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>>2398014 >Despite increasing public and political pressure, former U.S. President Donald Trump has not followed through on his promise to release all documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. Trump made the pledge during his 2024 presidential campaign, but no such documents have been made public to date.
<A Private Party with Only Epstein
>According to The Independent, Trump once hosted a private party attended by "young women," where the only other guest was the now-deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This claim is detailed in a New York Times article titled “Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein”, which was published on Saturday.
>The article outlines a close association between Trump and Epstein that lasted nearly 15 years, with the two socializing regularly in Manhattan and Palm Beach.
<Beauty Contests and Controversial Guest Lists
>Trump reportedly hosted events at his Mar-a-Lago estate, including so-called calendar girl competitions attended by young women. One of these parties was organized by Florida businessman George Houraney, who later expressed surprise that Epstein was the only other person on the guest list.
>This revelation came just days after The Wall Street Journal reported on a letter album created for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Among the messages was a crude note and a sketch of a nude woman allegedly sent by Trump.
<Mounting Pressure to Disclose Documents
>Calls for transparency are intensifying as lawmakers and the public demand the release of all documents related to Epstein’s criminal network. So far, Trump has resisted these demands, despite his earlier campaign pledge.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-epstein-party-women-b2792328.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/us/politics/inside-trump-epstein-friendship.html >>2399052you are right
I live a middle class californian. Must be my privilege blinding me.
>>2399204>the bill will obviously cut Israel off because it doesn't have an exception built in like Israel normally getsHow many times has this been said before already?
>Ever heard of FARA?Don't be patronizing, you know where you are, we all know what FARA is.
>And nobody said anything about it passing. my point is these bills that negatively effect Israel keep getting introduced when 3 years ago it would have been inconceivable for even one to pop up. My point is that it absolutely won't negatively affect Israel, and there have been plenty of bills around the last Trump administration that should have applied to Israel, but didn't, especially in regards to genocide, repression of ethnic minorities, persecution of Christians, etc. I read up on the bill, and the representative doesn't even care for Israel, they're referring to the top 50 "worst persecutors" on Open Doors, of which Israel isn't considered one of. It also just gives the president further powers to make such a decision, which means that can always give Israel a pass. This isn't targeted against Israel, this is targeted against every country that
isn't Israel.
To quote the website of the representative putting it forward:
<According to Open Doors, a charitable organization that gives relief to Christians in hostile countries, more than one in seven Christians worldwide experience, or are in danger of, persecution. Several of the countries responsible receive significant U.S. security assistance.Israel ain't one of these on the site.
>All this bill does it highlight the growing appetite to drop israel. yeah were not there yet, but the bills prove we're approaching itDo you actually think a single Republican is pushing this to give power to the president to restrict arms to Israel, and not instead the dozens of other countries they've been yammering about for decades? Rep. Luna talked more about how Ukraine was suppressing the Orthodox Church more then she talked about Israel lol.
>>2399230>show me an attempt before 2023. the fact that's it's happening at all is insane.It isn't targeting Israel you idiot, the person behind the bill makes no mention of Israel and refers to a list that doesn't contain Israel, while also making a screed about the Orthodox Church being suppressed in Ukraine. This has as close to nothing to do with Israel, and likely won't be used against it because the President get the say in the end. >Israel used to have the power to shut down a bill like this before it's even introduced. AIPACs influence over Congress is waning and these bills are proof of it.
You're fucking delusional if you think one of the most pro-Israel presidential administrations, congress', and senates' are outside of Israels influence lol. If anything, you have people passing pro-israel legislation before AIPAC even considers it. The president and Congress has always had the power to tell Israel to kick rocks, hell, one of the most pro-Israel presidents in history did it more then two decades ago. Currently? There has been next to nothing as of fuck all.
>>2399231>The SS was chock full of yids are you joking?Show me proof of hundreds, even thousands, that would even slightly off set the numbers you are talking about.
>The 6 million number is pulled from Talmudic numerology and is a metaphor for the burnt offering also known as a HOLOCAUST of goyim necessary to establish Israel. Proof? The 6 million number is "pulled" from being a round number between 5.4 million (the lower estimate) and 6.2 million (the higher estimate). It has nothing to do with "Talmudic numerology" or "metaphors for burnt offerings". It's honestly an extremely reasonable number given the deaths included, which range from just routine shootings to starvations in ghettos.
>You don’t need to spout Zionist talking points just because you’re afraid of being called /pol/Bruh, this is the USSR's talking point, wtf are you on? Nothing about the killing of Jews during WW2 is a Zionist talking point, if anything Holocaust survivors found themselves routinely abused in Israel for being "weak" and "cowards", called sabra in contrast to proper Israeli Yishuv.
>>2399249There isn't anything they won't blame on
illegals, also they implied 100% of them are in gangs. But they aren't wholesome family oriented gangsters like the Italian mafia.
>>2399264>Cancel Iron Dome funding There you go again substituting reality for what you want. She didn't put any such bill forward to cancel Iron Dome funding, she put forward a bill to cut $500 million from the existing billions still going to Israel in order to save some money, and even then had that shot down by practically every other congressional member. This is like arguing that things are changing because Al Gore put forward a moderate climate initiative that never made it past the floor.
>Give me a single example before 2023 that targeted Israel in this wayThe Biden era had the weapons halt (that got overturned), and reinstated aid to Palestine and UNRWA (which got cut after). So just like MTG, measly acts that did little and got put in the dirt as fast as they tried to get off the ground. How is this any proof of things changing or the current congress turning away from Israel? 422- 6? Are you joking?
>>2399288he says that crack-cocaine it's mayonnaise and baking soda, so he's implying that crack-cocaine (just sodium carbonate) it's just sodium carbonate, baking soda (the same thing as sodium carbonate) and mayonnaise.
Again, is he trying to look stupid?
>>2399313>Thats a lot of words just to say you couldn't find a single example of bills negatively impacting Israel before 2023. We literally had a weapons halt, which is more then the literal nothing that didn't pass. Omar introduced countless bills before this to try and block weapons sales to Israel. Also nothing.
>Face it my guy, the influence AIPAC has over Congress is shrinking, not getting stronger. We have literally one of the most pro-israel congress's to exist in a while, I wish I lived in the world you lived in.
