And not in a condescending way either. But in their honesty, their believability, for their hardships, for the massive epiphanies that they’re on the cusp of having.
I’m in a NE city. And I’d rather hang with these motherfuckers than the smug and superior, insufferable Neoliberal dupes listening to NPR and watching MSDNC, waving blue and yellow Ukraine flags and thinking Hillary lost because of misogyny and Russia.
Yeah, the one guy sits and plays Call of Duty with his wife, and the obsessed Trump gear-wearers and flag wavers are pathetic. There’s some outrageous cognitive dissonance going on. But at the heart of it they really get it that fundamentalists this thing is Wall St Economic Terrorism and capitalism, though they’ve been conditioned to never call it the latter. Having one dialogue in simple, direct language that we can all understand, as Malcolm put it, would certainly make it plain for people.
This thing has enormous revolutionary potential. And it’s also gonna take people getting out of their alienation silos to become cooperative members of a mutual aid society. It’s also gonna take them getting involved in constantly questioning and monitoring all govt and corporate action there, as well as civil disobedience and subversive acts. I hope they have it in them (I keep thinking that some brave protesters shutting down, tying themselves to, the rail tracks would be a good salvo to Norfolk Southern and the government that they’re serious about not letting them get away with this).
I don’t know. Is this just naive idealism?
"Wealthy elite" always seemed like codeword for anyone on the west and east coast making over 70k, has dyed hair and votes democrat. Like I got family spread all over the midwest and all I hear is mainly ranting hate rags about random fuckin' people the "news" tells them is the problem (similar to the hate "Trump country" gets from libs). Like mutual aid can help some of these peeps see the light, start them off small and bring in more stuff about how it's in the interests of wealthy people (don't use terms like 'capitalists' yet) to keep working class people down and that everybody doing labor (engineers, truck drivers, nurses, fast food workers, garbage peeps) all make this country run. Minute you bring up theory or writing though you get immediate :frothingfash:
Either way though I feel it will take a decade or two of humiliation and collapse to actually get wide swaths of peeps interested in what socialists have been saying since forever.