#high functioning democracy

[waytootiredstudent]

Why the CDU/CSU can go fuck itself

Time for another one of these. a quick(ish) summary for all the non-german speakers about why we're freaking out and the state of our democracy.

Spoiler. its not...good. Not catastrophic (yet). But the alarm bells are very, very loud.

Tl;dr: The CDU, party currently prognosed to win the election, has basically worked together with the afd to get a migrationbill to pass that is very strict. The afd are the nazi party that is getting backed by Musk. This might forshadow a cooperation between AFD and CDU. That would put the far right in power. The current response from the general public are demonstrations against that. Like. there are a LOT of protests currently.

Alright grab a drink and lets go.

First, groundwork: Who are parties and who is the guy we currently all want to punch in the face?

on top: Careful, risk of confusion. on the left: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. Real. On the right: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. comic figure.

This guy here is Friedrich Merz. no, not the guy on the right. the guy on the left. I know. Easy mistake to make.

He's an asshole. He's also the current boss of the CDU and their chancellor candidate. He's very likely to win according to recent polls.

The CDU has a complicated history, but to simplify it: They were in charge for sixteen years before the now broken apart Traffic-light goverment and are responsible for a lot of shit that we're currently dealing with. Like crumbling infrastructure for example. They were more interested, as a party, to preserve the status quo at all costs, than to invest anything. You could argue that a lot of the enviromental issues we are facing and the reason why Germany is currently pretty stagnant, can be traced back to the one and a half decade the CDU was in charge. They are conservative, not a fan of migration and like to throw around 'tradtional values'.

They are, generally speaking, or better were, center right. More on that later.

The other party that is going to be a major pain in the ass to outright fucking dangerous, is the AFD, short for 'Alternative for Germany'.

this is Alice Weidel, she's the current chancellor candidate for the afd. here is her wikipedia article and lets just say her 'controversies' part is longer than her 'political positions' part.

Those are the, to put it bluntly, Nazis. They are dangerous but also a fucking mess. Like, to just list a few of their hits: They've been getting money from dictators (different ones btw, not just one), infigthing is a sport to them, they try to glorify the nazi-regime, the german intelligence agency is watching them because they are officially considered radical right-wing and a threat to democracy, there is a petition to ban the afd and that is a high bar to cross, the demonize immigrants, hate queer people, you know, the usual. Also of course political correctness has gone too far and climate change isn't real and we need to leave the EU. Elon Musk, you know the rich guy who did the Nazi-salute, also has been appearing and is actively supporting them. Just in case we were unclear before on where they all stand.

(btw the whole 'elon is supporting them' thing is pretty scary bc you could argue the reason that the afd is able to win so many votes is bc, frankly, they're good at social media. Do i need to elaborate why that is a dangerous combination.)

to put them into perspective: The afd is too right for the other alt-right parties in the EU parlament. There is a coalition in the EU Parlament for the right, made up of all the right wing parties from other nations and the afd is too right for them. So. yeeeeaaah.

that should do it as background information.

Now. back to current events. where both of these parties are getting more and more support.

For a short history of why we currently have a non-functioning goverment, i made a post about that. Be aware that it was made as a product of its time and doesn't have all the information. For example back then we didn't know that FDP had actively engineered that break up and wanted it to happen for a while. Yes. They wanted to topple the goverment they were in. on purpose. It's been a fun time over here in Germany as well.

anyways, lets get to the meat of things. Since we don't have a functional goverment currently, Merz has introduced a harsh migration bill. This has been in the wake of an attack with two murders, where the current suspect is a migrant. while this is a tragedy, its getting brutally misused by all out rightwing parties to scream about how we need stricter migration laws and that migrants are a danger. Which to be so fucking clear about this, is such bullshit. It's been proven so many times how that is bullshit. I'm gonna be real and not even bother. They're just the newest scapegoats everything can be blamed on.

But because nobody has a majority, all attempts at governing so far have been pretty stalled.

(our goverment currently)

Quick information from the past:

in 2018 the CDU basically stated they wouldn't, in any sort of way, cooperate with the AFD, declaring basically a Brandmauer (fire wall). This basically means that yes, the afd had been given seats in the parlament, but nobody would give them any power whatsoever.

This has been the position of the cdu. It is why people still considered them center-right.

Merz has repeatedly said he didn't care who voted with him. now with a slight majority, 348 to 344, the cdu has won, with the support of the afd. Many see this as the fall of the Brandmauer. It's not good. Merz has more and more talking points that sound exactly like the afd and that is SCARY. There is still a vivid memory alive here about why having a far-right goverment is dangerous. There is a reason why there are currently a lot of massive protests all over the country loudly proclaiming that 'never again is now'.

This also puts for many the cdu from 'center right' to 'right'. There are calls from inside the cdu to 'stop demonizing the afd'. This is scary. This could mean that we get not just a conservative goverment in a few weeks, but a rightwing one. One who is comfortable cooperating with radical right wingers if it suits their needs. To cooperate with a party that even our own intelligence agencies consider a threat to our democrazy.

So. that is why your german mutuals sit there like

Now. To another part. What exactly is that migration bill merz had wanted to pass so desperateldy?

Well first of all it calls for a national emergency, using the beforementioned murder as reasoning, for the danger of immigration. It calls for closing and controls at the borders permanently, not temporary as is curently the case. They want for people without valid ID to be refused entry, even when they are searching safety. People that are already in Germany but need to leave should be thrown in jail until they actually leave.

Which. just to be clear about this. this what the bill they had, that had the support of the afd, says. This is not a wish list. This what they want to be law.

But to be also clear, lots of this is against our current law, against Basic EU law and principle and also a pretty big violation of our constituation.

Which is what makes this situation so fatal. This bill is going to be fought. In court, in politics, with demonstrations on the streets. this bill is controversial. Merz knew that. he knew that a lot of this wouldn't pass. This is a publicly stunt. This is testing the waters. How much will the public allow? how far can he push? Is cooperation with the afd possible for him? How does everyone react?

It was never about immigration or that bill. All the people this is going to impact, all the lives that are going to be lost because of this shit they are pulling - this is to them all just collateral. Its testing how much is possible, tolerated even. The chances of this bill making it law is slim. It needs to pass again in a different body of the goverment with a two thirds majority and that is nowhere in sight.

Also, lets take a look at who voted what:

it was about four votes. So my german friends who also read this - look at this and be aware of who voted what. Who abstained to vote and gave up the four votes it would have taken to stop this. who accepted that to get what they want they would need to get the support of the afd, no matter how much Merz now claims that he still doesn't cooperate with the afd and that there were no talks between them. Look at the numbers. Look how and with who they voted.

To be frank, i am pretty pissed off. I don't think much about wallowing in self-pity and despair. i am pissed off about what is happening. i am pissed off that these people don't have a spine, i am pissed off at the FDP for enabling this in the first place, i am pissed off that we have Nazis in out goverment, i am pissed off that we have people who are willing to cooperate with them. I am pissed off that i need to settle for damage control instead of being able to see something finally move forward.

Now here we come to the less depressing part of this whole thing. And i want you to pay attention to it.

People are protesting. loudly. And in the thousands. There have been ten to a hundred thousands of people all over the country in the last week, protesting against the rise of faschism and the far right. Its all over the country, in different cities. Where the afd appears to talk, so do the protesters. There are 35 afd people to 1300 protesters. People loudly say 'never again is now'. And they show up to back that claim up.

This shit is vile, yes, but it's not going to be unopposed.

I know this all reads as depressing as fuck but do not give into the temptation of falling into despair. This is far from over. Yes those are the alarm bells and they are ringing loudly. But there is still things that can be done. Don't let the afd lure you into thinking this all pointless anyways. It's not. This is all not good, yes, but no reason to fall into blind panic. The bill isn't law yet. Merz is facing massive backlash for his little stunt. This is not a hopeless situation. It's just a shitty one.

[kick-a-long]

I think people misunderstand the nonviolent movements of the sixties and before/after. They were absolutely motivated by moral principles, but non-violence was also a tactical choice. And a smart one.

If the government can argue that a movement is violent and dangerous the average person can’t defend it as easily and it’s much easier for a government to justify breaking it violently. Non violence is most persuasive in a democracy where opinions dictate laws.

If a movement advocates nonviolence, acts nonviolent, and polices violence inside their movement, it’s hard to justify ignoring it. It also generates networks of support that might be alienated otherwise.

