Imagine spending an entire decade scapegoating Chinese academics, building hostile bases around the Chinese mainland, starting a trade war, blaming an entire global pandemic on China while doing absolutely everything within power to sustain that pandemic, sending politicians to nakedly rile up separatism in Taiwan, and also publicizing a formal date for an explicit hot war… and being Pikachu face shocked that China doesn’t wanna be friends anymore.
Some good answers delving into the foundations of ideology here.
But most people who describe themselves as liberal aren’t that consciously ideological. They simply see the Republicans and Trump camp to be cartoonishly evil. They see the Democrats as “trying” to deliver on their promises for social welfare, human rights and stronger worker autonomy. The media discourse is tightly controlled so as not to allow socialist perspectives to enter the conversation so what most people think is possible is only reflected within this discourse.
Not to mention people in America, liberal or conservative, are too overworked, alienated, or assaulted by a never-ending stream of pop media outrage bullshit to take the time to properly investigate their own ideology. There are a lot of avenues for escapism.
But IMO the #1 disconnect American work-class liberals have (I’m talking about the plenty who would even describe themselves as progressive or socialist) is that they fail to see America’s current foreign policy as a direct but evolved continuation of its settler-colonial doctrine. US citizens are so removed from the direct effects of war and violent imperialism that they simply can’t see the current propaganda and assaults against AES countries overseas as the same exact thing that drove Westward colonial expansion across North America and the displacement and genocide of native people that accompanied it. They see things like slavery and genocide as relics of America’s past that can be healed with enough “acknowledgement” rather than active processes the American state is continuing to pursue today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…
Until Americans en masse can overcome this disconnect, there is very little chance of revolution happening. Because US rage towards their own ruling class can always be redirected into scapegoating other countries by politicians of both parties.
It took a Black POSUS to completely destroy the wealthiest country in Africa. He also officially jumpstarted the wave of sinophobia we have today, even though Trump gets credit for it. Still has deported more immigrants than any other US president. And all while rehabilitating the psychopathic image of the Democratic Party and sucking revolutionary energy away from an entire generation.
Yeah as an American I didn’t mean to absolve that, and personally it’s tough not to struggle with the immense guilt that comes with. Most people are genuinely kind in this country but they are also genuinely brainwashed. I think one thing to note when it comes to US imperialism specifically, is that most Americans have never actually experienced war, which lets politicians weaponize their compassion. Americans that do support war genuinely think they’re doing the world a favor by spreading “democracy.” In the US, the citizens are so removed from geopolitical conflict that it makes them extra susceptible to propaganda because they don’t actually face the direct violence of imperialism like the global south does. We feel the consequences still, but it’s economic and it takes more logical steps for people to connect their struggles with what’s happening outside their borders.
There’s also a huge generational divide. Millenials and Gen Z are more left than the US population has ever been in its history. There may be an overall lack of knowledge when it comes to foundational theory, but that’s where the current struggle is.
It’s not an excuse, but for most people here it’s not malice either. If more Americans genuinely understood what our military and financial system did, there would be a whole lot less complicity in it. Which is why there is the most sophisticated propaganda system in history obscuring those truths and keeping people ignorant. But even if most people here weren’t ignorant and pushed back against Western imperialism, they would still have no say in their farce of a political system. We have absolutely no say in what our government does when it comes to militarization and imperialism, even on the more local level.
Yeah, that’s extra extra frustrating. Because the GOP co-opts anti-war rhetoric when it comes to Ukraine, it only obfuscates the left’s position too. A bunch of well-meaning but ignorant progressive people associate leftist criticism of the US-Ukraine relationship with “right wing” or “Putin” propaganda. It’s just one more way that revolutionary potential gets funneled into the Democratic Party to die.
The barriers to class consciousness here in the US are almost immeasurable. I understand and sympathize with the disappointment that comrades outside of the US have with the indifference of people inside the US, but I hope y’all can at least understand what we’re up against. It really is the fucking Matrix over here.
There are protests and actions around the country periodically, but it’s just leftists showing up to them. The left is growing fast here. More labor unions are being founded by the day and better yet, these unions all seem to have socialist orientations, rather than being reactionary like in the past. But we still aren’t close to the numbers we need to be a major political force in Amerikkka.
The problem isn’t that the average USian isn’t feeling it. Things are going to shit here more and more quickly. It’s just that there are SO many things to protest and care about here that people are fatigued and many have tuned out from that fatigue. Seriously, we are overwhelmed and assaulted by never-ending stream of bullshit on a 24/7 loop. “Spy balloon” “Ohio train derailment” “Gendered M&Ms” “The Grammy’s are racist” “JK Rowling” “Abortion rights get repealed.” Every day it’s another thing.
