It’s not that the entire mainstream media is in on it, only the billionaires that own it. The editors and journalists go against their best interests because they have no one else who will pay them. The liberal press isn’t profitable, so the billionaires are trying to make them accomplices in their own destruction.

Rotate the compass 45° clockwise, name the new vertical axis to state economy vs private economy, and name the new horizontal axis to left and right. At the far left(green) you have total destruction of hierarchy and flattening of power inequality, while at the far right(blue) you have absolute hierarchy and centralized power.

State centralized economies(red) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering government officials to become powerful lords. Privatized economies(purple/yellow) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering capitalists to become powerful lords. Trying to reach either the top or bottom tip of the diamond leads you the right tip.

Horseshoe theory kind of applies to Marxist-Leninists like its pro-capitalists creators imagined, but they didn’t realize that they were the other end of the horseshoe. This is because both capitalism and the state are the dangers. The problem with both stems from allowing the unrestricted accumulation of power.

Government officials use political capital, while capitalists use economic capital. They can feed off of each other, with the rich helping politicians and the politicians helping the rich. My preferred solution to both is to redistribute capital from the rich directly to the poor, growing the middle class by putting a ceiling and floor on the rich and the poor.

It’s the subjective experience of not seeing the wage growth themselves, combined with things not being acceptable for a longer time than Biden or Trump’s presidency. Things are improving right now, but haven’t caught up to people having economic security. When you’ve sunk deep enough, it takes a longer period of rising to finally catch a breath. Basically, the current growth must sustain for longer to get more people into a good position. If things continue on their current path, people will calm down.

It’s also true that necessities like housing have inflated in price far faster than other goods, again, for longer than a decade. Unnecessary goods might be cheaper than ever, but you NEED things like shelter and there are NO alternatives. Despite good competition, the demand is inelastic, so limited excess supply translates to soaring prices, plus, other factors are at play.

It also isn’t a good idea ignore subjective experiences in general. Not only are people almost always right to be unhappy on some level, invalidating their lived experiences isn’t a good idea. Democrats will not be successful if they don’t listen to people’s displeasure. Basic economic measures are essential, but not sufficient to make voters happier.

Sorry, but the protection of rights requires that governments limit freedom. All societies and nations on earth do this. If given absolute freedom, some would kill and brutalize to gain power, forcing everyone who wants to avoid this to band together and enforce rules that prevent that behavior. This is the biggest reason to rationally want a government. Even if you believe rights aren’t social constructs themselves, everyone knows they must be fought for.

Some tankies use the fact that governments inherently limit freedom to claim all governments are authoritarian, and therefore states like the PRC and the USSR are no better than liberal democracies. Your definition of authoritarianism supports the bullshit arguments tankies make.

Authoritarianism is a sliding scale, and not every limit on freedom is equivalent in contributing to a country being more authoritarian. Not having the freedom to kill others without consequence doesn’t make a country very authoritarian. Not having the freedom to publicly disagree with the government is a large factor in a state being authoritarian.

Communism and socialism do not necessitate having no freedom of speech or bodily autonomy. Communism, as defined by Marx, was the final stage socialism and anarchistic in nature.

The idea that communism is always authoritarian uses the idea of communism popularized by Marxist-Leninist movements, where dissent is highly controlled and limited. In reality, these regimes were socialist at best, calling themselves communists to claim that only their version of socialism would deliver Marx’s communism. Even to the authoritarian communists themselves, their states never achieved communism at any point.

I didn’t blame Israel for Hamas killing civilians, I blamed them for letting hamas get so powerful that they could execute such a devastating attack.

Israel does not care about pushing civilians towards Hamas, as they have mostly done just that for the last few decades. They refused to support more moderate Palestinians forces, instead causing economic hardship for all Palestinians, while stealing territory from the West Bank where Hamas has less power. If they didn’t want a humanitarian crisis, they wouldn’t have blockaded essential resources. They demanded over a million people evacuate from half of Gaza in 24 hours, something that would be nearly impossible in even wealthy countries with functioning governments. Even if Gaza had a government willing to move those people, the request would still be impossible.

When the government originally said they were “fighting animals,” they did not specify Hamas. In fact, they were telling all Palestinians that they would be cut off from essentials. Bibi and his allies have been trying their hardest to make Israel a less free country, an explicit Jewish theocracy. The idea that the “free world,” would speak up is laughable when fascist parties are serious threats in every liberal democracy. The Republicans in the US have been even more explicitly genocidal against Palestinians than Israel’s government, dehumanizing all Muslims and inspiring hate crimes. It’s nothing new as they have been demanding trans people be banned from public life for the last few years. Most Democrats refuse to speak up enough, as they value their middle eastern ally way too much. The right wing in Israel want to steal Palestinian land and force the people into exile, as they have no sense of irony.

I don’t think he’s calling the last two decades genocide, but he is calling the last two weeks genocide. The language is genocidal, refusing to allow Palestinians a way to escape is murderous, and the limited aid coming from Egypt won’t be enough to keep Palestinians afloat. If kept up, the blockade of necessary resources will kill more people in the coming months than the air strikes ever could.