Pathfinder

I spend so much time thinking about this. I don’t feel I have much to add, so many good answers. But something I’ve been thinking about recently… I know it’s cliche to quote Sun Tzu and this advice does seem trite, but I think it’s also deep:

Do not do what your opponent wants you to do.

What is it that the bourgeoisie do not want us to do? I’m trying to answer that myself. I try to think of our world like a board game, and I’m the capitalist player. What don’t I want those commies to be do doing? Well I wouldn’t be afraid of armed insurrection. But I would be afraid of a slowly building and growing class consciousness. So I think developing that is what we should be doing with our time. I know that’s a vague answer, but again I think the comrades in this thread have already filled in the details well.

This comrade gets it.

IIRC the precise language (translated into English) that China uses to describe itself is “a mixed transitional economy governed by the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and I think that works pretty well.

Bündis Sahra Wagenknecht

Wait a minute, she just named a whole ass political party after herself? Like Bernie Sanders creating a “The Bernie Sanders Party” political party? Is this like a normal thing for Germans?

I was raised in (and was devout about until age 27 or so) white evangelical Christianity in the US. From that, I struggled to view “religion” in a broad sense other than through that lens. I held on to a lot of anger and in some ways was an edgy internet atheist. Marxism helped me understand base and superstructure. It helped me understand how the religion I was raised in grew out of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and as a way to maintain the meager privileges that the bourgeoisie grant upon the reactionary, white working class. In other words, the specific material and historical circumstances of the time and place I lived, driven by a specific mode of production. And it was those things that I was really angry at (well, for the most part. Beliefs around eternal torment still bother me to this day). Also seeing how faith and religion has brought encouragement and hope to the people of Gaza also helped me approach the concept of religion with nuance.

Ultimately religion can be a force for good or bad, it just depends on the material elements that underlie it in a specific context.

I think this is like a much worse dot com crash than it is a GFC. In 2008, the entire banking system was threatened, which is a horse of a different color.

And to play devils advocate for a bit… it’s not out of the question that the Buffet Indicator would rise over time as US corporations become more multi-national over time (higher earnings overseas lead to higher valuations but don’t necessarily contribute to higher national GDP). That said it’s WAY beyond that.

As a US-based commie, I think we have such a long row to hoe in terms of developing class consciousness here. Decades of propaganda plus comfortable living conditions based on exploitation of people and the environment make even suggesting a socialist alternative to people makes them look at you like you have a horn growing out of your head. Hasan does good work in normalizing these ideas among young people, thus making positive contributions to developing class consciousness. Someone who isn’t as “pipeline-friendly” but more ideologically pure probably wouldn’t have a fraction of the viewers Hasan has.

Also, while I think the “crisis of masculinity” in young men is overblown, the reality is that the right wing has an entire ecosystem of people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson who can sell young men on a false idea of a very unhealthy masculinity, and it’s been incredibly effective at pushing them to reactionary politics. Hasan is a great antidote to that as I think he (and others - I think Mamdani embodies this as well) provides a more positive version of masculinity that in itself I see pushing men leftward.

The article doesn’t mention it, so to clarify: Jin Mingri was arrested because if you want to accept funds from the US as a church, you need to register and disclose sources - a totally reasonable requirement. The Chinese government gave Zion Church seven years to do this, they refused, so they are just now facing consequences.

Also, Jin Mingri’s daughter (and media advocate) in the US studied “human rights” at a university in… Tel Aviv.

Sometimes the ops are just that obvious.

Literally just US dollars. They’re not “buying” anything with it. It’s not being used to plug a budgetary deficit (not needed for that anyway). It’s just a load of USD to be used to prop up the exchange rate, which would otherwise have the peso depreciate against the USD so prices for Argentinians on imported goods would rise significantly (i.e. more inflation). So this is just a $20B “gift” so inflation in Argentina doesn’t spike up before the election and Milei doesn’t lose more than he already will. Russia spends $200 million on “election interference” in 2016 through Facebook posts. The US spends $20B to actually interfere in Argentina’s election.

It’s the same way IMF loans work, only those have to be paid back. Poor country gets a loan from the IMF to prop up their FX rate. The rate eventually collapses anyway. Now the poor country has to pay back the loan but doesn’t have any increased means to pay it.

The IMF has been the main tool in US imperialism (arguably even more than the military) for decades now.

Thank you for sharing this, I have no doubt you are correct. Admittedly though, as someone who is not technically inclined I don’t quite know what to do with this information. Should I limit the apps on my phone to only what is essential? Use iOS with ADP and Lockdown Mode? Go with GrapheneOS? Just chuck out my phone entirely?

I moved out at 22 (went away for college at 18) and I do sort of regret it. I get on great with my parents despite some of their religious and political ideas. I could lived with them for years and been pretty happy. But I moved out because that was just what you did (this was the mid 00s).

Americans - even Americans like Bernie - have an incredibly shallow understanding of history. They will recall a few key words and ideas from their history classes, but probably even more just from the environment around us, which is skewed towards reproducing capitalism. So they understand historical subjects only at the most basic level and usually not in a way that is correct.

I don’t think historical ignorance is a huge problem in itself. The bigger problem is, despite their incredible levels of ignorance, Americans will insist their understanding of history is inviolably correct; No American will ever say “well, you sure seem to know a lot about Stalin, I don’t know anything so tell me more”. Suggest anything about Stalin outside of “authoritarian dictator who kiled millions and made everyone clap” and Americans will INSiST you are wrong and they are right, regardless of who has actually put in any work.