I’ve never heard of this podcast until today and now it’s gone!

We should develope an AI honey pot community for liberals that not only creates posts they would get mad enough to comment on but then ban them for doing so.

Well call it “the great filter”.

These texts are relentless. And there is no way the stop2text bs works. Sometimes I just send profanity laden all caps messages in reply. Maybe a human reads them, maybe not. Either way, it’s cathartic.

Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth

1. I didn’t know eBay was for sale
2. I thought GameStop was dying

Funny you say that, I just watched a video about that: This Ridiculous $200 AI GPU Shouldn’t Be This Good. Its a old data center GPU with an adapter for its SXM connector to convert it to PCI-E.

If Will Ferrel was cast as a baby. This could be a poster for Look Who’s Talking 4: Look Who’s Talking Again.

Like the other commenter said. Shen Yun is a cult, its very well documented.

• https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun

Damn this is very interesting stuff! I’m going to save that pdf and give it a read.

My youngest is turning 3 soon and I can’t believe it! He’s very different from his sister and a real character. He’s really starting to push boundaries. Probably going to sign him up for a some kind of sport activity. He’s good at throwing and kicking, and would rather be running then dancing.

Finally finished this book today after 8 months! So little time to read… Only about 238 pages. It’s very dense though so that slows things down some. I think I’m going to read something fun next as a cool down. Thinking about rereading Neuromancer.

Oh for sure, I feel this too. I gave my youngest a trim the other day with my hair clippers, and while he didn’t enjoy it, I think he looks cute AF with his little haircut!

Do you ever like, watch a walk through of cities or places elsewhere in the world? Just uncut everyday walk through a city?

There is a Chinese women on YouTube who does this and her videos are very grounding. Walking around Siria or Iran and having a very normal experience; people being generous, being funny, being cool, set against their conditions which are often very difficult.

You might not know these people lived under a “theocracy” based on her direct experience. People are just living their lives, working, watching children, going to school, going to church, playing games, listening to music.

Her channel is here: https://youtube.com/@littlechineseeverywhere

I highly recommend it.

This is something others in this thread are accusing you of too by the way. Posting vaguely. Don’t be vague here. This isn’t twitter. Were all capable of reading and understanding your POV if you lay it out directly. We can’t do that if you’re just gesturing and making vague claims. This also goes with linking other peoples analysis. Linking to redsails is fine if your going to then explain how that link supports your position. Otherwise people have no idea what your take is from that piece.

Your communication style feels hostile and defensive and vague from my perspective. I felt like I was engaging with the shadow of your perspective, and not your actual perspective and where it comes from.

I don’t know what your critique is if you’re just going to make rhetorical statements. Those only work if the other person understands your perspective already. “What is the PSL doing … ?” Only reads as a question you don’t have the answer to. It’s not a critique. But it also implies you know what they should be doing. Those ideas would have been something someone could engage with. And if you don’t have those ideas, that’s OK too, but you have to say so.

You can be critical of the PSL, like anything else, but you have to state your critiques directly or no one will be able to engage with them. Instead they’ll try to figure out your position through inquiry and assumption, which is also what was happening here.

Thank you for a direct answer. See its good to know this type of information before engaging. I always try to be up front with what I have read and what I haven’t. You presented your position without even mentioning what you’ve read. That would have saved both of us a lot of time, don’t you think?

Ah good, so its not just me who is being hit with a smoke screen of vague accusations here.

Did you read the book?

So have you read the book or just skimmed it? You haven’t exactly said one way or the other. It’s interesting that saying you haven’t read it would get this kind of response. I said I didn’t read it, twice. I said it when I linked it. I inked it because you said they did no analysis. I provided you a list of analysis. The book is easy to get, I’ve had it on my digital book shelf for a while now. I think we are done here since it seems like you’re not interested in having a conversation, just a platform for you brand of pessimism. That’s fine, you should start a blog if that’s what you’re looking to do.

Alright, this is a much more substantive conversation. Appreciated. Let me address your points in order.

On the labour aristocracy: You’re right that this is a real theoretical challenge. But the idea that the PSL’s analysis doesn’t consider it is false. Their program literally opens by grounding everything in an international assessment, and it treats the U.S. working class as “but one section” of a global one. That’s the exact framework needed to understand the labour aristocracy, not a dodge of it. The real disagreement here isn’t whether the bribe exists (it does) but what to do about it. Your position seems to be that the entire Western working class is bought off permanently; the PSL’s is that the bribe is real but eroding, and the most oppressed sections (Black people, other oppressed nations, immigrant workers) are the ones whose material conditions align with dismantling imperialism. That’s not ignoring the labour aristocracy; it’s a strategic differentiation within the working class.

