Michael Parenti - The Fall of the USSR
Why did the USSR Fail? by Viki 1999
Also today is Mao Zedong Birthday :mao-clap: so Read his Theory
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THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!)
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS
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I lost a close friend earlier in the week, and this has been the worst christmas ever. I had to restrain myself from texting them. I walked past their apartment, and couldn't help but hope I'd see them sitting on their balcony. For a while, I was hoping my friends were all playing an elaborate and cruel prank on me. Lots of crying. I'm a wreck.
And the best part is for the most part, it’s not like Cops where you’re just fucking punching down as hard as you possibly can towards society’s most vulnerable and airing it on live TV. The people that get on here by and large are the beautiful boaters. They are the reactionary petite bourgeoisie who have enough cash to sink tens of thousands into an epic bacon alarm/oven (that’s also made of wood). Deluded, doomed people who are begging Pokey Minch to find a place in his heart to pay for their inspirational t-shirt line. Some of the tenacious ones, after being told to fuck off, will read off rudimentary statistics about the market they’re trying to enter. These are the elite of the elite, by the way, most people who get on the show don’t even get that far. It’s reverse Alien vs Predator on public TV, whoever loses, we win.
this is a great point
you may have convinced me to watch this with this paragraph alone. plus that in-head bluetooth one, because that was so goddamn funny that i have to see more shit like it
I haven't watched too much of the show, but I mostly get angry at the people for being so completely clueless about how businesses work, especially THEIR OWN business. I've been a lowly humber cruncher for two huge corporations for like five years and even I know more than these schmucks. It's a glaring example of how the people at the top are completely helpless and the only reason they are there is because they started out with money.
Best part is when one of the sharks will ask a super basic question like what kind of profit do you expect to make this quarter, etc. and they obviously haven't done any math and it takes them by surprise for some reason.
Being a literate ape is such a ridiculous experience. The world holds so much complexity, yet my meat body can only meaningfully interface with a tiny sliver of it at once.
fr, how tf does it work? we evolved to hunt big game, eat berries, and have social groups of 150 people max. how tf do we have the capacity of doing all the rest, like being in societies of millions of people, being able to read, study a subject for years, etc?
I have no idea. When I'm at work talking to people about a particularly difficult problem, I always feel like it's someone else piloting my body. My ape ego has no ability to integrate the wildly abstract shit I do for work.
phenomenology is an essential Marxist science, read Walter Benjamin
he's got a whole body of work, is there anything specific that would be most relevant?
Yesterday I logged onto facebook for basically the first time in years to talk to one specific person I'd been missing. I ended up getting into scrolling down my front page to see whatsup. And what I saw was a bunch of people my age who have their lives together, a spouse, and kids. And I realized like, well of course, im about to be 32 lmao, that would make sense. But knowing that I'm that old and totally "off track" with no job, a small subsidized apartment I get through disability services, and no family and no prospects of having a family (and yes, I want a family) is incredibly depressing and anxiety inducing. Very sad times.
You have to let go of the notion that there is a particular track in life in the first place. It's okay to not be happy with where you're at in life, but don't let it be because it doesn't measure up to others or some imaginary standard
Yeah, rationally I realize that but emotionally it still sucks.
Yeah. Social media is fucking poison for this. Especially since people present the best version of their lives online. You can't tell the couple who are about to get divorced from looking at their selfies or who's clinically depressed and so on
Got Disco Elysium for Christmas, shoutout to whoever writes the "bad" conversation options. Like, the creativity required to be the level of awful/stupid/insane you can potentially be in this game is incredible. I don't have the heart for it at all.
LinkedIn sucks I hate it so much, anyone who actively uses it of their own free will is not to be trusted
Missing my mom a lot today. I watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town by myself earlier, and cried when “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” came on, because it brought back a super vivid memory of her. I was probably 8, sitting on the floor next to my mom while she wrapped presents and I ate the awesome sugar cookies she made every Christmas. Topped with homemade frosting and shaped like Christmas trees and candy canes, which I helped her bake and decorate. But when that song played, I remember her sitting next to me singing along with such a soothing, joyful voice, rocking side to side as she sang.
She always put so much effort into decorations, lights, an obnoxiously-decorated tree, cookies, pies, and dinner. I never realized how sorely I would miss that until I didn’t have it.
I just realized I moved out without taking the ornament she made for my 1st Christmas, and now the house is sold and everything gone. Damn.
One of the comrades here suggested reading The Spell of the Sensous Perception and I cannot personally recommend it highly enough. It's a real life-altering read on how to think of the world around us and our own place in the environment. Real eco-Marxist hours.
