Mando?

Solutions: China:

Problem: Biden/Kamala are letting China take over, threaten and attack the United States. To kill over 1 million Americans with a Biological Weapon (Covid-19) created in the Wuhan Lab. China's Purpose is to infiltrate, weaken and attack countries to take them over without directly declaring War. Everyday Biden is President America gets weaker & falls just like him.

NATO:

Mando plans to add America's membership to NATO as part of the United States Constitution

China: As President, Mando will declare 100% Comprehensive Full Trade Embargo against China.

what a maniac

Uh, aphantasia has precisely nothing to do with artistic ability. I only know a couple off the top of my head, but Ed Catmull founded Pixar and contributed greatly to computer graphics, and Glen Keane was an animator at Disney for decades, worked on all the big films. Both are aphantasic.

Counterpoint: States are the only way to ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat until communism can be achieved.

I hadn't heard of Hernández before, but I was intrigued by the title so I gave it a listen. He said he doesn't subscribe to dialectical materialism and his entire framework of defining socialism without even considering the ownership of the means of production strikes me as deeply idealistic, so I'm not so sure how seriously I want to take his work.

GOODS is a communist clothing co-op. It's from the blurb on the page for their Urb shirt.

Their manifesto is pretty all right, too.

City. Very much looking forward to how much better cities will be with socialist development.

GOODS FOR THE PEOPLE puts it well:

The future belongs to sustainable smart cities.

Ecologically speaking, increasingly concentrated mega cities is the only path toward a future of harmonious integration of humans and nature. Socialist cities of the future, such as the Forrest City being developed in the PRC, can develop and function in much more rational, healthy, and communal ways than random chaotic development under the tyranny of private ownership of land and industry.

Who's the host on this? It doesn't really sound like Breht, and there wasn't really an intro. The show notes link to Cosmonaut, is this a Cosmopod episode on the RevLeft feed?

I made lemmygrad.ml/c/socialistemblems a while ago and then forgot about it until now, so that's cool, appreciate the reminder

Gonna try to radicalize people at happy hour, wish me luck

I think it was originally a Telegram sticker pack, I'm no artist haha

name	shortcode	keywords	image
Lenin Tears of Joy	:leninlaugh:	lenin, laugh, cry
Lenin With Love	:leninkiss:	lenin, kiss, love, medal
Lenin Flag Thumbs Up	:leninyes:	lenin, flag, yes, okay
Lenin Surprised	:surprisedlenin:	lenin, surprised, hat
Lenin Wave (art)	:leninwave1:	lenin, wave, hello
Lenin with Sunglasses	:lenincool:	lenin, cool, sunglasses
Lenin We Can Poster	:leninwecan:	lenin, we can, poster
MEL Thinking	:melthink:	marx, engels, lenin, think, hmm
Lenin in Robe	:leninrobe:	lenin, robe
Lenin Carrying Log	:leninstrong:	lenin, log, strong
Lenin Writing	:leninwrite:	lenin, writing, thinking, working
Lenin Facepalm	:leninfacepalm:	lenin, facepalm
Lenin Finger Guns	:leninfingerguns:	lenin, finger guns
Lenin Pulls Out Shotgun	:leninshotgun:	lenin, shotgun
Sad Lenin Statue	:sadlenin:	lenin, statue, sad
Lenin Flips Off	:leninflipoff:	lenin, flip off, middle finger, bird
Lenin Cheers	:lenincheers:	lenin, cheers, tea, toast
Lenin Protects his Cat	:leninbadnews:	lenin, cat, bad news, oh no
Lenin Robs a Bank	:leninmoney:	lenin, bank, money, robbery
Lenin is Unamused	:leninannoyed:	lenin, annoyed, unamused
Lenin Shrug	:leninshrug:	lenin, shrug, i guess
Lenin What	:leninwhat:	lenin, what, how, why
MEL Party	:mellaugh:	marx, engels, lenin, ML, laugh
Lenin Yells at Capitalists	:leninyell:	lenin, capitalist
Lenin plays the Accordion	:leninaccordion:	lenin, accordion, music
Saint Lenin	:saintlenin:	lenin, saint, hamsic
Lenin Whatever	:leninwhatever:	lenin, whatever, eye roll
Lenin Distressed	:lenindistressed:	lenin, distress, oh no, joey
Lenin Crying	:lenincrying:	lenin, crying, sad
Lenin gives you a Rose	:leninrose:	lenin, rose
Lenin Shush	:leninshh:	lenin, shush, shh, secret
Lenin has an Idea	:leninidea:	lenin, idea, lightbulb
Lenin on Vacation	:leninbeach:	lenin, beach, vacation
Lenin Doesn't Want Your Money	:leninmoney:	lenin, money, no, bribe
Lenin Okay	:leninokay:	lenin, okay
Kiss Your Lenin Bust	:leninbust:	lenin, bust, kiss
Lenin Slaps the Bourgeoisie	:leninslap:	lenin, slap, bourgeoisie, bourgeois
Lenin on the Train	:lenintrain:	lenin, train, tea
Lenin with Flags	:leninflags:	lenin, flags
Lenin Taps Head	:leninheadtap:	lenin, head tap, good idea, roll safe

Finally finished.

