The "middle class" never existed. The "middle class" is an invented wedge to split the working class and try to turn segments of itself, against itself. It has no material basis. It is the 'myth of upward mobility under capitalism' distilled into a propaganda phrase to obscure the dualistic and antagonistic class relations in capitalist society between the PROPERTIED and UNPROPERTIED (those who own capital and those who do not), and the contradictions and conflicts therein.

It is false consciousness; personified by and in the 'middle manager' who is PROPERTYLESS (proletarian), but paid more and promised the "opportunity of more to come" to align themselves with the interests of the PROPERTIED, and take on the role of a low-level overseer -- to function as both a compliance enforcer and a mediative focus-dulling pain-sponge standing in the middle of, and soaking up the conflict between, the ONLY REAL TWO CLASSES IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY: The Worker, and the Capitalist.

"Middle class" is liberal sleight-of-hand in its core and conception, and a term to be derided and discarded in all use, except as a magnifying glass to show the ways capitalism distorts and deceives about the real nature of its own properties and relations; and how the ruling class generates and contributes to the development of false consciousness through their reframing of production's own characteristics, in order to reify into political "identities" to be captured and capitalized upon those roles which naturally manifest out of the laws of functional industrial-productive logistics, ie. the need for 'managers' to administrate complex or large-scale productive and distributive tasks. This serves double roles in the laws of colonial and imperial relations in places like the USA, as this distinction is also in practice highly racialized and rooted in the ongoing historical unfolding of these basal-and-superstructural systems of exploitation.

Make note of the conspicuous absences and obfuscations when duopolist-exploiter X or Y says they "fight for the middle class;" that they are not fighting for you or me in the working class, but pandering to those "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" that they've bought off enough or otherwise tricked into this false consciousness, to give them their ever-shrinking electoral margins they require and fight each other over so they don't have to pay any mind to the working class masses who make up the majority; because they in reality work for the big bourgeois, the capitalists, and the petty-bourgeois "small business tyrants" who think of themselves as capitalists --- all at the expense of the working class domestically and abroad.

ADVISORY: Outdoor furniture almost certainly uses treated wood. That is, toxic chemicals that act as fungicide, pesticide, and moisture-resister, which would be VERY BAD inhale the smoke of burning it.. And if it's pre-i-think-80s treated wood it's even worse than what they use now. You should also not use treated wood in bonfires and such.

Pipes are cheap, and even an apple (not ideal) is still better than this.

I'm hoping the Communists in France have been reading their Lenin. I can't think of a better gift Macron could have given the communists. "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder ::: spoiler Chapter 9: “Left-Wing” Communism in Great Britian

Lloyd George Macron entered into a polemic... with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with the Labour Party New Popular Front (NPF)... Lloyd George Macron argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for the Labour Party NPF which Lloyd George Macron prefers to call “Socialist” ... "In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called Bolshevism," he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on principle, Lloyd George Macron explained, because they stand in principle for private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .

... Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the Labour Party NPF.

...
At present, British French Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson Castets and Mélenchon and against Lloyd George Macron and Le Pen they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill Barnier and Le Pen (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson Castets and the NPF in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons Castets will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons Castetses and the Snowdens Mélenchons just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany. :::

...
This has stripped more and more active and engaged and hopeful people of their illusions about bourgeois democracy than even bernie-clinton 2016 nonsense. Which even that created a lot of communists; and that was relatively milquetoast compared to this huge national mobilization and upswell and coalition movement which was big enough to make international headlines no less. If the French communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this stuff even before it happened (as you said, very predictable) then the communist movement has gained 10x more than any eurosocialist thinks "the left" lost.

because nothing seems to be working.

This is an inspiring sign for communists. No reason for pessimism. A large mobilization of masses of engaged politically active workers in a state where the masses still largely believe in parliamentarism; who formed sprawling coalitions into a large left national upswelling that also made international headlines, now have themselves and onlookers been shown, better than any propaganda alone ever could, why bourgeois liberal democracy is an impediment to progress rather than a channel for it; and that the Liberals will side with the fascists to keep the left from getting an inch. This has made more communists than you probably realize. Especially if your communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this point, which probably a lot of workers didn't even need much agitation to expect this because of the state of things and how just... unbearably awful Macron is in every way

::: spoiler VI Lenin: LWC Chapter 9: “Left-Wing” Communism in Great Britian

Lloyd George Macron entered into a polemic... with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with the Labour Party New Popular Front (NPF)... Lloyd George Macron argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for the Labour Party NPF which Lloyd George Macron prefers to call “Socialist” ... "In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called Bolshevism," he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on principle, Lloyd George Macron explained, because they stand in principle for private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .

... Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the Labour Party NPF.