People on here like to rewrite what helped civil rights, woman’s rights, and gay rights really make change. It wasn’t the riots and the violent rhetoric. It was the fact that people in those movements could stay in them and interact easily with systems outside their communities. They weren’t “dangerous” as colleagues or friends. They could dialogue and organize which made them valuable in more ways than just their cause. It also attracted high functioning people to join their movements and generated change from people already able to better affect it.

In short, nonviolent movements were sympathetic and attracted equals, not exclusive and dangerous. India didn’t need to war with the British who had them out gunned and out funded. They just needed to break the British morale and make sure the British knew they were in the wrong with no justification for spending money and man power just to look bad.

That’s just my opinion. Violence begets violence and not much else. Dialogue and detailed goal oriented negotiation has a much greater effect.

[hrizantemy]

The Night Court is an Authoritarian Oligarchy Draped in the Aesthetic of Freedom

At first glance, the Night Court—especially Velaris—appears to be a shining utopia. It’s diverse, creative, safe, and egalitarian… if you’re one of the lucky few allowed to live there. But when you step back and look at the full structure of the court—not just the Inner Circle, not just Velaris—you see the truth:

The Night Court is a highly centralized, authoritarian oligarchy, built on selective control, fear, and aesthetic curation.

1. Oligarchic Rule by the Inner Circle

• All power rests in the hands of a small, unelected group: Rhysand and his Inner Circle. There is no representative council, no advisory body of commoners, Illyrians, or Hewn City nobility. All decisions are made by the Inner Circle or Rhys himself.

• These individuals are appointed by Rhysand based on loyalty or personal connection. They are competent, yes, but their authority comes from their relationships, not the will of the people.

• Rhysand rules with absolute authority. His friends may argue with him, but he always has the final say. This is not democracy. It’s aristocratic consolidation masquerading as benevolence.

2. Authoritarian Control over Dissent

• The Court of Nightmares is ruled through violence and fear. Keir governs Hewn City with brutality, and Rhys allows it so long as it keeps the nobility contained and subservient.

• When Keir insults Feyre, Rhysand’s response isn’t justice—it’s public bone-breaking. Rhys doesn’t create a better system; he simply asserts himself as the strongest monster in the room.

• This is not reform—it’s coercion. The people in Hewn City don’t obey because they believe in the system. They obey because they’re afraid.

3. Rigid Social Segregation

• Velaris is a gated sanctuary for Rhysand’s chosen few. The rest of his court—Illyrians, Hewn City dwellers—are kept out. Not metaphorically. Literally.

• It’s a city-state within a kingdom, isolated and elite. Citizens of the Night Court cannot just walk into Velaris. Their value to Rhys determines whether they are “worthy” of access.

• This is segregation by merit and favoritism, not unlike an empire where the core is protected and the borders are left to rot.

Why the Night Court Will Never Grow Beyond This System

1. Rhysand’s Power is Personality-Centric

Rhysand’s entire rule is built around himself—his trauma, his judgment, his control. The Inner Circle functions because they love and trust him, not because of any legal structure or enduring institution.

If Rhysand disappeared, the Night Court would collapse into chaos. There’s no succession plan, no democratic structure, no independent judiciary or religious body that tempers his power. He is the court.

That’s not sustainable. And more importantly, it’s not just.

2. There is No Investment in Structural Reform

Rhysand is willing to make progressive gestures—banning Illyrian wing clipping, promoting women, embracing polyglot diplomacy—but he refuses to build institutions to carry those reforms beyond himself.

• The war camps still practice clipping in secret.

• Mor has no real power over the court that nearly killed her.

• The Library priestesses have no political voice.

• Feyre was made High Lady in title only and rarely wields actual governing power.

Everything good in the Night Court hinges on Rhysand’s approval, not on a system that protects the vulnerable. That means when he’s gone, so is the progress.

3. The Narrative Reinforces the Myth of the “Benevolent Ruler”

This is a court—and a book series—that constantly tells us Rhysand is the best leader in Prythian. That everything he does, no matter how cruel, is “for the greater good.” This romanticizes authoritarianism as long as it wears a good suit and says nice things about women.

It’s the same logic that justifies:

• Forgiving Rhys for drugging and branding Feyre because he “meant well.”

• Ignoring how Velaris was protected at the expense of everyone else.

• Praising the Inner Circle’s “freedom” while allowing Keir to abuse his people.

The problem is systemic, but the narrative keeps blaming the individuals on the fringes (Tamlin, Nesta, Keir) while refusing to interrogate the rot at the center.

The Night Court Doesn’t Need a Savior. It Needs a Revolution.

This court isn’t broken because Rhysand is cruel. It’s broken because the system allows one person to decide the fate of thousands—and no one is allowed to question him.

• Illyrians are angry and beaten down.

• Hewn City is treated like a landfill of undesirable nobles.

• Velaris is a bubble of beauty built on exclusion.

• And even Feyre—High Lady—has to obey Rhysand’s will.

That’s not love. That’s not liberation. That’s control.

The Night Court will never truly evolve because it’s been designed not to. Power cannot decentralize unless the people who hold it choose to let it go. And Rhysand? He loves to say the word “freedom,” but he’s never once risked his control to make it real.

[thefusioncelestial]

Mix 19: The Knightly Sea Prince

polo-drone-065 asked:

Would you do like a chav meets a posh boy

Ah, the UK, one of the longest running democracies still in existence, and yet still has a Royal Family. And it is an old one. Many treat the birth year of the British royals as 1066 when William I took control, but they go deeper being able to trace themselves back to Cerdic of Wessex. That meant that this land has been influenced by the progeny of one man for over 1500 years.

As such, England & Scotland would develop a quite rigid society on the social side of things. Your station was not determined by wealth or any actual contribution to society, but what family you are born into & who you marry with. This leads to the creation of the Nobility: scions of Kings & Queens who never took the throne, next the Aristocrats: people who got in the good graces of a monarch to receive a rank & title.

And then there was everyone else.

Unless one got into a royal government, moving up socially or economically was hard. And while the functions of everyday government was eventually handed over to the people, the previous system persisted. A stark reminder that no matter how high you climb, there is always a ceiling.

Despite the wide strides made within recent times, there are those who have yet to catch their lucky break. And within those groups is a section of of young men with poor prospects who have banded together for protection. They aren't gang members, but they are stereotyped as being socially uncouth & wearing sportswear.

Being treated as the rough unwanted members of British society has made them the perfect target. They spend a lot of time outdoors in the streets trying to find something to do between job interview or promotion failures, and with all of that untapped & unused testosterone concentrated in an given area with the masculine aspects of British culture: you get a lot physical violence. When compared to their much more pampered & curated preppy counter parts, these men tend to be more physically dominate, and without centuries of rigid structure imposed on their fighting ability like you would in say fencing, they are able to adjust better to changing conditions.

The aristocrats love this. Their society rules makes it hard to for them to have much in the way of street smarts, and the pampered lifestyle can induce other bad habits. And so untold numbers of these poor men have been captured & assimilated into the young heirs of these landed peoples.

Here is Peter Montague-Pandall:

Slated to be the 22nd Earl of Salcombe.

One wouldn't think that a small coastal resort town like Salcombe would have anyone struggling. But every place has someone who is struggling. With resort towns, most people not business owners are forced to either go into fishing, farming, or into a service role. And while there is a lot of money that flows through, the pay for onsite workers can be bad & the rich clientele are notorious bad tippers.

Most with no prospects outside of cleaning the poop deck, move out via university or the military, and this has kept the local population low. But there are some who don't even have the option.

For Peter he grew up here, his family has been here for centuries. Granted monopolies long ago for saving some medieval king in the heat of battle, their solider founder ancestor set them up for life through bravery.

But like many such families, they all, aside from those who kept a strong military service tradition, lose their edge.

The inbreeding & a couple generations of gambling addictions should have layed the Montague-Pandall's low like the Fulfords, but they were able to course correct early enough.

The Pandalls were connected enough to learn about how the nobility would occasionally assimilate the strongest palace servants or guards to strengthen the family while still keeping up the bad practices that they do. But, they did not have enough power to get one of these necklaces that facilitate this. The fountain that birthed the method in Greece was not infinite in its waters.

A new method was found among those families, and they made a plan. They would make sure that some in their respective towns & cities were kept poor & working class, and unable to move up the ladder. The strongest born of this would be used to strengthen their heirs when the time was needed.

The Pandalls had a tradition that each heir & one spare would be merged with one of these people. The end result of constantly bringing in new DNA, new ideas & perspectives, and new skills would create a long chain of Earls stronger than the last. One result of this is that the Pandalls gained an reputation for being rather hot among their peers. And on top of this, they were more liberal with who they married.

