I started a thread about this awhile back if you want to peruse: https://hexbear.net/post/67602

Something I've learned since then comes from Todd McGowan on the Why Theory podcast. I think he has teenage twins so he talks about parenting now and then. He basically said that we always have to consider subjective factors. Basically, if you have two communist parents, and their kids grow up to be communists, you'll say it's because of the parents. In another situation, if you have two communist parents, and their kids grow up into libs, you'll also say it's because of their parents.

Off the top of my head, I'm honestly having trouble thinking of communist parents whose kids grew up into communists. In general it would seem like noteworthy communists dedicate themselves to the movement at the expense of their families, with predictable results. But I could be wrong.

McGowan has also said—and I don't necessarily agree here—that if you raise your kids too well, they basically grow up into...lazy nobodies? Like I guess that means that all the movers and shakers in history were ultimately just trying to prove something to their parents, who neglected or abused them. I don't know.

I have young-ish kids. We talk all the time. I'm not a perfect parent, but I'm definitely there for them. I'm working now on not bossing them around all the time, on letting them do their own thing, and also letting them know that I believe in them. I'm reading "Inside the Battle of Algiers," and the author, a revolutionary, constantly talks about how her dad (who was not a revolutionary) nonetheless told her, over and over again, that he had complete confidence in her. I don't think my parents did a terrible job with me, but they never said anything like that—not once—and even today act like it's a surprise if I can tie my own shoes.

Anyway, my kids' radicalism honestly makes me feel like a liberal sometimes. I have to occasionally remind them to make sure—contrary to Mao's wishes—to censor themselves around normies, although if some political incident ever comes up between my kids and their school (for instance), I will support my kids. I've observed them generally keeping their mouths shut regarding politics around people. And I mean, they're also kids, with all that term implies.

My wife is an anti-communist Social Democrat. She thinks like a Marxist all the time (money = power), but gets angry if I call her ideas Marxism. (She doesn't give a fuck about Biden or the Democrats, supports unions, is anti-imperialist, supports imprisoning most elected leaders in "democratic" countries, and has attended protests with me, so she's pretty cool most of the the time.) She doesn't want our kids to be little commies though. Sometimes she'll talk with them and just basically be like: communism bad, capitalism good. Thus far her approach has had, if anything, the opposite of the intended effect. I think it's obvious, but soft power is an incredibly powerful weapon. The fact that Hollywood, for instance, churns out so many movies and TV shows which just pretend that this fucked up world of ours in the imperial core is normal and nothing can be done about it probably makes far more of a difference than all the cops in the USA.

I have to see what happens when my kids become teenagers and adults. I assume that they'll think everything I say and do at that point is unbearable. As others have said here, you only have so much control.

I think that, sooner or later, another uprising will begin in the USA. Maybe it will achieve more than 2020. At that point, my kids will probably be teenagers or young adults. I suspect that they will want to take risks for the cause. I obviously don't want them risking imprisonment, violence, or death, but isn't that also an example of my own liberalism? Why should other people's kids have to take all the dangerous risks? Bringing down capitalism in the USA is a truly massive, epochal undertaking. All of us are going to have to work together and not all of us are going to make it. But then this also sounds like insanity—like I'm pushing my kids into some kind of death cult.

So yeah. There are twists and turns everywhere and we are not fully in control.

If you check out Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism, one of his many theories there is that people's attitude toward the state or the status quo comes from their attitude toward their parents. That, basically, having abusive parents and growing up rural, middle class, and as a member of the majority ethnic group almost guarantees that you will be a fascist (although again, there are subjective factors). Reich basically advocates the kind of sexual freedom we are working toward in the USA right now: let consenting adults enjoy having sex however they want to have it, because if they suppress their sexual urges it fucks them up in all kinds of ways. You can see how this plays out, for instance, in case after notorious case of fervent homophobic priests who are discovered to be fucking male sex workers like crazy. It's obviously not ridiculous to pay attention to the sexual element when considering people's political beliefs.

I'm thinking now of when I was hanging out at a playground a couple of years ago with some normies, and hearing one of the mothers, a fellow millennial, tell her daughter to act "ladylike." I couldn't believe I was hearing this word from someone my age. This woman is honestly pretty nice, but is like, textbook case of petite bourgeois in danger of proletarianization, and man the guys she hung around with—her ex-husband and her new boyfriend—were really, really not good people. (The ex-husband was the dangerous kid you never let yourself be alone with back in elementary school; the new boyfriend hung a fucking Gadsden flag outside of their house.) Nice as such people can be on a personal level, we all know that being a normie means you are either a fascist or highly at risk of becoming one, and I think looking into the sexual pathology here would just yield mountains of evidence.