- Housing
- Student Loans
- Medical Care
- Child care/The cost of children (assuming that’s something you want to do not making a value judgement)
- Education
- Wages/“JOBS™©®”/“THE ECONOMY™©®”
- Inflation/Cost of Living/Value of currency
- Just the political issues we all face but are the best “hot button” issues
All that sort of stuff. I’m not minimizing stuff like Palestine of course, but I don’t recall in the seemingly endless 2020-2024 election campaign. I don’t really think I heard any sort of real “kitchen table issues”. I feel like even the most basic political issues have been obfuscated or ignored. It feels like these very political issues have been removed from the sphere of political discourse.
I don’t know what my larger point is, but it feels strange to think that for example I haven’t heard a single mention of something like higher education costs for example. This isn’t just a dunk on Democrats either, though it is worth saying “get fucked losers”, but I think since about 2020 I haven’t heard a damn thing about healthcare or housing in a real political way from the big two or the media in general.
Again this isn’t to meant to minimize any other real problems either, not trying to “this is more important than that”, just saying I haven’t political people talk about politics all the while not being able to escape the political dimension
I think it’s because the DNC didn’t select Kamala via a primary, so she never had to make any campaign promises to the progressive wing of the party, there were never any debates or opposition campaigning for any of these issues that would cause them to show up in mainstream media. Every piece of Kamala’s campaign and planned administration was sold to donors from the start and totally tailored for them.
I’ve been thinking of this a lot and it’s really why Trump won so hard isn’t it? Right wing media people blamed it on all sorts of wrong shit but they acknowledged that there’s a problem with everyday people’s finances
That’s pretty much exactly it, if you ever talk to Trump supporters.
Yeah racism, bigotry, etc is their solution; but they mostly care about why groceries are expensive, why rent is expensive, why they can apply for a thousand jobs and get one singular interview for a job that doesn’t pay enough for anything. Dems failed to do the bare minimum, acknowledge that the vast majority of people in the US are struggling due to systemic issues. Trump acknowledged that and offered solutions, even if they’re horrifying. Even the trans stuff and other “culture war” items are rooted in financial stress.
Even the trans stuff and other “culture war” items are rooted in financial stress.
Yep. We saw this before in Hitler’s rise to power too, and we’re watching as the libs repeat it
Gramsci
These are the days of subscription campaigns. The editors and administrators of bourgeois newspapers tidy up their display windows, paint some varnish on their shop signs and appeal for the attention of the passer-by (that is, the readers) to their wares. Their wares are newspapers of four or six pages that go out every day or evening in order to inject in the mind of the reader ways of feeling and judging the facts of current politics appropriate for the producers and sellers of the press.
We would like to discuss, with the workers especially, the importance and seriousness of this apparently innocent act, which consists in choosing the newspaper you subscribe to. It is a choice full of snares and dangers which must be made consciously, applying criteria and after mature reflection.
Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation.
But the beautiful – that is the ugly – thing is this: that instead of asking for money from the bourgeois class to support it in its pitiless work in its favor, the bourgeois newspapers manage to be paid by…the same laboring classes that they always combat. And the laboring class pays; punctually, generously.
Hundreds of thousands of workers regularly and daily give their pennies to the bourgeois newspapers, thus assisting in creating their power. Why? If you were to ask this of the first worker you were to see on the tram or the street with a bourgeois paper spread before him you would hear: “Because I need to hear about what happening.” And it would never enter his head that the news and the ingredients with which it is cooked are exposed with an art that guides his ideas and influences his spirit in a given direction. And yet he knows that this newspaper is opportunist, and that one is for the rich, that the third, the fourth, the fifth is tied to political groups with interests diametrically opposed to his.
And so every day this same worker is able to personally see that the bourgeois newspapers tell even the simplest of facts in a way that favors the bourgeois class and damns the working class and its politics. Has a strike broken out? The workers are always wrong as far as the bourgeois newspapers are concerned. Is there a demonstration? The demonstrators are always wrong, solely because they are workers they are always hotheads, rioters, hoodlums. The government passes a law? It’s always good, useful and just, even if it’s…not. And if there’s an electoral, political or administrative struggle? The best programs and candidates are always those of the bourgeois parties.
And we’re aren’t even talking about all the facts that the bourgeois newspapers either keep quiet about, or travesty, or falsify in order to mislead, delude or maintain in ignorance the laboring public. Despite this, the culpable acquiescence of the worker to the bourgeois newspapers is limitless. We have to react against this and recall the worker to the correct evaluation of reality. We have to say and repeat that the pennies tossed there distractedly into the hands of the newsboy are projectiles granted to a bourgeois newspaper, which will hurl it, at the opportune moment, against the working masses.
If the workers were to be persuaded of this most elementary of truths they would learn to boycott the bourgeois press with the same unity and discipline that the bourgeoisie boycott the newspapers of the workers, that is, the Socialist press. Don’t give financial assistance to the bourgeois press, which is your adversary. This is what should be our battle cry in this moment that is characterized by the subscription campaigns of all the bourgeois newspapers. Boycott them, boycott them, boycott them!
from Newspapers and the Workers by Antonio Gramsci (1916)
I was just thinking the other day about how back in 2022 during the baby formula shortage it seemed like Democrats didn’t fucking care and talked about fucking Ukraine instead.
Then I had kind of a hunch about something, looked it up, and bazinga! Turns out infant formula usage skews based on socioeconomic status/race.
Turns out infant formula usage skews based on socioeconomic status/race.
In which way?
Sorry, I don’t have kids.
Poorer families generally rely more on baby formula. If you are working full time, it is not really possible to produce enough milk for all the times a baby needs to eat, especially considering that you need to eat good nutritional food as well, which is expensive.
Baby formula is a real fuck for poor families, because it is real expensive but also needed, and people can be very judgemental about it because not breastfeeding is seen as a choice (because it’s “free”). It’s another moment where the sadism of poor social policy is individualized as personal failure.
The stigma about formula is really awful. In addition to the socioeconomic considerations, some women just don’t have sufficient milk production. So now they have feelings of guilt and failure because they can’t feed their baby, that is then reinforced by society saying that it is “the right way”. Fed is best is often repeated, but only goes so far to counteract the background radiation
Pumping and storing milk is a middle class privilege.
My sister bought a $500 milker and separate storage fridge so she could plan out her pump schedule and meals for her newborn. She also had the kind of email job that has a private pumping room with plush chairs, dim lighting, and nobody asking questions as to where you were for the last hour.
The average mother of 3 working at Taco Bell needs to resort to using formula
The closest thing we got was Trump making fries at a McDonald’s.
