marxism

July 4th? Why Not?

by MyBaconPress

So, it’s the Fourth of July. The US celebrates it’s independence from Great Briton on this day. Might as well. The Continental Congress actually voted to declare independence on July 2nd. We could have used that date. Once declared, there was a bit of a dispute over whether we were actually independent or not. King George III thought not.

Major hostilities of the Revolutionary War ended October 19, 1781. We could have used that date, too. It might have been cold out for fireworks, though. The war wasn’t officially over until the Treaty of Paris was signed September 3rd, 1783, yet another viable date to celebrate our actual independence.

After the vote to declare independence it took the congress critters two more days to write up and distribute the announcement. People have been celebrating the announcement date, July 4th, rather than the actual independence date, July 2nd, ever since. It makes little difference. We picked a date and we’ve stuck to that date and that’s the date we use and that date is today, so, Happy Fourth of July…

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Speaking of fighting for independence, Ukraine continues to fend off Russia’s illegal war, despite the promise from 47 that he would end it on Day One and that it would be easy. It wasn’t easy. He got bored. He quit and walked away. Yet another promise made, promise not kept. Hell, the only problems I’ve ever seen him “solve” are problems of his own creation. If he’d just keep his stupid hands to himself, he’d have no problems at all.

According to estimates, Russia has lost a larger number of people than Ukraine, but Ukraine has lost a larger percentage of it’s smaller army. I saw one article suggesting Russia was losing fighting personnel at a rate of 8 to 1. That’s a LOT, but Russia has a larger population to draw from. Somehow, they’re already down to drafting felons and debtors, though. I’m not sure the war is going the way Putin planned…

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Holy Gods, what now? I hear 47 went to Mount Rushmore. Is it still intact? He gets near something special in this country, he can’t help but destroy it. It wasn’t about him, it doesn’t mean anything in his ever-so-challenged mind. He might try to add his ugly, raper visage to the others. That would certainly ruin it.

Most of the things he has done can be undone. Carving his mug into the mountain wouldn’t be so easy to fix but fortunately, it’s not so easy to do, either, so he probably won’t. His laziness and short attention span finally work for us…

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Old man Donny said he was going to give a speech today despite the fact that the weather report is calling for temperatures as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit. He said he was going to do it just to prove he can do anything. He did NOT say he wouldn’t use coolers of some kind, though. He also didn’t say he was going to do it outdoors. Maybe he will, though.

Maybe the frail old man will try to stand outside in 104 degree heat and give a long-winded speech full of lies and fear-mongering. Maybe he’ll sweat a lot and not drink enough water. Maybe he’ll suffer heat stroke or something. Hope springs eternal. But enough about daydreams.

I’ve heard snippets of his current campaign positions. He’s running on anti-communism. “Oh, the commies are coming, the commies are coming!” This seems to be his reaction to the recent success of Democratic Socialists in New York and Colorado. I’ve said before, Americans – as a group – are apparently an amazingly stupid bunch. (I was surprised, too.) Many, like 47, don’t understand the difference between Communism and Democratic Socialism.

Democratic Socialism is a Capitalist system. It’s just controlled Capitalism. Managed. Democratic Socialism seeks to soften the hardest edges of Capitalism and where it’s been implemented, it works wonderfully, creating the happiest societies on the planet. Communism fails.

But NO politician, not even Donny, can run against a system that’s more fair for everybody – so they don’t. They pretend commies are hiding under the Democratic Socialist banner just waiting to pounce, then they run against communism. That’s what Donny is doing now. The part that surprises me is that it might still work. I mean, how many times does one have to buy the same bridge from the same con-artist before they realize the sale isn’t real?

But speaking of real, let’s be real, here, for a moment. Bernie Sanders attracted a LOT of attention during his campaign. His message was SO popular, the Democratic party had to take, um, extraordinary steps to sideline his campaign so they could foist their FAR less popular candidate on us, instead, because, as they explained it at the time, her check cleared and he wouldn’t write one.

