I have a child and own a home, and am a member of the lost generation. Fuck the Republican Party and any conservative who believes their selfish bullshit should outweigh the greater good of others.
I agree about Republicans. I don’t agree about Democrats. Some, of course, are conservative, as they historically always have been. But a good portion are quite liberal.
As a whole, the Dems are pretty center of the aisle, because America as a whole is fairly conservative compared to Europe (despite 60% of the population being more liberal than the government at most times). Europeans generally consider the Dems in the US a conservative party, and corporate Dems are definitely closer to the right than to the left. The other issue besides the general conservative leaning in the country though is that there’s about 50 other groups of various left leaning shades that would be their own separate parties in Europe but are bunched in with the corporate Dems and therefore have little say in the party platform.
I had an feeling you actually meant GenX but I just wanted to make sure. I know that GenX is often thought of as the latchkey generation. I’m on the edge of GenX/millennial.
I just see myself as apart of the “ boomerang “ generation where I’ll be worse off than my parents. Fun times.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen my material conditions improve as I’ve entered my mid-thirties which has let me start a family and buy a home. I’ve also watched my incredibly talented and hard working friends/acquaintances/neighbours be ground into dust under the cruel rule of capitalism. I got lucky, they didn’t, this has radicalized me far more than any naive idealism ever could.
Exactly this. I’m fortunate enough that the skills I’m good at have a lot of demand at the moment, but people I know that are more hard working than I am and very talented, struggle to get by just because their job for some reason is considered less worthy to pay for.
Wanting to maintain this rotten system is the purest form of greed.
Which is weird since conservative politics is all about cutting funds for schools, gutting the department of education completely, no pre k or free lunches for kids, and getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement. Just doesn’t make sense why any one who cares about education or safety would be conservative
getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement
I’m pretty certain neither party supports this. After 2020, every state and city, including dem-run ones increased police funding.
If you’re talking about republicans complaining about the FBI because it went after Trump, they’re just as likely to abolish prisons because some jan 6ers got convicted. These people like those institutions too much when they’re doing their primary purpose of neutralizing leftist political movements.
Also you’re not private property nor do you own significant capital. It’s not your law enforcement.
Not all conservatives are that way. I support free meals at schools. It makes sense. It’s investing in our children.
Cutting is a complicated topic. The general consensus is throwing money at a problem isn’t the way to solve it all the time. So I’m not for or against spending on schools until we know what problem the money will solve. If we can’t show a benefit then it shouldn’t be spent.
Kansas City spent over a billion dollars trying to fix their schools and it didn’t work. Wasted money.
Cutting law enforcement? Most conservatives want more law enforcement.
Also don’t confuse the people who are shit stains with an old school conservative like myself. They’re not the same thing.
You should look past the Cato Institute’s analysis of the KC schools situation. For example, the summary and conclusion sections of this article from the University of Michigan law school show that the conservative criticisms are based on myth.
I lived it. I have not see the Cato analysis and I can speak from experience and the watching the news.
The goal was to desegregate the schools. That failed. The second goal was to increase test scores. That failed.
I’ve only skimmed the article you’ve posted but I’ve found numbers errors. It’s fifty pages, so it’ll take some time to get through it. They’re twisting things to silly extremes like minimizing the amount of money Kansas City has to spend.
You may revise your opinion after reading the summary and conclusion, but maybe you just figure the liberals at Michigan Law can’t possibly understand all the nuances vs someone watching their local news.
Also, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Your skimmed analysis of silly twists of numbers belies the full picture, and in my opinion, total desegregation without changing the major obstacles of the systemic segregation of the city’s real estate, was doomed from the start.
BTW, I agree with you that merely throwing money at an issue without cause isn’t correct. One might argue against the ridiculous and constant over-budgeting of the military, for example. In KC, I believe it had many successes, though obviously not a complete realization of the goals (that shouldn’t have needed to be implemented in the first place).
It’s 59 pages. So I’ll read it but it won’t be till this afternoon. Skimming any article is prone is errors and it’s why I’ll have to read it.
The goal was to raise test scores and integrate the schools. The primary goal was integration.
It failed because geographic areas. Kansas City is a massive city. I lived in the burbs which means the cab would pick me up at 4am.
