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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
That said, this doesn't mean the investigations will stop. Pelosi knows they don't have the political clout to get rid of Trump via impeachment, but the purely legal matters are all still in full swing. We don't need Republicans to show Jared and Ivanka are corrupt cronies of nepotism, or that any number of Trump's officials lied to Congress over the past two years and can now be brought up on charges, or that his cabinet is full of grifters and scammers.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says ‘we should be excited about automation’
...
Ocasio-Cortez didn’t put forward a specific plan for dealing with automation at SXSW. But her answer placed it in the familiar context of a larger fight against economic inequality and corporate greed. “We should be working the least amount we’ve ever worked, if we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing,” she said. “But we’re not. We’re paid on how little we’re desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire.”
I don't know if I agree with her, but she's making a good case for her ideas, which I love seeing.
I 100% agree with her. She's saying what I've been saying about the job market. We're moving towards a place where a smaller percentage of our population is needed to work in order to sustain our civilization than ever before. But this is a brutal and terrifying transition because we still live in a culture that places value on a 100% employment rate.
We want people to have jobs for the sake of having jobs, rather than because there is any benefit to the work they're performing. Working yourself to death has become its own reason for existing. And we are, as a result, standing in the way of progress for fear that the progress in question will lead to a world where people don't have to work to have a fulfilling life.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 12th 2019 at 7:19:07 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I mean, I think it's quite interesting that a leftist critique of capitalism I recently discovered is: increasing automation does the work that workers would have otherwise done. In capitalism, the fruits of that labour go straight up to the capitalist and the workers go out of work. In socialism, the workers would share the fruits of that labour and everyone has to work less to create the same amount of output - leading to a better quality of life overall.
Automation is pretty much inevitable. It's a problem for capitalism because it puts more and more people out of a job and contributes to wealth inequality. Socialists tend to see it in a more positive light because the workers would still be provided for in their scenario. And that's what "But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem" refers to. The time will come when there will not be enough jobs for everyone to do. And then an universal basic income (at the very least) will become not just desirable, but necessary.
Y'know, assuming climate change doesn't wipe half of us out within in the next century.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Mar 12th 2019 at 1:29:21 PM
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."There is a bit of a double-standard among conservatives in this regard, or at least double-think. They're fine with capitalism increasing the automation of labor, since it saves money on workers and returns more profits to technology creators. But they fail to follow it through to its conclusion, which is that the progression of that automation will make it literally impossible for everyone to hold a fruitful job. At the same time, they remain staunchly opposed to the idea of a "free ride" — that government should support people who are unable or unwilling to work.
The nightmarish social disaster that will inevitably result from these ideas is something they ignore, willfully or otherwise.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"This is a core element of the actual Communist strategy, actually: Use automation to create a superabundance of goods, thus enabling "to each according to his need."
No, they don't ignore it. They embrace it openly - witness the politicians saying "die faster" when asked about people who can't afford medical care. Kill the Poor is a completely intentional part of their ideology. So I'm not seeing any doublethink.
Edited by Ramidel on Mar 12th 2019 at 6:24:35 AM
I don't mean the politicians and capitalists. I mean the everyday voter.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"So in summation, Marx was completely right, just a few hundred years ahead of his time?
Though the problem of how are we gonna fulfill such a vision without overtaxing the environment even more is still an open question.
I mean the comfort of the First World is the primary reason the Earth is f*cked, after all.
How the Far Right Perverts Ancient History—And Why It Matters
Donald Trump famously does not read books, so it’s odd when he praises an author who normally writes about the ancient world. But there he was touting classicist Victor David Hanson, who just laid out his worldview for the New Yorker in an interview entitled The Classicist Who Sees Donald Trump as a Tragic Hero. The modern news cycle doesn’t have a lot of room for pieces addressing the ancient world, so it is upsetting to see people like Hanson dominating that discussion.
