I’m going to predict the future exactly as it will happen: either the US empire is ended and humanity survives it’s inevitable fall or the empire drags us all down with it in a nuclear fireball. Pick one.

*freedom fighters

But it’s weird like you can use things without owning them.

The medieval monks order of the Franciscans claimed exactly that and they gained quite some influence, land, buildings, and even money while claiming absolute poverty (not even collective ownership). It all relied on the claim, that the Pope was the true owner. But that also put the Pope in a difficult position as a merely worldly ruler of questionable morals, whom the Franciscans would deny the power to overrule previous church law. John XXII put an end to that by simply denying ownership of any of the stuff the Franciscans claimed to be “only using”.

No, never personally. But I’m convinced it was meant absolutely literally. The Jesus movement was a hardcore apocalyptic cult drawing many members (like for example Jesus) from older apocalyptic cults like the one of John the Baptist, who was executed for leading a cult. Everyone knew this, so anyone who still joined must have known full well what it entails. It seems fair and consistent with dogma to say, that Jesus went in it with a death wish. But all the other followers must have been pretty hardcore as well. A core tenet of the movement was preparing for the imminent kingdom of God - the end of the world. They are very clear about the kingdom coming within their lifetime, so any possessions would have been superfluous.

And then there’s the material component: the Romans had raised taxes immensely, mostly collecting them in the country but only investing in the cities. The Jesus movement was made up of losers of this process (that’s why cooperators and “tax collectors” are painted by them as the worst kind of sinners). They didn’t have much to hold on to. Too bad their revolutionary tactic came down to simply declaring what ever they wished to happen was about to be caused by devine intervention any moment now.

Freedom of expression in a small village in Bavaria? Sure all those Nazis, Christian conservatives and neo-cons will just be absolutely thrilled to welcome non-white queer non-binary trans people to their October fest and share unhealthy amounts of alcohol with them while dancing to terrible folk music.

Westerners do tend to accept personal guilt, but tend to not accept that other countries can simply be better. This kind of western exceptionalism is an aspect of western cultural hegemony, but as material reality continues to develop the contradictions make themselves more naked and obvious.

I can’t reply to all of your comments, but you’re often so on point, I love it.

Just from this list, Cuba is probably closest though, right?

I’d join. Ads do nothing but damage to society. How much? Well they manipulate people to make suboptimal choices and waste at least as much as the advertisers budget (on average), or they would stop doing it. So it’s at least 775 billion dollars per year. Rising annually. Enough to end world hunger and homelessness.

This is a great read! Thank you!

Depends. What does the pizza index say? How busy are the fast food places surrounding the white house? /s

If I’m physically safe, I think between 8 and 10 depending on my energy level. If I’m threatened or hurt in a fight, still up to 8 at least. We can love our enemies and still fight them with all the force necessary (but no more).

Often this “evil” like hate is born out of fear or some other vulnerability so you can find the underlying emotion and emphasize with that instead. Oh the other hand, what I find really hard to emphasize with in people with fascist viewpoints is their lack of empathy. Like when they are not acting out of being afraid or hurt or anything, just really clinging to privilege and being indifferent towards racialized people.

That’s ridiculous! Falangists practically invented fascism.

Okay, but how does this relate to the meme about prison population?

Yes, but there are bosses right now. And they would still be very powerful, even if they lost control of the state. They don’t care about what’s best for everyone. They care about what’s best for them. They would still control all those machines, institutions, money, private armies, the media and they would have the total support of all the capitalist militaries of the world, ready to come in and completely crush horizontal power and suppress mutualism. So the class of bosses wouldn’t magically disappear over night.

If people organized (either “horizontally” or otherwise) to form some thing, some kind of organization or institution or loose federation of grassroots cooperatives or whatever you want to call it, that would be able to suppress this boss class and their military and everything. That thing would be what marxist leninists call a state by definition. Because when we talk about a state, we mean nothing more or less than a weapon able to force the will of one class upon another. Even if that will is just:“stop forcing your will on us non-bosses”. How horizontal it is internally dosn’t matter at all for the definition of a state.

Not at all. The Spanish revolutionaries were communists. Some in the communist party, but even the Spanish anarchists called what they fought for “libertarian communism”.

I’m happy for you and your dad but you say

“Sometimes I wish you were still Republican, so I’d have someone to yell at.”

as if there weren’t still plenty of very good reasons to yell at Democrats…