My parents didn’t live some cushy middle class lifestyle with two cats and a giant garage. My dad is past 70 and still works to live comfortably by cleaning rooms for pensioners around his age. My mom has been disabled since her mid 20s and worries every day about the state potentially cutting her benefits. I was supposed to make the jump to something that paid better and was more professionalized, while checking all the boxes along the way and instead I failed and am right with my dad working for minimum wage and watching people decline every day.

I want to live a life where I at least belong somewhere. That’s the problem I find so much with the left circles I’m in: men like me should just accept being alienated and dying alone because of some unpaid karma to an amorphous mass of the oppressed or something. I don’t want to be a sin eater, I just want to live and die knowing I meant something to someone.

It’s crazy. You can get her to agree we need M4A or a national housing program and she’ll just keep voting Republican anyways. Yesterday I heard her asking about why don’t we do more for the homeless. I’m just like, " why don’t you ask all the Republicans who you voted for that made defending the welfare state a top priority. They were the vanguard of that issue."

That won’t work. These people are more afraid of losing their jobs to rock the boat. Hell, they don’t even have time to cook healthy meals with the long med shifts they do. I’m not going to put my neck out for a bunch of thoroughly lumpenized strangers.

I am talking to a Republican who doesn’t even know what the fuck she voted for. She’s like, “why can’t we just have amnesty for the Dreamers?” Like, she doesn’t even know about the failed Rubio immigration bill from fifteen years ago that the proto Trumpers in the Tea Party took down. An outlier sure but, that sort of ignorance just astonishes me. You can get her to agree that a good chunk of the migrants shouldn’t be treated like that, but then she’ll be like “Trump wouldn’t do that to the illegal who’s been taking care of my horses for ten years, he has a family here,” and just keep voting for the Republicans anyways.

They’ll just tell them that the high rent prices are causes by “the CCP” or something. I’ve heard POC line cooks tell me that they “heard the Chinese are trying to take over the world.”

I don’t think you can really reach workers either. Workplace density is shit because of automation, nobody wants to step out of line because they have kids they’re scared will lose support, and a good chunk of the working class (especially the white ones) can be bought off by just promising to make someone else’s life worse than their own.

Frankly, I’ve concluded the average voter is too stupid to comprehend the totality of the class structure that oppresses them. They want simple and stupid answers to the things that make their lives shit. Often wrapped up in conspiracism by an other.

Like, for example: Why is it getting hot and the weather becoming so severe in parts of the US? Our answer: Capitalist practices causing runaway anthropogenic climate change. The Fascist answer: The weather radar is being used to manipulate the weather. Guess which explanation large swaths of the population are enthralled by. Guess which answer caused a bunch of militia hogs to go and disable a weather radar in Oklahoma.

Nah, I agree with everything you said. I appreciate it.

They’ll probably just say the water prices are to blame on the Polish service workers or something. Hog brain is widespread throughout every country in the treat-o-sphere.

He’d blow up what’s left of the bond market if he did that.

What about calling her Kahanepoints?

What if we make it a statue of St. Columba, that way we make the Irish happy too.

He should just double down and go with the Lori Lightfoot approach. That’s the best way to handle obnoxious Italian-Americans.

Thank you for sharing this. I showed my Turkish friend and she was happy to see this.

I’ve been away from here for awhile but have been back to lurking the news comm to keep up with current events. While that happened I met this woman who I have a lot in common with. She’s a fellow queer atheist history nerd and we’ve become fast friends after texting back and forth everyday for the last two months. She’s such a sweet person and I try to tell her that to be encouraging and supportive.

The cold dead hand of Pharma Jim.

I just assume they’re all dead. I always assume the worst in these situations.

That is going beyond even Soviet losses in WWII, in terms of percentage of total population.

It’s just pure evil.

What happens when we run out of American awards? Do we convince the British to give him a BAFTA? Or better, give him a damn knighthood. Give him all the knighthoods. The liberals will scream about the Emoluments Clause again but, that didn’t stop him the first time.

Pope Dan.

I’m still voting for John Goodman.