#but also donald is a working class man exploited by a white billionaire and single father of three

[sananaryon]

Rewatched Smartypants and my real question is

Is Donald Duck invited to the cookout?

[mojoflower]

This is the guy that’s been whispering in my brother’s ear for the past 3 years:

[And he wrote all these things in emails to ME, an American woman who’s been a non-working at-home mom for 18 years, apparently entirely unwitting of the irony....  I found these various quotes by searching for the words ‘princess’ and ‘yoga’, lol.]

Feminism, Globalization, picking up the scraps after a stampede of baby boomers...so hard for a guy to make the "American dream" happen. Wall street hijacking Feminism and "equal opportunity" and replacing it with the false promise of absolute equality on all things and narcissism. If everyone thinks they are a buddhist yoga princess, independent and sexually liberated entitled to a degree in art or mass communication, it sells more toasters, cars, and condos on a credit card that returns 12% interest... they get you coming and going.

I am ready to march with a pitchfork, but a big part of me feels like this particular battle [healthcare] is best fought by women. They are the ones with the most to lose;  people need to put down their yoga mat and get rowdy.

I am sure you will enjoy San Francisco if you visit. You might get a sense of the people there that annoy the hell out of me. It's where your spoiled little sister goes to spend her million dollar trust fund. As a man, I just grew so disgusted with women there especially. Millions of men go to make their fortune in IT; and millions of women go to have one of these men take care of her inner child. They are too selfish to have kids of their own early on; a man is supposed to want to pay 100k for in vitro fertilization when they are 40 and are "ready to settle down."  There are the homemakers in the world, the go getters that want to be CEOs and work, and there is this middle 30% that just wants me to send them to Yoga, spas, retreats, trips to Maui, so they can find endless inner bliss. The Koch brothers are waging war on the middle class, globalization is hurting all our standards of living, the women who are working and staying single are making home and rent inflation worse, and still these brats think that somehow I should just have money for this golden life.

The feminism and inflation connection: I just think feminism got hijacked into "independence" instead of the right to choose your husband, job, pregnancy. I think Wall Street and retailers saw an enormous opportunity with the "women's movement." They could sponsor shows like "friends" to drop that seed of "permanent adolescence." They could put the icing on the cake with "Sex and the City" where independent women stay free until they are 40, then marry "Mr. Big."  It's just an impossible dream that women can "have it all." Be free, date yoga teachers, then a billionaire gets puppy love over you at 40. For Wall street, this means, they get to sell two condos, two toasters/microwaves/cars. They ran out of consumers and broke up the family unit to create new customers. So I have to share my job market with the 30% that want to work, but I also have to deal with a shortage of housing from everyone being on their own causing prices to skyrocket for the last two decades. Half the women still expect me to just pay for everything in life, but the other half either want my job or want to live in narcissistic bliss off of someone be it government, sugardaddy, or just me. It is impossible for a white guy anymore, sandwiched between all this. This is why Donald Trump can create a movement. Globalization and exploitation by the richest 1% made life hard enough, but add this derailed feminism turned independence and men just feel sunk. If you are a carpenter, add 20MIL illegal immigrants to the equation. Men feel one reality, and Wall street is marketing a carefree one to women. Lulelemon is a publicly traded company. Women have enormous amounts of student debt, credit card debt, single into their 30s and 40s in California. Basically men are funding the women's movement one way or another, and getting bashed the whole way. For me personally, I'm am trying to save for retirement, health care, homes, kids, while the bar for that middle-class life just runs away from me at three times the speed. And I think, the major culprit for my socio economic class is this permanent adolescence with so many modern women. It is just sucking our resources dry, making things expensive, with nothing returning to society in general. Now, Sheryl Sandberg thinks companies should freeze eggs for young women, pay for invitro later. That's about a 200k investment to make women "equal." Society can't afford it. It's an abomination in the first place, but will double our healthcare costs and suck even more from my buying power . I'm sure she and Zuckerberg own a 20% stake in the biotechs offereing these services, the latest group of startups. The world cannot survive if people are independent. It is clear that God gave us penises and vaginas to pair up and share resources in a family unit. Not even the USA can handle this new demand for resources from this independence, and preaching this message to the other 90% of the world would just be catastrophic.  I pick on women, because among all these forces making life harder, they were supposed to be the group making it better. I feel betrayed by the whole movement.