The military isn’t over budget. It’s about 3% of our gdp. Our commitment to nato is a minimum of 2%. Since the military paid for my college, I’m a staunch defender of it.
The Pentagon asked for less. It most certainly IS over-budget. When I say “the military” I mean the Military Industrial Complex, of course. I’m a supporter of our military, of the people actually in it. With a budget greater than the next ten countries combined, the M-I-C is outlandishly frivolous.
Regarding this, but more to the KC schools topic, it seems like your philosophy of budgeting is that only 100% = success, and anything less = failure.
How would they prove to you that the funding for schools is necessary? What studies do you require? How is the state going to conduct these studies (in your view), in a timely manner that will positively impact this generation?
There is plenty of research showing, e.g., that fewer kids per teacher provides for better education. Studies that show the benefit of school nurses, counselors, and other wellness experts. All of this costs $$$, often way more money than any given community is willing or even able to put up. This is why strong state funding is so important, rather than relying on levies and bonds. Requiring your specific state to prove the value of teachers, special education, etc is quite an ask. Why isn’t the existing research good enough for you?
Studies have shown that spending more per student doesn’t increase the quality of the education. That has been proven time and time again.
Yet some people think funding is the issue.
The I attended two high schools, one spent about twice as much as the other but the other school out performed the other. It’s not always about the money.
That’s an exaggeration. The median price for new construction in 1980 was $64,600. [1] As for existing housing stock, the median home value in 1980 was $47,200. [2] As housing prices are heavily right skewed, the prices of cheap housing is far closer to the median than the price of expensive housing. Based on a cursory overview of some charts, it seems like the bottom 20% of houses are no more that 30% cheaper than the median, putting them in the $30k range.
It’s an amendment; it wasn’t originally there. We’ve changed those before and we can do it again. I’m sure people said the same thing about the 18th amendment.
Yeah, so then it’s not about the children, it’s about guns. American conservatives care more about guns than they do about children, I don’t think it’s even possible to deny that.
Economic issues always come down to economic incentives. You care about property values because your home is an investment. You care about stocks because you have a retirement plan. You care about not being a burden on your children when you’re old and having inheritance to leave behind when you die. You care about crime because you have things to steal and a life to lose.
I don’t have property. I will never retire. I will never have children. I am nothing and no one and that will never change.
When I was younger I was a pretty typical liberal. By 30 I was a Marxist-Leninist and desired nothing but the complete destruction of the demon shithole country called Amerikkka. 😘
That’s a well intentioned sentiment. So don’t tske any of this as an attack, just a clarification.
We aren’t just all on this journey together, some of us are oppressed by others. Our problems aren’t abstract, they are a consequence of the ruling class engaging in warfare on the rest of us, and that’s what the person above was getting at.
We know we’re people, but we also know that we aren’t people to the ruling class.
Same honey but at different places in the journey.
That is where both of our parties fail is not realizing it’s the same journey. Your more impacts mine and mine impacts yours. Maybe no directly but like ripples when you throw a rock in water.
I buy an iPhone and I am chasing someone to be oppressed making it china.
Okay I’m communist I’m not in one of your parties. I have no idea what you’re talking about journey’s and different places, that doesn’t mean anything. Both of the parties you’re refering to serve the ruling class and help facilitate the oppression of the global working class.
There’s more to it, but at the end of the day there are two classes, the global ruling class who oppress, and the global working class who are oppressed. These aren’t different parts of a “journey”, its a global system of production thst is predicated on the exploitation of one class by the other.
Industrial production, mostly with simple hand tools and feeding steel parts into welders and presses.
It’s so fucking hot. It’s so fucking hard. I’m so fucking tired. Everyday forever until I’m too old too work, and then I’ll take out a 9mm retirement plan.
Nothing about the way everything’s going is designed to let me feel like a person. Money’s a requirement to simply exist. Everything’s a race to get enough money to sustain myself. I’m simply a worker who generates profit so my parasite of a boss and the associated shareholders can hang out on yachts. My job is nonsense too that doesn’t help anyone. I’m estranged from my family for gender and lifestyle reasons, can’t make friends because I’m always exhausted from work, can’t go to therapy except sparingly because it’s too expensive.
No matter how much validity my humanity holds, none of it really matters if none of it can be expressed due to a combination of alienation and dead eyed pessimism about climate change.
