thinking liberal bourgeois 'democracy' is a solution against fascism
(as if fascism is a person and can be "voted out," as if all of the things Democrats are supposed to "save us from" wrt Trump aren't still happening with no resistance, as if the Democrats aren't outflanking the Republicans on the right of issues like immigration, and as if they aren't just as genocidal and barely even bothering to play empty-rhetoric games to pretend otherwise, and as if both parties aren't part of, financed by, and working for the capitalist class and petty bourgeois who historically back fascism anyway, when economic crises create threats against their system and status for which fascism is the system's immune response against the rise of socialism. "first they came for the communists...")
(And that's not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the "Victims of Communism Foundation" which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet "Captive Nations Lobby" headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)
I'm writing PSL in regardless, even if they can't win the state fight against their lawyers. Fuck the "Democrat party" thinking they can bully me into voting for their genocidal asses by sending out dark-money superPAC lawyer squads to directly kill democracy. They're scared. It just shows how much of a paper tiger they are. They should be forced to change their name, this ain't even bourgeois 'democracy' this is bullshit.
Everyone should vote third party (ideally PSL, and join them, but Greens in a strong state for it could prove savvy as well) and force a political reorientation if the democrat wing ever want power again. Since the democrats are proven incapable of doing anything but flying to the right (in some cases even further than Republicans, like on immigration), stifling/brow-beating dissenters and sending militarized pigs to crush protestors; workers have been and will continue jumping ship from their genocidal-ass Cheney-Reagan-ass party. And if we throw enough numbers and support behind third parties and especially socialists like the PSL, and reliably rob them of the margins they rely on to keep this charade of death going, they will be forced from ground-up to abandon their duopoly and reorient if they don't want their liberal democracy to collapse and a whole lot more people to be radicalized into revolutionary politics. And even if they do bring about this reorientation, they'll have to reorient and reconstitute in a chaotic political retreat from a rising left (which in of itself can only help the victims of imperialism) because they've grown so complacent they forgot how to play politics.
With visibly boosting third party numbers alongside other on-the-ground-work the PSL does continuing to pick up disillusioned workers from their base and the huge 35-50% section that doesn't even vote because of how disaffected working people are by this 'fascist-and-vampire' show, the ruling class is going to have to realize they need float one of these kinds of concessionary reformist "labor" parties to try to capture all the working class people (who never held illusions about the Republicans either) being funneled to true left-wing and revolutionary parties. And that would sunder the democrats in two, with half joining the republicans (that they've all-but-done-already), and half flooding into that reformist labor party which, with sufficient agitation, would push the reformists' own "left wing" into revolutionary disaffection due to it becoming "democrat-ized" by the same people they were trying to get away from. A sufficiently-supported PSL being in the midst of this would only benefit the socialist movement.
And that's the best option for the imperialist ruling class to try to stay ahead of the rising independent left parties like the PSL, is breaking apart their own duopoly-of-exploiters under pressure of us throwing our weight behind rupturing these already bursting-at-the-seams contradictions. It isn't about "winning" like the liberals try to hand-wring about --- bourgeois democracy is a farce and always has been. It's about breaking their entrenched structures apart with a hammer and scattering its pieces with a sickle and make them show they still know how to play politics. And we can all tell they don't. They have been showing us every day how inept and scared they are.
it's notable how you "your side" is allowed to be a wide system of dispassionate material interests and power structures involved in seeking to overcome contradictions against its interests in callous yet rational competition; while the "other side" is a single cartoon comic book villain singlehandedly doing 'all the bad things' on an irrational whim for reasons of 'vanity and cruelty' I guess. And its people and their interests and opinions from the rural poor to the college liberal to the oligarch capitalist to the Prime Minister are only relevant to pity or otherwise also one-dimensionally criticize. I hope you analyze the ways in which you are conditioned toward orientalism and myopic essentializing that serves your own "side's" imperialism by not recognizing and erasing the realities of other nations as just as complex and multifaceted as yours.
You're carrying a colonial outlook to distill such a huge and diverse country with a massive population of its 150 different ethnic/national people groups and 20+ autonomous republics and all its various economic interests and players and political trends and history as in Russia to an idealist child's comic book picture of one man's "megalomania". As the west not-so-coincidentally concocts this exact image for every country it tries to overthrow or attack, distilling them to 'one crazy irrational madman dictator who only knows force' and erasing the material existence and interests of the nation and its constituent classes and peoples and the history and context from which these things all arose as they exist. Which is very convenient then for "your side" to make it into whatever it wants.
