Apparition of Jack

I wonder if Hitler had similar thoughts in 1945

Stay safe Americans. You’re not alone in these troubling times.

Death comes for us all. If nothing else, this is a strong memento mori for all of us.

I understand not wanting to call yourself a Marxist-Leninist or whatever, as you say history tells us that out of control communism never ends well, but at the same time, don’t you think the pendulum has swung too far in favour of laissez-faire capitalism? The welfare state came about as a result of both the unregulated capitalism of the Great Depression and collective experiences of WW2, for instance. Likewise, today’s economic situation of massive wealth inequality and poor worker’s rights is much the result of the neoliberalism pushed by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s. There’s also the fact that technology has just in general become far more productive over the last 50 years and we now have the machines, computers etc to adequately give everyone a decent basic standard of living. Even something like car production has become absurdly more productive since the 1970s, so the idea of guaranteeing everyone a car wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility, for instance. That’s why I’m a supporter of people like Bernie, AOC, Mamdani, etc. If you sat them down and asked would there be a place for private enterprise in their ideal future, I think they would truthfully say yes; the idea of Stalinist-style collectivisation seems to be a thing of the past. But we absolutely still can do things like tackle social media corruption, white collar crime, the two-tiered justice system, a severe lack of housing, education, healthcare, etc without turning into radical Stalinists or whatever. The problem is too many elites are too greedy and simply refuse to admit that their wealth is built off the back of millions of workers, often at the expense of those worker’s well-being. There’s no reason why, in 2025, with all the absurd amount of technology we have, a barista or office administrator should never be able to buy a home, repay their education loans, get medical needs fixed without bankrupting them, etc. The social contract states that if people contribute to a society, that society should look after them, not instead try and extract as much wealth from them as possible and leave them with nothing. That’s how you get the French Revolution.

Post-War Europe was basically an equal mix of socialism and capitalism. By which I mean, trade unions, workers, actual communists, etc had immense influence over the government and pushed to create the modern welfare state we know today, which has created some of the most stable and equitable societies on the planet. The public health systems in these countries that America lacks is in large part a result of this movement, for instance. The problem is America is far too embedded in the unrepentant materialism brainrot. Americans genuinely think owning a yacht, owning a Maserati and popping pills your entire life to stave off existential angst is the height of human existence, and will fuck over their fellow countrymen to get there. It completely eludes them that social cohesion, well-being, public health, community spirit etc are their own goods, which is what the countries of Europe, Japan, Canada etc have known for decades.

What about porn about climate change? Like an adult film about two people stuck on a mountain because the coast is flooded who decide to bang because there’s nothing else to do

Without getting into the ethics of it all, I feel like this isn’t really all that surprising in the first place? Take David Pakman for example. While I broadly agreed with his worldview, I always felt his videos were kind of “safe” and corporatised, if that makes sense. Like he was coordinating with people beyond just a handful of independent online leftists. The fact that he is taking money from the Dems seems kinda self-evident all things considered. I really don’t see the problem with it so long as his messages are still reasonable and grounded.

Yeah, just like we’re all gonna get those $5000 DOGE checks any day now, right?

@Emerald Elon Musk net worth: $413 billion Mark Zuckerberg: $270 billion Peter Thiel: $25.6 billion Donald Trump: $7 billion Tucker Carlson: ~$420 million-$2 billion Joe Rogan: $200 million Ben Shapiro: $50 million etc etc. As always, follow the money.

Release the Epstein files.

Discussions like these make clear to me that absolutely no one has any goddamn idea what direction the world is heading (myself included) and any “educated guesses” are no more accurate than throwing darts at a board and seeing where they land, lmao. Things are wayy to influx. I say just enjoy the ride.

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/07/jeffrey-epstein-suicide-client-list-trump-administration This is pretty freaking funny ngl. Seeing MAGA conspiracy freaks twist themselves into knots finding reasons why their god-saviour Trump wouldn’t release the same list he’s obviously on is fantastic.

It kinda feels like the last five years of human history has seen a mass regress of human behaviour towards purely base, self-interested survival / power / ego etc. COVID, Trump 2.0, social media etc all see to have contributed to this. What can be done about this? How do we get people to stop acting in purely selfish, materialistic terms and start acting in thoughtful, human-centric and conscious terms? I feel like we’ll make no real progress until we get people to wake up out of this haze that they’re in.

Commodification, commercialisation and financialisation of society have rotted our brains. Rather than focus on growth, life, beauty, truth, community and connection, we’ve been conditioned and encouraged to see everything as a “me vs them” zero-sum game of ego, dominance, greed and pursuit of individual wealth. We’ve fallen under the delusion that money alone is whats important, no matter the cost to obtain it (social stability? environmental health? human lives?) Our media, entertainment, politics, and just basic common culture is dominated by shallow, narcissistic peacocking and endless culture wars. Rather than see the basic humanity in others, we’re instead encouraged to see everyone as a threat, an enemy, someone to conquer and, fundamentally, someone to destroy. It’s pure social insanity. Something SERIOUSLY wrong has gone on in the human psyche. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know where it began or where it came from, but I know that it’s here and it’s turning even basic, everyday people into unrepentant narcissists. I try not to get caught up in it. I try not to succumb to tribalism and hatred, but it can be hard. My own hope is that eventually something breaks and people wake up to just has insane we’ve all become. But who knows how long that will be. We’ve just got to try and stay sane until then.

