not letting me post nobodies in the dunk tank just turns chapotraphouse into the dunk tank 2 
I can't imagine what that life must be like, believing in nothing except your next paycheck. Why even get up in the morning, if not to fight for a better world?
Reminds me of the Iranian cleric who said America's heros are spiderman and spongebob.
All I can feel is sadness and pity for these people.
No sense of shared humanity or duty to the biosphere, how nihilistic
haha holy shit this is literally just all my coworkers
The overwhelming sentiment amongst Google office workers is they hated the people who did the sit-in protest
Except it's more like "I bet they were all DEI hires who can't code anyways"
"I hate DEI!"
"Also, hey btw if you're looking for career advice, the most important thing is networking! It means you get hired because you're buddies with the CEO and he likes you as a friend. That's totally not nepotism, trust me."
So is DEI the new “woke” or something for the American right-wing?
Slightly different niche. It's a new way of calling people a racial slur.
It's actually more misogynistic and transphobic than racist
It was largely born out of the new culture war against trans people and tech companies pushing to hire women more and so affirmative action, something that is primarily targeted at Hispanic and black people no longer sufficed as an target to attack
It’s because they can’t complain about affirmative action anymore because it no longer exists. It’s always something with the reactionary babies.
It's honestly amazing at a certain point the amount of somersaults they do to avoid literally ever saying "yes, what Israel is doing is wrong."
It's the same reactionary playbook for everything.
Cops kill a black teenager "yeah but why did he have a hoodie up and why are all these angry black people burning down Starbucks?!" Instead of "why the fuck do we continue to allow cops the power to kill anyone regardless of whatever reason is given?"
Or someone is homeless "why don't they work? How much are they spending on drugs? Why don't they just get a roommate?" It's never "homelessness has no place in a civilized society. Let's simply build some fucking houses and give them to people- yes, even the ones using drugs or not working."
I know people are conditioned into certain ways of thinking and all that. I was too. But it just becomes more and more unbelievable to me as days go by that they're simply just ignorant. Especially on Gaza. As soon as you saw one dead or dying kid, I mean come on man. Who the fuck goes "no that's fine. Stfu college kids!"
You're literally not even a human if you act like that. Being human isn't just breathing and eating and shitting it's also all the other stuff... actually it's ONLY the other stuff that separates us from other animals. Dogs and spiders breathe, eat and shit too. But humans are supposed to love, have compassion, supposed to care about children and the defenseless in society. These dipshit Zionists on Twitter absolutely know the statistic that nearly half of Gaza are under 18. Literally that one stat should be enough for any actual human to go "hold up..." Even if you don't value the lives of the young militants, ok, but you're just bombing kids. Or cheering for/condemning those who say to stop (same thing). At this late stage anyone who still even slightly supports the state of Israel is always going to be suspect for the rest of my life. It's like the people who in the 1970s who were obsessed with Rhodesia. You won't find many today who admit to supporting it, for good reason. It's a permanent stain that follows them forever.
I feel your pain and frustration at having people get sucked into this demonic thinking that the egregore of capital requests. It does feel like people lose or even willingly give up their humanity. I'm thinking of my family who will find any reason to justify cop killings, homeless deaths, imperialism. Maybe it helps with cognitive dissonance in their twisted way as they can't face the challenges of what it would take to change their world and themselves. They were recently mocking the protests too when they were blocking the golden gate bridge? Why? I guess how dare people inconvenience other (white) people, while they're blind to every other injustice in this world. There may as well be an antichrist, as they are following them.
You're literally not even a human if you act like that.
Not a good path to go down, especially when you're talking about online comments, not even direct involvement in atrocities.
It also just isn't true that humans are the only creature that shows empathy. We've observed altruistic and empathetic behaviors in lots of animals, and I think anyone with a pet would argue they can love
Dogs and cats have more humanity than some of these rabid Zionists I've interacted with, TBH
not letting me post nobodies in the dunk tank just turns chapotraphouse into the dunk tank 2
Do what you can to reduce the power of a genocidal project, even if it’s only by 0.0001%
OR
Be the creator of the next cybertruck or vision pro?
The choice is obvious
This tweeter was asking in bad faith, but genuinely, why did this start on bougie campuses? I realize that stufents from wealthy backgrounds arent necessarily all monsters, but its not a group I would have expected to take point on a potentially revolutionary action
Because college kids have time, money, and access to information.
