The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Kshama Sawant on why the only hope we have left is the building of a militant labor movement that will use strikes to destroy the corporate state.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Kshama Sawant on why the only hope we have left is the building of a militant labor movement that will use strikes to destroy the corporate state.
From your summary: “Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. It will battle anti-trans legislation and against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people.”
That is why I and many working-class people will not support it. Although some “anti-trans legislation” comes from the Right, much of it comes from:
> Feminists and their allies, gays and lesbians who do not support “transing away the gay,” or being told that they are transphobic if they do not accept and sleep with trans-persons;
> women who oppose having their Title IX rights and opportunities being stripped away by male athletes;
> women who oppose having their domestic violence shelters, prisons, locker rooms and other sex-segregated placed invaded by men who “self-identify” as women, and women who have already been assaulted and harmed as a consequence;
>working-class parents who oppose seeing their children being swept up and harmed by the explosive growth of “rapid onset gender dysphoria”;
> health-care providers who oppose the harmful medicalization of youth who fall prey to this socially encouraged trend;
> the thousands of detransitioners who have been irreversibly harmed by it;
> the educators, other professionals and other speakers who have been fired, canceled, deplatformed, doxed, attacked and mobbed for critiquing this trend -- and many more.
I realize that you have questioned some of these excesses before. So why are you going along with this agenda now?
Is there bad “anti-trans legislation” that goes too far and does not merit support? A small fraction, perhaps. Progressive-minded people should support trans-identified persons having the same civil rights as everyone else – but not at the expense of women, not at the expense of children, not at the expense of science, not at the expense of ethical medical practice, and not at the expense of the First Amendment. Most of what is labeled “anti-trans legislation” is actually aimed at protecting the latter interests, not attacking the rights of adults who identify as trans to live their lives as they see fit.
It is disappointing to see a person of your intelligence and social awareness fall for this. I suggest a bit of homework. Here are a few sources that I urge you to study carefully, none of which can be fairly characterized as "right wing":
Thank you for your consideration. I think you can do better than this. Like it or not, we cannot unite the Left, or the working-class, until this ruling-class-supported ideology is exposed as the fraud that it is and can no longer be used as a wedge to divide us.
Mr. Whitney, I hope that most workers will put aside their individual biases against gender preferences and, rather, focus in the probably only solution to break the corporate power over their own lives and join this movement. It is time that they take care of themselves and stop worrying about the life style of others.
Finally , a plan for re setting this totally broken system.
Thanks Chris for bringing this information to light.
I think we’ve all felt completely at a loss when it comes to what we can do about this corporate greed that effects all and enhances the power of funded political bias.
Its definitely time to insist on worker rights and those of all people who are not well represented for civil and human rights.
None other than Hitler captured the spirit of unreason present at the time when he declared:
“We stand at the end of the Age of Reason.… A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising, an explanation based on Will rather than knowledge.
There is no truth, in either the moral or scientific sense.”
---------- Hitler quoted by Herman Raushning, Gespräche mit Hitler (New York: Europa Verlag, 1940), 210, translated in Gerald Holton, “Can Science Be at the Centre of Modern Culture?,” Public Understanding of Science 2 (1993): 302.
For a slightly different translation, see Herman Raushning, Voice of Destruction (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 222–23.
Irrationality breeds fascism and con-men.
“The key to pulling off a long con is never letting your mark see the whole picture. Give them the illusion of control while you’re pulling the strings—let them think they’re in charge.”
I love the logic of this. It’s pure like any good argument must be.
Speaking of bees, I also love the example of social insects for whom labor unions defined their existence. When certain ant populations have had enough. They simply bite the head off the queen, the power is always in the mass.
Only the radical, woke workers, the poor, and our youth can save people and planet....IF we all support them, and not the corrupt politicians.! Go Kshama!
You are an Idealist that has no clue how business works. Go start a business, and run it like Kshama wants you to. If you hate capitalism, you can move to a socialist country.
True. And especially when we have every reason to be discontent .26 Republicans on the Oversight Committee refused to condemn white supremacism. Pitiful.
