Rev Left Radio - The Democrats War on Democracy & Trump's Brush with Death

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Trump gets shot. Biden drops out. Kamala is coronated. Alyson and Breht discuss and analyze it all.   Omaha Tenants United: https://omahatenantsunited.wordpress.com Outro Song: Music for Shoplifting by P.O.S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Rev Left on Insta Support Rev Left Radio and get access to multiple bonus episodes a month  

Hello, everybody and welcome back to Red Menace. All right, on today's episode, Allison and I are just going to kind of, you know, talk about the recent events that have occurred. It's been sort of radio silence from my end for the last week or two. because I was on family vacation. In fact, I was sitting in a restaurant in Oklahoma City when Trump got shot. My sister called me and I thought she was like just fucking around. And then I started looking up the videos like, holy shit. And then I was, you know, in San Antonio when Biden dropped out.

So I had all these events rushing at me and I wanted to get on the mic. But as soon as I got back home, of course, I also picked up some bug. So I've been sort of sick for the last several days. Maybe some of you can hear it in my voice. congested right now, but I wanted to make sure that we did come together and we did discuss some of these events because they're rapidly happening and things have shifted dramatically over the past week or so. And so it's definitely worth talking about. And I guess the first place to start would be with, you know, the first event of the series of events, which was the attempted

assassination on Trump. This is obviously a huge, a huge event. There's a weirdness. I think Allison and I we're talking before we started recording a weirdness with how seemingly a little staying power that that story had. Do you want to kind of articulate the weirdness of that? Yeah. So, you know, I think it's just strange. A assassination attempt against a president is pretty undeniably a huge deal from a historical perspective in most instances. And it just feels like there hasn't been that much impact from it in a lot of ways. I know immediately after like everyone posted that picture with Trump raising his fist, right? And was like, oh, this like, cements the deal. But, like, even fascinatingly, polling hasn't really bumped in response to that to indicate that it has given

Trump a boost in any way. So, you know, there's this just kind of strange cultural aspect to this where it is this insane event. These things don't happen very frequently. And maybe partially because the news now is Biden dropping out, we've all just kind of lost sight of it and moved on to something else. I do think, you know, part of it is, like, I don't even know what else you can cover about it at this point. There's not much information about the shooter coming out right now. The right wing media is definitely still pushing it more because they're very interested in, you know, this idea that like perhaps the Secret Service allowed it to happen or that they failed to do something in some way. So there's a push there, but it's all just kind

of a security lapse discussion rather than like the broader discussion of why the fuck did someone try to assassinating someone, right? There's been very little impact as a result of it. And again, even on the polling, there hasn't been a huge impact in a way that seems kind of strange and surprising, given how rare this is. Obviously, in American history, there have been many political assassinations. It's not like they don't occur, but within the last several decades, not so much. So it is worth, I think, kind of thinking about just that weird, you know, lack of staying power as a cultural phenomenon, which I think really speaks also to just like the media inundation with always having to have some sort of new story.

As a result of, you know, many people have noted a fairly destructive 24-hour news cycle. Something like this just doesn't really register for more than a week or two in a really interesting way. Yeah, I mean, the last president to have an actual, you know, real assassination attempt on their life was Ronald Reagan in the 1980s before I was even born. Right. So it is a huge deal, but I think you're exactly right with the media, the sort of spectacular spectacle oriented media that we have, not only the 24-hour news cycle, but so. media itself, where new stories are so quickly metabolized that, you know, pre-internet, pre-social media, an attempt on a president's life like this would just be the story for weeks on end. And now because things are happening so rapidly, everybody can come out and comment on it immediately, that there is a sort of a quickening.

And it's not just relegated to our media consumption. it gives us a sort of manic and frenetic feeling overall. Like it feels like like history is speeding up or that, you know, nothing is ever at rest that we're constantly shifting from extreme event to extreme event to extreme event, which is just sort of exhausting and disorienting in its own right. I don't think there's obviously any conscious, you know, intentions behind that. I think it just really is a product of modern media. but I do just sort of have a question mark about where this stuff leads and just the

this sort of unnerving element of how quickly people, not that I personally care about Trump or anything, but just any event at all is metabolize so quickly. It's unnerving how quickly we adapt to things and move on. I was shocked at how quickly we just sort of metabolized, you know, the global pandemic or, you know, brand new wars or, you know, things just are happening so quickly. And people just very quickly accept them, comment on them, and move on to the next story. Of course, Biden dropping out a couple days later, certainly shifted the media focus. And it was a, you know, comparably big story. But it just sort of is interesting.

It has this feel of like the Vegas shooting. You know, when the Vegas shooting happened, it was clearly the biggest mass shooting in American history, this horrific event. And then it just very quickly is shuffled out of the. out of the media narrative we just don't quite know the details i mean we still are really blurry and confused on who the guy even was or why he did it a conspiracy conspiracy theories of all sorts abound in both cases because there is just a sort of lack of any real substance or any ability for our culture to focus on anything longer than 30 seconds um but it has that sort of vibe of like a vagus the Vegas shooting where it feels like in in several years when all this

has gone by that will learn some earth-shaking information about it. Yeah. But the time will have passed so its relevance won't be as as salient. But it's just hard to say. But yeah, the manic and frenetic pace of how media is consumed and metabolized in our society

is just weird and in some sense, like unsustainable. I don't know how we sustain this, you know? Yeah, no, it is very strange. And I think, you know, I agree with you when you say, like, it does feel like there is this like pace that is being set. And I think it would be wrong to be conspiratorial and contribute that to like, oh, some people are like sitting around and making sure the media goes that way.

But I actually do think it is interestingly, like, very beneficial to capitalism that pace because it makes it so that when these events that once upon a time might have ended up being catalysts for something happen, you know, there's this like ideological consent that the media kind of constructs of us just moving on to the next thing, which I do think actually kind of has a. function within, you know, a decaying capitalist society of preventing these things from becoming a larger crisis, right? Preventing them from being the kind of thing that can be reflected on by the masses long enough, such that they could see it as indication of something broader or as some sort of bigger social decay or contradiction. So I do think, you know, I don't want to be conspiratorial about it, but I do think it is certainly beneficial to capitalism as a system that is always in crisis to have that kind of pace and that is kind of metabolism about things. Yeah, I agree. And to the conspiracy-oriented aspect, it's not really

surprising, but it sort of took me aback, just how quickly, even people on the left, just immediately with no information, just immediately go to like conspiratorial explanations of things. I think it's a bad intellectual habit to get into, not that conspiracies never happen, not that, you know, that there's never any room to make those claims, but it's a bad intellectual habit to, in a total vacuum of real information, immediately jump to that sort of stuff. Like, I saw some stuff, you know, on popular left-wing accounts with a lot of engagement of, like, you know, this is the Trump campaign set this out. Like, you understand, like, if Trump turned his head half an inch later or moved it to a different direction, his brains would

have been blown out. Like, you know, this idea that the Trump campaign set it up so that they could shoot off the top of his ear so we could look cool. It's just all so crazy. Of course, the right does it. The right is immediately saying the deep state trying to take them out with all these convictions. You know, the deep state has infiltrated the social or the secret service. You know, DEI and letting women secret service members into secret service is part of the reason. They were like immediately goes into this misogynistic. The women weren't able to protect the president sort of weird shit. And then yeah, just and then just snowballs from there.

