A brave and true republican boy, who got corrupted away from his family by the antifa deep state complex, he would have been such a great person, if only his parents had homeschooled him without interference from the communist atheists, and were allowed to hit him more as a child 😢

Nice burn, even brought in the “libertarian”, at least be consistent, if I am a Zizekian heretic, I’m not an individualist libertarian who’s afraid of authority, I am of course a liberal anticommunist reactionary who won’t acknowledge the achievements of “really existing socialism”. You strike me as someone who would have written a hit piece on Marx for profiting from British imperialism and his capitalist buddy Engels, citing the letter and his drinking habits to make clear that he is an immature mind, then join some utopian socialist fringe group.

Yeah, look, I did read the article, and the article, unlike the person who might very well have done that in their work, did not do that. All I see is the same flipping of materialist analysis into an ideological dogma, that becomes ahistoric, trying to repeat instead of following material developments towards communism. From a quick look at your links, there’s even a lot I agree with, especially in criticising the French intellectuals. It still reads like a polemic removed from reality, that values its own farts more than understanding and working towards change, but it has value. And the article you linked in the beginning does nothing, but try to opportunistically recruit people away from one ideologue (which Zizek can definitiely be called) to another idealist “team” that tries to redirect proletarian material interests and analysis. You seem to think it’s a contest of who can quote “great people” the best and who can be the most orthodox, which treats it all like a religion instead of a material movement to change the world and mode of production.

In the end, I fear, we will be on other sides of the river, each seeing “their idealist perversions” across from “our materialist analysis”, but I at least won’t cross the river for your side any time soon.

If you think that sounds like “Žižekian nonsense”, then you obviously don’t understand what Žižek argues, because he clearly doesn’t say anything silly like “human ideology” (or “Žižekianism”, for that matter). The article you posted also does wonders completely breaking down Žižek as an abonimable human being - while not truly engaging with his ideas. It is pretty worthless, takes things deliberately out of context, and, after rigorously defining him as a persona non grata, invests no proper effort to do what actual communists like Marx and Lenin did - acknowledge that even enemies like that can give contributions to understanding, and things to learn from and work at doing so.

Does he sometimes spew bullshit? Absolutely. Does he believe in “human ideology” or spout anticommunism on a worse level than The Black Book of Communism, as the article wants to imply? Only if you deliberately misread and misinterpret him.

True, thank you for pointing that point out, because this actually does show an important angle of messaging ahead. What makes the article itself cope in my opinion, is its misleading headline and overall presentation. It’s tabloid-level of presenting the message, your interpretation is actually a lot better.

It’s a single focus group of specifically undecided Latino voters. Only more standardised and statistically significant polling will give a better estimation. Could there be an unexpected, seemingly paradoxical effect? Maybe, shit is complicated, yo. Politics are a chaotic system at times. I personally doubt it, but, hey, we will see.

But this article in particular? To be blunt: It is cope.

I think that analysis is missing an important fact: Yes, Trump’s mental decline is visible to anyone taking a closer look. He is a liar who just as much as Biden, more even, can just get things wrong unintenionally on top of that. But one thing that is important about him, is that he is a narcissist. Projecting charisma and using bullshit to shield himself is literally what his pathology and the very core of his unconscious mind is built on, it will be the very last thing to go. That is why the “Biden is old” narrative is still working with people - both are old, both are showing signs of it, but Trump can keep up the optics, because that is the very essence of what his life and psyche is revolving around.

I had a very quick look at post-debate rallies of both Trump and Biden. (Sidenote - where was that energy during the debate, Biden? Your voice actually had proper inflection and power, what happened there?) Trump spewed bullshit, of course, lies, falsehoods, nonsense. But he knew how to interact with the crowd, he knew how to speak, he knew how to adjust his message and demeanor between talking to his supporters and talking to a more general audience. Biden was competent enough with his speech - more competent than during the debate for sure - but he still felt like someone who had lacking dynamism. And in light of the debate that just happened, his enthusiastic supporters and his hype-people trying to build him up felt… surreal to be 100% honest. The chants of “You can do it” did not feel like a powerful message of competence, but like cheering someone on out of pity. His message in light of the current situation also felt confused. Saying both (not direct quotes, from memory) “I know I am not the youngest”, semi-acknowledging that there were problems, while also saying that “Trump is too dangerous” - that definitely sparked the immediate thought of “Yes, Trump is genuinely dangerous. So why are we running with you as our only hope of defeating him?”

I understand, talking about things right now is also about optics, it’s about trying to convince others, and yourself, to go vote, to believe in your chosen team and candidate and all that. But lets not delude ourselves, because that idea of Biden beating Trump on the sole basis of being not Trump has led to this situation. The optics of the mental decline of both candidates are different, and the pushed narrative of Biden being old is far from effectless.

Yes, you raise a very important point that I completely glanced over with sleep-deprived tunnel vision brain. Young males are a group, where ideological factors are a lot more prevalent. A constant barrage of presenting the desirable thing to be succesful - everything from sexual gratification to security in life depends on it - is given to, well, actually everyone, but even today still predominately young males. In addition, the ideological explanation presents no proper “out” that has analytical value: If you don’t succeed, you are just some sort of beta cuck or whatever. How about you buy this course by this YouTube influencer, on how to get money and pussy by changing your own inadequacy, which of course in reality throws the vast majority of their fans into dependence and diminishes any resources they had.

