Considering the Epstein situation, and the general horrors of the sex trade, what the fuck are you talking about?

IMO you are caught up in savior narratives and rationalizations. It is OK to take care of yourself. It is OK to not sacrifice everything to gain basically nothing. There is no God to prove yourself to, no Christ to advocate for you, no spot in Heaven to reward you.

As for others, I can say I am overwhelmed and unsatisfied with everything. I cling to what is most important to me. I have already lost a lot in recent months, and I am resolved to not lose anything else. The cacophony of contradictions is overwhelming, and if others cannot quiet themselves enough to hear it all, then they are compromised, but most of all I just need people to oppose and face imperialism in whatever domain they are in. For some reason this seems to be the one thing people won’t face, and instead they exploit subordinate contradictions so they don’t have to prioritize imperialism.

You don’t need to be loved to be capable of being a force for good imo.

Is this not a justification to harm yourself for nothing? I think the ruling class currently believes this and they do whatever they want with no connection to anyone but their own power. Good is fundamentally subjective, but the love from others is a necessary grounding force that gives it meaning. Love builds the consent needed to imagine collective futures and the accountability needed to set them in motion.

I’m not saying this to tell you to get connected to the real world, or to touch grass and make more likeminded friends, or to stop feeling the way you do. I’m saying this to say you need to take care of yourself and love yourself in dark times. I do care about you and people like you. Your mind and your will and your desires. Your hatred and malice for evil. I also have a lot of love for other autistic people that just can’t fucking take this shit anymore. A person like you is far more valuable to me than whatever reward you would trade yourself for in the face of loneliness and darkness. You are a pearl and you must not cast yourself before swine just for a fleeting sense of belonging in a world we do not belong in. Not everyone is on our side and it isn’t our fault. If graves are to be defaced, let it be all of ours.

There’s plenty of human rights enjoyers in the liberal crowd who I could bait into supporting socialism

This is too bold of a claim to take at face value or incorporate into a strategy. I don’t think it’s very true either. Rights are already a liberal trap for those who want emancipation, liberation, or revolution to be re-colonized by the imperial state. Liberals believe in rights because it is a system that uses the ills of imperialism to justify said imperial system. If a socialist told me they were using this strategy with success, I would assume nothing beyond their labor being co-opted by empire.

IMO this is a fundamental problem, and it indeed rings true that communists need to be quite honest about everything we say about what we believe. Especially when engaging with things that are ostensibly agreeable between communists and liberals. We do not have an advantage on this terrain, and we must differentiate ourselves or else we will lose ourselves.

Deception is not our chief weapon against the ruling class either. Our weapon is realizing and actualizing that we don’t need to appeal to any power but our own, and with that power we can have our way with the world. I believe this power will not grow by trying to trick liberals into being communists.

All options are on the table for all sides. Rules of war are only tools for the powerful.

This is one of my fundamental hangups with other communists. Class consciousness in the US will not reliably produce communists. It will produce imperialists much more reliably.

Socialist revolution is not a natural outcome of American class consciousness, WW3 is.

So, in fact, critical consciousness combined with a very refined ethical (not moral, more onto-epistemological) orientation is necessary to arrive at the consciousness needed for revolution in the US. In many regards, you DO need to be very critically skilled to be a communist in the US. Class doesn’t automatically hand you your politics, and the class that would hand you a proletarian politic does not exist in the US. Having a boss and having needs doesn’t magically create communists in a society built on theft and rape. It creates fascists.

I work in university education and critical thinking is abysmal among students. I deal with 40-60 students per class, maybe 10-15 in a class show worthwhile critical skills. Most struggle to retain key points or cannot read and follow instructions. The majority don’t, or don’t know how, to access library databases or archives. Most assignments are full of sources they got from Google because the library search function is an extra click away.

Students also make life hell for themselves, their peers, and teachers because of their lack of respect for their surroundings. A significant portion of students just sit there with earbuds in and text or shop online.

And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that half the curriculum isn’t worth learning because the professor or department are compromised by liberalism and settler imperialism.

Not sure what I’m contributing here. I think this is nothing new, it’s just so intense these days that it’s hard to believe it’s ONLY education and ideology. It feels like there is more to the puzzle otherwise my story of emerging out of Christian fascism through criticism is just an accident and not a universal model for personal growth.