And I expect that from the right. I was a little surprised to see it on the left. But one thing that might have changed this sort of hyper manic and frenetic metabolization of this story would have been, of course, if he hadn't turned his head and he was killed, you know, and you were just talking about how it sort of serves the status quo in the sense that it's really hard to react to anything in any real way because things are moving so quickly, you know, what would have happened if Trump was killed? what how would his constituency his base i mean there's like a there's a deification of trump and some elements of society that would really freak the fuck out i think if that happened um and so maybe that would have changed the pace and maybe even the biden dropping out story maybe one wouldn't have happened or two wouldn't have been you know relevant enough to overshadow uh that story so it is an alternate timeline where trump didn't turn his head and

was put down, it would be fascinating to run that simulation and see how that would have actually played out. Yeah, no, I think that would have changed things significantly. And one thing I do want to say on the conspiracy side real quick is, like, the thing that I think it's really important to push back against too with this isn't just the idea that like things can be false flags or things can be hoaxes or that intelligence agencies can be involved in things. I don't like inherently want to push out those ideas, but to instantly, within minutes propose those is just a full violation of the Marxist idea that you have to investigate something in order to speak about it. Like, you're not basing that on anything. You're not basing that

on anything other than an impulse and an instinct that you've become attenuated to. So I know, you know, exactly. And I know like parapolitics Twitter probably thinks we're feds because they think all podcasters are feds. There's nothing to be done there. But, you know, for those people, you know, the thing that I really come back to is it's like, I don't even disagree with some of your central claims that people can be too credulous about the operations of like federal agencies domestically, but you have to show something for that, right? If you want to make that case, you have to present some sort of evidence for that. And I think you kind of, you know, give away the game maybe a little bit too easily when within minutes without anything to point to, you've already reached your

conclusion, right? Like, that is a bad approach to epistemology and understand. the world regardless of who you know utilizes it or towards what political end yeah and and when i said it becomes a habit it's just like it's not just one thing that they turn to and like okay i'm very suspicious about this event it's every event every event is almost immediately framed by this sort of thinker as a sciop as a false flag and what that actually does i think is it it it disempowers people it makes people feel like there are elements and control in such a a high degree of control of events and of society that are that are so obscured and so much in the shadows that there's actually really nothing we could really do except scream about it

on Twitter like there's no organization to confront there's no person there's no movement that we can amass to take on these shadowy figures they're just like these this like almost omnipowerful elements in the shadows you know puppeteering every event that happens in society And that's not only anti-Marxist in the epistemological sense, but I think it actually functions to make people hyper paranoid and to disempower them because it feels like if they can just orchestrate every event, if they can control every narrative, then we really are completely powerless. And so that's kind of one of the side effects of that sort of thinking that that I find incredibly harmful over time. Yeah, I think the paranoia is like a key bit, right? you can take that to a point where it is fully paralyzing and where all you can do is post on Twitter, although even some people then reach the point where they're too scared to take even

that action. So, you know, it can go quite far. And yeah, I just think it's frustrating because I just think Marxism, one of the difficulties of it is that it does have a complicated epistemology about how we analyze situations and you don't do a service to it by being lazy whether it's like, you know, very impulsive conspiracyism or, you know, any sort of error. You actually have to, like, take time and investigate situations. And obviously, in a situation like this, it's complicated because we in the public don't know all the facts about what is being discovered, but that's not an excuse to just generate new ones, right?

Right. And there's an argument to be made of an Occam's Razor sort of approach where it's like, we live in a country of 360 million people, many, almost everybody of whom has immediate access to guns. and we have a mental health crisis where many, many people are incredibly alienated, the depressed, suicidal, psychotic in various ways, and that, you know, given enough time and on a large enough time scale over many years, this was bound to happen. And then you have a media environment where both sides are framing the other as a threat

to your very existence, to the future of our country, et cetera. And so, you know, these events can also just happen. You know, there are certain events in history that I'm very skeptical of. JFK assassination. I have no hard conclusions on it. I raise many eyebrows. I am very open to the quote unquote conspiracy version of that story. I think it's very possible that that could have been the case. But it just can't be your first instinct every fucking time. You've got to think through it and the very least you have to amass evidence. The reason the JFK thing is the reason the JFK thing is sort of appealing or, you know, I'm very open-minded to it being a conspiracy is precisely because

of the amount of evidence pointing away from the official narrative and towards all these other ways in which things were obscured and hidden and all of that stuff. So just, you know, just at least wait for evidence and compile a convincing argument before you just immediately knee-jerk move in that direction. Absolutely. But, yeah, we might find information out tomorrow that sort of, you know, elevates those theories to something more likely, you know, and we might have the opposite. it. But I think you have to remain epistemologically agnostic until you get any actual

substance of evidence. Right. All right. Well, it was fucking crazy, though. It was a crazy ass situation. Yeah, it's a wild thing that happened. It was so crazy. And, you know, like, again, we're talking about a matter of centimeters, you know, taking the timeline into very different directions. And, you know, not to give, I don't know if it's giving him as props or anything, But as far as reactions to assassination attempts go, like, it was so good that I could see why somebody like, God, this has to be orchestrated. We have to be living in a fucking movie that he would, like, stand up with blood on his face and scream fight. I mean, it was just, it was, it was cinematic in the way that it all fucking happened. And if that happened in a, yeah, he is a media sense.

He is. He has that, he has that media entertainment instinct. And he played that incredibly well. And when you juxtapose that to Biden, you know, Biden can't climb upstairs, can't finish a sentence. Trump can take a bullet. Yeah, I mean, in that moment before Biden dropped out, you know, somebody saying this shit's over, I get it because there is just a, there's this stubborn resilience about Trump who fucking eats McDonald's and doesn't, doesn't believe in working out because he doesn't want to drain his battery. And yet the motherfucker cannot be

taken down. It's, I mean, I don't know. I kind of felt and, you know, maybe I'll regret saying this. But there's a little tinge of like, damn, imagine if we had like a like a hardcore socialist anti-imperialist leader that could fucking, you know, that had that sort of that sort of toughness or something that could take a bullet like that and stand up and respond. Like, I understand why people who like Trump fucking fall in love

with him. What they see there. And love what they saw there. Absolutely. Like that just confirms every, you know, thought they had about Trump being this historically ordained figure. You know, and Marco Rubio and Tucker Carlson, they all immediately come out and say, God protected Trump. They never mentioned the person who caught

a bullet in the fucking head, a father who, you know is dead and his family just law like god didn't protect that guy but but god protected trump because they wouldn't they want because god wants trump to save the republic or something it's just i don't know it's fucking insane the whole thing's insane no it is insane and again that's what's so weird right is i do think like you can see what the trump supporters see in that image right but what's weird is that it has an impact in polling outside of them right like it didn't have that impact on so much of the population which i think is very different than what people and anticipated and I find it hard to explain because it is like a very powerful image in a sense right

but it just yeah I mean the numbers are saying that it hasn't been that significant do you think it could just be simply a manner of a matter of Trump and Biden being such known quantities that people's minds are so firmly made up that even something as drastic as that isn't going to shift polling in any substantive way yeah I think that's like a big part of it I think the people who are on the fence are probably not people who like Trump for his strength, right? They're probably people who dislike Biden. Um, and so that's probably less persuasive for them, but it's hard to say. It's very weird that it hasn't moved the needle more in my opinion. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, do you want to talk about Biden dropping out? Because that was an interesting thing. Of course,

that took over the entire media narrative. Um, and there's just this, I mean, immediately even with that, there's conspiracy theories about, you know, who posted it to his account. the right was saying for several days after that that Biden was actually dead and that some staffer put up his resignation and everything and then Trump and then Biden comes out and is seen publicly and they're like, okay, just forget it, but we said that for the last four days. But what did you make of the Biden dropping out and what do you think was ultimately the thing that that forced that event to happen? Yeah, so, you know, it's an interesting thing.