Peter was not only the top of his school's social circle due to his family, but due to his good looks. What the average person didn't know is that untold numbers of people were absorbed into his male ancestors to create this town's Adonis. And if the traditions held, his sons would be born with similar physical gifts.

The Pandells were careful on who they selected, but they eventually paired Peter up with someone.

Here is Jaxon:

He has dreams of leaving his hometown for something different. He likes to go to the beach and stare out west towards America. A land said to be of much better opportunity. But it is a land where you can also fall harder.

But Jaxon is a bit more upright about his future. He is best friends with Peter, son of the Mayor, scion of the richest family within the area.

While they don't help his family with things like bills or food, they have always made sure he was clothed. And so for among his sports clothing wearing brethren, he always had the highest quality. This of course caused conflict. His peers were jealous of this, and so he got into a lot of fights growing up. And that constant fighting forged him into a warrior.

It was the summer after graduation. Jaxon was going to join the Royal Navy. Peter was bound for Cambridge University.

Jaxon & Peter were inside Peter's bedroom. From what Jaxon understood, Peter had a graduation & parting gift for him.

Peter was at the entrance facing the door staring at the door knob. He knew what he had to do. His father did this at his age, so did his grandfather and so forth. But he liked Jaxon. Did he really have to assimilate him. He tried to persuade his father to chose someone else. Someone with no personal history.

He locked the door & turned to Jaxon who was sitting in a desk chair.

"I love you," Jaxon said. Jaxon was always straight to the point. Trying to weasel yourself out of a situation in the streets would get your teeth knocked out too often.

Peter, who was walking towards Jaxon, paused. Did he just confess to Peter.

"I do too, like a brother of course," Peter responded.

Jaxon stood up & gave Peter a hard expression that softened a little.

"I like you a bit more than that," Jaxon said.

Peter took out a small rounded cylindrical vial that contained a yellow fluid.

The fluid was how the aristocratic families without a necklace merged with others. It took some research, firstly by going to the source, and doing decades if not a century more of alchemical, and then chemistry related research. As it turned out, human to human fusion was one of the secret goals of alchemy.

Peter quickly opened the vial and swallowed the liquid.

"What is that," Jaxon asked.

"Liquid luck after what I just walked myself into," Peter said.

"Why are you confessing to me now," he asked.

"You saw how every girl in our school wanted to climb me, and yet I never responded," Jaxon replied.

"I thought being near me was enough to not get you to end up in paternity court," Peter said.

"I would gladly go to court if you were the other parent. I wanted you climb and explore me so badly, but I know someone in your position would never be able to act if you felt the same way," Jaxon said.

"You could have as-"

"Shut up my Sea Prince, I am not done. I am telling you now, because I am leaving this place. Your dad gave me the funds to travel to go to basic training. I am going to see the world, meet new people, and maybe fall in love again. Next time, with someone who isn't so blind. But I wanted to let you know that I no matter what happens after I leave town, that you will always be my first love," Jaxon said.

A silence fell the room.

"That's a lot of words coming from you," Peter said.

Peter started walking towards Jaxon. He soon face to face with Jaxon. Or he would be. Peter was 6'1. Jaxon was 6'5.

"I guess you are influencing me a little bit," Jaxon said.

This was it, maybe he could answer Jaxon's feelings through what he was about to do.

Jaxon closed his eyes & moved to kiss Peter. He was forceful about it, pressed too hard. Peter backed up a little bit, but stayed connected. Jaxon then moved to hold and caress Peter's forearms. This eventually moved into a full embrace. For Jaxon this was the first & last time he would embrace his first true love.

He let go, or tried to. His mouth wouldn't come unstuck and his hands started to sink into Peter's back. He opened his eyes quickly. He knew what Peter was trying to do. But rather than fight back, he gave in.

Peter was scared, he couldn't get a full look at Jaxon's face given his physical position relative to Jaxon's, but the eyes told all. A fierce anger like a Tiger fully committed to killing its prey after said prey tried to fight back in vain was shone through his eyes. Peter fully expected Jaxon to pull back violently and physically rip their faces, but the opposite happened.

Jaxon pushed in. It felt good too. As Jaxon moved into Peter's body, a wave of ecstasy filled his body, but that was mixed with fear. It was only a few minutes, but 60% of Jaxon was mixed into Peter. Jaxon sank more and Peter felt bloated. Their skulls had merged, and Peter lost his facial features. He was a blank skin colored canvas.

All that was left of Jaxon on the outside was his shoulders, chest, abs, & back. Peter tried moving, but it was hard. Each step pulled Jaxon in more & more. The shoulders were gone. More steps. The abs and lower back. He was now in front of his bed and as he reached it, all of Jaxon was consumed.

Peter felt weird. He didn't just feel bloated, he felt Jaxon's mass move inside him. Constantly swirling & flowing, like a river without end.

And then it happened.

Peter's body mass quickly shrunk away. Ribs sticking out, skin hanging off the bones of his arms & legs. Abs gave way to the general shape of his spine. He was like a skeleton draped in skin, but no facial features.

Peter woke up in a completely white space. He was laying on a nice sofa and he was in his fully healthy body again. He quickly undid his shirt, and his muscles were all there.

Was what just happened a dream? A nightmare? But no, he doesn't know of rooms where the area was an featureless white void. He thought about it again. Based on what he was taught by his family both directly & in his records, he was in his mind space. It dawned on him.

He really tried to assimilate his best friend & would be lover Jaxon.

Peter got out of his thoughts when he remembered Jaxon. He knew what was going on; the mental merge. Where was Jaxon?

"I AM RIGHT HERE YOU PAMPERED DONKEY OF A MAN," Jaxon yelled:

Jaxon was now visible to him. Why was he in his boxer briefs? Peter wondered.

"I had an idea of what you money grubbing, self important monsters were doing. I know of a couple of mates who disappeared, all who had help from you lot like...like," he said in an angry & then confused tone.

He couldn't remember exactly who got assimilated. As he thought harder, his memories of them faded away, moving further out of reach. This was by design. The one assimilated would face some form of historical erasure. Some completely, others had aspects of their history smashed into the intended beneficiary.

"Wait, I didn't want to do this-"

"Why didn't you just choose someone else. Pick someone else with nothing to look forward to. I had an option, your family gave it to me," Jaxon roared.

"You know how set in their ways my family can be," Peter said.

"All the help, the great treatment when I came around, and putting ideas into my head. I was just a pig for the slaughter. Tell me, my fate was sealed the moment we met wasn't it," Jaxon asked.

Peter darted his eyes away from Jaxon.

"Yes," he said sadly.

"DONT LOOK AWAY FROM ME, THAT IS NOT THE MAN I LOVE, NOT THE PERSON WORTHY OF BEING ONE WITH ME," Jaxon screamed.

Peter looked back at Jaxon. He noticed that his mental space had changed. It was now a luxury hotel. He realized what had happened.

His father set him up.

He started to become aware of his body in the real world. The emaciated look was due to Jaxon fighting back so strongly on a mental level. The process didn't know which way to go. Not until they resolved who would dominate.

Peter pulled himself together.

"Listen, I know you want to beat me to a pulp, but let me explain. We are giving you a chance," Peter said.

"If that was the case, we would be taking each other's cherries on your bed right now, but instead you tried to use me like meal supplement," Jaxon said. He was much calmer. He wanted to know of this "chance".

"Normally, people who are chosen to be assimilated are knocked out cold, chemically or physically, and then given further drugs to weaken their mental fortitude," Peter said.

"Why," Jaxon asked.

"You had a glimpse of my world, do any of the stuck up pricks I am forced to hang out with seem to have the mental strength or personality to take you guys over fairly," Peter said.

"Absolutely not, you over patted sheep break down at the simplest of inconveniences. Why wasn't this done to me? As you can see, you are doing a bad job of dominating me," Jaxon asked.

"My father probably set this up. My guess is that he wants me to earn this new me. Perhaps due to the subtle influence of whoever he absorbed. Their own way of giving you a fighting chance when they didn't," Peter said.

Peter was fully committed to letting Jaxon take over. His form of apology.

Peter got up, ready to get pummeled and be an aspect of Jaxon.

Jaxon was soon right up to Peter's face.

Those eyes were full of anger, but they soon softened into Jaxon's normal stoic face, but they were a little tinged with worry.

"You knucklehead," Jaxon said. Before Peter could respond, Jaxon kissed him again in their mental space. Unlike the last time, there was no mixing of bodies. They were soon in an embrace. They slowly fell back into the couch and made love. In each thrust from Jaxon, Peter could feel Jaxon's emotions flow into him. His love, his worry, his anger, his confusion, and his acceptance. Mentally, this lasted for hours. In the real world a few seconds.

