Gaza works best to start with in my experience. Only when people understand, that we might just not be the good guys, and are able to commit the worst crimes imaginable... Then they can put 2 +2 together and finally understand, that the exact same people, who burn toddlers alive for fun and have been lying to us about a fucking industrial scale extermination campaign of semites in a ghetto, just would never "help" Ukraine out of the kindness of their heart.
Ukraine isn't as clean cut as Gaza, the civil war hasn't really been covered at all and Putin started an illegal invasion, which tends to make people disregard most other facts as whataboutism.
Saddest thing - I didn't attempt to red pill him. I usually refuse to discuss politics with my friends, especially those who aren't politically minded. I told him, "I think it's a bad idea to discuss this. You'll end up misunderstanding me and ghosting me for no reason, I'm telling you." Of course, he believed he was too sophisticated for that to happen. You see this all the time among smug, elitist liberals with graduate degrees. They end up ghosting me, not because I'm wrong, but because they're embarrassed and at the same time know it's dangerous to espouse thoughts like mine and keep a UNI job. They drive it from their memories. Craven bullshit.
Thank you, Paul. This article speaks to the pain many of us feel about friends that don't or won't understand. My friends, when I get into it, start to get a glazed eye look, and I know the inevitable subject change is coming. For the most part, I do think it is due to the appearance of how insurmountable change for the better seem to be as you explained in your article.
I recently joined Substack to find like minded people who want to make change, people who understand the Democratic party is designed to eliminate the actual left and either force them to vote for them or remain unrepresented. Personally, I will never vote for them again.
So, how do we make this change in a country that has waged war on anti-capitalism for over a century? How do we convince people to make a leap of faith to start sometlifetimes.
What I see is a left that is so fractured that the idea of taking on the establishment seems like an impossibility unless we can get together on a much bigger scale than has been done at any time during any of our liftimes.
But eventually, we will have to accept that real democracy is impossible with a powerful, centralized governmental authority. It will always morph into a tool of the wealthy and powerful. It will always lead to tyranny. People need to believe in smaller, tightly organized, and interdependent communities that see to the needs of everyone, not the few.
Thanks! It means so much to get good feedback. It's hard to keep fighting every day. And listen, I have a lot of ideas, but we need to educate and speak to workers so that we can create solidarity across lines of race, education -- all demographic markers -- and create unity among working people. If we want respect for diversity -- racial, gender, or any kind of diversity -- we need economic democracy. First, convince people to trash this electoral system, or do something like this: Use the Super PAC laws to fund a group that can raise obscene amounts of money. Fight fire with fire. Back anti-war and pro-worker candidates, decent human beings who believe in civil liberties. If anyone goes to Congress and sells their vote, funding and endorsement are removed, and their careers are over. That's just one idea. We could even run leftists on Republican and Democratic tickets and this would solve the ballot line problem. They couldn't keep us off the ballots. Another would be doing congressional service the way we do jury duty. But first and foremost, educate. You can't save a country when Democrats are screaming at people for wearing an anti-genocide t-shirt and Republicans are telling us the Dems are socialists. The disconnect with reality is unmanageable, and it needs to be confronted. First, we need educators and writers to function as revolutionary PR forces. Shock Troops. Nothing will change if we believe that there's no problem, or that there's nothing to be done: the two most pernicious lies. We need to teach people critical literacy, all of us. It's a civic duty at this point.
Thank you for your generous answer. I apologize for taking so long to write a response. I was letting what you said marinate for a bit. I really like your ideas, and education is so very important. I don't like being called a communist by people who can't even define the word. The idea of using the establishments tactics sounds fair to me! The Dems and Republican do not play fair. Lawfare is one of their sharpest tools. Another quick question. Are there pockets deep enough to supply a superpac and the machinery of political change? There is such a long history of capital's relentless fight against anything that counters it.
I understand. I mean, I have a hard time self-identifying. I don't even like leftnotliberal, but I need a tagline. When I say "left" I mean first and foremost anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. I went through a period where my principal outlook was pretty Marxian. I've actually read Capital (and what they say about people pretending to read it is unfortunately true -- ask them what relative surplus value is and watch their eyes spin round in their heads) Marxism is still an invaluable epistemological tool for me. Perhaps the one that helps me understand the world best. But you're right. Few really understand it, especially the notion of banning private property. They think that means taking away your Kia. I gave one of my liberal friends a copy of The Prophet Armed, and he said it was boring! And these dopes claim to understand communism? My problem is that I'm like a lapsed Marxist, because I read lots of anarchist writers, and I get asked to leave at cocktail parties hosted by orthodox Marxists friends when they find this out. I'm joking a little, but the tribalism needs to end. I'll work with anyone who wants economic democracy and an end to forever war.
Indeed, the tribalism does need to end! Division enables the status quo. I also do not like to self identify. When I do, I've always identified myself as an anti-capitalist which many just label communist. I feel the socialist and communist thinking has at least one problem: they run on the same rails as capitalism. I think there needs to be a more comprehensive systemic shift from how we organize everything that encompasses all systems. An extendeavor that might be beyond what is capable in this extractionary system we were born into. That said, it does not hurt to share ideas and make strategies that just might work.
You are correct that the Demonic Party (what else to call it really?) exists to siphon off support for far-left reorganization of our government and politics, ie toward Marxist-Leninism ideology and dialectic.
Of course this ideological washing machine began with FDR opposing his many fellows in the Party who were of this leftist bent and threatened to take over the nation via voting booth. The programs FDR and later Dems put in place have evolved into today's sclerotic institutions that fail to deliver equity and justice but do pay very well for party adherents and apparatchiks.
Sry you lost a friend.