Maricata I was not replying to you but to the individual that is telling people to ‘move to a socialist country, if we don’t like capitalism. ‘ Apparently I was not in the right line here.
I actually have appreciated your well researched information.
What did I say that you disagree with? Can you refute any of it? I would be curious to know what evidence you have for your prior claims and now these? Can you provide it?
And when you say 'reality' can you give me an example, or an analogy or metaphor so I can better understand your point of view?
You simply cannot reason. Your inability to entertain rationality has been overtaken with your capitalist concerns.
I will let you have the last word for I do not do Facebook with Americans.
By the way, I left America ten years ago.
Blinders! Wake up!
You will get no sympathy from the working class, which you exploit, which is why you will not hesitate to run to the apron strings of authoritarianism: fascism.
This is fascist America.
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you.
When your turn comes, we shall not make excuses for terror.
But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”
Karl Marx, final editorial in the Neue Rheinische Zietung
And we the people can stop purchasing pharmaceuticals wherever possible and switch to natural remedies where possible and boycott all other corporate entities.
Kshama Sawant is a breath of fresh air who is fighting to improve the conditions of the working class in our country. She is taking her ideas and implementing them through the Workers Fight Back Movement. Unlike President Biden who says he is pro labor, but his actions indicate the opposite Ms. Sawant puts her "money where her mouth is." Ms. Sawant should run for President; she would do a much superior job to any of the potential candidates that are being considered.
Really, then all the world has the deep state right? Bangladesh, Sudan, etc.
You are stuck in America both within your thinking and within you point of view.
Capitalism is the problem.
And now with cartel-monopoly capitalism the small guy has no chance.
Just ask the small businesses put out of businesses by Amazon or box stores.
Concentration of wealth does nothing for small business.
Nearly two centuries ago in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined the State, not as a neutral body standing above society with competing political parties, but as a political instrument of class domination, “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
The fascist state is doing a good job. War, unemployment, no housing, inflation, addictions, destroyed
communities, trillion dollar pay outs to the rich and crushed lives.
This is our only hope. The tragedy of cartel-capitalism cannot be constrained by politicians.
And this movement, as it gains momentum as I think it will, must spread internationally to counter the growing international fascist movements gaining popularity daily, as in the US.
Listeners might find the following podcast of interest as it points directly to the horrors we face as the world is gentrified and the public commons a slim reminder.
Cities After… The Threat of Mega-Landlords
In this episode of Cities After…, Prof. Robles-Durán discusses the growing prevalence of corporate landlords and their devastating impact on affordable housing and homeownership.
The mass acquisition of single-family homes and apartment buildings by private investment companies, backed by global finance and, often, as Prof. Robles-Durán reveals our own pension funds, capitalizes on our basic need for housing as a human right and turns it into a profit-making enterprise. This phenomenon grows out of the capitalist-fed dream of private homeownership, which has never been truly accessible to the masses.
We need community land trusts, cooperative housing, and to put an end to the predatory commodification of housing before it’s too late.
Chris, this lady is a waste of time. Pay young people $25.00 per hour, then you will have people not coming to work because it will be their “cushion” not to. There goes production. Her Covid problem stemmed from the deep state. Why was Walmart open, while small stores had to close.
I guess that this person knows nothing of history. Socialism does not work nor will ever work. A recent event is the USSR. Did it survive? Freedom and Liberty certainly do!
That is Your logic ,not mine . If You ever go to site called Fraser Institute and look up a video of about 3-4 minute on the Video called Natural Law. Base A lot of thoughts on this version! I do not wish to convince You to see My view as totally correct , as I am Human as the rest of the Earthly Beings on this planet.
No, it is not his logic it is fact. Taxpayers pay for social services such as police and firefighters. This means that the cost is socialized.
The libertarian mind cannot rap itself around the fact that socialism does not means state control.
Fascism does. And you are living under it now.
The only socialism in the US is for the rich: they socialize their costs and privatize their profits.
