Granted in some cases and areas the GOP has been practicing for years, but I feel the presence of master hands. But who? The only reasonable explanation that occurs to me is that he gets advice and suggestion from Russia. — tim wood

This shit is becoming qanon for liberals.

I do so hope that someone in the senate quotes McConnells own words to his face on this one. — MSC

He will not give an iota of a shit; in fact he will just smile and laugh.

I actually have no idea what country @StreetlightX lives in I always assumed he was British

Sorry, don't accept people from shit hole countries. — StreetlightX

:cry:

I wonder what McConnell has to say about a Supreme Court nomination in an election year? — Monitor

"Oh we'd fill it"

Which of you non-Americans will house an American refugee?

I found the characters are mostly one dimensional and the writing sub-par, but it's nevertheless interesting in it's novelty, imagination, and by consequence, influence in the genre.

Novel actually :naughty:

To be honest I thought Dune wasn't very good.

I'm sorry you rub my back I'll rub yours

A ratio over one to one probably indicates trolling behavior, such as is evident with NOS. — praxis

To this point, if you have a lower ratio people likely agree with the comment.

At least in Blade Runner they had flying cars and everyone had Ana de Armas girlfriends.

Don't respond to Streetlight you'll only make him more powerful

Covid is just going to be normalized as something people can just die from. Much like school shootings or police brutality, or even climate change despite skies that look like something out of a Blade Runner movie. Hard to believe at this point that this country can be mobilized to eradicate it, even with a vaccine which a sizable cohort will refuse to get.

Also at this point I'm perplexed at how any American can give a shit about 9/11 when you have the equivalent of one every 3 days for the last couple of months — StreetlightX

America's response to 9/11 was far worse than 9/11 itself - more than twice the amount of Americans died in Afghanistan and Iraq, over half a million citizens of those countries have died in the resulting wars, and at least 37 million people have been displaced as a result of the 'War on Terror'. The world, would have been far better if this country did literally nothing in response to 9/11.

Don't feel bad mine is 0.8 and I would expect anyone over a 1 is pretty rare.

I rewatched Bela Tarr's 7 hour masterpiece, Satantango, in one sitting. First saw it several years ago over the course of four days. Definitely recommend viewing it in one go.

(they might have gotten it right this time) — 180 Proof

I will not stand idly by as David Lynch and Sting are besmirched

But clearly, that's asking for too much, and so we get purely performative/symbolic gestures (like Pelosi et al taking a knee for a photo op), and both the violence and the protests will continue. — Enai De A Lukal

Yeah to this point the liberal bandage on a centuries old wound has been primarily symbolic. Grotesque photo ops, renaming streets (which as recently as yesterday resolve nothing), even pulling down statues of Confederates are symbolic insofar as they aren't part of wider material substantive change for the black community and the police.

If Joe Biden or any other of these neoliberal dipshits want the fires to stop burning, the solution is simple enough: start holding police accountable for breaking the laws they're paid to enforce and killing/harming those they're paid to be protecting. The protesters are pretty clear about what they want — Enai De A Lukal

:cheer:

I mean after Covid is over, I haven't done outdoor dining myself

Hopefully we can at least keep the closed streets and outdoor dining. The city is better without so many cars.

I'm just going to drink heavily, watch a movie on election night, and turn my phone off why torture myself through it

Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian (going to read this later)
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx

Finished:
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx (reread)
The German Ideology by Karl Mark (just the section on Feuerbach and Historical Materialism)

Of course belligerent mobs threaten RNC attendees as they leave the event — NOS4A2

Counter-argument: fuck 'em

Tucker Carlson is openly defending a 17 year old murdering protesters, I don't think people are aware of how bad things will be in November.

Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in the back, in front of his family because cops "tHoUgHt hE mIgHt HaVe a gUn" while Kyle Rittenhouse shot three protesters last night, killing two of them, attempted to surrender with gun in hand yelling that he was the shooter was ignored by cops (who had previously thanked him for intimidating protesters and had given him water) clearly shows that systemic racism does not exist.