So I think I have been following, you know, the back and forth about whether or not he was going and drop out pretty closely for the last couple weeks. Like, I've really been reading quite a bit of the back and forth, all the incredibly boring Axios articles that they put out to. This anonymous source says this, you know. And my kind of thought was that it was very likely that he would back out or could potentially get conventioned. So I'm not extremely surprised by it. I do think the question of what caused him to back out, like, is an open question here, right? one of the impulses that I've seen on the left is to kind of want to attribute it to left-wing pressure, right? So there has been this desire to say, like, the uncommitted campaign is, you know, what did it?

I definitely think the uncommitted campaign probably had a part in convincing the donors that this was not a viable pathboard. But I think that is perhaps an overly optimistic read of what led us to this point and puts a little bit too much faith in the idea that any of this process is democratic. in that, you know, we have that effect. I think the bigger thing is honestly just that the donor class within the Democratic Party lost confidence, right? That really, I think, was the big part. Early on, we had, you know, people calling from a step down. A lot of Democratic politicians came out very quickly afterwards and put themselves out as defenders of him. Bernie did it. AOC did it. Some more moderates did it. You know, across the board ideologically within the Democratic Party, we saw this decision. What really changed things were two factors, I think. One, new polling

came out indicating that senators and Republicans facing down-ballot races were probably going to lose if he was the candidate. So suddenly, the calculation changes somewhat. It's not just that we might lose the presidency from the Democratic perspective. We might also lose the legislature. And that's a huge blow. So that led to more panic, I think. And that led to more politicians who are facing those races, making the decision to publicly call for him to step down. So that led to this broader divide within the party, I think. I think the Democrats would have been perfectly comfortable giving up the presidency, but not as comfortable giving up the presidency and the legislature. So I think that was a big part of it. And then the other thing is that a bunch of donors said

no more money, right? Not donating anymore until he steps down. And I think very much you can see Pelosi's role in the party as kind of a kingmaker within all of this, where Pelosi, really seems to be the figure that was pushing for this kind of internal move against Biden to try to get him to step down. Another kind of turning point seems to be that privately Obama may have expressed reservations to Biden after having previously supported him and not stepping down. But the main thing that I think really needs to get emphasized here is that I don't think this is a Democratic win, right? Like fuck Biden. I don't want Biden to be the candidate. I sure as fuck also don't want Kamala Harris to be the candidate, right? The real issue is that folks

didn't get a say in who this candidate was in the primaries, because the way our political system is built, if you're the incumbent, you don't get primaried. And I think that's fucked up kind of inherently, because now we find ourselves in a situation where someone that wasn't even voted for is put in as the candidate and no one ever got a say in it. And no one really ever got a say in Biden either. So I really do think the best way you conceptualize this is less as a win for the left. Unfortunately, I think the pressure campaign of the uncommitted vote mattered, but was not the ultimate factor here. And really more of a donor class coup to ensure that their interests as a fucking, maybe a rich Democratic donors are upheld.

And they think that will be best upheld if the Democrats managed to hold on to power. And that's really what we're seeing at play here. Absolutely agree. And that donor class versus the people themselves, I think comes in stark relief when you realize that, you know, polls have been showing forever that not only Democrats, but Americans want different choices. That within the Democratic Party, there's huge, you know, um pluralities of people that would like a different candidate we have been you know i don't like you know overusing these therapeutic languages because they get so cringeworthy and annoying but literally have we have been gaslit on his age for years actually we were pointing out that

shit when they was running against berny in 2020 um you could already see his mind slipping you can't get through sentences the incoherency of it and the same people that now come out and are applauding kamala and saying this was the right choice and even putting pressure on byton two drop out. We're precisely the exact same people who are telling us, you guys are just reading into it. You know, this is Russian propaganda. This is right wing propaganda. You know, this is misinformation. What the right is doing is they're taking these clips out of context where Biden might fall or something and then try to make a big deal out of it. Like they were just telling us that for years that he was completely, you know, people behind the scenes would like leak to the New York Times or

whatever that, you know, behind the scenes, Biden is on fire. Like he is just, he is a genius behind the scene you know you just wish you guys could see what he did behind the scenes because he's on top of everything like just being told this over and over and over again you know that to not trust our own lion eyes and then the moment that he has that bad debate where four plus years of slippage comes to the forefront it was not a surprise to anybody who's been on this tip for a long time that's exactly the performance that we expected we we've seen him deteriorate and we knew that was happening. But it took that sort of failure to really emphasize it enough to where exactly right, the donor class started pulling their money and their support. And that's what matters

in democratic politics. And that speaks to this bigger point, you know, that I really want to emphasize, which is the Democrats war on democracy. At the exact same time, they're telling us that they are the protectors of democracy, that if you don't vote for their candidate, then we're going to lose democracy, which, as a side note, if you have to, if you can only pick one person in an election or else we don't have democracy anymore, we already don't have a democracy. So, you know, like, there's, there's only one choice, but you're free to choose as a democracy. You can pick your candidate, but there's only one choice. Okay, well, then we don't, we already have lost democracy.

But this, but going back to the Bernie Sanders campaign where he won the first, what, three to five, I think it was the first three or whatever, uh, states in the primaries. And it was just, and Biden wasn't even in the top three, right? And then Obama behind the scenes and other big money elites. And of course the donor class, which Obama is in some sense a face for, right? Obama is like he has this reputation within Democratic Party that is very high. And the donors will through him get their needs met. And so Obama was the one that sort of orchestrated the fallout of all the other candidates that then immediately endorsed Biden because they could not stand Bernie Sanders.

They could not stand the prospect of of tepid social democracy genuinely chosen by the people. I mean, the Democratic voters were overwhelmingly choosing fucking Bernie and the donor class and the elites in the party could not stomach that. And so they orchestrated the Biden vaulting up into the to be the nominee. They left Elizabeth Warren in because they thought it would continue to siphon off votes from Bernie and everybody else, all the other centrists dropped out and endorsed Biden and, And, you know, Clyburn helped him in South Carolina get over the, yes. So this is a anti-democratic institution already.

And then we come up to this next year. They're telling us everything depends on this election, right? We're going to lose everything. We're going to lose democracy. We're going to have fascism. It's so important we win this election. But by the way, you don't tell us who we're going to put up against Trump. We're going to put this losing, senile guy with historically shitty polling.

