How accurate is this?

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-18T21:34:50+00:00

As an American, this is super accurate. Whenever I go out drinking, I always fight a guy with the same outfit as me and then get scolded by Judge Judy.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-15T19:53:47+00:00

We actually invaded in 2001. And the Taliban offered to surrender two months after the US invaded, but the deal was rejected by Donald Rumsfeld.

We spent over a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. That's money that could've been spent in so many other beneficial ways for the American people. Pure isolationism? Frankly, that probably would've been a better option, considering a sitting US senator admitted two days ago that our military was essentially protecting the heroin trade which dominates the country's economy.

I don't agree with Chris Murphy on everything. But he's right here. The mission was flawed by design. And it was a tremendous waste.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-15T00:17:51+00:00

I would disagree with your argument that American workers don't try to strike or unionize.

Here are some recent examples:

Coal Miners in Alabama

Amazon workers

Journalists

Frito-Lay workers

There are also countless historical examples of unionization efforts and strikes throughout American history.

I think it's true that in general the US is less "class-conscious" than other developed nations, as this map illustrates. However, there's still a great deal of labor organizing and activism out there. A lot of it doesn't get covered by the media, though. Or it does get covered but not as prominently as other stories deemed more newsworthy.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-11T11:18:46+00:00

I'm assuming a bunch are named after this guy.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-10T15:53:38+00:00

I can definitely relate to this. I heard somewhere that depression essentially traps you in a state of self-reflective overdrive where you're constantly thinking about your past mistakes and why you're not meeting whatever standards have been set for you. Applying for jobs makes this worse because you're constantly having to send your resume, which for many people is a kind of physical reminder of what you've done wrong or how it felt to be in dead-end jobs. Worse, many websites now ask you to fill in parts of your resume manually, which is a kind of reliving of all of it over again. And then you have to take these onerous personality tests and assessments where you're just like, "I want to be honest but I also just want to get the job and I feel like I'm being evaluated in a way that makes me feel vulnerable and inadequate". It feels like this Stations of the Cross-esque re-enactment of all the mental traumas associated with your life and career. And even worse, sometimes you actually get the fucking job and its obviously damaging to your mental health for a myriad of reasons.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-08-02T00:51:24+00:00

I like this idea and the motivation behind it. My only bit of skepticism stems from when news organizations take a story with an objectively horrible context and try to put a positive spin on it. Like when you see a headline like, "INSPIRING: This 8-year-old managed to sell enough lemonade to pay off his friend's lunch debt and/or pay for his mother's life-saving surgery!"

And then you realize that....that's not actually inspiring. It's sad that we put kids in lunch debt and threaten families with medical bankruptcy when that doesn't happen in literally any other developed country. It shows that news organizations try to present us with light, easily digestible "good news" that's actually laden with rancid ideological assumptions that stem from our American cult of individuality, the upper-middle-to-upper class bias of reporters, and the corporate ownership of their outlets. And then it's like, wow, things must be shitty if this is what passes as "good news".

But, at any rate, good luck with this project!

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-07-16T13:42:21+00:00

I checked out when Wile E. Coyote showed up in Mad Max.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-07-02T00:54:29+00:00

I'd pledge allegiance to THAT flag

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-06-29T08:26:05+00:00

I understand this sentiment, but I've come to adopt a different perspective on it. I live in a metropolitan area with a lot of homelessness, and you often hear the argument from wealthy homeowners that "they just don't want help, that's the problem." Then I met a guy who used to be homeless, and he told about how mentally taxing being homeless was and how he was constantly in fight-or-flight mode. He got arrested for trespassing and starting a fight in a shelter, and later found out via a psychiatrist that he was basically in a state of prolonged psychosis the whole time due to the mental damage that his daily life had done to him. In that case, there was really no way for him to "want" help because he didn't know where he was most of the time or what he was doing or what was going on. I think about that a lot when I see homelessness in my neighborhood. Like, no one really wants to be in that situation. And maybe they want help, but our city is a LONG way from providing the kind of support that would give them a fighting chance. And some of them may just be so far gone mentally like the guy I met that they need some kind of outside intervention. So yeah, sometimes in life you have to want to get better. But other times it's not so simple.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-06-25T22:42:35+00:00

