Reclords
Ticklets
muslings
-
stop tolerating antisemitism
EVERY DAY, ZIONISTS BOTH “LIBERAL” AND “CONSERVATIVE” PUT CORPORATE PROFITS AND MILITARY LETHALITY AHEAD OF JEWISH SAFETY. THEY CLAIM TO DO IT OUT OF A LOVE OF JUDAISM. THIS INCLUDES SITTING POLITICIANS, CANDIDATES, PARTY LEADERS AND STRATEGISTS, HIGH PROFILE MEDIA COMMENTATORS, BUSINESS LEADERS, PRESIDENTIAL “FRONTRUNNERS,” AND THEIR FANS AMONG THE GENERAL PUBLIC. WE ARE USED TO SAYING THESE PEOPLE ARE BAD AT POLITICS, BECAUSE THEY ARE. BUT RARELY DO THEY GET ACCUSED OF ANOTHER THING THEY CLEARLY ARE: RAGING ANTISEMITES. CONTINUING TO CONFLATE JEWS WITH ISRAELI MILITARY POLICY IS PUTTING JEWS IN IMMEDIATE DANGER. CONTINUING TO TOLERATE IT IS PUTTING JEWS IN IMMEDIATE DANGER.
Constantly conflating Jews with the genocidal and illegal policies of the Israeli government, and of its criminal funders in the U.S. government, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Paying Israelis to commit a genocide, in the hopes that American weapons, oil, real estate, and AI profits will go up, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Throwing the lessons of the Holocaust in the trash, to bring back genocide, illegal military occupations and forced relocation as acceptable business models, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Arresting and beating up Jews, for pointing out that genocide and apartheid are not tenets of their faith, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Democrats teaming up with avowed white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the White House, in Congress, and among the billionaire class, to pay Israel billions of dollars to turn itself into one of the most hated countries on Earth, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Calling someone antisemitic for opposing genocide, and thus stripping that term of any meaning by applying it to virtually the entire human race, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Saying that Israelis are inherently exempt from or incapable of rationally explaining their violent, racist, or criminal policies and behaviors, or pretending that these policies and behaviors are so insubstantial when done by Israelis that self-defense or retaliation is completely unforeseeable, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Calling Judaism, a ~5000 year old West Asian religion, from whose history and teachings we could all benefit, the same thing as Zionism, a ~100 year old racist European settler colonial movement that collaborated and still collaborates with Nazis, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Investing in Israeli wars, prolonging Israeli wars, and encouraging Israel to permanently base its economy on wars, thus deliberately making Israelis less safe, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Paying Israelis to turn fellow Semites into experimental test subjects for the R&D of American weapons and AI companies, to increase those companies’ profit margins or expand their investment bubbles, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
For Democratic politicians and pundits to demand that their own voters abandon their values, and stop having feelings about genocide and apartheid, when trends are clearly moving in the opposite direction, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Holding the majority of the global population, who disagrees with with Zionism’s racist political program, at gunpoint with weapons of mass destruction, funded against their will by the American taxpayer, college student and pension holder, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Restarting Hitler’s political programs of elective world war, illegal invasions, illegal military occupations, collective punishment, torture, mechanized mass killing, impunity for war crimes, racial final solutions, and ethnic supremacy propaganda is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Resurrecting Nazi propaganda by saying that Palestinians are “a people without a home, who don’t have the right to food, fair trials, their own property, self-defense, or votes,” against whom “international law does not apply,” and asking “why other countries won’t just take them all,” is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Deploying the most militarized law enforcement agency in world history against Americans, including Jews, who are trying to stop a genocide being committed in their name and with their money, to spare the rich and powerful any potential emotional discomfort, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Ranking people with West Asian ancestry on their deservedness to be alive, on the basis of their wealth or their proximity to whiteness, is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Committing, enabling, investing in, or excusing genocide, apartheid, forced removal, and permanent war profiteering in the name of Judaism is not just bad political strategy. It is blatant antisemitism.
