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+---- Thread: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! (/thread-158.html)
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RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Eric the Green - 02-28-2021
(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:(02-27-2021, 03:04 PM)Einzige Wrote:(02-27-2021, 02:52 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-27-2021, 01:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/04/blm-a04.html
This is a bit like quoting yourself, but assuming the reportage is not just the photo-opposite of the far-right practice, why take this as more than corporate defense? It's easy to use corporate funds to do things that will benefit the bottom line by making the company look more humane. It's cynical, but effective.
It's more than corporate defense, though it is that also - it's neutering the legitimate class anger of black American workers by uniting their interests with those of the PMCs of color employed by the official BLM organization, thereby eliminating African-Americans as a potential revolutionary locus.
In reality, a black NYC Uber driver has absolutely no shared interest with Oprah or Kenneth Frazier. But BLM exists to obscure this fact. The black proletariat needs to be armed and organized and melded into the wider militant working class.
For the corporate elites, making their lives easier is adequate payment for the shareholder money they burn. Reducing the power of any potential adversaries is icing on their cynical cake. Why is this surprising?
What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
Corporations are here, they ain't goin' away anytime soon. I decided that although I am opposed to them, to make my peace with them, try to change them with what little power I have, and live with reality instead of in utopia that isn't here and won't be in the lifetime of everyone's great great great grandchildren.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 02-28-2021
(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote: For the corporate elites, making their lives easier is adequate payment for the shareholder money they burn. Reducing the power of any potential adversaries is icing on their cynical cake. Why is this surprising?
What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
I think that's less true as time goes on. We've been buried in a 40+ year stretch of RW fundamentalism, and the nominal Left drank the Kool-Aid along with the Right. We'll see if that changes now.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - pbrower2a - 03-02-2021
Do you remember Big Boy restaurants? They were sit-down hamburger joints, the places that served food of the quality that one associates with Burger King, Wendy's, or Chez Mac but at a higher price. They got out-competed by better food (Applebee's? Cracker Barrel? some Chinese buffet?) or lower prices (Chez Mac, Wendy's, Burger King, Culver's) and have largely disappeared. With the demise of that chain has also gone its iconic statue of a fat waiter holding a hamburger in the air.
It had an elderly clientele, and it was the sort of place that one went if someone in the party didn't want to stand while waiting for an order.
![[Image: 6d12e0a93d193d7705176553a14b7ed45d41d509...=800&h=470]](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6d12e0a93d193d7705176553a14b7ed45d41d5092b6fd0fc09c6df2e8cc85c97.jpg?w=800&h=470)
No nostalgia on my part for that chain. If I am going to pay more for sit-down restaurant meals than for fast food I want food better than what I can get out of a freezer to zap in a microwave or what is available as fast food.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
(02-28-2021, 04:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote: For the corporate elites, making their lives easier is adequate payment for the shareholder money they burn. Reducing the power of any potential adversaries is icing on their cynical cake. Why is this surprising?
What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
I think that's less true as time goes on. We've been buried in a 40+ year stretch of RW fundamentalism, and the nominal Left drank the Kool-Aid along with the Right. We'll see if that changes now.
What's going to happen, as always, is that the proletarian Left will move further left and the petit-bourgeois will retrench in neoliberalism.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 11:18 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 04:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote: For the corporate elites, making their lives easier is adequate payment for the shareholder money they burn. Reducing the power of any potential adversaries is icing on their cynical cake. Why is this surprising?
What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
I think that's less true as time goes on. We've been buried in a 40+ year stretch of RW fundamentalism, and the nominal Left drank the Kool-Aid along with the Right. We'll see if that changes now.
What's going to happen, as always, is that the proletarian Left will move further left and the petit-bourgeois will retrench in neoliberalism.
The proletariat of today are mostly in the service sector: nurses aides, wait staff and other lower-level hospitality work, security guards, warehouse workers (e.g. Amazon Fulfillment) -- you name it. Almost none are organized. We'll see how that plays.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 12:05 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 11:18 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 04:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote: For the corporate elites, making their lives easier is adequate payment for the shareholder money they burn. Reducing the power of any potential adversaries is icing on their cynical cake. Why is this surprising?
What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
I think that's less true as time goes on. We've been buried in a 40+ year stretch of RW fundamentalism, and the nominal Left drank the Kool-Aid along with the Right. We'll see if that changes now.
