#democrats and republicans are all power and money hungry fucks who do not care about you

[excedrinam]

No one deserves to be subject to the trauma and violence of the ICE raids regardless of who they voted for.

"Oh hahaha the man you voted for is deporting you, this is what you get" The person you are pointing and laughing at is still a person they are still being wronged and hurt.

"Oh hahaha, the man you voted for is freezing the funds for your government-funded health care, you deserve it" The person you are pointing and laughing at is still a person who is scared and is threatening to have their safety net taken away.

We cannot stand up only for people we view as allies if our core principles are to stop violence like this and to change our government aid systems to actually help people, that goes for all people.

These are not Republican vs Democrat issues.

These are workers vs state issues.

Do not forget that Biden administration also committed violent deportations. Granted he was a little less vocal about it, but do not let that fool you.

[ishganytoja]

"don't vote democrat because they give money to israel" mfs when republicans win and send money to israel while also making sure you're imprisoned and unofficially killed for being queer.

Hear me, an eastern european, tell you what power hungry traditions-above-everything men do, they fuck everyone up for their own fantasy, and if you are eligible to vote in the US, vote for fucking Biden. Stop acting like not voting is the better thing, because it's not, voting neither is the same as voting Trump. Voting neither is the same as saying you give 0 fucks about the people dying for Ukraine and it's sovereignty.

If you care for human life, you don't let Trump win. Period. Just because Biden will most likely let Israel continue the genocide, it is not better to stay out of voting and let the guy WHO WILL DEFINITELY ENCOURAGE THE GENOCIDE win.

Don't hide behind the dead people at Gaza to conceal your inability to act. Death happens, it will always happen, this is a very bloody fight and sacrifices will be made, innocent people will die without reason in a cruel unjust way.

Vote blue, get blood on your hands, but for the love of all that's fucking holy, understand that having blood on your hands is still better than having blood all over yourself. Because by not voting, you're helping a man kill more than Palestinians.

Some of yall needed to hear this

Credits to @/mattxiv on Instagram

[science-fiction-is-real]

In which i talk about joseph stalin for a long time and also about intersectionality

You know who i’ve been reading a lot about recently?

Joseph Stalin.

And I’ve been reading, and while i’m at work all day, working mostly alone, no music or distractions, i’ve been thinking about everything i’ve been reading.

and this fucker who died before my parents were even born has been on my mind, because i just don’t fucking get it.

This idiot was a revolutionary.  a god damn REVOLUTIONARY.  Did hard time in siberia as a political prisoner.  (I mean, probably also a prisoner for all the organized crime he was doing---to fund the REVOLUTION)  That’s not the sort of thing a grifter, who is only interested in power, gets into.  It’s an absolutely terrible grift.  It’s a lot of risk to take if you aren’t a true believer.

And in between all the bank robberies and what not, he edited a newspaper and did a lot of writing.  There’s a database online where you can read pretty much everything Stalin ever wrote (Along with pretty much every thing pretty much every other famous Marxist ever wrote).  I can’t really bring myself to read too much of his stuff.  Eww.  Why would I want to.  Gross.  But also I feel like i should in the name of fact checking, and understanding what I’m talking about before I talk about it.

But the stuff i did read, was...... not terrible....? Some of it was replying to other socialist writing (because what do lefties enjoy more than arguing with other lefties, amiright???), a lot of it was old fashioned marxist stuff talking about working class vs capitalists, and a lot of it was describing legitimate complaints about the Czarist government.  Expressing anger at the pogroms and the suppression of ethnic minorities and hunger and poverty.  Sounds like a good reason to have a revolution to me.

Of course, those were all the same sorts of atrocities he himself would go on to do.  again.  eww.

But, after all of this, it’s pretty clear to me that pre-revolutionary Stalin was a true fuckin believer.

And that kept me up at night.  Because how come that would change when he himself came into power?

Is it because once you’re handed power, the temptation to abuse it is just far too great?  Is it because when the revolution is over, and the complexities of the ‘’Real World,’’ are obvious, and it’s all to easy to abandon idealism in order to get things done?  Are all post-revolutionary periods destined to be violent and oppressive, because the new government wants to assert its power?  How much blame does he get personally, and how much goes to the other founders of the revolutionary movement--Lenin and Trotsky and the like-- who laid the groundwork for how things would function?  IS socialism itself just cursed to fail like my republican grandma told me?