We're going to prop his ass up. And he's going to be. So this is the most. important election ever, but also we're running this historically unfavorable candidate, and don't you dare tell us not to? And so there's already, you know, we're not doing primaries. We're not having debates. We're not letting anybody else have a shot. We're going to, you know, push off any other third party candidate or even, you know, figure like Marianne Williamson trying to run within the party, completely shut her out, vilify her. Absolutely not. And then all the polling is suggesting,

please let us have a choice. No, no, no. And then when the donor class decides, that another figure will be more viable, that's when the shift happens. So at every step of the way, the Democratic Party, while it's telling you and me to our face that they are the protectors of democracy are undermining democracy in the exact institution where they have the most ability to expand it in the Democratic Party itself. So if you really, really truly believed in democracy, you would be expanding it and showing how viable it is within the Democratic Party itself. And guess what would have happened?

We would have never been in this position in the first place. We would have never had Biden. We would never have had to deal with the senility of Biden. We would never have had the donor class just coronate Kamala because even Kamala's pick is undemocratic. You know, like Kamala could never have won an open primary to earn this position in the Democratic nominee for president. She doesn't have the charisma. You know, there's all these concerns about her as a prosecutor in California. she just she's she's weird it was always a thing like now all these all these people are

coconut pilled but before that it was like a joke it was absurd that she cackled all the time and she said these completely empty platitudes like she had no charisma whatsoever nobody was stumbling over themselves to vote for her they're trying to shove her down our throat as if she is like this historic figure based on identity politics alone the first black woman this the first, you know, Southeast Asian, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These identity politics are all they have left. But there is only one way that Kamala could ever have been vaulted to this position, and that is through the total dismantling of any semblance of democratic input.

You know, she was picked unelected by Biden as the VP and then coordinated by the donor class without any competition. And so this is what we are seeing. This is what the Democratic Party is revealing itself to actually be, which is anti-democratic to the core. But this is, I think that this is like kind of the new norm because the Democrat elite and the donor class, they have this sense that, and it was really, you know, the fear of God was put into them through the Bernie campaign, which again, just tepid social democracy, not even anything militant, not anything crazy, but they could, they couldn't stomach the possibility of a Bernie Sanders. And so they've been dismantling democracy. They're trying to work around

democracy. And I truly think that this contradiction is going to remain in the sense that the The elites are going to have to continue to do this anti-democratic processing where they get their preferred candidates in positions where they can continue or the Democratic Party apparatus itself has to be broken and there has to be a bottom-up flood where that whole, you know, the donor class itself is defeated opening up the party to bottom-up actual constituent power. But this contradiction can't hold. But this is what they're going to try to do. they're going to try to undermine democracy they're going to try to weaponize identity politics and they're going to try to force down our throats corporate candidates that serve the donor class while all while telling us at the same time this is incredibly socially progressive that we're doing this and so i think we have to keep an eye out that this is not going to there's no normal we're returning to this is now a a deep contradiction within the party itself and it has to give one way or the other eventually but the the elites have all the power they have all the money. They have all the influence in the corporate media. And so they're going to try to hold on to this shit as long as possible. And shoving Kamala down our throat is just another step in that road, you know? No, absolutely. I think that, you know, the no back to normal is the important

thing to internalize, right? This is actually an exceptional thing that happened. And it's exceptionally fucked up. But that's the thing is that it is not going to be an exception for long, right? Now a stage has been set to have, again, internal kingmakers will then the party like Pelosi get to make these decisions upset the pretense of democratic input. And, you know, Pelosi has been doing this for some time, right? This is what the whole refusing to let's, uh, have Feinstein step down thing was, was to make sure that Pelosi could get her friend Schiff into a position within the legislature, right? So it's not new, but this definitely is the biggest kind of stage that we've seen that play out on. And it is fairly horrific. And one thing I do really want to just say is like,

you know, I can't speak for you, Brett, but I imagine we're on the same page. Like, Fuck Kamala Harris. She's just as bad as Biden. Like, realistically, I don't think this is a huge improvement from any perspective. She's not senile, you know, I will give her that. But the genocide that is unfolding is not going to change. There's not going to be a significantly more progressive domestic policy either. I think people have kind of tricked themselves into that in a way that I find very confusing. And there's this kind of like frustration that I know I'm feeling at least, where I'm seeing how people on the left talked about her during the primary where she actually got to run in 2020, but, you know, those same people seem to have almost like memed themselves

into supporting her in this like really strange way. It actually is kind of wild watching like the coconut pill memes kind of being cope, right? Like they are kind of a way of like coping and forcing, you know, creating the ironic distance into supporting her in a way that is really wild to see. and I get where that's coming from, I guess. I think there's like this profound fear that people have of another Trump term, right? Um, part of that is, you know, all these talking points about like Project 2025, all of these other things that frame another Trump term as like very much an existential threat. And so I think in the light of that, people have like used these memes to create the room to be like, oh, I'm ironically supporting her when it really is kind of this desperation thing. Um, but I just think that is a huge mistake. Like Connolly Harris, is basically a spokesperson of the police state in the U.S., right? As bad as Trump is, I think we always do just have to insist, again, that the Democratic Party is very much a part of the fascist project in the United States as much as the GOP is, right?

In many ways, they're fucking more competent at it. They're more proficient at it. So if your fear is the ascendancy of some fascist system, that is not a better outcome. And that doesn't mean you should go fucking support Trump, obviously. I mean, I guess not obviously, because there are people who would argue that. But it should be obvious that that doesn't mean you should go support Trump. But this weird, like, meaning ourselves into supporting the replacement, who was an undemocratic pick from the first place, who is still a centrist candidate, who still represents the police state, who still represents, you know, the weaponization of the legal system in the U.S. for class dominance. It's just a really sad and pathetic thing to see. And I really think needs to be pushed back on, like, very clearly. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a couple other points. I just want to. add on top of that but one there is this sense in which you know there's these people from

Biden to Harris to Buttigieg to Klobuchar they are sort of empty suits they're they're pure opportunists they're also fucking morons and careerists and there's something that's very useful about that sort of person to the donor classes because there is no sense in which these people have any real ideology other than their own advancement there's no sense in which they're going to threaten any status quo because that status quo has vaulted them to this position. And so these are incredibly safe candidates for the ruling elite, for the corporations, for the billionaires, for the donor classes. And I think Harris fits perfectly in this archetype of this sort of just, yeah, empty suit. There's no substance there. And in order for there to be

a figure in either party that comes up to really challenge the status quo, there has to be ideology, there has to be a mass movement, and there has to be a willingness to make enemies. And you don't have any of that with any of these people. That's not even on the, the, the, the, the the smorgas board of possibilities intellectually for them the other thing is you know i was talking earlier about how you know they can't allow democracy even within the democratic party itself because what what is actually happening what what are they so scared of it's not just bernie sanders social you know tepid social democracy but they seeing this this shift especially amongst younger voters of stuff like we want universal health care we want an end to israel aid

You know, we want higher taxes on corporations and the rich, more regulations, we want action on climate change. We want to, we're talking about all this debt and all the spending and all this. We want huge cuts to the Pentagon. We do not need to give a trillion dollars a year to this war machine, this military industrial complex. But of course, all of those interests that would be infringed upon if that element of the Democratic Party actually had a Democratic say are in direct contrast to the donor classes in their interests. because these are fortune 500 companies these are billionaires they don't want higher taxes they don't want universal health care you know they don't want the military industrial complex to be impeded on they certainly don't want you know is aid to Israel to be cut off and to us have a hostile um

position towards towards Israel and so they have a deep deep material incentive to prevent that at all costs even if that means hilariously and ironically throwing out democracy itself while they're telling us that they're doing it. And then the other thing I wanted to say is that, you know, AOC is just the millennial Nancy Pelosi. Like it should be very clear. That is what, that's the role she serves. She just uses the same empty, cringe-worthy, boring appeals to identity politics that have been shoved down our throat since Hillary and before. She does nothing of any real substance.

