Or they just use the gig to grift. Seems like there would be a lot of opportunities to take bribes in a position like that.

https://cwa-union.org/trumps-anti-worker-record

I'm sure others can back up the other claims, but you said "ANY."

I mean, yeah, but this is like showing a picture of the alphabet and saying "this is spot on for so many books."

< looks around at Western countries with militarized police forces, brutal suppression of protest, and high incarceration rates >

"This is fine. Tankies are authoritarian."

Clinton signed into law a whole raft of neoliberal policies that were started by Bush, and the cumulative effects of those policies over those decades are what we're feeling right now and what we warned about back then. The frogs have been boiled while the populace bickers about which neoliberal corporate shill sits on the puppet throne. They're after all our money and they're getting it by distracting us with the political circus and dividing us with wedge issues.

Believe me, I'm with you. But a complication to this is that insurance companies employ millions of people. Nationalizing them needs to take all those livelihoods into account, and would be nearly impossible without going full on socialist (which I am completely for, I don't think it's feasible to continue a capitalist system when it is clearly breaking down and killing the planet while doing so.)

And the same people that own the media also own and operate the state.

I'm so glad this stuff is starting to finally bubble to the top of the public consciousness.

Now, everybody read Marx.

You're preaching to the choir here, friend. I've been trying to shake people on the shoulders and get them to understand this for a while now.

The slightest bit of material analysis exposes the whole thing, but the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.

When you Google for "best whatever" and land on a reddit thread, take some time to look at the histories of the people commenting.

You'll find many cases where the only post they've ever made was for that product, and cases where the person posting the question also posts in the comments with an answer, like they forgot to switch to alt accounts.

A lot of it is obvious SEO marketing nonsense. Trust nothing. The entire Internet is trying to scam you. Enshittification, indeed. This used to be a nice neighborhood before the capitalists moved in in the 90s.

Here's me discovering socialism, new to the (actual) ideas but vibing with them pretty well.

Start talking about it online.

Anarchist: fuck you you stupid fucking tankie.

I had no idea what a tankie was, but I figured out real quick that anarchists are the angsty atheists of the political world.

We are boiled frogs in regards to fascism in the US.

Look at the facts:

We have the largest prison population in the world, which is mostly black. Slavery is still legal as punishment for crime.

We have a surveillance state that watches all of us all the time.

Dissent and protest results in brutal militarized police response.

We have militarized police. With tanks.

We scapegoat immigrants (Biden hardly changed any trump policies.)

Criticism of US policy and actions is instinctively seen as unpatriotic by a large number of citizens.

The existence of our country is largely due to the genocide of native Americans, but that really triggers the national cognitive dissonance.

The wealth of our country was in large part built on the backs of slaves, and continues today in prison labor, but also in regular workers who get a tiny fraction of the wealth they generate for corporations and billionaires.

We do not have a democracy. Corporations and billionaires have captured our government and control 80%+ of the media we consume, easily drowning us in the propaganda they want to push. Nobody is immune, not me, not you. The largest consent manufacturer in history is operating in front of our eyes, but we can't see it because it's the sea we swim in.

Corporations and billionaires control who even gets to run in national elections by promoting those that will toe the line. Why bother fixing the actual elections when you can just control who is allowed to get the job in the first place.

The fascism people are worried about came in quietly and made itself at home. It isn't a Hitler. It isn't a Mussolini. Hell, it isn't even a Trump (although he would make things much worse.) The fascists are who they've always been. Pick your name - corps and billionaires, the 1%, the bourgeois.

It's already here.

When eating chicken wing flats, if you pry the bones apart you can slip them out and you're left with a single piece of meat you can eat whole. You don't have leftover bits in the middle of the two bones.

Also, keep nitrile gloves in your glove box or purse and use them when eating messy things like wings and ribs and cake.

Republicans say the same exact thing about Democrats. And they're both right. Imagine that, common ground we could all get behind. But no, it's not those elites that are our enemies, it's definitely each other. The elite controlled corporate media I consume makes that very clear.

". . . . except as a punishment for crime . . . ."

Slavery never stopped, it just evolved. There's a reason black men are so overrepresented in the prison system.

The US is a fascist country. If you live here and you don't feel it, you are benefiting from it.

Yes. The elites want to keep us on the edge of sustainability and at each other's throats in order to keep us from seeing what's right in front of our eyes. They build their empires on our backs. They exploit us and take the fruits of our labor and sell them back to us at unaffordable prices. You resorting to thought terminating cliches, insinuating I'm a Russian bot or troll is playing right into that.

I'm not your enemy. I'm a person who has a different perspective than you. I think you're a potential ally in the coming struggle, and I don't hate you for not sharing my ideology.

"What should I do that's different?"

First, arm yourself and train. Second, educate yourself. Third organize.

This system is collapsing, and that collapse is accelerating. It would be in your interest to prepare for that.

You should read political and economic philosophy. If you can't articulate why someone would be attracted to Trump without resorting to insults you could probably use a little exposure to things outside your comfort zone. I'd recommend reading "A people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn to see how the elites in this country have employed propaganda and force to suppress movements that dare to threaten the ruling class (and the atrocities we commit overseas in order to prop up our empire.) After that, the classics of the left have some pretty good ideas for how to organize a society.

Organize. Join or form a union. Participate in mutual aid networks. Learn what prefiguration is and try your best to help prepare for what comes after. Build networks both on and offline and share ideas, challenge each other.

Question your own beliefs and ideology. Try to look at them with fresh eyes. Follow them to their logical conclusions.

"If anyone is playing into anybody's hands to undermine democracy"

Friend, democracy was undermined in this country before it ever had a chance to get off the ground. It was founded to pursue the interests of white land and slave owning rich men and hasn't changed much in the intervening time.

The "good" thing is that capitalism is unsustainable and will collapse under its own weight - we just have to hope it does so before it kills us all and that we still have a chance to salvage the planet.

You can hardly blame them. It's a 24/7 onslaught of propaganda and it's incredibly difficult to break out.

And even when I initially woke up out of it I frequently questioned my sanity. Is this real? Is this actually what's happening? How can nobody else see this?

And then I wanted to go back to not knowing because of the incredible weight that knowledge puts on your shoulders, but it's impossible. There's no going back, at least for me.

I didn't tell you not to participate. It's pointless at the federal level, but you knock yourself out, chief.

When nothing changes and we're back here again in four years this will be in your head and maybe you'll think about doing something different. My job is done.

I'm not your enemy. The oligarchs want us divided and you're playing into their hands.

Every single problem we face is caused or exacerbated by the logic of capitalism.

So yes, capitalism is bad. Sorry that pointing it out triggers you, but it's important to do so that people begin to understand and we can collectively do something about it. Infinite growth on a finite planet isn't feasible and it's killing all of us.

Let me ask you a question, what's keeping you from running and winning the presidency?

I mean, outside of political experience.

I'll answer for you: you don't have the backing of billionaires to fund your campaign.

You don't get to be a viable candidate for president in the US if you don't promise to kowtow to the oligarchy. Everything else is window dressing.

Yes, some are worse than others. But the bottom line is that all of them prioritize the interests of the oligarchs over the interests of the people.