inevitable only in hindsight

I’m not so sure. I’m still friends with a guy who told me emphatically “you dont understand what we did, we destroyed the global economy” and then explained the whole subprime mortgage scam to me, back in like 2007. Lots of downstream businesses, new home builders, paint and drywall companies, building materials stores, started folding several months before the official crash as well. I wasn’t nearly as aware of things then, I was a grown adult but not yet 30 and with little formal education, but there were definitely huge flashing signs. Only the media, based 100% on the words of the banks and insurance companies, thought that a crash was undetectable.

I’m not sure quite what it would look like yet, but I’m willing to bet if you look where these data centers are being built, when the cash runs out to keep the whole scam afloat, these big companies will stop paying their bills. The smaller companies providing services and supplies will run out of money before the huge mega corpos start showing signs, so that is one of the metrics I’m watching closely. I just happen to live in the shadow of these data centers so I’ll be pretty close to it, that is if I’m right.

we’re willing to die

I’ll just sit back

Willing to die in a seated position doesn’t cut it goofy

The 22nd amendment ratified in 1951?

Same shit, different pedophile

Wow the subtext to this image is actually terrifying.

Jesus didn’t die for our sins, he rescued himself from consequences. He uncancelled himself

Seem to be a lot of people posting this so I’ll just repost what I wrote elsewhere :

The 3.5% theory is extremely questionable. The first paragraph of (the BBC) article is problematic if you know like 3 things about Philippine politics.

I’ve dug deeper into the data and it is very opinionated how it defines “success” and violence/nonviolence.

I’m not a pro-violence guy, i defend liberation struggles, but work to create educational/political/cultural revolution. Also the 3.5% mobilized population would be rad AF in USAmerica.

I haven’t read the whole book the study is based on, though I was working on it for a while. But IMO it misrepresents historical fact to make a nice-sounding abstraction, and I’m not sure how people will react to its failure, which would be based on a faulty premise.

We need to be more focused on what we will do with the power that will come from mobilizing like 12 million Americans rather than hoping some members of the political class notice and decide to fix things. The actual problem is that power is kept out of the hands of workers. The thought of building that power and giving it away would be a catastrophic blow to our movements.

The political system is empowered to fix problems, but not equipped. As far as I can tell, the only people who have ever created or fixed a goddamn thing in all of history have been workers.

To the oppressor, equality feels like oppression

I mean, we can go back and forth rationalizing our historical perspectives until we are just talking past each other. Ultimately I think I’d like to have a more complete understanding than what I have now. So in time, I’d like to be able to see value in your emphasis.

But almost no-one teaches the labor history that lead up to the new deal. Its something that was given to workers, not something we fought for. It elevates a representative of the ruling class to hero status, while the heroes of the labor movement are all but completely forgotten.

Remember, this is the same guy who put a million Japanese Americans into concentration camps. The excuse he gave was risk of sedition, but what it actually accomplished was liquidating the farms of Japanese farmers and ag workers, to be bought up by American farmers and large producers. Japanese farming practice yielded much higher volume and quality of produce per acre, and US firms couldn’t compete.

Also, the New Deal was essentially a deal for whites. BIPOC workers were left out and suffered severe material wretchedness and discrimination.

So I choose not to give any leeway to the man who oversaw this, and I choose to decenter the liberal hero analysis to replace it with one that recognizes and lionizes the working class.

If you have any books or articles you think support your views I’d happily consider them however.

Def Reagan too, firing striking air traffic controllers and then overseeing and writing off blatant union busting and attacks on workers rights at the dawn of neoliberalism was a disaster for us.

But the answer is in your question. FDR didn’t give those things away for nothing, it was a conciliation to workers demands. In 1934 a nationwide strike wave shut down a number of cities from coast to coast, and in 1935 we got our new deal. FDR rescued capitalism from the jaws of socialism with social democracy. But the great depression was long and regular people were tired.

During ww2 he asked the workers movement not to strike, and they didn’t under the direction of his political ally Stalin. But without the ability to fight, the unions were bureaucratized and businesses organized against labor. By the end of ww2 the american left was gutted and couldn’t even fight against passing Taft-Hartley. That last point can’t be laid at the feet of FDR as he was already dead.

But FDR doesn’t deserve to be lionized, he played his part, legalized a labor movement that had earned its right to exist through our power, not his blessing. And as soon as he died, the right started scraping back those legal protections, so that Taft-Hartley was an easy nail to hammer in our coffin.

“How is good thing bad,” you say? The new deal was a tactical retreat on behalf of the ruling class against the ascendant working class. The state exists to manage the interests of the ruling class. Roosevelt wasn’t great, he was a representative of his class using the state to maintain capitalist control over the means of production. Once that was assured our rights began disappearing immediately.

