A few years ago, a Hungarian friend was educating me on the incredible corruption of the Orban regime. IIRC, he showed me a photo of the Hungarian equivalent of a supreme court justice shaking Orbans hand and apologizing - apologizing for having sentenced Fidesz (Orban's party) to a totally symbolic fine for breaking some rules about campaign ads or something.

This seems a lot like that. Yet the same libs who would talk about how awful the Hungarian system is will surely keep telling me that the US is, despite its flaws, a beacon of democracy.

I was feeling very much like what you describe after I quit my PMC job - which was quietly being taken over by machine translation and chatbot shit. What I did was pivot to childcare, specifically after school stuff. No idea if there is any real infrastructure for that where you live, but for me it's been pretty rewarding. It's an active, extremely varied job and when I walk in the door it's like my personal issues disappear for a while. Kids kind of put things into perspective or something. It can be hard, disorienting and rough sometimes (kids can be little assholes, and realizing all the fucked up shit in their lives that make them do so can be depressing), but it feels meaningful in a way that no office job I've ever had has done.

Wage is shit though, and I'm massively overqualified (have an MA in a completely unrelated field). It is however pretty cool that my most important qualifications in this job are actually things I like to do in my spare time - music, games, sports etc.

You really have such a way with words. This year more than any previous one, I felt like the political messages of the speech were thinly veiled and obvious. Although perhaps that is just a testament to my own increasing radicalization, or that I've felt Margrethe had a modicum of charisma and gravitas, while Fred has the personality and wit of a bag of pretzel sticks left out in the rain.

Support for you in this trying time, comrade. Also, psyllium husk supplement changed my life (specifically they changed my bowel movements from unpredictable and IBS-like to like 85% normal healthy bowel movements).

Glad to see I'm not the only one who keeps up with Ze Frank!

Doing God's work, kammerat

Millions being denied healthcare and dying of preventable causes: I sleep

One capitalist pig who made his fortune on the backs of sick people getting capped: when will the barbarism end?!?

Exactly what I was going to ask. I have a lib friend who I think could be pushed somewhat away from the "correct" lib take on the war with write-up like this, but his first question is going to be about the sources.

"war is bad and should stop", when removed from context and analysis is not a take, it's a platitude.

The fact that he whitewashes the West's role in the war, pretends Ukraine is not a country with a significant Russian-friendly minority, and puts the blame for the war's consequences and continuation on Russia means that his "war is bad and should stop" ends up being an endorsement of NATO's position - that only Russia can and should take measures to stop the war, and that any escalation from the West is justified.

I sincerely hope to one day get to tell a lib who quotes him that he was a monarchist who hated liberalism and democracy.

It's just a nice way of saying that under capitalism "children will be left alone, to fend for themselves".

Most pathetic press corp ever, for sure. If anyone had any doubt at that point, their coverage of Nordstream cemented that fact.

vote for Lars Løkke and talk about goddamn Mink Farms

When I heard my old boss say that the Mink-saga was the most important political event of our lives, I realized that the man was living in a fundamentally different reality than me. Then again he was a fairly rich business owner, so he had plenty of reasons not to learn fucking anything ever.

Agreed. I'm often met with the reply of "well, it's much better here (Scandinavia) than most other places!" whenever I criticize our country, and it just makes me sad. Like, if I say "our country is part of an extremely destructive and often downright evil western imperialist bloc, selfishly sucking resources out of the global south while actively destabilizing it.", then "but look how much material wealth we have!" isn't a rebuttal - it's just highlighting the problem.

Sure, it feels privileged to complain about living in one of the safest and richest countries in the world, if you ignore the context of those privileges. Any moral person's food should turn to ashes in their mouth if they know their neighbor is starving, and likewise I don't feel happy to live in one of the small, pampered kingdoms in the imperial core - it makes me miserable because its very existence reflects everything wrong with the system. Same applies when people here self-congratulate about our low crime (crime has been outsourced), low corruption (because corruption is mostly a legal part of our political system), social safety net (which is actively dismantled by the same people who praise it) etc. To the extent that we really have these privileges, how did we come to have them? Who suffers so that we can? It makes me go insane how little my countrymen think about this, and how many will frown at you for refusing to join in the self-congratulatory circle-jerk.

It's good to bring him up when talking to liberals about the necessity of violence to achieve liberation (something they'll vehemently deny). Usually, they respond by going "well Nelson Mandela was peaceful, unlike [insert unacceptable resistance movement]!". After which you can point to all the bombings and acts of "terrorism" that uMkhonto weSizwe engaged in. That can then lead to a productive convo about how those aren't actually blemishes on an otherwise peaceful and democratic struggle for freedom, but is itself part of the struggle for freedom (and, of course, based af).

It was talking about Trosky's criticism of Stalin and Kruschev's de-Stalinization and I wasn't really into it

I'm not sure I understand why you'd be interested in a book about Stalin but not those things. They are essential for understanding why the picture of Stalin among the western left is so skewed today.

That book made a lot of things click about modern liberalism, for sure. Losurdo doesn't miss.

The ones in my family (Scandinavia) are, yes. It's all surface-level "at least she's not an old white man" vibes. My experience is that our society is so Trump-brained, that most people would welcome literally anyone else.

EDIT: When I say "excited", I do mean relative to their lack of enthusiasm for Biden (although they were still certain he was way better than Trump, of course). It's worth remembering that a lot of people to the immediate left of centre here celebrated Obama as if it was some massive victory for them in 2008 (myself included, but I was just a dumbass kid).

Unfortunately, for the average left-leaning lib/succdem, symbolic victories and vibes are all politics consists of. I recently made the mistake of airing some doomerism about the state of EU politics to my overwhelmingly succdem family, essentially just saying that I believe fascism will continue to gather support in Europe as long as the "left" continues its strategy of moving right to counter the right, after which (surprise) the right says "thanks" and moves further right.

This was met with a) astonishment at where I got these "conspiracy theories" from, b) concern trolling ("are you doing all right? I get worried about you when you say these things") and c) vibes ("I have to believe things are getting better!").

All participants in this conversation are people I would call above-average in terms of political literacy among libs/succdems. And even they are just completely checked-out. They are also all quite excited for Kamala Harris