>You can expect to see more bills like this in the future. The final temperature increase makes the water boil, but it doesn't make all the energy invested in it before that moment worthlessAgain, before MTG did this one thing, Omar was constantly throwing out bills and making statements. And just like her, it didn't go anywhere. This wasn't even a bill, it was an amendment to the budget. We've had plenty of those in the past from the exact same people regarding the budget, what is this delusional do nothing bullshit? Do you tell yourself this so you can sit on your hands and do nothing, just waiting for when maybe the US votes against its imperial ambitions and MIC? It's not waiting for bills that will change this you retard, it's the people and power they wield.
>>2399121one of the bleakest things is how slow public consciousness is to catch up. A genocide is being live streamed and people are changing their opinoins much more slowly than the urgency of the genocide calls for. I want to say like 5 different things right here and add a bunch of disclaimers and footnotes to what I have said so far in this post alone but to keep it simple I wonder if this is because peple only "change their mind" opportunistically after the atrcotity is finished or if they really are just that stupid and slow to catch up.
Do I attribute this to ignorance or malice?
>>2399383You'd much rather throw away the lives of everyone else's family because you need more Nikes and Funko Pops.
I guess they should have been born a part of your "golden billion" Volk if they wanted to live, right?
>>2399393So your solution is that the third world should come here, depopulate their homes, and serve as low paid wage slaves for the American capitalist, thereby enriching your precious Volk even more at the cost of the immigrants.
What a brilliant plan. This will fix everything!
>>2399394There are no Communists in America right now.
>>2399367both/and. sometimes simultaneously in the same people sometimes in very different ways among different people.
i think an important variable with this kind of thing is how long it stays in the news + how often/from what side you run into irritants in your daily life. in this case zionists have been so complacent in taking for granted their status as hallowed victims that they way overplayed their hand and are themselves responsible for keeping the genocide in the public consciousness. ironically theyve successfully convinced people that zionism and being a jew are identical so the rise in anti-zionism is accompanied by a genuine rise in anti-semitism. which isnt only a "poor jews" issue, its reactionary obfuscationism that leaves politics open for all kinds of fascists who've been waiting in the wings. i suspect that a surge of antizionism in the US will leave us with the same zionism being equated with judaism, but itll seesaw from generally accepted as both good things to genuinely accepted as both bad things while retaining the same reactionary core. might even get christian zionists who hop on the antisemitism train after all and talk about directly annexing the holy land for the America Under God and settling christians there.
obviously none of that is any reason to not be glad about a surge in antizionism, never thought i'd see that in my life, tho hard to be happy about it when it took the absolute destruction and genocide of gaza to even start moving in that direction. im just remarking on the irony of the fact that its zionists themselves that are most effectively incubating a resurgence to 19th century schizo antisemitism
>>2399399don't take the bait. not only are you taking his bait you're hitting all the trigger checkboxes like mentioning that you have a family and friends (precious volk) etc. just stop replying. He's right that we should fight our own government and every second we don't do that we are inherently complicit in genocide. Beyond that I think he overstates and exaggerates to the point of pushing people away.
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." - attributed to Einsten but idc who said it
>>2399399So rather than making the world a better place (Communism), your strategy is to make America a better place, explicitly at the cost of the rest of the world, who will be driven to immigrate here and provide an endless stream of entry-level workers to do all the shit jobs you and your family refuse to do.
You want slaves. You are objectively a Strasserite. Why do you even post here when you are literally a National-Socialist?
>>2399410The vast majority of Americans supported the war from the first day to the last day and even now only very few of them know or care about the atrocities committed there. Same with Iraq.
>>2399422Revolution in their minds
The children start to march
Against the world in which they have to live
And all the hate that's in their hearts
They're tired of being pushed around
And told just what to do
They'll fight the world until they've won
And love comes flowing through, yeah
>>2399466I unironically brought this same issue up before in the context of Grubhub and DoorDash and said facetiously that if you can’t survive without DoorDash you should just starve. Instantly got called a Nazi for it.
So it’s pretty funny seeing people who’d defend “we need DoorDash for disabled folks to survive” suddenly do a 180 as long as you say “FIRST WORLD disabled person says they need DoorDash”
>>2399475>they just died!!doordash was launched 13 years ago in 2012, how many disabled people who “require” doordash today are above 13 years old? are the older ones all wealthy/provided for by their family?
what about places where these apps don’t exist? how do disabled people eat there?
>>2399361this is the actual measure of treatlerites. wanting access to stable, decent healthcare and housing does not make you a "treatlerite." neither does going to the movies with friends or playing video games or whatever other average, innocuous activity that isnt either work or guerilla warfare.
acting like access to overpriced luxuries is equivelant to essential public infrastructure is treatlerism. moralizing and victimization to defend your right to grubhub is delusional, rancid behavior.
rule of thumb for not a treatlerite: if someone is willing to accept eating self-prepared rice & beans 6 days a week, give up any car ownership and prospect of an apartment larger than 800sq ft per resident with minimal amenities, in exchange for assured stable sufficient work, healthcare, rent control, and public transportation. many many americans already live with these "drawbacks" except worse & would jump at the prospect of having a good enough bus service that they didnt need to shovel half their wage into car payments etc etc. if somebody starts talking about how they "need" a bigger apartment/selection of various meals and restaraunts/their own car even with sufficient public transport + work vehicles when appropriate, they are full of shit and qualify as treatlerite
>>2399480if it's about cooked vs. uncooked then it's a completely different issue than gig economc vs. trad economy.
because traditional pizza delivery is cooked
and shit like grocery delivery is uncooked.
at this point you're just like "how dare you purchase cooked food through a delivery service".
Who cares. is anyone really surprised that a person would work 12 hours, and spend the last 4 hours of their income on making sure a hot fresh meal arrives at their apartment around the same time they get home? all this tiresome moralism and needless nitpicking. there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
btw i go to the grocery store and cook my own food so don't make this about me defending my own lifestyle (imageboard faggots can't help but do this)
>>2399506well that's good because petty bourgeois labor aristocrats are becoming exploited, and therefore moral
actually wait no it's bad because petty bourgeois treatlerites are exploiting the poor gig workers
damn i can't figure out the right way to apply moralism and get mad at economic developments within class society. maybe I should consult the saints.
>>2399361She is right though? Do people not realize that old people are also often disabled and not every single one of them has kids or grandkids that takes care of them
>B-But muh good capitalist state will help them for sureDo you also believe in the tooth fairy and the myth of the free market?
