Tormato

joined 4 years ago
 

Pulled up to a state park this past weekend and balked at the admission price.

“This is insane. What are our taxes for?”

I hear ya, man.

“You know, this is why we need a socialist revolution. It’s way overdue in many ways.”

Ya goddamn right about that.

2nd conversation (spurred by a rant):

Walking down city street wondering aloud if favorite Middle Eastern restaurant would still be there…

“I’m not sure if that’s it; looks like a different name now (note: it was the same). You can never tell anymore with all this capitalist destruction in our lives!”

Woman behind me:

“Exactly; that’s true.”

Folks, speak up loudly and often in public. Comrades need to know that each other exists.

We’re getting somewhere…

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 18 points 2 weeks ago

Henry Luce to the Time art director: “Nah. Not good enough. Bring it back with his eyes devil red, just like that bowl of communist hellfire.”

Picks up the phone after: “Hey Dulles, wait til you see this cover I’m gonna let loose.”

“Any word on that drunken Senator from Minnesota who’s hellbent on that commie witch-hunt?”

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

Tax the fucking fuck out of the rich, firstly.

Disincentives greed and hoarding, which is the end game of capitalism.

At the same time heavily fund campaigns to mock and bully the rich. Not a Ferrari or Porsche should be without broken windows and flat tires. Hound all their residences until there’s no peace for those sociopathic criminals. Form flash mobs to terrorize golf courses.

Make it so they can’t give away their money quickly enough.

Just one tactic for creating socialism, heh….

 

It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked me. It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities: but in spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were so sentimentally selfish! They assisted in all kinds of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought out of dividends stained with the blood of child labor, and sweated labor, and of prostitution itself. When I mentioned such facts, expecting in my innocence that these sisters of Judy O'Grady would at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink, and the innate depravity that caused all the misery in society's cellar. When I mentioned that I couldn't quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intem-perance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an "agita-tor" —as though that, forsooth, settled the argument.

Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves. I had expected to find men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean, noble, and alive. I went about amongst the men who sat in the high places—the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the professors, and the editors. I ate meat with them, drank wine with them, auto-mobiled with them, and studied them. It is true, I found many that were clean and noble; but with rare exceptions, they were not alive. I do verily believe I could count the exceptions on the fingers of my two hands. Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, they were merely the unburied dead —clean and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive. In this connection I may especially mention the professors I met, the men who live up to that decadent university ideal, "the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence." I met men who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in their diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that killed each year more babies than even red-handed Herod had killed.

I talked in hotels and clubs and homes and Pullmans and steamer-chairs with captains of industry, and marvelled at how little travelled they were in the realm of intellect. On the other hand, I discovered tbat their intellect, in the business sense, was abnormally developed. Also, I discovered that their morality, where business was concerned, was nil.

This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman, was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black. browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor who nublichar patent medicine advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about said patent medicines for fear of losing the advertising. Called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I told him that his political economy was antiquated and that his biology was contemporaneous with Pliny.

This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a gross, uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme court judge; and all three rode on railroad passes. This man, talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal. This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign missions, worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage and thereby directly encouraged prostitution. This man, who endowed chairs in universities, perjured himself in courts of law over a matter of dollars and cents. And this railroad magnate broke his word as a gentleman and a Christian when he granted a secret rebate to one of two captains of industry locked together in a struggle to the death.

It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime—men who were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who were clean and noble but who were not alive. Then there was a great, hopeless mass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean.

It did not sin positively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and ignorantly by acquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by it. Had it been noble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and it would have refused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime. I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlor floor of society.

Intellectually I was bored. Morally and spiritually I was sickened. I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked preachers, broken professors, and clean-minded, class-conscious working men. I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.

So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and where I belonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice of society above my head, holds no delights for me. It is the foundation of the edifice that interests me. There I am content to labor, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder, with intellectuals, idealists, and class conscious working men, getting a solid pry now and again, and setting the whole edifice rocking. Someday, when we get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we topple it over, along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and sodden materialism. Then we’ll cleanse the cellar and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no parlor floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Black Sabbath. One of my all-time favorite bands. And the only metal I can still listen to.

Through and through true working class band from the Midlands “Black Country” where all the Industrial Revolution was based.

Geezer wrote most of the lyrics, very socialist/anti-war character. Besides the obvious War Pigs, stuff like Killing Yourself To Live, Cornucopia, Lord of this World, Wicked World, etc. His Dad was a Union leader I think, from a big Irish Catholic family.

Ozzy sang those tunes with such conviction.

Long Live Sabbath.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Caribbean rebels historically are very inspiring.

From Haiti to Cuba those revolutions reflected the strongest and most courageous human spirit.