I'm not going to add that other set I mentioned in previous edits because I looked and they would be unreadable when small. Heck, some of these might be, too, but they're better.

That emptiness is a very common feeling. Learning and doing more absolutely helps with it, though. Look into the concept of revolutionary optimism a little bit if you start reading again.

All right, thanks! I'll check those out. On a related note, is Trotsky's Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It worth my time?

Tried to reply to your more recent version of this comment but I don't think it worked because the post was deleted.

I'd like to know more about this framing - I was under the impression that a key component of fascism is the turning inward of colonialist/imperialist tactics onto members of the working class and specifically minority groups within that class, and less that it was a specific movement aimed at colonizing other nations, white european or otherwise. It's never seemed to me that the warnings about fascism and the anticommunism it upholds as well as the oppression it brings had any relation, moral or otherwise (not that moralizing has much to do with dialectical materialism), to colonialism.

I haven't yet read any specific works analyzing fascism, but if you have any recommendations, I'd love to know.

eBay is a great place to find e-readers (kindle, nook, etc) for quite cheap, as well. There's also software available for rooting if you're into that sort of thing, and to get away from the corpos.

I see the white savior and noble/exotic savage tropes in the film from two perspectives - first, as a bit of a 'necessary evil' on Cameron's part to fit in or appeal to audiences and the industry, as well as to actually communicate the narrative in a coherent fashion, and secondly as an actual subversion of what those tropes typically present as.

At its core, Avatar as a franchise is essentially an anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist story. I feel as though the 'white savior' criticism doesn't fully engage with how Jake as a character is presented in the film. From a narrative standpoint, it's necessary to have the main character be someone from the outside, otherwise it would be much more difficult to introduce Pandora and the Na'vi in a way that makes sense. One criticism I've seen is that Jake is a bland character, but it seems to me that this is actually sort of the point - he serves as a vehicle for the audience to experience the story. On the other hand, it's clear that Jake isn't invested in the project that's taking place on Pandora - he's already alienated at the start, and takes the job basically as an escape from the horrors of living on Earth.

It also doesn't follow the typical formula of the 'white savior' because, in some sense, Jake isn't an outsider that comes to the aid of the Na'vi through some sense of righteousness or morality and retains his original identity in that conflict.. By the end of the story, Jake has actually rejected his former humanity (whiteness, in the metaphor) entirely, obviously something that isn't possible in the real world, but that's where the narrative goes. It's addressed directly in the film in the video log montage as he describes the shift in feeling like his time with the Na'vi is the real world and his time as a human is the dream.

As for the whole 'noble savage' thing, I feel like Cameron did as well as he could have, both with constructing the Na'vi from a variety of influences and, well, they're the good guys, so of course they have to be 'noble' in some sense.

Been slowly working my way through le Carré's Karla Trilogy, but slowly starting to hate it more bit by bit. I still think spy stories are better if the setting is the Cold War.

I think now I prefer nonfiction and theory books more now, though, as I continue to learn. Should probably focus more on actually getting through them rather than reading snippets or shorter works as they come up, especially since sometimes I feel I'm not getting the full picture as I'm not entirely confident in my foundation of knowledge. Got a lot of stuff I'll probably have to reread at some point.

If you're into that sort of thing, here's some study guides I found for What Is to Be Done:

• Liberation School (PSL)
• Wellred Books (IMT)

I know Wellred is a trot publishing house, but I figure since the questions are different and trots still like Lenin that it wouldn't hurt.

Go for it. I'd say it's not quite as good as the first one, but it wraps up the story well.

Yeah, really odd - PSL states they're MLs and their national articles and media have defended Stalin, China, DPRK, etc. Perhaps some sort of ideological holdover from when they split with that other Trot party?

marxist leninist state... more harmful to the proletariat

The fuck?

We're on the same page there, for sure.

Unfortunately I picked the route where you don't get Jimi Hendrix - might have to try that next time around.

Have you all looked into Comradery? It seems like it'd be a good platform to jump on, given that it's run as a co-op and if Patreon eventually decides to start removing left-wing projects.

I never really had a moment of realization or anything - I just started my political development a bit before the time I was eligible to vote, and over time, just kept moving left. It picked up a bit when I started working shittier jobs, which makes sense, but one of the more funny elements was that I used to play quite a bit of Battlefield 1 - especially the expansion about the Russian Civil War. The narrations from the perspective of the soldiers talking about fighting off the imperialists and freeing the people really made me be like 'Hm, maybe I should look into this Red Army stuff a little more.'

I'm a big fan of this entire plan, it'll definitely clean things up a bit. On the SLS/SRS mod consolidation, it does seem like a good idea to have more mods with the anticipated increase in posts, as well as streamlining the transition. I genuinely don't have much of an idea about how moderating goes, though, so I may be overlooking some things.

С Новым годом, товарищи!

Rent free.

I don't know what form it'll take, but I do think we will. Revolutions have almost always come out of war, as the culmination of contradictions, so I'm optimistic that as long as we don't have a significant nuclear exchange that the current world order will be overturned.