>>2399514im not saying its an actual necessary tradeoff, its meant as a thought experiment. but tbf the amount of land used for livestock, the amount of crops that go to feed them, & the methane output they produce is all wildly inefficient and expensive compared to the amount of protein & nutrients actually provided.
anyway the point is that to anyone except the already secure middle class these barely sound like tradeoffs compared to what you get for them. if i didnt have to deal with precarity and expense of work, housing, & health for me or my loved ones its hard to imagine what i'd even be stressed about. and its hard for me to imagine that someone who wouldnt take such a mild trade of grubhub for those things being secured has any idea what most peoples primary concerns are
>>2399553>>2399555Actually it's pretty fucking expensive and unless you're a rich retiree you generally cant afford that long term, and the family thing only works if you have family which is willing and able to take time out of their life to aid you, which unfortunately is not an option for a lot of disabled people who are cut off by the rest of their family for being "burdens".
I'm not saying grubhub and doordash are sustainable either mind you, but as long as we continue living in this cartoonish dystopia that is the United States of America for some people that's going to be the only option.
>>2399581Lmao. Someone gave the twitter account to a schizo? Pure mental.
Someone needs to *THROW GLOWSTICK* SHAKIRA SHAKIRA that place asap and put us out of our misery having to see this stuff.
2,000 National Guard troops expected to be called up to assist at ICE detention facilities, sources say
>Roughly 2,000 National Guard troops across multiple states are expected to be mobilized to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement at detention facilities, according to a US official and a source familiar with the planning.
>It’s unclear when the troops will be mobilized, though the US official said the move, which is still under deliberation, could come as soon as this week. Both sources said the troops will be placed on Title 32 status, which puts them under the command of their governors and not subject to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
>The Trump administration has ramped up immigration arrests nationwide, resulting in a dramatic increase of people in ICE custody. As of Tuesday, there were around 57,000 people in ICE custody, according to federal data obtained by CNN. Senior Trump officials are preparing to expand detention space nationwide in the coming weeks after receiving a historic amount of funding from Congress.
>The US official said the mobilization is expected to call up National Guard troops from as many as 20 states who will be tasked with some hands-on roles including conducting finger printing and mouth swabbing of detainees. National Guard forces have largely been used to provide administrative assistance to ICE thus far, though the US official said ICE has communicated the need for assistance in other areas.
>A defense official said the Pentagon would not “speculate on future operations or operational needs, but DoD stands ready to support our DHS partners in executing the President’s executive orders and protecting the United States’ sovereign territory.”
>The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
>The plans are in line with an earlier request from DHS to the Defense Department asking for thousands of National Guard personnel to assist with a range of tasks, including processing, transportation support and detention support. According to the request, obtained by CNN, up to 2,500 National Guard personnel were requested to support security at detention facilities, in-facility operations like meal distribution, processing and emergency response.
>A Senate aide said the expected move to put 2,000 Guardsmen on Title 32 status was significant and likely an indicator of the administration moving closer to the full request from DHS for thousands more Guardsmen to assist in immigration enforcement across the country.
>“If you’re plotting the points on a graph of the way the administration has taken one step at a time, you continue that trajectory and it’s going to look pretty similar to what DHS has been requesting, as far as 20,000 troops across the country performing what we’d consider to be immigration enforcement activities,” the aide said.
>CNN has reported that the White House and Department of Homeland Security have been seeking ways to use the National Guard and the military more broadly to help bolster immigration enforcement around the country, in an effort to ramp up arrests of migrants.
>While ICE is preparing to receive an unprecedented $75 billion in funding, current and former Homeland Security officials say the recruiting and training of ICE personnel is likely to take weeks or months, requiring outside assistance in the interim.
>Roughly 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilized last month to assist ICE personnel in Los Angeles, in response to protests and to protect federal personnel and property, though half of them have since been released from the mission.
>The Florida National Guard has also been mobilized to conduct base camp security at a new detention center in the Everglades, the Pentagon announced earlier this month, though a spokesperson for the Florida Guard previously said they had not yet been tasked with “detention or enforcement operations.”
All aboard the fascism train! Choo choo motherfuckers
>>2399678>>2399664I have no clue where they live. Trust me I'd love to but I wouldn't know where to start on a Blue Ruin revenge quest against these assholes.
Also I have looked up rent orgs near me but I'm unsure of working with them.
How valid would a direct complaint to the government be?
>>2399685See above
>>2399690Exactly.
Lets say I kill my landlord.
It would barely make a dent.
>above the lawYeah I know.
Which is why despite potential fraud and blatant illegal eviction idk about sueing.
>>2399693Honestly I just want to stop the eviction and spend the last month of my lease finding a new place.
Can I send an anonymous tip in?
>>2399591<Transgender women>Trans peopleWrong.
Presumably transgender males can still compete in male sports…
OH WAIT I WONDER WHY THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN >>2399742i hate to say it but shes not entirely wrong about this. shes a liberal thats playing politics and the vote was cowardly but her actual voting record on israel is much better than most people acknowledge to the point where its almost misinformation to say shit like shes a zionist that votes for genocide.
she is trendy, cringey liberal that plays nice with some of the worst people in the world, and her vote on this was inexcusable. if anything its disappointing because its NOT just more of the same as far as her record on israel specifically, just not surprising that shes trying to fencesit and save face
>>2399628Unironically I think a good tactic would be trying to do revolutionary defeatism on the NatGuard.
To court some controversy here, I think the cops are better for the bourgeois government's ends than the NatGuard or military. The cops have a psychology of "Us vs Them", their job is to police and control the masses. It's a short leap from giving traffic tickets to evicting someone from their home to beating them senseless. The NatGuard is different because, under normal circumstances, they get the psychological boon of doing disaster relief. I know it sounds like a silly trope, but doing good feels good for a lot of people. If you're the guy handing out blankets and food to a place afflicted by flooding, or evacuating people from a burning town, on some level you're feeling good about it. Especially if it's people being genuinely grateful for your help. On some level, it can almost be an addicting feeling.
Then the government turns around and says you have to guard the Gestapo while they abduct people. There are folks protesting. They're telling you to stop. You're seeing a bunch of masked thugs throw little kids in handcuffs. And I think the dissonance is way more distressing. You aren't used to seeing the people as your "enemy" and in fact you probably convinced yourself that your job is protecting them, but now you've got to be the bad guy.
