anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]

That comment pissed me off, the whole trend of doomerist opportunism too. this site is so often just a black hole that no one is interested in fighting against and I’m fucking myself up wasting my time trying in the tide of it. It’s an active negation of revolutionary consciousness in an environment which needs it cultivated and brought into the real material world. So many people seem near universally more interested in uncritical and angry insular bias-spirals and opportunist defeatism, opportunist self-confirmation of ‘nothing to be done’ and ‘might as well flee’ (which shows a petty-bourgeois affordance), and the worst: opportunism-masquerading-as-principle then shit out onto others in a misery-loves-company kind of way, than anything else constructive. Just straight-line-segment-from-the-curve understandings, as fuel for undialectical projections of doomsaying, so do-nothing opportunists can say “SEE?!?!?!” at whatever they think gives them the opportunity and get applause from other do-nothings, which facilitates the furthering the comparative growth of reaction more than the reactionaries are capable of facilitating themselves than if people were interested in constructive active forward-moving analysis of things.

Socialists in the real world (which are exponentially growing in number every month and have been for almost a decade) I’ve worked with don’t talk like people here, by and large engage more healthily about problems in society, and are more interested in engaging critically along lines of where the problems are and aren’t in given things, and working the angles to separate them along dividing lines. This site is 75+% online ultra-leftism wearing the mask of something else. There are people who have been being tortured in US prisons for decades for their activism who have more revolutionary spirit, optimism, fluidity, criticality, and desire for and KNOWLEDGE OF whole-inclusive revolutionary change, and active political consciousness and preparedness to fight by it than the metaphysical one-sided self-satisfied petty-bourgeois-oriented shit I see here.

“iF oNlY i HaD oRgAniZeD mOrE~” People who say this shit are do-nothings. People who support and further it are do-nothings, thinking the people who turned out in the Floyd uprisings, the ever-growing militant labor and tenant movements, and even students occupying colleges at the cost of their petty bourgeois futures over Palestine (A THING WHICH DOESN’T DIRECTLY EFFECT THEM, compared to Vietnam protests where they were being DRAFTED — a MARK OF ELEVATED CONSCIOUSNESS) are nothing compared to these 5000 home-owners (or otherwise long-term tenants) who decide to partake in a shitty religious email survey? Because, and not just from this, that’s what I get and what I hear, more than I get or hear anything else on this site. I wonder, where have these people been this past 10 years, if they have not been on the street seeing what I’ve seen in just my small part of it? They seem to be seeing less than comrades writing from inside prison walls somehow.

Yes the US, particularly in its bourgeois and petty bourgeois, is largely reactionary, we know this (without this trash ‘American Academy of Religion’ member survey which should be thrown in the trash); particularly in the ongoing historical inheritance of colonial relations, and that this is an avenue where false-consciousness gets pushed when alternatives are not posited and constructed due to these historical relations and its inherited contradictions. But Christ. I’ve seen more things and comments on this site, whose only purpose and only constructed framing is to uncritically reinforce insular and doomsaying biases as dead-end metaphysical ‘truths’, to spiral people into do-nothing emptiness and defeatism before any battle has even been fought by ANY of the people saying these things; than I’ve seen constructive forward-moving dialectical considerations. I’ve seen more attempts by do-nothings to self-indulgently self-satisfyingly panic-monger and doomsay about their imagined reality “out there” where they do not stand or in some dreamed-up future, to inflame destructive and opportunist impulses in people to make more do-nothings (or worse), than positive construction toward anything — or even serious Marxist criticality toward circumstances or material put forward, as long as it confirms OPPORTUNIST, ULTRA-LEFT BIASES and helps people feel like their do-nothingism is somehow ‘principled analysis’ and they can feel self-satisfied in saying so. Which is effectively reactionary, discouraging socialists of the possibility and reality of change being built, and passing it off as ‘principled analysis’ based on one’s own shallow and actively-sought bias-confirmation as a metaphysical truth, rather than developing working and critical dialectical consideration in one’s analysis of material circumstances and events, their internal components, and relations to other circumstances and events as a whole living reality and unfolding history in which we are all partaking in in the ways we do.

The flight of some people from the underground could have been the result of their fatigue and dispiritedness. Such individuals may only be pitied; they should be helped because their dispiritedness will pass and there will again appear an urge to get away from philistinism, away from the liberals and the liberal-labour policy, to the working-class underground. But when the fatigued and dispirited use journalism as their platform and announce that their flight is not a manifestation of fatigue, or weakness, or intellectual woolliness, but that it is to their credit, and then put the blame on the “ineffective,” “worthless,” “moribund,” etc., underground, these runaways then become disgusting renegades, apostates. These runaways then become the worst advisers for the working-class movement and therefore its dangerous enemies.

