The typical American probably thinks that, outside of Hong Kong, everyone lives in extreme poverty in shacks. Or at best, in very small apartments in massive plain concrete buildings that look like prisons.
Just last week, I was talking with a coworker who didn’t realize South Africa had paved roads.
Angela Davis is very cool, I wish I knew more about her. Apparently one of her heroes is Joseph Weydemeyer, my all time favorite obscure communist.
This all makes sense to me, what I am trying to square is what’s the thinking in Berlin while all this is going on? Why do they make the choices they do? With the benefit of hindsight, why would Hitler ever even consider getting on Britain or France’s bad side? We know Hitler wanted his Lebensraum to the east, it seems like it would be straightforward to just hash that out with the eventual “Allies”?
The best answer I have is, Germany and the US/UK/France ultimately were never on the same page. I think the Allies wanted Germany to invade the USSR, but kind of in the way they want the Ukraine/Russia war in the present to grind on as long as possible. They wanted to use Germany to wear down the USSR. Best case scenario for them is for both Germany and the USSR to essentially destroy each other, so you eventually get two weakened states beholden to western hegemony.
That said, I can’t help but wonder how much the irrationality of fascism comes into play here. And I hate to ascribe irrational motives to anyone, even fascists… I have a hard time with any other explanation for a lot of the diplomatic and foreign policy choices the Nazis made.
I deeply love LotR but I re-read the trilogy a year ago for the first time as a leftist and as much as I hate to admit it, there’s definitely racism in the book. I don’t think Tolkien was consciously white supremacist or anything, but he was a product of his place and time, and early 20th century England was dripping with chauvinism towards non-white people in that time. He may have felt bad about portraying the orcs as one-dimensional but afaik he never regretted portraying the “evil men” in explicitly orientalist or brown terms.
But I definitely think Tolkien’s socio-political views are wildly contradictory. As much as he seems to love monarchy, afaik he never spoke out in favor of actual monarchs like Elizabeth II having any real power.
I don’t think this is much of an issue for anyone here but… expensive wrist watches. I am a reformed watch guy. My $11 Casio F-91W keeps better time than my FIL’s $6,000 Omega. Quartz and batteries were a real game changer when it comes to watches. I really like having a watch but there is no reason for anyone to spend real money on a watch that doesn’t use quartz.
If you want/need a watch, to me the sweet spot are those Casio G-Shock squares. Totally bullet proof, can last a lifetime, and you can spend as little as $35 or up to about $150 if you want solar and atomic time. But spending any more than that and you’re really just buying jewelry, not something to keep time.
50.8% to 49.2% feels like it’s a lot closer than it should be.
He isn’t TERF-y. He is an unrepentant turbo TERF. Some TERFs like Rowling try and couch what they say to not appear transphobic. Cockshott doesn’t even bother, he wears his transphobia on his sleeve.
And Towards a New Socialism was invaluable in helping me understand Capital so it’s complicated for me.
It’s the history written by the labor aristocrats and petite bourgeoisie who thought they’d make out better under capitalism than socialism. It ignores the many millions of working class individuals who suffered and died and who would gladly take security and safety over fucking oranges. But we never hear their stories in the west. We only hear from businessmen, journalists, academics etc who decry “no oranges” and ignore the suffering of the masses.
Hey speaking of apartments, this bozo leaves out what happened to GDR citizens immediately after reunification. Anyone in the FRG could make a claim on property in the East that was “taken” from them or their ancestors in the process of Germany being divided. At one point, over half of all residential dwellings in the East were claimed by leeches in the West. Even though a lot of claims didn’t end in evictions, so many GDR citizens had to live under the threat of being made homeless (and many were).
You had to wait for a car but it’s not like in the US where a car is a mandatory (and incredibly expensive) requirement to live. They had public transport. And part of the reason they had to wait so long (and also why bananas et al were hard to come by) is that the capitalist world tried to strangle the economies of the Eastern Bloc as much as possible.
Also, the Stasi didn’t come after you just for complaining about the government. Lots of people complained. They came after you if they suspected you were on CIA or BRD payroll, or were a capitalist wrecker, or a fash, etc. Good faith complaints were fine. The book I cite in the source below has an opinion poll that was made shortly after reunification. Former GDR citizens responded to what they liked the least about life in the GDR, and the Stasi were pretty low on the list. Travel limitations were clearly #1 IIRC, but that can’t be blamed entirely on the GDR as the capitalist west also placed restrictions on the travel of GDR citizens.
Source: Stasi State or Socialist Paradise. Haven’t read any Victor Grossman but he’s pretty great on this subject, too.
A sorta friend made a comment earlier that’s really been in my kitchen. I said in a group chat I hate managing people in my job (I was not given a choice, was basically conscripted into being a manager). I was just venting, but this guy responds with “well if you don’t like it just get demoted down to an entry level position”.
Bugs me for two reasons. One is that no, I don’t have to go to an entry level position, I’ve been in this job for 15+ years. I just want the job I signed up for, which did not involving managing people. Maybe because I know him, just sounded to me like “hurrr if you don’t want to work hard just do something easy that you were doing 15 years ago”.
But the other part that really bugs me, and I’ve buried the lede here some, is that this sorta friend is a literal capitalist. He got hired into the family business his dad owns and was always expected to take it over. Now that he’s in charge of a business he acts like he’s hot shit. But if his dad wasn’t a capitalist this dude isn’t particularly sharp or hard working, he would not be in his position otherwise. So I really don’t want to hear any “job advice” from him.
I expect there’s going to be a huge backlash against the US as the economic situation continues to unravel in Europe.
Yes, though nearly all this backlash seems to becoming from the far right as the “left” in Europe is 110% on board with supporting Ukraine. So we could see anti-US sentiment take off (good) but from the right (bad).
“The US trusted Zelensky on bad intel, so it’s all no one’s fault really”
Same as it ever was…
I listen to so much leftist podcasts and even some others that just don’t have ads (or in the case of Revolutions and Blowback, they put it at the beginning so it’s easily skippable), that it’s so jarring when I listen to one and they do a live read right in the middle. I basically can’t even listen to it.
I was interested in the Dominic Monaghan / Billy Boyd podcast. First episode was nice, I think just an ad at the beginning. Then after that they just loaded it up with live reads all the way through. Had to delete it, don’t know how people can stand it.
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This was Obama’s slogan, because he would always call out issues but then act like he was powerless to do anything.
Biden’s strategy is to act like problems don’t exist and actually it’s the people who are wrong, the economy is doing great. To say otherwise is to imply you actually support Trump.