And the conditions these guys are working in? Not good. Shit, aren't there reports about how some of them are getting such limited bathroom breaks they've resorted to shitting in humvees and stuff? You've got marines sleeping on concrete floors while ICE agents are being bunked in hotels. During the Texas border standoff in the Biden Admin, you unironically had guardsmen talk about forming a union; shit I saw a few posting "we should just start flying the Texas flag, 'cause it'd warn people that this is a racist shithole that's just gonna hurt them. This isn't the better life they're looking for." And in the George Floyd riots, I mean I saw folks who were happy the NatGuard were there because it was clear the police were just thugs looking to beat people, meanwhile the Guardsmen themselves reported a lot of sentiment that was basically "The cops fucking suck, they're making everything worse."
An active campaign to cause morale to sink to abyssal lows would be good in general, I think. Keep reminding these guys how shitty their assignment is, how awful ICE is, and see how much needs to be done before they break and say "I don't want to do this shit anymore."
>>2399776>What does this mean as foreigner?Basically the House is planning on going on their summer break (politicians get more time off than people these days) and there are enough people in the House to try to force a vote on the Epstein files, maybe even pass.
Trump wants the Epstein files suppressed, 'cause he's a pedophile. He wants all discussion on it smothered. And this puts Republicans in a real lose-lose situation because they've wholeheartedly adopted this Cult belief system (Q-Anon) that Trump is in a literal spiritual war with satanic pedophiles that all centers around the Epstein shit. Like they genuinely believe there's some spiritual battle going on where Hillary is sacrificing babies to Moloch and eating them for magic powers and that Trump is this holy crusader type that will stop them.
Thing is, Trump was an Epstein associate, he doesn't want the files released, so if it goes to a vote there are only two possibilities.
>The Files ARE released, implicating a lot of powerful people including Trump himself. Possibly uncovering an Israeli blackmail scheme at a time in which Israel's reputation is in the toilet. People start demanding blood in the streets.>The files AREN'T released thanks to the house voting against it, at which point a LOT of Republican politicians will have to explain to extremely angry and cultish followers why they voted against releasing the Epstein files.It's a lose-lose, so they're trying to close the House early so that they wont have to vote at all, perhaps hoping everyone forgets about the Epstein stuff after a few months.
>>2399793Okay Trump, sure. But what are we talking here? This is far more wretched than a celebrity pedo. They can't just release shit without bringing down probably half the leadership of NATO and beyond. So are we expecting they are going to release some sort of partisan edit which only implicates select targets or something?
Even that seems like a horrid standard to set for partisan lawfare. They are already relativizing every other part of liberal democracy (and media) to partisan and culture war lines. Every election is called into question. Every administration flirts with using the military on civilians. Both Dems and Reps openly flaunt the revolving door as a good thing. Making the deep state part of it may just be the end of all legitimacy in the eyes of the vooter, who has probably little sympathy for spooks. Even if they are told that's just the latest weapon "their side" has.
>>2399809Honestly, I support a lolbert conception of sports. No rules, bring in the most desperate and exploited of people and use the most destructive of doping. If the participants aren't spontaneously mutating into a Chaos Spawn like monstrosity, you aren't using enough drugs.
Or bloodsports.
The point is, the sooner we get the cruelty out of our system the better.
>>2399810To be honest I think you could get some surprising results if you had a “popular front” of MAGA guys and radical leftists demanding a release of the Epstein docs and the people in them to be held to account.
>>2399806It’s honestly the “perfect crime” in the sense that it gets to the root of the system. All capitalist government is, are various layers of obfuscation to say the rich can do whatever they want. No one likes a pedophile, shit they’re the one thing that I think everyone from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Nation of Islam can agree on killing in prison. So liberal democracies genuinely can’t release the files and continue as normal, and people can’t just accept en masse “Okay, well, the rich can rape kids Scot-free”
>>2399717>>2399718None of you have to worry about it because you're far rightists.
>>2399785American troops joined the military to murder people for the endless profits of capital in exchange for free college and healthcare so it's not a surprise to see you glazing them. The only use for an American soldaten is target practice.
>>2399785Well see that's why they're in a rush to get in some new recruits. They're using the National Guard to fill in the gaps now, but they've got thousands and thousands of nut jobs they've hired as part of the ICE expansion who are still going through training so they can be trusted to hold a gun without massacring their entire unit for the lulz. That'll take a couple of months, and once those guys are deployed the main advantage they'll have is complete loyalty to the Trump administration. The high command would be able to order the rank and file to sleep on concrete or the dirt and they'd worship the ground they walked on because all this sacrifice and austerity is being done for God and Trump.
The way I see it we've got about a month before the first wave of these indoctrinated recruits starts hitting the streets, by that point they'll phase out using the National Guard for these postings
>>2399818You can't just purge cruelty from humans like that. The cruelty remains, and is soon codified.
No, we must root out the most counterproductively cruel among us, and either rehabilitate or utterly liquidate them.
>>2399832>You project your misanthropic tendencies upon others, without an iota of self-reflection.nta but I think the point anon is making, besides the edge, is that you don't need the misanthropy. You don't need to think of yourself as a gun for hire for capital to be one. The cruelty is exerted through you, whatever you feel about it.
One who supports (and even helps to implement) the wonky policies of say, WEF's PR coat over neoliberalism, may think themselves a pragmatic humanist. MAy lead a loving life and be a loving partner and be a the kindest person around town… and still be a functionary in a mass murdering machine with the blood of millions on his hands.
>>2399827The national guard isn't deployed in foreign countries you absolute moron
>>2399842No it's just Felix being his usual self
>>2399838I spent some time reading up on Trump shit and their go to argument is basically that Trump did way better than he actually did in 2016 but the democrats still committed “fraud” (it just wasn’t enough) and that’s why he lost the popular vote.
Like a popular MAGA conspiracy was that Trump actually secretly won California of all places but there were so many illegals illegally voting that it flipped blue.
>>2399853At least with the crackhead who called an autistic kid the N-word they had the simp excuse
Imagine giving $30k to some fat loser
>>2399851Something important to consider is the optics we view both parties with. I know this is gonna sound absurd, but I think Republicans genuinely view liberals as a Machiavellian evil. Like this will sound ridiculous, but one of my buddies was born and raised in a republican town with republican parents, and if the topic of CalExit comes up, he says if it ever happened then the liberals will build death camps for republicans. Like they wholly expect them to start producing lists of anyone who voted Trump and just start shoving them into cattle cars. Even his fucking retiree parents.
