CarlMarks @ CarlMarks @lemmygrad.ml

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5 yr. ago

Per my last email, ...

If you do need to use copyrighted images for fair use purposes, modifying them a bit can help obfuscate them from bots. Let's say you want to criticize Nestlé. Their logo is birds in a nest. You could swap the birds for different cartoon birds, for example. This can be an opportunity to do something artistic or interesting as well as satire, like making the nest be made of dollar bills, a baby bird be porky, etc.

Another tip is totally separate from the copyright question but I do think it is importsnt. In terms of social media, both platforms are not anonymous by default. While you can obfuscate via your username so that randos can't ID you, both Facebook and Google tend to require a phone number to sign up/log in and both work with governments. So I recommend taking one of two approaches:

1. Accept that this may eventually be associated with your name and cater your messaging accordingly.
2. Go down the rabbithole of infosec to become more anonymous. For example, finding a way to buy a phone number with cash and not associated with your name and exclusively using a trustworthy VPN / VPS tunnel, again paid for with cash (Mullvad offers this, including with a voucher that is probably as secure as cash). This is a bunch of work but it is a generally enriching exercise that can provide value in irl organizing.

If it's US law then you can use copyrighted images for "fair use" purposes, which includes but is not limited to education and criticism. Though with automated bot reporting there is always a chance your video would get unfairly reported. There are also public domain stock images if that's the kind of thing you need.

Consent of the governed exists basically nowhere, including so-called liberal democracies. There is no "do you consent to this government?" question that results in a major change if you or even a majority say no. All are subject to an oppressive state, the only question re: consent is whether you want that state organized for or against the ruling class.

Who?

Socially it is nothing but good that the US is openly hostile and lashing out at China. In China, this works against liberals there trying to emulate elements of US economics that are a capitalist road. In the US, this undermines the anti-China sentiment that propagandists have been provoking for over a decade.

You could've been cool like that horshoe crab. But you just had to be difficult and be a smart monkey.

Of course. Our precious political class has delicate sensibilities and nedds time for self-care.

Oh and Dem voters, no need to join organizations or take direct action. Just sit around being a little stressed out and blaming everyone else is plenty. You did your part! If you must do something, go to a one-off police escorted protest with no feasible demands or threats to do anything that would ever exert pressure.

Here is a complete list of my crimes and home address:

It also still almost worked. This is how subservient and propagandized the US political electorate is. The idea of supporting mass murdering children was only a dealbreaker for a small minority, but enough to do most of the work in tipping the scales.

Kamala probably would've won with false promises to end "the war", some token Arab speakers, and "I see you and hear you" pandering.

The capitalist party that writes its own rules and does not adopt literally any positions via bottom-up mechanism? No, nobody can take it over except other capitalists. So in a sense you are correct, as US progressives are still fundamentally of the political ideology of capitalism.

The party works against you but, ironically, convinces you to help it for your own and others' interests. Instead, we must work together against capital if we want liberation and justice.

You can do useless things that take up very little time all you'd like. Doesn't bother me.

But if you want to have political agency you will need to do something real with organizing other people who can take direct action as a bloc.

There was no opposition to genocide.

I know people with disabilities caused by police responses to our fight against genocide.

Genocide apologist, beg for forgiveness.

Hey now, that's not fair.

Israelis and Boers would say that, too. And some Germans, still, believe it or not.

I agree with everything except the "it's working!" part. Unfortunately, Bernie and AOC are very much insiders that prioritize their capitalist party over common people. They go to bat for their "backstabbers" every time, they tell you to support Biden and then Harris, they shy away from the word "genocide" while voting to materially support one. The function of the Bernie-AOC tour is to keep the disillusioned from leaving the party behind. Which is what is actually needed to fight fascism. We already have civic fascism, we export the worst effects of it to other countries. It's just making a little visit home and there's a risk people will understand this violence as a normalcy of the system and that we must organize ourselves against it rather than just spend 30 minures every four years for a certain flavor if genocidal racist.

When it comes to the left, which now has the bar set at, "does not tolerare genocide", the Democrats cannot fail, they can only be failed.

You're welcome for the civics lesson, citizen. Don't forget to buy war bonds!

Those 90 million people are more correct about the nature of US electoral politics than any Dem voter.

You cannot take over the Democratic Party. It will just change its own rules before you get the chance. The people running it are all feeding from the same donor trough, either as politicians or consultants. You think they will let you just take the trough away? Friend they make the party rules! They will just change them! They already did this against Bernie, an imperialist socdem, someone who isn't even a real threat to capital (just the insurance industry) and they thwarted that even when it had momentum and kids allowed themselves hope for healthcare without poverty. This is the basic nature of capitalist parties: they are beholden to capital, not the people, and certainly not you or I.

By the time the Democratic Partu is "taken over" by anything, it will be because it has found a way to make capital happy by adopting a policy that costs them nothing. Which means we win nothing of serious value and the spiral of capitalist degrading conditions continues.

In the meantime, what role do these reformers actually serve? If they can't change what needs yo change, what other effects do they have?

Well, they mostly just convince people to have false hope for the party, delaying its need to crash and burn and be replaced, ideally with something more effective than a bourgeois electoral party.

Blocking movement to the left is why you're left with a rightward trend. Not just because the right itself "moves right" but because Dems' political nature breeds false consciousness and confused disillusionment. Dems promise basic things like a student debt jubilee and then do a little weak attempt at it. So then people leave them behind. Even worse, Dems help create the degrading conditions that provokes an anti-liberal backlash (liberalism being the dominant ideology of capitalism, not just US Dems), and then Dems work their hardest to fight the associated leftward shift. But not the right: their radicals are useful for crushing that new left, as the left is anticapitalist.

Most importantly, the bourgeoisie electoral system provides an illusion of control. You don't actually choose the lesset evil. You just throw in a vote for candidates preselected for you by capital and the party (a party in which you have no say) who will never actually be able to fight the right or adopt anticapitalist positions, and will therefore never be left. You, and the people, are not in control in this scenario. This scenario just provides consent for what capital wanted anyways, just with two different flavors: genocidal fascism with a good PR team for the theoretically empathetic and genocidal fascism with an okay PR team for braying hogs.

Capitalists will never let you vote them out of power. The field in which politicians can operate electorally is already heavily restricted and biased by donors and a donor-focused campaign machine that is further entrenched by ever-changing thresholds for candidacy and redistricting. I encourage you to run as a principled person as a third party and see how it goes. I would encourage you to run as a Dem but the time when a politician learns they are also enemies is after they've already helped entrench the party. If you ran as a Dem with principles they would not help your campaign and might fight it. Once in office they'll stymy most of what you attempt.

Voting for every general election is just picking which of two capitalist parties will dictate policy. And the "good guys" are actually detrimental enough that they make their potential voters apathetic or opposed to thrm, as they cannot resonate with their experiences or needs. You know what folks actually need? Rent cut by 90%. Real estate is a financial legalized crime to create "passive income" for the wealthy. That would be incredibly popular. It would also be impossible for a capitalist party in the US, it is their antithesis.

So the serious, adult question is to state what the existential problems are and then ask what solutions could be sufficient to solve them. And there is at least one thing we know well in US electoralism: just voting for Dems will never be close to enough, abd even believing it is particularly important will just keep you ans others from spending the time to work together and do enough.