You can't redpill people about Ukraine imho.
Gaza works best to start with in my experience. Only when people understand, that we might just not be the good guys, and are able to commit the worst crimes imaginable... Then they can put 2 +2 together and finally understand, that the exact same people, who burn toddlers alive for fun and have been lying to us about a fucking industrial scale extermination campaign of semites in a ghetto, just would never "help" Ukraine out of the kindness of their heart.
Ukraine isn't as clean cut as Gaza, the civil war hasn't really been covered at all and Putin started an illegal invasion, which tends to make people disregard most other facts as whataboutism.
My 2 cents...
Saddest thing - I didn't attempt to red pill him. I usually refuse to discuss politics with my friends, especially those who aren't politically minded. I told him, "I think it's a bad idea to discuss this. You'll end up misunderstanding me and ghosting me for no reason, I'm telling you." Of course, he believed he was too sophisticated for that to happen. You see this all the time among smug, elitist liberals with graduate degrees. They end up ghosting me, not because I'm wrong, but because they're embarrassed and at the same time know it's dangerous to espouse thoughts like mine and keep a UNI job. They drive it from their memories. Craven bullshit.
Thank you, Paul. This article speaks to the pain many of us feel about friends that don't or won't understand. My friends, when I get into it, start to get a glazed eye look, and I know the inevitable subject change is coming. For the most part, I do think it is due to the appearance of how insurmountable change for the better seem to be as you explained in your article.
I recently joined Substack to find like minded people who want to make change, people who understand the Democratic party is designed to eliminate the actual left and either force them to vote for them or remain unrepresented. Personally, I will never vote for them again.
So, how do we make this change in a country that has waged war on anti-capitalism for over a century? How do we convince people to make a leap of faith to start sometlifetimes.
What I see is a left that is so fractured that the idea of taking on the establishment seems like an impossibility unless we can get together on a much bigger scale than has been done at any time during any of our liftimes.
But eventually, we will have to accept that real democracy is impossible with a powerful, centralized governmental authority. It will always morph into a tool of the wealthy and powerful. It will always lead to tyranny. People need to believe in smaller, tightly organized, and interdependent communities that see to the needs of everyone, not the few.
Thanks! It means so much to get good feedback. It's hard to keep fighting every day. And listen, I have a lot of ideas, but we need to educate and speak to workers so that we can create solidarity across lines of race, education -- all demographic markers -- and create unity among working people. If we want respect for diversity -- racial, gender, or any kind of diversity -- we need economic democracy. First, convince people to trash this electoral system, or do something like this: Use the Super PAC laws to fund a group that can raise obscene amounts of money. Fight fire with fire. Back anti-war and pro-worker candidates, decent human beings who believe in civil liberties. If anyone goes to Congress and sells their vote, funding and endorsement are removed, and their careers are over. That's just one idea. We could even run leftists on Republican and Democratic tickets and this would solve the ballot line problem. They couldn't keep us off the ballots. Another would be doing congressional service the way we do jury duty. But first and foremost, educate. You can't save a country when Democrats are screaming at people for wearing an anti-genocide t-shirt and Republicans are telling us the Dems are socialists. The disconnect with reality is unmanageable, and it needs to be confronted. First, we need educators and writers to function as revolutionary PR forces. Shock Troops. Nothing will change if we believe that there's no problem, or that there's nothing to be done: the two most pernicious lies. We need to teach people critical literacy, all of us. It's a civic duty at this point.
Thank you for your generous answer. I apologize for taking so long to write a response. I was letting what you said marinate for a bit. I really like your ideas, and education is so very important. I don't like being called a communist by people who can't even define the word. The idea of using the establishments tactics sounds fair to me! The Dems and Republican do not play fair. Lawfare is one of their sharpest tools. Another quick question. Are there pockets deep enough to supply a superpac and the machinery of political change? There is such a long history of capital's relentless fight against anything that counters it.
I understand. I mean, I have a hard time self-identifying. I don't even like leftnotliberal, but I need a tagline. When I say "left" I mean first and foremost anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. I went through a period where my principal outlook was pretty Marxian. I've actually read Capital (and what they say about people pretending to read it is unfortunately true -- ask them what relative surplus value is and watch their eyes spin round in their heads) Marxism is still an invaluable epistemological tool for me. Perhaps the one that helps me understand the world best. But you're right. Few really understand it, especially the notion of banning private property. They think that means taking away your Kia. I gave one of my liberal friends a copy of The Prophet Armed, and he said it was boring! And these dopes claim to understand communism? My problem is that I'm like a lapsed Marxist, because I read lots of anarchist writers, and I get asked to leave at cocktail parties hosted by orthodox Marxists friends when they find this out. I'm joking a little, but the tribalism needs to end. I'll work with anyone who wants economic democracy and an end to forever war.
Indeed, the tribalism does need to end! Division enables the status quo. I also do not like to self identify. When I do, I've always identified myself as an anti-capitalist which many just label communist. I feel the socialist and communist thinking has at least one problem: they run on the same rails as capitalism. I think there needs to be a more comprehensive systemic shift from how we organize everything that encompasses all systems. An extendeavor that might be beyond what is capable in this extractionary system we were born into. That said, it does not hurt to share ideas and make strategies that just might work.
You are correct that the Demonic Party (what else to call it really?) exists to siphon off support for far-left reorganization of our government and politics, ie toward Marxist-Leninism ideology and dialectic.
Of course this ideological washing machine began with FDR opposing his many fellows in the Party who were of this leftist bent and threatened to take over the nation via voting booth. The programs FDR and later Dems put in place have evolved into today's sclerotic institutions that fail to deliver equity and justice but do pay very well for party adherents and apparatchiks.