If you cannot see this and how monopolies run your life, then you probably have either calcified your assumptions into fact and then folded your arms and circled the wagons around them or simply refuse to examine your assumptions.
Best to ask questions such as what is meant by socialism? How is socialism different from capitalism? Why do you think it would work, etc?
Sadly, Mark Fisher was right when he stated:
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than imagine the end of capitalism.”
Actually, it was Frederic Jameson who said that about imagining the end of capitalism. Fisher was repeating it. As for the end of the world, we may not have to imagine it much longer. The warmongers in Washington are working day and night to insure its inevitability. And it's all because saving capitalism is their highest priority.
Mr. Hrehirchek, the only few things that are still working in U.S. are our socialist institutions like Social Security, Medicare, and public education from which you probably have benefited better than the outrages of our predatory capitalism.
Absolutely correct, most people in the US have NO IDEA what socialism is, they are just AFRAID OF IT (I guess this is from the 'good old days' of the Red Scare ...). I grew up in a socialist culture and I can only assure you it was great.
"For as we have said, the art of the sophist is a money-making art which trades on apparent wisdom, and so sophists aim at apparent proof, for sophistry is an appearance of wisdom without reality."
--- (Quoted from Aristotle's On Sophistical Refutations, 171b32-7. Tr. E. S. Forster. Loeb Classical Library Vol. 400 (Harvard, 1955. P. 63
It is raitonality and critical thinking itself that has been so undermined by advertising and crass commercial culture coupled with a culture that is a seedy, little cut-rate carny that people have farmed out, out-sourced, their thinking to others.
And then they repeat it as if it was the fishing wive's tale.
I hear this all the time and am sensitive to the use of language for underlying our use of language is anchored our assumptions.
And we live in a society that implants assumptions and then teaches us nothing about what a point of view is our what assumptions are and how to separate what one knows from what one believes.
When I hear people using the terms “the left” or “the progressives” I cringe.
For they use these words believing all people have the same definitions and we do not.
The Russia psyop was necessary to once again create Russia as the evil Empire to assure support for a Ukrainian invasion.
The CIA thinks ahead.
And then “progressive and “alt-right” and “left” appeared with more frequency and more vacuity.
One is a socialist and anti-capitalist or they are not.
The word “socialism” now must be ushered into the dialogue before it too becomes hijacked which it probably already has although reports say more than 50% of young people support it. But again, do they know what it means?)
Beavis and Butthead along with South Park and the Simpsons worked unknowingly with FOX news and various other culture outlets to assure critical thinking is not taught.
They became the civic class for generations.
Well, we are not born critical thinkers.
We must learn it. Or we are left with the unschooled mind.
The issue is how and when and where.
I’d say the time is now which is why I asked this young man what he meant by socialism and as you can see he has no idea.
I am afraid that you in-advertently defined fascism:
“Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State.”
Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze:Vallecchi Editore. (p.15)
Looks like a I started a chain reaction of disagreements in your post. I hope that doesn't keep you from coming back, everyone can learn something from others.
I know I can. I was a c+ student (on my good days) in high school and college.
I must reply to this comment of Jon Carver. My tax dollars pay for everything You stand for! I do not have a say where My tax dollar goes If You think this fair that is Your opinion. Freedom and Liberty seem to be the best of the horses that are on the way to the glue factory! Have a good day eh!
I have no argument with any of Sawant's policies myself but I do wish she appeared to understand the old saw "you have to lead a horse to water to make him drink".
I'm not going to rant on about how the culture wars' issues have been deliberately been created by elite owned media to keep all citizens arguing with their neighbours so all of us do not unite and fight until we bring them down because most know this on some level, what I fail to comprehend is why Sawant doesn't want to recognise that reality.
It makes far more sense to organise humans on basic obviously fair issues such as a living minimum wage and healthcare for all whilst refusing to engage on BS culture war beat-ups so her movement isn't easily derailed by the PTB.
