Looking back, it’s embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave me a second look; Foucault and Woolf for the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found myself in a series of affectionate but chaste friendships.
I tried to be a socialist to get chicks but instead of finding it liberating I turned and shut down any sort of grass roots movements in order to continue American capitalism
I honestly wonder if that was actually real, if he actually read those books. I see this more likely as a literary device to say that these books are useless and those that read them, like I did when I was stupid, have corrupt motivations.
The dude is well read, I don't think that it's a lie that he read those authors.
Their use as a literary device is spot on though.
It's actually a good reminder that being educated in radical matters is horseshit in itself without some kind of praxis (cue Kamala's dad and Buttigieg Sr...)
He's in very good health. Dude can box jump like six feet into the air. We're going to have to listen to him concern trolling for like thirty more years.
He's got the best healthcare in the world. No shot he dies before 75.
Then again, he is black. Could easily die at 55 with the risk factors you mentioned
One of my older relatives and her boyfriend told me that they almost "gift of the magied eachother with Obama's memoir" It took a lot of restraint to not explain that this doesn't really fit the parable because they'd still be able to use eachother's gifts (they're also very well off and would have no trouble affording another gift after this one). I directed that energy into mailing them a copy of the Jakarta method.
Domestically, LBJ prob. Internationally, this shit's been an imperial project from the start
I was gonna say "William Henry Harrison because he died a month into office" but he actually genocided Indians as governor...
FDR is definitely the best from a leftist perspective and in terms of what's realistic to push for today. Obviously also had problematic moments like the Japanese internment and the limited benefits of New Deal programs for non-Whites. But he was the enemy of the ideologues of the capitalist class (although he also saved the capitalist class) and his Good Neighbor policy was perhaps the nicest the US ever treated other countries.
After that there's a steep drop in quality. Lincoln is probably #2 - he was willing to fight and kill the slaveowners in the end, and then abolish slavery. Then it's guys who have perhaps as many negatives as positives, even if some were decent statesmen if you ignore matters of justice. Jefferson - radical liberal ... rapist slave-owner. Jackson - radical democrat ... genocidal imperialist. Teddy Roosevelt - progressive reformer ... genocidal imperialist. Wilson - progressive reformer ... White supremacist. Washington was a great statesman who provided the stability needed to get the United States off the ground, which is why he's high up in mainstream historians' lists, but he stood for the interests of a tiny aristocracy of major land-owners and merchants; didn't even properly pay the troops who won the Revolutionary War.
Truman, Eisenhower, and LBJ had decent domestic politics - but they were overseeing a slow turn away from the New Deal, a regression. And they were all genocidal anti-communist imperialists. The Civil Rights Act was commendable, but somewhat like Obamacare - less than what was necessary then and weakened since.
This is the fucker that wrought Trump onto the country. His role has been reduced to "Why do you keep hitting yourself?"
title might be punchier if you replaced the second use of "silence" with another verb, like "stop" or "shut down"
It was originally crush while our team workshopped the title and so we have reverted to that.
Republicans spent 8 years calling this guy a traitor when he was actually a painfully loyal stooge of Empire. Shit sucks.
It's cool that they chose a picture where he literally looks like he's savouring his own farts
Sorry, I’m new here, but what was the second movement he ‘crushed’? I heard about what he did to Bernie, but besides that all I know is like one thing he said criticizing defund the police. Am I missing something?
Telling the NBA players to shut up and dribble when they went on strike last summer, I think.
Oh damn, I never heard about that I mean I don’t think that’s quite ‘crushing a movement’ but short a shitty thing to do
The NBA strike was at the height of the BLM protests. If they had carried through with that across the entire league (and likely moving to others) as opposed to like 1 or 2 days, it’s safe to say it would’ve been a starting as opposed to a fizzle point...
They went to Obama for advice and he said you sat out one game as a symbol that’s enough, you should continue working because people need a distraction during covid.