"Did we just..., bang mentally," Peter asked.

"Another round? Want to try being the top this time," Jaxon said confidently.

Surprisingly, they did it again, but in the way Jaxon suggested.

The couch that hosted this activity twice was in shambles. Peter looked back at the mess and was blushing. He didn't know he had that DAWG in him.

"What do we do now," Jaxon asked.

"Go through that door and live your life. Don't worry about me, I will gladly sacrifice myself so that you can see the world," Peter said.

Jaxon took Peter's hand & made the rest of him follow. Before Peter could protest, they both were a few feet from the door.

"What are you doing," Peter asked.

"I am not going to do to you what you just tried to do to me my Sea Prince. Since we can't come unstuck, let's walk this new us together as equals," Jaxon said.

Peter teared up and then wiped his eyes.

"You would agree to something like that after everything," Peter asked.

"Yes, outside from trying to eat me, everything you did for me made my life more bearable. Even if I had to fight more because it made me stick out more in streets," Jaxon said.

"Your father was right in picking me, you would be useless out there without me guiding you. But once we step through this together, we will be guiding each other, or guiding the new us," Jaxon said.

Peter let out a deep breath.

They both walked through the door.

Peter didn't dominate Jaxon, and Jaxon didn't dominate Peter. This meant that they would be reborn a new person.

The mass that was Peter began to show signs of life again.

It was no longer Peter though. Peter & Jaxon decided to walk the earth as equals. It was still deciding on its name though.

A liquid flowed through it's heavily constricted veins. It was DNA. Peter & Jaxon's DNA had broke down & mixed into a new structure. This new structure was being distributed throughout its soon to be new body.

Though it had no mouth yet, it moaned.

Starting with his feet, then his legs, chest, shoulders, arms, hands, and neck loud pops could be heard in that order. Immediately following the large pops in each body part, muscle exploded in those areas.

As the buttocks grew, you could hear the noise of stretched rubber, and its jewels were big like Jaxon's, but long & girthy like Peter's. Hair grew around the base.

Its stomach expanded in waves, doubling in mass each time. Soon it stopped growing after the third wave and began to restrict. An eight pack was forming with boulders for abdominal stones.

As the skin in the stomach restricted, the rest of the body followed, the result was a more vascular body than what Jaxon had.

Jaxon & Peter were quite compatible and this resulted in a new wave of muscle growth all over that made him more massive than Jaxon as well.

The formless face began to have features again. He had Jaxon's eyes, but softer. Jaxon's skull shape, but rounder. Peter's mouth, but more flush with pink. He had a combination of their noses & eyebrows. Jaxon's chin, Peter's ears. His hair texture & color were from Peter. but the volume was from Jaxon.

He let out a loud yell like a roar.

He was breathing heavily. Then he opened his eyes. It was time to meet his father.

He busted into his father's study unannounced.

"Hello son. Which one are you. Jaxon or Peter," he asked in a monotone manner. He also took a quick glance at the hinges of the door that guard his private study. They were bent at different angles. He was belated; he had strength beyond reasoning.

"I am both. I am Owen Montague-Pandall," Owen responded.

".... Good," the father said.

"You knew, you knew they wouldn't dominate each other," Owen said.

"It was obvious that Jaxon was in love with Peter when they turned 13. The boy was stealing too many glances at Peter once puberty kicked in. I figured they would mutually...mix. A reward for both. Jaxon can live his life with Peter as one, and hopefully you will do your duty and engender the next generation in the future. Tell me, do you like girls or boys," the father asked.

Owen mused for a bit.

"Both," Owen answered. Owen turned to leave.

Good enough the father thought.

"A reward for what though," Owen asked.

"I am aware that Jaxon would defend & protect Peter when he couldn't. Peter was good with a fencing blade, but everyday street fights were not his foray. Jaxon was his knight,' the father said.

Owen continued his walk out of the room.

"Are you not going to knock me out? You sure did a number on my door. I hated that door," the father said.

Owen turned his head.

"Like you said, they found a way to make this crap sandwich into one hiding gold. I can tell you, they are humming happily deep in my subconscious," Owen said.

"Your plans for the future," the father asked.

Owen smiled and walked away. He didn't utter a word.

Owen went to Cambridge like Peter was planning to:

He would spend enough time there & then go join the navy like Jaxon wanted. He would finish school through the methods that the military allowed him to. He would be both scholar & warrior. And like Jaxon, he would get to travel the world.

He would need to. Jaxon & Peter found the easy way out by merging, but now Owen would have to find his first true love, and not try to devour them this time.

Plenty of fish, in the Navy.

He also made sure that Jaxon's original family was taken care of. No more getting eaten by some elitist idiot.

[tanadrin]

re-listening to season 10 of revolutions, since i never finished it the first time around, and the retrospective on the emergence of socialism in the 19th century is probably the most interesting part so far. it seems to me that 19th century "liberalism" (which was scarcely worth the name) is really a very different beast than 21st century liberalism, which has in its more left-liberal strains incorporated a ton of criticisms of 19th century socialists, and is in many ways actually a pretty good synthesis of both political heuristics. certainly not perfect, and certainly still wedded to capitalism.

but a lot of early socialists were, even if they were social scientists, first and foremost utopians. it was easier to dream what might lie in the possibility-space of useful ways of organizing an egalitarian society when very little of that space had been explored, and the burst of 19th century utopia-building was part of an attempt to explore that space and put many unabashedly utopian ideas into practice. but many of the most ambitious ideas like proudhon's anarchism just weren't super workable in the end, either in the conditions that then prevailed or in the conditions that have prevailed since. liberal democracy--especially as it was refined into something actually worthy of the name--proved both durable and flexible enough to be quite egalitarian in some respects (e.g., it supports universal adult suffrage just fine! and consolidated democracies are pretty robust and quite stable, compared to competing systems). it feels similar to the high-flying hopes of early science fiction becoming tempered as we learned more about what the possibility space of future technology would really look like across the 20th century, you know?

and so i think it's natural that a lot of that early revolutionary energy went into doing politics in a liberal-democratic framework; it turns out to be a very useful framework for liberatory social projects (much more useful than either the halfhearted liberal constitutionalisms of the mid 19th century or the reactionary monarchies they usually contrasted against). but it also seems to me that a ton of the discourse in the rump left that has resulted is stuck in a very early 19th century way of thinking.

and maybe some of this is ideological distillation, with those sufficiently convinced by the virtues of the modern liberal-democratic system naturally falling out of coalition with those who aren't, so the remainder is a concentrated nucleus most likely to see fundamental continuity between the proto-liberalism of the 1800s and the more fully realized liberalism of later eras like the 2000s. plus people who are simply never going to be on board with, say, any system that is capitalist in its arrangement, no matter how prosperous or free it manages to be otherwise. but also i wonder how much of this is because for like 70 years you had a major militaristic, hegemonic state, the USSR, which was really very like the militaristic, hegemonic system it was opposed to in important ways, but which for reasons of its legitimating ideology needed to portray what differences did exist in the starkest possible terms. and the solution to that was to portray liberal democracy as of the 20th century as being functionally indistinguishable from the liberal constitutionalism of the 19th, while making themselves out to be the sole inheritors of the more egalitarian thinkers from the left. despite the fact that the USSR was pretty conservative in a lot of ways, and was basically authoritarian in a way that i don't think any of those original utopian socialists would have endorsed.

so maybe you have to keep 19th century political categories static and unchanging in order to make the dichotomy that supports your state still have meaning. even if, once you have established yourself as the ruling class of a large, powerful state, you act in ways that are actually pretty darn similar to the ruling class of other large, powerful states. and of course trying to maintain those categories even as the world continues to evolve, including the faction you have opposed yourself to (and the third leg of what is really a trichotomy, the actual, unabashed reactionaries, also continues to evolve) leads to further tensions and absurdities, which is why the most ardent defenders of the USSR like the tankies tie themselves into knots of campism and conspiracism and even frequently back directly into bog-standard reactionary ideology, because the framework they are trying to use to understand the world hasn't been updated since the 1840s, and was already having to be heavily distorted by the 1920s to make it work.

[peejayee]

hello there noble tumblr artist !!! your art (specifically the gorgeous silver woman and midpollo) has bewitched me and i am here to humbly request comic recommendations

ill talk normally now- uhm yeah ive NEVER read anything about any of them and i know nobody that reads about the authority so anything would help 🙏

Hey how you doing. I'm so sorry for the super late reply— school's been kicking my balls for the past 3 months.

