Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh

The truth is, Biden was just a historically awful candidate. We don't even need Marxist clairvoyance to see this. Biden has been a figure in national politics for FIFTY YEARS, first being elected to the US Senate in 1972. He has been an obsequious corporate servant and a bulwark against progress the entire time. Thirty eight years in the Senate, plus twelve in the White House is enough time to comprehensively impact the body politic. This man has made a negative impact on every corner and crevice of American life. He is the Forrest Gump of nearly every odious US policy, both foreign and domestic. In our acutely gerontocratic government, there are still few figures who compare.

The real media coup took place four years ago, when we had a competitive primary election and the candidate running on Medicare for All in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic get sidelined for an absolute fucking barnacle who was ALREADY exhibiting the signs of cognitive decline. A man so incapable of reading the room that he suggested the police shoot people in the legs during the largest uprising against police brutality in US history. The existential dread of Trump's reelection was enough to force people to accept this, but the implication was that this was an emergency measure. That deep cutting reforms could not be avoided indefinitely. Compared to the counterinsurgency deployed in 2020, what we are seeing this time around is fairly tame.

Trump's leadership is now four years in the rear view mirror. Things haven't gotten discernibly better. The pandemic went away because we stopped testing and abandoned all protocols. Inflation (driven primarily by unpunished price-scalping) has stung. The cops have only gained more power. The corrupt gangsters Trump staffed his administration with have been replaced by cold blooded, dead eyed ideologues of US imperialism, paired with the most unconvincing spokespeople imaginable. Biden's greatest policy accomplishments are infrastructure funding bills with no direct impact on the working class, which allegedly will make climate change one percent less deadly but still totally deadly 20 years down the road, and it was abundantly evident that any deep-cutting reforms were off the table for at least another four years.

I am surprised they didn't smother this fucking guy with a pillow. Kamala is a completely unremarkable figure. Average democrat with a slimy record, but typical. She is not burdened by 50 years of skeletons. She is a known quantity only in California, and has been cloistered from the media nearly her whole time in the federal government, aside from her flash in the pan as a presidential candidate. People don't personally associate her with their misfortune they way they do figures like Biden, Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, the Clintons. Not yet, anyway.

IMO it's a coin toss between Trump and Harris. It's just like 2016 except Harris is a better version of Clinton while 2024 Trump is much worse than 2016 Trump. Trump was terrible in the debate, but since he was up against a decomposing corpse, he looked good by virtue of being able to speak in complete sentences. I think the debate between Trump and Harris will be completely inconclusive like the vast majority of presidential debates with both camps thinking their team won. The Trump vs Biden debate was truly exceptional for having a very obvious winner and loser.

a) little brave dsa route: primary dems, and then throw elections as spoilers if they don’t play along, throw your candidates immediately from deviating from some set of core policies. Socdem way

b) anarchist-nihilist route: wide spread slow campaign of terror for 50 years (with significant downsides, obviously, due to crackdowns, but those seemingly happen anyway). Worked in spain, russia and ireland, and not anywhere else

c) maximizing utility value for an average small business-owned worker by impersonating business owners, and increasing economic potential ansyn route. Like make a delivery app for society of independent delivery drivers, explicitly non-profit, etc.

d) waiting for capitalist exploitation calculus to implode (with huge unknowns of Africa/India situation as manufacturing hubs) (current timeline is like 2050-70), promoting competition and anti-trust is good here

e) catastrophe via climate change/pandemic with natural/manmade virus (I still think people don’t realize how close are we for one person to be able to make designer virus with a pc, some chemicals and aliexpress parts, maybe that’s my paranoia)

f) building orgs from scratch whose goal is not electoralism, like sra, but leisure and community ties (spd before shittification), and some awareness spreading there. “Churches” for working class so to say

You don’t engage with a machine that’s designed to not do anything you want, I don’t go to vending machine to get surgery. The purpose of system is what it does and things of that nature

It is rare to find a large number of thoroughly clever and unprincipled persons playing a game together. Where the knaves assemble, there will always be fools; and where the fools are present in sufficient numbers, they offer a more profitable object of exploitation for the knaves. The psychology of the fool has become a subject well worth the serious attention of the knaves. Instead of looking out for his own ultimate interest, after the fashion of von Neumann’s gamesters, the fool operates in a manner which, by and large, is as predictable as the struggles of a rat in a maze. This policy of lies—or rather, of statements irrelevant to the truth—will make him buy a particular brand of cigarettes; that policy will, or so the party hopes, induce him to vote for a particular candidate—any candidate—or to join in a political witch hunt. A certain precise mixture of religion, pornography, and pseudoscience will sell an illustrated newspaper. A certain blend of wheedling, bribery, and intimidation will induce a young scientist to work on guided missiles or the atomic bomb. To determine these, we have our machinery of radio fan ratings, straw votes, opinion samplings, and other psychological investigations, with the common man as their object; and there are always the statisticians, sociologists, and economists available to sell their services to these undertakings.

• Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics (1961)

We'll see where she's at come election time or a few years afterwards. Dems are honeymooning rn.

I think the only way for Capitalist Liberal "Democracies" in the Imperial Core to become communist is to first pass through full blown fascism. The material conditions of the working class will never reach a level required for a popular uprising especially not if a large percentage of those effected by poor material conditions flock to fascism as the solution to their problems.

I don't even know if the pre-communism-fascism is limited to liberal democracies. Russia had the whites. China had the kmt and imperial japan. Cuba had usa installed military dictatorships. I feel like communist revolution is born of fascist repression.

I hope I'm wrong because its a fucking doomer take.

A slight bump in polls immediately after becoming candidate with a blitz of media fawning doesn’t indicate much. She’s still an incredibly weak candidate and this could easily be some of her best polling for the entire campaign.