She's a flip-flopper, a peer opportunist. She was one of these people saying Biden needs to stay in when everybody can clearly see he's falling apart. She was one of the dead enders. Her and Bernie were amongst the dead enders for Biden. So these figures are emerging within the Democratic Party to speak to and co-op the energies of a new generation. And they should be seen precisely in that way. Is it the case that AOC is taking money in smoky rooms? No, of course not.

but this is who is allowed to exist in the Democratic Party. If you get to that position in the Democratic Party, if you're allowed that level of platform, you have been subordinated to the overall interest of the party, which is the overall interest of the donor class. But it's good for them to have somebody that seems like they're going to go against the status quo because they're the promise of change. You know, when AOC and Bernie was getting into, you know, becoming popular across the board when AOC got elected,

It was precisely on this premise that they were going to take on the Democratic Party elite and they were going to be the arbingers of real change. And so it's incredibly advantageous to the party itself to be able to have figures like that that ostensibly represent a new generation, a shift in perspective, real change within the party to be able to put up to the younger people to continue to string them along and continue to have them support the party. So that's the fuck, whether she knows it or not, I can't speak to her in general monologue. whether she knows it or not, that's the role she plays, and that's the role that others likely play. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's so blatant at this point that, like, even, like, the factions within the DSA that have traditionally supported her are backing off of that support, right? Like, the DSA has actually removed their endorsement to my understanding. Things are just so blatant at that point. I think it is just an example of how much opportunism

really does just rot out, you know, politicians in these ways. The Pelosi comparison is, like, so fascinating, right? Because she really does want to be the little Niazzi Pelosi and position herself in the party in this really similar way that I think is honestly just kind of horrific. Yes. Yeah, it's pathetic. It's, it's, it's, it's grotesque. Um, and now, now, I want to address this and I would love to get your thoughts on this, Allison. There's this element that could be, that could be launched our way of, you know, this stuff is ultimately just, there's just self-defeating. There's like nothing we can do. There's no hope. Both parties are, you know, completely. completely, you know, unsalvageable.

And, you know, you're just going to tell us to organize more, but that's not working. That's not bringing any change immediately. You know, somebody could launch these accusations against us. And so I kind of want to grapple with that. Because, I mean, W.E.B. DeBois even said this. Let me find the exact quote. Because I actually just saw it today and I found it fascinating. And this is in the 19-fucking 50s.

And here we are 70-some years later. And it's the exact same shit. But, you know, De Bois is so ahead of his time and is such a seminal figure for us to learn from and to study. So the quote is from, I believe, an essay De Bois wrote, I won't vote in 1956. And just the part of the quote is, is the refusal to vote in this phony election a council of despair? No, it is dogged hope. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. And I think that speaks to the necessity for us to sort of grow up, to see the last.

limitations of these parties, but not to prevent the struggle. We're not saying this stuff as like, there's no hope that, you know, there, you know, we still have to organize. I still think like if you want to vote, um, I think you should vote. You should register your disdain with the two parties. Vote third party. Vote for a candidate that actually aligns with your values. Not that that's going to, you know, create a title shift in our politics overnight, but, you know, it's worthwhile to register that disdain. And I will say this, you know, I'm not a sort of a dogmatist when it comes to this. If there was a caucus within the Democratic Party that was a socialist and anti-imperialist, you know, just working class economics and anti-imperialist for foreign policy,

like the Freedom Caucus or what the squad could and should be, that was actually willing to make enemies within the party, to gum up the works, to fight against the elites, to point out the hypocrisy within the demo but there are democrats in the party itself i would 100% support that caucus um because i would i think it would be playing a vital role in um the electoral realm where unfortunately for now most americans sort of completely see uh politics as being like the realm of politics is the realm of electoralism and and that's true for hundreds of millions of americans and so to have somebody on that front whether that's a viable third party whether that is a caucus within one of the parties fighting for the things we believe in. I would support those

things. This is not coming from a dogmatist or a despair-oriented position. I think there is hope. I think it's precisely in the desperation of the elites that we can see that the emergence of hope. Change, I think, is coming one way or another. Good, bad or ugly. Change is coming. And we can see the system as a whole on both sides react to that emerging, you know, sort of gap. between the interests of regular people on the left, right, and center, and the institutions that have been bequeathed to us through history that weigh on us like a nightmare to this day. And so I don't want to, I don't want to ever get in a position where it comes off as if we're actively discouraging any sort of engagement with any politics because everything sucks, right?

What are your thoughts on that, Alison? Yeah, I mean, I think quite the opposite. I think that we need to be engaged in politics. you know, I think I have leaned towards being more dogmatically anti-electoral generally. I think I may be slightly softened on that to a level of more sympathy with Lenin's position in left-wing communism and infantile disorder, which shout out, we have an episode on if you want to go hear his argument there. But, you know, thinking about Lenin's argument there as well, though, I do even wonder, like, even if one is fully sympathetic to it, which I think I increasingly am,

it's not clear to me how much it applies to the current moment. For Lenin, you know, the reason to engage in electoral politics isn't even necessarily because you think that you're going to achieve anything in the electoral realm so much as because it's a terrain of struggle where the masses are invested, right? Like you are innocents meeting them there. And it's actually not even clear to me the extent to which that is true in the United States, right? Like a high level of cynicism about politics is actually the predominant tone in a way that I think is quite distinct for. what Lenin is discussing. I don't think the masses here see politics as a terrain through which their interests can be, you know, really pursued, right, or can be struggled for. That actually seems to be the opposite of the case. There's this overwhelming cynicism. In fact, I think like much of Trump's support is a product of that cynicism, right? They see him as like this anti-political figure in a sense, which he obviously isn't. But that is how he's perceived. So I do wonder even from that perspective, whether or not, you know, the traditional Lennonist arguments make a ton of sense here. If they do, you know, let's say that they might, I do think that that will never

happen within the Democratic Party, right? I think the kind of caucus that you're talking about can't exist because the party is structured such that it never could. And I think, unfortunately, the failure of the squad, you know, is really indicative of this, right? Their capitulation, they're being folded into the Democratic machine into funding the fucking Iron Dome, with a couple of exceptions, like, they have not done a good job in relation to these things. In supporting the fucking IHRA definition of anti-Semitism being codified into U.S. law, right? There actually has been huge capitulation around these things. And I think that shows the ability of the party to take those kind of aspirations and turn them to its benefit over the long term.

