I mean yeah, but if rent keeps going up they're going to reach a critical intersection between wages and living expenses where people might actually get desperate. Sure, the bread n circuses will distract the middle class but people near the poverty line already are just scraping by on the covid job market momentum.
Material circumstances of individual people don't matter to the Fed, the economy™ does. They also state that unemployment can never go below a certain number (iirc it's something like 3%), or that will also cause significant inflation , the unstated fact being that some people will have to be fucked for the economy™ to work.
So that may be another pony they trot out down the road if the 'wages too high' gambit doesn't work on it's own
The unemployment bit is really interesting, and I don't doubt that they'd do it. My point is that everyone here is convinced the average person doesn't have a breaking point where they'll seriously consider unrest and I think a drop in wages without a similar drop in cost of living will be that. I think the current calm is being floated by post-covid high wages.
Like I don't doubt white people will be complacent and do little rightoid protests like in Canada. But the discourse among young poc offline is trending increasingly toward anarchism. Online I'm seeing previosly lib popular figures with millions hundreds of thousands of views flashing theory briefly on video and talking about leftist shit when previously they didn't fuck with socialism.
the discourse among young poc offline is trending increasingly toward anarchism. Online I’m seeing previosly lib popular figures with millions of views flashing theory briefly on video and talking about leftist shit
One of the things that genuinely gives me hope for the future is seeing the significant uptick in leftwing discourse in large public spaces online. But I am also an incredibly cynical bastard, so my incredibly cynical belief is that many of them are just trend-hopping and they will still vote blue for everything and run back to liberalism wholeheartedly the instant liberals do something, ANYTHING materially meaningful
Online I’m seeing previosly lib popular figures with millions of views flashing theory briefly on video and talking about leftist shit when previously they didn’t fuck with socialism.
Awesome. Link?
(Edit: To be clear I'm not being flippant or disbelieving, I just really like to see that kind of thing. If it was already posted, I missed it).
In hindsight my sleepy brain inflated the numbers by an order of magnitude. But these people tend to line up with my impression of RL zoomers who seem better educated on intersectionality and vague anti-liberalism.
CJ the X is a little confused but they've got the spirit. I'd consider them a decent entrypoint for newbies because they like post-marxist/modern junk, but they're kinda reactionary in a weird spiritual way. It's just a lot less toxic than Vaush and PatSocs.
FD Signifier is becoming a big name in the space. His goal on youtube is to carve out a niche in the algorithm for anti-establishment black men. He talks a lot about the toxicity of black masc/patriarchal culture and the hypocrisy of liberals who appeal to black identity. I've seen him show up in videos/streams with ancom breadtubers (like thought slime) and while he's stated historically that he's iffy about communists (because racism on the left), he seems to be warming up to them and borrowing anti-imperial talking points.
The general trend I've seen is that the more fucked things get, the more they read, and the more socialist talking points they put forward in their work. And a lot of that change has been within the past year. On top of that, you can add the anti-cop and anti-work rhetoric that's been in 'the culture' for decades and is now filtering upward into the agitprop-creator intellectual class when they were previously solidly lib.
Thank you. I've watched FD Signifier before and appreciated some of his analysis, so it's great to hear he might be leaning further leftward. Haven't heard of the others at all, but I'm always happy to see lib/breadtube 'stars' turning genuinely anticapitalistat the very least, so I will check those out. (Thoughtslime is pretty good, and their Scardey Cats channel is a guilty pleasure of mine. I've been watching Matt/Mildred for a few years now).
The general trend I’ve seen is that the more fucked things get, the more they read, and the more socialist talking points they put forward in their work
Here's fucking hoping that's representative of a trend not just on lefty (bread) youtube, but across the working class. With all the hopeless bad news, the rise in, for example, unionization is beautiful and heartening to see. The spread of actual leftist ideals in popular culture gives me some hope for this bleak-ass fucking reality we're in. Anything that points to, as you said, that filtering upwards of anti-cop, anti-work rhetoric into anything even slightly more mainstream, is a kind of emotional/mental sustenance to me. Thanks.
closer to what, though? everyone is still hypnotized by TV/internet and lives in their little isolated pods in neighborhoods that can only be navigated in the magical steel box.
The problem is that people, individual people, don't all just spontaneously decide that "We've had enough of X!" and then go fuck shit up. They exist within communities which become subject to specific material & economic conditions, which they speak amongst themselves about, and then begin to collectively organize & deliberate among themselves what to do in response to those material conditions.
Americans cannot be moved into revolutionary or insurrectionist action because they (we), very deliberately lack any communitarian, or social character of any kind. No-one in real life talks about any of these things, and if they do they do so entirely within the context of whatever the glowing electric box in front of them tells them to say about it. I work in a car parts plant, our lunch-room is plastered wall-to-wall with tvs that are on a permanent tri-weekly rotation between CNN, Fox News, and ESPN. There is literally no way you can have a conversation during work hours about any of this shit without your own arguments getting drowned out by thought-terminating hog shit in real time.
Americans cannot be moved into revolutionary or insurrectionist action because they (we), very deliberately lack any communitarian, or social character of any kind. No-one in real life talks about any of these things, and if they do they do so entirely within the context of whatever the glowing electric box in front of them tells them to say about it.
They've really got things under wraps this time. I honestly have no idea how any of this could possibly ever change. There would have to be no TV or internet for months.