And no, we all aren’t on the same journey together. The economic strata that sits above mine has nothing in common with me.
I am sorry your family won’t accept you for you. If you were my family I’d accept you for you. Hopefully you can get the therapy you need and yes, it’s expensive and it shouldn’t be.
Thank you. And well that’s all fine and good to hope and imagine, but I’ve been trying to actively change things for the past 20 years through socialist organizing. Goes well sometimes, goes poorly most of the time, gotta keep trying anyway .
No offense, but it seems pretty naive to say things will get better. I try not to jump on conservatives when they are willing to engage, but that’s a pretty rough take.
I am always willing to enrage. I only block those who don’t want to have a conversation.
We are at a weird time in the world. We may have some bumps but it’s hard to image it’ll turn into planet of the apes. Something will have to give and things will improve.
There is a theory I use to laugh at about the cycle of generations. I take it more seriously now days.
This kind of talk is so worryingly common on this site. Feels like people insist on being seen as a “drone to serve their boss” even though they’re desperate to escape it. They’re disgusted by optimism because someone taught them that escapism is dumb and they believed it
Not in my case. I grew up pretty conservative she moved right libertarian until learning economics in college which moved me left. I bought a home and have two kids and am squarely on the left. I care about schools and crime which is why I want more funding for education and programs that actually decrease crime.
Healthcare is the big one for me. We should not be forking over 20% of our paychecks for healthcare. People on the right are fucking nuts to believe that the cost is because of too much regulation considering we have the least regulation and pay twice as much with now limited options. We need Medicare for All.
I care about schools. I want them to be free and public.
I care about crime. I want to abolish the police and use that money to on social safety net programs including healthcare, social workers, housing, and more which is proven to reduce crime.
I care about children. I want paid parental leave for both parents, guaranteed job return, free childcare, free healthcare for children, and a monthly check for groceries.
Conservatives want none of that, and actively work against every point. Centre/centre-left only want some of that performatively and will undermine any implementation of these programs. The only people working for this are the “hard left.” And because of decades of anti-communist propaganda, no one will touch it.
The only reason I can think of to be conservative and “socially liberal” is to protect your own capital at the expense of others while not wanting to feel bad about doing it.
Don’t say what conservatives want as that is a straw man argument.
Schools are already free and public.
Most people do not want to abolish the police. Crime would soar as there would be nothing to stop the criminals.
You get a monthly check for groceries, it’s called a job. I would like to see paid time off. My employer gives 5 months off, which is very generous. I do think we need something at a national level.
No, I wouldn’t touch communism with a ten foot pole. I will read anything suggested, but it killed millions of people, and not sure how you can say you want to abolish the police but vote for communism when the two are linked heavily in the real world. I have never seen as many police as I did in a communist country. I think this best take away about communism is if it was so great, why were people fleeing from it rather than to it?
Not Pre-K for most parents, and schools are only “free” and “public” for now, thanks to conservatives and liberals alike. College, tech college, and other educational programs are also not free and need to be. Private schools need to be abolished.
Most people do not want to abolish the police. Crime would soar as there would be nothing to stop the criminals.
You get a monthly check for groceries, it’s called a job.
Ah, so you truly are a conservative. A person’s worth is only equal to their productive in the blood-soaked economy machine. A child can’t have a job, jackass, that’s why giving new parents a check for groceries helps their income as their total costs rise.
I think this best take away about communism is if it was so great, why were people fleeing from it rather than to it?
You need to do some self-crit and question everything you have been taught. For example, there are more people in prison right now in the USA than there have ever been in a gulag. If you genuinely want to learn more about communism from a communist perspective, there are plenty of places to turn. You can start on the Prole Library with some shorter introductory works. You can watch Parenti’s famous yellow lecture for a short introduction, and you can watch Richard Wollf’s introduction to Marxian Economics on YouTube. You can read The Jakarta Method, Blacks and Reds, or listen to a few podcasts like Blowback to learn about the propaganda machine at specific times (e.g., Iraq, Cuban Revolution, Korean War, Afghanistan in order of seasons of Blowback).
But you’re going to have to stop trying to win internet arguments by being a smarmy ass and put in the effort if you really want to learn how a better world is possible.