Now that this Amerisrael mass killing experiment is underway, with test runs in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, it cannot be allowed to prove itself as workable, profitable, or consequence-free. If it does, not only will those populations be annihilated, but the experiment can hardly be expected to limit itself to Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. There are billions in profits at stake. This formula will be deployed again and again, against anyone who stands in the way of capitalists. In the end, being white or Jewish will not protect you. Those Israelis, Americans and Europeans clinging to this fantasy will watch it vanish once the price of fooling you and keeping you alive exceeds the price of letting you die.
This planet’s life forms, the only ones whose existence we know of in the universe, have evolved and survived partly because of an instinct for survival. What those who claim that investing in the genocide of brown people on the other side of the planet isn’t really all that bad are forgetting, and must now be told, is that human and nonhuman life forms on our planet have rarely died quietly and aren’t likely to start now. They will go to any lengths to survive, and rightly so. What Zionists and U.S. politicians like to call terrorism is actually a perfectly natural, predictable and legal response to war crimes and military occupation.
Americans may suffer from low morale, nihilistic malaise, and endless corporate disinformation, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world does. Every day this continues, the population of our planet is pushed closer to open revolt against the people, companies, countries, and economic systems responsible for their suffering and potential annihilation. According to polls as well as common sense, topping that list are the U.S., Israel, their capitalist system, and the fossil fuel, weapons, and Big Tech corporations that have become so wealthy at so much cost to everyone else. Once the rage of generations has been unleashed, can you imagine how furious it will be? Those who fantasize that their current lack of consequences will last forever should not expect mercy from people who just want to survive our attempts to slaughter them. We need to start making peace now, atone for our crimes, offer reparations, and begin the multi-generational healing process.
-
IF U.S. POLITICS WERE RELATIONSHIP ADVICE
We like to imagine that we’re doing ourselves a favor by simping for our favorite oligarchs…that during societal collapse we improve our own odds of survival by betting on and lining up behind the right members of the ruling class. Sadly this is mistaken. The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and their billionaire paymasters do not love you. They do not even like you.
U.S. politicians are best understood as abusers. Come on strong, earn your trust, promise to keep you safe, convince you to share your finances and private information in return for your loyal support. Then what do they do? Get into war crimes and corruption. Broken promises. Stalking. Physical and emotional violence towards you, your family, and your ability to stay alive. At the same time they pursue lasting, intimate relationships with the very people they promised they didn’t care about. And if you dare to stop believing their lies, they and their defenders guilt trip you for being disloyal.
The discourse around abuse gives us helpful models to describe how bullies, narcissists, and sexual offenders operate. In response to being held accountable for their behavior, they frequently and predictably resort to a tactic known as DARVO: Deny that harm ever took place. Attack the person they have harmed. Reverse Victim and Oppressor, claiming that they are actually the victim. DARVO is also easily recognized as a tactic of our two political parties, of Zionism, and of any number of other right-wing political programs which lack any cogent moral justification for the harm they inflict.
Denying that the working class is even being harmed is of course Step One of any strategy for holding onto ownership class privilege. There is an entire industry, both “liberal” and “conservative”, that endlessly repeats that “humans have never had it so good” to “technically it’s not a genocide” to “unionizing is a mistake and minimum wage needs to stay where it is” to “Obama’s presidency proves there’s no systemic racism here” to “poverty and slavery have almost been eradicated” to “our generation never had Netflix and avocado toast so the younger generation is nothing but entitled whiners.” Any serious engagement with the facts vaporizes such claims, but that doesn’t stop those with the most to lose from repeating them ad nauseum.
With monotonous regularity abusers will attack you for being too emotional or too sensitive. You’re not. Likewise those with legitimate grievances, questions, and emotions are told again and again by the rich and powerful that they’re "angry" or "negative" or "cynical" or “strident” or “extremist” Social Justice Warriors. Those currently enjoying comfort under the status quo are desperate to fabricate any grounds on which to attack those of us struggling to leave the next generation a livable world. To me the angry, negative, cynical, strident extremist is actually the one who no longer believes in basic human values, and takes revenge on humanity by competing with it, humiliating it, attempting to control it, and ultimately attacking it, physically, emotionally, legally and financially. Such a person is epitomized by U.S. politicians, CEOs, administrators, and media personalities.
