Fork found in kitchen

/hj 👀

I've had some interesting experiences, to say the least. I'm a white guy, so I can't understand peoples perspectives, but I can def see how it plays out.

One of the most jarring, but in fact maybe the most subtle instance I experienced, our org had a general meeting (open to the public). Of course, virtually anyone in the org you talk to will tell you we have a "whiteness problem". So def something people discuss and are aware of. One day, a young black woman came to check us out. Contributed to discussions in really interesting ways. At the end of the meeting, she just kinda lurked around a bit, picked up her stuff and walked out. I know for a fact nobody knew her, and yet nobody greeted her. So I followed her out, we had a nice talk, I got her info and we had some really good one on ones. She came back to a few general meetings and continued to contribute to discussions.

But she never did join our org, that I am aware.

Probably the most blatant examples though have been much, much worse. Those didn't happen within socialist orgs, but progressive ones. I found those progressive orgs to be filled with a lot of nice people, but run by very amateurish, ignorant, intolerant, and sometimes downright toxic individuals. Good times

But if the layers between the Democrats and the socialists are so nasty, no wonder a lot of people don't make it over. And if the Socialist layers are still pretty touch and go, at best, no wonder people don't stay around.

Black voters, particularly black women, are the most progressive voters of any demographic, by a long shot.

Black people put off by DSA are a different story, and not easily understood or labeled. Frankly, there is real skepticism toward DSA and socialism in general. I've had many conversations about it, not from "socially conservative" black people but from very progressive black people who could not get over their criticisms and hesitations despite many attempts at direct engagement with DSA and Democratic Socialists. I def know black radical DSA members. But skepticism toward DSA is not just a socially conservative phenomenon.

I had a one-time but total psychotic break from smoking weed, it was not fun and took a very long time to recover from. I had been a daily user for years, quit for about a month, and then smoked a small amount I had left over. I hadnt had an adverse reaction like that before or since. I became a daily user again for maybe 6-8 months, but I've since quit.

I'm not saying it will happen to you, and I'm not trying to preach about the dangers, but this was my experience, and it was very bad. I would not agree with someone trying to sell a line of "reefer madness" as it helped me through some pretty rough times. But when it didn't, I had some negative side effects too. I def don't think there is zero negative effects to using it.

No resume needed, complete success

It sounds like you are saying something like "Marx wouldn't have condoned the USSR/China". I don't see any possible way of litigating this, as it is so abstract and moralistic that it can't really be handled by Marx's methods. As for my taking an "academic" view, everything I said is directly supported by the works of Marx, I can pull quotes if you like, but pulling my Marxism card is a pretty lame maneuver. I'm not an academic. I learned Marxism through study of Marx and secondary sources, and real application of his ideas. You will have to work very hard to prove that I am misunderstanding Marx. On these topics we are discussing: I do not misunderstand, I have receipts, and I don't appreciate the implication.

If you want to criticize the USSR and China feel free to do so. Marx wrote extensively on the Obschina and the possibility of peasant communes to develop into socialism without going through a Capitalist phase. The revolutions in Russia and China were just, theoretically sound, and inevitable. The necessity of a proletarian and/or peasant revolution in both countries is underscored by how utterly bourgeois revolutions failed in their own time to actually overthrow their kings and emperors. All of them degenerated back into imperial relations.

Did the USSR and China also degenerate into top-down bourgeois relations? Absolutely, you'll get no argument from me. But Marx's theories were successful when they allowed revolutionaries to understand and act upon real conditions in order to overthrow the old order. I am familiar with the histories and criticisms, and are able to discuss them beyond just abstractly waving toward some (one might call) authoritarian "regime." Stalinist rejection of Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution", or the idea that if you start a revolution, you fucking finish it, bore out in predictable ways.

But if Trotsky had seized power instead of Stalin I doubt things would have changed much. These revolutions were thrust upon the revolutionaries, if you had asked Lenin in 1916 when a revolution would occur in Russia, he might have said "not for 50 years" and then advocated for a bourgeois revolution. The Bolsheviks had deep roots among the proletariat and peasants, but the proletariat was critically underdeveloped, the revolution as a "truly Marxist" one never stood a chance. That has nothing to do with Marx or the way his theories were applied or misapplied. It has to do with the exact conditions of those countries during their revolutions, and the difficult decades that followed. In order to understand those conditions, a thorough understanding of Marx is extremely helpful. but even then, there is still immense ground for disagreement. So much so that it hardly seems practical to litigate.

I'm happy to provide direct Marx quotes to support everything I said in my first comment, I have them saved on my phone and reference them frequently. I would be more than happy to share them. The works I would cite would be the Manifesto, Critique of the Gotha Program, the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, and my personal favorite, The German ideology. Incidentally, TGI has a great quote that I believe defends your position:

The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal powers (relationships) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by dismissing the general idea of it from one's mind, but can only be abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to themselves and abolishing the division of labour. This is not possible without the community. Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the State, etc. personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class. The illusory community, in which individuals have up till now combined, always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and was at the same time, since it was the combination of one class over against another, not only a completely illusory community, but a new fetter as well. In a real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association

I don't really disagree with you on some level, but it feels like you're trying to discredit me in order to make a point that you aren't making an explicit case for, so excuse me if I'm grasping a bit. I would appreciate specifics in order to continue, so we aren't just "talking past" one another.

A "girlfriend man" is actually extremely rare, most people look for a girlfriend, boyfriend, or non-binary friend. I suppose a girlfriend man might fall into the later category but it is still a minority of a minority, if it even exists.

I would recommend more realistic standards, or a more open mind. Start relationships with the people around, rather than holding out for unlikely standards of a man who will be your girlfriend.

One of the most interesting people I've ever met was a woman who hand painted signs and "flash" on windows.

As a teenager, she left home to join the circus, because she wanted to learn how to paint all the signs and posters that you see at circuses and travelling fairs. After several years in a travelling circus, she decided to start a business as a commercial sign company. She invested heavily in vinyl cutters, industrial printers, a large shop to house all the equipment, and hired employees to run the equipment.

But once she started going to meet with potential clients, according to her, nobody wanted the laser cut, industrially precision printed sign work; once clients found out she had the ability to create high quality hand-painted signs and flash, they hired her to do the hand-painted work. It turns out, that people are so bombarded by machine mass manufactured signs and images, that people tend to block it out as so much disinteresting background noise. But the hand-painted stuff stands out, even when produced with near-mechanical levels of precision.

So she sold the big shop and equipment. And now, she drives in a truck, filled with her paint and supplies, to a client with her daughter. The owner says what they want, she and her daughter go back to the truck, design it on the spot, get approval from the owner, paint it same day, take their payment and go on to the next client.

It reminds me of how so many people are getting tired of overproduced auto-tuned music. It just fades into the background.

I think AI content is quickly doing the same thing, fading into the background as slop. But people have such a (rightly) negative opinion of it, that I think a hard return to authenticity is going to come back fast. Its interesting how YouTube has started purging AI content creators. Back when there was a controversy surrounding ai content channels pushing violent and sexual content to children, very little was done outside public outrage. But now that the stuff is actively driving less people to interact with the platforms, the companies are aggressively purging these channels.

Progressive Stack

MF that's not what progressive stack is. What the actual fuck is this freak talking about