About the Authority, unfortunately, I can't in good coincidence recommend Wildstorm comics without a disclaimer. A lot of WS media is really, really, REALLY dated and I don't want to set the wrong expectations going in.

If you find yourself stuck, treat the process like it's media archaeology.

I love Wildstorm is because it the perfect time capsule of the 90s- 00s. You can see the birth of the modern culture war, the death of class analysis, and the consequences of Reagan-era policies. It's really fascinating.

Oh and the silver woman is the Engineer aka Angela Spica. She shows up in Authority 1, 1999.

And heads up, the main architect of the Authority is Warren Ellis, a man accused of and admitted to sexually coercing multiple people.

Reading order—Ill do my best:

Stormwatch:

tbh you can skip most of this. Stormwatch is an Image comics property that didn't sell well. It's a UN sponsored super human team. Stormwatch Jul #37, Warren Ellis was brought onboard to turn the ship around.

Stormwatch #37-#50: Jenny, Swift, Jack introduced to Stormwatch. If you don't read it, it's fine dw. Although, check out issue #44— really, really cool homage to comics. SW ends with everyone dead in an Aliens crossover event.

Authority 1999/Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch 1-12: Jenny's arc begins in Stormwatch #37, and ends in Authority #12.

#1-12 reads as a stand alone as a y2k disaster story, end of the world etc. etc. The engineer is introduced issue one without much explanation— basically, she's a scientist who gained access to Stormwatch tech and becomes superhuman.

Authority #13-29/ Millar, Quitely: It's a hard read... Very controversial but series/genre defining run. To put it succinctly, it is the spiritual precursor to the Boys. To make reading more bearable, look at the date of publication and try to recall what happened that year (9-11, George Bush election upset, war on terror). If you read the Ultimates (Marvel), a lot of its... quirks? Were tested here

IMO, there is one line in the final arc that makes this worth it.

Authority 2003-2004/ (Grant) Robbie Morrison: A lot of people don't like this run, I thought it was fine. It's introduced a lot of cool high scifi concepts but didn't do too much with them. Dunks on scientology before dunking on scientology was cool.

the Authority Coup d'etat—>Revolution/ Ed Brubarker, Dustin Nguyen: Another series defining run— btw Henry Bendix, if you skipped Stormwatch, is the old leader of the organization. This pre-dates Marvel's Civil War (written by Mark Millar).

Authority Lost Year, Grant Morrison: Things happen. the team gets trapped in space. Wrestle with the consequences of Revolution.

Authority World's End 2008-2011: ill keep it 100 with you, I don't remember why the world ended. This was a big Wildstorm comic crossover event and sets up the N-52 merge.

Dog, I'm gonna sound like a dick.

Heres a pretentious tangent:

I've been trying figure out what this story intends to say since reading it 7 years ago. IMO, Stormwatch #37–The Authority #12 functions as an accidental rejection of Francis Fukuyama’s End of History—the idea that humanity has reached the endpoint of political evolution. All forms of governance inevitably will converge toward neoliberal democracy. Jenny Sparks embodies the listless final years of the 20th century: her life was marred by unimaginable suffering, insurmountable geopolitical conflict, and the ideological drift into neoconservatism and neoliberalism. I thought Jenny Sparks' last hurrah reads as a dying struggle against the void—a desperate struggle against comfortable complacency. She sober up (slightly) from her consumerist slumber to see there is no rapture. There is no revolution. To wait for John Cumberland is akin to waiting for Godot.

Hindsight 2025, we look back at Fukuyama and scoff but, in 1999, a lot of people genuinely thought that Clintonomics, neoliberal democracy was it. And I say accidental refutation because I'd argue Ellis, in 1999, was squarely a liberal. I'd point to Transmetropolitan as evidence of his then politics. Transmet contained the underlying belief that the truth mattered. That we live in a system where justice will prevail when bad apples are exposed as frauds, cheater, liars, fascists.

20th century end on a triumphant note, but not without with a warning: Change is inevitable, progress is not.

There is a lot more I can say about this series. I got 7 years worth of showers monologues to pen on paper.

I'm so sorry for dumping this on you. IDK ab N-52 very much. The DC merge is not for me so idk the deets.

[mesetacadre]

Do you have any thoughts on student protests? Are they just kind of doomed to lose momentum or get coopted by bourgeoise parties, like so often happens with mass protests?

I'm trying to be hopeful of meaningful short term changes, but the amount of classism , middle class posturing and general "we want the system to do its job!!" always makes me wary, especially since the most likely political change is the return of people who care about "Eu values", the torch bearers of privatization and economic destruction. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but to me any sort of anti-corruption fight won't amount to much when I would say corruption is just part of the bourgeoise dictatorship, it's the name of the game at the end of the day.

Yes, precisely, corruption is an unavoidable part of a bourgeois state. The use of state, "public" funds in the interests of the few instead of the country as a whole is what constitutes the normal functions of a capitalist state. Looking at it this way, what's the difference between a politician making favors to his cousin who owns a sanitary masks factory, and basically anything the state does being auctioned to the lowest capitalist bidder? The only real difference is a personal connection and in the first case, harming other capitalists through "unfair compentition". What does it matter to our class if capitalists don't play nice between them? They're still managing capitalism and governing for the interests of that class.

Me and you and hundreds of thousands of communists understand this more or less, but nevertheless there are millions and millions of students who don't, and we want them to. Not for a question of proselytism, but because for our ultimate objective to be reached, it's necessary to get workers, including students, to share our politics. For this to happen, they need to participate in our work, not just in the practice, not just in the debates, but both, at the same time. If you invite students to collaborate in a banner painting workshop, they key is to, while they participate in this action, explain two things. One, the reason why those banners are being painted. We don't like x thing, y process is happening, etc. And two, how those banners will help you fight that. We're hanging them up in these places because we want to reach this objective audience and we want to stick it to the university/faculty/government, etc. And it's not only an explicative effort, they need to be a part of the debate even if we have settled it internally, maybe they'll be convinced but maybe from their doubts and opposition we can also improve our analyses. The banner painting workshop should be used to understand the workshop itself. Generally speaking, only by ensuring this twofold participation in our praxis, can an actual understanding be efficiently achieved, and work towards strengthening the student movement.

Are student protests doomed? kinda, but not if we can help it. Broadly yes, the student movement (in universities, in high schools and vocational schools they have their own particular form for mobilization cycles. broadly speaking they're more infrequent but more massive when they happen) is particularly prone to having very contrasted highs and lows, completely reactive. However, we can't expect to intervene in a movement already ripe to share our analysis, much less in universities where most already politicized people want to be the next Marx or Bakunin but only for their 15 friends. If we didn't encounter these sorts of obstacles, then we would already have the world socialist republic.

No, we can't run away from deeply liberal spaces if those spaces are where the spontaneous-economically conscious members of our class are. Never hiding our analyses, never capitulating to reformism and parliamentary grifting. But nevertheless there, so that anyone can see and take part in our practical and political competency, our classist consistency against wishy-washy social-democracy, and so they can be a part of our praxis. This is the only way we can ever see a more fundamented student movement, arising from the exposure of the contradictions that come to light in every demand and movilization, making the students a part of our criticisms as well as our positions.

[the-most-humble-blog]

💰 U.S. TAXPAYERS: SPONSORING MIAMI CLUB ROUNDS & UKRAINIAN WAR GRAVES One’s a Hero, the Other’s a HOE-ro! 🤡

🪖 Expendable War Meat vs. 👠 Escapist Bottle Rat

Wanna hear the biggest scam since student loan forgiveness? We’re out here funneling billions into Ukraine’s war machine while their men are physically locked in a meat grinder with no escape, and their women? Oh, their women are out here in Miami, getting plastered, shaking ass in VIP sections, and collecting American simp bucks like a side quest in Grand Theft Welfare.

Meanwhile, back in their "homeland," any Ukrainian man caught trying to escape is immediately snatched up and shipped straight to the front lines like a disposable Walmart-brand Stormtrooper. Doesn’t matter if he’s 18 or 58—he’s getting sent straight into the meat grinder where he can either die in a trench for "freedom" or get blown into government-issued confetti by a drone strike.

But women? Nah, they get a free pass. No forced service. No accountability. Just a direct pipeline to American sugar daddies and a fast-track entry to bottle service culture.

WHERE’S THAT "EQUALITY" YOU LOVE SO MUCH?

Oh, I know exactly what some weak-minded clowns are about to say— "Men are the protectors, women are the providers." 🚨 Bullshit detected. 🚨

🔹 Israel makes both genders serve in the military. Try again. 🔹 Russia isn’t stopping Ukrainian women from going back to "fight." They just don’t want to. 🔹 Feminism mysteriously vanishes when these club rats are dodging the draft in stilettos.

