Please,

It was cute the first time I saw it, but I’ve had enough snootposting to last a lifetime.

Invasion by train doesn’t seem very effective

D:

froge

Fascism is capitalism

How about nationalist?

Lmfao pragmatism is when you continue doing the thing that every generation leading to this point has done to either stalled or negative progress, and shit on your fellow classmen for not doing it as hard as you. Real winning strategy, you are definitely a qualified arbiter of who is “up for real change” and not. Abandon all substantive arguments, cast aside that stinky old historical materialism. internetcitizen2 is here to tell us what’s what! Thank heavens!

Sorry that happened I guess? Don’t really know what it has to do with me or anything I said.

do you have anything of substance to add?

Luigi allegedly made healthcare CEOs very afraid all on his own.

How long did that last?

Coordination with others in these things is a liability, not a strength.

Based on what evidence?

There’s always only a few dozen people directing the state’s violence.

How do you expect to outsmart or overwhelm the state mechanisms of violence protecting those people, or the people that will take those people’s places, without coordination? How do you expect your resistance to go on indefinitely, and not fizzle out as soon as the state gives away the smallest concession, without an organized struggle to spread and sustain it?

If those “other factors” were legitimate why would china be investing anything into infrastructure? If they could simply unilaterally repress discontent, why would they invest so heavily in the experience of their working class? Doesn’t that imply a huge impossible level of benevolence, in your version of events, to do these things with absolutely no mechanism for the people to enforce it?

We need to make them fear what will happen to them if they ignore us. Not a potential loss of support or popularity but actual, primal fear of physical consequences.

How do you do this without the organization to lead a coordinated effort? One guy with a gun here and there is an acceptable risk to them, and a useful tool in manufacturing consent.

They do these things not because we haven’t expressed our opposition, they do them because our avenues of expressing opposition are toothless and ineffectual by design.

It’s not about merely “expressing our opposition” it’s about wielding the full collective power of our class in order to enforce our interests. There’s nothing “lame duck” about that.

Their tactics of subversion are merely disillusionment tactics; they want us to think organizing doesn’t work, because without organization we have no way to pose a legitimate challenge to their power. There are ways around their tactics. People have organized and won significant gains under more oppressive conditions, even within our own country.

Slaves could not have won their freedom without organization, nor women the right to vote, nor workers the 40-hour work week and social security, nor could blacks have defeated jim crow… I could go on. Those in power teach us their own perspective version of history that gives them undue credit for these advancements, minimizing the role played by organized resistance, in order to convince us that we don’t need to organize to make change. We must study history from the people’s perspective in order to learn what truly works and what doesn’t.

So you recognize that our voting system features heavy disenfranchisement, but you use that as a reason for why it works?

The lesson here isn’t that voting alone is all that significant; it’s that the bourgeois will claw away even the most insignificant crumb they can get, and that’s precisely why democracy does not work under capitalism. The difference in that distinction is that; rather than fighting many small one-step-behind fights in the name of voting, in hopes we get to vote for some of the change that our people need 10 years down the road; we organize and build our capacity to directly fight the big fight for our people.

This is one of the many contradictions of capitalism; democracy is how the system maintains its legitimacy, but democracy itself is a threat to capital interests. Too much and too little democracy are both against ruling class interests. Too much, and the working class can influence politics in a way that threatens the ruling class and their power. Too little, and the system loses legitimacy, opening itself to the possibility of revolt.

The ruling class maintains the balance by minimizing the possibility of a coordinated working-class resistance; guaranteeing only the minimum amount of democracy, only for as long as they recognize the working class’s ability to organize and overthrow them. Making a show of what little faux democracy we have is a tactic to that end; the carrot hanging from the stick. It sows division, keeps us occupied, keeps our attention in one predictable place, and attempts to convince us of the system’s legitimacy; all of these being obstacles in organizing an effective resistance against the guy holding the stick.

What we’ve learned is that no politician is ever going to hold themselves or their class members to account, even if it comes at a great cost to their constituents, unless it’s for cynical reasons. We have to organize at the grassroots level in order to make sure our representatives are representing our interests. They just aren’t going to do that for us, despite all the money that goes into making us think that elections alone could ever fix this.

No it’s definitely the latter

There are enzymes in your saliva that actually dry your lips further when you lick them

Could be a compact tape measure

I was mistaken, the original nickelodeon was a movie theater where admission that costed a nickel. For some reason I had the impression of a machine like this that took nickels.

Ah yes, the original nickelodeon

It sounds like you’re speaking from experience