Ultimately I know and agree with this. But the implication frightens me. When I look at the West it seems like the conditions for revolution, - I suppose for a widespread class consciousness - are very distant. Things would have to get much worse before people understand that capitalism can’t be saved. And people will have to lose a lot more before their ready to fight for something new.
And with climate change and all the other ticking time bombs, it will get worse. But fascism is already here. And this wedge issue of immigration won’t go away. Climate change will cause unprecedented movement of peoples. And the West is already primed to blame their economic hardships on immigrants. So fascism is already stronger and more organised than we are, and the conditions it thrives in are only going to increase.
Maybe once boomers depart the stage then this kind of racism and chauvinism will lose some of its momentum. I hope so.

Yes I know, I just think I would be a lot happier not knowing. I mean everyone is already riddled with anxiety. At least with politics we can study and understand and exert some agency however small. What can we do about the fact people are pumping our bodies full of plastic for profit? And then when they repeatedly put these articles in the press before they’ve discovered the implications (I mean maybe microplastics cause ED but they’re really just spitballing here) it doesn’t seem to have much social utility

Yes I agree with all that, I’m just talking about political strategy within the capitalist system, and in terms of the needs of a populist (rather than revolutionary) left

Well I guess like the left alliance in France or a hypothetical populist left in the style of Corbyn, although even for small left parties like the Greens it might make sense to consider these issues. But to take Corbyn as an example, he did really fuck himself by advocating for a second referendum, whereas the smart thing to do would’ve been to accept the result of the first referendum (ie Brexit) despite the fact that outcome was basically driven by racism

I always imagined I would stand out (former ‘gifted’ child type), and so when as an adult life really overwhelmed me and got the better of me I felt (and suppose I still do feel) quite a bitter disappointment at my anonymity. Actually something that’s been useful trying to shift that perspective is thinking about Marx’s idea of ‘species-being’, rather than conceiving of myself in a kind of isolated and unique egotism.

I do think that a rational society would locate a problem like this and invest in solving it, rather than have a handful of scientists drip feed terrifying new theories and discoveries to a sensationalist media intent on scaring the shit out of people. But maybe it’s the only way they can attract funding for more study, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s really useful for people to be hearing about all these crazy environmental poisons - forever chemicals, microplastics, and so on - that are basically impossible to avoid and which no-one yet understands the implications of.

Neoliberals despise any kind of working class society. They want to cover the whole earth in a dead suburban wasteland of individuals who are atomised workers and consumers and nothing more.

Israel has been literally using human shields, forcing prisoners to go into tunnels and suspected Hamas hideouts with cameras strapped to them.

Prediction: Biden is going to refuse to step down, he’ll be desperate to make an impact in the second debate, they’ll overdose him on amphetamines and we’ll see even crazier shit than the first one

They have air superiority and are fighting an army that’s obsessed with launching hopeless offensives and been reduced to forcibly conscripting 50 years olds, I would totally believe a 10:1 ratio

It’s just about selling people a fantasy. Trump has a coherent narrative about coming in and fixing stuff. Biden rambling incoherently about how everyone else would love to be American because the country has it so good already, only plays into Trumps narrative that everything is fucked because the govt. is weak, corrupt and aimless. I think Trump did reasonably well. He can’t really hit Biden too much on policy specifics because the Biden admin is so far right anyway, so it’s more of a vibes thing at this point.

That’s his activation code

Biden used to seriously put on a big shit eating grin after every sentence though, it was like his trademark. he’s just so far gone at this point even compared to four years ago.

Nah they’re just hacks, they’re like a herd of deer, one gets spooked and starts running the rest will follow. Unfortunately for Biden that means his campaign is gonna be in cascade failure mode now

Even though Trump just lies and everyone knows he lies, he does sell people what feels like a kind of political agency. ‘You want a good economy? - I’ll give you a good economy. You want no war? - I’ll give you no war,’ etc. Whereas Biden takes a ‘don’t even worry about it, the adults are in the room, we’re sorting it out, and lucky for you’ kind of approach. That approach doesn’t work if you wheel out a bumbling incoherent old man as it’s representative, on the contrary it’ll make a lot of people very nervous. Trump really picked up on this too when he said that Biden was sleepwalking everyone toward WW3. I think Biden is done for.

Just a warning there is a lot of fake news being spread about this debate. If you take the time to watch it, Biden actually put in the greatest performance in the history of presidential debates. And by the way.

No, he isn’t. His weird politics is explained by radlib free speech brainworms, which you would expect from someone running a project like Wikileaks. I suppose technically Wikileaks could be used by the US or other government selectively leaking to them, but in the case of the US anything they want leaked they can just give to a totally compliant media anyway, so I don’t think this has ever been the case (possibly Russia did selectively leak Clintons emails to WL though).
The media payed attention to WL’s stories - when they were leaking major shit they were getting more website hits than major media organisations anyway, so the MSM had no choice but to pay attention.
US intelligence made plans to assassinate Assange, there is no plausible way he is an asset.

Disgusting

Please don’t refer to Millenials as old, that’s a slur and for some it can cause extreme existential distress

Well yeah did you think redditors would be the vanguard?
Boomers are a real thing because in a general sense they did well out of capitalism, at least in the sense of being upwardly mobile. They have a vested interest in protecting the status quo. And so they’ve fallen prey to all kinds of media propaganda because it ultimately serves their interests. And - again in a general sense - they have enormously greater wealth than other generations, which is just an objective/statistically provable fact. So analysis based around Boomers is not automatically bullshit.
There is no real difference in my experience (real world at least) between Millenials and gen z apart from small incidental cultural differences, which mostly just relate to gen z having become too online at an earlier age than Millenials did.
In so far as a lot of Millenials remain disappointingly radlib/ non-Marxist socialists, well it’s probably just an effect of being so close to the most materially successful generation that capitalism ever produced. They imagined their lives would be even better, and many of them are still wedded to the idea that we can turn back the clock to the old 60s style social democracy and save capitalism from itself.

Unless their bringing back the Tridentine mass I don’t care