These Ukrainian women aren’t "providers." They’re out here being provided for by clueless American men, drinking $30 cocktails and slurping up tax-funded handouts like government assistance was their birthright.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is selling the "bravery" of their men as cannon fodder, trapping them in a warzone they never asked for. If a man dares to run? He’s getting dragged back kicking and screaming like a medieval serf, because Ukraine isn’t a "democracy"—it’s a government-run kill box.

WOULD UKRAINE ACTUALLY BE WORSE OFF UNDER RUSSIA?

This is the question that no one wants to answer. The U.S. and Europe have been funding this dumpster fire like it’s a GoFundMe for military-industrial kickbacks, but let’s get real:

🇺🇦 Under Ukraine:

Men are forced to fight and die. No escape.

Women are free to party, get ran through, and post "support Ukraine" hashtags while sipping mojitos.

The economy is a black hole that only survives on unlimited Western handouts.

🇷🇺 Under Russia:

The same level of corruption, minus the illusion of democracy.

Ukraine wouldn’t need infinite U.S. tax dollars to function.

The same women would still be hoeing overseas, but without the victim narrative.

Be honest—what’s actually different? The West gets to pretend Ukraine is fighting some grand battle for "freedom," while the reality is that the entire country is just a high-yield money-laundering scheme with a body count.

Meanwhile, in Miami, Ukraine’s "victims" are deep-throating Grey Goose bottles and getting flown out by NBA benchwarmers. Yeah, let’s keep writing blank checks for that. Sounds legit.

WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SINGLE F*?**

Ukraine doesn’t care about the lives of its own men. Why should I?

The entire country has become a human sacrifice ritual where men are treated as expendable chess pieces while the women get to ride out the war with luxury shopping sprees. And you’re telling me I should care? For what? So Ukraine can keep existing as an open-air money-laundering operation? So its women can keep racking up American simp dollars while their men get body-bagged?

Miss me with that nonsense.

Ukraine is not a democracy. It’s not a victim. It’s not our problem. If they don’t even care about their own men, why should we?

🔥 REBLOG if you’re tired of funding foreign wars while Americans suffer.

💬 COMMENT if you see through the Ukraine scam.

🚀 FOLLOW if you’re here for the raw, unfiltered truth.

⚖️ LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This post is written for the purpose of artistic expression, cultural commentary, and psychological exploration of social and gender dynamics. It does not condone or encourage violence, harassment, or discrimination of any kind. Any references to power, strength, restraint, or critique are metaphorical, symbolic, and rooted in historical and cultural analysis. This is not a call to action — it’s a cultural mirror. If you feel offended, ask yourself if it’s from actual harm — or from seeing something you hoped no one would say out loud.

✨ TL;DR: If you're mad, it’s probably not because it’s wrong — it’s because you know it’s true.

[odinsblog]

Zuckerberg says he's a Libertarian. What's that?

A new profile of mega-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in last week's New York Times identifies America's richest millennial — he owns one-fiftieth of all millennial wealth in the U.S. — as a libertarian.

Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism or classical liberalism, according to people who have spoken to him recently. That includes a hostility to regulations that restrict business, an embrace of free markets and globalism, and an openness to social justice reforms, but only if it stops short of what he considers far-left progressivism. Zuck, of course, isn't the only one.

It's high fashion across the GOP to claim your libertarian credentials. Ron and now Rand paul turned it into a money-making scam, and most all of the Putin caucus in the GOP love to talk up libertarianism, as do multiple right-wing billionaires. Senator Mike Lieber claims himself a libertarian and has for years.

We see it writ large in the rhetoric of Republican members of Congress and conservative pundits who argue that shutting the government down is a good thing because most government functions are unnecessary or woke. So let's take a look at how libertarianism would work out in America and where it came from in the first place.

Generally speaking, libertarians don't believe in democracy, which they say is mob rule and should be replaced by the magic of the market. Or at least the magic of people made rich by the market place, running the country's essential services.

Here's the one question that always stops libertarians dead in their tracks when they come on or call in to my radio TV program to proclaim the wonders of their political ideology: Please name one country, anywhere in the world, anytime in the last 7,000 years, where libertarianism has succeeded and produced general peace and prosperity.

There literally is none, nowhere, not a single one.

It has never happened, ever.

If it had, that country would be on the tip of every libertarian's tongue, the way democratic socialists talk about Norway or Denmark, where the full-on social democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.

—Thom Hartmann: But where did all this ‘greed is good’ as a political philosophy that Zuckerberg is now embracing start?

[sophie-frm-mars]

so my new girlfriend is very much into electoral politics, she participates on a local level organizing meetings and going over policy ideas, we talk about politics from a local level to a global level and I always take the approach of like "the whole world is a system designed to crush people at the bottom, and all systems of power are just temporary configurations that will vanish and appear again and again as societies emerge and break down throughout time." and of course her approach is more "the written rules of politics have meaning worth paying attention to beyond just the desires of the powerful to have things their way."

and I need you to convince me that her approach is interesting, because I want to be interested in what she has to say, and if that's not possible then it would be nice to hear your thoughts about, idk, all of this, maybe an idea you have can shake things up in an interesting way, I'm not trying to win an argument, I'm trying to enjoy my girlfriend's special interest, help

I love this question!

So here's my first thing about this - human social structures use lots of the same absolute basic units of interaction and organisation. You have to talk about stuff, decide what goals you want to achieve, how to work towards them and then take steps. In military theory this is called the ODA or OODA loop, you can look it up. Your gf is involved in practical organizing, just in a way that serves to recuperate democracy into capitalism and take away rather than give power to the people

I'm not sure from your ask if you're involved in any organizing yourself but if you aren't there is still a tonne to learn from local political organizers in electoral politics even if their imagination is prefigured to coopt their efforts. I have friends who've worked in NGOs, panels and committees with the UN, I've known people who've written reports for President Biden and people who've gone to Westminster to meet with high level ministers, I've had friends in the DSA, Momentum, and all the way down to little affinity groups trying to organize a banner making session and it all works (or doesn't work) the same way. As Muel likes to put it, it's all just people going into different rooms and talking with different people

So on a basic level, there is a lot of practical stuff you can learn about organizing talking to someone involved in local politics

In order to be more involved, if that's what you want, in her interests while also maintaining your own political principles, I have two suggestions:

1. Try to figure out ways that your politics can help her. There are in the ways people organize what we could call "democratic technologies". The people's assembly. Hand signal voting. Stack organizing during meetings. Even a suggestion box is in a sense a democratic technology.

You can try to bring these things to her and see what kinds of things could be done in her environment to make things more actually empowering and democratic. Neoliberalism provides faux democratic technologies in order to blunt and dead-end organizing efforts while declaring to everyone they've "empowered communities". If you can trick everyone into spending all their efforts into getting a community funding grant that they may or may not actually get, where they have to present a complete budget and plan, they won't spend that time just directly using their labour to help people, and if they do get the grant the capital circulates more, promoting the market both materially and in people's minds as the only way society functions. If your gf can make changes to electoral politics around her she might be able to undo some of the things you don't like about it as a system and shift focus away from expecting an authority to fix your problems onto direct action

2. Organize in your local community and invite her to be involved. Not sure what else to say about this, it would show that your stance is more effective

[argyrocratie]

"Fascists were not entirely mistaken in treating liberalism and socialism as their twin enemies. (Curiously, in Nazi vocabulary the common term for both was ‘Marxism,’ which, according to the Horst-Wessel-Lied, had to be trampled along with ‘reaction,’ i.e. the conservative and monarchist Soldateska and high bureaucracy.) This is of course an error as far as communist theory is concerned, for communism is beyond Enlightenment, although ‘real socialism’ (both the social democratic and the Bolshevik version) is its pinnacle. We have to examine this aspect very carefully as the future of communism, at least in Europe, China and a number of other regions with a ‘real socialist’ past (and no region is totally exempt from such influences, perhaps in the mitigated form of a ‘welfare state’ or a developmentalist/populist semi-autocracy), depends on it. I do not speak of mere industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation or the like, but of the success of ‘real socialism’ (planned state capitalism) in bringing forth a people.

(...)

