Apparition of Jack

Sure, but consciousness can be developed to, and I like to believe all of human history and experience is a way to increase that consciousness, even for the most racist of rednecks or violent of cartel members. Slavery used to be a fact of life for human consciousness, but now it sees it as abhorrent. Large-scale warfare used to be as basic as getting married or sowing your field but now overwhelming people reject it (a few notable examples not withstanding.) Humans evolve. Humans grow. Sometimes there is a better way to act, and a worse way. Can’t we be a part of helping human consciousness grow in a compassionate direction?

Yes and that’s wrong.

And who gets most of that value? Your average postman? Librarian? Nurse? Doctor? Or does it all go to an increasingly small number of elites who have more money than God and the desire to control and dominate the world as they see fit? Productivity has been exploding in America for decades and yet even the most basic human fundamentals like housing and healthcare are increasingly out of reach for the vast majority of the population. What’s the point of being productive if you never get to see the fruits of that productivity? And no, iPhones and Netflix shows aren’t a replacement for heathy, prosperous communities where no one goes sick or hungry. Plus, those things are often a function of natural professions in technology, you don’t need absurd extractive economics to develop them.

I think this is where you and I disagree. Call me a naive optimist but I do think there is some fundamental force for good operating somewhere out there in the universe. I don’t think that means the world will all be sunshine and rainbows but I do think that means there are certain ideas, policies, movements and energies that can fundamentally lead to a better, more just world if not opposed by the forces desiring a more sick, hateful and selfish world. People can be fallible but surely there’s some true source of goodness out there in the universe no?

Immigration happens because of economic imbalance. You can’t have a city of rich country club snobs drinking margaritas and spending all their time trying to bang their Mexican secretary a few dozen miles from a city of impoverished farmers and workers constantly trying to pay for food while dodging cartel bullets and not have at least some of those poor workers make it to the rich city, regardless of the risks. Not to mention much of the wealth from that rich city comes from directly exploiting that poorer city. People will go where the money is. If America wanted people to stop coming to its borders, it would use some of its insane reserves of wealth to build up communities in other nations. You know, things like USAID, which has just been defunded by the Trump administration

Do you really think the way America currently exists is a fundamental force for good in the world, Leo? Do you not see the supreme inequality, racism, division etc it promotes on a global scale? Without wanting to be too critical, you are a rich white guy who benefits from this set up. I don’t think you are personally racist or uncaring but the evil the US state is inflicting across the globe affects hundreds of millions of people, including countless of its own citizens, not just a few “illegal criminals” as the current conservative zeitgeist would have you believe. Millions upon millions of lives have been killed under its insanity (Iraqis, Palestinians, South Americans, Indonesians etc), not to mention the countless more lives ruined through debt, oppression, racism, etc, again, even within its own borders. Are you really OK with the way things are? How can you not see the overwhelming injustices being committed in its name?

You know, honestly, this whole thing is making me question whether I believe in America as an idea at all. I used to believe in reasonable border enforcement, cultural assimilation, legal migration etc, but the more I see the US state enacting supreme injustices against other nations and its own people, the more I feel like the idea of the vague, oligarchal “western” (ie white) state maintaining absolute power on the North American continent is an affront to humanity itself. The US state destroys foreign economies, unilaterally uses its power to destroy another nations, backs insane ethnonationalist states abroad, and then doesn’t even have the decency to provide its OWN CITIZENS with healthcare. The entire thing is just one massive, vile experiment in hegemonic oligarchal white supremacy. There may have been a time it was serving the interests of humanity, but those days are long gone. “America” as we understand it needs a massive, MASSIVE restructuring from the ground up. It should no longer exist to be the harvesting ground for a bunch of vile billionaires and Nazis to harvest wealth from the rest of the planet while giving nothing in return. Things need to change.

Migration law is so fucked in the US that a lot of people would be legal if the system wasn’t so convoluted. How is deporting some factory package worker who’s lived in America for 20 years and supported their family making anyone safer? If undocumented migration is so truly evil, where’s all the crackdowns on the thousands of farm, business etc owners who employee these people for below minimum wage? They’re the economic forces driving this migration, but apparently because they’re rich and white they get all the protection from the law in the world. Also the whole thing is wrapped up in white supremacy. Where are all the raids on European backpackers in New York who’ve overstayed their visa? At this point “illegal” = Hispanic (i.e. someone who’s a “threat” to “white” America.)

Not without due process. If America is not built off constitutional law, then it’s not America at all, but rather whatever stooge who’s in power’s personal playground. EDIT: Trump also led a deadly insurrection on the US capitol. Where was the outrage then? The fact that he’s leading the country and not behind bars for for life for extreme sedition is an injustice that boggles the mind of any thinking individual.

As an Australian it’ll be interesting to see how the rise of Indonesia will play out. Most Australians are only vaguely aware of the country and there’s slight cultural suspicion due to religious/ethnic differences. At the same time I wouldn’t say we’re outright hostile though. I hope we can find common ground and find productive agreements that benefit both of us.

He can’t. He wasn’t born in America.

