just learned ke$ha now goes by kesha. Dedollarization in happening!! :bloomer:
(gorka voice) as sun tzu said in the art of war: when you are russian in, appear to be russian out
Happy 18th Brumaire, citoyens. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, the third time as reality tv :trump-anguish:
But you see, Ukrainians all hated Stalin for eating all the grain with his giant spoon, they welcomed the Germans as liberators until they started genociding everyone (0.1 seconds after crossing the border) /s
The erasure of the red army from Western historical narrative makes me sad.
mr trump, your subpoenaed sir
Rachel Maddow
Chapo Trap House is a podcast.
It all returns to monke :shinji-impact: :monke-return:
folks, i'm starting to think that NATO is an op
Imagining an Enemy at the Gates scenario where Sean Penn and Steven Seagal go toe-to-toe in the Donbass
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Fuck George Orwell/All My Homies Hate George Orwell
I'll give him credit for being a talented writer and risking his neck in Spain. But everything he writes is tinged with Angloid middle class snobbishness. All the non-white (and several English characters) in Burmese Days are caricatures.
The original sigma male
Does anybody else think it's weird that the most prominent republican ghouls who die are Black? I guess they aren't getting invited to the the serum parties...anyway, good riddance.
Not sure how to take that any other way than shitting on spirituality?
I see your point there--"pacifier" is definitely infantilizing imagery. I do think the "pie in the sky" message of religion is most pronounced in the context of America, a hedonistic land of plenty. (Mormonism, which is a fully americanized Christianity, promises godhood to believers in the afterlife.) Perhaps this is the case in other settler-colonial societies.
The 3rd world/non-western religion I am most familiar with is Hinduism, due to family ties to India, and it can certainly be wielded to uphold a pessimistic, hierarchical worldview, most notably by the present BJP/Modi government. It doesn't promise a pie-in-the-sky, but it does offer some sense of meaning/purpose to existing social relations, which is undoubtedly important. I could be wrong, but I think 19th century Catholicism/Eastern Orthodoxy had a much more sober day-to-day outlook and promised less to "you the individual" than "we the community of churchgoers." In both cases, I don't deny people's real attachment to their faith, but how much of it is the product of being born into a society that offers no alternatives? That castigates or even demonizes those who don't belong to the In Group (untouchables, Jews, etc.)? But that might not be an especially useful comparison to modern America.
Religion’s roles include community, connection to the past, beauty, art, meaning, reflection, ritual, and service of others among others. It also gives people a shared language to express feelings, desires, goals, hopes, etc.
Thanks: I appreciate that reminder. No real comment here, other than I hope that in a better world, we'd have these parts of religion (I think etymologically it means "linking to others") without the coercive/exploitative aspects.
but I’d wonder how often those material changes in society stem from liberatory spiritual expressions. That's fair! I guess it's whatcha call a dialectic-both the material and spiritual condition and drive one another--though Marxism would tend to give primacy to material changes, it's reductive to deny spirituality a key historical role. I fervently hope that we experience some sort of "spiritual revolution" in the 21st century. I guess I'm skeptical of the spirituality we need coming out of existing religious traditions, though to be fair these same traditions have survived great catastrophes and upheavals over thousands of years.
BTW I read some James Cone in college and dig your username, comrade! :100-com:
I love me some John Brown/liberation theology, but they emerged out of periods of radical social progress and change, not present neoliberal stagnation.
I sincerely hope that the potential for spirituality charging the Left with a sense of social purpose is there—but I also acknowledge that in present-day America, the dominant forms of religiosity are entwined with capitalism, individualism, and the existing social hierarchy.
Let’s not leave Hegel on his head: religion follows a society’s material order, not the other way around. I’m not celebrating the decline in church attendance-i think it mostly speaks to American atomization and general lack of purpose and unalienated time post-2000s.
I don’t really see how Ecoleo is “shitting on billions of people worldwide.” Religion helps people find connection and deal with the pain of life. What we believe people should do is besides the point—capitalism has a desacralizing drive, and most likely people will continue to turn away from organized religious tradition in the most capitalist countries.
I would also argue that more often, material changes in society lead to liberatory spiritual expressions.
He seems at least open to the opposite argument. Matt did ask the audience for any recommendations that take the opposite argument from the China Boom, but I couldn't think of any books off the top of my head. (Asking hexbear?) Maybe the complete works of Xi Jinping. Also worth noting that the China Boom was written before the Xi era.
About a year ago, Matt seemed like he was getting Deng-pilled, so it'll be interesting to see how this new plot arc goes.