I will say shout out the one person, like, really standing straw really does seem to be Rashida Talib, right, who I think really hasn't compromised on most of these things, but he's very much the exception, even within her own little segment of the Democratic Party. So I don't think it'll come through there. If there is an electoral game to be played, I think it is very much outside of the party. But then you encounter the other thing about the United States, which is that we don't have a parliamentary system, right? We have a system that kind of ensures that this two-party structure continues to exist. And many people have put an incredible amount of effort into trying to make a third party happen, and it continually hasn't happened. So it's

not even clear to me that from Lennon's perspective of meeting the masses on a terrain of struggle that they're already engaged in, that, you know, the third-party approach works either. So I, you know, I am very pessimistic about those things. Does that mean that I think everything is hopeless? Does that mean that that terrain could never emerge? No, I think that would be a dogmatic way of thinking, right? That would not be a materialist way of thinking. We have to constantly assess whether or not that's the case and then move from there. But I would push back against the idea that like the alternative is just this vague organize and then nothing else, right? I do think that there is something slightly more concrete that people are suggesting

as an alternative. I think that, you know, organizing has, you know, does things that even if it's not a revolution impact people's lives. If you talk to people who have avoided eviction because of radical militant organizing, their lives have been impacted by that organizing more than they have by voting, right? It is actually true that those struggles make a difference. And yes, it is unfortunate that in the terrain of the U.S. left, those struggles have by and large not surpassed economism, right? They have not surpassed, you know, their own, existing for their own sake, rather than for the sake of a party more broadly. And that is ultimately one of our biggest failings, right, on the left in the United States and something that all of us have to confront and combat. But that doesn't

mean that, you know, these hordes organizing are worthless. They're worth something, even if only for keeping someone in their apartment instead of on the streets. And so these other forms organizing, they do things. I don't like this idea that it's this endless, like chasing things in circles, never going anywhere, never having an impact. I think I could point to you so many more people who have had their lives impacted positively by the types of militant organizing at the left disengaged in than I could people who have really benefited from the, you know, voting for the fucking Democrats, right? I just kind of reject some of that premise. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, I read a tweet the other day, I think it's from the Hampton Institute that said a 10-day general strike, you know, would do more than 100 years of voting.

But of course, that takes working class power at certain, you know, pinch points, et cetera. But I think that speaks to your larger point that there are ways that you can confront the electoral system. To your point about organizing, changing people's lives, I want to give a huge shout out to my comrades, my close friends and comrades in the Omaha Tenets United, who just won a big fight against a corporate landlord in the Mexico. Metro, in the Omaha metro area made the local news and everything for like 300 plus tenants in this apartment, this huge apartment complex in Bellevue that just won a tent, they just organized a tenant union. So all the tenants came together. It wasn't just organizers coming in and trying, you know, the tenants themselves took up leadership positions. They took up, you know,

the roles of doing a lot of the work and they've succeeded, you know, historically. It's the first one of its kind in the area and it's a it's a beautiful it's a beautiful thing and that speaks directly to your point about how organizing has real material impacts and can change people's lives in a few weeks of struggle compared to a lifetime of voting yeah um and and and the other other point of optimism is that it's not a lack of numbers right i think it was was malcolm x that said it's not that we're out numbered it's that we're out organized there are millions of people in this fucking country who want radical change. There are millions of people of all ages and all generations who would

love to see a militant working class movement in this fucking country that took on both parties. And you said that, you know, people are very pessimistic about the system as it is and they don't see any hope in the electoral system. Absolutely, they do not. Which is also the prerequisite to if that movement emerged, if those forces emerged, people would fucking love it. People would swarm to it.

And yes, there are institutional forces that are doing everything they fucking possibly can to prevent the emergence of such a force. But the contradictions are heightening. The desire for change is completely widespread. It might be articulated differently across the political spectrum. You talk to like, you know, some 55-year-old working class guy in Nebraska who's voting for Trump. And he might articulate it a little differently than somebody, you know, in a different circumstances with more ostensibly or outward, left-wing politics, but there's still this deep change. They want to see

politics work for regular people. There's a disgust at the military industrial complex, endless wars. There's an overall hatred of the elite in both parties, which to some extent Trump both represents that hatred of the elite as he simultaneously represents the elite that they're

hating. So that's a contradiction that the Republican Party is going to have to continue to work out. And of course the whole idea of a militant working class anti-imperialist caucus within the Democratic party was purely hypothetical and as Allison said, it is functionally impossible because the party itself would never allow for that. But I was just trying to assert that if that existed, there would be support for it. So yeah, there's plenty of reasons to continue hoping and to be

optimistic to continue fighting, continue organizing, continue educating, continue to form networks of like-minded organizations and people in your community, to serve the masses in whatever ways you can and there is a sort of building momentum that is that is occurring and and sometimes we get disheartened we get discouraged because we see things at the highest institutional levels not going our way whatsoever and that can make some people despair um but there is there is this undeniable energy building and like i said you know the one fact in both buddhism and dialectics and marxism changes inevitable the status quo doesn't last forever you can't just force everybody to continue to have, you know, this sort of very

minority, elite-centric rule imposed on them forever. People do fight back. The whole history of humanity has been people, you know, rising the fuck up against the forces that have tried to impose authority on them, going back thousands of years, all the way up until the present day. You know, revolutions happen, uprisings happen all the time. And there is a, there is a direction that we're heading. in as a society that is that is geared in that direction and the more that the elites and both

parties try to keep a lid on it the more the steam builds and the more it's the the lid becomes unstable and eventually things will pop off and it is our job to organize and educate as much as we possibly can to ensure that when that lid pops off it pops off in the direction of the left not the direction of a military coup or a police state or you know whatever the american caesar or the american you know next dictator the american hitler forgot sakes um and so yes there's plenty of reasons to continue to be engaged as disheartening and exhausting as it can sometimes be um and to continue to fight in every single way that we can and uh so i i always wanted to to impress that upon people especially when we have a discussion about all the ways that

things suck ass you know of course of course yeah and i think the one thing that i will say to you to build on that is like you know if you are someone who very strongly believes that like the electoral realm is a place where we should be fighting, that I think that's all the more reason that the non-electoral organizing matters as a prerequisite, right? Like, one of the things that I've like been reflecting on a little bit lately, and this might be a slight tangent, but it's on my mind, so you all will be subjected to it, which is, you know, a thing that I don't hear U.S. socialist talk about is the idea of consciousness, right, and of raising the consciousness of the working class. I think part of that is like, we have this attitude where often we worry that that

that kind of language is like paternalistic or something like that. But fucking go back and read some linen and you can't get away from that concept, right? Read Mao and you can't get away from that concept. And I think for a class to struggle in the political arena, it needs a high level of consciousness to begin with, actually. You need to have a class that has already begun to think of itself as a class for itself, right? And that's a difficult thing to accomplish. That's a level of consciousness that is fairly advanced. And if you think about the context where Lenin is interjecting in his debates like in Germany, that consciousness was there, right? There was a working class movement within that country. And so I think we need to get there first before that

terrain could ever open. One of the reasons that I think tenants organizing is like such a good example is unlike things like mutual aid, it's combative, right? Tenants organizing takes a group of people and puts them into direct struggle against their class enemies. And when they win, it builds consciousness. It actually does. And I think that kind of consciousness can then lay the foundation for these broader, more macro-level strategies. But if that consciousness doesn't exist in the first place, then you're never going to have the ability to kind of have class interests struggled for within something like electoral politics in the first place. So I also, you know, just I'll say like I don't think it's inherently dichotomous, right? But I think really the question now is what kinds of work can we do that build the interests of the class as a class and raises its level of consciousness. And I don't see voting for fucking Caldala Harris being the way you do that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in the idea of building a class for itself, you have to think of all the ways in which the ruling class attempts to ideologically prevent precisely that. And one of the things it does is it will continue to sow as much division as possible amongst the

working class to make you hate your neighbor as opposed to the the ruling class elite so the right is trained to hate you know college students trained to hate quote unquote blue-haired lefties right and that that that keeps their hate you know they're destroying the family they're coming for you antifa's coming to your suburbs right that's how the right does it and on on the left there is this sense like you have to you fucking hate maga right the the guy on that that's that's your co-worker with the MAGA hat, you know, that's your real enemy. Not Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris is on your side.