Or is this just a classical example of the other thing our republican grandmas warned us about, radical idealists turning cranky and cruel and conservative in old age just like they did? I mean what sort of things did stalin do while in power?  A lot of pretty republican things.  LMAO.  Banning the gays and abortion, enforcing strict gender norms, getting TOUGH ON CRIME!  Beefing up the military on money that should be used to provide for people’s basic needs....

If the right gets to try and pass off Hitler as a socialist, the left gets to say that Stalin was a moderate republican.  (Not full republican.  I mean, he did actually react appropriately when he found out there were Nazis in his country.  Just moderate republican.)  LMAO!

But then i thought about it a little more.

No.  He was not a right winger.  No one who spends the first half of his adult life trying to overthrow a government that had been ruling for 300 years is a god damn fucking right winger.  He was left wing.  But.....  Old timy left wing.

Because he did make good on a lot of the socialist ideas while in office.  I’m pretty sure he set up a fairly solid welfare state, free housing and education and healthcare and whatnot.  That was pretty new and revolutionary for the time.

But... Old timy left wing.

and if you think about old timy left-wingers.  most of them are only left wing in SOME areas.  The right absolutely LOVES to point this out.  ‘’Sure Margaret Sanger was a radical feminist, but she was also a racist!’’  ‘’This person was a racist, this person was homophobic!  All your icons are fake frauds!’’  I mean, they probably were all racist and homophobic and whatnot, but that doesn’t actually deminish the radicality of the stuff they were ‘’woke’’ on.

And that’s true for the pre-marxist left too.  We can hate on Thomas Jefferson all day long for being a creepy rapy slave owner and rich asshole who should have been tarred and feathered and  (sorry, i brought up thomas jefferson, i have to go take 5 and cool down before i punch something)  But he still was..... left.  To say ‘’all men are created equal,’’ even if you just mean straight white men, was still kind of radical in the 18th century, when the world was still divided up between the gentry and the common men, and people were presumed to have class status that was bred into them and was part of their very inner nature.  The idea that you could just throw out the idea of a nobility ruling class, or the monarchy, and initiate some sort of meritocracy based system, was out of this fucking world at that point.

And you can say the say the same thing about the russian revolutionaries.  You can criticize them up and down and left and right for being undemocratic, but the idea that wealth should be something everyone has guaranteed access to, that no one should hold economic power over you, that working people deserve some sort of dignified recognition for what they do, that was--AND STILL IS--radical.

Lenin, who lived in monarchical empire, saw the western countries move away from monarchies and embrace our versions of Western Capitalist Democracy (TM).  He decided his revolution would go in a different direction, one of economic instead of political democracy.  The western style of revolution had been tried, and now it was time to try out an eastern style of revolution.

I think he would have said something like ‘’look, ya’ll in france and england can vote, and i’ve been to france and england.  Those places suck ass.  You’re poor and hungry and miserable and working 10 hours a day for shit pay and going home to your crammed tenement apartments before dying of cholera at the age of 12.  Hell of a lot a good DeMoCrAcY does.  We need ECONOMIC democracy instead.’’  

I do remember a quote from lenin, that said something along the lines of ‘’Yes, my system isn’t ‘democratic’ but if you think about it, it’s a hell of a lot more democratic than anything they’re doing in capitalist countries.’’

Of course, we modern folk who fancy ourselves so enlightened by hindsight will point out that you need BOTH economic and political democracy.  A democratic government being run alongside an undemocratic economy is oppression. Anyone who lives in the United States and has read more than three books in their life can see this.  It SUCKS.  Likewise.  An egalitarian economy being run by an undemocratic government is also oppression, because the government can do whatever it wants to the economy, like, say.... sell all the country’s food on the international market to fund various different 5-year-plan projects.  Had Stalin been subjected to democratic processes, he never would have been allowed to do that.

In the early 20th century, there wasn’t really much of a concept of INTERSECTIONALITY.  in the modern left, we pretty much agree that if you want to have freedom and equality in one sphere of life, you also need to pursue freedom and equality in other spheres.  Oppression is contagious.  If you allow discrimination against Gays for example, this leads to discrimination against the sexes because people are going to be forced into stricter and stricter gender norms.  And of course, if you want political equality under the law, you also need racial equality so that one group of people isn’t disenfranchised from voting or fair treatment by the courts.

