.
Now if we want to talk about changing warning labels (CW: nasty shit), or regulating away tobacco marketing, or making it less convenient to consume, that's more in the realm of something we should consider.
I believe black leaders led the 1994 crime bill too. This is a pattern. (See: Pete Buttchug, Obama, Copmala, etc.)
This claim is wildly inaccurate. Some black politicians may have supported it at the time. Several articles says that the black politicians were pressured into supporting it. The bill was introduced by Jack Brooks, drafted by Joe Biden, and signed into law by Bill Clinton. The bill was based on Bill Clinton's campaign promise to be tough on crime. It was not lead by black leaders.
As others have said about the black community and menthol cigs. This has to be the reason why Biden's doing it, because he's a fucking segregationist.
It's gonna be some logic like "black people have poorer health outcomes in the US so we are banning menthols to get them to stop smoking ." Like some actually woke segregation shit.
Is there any actual evidence that Black people smoke more menthols compared to other people or is it just a stereotype?
The average African-American adult has been exposed to about 892 tobacco-related ads, and youth, 559 tobacco-related ads.[1] Among adult and youth smokers, Newport, Kool, and Marlboro are the most popular brands. About 42% of black adults smoke Newport, while 84% of young African-Americans smoke this brand as well. African-Americans are the top consumers of all menthol products. Some products were made specifically for African-American consumers, such as Marlboro Menthol Shorts, which were advertised as being "exquisitely designed for the African-American lung."
:capitalist-woke:
That last sentence. Somebody got paid for that idea instead of laughed out of the marketing department
exquisitely designed for the African-American lung
Do they measure the brain pan too?
Anecdotally when I sold cigarettes at a gas station black people generally were more likely to by menthol. I wasn't aware of the stereotype at the time so it's at least a little unbiased.
this 2011 paper on menthol smoking from roughly 2004-2008 had this to say:
Blacks had the highest rate of past month menthol cigarette use between 2004 and 2010. Almost one in five blacks smoked menthol cigarettes each year. The 2010 rate for blacks (19.1 percent) was close to triple that of whites (6.5 percent) and Hispanics (7.8 percent), and 5 times that of Asians (3.6 percent). By contrast, blacks had the lowest 2010 rate of nonmenthol cigarette use (3.5 percent).
There was a clear black vs. nonblack menthol usage on the graph on page 4; most other race/ethnic groups were 8% max.
The non-menthol cigarette usage was almost the exact opposite; roughly 20% usage among whites and 3-4% among black people.
I think the statistics are a little bullshit to be honest (I saw this cited by a .org site attributing to it data that is not in this paper) but I think there is definitely a racial divide in menthol cigarette habits
Menthols do infinitely more damage to black people. wtf. This is probably the only good thing the Biden administration will do.
Are black people who smoke menthols going to stop smoking, or reduce their consumption? Or will they just switch to other cigarettes? If there's some research suggesting that people would rather not smoke at all than smoke something besides menthols, maybe this will do something, but I would be surprised to see those results.
Have you considered reading the FDA's ban press release?
One study suggests that banning menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would lead an additional 923,000 smokers to quit, including 230,000 African Americans in the first 13 to 17 months after a ban goes into effect. An earlier study projected that about 633,000 deaths would be averted, including about 237,000 deaths averted for African Americans.
[ FDA press release ]Menthols are literally more addictive and more carcinogenic. Simply banning their production will reduce death even if every menthol smoker switched to regular tobacco.
Nothing will fundamentally change... besides the shit no one asked for. That's a priority actually
Biden's too busy to remove the sanctions against Iran that everyone agreed was a bad idea when Trump imposed them; and too busy to remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list (a move done by the Trump admin in it's final days just to jam up Biden). But menthol cigarettes, yeah he definitely has time for those.
Liberals are hacks and frauds. Debating them as if they are speaking in good faith is a waste of time, as they are only worthy of derision.
It really varies. Some libs are basically just Republicans who think it's gauche to openly hate minorities and women, but others have better intentions and have just bought into neoliberal propaganda. That latter category can be educated and moved. A lot of people here used to be in that latter category.
