duderium

joined 5 years ago
[–] duderium@hexbear.net 26 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

California has one of the best state flags IMO. I wish we could keep the bear and the hammer and sickle somehow.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 13 points 4 weeks ago

Has Olympus fallen?

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I did recently hear a Trump voter just being perplexed by the idea of tariffs, and he was seemingly aware that they had not helped lower the price of anything.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 35 points 4 weeks ago

The police are feeling emboldened by Trump and acting even shittier than usual, people are getting more pissed off at them than usual, so it’s definitely possible that the nothing ever happens crew could soon be in shambles.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 40 points 1 month ago

I’ve been meaning to make a thread about an IRL vibe shift. I go jogging a few times a week and I live in an area that’s really touristy in the summer. I usually say “free palestine” to people as I pass them. 99% of the time, people just ignore me. I’ve said this to hundreds of people. This is a rich white liberal area and you need some money to vacation here. Only one person has ever answered me positively, and she seemed to be an Indian college student. This was months ago. But a few days ago I went jogging, and tourists were here for the first time this summer. I said free palestine as I passed them on my jog. And two of them agreed with me. Two! On the first day! Two white people! So I have to wonder if some sort of vibe shift is taking place. A majority of Americans disapproves of isntreal for the first time. Are the libs just pretending to be socialists when they’re out of power (and will they revert to “everything good is impossible” mode once they get back into the White House?) or is this a permanent change? It happened again yesterday. Not many people were out, but I said free palestine to two white boomers, and one ignored me while the other agreed with me! What is happening?

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 13 points 1 month ago

Don’t you know that the average voter is chomping at the bit to send their kids to die in an invasion of Iran?

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

American jew here, I don’t care who says “free the hostages,” they all deserve to be treated the way the Palestinians in Gaza are treated.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 14 points 1 month ago

The last time I used chatgpt (years ago) I asked it to imitate my writing and it just basically copied my sentences and used a thesaurus for a few words to cover its tracks, so you might not be far off here.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 27 points 1 month ago

I was a teenager during the W. years and I just remember it as the bleakest time. Not the best time in my life and just terrible politically. Very similar to the Biden years (W. and Biden are almost the same guy in so many ways), except imagine that no one is fighting back (except some pretty desperate people in Iraq and Afghanistan I guess) and all you know about Marxism comes from the cow poster on the wall of the English teacher's classroom. Don't get me wrong, things are still very bad now...but back then, they were possibly worse.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago

Welcome back, JFK.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Communists: “we have to radicalize people.”

ICE: “hold my beer.”

 

Ninja poopers / boss makes a dollar / bottom text

 

The world has "fallen" to communism. The last liberals and fascists on Earth flee to Puerto Rico (sorry) and basically turn it into another Taiwan for a few months or years. The ruling class there maintains that it has suffered only temporary setbacks at worst and that victory is at hand. And besides, if you like communism so much, why don't you move to [the rest of the world]? And they aren't even real communists there anyway because they have not instantaneously transformed the planet into paradise. They're just befogging the masses, who are too stupid to understand that the best days of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, and patriarchy lie ahead!

I'm just thinking about this because of the Yankee cope I'm seeing all over the place. Ukraine just needs more weapons and European soldiers, then it's bound to prevail against Russia, which is collapsing anyway. China is a heartbeat from balkanizing. Haiti is just run by a bunch of cannibal criminal gangs. Palestine can't possibly win. Etc.

 

Dude took off his shoes and then put them back on again twenty times before walking into his own home. When I was a kid I thought his show was fucking boring. I think libs are just pretending to love him because he was a civility republican. CMV.

PS: what the fuck is the deal with Lamb Chop’s Play-Along?

 

So I felt like I was following the genocide in Gaza pretty closely but apparently these images are at least a few days if not more than a week old. I found them on tiktok as well as a telegram channel called Gaza Now in English. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was looking at, but once I found this poor kid’s name I saw that his death had already been covered by establishment media. You can find these images and articles by googling his name (Yazan al-Kafarnev) and honor him by doing whatever you can to stop the genocide. I’m a parent and have trouble writing this but we failed this kid, our protests failed to save him.

 

I used to think that people focusing so much ire on boomers was anti-Marxist because the main contradiction in American society is class (settler / indigenous, bourgeois / proletarian) but I’ve started to wonder if this profound and really ubiquitous age-consciousness (ageism) is actually just a step toward class consciousness? Like I’m guessing most people who hate boomers don’t really have a problem with homeless boomers?