Just like how political democracy has to happen alongside economic democracy.

So yeah, I guess after the end of all this long ranting and shit.  I think it makes sense why a serious revolutionary true believer like Stalin can grow into a tyrant.  Because Old timy left-wing politics was underdeveloped and had lots of blind spots.  People didn’t realize that it was important for movements to be led by people who were seriously committed to intersectional emancipation.  Young Stalin when he would go hang out with all of his socialist dude-bro friends, planning their bank heists, wearing their newsboys hats, trying not to die of cholera,  he probably wasn’t being called out on sexism or racism.  They were just an economic-left movement that didn’t care much about the other stuff.

But there isn’t really a whole lot to gain by doing a character analysis on some ass wipe who kicked the bucket before color television was even invented.  All the terrible things he did and all the good intentions, sincere or not, that he had, that is between him and whatever God is governing this bitch of a universe. We on the left know better than to look at individuals to answer important questions, we know to look at systems.  And gather lessons so that we can build better movements in the future.

Yeah, whatever, intersectionality.

Sorry this was so long and poorly written.  I shall cite no sources and do no editing.  Fuck you.  Thanks for reading.

[cksmart-world]

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

April 7, 2020

WHO's JIMMY HOFFA, ANYWAY?

We're bummed out because things aren't going our way. Listen, we don't  have health care and sick leave. We didn't even know we didn't have health care like Sweden until Bernie told us. Why don't we have health care? It's our politicians, that's what. They're to blame. We voted, didn't we? Every four years, we voted, unless Bernie wasn't on the ballot. We voted, but we didn't want no socialism on account of then everything would all be bad. We'd be livin' like slaves, paycheck to paycheck with some kids going hungry and everything. Some keep sayin' we got the best health care in the world. It's them damn elites. And the media, they keep reporting what the politicians do instead of fixing things. What good is that. And who was Jimmy Hoffa, anyway? They say he was bad. Always causin' some trouble, getting people to picket and fight in the street for their rights — making them fat cats give a little somethin' to working folk. But didn't we always have the 40-hour work week? Folks could always afford a house, right? But Reagan said the government is the enemy and we gotta get it out of the pockets of them rich people and the money will trickle down on us like Niagara Falls. It's the goddamn government, man. They ain't doin' nothin', so let's take away the protections that Hoffa and those other dudes fought for and see what happens. Nothin. We ain't got jobs and we ain't got no health care and no retirement, neither. And those damn Democrats, they just keep taxing and spending and killing babies and stealing our guns. And the Republicans say, just keep votin' for us and the money is goin' trickle right down on you like a shower from heaven. Just be patient a little longer. Son of a bitch. What're we gonna do?

JARED TO THE RESCUE

OK everybody, big breath. Everything is going to be all right. Jared has taken the helm, just like Noah in the Great Flood. Yes, yes, we know the president has pretty much run the Ark aground, like that drunk bastard on the oil tanker off Alaska. But like Superman, Trump's son-in-law is more powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding pandemic and a lot smarter than those dopey epidemiologists and ICU docs. For starters, our superhero told the states to go fuck themselves. “The notion of the federal stockpile [of ventilators and masks] was that it's supposed to be OUR  stockpile,” he said. “It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use.” Just because hospitals have to use refrigerated trucks as makeshift morgues doesn't mean there is a shortage of stuff. "What you have all over the country,” Kushner explained, “is a lot of people are asking for things that they don't necessarily need at the moment.” Needy bastards. The worst of them, of course, is Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who says people will die if New York doesn't get 30,000 more ventilators. Jared knows better: "I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity. [And] I'm doing my own projections, and I've gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn't need all those ventilators." And anyway, if he gave them to states and the states gave them to hospitals, then he and Donald wouldn't have any. And that's not the way shit works.

Help Line: 240-970-2681— ask for Jared.