Log off and join an org

this was posted before, it’s a 5000 person survey by a non-profit for “finding the intersection of religion in society for clergy and the public” (hence the weird religious breakdown), which they got by just emailing people on a USPS list with a few hundred self-selected opt-ins on top. Which also inherently excludes a bunch of people, like those who’ve moved a lot or recently, any and all homeless, lumpenized people and people in distant or ad-hoc or delapidated communities with vague USPS lines and addresses, those who don’t have internet access, those in prisons, and those who don’t check their email, and those who wouldn’t be arsed with these kinds of surveys by religion-in-politics non-profits, and countless other groups. Inherently. The study also has no breakdowns for class or income, if they live in rural, urban, or suburban environs, or even generation breakdowns for most of the questions including this one (but does for some others, weirdly); and the 18-29 age group is vanishingly small compared to the others; and just a bunch of god awful things. Which is shocking to be taken at face value, this trash 5000 person “christian nationalism” survey as “percent of Americans” like the survey says. And then you get such god awful trash takes like in this thread of “if only I’d organized harder” absolutely anti-marxist nonsense, nihilist trash.

it literally isn’t a good sample size, especially for their selection process in the breakdown of a place as diverse and varied in peoples and living conditions and environments like the US and its 350 million people. It’s a religious-focused NGO for “christian nationalism in politics”, has vanishingly few young people, does terrible breakdowns in the full report and tells us nothing about class or income, self-selects for those who are on consistent addresses in USPS lines with internet access who would be arsed to do these surveys (as well as has hundreds of self-selected opt-ins), the report is trash by a non-profit for “finding the intersection of religion and politics for clergy and the public”

also be careful you might be arrested or fined for insinuating poland ever collaborated with hitler on anything

bruh why does trump look like texas chainsaw’s leatherface god that’s upsetting, the tilted head to augahshf

deleted by creator

I replied more viscerally in depth in another reply to one of your comment, but the assumption that it ‘not being able to think’ is a novel contributing problem in this case is working on a backwards assumption that those who can think will always seek to help and never seek to manipulate and reinforce harm, which we know from incel and other forums is not a thing. People who seek out this stuff will get it. It is a mental health and alienation and atomization under late capitalist dystopia problem, and the internet facilitates meeting like-minded individuals without effort. whether it’s a chat bot you can manipulate the guard rails by speaking in metaphoric terms to get it to reinforce you or active sadists and misery-loves-company ‘thinkers’ on the other side on a forum. People in these states are not trying to be convinced otherwise when they do this kind of stuff. They want to hear this stuff reinforced in themselves, and will do what they can to get it, (like this user speaking in metaphoric terms to get around the blocks of the bot), whether a chatbot or a forum or a discord of misery or whatever it is. The ease-of-access to these phenomenon on the internet facilitating this mirroring reinforcement and not being physically able to be broken up by a local community org is the unique aspect in general, and people can get that in forums just as easily as in a chat bot — the underlying causes and issues remain the same for both.

if it wasn’t this it would be an incel or “blackpill” forum or something. People who seek confirmation in their spirals will seek it, which this user was by working actively to get around the bot’s blocking of these things by speaking metaphorically to get it to print a reinforcement of what they wanted to hear. the chatbot is not a new thing in this scenario, and in compared to other cases online had more protection in place than others:

the chatbot in this context is in practicality no different than an incel forum which creates the same effects. It is a social reinforcement loop (“social” in the case of the bot, is approximating the same, which it machine-learns from the same interactions and relations from people online, presuming this is another LLM that just data-scrapes the internet, which also includes a lot of incel forums and these general social trends; and the user was actively trying to get responses to reinforce their biases in themselves as incel forums do.)

