In today’s edition of “The Democrats are absolutely fucking useless”:

https://twitter.com/jstein_wapo/status/ ... 70277?s=21



Because, as previously mentioned, the Democrats are absolutely fucking useless, and are just as complicit in this pandemic getting as bad as it has gotten as Trump and the GOP were. Pelosi let people die so the DNC could win an election, and only barely so, while still failing to win the Senate and a losing bunch of House seats.

She's saying that the dems are alright with a smaller package being released in a short amount of time instead of, well, who the fuck knows when, because she thinks more relief will be possible under the upcoming Biden administration. That seems like a reasonable position to take, no?

"We'll throw this fight to win the war" only works when you actually have a plan to win.

Friendly reminder that a huge, beefy Covid relief package was passed in the House back in July, but Mitch McConnell won't let it come to a vote.

But sure, let's blame Democrats for...some reason.

I mean, you can call it a throw if you just want to shit on the dems - I know it's fun, but in the current situation the only way to get anything done is compromise with the republicans. You'd rather see them throw the original two billion dollar plan against a brick wall for months and months?

Prediction: Rudy Giulani's next witness will be Charlie Sheen.

The Dems should not be constantly watering down the stimulus bill in the hopes that Republicans will vote for it. They never will, but the DNC still legit think they can get GOP votes on anything. The fact that Biden's gonna be president inspires no hope in me that the beefy stimulus bill will pass, as he, like Obama before him, also thinks he can get bipartisan support for something. The DNC should be pushing for as big as stimulus bill as possible because PEOPLE NEED IT. Watering down the bill to have no cash payments to people and just be a bunch of corporate welfare benefits nobody but those corporations.

The alternative to getting Republican votes is... nothing. Nothing is the alternative. When you're in the minority you don't have the luxury of passing legislation without votes from the other party, so either you get some votes or you get nothing, and it doesn't matter how big the bill is if it ends up being nothing.

If that bothers you as much as it bothers me, you should train your anger on the Republicans-- who are, I hope we can all agree, the main roadblock here-- not the Democrats. To make this into a 'both sides are equally bad' thing is absurd.

But why should the Democrats keep compromising on something they already passed months and months ago? Why should they continually water down something with the idea that they'll get bipartisan support when it is clear as fucking day that that bipartisan support will not happen? The DNC should have been screaming at the top of their lungs at every person able to hear them that the GOP do not care about them, do not want to help them, and they will obstruct any and every attempt at a stimulus bill, no matter how big or small, because that is what the GOP does, and they have a long, long history of it. Maybe if they did that, they wouldn't have lost 11 seats in Congress, because the public would finally be on their side and not think that any Democrat ever, no matter how center-right and full of wishy washy bullshit they might be, is a radical socialist Commie scumfuck and therefore vote red instead because they think the Dems are evil incarnate. Alas, that is all wishful thinking, because the establishment of the Democratic Party has no interest in governing or serving its constituents. That is why they do everything possible to spin their failures into positives, and punch left at every opportunity they get against people that actually give a fuck about others.

Also, did you miss the part where she said that a vaccine is part of her reasoning for going for a smaller stimulus package? That by itself could generate a couple paragraphs worth of response from me, but I will summarize my thoughts on it with this one line: A vaccine, as great as it will be, will not be readily available for many, many months, and it certainly isn't gonna keep people from getting evicted and becoming homeless in the interim or when it is available and society begins returning to whatever normal will be come the end of 2021.

... because again, the alternative is nothing. There's a reason so many Republicans retired after they lost the House, life in the minority ain't easy.


I agree, Dem campaign leadership should have been a hell of a lot more pugilistic, but what they should have done during the campaign won't matter until the midterms. Before that, there's a country to run, and talking about what you should have done during the campaign? That and four bucks'll buy you breakfast at Waffle House.


