Apologies, this one is smaller than usual, as I'm gonna be very busy over the next few days. It's the same amount of headlines, just not as much quoted from them.
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
America is what you get when babies are luxury items for the wealthy elite.
As someone currently working within the Texas foster system, it bares endless repeating that we do not have a baby shortage. What we have is a bureaucratic trainwreck that no sane individual dares navigate. It took me three years of jumping through hoops and navigating minefields to get my first placement. I actually ended up getting licensed through two different agencies simply because of all the staffing issues they endured.
But once I was on the list, I was getting calls regularly. I've had two infants placed with me in the last year, with at least one other we had to turn down at the time. I've had placement requests for kids ranging from 2 years to 8 years old, as well. Every child placed in my house has been an adorable sweetheart from day one. Which isn't to say they didn't act like children and require parenting. But the idea that there's some kind of "viable adoptable child" problem in our country is pure fiction.
Nobody - rich, poor, or otherwise - wants to deal with Texas CPS. That's the real bottle neck in the system. And while I have no doubt that "Designer Babies" will be a thing conservatives and liberals alike angle for in a post-Roe nation, this still really just feels like a spiteful reactionary move against young people. IVF and surrogate motherhood and full-time nannies were already a thing for wealthy elites. What we're going to get post-Roe is just a generation of kids with Downs Syndrome and other screen-able genetic disorders whose lives will most likely be nasty, brutish, and short.
Ah that's sweet, but those aren't babies sweetheart, those are worker larvae.
I've seen this take more than a few times. But it really doesn't sync up with the message the actual anti-abortion folks are sending out, either privately or publicly. This isn't about "workers" nearly so much as it is about Great Replacement Theory. Much like what's driving the Quiverfull movement and the anti-immigration paranoia, conservatives genuinely believe that the reason they're losing ideological market share is that they're literally being out-bred by Evil Brown People.
In the spirit of all Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires, they don't see this cohort as worker bees. They see them as the next generation's Master Race. The anti-abortion movement is kind-of a reverse-eugenics.
It's worth remembering that back in the 1970s Evangelicals, for the most part, did not :vote:. They had some end times bullshit going where they thought that Jesus was coming back and the secular government was sinful or something. But the Civil Rights Bill and de-segregation were really recent things, and Evangelicals are nothing if not racist, so their leaders and other right-wing leaders saw Evangelicals as a potential huge voting block that could reverse trends and re-install absolute white power. They just needed a way to get the Evangelicals to vote en masse as a block. So they set up a massive propaganda effort to convince Evangelicals that aborted fetus' were babies, which no one thought at the time. And it worked, they got a massive voting block that's been spreading through the government like cancer for fifty years.
And now they're on the verge of total victory. And they're going to get rid of abortion, but they're also going to bring back hard-core Jim Crow segregation, poll taxes, sundown laws, and god knows what other horrors.
I had no idea that's how it went down, but it really fits with mine and my dad's observation over the years. I remember him telling me that when he was younger (in the 60's and 70s) evangelicals were just some weird fringe that most people didn't pay any attention to. But by the 80's it was like they suddenly had started to become this massive political force. Do you happen to have any links or resources on hand where I could read up more on this? Specifically on how they were intentionally cultivated as a political tool.
I don't have anything on hand, but the key words to search would be "religious right", "silent majority", Jerry Falwell, Reagan and Evangelicalism, and anything about the political history of abortion rights.
@Frank is very much correct but the evangelical movement has even deeper political roots starting from the 1930s in response to the New Deal. One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America would be a good place to start if you wanted to explore this even older, reactionary history.
:O someone else mentioned this book! :stalin-approval:
They're not on the verge of victory as they're not really in control. The real power still remains vested in the police, the money men, and their capitalist administrators. Churches can't actually enforce this shit. They can't control who buys and sells contraceptives or abortion drugs. They can't dictate what goes on in hospitals - who gets registered as a miscarriage and who gets flagged as an abortion - or which individuals get to legally cross state lines.
They're actively working to concentrate power into an increasingly aggressive centralized government system. But their grip on that power still runs through the offices of those executives. So much of the original power of churches - their ability to engage and mobilize large groups of people into direct action - has decayed. Church attendance is down. Churches that don't command a high-roller audience are going bankrupt. And those that do are barely more than country clubs.
The insular Jesus-themed cults and privileged niches that still wear the trappings of a national religious movement can still operate as a network for powerful families. But the Mega-Church glory days are all behind us. 4chan and Facebook and Twitter are more effective at whipping up crowds of vocal adherents than any Protestant denomination. Yoga studios command larger crowds than your typical Baptist Church. This isn't victory for Evangelicals, its an Apotheosis. They're no longer a popular movement. They're just The Federalist Society with a cross hanging in the window.
I don't think we can do that shit again, nor do we particularly want to. The next generation of this shit is going to be driven by the Tech Sector and The Algorithm. We're already seeing the edges of it on Social Media, but I suspect we're going to be increasingly targeted based on our consumption habits rather than our race or gender.
The courts will open the door to a new kind of color-blind bigotry. Something more akin to Black Mirror's "Nosedive" or Community's "Meow Meow Beans", where everyone's in an endless popularity contest and access to amenities is dictated by associating more and more exclusively with "Five Star" people.
The rubes at the bottom aren't, but the leadership cadre has seized extremely resilient control over the government of many states, they own the police, the money men have no problem working for them, and the high capitalists don't care as long as the money flows. Their faction controls the SCOTUS, permanently after this election. They control all the red states at all levels of state and local government. With the SCOTUS and Congress in hand they can strip all human and civil rights off the books with no resistance. No more unions, no more financial independence for women, just pick something and they can get rid of it.
People have been talking about a demographic shift moving power to the center and left for years, and the GOP know that, and they're trying to finalize their coup to ensure that it doesn't matter.
They're going to finalize the coup just in time to be lowered into their graves.
The next generation has a different sent of priorities, even in the upper crust. Just look at the new Saudi Crown Prince. Or the Green Party takeover of Germany.
Even the Mormons are struggling to maintain membership. Churches can't command as niche cults. They need people power to function.
Very true, but that is an ideological narrative that capitalists at the top are just using to enforce the reproduction of labor. Capitalists see labor as nothing more than Oxen. These are the stories they tell to the cattle.
Capitalists generally aren't opposed to abortion. No shortage of pro-life Republicans back in the 70s and 80s, back when getting women into the workforce was considered Business Smart.
Democrats were the original pro-life guys - and continue to host lots of pro-life diehards - back before Clinton and Bush Jr put a bow on White Flight. Republicans inherited it when they got all-in on Midwestern Evangelicalism. The belief isn't really compatible with the AnCap Libertarianism that dominated the Goldwater Era.
What about Peter Thiel? He's out there picking primary winners for the republicans, airdropping tens of millions of dollars on candidates. Where do his candidates fall on the abortion question?
Thiel's strategy for a candidate appears to be
If I had to guess, I'd say that Silicon Valley vampire couldn't give two shits one way or another. But I also suspect he's got a White Nationalist streak wide enough for him to be sympathetic to the "Not enough white blonde teenage hotties in my area code!" plea from his incel fan base. So he's not against overturning Roe if it means more war-orphans from Ukraine getting pregnant.
This I believe.
the narrative conveyed by media is how they cajole/dupe the working class (into allowing the event or actively supporting it). The ulterior motive has to be inferred by material analysis.
Bourgeoisie rule necessitates deception because it's a minority class subjugating the majority class.
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:epstein: