Rev Left Radio - Red Hot Take: The American Ruling Class and Its Depravities

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

[ Edit: this was recorded hours BEFORE Biden invoked the Defense Production Act ] Breht discusses the infant formula crisis and its relationship to capitalist profiteering, how Tucker Carlson displaces blame from the actual ruling class and onto the most vulnerable and defenseless people in our society, how the Democratic Party elite look down their nose at regular people, Sweden and Finland applying for NATO membership and its implications for Russia, the Biden administration making it rain on Ukraine while working class Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians alike suffer needlessly, and much more. Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about a couple of issues that I think are really important and our current events, topical, and are worth discussing and bringing some principled analysis to the situation because there's a lot of obscuring going on related to these issues. And the first issue I want to talk about is that. the baby formula shortage. Now, as many of you might know, I myself have a six-month-old son and this baby formula shortage is directly and daily impacting my life and, you know, the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of families around this country. Now, why is there

a shortage? Well, for the simplest reasons, which is capitalism, to be more precise, monopoly capitalism. The corporation that runs or one of the corporations at play here is the Abbott Labs corporation of which one of their divisions is baby infant formula. And

infant formula is crucial because infant formula is what parents use when they, for various reasons, are unable or don't want to breastfeed. And breastfeeding, I know this has gone around quite a bit online, is not

as easy as a lot of people fucking seem to think it is. My wife, with our first son, struggled mightily to produce enough. She internalized her failure to produce enough breast milk as like, you know, she kind of had guilt and shame about it. But, you know, as we went through that experience, we realized it's much, much, much more common than people think for there to be issues with regards to lactation. I mean, there's an entire industry of lactation consultants, you know, that are there specifically to help new mothers, you know, learn how to breastfeed and, you know, all the things needed to do that in the right way, even down to getting the baby to latch correctly, right, to latch onto the nipple correctly. It's a whole

thing. It's much more difficult than people, especially those who've never had kids, might assume that it is. So formula is an absolutely essential, you know, commodity for parents. And it's already incredibly expensive. So even in the best of times, you know, formula is very, very expensive. And, you know, without some assistance for working class or, you know, poor parents, it can be very hard in good times to be able to secure enough infant formula for your child. Now, what happened in this situation is a classic case, as I was saying earlier, of monopoly capitalism, a handful of companies, specifically Abbott Labs, Mead Johnson, and Nestle make up 98% of the market in that industry. So that is a shared monopoly, cornered the market, no competition.

And this obviously creates a bunch of pathologies in our society. I mean, almost every industry and major strain of business in American society is a shared monopoly of one sort or another. So all this started basically with a shutdown of the Abbott Labs facilities, production facilities in Sturgis, Michigan, after there had been a bacterial contamination of their machinery that takes place in the drying process of the baby formula and that bacteria got into the supply, went on to kill two babies and injure two more before an internal whistle. whistleblower, you know, got the news out that this was happening and the FDA stepped in and had to shut down this facility. Now, why did this happen? Well, because Abbott Labs was engaged in stock buybacks, meaning the profit they make as a company was not put into, reinvested in the production facility, into the machinery, into maintaining safety standards, let alone into the pockets of workers with higher wages, the five, let me see here, the exact amount, $5.73 billion was spent

on stock buybacks. This is a mechanism by which companies stuff money into the pockets of their shareholders instead of spending that over $5 billion, making sure that their facility and their production equipment were up to safety standards and were running smoothly and not introducing bacteria into formula for infants. So you literally have a situation in which a company uses its profits to stuff the pockets of their shareholders while neglecting the safety and cleanliness of their own machines and production facilities leading to the death of literal babies, the shutdown of a facility causing then a huge shortage throughout the country. When you have three companies owning 98% of the baby formula industry in bed with government as I mean our government

is wholly captured and owned by capital you know the shutdown of one facility and this is one facility in the United States they have other facilities they moved elsewhere for what reason Brett well for the obvious reason of paying workers less so they actually move some of their facilities to China where labor is one-tenth the cost that it is in the United States but they did have one remaining factory here in Sturgis, Michigan, which due to their, you know, reckless stock buyback program using their revenue to buyback stocks instead of dealing with and maintaining their equipment led to this contamination, the death of two babies, the injuring of two more, and then the eventual shutdown. And so you have one of three companies going offline,

and that's going to result in huge shortages. So all over the country, parents are struggling to find baby formula you know we are constantly hitting our local like facebook groups up regarding where stocks are where supplies are so if a target gets a truck you know the mothers on that the parents on that a forum will tell each other hey there's a new truck here so mothers will go in there but you know that just results in that being that supply being eradicated very quickly so it's a very precarious situation moreover if you have a child with you know certain special needs like You know, maybe they have colic or maybe they have a sensitive stomach. You need a very specific type of formula.

And when that's not available, then you're doubly screwed. And there's been situations where parents have even, in one case at least, had to bring their baby to the hospital to get a feeding tube inserted just so they could have nutrition, you know, because they can't find the formula that they need. Now, my son, he eats every four hours. If there's just every four hours, if we do not have a bottle for him, he literally will suffer physically. Screaming, crying, you know, will be, well, we'll suffer. And that's true for children all over. So you need, formally, need a constant supply. This is the richest country in human history.

And we're giving billions and billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine while, you know, mothers in this country can't even feed their fucking babies. So this is a grotesque situation coming out of monopoly capitalism, the regulatory capture that is par for the course in this fucking country, the using of revenue to do stock buybacks instead of investing in your machinery and facilities and workers, and we have a classic situation where all of this has now led to a baby shortage, a shortage of an essential product for every family in this country with a child under the age of one year. years old. Now, that is the, that's the situation. But I was watching, and as I do, I punish myself, watching fucking outlets across the political spectrum, including plenty of liberal centrist outlets that I pull my hair out every single day listening to, and also Tucker Carlson. I listen to Tucker Carlson fairly regularly, especially as monologues, because I am interested in what that megaphone on the right is doing. And I was, you know, sort of searching around, doing research on this baby formula shortage, came across the Tucker Carlson

segment on it. And I'm going to play this full argument for you and respond to it in kind. So I'm going to play this pretty extended argument on Tucker Carlson's behalf. And I want you to notice two things. One, how powerful his rhetoric is to a certain sort of conservative mind. You know, hate him, you know, everybody fucking hates him on the left and for good reason, but he's effective for a reason. He's the number one person in cable news in the country for a reason. So pay attention to just the efficacy of his rhetoric. But the more important thing is this clip is a master class on how reactionaries shift the blame away from capital onto the most vulnerable.

We talk about this a lot, that the reactionary right is very skilled. at actually defending capital, defending the social relations and the mode of production of capitalism and the hierarchies of class and race and gender that it fosters. And they do this, they protect capital by shifting the blame

onto vulnerable people, enemies that are easily dehumanized and targeted, and get the anger and the hate and the violence of their community, of their ideologues, pointed towards not the real masters of capital, the dictators of our society, the real ruling class elites, but on the political enemies of the right and the most marginalized people in our society.

So listen to this argument from Tucker Carlson about the baby formula shortage, keeping in mind what I just told you about the real causes, monopoly capitalism, stock buybacks. You won't fucking hear those terms at all in this segment, but you will see some interesting people, some interesting groups that Tucker Carlson shifts the blame onto. And again, this is a masterclass in reactionary defense of capital and the marginalization and blame game and scapegoating of the most vulnerable people in our society. So here's that clip in full. Okay, so Joe Biden has been on this problem since February. So why is it still a problem? Why is it still impossible to buy baby formula in stores in San Antonio tonight? Well, the White House has an answer for that too. And the answer is

greedy mothers. They're the problem. Like Kulax hiding grain, counter-revolutionary moms in this country are undermining America's baby formula supply. They're, quote, hoarding baby formula. Watch Joe Biden's flack. Explain. But if you are a parent who's looking for formula right now struggling to find what you need, you have even a rough guess of how long these shortages are going to last, what should parents be bracing for here? Well, we've already seen an increase in supply over the past couple of weeks. What we are seeing, which is an enormous problem, is hoarding. People hoarding because they're fearful. That is one element of it, and people hoarding because they are trying to profit off of fearful parents. Oh, now we're down to Zimbabwean economics. We don't