I'm not sure what your picture of governing looks like. Is it pulling a Bernie Sanders and passing three bills after decades in Congress renaming post offices in Vermont because sitting down at the negotiating table is beneath you? Is it giving up on the possibility of any progress because you're in the minority and you can't get 100% of what you're after? The Democrats are up against a party whose obstructionism and willingness to hack away at democracy with a machete for the sake of politics is unprecedented. I think Dem leadership needs to be putting on brass knuckles whenever campaign season comes around, but when the dust settles and your party's short two seats in the Senate, you do whatever you can to get results. To do otherwise, that would show an utter lack of interest in governing and serving. Hell, you seem angrier at the Democrats for even bothering to try than you are at the Republicans for refusing to let major relief come to a vote.

The moment passed when Pelosi failed to create a skinnier stimulus bill that chopped out the money for lobbying groups, massive corporate bailouts and flushing fucking COBRA with government dosh and instead just focused on enhanced unemployment benefits, small business loans and stimulus checks. After doing that, she simply needed to clearly and specifically say that it's Mitch McConnell and the Republicans that are preventing you from the stimulus checks you desperately need, and the only way you can get it is by voting these people out.

No one should be angry that Pelosi didn't balk on the unemployment benefits and stimulus checks; the instant a bill passes Congress, it becomes much harder to pass the good things people actually need. What we should be furious at is how needlessly bloated and absurd HEROES really was; they threw everything but the kitchen sink in that, and while they correctly knew it would be DOA on arrival in the Senate, they utterly failed on messaging--you know, the only thing the bill was ever going to be.

The sole thing that gives me hope is that an analysis from fivethirtyeight showed that split ticket voting was nowhere near as common as originally thought, and when Trump is both not on the ballot and not in the WH, Republicans could be looking at a bloodbath.

It's hard to express just how much damage dethroning Trump by 7.2 million votes is to the GOP. He was the only reason Republicans did so well, but he was defeated handily and the chances of a 78 year old Trump winning again seems like nothing but copium for both the GOP base and the Sedition and Pockets of the world.

The statistics I read on the news are in total support of Subrick because they show a very high turnout and very few undecided voters and paint a picture that if like in Switzerland voting was mandatory, Democrats would have a permanent majority. There are simply more people leaning left of center than people leaning right of center in the USA. And the reason Democrats don't have a permanent majority is that the vast majority of non-voters in every election leans left of center, and the reason they are non-voters is they just don't bother going if Democrats do jack shit. A permanent majority supports their political ideals, but the lack of acting on those ideals leads to recurrent losses of elections despite that permanent majority.

On a sidenote, seeing conversations like between Subrick and Ezadara, making it out to be like the Democrats should either cater to the far left or should cater to the centrist left, being from Europe and having seen so many coalition governments between centrist left and far left parties, you Americans would really be surprised how absolutely not mutually exclusive it is to cater to both at the same time.

Two-party vs. multi-party with coalitions. Germany encourages cooperation between more disparate sects of political alignment, whereas the US's two-party mandates primarying and then a general election, which causes a neverending cycle of inter-party conflict.

An alieviant to this would be what Maine implemented which is instant run-off voting, although in that particular example that dumb rapist-voting cuck Susan Collins still managed to hold on to her seat, one of the more baffling and infuriating things to happen this cycle.

Honestly I don't think it is as apples and oranges as you might think, more like lemons and oranges. The basic ideas are the same here, just a little more broken up. Dems are three different parties (social democrats, greens, left) and Reps are three different parties (christians, libertarians, retards), basically the same but of course sometimes there's coalitions across the "divide" which makes for a bit less of the trench line thinking, but those are uncommon and undesired and the result of inconclusive elections and in reality left of center parties only want to form coalitions with left of center parties and right of center parties only want to form coalitions with right of center parties and really annoying inconclusive election results are the only reason anyone would ever bite their tongue about it.

Dems don't even need to cater to the ultra far left. They just need to advocate for the bare minimum that every other modernized country on Earth already has. As fucking awesome as it would be to see the US transformed into a socialist country, I'm fully aware that that will never happen. Therefore, the compromise is to go for social democracy, which would give us the aforementioned bare minimum that most of the rest of the world has. The DNC party leadership, as I said before, has no interest in doing such a thing, because it would upset their own power within the party. That is why they punch left and cater to Republicans at every opportunity. That's why you get bullshit, insane headlines like this:

Hey, Rudy Giuliani tested positive for Covid. Big fucking surprise, I know.