I’m thinking also of how women in South Korea are refusing to get married or have kids and how this will basically destroy South Korea (albeit slowly) if trends continue. Women in South Korea are objectively correct in identifying men as their oppressors, but is this awareness of the patriarchy a step toward class consciousness and revolutionary thought or is it a dead end? I guess it depends on the person as well as circumstances.

It still seems like, regardless of how hard the bourgeoisie pushes the idea that only individuals exist and anyone can rise to the top if they just work hard and smart enough, large numbers of people are possibly developing nascent class consciousness, which can lead toward an understanding of historical materialism and scientific socialism. This is basically an extended “is it gonna be barbarism or socialism?” meme but I just thought I’d post it here to see what people thought.

 

I’ve spent years arguing with people online and really have nothing to show for it aside from my own education and amusement. I was radicalized by discovering r/chapotraphouse back in 2018 I think. Nobody argued with me there, I just lurked, loved the memes, thought it was the funniest place online, then started reading theory because so many people there talked about it. Even though liberals are obviously ignorant about communism, their ignorance is willful: they never thank us for educating them, they always get angry and double-down. (In real life, it’s much easier to embarrass them and get them to shut up.) Still, I admit that it’s possible to change someone’s mind in an online debate, I just haven’t seen it happen when it comes to communism (libs on r/changemyview can change their minds about lib shit). Have you ever seen a lib admit that they were wrong about communism?

 

“You must be fun at parties.” Uh why would I want to party with Nazis?

“So edgy.” If I cared what liberals thought, I wouldn’t be a communist.

“You’re just a larper.” Larp it till you make it, am I right? Also, what have larpers ever done to you?

“Nazism and communism are the same.” Yes, Nazism is when you want to destroy Nazism forever rather than fund it the way you do.

 

We know they like to stick flags on everything. We've maybe all seen the Kelly cartoon where some guy complains that their neighbors only put up their flags for the fourth of July. But do they really notice if you don't have a flag on your house or your car? Also, what's the deal with reactionaries randomly removing their flags? A guy I know whose father or grandfather was probably in the klan took his flag down a month or two ago and I have no idea why. "Hunter Biden has tarnished our glorious nation's reputation" or something is probably the reason. I have another neighbor whose shitty wooden flagpole has lacked a flag since Biden won the election.

I've heard they put Blue Lives Matter stickers on their cars to get the police to leave them alone. But if you put a gun sticker on your car, will the police actually leave you alone, or think twice about pulling you over, or just blow you away because you were driving 5 MPH over the speed limit?

Bonus: I have a neighbor who has been flying a full-sized Ukrainian flag upside-down since February 2022.

I also once saw someone with a tiny house like sort of tucked behind everyone else's, but he managed to put a flagpole in his yard and get like, an American flag, an Israeli flag, and a Blue Lives Matter flag all on that pole. Very impressive brainworms

 

Yesterday I made the mistake of watching random comedians on youtube. One guy I saw had an audience of thousands of people in Australia, and he told nothing except painfully racist anti-China jokes. (Yes, it might have been the algorithm being like: "You like China? Well, howabout a comedian advocating genocide on China?") Everyone on hexbear knows that this is typical for comedians because the audiences at comedy shows tend to be drunk bourgeois scum, etc., etc.

But it's not just comedy. How many movies have you seen or books have you read where any of the characters, at any point, says something incredibly basic like: "capitalism bad, communism good." I'm not even sure Soviet or Chinese movies go that far (with the notable exception of Eisenstein's films...which were made before 1945). Plenty of works of art might imply that there is something corrupt about the military, police, or the powers-that-be, but they will never say that the system is the problem and that a better system exists. One very rare exception I can think of is The Battle of Algiers.

Also think about the dogshit novels Americans have to read in school: Animal Farm or To Kill A Mockingbird. The moral of both stories is basically: "Opposing the system is futile. Accept the system." Nabokov is hailed as the greatest novelist of the latter half of the 20th century, but he's basically a highbrow version of Ayn Rand, and repeatedly condemns communism by name in his books. We also know that the CIA had (and has) its fingers in every pie, and that the PMC also knows that it's not allowed to "get political," i.e., provide context. Even when it comes to classical Russian literature, Dostoevsky is probably the most popular in the USA, and the guy is a reactionary Christian monarchist who recycles the openings to his novels and is apparently nowhere near as popular in Russia.