have enough to eat because greedy people are hoarding it. It's your fault, America's moms, you and your piggish little babies, always thoughtlessly eating, eating, eating, eating, show some patriotic restraint and stop buying so much food for your kids, you greedy wreckers. That's the White House position on the baby formula shortage. In fact, and it's possible this will not surprise you, the reality is just the opposite of what you heard. America's moms are not hoarding baby formula because they're greedy or their fat little babies are eating too much. Sorry, Jen Saki. The Biden administration is hoarding baby formula. The administration's WIC program, formerly known as Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children is by far the largest purchaser

baby formula in the United States. That is true no matter what they're telling you from the podium at the White House. Here's how it works. States award a contract to a baby formula manufacturer to provide the product to WIC participants. Then people who receive WIC benefits take a voucher to the store and buy the baby formula from that manufacturer. Now, government agencies get a kickback from the manufacturer in the form of a rebate, sometimes as high as 85% of the wholesale price. In other words, the baby formula manufacturer essentially pays the government to maintain this

monopoly, and it's good business for everybody. It's been going on for a long time. The problem right now is that the Abbott Nutrition Company has made the baby formula for the vast majority of WIC contracts. The government had all its eggs virtually in Abbott's basket. Unfortunately, Abbott just closed its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, because of contamination. And that means that millions of people who used WIC to buy Abbott products are forced to buy competing formulas, and they're doing it all at once. So a government monopoly overseen by Joe Biden caused this baby formula crisis.

So what's the government doing to fix it? Well, here's what they're not doing. They're not invoking the Defense Production Act to manufacture more baby formula. Of course not. That's for Ukrainians only. Shut up American moms. Instead, the Biden administration is doing the opposite, which is to say doing the unimaginable. They're shipping scarce baby formula to the southern border to benefit illegal aliens who have no right to be here in the first place.

And we know this because of a Florida congressman called Kat Kamak. Here's the video. This got sent to me by a Border Patrol agent this morning and said, this is disgusting. You will not believe this. They're receiving pallets and more pallets of baby formula at the border. This was taken at Ursula processing facility where thousands are being housed and processed and then released subsequent. into the United States. So think about this.

This is what America last looks like. That's real, by the way. The administration does not deny that it's real. Congressman Kamak also uploaded these two pictures onto Twitter. The one on the left is from the Ursula Processing Center at the border. Shelves and pallets packed with baby formula, the congressman wrote. The second is from an empty shelf here in the United States reserved for American citizens. So there's never been a clearer statement of the administration's priorities.

Hey, American mothers, your kids are too expensive. Go have an abortion and get back to work in an Amazon warehouse. Congresswoman Katie Porter of California said that out loud this week. You're poor? Have an abortion. Get back to work. Other Democrats said the same. Try breastfeeding, exclamation point, wrote 76-year-old Bet Midler today on Twitter. It's free and available on demand. It's been a while since she's done that, but that's her position.

So here you have an elderly, out-of-touch, rich liberal lady lecturing, struggling American moms to shut up and suffer it in silence. And by the way, make your baby shut up too. Now, if you can think of a more perfect distillation, of modern politics of the left, circa 2022, then that, send us an email and let us know what it is because we've never seen anything that perfect.

And yet, here's the interesting part. That's not at all the message that the Bett Midlors of the world are sending to the millions of illegal aliens who are flooding into our country. The message to them is just the opposite. Come, we welcome you. We will subsidize your childbearing,

whatever it takes. Even if we have to take baby formula for American citizens, we will help you. That's literally what they're saying. And more to point, That's what they're doing. So how do you get the Biden administration to pay attention to American citizens? To you, let's see you need baby formula, you can't get it.

Joe Biden doesn't care. Bet Midler's mocking you, go breastfeed, it's free. How do you get them to awaken to the fact that you exist that American children are suffering? Well, turns out there is a way to do that. The baby formula shortage, and we look this up, like every crisis in this country may affect you, but it affects trans people disproportionately because trans people are always, and Joe Biden often says this, are the ones who suffer most. And as Congresswoman Cory Bush once told us,

nothing is more important than protecting birthing people. I sit before you today as a single mom, as a nurse, as an activist, and as a congresswoman, and I am committed to doing the absolute most to protect black mothers, to protect black babies,

to protect black birthing people. Oh, well, it's the last line that's going to get Joe Biden's attention. So your kids don't have enough to eat. They can't be bothered to help you at all, though they cause this problem. But once Joe Biden finds out that the trans-capped,

community is suffering. Once he sees the faces of that suffering, he will do all he can to help. He'll airlift those pallets of formula from the border and distribute them to the many American trans mothers who need them. Once he sees these faces, and here they are, ladies and gentlemen, straight from you of Calvin Kleinette, pregnant men. The pregnant man emoji, Joe Biden. Do it for the pregnant man emoji. Okay. So there it is. The master class in reactionary mystification, obscurantism and scapegoating of the vulnerable in the face of a capitalist-induced crisis. So who the fuck does Tucker Carlson blame for the shortage? Well, first, he says an interesting term, government monopoly.

So not a corporate monopoly, not the corporate capture of our government who is supposed to stand in opposition, ideally, to capital, but the government monopoly. This is a classic libertarian point that, you know, anybody that's engaged with libertarianism over the last several decades here is all the time. Whenever there is a failure of capitalism, it is immediately shifted onto government, government bad. What that does over time is

delegitimize the very idea of the government of the state as a mechanism that, I don't know, can control and regulate capital can actually take care of its people. So by shifting it away from corporations

onto the government, you are engaging in this sort of libertarian, attack on the state as such, on the power of the state. Now, Republicans will like the state for a few things, enforcing anti-choice legislation or whatever they personally like. But when it comes to taking care of our own citizens, investing in health care, investing in child care, investing in anything, anything, they're completely against it. So that's one thing, government monopoly.

But it gets much, much darker. There is this, I would say, He doesn't come out and say that WIC mothers are the reason for this, but in his government monopoly framing and is talking about WIC, what he's doing is he's putting something that is red meat for the conservative base. People already hate people on welfare. They have a very racialized idea of who is on welfare. So he doesn't actually have to say it's WIC moms that are the cause of this. He can just talk about WIC, throw the logo up there, talk about how bad the government is, and people get it. Government programs bad. Wick is bad, you know, and so there is a shift onto that as well. So the demonizing of Wick indirectly, but still there. Then he goes on to blame immigrants. Okay. Now, there are still, as we all know, you know, even though when the Democrats win liberal, shut the fuck up about it, concentration camps at the borders, people in fucking cages. And part of that means you have to get food and resources to that relatively compared to the American population, small amount of people. So a couple pallets go down to, immigrants and constant fucking tration camps at the border, and now this is used to demonize immigrants. It's the immigrants taking your formula. The reason I don't have fucking formula on the shelves in Omaha, Nebraska has nothing to do with mothers on WIC, has nothing to do with fucking immigrants, and has everything to do with corporate practices, profiteering, stock

buybacks, not investing in the safety standards and maintenance of your basic facility and production machinery, okay? So he managed to blame government, not corporations, WIC mothers, in the whole program of WIC, now immigrants, and what is he, and of course, you know, some liberal elites, Bette Midler, who or whoever the fuck, because when the right talks about elites, they don't mean the capitalist fucking class, right?

They mean their political enemies, people with some money or some social capital or some power on the liberal side of things. Those are, Tucker Carlson's not an elite. right right even though he's the heir to the swanson fortune donald trump isn't an elite he's never talked about as an elite even though he's a rich kid from a real estate magnate right these are all fucking elites so they can't talk about elites as this upper echelon of people with wealth and power because that would include them so the elites have to be fucking i don't know college professors liberals on msnbcc right so you see how he does that so weak mothers immigrants

the government as a whole liberal elites and then what does he do at the end there he manages to bring in trans people. He manages to drag in trans people to dehumanize and degrade them. Well, the moment Biden finds out that trans people are in need, like three pregnant dads, so, you know, three pregnant men somewhere in the country, once he finds out about that, then he'll act, then he'll get those pallets shipped. Again, just demonizing trans people for no fucking reason. Trans people have nothing to do with this motherfucking shortage.

immigrants have nothing to do with this fucking shortage but that is what they do not a word about monopolies not a word about stock buybacks not a word about regulatory capture not a word about profiteering and the incentives to do so none of that but you hear about immigrants you hear about trans people he found a way to denigrate corey bush a black congresswoman you hear about wick and you hear about government monopolies. And for a little extra of fucking spice you even hear about Kulaks.

