The "middle class" never existed. The "middle class" is an invented wedge to split the working class and try to turn segments of itself, against itself. It has no material basis. It is the 'myth of upward mobility under capitalism' distilled into a propaganda phrase to obscure the dualistic and antagonistic class relations in capitalist society between the PROPERTIED and UNPROPERTIED (those who own capital and those who do not), and the contradictions and conflicts therein.

It is false consciousness; personified by and in the 'middle manager' who is PROPERTYLESS (proletarian), but paid more and promised the "opportunity of more to come" to align themselves with the interests of the PROPERTIED, and take on the role of a low-level overseer -- to function as both a compliance enforcer and a mediative focus-dulling pain-sponge standing in the middle of, and soaking up the conflict between, the ONLY REAL TWO CLASSES IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY: The Worker, and the Capitalist.

"Middle class" is liberal sleight-of-hand in its core and conception, and a term to be derided and discarded in all use, except as a magnifying glass to show the ways capitalism distorts and deceives about the real nature of its own properties and relations; and how the ruling class generates and contributes to the development of false consciousness through their reframing of production's own characteristics, in order to reify into political "identities" to be captured and capitalized upon those roles which naturally manifest out of the laws of functional industrial-productive logistics, ie. the need for 'managers' to administrate complex or large-scale productive and distributive tasks. This serves double roles in the laws of colonial and imperial relations in places like the USA, as this distinction is also in practice highly racialized and rooted in the ongoing historical unfolding of these basal-and-superstructural systems of exploitation.

Make note of the conspicuous absences and obfuscations when duopolist-exploiter X or Y says they "fight for the middle class;" that they are not fighting for you or me in the working class, but pandering to those "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" that they've bought off enough or otherwise tricked into this false consciousness, to give them their ever-shrinking electoral margins they require and fight each other over so they don't have to pay any mind to the working class masses who make up the majority; because they in reality work for the big bourgeois, the capitalists, and the petty-bourgeois "small business tyrants" who think of themselves as capitalists

all at the expense of the working class domestically and abroad.

I wonder what Biden's record has been on on prisons and polici--oh

"typical Hamas press"

CNN

deeply unserious individual

because nothing seems to be working.

This is an inspiring sign for communists. No reason for pessimism. A large mobilization of masses of engaged politically active workers in a state where the masses still largely believe in parliamentarism; who formed sprawling coalitions into a large left national upswelling that also made international headlines, now have themselves and onlookers been shown, better than any propaganda alone ever could, why bourgeois liberal democracy is an impediment to progress rather than a channel for it; and that the Liberals will side with the fascists to keep the left from getting an inch. This has made more communists than you probably realize. Especially if your communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this point, which probably a lot of workers didn't even need much agitation to expect this because of the state of things and how just... unbearably awful Macron is in every way

...
It is a good day friend. Communism will win, and these liberal politicians are helping it do so. Don't let the systems and their media and propaganda make you believe otherwise in their lies. They're trying to convince you of your own defeat because of the implications if you don't believe you have been, and instead realize they're selling you the rope they will be hanged with; and you push harder in smarter ways that they can't keep up with, using connections built in these mass movements and coalitions which invariably have radical new elements that just need drawn together.

You're ahead of them in this. They've, in a very real dialectical way, undermined liberal democracy and created more enemies to the capitalist systems and institutions than they made allies, by their own blunders in being incapable of conceding anything to intelligently reify socialists back into feckless parliamentary legitimization of bourgeois democracy, and their failures to navigate contradictions in ways that aren't so short-sighted to look absolutely villainous to huge swathes of the population (and internationally, because this was a large enough movement to make headlines around the world; with a knock-on effect for the international proles who see parallels). Macron's so scared of radical politics he's making them everywhere he steps.

I'm hoping the Communists in France have been reading their Lenin. I can't think of a better gift Macron could have given the communists. "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder

...
This has stripped more and more active and engaged and hopeful people of their illusions about bourgeois democracy than even bernie-clinton 2016 nonsense. Which even that created a lot of communists; and that was relatively milquetoast compared to this huge national mobilization and upswell and coalition movement which was big enough to make international headlines no less. If the French communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this stuff even before it happened (as you said, very predictable) then the communist movement has gained 10x more than any eurosocialist thinks "the left" lost.