Hanson’s wildly successful 1989 book on ancient infantry combat, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, advanced the breathtakingly bigoted and utterly false notion that manly, honest, close-combat is the Western legacy of battle, and that perfidy, trickery, and ruse is the Eastern legacy, and that therefore the Western way has rightly come to dominate. This is the actual thesis of one of the most popular books on the subject, assigned to me again and again in college, graduate school, and as a young officer candidate earning my commission in the US Coast Guard.
The right wing’s distortion of the West’s fighting roots in the ancient world – roots that were by any measure polyglot, diverse and multicultural, resonate to the point of vibration with conservative movements that by definition lift up the past. It resonated with Adolf Hitler, who praised the supposed ancient Spartan practice of purportedly culling weak or deformed children (this practice was clearly not carried out uniformly, as the lame Agesilaus II was allowed to live long enough to become Sparta’s Eurypontid king). It resonates with Greece’s far-right nationalist party Golden Dawn, whose spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris stated in 2012,
“Those millions of illegal immigrants, racially, are the descendants of the first waves of Xerxes army. Those wretched people, with no military value, were smashed by the wall of Spartan fighters. Now their descendants, bloodlessly, have taken over an entire country and an entire people.”
It resonated with John Turano, the “Berserker of Berkeley” also known as “Based Spartan” who would violently clash with leftist protesters at rallies, wearing a muscled cuirass and crested Corinthian helmet similar to those worn by Spartan hoplites at Thermopylae. (Turano later left the alt-right movement). It resonated with former White House adviser Steve Bannon, whose computer password was “Sparta” in a nod to his admiration for the ancient warrior culture. It resonated with the main cheerleader for far-right Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who blogged support for Breivik’s numerous murders under the handle “Angus Thermopylae.”
This ‘conservative’ idea of Western martial behavior has even permeated popular culture. Hanson’s lionized interpretation of the fighting men of the ancient Mediterranean exploded with Frank Miller’s hit comic 300, which Zack Snyder made into a wildly popular film in 2007. The comic and film are both gross distortions of the actual battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans led a joint force of some 7,000 free Greeks and at least 300 helots (the Spartan slave underclass) in a futile and failed blocking maneuver that slowed the invading Persians for a mere three days before Xerxes went on to burn Athens to the ground.
The imagery in both the film and comic is a glam version of Hanson’s writing—an effete, feminine horde of brown-skinned invaders held in check by a hopelessly outnumbered force of gallant, chiseled white men. The image is tailor-made to slot into far-right terror of Islamic immigration, and the conspiracy theory of white genocide that was so potent in fueling the rise of the Tea Party, and eventually, Donald Trump.
Writing for The Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor pointed out that a You Tube video posted by a user under the handle “Aryan Wisdom” depicted then-candidate Trump as Leonidas, holding back an invading tide that included Soros and Obama. At the time Tharoor published his piece in November of 2016, the video had been viewed over two million times. It’s up to five million now.
It may seem silly to argue about the interpretation of events that unfolded thousands of years ago, to fret and hand-wring over people millennia in their graves. Some may argue it is harmless for the likes of Hanson to strut his toxic revision of ancient history across the stage. Just another blowhard shouting at the ocean, after all.
But this notion is having life-and-death consequences in America today. I worked at the NYPD during and following the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA where Heather Heyer was killed and more than two dozen other people were injured. In August 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center sent us its report on the flags and symbols used during the rally, including the vexillum of the Roman Republic (SPQR for “Senātus Populusque Rōmānus,” “The Senate and the People of Rome”), the ancient sun wheels of Germanic tribes, the Greek lambda (“Λ” or “L” for “Lakedaimon,” the Spartans called themselves “Lakedaimonians”) falsely believed to have been painted on ancient Spartan shields, and now used by the far-right Identitarian movement.
