O_ouziq wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzVc7s-_e8
Last edited by Shahter (2020-11-21 06:50:17)
Larssen wrote:
No it's a real Trump voter
it's easy - there no such thing. marxism is, and always have been, a critique of capitalism from - first and foremost - an economic point of view. "cultural marxism" is a smoke screen raised by the western propaganda machine to obfuscate what actual marxism is about.uziq wrote:
and besides, what the fuck is an avowed marxist doing complaining about 'cultural marxism'?
Last edited by uziq (2020-11-21 10:00:05)
right. as we were discussing this stuff, you were the first to point that large problems have to be broken into smaller parts to make any practical work possible. hence, my emphasis on the defining aspect of this shit - economic. unless we start there, all the stuff that went "woosh over my head" won't mean squat - and, judging by the way it's going, we are not even starting atm.uziq wrote:
whoosh! over your head.
the most prevalent methods of coercion under capitalism are economic. start there.uziq wrote:
why might it be useful to study dominant systems of power and coercion? why might it make sense to critique class formations and hierarchies as they exist? what use might one get from psychological, or sociological, or strictly cultural analyses of these questions?
anything ideological stands on economic basis. start there.did philosophers like althusser spend their entire lives, as marxists and activists i hasten to add, wasting their time on ‘fancy shit?’ or did they perhaps have an insight that you do not? like, for instance, that ideology and the intellected or imagined life are also very important?
uh-huh. start with economics.what’s your theory of revolution? what leads to these events? what catalyses them? what leads to their success or failure? (what leads successful revolutionary parties to devolve into reactionary, dynastic, or nationalistic regimes?) i doubt you can actually answer any of these questions in any meaningful way because all you can say is ‘it’s economic and we have to abolish property’.
i never really claimed to be. but even for me, with whatever limited understanding of all this stuff i happen to have got, the importance of economic aspect of all this over everything else is pretty self evident. you want to be a step ahead and pretend to know how to shape whatever comes after that aspect has been dealt with - be my guest, just don't put the carriage ahead of the horse. and if the stuff you've been posting here - and general idealistic insanity that's been going on on the left in the west - are any indication, your carriage is miles ahead of the horse. no wonder you are not moving anywhere.you’re not clever. sorry.
https://twitter.com/j_elliott78/status/ … 9677384704Took a flame thrower to him. I didn’t used to like Brian Williams because of his smugness, but it’s put to great use here. I was wrong.
Quote Tweet
Karine Jean-Pierre
@K_JeanPierre
· 8h
Watch the Brian Williams salty shade at its best 👇🏿
1:38 PM · Nov 21, 2020 from Columbus, OH·Twitter for iPhone
I'm sure thats what you did.uziq wrote:
i mean, look at the title. do you think even most grad-school students at berkeley or columbia are reading '800 pages of queer feminist theory'?
We have wandered into a psychoanalytic wonderland. Elected politicians are supposed to shy away from the prospect of being shamed or found guilty of breaking the law. Yet Trump owns the things he does, not by demonstrating repentance but through a flamboyant display of shamelessness. Some commentators suggest that Trump is trying to anaesthetise the public to his wrongdoing or to normalise his actions, but that account cannot address the ‘genius or suicide’ dilemma. One reason psychoanalysis as a form of critique has never been more important than it is today is that we are being asked to contemplate actions that could be either suicidal or a means of triumphant survival. But what if they are both, and playing out now in the political arena? How are suicide and survival linked in the psychic field we call ‘Trump’? It isn’t just that he thinks shameless confession normalises his crimes and makes possible his triumph in a world in which law and crime have become fatally confused. It’s that he seems to regard upholding the law and his oath of office as a form of weakness, convinced as he is that only those who circumvent the law (by evading tax disclosure requirements, by ignoring constitutional constraints on executive power) are smart and powerful enough to prevail. He banks as well on the enthusiastic admiration his base has for those who have the guts to flout the law: such romantic criminals are icons to those who thrill to the fantasy of living above and outside the law, without inhibition or shame.
