duderium

joined 4 years ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Drink water instead of soda constantly

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

We haven’t really spoken in over a year. They are Biden libs. We also never went skiing when I was a kid because we were too poor. But my parents inherited some money so = skiing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

My parents are skiing right now 😆 🔫

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago

We live in a free country, mate! Not like communist CHINA!

[–] [email protected] 66 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

My two cents on this issue: I'm a white dude who taught ESL in South Korea for years, I married into a Korean family, I speak Korean, I also haven't been in South Korea for seven years. What I'll say is: it's hard being a woman in South Korea, and there is little reason to get married if you happen to be one.

You're expected to work a prestigious full-time job, provide for your husband (sex, three meals a day, therapy), have two kids (hopefully boys, and you might get an abortion if your doctor genders your fetus as female), and also, on top of all of this, you need to care for your husband's elderly parents, sometimes intensively.

As for the men, their situation also sucks, but the ones shifting to the right are choosing to blame the real victims (women) rather than the system (and the American occupation) that has put them in this shitty situation. Men need to spend about two years of their youth in the military, where they are abused (your buddies hold you down while your CO spits in your mouth), and where you run the risk of dying or getting maimed in an "accident."

In high school, everyone needs to be on campus at 8AM, and people aren't really allowed to leave until 9PM, five days a week. They get six hours of sleep each night, possibly giving themselves brain damage from sleep deprivation, catching up on sleep in class (teachers don't care) or on the weekend. Men also face poor job prospects (it's almost impossible to get into a "good" school or get a "good" job) and a more or less pointless existence in a country that has been occupied by the USA since 1945. I’m not excusing their rightward shift, I’m just trying to provide a little perspective. People there are generally in favor of the DPRK (leaving it alone, at the very least) but they hate Japan, China, and the USA. Rightwing presidents tend to end their careers in prison; liberal presidents usually give money to the DPRK and are therefore better than standard Western liberals. Even if South Korea is part of the imperial core, it's right at the edge, and has come very close to a successful lasting communist revolution multiple times since 1945.

[–] [email protected] 85 points 7 months ago

Imagine simping for the fucking British.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

No but sweaty we can’t do that because then we’ll lose the support of the republicans who consider all of us blood-drinking reptoid pedophiles regardless of what we do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I’m glad to see that people on hexbear talk less about supporting local democrats these days. I used to be involved in local politics, and the local democrats are just as shitty as the state and national ones.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Gaza already looks like it’s been nuked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Elections in the USA are decentralized and difficult to control but only a few midwestern swing counties really matter anyway so conceivably you would only need to use a relatively small number of agents to tilt the election your way (and you would only need to change a few votes). But I think in this case the CIA was high on its own supply and also did not believe that Trump could win. They already control the corporate media and the federal government, and they can always just have someone assassinate Trump if he becomes an actual problem (which he never did), so I think they chose mostly to just stick to talking to the elderly bourgeoisie via CNN and MSNBC. Trump could have also responded by ordering a MAGA mob to sack Langley, which would have made 1/6 look boring by comparison.

1
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

🤡 yea

Seriously wtf, amerikkka now has three different flavors of fascist to choose from for president.

 

"The Keys to the White House is a checklist of thirteen true/false statements that pertain to the circumstances surrounding a presidential election. When five or fewer of the following statements are false, the incumbent party candidate is predicted to win the election. When six or more are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose." (The keys correctly predicted that Trump would lose in 2020.)

Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (false)

No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. (RFK Jr. currently polling at 15% in the primary so probably true)

Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. (true)

No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. (true, although if West runs all the way to election day and earns five percent of the vote, this will be false (Democrats will also completely lose their fucking shit if this happens and Biden loses))

Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (true...for now)

Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. (false I think?)

Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (false)

No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (true I guess, but this could change rapidly)

No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. hunter

No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (Afghanistan + Ukraine so false)

Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (false)

Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (false for sleepy joe)

Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (false, Trump is the most charismatic Republican since Reagan)

I count eight falses. It's not lookin' good for joe. One of those falses is maybe debatable but the others probably aren't going to change from here to election day. We could have Trump winning the presidency from a prison cell and pardoning himself lol.

 

If so, how / why? Do you have any regrets?

 

The pandemic didn’t fall out of the sky. Looking back, it’s easy to see so many warning signs.

The acceptance of white yoga anti-vaxx moms hosting parties to infect their kids with bizarre diseases is an obvious one. I live in a blue area, so these people were very present pre-pandemic. I very seldom run into them now, but when I do, I see that they’re also anti-maskers. Big Mask is in league with Big Pharma. Death drive is very present in the psyche of the bourgeoisie because they know, deep down, that capitalism cannot continue forever, and they would rather destroy themselves and everything around them than admit this.

Then there’s Americans’ total lack of interest in masking pre-pandemic, even though in Asia people voluntarily masked in order to protect each other years before the pandemic started. Making a collective effort to protect one another? Forget it! I've got crumbs from the table of imperialism I need to lick up off the floor!

Also the poisonous environment of America pre-pandemic. This country was founded by settlers deliberately infecting indigenous people with horrifying diseases in the name of profit and land theft (A very, very blue area in Massachusetts, Amherst, still bears the name of the guy who did this), and nothing has changed. Everyone being sick in so many different ways—from being forced to eat poisonous food, being forced to drive for how many hours each day, never having time to exercise, never having decent health care, never having the most basic health education, always being economically stressed —but then being blamed for all their problems. You have basically lived in Mordor all your life, but it’s your fault for not looking like Legolas, you just haven’t worked hard or smart enough, and you are insane if you question this. (Marxists referencing LOTR is like liberals referencing Harry Potter I suppose…)

We also can’t forget individualism. Every American, deep down, thinks he is a cowboy. The contempt for intellectualism (and science) has also been talked about in America for decades. Liberals are obviously not immune here. At this point they really are just as contemptuous of science as chuds. Their peaceful protests are just a rebirth of medieval flagellants—they're happy to punish themselves for enjoying capitalism, but not so happy to actually destroy capitalism itself. Most doctors have also literally gone mask-off during the pandemic, but some scientists at least (Rob Wallace for instance) are still doing their jobs, still uncovering new ways in which this nightmare is fucking us, and very few people are listening.

“Juking the stats” is a phrase from The Wire (watched it in my liberal days), but we see government officials at every level doing this constantly with covid. It’s become very difficult to figure out just how bad the pandemic is, though there are things the bourgeoisie is unable to cover up—deaths and life expectancy, for instance. Diseases associated with long covid have continued to climb, even if there are shithead doctors out there who claim that long covid is just in your head. (They were also doing this with chronic lyme pre-pandemic!)

So in a way, the pandemic is not really something new. It’s just a massive intensification of factors in American “life” which were already well-established. Disabled people were already being ignored even by Marxists before the pandemic, but now there’s a lot more of them, they’re in so much more danger, and it’s easier to become disabled than ever before.

Barring revolution, I think things will continue to get worse. (There are rumors of nurses striking to bring back mask mandates, which is a positive sign.) I’ve also wondered—if Trump “wriggles out of this one,” and if he becomes president again, will liberals go back to pretending to care about the pandemic? What’s stopping them from saying that Biden did a good job during the pandemic, but Trump is fucking it up now? It would also be a pretty effective way to mobilize large numbers of people against him.

As an aside, the pandemic has taught me that the apocalypse isn’t necessarily what we expect it to be. Had anyone made a film about this pandemic before it started, absolutely no one would have believed it.

Edit: this thread is also about LOTR and the Foundation trilogy.

 

If so, how is it going wrt covid and everything else? Nonparents feel free to answer if you know any kids going to school and what their situation is like. Teachers also please chime in.

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