That’s the rogue. They’ve already slipped their bonds but are waiting until the trolley is blocking the mage’s path to the rod so they can steal it.

The shepherd thrives by exploiting the existence of a fellow animal’s flesh for their own gain. God (religion) thrives by exploiting a fellow human being’s hopes, fears, insecurities, and desire for purpose for it’s own gain. Plants are alive but not to the same level of awareness we can recognize in other animals, and we do have to eat something to stay alive. But it’s little wonder that a made up god favors the development of hierarchies of exploitation that use those who commodify others most effectively as the best example.

The Legend of Johnny Mojitoseed.

Sound like you need to plant some mint and spend the summer enjoying all you can drink strawberry mojitos.

All or nothing thinking results in self-sabotage before an attempt is made. There’s no single “do this, solve a housing crisis” magic button, even a well laid plan is going to run into unforeseen problems.

Yeah, abolishing the vestiges of the monarchy would be the end of the country as you’ve known it. But it’s not like England is a monolith that’s been the same thing for centuries. The country people lived in after WW2 was not the country they lived in before WW2. Same for the post Victorian era, same for when they lost the colonies, same for when the Magna Carta was written, same for when William conquered. Societies change. We’ve got similar problems in the States. We’re not the country we were when the Constitution was first written, nor the country that split over slavery, nor the industrial titan of WW2 and the post war boom, nor the wealth gap growth of the Regan era. Were the inheritors of those legacies but we can either do nothing and let the conservatives hold us back, or worse, let the regressives cherry pick the worst moments in history and try to recreate them, or push for progress even at the expense of disrupting what is comfortably familiar and tolerable.

It’s not about numbers, it’s about people. You are correct, booting the royals out of their palaces and turning it into housing would not solve the entirety of the UK’s homeless problem, and while I’m guess you made up the percentage, housing for 6950 people currently unhoused or insecure living conditions is a better use of the buildings, which already exist. The royals also have multigenerational wealth that isn’t tied to stolen items you could transfer to agencies that serve the unhoused, build new developments. Even if didn’t use this moment to overthrow the entire capitalist system (which is unlikely) that wealth could be used to help the impoverished take steps within that system to get affordable housing.

And yes, wether symbolic monarchists holding on to the spoils of the previous centuries or the post-industrial/digital revolution corporatists that have risen in the last couple, the wealthy should be afraid that at some point the bulk of society is going to come kicking down the doors of their palaces, mansions, penthouses, and maybe even engage in a bit of piracy when they flee to their super yachts to reappropriate their estates for distribution to the masses. The world doesn’t need kings and billionaires.

I live in Boise, Idaho, a blue city in a deep red state. I always vote knowing that our federal reps and state executives will end up Republican, but locally my vote makes a huge difference. MAGA has made a push to get their people in school boards, library boards, highway districts- all the elections most voters overlook and have low turnout. We’re also a state that has seen mass immigration of blue state MAGA treating this place like it’s a white nationalist haven, so even in the city, districts that used to be reliably blue could flip in the state legislature and it’s more important than ever to not lose what little we have. We have a reasonably progressive mayor/city council that is constantly under attack from the state AG and legislature because the Republicans really fucking hate that the state Capitol, their seat of power, is one of the only places that routinely defies their authority. When the state legislature made a move to ban Pride flags from government buildings the city of Boise made it their city flag. When the AG “won” the city took down the flag and painted the flagpoles Pride colors. They’re quite skilled at malicious compliance.

Somehow, Leno returned. Again…

The crown’s value was made with blood and conquest. Returning the gems to the nations they were pillaged from doesn’t make up for the suffering that happened when they were acquired but it’s literally stolen property. There’s no obligation to reward thieves when you return what was stolen to the rightful owners.

And so what if their castles and palaces only house 0.0001% of the population? The UK has population of around 69.5 million, you’d be housing 6950 people in buildings that currently house one family.

The crown is made with valuables looted from foreign countries so those get returned. The real solution to a housing crisis is to sieze the royal assets and redistribute them to agencies that aid with housing placement. I’m sure you could turn the palaces and castles into massive apartments.

“You’re just going to sit on all those diamonds?”

Never forget- John Brown is the first American hung for treason. The Confederate leaders got minimal incarceration (if any), pardoned, or just walked back into society like nothing happened. Then they built statutes, named schools, and carved a mountainside with their images. Our only consolation is that Stonewall got shot by his own troops and died in agony a few days later after having his arm sawn off.

I’m pretty excited for the Clayface movie but I fear this show has done permanent damage to how I imagine the character now.

Vinyl wasn’t profitable for decades and faded but a handful of artists and small companies kept it alive. A band even put out a wax cylinder in 2010 despite having to use a museum piece to do it and that almost no one has a device that can play it. VHS and cassettes are the new vinyl and I suspect will be a trend big manufacturers jump on and drive into the ground like they did vinyl in a few years. Then the artsy types will ditch that and start producing 8 tracks and Betamax again on some tech they cobbled from thrift stores and storage unit sales. Wanna film ICE without using your portable biometric GPS unit? Thrift stores are full of tape based camcorders and unused or tape over blanks.

