No, you’re obsessed with Trump because you can’t square him. Aren’t the systems of civility and institutionalism supposed to stop that kind of guy? Total freak out, he’s mango Mussolini, he’s a Cheeto in the dang White House!!! In reality, he’s there because the business interests in this country like his meaningless word drivel spew which seems to make line go up for some reason.

This isn’t even a meme it’s just repent for your sins

Like honestly what are you supposed to do? Those I know are either going total striver and molding themselves to the every whim of a fake ass financialized economy, or giving up. Schemes and scams, etc. College degrees are less of an education than a very expensive job certification telling your HR email job “I am not stupid,” sold to you by a giant real estate company that also hires professors.

It’s not even a question of upward mobility but where you’re supposed to find employment that pays non starvation wages and won’t be squeezed out once you learn it. Niche trades maybe? But what’s the opportunity for advancement there.

A lot of labor in slaughterhouses or for that matter construction, landscaping, etc. is done by undocumented immigrants. If they try to unionize the owners and coyotes can just turn them in to ICE. The reason republicans are so obsessed with the border is because controlling these unofficial immigrants/migrant workers is a form of labor discipline that keeps prices of otherwise untenable products like a lot of meat or seasonal fruit low. Dems in turn want an “open border,” because the neoliberal agenda means not letting borders get in the way of cheaper labor.

In the end, there’s homeostasis. Made possible by extreme violence by human traffickers, ranchers, border patrol, and plant owners. Enough get in to keep costs low, but not enough to fight for bargaining power. If we look at the characters in The Jungle, they came from immigrant groups being basically let into the country no problem. They could participate in strikes because they were “legal,” and eventually when the postwar consensus saw the American labor movement fall into a pit of consumerism, become white people rather than Poles, Jews, Slavs, Italians, etc. That’s not going to happen again.

I’ll wait until the Xi bucks arrive to give you your affirmations. Until then, keep believing. American empire loves you and will NEVER do wrong to the settlers at home.

You realize the both sides thing comes from the idea that one side is actually different? I hate these internet cliches because smugly incorrect people will grandstand with them. Whataboutism too. You know the democratic party also gets aipac money right? Democratic Party politicians and democrat media are equally (if not more due to their neoliberal globalist stance) compromised by Israel. Get a spine, if you can’t even break the party line to whisper a mild critique about the milquetoast “””opposition””” that’s been complicit in a genocide for 3 years I have nothing to say to you. Politics is only a sport for you, then.

I haven’t read the collected works of Xi Jinping cover to cover but it feels like a different voice. I mean arguably a lot of things published under his name are a collaborative work by the CPC central committee anyways, but just, feels a bit different.

Yeah Xi’s speech was very obviously ghostwriter/AI, and the bit about making China and America both great again was a bit on the nose. Trumps latest truths are pure ai no sauce, Chinese are gonna do the same reciprocally. It’s clear Xi is just indulging our dear leader as a matter of decorum.

On a side note wrt to bibliographies and the Frankfurt school Western Marxism by Gabriel Rockhill is a great book. Essentially an analysis of intellectual commodity production, ‘left wing’ academia, and the lessons of the past available when theory isn’t reified.

I’ll be honest and say fantasies of a second civil war are trite. Right wingers will make one up about big government overreach (aka international capitalists removing the protectionist frameworks keeping crybabies like US ranchers and carmakers afloat) where the conclusion is getting back to what the founding fathers desired. Cosmopolitan types will make one about “””polarization””” and oh have you no decency??? where in the end everyone becomes a perfect, compliant neoliberal subject.

Whatever the case, it’s pure american exceptionalist drivel. Both are adamantly for the document that says slaves are worth 3/5 of a person. There is no serious willingness or dare I say ability to contend with what actual war looks like. These fantasies always stand counterpoint to the reality where as it turns out we aren’t having a setpiece war. Ever. It’s all cultural animosity. Economically, in the real world, everything is in lockstep. So a film about a scary future we can look at then turn off, it reassures us of the greatness of the US, in weal or woe, a place outside of history, above history.

Germany moment

Isn’t the biggest thing he’s known for is supporting humanitarian stuff in Palestine? I know ‘campist’ used to mean anyone who condemned imperialism, NATO anarchism, and seriously analyzed the forces at play (finding that the primary contradiction, the thing we need to break to lay the foundation for anything else, is imperialism). But now it just means thinking third worlders are human? Bar was low but Jesus.

China survived the color revolution attempt in 89. Here on the western left we only accept martyrs and losers.