Any superstructure and expression of it is going to have unique characteristics of the conditions and history of that specific country and its ruling class, I wouldn’t argue the US individualism isn’t unique in its ways, just as it is unique in other places in different ways. I don’t think profiteering healthcare and the hoodwinking of poor people about “but muh wait times” or what have you is an expression of individualism though. That is a straightforward capitalist interest in maximizing profits, particularly with having some elite hospitals being worth-travel for big bourgeois elsewhere, meaning you get the (probably racistly-named) “Arab Sheik problem” where they charge for the highest payers that will pay, and that is more profitable than charging normal prices, even when accounting for all those who never pay. And this dictates the general healthcare “market.” But then people are miseducated and kept from political education about healthcare and are told straight wrong information by their corporate bourgeois media and so believe it. They’re not saying “it’s my god given right to die not being able to afford an ambulance.” The majority of the US is in favor of single payer. And even those who aren’t it’s not individualism, there was that thing where people were cheering for Trump to dismantle Obamacare but then were pissed when they found out that ACA is Obamacare and they actually relied on it (as garbage as ACA is). Bad education and being propagandized is not an aspect of US individualism. And it’s not only the US that has privatized or partial private healthcare.

‘Thoughts and prayers’ is a Christian thing in general. Maybe a western Christian thing idk about Orthodox if they do that kind of thing. Christianity is a deeply individualist religion with a long history in Europe through Feudalism of the church ensuring its subjects develop in a way where they individualize all of their problems and internalize them, kept meek and modest and passive and accepting of bad things, kept separated, and made to idealize keeping their thoughts and wants and needs between them and god and repressing themselves and never making trouble in society (and paying their tithe!) in order to be granted freedom when they die. It’s not unique to the US. The more modern prosperity gospel trend of it is certainly a particularly individualist trend, but rooted in the same thing I mentioned, a superstructural expression as the typical bourgeois individualism of “I have this which means I earned it which means I’m good and should have this.”

There were terrible lockdown responses all over Europe, this was absolutely not a US-specific phenomenon. And it all came from the same roots, a base in capitalist interest and the liberal individualist superstructural outgrowths of it came after and was also not unique to the US. The covid response being temporary and feeble all over even in European countries who ‘let it rip,’ and even half or more of the anti-lockdown protestors too, were economic in nature. It was the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois wanting profits and not being able or wanting to tighten belts to deal with lockdowns and associated costs, and even workers wanting to work and not being paid enough to survive and support families compared to the gouging of rents and costs of living including price gouges by grocery stores and other companies.

Where there was lockdowns, there was economic lobbying by capitalists to open it back up, which was not out of individualism but out of base material interest. In tourist states and cities in the US for instance there was heavy heavy lobbying by restaurant and hotel capitalists and their cartels (I mean, ‘professional associations boards’) to ram things back open because of their bottom line. That isn’t an expression of individualism but of material interest, a base and not a superstructure. A basal interest, which is furthered socially in superstructural outgrowths, in narratives from that base interest, rooted in what I described before, the bourgeois liberal individualism as a natural consequence of capitalist relations; where they express (and even convince themselves), that their individual freedom to run their business which they ‘worked so hard to achieve’, and others individual freedom to engage in tourism and dining and commerce ‘to spend their hard-earned money (at my restauraunt)’, are impeded by the lockdowns. That base creates superstructure, which then reinforces the base. It’s not a ‘trick’ but bourgeois ideology, which is the dominant ideology in bourgeois society; which has its own character in its own conditions and histories, but is itself not unique to the US.

Coal rolling is a specific spiteful individualist asshole exclusive to the US — an expression of this same root of European bourgeois liberal individualism from the same origins, but its form and character and expressions shaped by how it came out of the US’ material conditions and history, such as its particular car culture which grew out of its specific historical powerhouse capitalist monopolies (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, Chevrolet, adjacents like agricultural vehicles from International Harvester Company and John Deere etc.) which was at the forefront of global industrial machine production with, and in which, it achieved its dominance in the early automotive and industrial-agriculture markets — from which also the war industry was built by retooling existing infrastructure, from which the US empire became global hegemon out of the World Wars.

Coal likewise has its own basis in this history, with similar the world’s richest people being coal and railroad tycoons; and the “coal towns” and the like; which in the earliest years was basically commodity serfdom, heinously criminal and caused things like the coal wars — but afterward while still flagrantly criminal and exploitative in many many ways, also became a very high-paying stable trade for workers in which much pride was taken in their work (which happened in the Soviet Union too, Stakhanovites movement and such, but of course a different system under better conditions and without capitalist exploitation, there are still important understandings of peoples connection to their labor) which when that was lost created a lot of alienation and poverty and ravaging of their communities as all post-industrial towns, and anger/resentment with no class consciousness to replace it, as a legacy of bourgeois-initiated red scares white terrors and anti-communist propaganda the pervasiveness of which would make the Nazis swoon. And so environmental/green tech movements and protestors are a point of false-conscious conflict in regards to that legacy which gets emanated into wider culture.