This demand to be succesful, dominant, happy and stoic, weighing on the superego as basically an old dream of success that is becoming more and more unattainable but is still presented everywhere, is also in conflict with material reality. Being the breadwinner of a household where you have a wife that delivers reproductive labour and sexual gratification to you, while you earn the money and keep her dependent? Even with chauvinists that are deep into that ideological prison, households being able to earn enough money without both people working (often even more than two jobs) is not what we are seeing in the present and the future. So, this discrepancy has to be explained in a way, that is compatible with their ideology.

As a side note: parts of the liberal, more well-off “left” (a very relative term here) will basically just give them the answer “well, you are a stupid, low-IQ chud loser, so its your own fault” - basically reinforcing the very “sink or swim, be succesful, if you can’t be, it means something about you is wrong” ideology that creates this whole mess to begin with.

But of course, the answer many will then land on is a variant of my previous post: It worked in the past, right? An outside malevolent force must have corrupted this. It’s the feminists. It’s the Jews. It’s the insert enemy here. That is the core of it again - discrepancy between material reality and ideological demands and dreams within society. Concerning young men, the extreme right also has good illusionary ways to provide them with a sense of being powerful when they are in reality not, through violence that doesn’t threaten the upper classes, and relative privilege within their ideological stratified view of reality.

Ironically, that material reality of proletarisation can even fuel “tradwife” romanticism for some women - basically, the dream of being a loved and loving housewife, being submissive to and dependent on their husband and his income, anything, just to escape the dread of having to work under current conditions without any of the security of the past. (Note that actual submissive impulses that people potentially have as a fetish are a whole other thing in that discussion, but it is relevant, that for some submissive people at least, that can of course also add to the allure of that fantasy, just as the idea of being a breadwinner that has a dependent person giving them sexual gratification and admiration is alluring to people with dominant fetishisations)

So, I am heading to bed for the night, because I have been awake all night and day and the day before to catch the debate - but the short answer is: The decline of the middle class and the petite burgeoisie - which I in this case view not in the traditional definition, but also broader, as all the people owning a little bit of capital i.e. savings for old age in some fond or maybe a house of their own. Also the disappearance of job security and stable work relations.

With it, the conservative “lets keep things as they were” mindset of people who had a decent enough life, i.e. mostly boomers that lived through the economic growth phase of the post-war era, but also younger people dreaming of that time or having profited from it through their parents, comes into crisis. But as this mindset argues from its own experience, it dreams of the past (“Things worked back then, right?”), while missing, that the very same “working” system was what had within it, already the inherent nature that eventually led to it decaying around us. So they need to explain the decline as something caused by an outsider, a malevolent force.

At the same time, this decline of the middle class leads them to try and grasp to divisions that might “save” them from proletarisation - becoming properly dependend on paycheck to paycheck and owning nothing but their own labour power to sell on the market. So, racism for example - if you are white, you might just be spared from the above fate. And you can kick down, targeting all those brown people below instead of punching up - the latter is a lot more risky after all. And the people up above can’t be at fault, after all, you (or the people you heard about from the past) had a great life when those were around, right? It just have to be the “right” people, like you and the people of your nationality/race/religion/other ingroup - often depressingly arbitrary.

This is still a very reductive summary, a lot is missing, globalisation, how it relates to the net rate of profit, how consolidation happens, details about the ideology of our current times. But broken down to it’s basics it can be summarised as such. The middle class is disappearing as a consequence of capitalist development, which leads to them becoming panicky and diving headfirst into ideology.

Well, anyway, good night, hope it was possible to understand what I was trying to bring across in my rambling

Yeah, while the republicans have basically openly moved to reactionary and fascist politics, thus implicitly accepting the status quo is over, the influential parts of the Democrats seem to have been clinging completely to the idea that the status quo is what is to be preserved - even though material reality will not make that possible.

Right now, we seem to be in a historical moment, where old privileges are breaking away from a continuing crisis in capitalism that basically has been smouldering since the (late) 70s and kept stable through neoliberal policies thus far. Old privileges being lost results in a reactionary shift worldwide at the moment. It will be harrowing, but there is at least always the possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way - right now, in the coming years, organisation, connecting people, openly presenting radical alternatives to prepare for that moment seems to be the most important work to me.

You know, as much as one has to keep Machiavellian machinations and Realpolitik in mind… Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Biden did not do well. They report about it in a way that gives them clicks. There is no plan.

That was ironically the best summary of the damn debate. Two out of touch liches talking about golf.

I wonder how the liberals feel now, that pushed Biden on electability and rejected any more radical options because they were too scary and conflicting with the party line.

He got a little more energetic, but not enough, really.

“We had H2O”, what is he even talking about? It’s scary to realise his cult just accepts anything he says.

And then a confused attack on Trump on climate change that was so softball and not to the point… oof… Biden, why?

Of course, Trump completely deflects on the climate change question.

Well, Biden’s Charlottesville attack on Trump wasn’t too bad all things considered, Trump did deflect of course, but maybe it invigorated the old fart.

That would be an interesting outcome. I doubt it, but if it were to happen, I don’t think it would have been planned, just a panic reaction.

It just goes to show, that rhetoric and charisma are important. They aren’t the only important thing, but Jesus, if you have good points to make but can’t make them properly, you will be bulldozed.

Why is there no fact-checking on air? Why even have moderation if they do nothing to challenge the two?

Oh my lord, I will never, ever understand how and why Democrats argued that Biden was “the more electable” candidate. This is painful.