are we in "weeks where decades happen" territory rn?
-supreme court fash speedrun any% begins in earnest
-biden does his best cryptkeeper impression in the debate, the lyin' lamestream media balks hard, swing state polls start leaking badly
-reads from post Trump calls for jailing and "televised military tribunals" of "Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer, Mr. McConnell and Nancy Pelosi"
-xi presses the rare earth resources socialism button, presumably (or at least hopefully) in prep for pressing the ALL earth resources socialism button
-heritage foundation president does a public threat of violence at the left, increasing his chances of being roadkilled by a significant factor (fingers crossed)
-the west sez: zelensky your country is three embodied forms of corruption in a trenchcoat, yea we are gonna need you to take off that "i fought a losing war of attrition and all i got was a spot in NATO" tshirt you keep wearing on tv
-dr disrespect dropped by subway (this isn't momentous it's just hilarious LMAO)
-steam summer sale
-the pho place near me fixed their broth (less cinnamon )
I'm not a :vote: guy, but I think every Prez election year will be a flashpoint. it's when the tensions come closest to tearing the illusion of those who want to believe in electoral reform. 2020 had police stations on fire and people getting nabbed off the streets in unmarked vans while a global pandemic raged.
if Biden had looked even remotely presentable at the debate, few on team blue would be looking at the present situation critically, wondering, if beating trump is so important, why are "we" running a guy who is about to code? wondering who made this decision and why there is no alternative.
all of the other injustices could be explained away by pushing "trump would be worse" and funneling the tensions into the electoral system. but now what could have been characterized as an "imperfect" system is seeming "fundamentally fucked and incapable of reform".
I think we will get these crescendos every 4 years until elections are suspended.
The DNC in Chicago this year is gonna be fucking crazy, and I could absolutely see a situation where a peaceful protestor gets murdered by a cop and shit pops off across the country
I agree with this. I think we'll know better after the election, not so much because of cheeto or cryptkeeper, but just because what comes after will be what we settle into for at least the foreseeable future.
The contradiction I'm failing to understand is why these elections in the West are flashpoints... like, the bourgeoisie have total domination, especially since there's no real leftist opposition anywhere in the West™. Why on earth create tensions with people that agree with you on 99.99% how to rule?
I get it to some degree, there's propaganda bubbles surrounding the type of liberalism you gravitate towards based on your life experience, but fundamentally those ideologies are 100% compatible with each other. It's as if when the cold war ended, liberal "democracy" dropped all pretense of sanity.
For a very long time now, the presidential elections haven't been flashpoints for exactly the reason you describe. But since the 2000 elections, the contradictions have progressively ramped up, probably because material conditions have deteriorated and the bourgeoise are not omnipotent.
Ideological infighting between bourgeoisie factions. The Civil War never ended, it simply entered a cold state after the assassination of Lincoln and with him the assassination of reconstruction. Andrew Johnson's alliance with southern capital meant none of the financial stake holders we're held accountable and land was never redistributed to the free slaves.
So the slaves of the south were emancipated into the open arms of the southern capitalist who replaced chattel slavery with wage slavery.
The emancipation process never ended, and the reimplementation of slavery also never ended. Over the decades new factions have risen and been incorporated into the struggle, mainly Evangelicals, since they represent such a large base for the conservative axis. Their incorporation has caused the development of the conservative solutions for the issue of labor reproduction, namely in the antiabortion movement.
With conservative victories over the last 20 years, they have positioned themselves ever closer to winning this cold war. This has been a war of ideology, attempting to solve the contradictions of capitalism from different positions. The problem progressives have however is that appropriating leftist positions doesn't solve the issues of capitalism, it erodes capitalism. Their dabbling in populism has given the electorate a taste for it. When progressives fail to deliver on their populism however, it weakens their voting base, solves none of the issues of capitalism, and requires them to lean right for real solutions.
This fragmented position leaves the collective bourgeois unable to deal with external conflict. Their handling of Ukraine and Israel can be viewed as an extension of this internal conflict.
At some point one of these positions within the ruling class has to win out over the other. Resulting in either Christian Fascism, or a kind of "National Socialism" rooted in a more traditional form of Fascism.
I suppose because the contradictions are inevitable within such an economic system. Capitalists are loyal to nothing. They have no credo. They clearly have no restraint. If these economic relations are in place, humans will inevitably do terrible things to each other to exploit such a system.
They didn't have morals before. They had competition (from a number of communist revolutionary states). That's what kept them in line. That's why they had a pretense.
No competition - no need to pretend you're sane... I mean, I guess false consciousness is so prevalent now that these people all believe themselves to be sane. These sane people are created by rampant capitalism, and act in the way I described in my first paragraph.
I'm wondering if the burgerland bourgeoisie are happy to sacrifice the country to fascism now. Or is this just the natural progression of late capitalism, to decay into fascism or fascism to be deployed against a growing left.
Pretty sure they'll do anything to keep the doors off their public beaches.
If all else fails they Cana just move to a country that hasn't devolved to right wing hysterics and then buy up the politicians and media there to try to get their new nationalized tax rate lowered and start all over again.