Post script: Well, chalk up another week of Love In The Time of Covid 19 by Donald J. Trump. Or maybe it should be Fear And Loathing With Capt. Queeg. Folks who love Capt. Queeg, er uh, President Trump, really like him and will sail with him right into the teeth of the storm, gleefully knowing they have finally found their prophet — perhaps he will part the ocean on the way to the promised land. But the majority of Americans would rather get off Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Already exhausted by three-and-a-half years of gaslighting extraordinaire, the captain's daily briefings on the deadliest pandemic in 100 years are just too much for folks who face financial oblivion and even those who are lucky enough to be clinging to dry land. Did you know he is #1 on Facebook? Oh, and by the way, 10,000 Americans have died of coronavirus and there is no end in sight. But Trump is doing a tremendous job. Just tremendous. And look at him, he's a 10 out of 10. Aside from his Royal Highness, this could be one of those watershed times when Americans come together to overcome catastrophe and even make things better for everyone. It's worth a prayer — even if you don't believe.

OK, Wilson, we know that you and the band have made productive use of all this down time and haven't just been laying around in a stoned daze watching cartoons on TV. So give us something to stoke a little hope as we claw our way through history:

And into this life we're born/ Baby, sometimes, sometimes we don't know why / And time seems to go by so fast / In the twinkling of an eye / Little darlin', come with me / Won't you help me share my load / From the dark end of the street / To the bright side of the road...

Addendum: CORONAVIRUS/TRUMP TIMELINE

Jan. 7: China identifies a new type of coronavirus

Jan. 11: China records first death due to coronavirus

Jan. 13: U.S. intelligence agencies advised the Trump White House of the threat.

Jan. 18: Trump was first briefed on the coronavirus by HHServices Sec. Alex Azar.

Jan. 20: First case of coronavirus identified in a Washington state man.

Jan. 22: Trump: “No, we’re not worried at all. And we have it totally under control.”

Jan. 23: Wuhan, China is placed under quarantine.

Jan. 24: Trump: “It will all work out well.”

Jan 30: World Health Organization (WHO) declares global health emergency.

Jan. 30: Trump: “We think we have it very well under control... We’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.”

Jan. 31: Trump bans foreign nationals entry into U.S. if they had been in China in the past two weeks.

Feb. 2: Trump: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

Feb. 3: A briefing document on the coronavirus prepared by the U.S. Army projected that “between 80,000 and 150,000 Americans could die.

Feb. 9: China death toll hits 811.

Feb. 10: Trump: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine.”

Feb. 19: Iran outbreak begins

Feb. 19: Trump: “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus... So I think it’s going to work out fine.”

Feb. 21: Italian outbreak begins.

Feb. 27: Trump: “When you have 15 people [infected in U.S.], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done."

Feb. 28: Trump: “There’s one who is quite sick, but maybe he’s gonna be fine… It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Feb. 29: First death reported in U.S.

March 3: Coronavirus cases begin to spike in Spain.

March 8: Italy places all 60 million residents under lockdown.

March 11: The World Health Organization declares a pandemic.

March 9: Trump: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the coronavirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant.”

March 12: Trump: “It’s going to go away. … The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point… it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.”

March 17: A leaked federal plan warns the pandemic will last 18 months or longer and may come in multiple waves.

March 23: New York City confirms 21,000 cases, making it the epicenter in the U.S.

March 24: Trump: “You’re going to lose a number of people to the flu. But you’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.”

March 26: Total confirmed U.S. cases hit 82,404, surpassing China's reported 81,782 and Italy's 80,589.

March 26: Trump: “I have a feeling that a lot of numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.”

March 29: Trump: “So you’re talking about [worst-case scenarios of] 2.2 million deaths... And so if we could hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — it’s a horrible number, maybe even less — but to 100,000. So we have between 100 and 200,000, and we altogether have done a very good job."

March 30: The American Medical Association warns against the use of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug, for treatment of Covid-19, citing side effects and a lack of testing.

April 5: Trump: “I really think you should take [ hydroxychloroquine]. What do you have to lose? Take it.”

April 7: Worldwide, some 1.3 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed with over 76,000 deaths. In the United States, more than 337,000 cases have been confirmed with more than 11,000 reported deaths.

[higgzbosen]

Shame.

