#socialist

If I had a dollar for every time a man told me I was “very opinionated” I’d be able to pay off all my student loans.

depsidase:

guerrillatech:

Happy Friday everyone. Also ACAB. Especially the ones in Texas who stood outside of an elementary school and let children die.

It’s important to find joy where you can in hard times. Today for me that looked like spending an hour browsing a used bookstore and buying these lovely finds. Take time for yourself, away from your phone. You deserve some peace.

Too rageful to be eloquent right now so the words of others will have to suffice for the moment.

Anyone else want to go set the Supreme Court on fire tonight?

garthgender:

garthgender:

garthgender:

White vegan types who shit their pants and cry and throw up about a prey animal being killed for food/hide/etc and then love plastic and slave labor are maybe some of the stupidest bitches on earth sorry

“I won’t eat honey because it exploits the bees :(” & where did your quinoa come from

Uh oh girls I got the pleather fandom after me for this one

I know many lovely people who don’t eat meat or limit their meat consumption for ethical reasons and even they shy away from the term vegan because of stuff like this.

A man named Wynn Alan Bruce used self immolation (settings oneself on fire) in front of the Supreme Court to protest government inaction on fighting climate change. This method of protest was made famous by Buddhists monks protesting the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Our Earth will be destroyed because saving it is not profitable. The government will not make the news of this man’s sacrifice and its reason well known, they don’t want it to be known. Destroy capitalism, save the earth. Rest in power Wynn.

Please still wear a face mask. Disabled people’s lives matter and we’re all still at risk.

Trump is launching his own social media app Gettr.

The mission statement of the app is to “fight cancel culture” and “promote free speech”. But I wonder if the trumpies would still love it if that speech happened to be pro-LGBT+?

The app launches at 10am July 4th, it’d be a shame if it were spammed with LGBT+ and leftist memes, right?

I’ve seen at least a dozen people post to the effect of “now that you’ve had a taste of socialism (restricted movement, curfews, long lines for food) how do you like it?”

Putting aside the part where anyone posting this is fully showing their ass and demonstrating how little they actually know about socialism, let’s talk about the role CAPITALISM is playing in our country’s present dire straits!

In the middle of a pandemic where (absent any viable alternatives) experts have recommended shutdowns and social distancing to slow the spread, the United States is faced with:

1. People losing their jobs and, along with them, access to healthcare (a uniquely American problem). In the middle of a pandemic. That our lawmakers even have to discuss if COVID-19 testing and treatment will be covered is a purely capitalist and American scenario.
2.  Companies that had *billion* dollar profits suddenly demanding (and receiving) multi billion dollar government bailouts while also laying off workers, and those bailouts being justified as “without these companies, no one will have jobs to go back to.”
3. Workers at risk of losing their homes because rent/mortgage freezes aren’t happening like they are in other countries.
4. Lawmakers actually debating how much individuals should receive for the stimulus and for unemployment because if we give them too much money, they won’t have an incentive to go back to work. Instead of figuring out how much money people actually need to survive, they chose the absolute bare minimum ($1,200 is the equivalent of 1 month’s pay at $7.50/hour for 40 hours). The priority is not making sure people survive, it’s making sure they’re still broke enough to be willing to go back to work when this is over…. because those companies mentioned in #2 are nothing without their workforce, even if their pay, benefits, and treatment of the same don’t even begin to reflect that.  
5. While we hotly debate “how will we pay for it???” every time there’s a discussion of helping small businesses and individual workers, our government injects *over a trillion dollars* into the stock market to keep it afloat.
6. If workers are in such dire straits after only a few weeks, then clearly they should manage and save their money better! No. Those billion dollar companies who pay workers the absolute bare minimum and suddenly need bailouts despite a) massive profits in previous quarters and b) had enormous tax windfalls last year which they squandered on stock buybacks – THEY should be managing their money better. And paying more taxes.
7. The same people who screech about socialism being deadly and oppressive are unironically demanding the right to return to work. They’re rejecting a society where (particularly in a crisis) we take care of each other like the social animals we are, and instead are *begging* for the right to return to work because they believe in the system where if you’re not working, you deserve nothing. They shout that “even during a pandemic, we can’t kill the economy” without realizing that WE DON’T HAVE TO BUT CAPITALISM DEMANDS IT. Under capitalism, you can either have a thriving economy OR you can weather a pandemic like this with minimal casualties.
8. Only under capitalism are farmers throwing away food and milk while food banks are desperate for food to provide to those in need. We are literally letting crops rot and people starve because profit is paramount. This has been going on for a long time, but the fact that it continues during a crisis like this is about as American and capitalist as you can get.
9. We are in the middle of a crisis, and we’re debating who *deserves* help and *how much* instead of acting like a society and just helping everyone until the crisis is over. But that’s socialism, and the same people who reject that are marching in the streets and demanding the right to return to work, and they can’t even begin to see the irony.
   

People don’t HAVE to starve, lose their homes, lose their jobs, lose their businesses, and lose their healthcare, even while we get through COVID-19. We as a society can choose to reject profit as the top priority, and instead prioritize people. We as a nation can make changes – some temporary to get us through the crisis, others permanent to prevent this from happening again – but Americans are too quick to reject anything that resembles socialism (read: anything that helps someone who hasn’t labored to earn it), and instead cling to not only capitalism, but to its cruelest manifestation.

The point here is not to suggest that socialism is the perfect way to go or that it never goes awry for the working class. The point is that in all our kneejerk Red Scare responses to anything that even *smells* like socialism, we’ve created a society in which people will literally march to demand the right to put themselves at risk in order to work for the wealthy capitalists who feed them scraps and expect them to be grateful for it.

We don’t have to live like this. The answer is not 100% socialism, but Americans have got to acknowledge that the answer is not 100% capitalism either. The answer in fact lies somewhere in the middle, where people have their basic needs met, workers are properly compensated, healthcare is not a privilege, and no one suffers at the bottom while a handful hoard wealth at the top.  

We CAN have better wages, better healthcare, better living conditions.

But first we have to let go of our fear of socialism.

We have to let go of our infatuation with capitalism.

We have to let go of the idea that America is somehow unique and that those systems that work in other nations won’t work here (American exceptionalism is pure unadulterated nonsense).

We have to find an answer that prioritizes people over profit.

(Okay to share but please don’t remove my name.)

One day this will all come crashing right down!

(Blackbird Raum - Honey in the Hair)