This is what lead my brother to tell me (me, an American at-home mother) that “American women need to give up the white picket fence dream and realize that they can’t get a free ride anymore and just sit home eating bonbons;  they need to work.”  And then kick his wife of 17 years out of his house and try to keep her from “taking him to the cleaners” by asking for half of the marital assets.

[larrykrakow]

Leftist Movements: Where Were You When We Needed You?

New Post has been published on https://theprogressivemind.org/leftist-movements-where-were-you-when-we-needed-you/

Leftist Movements: Where Were You When We Needed You?

Leftist movements have played a critical role in American politics in the past. They brought about the New Deal in response to the Great Depression. They attracted masses in search of civil rights. The left brought us out of the Vietnam War and into a period of relative peace. Even if you are on the right, you need to read this piece. It shows how YOU were taken for a ride by our current system.

So where have the leftist movements been?

It seems that they are starting to re-energize after decades of decline thanks to the campaign of  Bernie Sanders and the rise of political giants like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, but the war on the left began in the post World War II era. The first shot across the bow was an attack on labor.  President Truman signed Taft Hartley in 1947. Since then, we plowed through the McCarthy Era into the Civil Rights Movement. Many believed that the death of Martin Luther King Jr. was a major blow to the economic left.

Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was the leader of one of America’s most successful progressive movements. He was not solely working towards racial justice. Perhaps, the one thing that the plutocracy feared the most was that he was working towards bringing about working class dignity for ALL races.

Doctor King planted a flag for the working class. It was not only about race for him. He was about fairness in our society. This is the fairness that has been stolen from us over generations. Unfortunately, the attacks continued and reached a breaking point. Richard Nixon divided us up with his Southern Strategy and Reagan went after the air traffic controllers as a symbolic shot that government had disdain for the working class. Sadly, that has led to destruction of organized labor across the country, organized labor of black AND white people.

Fortunately for us, people have started to wake up. The minimum wage has become a litmus test for many on the left. States are now passing laws raising the wage, but in reality, it is still not enough. Leftist movements like Fight For 15 have won some victories, but the country still has a $7.25 minimum wage.

The attacks however have gotten worse. When the economy collapsed in 2008, there were no prosecutions related to the fraud that brought down the economy. Occupy Wall Street started in response. Sadly, there was no leadership or organization. It was quickly co-opted by the Democrats and fizzled out.

Donald Trump is a symptom of a broken system.

The establishment Democrats paid lip service to the working class. They pushed the same trade deals that have led us down the path to where we are today. The only difference is that this time, the guy who says he is against bad trade deals actually signed one. As Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership was shelved, Donald Trump was reworking NAFTA and out came an agreement that further put the corporations in charge.

If you want to talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing, look no further than Donald Trump. He came into office calling Hillary Clinton crooked. She may have been in the eyes of many, but he is every bit and more. He added several Goldman Sachs lackeys to his cabinet and appointed some of the worst corporate actors as well. He made sure that his daughter and son in law were able to exploit positions of power for personal gain. Trump violated the Emoluments Clause of our Constitution by profiteering off other governments.

Covid-19 is perhaps the breaking point.

Out of tragedy, we often see hope. Times in our history have shown that. When George Floyd was murdered by the police, nationwide outrage started to simmer, but it is nowhere near what is expected to come. The Federal Reserve has been pumping money into financial markets to make them go with the intention of driving economic growth and saving struggling companies. This kind of action never brings money into the hands of people like you or I. It puts the money in the hands of corporations who are now flush with cash as people are losing everything.

We are getting closer and closer to seeing millions of people being either evicted or foreclosed upon. Sadly, the response by our government has mostly been to bail out corporations. As people are forced home, people like Jeff Bezos are expanding their wealth far beyond what is imaginable. This should wake up the left. If it does not, then we have a structural flaw in our society.

It is high time for an uprising unlike we have ever seen.