ADVISORY: Outdoor furniture almost certainly uses treated wood. That is, toxic chemicals that act as fungicide, pesticide, and moisture-resister, which would be VERY BAD inhale the smoke of burning it.. And if it's pre-i-think-80s treated wood it's even worse than what they use now. You should also not use treated wood in bonfires and such.

Pipes are cheap, and even an apple (not ideal) is still better than this.

well except all the Nazis in Germany that were brought directly back into:

• Official posts within the federal government and its ministerial cabinets
• into the upper judiciary and magistrates
• into local governance
• elevated and hired into immense wealth in industry and finance, or just kept where they already were in industry and finance
• hired into forming the Nazi core of the West German intelligence and secret police agencies (which would become today's German agencies) under the protective auspices of the OSS/CIA; who made extensive use of their networks of executioners and collaborators to prop up US-backed dictatorships and cartels and use as anti-communist stay-behind guerilla terrorists by the CIA and NATO (and brought into the CIA and FBI themselves, and into MI6 and Mossad)
• into German academia and universities as faculty and professors,
• to write western history books at the behest and with support of the US Army and OSS/CIA to sanitize themselves
• all those hired into NATO and into the EU
• into positions of power in West Germany (and all the NATO countries, helping in and helped by Gladio violently purging the communists) in such saturation and such impunity that it caused the formation of left wing militant groups that would assassinate and kidnap them.

but other than all of that though!

(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.)

honorable mention to New Marijuana Study Confirms Everyone Knows You're High And You Will Be Stoned Forever

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.

Prague's Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport

And a 'from-16-years-back' broadside at the US approaching November:

'No Values Voters' Search For Most Evil Candidate

Towns and "communities" (don't laugh!) which expend resources on stuff like this to actively marginalize, punish, degrade, and criminalize homeless and impoverished people further, in a country which already has way more vacant houses than homeless people, but require homelessness and require it being kept dangerous and wretched in order to keep the "housing market" 'competitive' and stable for landlords (similar to the "job market" under capitalism fundamentally requiring unemployment as the "Reserve Army of Labour") deserve all of the used needles and wall-feces they get.

It is a deeply sick country which does this, for a sick economic system, which produces sick mindsets in its petty-bourgeois "have-mine's", represented in the fact that the first reaction at someone pointing out the absurdity and anti-social hypocrisy of painting hostile architecture 'PrOgReSsIvE,' is "but if we don't occlude public space and dehumanize and force further into pits-out-of-sight the homeless, I might have to step over them on my way to get Fro-Yo!" Even those homeless who try to stay out of the way and consign themselves to busted tents in loud, toxic, dangerous places like under highways still regularly get smashed up and chased out and their stuff stolen by the pigs at the behest of some of the most reprehensible cowards in the country. I've lived and worked in places where I daily spent hours around or commuted on foot through multiple homeless encampments at all kinds of hours. I can't imagine the lack of conscience and callous shallowness-of-soul that would drive people to rally systemic violence against them. I've had more problems caused to my life by small business tyrants and tourists and pigs in single cities in a year than from every homeless person I've interacted with in my life put together. I've also been meaningfully helped and advised by more homeless people than by any gentrifier or cop.

If you don't want so many homeless people, take it to the landlords. Demand the end of (or at least mitigation regarding) the parasitic extortion of the need for shelter, where workers have to fork 1/2 of their paychecks over to some moneyed jagoff who didn't even build the house (and half the time don't even maintain it, and when they do they pay real workers to do it, with the money they parasitized through rent in the first place), and who evicts those who lose their job for 'existing in a house while poor', or who hikes their rent and evicts "low-value" tenants the second they smell better profits. Better yet or in addition, take it to the banks and real-estate tycoons foreign and domestic sitting on huge lots of vacant housing which are illegal to live in, all while new plots of land (including some of the last remaining nature) are ripped up and destroyed for more hideous condos and soulless developments that nobody can afford. Also demand the abolishing of criminal-record hiring discrimination for those who served their time which keeps them in the system and cycle.

Take it to your town doing this sick depraved stuff so they put these resources toward actual community efforts to address the causes of the problem, rather than toward additional fascist policing and morally and spiritually bankrupt dystopic projects like this, whose advocates and executors are infinitely more sociopathic and violent and disgusting than any of even the filthiest sketchiest and most aggressive homeless people I've spent time with, been threatened or hassled or scammed by, shared bottles or cigarettes with, given money or food to if I had some, whatever.