We need only look at Europe to see what neoliberalism does in response to the pandemic.
I always remind libs at reddit that neoliberalism fucks the little guy and rewards the rich. Always.
I tell them the tale that after the 2008 near second Great Depression - zero people went to jail because zero people went on trial because zero people were indicted. And it was Obama's DOJ who did nothing.
Eventually in 2013 one guy went to jail. He was sentenced to 30 months in "prison" which must mean he went to acountry club prison for about a year and a half.
Kareem Serageldin (born in 1973 or 1974) is a former executive at Credit Suisse. He is notable for being the only banker in the United States to be sentenced to jail time as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, a conviction resulting from manipulating bond prices to hide losses.
The libs are going to spend four years explaining to everybody that compromises are needed to get things done. And that's how politics works.
Material conditions are about to collapse and pave the road for fascism.
When Biden was declared the winner - I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought at least we avoided fascism. But within about a week I realized that we only avoided fascism for now.
After the collapse - the dems will get slaughtered in the 2022 elections. I wonder how badly they'll lose the house. And in 2024 some heinous GOP ghoul will become president. And all of this will be our fault because we made fun of Biden online with our uncivil memes.
When CNN or MSNBC wants to show how bad things are - they nearly always show lines of cars of people waiting to get food. And the anchor intones the same line to the on the scene reporter "And many people in that line of cars have never gotten food this way before, right?" And - of course - the reporter says yes. And then on cue somebody says "How could this happen in the richest country in the world?"
How about the people who don't own a car? How about the people who were hungry before the pandemic? It's as if Trump is the only real problem in the US.
this is what he'll try to do but events and the conditions driving them are deteriorating even faster. next month, something like 40 million people will get evicted. their landlords have been holding the bag on that unpaid rent so far (I know, I'm making an economic point, not a moral one) and there's no stimulus so far to help them out. retail is practically dead as a sector. much of the rest of service is in steep decline. conditions are rapidly approaching a cliff in the next several months - forget about years.
into this crisis, steps one of the most hard-line austerity liberals. he wanted the stimulus bill to include no checks for the destitute - gave both parties permission to cut it, in fact. and remember, it's not just the working class that needed those checks to go out. those checks amount to an indirect bailout of the lesser bourgeoisie. it's unlikely that with Trump out of office that either the evictions moratorium or stimulus checks are going to go out. if the democrats are not actually just devoid of any and all political sense, they'll minimally provide relief to the petit-bourgeoisie - but this something they've largely not wanted to do so far (the banks and larger businesses stand to make a lot of money on the collapse of the rungs just beneath them).
so we have two movements that are bolstered by this inaction from the top. first, the obvious - the collapse of the petit-bourgeoisie, especially the smaller landlords and retail businesses, will, as it always does, fuel an immediate rise in fascist activity. in fact, we're already seeing this. second, the rebellions that began last summer are only waiting for another catalyst to begin anew. millions of newly destitute and homeless people ensures a very large base of working class resentment to drive them.
the ruling class will, of course, try to channel both movements towards their ends, collaborating with the fascists and recuperating any revolutionary energy that begins to develop in the new round of rebellions. but given how quickly everything looks to be poised to slip, I'm not sure they can do either fast enough to truly dull either threat. there will be much more blood shed in the streets and we will see a much stronger response from security forces, as the "competent" administrators of empire return to helm the same strategies that failed to quell uprisings overseas, against their own subjects.
this conflict is, to me, much more salient in the present moment than what ghoulish policies Biden might enact because it shapes what response from the white house and congress even matters. does it matter if Biden spends all his time destroying social security if his administration's inattention or inability to coherently respond to the deepening crisis allows a sudden collapse of the state or the outbreak of civil war? his penchant for austerity makes him one of the most dangerous administrators possible during this crisis, for the ruling class, for the preservation of the status quo. we will see if his advisors convince him to abandon it or he's otherwise forced to by monied interests, but I don't think so. I think he will blunder into disaster.
I bought some knee socks to keep my legs warm on cold winter mornings, unfortunately because I am a tiny person they ended up being thigh highs on me.
It feels odd. They are so long on me that they reach the tops of my thighs and I have to tuck them into my underwear and that is a strange feeling.
Until Liverpool needs more water, and they flood the rest of us.
knowing the state of this country people here would probably welcome it too.
Not so lucky. I always get carded when buying booze, because most teenagers are taller than me.
i just chopped off shoulder length hair for a military style cut
holy shit no one is going to recognise me now
in other news im masc4masc now
I'm busy doing the opposite now, growing it out. Hope it looks good in the end and I'm not going to waste 6+ months growing the sides out lol.
Enjoy your short hair
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