Instead Sawant has willingly jumped into a really obvious trap thereby alienating a huge chunk of citizens, admittedly on issues that rarely affect most humans, which is how the elites use them to divide but why not just day "I support what is determined by people to be the best outcome on all those and rather than arguing incessantly it is a duty bound on all of us to develop a mechanism for discovering exactly what everyone thinks before we run around haranguing each other on issues that are complex, emotive & uncertain, next question please".
Monopolies kill small businesses. You are stuck in binary thinking and your anger is directed at those who want to change the system not work within it.
It is a bit frightening for it was the middle class, the small shopkeeper in Italy, Spain and Germany that brought fascism to power.
As rear guarders or pilot fish, they latch themselves onto the agenda of the ruling elite even when the evidence shows that they are destroying small everything.
I don't believe in censorship --- but I do believe in moderation and I wish the comments here were moderated. It's painful to read thru a number of them.
I fully agree, and do away with all forms of money of any type as we can live far better and realize our full Potential as human beings without illusory classes and the separaion it causes.,
From your summary: “Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. It will battle anti-trans legislation and against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people.”
That is why I and many working-class people will not support it. Although some “anti-trans legislation” comes from the Right, much of it comes from:
> Feminists and their allies, gays and lesbians who do not support “transing away the gay,” or being told that they are transphobic if they do not accept and sleep with trans-persons;
> women who oppose having their Title IX rights and opportunities being stripped away by male athletes;
> women who oppose having their domestic violence shelters, prisons, locker rooms and other sex-segregated placed invaded by men who “self-identify” as women, and women who have already been assaulted and harmed as a consequence;
>working-class parents who oppose seeing their children being swept up and harmed by the explosive growth of “rapid onset gender dysphoria”;
> health-care providers who oppose the harmful medicalization of youth who fall prey to this socially encouraged trend;
> the thousands of detransitioners who have been irreversibly harmed by it;
> the educators, other professionals and other speakers who have been fired, canceled, deplatformed, doxed, attacked and mobbed for critiquing this trend -- and many more.
You should be critiquing this divisive attack on the working class, which has been funded by its billionaire advocates, not cheerleading it. See, e.g., https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
I realize that you have questioned some of these excesses before. So why are you going along with this agenda now?
Is there bad “anti-trans legislation” that goes too far and does not merit support? A small fraction, perhaps. Progressive-minded people should support trans-identified persons having the same civil rights as everyone else – but not at the expense of women, not at the expense of children, not at the expense of science, not at the expense of ethical medical practice, and not at the expense of the First Amendment. Most of what is labeled “anti-trans legislation” is actually aimed at protecting the latter interests, not attacking the rights of adults who identify as trans to live their lives as they see fit.
It is disappointing to see a person of your intelligence and social awareness fall for this. I suggest a bit of homework. Here are a few sources that I urge you to study carefully, none of which can be fairly characterized as "right wing":
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
https://segm.org/
https://www.genderhq.org/
https://ourduty.group/
https://www.partnersforethicalcare.com/
https://www.parentsofrogdkids.com/
https://pitt.substack.com/
https://www.realityslaststand.com/
https://www.the11thhourblog.com/
https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/
Thank you for your consideration. I think you can do better than this. Like it or not, we cannot unite the Left, or the working-class, until this ruling-class-supported ideology is exposed as the fraud that it is and can no longer be used as a wedge to divide us.
Mr. Whitney, I hope that most workers will put aside their individual biases against gender preferences and, rather, focus in the probably only solution to break the corporate power over their own lives and join this movement. It is time that they take care of themselves and stop worrying about the life style of others.
This reminds me of another comment I once saw:
“Well, if the Blacks, and the Puerto Ricans, and the Chicanos and the Indians all get what they want, then there won’t be any United States...?”
-- Oregon high school student questioning a Cherokee speaker from the American Indian Movement
Finally , a plan for re setting this totally broken system.
Thanks Chris for bringing this information to light.
I think we’ve all felt completely at a loss when it comes to what we can do about this corporate greed that effects all and enhances the power of funded political bias.
Its definitely time to insist on worker rights and those of all people who are not well represented for civil and human rights.
Look at the comments.