College should not be free. Trade schools should be free. If college were free, we would have to limit it to the best, which means the poor would be excluded. It needs to be affordable. Right now, it is not affordable for most people. It doesn’t make sense for a garbage man to for someone else’s gender studies degree.
Crime dropped because it wasn’t being reported. It wasn’t because there wasn’t a crime. There just wasn’t anyone to arrest them. As you can see, with out current crime rates, it is not a sustainable model. If they are not arrested, then they repeat their crimes. If you look at San Francisco, businesses are leaving because of the crime, which hurts the city and community. It’s why poor areas don’t have grocery stores. The theft causes the business to leave. If you want to solve the food desert problem, you have to solve the crime problem.
I have talked to people who lived during communism and I have visited a communist country. It isn’t a life style i would embrace. I like having a decent home, food in my stomach and being able to make my own decisions. I have never seen such poverty in my life until I went to Cuba and talk to my Polish friends, growing up starving wasn’t the life I would want. There is a reason millions fled communism. It just doesn’t work.
I have learned how to make the world better. Be accountable to yourself, work hard, and respect others. I have done very well doing those things. I don’t want ‘free’ things from the government. I want the government to stay out of my life as much as possible and to live my life the way I want. I do support a single payer system as I think it enables more freedom but otherwise I don’t need a nanny state.
Consistent with other studies that find preschool has a huge effect on kids, Walters, Gray-Lobe and Pathak find that the kids lucky enough to get accepted into preschools in Boston saw meaningful changes to their lives. These kids were less likely to get suspended from school, less likely to skip class, and less likely to get in trouble and be placed in a juvenile detention facility. They were more likely to take the SATs and prepare for college. The most eye-popping effects the researchers find are on high school graduation and college enrollment rates. The kids who got accepted into preschool ended up having a high-school graduation rate of 70% — six percentage points higher than the kids who were denied preschool, who saw a graduation rate of only 64%. And 54% of the preschoolers ended up going to college after they graduated — eight percentage points higher than their counterparts who didn’t go to preschool. These effects were bigger for boys than for girls. And they’re all the more remarkable because the researchers only looked at the effects of a single year of preschool, as opposed to two years of preschool. Moreover, in many cases, the classes were only half a day.
College should not be free
Scratch a liberal and…
It doesn’t make sense for a garbage man to for someone else’s gender studies degree
There it is folks. Mask off in three replies.
“I will read anything suggested.”
Direct links to books, articles, videos, and a podcast
“I have talked to people who lived during communism and I have visited a communist country.”
Your only interest is yourself and your capital. You only want to protect yourself and, by doing so, you actively harm others. You are not only incredibly selfish as a conservative but want people to applaud you for being “socially liberal.” I hope your pile of gold is worth it.
I only have one further question: have your children cut off communications with you or is that something you have to look forward to?
My child adores me. She didn’t do pre-school either. We spent time with her and developed her as person. I get you may not able to teach a child to read, but most people can.
Translation: you’ll become more conservative when you have children and own a home
Millennials: 😆
Zoomers: 😂
Alpha: 🤣
Whateverthefuckcomesnext: 💀
Too bad boomers ruined my best chance at that.
I have a child and own a home, and am a member of the lost generation. Fuck the Republican Party and any conservative who believes their selfish bullshit should outweigh the greater good of others.
Republicans are fascists, not conservatives.
Democrats are the conservative party.
I agree about Republicans. I don’t agree about Democrats. Some, of course, are conservative, as they historically always have been. But a good portion are quite liberal.
As a whole, the Dems are pretty center of the aisle, because America as a whole is fairly conservative compared to Europe (despite 60% of the population being more liberal than the government at most times). Europeans generally consider the Dems in the US a conservative party, and corporate Dems are definitely closer to the right than to the left. The other issue besides the general conservative leaning in the country though is that there’s about 50 other groups of various left leaning shades that would be their own separate parties in Europe but are bunched in with the corporate Dems and therefore have little say in the party platform.
There are two kinds of Democrats: conservatives and hostages
Seems people feel the need to try to educate me, not really sure why. But whatever :)
I agree with everything you said except, im confused about the use of the term lost generation. That’s a generation born in the 1880-1900s.
My mistake if so. I was under the impression that term was used for those of us born between 1978 or so thru 1983.
In any case, I don’t see myself in the same vein as GenX nor Millennial, at least stereotypically.