But I heard of say that Kulak shit, man, I cracked up. So he even managed to slide in some anti-communism, some fear-mongering about what Stalin did to the Kulaks and attaching that to this situation. Everybody except the actual

fucking perpetuators of this problem. The most vulnerable people in society that have absolutely nothing to do with this shit are the ones that are on the on the target sites of Tucker Carlson in his audience. But that is precisely what they do. That is what the right, what fascism, what reactionaries fucking do. Now, it's also worth noting because Marjorie Taylor Green said some important, she said some shit about this in Congress, right? She stood up and she was like, we're giving all this money to Ukraine, you know, babies and mothers.

in the United States don't even have formula. On its own, that's a fair point. To the extent that you even see some people on the left starting to like those and retweet those tweets, like, based MTG? Is MTG based? First of all, based is the new fucking epic. So if you're saying based, please

grow the fuck up. I mean, people repeat it like they used to say epic all the fucking time. It's that for me, but it's neither here nor there. The point is how some segments of the left are so easily swayed by the empty rhetoric of people on the right, like Carlson, like MTG, whatever the fuck, Marjorie Taylor Green.

But if Trump was president, if their guy was in office, their entire shit would shift. Do you think Marjorie Taylor Green would be taking Trump to task, the Trump administration to task? If this exact fucking thing happened under Trump, which if Trump was in office, it would, because this is just, this is a problem that's much deeper than who happens to be the president at the fucking time? No, she would shut the fuck up. She would be the defender. The Democrats and the Republicans would just switch positions. So stop acting like these fucking people on the right are principled or have any values that might dovetail with your own. It is a complete fucking mirage. Put Trump in office and under this exact same conditions,

Tucker Carlson's segment would be fucking framed very differently and Marjorie Taylor Green would never get the fuck up and say shit. But why we're on that topic, when she did finish that in a vacuum, good argument about fuck sending money to Ukraine, let's help the fucking people here in America. The Democrat got got up, I forget this fucking, who cares? Well, one of the Democratic congressmen, he got up after she kept saying like, you know, mothers and babies can't even find formula. That's how she would end like every sentence in her little ramp. And so this Democratic asshole gets up and he says, well, you know, the formula for protecting democracy is making sure that Ukraine has all the weapons they need to fight this fight. Right. So spitting in the

fucking face of people like me and my family who struggle to make sure that our son is fucking being fed by doing the cute little pun on the word formula and then shoehorning us back into the discussion of why we need to spend $54 billion on Ukraine in two fucking months while American parents in the richest country that has ever existed in human fucking history can't even feed their babies. You know, so Democrats and Republicans, are absolute dog shit. There's this contingent of the dumb, dumb left that gets swayed when the Republicans talk like this, right? They're hyper-sceptical of everything the Democrats say, and for good reason. But then a Republican farts out a couple syllables that might align

with them, and all of a sudden they're liking and retweeting and saying, based, question mark, clown car shit. So don't be one of those fucking idiots. So that is, that's what it is. That's the masterclass in reactionary obfuscation and the reactionary shifting of the blame away from the rich and powerful toward the most vulnerable. That is what they do. And that right, that little clip from Tucker Carlson is the perfect fucking packaging of that reactionary strategy that has been around as long as there's fucking been capitalism and fascist to defend it. Now, I do want to move towards a discussion of that $54 fucking billion that we're sending to Ukraine. this is the American Empire and both the left and the right are getting very sick of it in interesting ways in ways that I think are actually reaching a threshold to put real pressure on the system over the next several years and whatever how long it fucking takes

