Mastodawn

Sir Rochard 'Dock' Bunson May 22, 2023

Josie (6 years old), Bertha (6 years old) and Sophie (10 years old) worked regularly at the Maggioni Canning Company. Work began at 4 AM and the three would make from $9 to $15 a week. Sophie would do six pots of oyster a day and her mother who also worked with her said "She don't go to school. Works all the time."

Through such photos, Lewis Hine documented the harsh working conditions borne by thousands of children, who were sent to work soon after they could walk, and were paid based on how many buckets of oysters they shucked daily.

He covered around 50,000 miles a year, photographing children from Chicago to Florida working in coal mines and factories.

These photos helped to raise an outcry against child labor and made the American public become widely aware of the scope of the problem. This resulted in the establishment of organizations such as the National Child Labor Committee, in 1904, which led the fight against child labor.

MugsysRapSheet Blog ☑️May 22, 2023

@SrRochardBunson
And don't forget there are Republicans TODAY who think "Child Labor" should be made legal again, actually arguing "it BENEFITS poor families having that extra income."

Of course, none of them considers for a microsecond how "not being in school" or "lower grades b/c a child is too tired to learn" condemns these same families into a cycle of poverty. 🤬

Nicole Parsons May 22, 2023

@MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

So many Republican policies can be seen through the lens of deliberate immiseration.

Keeping the poor as poor.
Thwarting social mobility.
Keeping people in their place.
Social stratification.
Class hierarchies.
Gender & racial isolationism.
Religious control.

Eroding the institutions that made the American middle class.
Homes. Public Education. College. Steady jobs. Living wages. Unions. Literacy. Public health. Libraries. Functional government. Voting.

Nicole Parsons May 22, 2023

@MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Oil industry billionaires are funding Republicans to conduct hostage negotiations over the debt ceiling.

The same billionaires frying the planet.

https://www.salon.com/2023/05/20/mccarthy-pushes-us-to-brink-of-default-to-appease-energy-donors--but-biden-has-an-ace-up-his-sleeve/

McCarthy pushes US to brink of default to appease energy donors — but Biden has an ace up his sleeve

GOP threatens unconstitutional and catastrophic move if Biden refuses to cave to McCarthy's Big Oil blackmail.

Salon.com

JW prince of CPH May 22, 2023

@Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Because they think they'll have air conditioning after the apocalypse.

No, really.

Their brains are so fried by money, they think they will remain rich even if civilization collapses. If they ever understood that civilization is what makes them rich, that understanding is long gone. They believe they'll still own stuff when the fallout settles.

It's like thinking gravity doesn't apply to you because you have a private plane.

Frances Larina May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

My apologies, but you are thinking locally. They are global and can go anywhere. Their actions suggest they've already spent a tiny fraction of their wealth to ensure they can live out their lives - perhaps another 30 years - in comfort and power. After that, they really don't care what happens.

JW prince of CPH

@Frances_Larina @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Oh, absolutely - I'm just saying that even if their actions drive the ENTIRE GLOBAL CIVILIZATION towards destruction WITHIN THEIR LIFETIME, they STILL think they'll come out on top. That's how deluded they are.

Frances Larina May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

I don't disagree, I just thing perhaps they have a different definition of, "come out on top".

JW prince of CPH May 23, 2023

@Frances_Larina @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Perhaps so, but in a post-apocalyptic world, *nobody* "comes out on top" - not them, not anybody. Because there's nothing to be on top of.

Frances Larina May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

In a true post-apocalyptic world, they'll already be dead. They're like narcissists that way.

JW prince of CPH May 23, 2023

@Frances_Larina @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Well, they do build these luxury shelters, so maybe they'll survive whatever downfall of civilization they themselves caused - the delusion is that when they emerge from those shelters, they will still be in charge.

Frances Larina May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

I think that perhaps, for some of them, being protected, self sufficient, part of a self-built culture and knowing they have it better than 99.999% of humanity will be very emotionally satisfying.

JW prince of CPH May 23, 2023

@Frances_Larina @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson - but that's just it; they're *not* self-sufficient, their culture is *not* self-built, and when civilization ends, everybody else who survived will be coming for their resources, which they can't protect because they can't exert power over anyone anymore.

Nicole Parsons May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Frances_Larina @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Republican billionaires need to read up on the history of the Roman Empire, especially about emperors & the Praetorian Guard.

Slave societies create groups of disengaged people who idly watch as the Visigoths sack estates on their way to pillage Rome.

Or more recently, Indira Gandhi & her security detail...

Badwolf303 May 23, 2023

@Npars01 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina The #rulingclasses are buying up land in NZ & private islands. They may last a long time unless…

Sir Rochard 'Dock' Bunson May 23, 2023

@marcibadwolf303 @Npars01 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @Frances_Larina

#BillionairesAreDelicious

Badwolf303 May 23, 2023

@Frances_Larina @MugsysRapSheet @Npars01 @SrRochardBunson @jwcph 😋 yum

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@SrRochardBunson @marcibadwolf303 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @Frances_Larina

Oil billionaires aren't palatable.

Fossil fuels are contaminants that cause cancer. David Koch passed away from cancer.

Cannibalism isn't a prudent dietary choice. Prions.

Encephalopathy isn't a nice way to pass.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

Kuru (disease) - Wikipedia

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@marcibadwolf303 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina

Do you think an elderly white man, unused to manual labor, like Koch, Murdoch, or Barre Seid are equipped for total self-reliance?

Growing food, building & maintaining a home, & providing sophisticated medical care isn't feasible long term.

