Hello newsmega heads, I have a question. Has the USA declined in absolute power since the 90s, or just in relative power? Is it's ability to wage war, maintain alliance and influence other countries less than what it used to be, or does it just face more resistance?

SeventyTwoTrillion trying to make the news mega beat the trans mega this week by turning the news mega into the trans mega

Weber's work, thus, encouraged social scientists to talk about class divisions in non-antagonistic ways. Social class was analyzed along a continuum - upper class, middle class, and lower class - without any notion of exploitation or conflict among these groups.

God this pisses me off so much. Its been a while since I've studied Weber, so I don't remember if this is an accurate representation of his views, but this notion just fucking sucks.

Basically, she presents class as something that is not real. Class, when reduced to "upper, middle and lower" under capitalism, is an entirely aesthetic definition. Under feudalism, upper, middle and lower were real classes, wherein the upper class were those who owned land, the main form of wealth and representation of production, the middle class neither owned nor worked the land, but were free, and often educated and literate (guilds men, bureaucrats etc) and the lower class, who worked the land and were not free (peasants, slaves, serfs). This is a real distinction defined by the relationship of people to ownership of land.

But under capitalism, these terms are completely meaningless in terms of telling us what someone does for a living. A capitalist and a famous athlete, for example, are both upper class, despite one working for their wages and the other exploiting the labour of others. A doctor might be middle class, but they might also be upper class depending on how rich they are. A lot of people won't even say the words "lower class" or "poor", instead saying "working class", completely bastardizing the term as an innuendo for poor, because they feel uncomfortable acknowledging that there are poor people.

So what makes one upper, middle, or lower class under capitalism? Whatever you think. Most people want to think they're middle class, especially those who make significantly more than the average person (ie, people who make 100,000+ a year but are embarrassed to call themselves rich). Being middle class is about taking two vacations a year abroad, or having a laundry room, or having two cars and 2.2 children, or eating a fancy meal twice a month. Feeling middle class is being middle class. Being lower class is living in a "working class area", not being able to afford a good house, struggling to pay bills. More material than middle class, but still nothing of value. Being upper class is anything between a proletarian making 80,000 dollars a a year in their tech job, and Elon Musk. The divisions are undefined and ever changing - the difference in upper, middle and lower class is only ever a cultural attitude.

So when Bodie says that Weber encouraged social scientists to examine society on a basis of upper, middle and lower class, you should disregard the word "scientist" from their job title, because there is nothing scientific about this approach. They analyse vibes and prestige aesthetic, which can never be proven or disproven, therefore it is impossible to say that they are definitively wrong. Nothing about the upper-middle-lower class model is based in material, provable, measurable reality, which is the realm where science tends to take place.

This is not a social science at all; it is pure idealism

Who fell off harder, Zizek or Chomsky?

Parenti stays winning, of course.

I think a lot of people who are saying this are radlibs who balk at socialism or anarchism or anything actually real that opposes capitalism. A lot of people call themselves "anticapitalist" when in reality they are social democrats. There's also a lot of "anticapitalist" media that doesn't actually portray any solution or any other system as being good. Like, its very easy to think of a lot of pop-culture that criticises or satirises capitalism from the past couple years - Parasite, Squid Games, Fallout etc - but their conclusion is usually just "this world sucks." They never say "this world sucks and a better world is possible".

But even so, its definitely a good sign. People are moving towards anticapitalism, and the next step is for them to want revolution.

Oh awesome! They finally made an app for guys who join the DSA to pick up girls

Can anyone else just not do the 9-5? I hate working in the morning (or doing anything in the morning) and also hate capitalism

"I have to support the guy doing the current genocide in case the other guy does a worse genocide."

For anyone who missed it: last night there were riots in the city centre of Dublin following the stabbing of children outside of a school during the day. The far right assumed that the attacker was an immigrant and began burning buses, trams, police cars and destroying and looting shops. From what I could tell, it was loosely organised and was mostly oppurtunists and fascists looking for an opportunity to attack people. Supposedly the attacker was an immigrant, but had been made an Irish citizen 20 years ago. He was subdued by a Brazilian immigrant. Police were very slow to respond to the rioters, despite them always being organised and showing force whenever a left wing gathering is happening. Group chats were leaked (the veracity of them is unclear), with one particular group chat called "kill all immigrants", and a voice message sent by the owner of the group chat telling people to go out on the streets and kill any immigrants they see.

Supposedly no one was seriously injured during the riots. This shows the serious threat of the far right in Ireland which, while previously extremely small, has been growing rapidly over the past five years. The neoliberal parties in power, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have done nothing to oppose the growth of these fascists, and instead handed them a silver platter to base their anti-immigrant platform on, that being the housing crisis in Ireland. Fascists have grown more popular mainly due to their insistence that the housing shortage is because of immigrant invasions, white replacement etc, instead of pointing their fingers at the landlords and investors who hoard homes.

On a personal note, its been a kick in the backside for me to get back into organising. My mental health has been atrocious lately so I've been inactive in my org, but clearly no one has the luxury to take breaks anymore.

Made the mistake of looking at a reddit thread about Palestine

Of course they are using Palestinian attacks on Isreali citizens as a reason to call for the full extermination of Palestinians. The most vile, white supremacist shit you can imagine, calling them savages and barbarians and and wishing for their genocide. Of course while Israel has been dispossessing, massacring and performing ethnic cleansing for the past 70 years, that's just something to shrug their shoulders about

Also context for any shitlibs who are crying over this (not that it should matter) - that thread was showing how popular outright nazism and white supremacy are on Reddit. Literally whiteys calling for concentration camps.