None other than Hitler captured the spirit of unreason present at the time when he declared:
“We stand at the end of the Age of Reason.… A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising, an explanation based on Will rather than knowledge.
There is no truth, in either the moral or scientific sense.”
---------- Hitler quoted by Herman Raushning, Gespräche mit Hitler (New York: Europa Verlag, 1940), 210, translated in Gerald Holton, “Can Science Be at the Centre of Modern Culture?,” Public Understanding of Science 2 (1993): 302.
For a slightly different translation, see Herman Raushning, Voice of Destruction (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 222–23.
Irrationality breeds fascism and con-men.
“The key to pulling off a long con is never letting your mark see the whole picture. Give them the illusion of control while you’re pulling the strings—let them think they’re in charge.”
-Laurent Thierry ; “The Great Pretender”
I love the logic of this. It’s pure like any good argument must be.
Speaking of bees, I also love the example of social insects for whom labor unions defined their existence. When certain ant populations have had enough. They simply bite the head off the queen, the power is always in the mass.
Only the radical, woke workers, the poor, and our youth can save people and planet....IF we all support them, and not the corrupt politicians.! Go Kshama!
You are an Idealist that has no clue how business works. Go start a business, and run it like Kshama wants you to. If you hate capitalism, you can move to a socialist country.
Trying to fix this Krapitalism by helping Kshama is a more rational solution than sending discontents abroad.
True. And especially when we have every reason to be discontent .26 Republicans on the Oversight Committee refused to condemn white supremacism. Pitiful.
Or invading MX
You clearly cant see reality because you’re so angry and sure that you have all the answers .
Maricata I was not replying to you but to the individual that is telling people to ‘move to a socialist country, if we don’t like capitalism. ‘ Apparently I was not in the right line here.
I actually have appreciated your well researched information.
Thank you .
What did I say that you disagree with? Can you refute any of it? I would be curious to know what evidence you have for your prior claims and now these? Can you provide it?
And when you say 'reality' can you give me an example, or an analogy or metaphor so I can better understand your point of view?
I think we both know the answer Patricia.
Can you name a socialist country and why it is socialist?
Don’t get side tracked. You should seek that country and move there. You can’t wear blinders all your life. Wake up!!
You simply cannot reason. Your inability to entertain rationality has been overtaken with your capitalist concerns.
I will let you have the last word for I do not do Facebook with Americans.
By the way, I left America ten years ago.
Blinders! Wake up!
You will get no sympathy from the working class, which you exploit, which is why you will not hesitate to run to the apron strings of authoritarianism: fascism.
This is fascist America.
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you.
When your turn comes, we shall not make excuses for terror.
But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”
Karl Marx, final editorial in the Neue Rheinische Zietung
And we the people can stop purchasing pharmaceuticals wherever possible and switch to natural remedies where possible and boycott all other corporate entities.
Kshama Sawant is a breath of fresh air who is fighting to improve the conditions of the working class in our country. She is taking her ideas and implementing them through the Workers Fight Back Movement. Unlike President Biden who says he is pro labor, but his actions indicate the opposite Ms. Sawant puts her "money where her mouth is." Ms. Sawant should run for President; she would do a much superior job to any of the potential candidates that are being considered.
Another presidential ticket, Dennis Kucinich for President, Kshama Sawant for Vice President, and Medea Benjamin for Secretary of State.
Bring back unions! We once were strong and made a decent wage. The rich have bought our government and we the people must take it back!!
Really, then all the world has the deep state right? Bangladesh, Sudan, etc.
You are stuck in America both within your thinking and within you point of view.
Capitalism is the problem.
And now with cartel-monopoly capitalism the small guy has no chance.
Just ask the small businesses put out of businesses by Amazon or box stores.
Concentration of wealth does nothing for small business.
Nearly two centuries ago in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined the State, not as a neutral body standing above society with competing political parties, but as a political instrument of class domination, “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
The fascist state is doing a good job. War, unemployment, no housing, inflation, addictions, destroyed
communities, trillion dollar pay outs to the rich and crushed lives.
This is our only hope. The tragedy of cartel-capitalism cannot be constrained by politicians.