Those in power deliberately reverse the roles of victim and oppressor. There is this ridiculous notion that I'm supposed to regard the ruling class as tragic heroes who certainly mean well. I’m asked to feel sad for the president who lies awake at night deciding whether to commit mass murder, and praise them for almost deciding not to go through with it. Their job is stressful and we’re supposed to go easy on them when they feel bad about being serial killers. We’re only supposed to hate the ones who don’t feel bad about being serial killers. Meanwhile we get our heads cracked by both if we question the serial killing itself.
It’s never wrong to point out when you or someone else is being harmed, especially when it’s being done in your name. There is no shame in sharing your story and communicating about solutions. There will always be the less empathetic among us who’ll come back with “You should stick with your current abuser because the harm you’re experiencing with them isn’t as bad as the harm you would experience with a worse abuser,” or, “At least they’re not abusing you, why do you care?” Such people are correctly identified as enablers. It’s easy to see this with romantic relationships, but somehow we’ve been trained to normalize it in politics.
Some behaviors are just so abusive and so sick that there is simply no way to ignore them. It turned out that genocide was one of those things, much to surprise of the Democratic Party, who thought for sure their voters were cynical, apathetic, nihilistic, or uninformed enough not to mind. And apparently the party is still led by deranged deadenders who continue to believe that with enough nagging, Democratic voters will finally decide it was wrong to care about racism and war crimes. There are still Dem cheerleaders who think that it’s forever a bad strategy to express any grievances about their elected officials if they are Democrats, or ever engage in discussion of independent or third party candidates.
Playing dumb is not an apology or a substitute for ending harm. Politicians act stupid on purpose to avoid punishment and to maintain the illusion of a democracy. That doesn't mean we have to do their job for them and volunteer to gaslight ourselves. They know full well what Israel is doing. They know what weapons of mass destruction are for. They know how many people Luigi Mangione killed vs how many United Health kills every week. They know that 3% annual economic growth cannot be permanently maintained without eventually sacrificing billions of this planet’s human beings.
Focus on action, not talk. When an abuser decries evil or expresses sorrow, they are wasting their breath, unless they stop their abuse. A politician needs to be rallying around specific new policies that end the evil and the sorrow. Unless they are actively trying to pass Medicare For All, abolish ICE, or stop the wars and carbon emissions that keep creating so many refugees, saying “our healthcare system is broken” or “our immigration system is broken” is literally worse than saying nothing. It just becomes a tactic for pacifying the public and shutting down their perfectly legitimate demands.
It’s essential to test candidates, whether romantic or political. But the U.S. version is completely backwards and worse than useless. Instead of us making sure a potential leader is honest and has their constituents’ best interests at heart, we have our hazing rituals performed by other members of the ruling class, while we simply observe. This comes in the form of mocking anyone who exhibits discomfort at becoming a war criminal for Israel. Poking and prodding to make sure they agree we need “stronger borders”, that billionaires should not be taxed, and that there shouldn’t be free handouts for starving children. Accusing candidates of immorality if they disagree that “everyone must pay their debts” and that our high interest rates are fair, because capitalism is the best system. Humiliating candidates as wimps if they don’t say that the U.S. military needs to be more lethal. Testing how comfortable candidates are lying on camera.
In a healthy relationship or a healthy democracy, we would praise the things that are done right and criticize the things that are done wrong. There would be no place for hero worship. Those seeking hyperwealth and hyperpower under our system are very likely to be those who learned from an early age to interact with the world by humiliating others. So many of our presidents and CEOs were clearly unpopular in childhood, and these man-children see beating their tormentors at their own game (i.e. becoming investment bankers and genocidal lawmakers) as some kind of delicious revenge. This Freudian drive is rewarded under our current system, which is why the next generation’s survival depends on the creation of a new system that does not reward this and subjects candidates to public testing that weeds out rapists and sociopaths with a chip on their shoulder.
You are now in a relationship with a politico-economic partner who derives value from your anger and sadness, because those things are easier to monetize. Frustration and dissatisfaction make you want to scroll more and to buy more things. Trump making everyone mad is good for the economy. Making the public feel bad about their bodies, their feelings and their needs helps to divert their attention and money towards capitalists. Stoking conflict, war, and genocide generates stupendous profits for the oil, tech, and weapons CEOs who fund our political system. On the other hand, feelings of safety, love and mental and physical wellbeing or equilibrium do not translate as quickly into profit.
