@alpinefolk @lightweight @pkboi @simplicitarian which of their values align with the Left, then? I'm guessing none of the important ones, hey?

Partly I think I’m having a depressive bout due to personal stuff like my relationship ending. But partly I’m bricking it because we’re staring down the barrel of a heist to steal our future and we’re individually at the mercy of the owning class.

They are coming for your savings, and for your debt, and for your buying power, and for your job security. All four. How do we individually defend against that? We can’t! But where is the class consciousness?

Your savings will get eaten up, either by inflation or KiwiSaver shenanigans or by haircuts. Your earnings go bye bye as inflation is turned up, and employers are pulling every dirty trick to undermine labour, even though they killed enough people to create a labour shortage.

Your debt is in some ways safer than your assets, but not if the debt interest rates go up. You better be able to service it or say goodbye to the mortgage.

And who have we got in our court? Some (not all) of the unions. A couple of politicians within broadly Liberal parties.

A socialist network largely dismantled and sidelined by a labour peace that is now dead. The next few years are going to HURT, and not hurt equally, which is the point.

And this in the context of a global pandemic (and death cult response), climate extinction, energy crisis, and the deliberate turn towards fascism to protect Capital in case the Left get too powerful.

And meanwhile I’m trying to convince my Liberal friends to become Leftists before it’s too late, but they don’t want to “contribute to polarisation or radicalisation” when it’s “a complex and nuanced situation”. Fuuuuuuuuck

And we don’t have the luxury of 20th Communism as a successful model to reach towards. To be a socialist of any flavour today is to believe in values like universalism and integrity that mean we don’t get to lie, cheat or take short cuts, but to not have a surviving model to work towards. We can’t be utopians, and we can’t rely on 20thC ideology and vision. We’re back to improvising with the few tools we know can’t be coopted.

So materially it comes down to harm reduction and risk mitigation. But there’s just no fucking money for it, so its all scraps and personal virtue. How many refugees can you shelter? How much of your income can you put aside for ko-fi and patreon and give a little? It’s not enough, never enough.

And every regular, neurotypical person I talk to is like "you are correct, but don't worry about it, like me." and it's like... but people are going to suffer and die, and "people" doesn't mean "other people far enough away to pretend it doesn't matter" here, it means all of us. It's not a hypothetical, Darren.

We don't even have a fucking newspaper, that's how bad it is. In Aotearoa NZ, we've got the basically-liberal Spinoff, and they are as likely to run a soft piece about riding along with the fucking police helicopter as to call out the RW.

@simplicitarian I agree we're seeing some positive movement, though half the climate activism is run by liberals like XR who just endorsed an NFT project.

I'll be okay, just needed to rant.