Beyond the triune screenshots of twitter, reddit, and tumblr, a new challenger appears (albeit in the shadow of Twitter). That challenger is Mastadon. What does this foretell for the discourse?
To me, pessimism is defeatist and essentialist. It seems to state that the current principle contradiction within settler society (anti-Blackness) is insurmountable. I agree, anti-Blackness is inherent to the US settler civilization but I have to believe that that civilization can be overcome in order for revolutionary work to be possible. It is not likely in the short-term, but to me you have to believe something is possible in order to struggle for it.
Not a trekkie and writing from a real life perspective: genetic engineering cannot have the consent of the child whereas an adult may freely consent to become a cyborg. Moreover, genetic changes are permanent in the population whereas cyborg modifications end with the individual.
Those ideas coupled with the Federation having the legacy of the Eugenics Wars in the past probably motivate them to ban genetic engineering.
It is fantastic as a revolutionary anti-racist, anti-imperialist history of the US Empire. I recommend it to virtually everyone on those grounds. However, his ideological basis is heavily informed by the widespread pessimism that followed the collapse of the US New Left anti-colonial struggles of internally oppressed nations (as Sakai characterizes). He embraces a brand of Third Worldism whose main practical application is to give up on revolutionary activity in the imperial core, since all workers are labor aristocrats who benefit more from imperialism than they are exploited by Capitalism.
While the degree of exploitation of workers in the imperial core is unquestionably lower, while White workers unquestionably benefit immensely from racism, we cannot accept defeat as a given.
The primary contradiction in the world is between Imperialist Nations and Colonized Nations. "Leftists" in the imperial core cannot wait for the comrades in the Global South to liberate themselves, we must be active strugglers for their liberation and our own. We must believe revolution is possible to hold any attitude other than 'lie down and rot'.
Also watching white people squirm reading is really fun. A comrade's conservative, racist sibling has possibly the only actual 'SJW Marxist Professor' in the US who is making the class read it. The comrade has been giving us updates on the growth of their sibling's growing guilt and political conciousness.
I was gonna say, take my boyfriend to fine dining restaurants and fun shows every week, but even assuming we took a $400 each way flight and stayed at a $500 hotel and paid $200 a plate and $75 a show, that still comes out to just $150,000 a year.
Yeah. My grandpa made me read Atlas Shrugged when I was in HS and it was so dumb it made me a communist. I did like the scene with the fast train on the green rails. Literally the only scene in the whole book with imagery.
I convinced myself it was very important to read this book when I was 17, physically dragged my eyes across ~200 pages of it, and understood nothing of what was happening.
I started over again out about a year ago, and my best decision was to buy an alright futon and save up/look around for a decent quality bed. The futon was enough that I wasn't miserable but not so good that I could be complacent like I would with the first mattress I could afford/find. Since I was not desperate, I could wait till a good deal showed up.
Also, you are going to establish 'home' in phases or waves. It will be really exciting at first, but your energy will probably peter out sometime after you have a basic kitchen set up, sleeping area, and maybe sitting area. That's natural and nothing to feel bad about! I wound up being in a ~10 month break after my initial blitz before I started to turn my apartment into a home; it took me that long to recharge.
Is that reflective of the fact that the largest cost in transportation in the industrial world is labor so less traffiked routes require more labor per package-mile? In this case, its like a 11x economy of scale to California. So maybe not.
So buy broccoli and cook it well and if she don't eat you can afford it. What about people who can't afford to scrape nothing into the trash? It's not like most people don't know they should eat healthier. They just can't afford they kid to refuse and pitch a fit, financially or emotionally.
Out of the voting booth, into the streets! The I"D"F trains our police!