He's your real enemy. And there's a million ways they do that, right? There's identity politics, which on the right takes the form of, like, white identity politics. You know, we're losing our country. White Christians are being preyed upon, blah, blah, blah. You hear that all day long on the right. And on the left, the liberal, neoliberal weaponization of identity politics that we see with

Hillary Clintons and Kamala Harris as an AOCs is that exact same thing, but inverted, you know? serves the exact same purpose. If that identity politics was a threat to the status quo, do you think it would be coming out of the mouth of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris? Absolutely not. And so you have to see the ways in which the divisions amongst working, not to say that there are no divisions, not to say that we should just wrinkle them all over,

that there's no differences that we could all just get together in kumbaya and fight the elites. There are real divisions, but there's false ones being raised by the elites that can keep us at each other's throats and away from their own. And I think, I think that's also shown in extreme clarity when Trump gets his ear pierced and all the Democrats trip over themselves to come out and say, oh my God, political violence, this is so disgusting. This is, this is way over the line now. Killing the latest numbers coming out of some sources for the death toll in Gaza right now is over 180,000. That is, that is some of the estimations coming out of, you know, universal

agents or global agencies that are trying to track this stuff despite the difficulties. You know, the idea that it's still 40,000 is fucking absurd. Way over 100, you know, that's not political violence. You know, going down the downtown area of any major city and seeing people that are in desperate need of treatment of health care, of mental health care, sleeping in the gutters, sleeping on the street. That's not violence. That violence is acceptable.

Kicking, you know, a single mom and her family. out of their house and making them foreclose and sell everything they have and live in a hotel because she got cancer and can't afford the medical debt. That's not violence. But Trump getting his ear pierced, that's unacceptable. Why? Because when violence is aimed at the elite, even of the other party, they all feel threatened. And so they have to come out and denounce, okay, now you're aiming at one of us.

Now that they hate Trump. Trump's the next Hitler, according to these people. But at the same time, oh my God, now we're crossing so many lines. This is unacceptable. But all the violence built into the system itself that just is grinding bones and blood and guts every single day to keep this fucking system operating. That's built in. That's totally acceptable violence. And so, you know, that's another thing that has really been brought to my mind and many people's minds in the wake of that event.

Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think, you know, to touch on one of the things you said there to you is like it's not that like contradictions in the working class don't exist, right? getting on that, you know, we're like taught by identity politics to hate different people and to really misdirect from the class. Obviously, contradictions do exist, right? Like, race is a contradiction in the United States, but those contradictions are worked out through struggle, right? That is how we're going to overcome them. It's not through fucking representation, who's in movies or some shit like that. It's going to be people fighting alongside each other

for their economic material interests in a way that allows for solidarity that transcends the conditions of those contradictions and also creates the conditions for understanding the differences in struggles that different people face. That can only happen through the kind of organizing that goes beyond fucking neoliberal identity politics. So it's not like those things aren't real. It's just like the way you resolve them is through the class struggle. Yes, exactly. And racism, it exists, but it's also always been fostered by the elite. There's always been an incentive for the elite to triple down. I mean, we go back to the early days of union organizing. in the IWW, letting in, you know, black workers for the first time.

Like, this goes deep into the history of the United States where racism was deployed as one of the many ways, but one of the most salient ways in which, you know, working people were divided and taught to hate each other. And that's not to say that there wasn't real sentiments of racism or that that didn't work on a lot of motherfuckers, you know, and racism is absolutely fucking unacceptable. But the cure to racism is not to fetishize identity reductionism in the inverted neoliberal. liberal identity politics way, it's to say, hey, we all have different experiences. The black experience is a unique experience in the United States given this very unique history. The immigrant experience is different, is unique. The white experience is different is unique, right? We all have

different backgrounds. We should strive to understand where each other come from. The unique experiences that identity does shape. But ultimately, class politics allows us to unite across identities for a shared goal that benefits us all. And, you know, what would help trans people? What would help black women? What would help, you know, any identity marginalized person in this society is, of course, fighting for their humanity and their fucking their rights. And also to push forward a universal class project that lifts all of them up, that allows

them to have economic autonomy, which is core to living a dignified life into having some semblance of power or at least not having other people have. immense power over you. You know, democracy and, and egalitarianism and widespread economic prosperity that is not, you know, a billion dollars over in this guy's pocket while this guy's sleeping in the fucking gutter, right? But to equalize that out and to make sure everybody has a decent, dignified motherfucking life, that helps everybody. And it also undermines a lot of the material basis that, you know, can be used to foster divisions and racism and hatred of other people because one of the things that elites and especially

reactionary elites do is they're constantly training their underclass constituency to aim their ire at powerless people refugees asylum seekers immigrants trans people with no power you know LGBT people with no power they're constantly pointing to them as the problem as the thing that needs to be purged in order to solve all these problems and if if if everybody had a decent dignified life and had control and autonomy over their own life, that message wouldn't work as well. It's only in a state of precarity and fear and paranoia and downward mobility that those narratives become incredibly salient.

And I think that is something we have to continue to keep in mind as both, you know, factions of the elite triple down on this identity reductionism. Right. Yeah. And I do think, you know, to add to that, I don't want to deny the existence of like material contradictions that exist on a colonial basis in the United States. I think we've always been very careful to indicate that we both believe that those exist. But those don't get resolved either. Like, national contradictions don't get resolved either through neoliberal

identity politics, right? Those also have to take the form of a material struggle. And communism as a movement has always aligned itself with those struggles, right? And so the only path to, you know, really creating the possibility for that is still through communist struggle, right? That's what I mean when I say we will work this stuff out through united struggle together. That might mean recognizing that these contradictions go beyond just false consciousness, because I do think they do, but they also, you know, false consciousness is a part of it. It's not like this isn't intentionally stoked because the capitalist class is also the colonial class, right? You can't differentiate the two

from each other. Absolutely. I want to read two quick quotes that I think speak to some of the stuff that we're talking about. One is, of course, Franz Fanon, who said, quote, what is fascism but colonialism at the very heart of traditionally colonialist countries? And I think that's incredibly important because it, it weaves together, you know, the emergence and perpetuation of fascism across the quote unquote Western world with that legacy of colonialism, which I think is essential. And then if you're anti-fascist, you have to then be anti-colonial and, you know, decolonial in that context. So France Fanon is always, you know, a wise elder continuing to lead us through the fog of our own time.