I know this sounds stupid and contrite to say, but I don't know how else to convey the disappointment I feel in our nation. Everything that has transpired and the horrible possibilities that await us was completely avoidable. There were so many opportunities to act on the numerous warnings that bad things would happen if we put 45 in control of the country. Yet here we are. Only 7 months in and it's so obvious that this is a disaster now and only calamity seems to loom before us like the darkest of storm clouds on the horizon. Growing up in the 70s, I learned to be wary of the russians. The fear of nuclear war was a very rationale fear shared among the Americans everywhere when I was growing up. It wasn't an actual fear of fighting, it was the escalations of fighting that worried not just us but the world. Shit got to that it was over for all of us. There was no bigger foe of the russians than the Republicans as I grew up. The Republican party worked very hard to take the lead on anything that would show not only their distrust of the red menace, but would revel in their distaste for the communists. It was their thing. The pussy democrats could never handle the cunningly evil agents of communism. Only the Republicans could protect us. Yet here we are. We not only have an orange man child sitting at the desk with the "football" but he is under suspicion of colluding with the Russians to get there. There is a possibility Republican president of the United States has worked with a hostile foreign nation in order to do what exactly it's really hard to tell, but the sheer fact that this question is even asked should scare the shit out of all of us. This is a serious issue that can no longer be minimized and dismissed. It's hypocrisy at its most buoyant that 5 he very party that has rolled the big bad ass fight those commie bastards card for decades but when the red monsters mess with the elections, it's not outrageous enough to defend the country from outside attacks that you get so greedy to go after health care. That's is the bigger threat? That deserve your attention? Your priorities are corrupted and your spines are weak under the pressure of your own rhetoric. Shame on you most though because your party leaders knew about the russians efforts and were told what was going on. But they said nothing. Because it was their guy who was going to win, if the russians were successful then yea, wow that's bad right. You also were told of your candidates on goings, but you did nothing. Why? Recently it has become very evident that the only thing that matters now as this legislative term moves on wasting your time on greedy plans to make profits for greedy people off of human suffering. Now more than ever the win or just a win becomes so important, but it was never a win for America was it? I really don't think it would have been a win for the majority of Americans that would have been effected by this effort to rid our nation of Obama care. How utterly disgusting that a few small fraction of that industry profit so hugely from doing nothing but " administrating" the process. If you went after that greedy bunch and put them out maybe, but that's who you were actually talking about making America great for. Not for the red states, red fucking dots that exist in those states. Little men with lots of money to get the ears of weak men like the leadership of the Republican party. They knew what was coming and did nothing. They knew what was going on and they could have stopped it. But here we are. It's not right that we should even have reason to ponder the idea that 45 is drinking the red vodka. It runs so counter to the DNA of the Republican party, it's almost like having a non-white guy be your candidate. You know it's coming at some point as the demographic changes, so you work hard on including diversity, but your very nature is embracing exclusion. But this should be like finding out Ronnie and the Duke were the original broke back mountain. It ain't so. No way that none in our party would ever be a Russian agent or confidant. It's OK to bang them though. For what it's worth even putin has said that Russian working gals were the best, so yea it's OK to do that right? Yet here we are. So easily avoided. But still we are heading down what I can only surmise will be histories most absurd periods where the travesty that will most certain assail us was so completely avoidable that pridefully ignorant ambivalence could be the only thing stopping anyone from doing anything to avert certain disaster. It's so preposterous it wouldn't hold up as a plot to a movie. Yet......so how do the republicans stomach the notion that they have let their party be taken over by such a disaster as 45. How they try to give the current situation away with the benefits of doubt on their side, yet for the past 8 years they acted as they were at war with the president, I'm sure it had nothing to do with the color of that man. Nothing at all. But now it's his naiveté of the orange one. He is learning on the job. No. Not right, bullshit. Your just as guilty of this abortion of democracy as are the people who were conned into wasting their hard earned rights to vote for this blasphemy of humanity. How in the world can any be convinced that this man, and I say that in only the most basic representation of the gender, he is no man. Deferments don't fight wars and neither do the rich. Like they also rarely work for what they claimed to have earned. How could he with the spoon of plenty feed the hearts and minds of the hungry and needy that outnumber his kind many fold, but he is supposed to drain the very swamp that he is known to frolic in. You ignore this like you ignore the oncoming constant trickle of more "forgotten" meetings or discussions with the Russians. Your very AG has committed perjury and recused himself from anything to do with it and 45 wants to bash his biggest fan when he started this insane March to doomsday. Just like a rich arrogant prick to cast away something someone when they no longer can get them what they want no loyalty from the wanna be king who demands it from his subjects? You can't be surprised that he is turning on him, look at what he did to that douchebag Christie. Not that I care for the little golam looking racist, but to look like you may have betrayed your own nation for this and then lie about it in front of the very people you worked with for years, to be pissed on by this orange buffon, you actually deserve far worse "my precious" Shame on our nation for taking for granted its greatness and throwing it away like this. It may not be the total end of our country but I am fearful it is going to along time before the damage will be repaired and the lives lost on the follies of the orange hulk. In a nation of laws, precedent is the basis for progression and the status quo, 45 may not be the last one to exploit the office for the gains of a small few, but every expansion of power allows those who come after to push it even more.....