And it seems ridiculous over here, cause I think lots of folks on the Left come from a milieu of disappointed liberalism (lord knows the Obama years were a blackpill for me) and so we have this image of democratic politicians as impotent, feckless, losers. Unironically Republicans are convinced of the same thing from their own party, but it goes into what both sides expect. We see Dems as feckless losers because of their various political bungles, while Republicans see Democrats as these Machiavellian geniuses who managed to “brainwash” the country into various left wing social causes. Like, we’d consider the Dems bungling shit like the entire Biden admin or their fetishization of West Wing as proof of them being cucks. The Republicans would point to, I dunno, Black Panther having a scene where they bark down a white guy for speaking out of turn as proof the democrats are geniuses completely shaping the culture. Some kid comes back from college and says “yknow Columbus was bad?” And they think Pelosi did it. They’re convinced that the Democrats are part of an open conspiracy that wants to slowly kill off their religious faith, upend their history, and completely invert everything they see the world as being.
I think Felix from Chapo described it best. Obama getting a second term didn’t just disappoint Republicans, it caused this massive psychic anguish, this dissonance over what they thought America
was versus what it
is. I don't know how they are going to call that photo with Ivanka and Eric we've had since forever "exclusive" but ok.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/22/politics/kfile-trump-epstein-photos-footage Exclusive: Newly discovered photos and video shed fresh light on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein
> Newly uncovered archived video footage and photos reveal fresh details about Donald Trump’s past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
>Photos from 1993 confirm for the first time that Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. Epstein’s attendance at the ceremony at the Plaza Hotel was not widely known until now.
>In addition, footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York shows Trump and Epstein laughing and chatting together ahead of the runway event. CNN’s KFile uncovered the raw footage during a review of archival video of Trump at events in the 1990s and 2000s. Trump and Epstein appeared together in at least one video among the limited archival footage reviewed.
> The new footage and photos, which have not been widely reported and pre-date any of Epstein’s known legal issues, come amid renewed scrutiny of Trump’s past relationship with Epstein. The Justice Department’s recent decision not to release long-promised files related to Epstein has spurred outrage in some corners of Trump’s MAGA movement, where people developed an expectation for bombshell revelations into Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators.
>In a brief call with CNN on Tuesday, President Trump, asked about the wedding photos, responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” before repeatedly calling CNN “fake news” and hanging up.
>In a statement to CNN, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “These are nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious.
>“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
>Allegations that Epstein sexually abused underage girls first surfaced in 2005, leading to his arrest a year later. He was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and later died in jail, fueling numerous conspiracy theories. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging.
< A past relationship
>Trump’s relationship with Epstein dates back to the 1980s and included regular appearances at social events in Palm Beach and New York. No law enforcement authorities have ever accused Trump of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
>The two had a falling-out in the mid-2000s, according to the Washington Post, stemming from a dispute over a high-profile real estate deal in Palm Beach.
>Before then, photos and video repeatedly showed the two were friendly. In 2019, NBC posted footage of a party showing Trump socializing with Epstein in 1992.
>A year later in October 1993, high-society photographer Dafydd Jones took photos at the opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York, capturing Trump and Epstein together.
>“There was this guy there who struck me — the way he was looking — and he gave me his card. It said: Jeffrey Epstein, financial advisor,” Jones recalled in an interview with CNN this week.
> Jones captured photos of Trump with his arm around his two young children as he stands next to Epstein, leaning on a railing.
>Two months later, in December 1993, Jones was assigned by a media organization to photograph Trump’s wedding. Among the photos he took was one of Epstein entering the event.
>“I must have recognized him going in [to the event],” Jones said to CNN, adding he only took select photos of attendees he thought looked interesting.
> “I wish now I took more of him with Trump,” he said. “I had the job of photographing the Trump wedding, so I stood with the press and photographed him. The image you have is from the contact sheet — the negatives were lost.”
>Another photo captures Epstein at Trump’s wedding, part of LIFE’s archive that was reviewed by CNN. It shows Epstein smiling in the background — his head just visible between other guests and shock jock Howard Stern and Robin Leach of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” who were taking a group picture.
>LIFE’s collection of dozens of photos of Trump’s wedding are available online through Google Images and Shutterstock, and a CNN review of photos found multiple photos with Epstein.
< Together at a fashion show
>The 1999 fashion show wasn’t the first Victoria’s Secret event the pair attended together. Two photos from Getty Images show Trump and Epstein appearing at a 1997 Angels party in New York, two years before the footage uncovered by CNN.
>Epstein’s presence at the 1999 fashion show also reflects his longstanding ties to Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company. Epstein managed Wexner’s finances from 1987 to around 2007. The two later severed ties, and Wexner has said he was unaware of Epstein’s alleged crimes during their association.
>In 2002, Trump was quoted in a New York Magazine profile of Epstein — “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery” — describing him as “a terrific guy,” saying he’s known Epstein for 15 years. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.
>Trump flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York, at least seven times according to flight logs.
>In his 2004 book, “Trump: How To Get Rich,” Trump wrote about taking a call from a man he named “the mysterious Jeffrey.”
>“As mysterious as Jeffrey is, he’s one of the few people I know who can get by on just a first name. My staff never asks for a last name in his case, which in a way puts him up there with Elvis. Not that Elvis calls in much these days, but you never know,” Trump wrote.
>It’s unclear if the “mysterious Jeffrey” is Epstein and White House did not address it in a comment to CNN.
>Images published in the Palm Beach Post in 2000 also show Trump, Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell — who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking — and Prince Andrew in attendance at a charity fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
>Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on a birthday message sent bearing Trump’s name for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. According to the Journal, it contained an outline of a naked woman and a typed note that ended with the line: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
>Following the report, the Trump administration pledged to release grand jury materials related to Epstein. The federal judge overseeing Maxwell’s case set a deadline for the Justice Department to provide information so he can determine whether to unseal the transcripts.
>The Department of Justice also said Tuesday it has reached out to Maxwell for a meeting amid backlash over the administration’s handling of files related to Epstein.
>Maxwell’s attorney told CNN they “are in discussions with the government” on the matter. “Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case,” attorney David Oscar Markus said.