there is a disdain that I've never quite seen in my life on the left and the right about American military interventions abroad for my entire life the party has been host the republican party has been hostage to neocons and it's always been a free-for-all for the defense contractors for american empire etc this america first populist energy coming out of the republican right is calling that into question which i think is ultimately just in and of itself a good thing um and there is this move by the new right we can i'll talk about it later i mean i think we're going to do a guerrilla history uh intelligence brief on it but the new right this realignment that rejects right-wing libertarian economics, but embraces social conservatism, basically saying, we want a social democratic state, but with very strong

borders, with the state that enforces socially conservative domestic policy, and that keeps out the not-real Americans, whatever that means, that shifting goalpost of who is and isn't considered a real American, or in Tucker Carlson's language, a legacy American. so this is interesting and it's just worth talking about that that in and of itself that pressure on the left and the right is an interesting thing and I hope you know it damages the fucking war mongering and the defense contractors and the military industrial complex who own our fucking government but let me just put that money in perspective so over roughly two months three months the the the American ruling classes took in 54 billion of our taxpayer dollars

and turned it into weapons and money and funds for the Ukraine, not to win the war, but just to endlessly drag it out until they eventually inevitably do lose or negotiate or, you know, have a compromise that ends the conflict. But funneling weapons and shit does nothing to protect Ukrainians. It just prolongs the bloodshed and there's the obstinence from NATO, from the US, and from Ukraine to not give Russia what it wants, which is fundamentally a neutral Ukraine and NATO to back the fuck up. And I'm going to get into Sweden and Finland, wanting to join NATO here in a second.

But just on this $54 billion to Ukraine, you know, in America, look at every major fucking city in this country, miles of fucking homeless people. And it's only growing. Every fucking turn stop in every major city is full of tents. $54 billion could go a long fucking way in dealing with the homelessness crisis in our society. You know, the Russian military, you know, Americans are used to 700. $800 billion a year going to our empire. The Russian military, for all intents and purposes, perhaps the second biggest and most powerful military, even second or third, however you want to argue that and parse that out,

only spends about $61 billion a year on their military. So we are giving Ukraine roughly an annual Russian military budget's worth of money when we have all of these problems here in our own fucking society. But that money going to Ukraine, that conflict being elongated, this is good for the military industrial complex, for the defense contractors, for the Pentagon, for the empire. It's profitable. It serves their geopolitical interest.

It does nothing to help average Americans, but that's not what this country's about. The American ruling class is not about helping Americans, or about stabilizing society, investing in your own people this stuff is anathema to these motherfuckers but talk about spending 50 fucking billion dollars in ukraine absolutely bipartisanship it's a single unit that's why i said um another recent episode when the politicians feel themselves to be even slightly uncomfortable in the face of protest they'll act as one when it comes to the empire the military

industrial complex funneling arms to can fight proxy wars they'll operate as one um when it comes to solving any issue for regular American people in this society, sorry, we can't do it. We got a, I don't know, a coal billionaire in our party that says we can. So, you know, sorry, fuck off. That's how this entire fucking system works. But a Russian military budget's worth of money in a year going to Ukraine in two months from taxpayers, you and I, we spent more on Ukraine in the last two to three months than we spent on roads and bridges in the entire last year. Every American road and bridge, any money that went into those, all that combined for the entire year of 2021, doesn't even touch how much money we funneled, shoveled into the face of fucking Zelensky.

And again, for homelessness, Russian military, roads and bridges, all the other things that we could use as money on, I don't know, maybe putting that money to a defense production act and generating a fuck ton of baby formula and stocking the fucking shelves. That would be a good use of that money. Nope. Nope. Sorry. Sorry. Feed your kids water if they're fucking hungry. So all of that is happening. And the right is sort of opportunistically, you know, talking shit about this. You know, Marjorie Taylor Green, as I said.