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The US midterm elections are almost upon us, but this is a needless bit of inconsequential trivia. It really doesn’t matter. All the Republicans can win or all the Democrats.  Either way it means about as much as a fart in a category 5 hurricane. The net result of actions taken, legislature composed, or honesty with the populace will be inconsequential. The primary difference between the two parties, who are merely playing a game of good cop/bad cop, is only if you’d prefer to see a rapid more authoritarian style ecological collapse or if you’d prefer one with a soothing dulcet voice reassuring you everything will be fine at two minutes to midnight. Neither have a workable plan on the table to get the US in a sustainable ecological state before it all comes crashing down, nor do they have any notion of creating such a plan. The best the Democrats offer are conciliatory gestures in policy shifts, but they have not the wisdom, fortitude, or honest intent to stop the devilish system at the heart of the matter. During Obama’s presidency there was a time when the Democrats controlled the senate and the house and they showed their true motivations. They did nothing to pass policies to assuage the damage being done and stop the plunder of Earth for profit, or to end the wars, or to quell mass incarceration system. Even with total control we know what the Democrats offer amounts to platitudes. And keep in mind, even if the entirety of congress, SCOTUS, and POTUS were controlled by Democrats we still would not find ourselves in a sustainable society, as again, no workable sustainability assessment and plan of transition has ever been done by the party, nor do they care to do something which might lead to such blunt truths. Because those truths would mean decentralization of power and reduction of economic influence for the neoliberal class. Monied elites know the game, and their egos immediately nix any solution set that doesn’t focus the onus of power and attention directly on them. So what are we doing here in this system? We don’t have a pragmatic solution on the table to avoid ecological collapse, which is accelerating much faster than most think. Meanwhile the people are simultaneously being told by proponents of faux democracy that by not voting for one of the major political parties one is wasting a vote, and not voting at all is akin to a crime by their measures. What such people either don’t know or won’t admit to is that we are stuck in a system where a financial gun is held at the head of the people at all times. This communicates to the people that if you change, the elites will pull their money out of markets and go Galt. The powers that be will make sure you suffer for your insolence to stand against them. They’ll make finding a livable wage impossible and thus threaten the plebs housing, supply of food, and ability to get healthcare for no other reason than a puerile egotistical insistence that they get their way. They simply don’t care what happens to the people or mother Gaia. Their self interests are why they sought out power to begin with and they’ve devoted their lives to it, and they aren’t surrendering anytime soon. As it stands, this finger trap of a system will forever spin in place and only create varying levels of profit for capitalist interests. What the system won’t do is solve any of the real problems it has created because it’s been designed to operate to do exactly what it’s doing now, which is drive profits and power directly to the 1%. Democrats only push back enough with pretty sounding words to win your vote over the other guy they are running against, but they’re going to sell out just like their opponent because they themselves are part of the problem. If this sounds like I’m discouraging people from voting, then good. Fuck voting in this system designed to oppress. As the saying goes, if voting changed something they’d make it illegal. What should be common questions routinely go unanswered around the voting system, like why are we still dealing with the same issues generation after generation; e.g., homelessness. After a couple hundred years of voting it seems like we could have solved this issue as it’s rather easy to work out when there are enough structures to house everyone. And why would we construct a system at all that awards so much power to so few, and a system that is so corrupted that people ascertain by not voting it leads to tyranny. The system itself should never allow for such a thing, but it’s innately authoritarian in premise, and continuing to vote and pretending like it makes a difference is false hope. It’s like tugging on the controls on an arcade machine without inserting a quarter, where it kinda looks like you’re making something happen on the screen, but everything is on rails. Your input makes zero difference in this undemocratic system which is designed to ignore you. And in response to the hordes of people who will insist that not voting is irresponsible and support the age old lie that if we just can get the right people in power then, then, the system will turn around – Such naive assertions should be met with a dose of reality which is glaringly clear through a cursory look at history. Such people should have to explain at what point in time there has been a sea change in our system from where it started from genocidal slavers to benevolent rulers, because such a change is nonexistent, and all one need do to figure this out is pick up a copy of Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States. What’s been there from the get go to present is abuse, stemming from the very origins of western civilization and top down social hierarchy. When the people claim they achieved a victory what they have really achieved amounts to a gesture that shuts them up. It’s analogous to a hungry child crying that has just irritated their abusive parent enough they finally concede to give them an extra morsel of food. The child then celebrates like they won a battle; however, the child is still in the abusive state but now thinks their wails do something. What they don’t realize is if they get annoying enough what they will be met with is not another conciliatory gesture but a beating. Thus I call on the people to grow a spine and stand up to our abusers. Stop choosing between which pro-mass-murder psychopath in a suit you want ruling over you and start fighting for something worth having. Should we not at least try to come up with some kind of plan as a people to organize a real solution that could potentially shake monied elites from their elevated perches? If we are to change, then a real stand has to be made against this archaic and draconian system of social hierarchy presently installed because the powerful aren’t going away and they cannot be reasoned with. They have no plans of surrendering their ill gotten gains accumulated over several centuries of abusive behavior. Many of our problems are very solvable, as they are merely the result of childish power grabs and a desire to control the labor of others. By not subscribing to this system it doesn’t mean giving up, it means shifting focus. It means incorporating real pragmatism to stop the nose dive into dystopian apocalypse and take a swing at a sustainable egalitarian borderless global society where humanity finally rids itself of the parasites who continue to insist they are more crucial to the world than the hosts they feed from. If we rid ourselves of those arrogant parasites and their system of abuse, we will find freedom again. A freedom like Native Americans and Aboriginals knew for thousands of years before the bloodsuckers latched upon us. Many will find this vantage point to be highly impractical, but I find naive half-assed solutions, endless extreme unnecessary suffering, and a trajectory leading directly to societal collapse to be far more impractical Revolt! Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. — Dylan Thomas http://clubof.info/