Do you know what the Duma's structure and role is, its party and factional makeup is and has been, what their members' stances has been on topics like Ukraine since 2014, and what actions Putin has taken in accordance or against what they've been pushing for? Do you think its existence is just for show? You'll be surprised on some points and maybe dig deeper. To really have true understanding of a country you'd have to also dig into the historical, social, political, and economic realities, trends, and topics in the country --- and the contradictions, struggles, and syntheses between them over the years; and go past just 2014 to root these trends in their relevant circumstances experiences, struggles, transition periods, etc. from which they all arrived in their present form, on both a structural and people level. Optimally bolstered by some culture studies and language.
But learning about the RF's federal governmental structure, and the Duma, and then the differences between the statements and actions of the Duma vs the Russian President's statements and actions since 2014 is a starting point to start chipping away at this cartoon caricature notion you have, which is not rooted in reality. For any country on the planet. And you know this about your own country, but don't extend the same humanity and respect toward other countries. It's a very US American thing. Maybe if you don't have the language skills you can also machine translate some stuff that they say themselves in their statements and speeches and congresses rather than dubbed 8 second snippets followed by 10 minutes of punditry on CNN too. And that's just politics --- history and economy is important too. And never forget about the people on the ground. In who they actually are, not who you've decided they are, or your media has told you they are.
because when this was originally uploaded on their website it would play a slightly different version every time you opened the page. So you'd laugh and show your friends, so then even if your (allegedly) stoner ass hadn't gotten tripped out the first time, while they're watching it and laughing you'd start sweating.
Second honorable mention to "Is The Government Spying on Schizophrenics Enough?" But I'm honestly still not sure that one's totally okay, even if I still laugh every single time I watch it. I'm not that type of mentally ill but have had people close to me who struggle enough with it and the very nature of the disorder is such that even though I laugh I've always at the same time felt it treads very much on the line.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is denouncing a documentary about Russian soldiers screening at the Toronto International Film festival (TIFF) this year.
maybe if the US abolished the myopic hyper-consumptive sterile mediocrity that is goddamn LAWNS this would happen less.
Also pretty psychopathically callous comments by the blue-maga liberals here. As if Texas is only petty-bourgeois MAGA-craka Qanon suburbanites rather than also having an equal amount of Latinos and a 10% Black population (3.5 million) and almost a hundred-thousand Indigenous. There are more of the minority-groups that liberals pretend to care about (while doing everything to support their oppressors) in Texas than probably anywhere in their yuppie yankee states. Never tell me that Liberals care about the working class.
It is interesting to me how this pushing the blame from the military and corporations onto the "higher-income consumers" who have high footprint as individuals, seems very indicative of the ways liberalism's incapability to handle capitalism's contradictions inevitably inflames the fascist political base of petty-bourgeois. Hence the reactionary rhetoric which comes out in dialectical response from exactly this article's conclusions: how the government and [bourgeois] "environmentalists" are 'targeting the middle class.' and 'declaring war on the middle class' etc. Leaving the multinationals and imperial military untouched.
The "middle-class," of course, being a fake class --- an income bracket wearing groucho glasses and calling itself a class so it can act as a wedge to to obscure the dualistic and antagonistic class relations in capitalist society between the PROPERTIED and UNPROPERTIED, and the contradictions and conflicts therein. The "middle class" is like the myth of 'upward mobility under capitalism' distilled into a propaganda phrase. It is false consciousness personified as the propertyless middle-management overseer-and-pain-sponge standing between the capitalist (who the state works for) and the broad masses of the low-bracket or no-bracket workers.
This is obviously complicated by imperial and colonial relations, but none of that changes the focus on "high-income consumers" and their individual actions being a liberal half-truth obscuring the real causes of multinational industry overgrowth and side-stepping the need to demilitarize the US and NATO (Which is itself the US empire and its vassals, all wearing groucho glasses).
"In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic."
(as if fascism is a person and can be "voted out," as if all of the things Democrats are supposed to "save us from" wrt Trump aren't still happening with no resistance, as if the Democrats aren't outflanking the Republicans on the right of issues like immigration, and as if they aren't just as genocidal and barely even bothering to play empty-rhetoric games to pretend otherwise, and as if both parties aren't part of, financed by, and working for the capitalist class and petty bourgeois who historically back fascism anyway, when economic crises create threats against their system and status for which fascism is the system's immune response against the rise of socialism. "first they came for the communists...")