>Trump has denied authoring the note and drawing, calling the report false. On Friday, he sued the newspaper for libel in federal court in Florida. >>2399866>what is it with bernie ? rose tinted glasses? nostagia for the days of the 'socilaist' kibbutzim and the good ol' labour zionism of gentle yitzak 'break their bones' Rabin? or is it perhaps something a bit more cynical?It's just identity, it's part of who we are, it's as simple as the fact Bernie Sanders is Jewish. If you want a funny example of this thinking in action, Stavros Halkias has a bit where he talks about seeing a black kid telling some white trash kid at his school that his ancestors were torturing slaves or somesuch. The white kid got upset and started pushing back, Stav laughed at the absurdity of it, and when the black kid asked him what's so funny, immediately a teacher intervened with:
>"No no no! You gotta understand, the Greeks had NOTHING to do with that!"Israel and its actions ultimately strike at the core of Jewish identity. For as far as we've come as a society, we still have this borderline superstitious idea of evil being "in the blood" as it were. Another example: you find out some random guy on the news is a pedophile and you might say "Well he should get the gas chamber!" or delight in how you'd sadistically brutalize him. You find out your neighbor is a pedophile and you might get nervous, you might think back on every conversation you had with him, you might tell the press "I never would've known!" Now, if you find out your parent or some sibling is a pedophile, then I think for most people it'd shock them to their core. Its terrifying. There's a sense of profound guilt even if you aren't personally guilty of anything. Some people will go into denial, "Oh it was all a setup, they would never" while others just kind of collapse into waves of anguish. I think most people wouldn't want to talk about it as readily as they would seeing some random pedophile get arrested on the news.
There's a kind of psychic distance by which people outside a certain identity can critique aspects of that identity with almost no anguish. I doubt a protestant or a Muslim feels any discomfort at, say, the Catholic sex abuse scandals. Catholics though? Lots of discomfort, lots of anguish. And for many just "dropping" Catholicism isn't an option because it's part of who they are, it's their childhood faith, they still have some affinity for it. Shit, didn't Gramsci decorate his cell with religious iconography because it reminded him of his childhood? My parish monsignor when I was little was just a nice Irish guy who'd let the homeless live with him until they could get back on their feet. I certainly don't hate the priesthood with the vigor of someone totally removed from Catholicism.
It's psychological distance. I've met "nice" Israelis in the form of an old man who shops in my store, talks a lot about health foods and soups, just a really friendly guy. But I'm not an Israeli and I'm not Jewish. At the end of the day the psychic anguish brought on by seeing a bunch of grotesque looking dudes laughing about bombing children outweighs whatever attachment I have to the nice old Israeli guy that shops in my store. By contrast, a coworker of mine is Mormon, but his close friends are Jews and he has a part time job helping this synagogue with graphic design/AV type stuff; he's quietly more pro-Israeli.
It's disappointing and can be kind of cynical, but I saw a turn among some very loud and very progressive Jewish people after October 7th. They'd be the first allies to march for Black Lives Matter but then get awfully anxious if they saw a Palestinian flag there. And while it looks absurd to us, as I think it'd be hypocritical to support BLM but oppose Palestinian rights, this time it's them in the crosshairs. If it comes to talking about shit like America's history of racism, certain groups, even white-adjacent ones, can say: "Oh that wasn't us, we're the Jews/Greeks/Italians/Irish, we came after the bad white people did all the genociding, we're innocent! In fact, we're victims too! They used to say 'Italians Need Not Apply'!"
It turns out things like standards are, for a lot of people, relative.
>>2399871I suppose I could, but what would that entail? Certainly more than posting left-wing propaganda on Facebook most likely.
>>2399872I've thought about something like this, and it's not a bad idea, but I'll be honest I don't know who would help me. I live in a reactionary area, and most of my coworkers seem rather right-wing. It's why I'm hesitant to try to form a union.
Also I don't really have many real-life friends anymore, not that I ever had many to be honest. >>2399866> nostagia for the days of the 'socilaist' kibbutzim and the good ol' labour zionism https://www.timesofisrael.com/revealed-the-mystery-kibbutz-that-once-hosted-bernie-sanders/
>WASHINGTON — The identity of the kibbutz on which Bernie Sanders spent several months in 1963 has finally come to light, after a veteran Israeli journalist announced that the Democratic hopeful had named it in an interview with him more than 25 years ago.
>Sanders, a senator from Vermont now running for the Democratic presidential nod, spoke to then-Haaretz correspondent Yossi Melman in 1990, on the eve of his election to the US House of Representatives as a socialist. He named the kibbutz where he volunteered as Sha’ar HaAmakim.
>The newspaper, like others in Israeli and Jewish media, had tried previously to locate the kibbutz as Sanders’ campaign gained traction, but until Melman said Thursday on Twitter that Sanders had named the kibbutz, no one had tracked this particular story in its archive.
>In the article, reproduced Thursday on Haaretz’s website, Sanders tells Melman that he visited Israel in 1963 as a guest of the leftist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair movement and stayed at its affiliated kibbutz, northeast of Haifa.
<It was reported that B. Sandres refused to say in which kibbutz he stayed in 60's in Israel. In 1990 interview he told me Shaar Haamakim
>Sha’ar HaAmakim was founded in 1935 by immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia who had been trained in farming techniques. The kibbutz still includes farmland and has a flour mill and a dairy, but its primary income is currently from the manufacture of solar panels, according to its website.
>It’s not clear what drew Sanders to Israel; his older brother, Larry, was spending some time there. He also had earned some renown as a civil rights activist at the University of Chicago.
>Sanders has been reticent during this campaign regarding matters of his Jewish upbringing and his time in Israel, where he traveled with his first wife, Deborah Shiling, who also was Jewish. His campaign has turned away queries about his Israel stay. >>2399848Holy shit, I know you're all really stupid here, but I had no idea you were THIS stupid.
The National Guard is FREQUENTLY deployed overseas and were responsible for some of the worst slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 300,000 National Guard deployed to Iraq and every guard brigade deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan at some point during the war.
The National Guard are still murderous thugs who kill in the third world in exchange for free college and healthcare. Your attempts to whitewash them will not work.
>>2399975Germany is Central Europe like Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia AKA honorary Slavs. Also East Germany is former AES
Netherlands gets a free pass because they made Ongezellig which is proletarian kino
>>2400023I can about fighting imperialism.
Felix and his followers simply have no workable plan to combat it. It's self-aggrandizing moralism more concerned with coming up with excuses for its eventual failure rather than actual results.