I mean yeah, but if rent keeps going up they're going to reach a critical intersection between wages and living expenses where people might actually get desperate. Sure, the bread n circuses will distract the middle class but people near the poverty line already are just scraping by on the covid job market momentum.
Material circumstances of individual people don't matter to the Fed, the economy™ does. They also state that unemployment can never go below a certain number (iirc it's something like 3%), or that will also cause significant inflation , the unstated fact being that some people will have to be fucked for the economy™ to work.
So that may be another pony they trot out down the road if the 'wages too high' gambit doesn't work on it's own
The unemployment bit is really interesting, and I don't doubt that they'd do it. My point is that everyone here is convinced the average person doesn't have a breaking point where they'll seriously consider unrest and I think a drop in wages without a similar drop in cost of living will be that. I think the current calm is being floated by post-covid high wages.
I don't think it's people in general they believe that about, just mostly Americans, who are very...housebroken.
I don't think this will do it, I don't even think the current crop of issues taken together will, but...I think we're getting closer
Deliberate malice is for certain a more powerful driver of anger and change than blithering incompetence
Like I don't doubt white people will be complacent and do little rightoid protests like in Canada. But the discourse among young poc offline is trending increasingly toward anarchism. Online I'm seeing previosly lib popular figures with
millionshundreds of thousands of views flashing theory briefly on video and talking about leftist shit when previously they didn't fuck with socialism.One of the things that genuinely gives me hope for the future is seeing the significant uptick in leftwing discourse in large public spaces online. But I am also an incredibly cynical bastard, so my incredibly cynical belief is that many of them are just trend-hopping and they will still vote blue for everything and run back to liberalism wholeheartedly the instant liberals do something, ANYTHING materially meaningful
Awesome. Link?
(Edit: To be clear I'm not being flippant or disbelieving, I just really like to see that kind of thing. If it was already posted, I missed it).
In hindsight my sleepy brain inflated the numbers by an order of magnitude. But these people tend to line up with my impression of RL zoomers who seem better educated on intersectionality and vague anti-liberalism.
CJ the X is a little confused but they've got the spirit. I'd consider them a decent entrypoint for newbies because they like post-marxist/modern junk, but they're kinda reactionary in a weird spiritual way. It's just a lot less toxic than Vaush and PatSocs.
FD Signifier is becoming a big name in the space. His goal on youtube is to carve out a niche in the algorithm for anti-establishment black men. He talks a lot about the toxicity of black masc/patriarchal culture and the hypocrisy of liberals who appeal to black identity. I've seen him show up in videos/streams with ancom breadtubers (like thought slime) and while he's stated historically that he's iffy about communists (because racism on the left), he seems to be warming up to them and borrowing anti-imperial talking points.
Khadija Mbowe has actually been doing black video essay content for a bit longer. Her focus tends to be on feminism and queering relationships. Like Signifier, she platforms other users for alternative perspectives (she made Signifier popular as he is now). And some of these channels are a lot more left of her. I think she is reading some stuff off the anarchist library because her recent video on romantic relationships featured quotes from a manifesto that I found mainly on anarchist websites.
The general trend I've seen is that the more fucked things get, the more they read, and the more socialist talking points they put forward in their work. And a lot of that change has been within the past year. On top of that, you can add the anti-cop and anti-work rhetoric that's been in 'the culture' for decades and is now filtering upward into the agitprop-creator intellectual class when they were previously solidly lib.
Thank you. I've watched FD Signifier before and appreciated some of his analysis, so it's great to hear he might be leaning further leftward. Haven't heard of the others at all, but I'm always happy to see lib/breadtube 'stars' turning genuinely anticapitalistat the very least, so I will check those out. (Thoughtslime is pretty good, and their Scardey Cats channel is a guilty pleasure of mine. I've been watching Matt/Mildred for a few years now).
Here's fucking hoping that's representative of a trend not just on lefty (bread) youtube, but across the working class. With all the hopeless bad news, the rise in, for example, unionization is beautiful and heartening to see. The spread of actual leftist ideals in popular culture gives me some hope for this bleak-ass fucking reality we're in. Anything that points to, as you said, that filtering upwards of anti-cop, anti-work rhetoric into anything even slightly more mainstream, is a kind of emotional/mental sustenance to me. Thanks.
closer to what, though? everyone is still hypnotized by TV/internet and lives in their little isolated pods in neighborhoods that can only be navigated in the magical steel box.
The problem is that people, individual people, don't all just spontaneously decide that "We've had enough of X!" and then go fuck shit up. They exist within communities which become subject to specific material & economic conditions, which they speak amongst themselves about, and then begin to collectively organize & deliberate among themselves what to do in response to those material conditions.
Americans cannot be moved into revolutionary or insurrectionist action because they (we), very deliberately lack any communitarian, or social character of any kind. No-one in real life talks about any of these things, and if they do they do so entirely within the context of whatever the glowing electric box in front of them tells them to say about it. I work in a car parts plant, our lunch-room is plastered wall-to-wall with tvs that are on a permanent tri-weekly rotation between CNN, Fox News, and ESPN. There is literally no way you can have a conversation during work hours about any of this shit without your own arguments getting drowned out by thought-terminating hog shit in real time.
They've really got things under wraps this time. I honestly have no idea how any of this could possibly ever change. There would have to be no TV or internet for months.