I jist finished watching Ukraine on Fire.

If the USA would do that… Then I cant even say in good confidence that the USA is even a republic.

If the USA would do that shit anywhere; then how can any of us trust the results of any American election?

    • @GloriousDoubleKOP
      link
      8
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      What I meant to get at is just how precisely it is all controlled.

      Like if someone told me OWS was a color revolution, Im inclined to believe that…

      Basically Im coming to some kind of way that the elections are 100% just artificial.

      • @lxvi
        link
        161 year ago

        I heard that once before from somewhere too, though I couldn’t tell you the point to introducing class politics back into the US political awareness, especially at such a dangerous moment as post 2008.

        You could see a lot of something like that around BLM. I wouldn’t call it a color revolution, but it was obfuscated and became heavily managed. I noticed that the conversation around BLM rapidly changed when popular newscasters started getting involved. It lost it’s working class tone as black billionaires started telling the white members of the working class that they needed to check their privilege. The focus stopped being around the systematic oppression and extermination of the black members proletariat and became an accusation against the white members. At the same time you had the original, organic leaders of the movement swept under the rug, while liberal grifters set up foundations, which subsequently found themselves scandalized for just how flagrant the grift got.

        Of course I think that Black America has always been the strongest and most immutable heart of Marxist-Leninist America. The Black Panthers are the best party to ever come out of the nation.

        I think the Revolutionary Blackout Channel is a great Channel to follow if you don’t already.

          • @GloriousDoubleKOP
            link
            31 year ago

            Yeah. Recently they were saying Dems are mad cause Desantis handled the pandemic better than the dems.

            And Im sitting here like… It’s easy to prevent people from going broke in a pandemic if you simply let them go to work as if nothing is wrong.

            • @lxvi
              link
              11 year ago

              I mean I’m in Washington St. What did here was lay everyone off for a month so we’d go broke and then put us back to work as if nothing was wrong. They didn’t really lay everyone one off. They just laid the manufacturers while half of everyone got told they were heroes or something like that. And oh yeah, they used it as an excuse to shut down all of the public services and fuck up the local judicial and completely undermine the speedy trial clause of the constitution.

              Honestly I would have preferred them to have done nothing.

              • @GloriousDoubleKOP
                link
                21 year ago

                🤷‍♂️ I feel ya. The response was god awful. But the conservative response to “fuck it, get money.” is obviously an accelerationist approach.

                But yankees are willing to tolerate a million dead. So it wouldnt have mattered if we just went along as if nothing was happening.

          • @lxvi
            link
            -11 year ago

            I don’t see how someone’s opinion on one particular group of vaccines should be considered as a red-line. It would create a massive and completely unnecessary divide among us.

            There happened to be a lot of scandals around those vaccines. It would be a shame if nobody ever got to hear anything about that because everyone was too afraid of being ostracized. Why take an absolutists position on such a grey topic just to cut yourself off from so many people who have done so much for our movement.

            Not only are you talking about turning your back on the most radical among the black community because you don’t want to allow any criticism over a flawed vaccine, you would turn your back against Max Blumenthal who has done so much for us, has proven himself so invaluable. Where is your gratitude that one of our best journalists becomes an untouchable over-night?

            Over a one vaccine you’d split the little ground we have in half. You’d call them anti-vax as if they weren’t vaccinated against polio or smallpox like the rest of us. Again it’s more of that absolutist rhetoric. People are allowed to be concerned over issues that involve their lives and their bodies, but you would dismiss someone for addressing even a single issue that people are reasonably concerned about as “anti-vax”, as if they were against the very notion of vaccines.

            But you’re right that the black community had justifiable fears concerning the vaccine and it would have been WRONG for the Revolutionary Blackout movement to not address those concerns.

            All of this is Passe’. The hype over Covid is come and gone, and the damage is already done to our community. The question is are you going to insist on bring it up past the point that any of still maters?

              • @lxvi
                link
                21 year ago

                I’ll apologize because I like you and I don’t want the bad blood.