And this movement, as it gains momentum as I think it will, must spread internationally to counter the growing international fascist movements gaining popularity daily, as in the US.
Listeners might find the following podcast of interest as it points directly to the horrors we face as the world is gentrified and the public commons a slim reminder.
Cities After… The Threat of Mega-Landlords
In this episode of Cities After…, Prof. Robles-Durán discusses the growing prevalence of corporate landlords and their devastating impact on affordable housing and homeownership.
The mass acquisition of single-family homes and apartment buildings by private investment companies, backed by global finance and, often, as Prof. Robles-Durán reveals our own pension funds, capitalizes on our basic need for housing as a human right and turns it into a profit-making enterprise. This phenomenon grows out of the capitalist-fed dream of private homeownership, which has never been truly accessible to the masses.
We need community land trusts, cooperative housing, and to put an end to the predatory commodification of housing before it’s too late.
https://www.democracyatwork.info/ca_the_threat_of_mega_landlords?utm_campaign=nd_roundup_03082023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=democracyatwork
The vast majority of police and fire departments are payed by taxpayers.
Plain and simple. Don’t need a video brother.
End of discussion. Thanks
You are welcome brother.
Chris, this lady is a waste of time. Pay young people $25.00 per hour, then you will have people not coming to work because it will be their “cushion” not to. There goes production. Her Covid problem stemmed from the deep state. Why was Walmart open, while small stores had to close.
STP : "Why was Walmart open, while small stores had to close" Krapitalism, I think.
I guess that this person knows nothing of history. Socialism does not work nor will ever work. A recent event is the USSR. Did it survive? Freedom and Liberty certainly do!
“Socialism does not work nor will ever work.”
Using your logic all policemen and firefighters’ jobs should cease to exist.
Public libraries work.
That is Your logic ,not mine . If You ever go to site called Fraser Institute and look up a video of about 3-4 minute on the Video called Natural Law. Base A lot of thoughts on this version! I do not wish to convince You to see My view as totally correct , as I am Human as the rest of the Earthly Beings on this planet.
Examples of socialism include public infrastructure, social security, public transportation, and fire protection services among others.
No, it is not his logic it is fact. Taxpayers pay for social services such as police and firefighters. This means that the cost is socialized.
The libertarian mind cannot rap itself around the fact that socialism does not means state control.
Fascism does. And you are living under it now.
The only socialism in the US is for the rich: they socialize their costs and privatize their profits.
If you cannot see this and how monopolies run your life, then you probably have either calcified your assumptions into fact and then folded your arms and circled the wagons around them or simply refuse to examine your assumptions.
Best to ask questions such as what is meant by socialism? How is socialism different from capitalism? Why do you think it would work, etc?
Sadly, Mark Fisher was right when he stated:
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than imagine the end of capitalism.”
---- Mark Fisher
https://files.libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf
Birds born in cages think flying is ludicrous.
Actually, it was Frederic Jameson who said that about imagining the end of capitalism. Fisher was repeating it. As for the end of the world, we may not have to imagine it much longer. The warmongers in Washington are working day and night to insure its inevitability. And it's all because saving capitalism is their highest priority.
Ture'dat.
Thanks for the backup. I was going to point to corporate welfare also. Thanks for picking me up.
Mr. Hrehirchek, the only few things that are still working in U.S. are our socialist institutions like Social Security, Medicare, and public education from which you probably have benefited better than the outrages of our predatory capitalism.
The USSR was not a socialist country.
You need to define what socialism is.
As Mark Twain once said: "Get the facts first and then you can distort them as much as you want."
Absolutely correct, most people in the US have NO IDEA what socialism is, they are just AFRAID OF IT (I guess this is from the 'good old days' of the Red Scare ...). I grew up in a socialist culture and I can only assure you it was great.
"For as we have said, the art of the sophist is a money-making art which trades on apparent wisdom, and so sophists aim at apparent proof, for sophistry is an appearance of wisdom without reality."