But if Trump was in office, I think that rhetoric would be very, very different. None of these people, Democrats or Republicans are principled. None of them have actual values. They're team players, their careerists, their opportunists, their scum, fucking bags in their rats, and they should never be trusted, liberal or conservative. And if you're still voting for either party, you are voting for corporate domination. You are bowing, you're bending the knee to the corporate dictatorship. Never vote for these motherfuckers again unless and until they start actually delivering

materially for you and your family. They have to earn your fucking votes. And until people fucking realize that and say, I'm not voting for you scumbags until I can fucking feed my baby until I can have secure housing, until my family gets fucking health care, you don't earn my fucking vote by pointing to the other blood-soaked monster on the stage and saying he's worse. And until enough people realize that and stop fucking doing it, they can continue to play this game indefinitely.

And our futures and our families are what's going to be jettisoned or what's going to be sacrificed on the altar of American Empire. so keep that in mind but now we also have this new escalation so Sweden and Finland are now moving aggressively attempting to apply and fundamentally join NATO

all under the pretext that well see look at Russia's crazy they're doing the classic Russian hoard thing in Ukraine so now we now you give us no choice we have to fucking join NATO even though NATO in its expansion is the fucking primary cause of this conflict in the first place so now what does

this mean if Sweden and Finland actually are allowed in. Now, it might just be used as a bargaining chip. Their application process might be just something that is being used to put pressure on Russia. So we'll see how this plays out. It's not guaranteed. This is going to go through. But for Russia, this is an insanely escalatory movement. If we concede, as all rational fucking informed people should, that a lot of this conflict in Ukraine is about a neutral Ukraine, about NATO expansion, about Russia not wanting NATO troops, hostile troops on its border, then the entrance of Sweden and Finland into NATO

would do that exact same thing. Look on a fucking map. If you don't have the image in your head, go look at a map of northern Europe and look at where Sweden and Finland are. They are right on, I mean Finland, right on the Russian border. Now, what happens if those countries become NATO countries?

Well, from Russia's perspective, NATO could then block the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. So if you go and look on a map, and I really will help a lot to visualize this, look at St. Petersburg, you know, the jewel second only to Moscow, you know, of the Russian civilization, right on the Gulf of Finland, which gives you access to the Baltic, which then gives you access to the broader Atlantic and to maritime trade. It's really essential, especially for a country like Russia who has its north, northern and huge parts of its eastern border ensconced in ice most of the year.

Any year-round access to maritime trade in the oceans is essential for any country and not excluding Russia. So you have, if you had a NATO situation in Finland, they would be literally breathing down St. Petersburg's neck, literally just a hop, skip, and a jump over to take Petersburg. So you would have U.S. troops a few dozen, 100 miles from St. Petersburg. and you would have the capacity with the Baltic states which are already part of Estonia Latvia, Latvia, already part of NATO

and then you have above them Sweden and Finland going onto NATO and then you could literally just choke off that entire segment. And a big part of the reason that Russia is doing this shit in the captured Crimea and is now focusing a lot of its efforts

in the south and the east of Ukraine is precisely to enlarge and secure their access to the Black Sea, which allows you into the Mediterranean, which is huge, crucial, you know, world historical trading routes for human history. So, you know, they're down there working in Crimea, in the Black Sea to make sure they can maintain access there, while NATO's threatening to cut off their access to the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic, and ultimately the Atlantic. So this is an escalation. And, you know, we've already had nuclear fucking

sable rattling. And this is. is a real attempt to escalate the situation, push Russia further into a corner. Whose interest does any of this serve? It doesn't serve the Ukrainian people's interest. All these dumb fucks getting up there talking about, we have to do this to defend democracy, to defend the Ukrainian people. None of this is helping. Escalating the situation, not compromising, refusing to negotiate, backing NATO the fuck up.

this is not helping the Ukrainian people, it's not helping the Russian people, it's not helping the people of Europe, and it's fucking sure as hell not helping the people in America struggling to find food for their babies in the richest country that's ever existed in human fucking history. So we have to reject all of this shit. Reject the opportunism and the rhetoric-mongering from the right, which is picking off elements of the dumb, dumb left. Reject the Democratic Party in their attempt to scare you into voting for them, to do

shit that they had every opportunity to do like Cotify Row but never fucking did because they wanted to run on it. Reject them. Reject every leftist who's being bought, who's buying into this stupid ass Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson rhetoric shit. I mean, the Jimmy Dorification of the revisionist MLs

is a hell of a thing to watch. These fucking clowns, man. You know, we always talk about, you know, anarcho-liberalism. Huge chunks of so-called anarchists are so easily driven into the arms of liberalisms. It's pathetic. But that's happening on the ML elements, relatively small elements, of the Marxist-Leninist, revisionist left, who's being driven into the arms of reactionaries and patriots and Russian nationalists and Duganists.