The creation of a people by planned state capitalism steered by an initially proletarian party should be regarded primarily from the simple Aristotelian definition of democracy as the rule of the poor over the rich, defined similarly by Pseudo-Xenophon, the unknown author of the arch-conservative tract, The Constitution of the Athenians (IVth century BC) as the rule of the wretched over ‘quality.’ This did not ever mean that poverty was or was likely to be ended, only that social power could be counterbalanced by political power. The Roman tribunate did not aim at the obliteration of property, only at the rehabilitation of ager publicus, and handouts to the indigent and the preservation of an independent counter-power. ‘Democracy’ has also meant (and it still does to a certain, ever dwindling, extent) lay power, magistrates and political leaders elected by drawing lots, and devices to prevent strong political or military privilege. The people, essentially those who are free and without property, were circumscribed by their social position – as opposed to ‘the nation’ – within an arrangement that sanctified conflict under the political preponderance of the ‘lower classes’ (hoi polloi: the many).

However little this has to do with the original socialist idea (e.g. Proudhon, parts of Marx and Engels, Lassalle), it was ideologically inherited from the radical strands of the French revolution (from Babeuf to Blanqui) and it had become the essence of ‘real socialism’ whose work was – and this explains in part its horrors of tyranny and persecution – to annihilate old élites and to instaurate the (classical republican) idea of political equality in the sense of the power of the ‘men of the people’ meaning, in practice, committed, ‘class-conscious’ and ‘organised’ workers and ‘organic’ Party intellectuals.

This power was as absolute as power could ever be, but this should not hide its defining negative function from us. ‘Real socialism’ remained beyond doubt a class society but, paradoxically, without a full-bore, authentic ruling class.

(...)

Rôles, functions, positions, influence and (impermanent) rank were constantly redistributed, the actual ruling was done by an institution, the members of which were subject to the rotation, advancement and rustication (limogement) usual in an institution: to use an imperfect historical parallel, a court rather than a nobility. Property – the ownership of the means of production – was separated from the producers but was not individualised, and control as such could not be and was not inherited. Those who exercised control were selected politically and bureaucratically, not according to the hereditary privileges of their forebears assured by the concept of property inherent in Roman law and decisive in all ‘white’ and many other (caste or class) societies."

-Gáspár Miklós Tamás, "Communism on the Ruins of Socialism" (2012)

[moeyangwenli]

I feel like I come across as moralistic when I talk about Reinhard. In fact when I started the show, I was engaging with it how I engage with history. I’ve studied Roman and Chinese history somewhat in-depth; when you’re discussing a ruler, you aren’t trying to slap a “good” or “bad” label on them, but to place them in historical context. Appraisals of their merits and weaknesses are done neutrally. Thus, I was watching the show like a drama rooted in realpolitik.

The reason I ended up being critical of Reinhard’s writing is that it felt like the story romanticized him to a significant degree… specifically in how it ceased having any feeling of sociopolitical groundedness. If LOGH has historical felicity, it’s in terms of military history. Reinhard as head of state was glossed over; he faced none of the challenges one would expect for someone in his position.

I’ll give one example. You know what foe shows up to menace kings and emperors across history? Inflation. Financial crises have brought imperial powers to their knees, accomplishing what a thousand armies could not. I suppose you could say that seizing control of so much territory, including the financial hub of Fezzan, would solve that for him. But is that actually the case? The Mongols conquered vast lands and riches in a span of three generations, but it took no time at all for them to devalue their currency and burn through their wealth. What kind of taxes did Reinhard impose? I’d assume he’d have to levy high ones to maintain his military force and support his building projects. Wouldn’t that reduce his popularity?

While watching LOGH, I was asking myself a lot of logistical questions like that, which the story itself seemed uninterested in. For instance, where were all the damn ships coming from? An economic and materialist exploration of that question could be very interesting. I mean, we were told next to nothing about the economic systems of the Alliance or the Empire. One can assume they’re capitalist and feudal respectively, but how was the work actually getting done? Wouldn’t it have deepened the themes to compare the two societies in these terms? An exploration of how the Alliance’s economy was geared towards war would have been nice, as well as an acknowledgment of the role money plays in politics (the work liked to blame “the people” for the failures of democracy without actually going into how that democracy functioned). And on the side of the Empire, we are told that the Goldenbaums used forced labor. Well, did Reinhard outlaw that or maintain it? If he got rid of it, how did he replace the laborers? Wouldn’t that affect the imperial budget?

After watching LOGH, I went on a bit of a girl-on-girl kick to cleanse myself of all the masculine energy. I finally sat down and read JWQS (English title “Two Adamant Hearts”), an incredibly long Chinese novel series. Spoilers, but one of the main characters of that series, Jingnu, becomes an empress. She’s young and idealistic, determined to be a good ruler. And as soon as she takes office, she’s hit with the reality that she’s inherited a financial crisis. The story expends a great deal of time dwelling on what she has to do to save her kingdom from destitution.

I’m not saying LOGH had to do the same. Tax policies aren’t all that fun to learn about in history books, much less in fiction. My point is that I believed Jingnu as a good ruler more than I believed Reinhard as one because the story focused on what it would actually take to rule competently, justly, and responsibly.

Reinhard ended up looking like a pretty weak ruler in a variety of ways, and even if he had been perfect, I would expect his empire to be very unstable. It would take a ridiculous amount of effort to control and administrate all the territory under his power. Even an excellent statesman like Kublai Khan ended his reign in failure and disgrace because of the contradictions inherent to being an imperial power: the imperative to expand. But Reinhard’s glory was dimmed by nothing; even the most significant challenge he faced, the accusations of the survivor of Westerland, were only used to fuel his angst and get him in bed with Hilda, after which they were swept under the rug, never to be mentioned again. Couldn’t that have gotten out and damaged his reputation? Again, there were a million ways the story could have gone, but it feels like it only chose the safest ones.

So what I’m saying is I would have liked either for Reinhard to have done his absolute to best to be a good ruler, with focus on the logistics of that, or I would have liked to see the story take a realist turn where his legacy is tainted and his empire falls apart, or is at least destabilized. Ending the story with an epic tone, and the assurance that everything will probably be fine ‘cause Reinhard has a son, was too much for me. Especially given that there was no resolution between democracy and autocracy. At one point, Yang gave a wonderful speech about how dangerous it would be for all of humanity to exist under a dictatorship, and then the story ended with all of humanity under a dictatorship, and this was not painted as a bad thing 😭 A constitutional monarchy was maybe on the table but that was also not explored at all, leaving me with no choice but to conclude that LOGH ultimately did not care about politics in the least.

[mariacallous]

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released his proposal to reorganize the Department of State—and it’s a doozy. When I joined government as the U.S. special envoy for the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, after a career working for human rights organizations, I found many of the clichés about government inefficiency to be true. However, Rubio’s plan— which includes reducing U.S.-based staff by 15 percent, cutting 132 offices, and transitioning an additional 137 offices into other parts of the department—is the equivalent of wielding a chainsaw when the patient deserves a scalpel.

Many will shrug, assuming that news as seemingly mundane as a new organizational chart for a federal agency doesn’t impact them or that cuts to government agencies are by definition beneficial. But the truth is that the proposed restructuring of the State Department, including the elimination and downsizing of various bureaus that promote justice globally, will have profoundly negative consequences for American interests and the well-being of people around the world.

The new plan doesn’t just devalue human rights—a critical feature of U.S. foreign policy—it also strips the State Department of expertise around key foreign-policy issues like countering disinformation, fighting corruption, and defending democracy worldwide. Moreover, it imposes an extremist worldview that brands support for marginalized populations as anti-American, undermining core national interests like a strong economy, reliable allies, and global capacity to fight disease.

While the State Department is not a human rights organization, the extent to which it is willing to respect human rights tilts the scales of justice globally. Thus, the omissions from the State Department’s new structure are telling, demonstrating a failure to understand how events around the world directly impact Americans. Nor does the plan reflect long-standing bipartisan foreign-policy priorities or issues with strong support within the American public.

For example, the proposed reorganization makes no mention of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which pursues accountability for war crimes like sexual slavery, the abduction of children as child soldiers, and the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Similarly, according to the proposed plan, the Office of Global Women’s Issues (GWI), which works to end child and forced marriage among other forms of oppression against women and girls, will apparently be eliminated. As crises in Afghanistan, Sudan, and beyond show, women and girls are disproportionately targeted for violence. Yet ample evidence demonstrates that empowering women and girls boosts economic growth, fosters social resilience, and promotes peace and stability. This is exactly why mechanisms like GWI are essential; GWI’s targeted programming for women and girls ensures that U.S. investments produce a high rate of return for those most affected.

The proposed reorganization also includes the apparent elimination of the Foreign Service Institute, which has trained new foreign service officers since 1947, thus threatening to send the next generation of U.S. foreign service officers into crises worldwide without adequate training or support.