Republicans only care about them and their money using the 'Murrica excuse to keep their positions, they don't give a flying fuck about the country. Once people fully understands that and starts to not voting any of them, the political map will eventually change.

US has no real left and it's not like you need Communism or fully loaded Socialism to be a better country. Look at Scandinavia. They care about the people and the Government's efforts are mostly directed at improving life standards first and profits following than the opposite. They understand that providing a better lifestyle to the general population and managing resources efficiently in the short term means to have steady profits and savings in the long run. Look at healthcare. If US would put some real effort on providing a quality and extended healthcare of everybody, the country's health WILL improve significantly, which will mean massive savings in the health system later.

US politics are way too shortsighted.

This.

The Republican party dying out would be an absolute dream. Not just because Republicans are awful but because it would end the current atmosphere of politics in the US. If conservatism and and right-wing politics start losing traction then there will be a lot more room for competition in the left, and eventually we'll probably get to a point where the dems will actually have to do stuff and push for concrete change to win elections, instead of just winning because they're the party that won't completely fuck everything up.

Unfortunately that is really nothing but a dream. Real positive change seems less likely than ever imo. We're probably just gonna see presidents that do everything through executive orders that are easily undone by the next president, with no concrete changes to the law or this country. And the dems will keep getting away with not actually getting shit done, because they're the only alternative to the republicans.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/94423051 ... o62FRvbHbU



Put a sock in 'em. It's over. I mean, it's already been over since November 7th, but now it's super over, and it'll be super duper over on December 14th when the Electoral College actually votes. Won't stop Trump from going insane in public about it, though.

This is something I wonder about the US (and my own country a lot of the time when it comes to "raising group X out of underclass status" campaigns): you don't have to be overflowing with "green empathy" to see the economic sense in implementing universal healthcare, targeted education programs etc. You raise the health of group X, you spend some public funds to make sure everyone in group X gets a quality education (especially girls) and then everyone benefits, including hardline conservatives that hate the idea of giving someone a leg up. Healthier, better-educated people go into the workforce and earn the country more money, contribute more to society, and the entire country prospers. It doesn't even have to be seen as "savings" when someone spends less time in the public healthcare system - it's actually longer-term profit/prosperity on top of lower expenditure. This kind of thing should be bipartisan policy but it always boggles my mind that it's not.

But one of the biggest problems is that the more vocal left-leaning groups seem willing to shoot themselves in the foot over a principle by framing their arguments as "come on, why don't you have any EMPATHY, you cold cunt? You're hogging wealth and we want to force you to give it to group X, you rich entitled piece of shit" - but it doesn't have to be that way at all. There are solid economic arguments for equality that don't need to take in the left's ownership of "empathy" as a motivating factor, or pointlessly attacking the right-leaning middle classes. This is where general centre-left arguments just get lost in the crowd, but would probably the best for society overall.

I don't see it as a problem of empathy at all, I just view real equality as being beyond realization in a system (capitalism) where the basic systemic imperatives and drives are towards inequality. I think most folks have plenty of empathy, and that includes the people who make up the ruling class. I just don't believe you can make that empathy really count for something without altering the fundamental calculus of the system away from the private extraction of surplus value. Under capitalism, the best we can do is mitigate the impact of inequality, without overcoming the material basis that creates it in the first place. Equality demands a whole new system.

The myth of Scandinavian socialism is tiresome. Every "right" the workers have gotten has been due to the "threat" of revolutionary socialists (communists), which is why since the collapse of the Soviet Union, those "rights" are being dismantled one by one. Hospitals, retirement homes, schools, etc. are being privatized and run for the sake of individual profit, the right to strike is being countered, etc.

And all of this involves social democrats to a high degree, because they are and always have been the left wing alibi of bourgeois pseudo-democracy.