Meanwhile most people are living paycheck to paycheck and are an hospital incident away from bankruptcy and homelessness. Yet we’re all still expected to participate in this system that hates us. As much as the past few years have radicalized some, it’s made probably more people default to being apolitical. People have to go through a lot of mental steps and learning to see Ukraine as something that harms them and they just don’t have the patience or fortitude for it anymore.
Just adding to your point, but the revolution needs disaffected people from our police and military. It was true in Lenin’s time and it’s true now. Obviously they should be treated with a lot more skepticism. However, plenty of people join these institutions as apolitical people and come out radically against them. And they leave with inside knowledge about how these institutions work. That’s valuable.
I know how you feel. I have dear friends who have recently started escorting. They say they feel “powerful” and “liberated.” They’re also relatively privileged people who don’t actually need to exploit themselves. They just like lonely rich men paying for their vacations and luxuries.
Which is just another example of how the people who “benefit” from this rehabilitation of the rape trade are often petite-bourgeois (sex entrepeneurs to be more correct, not “workers”) and how the rape trade actively exploits and harms men as well.
I think that’s the crux of the issue that is often missing in so many conversations about the validity of sex work as work. Humans should be free to embrace all of the positives that come out of sexual relationships. And that includes things like erotica and sexual release as a form of therapy. These things can add value to society.
But like, you said, society would have to be fundamentally different to even begin having that conversation. Because our cultural perspectives on sex are all part of the superstructure rooted in our economic base. And under capitalism, it’s all coercive. And if sex work is coercive, like all other work under capitalism, then what we’re talking about is rape and rape glorification. We can’t seriously have the conversation about the validity of sex work, etc. if we can’t tear down this system first.
The psychopaths in Washington are just itching to press the nuke button. It’s irrational af but… so are they. And even worse, if an actual white nationalist populist coup does succeed in the US when this war breaks out, that spells very bad news for the world.
Trying not to be a doomer about it, but the reality we’re all in is pretty bleak right now.
He is but he’s pretty critical of Israel as a totalitarian police/surveillance state. Probably a believer in a two-state solution, which to be honest there are Palestinians that support that too.
Either way, he’s got a point about mythmaking. All of recorded history is essentially storytelling – narration of varying degrees of unreliability. History is propaganda, and whatever class controls the narrative of history at any given point in time, also controls the advancement of their struggle and the sustaining of their rule.
In Marxist terms, it’s just one way the superstructure can influence the base. So it’s not he’s particularly advancing anything new, just articulating the same notion from a different angle with different phrasing.
Total historical revisionism. It’s frustrating as all hell. I’ve got a friend who grew up in Ukraine this decade under fascist education and they insist that Lenin and Stalin banned the Ukrainian language.
Nevermind that in actuality Ukrainian culture flourished under Stalin and Russian chauvanism was actively combatted through government policies. Nevermind that more art and books in the Ukrainian language were created than ever before. Nah. They’re rewriting history because of feels.
“The main danger, Great-Russian chauvinism, should be kept in check by the Russians themselves, for the sake of the larger goal of building socialism. Within the (minority) nationality areas new institutions should be organized giving the state a national (minority) character everywhere, built on the use of the nationality languages in government and education, and on the recruitment and promotion of leaders from the ranks of minority groups. On the central level the nationalities should be represented in the Soviet of Nationalities.” - Stalin
The whole concept of whiteness is the destruction of unique cultural traditions in favor of class collaboration. There is Irish, Italian, Spanish, Germanic culture, etc. But they all get enveloped in the cultural cemetery that is “whiteness,” at least that’s the case in the US. You can see the same process starting within sects of the Latin American community as well.
IMO we really ought to be encouraging white people to decolonize and re-engage with their ancestry in a way that reveals and teaches them how their cultures were devoured in service of the ruling class. Because the fascists are doing just that, but misleading them along the way (which is one reason I think there is such a heavy emphasis on Norse mythology in a lot of white nationalist symbology; white people are ignorantly reclaiming lost culture in service of capitalism rather than opposition to it).
Especially if you’re part of the broke working class and can only afford piece of shit cars that need constant repairs. You end up spending way more money on said piece of shit car than something more reliable that you can’t get approved for. I’m finally out of that cycle now but lived that life for way too long and it was always a major stress in the back of my mind. When is this piece of shit gonna break down next and take all my year’s savings with it?
Cannabis is no more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco (which are dangerous, don’t get me wrong, but if people are free to consume a&t, then they should be free to consume cannabis). However, it’s not surprising given China’s colonial history of suffering at the hands of Western drug profiteers. Ultimately, it’s a cultural attitude that may or may not transform over time and the benefits of psychedelic substances becomes more medically verified.
And in the US, where mental healthcare is prohibitively expensive and inaccessible, cannabis and other psychedelics have taken its place. Personally, they got me through the pandemic shut down and have done wonders for my ptsd symptoms.