To paraphrase James Baldwin, ‘we can love and disagree with each other, as long as that disagreement isn’t about my humanity and right to exist’

Yeah, and I know the Mussolini quote you’re referencing. Mussolini was deliberately dismissing the several aspects of fascism that made it look re brutal than mere corporatism. The integration of mobilized militias with government, the criminalization of all descent and popular organization, the elimination of out groups, etc.

You’re being dismissive of what rights we have to protest and organize. Or the rights of some people to just exist. Guessing you don’t use them so why would you appreciate them.

As long as Elon dead names his child (and supports dead naming), I’m dead naming that dumpster fire Twitter.

If you look around the world at the Orbans, the Bolsanaros, the Le Penns, the AfD, etc., you will find that polarization and the rising far right is global. First past the post is not a good thing, but the causes are far deeper.

A past global trend was how the center left parties (Democrats in the US, 2nd International Socialist parties in most of the rest of the world) discredited themselves, abandoning their core constituencies and pushing neoliberal economic policies (in the US, free trade, dismantling welfare, the banking deregulation behind 2008). I think that’s the proximate cause in the rise of the global far right.

The cause of that trend is the inability of regulated capitalism to both provide for everyone AND provide the necessary ever increasing rate of profit.

While there have been stirrings of possible left reformist parties (Sanders, Corbyn, Lula, etc) even those that make it into state power are ineffective at creating a new, stable, political economy.

Meanwhile climate change is haunting the globe and the clock is ticking.

My impression of the Russian communist party is that they’ve become more a nationalist party than anything promoting class struggle.

I avoid them if I can. If the store wants me to work for them, they can pay me. If they don’t have any available human checkers, I will pay myself by accidentally not charging some of the items. I have left stores and attempt to tell store managers why.

If we had a sane economic system where jobless folks still got their needs met, I’d be all for automation. But we don’t. So every time we allow the corporations to profit with less human workers, we are fucking over our fellow humans.

Eh, I think Trotsky and Lenin have some responsibility. While I am in full support of October (and Leninists ideology), I think the Bolshevik repression of the 20-21 strike wave was a troubling development demonstrating separation between the party and the class. (Kronstadt began in sympathy with that strike wave.) Then in the 10th Party Congress, the Workers Opposition took up some of the workers demands and pushed a program to keep party and state separate. They urged union control of the economy and democracy. In response, Trotsky argued that unions would no longer be necessary at all! Even Lenin thought that was going too far. But this is when democracy came under attack even within the party and factions were formerly banned.

Here is the text of the Workers Opposition manifesto. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm

The text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. The headings, “individual or collective management” and “bureaucracy and self activity of the masses” seem prescient.

Trotsky became a champion of democracy a little late, only after methods of repression he himself used were turned against him.

Right, a dictatorship OF the class proletariat OVER the class bourgeoisie. And can, should, or even needs to be a democracy WITHIN the proletariat.

Unfortunately, tankies turn the phrase into an excuse for authoritarianism, which they wank over.

Marx himself called the Paris Commune to be an example of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Commune had universal suffrage and recall of neighborhood representatives on demand.

"One of the employees at Spirit AeroSystems, which reportedly manufactured the door plug that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon, allegedly told company officials about an “excessive amount of defects,” according to the federal complaint and corresponding internal corporate documents reviewed by us.

According to the court documents, the employee told a colleague that “he believed it was just a matter of time until a major defect escaped to a customer."

https://jacobin.com/2024/01/alaska-airlines-boeing-parts-malfunction-workers-spirit-aerosystems

He did. It contradicts basic tenants of Marxism, but he did write theory.

Edit: tenets. That’s embarrassing. Thanks.

They did actually hijack 1 ship and have kept it and it’s crew hostage, the Galaxy Leader. While there have been misses and successful interceptions, several ships have been damaged.

When you insure ships, you take notice of these kinds of things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_involvement_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war

George Lucas certainly did. The Vietnam War was part of the inspiration for Star Wars.

He says it contains DNA. There’s a grain of truth to that but it’s still bullshit:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/dna-in-covid-19-vaccines-7-pieces

Since 2000, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths is 21:1 (NYT). Rockets? The name evokes weapons from Lockheed or Boeing, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad make them in garages and basement tunnels while Israel has the most hitech interceptors available. It’s still comparatively slingshots to F-16s.

Hamas was created in 1987, and has benefited from disproportionate treatment from the Israelis, who used Hamas to divide the Palestinian resistance. When Israel blows ckekd the negotiation tactics of the secular Palestinian resistance, what else were Palestinians to do? Palestinians in Gaza tried mass civil disobedience I’m 2018 with the Walk of Return, but Israel used live rounds and nearly 300 were killed and thousands wounded. How else were the Palestinians to seek freedom?

Always has been. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_riots

You paid money for something and then you find you can’t use it again. You seriously think that isn’t fucked up?

You’re absolutely right that there IS a difference between the two parties.

But Obama’s healthcare plan was a rebrand of a Heritage foundation (conservative) plan that had been enacted at the state level by Romney in Massachusetts, and the most progressive part (the Medicaid expansion) was a last minute compromise to make the plan CHEAPER because the majority of the plan is a tax payer subsidized government enforced insurance monopoly. It hasn’t ended medical bankruptcies and it doesn’t cover everyone.

Biden is actually better than I expected, while he gave in to the antics of Sinema and Manchin a little too easily and he’s still drilling oil and gas, the “Inflation Reduction Act” is the best climate and infrastructure legislation we’ve had, just 20 years late and still too little. Meanwhile he lets the courts roll him on student loans, on reproductive rights, etc.

So yeah, the Democrats are better than the Republicans but they still SUCK.

Since Eugene McCarthy in the early 70s to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and recently Bernie, working inside the Democrats has not worked. But obviously neither has working outside. We need to keep trying, and I wish I had a better answer. But we need to do better than the Democrats.

Fascists gonna fasc

Officially “celibate”

There have been many spans of time when Democrats had enough control of government to push through what they profress. They don’t use those opportunities.

Not arguing that the two parties are the same. They are better than the Republicans by far, but the Democrats are still not our friends. They either need to be destroyed or changed.

Since Eugene McCarthy, to the Rainbow Coalition, and then the campaigns of Kuccinch and then Bernie working inside has not worked. Of course, neither has working outside.