John

Yes. I miss lifting/fitness content

I’m very happy with my Reolink cameras and home NVR to store all the data.

I responded in good faith. And you reply with this. Goodbye.

lol, yes “billionaires love me”, as I’m actively fighting against them and organizing my community and the working class against them. Yep. You got my number. I find it fascinating that Libs would rather fight against Socialists like me than enact real change in the world…

EDIT: throwing in some reading:

ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 5: EVERYBODY HATED SOCIALISM

• RESOURCE 1: Homesick for a Dictatorship
• RESOURCE 2: 60% of Russians Want Communism Back
• RESOURCE 3: Former Soviet Countries See More Harm from Breakup
• RESOURCE 4: Russians say Aug 1991 events are tragedy, not triumph of democracy
• RESOURCE 5: Struggling Romanians Yearn for Communism
• RESOURCE 6: Tajikistan Pines for Old Soviet Union Strength
• RESOURCE 7: Referendum on the Preservation of the USSR
• RESOURCE 8: Central Asia in Nostalgia for the Soviet Period
• RESOURCE 9: Freest Under Czech Communism!
• RESOURCE 10: Seven Myths about the USSR by Stephen Gowans

ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTH NUMBER 6: LIFE UNDER SOCIALISM WAS TERRIBLE

• RESOURCE 1: An experiment in living socialism: Bulgaria then and now by F.S.
• RESOURCE 2: Growing Up Under Communism Was The Happiest Time Of My Life by Zsuzsanna Clark

You want me to write a dissertation on why Capitalism doesn’t provide reasonable prices, cannot provide “actual robust competition”, and cannot stop a few big monopolies?. Sorry, I’m not going to. Lenin was writing about this stuff 100 years ago.. The current state of Capitalism, that is Capitalism. That’s how it functions. There isn’t some idyllic form of Capitalism that we can work towards … that has never existed ever.

People like to point to the 1950s and 1960s postwar US and the Nordics as examples of “how Capitalism should function”. Postwar US was in a red scare, Communism spreading across Europe, fear of uprisings at home, and that fear forced progressive concessions. The one era of capitalism people romanticize is that one, and it was shaped by fear of Communism plus massive grassroots working-class movements.

Same thing in the Nordics. What is right next door? The Soviet Union, with a successful revolution that brought millions out of abject poverty and brought USSR from a feudal backwater to modern superpower within decades. The fear of that spreading caused Nordics and elsewhere to give more concessions to the working class. The form of Capitalism itself hasn’t changed one single bit. There’s still wars, worker exploitation, imperialism, global extraction and exploitation of the 3rd world (global south), etc.

You seem a bit angry. Maybe take a break from technology today.

That is correct. It’s still Capitalism with all of the gross exploitation, but the people get a bigger piece of the pie.

Capitalism provides none of that

DSA uses the Dem ballot line because there’s virtually no path to victory as a 3rd party. That doesn’t make them Democrats.

Dems and Reps are virtually the same. They both serve capital and corporate interests. The same billionaires funding the Reps also fund the Dems. Nothing has materially improved in decades. In fact, the complete opposite has happened: things have gotten progressively worse every year no matter if the guy in charge is blue or red. But sure, Dems are “winning” the culture war.

yes, broadly dems fight for lgbtq … when it’s beneficial to them. For most Dems, lgbtq rights are just a bargaining chip, and not embedded into the platform as it is for DSA, for example.

“Corporations are fine with exhibiting symbolically pro-queer behavior—perhaps sponsoring a gay pride festival or lobbying the Governor of North Carolina—but only when it’s marketable”

“The rights of queer people do not depend upon the whims of capital. A broad coalition of the left can fight against the advances of the religious right. We must reject organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, who are funded by and work closely with capital to preserve the capitalist status quo. In doing so, queer people must build alternative organizations that fight for our rights from the perspective of the working class. Only by combating capitalism, and continuing to build a socialism infused with queer radicalism, will queer people dismantle the oppressive structures which harm us.”

Really? You’ve been to DPRK? Surely you’d be able to refute these claims then.

Because the Capitalists and billionaires told you to?

I’m more just shouting at clouds than at you specifically. Cheers! 🥃

Could you explain what you actually want

Simply put: I don’t want billionaires controlling every single aspect of society, as they do now.