Nobody’s perfect but let’s not settle for the literal opposite of what almost every Dem voter, and most independent voters, say they want:
stop arming Israel no new drilling permits and oil industry subsidies no new data centers tax billionaires medicare for all shrink ICE budget shrink Pentagon budget increase education budget cancel student loan debt no concentration camps, family separations or border wall
But this exact list is what billionaires and their puppets say makes one “unelectable”.
When a millionaire goes on a TV station owned by a billionaire, and offers their wisdom regarding “electability,” they are describing whom they — millionaires and billionaires — would vote for. This usually turns out to be Democrats who move to “the middle of the road,” “meet Republicans halfway” and have proven themselves willing to sell out to a corporate donor system. There is no evidence that such candidates actually inspire more enthusiasm among angry swing state voters, and mountains of evidence that what does inspire such voters is the promise of radical change that might allow their children a better chance at survival.
There are plenty of fish in the sea. A common feature of abusive relationships (and of brainwashing and cults) is isolation: limiting exposure to the outside world and to alternative ideas. The goal is to prevent new friendships and exert total control. But you only harm yourself by limiting yourself to two political parties and limiting your sources of information about the world to a tiny handful of corporate news, corporate advertising, and corporate politicians. This is the very class of people that has the most to lose if anything changed.
On the following spectrum of relationship status, where do you see yourself and the Democratic party? Where do you think the Democratic party sees you?
- We're calmly working out a disagreement.
- We're in a fight and saying some things we regret, but staying together.
- We're breaking up, knowing that trying to hash it out any longer will only lead to more disappointment.
- We're doing no contact, or one is ghosting the other.
- We're actively trying to destroy each other's lives.
I think most Democrat voters now see themselves as being somewhere between “working out a disagreement” and “in a fight” with their party. The party on the other hand is well past “ghosting its voters” and into “actively destroying their voters’ lives.” They now cast Newsom, Booker, Emmanuel, and Harris as presidential front-runners. These are not serious candidates, and none of them has any chance of winning. They’re openly hostile to the basic needs of Democratic voters. They’re explicitly pro-ICE, pro-Israel, pro-war and pro-AI. They are against taxing billionaires, against Medicare For All, and against the kind of bold climate policy that scientists have been insisting is necessary for survival. These are spoiler candidates being deployed to defeat the American voter, even if it means more Republican victory.
The average sitting U.S. politician of either corporate party has already made it clear that they are comfortable with mass murder, the erasure of entire ethnicities, and the submerging of entire islands and subcontinents, the permanent prolongation of war, and the collapse of global food systems, if it might enhance corporate profit. If you can be in relationship with such a person, I’m not trying to stop you. I’m saying that if you think that going into the comments and saying vote blue no matter who is going to convince the average American voter, who cannot be in relationship with such a person, to stop sharing their own abuse stories with each other, you are too late.
You are under no obligation to stay loyal to someone who abuses you. In fact you have a solemn duty to save yourself and to warn other potential victims. I will no longer be taking advice on what kind of political engagement is illegal or inappropriate from someone committing or supporting war crimes. I will no longer be engaging in debates with someone who replies to legitimate grievances and questions with denials of harm, attacks, victim-swapping, no serious engagement and no cogent arguments. While it’s noble to personally forgive those who make mistakes and choose to own up to it, when we’re talking about mistakes on the apocalyptic order of magnitude that most U.S. lawmakers and CEOs make, we should definitely not be letting such people anywhere near the levers of power ever again.