Because what? They think this is Marxism-Leninism? It's, as I said, I think I said this before. We know tailism is an error on the communist left to tail the masses. These motherfuckers are tailing reactionaries. They're tailing. tailing fascists. They're tailing Russian nationalists. That's not just tailism. That's an abandonment of revolutionary politics. And there's no fucking excuse for it. But as all of these people are blown around by the winds of change and transition, nobody's anchored to any real principles or values, everybody's playing team sports, it behooves those of us who actually give a fuck about working people, about revolutionary politics, to anchor ourselves in principles and values and to not be blown around like the fucking clowns right, left and center, are being blown around by the winds of history right now. And that is what a principled Marxist analysis and a set of

politics rooted in a real love of working people, a real internationalism. That is the anchor, you know, that that holds you in the winds of history buffeting everybody else around. So just keep that in mind. But yes, we have many fucking problems. The Sweden and Finland NATO bid is certainly an escalation. And the fact that you just have just automatic bipartisanship when it comes to just shoveling billions of American tax dollars into Ukraine, while Americans at home are fucking suffering in a million ways, it is a crime. It is a crime. it's not helping the Ukrainian people, reject that narrative entirely. If you wanted to help the Ukrainian fucking people, you would negotiate a compromise where NATO backs the fuck up, guarantees a neutral Ukraine, and stops this brinksmanship, which only helps to enrich the military industrial complex and the defense contractors. So that's my fucking take on the baby formula. I really hope that Tucker Carlson segment is illustrative of exactly what reaction do, and every time you see

somebody on the left one over by that stupid fucking shit, call them out. Draw the lines of demarcation around these fools and say, this has nothing to do with Marxism. You are just a reactionary. You're just tailing the most backward elements

of the masses. That is fucking embarrassing. It's Rumble. Will he perform when he has money right in front of him? Run up on that boy and kill his cousin right in front of him? I just tapped his shoulder, I know that he is touchable. Put 30 in my chop, and then I turned him to a huckstable.

Came a long way from pre-K and eating lunchables. I just tip your life, and as you know, it's unrefundable. When you up the smith, then you should never feel uncomfortable. Don't waste any time, bro, just turn them to a vegetable. Do the job, writer, you are surely going federal. Don't knock on some wood, but I just feel I did incredible. How many shots were fired, I don't know, but more than several. I thought it was just him.

I can't believe it was a bunch of them. Brody did him dirty, hit him up, and now I'm stomping them. I know a lot of demons I can summon any one of them. Bodies holding bodies It was as if they were cuddling Will he perform When he has money right in front of him Run up on that boy

And kill his cousin right in front of him I just tapped his shoulders So I know that he is touchable Put 30 in my chop And then I turned him to a huckstable Came a long way from pre-K and eating luncheables I just took your life And as you know it's unrefundable

When you up the smith And you should never feel uncomfortable I was watching him outside his house He's getting comfortable I was trying to make sure that my clock was undiscoverable. You were popping it, and now just look at what we've done to you. Peter Piper picked a pack of bullets, now they're touching you. I was coaching up a team of shatters, now they're rushing you. I just threw your life inside a toilet. Now I'm flushing

you. If I think you wronged one of my homies, I will punish you. Will he perform when he has money right in front of him? Run up on that boy and kill his cousin right in front of him. I just tapped his shoulders so I know that he is touchable. Pith 30 in my chop and then I turned him to a hugstable. Came a long way from pre-K and eating luncheables. I just took your life and that you know it's unrefundable when you up the smith and you should never feel uncomfortable will he perform when he has money right in front of him will he perform when he has money right in front of him