>>2400013>not using 5.56 for home defense like a civilized person>>2400066they are, in fact, giga cucked. solidarity strikes and general strikes are explicitly illegal and you WILL lose your job and have your union decertified if you try. not to mention a lot of federal unions (the sector with the highest unionization by far) are literally not allowed to strike by law. how many americans can afford to lose their jobs to help care workers?
none of you know how american labor laws work and its actually quite revealing of your political illiteracy. the law is explicitly set up to make solidarity illegal.
>>2400081>the minimum wage will be lowered to 6 or 5 dollars an hour.And if you're "lucky" enough to end up in RFK Jr's wellness camps, your wage will be a
generous 37 cents/hour.
>>2400071Not a big fan of this quote. You can interpret it a million different ways to justify all sorts of revisionism and opportunism.
I'm sorry to go against Marx but to me Communism IS indeed a goal and state of affairs to be established: it is a mode of production that results from the abolishment of capitalism and it is characterized by a society in which production (now collectively owned by all individuals) is oriented towards societal needs rather than profit.
>>2400105the fact that you can get this close to members of congress and yet no one assassinates them is inarguable proof that americans are collaborators.
one person with a sawed off 12 gauge could accomplish much more there than 1000 protesters in keffiyehs
>>2400131>the entire goal is to bring the war home and make the guilty feel even a shred of the terror that they so gleefully inflict on the world. vs what you're saying now
>The goal is to discredit, diminish and destroy the authority and power of the United States Government by any means necessary and at any cost. It is the ultimate enemy, and it must be destroyed.You're saying the goal is at one moment to "bring the war home" and make "the guilty" pay, but you can ask any third worldist on here and they'll say they consider the "guiltY" to be any normal U.S. Citizen who isn't actively shooting at the government for the third world.
So I ask again, given the fact that Third Worldists are openly saying they want America to become a nationwide Gaza, why not just nuke the planet at that point? Turn Brazil, Africa, indonesia, and any other third world country that one imagines giving us our "just desserts" into ash. Yeah, we'll die too, but then the question is would you rather go for the agonizingly slow death of a concentration camp, or one burning pillar of fire that functions as a massive "fuck you"?
Of course I don't expect a serious response from third worldists on this, because they just play games. The premise of every third worldist argument is to say something so hyperbolic and psychotic to anger you enough into saying something equally psychotic, at which point they point and say "See! See! We told you so! We told you they're all Nazis!"
But again, when it comes to the choice between becoming a nationwide auschwitz or just taking the whole world down with you, why
wouldn't you choose the latter?
You all understand that assassinations are a tactic practiced by just about every revolutionary band in history, right? This isn't uncharted territory. This is literally how it's done. The Viet Cong had entire regiments dedicated to assassinating agents of the South Vietnamese puppet government. The Bolsheviks shot every white and tsarist they could lay hands on.
Consider this: There are only 100 sitting US senators. If the capitol can be breached by rioters without weapons, what could say, 100 trained infantry accomplish? The last line of defense between the senators and the rioters was a regular cop armed with a pistol. You could roll over that with ease.
>>2400135You have to put words in my mouth to justify your own right deviationism. I never said all Americans should die. Politicians should, though. As should anyone who willingly bears arms for this government. The goal is not to kill every American, you utter fucking moron, it's to destroy their government so you can save them.
>>2400136The Fed is showing off some of his sockpuppets here, I see.
>>2400142>You have to put words in my mouth to justify your own right deviationism. I never said all Americans should die. Politicians should, though. As should anyone who willingly bears arms for this government. The goal is not to kill every American, you utter fucking moron, it's to destroy their government so you can save them. Your words, again:
>>2400122>the entire goal is to bring the war home and make the guilty feel even a shred of the terror that they so gleefully inflict on the world. When you "bring the war home" do you think politicians would be the primary victims of any war?
>>2400143They will elect new ones, sure. So did the South Vietnamese. But the Viet Cong never stopped assassinating them, because it was done alongside mass organizing to build a resistance and make the country ungovernable. Every South Vietnamese politician they shot eroded the control of the country, forced the government to overreact and thereby drive recruits into the Viet Cong's arms, and made it easier to build people's power.
Assassination and sabotage is only one strategy in a many-sided struggle that is designed to mature the conditions for armed insurrection and the conquest of power for the people.
>>2400105AE-JTH
Actual Existing Jabba the Hutt.
>>2400165Hezbollah is able to effectively resist with about 30% of the population on their side and they have organized enough to defeat an army which is arguably stronger and inarguably much more experienced than the US Army in direct combat. Hezbollah does this by systematically eroding the control of the Lebanese puppet government while building dual power in the regions that support them.
>>2400166Then you overwhelm their security with IEDs and/or infantry ambush and take the VIP anyway. This deals an even more severe blow to the enemy, because it lets them know that even with security they are never truly safe. The fact that groups like the Red Army Faktion could do this shows that it is not terribly difficult. Hanns-Martin Schleyer had a large security team, the RAF Commandos did a blocked ambush to stop the car and then eliminated the entire security team in close combat before they even had time to draw their weapons.
>>2400196Very cute desu
>>2400201What about 1 trillion gorillas vs the sun?
>>2399867>and if the topic of CalExit comes up, he says if it ever happened then the liberals will build death camps for republicans. Like they wholly expect them to start producing lists of anyone who voted Trump and just start shoving them into cattle cars. Even his fucking retiree parents.It's so fucking amazing how conservatives can whip themselves up into a frenzy over things and events that aren't happening and never will happen. Where did this whole "MAGA genocide" thing even come from in the first place? It's honestly disgusting coming from these people, especially considering how much they love Israel and Alligator Auschwitz.
>>2400209>All the editors and journalists of WSJ, NYT, etc. should be trialed for war crimes, just like how the editors of Der Sturmer got hanged at the Nuremberg Trials.I've been thinking this ever since the Iraq days.
>>2400201I really don't think it's as easy as you think it is to completely destroy the American state.
I mean, if it was, why the hell didn't the USSR do it?
>>2400242Your dollars will become worthless. You need to put it in a physical good:
>>2400245this.
>>2400275when does an american holodomor happen
people can't just ignore economic reality forever
>>2400281Definitely. One of my coworkers in fact loves Trump because of some story about how he was very gracious to some guy who stopped to help fix a flat on Trump's limo or something dumb like that.
I don't see how people can actually have to work for a living and see Trump as anything other than a conman.
