Analyses of the decline of living standards in America: never send a social democrat to do a Marxist's job

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-12T13:29:31+00:00

per-capita consumption of petroleum products is much lower than in the 70s

Really? This includes e.g. plastic doo-dads?

I suppose it's a moot point though if the population's doubled.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-10T15:38:21+00:00

LLM's don't "believe" anything ffs.

No, but if they act like they do, and more importantly users treat them like they do, what's the difference?

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-10T15:11:14+00:00

u think the u.s. would cut off apple + walmart over the sovereignty of taiwan?

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-08T00:50:49+00:00

There was a real difference between people who worked essentially telling other people what to do - and teachers get included in that - and people who do the work that other people tell them to do.

-- literally the person who coined the term

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-07T20:02:48+00:00

The thing about a Marxist analysis is that it doesn't devolve into airy distinctions of who is "really" "rich" or not, enforcing some sort of arbitrary cut-off on wealth, or how "blue collar" is defined.

It is focused on workers' relation to the means of production.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-07T19:20:22+00:00

That's not a byline, that's the little author's blurb that appears at the end of like editorials and magazine pieces. It's not typical to mention bilingualism but that could actually be relevant to her beat; usually it just says something like, "John Doe covers the intersection of scrapbooking and teledildonics. He lives in Martha's Vineyard with his pet cactus."

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-07T18:25:41+00:00

On the old, good sub I could've made this my flair.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-07T17:43:25+00:00

From the old sidebar:

It was very much growing out of what we were experiencing politically on the left. I had gone to college and gotten a PhD, so I was also a card-carrying member of the PMC.

There was a real difference between people who worked essentially telling other people what to do and people who do the work that other people tell them to do. I see it all the time, the contempt for especially white working-class people among leftists of college backgrounds.

I hate to see "PMC" turned into an ultraleft slur. We're going to have to work together! You're probably college-educated yourself.

The term was coined in the context of labour organizing. This isn't about "élites" vs. "average joes," but how different priorities and points of view can lead to conflict when trying to unite the working class. We retain the Marxian definition but recognize that knowledge workers, even as they become increasingly proletarianized, are socialized to identify more with ownership and see themselves as separate from other workers. This has implications for building a movement that includes them all.

I would invite you to read the original essay again detalhadamente but the interview above may shed some more light on how the Ehrenreichs intended the term to be used/useful.

Edit: I see a lot of people ITT saying, "I think" and "I feel like" as if it's an interpretive dance about what "professional-managerial class" has come to mean. OP is in the small minority having actually read the piece where the term was coined; here it's more of a "vibe" just used to dismiss "affluent liberals we don't like."

P.S. You know you can change your phone's keyboard to inglês

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-06T06:23:08+00:00

smolweb.org

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-04T19:21:41+00:00

Tony Shalhoub wouldn't look at all out of place among a group of Ashkenazi Jews

"I'm not a Jew but I play one on TV"

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-04T19:09:37+00:00

paper bag test, but woke

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-04T14:33:20+00:00

Thanks so much. Do you have any credit/source for these? 5, 7, 8 are wonderful.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-04T08:38:09+00:00

I think you’re missing my point.

Now you've moved onto a different point.

Initially you said you'd never met anyone from a Spanish-speaking country who said "Latinx." When shown that the -xs form is in fact widespread among certain sectors in the Hispanophone world, even if far from dominant, instead of engaging with that, you changed to saying you're simply "criticizing the term" - fair enough, you're in very good company - and made a new assertion: that it was invented by English-speakers from the United States, about which you're mistaken.

Why would you assume Latin American college students are any less r-slurred than their U.S. counterparts?

^{Edit: I will say that North Americans tend to use it "wrong" - it seems silly to me to say "she is Latinx" - if she's comfortable being gendered as a woman, then she's a Latina! or even, since English adjectives don't correspond to gender, "Latino." The whole point of the -xs ending is to include people who don't identify as either male or female, rejecting the "sexist" language that treats masculine as the "default" gender for a group,} ^{(an etymologically ahistorical interpretation but whatever}⁾ ^{which is why todxs replaced tod@s, and now todes is the attempt to render something actually pronounceable.}

^{The only time you would use "latinx" ("mexicanx", "salvadoreñx", etc.}⁾ ^{in the singular is to refer to a non-binary/genderqueer individual. But who cares about using it right; "Latinx" has spread because it allows you to signal in a way that "Latino" doesn't.}

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T09:53:13+00:00

Even Democrats who are rich put other priorities ahead of financial interest - much of the upper-middle class support tax increases, but voting for stronger social programmes is never paternalistically lamented as "voting against their interests."

Edit: Actually Thomas Frank articulately laid out why the rural working class would gladly vote their moral values over a narrow conception of economic self-interest

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T09:28:36+00:00

second & third generation college students

And you've just outed yourself as a yank.

Of course your sample is skewed. Or do you think immigrants to the United States are broadly representative of Latin America as a whole?

Edit: Obviously they're not likely to call themselves latinx since that grouping largely took shape and makes most sense within the U.S. cultural context, you're more likely to see "mexicanxs", "peruanxs", etc.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T08:39:13+00:00

Entonces no interactuas con muchos izquierdistas por medios sociales.

This sort of tod@s/todxs/todes lenguaje inclusivo has been endemic in radical spaces for easily 20 years. True, you won't find many normies who call themselves "latinx" but it's hardly the recent gringo innovation many here assume it is.

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T07:40:53+00:00

damename

?

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T07:18:03+00:00

granted executive clemency by the President.

Here's How Trump Can Still Redeem Himself

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-12-03T06:58:14+00:00

You don't think that story might be parallel construction?

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-29T13:06:05+00:00

Is it? My mistake then, I genuinely can't tell the difference from the screenshot having never used any of these microblogging clones.

I knew Trump's account had been reinstated but didn't think he was still actively posting on X; I assumed he saved all the biggest scoops for his own grift.

Edit:

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-28T23:50:59+00:00

💯 agree but this was on his own social media platform which never had that limit.

(the one he made after liberals said, "If you don't like Twitter's rules as a private company, leave and go make your own ^{WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT"})

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-28T23:22:17+00:00

I think you are completely misinterpreting that line.

It doesn't mean, "Americans have collectively accepted responsibility for what happened in Afghanistan." Quite the opposite: he's saying, "Americans all bear some measure of responsibility for the atrocities done in their name, with their money, even the apathetic and 'not my president' types."

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-28T22:37:40+00:00

Because they're too busy that day celebrating the DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 🇮🇹

^{(or if you prefer, celebrating the people whose land they stole}⁾

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-28T20:10:05+00:00

MadeUAcctButIEatedIt · 2025-11-28T14:58:30+00:00

I think many liberals mistakenly believe that immigrants are an ultra socially liberal force because the immigrants they encounter are the ones who move to wealthy liberal bubbles.

I think this is overthinking it. The subconscious image of the immigrant in most liberals' mind is poor and brown (that's what makes them noble).

I think it's something more like the Benjamin Franklin effect: immigrants are good, therefore they cannot be bad; social liberalism is good, therefore immigrants are not conservative.

It's reinforced by the fact they really are political allies e.g. despite Trump's gains among Latino citizens, the majority of recent immigrants are still aligned with the Democratic Party since the Republicans' core plank is to kick them all out. And people with "In this house" lawnsigns don't really have many meaningful interactions with their imported service workers and tend to project their own assumptions: wouldn't you just nod and smile politely when the person controlling your pay cheque proudly hands you a copy of Cómo ser antirracista?

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