Didn’t Barbados also recently demand reparations from France?

Need more of this.

Fidel and Che were right. There needed (needs) to be a solidarity block of central and South American countries against imperial US.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

Heartened by the immediate pushback to corporate media drivel like this by traditional left and alternative media.

This’ll be an important operation going forward: responding immediately to their pathetic, off key calumny.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

So afraid of people who aren’t Real Americans.

I mean, it seems these days that you can go to any small town across this hellhole country and encounter an immigrant/recent citizen from somewhere else - who might have different customs in eating, dressing, decorating, etc. What’s so scary, little boys?

Isn’t that what makes the world interesting, and something to celebrate?

Nope. These stunted adolescents insists on living in a fake dreamworld of conditioned nostalgia preening to make them believe their best days are behind them and that if we could only get these illegals out of here everything would be Aok again.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago

Was just having this conversation last night with a friend as we were remarking to each other how mesmerizing dusk is with the summer fireflies.

When he said they didn’t exist out West where he grew up I was surprised.

Thought all along fireflies at dusk was one of the more enchanting parts of summer.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Bernie was St John The Baptist .

I dig this Zohran meme.

Hey Seuss Christ…we really do have an incredibly great opportunity in NYC to put socialism on the map. It’s gonna take us all to be involved. But it’s already changed the mood entirely.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Great stuff, thanks!

Recently read that Dinkins went to visit Fidel Castro. Love that!

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Thanks, comrade.

Wonder how spread out their terms were, and the period context.

That Dinkins really ran as a socialist - and won - is blowing my mind. That’s the late 80’s hellscape.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Will come to this everywhere.

Empire falling apart at home.

[–] Tormato@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Who are the others, besides La Guardia?

 

Zohran’s massive success in connecting with NYers is especially melting the brains of the worst kinds of capitalists.

Hellgate:

I was expecting a crowd outside of the Gristedes on 40th Street and Second Avenue, because I had gotten an email telling me that John Catsimatidis, the tycoon who owns the chain, would be leading 100 supermarket and bodega employees in a "dramatic, worker-led press conference and protest rally" late Monday morning. Instead, I found a few news cameras pointed at Catsimatidis himself, who was checking his watch and promising that he'd be joined by United Bodegas of America spokesperson Fernando Mateo "any minute!" Catsimatidis held the conference in protest of Democratic candidate for mayor Zohran Mamdani's proposed pilot program for five City-run grocery stores. Behind him, five uniformed workers from the Midtown Gristedes lined up dutifully, but didn't say much.

"I've been in the supermarket business for 54 years," Catsimatidis said when he took the podium. He went on a real tear, on topics that ranged from helping run Bill Clinton's campaign in New York City to casting doubt on the validity of Mamdani's election. "It's not the same Democratic Party we know," he said. "The socialists have taken over the Democratic Party." Catsimatidis opined that, because the common-sense Democrats had too much common sense to come out and vote in the 102-degree heat last week, he's "not sure how much of an accurate vote it is." (More New Yorkers voted in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary than in 2021.)

 

My kid just excitedly showed this to me. He’s learning real history at home, not American Exceptionalism propaganda that he gets in school.

“Where Is the Grand Canyon?” children’s book, part of the WhoHQ series of Who? What? Where?

Some of these books in that series are fairly open to presenting radical history. We’ve also got the Che, Nikola Tesla, The Underground Railroad books.

 

“In the mad Black person, all the violences of modernity converge to produce death. That is what we witnessed on the New York subway. Add to that homelessness, and the mad Black person without property is the perfect anthesis of this violent brutal capitalist society — they must be made to disappear by all means necessary, even if by white non-police deputization, as Frank Wilderson has called it. Wilderson argues that the existence of Black people is put permanently in question when compared to others whose existence goes without saying. He writes, ‘In such a paradigm White people are, ipso facto, deputized in the face of Black people, whether they know it (consciously) or not.’ The message seems to be, ‘kill them fuckers!’ Indeed, any white deputy can kill them fuckers. White protection is the order of the day because whiteness owns everything. In ‘The Souls of White Folk,’ it is W.E.B. Du Bois who says, ‘Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!’”

 

It’s so fucked up on soooo many levels I’m getting dizzy.

The result of a festering toxic stew of: centuries of institutional racism (literally the cornerstone of the imperialism and capitalism that made America rich), the sanctification of authority, hatred of the poor/homeless/mental ill (the counterpart of HeMan individualist Bootstrapism), RW hate machine media ridicule of the poor and criminalization of skin color/purposeful Neoliberal ignoring of the problem, cultural Copaganda/worship of the military, a learned cultural helplessness/turning away from what’s wrong/lack of examining ones conscience, still no universal healthcare (during a fucking pandemic!!) and paltry, dysfunctional mental health care, cost of living obscenely out of control, people alienated by the social media trap which further silos and depresses us, etc.

Pure unadulterated FASCISM, in every way.

That motherfucker better be prosecuted to the fullest degree of “the law,” along with the two other accomplices. Which is a joke in and of itself.

Did he get a little Happy Meal with the KKKops afterward?

Jordan Neely had to testify as a kid at the trial for when his mother was choked to death at 30 yrs old. Can you imagine his life?

If anybody knows of a vigil or rally for this poor, wretched soul please post.

I fucking hate this country with a blinding rage.

https://twitter.com/marxist777/status/1653872190977179650

 

Just opened. Sent away to the good folks of Radical Graffiti in Australia for a package of assorted stickers. This is a sampling of the cool shit they do.

Comrades, there’s nothing like seeing graffiti out in public to let our brethren know that we’re (they’re) not alone. Spray the walls, until the bastards fall.

Fuck the fascists.

 

Yeah, yeah. We all know Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon was the longest charting album in the history of Billboard. When I was growing up you could absolutely count on going into a anyone’s house and finding it in their record collection. And then there’s The Wall. Which just shattered the ceiling for what a rock opera could achieve, both musically and in terms of live presentation (although my personal favorite and their most political is Animals, of which gratefully he’s been doing a lot of on his recent tours).

A couple of bits on his politics:

Surprisingly good interview with Marc Maron in which he shares some pivotal moments in the development of his political ideology. https://youtu.be/aS4HHJWGMEY

Neoliberalism is fanning the flames of fascismPt 2

The Occupation of the American Mind

*Dogs (from Animals, 1977)

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.

You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,

You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.

And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,

You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.

And after a while, you can work on points for style.

Like the club tie, and the firm handshake, a certain look in the eye and an easy smile.

You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,

So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

(2nd verse)

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.

You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older.

And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south, Hide your head in the sand.

Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer.

(Middle)

And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.

And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.

And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.

So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone, Dragged down by the stone.

(3rd verse)

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused. Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.

Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.

If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending

That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.

And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner

And everything's done under the sun, And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

(Outro)

Who was born in a house full of pain

Who was trained not to spit in the fan

Who was told what to do by the man

Who was broken by trained personnel

Who was fitted with collar and chain

Who was given a pat on the back

Who was breaking away from the pack

Who was only a stranger at home

Who was ground down in the end

Who was found dead on the phone

Who was dragged down by the stone.

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submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by Tormato@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net
 

Ward is one of the residents at Ridgeview participating in a rent strike after new owners of the park announced they were raising rents by six percent. "I moved here because it's basically the most affordable living," said Ward, who is disabled and living off of a fixed income. The plight of residents at Ridgeview is playing out nationwide as institutional investors, led by private equity firms and real estate trusts and sometimes funded by pension funds, swoop in to buy mobile home parks. …

Residents, about half of whom are seniors or disabled people on fixed incomes, put up with the first two increases. They hoped the latest owner, Cook Properties, would address the bourbon-colored drinking water, sewage bubbling into their bathtubs and the pothole-filled roads.

When that didn't happen and a new lease with a 6% increase was imposed this year, they formed an association. About half the residents launched a rent strike in May, prompting Cook Properties to send out about 30 eviction notices.

“All they care about is raising the rent because they only care about the money,” said Jeremy Ward, 49, who gets by on just over $1,000 a month in disability payments after his legs suffered nerve damage in a car accident.

He was recently fined $10 for using a leaf blower. “I’m disabled," he said. "You guys aren’t doing your job and I get a violation?”

Blackstone company towns, except they don’t make anything. Rentier class will ultimately kick off the revolution.

The Torture Never Stops…

 

First, I was told by a total MSNBC-watching, immigrant neoliberal mom that she took out a book on Kamala Harris for her son. Made me look at her different after that. Contempt then gave way to pity.

The propaganda machine relentlessly churns on, while we have this place.

What’s the latest in The Rat? I bet that overly ambitious robot mf-er is gearing up big-time for another run.

Get me the fuck out of this surveillance police state, capitalist dystopia!

At least my kids know better when they see cops, the flag or advertising, all of which are suspect to them now.

 

Starting to get that feeling in the first 26 pages. It’s great and have wanted to read it for a while now. But wondering what the take is here on it overall.

The line he literally wrote about the population size of Russia being unsuitable for socialism is like verbatim RW criticism used today and typically repeated when saying that it while it may work in small European counties it won’t here.

Need also to brush up on the Russian Revolution, having only read some of John Reed’s account.

 

It’s just unbelievable.

Is there really no way on here to edit a photo?

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