If you’d like to read more, I agree with all of this.. I also agree with all of this.

what you could see realistically happening if the fascists won?

Arguably, and I would, the fascists are already in control. Just think of the tech enshittification at the hands of technofascists. Think of the endless wars; how much say in those wars do you truly believe you have? Think of the military budget outspending every single other country combined. We are the most powerful and richest country in the history of this planet … and 50% of americans can’t afford a 1 bedroom apartment. Americans can’t afford groceries. Real wages have been stuck in the 1970s. We are bankrupting ourselves with medical and student debt. Nobody can afford a house. Kids still in cages, guantanamo bay still operating, ICE record funding every year,

How much say do you have at your job? Unions are being squashed and suppressed. Have you attended a pro-gaza rally lately? How did the police treat you?

…I want a better world in which the 99% actually have a say, actually have a better life, and we don’t have 1% of people hoarding all the power and wealth of the world. This IS possible.

JFK passed the equal pay act. LBJ passed the civil rights act.

You’re skipping why those passed when they did. Postwar US was in a red scare, Communism spreading across Europe, fear of uprisings at home, and that fear forced progressive concessions. The one era of capitalism people romanticize is that one, and it was shaped by fear of Communism plus massive grassroots working-class movements. JFK and LBJ didn’t pass those laws out of kindness. Cities were burning, people were organizing at rates this country had never seen, demanding better material conditions.

Clinton passed the violence against women act

This law was very limited and a classic neolib policy. It did not, in fact, dismantle any systems of oppression. It was another concession to the feminist “radicals” of the era.

In Texas, my grandmother wasn’t able to have her own bank account without my grandfather signing a permission note until John Connally, a Democrat, passed the Marital Property Act of 1967. My mother never had that problem because a Democrat changed the conditions for women in this country.

Democrats didn’t do this though. That’s my whole point. Sure they may have signed the law, but the pressure and the framing came from socialists and activists, through fear of revolution, strikes, boycotts. Yours is a standard liberal talking point, and it whitewashes history and erases the struggle that was actually fought for.

Do I want a true left to rise in the United States? Yes. Do I think the Democrats have any hope of fixing capitalism? No. BUT, this victory is sweet, and I’ll be raising a glass to the Democrats today anyway.

On this we agree. Victory was sweet yesterday. I’m mostly celebrating. But we need to continue to organize and fight for what we want. Capitalists and billionaire oligarchs will not just give us what we want out of the kindness of their hearts. That’s simply not how any of this works. Don’t become a “If Harris won we’d be at brunch” kind of person.

“tankie” is pejorative term used by fascists and libs for Socialists and Communists. the people who use the term tankie unironically often denounce many or all existing Socialist states (Cuba, China, DPRK, etc) as “authoritarian”.

I repeat: You have a very warped view of what Socialists believe in.

“tankie” is pejorative term used by fascists and libs for Socialists and Communists. the people who use the term tankie unironically often denounce many or all existing Socialist states (Cuba, China, DPRK, etc) as “authoritarian”.

We have plenty of wins, built on the hard work of working class Americans door knocking, phone banking, canvassing, signature gathering, etc.

You have a very warped view of what Socialists believe in.

This is very incorrect.

As “one of those people” you are talking about, we’ve been here before. Yes, it feels awesome to get such a decisive victory over the republicans. I’ve seen this before. Over and over again. The pendulum has swung back to the left. But, just because we voted in a bunch of Dems, hell even a bunch of Socialists, that doesn’t mean they will, or even can, fix the most broken parts of this system. Democrats have enabled and even facilitated some of the worst aspects of what we’re seeing right now from Trump and Republicans. I mean, you yourself even admit it: “I don’t have a lot of faith in democrats to actually get the shit done that they need to”.

The difference is, we know what needs to be done. A really famous guy wrote about it over a 100 years ago. Having Blue majority didn’t improve anybody’s material conditions in the past. Why would it now? Yes, they’re “less bad”, but Dems are still pretty bad. What makes this time different?

I love the outcome of the election. It was a bloodbath. But I’m not deluding myself that wholesale change will ever come from national electeds. Defeatist? Maybe. I’m just tempering my expectations, even from DSA endorsed winners.

this post sums it up best imo. Prove me wrong. Prove all of us MLs and “tAnKiEs” wrong. Prove to us that voting can and does work, that we can materially improve people’s situations without protest.