The Dems are, right now, trying to figure out how to “manage” the recent upsurge in Democratic Socialist support. It’s a tough position. How does one push out the candidates that want to actually serve the masses without alienating those self-same masses? But the Dems serve the same One Percent the cons do and they’ll have to fight against their own success when a candidate like Bernie Sanders shows up. But the Dems weren’t ready for his popularity and their efforts to sideline him were sloppy. Bad optics.

Bernie’s attraction was and is that he offered something different than politics as usual. Bernie’s message was to the masses, not the masters. (That’s the real reason Hillary was pushed forward, by the way. She was far more “don’t change a thing” than Bernie.) Before being artificially sidelined, Bernie attracted people from both sides of the aisle. After being pushed out, some Bernie supporters turned toward The Dumbass because he, too, was promising change.

But Bernie’s success and more recently Zohran Mamdani’s success is proving people want something different, and not the hate-mongering and fear-mongering and criminal activity of a trumpster. The masses are looking for candidates who will keep them in mind when decisions are made, not the toadies doing the bidding of the One Percent.

I suspect the hardest challenge for the movement will be teaching people the difference between Capitalism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism. The Capitalists have a real advantage, here, because the ‘Ain’t commies scary?’ message has played out in this country since Marx and Engels published ‘Das Kapital’ in 1867.’ So long as they can keep, uh, “low information voters” thinking communism and social capitalism are probably the same thing, they’ll control the message.

But we shouldn’t walk away from the fight just because it’s a fight. No social change has ever come to this country – or any other, by the way – without a fight. It seems pretty clear WHY the One Percent want to protect what they have accumulated, honestly and otherwise. Life is pretty good for them and they have no idea, not a clue, how life is for most of us. Largely, I suspect, because they don’t care. But there’s a better way than this and I hope enough Americans understand and embrace it to bring it about…

It’s the Free Market, Stupid…

by MyBaconPress

Capitalist: 1) An investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise. 2) A person of great wealth. Then, thrown in to try to keep the rest of us on board, 3) A supporter of capitalism. (Uh-huh…)

It’s one of the greatest deceptions of all time. Capitalists have their victims (that’s you and me) declaring themselves capitalists and defending capitalism. And we do, too. If you ask anybody in America, odds are they’ll tell you they’re a capitalist and they believe in capitalism. You can see that one of the definitions is ‘A supporter of capitalism.’ That makes us feel like we’re ‘on the team,’ as it were – but we really, really are not.

Those first two definitions – rich people who have major financial interests in important enterprises – are FAR more accurate descriptions of capitalists, but do you know what THAT means? That means that, far and away, most Americans are NOT capitalists. (We’re the victims of capitalism.) We’re not rich and we don’t own enough to have “major financial interests in important enterprises.” We just get up and go to work, creating the wealth the capitalists keep – and then use against us…

Suddenly, I feel a need to make this point. There are NOT only two systems, Capitalism or Communism. I don’t support communism, either. It clearly doesn’t work – based on the idea that it has never worked anywhere in the world, any time in history. But this so-called ‘Free Market Capitalism’ ain’t working so hot, either, wouldn’t you say?

I support the middle road, once known as New Deal Capitalism. I call it ‘Social Capitalism.’ The rest of the world calls it ‘Democratic Socialism.’ That’s too bad, too. Americans have been fully conditioned, brainwashed really, to believe that the word socialism describes one thing and one thing only: communism, so the instant they hear that word, many Americans crap their panties and dive for the covers to hide their heads. But despite the stupid name, it’s really just managed capitalism, the kind that fights back against capitalistic abuse. It’s better for everyone – even rich people.

Right now, the poster child for the failure of ‘Free Market Capitalism’ is Luigi Mangione, the guy who gunned down the current poster child for capitalistic abuse, Brian Thompson. Mangione shot Thompson in the back, just gunned him down in the street. As of this writing, it appears Mangione shot Thompson as a symbol. That is, he had no personal beef with Thompson. Thompson became the poster child of capitalistic abuse because he was the CEO of the health insurance company that denied more claims than any other company.