It is a unique expression of spiteful individualist assholery in the US, but only as a form of the general European bourgeois liberal individualism which came from the unique US material conditions, as a natural superstructural outcropping of its bourgeois class interest, which gives rise to bourgeois liberal ideology in its form, which becomes the dominant hegemonic ideology as bourgeois ideology always does, and in a dialectic way then gets taken-and-changed by the working class to their own conditions and perceived interests in whatever level of political consciousness they have. It is, agreed, a spiteful manifestation and expression of liberal individualism which is unique to the US, but it is that just as there are other spiteful manifestations and expressions of liberal individualist assholery in other European countries in other forms from their history and conditions.

Hardly a US specific thing. Individualism will do that, and individualism has been a cornerstone of liberal ideology since its inception out of the material conditions of transition from feudal relations to capitalist private property, with its particular personal profiteering phenomenon in Europe in general. The advent of socialized labor yet individual appropriation, as a natural continuation from small-scale personal artisanal craft and trade where the one exchanging was the one making, evolving into its next stages; with the new productive forces unleashed being owned in these same private hands which could afford them and were established in the markets and trade, alongside the flocking of dispossessed peasants to cities, which began the socialization of labor with machines; but while continuing the same process of personal exchange of the products at market by the owner, who could then afford more machines from the surplus, and employ more socialized labor, etc. And so liberal individualism is a natural the superstructural outcropping of there being an inherent logical assumption of the capitalist “earning” that, even though they did not provide the value, this wasn’t really known or even thought about, people were just continuing relations as they had been, in the new form with the new productive forces, in the new mode of production.

this study is garbage and is focused on how “christian nationalism” is affecting politics, hence the bizarre breakdown (and extreme lack of young people in the report, and with no generational breakdown in a few specific questions including this one, and no breakdown at all for class, income, urban/rural/suburban, or anything, etc.) this whole research non-profit is religious-focused.

but in general, one of the most effective mobilizing rhetorics for the Republicans right now is tying petty bourgeois racist paranoiac tropes (gangs, crime, etc.) to economic working class problems of capitalism which democrats ignore; having it folded into general nationalist false-consciousness trends (which the report does show in its ~5000 people old-religious sample economic concerns over housing and cost of living are the highest concern for people) — the classic conservative ‘they’re competing for our jobs,’ ‘they’re taking all the housing and the democrats are giving it to them,’ ‘they’re the reason you can’t afford x y z,’ ‘they’re driving up taxes while you can barely afford to survive,’ etc. which is a cornerstone of Trump’s campaign. Again the report is TTRASSSHHH and doesn’t tell us who among these percentages are working class or bourgeois, definitely includes no homeless or lumpen, barely includes young people and often avoids breaking down percentages even with what they have, so it’s hard to know anything about the dynamics there in the 5000 sample size that this organization has the gall to extrapolate to “percent of all Americans” and get taken at face value by people. But It’s a big focus of Trump campaign that as much as he does the petty-bourgeois paranoiac racism about immigrants eating dogs and bringing guns (lol the cartels get their guns from us not the other way around) he scapegoats them for housing shortages and cost of living increases and tax costs which are real points of struggle for working people. As well as his fantasy that tariffs will bring jobs back to lumpenized post-industrial towns that are in some cases not much better off as far as opportunity, drugs, crime, capital flight and brain drain, etc. than city slum areas. Which again, who knows if any of these areas are represented in this dogshit study at all.

As always, needs drilled more on that there are already more vacant homes than homeless and its banks and real-estate capitalists who sit on them, the same capitalists who the bourgeois politicians in both parties work for and are financed by and working to break down false consciousness for real class consciousness. Basic communist proletarian tasks of agitation, education, and organization around the real causes of the problems. It’s similar to the weaponization of the heinous capitalist gouging in medical care to attack trans people ‘they can get xyz but insulin/whatever is [cost]’ as if the question is ‘one or the other’ and not ‘stop dividing with bigotry and join action-coalitions with the trans-rights groups who had some successes in places to fight for access to insulin and all of these things’. it’s false consciousness

it is lmao, this whole report is constantly relating things to “christian nationalism” and its affects on politics. what trash. And there’s no class (or even income) or living environment (urban, rural, suburban, gated fcking community) breakdown or anything, and definitely includes no homeless and lumpen areas, is so fixated on religion, and the 18-29 age group is vanishingly small compared to olders — and they totally avoid breaking down the generational percentages on a few questions including this one. This whole report is garbage, I read the actual report and it doesn’t clarify itself for shit, its selection process just blindly assures that it is ‘representative’(enough to say “percentage of americans”) when they’re just emailing people from USPS databases with an additional 315 opt-in which is its own selection type (5000 people no less, to extrapolate to the whole country in all its differing segments for which their breakdown is barely existent except for Christianity types and intersections).