>>2400244Some interesting things I've noticed about this graph. The interest rates are not that high; in fact, ~5% has been the usual interest rate for economic highs. Lower interest rates are in fact correlated with recessions. What they're saying is essentially that the USA is basically a "zombie country", akin to a zombie company.
>>2400245>>2400246>Unironically promoting Libertarian goldbuggeryInvest in things and resources that actually matter and will be needed when things go to hell, not a bunch of yellow metal.
>>2400338I'm honestly a bit more confused about his claim Obama is the reason he lost in 2020.
He really is
OBSESSED isn't he?
>>2400317Apparently that photo was taken not long after surgery so her head was pretty swollen from the fat removal in her head/neck area.
>>2400328She has a gf so I think she's doing alright tbh
>>2400596>>2400646Will never happen
>>2400647This country is over
>>2400547He means the "socialism" of Bernie Sanders and DSA.
The "Socialism with imperialist world hegemon characteristics" which main achievements are reframing the two party system and it's political theater as revolutionary.
>>2400352>>2400353>>2400353Tulsi has always rode the Israel (and also pro-India) bandwagon really hard.
What a lot of millennial/zoomer leftists who get taken in by this stuff don't get is that Tulsi Gabbard has a view that is more like the Republicans during the Cold War than Bush-style neoconservatives. This is because they didn't live through the Cold War and don't really understand it. (The definition of "neoconservative" also changed over the decades, as it originally referred to domestic policy, not exclusively foreign policy. I'm talking about the 1950s here.)
You see it with Nixon, but take for example, Reagan foreign policy advisor and U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Her whole thing was that "traditional authoritarian governments" are preferable to communism because "the miseries of traditional life are familiar" so ordinary people "learn to cope" with them. So the U.S. in practice should support right-wing military juntas that were anti-communist. Leaders exactly like Gen. Sisi in Egypt. During the Cold War, that was the theory behind supporting the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Latin American juntas (transferred to today with Bolsonaro in Brazil).
She was mostly retired and really old when 9/11 happened, and advocated war with the whole "fundamentalist Islamic terrorist network" but invading Iraq was "a bit too interventionist for my taste" and that "moral imperialism" was "not taken seriously anywhere outside of Washington D.C." (Side story: Kirkpatrick was raised in a family of Oklahoma socialists in the 30s/40s and joined the YPSL while in college in Missouri.)
Max Abrahms is similar. He's a professor (and a big Tulsifag btw) who focuses on the subject of "terrorism." He developed a following among anti-imperialist circles for his criticism of Russiagate and U.S. support for Syrian rebels, and would make appearances on Glenn Greenwald's show to argue this point. Mainly Russiagate, but he saw Assad as preferable to ISIS, and so the U.S. should ally with Assad (and basically ally with Russia) to fight ISIS. But after the Al-Aqsa Flood, some of those followers were very confused when he began rallying for Israel really hard – but he always was very pro-Israel. (Incidentally he's Jewish but that's not strictly relevant.) He's very pro-Modi. He doesn't see any contradiction between supporting Israel and a traditional Arab dictator like Assad.
BTW, I don't think the Israelis ever bought into the Bush-era democracy stuff. I think they encouraged us to invade Iraq, because Saddam was their enemy. But I think it's mainly because they wanted us to fuck up Iraq for them, and I don't think they give a crap about building American-style model liberal democracies in the Middle East or believed in it then. The stuff you hear from some anti-imperialist types that ISIS = Mossad is propaganda from the Iran-led Axis of Resistance network. The Israelis like to fuck up and destabilize their neighbors (Lebanon, Syria) but they're not pro-ISIS, rather they prefer Sisi's Egypt, the UAE, and Aliyev's Azerbaijan.
>>2400383I think the JFK stuff is more wrapped up in vague populism at this point. There's this whole cult around him as some nationally unifying future-forward modernist figure (space program etc.), and he was assassinated, and so people project onto him their own politics. You'll even see wignats say Kennedy was killed by da Joos.
>>2400666be highly critical of the DSA and especially of sanders, the former is a poorly organized mess and sanders is at this point undeniably at least acting as a sheepdog
but i think a lot of people have forgotten what the status of anything called "socialism" in the US prior to sanders 2015 campaign. a lot of people involved today (or just calling themselves some flavor of socialist or communist or "leftist") arent old enough to have any real memory of it, let alone to have been organizing at that time. "socialism" was a dirty word, a dead-end ideology, the furthest you could get among the vast majority of americans talking about socialism was mentioning fucking sweden and prostrating yourself insisting that you werent talking about marxism or communism, and even then it was a gamble. forcing the term alone back into public consciousness, as something associated with good things that people want, was undeniably historically product. im not "crediting" sanders for that individually but if youre talking about achievements in terms of practical consequences, its just not true that the only effect sanders & DSA boom has had is negative
>>2400700A rare sober take on Bernie Sanders and the DSA, unfortunately because you have not specified that communism is your personal vindicative bloodthirsty revenge fantasy you're probably going to get called a liberal for your trouble.
But yeah we've really come a long fucking way in just ten years. The idea of calling yourself a socialist and getting positive support at all was a huge deal and the Sanders campaign played a role in making actual socialist discourse acceptable again even if Sanders himself has cucked out to the DNC too many times. The popularity of Zohran Mamdani, who has described himself in the past as a communist who wants to "seize the means of production", would have been totally unthinkable even five years ago. There's a red star rising in America and we need to cultivate it and fan the flames rather than try and snuff it out for lack of ideological purity
>>2400700IMO the withdrawing of taboo around socialism is not a sign of progress, but just a necessity of the new model of culture war. The new culture war, shaped by social media needs a much more engaged public. Because that's the essence of the business of media lately and it jives very well with the security state.
A "taboo" subject, one that doesn't enter the spectacle and remains private, remains dangerous. To disarm things one needs to make them into a culture war point, assigning control of it, to the superstructure.
The propaganda cycle works like that, every now and then enemy propaganda, the most taboo of taboos, the sort or thing that can be silenced with the mere mention of "enemy talking points"… becomes yesterdays facts and some faction of culture warrior its appointed defender. And just like that, facts that may have been dangerously contradictory of the official version end up disarmed. Relative, like all things culture war. The truthiness of it unknowable in the partisan arena, irrelevant beyond being useful to advance your own side's agenda in the culture war.
"Socialism" is just another meaningless term now. It carries no actual meaning beyond a vague allusion to populist policy and pearl clutching about the most grueling of liberal policies.
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