Dirt_Possum [she/her, undecided]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I think that is a valid concern and analysis, but I also think it has a lot to do with where in the hierarchy of the organization an individual is. As with labor aristocracy in the proletariat, there are those whose class interests will still align with the capitalists, but the low-level street gangs don’t really fall into that kind of category and the majority of the people comprising the larger organizations are still working class grunts, doing what they can to eke out a living. Part of the problem is the broad meaning of “gang,” and the use of “criminal” as a catch-all for anyone who is operating outside bourgeois law. If we’re talking about the giant cartels and the people who run them, they are just another part of the capitalist machine, filling a particular niche in the corporate ecosystem and even serving a particular political purpose for the capitalist class as a whole. Of course they will follow the money. Even though smaller local gangs may end up ultimately working for the cartels out of necessity, just as regular workers need to sell their labor to “legitimate” capital, they can’t be lumped in as part of the same class as the cartel management. Like came_apart_at_Kmart was saying (or asking)

    a lot of “gangs” in the US originate from minority ethnic community defence organizations, to push back against particularly egregious mistreatment by the hegemonic political project

    That’s close to being the definition of the kind of people who are ripe for radicalization. So when we hear the line “organized crime is likely to follow the money” we still have to ask “who exactly are we talking about within ‘organized crime’?”


  • I still remember a thread where someone was talking about the revolutionary potential of modern lumpen making “lumpenproletariat” not a great class distinction, and one of the top comments was some snide “Lumpen drug runners aren’t gunna’ help us do communism, dude.” Oh really? Why not? Seems like the people forced out of any “legal” means of selling their labor to survive would be primed for revolution. To me a lot of that thread read like hexbears with unexamined classism and even unintentional and unexamined racism. So-called “gang-affiliated” “criminals” are more often just members of ad-hoc organizations within marginalized communities struggling to survive within a system that wants to see them be literal slaves or cease to exist. Liberals spit on these “gang members” meanwhile white supremacist gangs are called “cops” and liberals honor them at every opportunity and expect complete deference to them. Most “gangs” may not be at all Marxist yet, but they have extremely high revolutionary potential.



  • For what it’s worth from a lurker, I completely agree that it seems much more like there’s a bloomerism problem than a doomerism problem. From what I can see as I read through nearly every comment in these megathreads is that people are doing their best to do some material analysis with what will always be incomplete information. I appreciate seeing conflicting perspectives because I always end up having my own limited conceptions of the situation challenged. In this case, the conflicting perspective is whether Iran abiding by this ceasefire was a massive misstep or a positive and necessary strategic move. I am afraid it seems a lot more like a mistake to me, even a failure of the resistance, but I could be wrong and I would love it if it turns out I am.

    But then I come across these comments complaining about all the “doomerism” and it’s like wtf? I don’t see “doomerism” I see justifiable frustration, anger, disappointment, even fear about how events are unfolding along with valid criticism of the decisions that these circumstances resulted from. Posting these criticisms is not an act of surrender or total despair to the point of “giving up,” and they also don’t degrade the discussion, they add to it just as constructively as any optimistic comments, so long as both are rooted in material reality that none of us have the full picture of.

    On the other hand when people talk as though we all just need to have faith in Iran, that seems to me the kind of idealism that we should avoid and much more of a potential problem than expressing valid concerns that may sound pessimistic. None of these comments, no matter how critical or frustrated, or how congratulatory and optimistic, have even a grain of material influence on the outcome of what’s being discussed. Neither do our predictions, whether they turn out to be correct or not, we just need to reflect on them in any case to try to learn from how those predictions compared to what actually happened.





  • How is that being “fair” or the original framing “disingenuous”? She’s the Walmart heiress! So what if it wasn’t the actual direct corporate funds that the money was shelled out from, it was still a top member of the Walton Family who owns the corporation. No one is saying “Ew look, Walmart funded this” we’re saying “Ew look, some of the filthiest and most notorious of the bourgeoisie funded this.”

    Walmart heiress Christy Walton promoted a planned nationwide protest against President Trump by placing a full-page advertisement that ran in the New York Times on Sunday. The ad, which the billionaire heiress paid for, calls on people to participate in the “No Kings” protest.

    Pretending that because the Walmart board of trustees weren’t directly the ones funding it, this criticism is some kind of misdirection, that is what’s disingenuous.


  • Been working pretty well for me over all and fine for the last few hours. But earlier there were some half-hour chunks of unresponsiveness when things were very slow to load. You’d click the arrow to upvote and 20 seconds of bear head spinning later it finally turns yellow and the counter goes up. Same thing with the loading of replies below the top-level comments. It always ended up working before too long though, and it wasn’t consistently slow like that. Now it’s working normally. I would bet that waiting for the normal thread change time should be fine. But of course, that does depend on how the next 24 hours shape up too.







  • If you haven’t played a soulslike or a game focused on parrying before it may be worth trying something simpler first

    Are there any in particular that you (or anyone else reading this) would recommend? Specifically for parrying, that is. I’ve played a couple soulslike games and I did love them. Bloodborne and Mortal Shell were both fantastic, but in both cases I learned how to dodge really well rather than parry.