On Che: You asked “Is Che wrong?” No, but his 1954 essay doesn’t back you up the way you think. He identified exactly the mechanism you describe: imperial super-profits create a temporary quiescence. But he also wrote: “I insist that we cannot demand that the working class of the North look past its own nose. It would be useless to try to explain, from afar… that the process of internal decomposition of capitalism can only be deferred for a while longer, but never stopped.” And, crucially, he singled out Black people as “the germ of the first serious rebellion.” That’s not an argument to abandon the whole U.S. working class. It’s an analysis that the contradictions will eventually crack, and the break will come from the most oppressed. That’s exactly the orientation PSL takes. You’re citing Che as though he argues the Western proletariat is an eternal reactionary bloc. He doesn’t.

On Césaire: He dismantled the idea that poverty alone makes people revolutionary. Agreed. But PSL isn’t arguing “these people are poor, therefore they’re ripe.” Their 2005 assessment defines class by relationship to production, not income brackets. Césaire was a communist who saw the proletariat and the colonial question as linked problems, not one canceling out the other. Using him to argue that any attempt to organize in the imperial core is reformist doesn’t track with his actual politics.

On the book: I haven’t read Socialist Reconstruction yet, so I’m not going to defend it chapter and verse. From what I understand, it’s an attempt to sketch what a socialist government would actually do in its first decade: concrete plans around housing, health, employment. You’re calling that “socdem politics.” But the Bolsheviks’ program had bread, peace, land: immediate, concrete demands. Having a transitional vision that speaks to material needs isn’t social democracy; it’s strategy. The alternative is just gesturing at global revolution while refusing to say anything about what society here might look like after a seizure of power. That’s a rhetorical stance, not a political one. Also, you haven’t read the book either, so dismissing it with an eye roll is cheap.

On electoralism, unions, and “what do they have to offer”: The PSL runs candidates as a way to inject revolutionary ideas into mass consciousness, not because they think elections are the path to power. They do labor work in difficult conditions. You dismiss this as “reactionary unions aren’t worthwhile” and “protest doesn’t work.” Okay. What’s your concrete alternative, concretely, for building revolutionary capacity in the imperial core? “Pick up the phone and call Global South organizations” is a fine suggestion, but it’s not a strategy for building a pole of organization here. If your entire position is that nothing can be done and the only real agency lies outside the imperialist countries, just say that openly. At least then the implications are clear: no organizing here will meet your standard because you’ve already decided it’s impossible.

I don’t know who probablyKaffe is, however, I’m aware there’s a specific political tendency that argues most Western workers are labour aristocrats and therefore no revolutionary movement can arise from within the imperialist core. That’s a coherent position, but it’s not the only Marxist position, and you’re presenting it as if it’s settled truth and anyone who disagrees is a social democrat in Marxist drag. The PSL’s line is that imperialism’s contradictions are sharpening in a way that objectively erodes the material basis of the bribe. Whether they’re right or wrong is a debate worth having. But you haven’t actually argued that point with evidence. You’ve just asserted they’re wrong and slung terms like “socdem” at a book you haven’t read.

So here’s the bottom line: I’m not a PSL member, and I’m not asking you to be uncritical. But if your criticism is that they haven’t done the analysis, the analysis exists and I’ve linked you to it. If your criticism is that their program doesn’t solve the labour aristocracy problem to your satisfaction, the answer is that nobody has “solved” it; they’re organizing through it, with a clear-eyed view that the U.S. working class is divided and its most oppressed sections are key. If your alternative is to argue that the entire Western proletariat is hopelessly bought off and the only revolutionaries are outside, then you’ve chosen a form of revolutionary pessimism masquerading as rigor. That’s fine, but don’t pretend it’s the only possible Marxist conclusion. Che certainly didn’t.

That is what requires a deep statistical study and the PSL does not appear to give the impression that they have done so.

I’m not sure why you have this impression. You seem to not want to explain your position at all. You just make these broad claims about the party. I’m not a party member, but you can read their 2005 assessment of the US working class here: https://liberationnews.org/05-04-01-the-us-working-class-today-html/ obviously this is dated, but I have no reason to believe that they haven’t continued to build on this analysis over the last two decades.

Their party program is here: https://www2.liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/#part1 updated last in 2022. Its unclear to me If you’ve read either of these.

Lastly, they produced a book entitled “Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States.” Which you can find here: https://1804books.com/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future. I haven’t read this yet but its on my list.

So, the answer to your question of “which groups benefit?” isn’t a mystery. They argue the vast, multinational working class, particularly its most oppressed sections (African Americans, other oppressed nationalities, immigrants), has the greatest objective interest in dismantling U.S. imperialism, as it would end both the super-exploitation of the Global South and the domestic austerity and racism used to divide the working class at home.

I’m not sure if “statistical analysis” is what you meant here. I’ll assume not. Since both revolutions you mentioned were built on the backs of rigorous political analysis from a Dialectical Materialist world view.

You accuse them of having not performed similar work, and almost seem to imply that you know the answer that the PSL doesn’t. You again are not saying anything, you are simply making claims that you are not backing up with any sort of personal analysis from what I can tell.

And its not that the PSL isn’t beyond criticism, but I’m not even sure what your criticism even is to begin with.