...
At present, British French Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson Castets and Mélenchon and against Lloyd George Macron and Le Pen they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill Barnier and Le Pen (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson Castets and the NPF in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons Castets will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons Castetses and the Snowdens Mélenchons just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany. :::

...
It is a good day friend. Communism will win, and these liberal politicians are helping it do so. Don't let the systems and their media and propaganda make you believe otherwise in their lies. They're trying to convince you of your own defeat because of the implications if you don't believe you have been, and instead realize they're selling you the rope they will be hanged with; and you push harder in smarter ways that they can't keep up with, using connections built in these mass movements and coalitions which invariably have radical new elements that just need drawn together.

You're ahead of them in this. They've, in a very real dialectical way, undermined liberal democracy and created more enemies to the capitalist systems and institutions than they made allies, by their own blunders in being incapable of conceding anything to intelligently reify socialists back into feckless parliamentary legitimization of bourgeois democracy, and their failures to navigate contradictions in ways that aren't so short-sighted to look absolutely villainous to huge swathes of the population (and internationally, because this was a large enough movement to make headlines around the world; with a knock-on effect for the international proles who see parallels). Macron's so scared of radical politics he's making them everywhere he steps.

well except all the Nazis in Germany that were brought directly back into:

• Official posts within the federal government and its ministerial cabinets
• into the upper judiciary and magistrates
• into local governance
• elevated and hired into immense wealth in industry and finance, or just kept where they already were in industry and finance
• hired into forming the Nazi core of the West German intelligence and secret police agencies (which would become today's German agencies) under the protective auspices of the OSS/CIA; who made extensive use of their networks of executioners and collaborators to prop up US-backed dictatorships and cartels and use as anti-communist stay-behind guerilla terrorists by the CIA and NATO (and brought into the CIA and FBI themselves, and into MI6 and Mossad)
• into German academia and universities as faculty and professors,
• to write western history books at the behest and with support of the US Army and OSS/CIA to sanitize themselves
• all those hired into NATO and into the EU
• into positions of power in West Germany (and all the NATO countries, helping in and helped by Gladio violently purging the communists) in such saturation and such impunity that it caused the formation of left wing militant groups that would assassinate and kidnap them.

but other than all of that though!

(And that's not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the "Victims of Communism Foundation" which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet "Captive Nations Lobby" headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)

"typical Hamas press"

CNN

deeply unserious individual

honorable mention to New Marijuana Study Confirms Everyone Knows You're High And You Will Be Stoned Forever

because when this was originally uploaded on their website it would play a slightly different version every time you opened the page. So you'd laugh and show your friends, so then even if your (allegedly) stoner ass hadn't gotten tripped out the first time, while they're watching it and laughing you'd start sweating.

Second honorable mention to "Is The Government Spying on Schizophrenics Enough?" But I'm honestly still not sure that one's totally okay, even if I still laugh every single time I watch it. I'm not that type of mentally ill but have had people close to me who struggle enough with it and the very nature of the disorder is such that even though I laugh I've always at the same time felt it treads very much on the line.

Prague's Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport

And a 'from-16-years-back' broadside at the US approaching November:

'No Values Voters' Search For Most Evil Candidate

I’d rather be dead

hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don't get to make that decision for other people. And to do it over your tax money? (which by the way, is a fraction that your employer steals from the value you produce for them every day)? it's a misanthropic and myopic selfish callousness; whether or not you have struggled it is a sign of insularity to ascribe your experiences to others and how it "should be", and to do it in such a transactional way is even more disturbing.

I’d like to know how much you can cope with...

unclench your jaw and breathe friend, this is unreasonable

that is not how HIV/AIDS is spread.

You could potentially get herpes from it, but idk how long the virus lives on porous material like wood exposed to the elements. Covid for instance lasts 4 days on wood, but only 1 on cardboard. It lives much longer on, say, plastic, than on clothing.

I'd be much more worried about toxic chemicals because outdoor furniture almost certainly uses treated wood. And if it's pre-i-think-80s treated wood it's even worse.

Democrats outflanking the Republicans on the right over immigration has been a wild one. Though it's been happening for years, they usually weren't so proud and open about it. Obama himself was infamously known as the "Deporter-in-Chief," and Biden not only didn't put a stop to the concentration camps the democrats and liberals feigned outrage over with Trump, but also deregulated them and sent people to unknown fates, as well as allowing for and advertising the private subcontracting of these concentration camps, and pretending that was progress. Very normal country, with parties that are definitely not just two hands of the same sociopathic capitalist class.

