The conservative movement basically just accomplished almost every long-term aim that has animated them since the 60s and brought the modern movement into existence - school prayer, abortion, public funding for private and religious schools. By next week they will gut the ability for executive branch federal agencies to do literally anything and probably illegalize gay marriage again (they will next year for sure if not now). Senator Cornyn absolutely is not bluffing when he expressed the desire to see Brown v Board overturned too - they'll go after that as soon as they think they can, probably next year, because one of their ultimate aims is to literally do segregation again. And if Charles Koch has anything to say about it (he very much does) they'll pull as back to Gilded Age jurisprudence and strip every single labor law and regulation of its teeth.
We're going back to the 80s, baby. The 1880s.
We're in fuckin 1320 motherfucker. You are a serf. Bitch, you live in Alsace. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin' lord the grain. Your fucking children, you've had 15 children. You've never taken a bath. You've literally never. washed. your. penis. You've never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You've had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are child soldiers in the Duke's army.
Thats fine all all this will do is make violent working class movments inevitable and now we will have the stronger knowledge to kill the next FDR instead of letting them prevent the revolution that is desperately needed . The chuds are riping apart the stabilizing reforms of captlism it doesn't matter how much police state they throw at us, soon enough our numbers will overwhelm them.
It's not fine but I agree nonetheless. Whether we like it or not we are all accelerationists now.
its like reverse Richard Nixon moment, but yeah I'm trying to cope right now so yeah its not Fine but I gotta operate like it is fine so I can function :joker-shopping:
I think violent labor resistance is much less feasible now. The disparity in weapons between the left and right, the people and the state, and the state's willingness to use violence on citizens makes violent resistance harder to accomplish and far fewer people willing to imagine it happening. I think in the back (or front) of their minds libs have already accept a fascist theocratic future where they profit off the immense suffering of a broad underclass (because naturally THEY wouldn't be part of it).
In the short term, yes, we're not ready, but I don't think it's as bad as people say.
The military is significantly more liberal than the popular view, especially in the officer corps, and a bunch of those are going to be increasingly radicalised both in and after leaving the military. As things move into "bleeding Kansas" we're gonna see a rise in armed members of the left. The key difficulty here is linking that to organised labour.
The military is significantly more liberal than the popular view, especially in the officer corps
Can you elaborate on this?
Sure.
So, firstly, the Officer Corps, in most nations is by default moderately conservative. They like the status quo, and they hate Fascists because they do dumb shit that makes war hard. This usually filters down to influencing the enlisted ranks, who generally split more radically left or right depending on material conditions of the soldier strata. The median US officer in 2000 is not a rabid chud, but an Eisenhower Republican and thinks the Republican party still caters to those.
The enlisted military until 2000 was mostly Rural Conservatives and a split of Urban Conservatives and Urban Social Democrats roughly in thirds, with the latter either being people of colour or union worker's families. The fuck up of the 2000s ended up polarising this divide, with about a 50/50 radicalisation split, but a good chunk radicalising to the left left the military because of this. The remnants were those that can stomach it, ie. Liberals.
The officer corps also polarised, with the Army surprisingly breaking mostly left under the strain of realising they're the baddies, the Navy not caring, and the Airforce going full utter fash as Air Forces everywhere love to do. But this took time to filter through the ranks, since the Nixon/Regan era senior officers were still in power.
The increase in women in the armed forces also altered the balance hard towards the liberal side of the calculus, and continues to.
Finally, Trump screwed up the contracting gravy train with his less hawkish policy, pissed off military members with half a conscience by doing things like fucking over the Kurds (there was, apparently, almost a mass resignation of the officer corps over letting Turkey have Rojava.), and generally annoyed people with his dumb ideas. This resulted in the Armed forces voting majority democratic in 2020 for the first time ever.
Now, this doesn't mean the army is a bunch of communists, they still lean slightly to the right of the American political centre, but they want to keep the wheels turning, and this has caused them to adopt the default centrist liberal nature of a normal government department. This means they'll break against the chuds...probably...except for the air force, who, joy, have most of the nukes.
Ultimately though I think things are going to come down to the personal beliefs of the field commanders and their ability to command personal loyalty from their troops. The chain of command is going to become increasingly ossified at both military and civilian levels.
My comrade in Christ, if shit goes down now the fascists will simply murder us.
We need to be organizing and we need time to grow.
