Shower Rat

Not built for a post-apocalyptic world. #CeasefireNow #ClimateActionNow #CapitalismKills

[Shower Rat @shower_kat]

@8TigerLilly @goodreads Fantastic series!

[U.S. Tech Workers @USTechWorkers]

Tech bros: “There’s a shortage of talent. We need more workers! More H-1Bs!”

Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley: “My perfect GPA students are contacting me worried because they are getting zero job offers.”

[Just.A.Thought 💭 @e_galv]

If you believe that the people who serve you, cook your food, make your coffee, deliver your packages, drive you around, and effectively provide you the convenience, comfort, and consumption which you so crave do not deserve living wages… then perhaps you deserve to fuck off.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

When your priority is genocide and you wonder why people are angry.

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

“Violence isn’t the answer” unless you’re Israel, the American government, the police, military-trained vigilantes, or a for-profit healthcare system.

[🇵🇸 Rafeef Garbi #FreePalestine @RafeefGarbi]

Imagine a society that produces army soldiers who look at this angel and pull the trigger placing a bullet in her heart. Western doctors documented hundreds of such cases, bullets always in head or heart. Babies.

[Stop the Forever Wars @DoctorFishbones]

No $15 minimum wage or public option but Biden did give Ukraine $150 billion and pardon his son the crackhead

[Mike Prysner @MikePrysner]

The Democrats are using their defeat as a justification to move further to the right. But if Harris won, they’d be using the fact they catered to Republicans as a justification to move further to the right.

[sensory homunculette @myfriendcallie]

This can’t be the same through that the only way out is

[Adam @AdameMedia]

This is one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind euphorically caught on camera.

They sent aid trucks to lure out the starving and then opened fire with machine guns and tanks while filming and making fun of it.

What kind of society does this?

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Shower Rat @shower_kat]

A second Trump presidency is obviously terrible for many reasons but maybe liberals will start caring about genocide if Trump’s the one doing it?

[Emma R @ER_Roberts_]

"Fifty of the world’s richest billionaires on average emit more carbon through their investments, private jets and yachts in just over an hour and a half than the average person does in their entire lifetime."

https://t.co/UcFqM95Tfl

[Taleed El-Sabawi, JD, PhD @el_sabawi]

Executed while giving birth.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Remember when bombing hospitals was a big deal? After destroying Gaza’s healthcare system, now Israel is attacking hospitals and killing medics in LEBANON where there’s no hostages to “rescue.”

This is a war crime, funded by US-tax dollars, and US officials couldn’t care less.

[AYMAN @AymanMSNBC]

"We had children that were hit with such high velocity bullet wounds, exactly where I would put my stethoscope...And then they were shot perfectly in their temple and their brains were missing. No child gets shot twice by mistake." @mperlmuttermd on what he saw in Gaza

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

I feel like I should reiterate my position that you're not actually punishing the Democrats by refusing to vote for them in November. They don't care if you don't vote for them. They don't care if they lose. Their political careers will be fine either way.

It's entirely fine and legitimate to not vote for Democrats, but don't let that act dupe you into thinking your vote matters. It doesn't matter how you vote, and it doesn't matter how you don't vote. The US power structure is set up to be completely unaffected by voters. Acting like you could teach the Democrats a lesson by refusing to vote for them only feeds into the illusion that voting matters inside a power structure that has been deemed too important to be left to the hands of the voters.

There's a viral tweet from Glenn Greenwald going around that says "The US has no functional president and has not had one for months, and it's barely noticeable and barely matters because there's a permanent unelected machine that runs the government."

Greenwald is correct. Nobody with any real power cares all that much who the president is. The president doesn't even need to have a functioning brain. This whole show is being run by people who don't ultimately care all that much whether Democrats or Republicans are in office, including the party leadership of the Democrats and the Republicans.

You think Democrats have enjoyed playing the face of the evil empire these last few years? You think they've enjoyed having their political rallies interrupted by anti-genocide protesters and having their feel-good progressive image completely discredited in front of everyone? They'd all be having a lot more fun if the terrible things being perpetrated by the Biden administration were being done by Trump instead, so they could go back to playing the good guys.

They're happy to lose, which is why they're acting like they're happy to lose. They're doing absolutely nothing to appeal to progressives or energize their base. They're not articulating any real policies besides more of the same. They're not changing anything about any of the things that make normal people hate Democrats in the year 2024, and if they lose again in November they will continue to not change anything.

Americans don't live in the kind of country where votes matter. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. Vote or don't vote however you want, but don't make the mistake of believing you'll be teaching the Democrats any kind of lesson that they will actually learn by doing so.

If real change comes to the United States, it won't be because of how any Americans chose to vote or not vote in any of their fake elections. There are no solutions to these problems in electoral politics.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Palestinians are digging with their hands in the dark to find their loved ones after Israel’s latest massacre.

Israel is burying people alive with US weapons, while Biden and Harris officials say they’re doing everything they can to stop it…Unbelievable

[Richard Medhurst @richimedhurst]

Another massacre.

40 killed, 60 wounded and rising.

How can we watch our cousins being exterminated like this and stay sane? To say nothing of what they're going through.

Digging with their bare hands to try and save their relatives after Israel dropped 2000lb bombs on tents in the "safe zone".