This was Obama’s slogan, because he would always call out issues but then act like he was powerless to do anything.

Biden’s strategy is to act like problems don’t exist and actually it’s the people who are wrong, the economy is doing great. To say otherwise is to imply you actually support Trump.

I would call them “workhouses” but Americans have no idea what “workhouses” are and how horrific they were.

Death to Israel and death to America.

grossly mismanaged the pandemic (killing a lot of people), did horrible stuff for the environment, passed a bunch of shit laws, including repealing net neutrality, deported a bunch of ppl for no reason, and he supports isreal

All that is literally and precisely what Biden has done, too (except net neutrality I guess, but you’re also leaving out Biden signing off on the biggest expansion of the surveillance state since the Patriot Act).

He fucked over queer people in the us

Lots of queer people on Hexbear, ask them if the barest crumbs Democrats throw to queer people (i.e. doing nothing to stop anti-queer actions, but not being the ones to propose the laws) is worth supporting genocide.

increased the federal debt by 7 trillion

Imaginary number doesn’t matter.

You seem well-meaning, so let me put my cards on the table: I don’t believe in validating the invalid dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by voting for anything beyond the local school board and various propositions, so it’s not like I’d be voting for Biden anyway. But what I don’t get about when libs push leftists to vote for Biden is… at what point does someone committing heinous acts mean that not voting for them is the only moral action? If Joe Biden murdered my daughter, would I not be in the right to say I wouldn’t vote for him? Even if in this weird scenario Trump also would have murdered my daughter… at what point do we measure someone by what they do and not what the other person would have done? And it doesn’t matter if my kid isn’t actually involved, I have seen enough death and sadness from parents and children in Gaza that the fact that it’s not my kid is totally and completely immaterial to me.

While I do like the LotR movies, the worst thing about them is one very specific directorial choice made by Jackson that isn’t in the books: to show the “good guys” as being reluctant to fight and downplaying the threats faced.

Theoden is portrayed as unwilling to fight at first. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen reactionaries on Twitter reference Aragorn’s line about “open war is upon you, whether you would have it or not” when talking about tRaNsGeNdEr iDeOLoGy or something. Theoden has to be convinced to fight. Likewise, Treebeard and the Ents initially refuse to fight until Merry delivers his Sorkin-esque speech about how they’re a part of the world, so they have to fight for it.

But none of that is actually in the books!

Theoden and Treebeard are not indecisive. They immediately join the fight without hesitation. Everyone recognizes the threat posed by Sauron and they join in. The Hobbits, while they are Little Englanders, are more in an isolated bubble far away from trouble, so it’s more that their courage is never tested until the Scouring. They are unaware of what’s happening in the world, not that they know about it but don’t want to fight.

This seemingly small change has been latched onto by liberals and chuds alike for 20 years now. Because no one reads books anymore, we just assume the movies are the books. I doubt Ferguson has read the books any time recently.

And for as long as LotR has been published, everyone wants to interpret their own allegories into the story. It was very popular to read Mordor as Nazi Germany, which Tolkien had to always push back against. While Tolkien was the first to say things like his experiences in war and his religious faith influenced the books, he absolutely and in no uncertain terms was NOT writing anything to be allegorical to the real world. And to any fan of the books, it’s offensive to try and read allegory into it when you understand that act of story telling and world building - and not allegory making - was central to the writing process for Tolkien.

The typical American probably thinks that, outside of Hong Kong, everyone lives in extreme poverty in shacks. Or at best, in very small apartments in massive plain concrete buildings that look like prisons.

Just last week, I was talking with a coworker who didn’t realize South Africa had paved roads.

Thanks! That alone is pretty helpful information.

I really feel like my knowledge of Algeria is lacking, given their successful anti-colonial fight, and that at least at one point they were a socialist country in some regard.

Maybe I’m thinking about this too hard, but is this actually a bit self-deprecating? Like, the gamers and the women both have their backs to each other. The women seem to be completely oblivious to the presence of the men, and vice versa.