Wouldn't surprise me if the long game is 1780s, to bring back OG slavery, not the prison slavery that currently exists.
We have some rabid monarchist theocrats around. Just watch, the next trick with be to codify something that limits it to a certain branch of Christian prayer when Muslims in Dearborn start prayer in schools and scare the fundies.
I don't see why they wouldn't continue the prison slavery thing because the US has shown it's willing to mass-incarcerate and to criminalize literally anything to make it happen. Like if you make homelessness, protests, etc. illegal then you got millions of people who can be arrested and un-personed by society and the establishment. Gives everyone a "don't' do crime and you won't get imprisoned" thin excuse, which is all anyone needs to do or support the worst things imaginable.
Filling prisons with actual leftists capable of radicalizing people seems like it might backfire.
Right, they can't just copy the previous fascists homework, they have to change a few things around to make their ideals look original so they can just tell all the "debate" libs that this is nothing like the past
With all these abortion prosecutions coming down m, they’ll have even more exploitable labor.
I was thinking it would be more like the late 1800's or early 1900's, but your estimate sounds like it could happen too at this rate.
No actual slavery, but still kkk and Jim crow, and like 5 capitalists own the entire economy. Seems what they want openly
Way more expensive to maintain slaves alive than it is to just give workers pocket change then blame it on them if they can't live off of it
Right, that was one of the initial big draws of moving toward capitalism.
When the Americas were first colonized they just worked the Indigenous slaves right to death, gave as little fucks about maintenance even left them out in the elements (or so some account went,this was more CenAm), yes disease played a role as well in mass killing, when the labor provided was too low since they genocided too many people then they started importing Africans which was more costly. Early colonizers had this absolutely nasty view indigenous slaves were seen as free gifts of nature, some inconsequential part of the land they conquered. Genocide was considered no differently than clearing the land for settlers and if you look in journals of the assholes at the time they wax poetic on that horrific shit. Collapsing US will share in this view, we're all seen as part of the resources they have on hand rather than humans.
It wouldn't surprise me if US history ends similarly to its beginning because of its highest developed fascism being a wonton colonialist death cult, and also so inept at containing its contradictions that it takes us back to pre-feudal period in futile hopes of again giving birth to bourgeois-aristocracy at a later time. It's not exactly a fully rational decision, its more of a reaction and cope. At least that's my thoughts on it so far, I'm no expert.
Senator Cornyn absolutely is not bluffing when he expressed the desire to see Brown v Board overturned too
I wonder what their excuse will be. “Uhhh not the founding fathers’ vision”
I mean, it very clearly wasn't the founding fathers vision. That being said, the founding fathers were slaveowning scum
the founding fathers were slaveowning scum
Many, many people are saying this, folks. They're no good! We say, 'thanks for the country, but we'll take it from here,' okay?
Learned something reading The Counterrevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne, though Zinn kind of touched on it in A People's History. We tend to ascribe lofty and benevolent ideals to the Constitution and Bill of Rights while forgetting they were written by rich white male slave owners and businessmen at a time when the concern was that the ratio of Africans to non-Africans created the constant risk of them rising up and basically slaughtering them all, like they did in the Caribbean. So, one of the ways they fought against that was constantly trying to bring in more white people... Problem was those white people were in the middle of their own religious wars back in Europe. So in order to cement a White Race, they needed to neutralize the religious conflict among them... by ensuring that the US was never seen as playing favorites. We tend to look back at the Revolutionary war and all that as a unified front, but they really need to sell it to people and things make a lot of sense when you look at the Bill of Rights as kind of a negotiation with the rest of the white males of the US. First amendment ensuring that the government will never silence the rich and they'll always be able to practice their religion, the second so that they can always form their militias to hunt down slaves and kill native americans, etc...
Obviously Freedom of Religion is important, but it's funny how we look at it now and completely misinterpret the origin.
Also! Had no idea that Georgia started as a whites only, anti-slavery colony to exist as a firewall between the southern colonies and Runaway Slave raiders operating out of Spanish St. Augustine. Fascinating book!
No joke. Raiders were a major problem because it was a proxy war between Madrid and London. So Madrid would support runaway slaves, give them guns and whatnot and send them up to the carolinas to free more slaves and kill British. So this dude named Oglethorpe figured if he could create a whites only colony that would solve the problem because if you saw an African you knew right away something was up. But, again, the greedy fuckers demanded their slaves. So eventually they got their way.
