dharmacurious

When we went to Cancun (Isla Mujeres, actually) all the food was Americanized or just seafood. Our bartender at this little beach hut bar thingy became a good friend (still in touch, nearly 10 years later) and he heard my brother and I complaining that all the food was super Americanized.

He told us to rent a car and he would take us to the most authentic Mexican food in the world... So we rented a car, and dude drove us over an hour away to his abuelas, and she cooked us food, and it was the best food I had ever had. Incredible.

For what it's worth, you're objectively correct, regardless of what anyone else says. The majority of the country didn't vote for him, and yes, inb4 "not voting is voting!" The people who didn't vote are making a civic choice, and that choice lead to a trump presidency. But it doesn't mean those people wanted him, or like him. It means they were politically un/underinformed, or didn't want to have to make a choice between fascism and slower fascism (I hated making that choice, voted for Kamala). we are a nation of 340 million people. 75 million voted for trump. That's 22%.

There's your number. 22% of the US wanted this guy. Anything else is speculation. The only thing we know is that 22% voted for him.

Give Americans a politician worth voting for, someone with a backbone who believes in the universal right to healthcare, childcare and all the other things industrialized countries have by this point, and who doesn't believe a little genocide is okay, as a treat, and you'll see a different fucking result.

In other words, to my dear European friends blaming every American for the act of 22% of us, if we had a politician to vote for who would even try to give us 1\10th of what you already have maybe more people would have gotten off their ass and voted. But our elections have a different fucking vibe. We're not fighting to keep what we've got here, we're fighting to get some level of human decency so that we won't have to watch our parents work into their late 80s with 3 days of sick time per year, and then die sleeping on the sofa in our living rooms because God knows their can't afford to keep their house in this economy.

Yeah, you nailed it. Obvious in hindsight, but until this I had just assumed it was accurate, like, even if everyone wasn't counted, I guess had I been pressed, I would have assumed there was some formula or something to account for the uncounted or some shit. Kinda wild

Also, village isn't a word we really use in the US, but now that you say it, I guess that's kind or exactly what it is. A little village of insane, isolated, meth makin' hillbillies up in the woods that aren't accessible by road.

I personally know of ~400 people who are absolutely not counted on any census and I'd be willing to bet not included in any population stats. Whole town up in the mountains. I'd imagine if that can happen in the us, it's not unlikely to happen elsewhere, so sure... But when they do the whole earth population calculations, I always assumed they just checked in a few extra people to account for, like, uncounted towns and shit

Could also be a business you owned for a year after getting a business license. Owned my own for a while from 2012 to 2014, and it's been my employer on all my resumes since. I never include any shit I did after, just keep that one as if I worked there as a supervisor from 2012 to present day. Works wonders.

Doesn't come across as rude! Always happy to be educated.

Okay, so, it was my understanding that the ultimate end goal, say, 200 years after the revolution, the society would be practically the same between anarchists or communist. That just the means and transitonary state would be different. Once the state has withered away, once we have achieved classless, stateless, moneyless, it would be virtually or actually, and definitely practically, the same.

I'd love to know to more if that's not the case, and how they would differ. To be honest, I knew more 5 years ago, but I've forgotten a lot of theory and checked out pretty substantially for a while.

Oh Lord, ask someone smarter than me! Lol. I was clarifying terms more than anything else. Communism is an end stage, an eventual goal. That's the big sticking point between anarchists (hi!) and communists. Communists believe in capturing the state so that it can be transformed and eventually wither away to become a communist society, anarchists believe in dismantling the state and creating communism directly. There are other differences, including how we define terms such "the state," but that's the jist.

I guess firstly, I should probably out myself that I'm not a Marxist leninists, but more along the lines of a syndicalist or platformist. Council communist is a semi appropriate term. I also don't believe the same system that would work in rural Tennessee would be viable for urban New York. I believe in democratic, worker control. Consensus democracy and direct democratic control. The trouble is, I, and many others, don't believe that communism is possible in just a single area. It would be subsumed, attacked, overthrown. It, by necessity, must be either a world wide movement to achieve True Communism™, or it would need to be isolated, insular, and completely or near completely self sufficient. The latter option is, frankly, kind of shit, and in my opinion, when combined with more authoritarian means and the "capture the state" side of things, leads to dictators and shitty conditions.

I don't think money makes a society inherently capitalist, money predates capitalism by a loooong time, but I agree that if it has money it isn't communist. It can be on its way to communist, a transitonary state, and depending on your definition it can be socialist, but communist is explicitly a moneyless, classless, stateless society. So, yeah, if it's got it money, it's not communist, but saying it's capitalist is to create a false dichotomy of there only being fully realized communism or capitalism, with nothing outside of or in-between the two.

Eta: replied to the wrong person in the thread. Whoops. Meant to reply to the original commenter on this thread.

I always mention whenever I see libro.fm brought up: if you don't have a local store you want to support for whatever reasons, Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina is a fantastic refuge for the local queer community, it's a worker cooperative, and they're struggling to survive. Please consider them if there isn't another local place in your own community. With the big book stores and then Amazon, a lot of communities don't have a physical local shop anymore, so if someone has a plug for their local, I think it's worth making on these kinds of threads.