Why are so many people here former libs if all libs are hacks and frauds? They can't all be lost causes if empirically we know some of them aren't.
I told you I'd slap you next time you posted :LIB: shit like this.
:bonk:
Lol get the fuck out of here. You're wrong, and being an ass about it doesn't make you right. Keeping tabs on specific members of a niche communist forum is serious "log the fuck off" territory in any event.
Remember when Obama wanted to normalize relations with Cuba and Trump put a stop to that basically out of spite?
Me: President Biden, can we have moderate policy reforms?
President Biden: We’ve already got moderate policy reforms on the agenda.
Moderate policy reforms on the agenda:
Cops are gonna be stopping black drivers and say they smell menthols so they can search vehicles lmao.
Reminder that BJG had Contrapoints on---what like two weeks ago---and didn't press her on exactly this topic. At what point is a stance performative?performance?
That said, this is a good tweet by her.
You can't be the guy calling for Contra to be held accountable and then act like you're on the side of "yeah why are people complaining about some youtuber being accountable for biden's policy"
Pathetic shit honestly
I'm not calling for anything. Just pointing out inconsistency. 😉
Much In the same vein as a 2016 Peter Daou or a 2008 Kal Penn, she is an administration mouthpiece within her specific medium to punch left.
They had an animal rights episode and started it off by saying they aren't vegan lol
:LIB:
Put that hot take back in the struggle session Com where it belongs
It's not a hot take to say someone concerned with animal rights that also eats meat is a pretty funny contradiction
I wouldn't have said anything if they hadn't touched the topic. When the entire episode is about the major issues of the meat/dairy industry and the hosts also support the meat industry, it's more than a little silly
https://hexbear.net/c/strugglesession
I'll link it for you comrade. There you can also bemoan us for daring to use iPhones yet be anti-capitalist.
I'm not gonna relitigate the entire damn thing because you're feeling sanctimonious today. We literally made a comm for it for a reason.
Disagree, but you can read back through the struggle session from a month ago if you're curious as to why. I honestly don't have the energy for it. Respectfully disengaging.
Was it worth listening to? Im not too fond of bad faith pod tbh but that seems like a decent combo with contra??
what why would that happen. that interview would be stupid.
It would probably be about as stupid as her badgering people over FTV after the opportunity passed.
Much like bloombutts banned big gulp sodas cups because you deserve to be punished as an individual for making choices instead of addressing the root material problem, O'Bidet is banning memethols because kids and black people cant be trusted to make big kid choices instead of addressing the root material problem of why people start smoking
bloombutts
O’Bidet
:cringe:
You can't really talk about "big kid choices" given how addictive nicotine is, how cigarettes are marketed to actual kids, and affects on others (like secondhand smoke). Yeah, paternalism is bad, and yeah, individuals should have wide latitude about what to do to their own bodies, but this isn't sober 35-year-olds making rational choices with full access to all relevant information. Believing anything along those lines is just buying into free market mythology. We shouldn't ban smoking altogether, and we shouldn't try to reduce consumption in ways that just end up taxing poor people, but we should be looking for ways to reduce consumption, or at least move the decision to consume closer to an informed decision.
And obviously they should be addressing the root causes of why people start smoking, too, but an ideal solution would treat the root causes and existing symptoms.
Lets see, whinging about making fun about Bloomberg and biden's names, then a whole bunch of fluff that repeats what I said.
Not jumping in on the argument in general but yeah, changing ghouls' names like that is definitely lib shit.
This has been a Chapo bit for ages.
Copmala, :top-cop: , Liz the Snake :warren-snake-green: , and Pete the rat :pete:
We do it because it's funny.
Addiction is a choice ackshually. People scrambling to dunk on Biden by defending market principles and framing destructive industries as being governed by rational consumerism. Makes total sense.
Tfw people whom are subjugated by Capital to toil away til their bodies and minds decay from alienation and overwork should be punished for pursuing vices to bring respite from their suffering instead of working to shatter the conditions that drive them to adopt such vices in the first place.