                Everyone was afraid of Covid. I was afraid. All of my friends admit that they were afraid. That fear was used to hurt us. We should have listened to each other. We should have had better conversations and more understanding, but we failed.

        • @GloriousDoubleKOP
          link
          3
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I already follow it. Some of the things they say is… Frustrating? But I appreciate the majority of their stuff and as I understand it; they’re out there putting in the work as well.

  • @lxvi
    link
    15
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    You probably shouldn’t. There’s a series of biographies on LBJ that have no political aim one way or another. They’re just biographies. The first one in the series “Means of Ascent”, by Grover Gardner goes over a lot of really dirty and obviously falsifying election tactics. All of these things used to be well acknowledged facts of political corruption like stuffing the ballot boxes, paying people to deliver votes, falsifying the regional tallies. I just happened to read this Biography while trying to read biographies on all the presidents from FDR up. It just came out and said completely undisputed historical facts.

    Even when George Bush Jr won the election everybody knew the election was stolen. Al Gore was just sufficiently bribed to accept it. Actual electoral integrity has never been the issue. It’s the peaceful transition of power that the political class is concerned with. The parties are supposed to accept whoever steals the election fair and square.

    If you haven’t watched JFK by Oliver Stone then you probably should watch it right away.

    When Malcolm X said that the Chickens come home to Roost he meant exactly what you’re suggesting. It wasn’t just JFK. Nixon was surprising progressive for being Nixon, even though that side of him isn’t remember. He wasn’t impeached for being too corrupt. That’s a joke. He got impeached for going up against the deep state. Jimmy Carter was gotten rid for being too much of an internationalist. Everybody knows about the Iran hostage situation and how the hostages were held until after the election in order to ensure his defeat.
    When Trump was elected the CIA literally said they had “six ways til Sunday to screw the president.” They said that right on the news for everyone to hear. The next thing you know they’ve got cartoonish allegations of Russian Piss tapes. Then they attempted to impeach him after he threatened to withhold arms to Ukraine and investigate corruption.

    Each of these events should be viewed as a deep-state coup of the official government, but especially the assassination of JFK and the subsequent assassination of his brother Bobby Kennedy. That represented a straight up military coup.

    What I mean to say is that you’re too late. What you’re talking about already happened a long time ago. Don’t ever forget JFK or his brother Bobby Kennedy. JFK was the last president this nation has seen.

      • @lxvi
        link
        81 year ago

        The positive is that competent statesmen and bureaucrats either resign or get purged in such a dishonest and hostile environment. Intelligent and capable people have principles and ethical standards. Even if they’re not mass aligned, they’re aligned with some higher virtue than ‘to the strong go the spoils.’ Capable men are men of their craft. That’s what you saw over the last couple years; a flood of high ranking bureaucrats resigning over official policies. Before that we have the Doulma investigators denouncing the OPCW. Even today Scott Ritter has made a name for himself.

        It’s gotten so far that the whole Western Establishment is run by blind fools in a panicked frenzy. It’s what you might call a natural contradiction of fascism. There just aren’t enough Obamas in the world to keep the whole thing running.

    • @redtea
      link
      91 year ago

      Within the imperial core, it’s not just the US, either. What happened to Corbyn in the UK and Syriza in Greece§ gives a glimpse into how all the state apparatuses will come together to neutralise change.

      It’s quite scary, but I still tend to see these actors as paper tigers. They only succeed because there’s very little organised resistance (Corbyn, it seems, assumed he could just walk in with enough votes, for example). It’s like you point out, with the removed US presidents – they tend to be lone voices doing one or two good things, but without organised mass support (except FDR, maybe, who had the unions, socialists, and communists on board, and it took three terms and saw a whole lot of reform before be could be dealt with).

      I’ve not read many biographies because I was unsure if I could stomach them, but you’ve persuaded me… maybe it’s time to start.

      § hmm… Can Greece be said to be in the imperial core, considering how badly it has been treated in/by the EU?

      • @lxvi
        link
        51 year ago

        I would actually not recommend reading presidential biographies if you have better things to read. It was just something that I did while I was trying to understand the last century better. There’s a lot of fluff and caricature.

