- Housing
- Student Loans
- Medical Care
- Child care/The cost of children (assuming that’s something you want to do not making a value judgement)
- Education
- Wages/“JOBS™©®”/“THE ECONOMY™©®”
- Inflation/Cost of Living/Value of currency
- Just the political issues we all face but are the best “hot button” issues
All that sort of stuff. I’m not minimizing stuff like Palestine of course, but I don’t recall in the seemingly endless 2020-2024 election campaign. I don’t really think I heard any sort of real “kitchen table issues”. I feel like even the most basic political issues have been obfuscated or ignored. It feels like these very political issues have been removed from the sphere of political discourse.
I don’t know what my larger point is, but it feels strange to think that for example I haven’t heard a single mention of something like higher education costs for example. This isn’t just a dunk on Democrats either, though it is worth saying “get fucked losers”, but I think since about 2020 I haven’t heard a damn thing about healthcare or housing in a real political way from the big two or the media in general.
Again this isn’t to meant to minimize any other real problems either, not trying to “this is more important than that”, just saying I haven’t political people talk about politics all the while not being able to escape the political dimension
And the furtive coronavirus, so easily forgotten
wdym, everyone knows latinx trans groomer hamas supporters are ruining the country by shoplifting a gorillion dollars worth of merchandise by day and painting bike lanes on every street by night
I think about that every day. Im posting from inside my Ford F1-800 battle truck in my suburban gated home. I am deathly afraid of nonexistent people harming me and my family who I see as a burden on my lost future. I don’t know a single person who works a wage job. I make $600K a year selling business to business finance software I don’t understand. I believe myself to be working class. I hate my fellow man in a way I cannot articulate.
New tag line just dropped
I was chatting with a Mexican friend the other day and had the realization that if Democrats were willing to promise half the shit AMLO has done they would win in a landslide. But they aren’t even willing to lie!
Big time agreed! Mexico is also another capitalist nightmare country as with its own unique evils, but they at least some some of the basics niceties of social democratic policies. They didn’t even try to lie is also one of the most lazy ass American entitlement bullshit things I can thing of.
Harris made an ad about it and her billionaire donors told her to knock it off. I’m barely exaggerating
americans are brainwashed from infancy to not understand that material conditions exist
I think about that a lot, we totally taught to consider political issues to personal/interpersonal issues. Things don’t need to change you need to do better. Show more initiative, put in those extra hours, all the bootstraps nonsense.
Besides the obvious capitalist logic behind it, this complete lack of issues in any sort of discourse - be it media or general day-to-day discourse - seems to me to be the result of capitalisms complete failure to in any way serious way address climate change. If you won’t address the elephant in the room, you also won’t address all the fine china it is pushing over (kinda got mixed up in my metaphors here). And climate change in that sense is of course not just literal changes in climate due to our excessive output of CO2 but our increasing awareness that the capitalist mode of production of endless profit growth is not compatible with our life on this planet in basically every conceivable way. They should maybe make up some word for that. 🤔
I totally agree. It’s like they don’t want to recognize the political issues because they understand their politics have utterly failed them and/or are totally unequipped to handle these very real political issues. It’s like a resignation I haven’t really considered until you said it this way. Well said friend.
I’ve been thinking of this a lot and it’s really why Trump won so hard isn’t it? Right wing media people blamed it on all sorts of wrong shit but they acknowledged that there’s a problem with everyday people’s finances
That’s pretty much exactly it, if you ever talk to Trump supporters.
Yeah racism, bigotry, etc is their solution; but they mostly care about why groceries are expensive, why rent is expensive, why they can apply for a thousand jobs and get one singular interview for a job that doesn’t pay enough for anything. Dems failed to do the bare minimum, acknowledge that the vast majority of people in the US are struggling due to systemic issues. Trump acknowledged that and offered solutions, even if they’re horrifying. Even the trans stuff and other “culture war” items are rooted in financial stress.
I hate to say it but without any other information the one saying “groceries are too high because the Italians are using magic on the price tags” is acknowledging a problem exists vs the one saying there is no problem
Even the trans stuff and other “culture war” items are rooted in financial stress.
Yep. We saw this before in Hitler’s rise to power too, and we’re watching as the libs repeat it
Their disagreement with fascists is about means, not ends, and at the end of the day they are pragmatists.
even bernie agreed that this was the case and the dnc leadership showed us their true colors when they rebuked his assessment.
Mocking people for caring about grocery prices is common among libs now
ENJOY your AFFORDABLE MACRONUTRIENTS, can’t wait to watch trump deport you and your family
please donate
Making memes about people not being able to afford food is what the lesser evil does, red fash
That’s vile. I can’t imagine thinking it’s cool to dunk on others that are struggling. That’s the sort of lowbrow shit they hate about their supposed opposition
They frame it as mocking trump supporters but what they really show is that they’ve never had to worry about where their next meal is coming from
I think it’s because the DNC didn’t select Kamala via a primary, so she never had to make any campaign promises to the progressive wing of the party, there were never any debates or opposition campaigning for any of these issues that would cause them to show up in mainstream media. Every piece of Kamala’s campaign and planned administration was sold to donors from the start and totally tailored for them.
