FlyingCircus

Censorship is not the same thing as propaganda. They often go hand in hand, but the US prefers to drown dissenting voices in billions of dollars worth of media. No other country has a propaganda budget the size of Hollywood’s, for example.

That’s basically what I meant. I support the Iranian people, their war of defense, and their general stance against Western Imperialism.

That doesn’t mean I think the Iranian state are the good guys though. Some elements are doing good in the world, but it’s also a horribly repressive theocratic regime. Of course, on the list of oppressive regimes, Iran ranks far below the likes of Israel and the USA…

Honestly, comrade, I agree with you. I’m just trying to create some space for the large amount of people who would be turned away by a Stalin quote to join the left in supporting Iran’s side in this. They don’t care about the broader fight against US imperialism, but they hate how bad this war looks for America (and how expensive it is).

I agree that is how the Dream is sold, but the reality of capitalism is that it is founded on exploitation. One person can rise above others because the system is pushing them down. And in order to justify that inequality, we have the ideology of American Individualism, which says to always take care of “number one” first. So people who are born into privilege get told that they deserve it, and that people who don’t have it are undeserving because of some moral failure.

The very system breeds the ideologies of selfishness. It doesn’t matter if some Americans are different, on a societal level, we are crazily selfish.

America is the most propagandized place in the history of humanity. The stranglehold that capitalists hold over American worldviews begins in public schools and is constantly reinforced through media.

I honestly don’t believe Americans can think about the rest of the world until either capitalism is dismantled and the propaganda machine destroyed, or they lose a world war and are made to change.

Or maybe you don’t choose the sides that are running the war (eg USA vs. Iran), but instead choose the side that is fighting it (the working class) against the side that instigated it (the global billionaires who benefit from imperialism and capitalism).

The party doesn’t offer good candidates in primaries, either. The only people I’ve found actually worthy of my vote have been from the DSA, PSL, or Greens. This is why the Dems will never support ranked choice voting, it totally destroys their ability to siphon political power from the left.

What language is that?

Or maybe, instead of creating privacy-infringing laws or blaming parents, we actually dismantle the tech companies who created them and imprison their leaders. We all know corporate social media is cancer, that’s why we’re on Lemmy. So let’s fucking do something about the cancer instead targeting the victims or worse, exploiting the situation to expand the surveillance state.

Honestly I doubt that Democrats would move for prosecution. This is the party of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. There’s no way they want consequences for a member of their own class.

Now, if Trump were a leftist and breaking norms to the benefit of the working class, he’d already be executed.

SMART Recovery is a science-based alternative that uses Cognitive Behavior Therapy techniques. I don’t know what their success rate is, but people I know have been helped by their programs.

It’s more like the constitution was written by wealthy landowners for wealthy landowners, and the idea of the common people being able to hold the rich to account was downright undesirable, so it wasn’t encoded into law.

Pahlanuik has a certain way of planting images in your brain that stay there for decades. Such a weird, brilliant, fascinating and slightly off-putting author. He really captures the ennui, alienation, despair, and absurdity of late-stage capitalism.