And every single one of them is an agent of Mammon, lol 🤑

What do you guys think about this? I think in the age of outrage and social media algorithms, having a place for grounded, respectful debate is very helpful. https://braverangels.org/

Have you ever considered that Musk is an impulsive idiot? Stop idiolising these cretins. They’re not 4D chess masterminds. They’re impulsive, immature assholes who just know how to manipulate people to get power. Don’t read into it too much.

No one on the left will accept Musk back after this

A Vance administration would have way less support than a Trump one. I mean Trump is literally the head of a cult lol, without him his supporters don’t give a fuck about politics

I gotchu homie 😎

Trump vs Musk shitshow incoming. This is going to be glorious. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930645855285231914?s=46

Really hoping Zohran wins this one. It would be a huge moral and political win for progressives in this age of chaos.

What I see from the pro-Palestinian side of the conflict is an inability to understand the motivation behind Israel’s motivations for wanting to remove Palestinians from Gaza, and forming a conception of Israel as “evil” as a result. I’m here to explain Israel’s position, and why they’re fighting so hard and (seemingly) committing atrocities for no good reason. It’s the Holocaust. It really is that simple. If you’re not Jewish, it can be almost impossible to understand the level of trauma, grief and terror that hovers of the heads of too many Jews to this day about it. It was the first and only time in human history that a people were subject to industrial genocide - not just displacement, not just shootings or massacres (as bad as they are), but systemically slaughtered like animals using mass industrial methods. The level of evil it involved almost seems incomprehensible. Basically, to most Zionist Israelis, Israel represents the only hope Jews will ever have of not suffering yet another genocide of that scale again, and one that might be successful this time around. And who can blame them? The world failed to stop the Holocaust. Britain, the US, etc knew it was happening. They could’ve done more to stop it. Instead, they mostly ignored it (and even turned Jews away from their countries in literally their most desperate hour) while millions of them were again, being industrially slaughtered. If you’re your average Israeli, and you see virtually every other nation on earth still condemning you as greedy, “globalists” and, at worst, subhuman, where else are you going to feel safe? Would you really trust the US, or Europe, or anywhere else, when these nations are swarming with neo-Nazis? Where are Jews to go? Zionist Israelis are like cornered rats, desperately trying to hold onto the only piece of land they can call “theirs.” If you want to stop the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, you have to assure the Israelis - even the most crazy, rabid ones - that you won’t let another Holocaust happen again. You have to assure them their fears are unfounded and that antisemitism will be destroyed in all its social manifestations. Why do we allow antisemitism just to fester unchallenged? It’s literally the most destructive form of racism in human history (again, because of the Holocaust) and yet most people either dont give a shit, or implicitly or explicitly believe in it. Jews are not demons. Jews don’t control the world. Jews aren’t lizard people globalists trying to establish a one-world government and enslave humanity. That’s literally Harry Potter-tier fantasy bullshit. It’s not real. It never has been and never will be. Jews are literally just like anyone else - they have their good and bad, just like all cultures. They have a unique religion, but then so do Sikhs, so do Druze, so do Yazhidis, so do Alawites. If anything there’s a lot of good things about Jewish culture (food, family, commitment to education, etc.) To defeat Israel’s aggression, we have to defeat global antisemitism. You can’t have one without the other.

There are deeper forces at play. We live in an age of massive, massive restructuring, where the old assumptions and biases that got us through the last era in human existence are breaking down. I don’t know if Trump will receive his “karma”; I think the world to come will be too light-based to allow for concepts like “revenge” or “punishment”, but somehow, his nasty actions won’t be forgotten either. Right now our job is just to buckle down, maintain a sense of love, nature and humanity, don’t get caught up in the politicising of it all, and don’t try and make predictions of how things will play out. Think of the current era like a quantum break in the basic laws of morality and society. What was up is now down. What was left is now right. Trying to grasp onto any one idea of “right” or “goodness” is foolish at a time like this, so instead we had just better learn to go with the flow until whatever the heck is happening finally comes to fruition.

Don’t forget a lot of that stuff is pushed by right-wing grifters taking the most extreme examples of identity politics in order to make redistributive economics bad by association. It’s like how Biden actually passed a law to lower the cost of insulin and no one hears about it, but when Donald Trump says he’ll do the same thing (even though he won’t) suddenly hes the Messiah. There’s a fuckton of progressive economic activism happening every day you just don’t hear about because it threatens the neoliberal orthodoxy.

this was the first thread I saw when I checked out /r/latestagecapitalism. https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/s/QtlWxH2rkV This is the latest video I found from Vaush, criticising the massive corporate / security state overreach by Palantir. I understand it’s easy to feel like all the left does is whine about gay Muslim trans athletes or whatever but criticising capitalist insanity is like their bread and butter.

With all due respect, this is completely false. Spend even a tertiary amount of time in any progressive online space and you’ll see countless discussions on how workers (ie lower and middle class) are being fucked over by corporate greed, predatory economic policies etc.

The UN should just go in, guns blazing, and force both sides to settle down until a long-term solution can be found.