[whispersinthewires]

January 23rd, 2018

i want to talk about what i believe in here, because i don’t know what i believe in anymore. writing has been cathartic, for sure, but it’s also been eye opening. 

i guess i should start with what i don’t believe in. recently, i’ve realized that i don’t believe in ghosts. i don’t believe in aliens. i don’t believe in bigfoot. i spent my whole life being afraid of the paranormal, but my only fear now is that i’m wrong. i don’t believe in them, but i’ve been wrong about everything at least once in my life, and i don’t want to find out that i’m wrong once my house is haunted or my cat is possessed or some shit. to dust off a joke that’s now (fuck) five years old, i have a crisis of confidence. i’m scared of my own weakness. 

i’ve been weak for a very long time. i thought that it was just physical. i thought that it was me against the world and i had to toughen up. i was was half right. i need to toughen up, both physically and mentally. the world doesn’t care enough to be against me. i think maturity is coming to terms with the fact that you’re not the protagonist of the story. you’re not the antagonist either. you probably won’t even be a side character. we know a handful of people from history, but we forget about millions (billions?) of others. i just googled it. 108 billion. though i’m not sure how much i trust the site, because it says that humans started from just two, and that seems weirdly bibley to me. the world doesn’t celebrate your birth, and it won’t remember your death. i don’t believe in god or an afterlife, so that’s it. you live for a while, and then you disappear. and that’s fine. it will happen to everyone, and it’s important to enjoy every moment, because the cut to black will be bleak. i think i probably would have been suicidal if i believed that there was an afterlife, even if it was hell and torture. at least i would continue to be. death terrifies me. i’m so scared that i’ll never be able to make the progress that i wanted to make. i’m scared that i’ll be forgotten. i’m scared that i’ll... i don’t know. i’m scared of not being me. of not existing anymore. i don’t care if i’m mourned, and i don’t care if i’m remembered, but not being me is more terrifying than anything else i can imagine. 