Sakai argues in Settlers that most abolitionists were simply scared of a Haiti-style slave revolt after Louverture's revolution :louverture-shining:
It wasn't uncommon for abolitionists to expect that they could just send the freed slaves "back to Africa", too.
Yep! I haven't read Settlers yet, but John Brown was kind of a outlier among abolitionists at the time who saw Africans as his equal as opposed to many of the other abolitionists who just wanted them gone.
uncommon for abolitionists to expect that they could just send the freed slaves “back to Africa”, too.
Tried reading Lincoln's speeches to see why he's considered so good and apparently this was just his position. They uh left that part out in school
They also left out the part where he was more concerned about keeping the union together than freeing slaves.
One of his proposed central American colonies was named Linconia
Yeah that’s another thing Sakai brings up. Lincoln’s vp literally commented that Africans would be outcompeted by whites so it wasn’t anything to worry about
It wasn't just his position, he actually did send some folks. I know someone who doesn't have definitive proof, so grain of salt, but it's been folklore passed down through their family that it happened to one of their ancestors.
Settlers is a great read. It also gets bonus points for how much it upsets white guys
It's fucked up because I've known this for years and I still get extremely mad every time it's brought up.
:amerikkka:
I knew that Oregon banned black people from entering the state but I never realized the Free Soil connection :agony-shivering:
Absolutely. Also, it's crazy, because if you look at the graph, they just couldn't stop bringing in slaves despite knowing they were setting themselves up for disaster. Just greedy assholes.
Imagine getting hundreds or thousands percent returns on your investments. this was the motivating factor
Hell yeah we need more Horne posting here. Every single one of his books deserves immense attention from anyone seriously trying to understand the underlying connections for the past millennia.
The Dawning of the Apocalypse is soooooooo fucking good, every damn page is worthy of its own 10 page expansion of notes.
That one is on my list too, but I don't think I can follow up with it too soon. CR1776 was such a slog to get through those first four chapters. Fascinating stuff, but my man is in desperate need of an editor. I've been checking out his talks on youtube every once in a while instead.
I found this Youtube channel that just constantly uploads Gerald Horne appearing in random podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8MAryWjYYX3IUkmZfTnmug/videos
Yes! I'm actually subscribed to them already and recommend others do too!
IMO, he's a slog much like Marx can be a slog. They just have too much they want to say, and it all loops back in on itself paragraph after paragraph of heavy punch 😂
Oh yeah, totally. Also, he's trailblazing so like you need that background info, but it's so much. And I'm not typically a history guy so my head was ready to explode at times. I realized about halfway through the book he kinda writes as if he's up on stage with a powerpoint running behind him, but he knows we can't see the pictures so he just puts it all out there.
Its one of those books where you can pop it open to a random paragraph and it'll send you on a night long tangent of research, forgetting why you were researching.
Sorry in advance for your time lol
while forgetting they were written by rich white male slave owners and businessmen at a time when the concern was that the ratio of Africans to non-Africans created the constant risk of them rising up and basically slaughtering them all, like they did in the Caribbean.
I've seen some liberals try to give Thomas Jefferson credit for passing the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, but if you use your brain for two seconds you can tell this isn't because he was a slaveowning abolitionist, but because the Haitians had just brought the liquidation of their masters to completion three years prior and the US slaveowners were scared shitless.
Exactly. There's a lot of warning signs but the mythology around the US is strong.
i think freedom of religion is the most over rated right we have
it has caused more harm than good
I mean, unless you have a specific one in mind you want to force everyone to subscribe to, by abolishing it you're just going to run into the problem of everyone looking towards commercial indoctrination that fulfill the same "spiritual" needs. Definitely not thinking of Disney adults as I write this. ;)
Does he give any good sources regarding that being the concern of the founders, eg letters from them or is there some quote from the federalist papers or something where they cite the idea that they need to bring in more whites from Europe so that’s why they need religious freedom etc? I’d love to have quotes like that ready to pull out and show people.
I'm doing some quick searching with calibre and he asserts in the intro that the idea began after Bacon's Rebellion which was 1676-ish.