        If you want to read an interesting book that not enough people have heard of I’d read “Inside Hitler’s Greece” https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Hitlers-Greece-Experience-Occupation/dp/0300089236

        Considering your question I’d turn toward Yanis Varafankus “Adults in the Room”

        I’m tempting to think Greece is a thoroughly colonized nation. During the 2010 crisis they attempted to redress their debts in an amiable way but were hostilely prevented by the IMF and EU.

        I don’t know how we should view the imperial core though. Should we view it as entire groups of people or should we view it as similar to the American Empire, as a serious of bases spread out but capable of exerting it’s will. Certainly there are Greek collaborators who facilitate the colonization of Greece and they should be considered as members of the imperial administration. Then segments of Greece would and segments of Greece wouldn’t.

        You could view the “Imperial Core” as a more super-structuralist aspect. Even this breaks down slightly. Certain classes among Greek Society would feel tightly aligned with the “imperial Core” while others would feel alienated by it.

        I think the most useful way of understand the Imperial Core is in opposition to the Periphery of Empire. Some regions the Capitalist empire has a very strong hold while others the empire has a very tentative hold. Even in the US, at the very heart of the empire we are a colonized people. Materially, only a small segment of the population plays a role in managing the occupation of the US territory for the administration of the empire. Super-Structurally, many of us are completely brainwashed by the empire’s culture, media, and identities, but what really makes us the Heart of the Empire is the firmness by which the Empire holds us and their use of our political structures in their operations.

        This is true for all European countries within the EU and all NATO Members. It’s also true for nations like South Korea, Japan, and Australia. These nations are under the firm grasp of the empire and their political structures are used in the operation, administration, and coordination of the empire.

    • @GloriousDoubleKOP
      link
      81 year ago

      There is always you know… Knowing this is true as an axiom; but to REALIZE just how true it is is really something else.

      • @lxvi
        link
        71 year ago

        I think you’ve got a point here. A lot of people know all this at some ironic distance, but they haven’t come to terms with the reality of it. Everybody at least passingly knows the details of the things which deeply concern us. The difference between us and them is that we saw them for the REAL. There definitely is a difference between knowing and KNOWING. It the difference between knowing there’s a hungry bear in the woods you’re camping and KNOWING. There is a much more eminent reality to actually getting it.

        • @GloriousDoubleKOP
          link
          21 year ago

          Another way to put it. Knowing, realizing, and FINDING OUT.

          And now I sit here… Slightly creeped out about the fact that some of these QAnon wackos have a point.

          And I just had this creeping question in the back of my head when watching this documentary. If the US would do that to a people; then what EXACTLY prevents the US from doing it to their own? Where is the guard rails on this behavior?

          The tail is wagging us.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
    link
    71 year ago

    I don’t think it’s 100% artificial, all you need to do is talk to the average American for 5+ minutes and you’ll see they speak how their officials do about politics because they don’t understand basic DialMat.

    Republican and Democrat voters really do believe their own bullshit. Just as I once did. You conveniently ignore what your “side” does and harass the other side when they fuck up. It’s a simple Red V Blue, 2 teams, don’t worry about Libertarians or Green Party or anything further left, “just pick red or blue, they’re the only ones who can possibly win”. The vast VAST majority of Americans think this way. The US doesn’t even really have to fake elections because Dems and Reps already pay for 10+x the amount of ads that any 3rd party would pay for. Americans watch plenty of TV and don’t often read. So if you’re the Dem or Republican pumping out ads, Americans will see it and pay more attention to the name they heard 30 times a week than the small candidate who will change their lives for the better.

    • QueerCommie
      link
      21 year ago

      I wouldn’t say the vast majority believes that stuff, it’s just that most people that care about politics think so. Most people (almost two thirds) are just mostly apolitical because they see that the way the mainstream tells them to participate has very little effect, and indulge in the little spoils from imperialism they are given to try to lessen the pain.

      • ButtigiegMineralMap
        link
        21 year ago

        A good correction, I definitely meant among the voters that are entrenched in US politics.