-
arson
what could be worse than betting on wildfires, and then making sure you win by just setting the trees on fire yourself?
how about betting someone else's money on israel and then making sure you win by just setting the humans on fire yourself
whether you like it or not, if you have a bank account or a tuition or pay taxes, your money is right now being betted on any number of absolutely despicable ventures, including genocide. it is very profitable, though not for you. we have not lived in a democracy in decades.
there are no non-radical solutions left in a country where both traditional parties are pro-genocide, pro-ice, pro-fossil fuels, pro-wall st, pro-a.i., and pro-military. don’t feel bad - these parties did it to themselves.
the U.S. is riding a broken car and fantasizing that the car won’t be broken anymore if it just hires a new chauffeur
some policies are so sick there is simply no way to overlook them. it turns out genocide is one of those, much to surprise of the democratic party who thought for sure their voters were cynical, apathetic, and nihilistic enough not to mind
whether to recognize palestine's right to defend itself or israel's right to defend itself is a no brainer. unless you don't believe in international laws. then it’s very complicated and genocide, apartheid, land theft, and military occupations are ok.
an american arsonist who would profit from the fire they create: bad person
an entire army of israeli arsonists who are burning lebanon down so that american weapons manufacturers and tech companies and real estate developers will profit: apparently above all criticism
the people with the most to lose when socialists win - billionaires, our two corporate political parties, and corporate news - will do almost anything to stay in their comfort zone. they will spend millions to sabotage socialist candidates, to sabotage policies that threaten their luxury, and to corrupt sitting politicians. even most so-called democrats would rather line up behind trump than see popular socialist policies and candidates succeed.
we’re told we must believe in capitalism. but if banks, insurance companies, big tech corporations, fossil fuel corporations, and foreign countries who do our military dirty work get bailed out every time they screw up or run out of money or bombs, that’s not free market capitalism. if they are never allowed to fail, that’s called communism. but communism only if you are extremely rich and/or violent.
dear democrat who campaigned on opposing trump: how does your israel policy actually differ from trump’s? how about your ice policy? how about taxing billionaires? how about data centers? how about military budget? how about medicare for all? how about war crimes?
today’s democrat politicians are stupefyingly far to the right of their own voters on almost every conceivable issue. that’s because democratic voters have been trained to vote against their values, and because as a rule democrats who get elected wind up moving way to the right soon after entering office. the only logical voting strategy would therefore be to support candidates whose platforms are to your left.
backbone is critical.
leftist politicians who talk a good game but have already shown themselves to be weak when word comes down from party leadership or billionaire donors will not magically become more reliable when they’re elected to an even higher office and subjected to even more intense pressure from their peers in the ruling class.
-
CAPTAIN AMERICA
It is indeed a relief to see most of the country turn against genocide. It was all well and good for Biden to crack some heads on college campuses, but how can Trump and Schumer possibly arrest 3/4 of the country? Most Americans have had enough of this capitalist gaslighting that expects us to believe that they are doing it all for the love of democracy or of Judaism. At the same time, the killing hasn’t slowed down, and you and I are still the ones buying Israel the weapons to do it.
An obvious strategic flaw is how much anti-genocide criticism is focused on Netanyahu. That man signed up to be the scapegoat. If you don’t hate him, he isn’t doing his job. He’s the cartoon villain that self-appointed cartoon heroes are scripted to vanquish. The goal was always to replace him with someone who will commit the same genocide, steal the same land, enforce the same apartheid, but be less obnoxious. War crimes will return once again to their rightful place as boring, everyday background noise.
A deeper problem is America’s unwillingness to reckon with its own past. It’s a bit rich for white liberals who have benefitted for generations from global capitalism, racism and colonialism to now stand in judgement of such practices when Israelis do it. And as long as defeatist Americans keep throwing up their hands and voting for politicians who give weapons to Israel, Israel will keep asking where those voters get off telling them which ethnicities they can or can’t wipe off the face of the earth.
Likewise, until the entire Western world does some repair work for its own land theft, apartheid and genocides, Zionists will be correct to call its critics hypocrites. Remember that the Nazis looked to American genocide, American slavery, and Jim Crow as their model, inspiration, and justification. Until the Western world rediscovers its many centuries of calculated anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust, and all of the trauma thus inflicted on European Jews, it’s unprocessed guilt will continue to be weaponized against majority-Muslim countries that had nothing to do with it.
Likewise, until we design a new type of American economy that does not prop itself up on investments in weapons, foreign wars, AI-enhanced killer computers, oil, slave labor, and usury, we can expect our leaders to keep this madness up. After all they are simply fulfilling their contractual obligations to an economic system which granted them their power and wealth. Once we start investing our economy in things that liberate and nourish and educate and sustain us, there will be no more pressure to mass murder non-white people for profit.