Angela Davis is very cool, I wish I knew more about her. Apparently one of her heroes is Joseph Weydemeyer, my all time favorite obscure communist.

Was looking at some of the “no party affiliation” candidates in CA senate primary election. I came across a questionnaire that Laura Garza filled out for the OC Register (link). It first mentions she was “Former vice presidential candidate on Socialist Workers Party ticket in 1996”. I’m thinking hmmm… that’s sounds kinda Trot-y, but maybe not. Let’s see what her positions are. First question was about Palestine, “israel”, Ukraine, and Russia… and this was the response:

I defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and condemn the Jew-hating pogrom organized by Hamas with the backing of the Iranian regime. The capitalist regime in Tehran and the reactionary forces it backs in Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are enemies not only of Jews but of working people of all nationalities. So long as capitalism exists, in times of crisis, the rulers will turn to scapegoating Jews to smash the working class as they did in Nazi Germany. The fight for workers’ power and socialism is the only solution to end the anti-working class poison of Jew-hatred.

I stand with the people of Ukraine in their battle for independence and sovereignty over all of Ukraine and against Moscow’s reactionary invasion.

I don’t support the policies of the U.S. capitalist class and their military, which is used worldwide to defend U.S. profits and imperialist domination, not the interests of working people here or elsewhere. I am for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, the Middle East and Europe. I defend the Cuban Revolution and call for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which is used to suffocate the Cuban population for their decision to reject living under Washington’s boot.

What a fascinating mix of leftist language and absolute dogshit, sprinkled with some good takes (but also ones that even normal libs support, like ending the blockade on Cuba). Honestly, her takes on “israel” sounds like what an actual neo-Nazi would come up with if they were trying to make a caricature of a leftist.

I am an economics and investment strategy consultant and serve as chief economist for the NY-based communications firm, Vested… In my long career in finance, I have held positions as portfolio manager, director of research, and chief investment officer.

While bourgeois economists get a lot wrong, I do have grudging respect for some of them - someone like Keynes for example. But this guy isn’t an economist. He’s a glorified stockbroker. This is a person who can only see real estate as an investment and something to profit off of, not as thing that everyone needs and should have. He’s an economists like how Anne Applebaum is a historian (she isn’t)

Oh my god, incroyable. I thought the interviewer was going to cry. Anyone in this thread, watch the video, I promise it will make your day. It was like watching Simon from The Inbetweeners conduct a hostile interview.

Edit: his response vis-a-vis Hezbollah was about as good as a western politician can express. Anything further and they probably charge him with sponsoring terrorism.

A Hexbear post from 3 years ago that highlights the Biden campaign’s position on BDS

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To be honest, I think the real switch is from when video games went from being in person only (arcades and consoles) to online (so you can play with anyone in the world). I think when video games are something you can only play by yourself or with friends, it is so fundamentally different of an experience than gaming today. And the corollary with this: that you could really only talk about video games with people you know, instead of via forums and Reddit.

One of the worst things about being on the older edge of “Millennial” is that at this moment in time, it feels like nearly all media and advertising is geared towards people precisely around my age bracket (since we’re probably at the relative zenith of income and spending that income). The original sucked and I haven’t even thought about it in 25+ years but it’s such an obvious attempt to cash in on people my age’s feelings of nostalgia, which are largely fueled by precarity that everyone would rather think about how cool things were when they were 16 instead of deal with current reality.

This Growth Crystal summary is great, pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Hope the full book gets translated into English one day, though.

That takes some real cojones, especially considering since he refused the offer it’s not unreasonable to think that MI5 will tip off his location to the IOF and give them the all-clear to murder him and his family.

In August, we finally got an official English translation of Losurdo’s Stalin book. I feel like reading that and then Socialism Betrayed would be a great 1-2 combo (even if the Losurdo book isn’t really about Stalin’s economy).