Last of all was the flag of the American Guard, violent hardcore nationalists who sport crossed meat-cleavers as a rallying symbol. Above them stretched a black cannon blazoned with the clarion call of pro-gun advocates from the NRA to militia groups across the country—“Come and take it.” The phrase is from the Greek “molon labe,” (μολὼν λαβέ), Plutarch’s words put in the mouth of the Spartan king Leonidas in 480 BC, when he defied the Persian king Xerxes’ demand that he lay down his arms. Senator Ted Cruz has repeatedly invoked the same phrase.
It is heart-wrenching to see the symbols of the ancient world placed in the service of these noxious organizations.
I recall the 2017 incident where a U.S. Marine sergeant and staff sergeant were arrested for trespassing after they rolled out a banner from the roof of a building in Graham, North Carolina, during a Confederate Memorial Day event there. Beneath the Spartan lambda was scrawled a phrase from Orwell’s 1984, "He who controls the past controls the future," along with the identitarian acronym YWNRU: “You will not replace us.”
Now, more than ever, it is critical to consider who controls conversations about history, and who receives the limited access to the megaphone to disseminate that message.
We would do well to consider Herodotus’ description of the training of the young Persian warriors who fought against the Spartans at Thermopylae, the forebears of the modern-day Iranians we in the west are so quick to demonize.
“Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year,” the father of history tells us, “in three things only:
“to ride,
to draw the bow,
and to speak the truth.”
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 12th 2019 at 3:52:05 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyI mean, we already produce enough food to feed everyone, it's just that getting that food to everyone has a barrier called capitalism, which decides if you can't afford to eat, you don't sodding eat.
Capitalism also produces a lot of waste since it's oftentimes cheaper to throw perfectly fine food away rather than find someone to give it to. I heard of a company policy of some local Domino's of a friend's who insists that if they get the pizza wrong, they'll send out a replacement on the condition that you give them the wrong pizza back. Which they'll just throw away, but they don't want anyone to have a free pizza.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."Communism meanwhile has the opposite problem of not being able to produce the food and other supplies in the first place. At least, not enough for everyone. A lot more people go hungry and die in Communist countries than in Capitalist ones. It's a recurring issue with them, really.
Automation would have to become a lot more widespread and more effective before this sort of thing is even remotely feasible.
Edited by M84 on Mar 12th 2019 at 11:00:54 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedWe have successful examples of collectivization within our democracy, such as certain grocery chains and farming co-ops. We don't have to go full Marx, but it's hardly unheard of for workers to own the enterprises that they operate, and this is not an automatic ticket to failure in the marketplace.
Edit: The ultimate failure of Communism is found in the corruption inherent to state ownership of production. The end goal is supposed to be the transition to full collective ownership, but no state Communism has ever actually achieved that.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2019 at 11:03:44 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I tend to view the problems of communism to be the fact that it requires an absolute authority over property and unquestioned obedience to the state that you cannot opt out of or control.
As such, it becomes innately a clusterfuck and oppressive.
Then throw in the suppression of all competing ideologies and religions.
In communism there is no flexibility because for everyone to be equal, everyone has to be on the same page.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 12th 2019 at 8:07:15 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
I ninja edited my post, sorry.
Yes, it's when the apparatus of state collectivization falls under the sway of people committed to ideological purity that everything falls apart. Of course, that describes every attempt at Communism in the world to date.
By the way, Trump's not only wrong about his claims about how drugs enter the U.S., but he's calling the efforts of his own enforcement agencies to be lies.
(Maddowblog, MSNBC)
Original story by NBC News: Authorities make largest cocaine seizure at N.Y.-area port in 25 years.
The total haul is 3,200 pounds, with a street value of $77 million, on a ship from South America.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2019 at 11:08:47 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Collectivism fails the moment you pass the numerical threshold of human empathy.
Dunbar's Number
. So about 150 people tops.
Edited by M84 on Mar 12th 2019 at 11:07:49 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedI'd say that most communists these days are not in favour of an authoritarian state.
Bit of an assumption there. Besides, edging closer to it within capitalism is hardly a bad idea.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