Edit: I want to add that my deepest frustration isn’t even with fascism per se. It’s with liberals. I am about as scared of liberals as fascists, because liberals (and anarchist types) are very self righteous about things that will only make things worse and they are so poisoned by discourse that whatever critical skills they have only function as their own ideological prison, a golden cage to be proud of. Fascists do exactly what I expect at least. Fanon was right that people can only truly become themselves through conflict against oppression and by destroying their oppressors. There is no other anvil to be molded on but imperial ideology.

This shit is so rancid. I’ve got “friends” who call themselves Iranian feminists pleading for a rapist to save Iranian women. Truly the most undignified fucking position I’ve ever heard in my life. But no, it’s the privileged American that heard stories of their father’s war crimes who is obviously wrong.

That is a big part of it.

But also how “puritans” are this supreme scapegoat historically that supposedly explains a wide range of American behaviors. It is used to leverage sexual politics but it is always clunky at best yet way too confident. I would say few Americans actually have puritan heritage.

The other part is personal. I have had a very specific relationship with Christianity and grew up in a hard-line family. Since living on the west coast I find that many ex-christians and Christians are completely dumbfounded by my experiences while I am dumbfounded by their severe lack of knowledge on Christianity, the Bible, varying doctrines etc. Christians here are not, in my personal view, Christian at all. And most ex-christians who tell me their experiences have almost nothing in common with mine.

So generally when “puritans” come up, I anticipate nonsense.

I doubt you think so.

This is exactly how this dogshit spreads. Same with the hatred laced in Tylenol jokes. I don’t care what undignified ways people internalize their ableism. Get this shit out of my face

Please delete this. Really tired of autism and autists being made into a fucking joke or otherwise objectified.

Why won’t they just ban it?

My 2nd least favorite religion.

Fuck AI

The US is currently stealing the largest oil reserves on the planet, worth 4x the GNP of Japan, while already boasting the world’s largest oil production.

Id say they’re buying themselves more than enough time to do permanent damage.

The reaction to Trump is also part of emboldenment. Listen to the chorus of “we are a 3rd world country!” “She was a CITIZEN!”

We can not afford to be fooled by liberal historonics.

But I write none of this as a commentary on hope. I don’t give a shit about giving people hope any more than I care to take it away. Hope simply isn’t my perogative. I think you are fully valid to feel as if life is over, because there is no reason to think our lives aren’t the price of fixing this. I wouldn’t even blame you for saying that cost is too high.

I grew up in a culture of evangelism. I was part of sects that would have you build your own casket before you were sent into the field. You had to forfeit your life for the mission. I’ve never met a single person on the west coast USA that has a comparable attitude when it comes to their convictions, but when I do I might admit to an iota of “hope.”

TOWN HALLS! PHONE CALLS! Lmao

Your belief that those who doubt your tactics are giving up makes you a fascist in my view. If you think the only way forward is to believe in America, then I’m going to pave the future straight over you, and Trump too.

But will the rate of profit falling, which is a tendency and not a law, actually end empire if no one takes action? What actions will people take in the core? Will the global south actually do the magical thing you suggest? I don’t understand what we gain by painting this telelogical end unless we are so hopeless, weak, and vulnerable that we need a heaven/salvation myth forged from a religion of economics to cope with the reality that we have no real grip on history.

I’m not optimistic. Since Trump first mentioned Greenland my intuition is that no one will stop it. I would not be surprised if young folks that scoffed at Trump’s proposal end up taking land claims in Greenland, USA 5 years from now.

I don’t see a scared empire. I see an emboldened one that is looking in the mirror and noticing it’s wardrobe the last few decades is now out of fashion. I don’t see desperation at all. I see a new trend setting. Modernity is not a prison for fascism and it will no longer imprison this empire. The ruling class doesn’t need to play a perfect hand.

There is too great a desire to emasculate fascism and it is fruitless. ICE and DHS are dangerous. They aren’t “larping.” Their equipment is deadly regardless of if someone thinks it is embarrassing. People can only lash out with “eh they don’t look so tough.” This is all I hear when people try to say the empire is magically crumbling and I find it to be an expression of weakness above all.

And to go further, I also am not always hiding away. I have to interview people and meet with people and correspond with people for my work and studies. It has only broken me down more, especially since everyone is just trying to carry on as if things will just calm down.