I had an feeling you actually meant GenX but I just wanted to make sure. I know that GenX is often thought of as the latchkey generation. I’m on the edge of GenX/millennial.
I just see myself as apart of the “ boomerang “ generation where I’ll be worse off than my parents. Fun times.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen my material conditions improve as I’ve entered my mid-thirties which has let me start a family and buy a home. I’ve also watched my incredibly talented and hard working friends/acquaintances/neighbours be ground into dust under the cruel rule of capitalism. I got lucky, they didn’t, this has radicalized me far more than any naive idealism ever could.
Exactly this. I’m fortunate enough that the skills I’m good at have a lot of demand at the moment, but people I know that are more hard working than I am and very talented, struggle to get by just because their job for some reason is considered less worthy to pay for.
Wanting to maintain this rotten system is the purest form of greed.
Having to mow the lawn is the first step in the pipeline of fascism
Everyone knows it’s a gateway chore
You joke, but if you ever talked to a homeowner about their lawn and heard them complain about their neighbor’s lawn…
Mowing the lawn is the only hour of uninterrupted creativity I get in the week. Also my neighbour’s lawn is 50% dandelions.
Your lawn is green concrete; a lifeless painting with nothing for pollinators.
Your neighbor’s lawn has wildlife in the deadlands of the suburbs.
Except for the magnolia tree and vegetable garden cleary visible in the photo…
A tiny little strip of life, carefully manicured to minimize nature as much as possible.
Might as well pave over the rest of it and just have potted plants for all the good that does.
its too late, you’re hitler himself
While I disagree with your take that dandelions are bad, that’s a great mow job! How do you get stripes that pronounced?
I put the wheels on one side a notch lower than the other and alternate directions when you mow.
Influencers on the whole are trying their best to make little nazis out of the next generations. Give them time.
Wait is Alpha the next generation’s name after Zoomers?
Yeah, for now. That might change. Millennial was originally Gen Y.
Ok that’s a fair but sad take.
I’m conservative but became more socially liberal in my 30’s
My friend who were liberals, who had children and homes grew slightly more conservative but still were liberals.
But I do think that is what drives it is the children and homes. You have to care about schools, crime, etc since you’re in the thick of it.
Which is weird since conservative politics is all about cutting funds for schools, gutting the department of education completely, no pre k or free lunches for kids, and getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement. Just doesn’t make sense why any one who cares about education or safety would be conservative
I’m pretty certain neither party supports this. After 2020, every state and city, including dem-run ones increased police funding.
If you’re talking about republicans complaining about the FBI because it went after Trump, they’re just as likely to abolish prisons because some jan 6ers got convicted. These people like those institutions too much when they’re doing their primary purpose of neutralizing leftist political movements.
Also you’re not private property nor do you own significant capital. It’s not your law enforcement.
Not all conservatives are that way. I support free meals at schools. It makes sense. It’s investing in our children.
Cutting is a complicated topic. The general consensus is throwing money at a problem isn’t the way to solve it all the time. So I’m not for or against spending on schools until we know what problem the money will solve. If we can’t show a benefit then it shouldn’t be spent.
Kansas City spent over a billion dollars trying to fix their schools and it didn’t work. Wasted money.
Cutting law enforcement? Most conservatives want more law enforcement.
Also don’t confuse the people who are shit stains with an old school conservative like myself. They’re not the same thing.
You should look past the Cato Institute’s analysis of the KC schools situation. For example, the summary and conclusion sections of this article from the University of Michigan law school show that the conservative criticisms are based on myth.
I lived it. I have not see the Cato analysis and I can speak from experience and the watching the news.
The goal was to desegregate the schools. That failed. The second goal was to increase test scores. That failed.
I’ve only skimmed the article you’ve posted but I’ve found numbers errors. It’s fifty pages, so it’ll take some time to get through it. They’re twisting things to silly extremes like minimizing the amount of money Kansas City has to spend.
You may revise your opinion after reading the summary and conclusion, but maybe you just figure the liberals at Michigan Law can’t possibly understand all the nuances vs someone watching their local news.
Also, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Your skimmed analysis of silly twists of numbers belies the full picture, and in my opinion, total desegregation without changing the major obstacles of the systemic segregation of the city’s real estate, was doomed from the start.