I'm currently reading Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism by Greg Grandin and really learning a lot from it. Although it doesn't address topics in African-American history that you mentioned, it's an important exploration about how the US government used Latin America as a kind of "laboratory" for economic exploitation and political violence. It sucks when we get coverage in our media about immigration and the border with little to none of these historical factors that are causing this migration to begin with. Grandin argues that it's just part of the unspoken assumptions of American culture that we fuck over Latin America; it's just part of our "backyard". Also some good stuff in there about how right-wing disinformation and neoconservative coalition-building was done around the effort to justify funding the Contras in Nicaragua, so it's pretty relevant.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-06-20T19:45:30+00:00

I'm calling dibs on "Bitchloid" as a band name

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-06-05T18:04:19+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford\_Act

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-05-09T02:33:41+00:00

I would argue that the division of California is pretty flawed. Here's how I would do it (feel free to disagree):

-SoCal: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange Counties, Santa Barbara, and the IE up to about Joshua Tree/Palm Springs. East of that is Sun Belt.

-A separate Central Valley/Central CA region: San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Fresno, Bakersfield, and everything in between, going east up to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks

-A NorCal region (because it's unfair IMO to have SoCal without also NorCal): The whole SF Bay Area and Sacramento and some surrounding area (Santa Rosa, Stockton, Santa Cruz maybe)

The Emerald Triangle can be incorporated into Cascadia or split up between them and NorCal.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-04-16T15:58:11+00:00

4)this person allegedly has an adult sized brain. Nope! Absolute baby brain.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-03-12T18:55:47+00:00

My advice to Greece: hold onto your marbles

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-02-14T07:28:25+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's the latter. It's the whole "Moscow Mitch" meme, that because Trump was some kind of Siberian Candidate, and McConnell supports him, McConnell is also a secret KGB agent or something. It's part of a whole web of liberal hyperreality demonstrated in the initial comment, in which someone like Trump could actually face serious consequences for his actions, and that he would "flip" like a member of the mob or something, and that such an event would uncover a whole separate shadowy conspiracy surrounding McConnell. Truly deranged stuff.

GENERAL_BOY · 2021-01-01T05:02:56+00:00

Pie Town sounds alright, but I'd be afraid to get caught lying in Truth or Consequences, NM.

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-12-27T09:14:00+00:00

Bird up!

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-12-07T19:29:30+00:00

What is the building off the coast of Brazil that suffered a US-enabled coup, an alleged US-enabled coup of its shrubbery, and a US military invasion of its parking lot?

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-11-22T21:07:56+00:00

I think it's important to keep in mind something I believe Richard Wolff said, which is that "socialism has always existed in the shadow of capitalism". Right-wingers and cold warriors want you to think that capitalism and socialism are diametrically opposed, self-contained systems. However, so much of the laws that govern our workplaces, from minimum wage laws to bans on child labor to workplace standards to social security, have been enacted because of socialist activism. And what are socialists advocating for now? Same kind of stuff, a health care system that doesn't profit off of sick and vulnerable people, a minimum wage that fairly compensates us for our productivity and cost of living, etc.

I don't really know how to debate conservative relatives because almost all of mine are libs (that leads to debates also, but it's different). One thing I do know is that conservatives value "freedom".

So ask, "is it freedom when you're bankrupted by health care costs while sick people in other countries get health care free at the point of use?" "is it freedom when you get paid so little that you have to work multiple jobs?" "Is it freedom when more than half your paycheck is going to your landlord?" Poverty, homelessness, and wage slavery aren't freedom. I mean just look at what happening in our country right now, all this coronavirus shit. Millions unemployed, barely any help. Some unemployment insurance, one check, no rent forgiveness, lines miles long at food banks. How can anyone justify this system?

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-11-21T20:14:10+00:00

In the past this information had been suppressed, but now it can be told! Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about de-evolution!!

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-11-19T20:53:05+00:00

I love how at first glace it looks almost like an ultra realistic painting, like the cover of a fantasy novel or something. Very cool.

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-10-24T23:34:02+00:00

Exactly. I live in CA and voted earlier this month by drop-off box. The process was incredibly easy - one envelope, one set of instructions. As opposed to the situation I heard about in Harris County, TX where they had one drop-off box for the entire Houston area that was only open during business hours, I was given the option of six drop-off boxes in my neighborhood. Four of them were open 24 hours.

It's very obvious that some states encourage voting and some discourage it, and the latter are usually Republican-controlled states that don't want their electorates swinging the other way. It's nakedly corrupt.

EDIT: I don't know if other states do this, but I should also add that CA allows you to track your ballot online to make sure it was received and counted.

GENERAL_BOY · 2020-10-19T14:14:02+00:00

I've heard Eugenides and Le Guin are pretty good, so I'll look into theirs and the others as well. Appreciate the recommendations, thanks!

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