And it is all so obtuse in its focus and bent on this “christian nationalism,” and questions are either vague as to be pointless or weirdly aggressively leading to try to bend it toward that frame and then burying the contextual construction of the series of questions built around it, and their component subquestions, in different places in the text or in separate graphs (with some of the worst graphs I’ve ever seen, why did they do it this way?). And what little cohesion there was in the report this article removes by separating one part, which is broken down into meaningful demographics and extrapolated even less than the other sections even in the report itself, along these same bizarre obtuse lines. I really don’t trust this 5000 person religious-focused obtuse garbage to be able to say as it does “percent of americans.” This is fucking awful.

EDIT:

About PRRI
PRRI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research at the intersection of religion, values, and public life.
Our mission is to help journalists, opinion leaders, scholars, clergy, and the general public better understand debates on public policy issues and the role of religion and values in American public life by conducting high quality public opinion surveys and qualitative research.
PRRI is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the Ameri- can Political Science Association (APSA), and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and follows the highest research standards of independence and academic excellence. History
Since PRRI’s founding in 2009, our research has become a standard source of trusted information among journalists, scholars, policy makers, clergy, and the general public. PRRI research has been cited in thousands of media stories and academic publications and plays a leading role in deepening public understanding of the changing religious landscape and its role in shaping American politics.

5000 is honestly a pretty small sample size of such a populous country, and this whole report is about Religion and its affects in politics, which explains why the religious breakdown focus is so stand-out bizarre. I see even in the full report absolutely no methodological breakdown for things like income, urban/suburban/rural, by design excludes all of the most marginalized including lumpen and homeless and those without USPS access database records and those without internet to do their survey, (and those who wouldn’t be arsed for this kind of stuff) etc. it also barely has anyone in the 18-29 age group, and even in the full report (and so the article) specifically doesn’t mention generation breakdowns when talking about the immigration questions, even though it breaks down the generation percentages in (some) of the other sections, like regarding Israel/Palestine. Honestly there’s a lot that pisses me off about this “study” and report. Whole thing looks ASS and is so obtuse about its framings, specifically trying to illustrate “christian nationalism” and its effects on politics. The longer report is barely even clearer on some of the critical breakdowns of age, etc. and the selection is just emailing people in USPS samples along their weird focus and also getting hundreds of self-selected opt-ins. And the religious focus is just. weird. as. hell.

wait is this just polling US Christians? Did they go to a bunch of churches what is this breakdown lol. Its “methodology” section just names a Stanford-linked research company but doesn’t actually say anything about their criteria here. The number is lower for “unaffiliated” but there’s no breakdown of how many of each of these groups proportionally were asked what.

This is literally already happening and has been since at least Bush and Obama? Does people think the border camps are operated and manned through pinky promises and good-faith dialogue? ICE uses boxes of chocolates and impassioned pleas? I guess this is support of it continuing?

yeah, electric vehicles and stuff could theoretically help by centralizing the energy to efficient source points for gathering and storing the energy (which is still fossil fuels which people forget often) which is used for charging batteries (disposal then becomes its own things, as well as mineral components), rather than just dumping gas and oil on an individual level into every vehicle large and small, efficient and grotesque, and all the idiot consumptive stuff like lawn mowers (which pollute way worse than cars because there’s no regulation and the engines are much less efficient);

But the US doesn’t and won’t have that, because its energy sector is owned by ‘decentralized-centralized’ monopolies (a bunch of shells and subsidiary daughter companies owned by the same people, for book-cooking of course, legally and financially), whose sole goal is profit and increasing consumption in general. China has the capability to do this ‘centralization-for-efficiency’ transition to cut emissions; but the US not only won’t, but is incapable of doing so without completely smashing and overturning its entire structure of economy, and the political structures which grow out of it.

In short:
EL PROBLEMA ES EL CAPITALISMO

#JustLeopoldIIThings

also those metrics are almost always hiding a giant elephant in the corner which fucks the scales entirely — because the Department of “Defense” and their global imperial-behemoth-without-compare military lobbies to not be included in metrics and regulations and climate agreements, and where they are included they bury and manipulate and launder data, to hide that the US military is the single largest institutional consumer of petrochemicals, and #1 institutional emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide — more than the total emissions of 140 countries.

McDonald’s Magic