BTW, I agree with you that merely throwing money at an issue without cause isn’t correct. One might argue against the ridiculous and constant over-budgeting of the military, for example. In KC, I believe it had many successes, though obviously not a complete realization of the goals (that shouldn’t have needed to be implemented in the first place).
It’s 59 pages. So I’ll read it but it won’t be till this afternoon. Skimming any article is prone is errors and it’s why I’ll have to read it. The goal was to raise test scores and integrate the schools. The primary goal was integration. It failed because geographic areas. Kansas City is a massive city. I lived in the burbs which means the cab would pick me up at 4am. The military isn’t over budget. It’s about 3% of our gdp. Our commitment to nato is a minimum of 2%. Since the military paid for my college, I’m a staunch defender of it.
The Pentagon asked for less. It most certainly IS over-budget. When I say “the military” I mean the Military Industrial Complex, of course. I’m a supporter of our military, of the people actually in it. With a budget greater than the next ten countries combined, the M-I-C is outlandishly frivolous.
Regarding this, but more to the KC schools topic, it seems like your philosophy of budgeting is that only 100% = success, and anything less = failure.
How would they prove to you that the funding for schools is necessary? What studies do you require? How is the state going to conduct these studies (in your view), in a timely manner that will positively impact this generation?
There is plenty of research showing, e.g., that fewer kids per teacher provides for better education. Studies that show the benefit of school nurses, counselors, and other wellness experts. All of this costs $$$, often way more money than any given community is willing or even able to put up. This is why strong state funding is so important, rather than relying on levies and bonds. Requiring your specific state to prove the value of teachers, special education, etc is quite an ask. Why isn’t the existing research good enough for you?
Studies have shown that spending more per student doesn’t increase the quality of the education. That has been proven time and time again.
Yet some people think funding is the issue.
The I attended two high schools, one spent about twice as much as the other but the other school out performed the other. It’s not always about the money.
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That’s money in 1980 dollars. 15k per year was a lot of of money. A house was about 20-25k.
That’s an exaggeration. The median price for new construction in 1980 was $64,600. [1] As for existing housing stock, the median home value in 1980 was $47,200. [2] As housing prices are heavily right skewed, the prices of cheap housing is far closer to the median than the price of expensive housing. Based on a cursory overview of some charts, it seems like the bottom 20% of houses are no more that 30% cheaper than the median, putting them in the $30k range.
We are talking Kansas City. Not a general area like the Midwest.
My parents home was 20k in 1975. My grandparents homes were about 10k in the same time frame.
Kansas City was very cheap at the time. Yes there were more expensive homes but in the 1980’s working class families didn’t have McMansions.
1975 =/= 1980. Looks like housing went up 64% in those 5 years from the data I already linked.
Then why conservative when they actively hate children and society in general? It seems insane to lean that way.
They don’t. How myopic to think that.
How myopic to forget the Republicans’ stonewalling after Sandy Hook and Uvalde.
You mean protecting our constitutional right to own a firearm.
It’s an amendment; it wasn’t originally there. We’ve changed those before and we can do it again. I’m sure people said the same thing about the 18th amendment.
Yeah, so then it’s not about the children, it’s about guns. American conservatives care more about guns than they do about children, I don’t think it’s even possible to deny that.
Economic issues always come down to economic incentives. You care about property values because your home is an investment. You care about stocks because you have a retirement plan. You care about not being a burden on your children when you’re old and having inheritance to leave behind when you die. You care about crime because you have things to steal and a life to lose.
I don’t have property. I will never retire. I will never have children. I am nothing and no one and that will never change.
When I was younger I was a pretty typical liberal. By 30 I was a Marxist-Leninist and desired nothing but the complete destruction of the demon shithole country called Amerikkka. 😘
For the record, you are something and someone. Don’t ever doubt that.
I am a machine that exists to create value for my boss. I’ll never doubt that.
You’re still a person. We should never forget we are all on this journey together and there is a person on the other end.
Never doubt that.
The last few years have been strange. It feels like a glitch in the matrix but things will get better.
That’s a well intentioned sentiment. So don’t tske any of this as an attack, just a clarification.
We aren’t just all on this journey together, some of us are oppressed by others. Our problems aren’t abstract, they are a consequence of the ruling class engaging in warfare on the rest of us, and that’s what the person above was getting at.
