Saying Americans are too comfortable is just reinforcing US propaganda that the USA is this free capitalist paradise where food and luxury rains from the sky. It ignores the psychological war constantly being waged against the working class in the heart of the empire. Yes they have food, but they're malnourished because it's made of cheap plastic slop. Yes they have circuses but even cavemen had entertainment, that's not a luxury. I can't believe I have to tell leftists that 'but you have iPhone' isn't a sign your life is easy. Especially because half of these 'luxuries' are just tools that:
- You can't take part in society without.
- Everyone fucking hates them but you're damned if you do, damned if you don't (good luck getting a job and feeding yourself without a phone, car and social capital of being a good consumer).
Ask the people working three jobs just to afford rent if they're comfortable.
Ask the people living in tent cities in they're comfortable.
Ask the young people grimly joking that they're going to die before they retire if they're comfortable.
Ask the people on the kill line who are one medical bill away from being on the street if they're comfortable.
Are there countries where life is harder? Yes, but playing the suffering Olympics ignores the real material conditions that the US (and it's vassals) face and we would be stupid to ignore it. Ignoring mental anguish and the exsaution of being human cattle just because they aren't being physically bombed is downplaying the severity of psychological violence. Telling the single mother burnt out working multiple dead end jobs worried if her kids are going to ever have a home or even a habitable planet that she's too comfortable is fucked and isn't going to create the vanguard.
Nearly every single person I talk to (excluding the owning class) is running on empty. Everyone is sick. Everyone is depressed. Everyone is hopeless. They have seen countless protests amount to nothing. They have seen our rulers commit every single unspeakable crime and go unpunished. They've watched the surveillance state grow and record their every move. They know, they fucking know. But their hope has died. The lack of riots over the Epstein files isn't the inaction of someone who has it too good to care, it's the inaction of a beaten spouse who knows their place.
They're doing nothing because their spirits are broken, not because they're too well fed. From their perspective they're too busy making sure they have the energy to put food on the table to start a revolution.
My point is that downplaying the struggles of the US working class is ignorant, reactionary, and ignores material conditions and therefore is unhelpful in mobilising anyone. I think this rhetoric needs to change if we are to be effective.
Good post. I just don’t see how we get anywhere by giving anyone outside of the ruling/owning-class immutable and intrinsic morality. People can be evil of course but I think the average person is much more of a dumb sad little baby than most people on this site would lead you to believe. I don’t know how we’d organize a revolution, let alone run functional socialism without extending some trust and grace to our neighbors who have just done the only thing they’ve ever known and have been forced a steady diet of propaganda their entire life.
As mentally exhausting as it is we do maintain a bit of privilege over these masses be it from education, trauma, tism, what have you, we’ve seen the truth about our world and believed it.
babies are curious