[...]
If he does finally get taken down, escorted by federal guards from the White House or, after he has left office, extracted from Mar-a-Lago or from one Trump property or another, he will doubtless be spewing accusations and insults as he goes. He will try to destroy in the course of being destroyed. But for him it will be the scene of a lifetime, a raging battle to determine who delivers the final judgment against whom.
Was the Trump regime always meant to end this way? Maybe. His base is taken by the drama of the reckless sovereign, the ultimate representative of state power living shamelessly outside the law. It is a manic escapade, a mythological thriller in which the ruler who declares his ‘great and unmatched wisdom’ threatens the destruction of the Turkish economy days before he unleashes the Turks on the Kurds. The rhetoric would be laughable if the consequences were not so murderous.
At best, a lethal joke is being played out here, as the sovereign pumps up his destructive powers on the eve of his exposure and legal capture. By continuing to unleash rhetorical utterances that confirm all that the investigators need in order to impeach him, while refusing to yield to the impeachment proceedings, he manically proves that he is above and outside the law even as he seals the legal judgment against him. The shameful ‘end’ is what he fends off and solicits at the same time: getting shamed is not what he wants, yet he moves compulsively in that direction. Here mania takes the form of an unrelenting fight, an obsessional pursuit of his enemies, a limitless self-aggrandisement, his weaponised messages fired out into the world as a barrage of daily tweets, keeping going at all costs – because what would happen if he stopped? How odd that Trump may well give us back the law as he is forced to submit to the law and go down: will he then become, even if only in his demise, the lawgiver? The price he would pay might well be prison, an infinity of shame waiting for him at the end of the road.
I have offered no more than a dream sequence of my own. It may be that shame and guilt has suffused all he has ever felt. The jury is out. My wager/dream is that he would rather die than pause to feel the shame that passes through him and is externalised as destruction and rage. If he ever registers shame, it may be only in that briefest moment just as it turns outwards, to be expelled into the world around him. It can never properly be lived as his own, because his psychic structure is built to block it – a gigantic task. If in the end shame ever turns back on him, it would – according to the rules of his psychic playbook – be a suicidal submission. Expect then a very long and loud howl, as he launches a climactic accusation against the whole world. Let us hope that by then he has been deprived of his access to military power.
Brian Williams losing his career over lying about a helicopter trip seems pretty petty in the age of MeToo and Donald Trump.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
https://twitter.com/j_elliott78/status/ … 9677384704Took a flame thrower to him. I didn’t used to like Brian Williams because of his smugness, but it’s put to great use here. I was wrong.
Quote Tweet
Karine Jean-Pierre
@K_JeanPierre
· 8h
Watch the Brian Williams salty shade at its best 👇🏿
1:38 PM · Nov 21, 2020 from Columbus, OH·Twitter for iPhone
Ouch.
Of course the defense I've encountered is blanket cynicism. "Biden doesn't care about any of us either! They're all the saaame!" Like wait, I thought Trump was the chosen one. Messianic even! If they're all the same, that means God has big plans for Uncle Joe too.
It's been pointed out by a number of people in or who have been intelligence how much of a risk factor is currently at play, and it probably does them a disservice to downplay that. The president leaking classified information through the non-filters of twitter out of spite wouldn't be an (irrecoverable) blow but could have long lasting implications as well as put members of our intelligence community at risk. It's even been suggested that Trump be declared incapable, with Pence assuming the mantle of acting-president for the duration.Larssen wrote:
Nah that's media/Biden camp BS mostly. Departments will merrily keep functioning regardless of who the political leadership is or even if there is any political leadership. The NSA doesn't suddenly stop its surveillance, the intelligence agencies don't stop sharing info, the military doesn't start twiddling thumbs etc. 'Business as usual' continues, no matter what, independent from politics.