Likewise, Americans have a hard time facing the reality that the past three years in Israel are hardly an aberration. The U.S. ruling class, and the media that parrots its talking points, has a long history of selling mass murder as some kind of rescue of democracy or human rights. They’ve been doing it since the Korean War, and it really goes back to the country’s founding. But once whatever scare headlines du jour die down, history is consistent and clear: The U.S. does not care about democracy or human rights. Decade after decade, it’s been perfectly happy to depose or assassinate democratically elected leaders around the world, and install brutal dictators more friendly to American capitalism.
Likewise, the U.S. never actually abolished the slavery that made this country such a capitalist success story. We still practice it in our prisons. And conveniently for capitalists, who are contractually obligated to minimize costs and maximize profits, we imprison more human beings than any country ever, total and per capita. This colossal population is made up largely of poor Black men. At the same time we still allow our most successful companies to practice literal slavery or near-slavery abroad. Until we change this, liberal claims of “this is not who we are” will continue to ring false.
Likewise, people who say “our immigration system is broken” need to clarify what’s actually broken about it. Let’s do that right now: We criminalize human migration. We violently prevent people from escaping global existential crises that we create. The U.S. is systematically making the world uninhabitable. We impoverish countries to maximize profit. Destroy climate to maximize profit. Start or prolong wars and genocides to maximize profit. Make growing food impossible to maximize profit. Install ruthless dictators to maximize profit. We are responsible for the refugees we create.
And at the same moment that we shirk these basic responsibilities to Earth's humans, animals, and their future generations, many of us seem to want to go out of our way to take on the bonus responsibility of centering the feelings of white supremacists and mass murderers. We pressure our friends and neighbors to support them. We stress the need to be cordial to them. We praise them when they die and sympathize with them when they get publicly humiliated. We pointlessly struggle to meet them halfway. We platform them and their racist, murderous beliefs, in an effort to generate clicks and ratings for ourselves, and they are only too happy to oblige.
Have you noticed how no politician or CEO who has been busy destroying the climate and lying about it, or who has been enabling this disgrace in Palestine, has faced the slightest legal consequence? Meanwhile those who actually do believe in international laws, or human liberation, or survival, get their heads bashed in, or get thrown in prison for terrorism. We vote and spend these mass murderers into power and wealth. We pay them salaries and give them healthcare. We put them on TV and debate whose version of genocide we like more. We’ve been willing participants in the normalization of mass murder for profit.
We’re long past the point of claiming that the deaths at the hands of Amerisrael or fossil fuels companies or ICE are some kind of tragic accident. We’re watching the planned murder of millions, if not billions, of people. The only acceptable political position is rapid demilitarization, decarbonization and degrowth. If you aren’t hearing this explicitly from the mouth of your favorite politician or candidate, then they are an avowed murderer. Every bit as premeditated as any serial killer or Marvel villain.
If Amerisrael is allowed to keep up this pace of destruction, there’s no more Palestine. No more Lebanon. Maybe no more Iran. If fossil fuel companies are allowed to keep up their pace of destruction, there’s no more Caribbean. No more Bangladesh. Where do we think those millions of people are going to go? We just sacrifice them to capitalism? So a handful of oil and weapons moguls can get even richer? It all sounds bonkers, but listen carefully to your leaders and media personalities. This is precisely their view, whether they say it out loud or not.
And Republicans do say it out loud: Black and Brown lives are worthless. Democrats try to spin it. Former Biden officials now attempting a weak apology, now that they can’t do anything about it, is simply disgusting. Nothing against personal forgiveness, but no one trying to launder their image and increase their electoral odds by saying “oopsy” after that much unmitigated savagery should ever be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. Same for enablers of ICE, and of the Big Tech fascists. This madness was obvious from day one.
In fact, you pick the controversy, I’ll show you a Left that has been vindicated by history. Time and again the Left turns out to have been holding the only realistic position. Time and again mainstream public opinion ends up adopting the original Left view. Vietnam. Iraq. Data centers. Abolishing ICE. Taxing billionaires. Opposing AIPAC and getting money out of politics. Guantanamo. Medicare For All. New drilling permits. Student loan debt. Family separations. American concentration camps. LGBTQ erasure. Voting DSA. Warning that Harris will just hand Trump the reins unless she takes a clear stand on genocide.
