“But then Ocasio-Cortez spoke, followed by Bush, and I saw something
truly terrifying. I saw just how easy it would be, were I less involved
and less certain of our nation’s founding and its history, to fall for
the populist lines they were shouting from that stage.
I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.
I
saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends
meet, to accept the idea that a “living wage” was a human right.
Above
all, I saw how easy it would be to accept the notion that it was the
government’s job to make sure that those things were provided.”
You guys, the Daily Caller just published the funniest thing I have ever read in my entire life. It is literally an article where a conservative is just terrified to death that they nearly felt empathy and love.
This article is like the biggest proof I have ever read that conservatives are just pathologically afraid of kindness.
There’s… not even a punchline. Like, the article concludes just a few lines after the quoted section, with no suggestion for why anyone SHOULDN’T support things like universal healthcare. Not even a token “but, you know, the money,” or “but you have to EARN it.” It just ends.
I guess the audience is expected to fill in the blanks? Like “gosh, I almost cared about an unrelated human being, but CLEARLY the very concept is absurd.” Which is… pretty sad, honestly.
I’m telling you, at least according to this article, it is literally just terrifying to think that your kids deserve healthcare and education.
There are powerful private organizations outside the US government that do a much more effective job spreading pro-capitalist propaganda (like Koch organizations) than the government because they position themselves as outsiders. A lot of people reading this propaganda don’t know it comes from billionaires wishing to uphold the system, they think it comes from whatever person is currently on screen. ReasonTV, PragerU, etc. Funded by big oil. This method of spreading propaganda is much more effective today.
It’s not just the government that wishes to keep order, it’s the ruling class as a whole.
many an edgelord has observed that morality is purely a human creation, and has thus concluded that it must be fake, and lame, etc.
this, of course, misses the whole point- morality is social technology.
imagine a prehistoric community of hunter-gatherers. they’re doing decently for themselves but they have a problem- conflicts in the community keep escalating to violence, even killing. so a moral edict is created- “do not spill blood”- and people following this edict helps to keep conflicts from spiraling out of control, increasing the overall welfare of the community. decades go by, and with the help of the social technology of morality, the hunter-gather community has settled down, developed agriculture, and formed a small early city.
then someone in the community figures out how to drain poison from snakebites, or some other early form of surgery- and a problem emerges, because according to the moral edict, this practice is banned, since it spills blood.
so an underground develops, of people using these banned practices. and the society struggles to stamp this out, and the underground surgeons struggle against this repression- until as a result of the struggle, it is realized that the moral edict is flawed, and is preventing well-being, rather than encouraging it. so the moral edict is revised to “do not spill blood involuntarily,” legalizing surgery, and further improving the well-being of the community.
through this process- a dialectic between hegemony and counter-hegemony, an alchemical process of the conjunction of opposites- the social technology of morality is refined and improved.
both moral realism and moral nihilism stymie this process. we must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is One Definite Unchanging Thing. and we also must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is Fake And Lame And Nothing Matters.
we must remember that morality is social technology, which must be continually revised and rectified, through a repeating process of revolutionary struggle.
Human Morality as the Operating System for the Computer that is Mankind: makes it easier to function understandably, but does best when we upgrade it every so often.
I think leftblr is a little too quiet about sensible drug policy and that’s really telling 🤔
Access to clean needles should be free
Testing kits for fentyl and stricnine and other laces should be free
Narcan should be free (and is given out by a lot of opioid awareness groups thank god)
Access to methadone and suboxone should be free
And this is all like… really basic stuff. I personally want full repeal of the scheduling system and other measures regarding the prison system
Drug addiction is a direct result of suppression of certain populations and the pharmaceutical industry’s push for the normalization of opiate use.
Anti drug policy is almost entirely rooted in racism and it serves to build up our prison system, while simultaneously denying addicts access to safe withdrawal measures. The war on drugs never served to help the people as a whole, and always served to isolate people of color and divide the classes even further. There’s a reason mostly poor people and/or people of color face real time for drug charges.
A lot of you are inherently against drug addicts and supplying them with clean materials because you have no idea how addiction works. If you come off certain drugs like meth, heroin, or spice cold turkey, you could DIE. Needle exchanges provide safety, health screenings, and information on recovery while providing disease free, smooth needles to taper with.
And if we don’t destroy the system that enables addicts (capitalism) then we’re not going to solve the 97% relapse rate that addicts have.
You can’t claim to align with the left if you want addicts to die. It’s a blatant ignorance of why addicts become addicts and it’s an engrained hatred of neurodivergent people.
Remember that boycotting (or not crossing picket lines, including symbolic ones) is not about ethical consumption. It’s not about ethics at all, and it’s not about performing purity. It’s an organized action toward a material goal. Crossing a picket line can be thought of as working against the material goals of a strike.
If for whatever reason you can’t participate in a boycott in solidarity with strikers, it’s good practice not to make a lot of posts justifying your right to cross a picket line, or how you don’t believe in strikes for ethical reasons, or you don’t care, or whatever. At best, it shows that you are ignorant about what boycotts are and the issues at hand, at worst, you are just like… doing unpaid labor for Amazon. At worst you are doing harm to workers. And literally everyone has heard it before. If you want to end performative internet politics, start with you! 😉
[ image description is galaxy brain meme format but with skulls on the left side. First pic and text is a pic of a skull in black and white next to text that says, “call in sick.”
Next image is a skeleton blurred in all red next to text that says, “go in high.”
Next image is a colourful skeleton next to text that says, “go in high and steal stuff.” last image is a skeleton wearing a white sash with text that says, “communism” on it. They’re wearing a top hat, and a long black coat with red stars and hammers and sickles behind them. Text next to the image says, “go in high and start a union.” ]
Suicide rates are absolutely going to continue to climb in the USA as long as our concept of “Mental Health” remains separated from material conditions.
Antidepressants can’t cure poverty and alienation. They can’t cure the crushing pressure that comes with watching climate changing in real time, but feeling powerless because the government is too corrupt to care. They can’t cure the many chronic physical health conditions people go without treatment for because the US physical health system is bullshit.
Always turning toward psychiatry for an answer is a perfect example of American style individualism killing people, because the problem is always said to exist in the individual’s brain chemicals, and society is always innocent.
As the famous quote goes “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.“
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