I've just also been thinking about the greatest works of Statesian literature, how they are few and far between, how they were all written before 1945, and how they rarely were recognized for their greatness until long after their authors were dead. Steinbeck is one exception. The Grapes of Wrath is great (it was also written before 1945), but doesn't advocate for a better system. Poe and Melville are as good as the best writers from any other country, and Melville specifically inveighs against colonialism in his earlier novels, but both of these dudes were dead before they were recognized as titans. (Melville enjoyed some early success but then faded into obscurity long before he finished Moby Dick.) Are any post-1945 Statesian writers as good as Poe or Melville? Maybe just Octavia Butler, who was dead before she was a household name AFAIK. She advocates for communism in Parable of the Sower, but has to hide it behind mystical language ("God is change"). Sorry To Bother You is one possible cinematic exception, but it never goes beyond saying that the system sucks.

I'm wrapping up a trilogy of novels at the moment, and they are blatantly pro-communist, and I'm just preparing myself for the fact that they are almost certainly not going to be a success, not just because of the numbers involved (millions of books published every year), but because of the passionate anti-communism in western countries. These books don't have people saying "capitalism bad, communism good." But they do have workers and peasants forming Soviets (even though they aren't called Soviets), and I know from experience that even if as a writer you never turn to the camera and say "capitalism bad, communism good," readers will still pick up on the fact that something is wrong, from a capitalist perspective—that workers aren't capable of doing anything on our own, we need guidance from our enlightened masters, "human nature" is futile to oppose. I think there's just a dialectical materialist style of writing that liberals and fascists pick up on without necessarily knowing that they're picking up on it (because they spend their entire lives asleep).

Also I thought about this because I just saw and liked Trumbo, even though I was like: the blacklist never ended lol, where is my biopic about Paul Robeson, a Black colossus who never backed down from praising Stalin? Even if your job is dog shit picker upper (which I have done), you’ll lose that job if you praise Stalin.

And yes, this is a Arby's.

 

“In September [of 2023], Guyana’s government said it would award concessions for the exploration of new oil blocks by the end of the year, infuriating Maduro, whose government has said some of those blocks are in waters that have not been delimited or belong to Venezuela.”

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/exxon-venezuela-guyana-threats-18538010.php

CIApedia:

In September 2020, in a joint statement with the United States secretary of state Mike Pompeo (cringe), [Guyanese president] Ali said the two countries would begin joint maritime patrols aimed at drug interdiction near Guyana's disputed border with crisis-stricken Venezuela.[26] The agreement came as U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp, as part of a consortium with Hess Corp, ramped up crude output from Guyana's massive offshore Stabroek block, a large portion of which is in waters claimed by Venezuela.[26] Pompeo and Ali added that "greater security, greater capacity to understand your border space, what's happening inside your Exclusive Economic Zone - those are all things that give Guyana sovereignty."[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irfaan_Ali#Foreign_policy

“Wait, you mean every country the US corporate media dislikes isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just displeasing the US ruling class?” astronaut-2

In four days we could be seeing an anti-imperialist action every eight hours until they are coming every four minutes.

1
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by duderium@hexbear.net to c/electoralism@hexbear.net
 

🤡 yea

Seriously wtf, amerikkka now has three different flavors of fascist to choose from for president.

 

"The Keys to the White House is a checklist of thirteen true/false statements that pertain to the circumstances surrounding a presidential election. When five or fewer of the following statements are false, the incumbent party candidate is predicted to win the election. When six or more are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose." (The keys correctly predicted that Trump would lose in 2020.)

Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (false)

No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. (RFK Jr. currently polling at 15% in the primary so probably true)

Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. (true)

No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. (true, although if West runs all the way to election day and earns five percent of the vote, this will be false (Democrats will also completely lose their fucking shit if this happens and Biden loses))

Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (true...for now)

Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. (false I think?)

Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (false)

No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (true I guess, but this could change rapidly)

No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. hunter

No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (Afghanistan + Ukraine so false)

Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (false)

Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (false for sleepy joe)

Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (false, Trump is the most charismatic Republican since Reagan)

I count eight falses. It's not lookin' good for joe. One of those falses is maybe debatable but the others probably aren't going to change from here to election day. We could have Trump winning the presidency from a prison cell and pardoning himself lol.

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