ToastedPlanet

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/28150055

[Alt-text] Pikachu Ezra Klein asks Slow King Schumer to "Incrementally improve society by deregulate housing."

Slow King Schumer says, "I'll ask the boss."

Spoink Bill Ackman says, "I'll pay you a million dollars to never do that."

Slow King Schumer says, "I'm so aroused."

Slow King Schumer says, "No."

Pikachu Ezra Klein has a surprised pikachu face.

[Alt-text] Pikachu Ezra Klein asks Slow King Schumer to "Incrementally improve society by deregulate housing."

Slow King Schumer says, "I'll ask the boss."

Spoink Bill Ackman says, "I'll pay you a million dollars to never do that."

Slow King Schumer says, "I'm so aroused."

Slow King Schumer says, "No."

Pikachu Ezra Klein has a surprised pikachu face.

[Alt-Text] Batman, an animated bat, and Robin, a robin, are in a room with an infinity gears machine. The Riddler is behind a locked door on an intercom.

Riddle me this Batman! The door to my room will only open if the last gear fully rotates, but you can only turn the first gear! How long will you be standing there? HAHAHAHA!

Holy sociological metaphor Batman! If you tired to fully turn the last gear by only incrementally turning the first gear, you would be standing there for 346 quintillion years! The Earth's orbit will decay before we catch the Riddler at this rate!

Batman picks up the infinity gears and then flips it over. This opens the locked door and reveals a surprised Riddler, who is a Tommy gun.

Last time the alt-text I wrote didn't seem to work. So I'm going to put it in the body as well.

[Alt-Text] A cyclops considers his predicament. "This dungeon is known for plucking out an eye as part of a hazing ritual. I'll conspire to replace the current boss! That'll fix it!"

Spongebob Squarepants style time skip. "One adventuring party later..."

A cyclops wearing an eyepatch considers his predicament. "So an organization's culture can persist across multiple leaders... Systemic change will fix it!"

If you are consuming this meme then you are living during history.

We've reached the second iteration. There isn't a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.

People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.

People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.

This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.

I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.

I'm not sure how pervasive this is, but Maeve@kbin.earth's comments don't seem to have federated. I can only see 24 of them from 9 months ago, but when I go to kbin.earth I can see the user has over 3000.

I'm definitely not a federation expert, so there may be a good reason for this. I wanted to point it out in case it was part of a larger issue.

I see this idea everywhere, that people who fall for fascism or MAGA must not be intelligent enough because no intelligent person could fall for that. This goes beyond just wanting to call MAGA dumb, which is not the issue.

This is effectively a thought terminating cliche, because we are lead to assume that nothing can be done about a person's intelligence.

There are all kinds of people in the MAGA movement. The commonality between them all is a refusal to use their critical thinking skills or in some cases a lack of those skills altogether.

Anyone can learn to think critically. We need to examine our neoliberal society to understand why people haven't or more often than not are refusing to think critically. And we need to encourage others to do the same.

From remains an unabashed centrist who believes that economic growth, not the economic populism of Sanders or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the answer. “It’s important the critical mass in the Democratic party show that it’s the party of opportunity, responsibility and community but not the party of the left,” he insists.

He also argues that the party should not be afraid to talk about law enforcement and developing a system of community policing rather than urging “defund the police”. Likewise it should embrace the idea of legal immigration and a border that is under control. From applauds governors who have made jobs available to people without college degrees.