came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]

he’s a real VIKING of following the rules written by rich people!

deleted by creator

no, this is what happens monetary policy is the only tool in the neoliberal toolbox, corporate profiteering is unchecked, and 2 million workers die off to keep the rent checks coming.

not sure a social collapse is something that can be identified in real time, but rather a point identified by historical analysis at a later date to say, “this was the point of no return for the hegemonic order and its property relations” and it may be something like a persistent government shutdown that sees many programs never recover administratively/fall into corruption, a court ruling, a moment of political violence, etc. basically the single moment in a chain of events undermining the social order beyond which recovery is impossible.

this is an instructive read: https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc

I can’t believe Putin went back in time just to get Trudeau to wear blackface in public several times.

these sneaky Russians and their constant stream of propaganda Ws.

you can tell how little attention Democratic Party apologists like this pay attention to the Democrats, because they never seem to see any of the absolutely dirty tricks they pull against popular progressives to enforce discipline, that are somehow never ever deployed against these sineating right-wing assholes like Sinema and Manchin.

so you’re saying they can’t get anything done, because they follow special, unwritten rules against getting things done. because getting a good thing done is bad.

another ringing endorsement to vote for the Democrats.

socialism is when I listen to NPR. capitalism is when I go to my parent’s house for Christmas. communism is when I get to program the radio presets in mom’s Honda Odyssey. social democracy is when I go to Starbucks. liberalism is when I look through the LL Bean catalogue.

you sound like you are entangled in several MLMs.

was just joking around with a sibling about how some of the most intensely “being highly intelligent is my identity” people from high school with supportive families grew up to be dumb as hell.

the gifted valedictorian became a nurse, then went full “iraq had WMDs, but it was classified” chud, quit the workforce to have 4 children, is a god-tier horder with rooms full of actual garbage, and now is entangled in several MLMs shoveling a spouse’s very high income into a blackhole.

the “actually, i have a 160 IQ” inherited a bunch of $$, bought a bunch of vehicles, had 5 kids, went full blown “dance mom” facebook+social media freakshow, and spends most of their effort trying to cultivate inappropriate relationships and fabricate dramas with other married spouses in their neighborhood.

excellence and success are subjective. a life of curiosity, personal enrichment, family, and friends can be excellent without needing accolades or other features of careerist striving. but i’ll be damned if some really “smart” people don’t take their potential and, in defiance of the odds, turn it into a shit smoothie.

“socialism is when you’re in russia. the more russia you are in, the more socialism is what’s wrong america #1 football hotdog toby keith.” - the diabetic gym teacher who taught this guy’s social studies class.

not to mention, many big developers aren’t paying cash to construct housing. they get a loan or establish a line of credit with or brokered via investors/banks/funds. the first rule of doing anything under capitalism is to use somebody else’s money to do it, and all those loans drawing on lines of credit ultimately leads back to the central bank anyway.

it’s a massive shell game to obscure the fact that workers do all the work to create the products and services and then have to pay their shitty wages right back to access the very things they create, just so maybe 2-3 million megarich assholes can roll around in piles of money and make an income for doing literally nothing.

landlords are among the most nakedly parasitic sectors of society, and even then we still get bootlicking bozos pretending they “provide” housing or are somehow responsible for the community infrastructure that makes living in the place where the house exists desirable.

being dumb is exactly how you got where you are.

having a PhD doesn’t mean you think critically or can evaluate literature anymore. and it definitely does not give you license to kick out of your coverage, like you’re trying desperately to do here…

having your little credential just means your committee wanted you gone after 5 years of being an asshole and didn’t want to fuck the stats of whatever shit tier program’s orifice you oozed out of.

i think one of the aspects of fascism that really freaks out liberals is that fascism is the return of the policies they (casually or explicitly) support overseas to their homes and applied to them and their neighbors. i was reading that post-colonial analysis excerpt about how hitler did to the core what “heroic” churchill and his predecessors had been doing to india and other peoples/nations for decades. libs avoid any material analysis of the core/periphery or fascism because the connections make it obvious libs have no trouble enjoying the fruits of evil done elsewhere to secure markets, but bringing those same methods of repression and control home is the unspeakably evil act of a madman.

the idea that their poorly-interrogated political project creates and necessitates the very monster they fear is too much to grapple with for some.

god that’s heartbreaking. i had never heard of any of this before today. what a massive implosion.

maybe i’m too dumb or old, but i cannot wrap my head around why “fans” are loyal to some sponsored content/native marketing organization like this enough to follow some kid around youtube and crap on their content. or harass someone doing their job. having to do tons of social media content professionally seems soul destroying… especially because “the bosses” only think about The Algorithm and maybe saw some SEO snakeoil pub telling them it’s better to generate 8 weak outputs than 2 strong outputs worth watching, because the “goal” is to harvest all those passive clicks and views of people who are bored out of their skull barely playing on their phone… instead of maybe targeting someone actively engaged and searching for something well made and relevant to their interests.

so you get overpaid bozos who don’t know fuck about shit leaning heavy on underpaid young people to make more internet garbage for the sake of making more internet garbage, and then later complaining that views per output are down or reactions are lukewarm or engagement is off. imagine that job and then a handful of fuckups following you around and shitting on your online presence because you’re doing what you’re told in order to have a roof over your head and food to eat and dreams of a mildly secure future.

as someone who was once idealistic and full of energy and stamina that was taken advantage of by ego-driven and deceptive exploiters: beware assholes, the rest of us can come together and build a world without a place for you in it.

the word you are striving not to say is capitalism. capitalists did this to russians, using the playbook developed and advocated for by western institutions.

imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history’s baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.

human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.

the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the “winners” the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.