These immigrants and refugees are people who are, I will add, fleeing from countries that the west under both parties have spent a century terrorizing, destroying, destabilizing, starving, and exploiting (same story with the European refugee crises, the refugees are blamed and demonized when they are all fleeing from the chaos and suffering and destruction caused and continuously caused by western imperialism --- a bipartisan and usually NATO-spearheaded affair --- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc.)

Towns and "communities" (don't laugh!) which expend resources on stuff like this to actively marginalize, punish, degrade, and criminalize homeless and impoverished people further, in a country which already has way more vacant houses than homeless people, but require homelessness and require it being kept dangerous and wretched in order to keep the "housing market" 'competitive' and stable for landlords (similar to the "job market" under capitalism fundamentally requiring unemployment as the "Reserve Army of Labour") deserve all of the used needles and wall-feces they get.

It is a deeply sick country which does this, for a sick economic system, which produces sick mindsets in its petty-bourgeois "have-mine's", represented in the fact that the first reaction at someone pointing out the absurdity and anti-social hypocrisy of painting hostile architecture 'PrOgReSsIvE,' is "but if we don't occlude public space and dehumanize and force further into pits-out-of-sight the homeless, I might have to step over them on my way to get Fro-Yo!" Even those homeless who try to stay out of the way and consign themselves to busted tents in loud, toxic, dangerous places like under highways still regularly get smashed up and chased out and their stuff stolen by the pigs at the behest of some of the most reprehensible cowards in the country. I've lived and worked in places where I daily spent hours around or commuted on foot through multiple homeless encampments at all kinds of hours. I can't imagine the lack of conscience and callous shallowness-of-soul that would drive people to rally systemic violence against them. I've had more problems caused to my life by small business tyrants and tourists and pigs in single cities in a year than from every homeless person I've interacted with in my life put together. I've also been meaningfully helped and advised by more homeless people than by any gentrifier or cop.

If you don't want so many homeless people, take it to the landlords. Demand the end of (or at least mitigation regarding) the parasitic extortion of the need for shelter, where workers have to fork 1/2 of their paychecks over to some moneyed jagoff who didn't even build the house (and half the time don't even maintain it, and when they do they pay real workers to do it, with the money they parasitized through rent in the first place), and who evicts those who lose their job for 'existing in a house while poor', or who hikes their rent and evicts "low-value" tenants the second they smell better profits. Better yet or in addition, take it to the banks and real-estate tycoons foreign and domestic sitting on huge lots of vacant housing which are illegal to live in, all while new plots of land (including some of the last remaining nature) are ripped up and destroyed for more hideous condos and soulless developments that nobody can afford. Also demand the abolishing of criminal-record hiring discrimination for those who served their time which keeps them in the system and cycle.

Take it to your town doing this sick depraved stuff so they put these resources toward actual community efforts to address the causes of the problem, rather than toward additional fascist policing and morally and spiritually bankrupt dystopic projects like this, whose advocates and executors are infinitely more sociopathic and violent and disgusting than any of even the filthiest sketchiest and most aggressive homeless people I've spent time with, been threatened or hassled or scammed by, shared bottles or cigarettes with, given money or food to if I had some, whatever.

That article is literally just reporting what the president did. How does that mean they're "pro-gun control?" Do you not even read the articles and just seethe and shit yourself about what you think about the wording of headlines? You are such a raging rightist ideologue you have been blinded to all reality and don't even understand the things that you are mad at. Is this satire? Are you a real person who engages in media and politics like this or have I been trolled?

If you're serious, the US must have gasoline in the water or something (but ah that would be COMMUNIST to regulate that; or even report on it!)

1. That's not what entryism is. Entryism isn't "voting democrat candidates who support xyz in primaries." Entryism is infiltrating an organization's membership with communists(or what have you), with the intent to change the basic proportional makeup of its membership ranks, and so change its interior political composition, and so its exterior action.

2. Entryism is explicitly and categorically denounced by every serious ML as having proven historically and politically ineffective at best, and actively counterproductive and opportunist at worst and most common by far; and has been in explicit terms criticized as such for a century. Saying "Surely you've heard of entryism?" to Marxists is like saying "Surely you've heard of filling masks with lavender to keep away the miasma?" to an epidemiologist.

3. The point mentioned in #2 is by a factor of 100 extra true for an organization like the democratic party, which is (just like the Republican party) a monstrous behemoth of leagues of multi-generational dynastic establishment careerist ghouls, thieves, racketeers, and murderers from multi-billionaire elite university family empires; whose entire operations are financed, advised, organized, and run by and for the richest imperialists in the world, with uncountable streams of both open channel money and dark money from private billionaires, banks, industrial monopolies (fossil fuels, pharma, agribusiness, etc.), arms dealers, conglomerate Super PACS, shady Think-tanks and "NGOs," and the Israel lobby. Obama's cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup. Biden has appointed all the most heinous neocons and war criminals he could find, even bringing back convicted massacrists like Elliot Abrams; and hiring the most corrupt people he could find, such as a Chevron lawyer who defended the destruction of the Amazon and poisoning of Indigenous people to head his Environmental executive. All while outflanking the Republicans on the right of many issues including immigration.

**

The Democrats actively benefit just like the Republicans from hyper-restricted 2-corporate-party system, proven by them, currently as we speak, sending out leagues of dark-money Super-PAC-financed lawyers to every state they can to try to purge 3rd parties off the ballots; actively killing democracy. This is their goal and interest, because it is the goal and interest of their donors. They have no interest in a different or better world and never will. Even someone as milquetoast as Bernie ran into endless smears and obstruction and undermining and got nowhere and has capitulated more and more to the right wing by hitching his boat to this circus. The liberal darlings "the squad" have each capitulated or even become active careerists and attack-dogs for the establishment imperialists against alternatives and progressives, barring Ilhan Omar who has faced endless shit and isolation even from the rest of that coward group of "progressive" dems, to say nothing of the establishment that actually runs the show with their army of equally-careerist factory-stamped liberal interns at their beck and call, pipelined from upscale colleges with PoliSci degrees to do whatever bidding they want.

The Democrats are not going to change for anyone but their donors and have proven it for decades; and they are structurally incapable of being budged internally toward anything remotely resembling democracy or socialism. Entryism to the democratic party is beyond a dead end. It would It would be more effective and principled to vote third party and continually elevate a working class party (Like the PSL) and visibly starve the democrats of votes for their failures and betrayals and making it known that is the reason; which would force a political reorientation of the democrats if they ever want power again. This necessary reorientation is impossible within the Democratic party structures, so the ruling class would have to figure out to desperately float a reformist "labor party" or "progressive party" to capture people being funneled to the PSL socialists, and this reformist party would receive an influx of the less-far-right careerist liberals from the Democrats fleeing to the new party "like rats from a sinking ship;" while the Republicans and remaining establishment Democrats proper inevitably join together in a coalition like David Lloyd George's Conservative-Liberal coalition, or like Macron's doing with the fascists in France. It's not even much of a leap for them compared to the existent state of things --- they've already been converging for decades and most of us have already come to feel the effects of it.

And this way by elevating the PSL, a real working class party who have a broader picture for revolutionary change than limiting to parliamentary dog-and-pony shows against the richest most evil people on the planet, you're actually helping the ground-up elevation of meaningful on-the-ground working class politics which speak to the 35-50% who are so disillusioned and disenfranchised by the lies and corruption and bloodthirst of the corporate-imperialist duopoly-of-exploiters that they don't even vote --- and activating them into actual meaningful political movement-building and action with a revolutionary long-term perspective, while forcing the establishment's hand to intercede how it can, highlighting the contradictions and failures of the system. Instead of finding new ways to capitulate to it (which are actually the same ways people have been capitulating to it for a century).

How have I known about Varoufakis for years as a serious political economist and speaker-on-the-topic, and never heard he was a Valve employee with a catalogue of 'gaming-economics' blogs in the early 2010s? LMFAO what a world

Sees the USA doing what it's always done, which we've known since COINTELPRO and Snowden's whistleblowing

"THIS IS LIKE CHINA!!!"

Makes one think who all has been benefiting from the expansion of militarism and conflict, doesn't it? But no need for us to worry, because I'm certain the peace-loving Democrats, who I'm assured by very democracy-valuing liberals, are despite all appearances definitely not nearly-indistinguishable from the open-fanged right-wing Republicans, and will stop this US militarism which is destroying the planet faster than anyone.

Pay no attention to the 3rd parties who actually come out against militarism; If we just give the wing of the bipartisan-imperialists who actually rely on working class margins whatever votes they want regardless of their actions forever, then surely because of how appreciative they are of us that they will gift to us some result that's remotely different than all of exactly this and exactly what brought us here... right?

What does that have to do with the internal collapse of the USSR?

you've still not made any actual assertions. "The internal collapse of the USSR" makes it seem like you're gesturing toward having some actual knowledge, which you're refusing to disclose, instead making smug assertions that this hidden vague knowledge that you refuse to declare means you're right. So, what does "the internal collapse of the USSR" actually mean to you? What are you imagining (the pictures and words in your brain) when you say "the internal collapse of the USSR," and what were the causes in your opinion for whatever you're imagining?

It doesn't seem like you actually know what you're talking about, because you're desperately avoiding making real substantive statements in any of these comments, instead throwing tantrums when pressed on what you actually think. Tell us your actual positions, without petulant 'McCarthy-if-he-was-a-redditor' tantrums, or otherwise stop pretending to have any.