I was just thinking the other day about how back in 2022 during the baby formula shortage it seemed like Democrats didn’t fucking care and talked about fucking Ukraine instead.
Then I had kind of a hunch about something, looked it up, and bazinga! Turns out infant formula usage skews based on socioeconomic status/race.
What was interesting is that, in a rare W, the Biden admin actually did act fairly quickly to arrange new imports and stabilize the supply. But then they never communicated any of that shit to voters for the upcoming midterms.
Turns out infant formula usage skews based on socioeconomic status/race.
In which way?
Sorry, I don’t have kids.
Poorer families generally rely more on baby formula. If you are working full time, it is not really possible to produce enough milk for all the times a baby needs to eat, especially considering that you need to eat good nutritional food as well, which is expensive.
Baby formula is a real fuck for poor families, because it is real expensive but also needed, and people can be very judgemental about it because not breastfeeding is seen as a choice (because it’s “free”). It’s another moment where the sadism of poor social policy is individualized as personal failure.
The stigma about formula is really awful. In addition to the socioeconomic considerations, some women just don’t have sufficient milk production. So now they have feelings of guilt and failure because they can’t feed their baby, that is then reinforced by society saying that it is “the right way”. Fed is best is often repeated, but only goes so far to counteract the background radiation
Pumping and storing milk is a middle class privilege.
My sister bought a $500 milker and separate storage fridge so she could plan out her pump schedule and meals for her newborn. She also had the kind of email job that has a private pumping room with plush chairs, dim lighting, and nobody asking questions as to where you were for the last hour.
The average mother of 3 working at Taco Bell needs to resort to using formula
I feel like the even further odd thing here is that what is discussed, which is mostly geopolitics, public opinion also doesn’t seem to have any impact either. Like value neutral so much geopolitical stuff polls horribly with the general electorate and it’s still done
Like value neutral so much geopolitical stuff polls horribly with the general electorate and it’s still done
I was thinking about that too. Like everyone hates the endless war that just sits in the background our everyone’s mind. No one likes it, but the general electorate sort of passively approves/is okay with it. I think about how everyone who works at Defense (which really should just be called “Offense”) firms all know their job is making things worse but the pay is good so they keep going because they need to fed their family and pay their rent.
opportunist antiwar-ism is probably the biggest reason for the fash gaining so much ground electorally in Europe the last couple of years. the libs just refuse to take that position so people are looking elsewhere. most people simply want the war to end.
At Bluesky for my main account - I’m not following anybody. Instead - I use feeds I made at skyfeed.app. I want to know the current lib zeitgeist. 2024 is the new 2016.
I alphabetized the list so it’s easier to reflect on…
- Child care / The cost of children (assuming that’s something you want to do not making a value judgement)
- Education
- Housing
- Inflation / Cost of Living / Value of currency
- Medical Care
- Student Loans
- Wages/“JOBS™©®”/“THE ECONOMY™©®”
When I consider that list in their post-election posts/comments - those topics have hardly come up. The only exception is angry posts about people not voting for Kamala due to inflation, etc. They’ll say stuff like “People complained about eggs and now we get fascism.” I literally had to mute words like “egg” and “eggs”. Hate scrolling is only good if you can least laugh once in a while at how clueless or hopeless people at a site are. I was getting angry at such stuff. Will they still be making egg jokes years from now? I think so.
Just like 2016 - libs are incapable of introspection. They don’t try to sympathize or empathize with common people. Instead they are really angry that the public failed the democrats. And if you point out this a horrible attitude - they hate you.
Post-election there’s been an insane explosion of highly popular Twitter libs. When it comes to politics there’s a sea of Orange Man Bad crap. I want to tell them: I agree - Trump’s administration will be a horrorshow but why can’t you can’t even manage a veneer of solitary with ordinary people?
I had to start [cough] liberally using the mute function and I also started blocking political accounts. I didn’t block a single political account pre-election. There was no need. I could just scroll past and smirk or smile at how bad the posts were. But now I have clean my feed. Trump Derangement Syndrome is at 11. I don’t need to see one zero effort post after another that are still highly popular. It’s trenchant commentary like…
Upvote if you hate Trump and are worried about America.
giant-American-flag.jpgI literally had to mute words like “egg” and “eggs”.
For real. Why do they always go with egg prices specifically when mocking people now? It’s so bizarre to me how uniform they are. Whoever originated that one must be like the final boss of lib propaganda dissemination.
Why do they always go with egg prices…
I think because egg/eggs is easy to use in a joke and it’s punchy because it’s a single syllable. A “They voted for egg prices!” joke allows libs to skewer the people they like least. Who is this “they”? Maga? Traditional republicans? Non-voters? People who don’t vote often enough for the democrats? The poor? Etc. And it’s a sort of Freudian slip that some dems can’t resist. They are actually saying it’s stupid for people to vote based on their own circumstances and their own material conditions. Gee - why would people do that???
