"Soviet Socialist":
I’m evading nothing, but somehow every time we get into a conversation let alone a debate, even if we are talking about butterflies, it always turns into “well, they’ll never see the light of day because socialists will kamikaze their home base because they’re inherently violent blah blah blah”. I’m stating simply this: do you want to talk about libertarianism or socialism? We were speaking about whether Paul was a racist, libertarianism was racist, or if my claims are illegitimate, not war, peace, or “poor libertarians are so loving and caring compared to the wickedness of those evil commies”. So I naturally believed that since the conversation was nowhere at that point, that you were just finding a reason to say “damn socialists”. I am justified in my conclusion.
In terms of islamophobia, you are COMPLETELY out of touch with the rest of humanity. Campaigns in Europe are being run off of the “Muslim and immigrant menace”, ESPECIALLY IN FRANCE AND GERMANY and numerous burning of the Qu’ran were held in US cities including New York and San Francisco. Have you NEVER heard of the fights between Muslims and “patriotic citizens” and the Tea Party on Ground Zero concerning the mosque? Have you not been hearing Fox News rant and rave about Islamic terrorists, the evils of Islam, or Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh spouting their Muslim conspiracy theories? What about the struggle between Israel and Palestine? Or maybe the protests that have recently taken place against the media in the US for the anti-Muslim speech that’s been flying around? Have you even considered speaking to Muslims about how they feel in this country right now with all of the hate speech that has been flying around lately? Libertarians ALL AROUND ME in the military and outside of it sneer and snicker at the thought that Islam is an inherently peaceful religion and a couple have called for its demise. An Army Staff Sergeant told me he feared for his life and that he thinks he’s always being watched because he is Muslim. That shit is being sung LOUD AND CLEAR so don’t sit there and laugh at me for actually taking notice of what’s going around in the military and the media. I’m surrounded by this EVERY DAY.
In terms of labor and heads of state/CEOs working hard, bull. It took days before Bush got off his ass to aid those in the Katrina disaster and the president of BP chose to go on a yacht cruise instead of deal with the mess his company caused. You are right, the labor is different, but the backgrounds and the situations are as well. A friend of mine’s parent had THREE JOBS and STILL could not make ends meet with putting food on the table and paying house bills. This was in the UNITED STATES where the streets are allegedly PAVED WITH GOLD, and ANYONE gets a second chance at the American Dream…BULLSHIT! ¼ of the country lives below the poverty line, many of them still working in dangerous laboring conditions (I worked around black mold for over a year and got a minor concussion because I didn’t have a hard hat), with unionization under relentless attack and talk of reducing the average living standard by 25% while extending the Bush tax cuts for the superrich, thus ever widening the already monstrous gap between the rich and the poor. According to the US Dept of Labor, about 70% of the US population would be considered working class…not middle class. If you compare workers benefits and vacation times to other industrialized countries in the world, the US working class produces a hell of a lot more for less and as such would be the hardest working industrial populace in the world. These people, including myself (for a time), absolutely HAVE to work two jobs to make ends meet because of inflation and the fact that globalization is now forcing us to compete with cheap labor half way around the world for the same profession (heard of “race to the bottom”?). So please, PLEASE sit there and tell me that somehow someone like Mark Zuckerberg (who cheated his partner out of half of the profits and others who helped him succeed out of well earned sums of FB profits) or Bill Gates even compare to someone in the US working three jobs to feed their family, let alone someone in a third world country who works 12 hours a day for a NIKE franchise but gets only $2 a day(esp. war torn). That’s got to be singularly the dumbest thing I’ve heard since “the world is stricken by a case of laziness so billions of people are in poverty”. Stop this attempt to make capitalism seem palatable, it DOESN’T WORK.
Your epithets that you are carelessly giving to so called “Marxists” and actual Marxists, esp. with the loosely using the term “utopian” is just that…careless. Utopian socialism implies two things: inevitability of a workers revolution and the failure to exercise the single most important thing to Marxism-taking to the streets, protesting, putting theory to practice, essentially standing with the working class in its struggle. Utopian socialists are armchair thinkers, have never established a meeting, never organized in a workers’ council, and sure as hell never went on strike (ex: World Socialist Organization). Petty Bourgeois socialism is interchangeable with today’s CPUSA: apologists—plain and simple. Hitler, in terms of National Socialism, claimed that the use of the term socialism was simply for votes. If you recall, he KILLED Communists AND Socialists alike unapologetically. Make no mistake, they are FASCISTS. A turd by any other name still smells like shit.
DuBois and Einstein were unapologetically Marxists. The term “international socialism” denotes Trotskyism, which is what I am…hence the International Socialist Organization. I’m not talking about specific variations of Marxists. I’m talking about Marxists, and no matter what name you put on Einstein, Steinbeck, DuBois, H.G. Wells, or Helen Kellar, they ARE STILL MARXISTS NOT CAPITALISTS. The fact that Einstein wrote an essay on the fallacies of capitalism should tell you something about that particular system since the man DID come up with the THEORY OF RELATIVITY. If you recall, there are Marxists who also have patriotic feelings stranded to their name, but once again, that’s still the specifics of different shades of red. I’m just talking about the color red.
Douglass HATED the US and WROTE A SPEECH DENOUNCING JULY 4TH AND THE US!! Aristotle wrote the famous quote that’s on my wall about democracy vs. men of property. Voltaire, along with Rousseau, was one of the biggest troublemakers in the Enlightenment era and often found himself being questioned by the monarchy/nobility.
Jesus stated that the poor were especially under the good graces of God in comparison to the rich, Jesus stormed one of the synagogues because they used God’s name to collect money, and he supported a society where people share goods collectively. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4:14-21, ESV). A good book: Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography by John Crossan.