While the elimination of entire programs is alarming, so is the diluting of robust and effective mechanisms. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which has been the centerpiece of U.S. human rights policy since the 1970s and supports the promotion of democratic values and labor rights globally, has been moved under the office on foreign assistance. While this reshuffling will still allow DRL to offer grants, the bureau is likely to not have a say in the department’s policy positions since its new location doesn’t have a policy function. In a previous iteration of the new chart that circulated widely and was seen by Foreign Policy, DRL was renamed as the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Religious Freedom, falsely suggesting that religious freedoms do not fall within human rights and that, in a hierarchy of priorities, workers have no value.

This is not an effort to prevent government inefficiency, as Rubio claims. If the plan takes shape, critical subject-matter expertise will be eliminated. Entire programs will be cut. Partnerships with allies will be severed. The State Department will be under-resourced exactly at the time it is called upon to absorb programs by the largely defunct U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and hollowed out exactly at the time diplomacy is most needed.

With wars raging on three continents, the proposed reorganization and alleged cuts to staffing will leave the State Department and Rubio with less bandwidth to tackle the complexities of today’s global politics, human rights crises, and conflicts. If these changes are implemented as proposed, it will send a clear message of indifference to repressive governments if they block free and fair elections, engage in cronyism and other forms of corruption, ban free speech, target nongovernmental organizations, oppress minorities, commit war crimes, or arbitrarily arrest their own citizens.

The proposed changes at the State Department come against the backdrop of other major cuts to U.S. foreign-policy mechanisms. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which includes Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has eliminated tools to provide reliable news for people who too often are denied access to the free press—and by extension, it also hurt U.S. soft power. The stripping down of USAID has led to the abrupt termination of lifesaving programs, including HIV/AIDS clinics and famine relief programs. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s federal job cuts have adversely impacted key foreign-policy sectors like global health and rights. Amid all this slashing, the reputational damage for the United States has been almost unimaginably vast.

Americans are right to expect change from our government, but if they’re concerned about the price of increasingly unaffordable eggs and home mortgages, they need to understand that domestic and foreign policy are interdependent. To meaningfully protect human rights at home, we absolutely need to invest in human rights globally. For example, to increase American prosperity, we must fight forced labor around the world or else goods made by American workers will be too costly to compete in the global market as compared to goods manufactured by forced or child labor. If we want favorable trade with other countries, we need to monitor and implement existing trade agreements that protect American workers, farmers, businesses, and consumers’ economic interests. If we don’t want another pandemic, we need to fund the United Nations, including lifesaving agencies like the World Health Organization. If we want to protect Americans at home and abroad, we need to invest in security and the rule of law across the globe.

This isn’t to say that the State Department doesn’t need to be streamlined; redundancies should always be eliminated, and decisions need to be made quickly, but the Trump administration’s proposals cut well past the bone.

We can imagine alternate ways to restructure the department to maximize efficiency, such as by shortening the clearance process and clarifying who has decision-making authority to avoid intradepartmental turf wars. However, if we want to envision a State Department that truly prioritizes consultations with local communities, especially those that are most marginalized, it would require increasing investment in mechanisms with strong track records DRL or GWI. If we are proud of our national values, we should uplift the United States’ historic struggles for civil rights and justice by adequately resourcing special envoys, special representatives, and special advisors for human rights instead of eliminating them. The U.S. Congress can play a vital role in the solution by legislating for human rights. It can include more statutory requirements for human rights in the annual human rights reports; ensure that the State Department budget reauthorization increases; and mandate funding for foreign assistance.

Rubio said the announced reorganization of the State Department is just a proposal. Let’s hold him to that. It is sorely lacking a commitment to expertise, to public servants, and to the fundamental principles that guide U.S. foreign policy. The American people—and people everywhere—deserve better.

[meret118]

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities.— Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets. — Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. — Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties. — Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily.

. . .

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper.

That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”This trend is massive.

. . .

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

. . .

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street

.”It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

. . .

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021. “Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

. . .

Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:

“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

. . .

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

To address the housing shortage and bring down prices for renters and homeowners alike, the Harris campaign’s plan calls for a historic expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and the first-ever tax incentive for homebuilders who build starter homes sold to first-time homebuyers. Building upon the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed $20 billion innovation fund, the campaign proposes a $40 billion fund that would support local innovations in housing supply solutions, catalyze innovative methods of construction financing, and empower developers and homebuilders to design and build affordable homes.

To cut red tape and bring down housing costs, the plan calls for streamlining permitting processes and reviews, including for transit-oriented development and conversions. The agenda also proposes making certain federal lands eligible to be repurposed for affordable housing development. Collectively, these policy proposals seek to create 3 million homes in the next four years.

The campaign plan cites the Biden-Harris administration’s ongoing actions to support the lowest-income renters, including its actions to expand rental assistance for veterans and other low-income renters, increase housing supply for people experiencing homelessness, enforce fair housing laws, and hold corporate landlords accountable.

Building upon these commitments, the Harris agenda calls upon Congress to pass the “Stop Predatory Investing Act,” which would remove key tax benefits for major investors who acquire large numbers of single-family rental homes (see Memo, 7/17/23), and the “Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act,” which would crack down on algorithmic rent-setting software that enables price-fixing among corporate landlords.

To make homeownership attainable, Vice President Harris’s proposal would provide up to $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for two years. First-generation homeowners – those whose parents did not own homes – would receive more generous assistance.

Vice President Harris’s economic agenda also includes proposals to lower grocery costs, lower the costs of prescription drugs and relieve medical debt, and cut taxes for workers and families with children. The plan would restore the American Rescue Plan’s expanded Child Tax Credit, which provided up to $3,600 per child for low- and middle-income families for one year before it expired in 2022, and would enact a new $6,000 tax credit for families in the first year after their child is born. These measures to reduce expenses and boost household income would also improve housing security for low-income families, who often face impossible tradeoffs between paying rent and affording food, medical care, and other basic needs.

-----

Sorry for the length, but I thought this was really important.

[sananaryon]

@elpeadro

You have activated my trapcard because I love this stuff! Please recall that this system is in its infancy so what im going to talk about is not all established as precedent, but will be assuming the boiling isles exist for that long.

The Principality of the Boiling Isles is an elective monarchy, with a Prince as its head of government. Won't go into the details of election (look up the Venetian doge elections sometime), but it runs on five year intervals, with Raine having been in their first term as Prince when the frogvasion began.

Immediately under the Prince are the High Covens, several small groups of three leaders and a number of aides and bureaucrats appointed by the Prince (usually through appointing one person and then letting them pick their cohort, though direct appointment does happen). Some of these covens are permanent with only its members being switched out, while others are temporary and only formed for short-term projects. Case in point there are several covens appointed for dealing with the whole raised left arm situation and other public works projects to repair Belos' nonsense, which will probably only exist until that mess is sorted out.

Finally, there is the Great Thing (im norwegian), the gathering of representatives. The Boiling Isles being what they are, this is less an organized system of carefully elected representatives and more a rambunctious gang of witches and demons that were in some way appointed by a local government or organization who have been recognized by the Prince. Getting to appoint someone to the Great Thing basically just boils down to submitting an application to the appropriate High Coven, which will then vet it before passing it along to the Prince who will approve it if they feel it is worthy of representation.

and if you can see some big flaws in this system, well that's the point, the Boiling Isles went from petty nations and anarchy to a theocratic empire and are now trying their hand at democracy, it's gonna be a rough start.

And while you didn't ask…

The Empire of Calamity is an absolute monarchy governed by a triumvirate with the Lord High Emperor as head of state, immediately followed in the system by the Triumvir Queens, called Lord General and Lord Speaker (among other titles). Aside from them, conquered territories function on different systems and are largely self-governing but only at the behest of the triumvirate, and are required to obey any edict and pay their tithes.

You were pretty much spot on in this reblog. Anne is a one-woman secret police and acts as the public face of the empire when it's feeling nice, whereas Sasha is a one-woman army and is the face of the empire when it feels mean. Marcy would make for a darn good one woman intelligence service, but you can't have everything. Ironically while Marcy could do well as administrator by herself with both her powers and her natural intelligence, the Core is probably better than her at this specific field just from experience. Gestalt of past kings vs. teenage girl, epic bureaucrat battles of government.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

How Trump's billionaires are hijacking affordable housing

Thom Hartmann

October 24, 2024 8:52AM ET

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: we should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

ALSO READ: He’s mentally ill:' NY laughs ahead of Trump's Madison Square Garden rally

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. — Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets. — Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. — Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties. — Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021. “Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:

“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

ALSO READ: Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia