Objection

In addition to valuing nerds as a way to win against the Soviets, there was also a latent fear of a revolution in America that would be supported by and follow the example of the USSR, which created an understanding that the masses had to be kept placated. And if there was anything too awful about society, it would be criticized by the USSR for the sake of gaining soft power, which provided an additional incentive to fix it. Regardless of all the problems that the USSR had, a world order with competing powers (multipolarity) seems to me to be the only way of keeping the worst abuses of any power in check.

This is very true. A lot of it comes down to chauvinism and, "we're #1." If an American sees a problem with the US government, then they'll conclude that it is a problem inherent to all existing, or even all possible governments. When it does something bad, the worst thing people will say is, "This is like something you'd see in [rival country]." In this way, even while criticizing it, they still reaffirm their belief in their own superiority. And if you deviate from that and point out various ways in which the country is uniquely bad, it means you just knee-jerk hate everything about the country and want it to be bad. We are thoroughly cooked.

How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country?

The prevailing economic wisdom after WWII was Keynesianism, which says that the government should increase government spending when unemployment is high and decrease it when inflation is high. What happened in the 70's and 80's was that the economy started experiencing both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time, "shrinkflation," which wasn't supposed to happen according to Keynesianism, and which it had no real response to. The reason it was happening (at least from a Marxist perspective) was that the US had already developed in the ways that saw the highest returns, and there simply wasn't as much new ground to cover - this is what's meant by "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall." Regardless, the government was faced with a decision of which problem to focus on between unemployment and inflation - and it chose inflation.

The phenomenon of shrinkflation started under Nixon, who attempted to fight it with price controls and taking us off the gold standard, which was perhaps the most anyone ever did. Ford had no idea what he was doing and just asked people to spend less.

And then we got Carter, and Carter does not get nearly enough hate for his role in this. Carter chose to confront inflation rather than unemployment, the real beginning of "supply side economics" that Reagan would take further. Carter's whole deal was "restoring the dignity of the office" after Watergate and his focus was on individual morality. His message was essentially, you're going to have less purchasing power, but it's ok because we can seek fulfillment in other ways, outside of the economic sphere. He marked the transformation of the Democratic party away from representing the interests of labor and towards the beast that it's become today, with it's obsession over norms and procedure and technocracy.

The result of Carter's messaging and policy was one of the greatest blowout losses in history against Ronald Reagan. Reagan would do all the same things as Carter, but he at least had the decency to lie about it. He focused on how much more you'd be able to afford with cheaper goods, conveniently ignoring the fact that with lower wages, purchasing power would actually decrease. However, thanks to the Democratic party completely abandoning labor and the common people, there was no real pushback against this, there was no alternative explanation or solution or criticism of the broad direction of policy. In fact, economic policy was moved out of the sphere of democratic accountability altogether by leaving it to the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. Instead, the culture war kicked off and that's what elections would be about from then on.

Why did the Democratic party abandon unions? Because the unions like the AFL/CIO stripped themselves of power and radicalism by purging communists during the Red Scare. The Carter administration didn't view labor vs capital in terms of the fundamental struggle of society but as just another set of competing interest groups and lobbyists, which is honestly pretty much how the unions saw themselves and wanted to be seen anyway.

So what happens when more and more important questions are taken out of the hands of the voters, who then watch conditions gradually decline? Well, the voters get mad about declining conditions - and at the same time, get dumber from not being engaged in any important questions. There's a sense that we can just fuck around and do whatever because our actions don't have consequences, because most of the time what we say and believe seems to have no real effect on policy anyway. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not to keep arming Israel and bombing Yemen or on whether to raise or lower interest rates or anything like that - the only thing we get to vote on is stuff like whether trans women can play sports.

Trump's popularity is very easy to understand in that context - he is a rebellion against that declining status quo and a desperate attempt to reassert the power of elected officials over technocratic institutions. Of course, since the left has been purged and is devoid of power, this rebellion can only come from the right. A similar thing happened in Iran (which Carter also fucked up btw but that's not important right now), where after being installed by the CIA, the shah hunted down and exterminated everyone on the left, and then conditions declined and people wanted change, only that change had to come from the right because the left was powerless. And if the American left can't materialize and offer an alternative vision, both to Trump and, more importantly, to the failed bipartisan status quo that existed before him, then we're headed towards the same future.

What are we supposed to do, not put golf courses all over the desert?

So their contract states that they'll be paid $0.50/hr more than the wages they negotiated in their contract. Got it, thanks for clearing that up.