the left is obsessed with labels. the right only has a few. you’re a republican, or you’re alt-right, neo-nazi... there aren’t a lot of options. there are less for libertarians, who circlejerk over ayn rand and all espouse the same bullshit 24/7. the left is immense. not center left. if you’re a democrat or a liberal, that’s it, you get your box and you get to hang out in it. fuck them, by the way. at least the fucking fascists stand for something. the liberal agenda with their horseshoe theory and their “both sides are wrong” mentality are the reason that we’re where we are in politics currently. they allowed hillary to ascend to what she thought was her birthright, and the left didn’t end up showing up. they didn’t buy her bullshit, and i’m proud of that on some level. i sure as fuck didn’t vote for her. i didn’t like jill stein that much, but at least her platform would have gotten us somewhere. bernie should have taken her offer to take the green party ticket. i’m not sure that he would have won, but i think he might have. imagine if he did. i think that we’d definitely be better off. that said, i don’t want him to run in 2020. i don’t want him to be president anymore. the opportunity for him presented itself, and we ignored him. we got what we deserved. we got donald trump. this country will burn to the ground, and it will tear itself apart. i don’t know that the left even has to do anything. i think if we just let the republicans keep running shit for a couple more years, there won’t be anything left to manage. either that, or people will become radicalized enough to tear it down. the issue is that if the dems get back house and senate, they’ll push back toward status quo. spineless fucking money hungry garbage people. back to normal is while we were failing in the first place. trump was able to win because people believed that america wasn’t great, but could be. regardless of other issues, the biggest being race, the american populous didn’t feel like normal was good enough. and they’re right. we’re a cancer on a global scale at this point. our prisons are designed to create slave labor, and that slave labor goes to making military uniforms. police uniforms. then we’re making the police more like a military. we’re in a bunch of countries where we shouldn’t have been in the first place. we love our guns. we love our crime. we love our troops. fuck education though. 

so i guess at the core i’m an accelerationist. i think that if we push forward and just let things keep getting worse and worse and worse, eventually we’ll be able to make the left more powerful. am i an anarchist? am i a communist? i believe that government inherently is flawed and doesn’t allow for people’s best interests to come through. even the best representations of democracy allow for monsters to take power. that said, i think that a lack of government would allow for the same issue. i sincerely believe that most people are good. most people want to live their lives and prosper. under anarchism, i believe that those people would flourish. there’s a handful of people that would ruin it for everyone though. the kind of people who enlist in the military for the power. the kind of people who join the police force with no intention of actually protecting citizens. the people who took gym class way too seriously. those people would only make things difficult. under a perfect anarchist society, those people would be left alive, to leech off others and to generate conflict. fuck them. i believe in the wall. i believe in lining every single fascist up and executing them all one by one. this is by no means a threat or letter of intent (sorry nsa) but it’s a value that i hold deep in my soul. i think that the only way to create a society worth living in is to execute all of the people who make society unlivable. but i don’t trust people to make the call on who to kill. mob mentality is dangerous, and vendettas are a great way to start a witch hunt. it’s a shame, but no matter how much i believe in people, i know that we as a species become less and less competent when we’re in groups. look at kitty genevese. look at salem. look at mccarthy. army ants are able to march in perfect lines and find and distribute food. they’re able to divide labor and work accordingly. if you put a single army ant on a table, it will wander around the table until it eventually dies. people are the opposite. they are much smarter, and much more resourceful on their own. they have to be. so there has to be some sort of system in place to determine who is a problem, and who isn’t a problem. i’m confident that people like that exist, but i have no idea how one would go about appointing them. voting is out of the question. and if it’s as simple as handing it down, there’s too much room for corruption. who would even get to make that decision? in a society where power is truly equal, i don’t know how we’d manage to appoint any sort of governance. communism doesn’t feel right though. communism is too state-focused, and that’s something that i very strongly don’t believe in. i guess for now it’s important to know this. to know that i trust people enough to manage, but i don’t trust people enough to determine who is worth killing. there needs to be a state for the sole purpose of execution. maybe we need to harken back to the old west with hangmen. maybe we need to have traveling judge, jury, and executioners to come to town, address the issue, and leave. impartiality is key. 

again, i’m believing in less and less as time goes on. the world is chaos, and we’re lucky to be here, but assigning any kind of reason to it is naive. i envy people with faith. i wish that i could believe that strongly in anything. that’s not the person that i am though. i wasn’t made to be a believer. that’s okay though.