For all the billions that are poured into the capitalist propaganda machine, and pushed on us 24/7 from the day we are born, it’s really not working anymore. Polls show that we increasingly see American capitalism for what it is. The contradictions between words and actions have just become too glaring. We no longer trust our lawmakers, nor the billionaires who own them and own the major media. Unfortunately none of this makes any difference in policy, as long as we keep submitting to the lie that an actual transition away from capitalism, and its two decrepit political parties, is “going too far.”
We’re told repeatedly that this epic showdown between our two clown-like capitalist parties is world history’s top priority. But do we ever stop to notice how many of the actual billionaires driving the world into the gutter are suddenly Democrats when a Democrat is president, and suddenly Republicans when a Republican is president? For these weapons dealers, oil tycoons, and Big Tech man-children, it doesn’t matter who wins. It matters whom the winner serves.
Being a centrist in 2026 is more meaningless than ever. The 2026 centrist is opposed on principle to standing for something, or risking anything. Their goal is to identify the exact halfway point between whatever left and right boundaries happen to be spoon-fed to them on TV that week. The centrist sees it as their duty to dismiss global liberation struggles as unrealistic, and stifle the momentum of any positive movement that has yet to reach 51% public support in America. In this sense they are really more conservative than the far right, and thus a key reason the far right keeps winning.
So why not save ourselves some trouble and just put more trust in the Left, starting immediately? The Left is not a monolith of course, and any number of differing methods and philosophies are contained within it at any time. But what they all share is a set of basic values that the American capitalist parties work hard every day to dismiss or destroy. The Left is where the energy and fun are, and where the future is being written. Follow its voices and momentum. Engage with its analyses and critiques. Support its movements and organizations and candidates.
Let’s don’t judge politicians anymore on what they say. Let’s don’t judge them on what they think. Or what we think they might think. Let’s judge them on what they do. And if they are planning a mass murder, let’s put an end to their political career.
-
oh the ironies
While “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s latest warning to Democrats who criticize ICE that “there’s still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted” is nonsensical, it does highlight many of the ironies of the debate around ICE. First is the total contradiction between Dem words and Dem actions. What these cynical politicians say in public to score political points is the opposite of how they vote. Consistently and hypocritically they fund, expand, militarize, normalize, and leave unaccountable this rightfully hated agency.
Remember that only the reason this guy exists to torment us in the first place is that Barack Obama appointed him as head of ICE, and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his massive increase in deportations, and his brainstorm that the U.S. government should start separating immigrant families as a deliberate form of deterrent cruelty. The difference between the Dems and GOP on this issue is much smaller than advertised.
Tom Homan knows this. It’s all playacting to do Democrats a favor and make it seem like they are actually "resisting" when anyone who reads the papers know that they are not. The best today’s prominent Democratic Party leaders could come up with to “resist” ICE has been to propose increasing its funding to add bodycams to facilitate more extreme surveillance of targeted populations, and to complain that the violence that ICE is wreaking should in some cases be more properly be wrought by local and state police.
The purpose of statements like Homan’s is to shift the window of debate away from “Should ICE be allowed to exist when they are murdering people in the street?" to “Is it sometimes OK for ICE to murder certain specific people?” It’s the same when ICE admits publicly that they are arresting people without warrants and who pose no threat to them.
The reason the ruling class is deploying this guy and guys like him is because they know that Americans are overwhelmingly disgusted with ICE. The ruling class needs that energy turned from “ABOLISH ICE” to “Let’s find ways for elected officials to debate which people do actually deserve to be murdered in the street, and look into potential ways to reform the training of individual officers.”
Homan’s statement, while ludicrous, patronizing, and meant to short-circuit human brain function, does in fact conform to the recent realities of U.S. policing. When Americans turned out in record numbers in 2020 to protest police brutality, racism, militarization, overfunding, and unaccountability, the result was that lawmakers of both parties, from city to state to federal, gave the police more money and more weapons. As a result police murders have continued to go up ever since, no matter which party was in power.