Fuck off with your liberalism
fam I honestly don't ever recall being banned anywhere except from r/politics, /fuckthealtright, /contrapoints, and other minor subs.
I do recall getting :bonk: on main (WHEN WE HAD ONE!) here for bringing out too much of the sectarian shitlord bit when we were sorting out the "No sectarianism" struggle session last year
The secret is to listen to the people for the good takes then act as if they were your own the entire time. I am big dum dum.
Communism is when people can buy menthols. And communists defend the interests of tobacco corporations. This is basic communism. Also two things can't be bad at once. A corporate model that exists by addicting people and giving them cancer cannot be bad at the same time as capitalism.
i'm defending people's right to consume whatever the fuck they want. prohibition is bullshit. you should really educate yourself more on the history of prohibition, and then you probably wouldn't be defending it.
everyone knows smoking is bad for them, if they want to continue to do so they should be allowed. it's personal consumption.
So your concerns are with consumer choice? More choice = more freedom!
my concerns are with prohibition. you're the only one trying to put words in other people's mouths.
you just come off like a smug douche when you applaud the federal government for prohibiting something that people enjoy.
there are a million things that will kill you. a lot of them are enjoyable in the meantime.
i bet you thought banning transfat was a great idea.
You come off like a contrarian knob when you defend the interests of cigarette companies under the guise of freedom of choice.
i'm defending the interests of people who like to smoke menthol cigarettes you fucking tool. you think there's a bunch of people here who are defending cigarette companies.
Trying so hard to dunk on libs that you just become unthinkingly contrarian is a persistent problem here.
People here are really fucking' defending American-sized soda while also saying "address the root problem" as if being able to buy a litre of unhealthy soda for immediate personal consumption is anything people need and not part of the problem. I fucking hate how stupid this site is sometimes.
This article about cigarettes in Current Affairs is really good:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/02/knowledge-is-not-power-why-cigarettes-still-appeal
Marxist but only talks about lib shit. You mean like this entire site?
Like how she constantly has on marxists and tries to get people invested in a third party to destroy the Democrats
I guess that's lib shit to someone who just posts on hexbear all day and feels fulfilled
Democrats really want to make sure non-whites know they are hated by both parties.
It's amazing to me how little this site seems to understand in regards to how heavily menthols have been marketed towards African Americans specifically. some of the posts on here sound like stupidpol shit
i wish that were true. trump changed the age of tobbac to 21 and no one bat an eye
Obama took my cloves away and none of you libs went to my protests.
I don’t care what a socdem says. ever since her bad faith about the capitol riots being “scary” for bourgeois ruling class scum
Virgil JUST went on a rant about how much he hates trots, at least pretend you know what you're talking about
Radlib entertainment hour. I used to enjoy Virgil's schitck but now I can't stand the detached, sardonic, mocking vibe he takes so much pride in. They platform people like Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson for (imo) extremely softball interviews. BJG has her moments, no doubt, but more and more it's just looking like she's the face of the 'civilized' left that never goes farther than twitter dunks: a safe person to appear on MSNBC interviews as the leftist whisperer when they need to project consensus for whoever still watches the news.
After the capitol riot they were talking about it and she was talking about how scary it must have been for the “legislators” and giving sympathetic rhetoric for them.
...That sounds like a completely normal expression of empathy. "Man, having a bunch of fascists ready to lynch you must have been scary."
I don’t feel bad for fasc on fasc violence or on the bourgeoisie and ruling class. They deserve the wall.
I mean you can be empathetic for Pelosi, Pence, Schumer, McConnell, etc., if you want. But I won’t waste the energy.
Flattening all distinctions between everyone involved into "fasc on fasc violence" is ridiculous. That's the type of shit that gets anyone who isn't already a leftist to ignore whatever else you have to say. BJG is -- rightly -- trying to pull more people to the left, not just pander to the people already here. There's nothing wrong with some basic human empathy in that context.
