It can still be close but that is close between the people that vote. More than half of all Americans do not vote consistently. We don’t have mandatory elections, so if half the country doesn’t vote and its close between the two candidates, then its close between two quarters of the population, not half. And it seems maybe a little pedantic, but those half of people who don’t vote are either disenfranchised or implicitly choosing neither candidate. Half the voting population is not half the population; those non voters are actual people. Maybe if they were treated as an important part of the electorate, they would vote. Maybe they wouldn’t vote for a republican or a democrat, in which case it is also in the dems best interest to disenfranchise voters, although that certainly isn’t the conventional wisdom, nor is it the mission of the millions of volunteers who work to sign people up to vote on important issues.

Trump never won the popular vote and he’s more unpopular now than he’s ever been. Never has half of this country voted for him, not even close, and it isn’t true now either

Violence and nonviolence, in the face of violent, intolerant ideologies such as Nazism, or even colonoalism, is not as clear cut as it gets made out to be. I think primary arguments for violence are often misunderstood and taken out of context.

I don’t think it’s a moral question, as moral reasoning seems to lead to either 1. Violence is always wrong or 2. Violence is a moral imperative against certain enemies, for to do nothing is to permit and assent to the violence that they inflict. Neither of these absolutes are adequate within actual consequences, although both views definitely have to their credit historical circumstances where these strategies were arguably successful and progressive.

However i think there are important lessons on violence and nonviolence that can be learned from various historic examples:

1. Individual violence against individuals does not advance progressive goals. Individual violence merely strengthens the status quo against that violence, and can be used to justify mass violence of the state or militias against masses of people, usually a targeted minority.

2. Nonviolence tactics can be effective against state or military repression, but state and military roles in genocidal campaigns, or participation in extrajudicial violence shows that otherizing is effective at dehumanizing, and in order to be effective must consciously and effectively humanize the nonviolent activists to the oppressing forces in order to introduce contradictions into their justifications and create splits within the ruling classes of the oppressing powers. This is a long term strategy so you have to make sure that whoever you are nonviolent resisting isn’t gonna just kill everyone, which they will try to do, even if it is against their interests to do so.

3. Violence may be immediately necessary to protect human life, in the short term or in the long term. The fact is violent repression creates the conditions for violent resistance escalation of violence sharpens the contradictions already present in the status quo and creates splits among the various classes in an oppressor/oppressed dialectic. In this way violent resistance can galvanize both violent and nonviolent forms of resistance for your side, but it also does so for the other side. Therefore violence should be avoided if possible, but if violence is perceived as defensive or necessary it can have progressive or even revolutionary consequences on consciousness and material conditions.

So the conditions that introduce struggle and violence are social contradictions, not necessarily a conscious choice by individuals intending to do violence, although sometimes it is.

So for my part, as an American with that perspective, I’ve become fond of the concept of “armed nonviolent defense.” An example of this is the Deacons of Defense and Justice that proliferated in the south during desegregation. Groups of black men took up arms to defend their communities from Klan violence, and provided security for MLK, CORE; as well as forcing the Klan underground in the south for a generation or two. So organized citizens defending their communities and working together with political groups and revolutionaries to defend against violent reaction without the progressive political movement taking it upon itself to be a violent one.

This is an immense and complex topic and the rightness or wrongness of it is contingent on the historical conditions that are present. So understanding “correct” usages of violence and non violence doesn’t extend from our moral obligations, but our obligations to the real world, each other and the future of our movements.

When you absolutely, positively know nothing about Marx, his ideas, or what he actually said. I will never understand why Marx’s critics refuse to engage with his ideas. 90% of criticisms against Marx can be shown to be directly addressed in the opening paragraphs of his most famous works, proving comments like these to be just repeated dogma by people so confident that others haven’t read him that they feel like they can get away with repeating said dogma, and the “right people” like capitalist toadies such as bosses and conservative academics will nod their approval.

Don’t pretend you’ve done any “intellectual exercise” wrt Marx. Those of us who have read him and bothered to try to understand him can see through your sad “call and respond” approach to political education. Instead of making noises you think will win you fake internet points, educate yourself.

What does this mean though?

Videodrome. Watched it few years ago and started strongly recalling watching certain scenes. 20 minutes in I was like oh wow I’ve seen this before, but by the time James woods was doing bdsm with a debbie harry television, I was like “who let me watch this?”

It explains a lot, honestly

YouTube can make sure not to target certain people with certain content but also they have no control over it sending me tons of far right wing stochastic terror influencers like Ben Shapiro and matt walsh

Does anyone else hear that? Its the worlds smallest AI violin playing the saddest song composed by an AI

Looking forward to this dystopian technology being pushed out to all retailers and then never working so I still have to swipe my card anyway

Who are they in debt to? Mostly their own state-controlled Industries. So when China is 1 trillion in debt to their productive capabilities they are failing, but when the US is 35 trillion in debt to international finance capital (via the federal reserve) that’s a healthy economy.

No you see China’s economy has to be failing, if it isn’t then it would be a good market to find businesses to invest in. If a large enough segment of the small capitalists – for whom the great superstructure of American cultural reproduction is geared toward – began investing heavily in Chinese industry and saw large enough roi, they would structurally oppose anti-Chinese domestic policy. Not to mention other economic consequences like creating a more robust and durable class of small capitalists. If small capitalists felt greater economic security as a result of Chinese investment, it would damage not only the foreign policy aims (war) of a large segment of the ruling class who wants to destroy Chinese (lets call it) political republicanism and raid it for its resources and labor a la early 90s Russia; it would also threaten ideological temperament of small capitalists who inform aspiring small capitalists and legions of lumpen workers, who always feel the pressure of capitalism’s natural tendency to crush their classes during economic downturns. If these layers don’t feel threatened by China, if the west can’t successfully blame them for problems we created, then those layers whose exploitation is so crucial to the various profitability schemes of the ruling class might be more amenable to social democracy or maybe even socialism.

The hate that westerners feel toward China is part fear that we will lose our social status, and part hatred of the conditions that allow Chinese markets to operate successfully and independently of our ruling class. Therefore, the Chinese economy must collapse, any day now…

Ideology is a hell of a drug

My friend is a medical librarian and stumbled across two full real skeletons being thrown away, she took their skulls. So yeah ethically sourced and she actually had a website where you could order different human bones left over from cadavers. So they’re not that hard to source, a lot of people donate their body to science, which is good.