I cannot emphasize enough that any "gains" working and oppressed people obtain under capitalism are always subject to revision, circumscription, and outright revocation. What the ruling class gives with one hand, it can always take away with the other. We can see this with almost every victory obtained over last century. Labor rights have been all but extinguished, and unions are a shadow of a ghost of what they once were. The women's movement has spent the 50 years since Roe fighting desperately just to hold on to the last vestiges of the right to abortion, to the exclusion of almost every other struggle for the rights of women. The ACA is being eroded one piece at a time, and we're watching the catastrophic failure of the American healthcare system unfold in real time. At this point, it is a near certainty that 500,000-1,000,000 Americans will perish before the COVID crisis is contained. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts have been virtually eviscertaed; meaningful progress towards racial equality stalled decades ago. A mere five years after Obergfell came down, the Supreme Court stands poised to kick the guts out of it and return queer folks to the status of second-class citizens in their own marriages. Nothing we gain under capitalism can last so long as capitalism remains the governing system of the world. We have only one choice. We must smash the capitalist system. We must shatter the capitalist state and obliterate the class of thieves it represents. Only then can we build a new world—a better world—from the ashes of the old.

You people make holding my tongue very, very difficult, even if I decided a good while ago that I would not participate in politics discussion here. But sure, let's have a go at this...

First of all, if you really think communism is the solution to such things as the problems of LGBTQ people or abortion rights, you must have your facts and priorities checked. There is NO historical basis for claiming that sexual minorities were ever really treated any better in communist/socialist countries than elsewhere to my knowledge. It is not a problem of capitalism, no matter how you look at it, but a result of people fearing what they do not understand, and people in power using that for creating division and making up strawman enemies. Saying socialism in any of its forms is a solution to those issues is a daydream and bullshit, it is NOT a product of a economical model in a country. The last I heard, states in the USA still had gender neutral marriage laws, and if that is not an example of progressive sexual freedom in the most ultra-capitalist country in the world, I don't know what would be. Yes, people have their opinions, biases and bigotries, but it's quite obvious that pretty much everywhere in the western world, excluding East European banana republics and places with the highest banjos-to-people ratios, there has been steady and true progress in the past 50 years.

And if you think simply enough to equate abortion rights to freedom, I guess you could say the USSR was a paradise: they actually had a decade or three with more abortions than live births, so if you use that as a metric, it must have been blissful. I'd sure prefer a place where contraceptives are available, kids get good and honest sex education, abortion is available if necessary, and it also has alternatives such as guilt-free adoption options and such. Socialism did not have those, and I have no reason to believe it would, either, seeing how population growth has always been one of the basic ways to promote extreme ideologies.

Both of those rights would be equally much subject to reversion under any socialist or communist regimes as under the capitalist system. They have little relation to the economical models in place.

And when it comes to Scandinavia, please try to make some sense. The workers' rights in Finland, for example, were built first under the damn Russian empire, then between our stupid civil war and the Winter War (1918-1939), starting from VERY right wing capitalist rule. The Reds lost the civil war, and in most places with a capitalist rule, they would have been crushed and the country could well have been the most right-wing place in Europe. Insetad, in just 21 years, the rules were changed so drastically that with the exception of a very tiny minority of extreme leftists, the nation fought as one man against the "liberators" who were about to provide the oppressed masses with the sweet socialism they were supposed to crave. The people actually sat down, had a chat, and agreed on things, and the losers in the civil war also got to say stuff. That's how you build functional societies, not by rising up in arms. Yes, it was a product of the civil war, or rather its aftermath, to a large extent, and the need for national healing was a major driver in the process of change, but it was not anything close to the revolution you depict.

And when it comes to the current erosion of workers' rights and whatnot, I personally blame the left more than the right. While the right is always willing to grab more, it's still quite modest in its stated goals, and we have more liberties and benefits from the state than we ever had in the 1970's and other times with a more hard line left. However, the left here has lost its bearings, and has utterly failed to adapt to the changing times. The recent prime minister, social democrat Antti Rinne, is a prime example of a person who, despite being less than a decade older than I am, still thinks he lives in the shadow of the smokestacks of factories and fights in the forefront of the united workers' unions. It's bullshit. There are virtually no classes here any more, and I know electricians with stock portfolios, and guys working in paper mills who make more money than I do as a development manager with my Master's degree in a telecoms company. Yes, there are differences in incomes, but you need to go in the opposite extremes to find a multiplier higher than four between the wages of people, and that is a very good thing for the people. It still gives healthy incentive to get education and working, but does not result in excesses like in the US. We have social mobility, and people such as myself, with working class backgrounds, can pretty easily get university education without wending up to our necks in debt. My family, from both sides, has gone from very small scale farmers and laborers to university educated majority among my cousins in just two generations, and that is all due to our combo of social democracy and capitalism, most of the time under the looming shadow of the USSR.

