Exactly.
I will consider contributing financially to Dessalines but not nutomic so long as they spread and maintain reactionary positions against trans people. To be honest I'm even on the fence about Dessalines for maintaining a public relationship with nutomic in light of this.
"Give money to a transphobe so we can have open source Reddit" doesn't have a great ring.
Big artists are performing clowns for monopoly capitalists.
Ask yourself whether it was normal for cops to be at lynchings, then re-read my previous comment.
The NYPD budget would make it something like the third largest military if compared to countries' military budgets. The NYPD's main purpose is to protect capital which, per "stop and frisk" and similarly racist policies, are intended to harass minority groups. If there is a safety issue where minutes matter, they are only hours away. If a shop window gets broken they'll be there immediately.
You're talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, "but Trump is worse". They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they're told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I'm aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.
Netanyahu isn't a dictator any more than any other Western bourgeois democratic leader. The genocide he and those around them carry out is very popular in Israel. It is a deeply racist society premised on the hatred and subjugation od the Palestinians from whom they steal land and resources and life.
It will be strikingly similar to the last 4 years but the partisan narratives will simply flip in various ways, as will those of allied media. The bad things that the Trump admin did in his first term that became suddenly tolerable, ir even "good" under Biden? They will be back to being good again. Dem politicians will be back to calling themselves "the resistance" despite losing another layup because they could not do more than campaign on "at least we aren't them" while presiding over a genocide and economic decline for the average person, both with intentional policies. Remember that they are all PR and cynicism and are lying to you about what they will do, as they are not beholden to a disorganized public in any way.
To be clear, bad things will be happening. It is only reasonable to feel some despair for them, but if you can allow that to motivate you to substantive action you can escape merely being a witness to suffering and can begin to work materially against it. Much of that suffering was going to happen anyways or a different form of suffering may have happened under a Harris regime. It's not like Democrats did much with their power, they tend to pretend they have no party discipline or power even when thry have the presidency and Congress, so they allowed the major shifts at state levels to occur largely unheeded and served a right wing agenda at the national level. So it is important yo ask the question of what action you can take that does not depend on expecting Democrats to save you. They won't. What we need are other organizations, ones that organize independently of ans often in opposition to the Democrats, Dems who otherwise suck up all political energy demanding improvements to people's lives and turn it into more cops and wars.
So, the two ingredients to effective organizations are political education and organization building. The former is just an organized form of reading and teaching, and it is essential because we have all internalized false ideas of how politics functions. They are taught to us by the ruling interests that keep us disempowered *because * this keep them in power. The latter is about growing and improving an organization so that it can have greater and greater leverage and develop strategies for gaining and wielding power (and power is not things like letter writing campaigns to already-elected ghouls, it is making demands that must be met or else).
You can enjoin this kind of project in many ways. You don't need to jump deeply into a hardcore organization straightaway; it can be useful to join one that is only oushing yourself moderately at first. Maybe a mutual aid organization or a single issue or single community group. The important thing is that it is of the left and therefore not of thr Democratic party. You can also engage in your own political education independently if you'd like, which can keep the pressure down when you are first starting out with irl left work.
And of course please do rely on whatever community you already may have, including here. I am happy to chat here or via DMs if you'd like and can answer basically any question you might have. I'm also happy to recommend readings that you may find useful or helpful.
has been built with massive debts
While they have been financed it has not resulted in substantial long term debts.
no immediate commercial viability
Lmao. This is public infrastructure not a business grift.
When the private sector is in charge of things like this they do it worse and at higher expense btw.
Not a million miles away from Victorian railway companies in London building lines for, hoped for, future demand.
Very different, actually.
I hope it works out, but there is for sure a risk of it becoming a millstone.
I'm sure the Redditor that thinks public infrastructure needs commercial viability has plenty of useful lectures for the Chinese state on how to drive production and transportation.
While this is true it is not because China has deviated from socialist theory, including that of Marx and Enfels. China is a dictatorship of the proletariat as described by Marx and Engels as the necessary precursor to communism. It is also taking a very specific strategy towards imperialism that involves special economic zones, or capitalism zones, in order to build productive forces while also coupling the well-being of imperialist countries to China's ability to produce.
Communism will never be achieved by a state and no state has ever expected to do so. The idea that any country ever could use a category error, it means a person doesn't understand the term at all as used by Marx a d Engels. It is, by definition, stateless, and could only happen after all states are eventually abolished. But again, being practical people, they expected this to happen through a long process of struggle with dictatorships of the proletariat being what socialists first formed and could use to overturn the capitalist order
I'm sorry you've had to experience that transphobia on Lemmy. It is unfortunately common. And sometimes it even lurks as internalized transphobia in people that do not think of themselves as transphobjc. For example, there are Lemmy instances that actually promote chasers.
I believe all instances if transphobia should be called out and obvious examples should result in bans. Sometimes it is good to let people have a chance to accept criticism and retract but I am biased towards more often banning. Comments that are transphobic should also be removed.
This is how the American system works. He's just not being classy about it.
Congressmembers do insider trading all the time and move into industry positions after they leave, having helped those exact industries (following the requests of their lobbyists). Congressmembers go straight to the top of boards for weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, etc.
Regulators and other officials do the same thing. They cycle back and forth between the industries they're supposed to reign in and supposedly the job where they do reign them in. Work for the FCC -> work for a telecom -> FCC -> telecom.
In terms of the Supreme Court itself, it is an illegitimate body that has legitimacy only because the other two branches give it to them. Their major powers are not in the constitution and they have very few rules to follow.
You are right that gaining power to establish justice is what really matters, not "the rules" (which are always selectively applied). But it really depends on what you mean by the "good guys". If you mean Democrats, unfortunately they are also deeply embedded in this system and are not champions against it. They maintain power through the same kinds of industry connections and exit strategies and insider training. Their electoral apparatus is built on getting donations from companies and their executives so that they can buy ads and canvassers and phone bankers and data nerds to reach out and drive likely voters to turn out for them.
I've been in high-ish level Dem offices on various occasions. They put a lot of effort into shmoozing with donors and doing everything they can to get more money from likely donors. Big and small, though big get the most attention. The idea of building their base of power from the action of motivated grassroots individuals is rejected. And that's the only real base of power that is likely to reflect justice.
US whiteness is a social construct that serves to justify and reproduce marginalization: white supremacy. It started out excluding the Irish, Italians, the Spanish, Slavs, etc and shifted over time in order to maintain anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity. So it is far from just one thing and is simultaneously very recent. It would be best described as a culture of domination and capitalism, being a product of the US' industrialization and then economic subjugation of the planet. Whiteness is about who you are better than and how entitled you are to a good life, or at least one better than non-whites. White culture is tolerating and even engaging in genocide so long as it is against non-whites. White culture is trying to pretend oppressions don't need justice on any timeline that might inconvenience a white person. White culture is jingoist. The image of a warlike America has a white face.
As white people were largely drawn from European immigrants, they sometimes have watered-down elements of culture from "the old country", Americanized to the point of being unrecognizable. Those elements were usually watered down because their immigrant ancestors were not considered white at the time so they tried to hide or erase identifiable cultural elements. Name changes. Modifications to food. Going to the whiter church. Skipping traditional holidays.
And of course, much is just white supremacy under capitalism. Processed industrialized foods. Commercialized holidays and events. Workaholic myths of paths to success. Everything cheaper or subsidized to their benefit and treated as an entitlement. National chauvinism and racist warmongering. Colonizer mindsets.