Moreover, the colonial project unfolded alongside a kind of Cold War between Catholics and Protestants13 (studded with the periodic equivalent of a kind of “Sino-Soviet” split that from time to time disunited Madrid and Paris). The chaos of colonialism combined with this defining religious rift ironically created leverage for Africans as they could tip the balance against one European power by aligning with another—or with the indigenous. Then there was the developing notion of “whiteness,” smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the “old” continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes: this, inter alia, served to unite settlers in North America with what otherwise might have been their French and Spanish antagonists, laying the basis for a kind of democratic advance, as represented in the freedom of religion in the emergent U.S. Constitution. Surely, the uniting of Europeans from varying ethnicities under the umbrella of “whiteness” broadened immeasurably the anti-London project, with a handsome payoff delivered to many of the anti-colonial participants in the form of land that once was controlled by the indigenous, often stocked with enslaved Africans—not to mention a modicum of civil rights denied to those who were not defined as “white.” Ironically, the founders of the republic have been hailed and lionized by left, right, and center for—in effect—creating the first apartheid state.
The famed “Bacon’s Rebellion” has been described as a civil war as much as an insurrection spearheaded by servants—there were about two thousand slaves and six thousand servants in the colony’s forty-thousand-strong population, as tabulated: the indigenous population also has to be accounted for when assessing the balance of class and racial forces. The growth in the population of enslaved Africans—their numbers reputedly tripled between 1680 and 1690—happened to occur as the more encompassing category of “whiteness” ascended 89 and, perhaps, as a result of this abortive revolt. This rebellion—according to a recent study—illustrates the illiberality of the settlers, making it difficult to swallow wholly the progressiveness of their revolt against London a scant century later: for, it is reported, driving this rebellion was a settler desire to enforce a quicker extermination of the indigenous, which was thought to be resisted by London’s delegates. After this revolt, religion and “race”—which pointedly excluded Africans—helped to bond the colonial elite and European servants 90
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Sharples, “Flames of Insurrection,” 62, 140. See also Strange News from Virginia; Being a Full and True Account of the Life and Death of Nathaniel Bacon, London: Harris, 1677, Huntington Library; “Mss. on Negroes, Slaves, etc. Together with Some Papers on Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion,” Folder 183, Daniel Parish Slavery Transcripts; Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, 133: “After the rebellion’s conclusion, Anglo-Virginian planters emphasized whiteness and Christianity as the two bonds that held English people together against Indians who threatened from without and enslaved people who threatened from within.”
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James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.`
If I go searching for "white" there's quite a bit to go through. And I don't have that kind of time right now, but I do plan on trying to give this a reread with the intention of finding meme-able content.🤞
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More teachers should join the church of Satan and lead our kids in prayer. Hell, I'm sure there is a church of Marxist saints that they could join to lead some kids in prayer too.
It's completely legal not to stand up for the Pledge of allegiance. But there will be social consequences. Becoming a Satanist is also legal, but in many places in America can lead to ostracization, making coworkers/boss uncomfortable, possibly getting fucking beaten up.
Yeah I tried ironically doing a Satanist club at my high school and another kid brought a knife one day, cornered me, and threatened to cut my throat open, and this was back when school shootings were less common.
Something like 39% of Americans literally believe the second coming of Christ will occur during their lifetimes.
I’ve not seen such an apt response in some time. You are 100% correct.
And yes, these people believe deep in their bones that this is just a given. Of course he’s comin’ back, y’all.
More teachers should join the church of Satan and lead our kids in prayer.
Naturally, the court does not protect the teachers from the administration. It only protects the administration from parents in the district.
Teachers can still be fired cough for no reason at all cough.
To be quite honest I don’t want anyone who believes in magic teaching my children
The Satanic Temple was founded in 2012 and is mostly atheists. They have an abortion ritual
Satanic temple people spend most of their time bullying schools into keeping separation of church and state.
Like they tried to put up a baphomet statue at a school that was displaying a nativity scene and stuff like that
I think people here would benefit from reading the Supreme Court chapter of Michael Parenti's Democracy for the Few. The Supreme Court was always a reactionary institution. Almost all of the "good" rulings like Brown vs The Board of Education and Miranda vs Arizona were ruled from the Warren court, which was a one-in-a-century occurrence that involved the Chief Justice basically hiding his power level when he was nominated by Eisenhower.
These rulings are simply the Supreme Court returning to form as a thoroughly reactionary institution. Because as we all know, the infamous Dred Scott case was ruled in favor of white supremacist slaveowners by the same institution. Parenti lists more rulings that clearly favored the rich and powerful.