We know we’re people, but we also know that we aren’t people to the ruling class.
Same honey but at different places in the journey.
That is where both of our parties fail is not realizing it’s the same journey. Your more impacts mine and mine impacts yours. Maybe no directly but like ripples when you throw a rock in water.
I buy an iPhone and I am chasing someone to be oppressed making it china.
Yet nobody gives a shit when I bring it up.
Okay I’m communist I’m not in one of your parties. I have no idea what you’re talking about journey’s and different places, that doesn’t mean anything. Both of the parties you’re refering to serve the ruling class and help facilitate the oppression of the global working class.
There’s more to it, but at the end of the day there are two classes, the global ruling class who oppress, and the global working class who are oppressed. These aren’t different parts of a “journey”, its a global system of production thst is predicated on the exploitation of one class by the other.
Optimism is for older generations, who lived the before times when life got better year-after-year.
That has never happened in my entire life.
Currents of “optimism” or “pessimism” are meaningless. Actions are all that matter. And it’s not just you out there.
If you don’t mind me asking. What do you do for a living ?
Industrial production, mostly with simple hand tools and feeding steel parts into welders and presses.
It’s so fucking hot. It’s so fucking hard. I’m so fucking tired. Everyday forever until I’m too old too work, and then I’ll take out a 9mm retirement plan.
Nothing about the way everything’s going is designed to let me feel like a person. Money’s a requirement to simply exist. Everything’s a race to get enough money to sustain myself. I’m simply a worker who generates profit so my parasite of a boss and the associated shareholders can hang out on yachts. My job is nonsense too that doesn’t help anyone. I’m estranged from my family for gender and lifestyle reasons, can’t make friends because I’m always exhausted from work, can’t go to therapy except sparingly because it’s too expensive.
No matter how much validity my humanity holds, none of it really matters if none of it can be expressed due to a combination of alienation and dead eyed pessimism about climate change.
And no, we all aren’t on the same journey together. The economic strata that sits above mine has nothing in common with me.
I am sorry your family won’t accept you for you. If you were my family I’d accept you for you. Hopefully you can get the therapy you need and yes, it’s expensive and it shouldn’t be.
Thank you. And well that’s all fine and good to hope and imagine, but I’ve been trying to actively change things for the past 20 years through socialist organizing. Goes well sometimes, goes poorly most of the time, gotta keep trying anyway .
No offense, but it seems pretty naive to say things will get better. I try not to jump on conservatives when they are willing to engage, but that’s a pretty rough take.
Things will always get better.
I am always willing to enrage. I only block those who don’t want to have a conversation.
We are at a weird time in the world. We may have some bumps but it’s hard to image it’ll turn into planet of the apes. Something will have to give and things will improve.
There is a theory I use to laugh at about the cycle of generations. I take it more seriously now days.
Half the country doesn’t believe that climate change is real. If things were to get better, it would have to start with that group first.
I hope you find some comfort one day.
This kind of talk is so worryingly common on this site. Feels like people insist on being seen as a “drone to serve their boss” even though they’re desperate to escape it. They’re disgusted by optimism because someone taught them that escapism is dumb and they believed it
Not in my case. I grew up pretty conservative she moved right libertarian until learning economics in college which moved me left. I bought a home and have two kids and am squarely on the left. I care about schools and crime which is why I want more funding for education and programs that actually decrease crime.
Healthcare is the big one for me. We should not be forking over 20% of our paychecks for healthcare. People on the right are fucking nuts to believe that the cost is because of too much regulation considering we have the least regulation and pay twice as much with now limited options. We need Medicare for All.
I care about schools. I want them to be free and public.
I care about crime. I want to abolish the police and use that money to on social safety net programs including healthcare, social workers, housing, and more which is proven to reduce crime.
I care about children. I want paid parental leave for both parents, guaranteed job return, free childcare, free healthcare for children, and a monthly check for groceries.
Conservatives want none of that, and actively work against every point. Centre/centre-left only want some of that performatively and will undermine any implementation of these programs. The only people working for this are the “hard left.” And because of decades of anti-communist propaganda, no one will touch it.
The only reason I can think of to be conservative and “socially liberal” is to protect your own capital at the expense of others while not wanting to feel bad about doing it.