What's going to happen, as always, is that the proletarian Left will move further left and the petit-bourgeois will retrench in neoliberalism.
The proletariat of today are mostly in the service sector: nurses aides, wait staff and other lower-level hospitality work, security guards, warehouse workers (e.g. Amazon Fulfillment) -- you name it. Almost none are organized. We'll see how that plays.
Do you work for a wage?
Lemme jump to the chase: all wage workers are proletarian (including cops, contractors some radlib theorists). Even the petit-bourgeois are proletarian trying and failing to deproletarianize themselves.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
(06-06-2016, 03:14 PM)Anthony Wrote: After Hillary wraps up the Democratic nomination tomorrow night, the 90-degree rotation of the two parties will be complete: The Democrats, a left-liberal party since 1972, will be confirmed as now a neoliberal party with Hillary's win over Comrade Sanders, with the Republicans having already gone from a conservative party to a national liberal/"hardhat" party with Donald Trump's victory.
I do admit that I got the "rotation" wrong, in that, as of the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I expected the Democrats to go from left-liberalism to national liberalism, and the Republicans to go from conservatism to neoliberalism/libertarianism.
But overall I am very pleased with the results.
Spoiler alert: The Democrats have been neoliberal since 1976, with antecedents in the Kennedy tax cuts, and Trump was also a neoliberal. Lmao!
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 12:12 PM)Einzige Wrote:(03-02-2021, 12:05 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 11:18 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-28-2021, 04:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-28-2021, 11:43 AM)Einzige Wrote: What surprising is how comfortable left-liberalism are with this social arrangement and the function their institutional allies perform within it.
I think that's less true as time goes on. We've been buried in a 40+ year stretch of RW fundamentalism, and the nominal Left drank the Kool-Aid along with the Right. We'll see if that changes now.
What's going to happen, as always, is that the proletarian Left will move further left and the petit-bourgeois will retrench in neoliberalism.
The proletariat of today are mostly in the service sector: nurses aides, wait staff and other lower-level hospitality work, security guards, warehouse workers (e.g. Amazon Fulfillment) -- you name it. Almost none are organized. We'll see how that plays.
Do you work for a wage?
Lemme jump to the chase: all wage workers are proletarian (including cops, contractors some radlib theorists). Even the petit-bourgeois are proletarian trying and failing to deproletarianize themselves.
First, I'm retired so I work at being entertained -- not for wages or other remuneration. Not all wage workers are in the proletariat either. Cops are on salary, so they don't really count. Many are highly paid as well. For that matter, salaried workers are more likely to be "oppressed" than wage workers, because 50, 60 and 70 hour weeks still pay the same as 40 hour weeks. That's why some professionals chose to be paid by the hour to assure that they are not manipulated. For example, hardworking Nurse Practitioners and Dental Hygienists top-out at 6-figures -- hardly an oppressed class. The ones that need help are Grocery Clerks and Gig Workers, among others.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
They're all proletarian, dude.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 12:30 PM)Einzige Wrote: They're all proletarian, dude.
Anyone in the top 10% of earners doesn't fit the description, no matter how you slice it.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 01:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 12:30 PM)Einzige Wrote: They're all proletarian, dude.
Anyone in the top 10% of earners doesn't fit the description, no matter how you slice it.
Social class has nothing to do with income. A train conductor takes more home than many small businesses owners.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 01:45 PM)Einzige Wrote:(03-02-2021, 01:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 12:30 PM)Einzige Wrote: They're all proletarian, dude.
Anyone in the top 10% of earners doesn't fit the description, no matter how you slice it.
Social class has nothing to do with income. A train conductor takes more home than many small businesses owners.
I assume you believe that one has control and the other not, but no one has less control than a small business owner. Been there; done that.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
(03-02-2021, 01:48 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 01:45 PM)Einzige Wrote:(03-02-2021, 01:44 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 12:30 PM)Einzige Wrote: They're all proletarian, dude.
Anyone in the top 10% of earners doesn't fit the description, no matter how you slice it.
Social class has nothing to do with income. A train conductor takes more home than many small businesses owners.
I assume you believe that one has control and the other not, but no one has less control than a small business owner. Been there; done that.
Yes, I know. Which is why small business owners are always angry. SBOS are as I said proletarian trying (and inevitably failing) to deproletarianize.