This is basically the argument Castro makes in "My Life" as to why revolutions tend to start with someone that is a descendent of the capitalist class (Castro - father was a plantation owner; Lenin - father was a state councillor and appointed to the hereditary nobility; Mao - father was a moneylender and one of the wealthiest farmers in the region)
Related, also why so many revolutionary movements begin with providing education to the people, and why liberated societies often begin building their new society by building robust education and scientific institutions
There's a good point there but I think it's even a bit more nuanced. Castro's father did not come from old money. From what I understand he was born a poor peasant in 1875 and spent the first quarter of his life doing hard labour and military service. Fidel wasn't a pure bourgeois class traitor - he was from an upwardly mobile family that hit a limit. There's an interesting bit in a
book about this:Speaking broadly, it seems to me activist milieus can best be seen as a juncture, a kind of meeting place, between downwardly mobile elements of the professional classes and upwardly mobile children of the working class. The first consist of children of white-collar backgrounds who reject their parents' way of life: the daughter of a tax accountant who chooses to work as a carpenter, the daughter of veterinarian who chose to live as a graphic artist, the son of a middle manager who chooses to become a civil engineer or professional activist. The other consisted of children from blue-collar backgrounds who go to college. In historical terms, both correspond to a classic stereotype. The first represents the classic recruitment base for artistic bohemia; if not children of the bourgeoisie, as they were often assumed to be in 1850s Paris, where the term was first coined, then children born to members of administrative or professional elites, living in voluntary poverty, experimenting with more pleasurable, artistic, less alienated forms of life. The second represents the classic stereotype of the revolutionary, particularly in Global South: children of the laboring classes (workers, peasants, small shop-owners even) whose parents strived all their life to get their sons or daughters into college, or even who managed to get themselves bourgeois levels of education by their own efforts, only to discover that bourgeois levels of education do not actually allow entry into the bourgeoisie, or often, any sort of regular work at all. One can compile endless examples among the ranks of the last century's revolutionary heroes: from Mao (child of peasants turned librarian), to Fidel Castro (unemployed lawyer from Cuba), and so on. In fact, both bohemia and revolutionary circles have historically tended to be a meeting place of both.
Obviously this is a highly schematized picture. First of all, it leaves out some significant groups entirely: for example, those who adopted bohemian lifestyles because their parents were bohemian, or the children of professional activists. One should not underestimate the degree of self-reproduction in such sub-classes. Also: while the stereotype of the bohemian as rich kid-secretly supporting his absinthe habits with money from home, eventually either to die of dissipation or go back to the board of daddy's company-is strikingly similar to the stereotype of the activist as trust-fund baby, it is probably no more accurate. Certainly there have always been scions of the bourgeoisie in both milieus, all the more influential for their money, social skills, and connections. But bohemian milieus of the last 150 years never really consisted primarily of children of the upper, or even professional, classes. As Pierre Bourdieu (1993) has recently shown, the social base for nineteenth century bohemian culture in Europe emerged, in part, through exactly the same processes that shaped social revolutionaries in the Global South: among talented children of peasants, for example, who had taken advantage of France's new educational system, and then found themselves excluded from conventional elite culture anyway. What's more, these milieus tended to overlap. Bohemia was full not only of working-class intellectuals and self-taught eccentrics, but outright revolutionaries. The friendship between Oscar Wilde and Peter Kropotkin was not atypical; actually, it could be taken as emblematic. Similarly, revolutionary circles have always been filled with children of privilege who have rejected their natal values: Karl Marx (lawyer's son turned penniless journalist) being the archetypical example. Every Mao had his Chou En-Iai, even Castro had his CM. The constitution of both milieus, then, is really quite similar. Which probably helps explain why artists have felt so consistently drawn to revolutionary politics.
Well, Castro actually talks about that as well.
He argued it was important to be the child of a bougie, not a grandchild so as not to be desensitised through normalcy (note: every example given above were the child of "success", not the grandchild.)
Further education is very heavily linked with approval for left-wing policies. There's some big correlation between learning stuff about the world and being politically left-wing. When that information floods to an otherwise very sheltered group, I guess you're likely to see reactions.
This is not entirely true
More education correlates higher with voting Democrat but once you start taking into account anti-war sentiment, progressive economic policies, etc.
Education starts having an inverse relationship with support for the aforementioned
I'm lazy but there's tons of pills on Americans to support this if you look them up
I would be interested to see papers. Because when googling I can only find studies that conclude somewhere between a mixed and significant link between education and supporting left-wing policies.
So the reason why this movement specifically is tied to these “big” schools is twofold:
The “divest” part of BDS is directed at wealthy private schools like Harvard and Yale who have large financial stakes in the defense industry and Israeli companies. Their schools are, through their investments, much more complicit than Podunk State.
These elite schools are recruiting and/or research institutions for the military/industrial complex, and are therefore more involved than other institutions. Schools like Stanford are integral to the maintenance and perpetuation of the war machine, and therefore the actions of the student body are in response to that context.