My personal story…I’ll tell you two on this account that you understand. I, as a Marxist, make it my personal mission to understand people, their lives, their struggles, their happiness, their beliefs, everything. I’ve witnessed the things that I accuse CEOs and Government of and have spoken to people who have single-handedly dealt with these traumas. My name is not Glenn Beck Jr and I am not a heretic. If anything, your accounts for people in high places being worth praise is a detached second hand account for reality. I’ve had opportunities to speak with Egyptian revolutionaries, med students about healthcare reform, non-Socialist union members, local politicians and teachers about current events. Most of them were not of a socialist affiliation, but came to very liberal leaning conclusions just by experience and not by research like what I’ve conducted. Marxists believe that people come to radical conclusions through struggle, and every good Marxist participates in struggle and is always on the front lines with the workers fighting in solidarity for their cause. I am not an armchair thinker, and most armchair thinkers that have never witnessed the establishment of a workers council or even connections between labor groups with immigrant or LGBT groups being forged IN STRUGGLE. They come to erroneous conclusions about human nature, the working class, and struggle with political economy because they live in a fantasy land their whole lives instead of going out on the front lines.
I was born a working class citizen, my parents divorced, my father ostracized me, I grew up being made fun of because I was “the poor kid”, I’ve been a frequent victim of anti-Semitism and sexism, and above all homophobia. I’ve been in advanced placement classes, been denied entrance into collages because I wasn’t living below the poverty line but the government wouldn’t give me entrance because I “made too much”. I received no scholarships because they were on a “need basis” and when I was 17 I was taking care of myself financially and got kicked out of my father’s home. Eventually I had to work 2 jobs to get food and pay for car insurance/gas AND community college. My house foreclosed on my mom, I didn’t have health insurance at 18 but a bunch of conservatives thought it right to accuse me for “my mistake” and call me worthless scum of the US because I was too poor and lazy to take care of myself (according to them). I became unemployed, had to work under the table for a family friend who owned his own business, but didn’t make enough to support myself and eventually was completely unable to pay for community college. I’m now in the Air Farce, working 12 hour shifts while getting 8 hr pay, am STILL living paycheck to paycheck paying for my car, cell phone, paying back family for loans due to car problems, and helping them survive as well. Some of my best friends are in WORSE situations than I am, are living in shack-like homes living on welfare, are uninsured (healthcare), cannot afford college, some are even bankrupt, and have issues ranging from health to mental capacity that keeps them from considering the military as an option, or they are losing their pensions and half of their retirement because of the crackdown on public schools. My step father, who has MULTIPLE YEARS of experience being a computer tech, was unemployed for almost two years. So please, PLEASE continue to sit there, pretend NOTHING is wrong and tell me that I’m full of crap. The sad thing is is that I’m better off than half of the world population. If my life isn’t depressing enough to prove my working class status and MY RIGHT to think the way I do, I can get you someone who does have one more depressing…GUARANTEED. I am the monster this system created.
And next time you feel like posting my conversations with you, Zach, on your blog for the whole world to see while leaving out my promise to refute AND neglecting gaining my consent to post what I've written, DELIBERATELY trying to discredit me by twisting the situation, accompany it with an ol’ fashioned “FUCK YOU”. When you have lost battles with me or made comments that I thought were exceptionally stupid, I kept it to myself and between you, me, and those who opted to be a part of the debate. I didn’t post it for the whole world to jeer at and try to shove a boatload of shit in your face for it, no matter how much I hate your politics. I have enough respect to refrain from pouring more salt on your wounds, but obviously you don’t share the same respect for me. I would have at least ASKED if you were fine with it, but you didn’t even ask me that much. I feel completely disrespected by that action and am BEYOND offended. I understand if you disagree with my conclusions, and that’s fine, but don’t go posting my UNFINISHED COMMENTS attempting to prove some twisted point about the “socialist mentality”. I’m not your fucking goon. If I am wrong, I have the balls to own up to it and apologize. Buster knows this because I made a fucked up comment on religion, but I RETRACTED AND APOLOGIZED. You should know that any comments that I would otherwise make would have good reason and logic thought out prior to me making them and I take pride in what I write and say because of that. If you can’t make good comebacks to my “irrational socialist mindset”, admit it or tell me you need time for a rebuttal. You aren’t going to lose brownie points if you can’t make a comeback right away. I’ll admit that a couple times I needed time to make rebuttals, but I made them nevertheless, and I’m not sorry for admitting that I take time to think things through. All good intellectual minds lose some and win some, most lose a hell of a lot more than they win. But posting my comments on a blog because you think they were irrational and that you “stumped a Marxist” is a massive sore loser move, ESPECIALLY when I told you that I was tired from 20 hour shifts and needed rest. Lastly, don’t title me a “capitalist baiter”. You are not a capitalist by definition because you do not own billions of dollars worth in assets. Seeing as how your family just now started a business, the most you are is petty bourgeois (middle class). Not ONCE did I ever call you a capitalist piece of shit. I’ve called you a sympathizer to capitalism because that’s just stating a fact, because you prefer it. It wouldn’t be any different from calling you a republican or libertarian. Posting an unfinished conversation in an attempt to make me look simple minded for choosing socialism above capitalism is, in fact, red baiting—nothing more. It isn’t just simply “stating a fact” about my Marxist affiliations. And my epithet puts the icing on the cake that is your article’s title. I really don’t see it as anything other than an attempt at political satire, ESPECIALLY when you neglect asking my permission to post this.
"Reality vs. Red fiction"? Fuck off.