Homan’s statement also reveals, perhaps inadvertently, that the true nature of ICE is not what has been stated by its Dem and GOP cheerleaders. It’s not about managing immigration, or even strengthening our borders. It’s a private army deployed by the ruling class against its own population as a form of political control.
ICE exists, as do the police and the military, to protect the profits and property of the super-rich. They do just enough to give the appearance of something more beneficial to society to trick gullible Dem and GOP voters into continuing to elect the clowns who fund these agencies.
To the extent that ICE has anything whatsoever to do with immigration, it’s not to remove all immigrants, as is advertised to gullible, impoverished white supremacists, but simply to scare our underpaid immigrant workforce, without whom our economy would crumble instantly, into not asking for a raise or more humane working conditions, lest they face “more bloodshed.”
The issue of ICE is inseparable from the issue of Israel on many levels. They share technology and training. Both rely heavily on A.I. weapons, including drones, surveillance, and targeting databases. Both rely on racism to justify their existence. Both exist only because the U.S. taxpayer has been tricked into voting for politicians whose campaigns were underwritten by the profiteers of violence who make a fortune every time there is “more bloodshed.” And both are hard right, fascist phenomena.
ICE exists as a critical piece of the fascist machinery. George Jackson taught us that when fascism is doing well and its imperial fantasies of global domination not particularly threatened, it puts people like Bill Clinton in power to project an image of niceness. This does not mean that Clinton himself is any less depraved than the meaner-looking counterparts from his class, the Epstein Class. When fascism does feel threatened, as it rightfully does now, it uses overt fear campaigns and naked violence to put people back in line.
The fascist movement is not having its big moment at a random time. Everyone knows global warming and economic collapse are about to wipe billions of people off the face of the Earth, and people need an excuse for why they should be the ones who get to survive. Things like white supremacy and Jewish supremacy provide that excuse. If you really want to fight white supremacy, Jewish supremacy, and fascism, calling them “deplorable” only plays into their hands. You have to change the condition that creates them, and that condition is capitalism.
What we are seeing now is historically what happens when the left has already won the argument. The public agrees with the left on ICE and any number of major issues. The ruling class then gives up on trying to persuade the public, and instead starts deploying some small fraction of their unlimited wealth and power on naked violence and self-protection. In our time, they’ve started using that wealth to build bunkers and spaceships and A.I. armies.
Only the liberals still fantasize that people like Homan, Trump or Netanyahu are actually trying to win over the public or trying convince you of anything. Liberals therefore obsessively argue their ludicrous statements on their merits, as if they were presented in good faith, giving the fascists free publicity and validation, and closing the window of debate to exclude what most of the public actually thinks, which is that, no, we should not be paying our taxes to fund ICE, nor any other unaccountable militarized agency that shoots innocent people in the street.
The right loves it when witless liberal commentators continue to give such ludicrous statements as Homan's the respect of treating them as good faith arguments. Meanwhile they've long since moved on to a strategy of ignoring, silencing, impoverishing, imprisoning, dispossessing, infecting, injuring, and killing the public, and using their wealth and power simply to protect their profits, their property, and themselves.
The ruling class loves when we argue over whether this or that victim of state violence was or was not an “angel.” They’re overjoyed when we quibble over whether it’s wimpy to wear a mask during chemical spills, forest fires, and pandemics. They’re satisfied as long as we fight over anything really, as long as we aren’t striking, boycotting, suing, organizing unions or electing socialists to office.
It’s often said that “It’s not left vs right but rich vs poor,” but I’m not sure I entirely agree with that. A big part of the right is the part that claims to be the left, but actually spends more energy trying to drive a wedge between itself and the actual left. They do this by pretending to criticize the right while simultaneously imitating, appeasing, compromising with, collaborating with it.
I define the right as a radical political movement that divides human beings into those deserving and undeserving of basic rights, whether we’re talking about immigrants, Jews, activists, or anyone else. This movement protects money and power at the expense of the worker. It justifies genocide, slavery, militarism, extreme levels of inequality, and enacting policies that are the opposite of what the public wants. In the U.S. the main institutions of the right are Democratic and Republican parties.