Yes, we might be rolling back some workers' rights and benefits the state cannot pay for. But the world is changing, and it's easy to see that in our (or rather, you youngsters'...) lifetimes we will see a situation where some sort of universal income model is absolutely vital, because the increases in productivity are still taking huge leaps, and without some sort of change in the ways the benefits are reaped, there will be sizable part of the population with very few means of supporting themselves.

I'm quite probably among the top 2% of this site's user base when it comes to paying taxes, knowing our heavy taxation and my relatively comfortable income levels. But I also believe I'm among the 2% happiest tax payers, because I get things for my money. My kids have gone to good schools for free, I get healthcare when I need it, my parents are doing OK despite their illnesses, and I feel very safe here. I'd rather pay taxes to keep everybody alive, well, equal, and as happy as possible, than hand the same money over to healthcare insurance companies willing to fuck me if I ever get sick, to schools where I'd have to work hard to get my kids into, or guards of a gated community. Believe or not, no matter how much you downplay the Scandinavian success from both the right and the left, people are surprisingly happy here, and don't even complain about the taxes too much. A society can work without being either super capitalist or a full-blown socialist dystopia.

The greatest one-sentence life lesson I've ever gotten was, incidentally, from an openly communistic construction work mate, 20 years my senior. I was about 22, and he listened to us arguing about death penalty on a coffee break. Being young, we were very confident about our opinions, and he was a bit amused, I guess. His comment?

"I still remember being young enough to know all the correct answers myself, too."

That has stuck with me for over a quarter of a century now. The older I get, the more I think I understand the shades between black and white, and the more I try to understand the motivations behind different people's weird opinions and ideas. It is good to try to take a look behind the facade sometimes, even if what you see is repulsive at first sight.

And no, communism is NOT the solution, any more than the most bulldozing variants of capitalism are.

This kind of thinking flows from an idealistic understanding of history, and one that fundamentally misrepresents how things work. History is not a a series of discrete events bridged by leaps forward in thought. History is a process of interaction between forces in constant motion, and it can only be understood in its totality as a record of those forces in flux. It is constant development. Looking at a fixed point and drawing conclusions indefinitely into the future has the same predictive quality as astrology. Material reality precedes ideas, it conditions and sets their boundaries. Material conditions are primary; new ideas only emerge secondarily as a product of and development from the existing material conditions of society. This means that to fundamentally alter the basis of the ideas, beliefs, and organization of society, you first have to alter the material base from which those ideas, beliefs, and organizational structures arise. In the final analysis, that material base is economic in nature, namely the mode of production of a society, and the relationships between humans and production and between each other that flow from the productive mode.

There are several points worth raising that flow from this:

1. Gender-based oppression and the oppression of LGBTQ people absolutely are direct products of the economic arrangement of society. Specifically, they are a product of class societies and of property relations. They arose with the development of class society to protect the line of property inheritance and to control social reproduction to the benefit of the owning classes.

2. The necessary precondition for the end of the oppression of women and LGBTQ people is the end of private property and with it socially stratified class society.

3. New societies don't spring ex nihilo from the void, they emerge from previously existing societies through a process of struggle. They inevitably bring with them scars and baggage from the old society, which can only be overcome by further struggle. It would be unrealistic to expect socialism to immediately end the oppression of women or queer folks, having sprung from a capitalist society where this was widespread and endemic. That already existing socialist societies haven't completely eradicated these forms of oppression tells us nothing meaningful about the liberatory capacity of socialism in this arena, except that it takes time (which is something that should be obvious on the surface). The fact that existing socialist societies have only so far emerged in places plagued by residual feudalism and colonial underdevelopment only makes this more apparent.