Nobody seems to care. I see memes out there of Luigi superimposed by Photoshop into various work environments with comments about how he was there on Dec 4, on-site all day and right next to other workers. Never out of their sight, even for a moment. Why, the memes insist, Luigi couldn’t have done it. Alibi established. Obviously, it isn’t. It turns out, the police have a few photos of their own – and theirs aren’t Photoshopped.

Truthfully, when the shooting occurred, my first thought was “Someone who got denied.” I wasn’t alone. I felt badly that I didn’t feel worse about the shooting. I felt guilty that I was kind of happy to see a little guy get even for a change. As it happens, I’m not alone in THAT, either. I expected the party to end a few days later, as people got past their bubbling anger and re-connected with their humanity. So far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, there’s a “Free Luigi” movement starting.

Do you know who IS showing signs of concern, though? Corporate media. The media owned and operated by the capitalists. The message coming from both sides of the dial is the same – it’s poor form to shoot capitalists. Don’t do it. That’s not working, either. I suspect we’ve all noticed that NONE of them are promising to change their ways. They just don’t want people shooting them for the abuses. But people are really angry and most of us seem quite happy that a rich guy got his, for a change. And that’s the key.

Thompson’s program of denial likely killed thousands. THAT was just “good business.” HE was getting bonuses for increasing the bottom line so nicely. Families were planning funerals that didn’t have to happen. We ALL know this. We ALL know we COULD have decent health care in this country. But the capitalists don’t WANT us to have decent health care. They can’t profit if they can’t insert themselves into the process and all they care about is profit.

So, after forty years of living the ‘Free Market Capitalism’ life, one guy has reached the point of shooting someone and the rest of us are cheering the act. There’s even a new movement out there called ‘Board rooms, not classrooms.’ It takes the position that, if you’re going to be a random shooter that goes out and kills someone for fame – at least kill someone whose death benefits society. Don’t kill six-year olds. Don’t shoot up classrooms. Kill CEO’s. Shoot up board rooms. Go out a hero, like Luigi. (I’m only describing, and not endorsing, the movement, here.)

I think Luigi was trying to start something and I think he has. Somehow, this single act of defiance has loosed a torrent of anger at the way our economy works (or doesn’t, in so many cases). I suspect Luigi wanted other people to start shooting right away. That part didn’t happen but the anger is now at the top, not being hidden anymore, perhaps bubbling over. In fact, it’s being celebrated. There WILL BE other shooters.

And now, just to put the icing on the cake, we’re getting the richest political Cabinet in history. We’re already hearing messages from billionaires like, “You Poors are going to have to suffer,” and comments about how Joe Six-pack has it way too easy. Trump has admitted, now, that he isn’t going to bring the price of groceries down and he can’t guarantee his tariffs won’t raise prices. “Yeah, I lied. Whaddaya gonna do about it?” Hey, ask Luigi.

Consider this: So-called “Free Market Capitalism” has created a world in which people cheer when a capitalist is gunned down in the street – and all the while, there have been entities in place pushing back against the abuses of the Free Market. Now, the One Percent (and Putin) have managed to install the richest group of people in history, none of whom have even the slightest idea of what life is like for a working person. Corruption has mostly eliminated the restraints the held them back in the past – even the recent past.

Now? The brakes are off. The capitalists – the true capitalists, not the “supporters of capitalism” – are about to have their way with the economy without restraint. Do you think that’s going to be better or worse for the Small Folk? If we’re already at, “Yes, kill them!” and the capitalists are about to turn the screws even harder – and I guarantee they are – I expect blood.

To be clear, I don’t WANT blood. I wish every self-absorbed, self-serving, self-described “important” blowhard would get visits from three ghosts and see the error of their ways. But John Kennedy’s words are about to explode in front of us. The capitalists are making violent revolution inevitable…