And then it was recently, I believe, the anniversary of Michael Brooks's passing, his tragic passing at way too young of an age. And there's this quote that recently popped up on my feed from him. And this speaks to the need to speak to regular people and to try to build up that class consciousness that Allison was just talking about earlier. While staying principled at the same time, Brooks said, quote, we need a material analysis, buttressed with a sense of humor and a recognition of human fallibility. that connects the fight for a better world to the immediate interests of the majority of the population. And I think he does a couple things here that are really important. We need this materialist class analysis, this anti-imperialist, you know, analysis that we're always pushing forward. But to prevent it from being dogmatic and alienating to people, there should be a sense of humility that we all have, that none of us have all the fucking answers, that we have to work together if we're ever going to be successful.

there is no leader coming to save us. There is no one guy who knows everything and everybody else has to listen to him. And there's a sense of humor, which is also, I think, a product of humility, which is, if you're going to relate to people, you don't just shove jargon down their face, you don't lecture them. You're a human being. You relate to them as a human being. Having a sense of humor, an approachable personality, a humble recognition of human fallibility,

that we're all fallible, that none of us have all the answers. I think humanizes us in our movement and is an important aspect. respect to reaching people where they are. And then he says this other thing where that connecting the fight for a better world. So, you know, we are communists. We talk about a classless society. We talk about this broad, beautiful, long-term vision we have for what society could be, transcending and maturing beyond, you know, the, the predatory phase of human development,

class society, as Albert Einstein put it. We have to glue that vision for a radically different world, right, which is very different from the actual world that we live in. We have to glue that to the interests of the, the immediate interest of the majority of the population. It's not enough to say, here's our vision of the world that we would like to get to. Well, shit, the world that we live in is so, you're utopian is what a lot of regular people will say.

No, we want, this is the vision for the world that we have. And here are the, you know, concrete sort of demands and policy changes and moves that we would like to make in the here and now and our actual material concrete conditions. that would directly speak to regular people's interest in the here and now. It's not enough to offer them a beautiful vision of what could be. It has to be glued to, okay, how does this actually help me in my family now, though? You know, and I think that is something that we can sometimes lose sight of when we get in echo chambers, when we're using jargon that all the other guys and girls in the, in the, in the echo chamber

understand when we're putting forward, you know, these broad visions, we sometimes lose, lose sight of you know how do we connect that to a regular person's struggle to pay their rent to get out of medical debt to build a better life in the here and now and then to work on that and build toward the future we want which can't just be created like a sandcastle in the sky but has to be built brick by brick by brick out of the actual situation we're currently in so that is again another you know a brilliant quote from michael brooks that continues to resonate and continues to be important yeah and that is precisely why forms of organizing that bring people confrontationaly into conflict with their class enemies matter, right? I can talk all day about,

you know, there are very abstract parts of communism that I find fascinating about what the world would look like under communism, but that doesn't matter to someone who might get thrown onto the streets because they can't pay their rent. But avoiding that situation does matter, right, in a way that is very concrete and makes it very clear what we have to offer. And I think we do lose sight of that because there is this unfortunate subcultural side of things that we can fall into very, very easily that often obscures those. 100%. And to cap that off, there's this story I remember. I've said it before, but a long time ago.

I was at a conference many years ago. I think it was like 2017. It might have been the one that we were in in Denver together. But there was a Philadelphia Tenets Union sort of panel and they were speaking. And there was a guy on the panel who, you know, was basically saying like now he's a he's an organizer in the union and everything. But he was saying, he's like, I didn't, when, when these. folks came to me for the first time like you know they they they didn't lie to me they told me

that they were socialist communist marxist whatever i didn't really know what that means i didn't really care the important thing was that they were showing up to help me fight the shitty landlord and to save my family from eviction and through that process you know i started becoming curious and learning about these things and and then you activated you know they activated a regular working class person that was not an activist was not an organizer they activated him to become an organizer in his own interest in the interest of his neighbors and that is precisely how you reach people how you activate people how you make people class conscious is by doing that and so that's another another reason why i want to give a huge shout out to omaha tenants united i'll link to them

in the show notes people can go show them love follow them and if you're in a city if you want to start something up like this i personally know the the you know leadership of that organization and i can put you into contact with them if you wanted to um you know get some tips on how to start a tenant organization, how to fight landlords, things to be on the lookout for, et cetera. The comrades in that organization are incredibly open to helping other people do similar things.

So if you're at all interested, I'll link to that in the show notes. You can reach out to them on socials, and they will absolutely help you get started on that because it's a beautiful thing to do that addresses people's material needs in the moment while building class consciousness and doing all the things that we talk about all the time on the show.

Oh, yeah. All right. Well, do you want to end on a quick conversation about the protests with Netanyahu coming to the belly of the beast to ask for more money? Honestly, we can get into that in a future episode, probably. I think that's a pretty solid note to finish on. I agree. And I'll just give a shout out to the comrades protesting, Netanyahu's visit. Of course. Jewish Voices for Peace, et cetera. Keep up the great fight. Nothing but salutes and love from Allison and I. Yes, completely. All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us today.

Thank you to everybody listens to the show, shares the show, supports the show, love and solidarity. We'll be back soon. All right, Brahms, then rhyme, right? Yeah, that about sums it up, but while some of them get broke, I get seen. Stories and truths, I share views, see I see why I cruise shoes to Fox News. I see and CNBC and by the show, it's crystal clear without a PCS phone. BOS is known for heart. Spit from the home, put it to music, then let you download the ringtone.

And from a broken home stories are hard times past. Oh, that ain't a breeze of the draft because the window's cracked. That's where the heart is. Growing in a knot, I won't turn my back. Word of great stories, thanks for the womb and support. Let's see that smile. You ain't got to worry no more. We ain't got to worry with tough, and we can deal with whatever comes up.

This is for those who can't pay the rent. Run out of toilet paper, find the Sunday paper, wipe your ass with the president. This is for them thugs. You don't crack but stop because it's our first hand what crack does. This is for all the artists who know they work is just a drop in the ocean, but do it anyway. Hope this is for everybody who carries the world's weight But stands up straight Put a hand up, try to relate

And then we keep candles on the doom trust Now it's not You know Something for like prayer or anything It's more for everyone I shut the wall Power off Now is it the money of the past dudes The switch blades estapples

Why's it always gotta be bad news, huh? Why's it always gotta be bad? You choose some new shit Or fix what you have? See, growing up I shook the bobber on the poverty line, but wait, I got away with the bait. To this minute, I'm dealing with nightcrawlers who rule my mouth, so what you think? New shit, or fix what I have. I think of hooks, right lines, and sick with the times, get fished in, caught by the decline.

I fought only to find. I'm not right in the mind. I'm left, I mean, I'm fine, just not so fucking blind. Rather be forgotten, than remember, forgiving in, refuse to lose my name like sins. Away with spirits, I am fear personified, no place to hide if you're locked in your mind, right? You ever feel like you got a closet to clean You can't find the key You look but you lost the damn thing

You ever feel you know exactly where the fuck it is But don't want to see Yeah me too I don't care where just fall right I'm escape personified Drop the P from Pride and hop in my car Just drop far I'm escape personified

Drop the P from Pride and hop in my car So Run out of toilet paper But find the Sunday paper wipe your ass with the president This is for them thugs Who don't crack but stop Because it's our first hand what crack does This is for all the artists

Who know they work is to drop in the ocean But do it anyway Hoping this is for everybody who carries The world's weight The stands up straight Put a hand up, try to belate That's a little rhyme. Get that rhyme?

I put that rhyme in me because quite often dropouts come in to catch the show. Them dumb-ass dropouts like those rhymes.