A 17-year-old kid started working with me, and he was talking politics with another co-worker. I was staying out of it, but then he asked me what I consider myself to be, politically. I hit him with, "I'm a pretty hardcore communist, actually." His jaw dropped and he laughed, and he was like, "No, really. What are you, actually?" When I told him that I was a Marxist-Leninist, he responded with, "Dude, that's terrible. Why?"
I'm normally not super open about my politics unless I gauge that someone is accepting to hear some theory, but I just wanted to fuck with this kid lol. I told him that the incentive for ever-increasing profits in the interest of a small group of elites is destroying the planet and exploiting people all around the world. He came back with, "You really need to read more. If you understood more about what you were saying, you wouldn't support such a violent ideology." I'm literally twice his age, lmao.
Then he asked me if I ever read 1984 :michael-laugh:
He asked what led to me becoming a Marxist. I told him that I used to be a libertarian like him when I was his age, but as I grew older and started learning historical materialism, my worldview changed.
We went back and forth a little over the next 20 minutes. I kept it cool and respectful because I wasn't super invested in debating him. But he was getting all flustered and started playing all the hits, like workers not being entitled to owning their work because the boss took all the risk. Humans are naturally greedy, so socialism could never work. Marxism is responsible for over 100 million deaths. I rebutted what I could when I felt like it, but I'm not a debate bro and I didn't really care what he had to say. I just thought the whole thing was funny.
My favorite part was his face when I told him that I don't support liberal democracy, and that a one party state is actually far superior. :che-smile:
Accidental commentary on how poor the US education system is. Indeed many places do not read it anymore. Shit, do they still read at all in US schools?
They did in my school, but somehow I ended up in the track where we read NONE of these books
1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, we basically read none of the most-talked-about US classics.
What we did read: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Their Eyes were Watching God, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Things Fall Apart, Scarlet Letter, Night, The Things They Carried, Of Mice and Men
I read Of Mice and Men and the Scarlet Letter out of that list in school. Used to work with a devote Jehovah that would read his holy book out loud on breaks that I called Lenny, he had never even heard of Of Mice and Men.
Of Mice and Men was the first classic I read that totally enthralled me. Such a great book. Same thing with Old Man and the Sea and One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Stopping every sentence for the teacher to say “this is why communism is bad!” during the middle of the lesson