I saw an egg meme with two gigantic black trucks in a driveway. It was very strange. I don’t remember the text. Ninja edit - this…
To be fair the average American eats something like 300 eggs per year. Not a joke
That’s so many eggs wtf
Post-election there’s been an insane explosion of highly popular Twitter libs. When it comes to politics there’s a sea of Orange Man Bad crap.
Their politics are so devoid of politics. I still to this day cannot name a single GOOD thing the DNC can point to and say “we did that”. I can point to bad stuff for sure, but zero things that make my life, or the lives of people I know (or perhaps don’t know) better.
I want to tell them: I agree - Trump’s administration will be a horrorshow but why can’t you can’t even manage a veneer of solitary with ordinary people?
I think about that one all the time. Part of the big reason I think this leftist shit works is because it forces you (the rhetorical you of course) to see others like yourself. Even if I’m not them, or I don’t rock like they do, I can at least see how their conditions will be my own. I want them to prosper so I can too, because I certainly know as they suffer I will too. Solidarity with others (within reason, we aren’t trying to link up with the people doing the harm of course) is like only way out. These libs man they don’t want solidarity but they also don’t want whatever is coming, like what the fuck man?
These libs man they don’t want solidarity…
Bluesky libs and libs like them have their own uber-lib version of solidarity and it’s “building coalitions”. And - of course - the concept means people should do exactly what normie libs and the democratic party want.
It is weird hey because “JOBS JOBS JOBS” was the go-to neolib line not so long ago. It’s not just in the US btw — it’s the same across the West. I think they know they can’t keep promising the same things without delivering, but are running out of things to promise.
I think they know they can’t keep promising the same things without delivering, but are running out of things to promise.
Damn that is so bleak. True but just very grim thought.
The closest thing we got was Trump making fries at a McDonald’s.
Gramsci
These are the days of subscription campaigns. The editors and administrators of bourgeois newspapers tidy up their display windows, paint some varnish on their shop signs and appeal for the attention of the passer-by (that is, the readers) to their wares. Their wares are newspapers of four or six pages that go out every day or evening in order to inject in the mind of the reader ways of feeling and judging the facts of current politics appropriate for the producers and sellers of the press.
We would like to discuss, with the workers especially, the importance and seriousness of this apparently innocent act, which consists in choosing the newspaper you subscribe to. It is a choice full of snares and dangers which must be made consciously, applying criteria and after mature reflection.
Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation.
But the beautiful – that is the ugly – thing is this: that instead of asking for money from the bourgeois class to support it in its pitiless work in its favor, the bourgeois newspapers manage to be paid by…the same laboring classes that they always combat. And the laboring class pays; punctually, generously.
Hundreds of thousands of workers regularly and daily give their pennies to the bourgeois newspapers, thus assisting in creating their power. Why? If you were to ask this of the first worker you were to see on the tram or the street with a bourgeois paper spread before him you would hear: “Because I need to hear about what happening.” And it would never enter his head that the news and the ingredients with which it is cooked are exposed with an art that guides his ideas and influences his spirit in a given direction. And yet he knows that this newspaper is opportunist, and that one is for the rich, that the third, the fourth, the fifth is tied to political groups with interests diametrically opposed to his.
And so every day this same worker is able to personally see that the bourgeois newspapers tell even the simplest of facts in a way that favors the bourgeois class and damns the working class and its politics. Has a strike broken out? The workers are always wrong as far as the bourgeois newspapers are concerned. Is there a demonstration? The demonstrators are always wrong, solely because they are workers they are always hotheads, rioters, hoodlums. The government passes a law? It’s always good, useful and just, even if it’s…not. And if there’s an electoral, political or administrative struggle? The best programs and candidates are always those of the bourgeois parties.
And we’re aren’t even talking about all the facts that the bourgeois newspapers either keep quiet about, or travesty, or falsify in order to mislead, delude or maintain in ignorance the laboring public. Despite this, the culpable acquiescence of the worker to the bourgeois newspapers is limitless. We have to react against this and recall the worker to the correct evaluation of reality. We have to say and repeat that the pennies tossed there distractedly into the hands of the newsboy are projectiles granted to a bourgeois newspaper, which will hurl it, at the opportune moment, against the working masses.
If the workers were to be persuaded of this most elementary of truths they would learn to boycott the bourgeois press with the same unity and discipline that the bourgeoisie boycott the newspapers of the workers, that is, the Socialist press. Don’t give financial assistance to the bourgeois press, which is your adversary. This is what should be our battle cry in this moment that is characterized by the subscription campaigns of all the bourgeois newspapers. Boycott them, boycott them, boycott them!
from Newspapers and the Workers by Antonio Gramsci (1916)
God damn, this still hits just as hard
Fuck. Antonio might as well written that on his SubStack today. Fuck man
Fuck this Gramsci guy I’m going to make a podcast where I bemoan how bourgeois newspapers have abdicated their responsibility to our democracy and deep down want to be good.