Next time there can be no deal. The international, inclusive working class have to take power and fight to keep it, or we will lose it. The old American communists understood this, so had to be destroyed. The sooner we realize the liberal economic order is what brought us here to these horrible conditions, the sooner we can leave behind old illusions about reforms and private property and start to create something real.

Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the spirit!

Solidarity forever comrade!

Ahh, yes then I am too familiar with your frustration.

We are organizing, for the first time in our chapter, a visible coordinated intervention in No Kings. We are taking sign up sheets and lit, wearing our DSA gear, making plans for before and after.

I did some work with 50501/No Kings groups earlier this year, but I didn’t have support and burned out with little lasting effect. In general our chapter is slow to mobilize because, like you said, its a waste of time waving signs at empty govt buildings for 2 hours on a Saturday. I worked alongside PSL and they were a lot more effective because they could coordinate. PSL is far from perfect, same as DSA, but at least they are 1:1 much more centralized, with a greater deal of cohesion on strategy and tactics.

Now we finally have some capacity and urgency. And can stand apart from the liberal mobilization movement and light a beacon for people looking for something more practical and radical. There are a ton of people getting the message everyday.

Fear can have the intended effect but it can also backfire. It might take a while, and we def aren’t ready to meet the moment as a movement. But the imperial core is where all of the contradictions of empire are stock piled. If history is ever gonna happen here, we will have to grow the fuck up. And maybe it won’t start here. But the working class is international, it doesn’t have to. In either case we gotta try and hang with it.

In any case I was not aware of your game Albert, see there’s hope for us yet

I dont define things like this. I dont care really what people are, only what they could become. Consciousness and radicalism is shifting left, hard.

The active left is growing rapidly. Democratic Socialists of America has become larger than ever. In less than 10 years, we grew from like 10-15k members to 80k members, and still growing. Our unions, many of which were mired in bureaucratic stagnation, are seeing legit reform movements in some of the largest industries, with admittedly mixed results.

Remember that a general strike is illegal in the USA, and our people are very legalist minded. But reformer UAW president Shawn Fain is encouraging unions to renegotiate their contracts to end on May 1 2028. If all the contracts expire on the same day and all the different industries renegotiate, it isn’t a general strike. Its many small craft unions and a few big ones renegotiating at the same time. So no, we aren’t ready to have one today, but we are getting ready to have one in less than 3 years. While Trump keeps ruining everything, the people are getting prepared to shut it all down.

The die isn’t cast but its a good start and we are growing rapidly and improving in radicalism, experience and audacity. I’m very close to it because I’m an organizer, so I may have my biases, but I can also see the changes occurring.

You need to have a theory of change.

1934? When Americans won our new deal? Bloody Thursday? Teamster Rebellion? Little UAW?

Tend to agree we aren’t ready but study your labor history if you wanna be an even cooler Albert.

We actually had a left in this country before Stalin and FDR destroyed it. Time to rebuild

Do you believe private property is a fundamental human right? If yes, Do you believe that people who own or run businesses should be able to pay a living wage?

Do you have a theory of political change? What is it?

Are you familiar with theories of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism? Are you pro-reparations?

Do you believe economic degrowth is necessary to avoid climate change?

Are you opposed to the genocide in Palestine? Do you support a one or two state solution?

Are you a British Green or an American Green?

I worry that by asking these questions directly it might affect any answers but these are “further left” than your stances.

Based on what you shared I’d say you’re a “progressive liberal”, which is a right-leaning moderate position. But that’s where a lot of revolutionary leftists, including myself, started out.

What really matters to me when relating to progressive liberals is: If you’re willing to educate yourself, and getting involved in a political party like you’re doing could help.
if your positions are based on a real spiritual progressivism, or if someone acts fundamentally reformist/opportunist.

The powers that are driving this are actually planning 20, 30 years ahead. Market solutions is a cover for class war. Trump is cashing checks written by Bush, Obama, etc.,

The “line go up” meme is prevalent because the attitude is a flimsy cover for deeper relations and actual class conspiracy

“Machines were the weapon used to quell the revolt of specialized labor” – Karl Marx

Its literally 8 people that own half the worlds wealth

If you eliminate enough jobs and increase unemployment, wages go down across the board. But then you also do away with high wages for highly technical roles

On the right, opposition to the genocide is miniscule.

Both major parties ardently support Israel’s “right to exist”. Only our most left wing federal politicians, who are like moderate social democrats, have voiced any opposition, fewer willing to call it a genocide. Often that opposition is uneven, unreliable, and conditional.

Israel is deeply embedded in USAmerican politics and culture. And our right wing is a growing fascist movement.