They've forced children as young as 6 to defend themselves in court with no right to an attorney, and it's been going on for years. The right to counsel isn't applied to immigration cases. It's truly insane, kangaroo court shit.

If the interpretation that they don't need a warrant stands, it means that ICE could walk into anybody's home, abduct their child, accuse them of being an illegal immigrant, do a show trial, and then ship them off to Guantanamo Bay where no press is allowed. Or, for all we know, to Little St. James or anywhere else.

I can't tell if that's a yes or a no to the question of whether the "we" that gets paid more than union members includes union members.

The union members are included in the "we" that contractually makes $0.50/hr more than... union members?

If you had told me a year ago that one party had to stop holding town halls because they were afraid of their constituents, I would've assumed it would've been about heavily armed far-right militias intimidating Democrats. People can downplay it but it does seem kinda significant to me that Republicans have effectively been deplatformed by their own constituents, even if the specific example in the article (a town of 4,500 people) is pretty insignificant. Combined with the narrative shifting to, "things will get materially worse in the short term, but that's good, actually," it's starting to shape up to a potentially big shift in the midterms.

Extremely unlikely. Not for another 20 years or so, worst case scenario, and by then they probably won't care about now.

First off, there's way too many people who criticize the government to arrest everyone, secondly it's completely unnecessary. Complaining about the government doesn't really do anything other than allowing people to vent their frustrations and feel more content. It's the same way Trump obviously isn't going to "end elections forever" like people say, virtually every country in the world has elections, regardless of how actually democratic they are, because they're a nice little ritual that lets you feel free and in control. It would be like saying that Trump is going to knock down the Statue of Liberty - he doesn't have to.

Now, there are reasons to establish more secure lines of communication, like if you're involved in actual organizing or if you're either helping people do illegal things or planning to help people do things that could potentially become illegal - for example, shipping Plan B or trans hormones to people in red states. Laws in some red states about "pushing transgenderism on minors" could theoretically be interpreted so broadly that if you post information or supportive messages on a public forum and a minor in a red state happens to see it, they could try to come after you for it - but that would probably be found unconstitutional.

Using secure lines of communication for routine, everyday stuff helps keep those lines secure by generating more chaff they'd have to sort through, as well as familiarizing yourself with it and getting more people on board. However, you shouldn't scatter to the wind preemptively and self-censor, beyond just not fed-posting.

The people the contract is with, maybe all employees of the company have the agreement.

That's literally what I'm saying.

It only works in USA and very few sectors in Europe where sector agreements are not mandatory by law.

I’d argue that it also doesn’t work in USA, since the companies end up spending more money on avoiding an agreement than what they’d save on salaries. They also waste a lot of time and resources on the individual bargaining, which provides no value for neither the company or the employee.

This is very silly and idealistic. Just because it's underhanded doesn't mean it doesn't work. Take a company like Amazon, it has a massive number of employees all across the country, who are not unionized. If employees at one location do attempt to form a union, the company isn't just looking at the immediate, short term cost-benefit of letting it happen vs busting it (even to the point of potentially closing down the location entirely), they're also looking at the potential precedent that it would set, the proof of concept. If they allow one location to unionize, they all might unionize - as A Bug's Life explains, "It's about keeping those ants in line."

It absolutely works in the US which is why they do it. Europe has historically had more organized and more class conscious workers, compared to the US with all our "temporarily embarrassed billionaires." I get that it may sound nice to say that employers reap what they sow, that if they bust unions they will naturally face the consequences of their actions - but unfortunately, that's not how the world works. Historically, many people got rich off of slavery, colonialism, and blatant, horrific exploitation, far worse than the conditions we have today, they lived and died for generations in wealth and prosperity. Why then, is it so hard to imagine that people who bust unions and underpay their employees could profit from it today?

If the employers pay people more to not join a union, the union might even say: “Mission achieved without a fight. See ya’ll next time inflation catches up.”

This is so dangerously naive and idealistic. You're talking about giving up worker power because you trust market forces to come back around to our benefit. You're completely ignoring the life-or-death nature of the power struggle between the classes. Any union that has any power to stop such an arrangement should come out in full force to stop it from happening, and if they're powerless to stop it, then they should be desperately looking at how to change things to strengthen their position. It's absolutely insane to try to say that it would be a "win" for the union, to the point that frankly I have to question your motives for saying it. Letting the company but off union members out of the union would destroy or significantly weaken the union, and the union is the only thing checking the power of the company, and if that balance of power shifts far enough, it may be impossible or extremely difficult for the union to recover.