4. Capitalism cannot form the material basis for a society purged of inequality. Capitalism is irreducibly built on inequality and requires inequality to exist. Only a revolutionary development from capitalism, one that dispenses with its fundamental economic inequality, can form the material basis for the total liberation of society and the end of inequality.

Let's get an art thread going with Abominatrix and Witcher.

That's why I said you don't need to be a Communist country to care for the population. It's a matter of closing the gaps between the elites and the more abandoned/impoverished people and not only economically, but culturally speaking. That's what Scandinavian countries did. Numbers don't lie;

https://data.oecd.org/inequality/povert ... ator-chart

One of the biggest issues that has been going on since forever is that people in power and wealth have no idea about regular people's needs. What would happen if, for example, Executive, Congress and Judiciary were forced by law to use public healthcare, schools, universities, etc? They would be forced to improve the system.

Now, History teaches us that every big social change has been brought upon violence. It's not the ideal thing but it seems to work in that way, which is what's happening all around the world. Macron tried to privatize pensions and France was on fire. It was THE way to go, in my opinion, but at some point that violence must stop to give way to a decent lifestyle and that's where the Elite must do their fucking job. I myself have been involved in violent protests but I know we can't be facing the police and fighting politicians forever.

In terms of US politics, Republicans have no intention whatsoever on doing that. They defend corporations and themselves, doing absolutely nothing for the country as a whole. Dems are no better, but among them, there might be a chance to slowly change the role of the government on providing or improving the general life standard of all Americans.

The defense of Capitalism purely theoretical. Its practice has vastly proven that the system is broken as shit. With the current level of globalism and deprivation of resources, we can't just get rid of Capitalism entirely. It must be reformed and regulated as fuck to make sure it'll work for the maximum amount of people.

Who can defend this shit?
https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/

Well, in a little less of the public now that Youtube bans election fraud videos.

Unless, I'm mistaken, it sounds like your buddy was paraphrasing that quote Homer said in The Simpsons that was something along the lines of, "I remember when I was young enough to believe in things".

The Kraken is dead. The Gullibles have now moved on to the Texas AG suit who wants the Supreme Court to overturn the election results. I'd say he is doing it only to deflect from the whistleblower complaints against him and the firing of said whistleblower. But 16 other AGs have signed on.

So two things:

1) Either they are actually traitors who want to overturn a lawful election and they should be arrested (but let's not kid ourselves, it'll never happen, consequences are not for Republicans);

2) Either they are fucking cowards who don't have the spine to stand up to the Gullibles, whom they've excited and gaslighted for four years and are now uncontrollable.

I'm absolutely amazed that this far after the election, after results have been certified again and again, often by Republicans if not Trumplicans, after recounts and recounts that have often just widened Biden's victory, after Fox and Fucker Carlson himself have said Biden is president, that there are so many so-called "Americans" (a proper term would ne Neo-Confederate) that are absolutely convinced that there was not just fraud, but massive, international fraud involving the DNC, socialists, marxists, China, Canada, Schrodinger's disease that is both a complete hoax and also real but not a big deal, the gjost of Chavez, Mike Pence's pet fly, a kraken... and they believe it because a washed up celebrity with recorded massive debts and suspicious ties to China, Russia and Ukraine, his idiot farting lawyer who wiped his sweat on his girlfriend and a drunken "Constitutional lawyer" with no experience whatsoever tell them to. Three caricatures that would be too stupid and incredible in a C-series comedy, and they are the paragons of truth to 70+ million "Americans"... it's just so fucking baffling.

Biden won, but I'm still exhausted. I don't know how to move from there - you cannot logic with these people, the only facts they will accept are lies coming from Donnie's mouth, and you cannot use emotions, since they absolutely hate anyone who doesn't lap their god-emperor's ass, they hate people of color except when they can use them to show they're not racist, they hate poor people needing help and they cause so much damage by not being careful during a time of pandemic. I guess the only thing left is hope that Trump croaks and his spell over them breaks, or that COVID takes its toll. Fuck them. Sorry for the rant. I always hated idiots, and I never thought I'd see idiocy at this level, on that scale, having such concrete consequences on the world.

This is just not true.