Don’t say what conservatives want as that is a straw man argument.
Schools are already free and public.
Most people do not want to abolish the police. Crime would soar as there would be nothing to stop the criminals.
You get a monthly check for groceries, it’s called a job. I would like to see paid time off. My employer gives 5 months off, which is very generous. I do think we need something at a national level.
No, I wouldn’t touch communism with a ten foot pole. I will read anything suggested, but it killed millions of people, and not sure how you can say you want to abolish the police but vote for communism when the two are linked heavily in the real world. I have never seen as many police as I did in a communist country. I think this best take away about communism is if it was so great, why were people fleeing from it rather than to it?
Not Pre-K for most parents, and schools are only “free” and “public” for now, thanks to conservatives and liberals alike. College, tech college, and other educational programs are also not free and need to be. Private schools need to be abolished.
First, okay? I said me, not everyone. Second, that’s objectively not true. If you care about a data-driven argument that shows how policing increases crime, see Alex Vitale’s End of Policing. You can download it for free in a bunch of different formats here.
Ah, so you truly are a conservative. A person’s worth is only equal to their productive in the blood-soaked economy machine. A child can’t have a job, jackass, that’s why giving new parents a check for groceries helps their income as their total costs rise.
You need to do some self-crit and question everything you have been taught. For example, there are more people in prison right now in the USA than there have ever been in a gulag. If you genuinely want to learn more about communism from a communist perspective, there are plenty of places to turn. You can start on the Prole Library with some shorter introductory works. You can watch Parenti’s famous yellow lecture for a short introduction, and you can watch Richard Wollf’s introduction to Marxian Economics on YouTube. You can read The Jakarta Method, Blacks and Reds, or listen to a few podcasts like Blowback to learn about the propaganda machine at specific times (e.g., Iraq, Cuban Revolution, Korean War, Afghanistan in order of seasons of Blowback).
But you’re going to have to stop trying to win internet arguments by being a smarmy ass and put in the effort if you really want to learn how a better world is possible.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=eAbHJn4WIz8
https://piped.video/watch?v=ljgRSIUxrCo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Pre-K isn’t necessary.
College should not be free. Trade schools should be free. If college were free, we would have to limit it to the best, which means the poor would be excluded. It needs to be affordable. Right now, it is not affordable for most people. It doesn’t make sense for a garbage man to for someone else’s gender studies degree.
Crime dropped because it wasn’t being reported. It wasn’t because there wasn’t a crime. There just wasn’t anyone to arrest them. As you can see, with out current crime rates, it is not a sustainable model. If they are not arrested, then they repeat their crimes. If you look at San Francisco, businesses are leaving because of the crime, which hurts the city and community. It’s why poor areas don’t have grocery stores. The theft causes the business to leave. If you want to solve the food desert problem, you have to solve the crime problem.
https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/study-major-crime-complaints-fell-when-ny-police-took-a-break-from-proactive-policing-iIKjnJjkPaFQGcXY/
I have talked to people who lived during communism and I have visited a communist country. It isn’t a life style i would embrace. I like having a decent home, food in my stomach and being able to make my own decisions. I have never seen such poverty in my life until I went to Cuba and talk to my Polish friends, growing up starving wasn’t the life I would want. There is a reason millions fled communism. It just doesn’t work.
I have learned how to make the world better. Be accountable to yourself, work hard, and respect others. I have done very well doing those things. I don’t want ‘free’ things from the government. I want the government to stay out of my life as much as possible and to live my life the way I want. I do support a single payer system as I think it enables more freedom but otherwise I don’t need a nanny state.
“Fuck them kids” - You
Scratch a liberal and…
There it is folks. Mask off in three replies.
Direct links to books, articles, videos, and a podcast
Your only interest is yourself and your capital. You only want to protect yourself and, by doing so, you actively harm others. You are not only incredibly selfish as a conservative but want people to applaud you for being “socially liberal.” I hope your pile of gold is worth it.
I only have one further question: have your children cut off communications with you or is that something you have to look forward to?
THe child should be at home with their parents.
My child adores me. She didn’t do pre-school either. We spent time with her and developed her as person. I get you may not able to teach a child to read, but most people can.
No they can’t, and neither can the american education system. 21% of americans are illiterate.