Erm.. I mean I'm the first one to encourage skepticism of mainstream history but.. pretty sure at least most of it happened lol. Kinda graduates past the "theory" stage really. Besides, wasn't your boy Marx talking about something along the lines of "the people want what they want (feels natural, doesn't feel totalitarian/government enforced) and will fight (damage people and property) for it" or some bit? — Outlander

I don't understand what you are saying here.

Another point I would want to make is that anthropological history is not necessarily relevant because the environmental factors are completely different now. One might for instance point to the more equalitarian societal structures of hunter-gatherers, but across the globe societies developed hierarchical and stratified societies independant of eachother as population grew larger after the agricultural revolution. I don't think that was some arbitrary fluke of history. It rather seems like it was a necessity to keep larger societies together. — ChatteringMonkey

My point was that values are multifaceted across history and are more often than not derived from alternative modes of production and the social relations that are organized around them (a point that Marx made as well). As such, contemporaries who claim that human nature is reducible to greed or competition is akin to a fish claiming that everything in under water. It's myopic.

Personally, I detest building or theorizing about a socio-economic system or a government based on some theory of human nature that's reducible to a specific state of mind or biologically-based interaction.

These two were the most unhinged.

The first night of the RNC is completely unhinged

Aligning human nature with capitalism via immutable "competition" is to naturalize a socio-economic system that's only existed for a few centuries. It's another point of propaganda to identify capitalism and capitalist values as ingrained in humanity, while ignoring actual anthropological history that can provide alternative values for modern alternative systems.

"Only by forcible overthrow" doesn't seem like this "disappearance" would be peaceful. Stop trying to make Marx some kind of benign social democrat when he clearly isn't one. — ssu

Marx oscillated throughout his lifetime between violent insurrection and peaceful democratic regime change, often as a result of whatever was going on in Europe, but if you can't grapple with the fact that a 64-year-old man changed his mind here and there during the course of 40+ years of a highly intellectually active life than you demonstrably can't handle this thread

American is actually the greatest socialist country that has ever existed on the face of the earth. This is not my opinion, this is an empirical fact. America redistributed 4.5 Trillion dollars into the stock market. And the Pentagon cannot account for a whopping 21 Trillion dollars! — JerseyFlight

Marx would be rolling in his grave over this stance. Socialism does not equal government intervention tout court.

by the way, no one is forcing anyone to respond to NOS

What has Marx to do with democracy?

Marx isn't talking about democracy, especially not as an safety valve for society, but as a means for proletarian dictatorship in the class struggle. Proletarian dictatorship is a way to eradicate private property, the final goal for Marx. Marx doesn't give a shit about democracy, only if it furthers the exact cause of the proletariat: — ssu

Yeah what could Marx, the most prominent political thinker in the 19th century, have to do with democracy, the most contemplated political idea of the 19th century.

Of course Marx wrote quite a bit on democracy; advocating and organizing the formation of class conscious proletariat classes and organizations, and a political form that would appear alien to most inhabitants of the 21st century, much less to those that lean economically conservative. Marx's rendition of democracy that would be of value to the proletarian class is Hegelian in concept: abolishing private property in order to socialize the benefits of productive property for the proletarian class to legitimately unite the universal (i.e. the form of government) with the particular (the interest of individuals or a class). Besides the fact that the proletarian (i.e. wage laborers) make up the majority of voting citizens it's curious that you think democracy dissolves into a literal dictatorship if a class conscious citizenry gains legitimate power and leverages it to further their own goals by reorganizing pre-existing property arrangements. In form, it's no different than a "capitalist dictatorship" furthering their own cause by destroying labor unions, overturning or blocking environmental regulations, etc.

That Trump's approval rating is .2 points higher than it was an exact year ago during mass unemployment, a pandemic that has killed nearly 200K people, and a major recession reveals a lot about his supporters.

Zizek really pitied him

Remember when Jordan Peterson prepared for a debate on Marxism just by reading the Manifesto, which he admitted he hadn't read since he was 18

how I long for sweet death