Progressives would shift the tax burden heavily to billionaires. The whole point is to get billionaires to actually give back to society that they dramatically benefit from (so better highways, better hospitals, proper trade schools, etc.) and free up the economic productivity the working and middle classes provide. Right now, most of the wealth workers produce goes towards giving Muck Zuckerberg another Hawaiian island. They see no benefit from their labor.

Yeah good point man. Our tax dollars should go to Amazon subsidies and Israeli weapons instead! That’s what real tough-as-nails American workers want 😎

If this were true, why are Trump-AOC voters such a large demographic? You said something about Trump “awakening the lizard brain” in 100 million voters or something. The thing is, Trump and progressives have very similar economic messages - what do you think “drain the swamp” means? The difference is, unlike Trump, progressives are actually sincere in their desire to fix the (incredibly obvious) catastrophic failures of modern American society. Trump isn’t (and will actually make things significantly worse.) Like, are progressives lying when they say income inequality is out of control? Or that it’s borderline murder the US doesn’t have a public healthcare system yet? Etc. Hell, you would be considered a progressive by your voting record, Leo. There are certain ideological blindspots within progressivism but at the end of the day it’s not like progressives popped up out of nowhere. They are a very real and very legitimate response to the insanity of late capitalist society. Of course you could argue that they’re “out of touch” for the common voter or whatever, but I hardly think that makes a difference when that voter then dies of black lung disease at 43 because their local hospital got defunded by Trump. EDIT: Let’s not forget that progressive policies are incredibly popular with the US electorate, it’s just people have been conditioned to oppose them by the insanely influential corporate media. I’m reminded of the time when Bernie Sanders got a room full of Fox News watchers of all people to agree with basically everything he said.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/01/business/trump-job-report-number-fire No new jobs added to the economy for the last two months. I hope y’all are happy that you get to eat tinned peas for dinner so you wouldn’t have a black woman running the country 😎

Fuck humanity. Fuck this unrepentant evil. I’m sick of this shit. and yes I know this contradicts my earlier post. I’m just fucking done with it. We deserve all the suffering we get. Evil species.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that there’s something truly deeper going on and all the rage, chaos, selfishness, greed etc we’re seeing happen on the world stage is just the external manifestation of humanity as a species having to deal with all the latent corruption and bias we haven’t yet dealt with over the last 200 years. It’s like, prior to all this even good-hearted people more or less accepted warfare, poverty, ecological destruction, etc as “facts of life” that at best could be mitigated with good policies, but as more time goes on the more I feel even that is simply far too limited thinking. Fundamentally, we are going through a test to see if we collectively can just genuinely see the basic humanity in everyone else and if we can put our limited ego-differences aside for the sake of union / community / love / healing / peace etc. Why does it have to be like this? Why does there have to be so much random anger and hatred and darkness and chaos out there for us to go through this? I don’t know. I’m not one to ask things bigger than myself. But I do sincerely believe this isn’t all for nothing, that there is something better in the works, and that we can’t lose hope and faith that the way things are is the way they’ll always be. Eventually goodness and light shine through.

Bro traded zen for rizz

Speak for yourself imma ride that little auto toot-toot motherfucker like a badass

@sholomar They did. The Republicans shot it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policy_of_the_Joe_Biden_administration?wprov=sfti1#Bipartisan_Border_Security_Bill_(2023-2024) >It was negotiated in a bipartisan manner and initially looked like it had the votes to pass until Donald Trump opposed it, citing that it would boost Biden's reelection chances.[81][79]

Meh, this isn’t too unusual IMO. Once someone is worth $100 million+ they pretty much gain access and connections to all elite institutions, not just the ones they came out of. Like, why do British royals, stock brokers, Hollywood actors and university professors all hang out with each other? They call come from completely different fields. The answer is simply wealth and influence - if you have both all sorts of people will come knocking on your door.

Old systems are breaking down, people are slowly waking up, but this means that those old systems will fight extra hard to legitimise themselves in the minds of the people. It’s why Trump’s approval rating with Republicans went up after the Epstein allegations came out. People have so deeply, deeply bought into the delusion that Trump is a good man that even the most glaring evidence that he isn’t causes a (short-term) spike in popularity as his supporters “rally around the leader” to reinforce that delusion. I see this is a test of faith in basic human decency and material truth. There are so, so many forces attempting to convince people that: - unrepentant greed is good for the world - humans are above nature - certain races are genetically superior to others - America is uniquely favoured by the universe and above “lesser” rules Etc etc. That’s why everything feels so chaotic and nonsensical lately. I say just hold the line. If you were in Europe in 1941, Germany wouldve seemed unstoppable - France had fallen, Britain was on the backfoot, and Hitler was about to take Moscow - but less than four short years later Hitler was dead, the Third Reich in ruins and Nazism/ultranationalism forever discredited on the world stage. Democracy and kindness proved stronger in the end. I don’t know what else to say beyond this. It sometimes fucks with me too. I just hold onto faith and trust that darkness is only as powerful as people believe in it and eventually light always shines through. This, too, shall pass, after all.