--- (Quoted from Aristotle's On Sophistical Refutations, 171b32-7. Tr. E. S. Forster. Loeb Classical Library Vol. 400 (Harvard, 1955. P. 63
It is raitonality and critical thinking itself that has been so undermined by advertising and crass commercial culture coupled with a culture that is a seedy, little cut-rate carny that people have farmed out, out-sourced, their thinking to others.
And then they repeat it as if it was the fishing wive's tale.
I hear this all the time and am sensitive to the use of language for underlying our use of language is anchored our assumptions.
And we live in a society that implants assumptions and then teaches us nothing about what a point of view is our what assumptions are and how to separate what one knows from what one believes.
When I hear people using the terms “the left” or “the progressives” I cringe.
For they use these words believing all people have the same definitions and we do not.
The Russia psyop was necessary to once again create Russia as the evil Empire to assure support for a Ukrainian invasion.
The CIA thinks ahead.
And then “progressive and “alt-right” and “left” appeared with more frequency and more vacuity.
One is a socialist and anti-capitalist or they are not.
The word “socialism” now must be ushered into the dialogue before it too becomes hijacked which it probably already has although reports say more than 50% of young people support it. But again, do they know what it means?)
Beavis and Butthead along with South Park and the Simpsons worked unknowingly with FOX news and various other culture outlets to assure critical thinking is not taught.
They became the civic class for generations.
Well, we are not born critical thinkers.
We must learn it. Or we are left with the unschooled mind.
The issue is how and when and where.
I’d say the time is now which is why I asked this young man what he meant by socialism and as you can see he has no idea.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Social-and-Psychologic-by-Danny-Weil-Belief_Beliefs_Deception_Delusion-141231-996.html
Well said, thank you!
Oh, by the way Socialism is when the state runs the economy. Such as We have in many countries in the world!
I am afraid that you in-advertently defined fascism:
“Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State.”
Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze:Vallecchi Editore. (p.15)
Looks like a I started a chain reaction of disagreements in your post. I hope that doesn't keep you from coming back, everyone can learn something from others.
I know I can. I was a c+ student (on my good days) in high school and college.
I must reply to this comment of Jon Carver. My tax dollars pay for everything You stand for! I do not have a say where My tax dollar goes If You think this fair that is Your opinion. Freedom and Liberty seem to be the best of the horses that are on the way to the glue factory! Have a good day eh!
I am sure that the gate swings both ways! And to You good luck!
I have no argument with any of Sawant's policies myself but I do wish she appeared to understand the old saw "you have to lead a horse to water to make him drink".
I'm not going to rant on about how the culture wars' issues have been deliberately been created by elite owned media to keep all citizens arguing with their neighbours so all of us do not unite and fight until we bring them down because most know this on some level, what I fail to comprehend is why Sawant doesn't want to recognise that reality.
It makes far more sense to organise humans on basic obviously fair issues such as a living minimum wage and healthcare for all whilst refusing to engage on BS culture war beat-ups so her movement isn't easily derailed by the PTB.
Instead Sawant has willingly jumped into a really obvious trap thereby alienating a huge chunk of citizens, admittedly on issues that rarely affect most humans, which is how the elites use them to divide but why not just day "I support what is determined by people to be the best outcome on all those and rather than arguing incessantly it is a duty bound on all of us to develop a mechanism for discovering exactly what everyone thinks before we run around haranguing each other on issues that are complex, emotive & uncertain, next question please".
She is so out of touch. All her demands will kill small businesses.
Monopolies kill small businesses. You are stuck in binary thinking and your anger is directed at those who want to change the system not work within it.
It is a bit frightening for it was the middle class, the small shopkeeper in Italy, Spain and Germany that brought fascism to power.
As rear guarders or pilot fish, they latch themselves onto the agenda of the ruling elite even when the evidence shows that they are destroying small everything.
I don't believe in censorship --- but I do believe in moderation and I wish the comments here were moderated. It's painful to read thru a number of them.
I fully agree, and do away with all forms of money of any type as we can live far better and realize our full Potential as human beings without illusory classes and the separaion it causes.,