Economic justice is a tough thing to achieve. The mainstream media never covers the suffering of average Americans. They have the power to create a narrative that highlights suffering brought on by our corporate social capitalist system. This very system socializes losses for the corporations and privatizes the gains. That is how crony capitalism works. In down times, it is you, the tax payer who must bail out these poor corporations so that we can save the country. When you need a savior, all I here is crickets.

Leftist movements are not made at the ballot box. I can tell you that Donald Trump has been an even bigger part of the problem than any corporate Democrat. His tax cuts largely went to the plutocracy while your stimulus payment was enough to buy a couple of months worth of groceries and gas in your car. After that, you are on your own. In fact, Congress went on break without a deal for economic relief for the people. Unbelievably, they did not believe that a break would hurt people facing eviction.

Here are some statistics to wrap your head around. Around 40% of all renters nationwide are at risk of a rent shortfall and/or eviction. The state with the highest number is West Virginia at 59%. The lowest percentage comes from Vermont with 22% of renters at risk. The state with the lowest percentage STILL RISKS HAVING OVER ONE IN FIVE RENTERS RISKING EVICTION!

If you are not outraged by this when American billionaires increased their wealth by over 500 billion dollars during the pandemic, I don’t know what to say to you. I put this blame squarely on Mitch McConnell AND Donald Trump. I also put this blame on the American people for not standing up to power and demanding what is rightfully yours.

Don’t listen to Hannity or Rachel Maddow. Even though they are on different sides of the fence, they are there to watch out for the plutocracy. How do you feel about your right wing values when you may not have a home to place your flag? The media will not tell you that the economy is in such a bad place that your small town businesses may go under, leaving your brother, sister, cousins and friends without jobs. They also will not give lip service to leftist movements.

What you may NOT realize is that we are being divided up and powers that be are walking away to the bank!

You are told that the left only wants to give away free stuff. That is a crock! As a member of the left, I can tell you that I always want the dignity of a job and one that pays well. We are NOW living in a pandemic that has taken the lives of 167,000 Americans. It has caused our economy to contract by 9% in a single quarter, the largest contraction in American history. If you want to talk about FREE stuff, look no further than the crooks that gave it all to wealthy corporations.

We should never be forced to put the pressure on our politicians, but the reality is, they are owned by powerful special interests who have the desire to rig the game in their favor. Getting back to those of you on the right that support the clown in the White House and the goons in Congress, remember, the only thing that they have promised that they have kept is that they would make sure that those people of color are not your problem. Unfortunately for you, they are linked to you, like it or not.

They WOULD be your natural ally for working class solidarity if you let them, yes, the brown people. They would march in picket lines with you. It is very simple when you ask someone who is really considered to be on the left in America what they want. We want a living wage, universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, ending the wars, ending the war on drugs and ending mass incarceration. I doubt that I am asking too much. Every American should be able to be able to have a roof over their head, the ability to see a doctor and the ability to live in a clean world. That is all that the leftist movements are about!

The corporations don’t care if you have that or not. They care solely about their profits. They do not give a shit about you. They don’t care about the 59% of people in West Virginia who could lose their housing during a pandemic. These people are parasites to our society and intend to keep us divided.

Just remember one thing. Leftist movements are not an attack on your freedom. It is an attack on greed and corruption. This corruption has brought our system to its knees. We have people waiting on bread lines across the country. How can we allow this to continue? I cannot understand why. Is it really that important to see Trump build a wall that you will allow the greediest in our society take EVERYTHING? Chris Smalls asked Amazon to provide protective gear and hazard pay as his coworkers were getting sick. HE is a man of color that fought for ALL of us, no matter what the color of our skin is! This is a black man that fought to help prevent you, maybe a white person from getting sick with a potentially deadly illness.

Our differences are only skin deep. We are all strugglers in the vast ocean of society. The plutocracy is made up of the sharks like Donald Trump that are eating us alive. They are taking our last resources as a nation and hoarding them, because they know the end is near. They know that one day, we will rise up together and take them on. Donald Trump is just a symptom. The disease comes from a system that has been manipulated to control you. It comes from the media that is owned by billionaires and the divide and conquer tactics that distract us from the REAL Truth. That truth is that the American dream is dead. You have to be asleep to believe in it. If you wish to revive it, stand together with people that you normally do not like, because the people at the top don’t care about you.