What do Michael Jordan, Sam Worthington, Trent Reznor, a college professor, a garbage man, a burger flipper and you all have in common? You are all working class.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - pbrower2a - 03-02-2021
Social class as Paul Fussell saw it:
Upper out-of-sight. Very old money whose foundation comes from the nineteenth century or earlier. These families are very secretive. Harriman. Rockefeller. DuPont. Vanderbilt. Rothschild.
Upper. Fortune made before one was born. A grandson of Sam Walton. Families of Henry Ford and Joseph Kennedy might now be on the borderline of the upper out-of-sight.
Upper-middle. Fortune made while one is living: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. Highly-successful professionals in medicine and law, maybe publishing (unless one is Hefner, Guccione, or Flynt... get it?) Highly-successful people in real estate and entertainment.
Middle. Low-level, typically college-educated professionals. One now needs the sheepskin, have a sizable farm (farmers though are not the uneducated yokels that they once were) or to be decidedly successful in business. Salesmen, research scientists, dentists, accountants, engineers, teachers, clergy
There is no lower-middle class. It consisted heavily of blue-collar supervisors, engineers, cops, schoolteachers, clergy, and clerks -- people often with 'solid high-school educations' or even (before WWII) people with "solid eighth-grade educations". This class raised its qualifications and rose into the middle (engineers, schoolteachers, and clergy) or joined the upper echelons of the working class.
Fussell recognizes three layers of the working class: high proles (skilled workers such as craftsmen, pilots of ships or aircraft, nurses, technicians, supervisors, cops, and prison guards -- skilled workers); mid-proles (semi-skilled workers who operate machines or who do machine-paced work -- assembly-line workers, vehicle drivers... the largest class in America), and low-proles (laborers such as pickers, packers, diggers, cleaners, and orderlies). Work gets increasingly low-paid and unreliable as one goes through from the skilled to unskilled.
Below that are two classes. One is the destitute, people with no reliable income or with no honorable income. Here are people living on family assistance, welfare, disability... or criminal income. Below them are the bottom out-of-sight, people institutionalized or incarcerated because they are too stupid, unruly, or criminal.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-02-2021
Fussell is wrong. Everythibg he considers as "middle" and below is proletarian. Everything above is bourgeois.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-03-2021
(03-02-2021, 03:23 PM)Einzige Wrote: Fussell is wrong. Everything he considers as "middle" and below is proletarian. Everything above is bourgeois.
For this argument, let's say that's correct. Now, how many of the Middle think they are just workers with sheepskins? Not many, I think. most believe they're on par with the Upper Middle, just not as lucky as they are. Good luck fomenting a revolution on that.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-03-2021
Doesn't really matter what they believe. When the time comes, they will know.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - David Horn - 03-03-2021
(03-03-2021, 02:10 PM)Einzige Wrote: Doesn't really matter what they believe. When the time comes, they will know.
Considering how long we've been waiting, I doubt it will ever happen. We've already passed 150 years since Das Capital was published. It's Marx seminal work. If not now, when?
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Bob Butler 54 - 03-03-2021
(03-03-2021, 05:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-03-2021, 02:10 PM)Einzige Wrote: Doesn't really matter what they believe. When the time comes, they will know.
Considering how long we've been waiting, I doubt it will ever happen. We've already passed 150 years since Das Capital was published. It's Marx seminal work. If not now, when?
The next awakening or crisis, though I doubt it will be violent. Violence is so Industrial Age. But the division of wealth is getting close to being the biggest problem with the culture. It is due to be addressed.
RE: Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can! - Einzige - 03-03-2021
(03-03-2021, 05:59 AM)David Horn Wrote:(03-02-2021, 03:23 PM)Einzige Wrote: Fussell is wrong. Everything he considers as "middle" and below is proletarian. Everything above is bourgeois.
For this argument, let's say that's correct. Now, how many of the Middle think they are just workers with sheepskins? Not many, I think. most believe they're on par with the Upper Middle, just not as lucky as they are. Good luck fomenting a revolution on that.
(03-03-2021, 05:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(03-03-2021, 05:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-03-2021, 02:10 PM)Einzige Wrote: Doesn't really matter what they believe. When the time comes, they will know.
Considering how long we've been waiting, I doubt it will ever happen. We've already passed 150 years since Das Capital was published. It's Marx seminal work. If not now, when?
The next awakening or crisis, though I doubt it will be violent. Violence is so Industrial Age. But the division of wealth is getting close to being the biggest problem with the culture. It is due to be addressed.
Have you watched the news lately?