A group of friends vow to do whatever it takes to stop evil corporate overlords from destroying the Earth. How? They aren’t sure. They explore various strategies, but so far nothing has worked. As they build a resistance movement, those who love them the most can be their biggest obstacles.
© Stephanie McMillan - All Rights Reserved.
Mike du Jour by Mike Lester
Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler
Comments (10) (Please sign in to comment)
Radish
said, 8 months ago
Property is theft.
French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said in 1840
Stephanie McMillan
said, 8 months ago
Understanding where we are…
In every situation, we use theory to see patterns and tendencies, discern trajectories (insofar as that’s possible) and decide on appropriate responses and strategies—to determine on any given day whether it‘s better to feign compliance, take up arms, or stay in bed with the blankets over our heads. We might still manage to fight the enemy even if we’re not in control of the theories guiding us, but we’ll be blindfolded, flailing in all directions. Emotion sets us in motion, and willpower fuels us, but without navigational tools we’re lost.
Theory is the topography of our strategic map, determining our starting point and destination, where we lay down paths, and how we focus and direct our energy. At the start of our journey, we don’t need to get bogged down in ultra-complicated minutiae…better to zoom out for an overview of the major contours. As we develop our theoretical skill (which takes practice, like anything else), we can zoom in to explore ever more detailed levels of abstraction. One can pursue any concept to infinite complexity, but first we should sketch some basic outlines.
Ms. Ima said, 8 months ago
Or we can use the existing freedoms America guarantees to pursue personal dreams and achieve goals to the extent of failing or becoming extremely successful. For an individual to serve people instead of our own selfish revolutionary idioms. The Constitution assures a person has to freedom to speak his or her mind. A revolution would destroy the Constitution and remove that freedom of speech under threat of death. Revolution for revolution’s sake makes no sense at all.
Fourcrows said, 8 months ago
@Ms. Ima
Wow, Ima, I’m impressed. You posted something I like and can agree with! The Mayans must be right!
Seriously, though, why not a smaller revolution within the current structure? Isn’t this why women and non-whites have the right to vote? The Constitution was designed to be flexible and to be amended as America changed and went into the future. This is what separates us from countries like Saudi Arabia. Capitalism means everyone has the right to succeed based on their own drives and abilities. But what happens when those who control the money choose who has that right? Think back to the robber barons. If only 12 families are controlling all of the money and making all of the decisions, how are the rest of us free? Are you comfortable going back to the days of the “Company Store” in the name of defending pure capitalism?
Trebuchet said, 8 months ago
Who said anything about a revolution to destory Freedom of speech?
Americans are not as free as they think they are. Most are enslaved to their jobs, mortgages or the crime-ridden neighborhood they were born in, as well as a continuously degrading enviroment, that even effects the wealthy.
Capitalsim cares nothing for the environment, except that which it can extract from it.
Captialism itself is a form of slavery, even to the captialists themselves.
True freedom will happen when we destroy it.
Night-Gaunt49 said, 8 months ago
@Ms. Ima
So you like the way things are going? Our freedoms are being removed like the right to birth control and health care. Clinics are being legislated into oblivion via laws designed to do so. Even though the laws say women can have such things. We have elements of the top 1% writing laws that benefit only them. 275% benefits to the rest of us getting little or in the case of the very poor——paying more in taxes.
joe waskiewicz
said, 8 months ago
Go ahead destroy it, because we know all those other economic systems worked Sooooooo well. Get real people the USSR, Cuba, East Europe, Red China, etc. have proven communism doesn’t work. Now western Europe has proven Socialism eventual fails. The Middle East proved that Dictatorships eventually fall and now they’re trying Theocracy, glad I don’t live there. So go ahead and try to destroy the only economic system that works over time, Capitalism. God, pull you heads out of your anuses and get real.
Trebuchet said, 8 months ago
@joe waskiewicz You are the one who needs to pull your head out of your anus, because you have been brainwashed by the corporate controlled propaganda.
I know its not easy to accept, I had to work hard to break my own conditioning as well.
The USSR/eastern block propagandized that they had achieved socialism. The west furthered that propaganda by pointing at their failures and calling it “communism.” In actual fact the USSR only ever was able to achieve a state controlled version of capitalism, further hampered by a militarism/imperialism that wouldn’t go away from their czarist period.
China on the other hand has also adopted a state controlled capitalist model, and is having more economic success than the USSR with it, though it has not created any thing even close to socialism for its people, and is destroying the world with its economic “success.”
Western Europe, also never had socialism. They merely attempted to incorporate some elements of the so called “social democracy” into their capitalist systems. The largest banking and investment firms and many large multinational corporations have been doing just fine for decades in a very non-socialist Western Europe.
No, Capitalism does not work over time. Over time it accumulates more and more wealth at the top. Because it constantly seeks to produce more things more efficiently, it creates an overproduction of materials, and must find alternate ways to sell the overproduction, so it then creates debt which it can sell in order to allow the consumer base to buy the overproduction. In the long term this is unsustainable, as all of the recent banking crises are proving. Also capitalism regards both labor and the environment as resources to be exploited for the profits they can deliver. A democratically controlled economy would value humans and their environment as a higher priority than profit.
True socialism and true democracy (and even true anarchy—sometimes called libertarian-socialism) are one and indistinguishable from one another. It would represent the pinnacle of human social achievement, since its never yet been applied on a national scale. What the United States calls democracy is laughable. Its a corporate-military oligarchy, with a bit of democratic show sprinkled in to distract the public while the world is being destroyed.
Ms. Ima said, 7 months ago
Socialism and communism’s entire Constitution:
Freedom for me and none for thee
Ms. Ima said, 7 months ago
@Night-Gaunt49
I do like how things are going. America has inexpensive gasoline and abundant food. Taxes are low compared to socialist states (taxes for people who actually pay them).
No one except dems at election time talk about removing the ability to remove unborn babies. Women in Ireland actually had to go to the UK to get abortions (horror of horrors! Abortion illegal in Ireland????).
If you don’t like the laws we have run for office and change them. But then again, I’m talking to someone who has no power to change his own life and thinks he can change other’s lives.