Their arrogance is precisely why I don’t think they’ll take note and the ignorance of their voting base is precisely why I think they’re not incentivized to do anything differently than they have done since the end of the American Civil War. There’s no personal accountability internally or externally for their behavior. When provocations lead to violence it’s not them or their tribe that pays the price. Religious fundamentalism reinforces a belief that the believer is perpetually a victim regardless of whether their faith is the dominant power because the continued existence of any belief and anyone who believes differently is an affront. Bullies don’t just give up because they grow tired of it. Your best hope for a (relative) peaceful end to American aggression abroad is to support efforts in your nation to make the US a pariah and begin dismantling their financial power within those nations. Or, if willing, accept that as the elite are beyond the reach of the average American gun owner, it’ll take an outside force (or a very well equipped internal force backed by external support) to forcibly remove them, then either work to eliminate the power of middle class Christian nationalists or stand back and allow them and the antifascists duke it out. If you want an end to American imperialism you’re going to have to get it to turn on itself. Which it kind of is, but without some outside assistance in some form I do believe it’s just going to continue to lash out as it can.

I’m just indulging curiosity. My comments have sparked a lot of responses from a lot of different commenters. I have no idea whether the respondents are in China, the US, or elsewhere, and while you all share some similar ideas, there’s a wide range of attitudes and ideas about what the current status is, what the goals should be, and how/time frame it might transpire. Your responses are just another one on the list and shape how I contemplate my own world views and then push me to construct a clearer goal of how to engage with different personalities and opinions in the future. I’m probably never going to meet any of you in real life nor will any of our personal actions amount to much on the global scale, but I do and will encounter real humans on the local level I operate on and have an influence in, so bantering philosophically with randos on the internet is practice for legitimate social engagement. It’s a place where the stakes are low and the points don’t matter but you have access to a wide variety of human opinions.

Only about 26% of Americans own their homes, 40% are paying towards eventual ownership through a mortgage even though they are called “homeowners”. Because of the nature of this system the demographics of who outright owns their home is skewed heavily towards Boomers and Gen X. Millennials are more likely to be drowning in a mortgage, and Gen Z is rapidly falling behind in their ability to gain entrance as elder generations refuse to downsize into homes better suited for their needs, turn their properties into passive income generators, and when housing does reach the market is purchased by private equity.

Indeed it is. Since you don’t provide any specifics then all I can do is probe the limits of what you mean by “casual” and see if I can come to a clearer conclusion based off your responses. Or you could just explain what “casual” means to you.

Against civilian targets, in a nation that had lost its ability to project military power abroad but was dug in at home, had no idea such a weapon was in existence, and had no capability to retaliate in kind. China and is not Japan in 1945. If roused it could project military capability abroad, has reasonable defenses against such attacks, and is more than capable of retaliating in kind.

>When the load bearing pillar of the current order (America) falls, portfolio diversification into Swiss francs or Trump coin will do nothing to preserve elite dominance under a new order.

If the American oligarchs convert their wealth to Chinese yuan prior to the collapse of that pillar (and it would appear that many are doing so), and China does not use the opportunity of becoming the new pillar to undermine what possessing currency means in global economics, the elite of the west remain elite even if their sphere of influence shrinks. Which I would argue is an acceptable outcome for the upper echelons of neoliberalism, they’d rather be absolute monarchs of their slice of the planet than god emperors of the planet, so long as they are acknowledged for what they are and have some ability to manipulate beyond their sphere.

>Your analysis substitutes individualist psychology for systemic class forces, treating the ruling class as atomised actors free to exit the system that constitutes their power.

I’m positing that we are in a position where this is extremely likely depending on what China decides to do as it assumes global financial dominance if the American oligarchs move their currency to the yuan before they run the American economy into the ground and China fails to take the opportunity to push for how currency is used globally to be reevaluated. As you pointed out, “The American ruling class does not uphold global capitalism because of sentiment or long term vision, but because its reproduction as a class is bound to the existing configuration of productive forces, military reach, and institutional hegemony.” The existing configuration is failing and the American elite are aware of it, which is why they are extracting as much wealth from the dying American economy before it collapses. They hype anti-China rhetoric because they still have some need to appeal to the masses but are quietly planning for how to maintain their positions when the inevitable change occurs.

>Transition is not a future possibility but is ongoing in China, where public ownership remains primary and the birdcage around the secondary private economy has been systematically tightening since 2014.

My question here is, what do you expect to see domestically and internationally once China assumes the position of the financial pillar? Do they start the process of eliminating the private economy at home? Do they use their leverage to isolate American imperialism by continuing to indulge capitalism as a necessary evil in the global economy and placate the American by allowing them to live as rulers of their own private fiefs on the other side of the world, or do they flex their new power and begin to undermine the entire capitalist system when they control the value of “money”. Money is not power in itself but a token of command over labour and territory, mediated by the state under the current system. What happens when the current system is no longer obligated to be the current system?

>That is why nuclear escalation cannot be dismissed as bluff; the stakes would be existential to the bourgeoisie.

True, but the threat can be minimalized by should China take the reins of global finance and allow billionaires on the side of the planet to maintain their fiefdoms and domestic prestige. But if they chose to do so, where is the line between common sense (they have nukes and will burn it if they can’t have it) and using the power at hand to pressure the economy forward towards socialism? Do you wait for the oligarchs to die out, having pulled the ladders behind them and inadvertently prevented their successors from being able to attain their level of influence? Is it either and die approach, or would you rather see pressure applied, because once the transition occurs the leverage is in China’s hands and they could exercise that power or they could allow their current system to run in their favor indefinitely.