bearboiblake [he/him]

🏳️‍🌈 hi there, i’m blake! i’m a silly gay bear 🌀

  • 35 Posts
  • 1.67K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: February 25th, 2025
  • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialtoA Boring Dystopia@lemmy.world•Thousands could be coerced into "unpaid labor" in Louisiana under new bill | HB 211 would make sleeping outdoors in public illegal and force unhoused people to "choose" between prisons and workhousesEnglish
    341·
    1 month ago

    The media are owned and controlled by the ruling class - the same class of people who also own and control for-profit prisons, and also own and control elected politicians through lobbying.

    As I always say, under capitalism, democracy means the power of the state is auctioned off to the highest bidder.

    How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?

    Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.

    Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.

    The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.

    So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.

    To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.

    That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.

    But can't capitalism can be reformed?

    While, of course, some laws to reform capitalism can be passed, and would definitely alleviate the worst harm caused, over the long term, capitalism cannot be reformed.

    Any attempts to reform, democratize or socialize capitalism may yield short term improvements to quality of life of the working class, but if capitalism is not abolished, it will always reassert itself, and capitalism inevitably leads towards fascism.

    The New Deal prevented the US from sliding into fascism in the 20th century, so that’s ultimately a good thing, but it did not go far enough, and that’s why we have the resurgence of fascism in the 21st century America.

  • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Who recognizes who around here?English
    13·
    2 months ago

    This is gonna sound really terrible, but… I generally don’t recognize people by name so much… maybe something dyslexia related? I think there are a couple of rare exceptions, like the user with two letters and then four numbers in their name.

    I recognize lots of avatars, as I scroll around, but I don’t generally register the names or even descriptions of the images, just kind of like… my brain just remembers purplish-blob shape, red glowy circle, monochromatic goblet.

    Oh, and dancing banana, and blue name furry. I actually remember his, it’s Kolanki I think

    All of you users with no avatar, go get one so I remember you all please! It’s an accessability aid in a way :p

  • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Who recognizes who around here?English
    177·
    2 months ago

    Flying Squid was an auto-block for me, as soon as I made my account. He always used to ban me because he couldn’t win arguments with me in the comments.

    Edit to spill the tea:

    Hello Lemmy.world admin team, I am writing to complain about the conduct of the moderator FlyingSquid.

    On two occasions I have had negative interactions with FlyingSquid on the /world community, both times he has used, or threatened to use, his moderator powers against me, because of his personal disagreements with me.

    I am happy to refer you to both conversations:

    link 1

    In this conversation, we had a long conversation about laws and politics. Personally, I feel he acted in bad faith on several occasions throughout our conversation, in my opinion, he was trying to bait me into getting upset so he could righteously ban me.

    And your silly prediction is wrong. I am not going to ban you for this despite the incivility rule violation. I am just going to stop talking to you.

    But you have just earned yourself the eye of a moderator who will not tolerate your rule-breaking with anyone else. Including if I see any in your recent history.

    More recently, we had a conversation today:

    link 2

    Again, in this conversation, he was, in my opinion, highly rude, dismissive and arguing in bad faith. He even admitted as much. I said I wasn’t interested in talking with him, he continued to push me for an answer, and then said:

    You didn’t let me down, because I knew you didn’t actually have an answer

    I completely understand that sometimes people get heated or struggle to deal with arguments where they care about the topic, so I am totally willing to look past that. However, I am not willing to look past his abuse of power.

    What a bullshit cop-out. I have asked you multiple times what the next step is and you’re now claiming I’m not interested?

    That’s two lies you’ve told about me now. That is coming close to trolling. This is seemingly a pattern for FlyingSquid - goading people he disagrees with into becoming frustrated with his bad-faith arguments, then accusing them of “trolling” when the people he experiences push-back, and using that as an excuse to ban someone he disagrees with.

    I was writing a response to his post pointing out that he was arguing in bad faith when I accidentally submitted it half-way through, when he suspended me for “trolling”.

    I do not believe that he has the disposition to be a moderator if he gets so upset at a polite discussion that he feels compelled to use moderator powers to silence dissent. I go out of my way to be as polite, kind and compassionate as possible and to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I do not believe we should allow those in a position of trust or power to use that to settle their personal disputes. I know there has been some issues with that recently regarding the vegan community so I am hopeful that you will do the right thing and either remove his moderator powers or at the very least let him know that his abuse of powers is not tolerated.

    I would prefer not to make a community spectacle out of this, hence the email.

    Thanks and all the best,

  • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialto196@lemmy.blahaj.zone•rule needsEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    So, for context, I have pretty severe PTSD, on bad days I have entire hours that go missing due to dissociation and the like, and my experience with EMDR is that it is wholly inappropriate for the treatment of extremely traumatic memories, and runs a pretty heavy risk of re-traumatizing.

    Re-processing traumatic memories is a great way to overcome them, but I think that it is best done with a very slow, very careful approach, at a pace set by, and comfortable to the person going through the process.

    EMDR is an attempt to kinda “brute force” the process, rather than slowly peeling away the layers and making the traumatic memory accessible and bearable a little at a time and reprocessing it that way.

    Just my thoughts and experiences, not a professional.

  • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialto196@lemmy.blahaj.zone•rule needsEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I’m not really a fan of approaches like EMDR or CBT, I’m sure it has helped some people, but personally, I think just normal talking therapies where you discuss and explore your feelings in a validating, safe environment is the best approach, no gimmicks, no “one neat trick” bullshit, just talking through your fears, feelings, worries, without judgment.

    anyways, sorry to hear that shit is bad where you are, I really hope stuff gets better for you soon <3

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