Liberals do not know history and do not understand that the Supreme Court, regardless of who the justices are, should be seen as the enemy, not a potential for good. This leads to a tendency that I would style as "courtism," the idea that social change doesn't come from protests or armed struggle or even through participation in electoral politics, but through favorable court rulings. Voting is reduced to a procedural step with the ultimate goal of having an politically advantageous composition of justices. How many times have we heard people say we should vote for Clinton or Biden because of the Supreme Court?
hmm @PorkrollPosadist must have read that
The constitution only exists as a pretext for the reactionary Supreme Court to strike down any victories achieved by the people who are foolish enough to play the bourgeoisie’s game by the bourgeoisie’s rules. You will notice that, in practice, constitutionality is never an impediment to state oppression, and throughout the vast majority of the constitutional republic’s history the Supreme Court has had no issue shit-canning the limited victories of the people by using the most contrived interpretations of its rather simple language imaginable.
Liberals venerate the Supreme Court because for a very short time in its history it rendered decisions like Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade, but if you zoom the camera out a little bit, this short period is a clear aberration to the status quo of busting unions, returning slaves to their masters, and permitting the practice of eugenics and internment.
:sankara-salute:
This. For every admittedly important case on social issues, there are like a dozen that say shit like Nestle can use slave labor.
This leads to a tendency that I would style as “courtism,” the idea that social change doesn’t come from protests or armed struggle or even through participation in electoral politics, but through favorable court rulings.
Isn’t this just common law?
is anyone keeping track of everything the supreme court is dismantling? this is happening fast
Oh yeah they're gonna waste no time ramming shit like this through. Especially if/when they take back the house/senate/whitehouse.
And rules obsessed liberals will just roll over for a fascist dictatorship emerging through their trust in the "democratic" process.
So is June 2025, when the repubs have all 3 chambers, going to be a gigantic meme?
Do you mean January? When they're back in power I don't even know what they'll have left on their agenda. They'll have everything they want before then.
They will never be satisfied. They will be angry that the guy at Starbucks doesn't like then. And that will be on their agenda. They will have an "other" until the second most fascist person on earth is killed by the most fascist person for being too removed
And rules obsessed liberals will just roll over for a fascist dictatorship emerging through their trust in the “democratic” process.
Even most of them have been screaming at Biden to court pack, and he's too much of a dumbass putz to do it
Man's lasting image as president, aside from trying to not crap himself during pressers, is going to be a massive walkback of basic human rights and him doing nothing about it
I love how the Democrats are all "things take time, slowly slowly, compromise, incremental reform, we need republican buy-in. Be patient and voooteeee"
Supreme Court: Haha sigma grindset go brrrr.
All the libs saying Bernie was too extreme and that incremental change was the way to go just got "Chadfaced yes" by the Supreme court. Would be a lot funnier if it wasn't so damn depressing.
That's the Dems in a nutshell in every branch though.
In the executive branch, a Dem president does fuck all while the Rep president is the ImPeRiAl PrEsIdEnT ruling by decree.
In the legislature, the Dems are full on "oh but the parwamentawian won't let us and the norms!" While the Reps are like "lol, fuck the filibuster that's a dumb ass rule for dumbasses we're literally stacking the court and you won't do anything"
Fuck, those really annoying coaches that continuously got news coverage for whining that they can't pray with their kids, finally won? I thought that was the textbook definition of separation of church and state
There is already a trend with religious schools outperforming underfunded public schools, fuck this
Yahweh, please grant us strength to win this game of junior league baseball
It seems unbelievably vain to summon the galactic creator for divine providence in a fucking sports game. What happens when you lose?
These are the people who are running around calling people groomers.
I swear, they could rule in a 6-3 decision that the original wording of the Constitution clearly says that only those approved by Republican leadership may hold office, and libs will still be telling us to :vote: harder.
Not only that but they totally lied about the facts of the case, claiming he was doing a quiet private prayer at the 50 yard line when the fact finding of the appellate court found he was putting on a huge show. They can't even lay out the facts, they're fucking Fox News now.
My guess is that the right was worried about Roberts being a squish when it came to overturning decades of precedent. With Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, they have enough hardcore ghouls that Roberts is a non-factor.
Also, court cases take a long time to wind through the courts. The case that resulted in Roe being overturned started in the lower courts all the way back in 2018, right around the time Gorsuch and Kavanaugh got seated.
EDIT: The case in OP started in 2017. You're just seeing the speed of the judiciary.