Implying that MLK was an activist because of low SAT scores is quite a take. I’m guessing she’s the type of conservative who rants about affirmative action and iq whenever she thinks of Black ppl.
I have to wonder why any decent and intelligent person would want to be an industry lead.
Even being a success under capitalism doesn't appeal to me. It sounds boring and pointless. What is the point of being rich and leading a bunch of people if all you're doing is the same pointless goal of turning our beautiful planet into more plastic shit for people to throw away?
Oh cool, I lead the team that made a new throw away product and pointless waste of resources. I get my sports car that I never drive, my white picket fence and my generic family. Barf. No thanks.
And this is all assuming that capitalism doesn't completely collapse itself in my lifetime due to the crumbling empire running out of shit to exploit and a dying planet. Fuck that noise. I'd be happier as communist nobody that a capitalist super star.
i mean, getting rich enough to know 100% sure that you'll always have a place to live, food to eat and good medical care seems like a motivating goal, and it's the only way to escape constant existential threat short of a revolution.
what i cant really imagine is what the hell keeps them going once they have enough money to just vibe.
So I know a ton of wealthy tech bros who came from poor families. Many from dirt poor families in India and China
After they've amassed a certain amount, it entirely becomes a social thing. All their friends are other wealthy tech bros. Their partner is also a superficial wealthy PMC or a hot gold digger. Their families admire them for being successful. Their self worth and identity becomes their job title seniority and work accomplishments
These people starting off working so hard to achieve material comfort for themselves and their families that by the time they've made it, they've forgotten why they starting working so hard on the first place, and so working hard is all they have left (yes, they actually work hard. I never see them do anything but code or meetings the ENTIRE day and they also log work for hours at home later)
I feel the same way, but I think for most of these people it's actually about the social rewards/ego strengthening effects and not the material boons. Like, imagine if the constant drumbeat of capitalist society that tells you "you're disposable, you're subhuman, you're nothing" was actually whispering the opposite in your ear. "You've won. You're better than all those wretched people. You are justified, you are sanctified, you made it, you're gonna live forever." Like that kind of external motivation and validation is not a recipe for true happiness, but I have to imagine it feels damn good to have all of society's messaging and all the people you know pretend that you are some elevated class that actually matters.
God communists are so fucking smart. You're entirely correct (here's my close up observations here https://hexbear.net/comment/4860832)
I'm ashamed to admit I've fallen into the same trap until recently. It's actually fucking wild because almost everybody I meet actually does just heap absurd praise and worship onto me. Even the blue collar workers in the office will sprint to clean up the tiny spill I made when I'm cleaning it up and tell me to please not because that's their job
I remember on my very first day, I asked for directions to a certain room and some guy helped me out, asked me my name what I do. When I told him, he replied with his name and said "Oh, but I'm only a contractor" and sheepishly showed me his contractor work badge and bowed before leaving like he was kneeling before a lord or something to show me fealty
I knew a guy from a family with a super successful business. Right out of high school he carved off a chunk of his family's business and ran it well enough, so he was always completely set in terms of money and career, but he's always had more artistic sensibilities and curiosities than most business types I've met so I'm not sure he was ever fulfilled by it. After a breakup a few years ago he sold off the rest of the business, started traveling, and never really stopped. I think he's restlessly searching for meaning and community but has zero class consciousness and so he hasn't been able to realize that his position at the top of the pile is what makes that impossible to find. For a while he was trying to pull me out on adventures but I was never able to afford it and wouldn't have been comfortable frolicking around the world with him paying for everything.
I'm not struggling to put food on the table so obviously there's a bit of privilege in saying this, but I wouldn't trade places with him for anything.
So I founded a start up with my partner. It’s an online business that isn’t making a bunch of plastic products and is a service that will help players in our hobby. But honestly, the mental weight of fighting for capital and trying to get funding is.. I don’t know if I really play the entrepreneur game well enough for it. I am good at making connections and leading projects and managing people. But the constant need to sell what we’re doing to capitalists as not only “will make a successful business” but “will 100X your investment in 5 years” is just. Excruciating.
The reason I’m doing it though is that I just don’t see how in the current world I’m supposed to get to a stable and secure state without owning our own business. I used to be a lawyer and I was just protecting the interests of the oligarchy and it was unbearable. Being an employee for someone else is, to my kind, always a risk. We are privileged enough to get this chance to try to build something that lasts, and we are good at it.
Honestly I long for revolution and the collapse of Western imperialism. I’m bourgeois as fuck but I want to dedicate my life to a meaningful cause. In the meantime though I guess I’m trying to “win” at capitalism enough that I can just be independently wealthy and not rely on others. I don’t know. I hate it all
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its greed.
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Look, right out of school I started working for a energy company but it has a progressive outlook. It's true that the vast majority of our business is oil and gas but...