Capitalism is not the only source of oppression. And more importantly, these specific things you mention are not exclusive to capitalism and are NOT inherent to it. The only form of oppression that is inherent to it is classism. Does it enable other forms of oppression? Yes, capitalism works to further oppress marginalized groups of people, but it'd be stupid to say that capitalism can't exist without systematic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. It is the nature of capitalism to create inequality and to oppress, but it is not necessary for it to take those forms. It's ridiculous to say so.

Capitalism is horrible don't get me wrong, but it isn't the source of everything wrong with the world, and it's certainly possible to make progress while still under that system.

They did not originate under capitalism, but they have been part of capitalism from the beginning, and are, in fact, inherent to the capitalist system, because they are inherent parts of all stratified class societies, of which capitalist society is simply one type. I suggest that everyone that is interested in how these forms of oppression developed read Engels Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which remains the best and most comprehensive work on the origins of gender/sexual oppression.



The special forms of oppression under capitalism are not separable from class oppression; they form key parts of the superstructure that upholds and defends class division and class oppression. As a practical matter, they amount to subsets of class oppression, further dividing the working class into subclasses along lines of race, gender, and sexual expression, singling out certain groups of people for superexploitation by the capitalist ruling class, while also benefiting that ruling class by dividing the working class against itself and inhibiting the development of the working class unity and solidarity that alone forms the basis for the overthrow of capitalist rule.

Morocco and Israel restore normal diplomatic relations, as USA recognizes Moroccan claim over Western Sahara: https://beta.cp24.com/world/2020/12/10/1_5225964.html

Well this will piss off Mauritania, but otherwise seems like a good thing. More peaceful relations between countries in that volatile region is fine by me.

Saw a video by Feeding America about the USA being in a severe food crisis and 18 million people being in need of humanitarian aid. Great job Donald, you turned the United States into Ethiopia. Clearly the best economy ever like he always says.

They're going to run ads in African countries, showing malnourished American kids with flies on them and sad music. "Please give, these kids have nothing to eat."

I suppose you include social democrats in the left, since you mentioned the Finnish prime minister. But I've already pointed out that social democrats are to a high degree involved in the dismantling of workers rights. This is no argument against left wing politics, but an argument for categorizing the politics of social democrats as right wing. Taking rights away from workers and increasing inequality doesn't become left wing policies just because parties with red banners or ones that are described and self-described as socialist implement them.


Same here. I don't understand how my pointing out that social democrats are highly involved in dismantling the rights for workers and increasing inequality is why you said something against communists.

Let's just max it out and say that socialism and communism are right wing too and actually nothing is left wing.

Fascist !

Soo... eventually anything even slightly right of the Khmer Rouge is essentially Hitler? You're delusional, and more than slightly naive. Unless the left-right division is a continuum from politically somewhere to somewhere else, it loses all meaning. But sure, for any extreme political movement a simple setting of us-vs-them is a good idea, so you do you. Does not work in the real world, though.

Mind you, every single political party in the Nordics, with the exception of those actually flying Nazi colours occasionally, is essentially left of the US Democrats. By your definition, Finland has 0.3% of left wing people, and the rest are fascists. And I happen to love our tiny Seventeenth Reich too much to not care.

Look, dear politically pure leftie people... I'm not going to moderate this thread much, but I wish to politely point out that the thread is on US politics. While it may sound like a mighty fine idea to read your Communist Manifesto aloud here, you've already converted the three gullible ones among the user base of roughly 200k, and you should perhaps tone the preaching down a notch. It is getting tiresome, derails the discussion all the time, and, frankly, makes most of us feel a bit embarrassed for you. This especially applies to most of the post-modern political theory word salad mantra. May I suggest finding a more suitable arena for spreading the word to the masses? Maybe a separate thread for the purpose, or even the Khmer Rouge chat board?

Perhaps the "left/right continuum as a model is the problem, inasmuch as it doesn't really describe reality. What we actually have are two contending and opposed positions (socialism and capitalism), with internal disputes within those camps regarding how best to implement those basic positions. There is a hard and impermeable break that turns on the question of ownership of the means of production, and the "center" is more in the nature of a myth.