Fasc on fasc just refers to police and protestors. The ones who “love and respect our boys in blue, the blue lives matter crowd” attacking the police and storming the capitol. Of course I wouldn’t directly say that to someone who isnt on here or is not a lefty.
I have more empathy for the homeless, the impoverished, people working 2 jobs and still barely affording bills, migrant workers, and others in the working class or lumpen etc. That’s who we should be saying we have empathy for, not millionaires who are austerity hawks and imperialist and racists who don’t have to suffer the same way we do.
Bourgeoisie and the ruling class get the wall.
Of course I wouldn’t directly say that to someone who isnt on here or is not a lefty.
OK, consider that the Bad Faith audience (or at least the audience they're aiming for) isn't here and plenty of them are probably more radlib than lefty. I doubt they were expressing much sympathy for the cops, anyway.
"Congresspeople are all fascists and get the wall" makes you look like a crank to anyone who isn't already a leftist. If you're at all concerned about convincing enough people to become leftists that we have a real chance at achieving socialism, you wouldn't rip people trying to do exactly that over something as mundane as "wow that fascist mob must have been scary."
She made a big point about “I can drop the Democratic for Democratic socialist now.” Then turns around and has misplaced empathy for the very people who helped sabotage the Bernie campaign, won’t raise the minimum wage, won’t provide nationalized healthcare, aren’t going to fix infrastructure, isn’t going to house the homeless, close all military bases and end the imperialist venture.
It’s not just about making people leftist. Sure, we need to bring more and more people to the left, but the masses aren’t all going to. If you tie in why someone’s life is in misery and why their conditions are the way they are due to the ruling class gerontocracy and corporatism, they can become sympathetic. Especially as we see an increase in proletarianization of the “middle class.”
You don’t start to build class consciousness of the masses by saying “feel sorry for the people making your life hell.” You teach, educate, and explain to people what it is that capitalism does to them and who is profiting off of their labor. You can’t force it down their throats. They have to recognize it from their own experiences living under capitalism.
Not every one of your emotional responses needs or can be mediated through your ideology. Nobody lives like that, sometimes you see something happen and react to it without first analyzing the class dynamics of it
You’re right, but she’s a public figure and was involved in politics and is on a politics style podcast. If she’s a “socialist” then she should have an analysis and a critique bigger than “oh no the ruling class” especially a week after the fact.
i'm inclined to agree with you, but i'm gonna be honest, talking about who deserves the wall is crank shit. we're cranks. no need to get grouchy about it.
This will make it infinitely cooler to smoke menthols. I hope they make menthols illegal
Now that weed is legal in my state I've been hoping to get into something I need a dealer for. Can't wait to have a menthol guy.
Sorry for ignorance but what does menthol cigarettes have to do with race? I'm not from the US. Flavored cigs have been banned for ages here.
Menthol cigarettes are predominantly used by black smokers due to tobacco industry marketing campaigns that specifically targeted them.
tobacco industry marketing campaigns that specifically targeted them
So then wouldn't it be good to ban them? Smoking cigarettes is highly regulated, and discouraged with great success here.
It's a racial segregationist and a cop being tasked with helping black people. They could do the thing which helps black people but hurts their lifelong political projects, legalising drugs so lives aren't destroyed. Orrrrr they could do the liberal thing and scold black people for consumer choices offered to them by people like Joe Biden to deal with stresses forced on them by people like Kamala Harris. You won't find a single homeless person in New York sipping on a large soda. We fixed it. You won't see a single black person smoking a menthol cigarette while watching their neighbours be murdered by police. We fixed it.
I hear what you're saying. Yeah, they could prioritize way more pressing and useful things, definitely.
marketing campaigns that specifically targeted them.
But why? I mean, why? Wtf
cause the menthol numbs the throat a little and lets you smoke more. more smoking more $$$.
It started around the time when it stopped being profitable to recommend cigarettes as healthy to white people. Civil rights wins created a consumer class in the black community that they shifted to under the guise that it was a status symbol instead of a health supplement.