The supreme court thing isn't decades happening. Someone actually making use of the ruling might be.
It's also worth mentioning that the state laying claim to minerals does not mean they have been socialized, and indeed they have not been, though what China actually did was nonetheless reasonable.
Yea china's just establishing that they have liberal rights, it's basically the same as when we use imminent domain to install a fore hydrant when a municipal water system gets redone.
To me it feels like the 2020s is the decade where the West is finding out after fucking around for so long and it can only respond with fascism. It is culminating in something happening every month, especially when the supreme court, Biden, Trump, and Europe are taking the mask off even further with each decision they make.
These aren't the weeks where decades happen. I fear that we are about to enter a stage of history where we will be living through decades where centuries happen. The current climate crisis is bigger than anything humanity has faced in its entire existence. This upcoming crisis is going to be larger in scale than the one that forced humanity to switch to agriculture.
No. By the exercise in levity, you also seem to be ambivalent about it.
This is just what decline looks like. It's very naked and brazen with Biden, but that his senility is on full display only demonstrates that the Presidency is more of a presidium where the cabinet, advisors, and staff make the decisions; the President mediates and acts as spokesperson.
There is no inability to express and display power on the world stage, it is just a diminished form of this antagonism. The US is still ruining its enemies and puppets. It's just those subjects have adapted to those tactics to soften the blows.
I don't think Hezbollah is going to attack Israel either; I think Israel's decline is more precarious and amplified but the US will keep it alive as a zombie state as long as they suit each others needs. Israel will continue to bleed citizens who, if they don't have dual citizenship, will just try to emigrate to Europe & US as economic opportunities pull them there and economic stagnation looms in Israel. The trajectory it was on before Oct 7th.
Domestically, the US has crushed any nascent left-liberal, leftist, or left anti-capitalist/government movement and force. Those groups, such as they are, are scattered and weakened. And although there is growing consciousness and antagonism towards the government and capitalist order, there is no coherent ideologies, movement, activists, and party to mobilize and articulate a vision of an alternative.
Even the tactics of protest and resistance are diminished as they often are just glorified rallies and parades. Activists don't even need to resort to violence or property damage. They could just block airports, seaports, roads, warehouses, et cetera but most Americans aren't even up for that.
Ultimately, USD hegemony and global dependence define and determine the macro-tangible outcomes of our political landscape.
I think Biden is going to refuse to step down so we're just going to see a slow lumbering jog to complete electoral defeat.
When the Republicans have complete control of all three branches next January that's when shits really gonna start hitting the fan domestically.
Unless Isreal decides to actually fuck around and find out with Hezbollah, that'll certainly shake things up. Maybe Biden will actually send American troops and drop the number of states he's viable in to the single digits.
supreme court fash speedrun any% begins in earnest
Begins? That shit goes back to at least them installing Dubya by decree.
biden does his best cryptkeeper impression in the debate, the lyin' lamestream media balks hard, swing state polls start leaking badly
Just the latest symptom of how decayed and impotent the DNC have become.
reads from post Trump calls for jailing and "televised military tribunals" of "Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer, Mr. McConnell and Nancy Pelosi"
And he said he was gonna lock up Hillary, we saw where that went.
xi presses the rare earth resources socialism button, presumably (or at least hopefully) in prep for pressing the ALL earth resources socialism button
This is the one with the most “weeks where decades happen” potential, America desperately flailing its antiquated economic empire weight around to get that sweet battery tech/materials they didn’t bother to develop themselves and China just goes “lol nope.” And the associated treat fallout would splinter the U.S.
heritage foundation president does a public threat of violence at the left, increasing his chances of being roadkilled by a significant factor (fingers crossed)
Ehh these types are always saying shit like that.
the west sez: zelensky your country is three embodied forms of corruption in a trenchcoat, yea we are gonna need you to take off that "i fought a losing war of attrition and all i got was a spot in NATO" tshirt you keep wearing on tv
Americans are great at memory holing shit like that (see: Afghanistan in the 80’s), I fully expect libs to be “Zelensky who?” once the dust has settled.
No. My criteria for for things happening is if everyone knows about it regardless of news reporting. A chatgpt generated headline summarizing a supreme court decision is not.
Isn't that the sentiment behind 'weeks where decades happen?' The momentous weeks that come out of nowhere, changing everything, and their seemingly innocuous build-up over the decades prior?
The momentous weeks that come out of nowhere, changing everything, and their seemingly innocuous build-up over the decades prior?
We're still in the build up phase for sure, but I don't think it's necessarily an on/off switch. There has to be a ramping up of the seemingly innocuous things in the weeks before the weeks where things happen.
This kind of shit does have a striking resemblance to those weeks that happen before weeks where things happen, so they could be the immediate precursor of things happening. But it's also entirely possible that these past few weeks are not the weeks building up to weeks of happening things and things will ramp back down to a simmer for another who knows how many more before things actually happen. Regardless, I feel like it is clear that we no longer have entire decades where nothing happens. Shit goin be happening one way or another before another decade is out.
-reads from post Trump calls for jailing and "televised military tribunals" of "Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer, Mr. McConnell and Nancy Pelosi"