Most island societies become deforested quickly & become barren outcrops like Easter Island.

A constant resupply of fresh water, fuel, & food is necessary for even short stays.

Badwolf303 May 24, 2023

@SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @Npars01 Excellent point. I don’t expect Koch or Murdoch to do physical labor at all they’ll have laborers. Nor be cutting trees for fuel. We’re talking about billionaires who may hate green energy for us but are already using it themselves. The superrich super elderly may not live to go into their luxury bunkers. Their families? Who knows?

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet

Republican billionaire donors plan on having slaves to do the heavy lifting.

DeSantis's 1st book Dreams From Founding Father's whitewashes slavery & misrepresents the founders

Memory holing of slavery by the wealthy is deliberate & ominous

Gillian Brockell did an analysis on how this book was made to vanish from even the publisher's catalog. Her article is a must-read

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/05/21/ron-desantis-book-founding-fathers/

https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/desantis-book-dreams-from-our-founding-fathers-first-principles-in-the-age-of-obama-discussed-by-washington-post-s-history-blog-staff-writer-gillian-brockell-176246853816

Ron DeSantis’s context-free history book vanished online. We got a copy.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has attacked history lessons in Florida, dismisses slavery in his 2011 book as a “personal flaw” of the Founding Fathers.

The Washington Post

Martin Johnstone May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet this person. This DeSantis will not be in the Oval. The winner will be the 1 who realises they have to be President of the whole USA. Not just the people that agree with them. Yes, he deserves every ounce of the best disinfectant. But he will not win anything. He is not who he believes he is. He's worse than we think he is though. That's why I applaud you.

The Evil Microwizard May 24, 2023

@thecharmingcompany @Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet I suspect a lot of people said that about Trump, though, unfortunately.

Martin Johnstone May 24, 2023

@evilmicrowizard @Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet Actually it was my unfortunate experience to listen to conversations that pointed at Trump even during the 2012 race. Romney looked as though he was allowed to run as a sign of their "ahem" respect for him. Despite the forecasting that put his odds in Black Swan range, I witnessed analysts call his win as easy as the week before Election Day. Odds against that are that extreme are too often wrong. De Santis doesn't have the same pitch of extremism. Yet, I guess, is possible.

Frances Larina May 25, 2023

@thecharmingcompany @evilmicrowizard @Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet

"De Santis doesn't have the same pitch of extremism."

Have you seen what he's done to Florida? That's his pitch. He's selling the same thing as Trump, - the promise of granting power over others based on bigotry - but currently with the power to show he can make it happen. Trump has no current power, only potential. I think that makes a difference to a crowd willing to follow the leader perceived as most powerful that aligns with their values.

Martin Johnstone May 25, 2023

@Frances_Larina @evilmicrowizard @Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet While I see and understand your point he could be much worse. I went to high school in Reagan's Florida. I have lived in part, in Thatcher's Britain. What I see in De Santos is someone who would fall short of being extreme enough to take power. He isn't Braverman. He isn't Orban. Or Le Pen. I've just left Europe after 16 years. That's what I believe we are dealing with. A GOP staring at an electoral map where they have taken power. Inserting the candidate at their Convention. The 1 willing to know the power was taken.

The Evil Microwizard May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet Alternative for the first link for those paywalled: https://archive.ph/iUntK

JW prince of CPH May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @marcibadwolf303 @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @MugsysRapSheet they definitely *want* slaves after The End - but who is going to want to enforce slavery for them? "Guard my slaves, I'll pay you from my food storage" - oh, the food storage I can also just, you know, take, because there's no police anymore, and which will also expire long before any form of resupply logistics become available?

Badwolf303 May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @jwcph @SrRochardBunson @Frances_Larina @MugsysRapSheet Exactly. It will turn into a Lord of the Flies situation at some point.

Frances Larina May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Npars01 @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

I think you might be amazed at what unlimited wealth can buy. We don't even know where most of their apocalypse compounds are, but of those that are known, they're like small villages, and are in very geographically isolated areas and appear to be resource independent. I don't think they are preparing to remain in power of a failed planet; I think these are just fallbacks *should* everything fall apart. So that they can live out their days in relative comfort. The ultimate golden parachute. It's kinda terrifying, really.

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Bunkers become targets for the desperate. They'll change hands a hundred times after a societal collapse.

Seige mentalities pin you down & it's an unsound military strategy to lose mobility.

Mobility limits the amount of supplies carried.

Frances Larina May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Still not thinking big enough. These are people who influence nations. Those superyachts they've been buying lately can stay at sea for months. And I'd be amazed if they haven't bought their own islands and or simply bought thousands of desolate acres in which to put their compounds, complete with a private army, farm workers, doctors, etc.. They don't intend to be anywhere near the desperate masses.

But my point isn't whether they can pull it off. It's that they believe they can, so they don't care what happens to the rest of us, or the planet. They are capitalism's equivalent to the cults that are awaiting the Rapture.

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Republican billionaires seriously underestimate how long it takes a collapsed society to reconstitute.

The 1929 crash only ended with WW2.

The 2008 crash took 8 years to recover.

Many collapsed states never recover because they're invaded by an enemy.

Think that the Chinese Red Army will let Peter Thiel keep his bunker? Or Murdoch his Montana ranch land?

Most food supplies & medicines don't last beyond a decade, despite preservation

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Climate change will cause collapses that may last millennia.

The Permian extinction eradicated 80% of marine life & 70% of land species.

No matter how much a billionaire prepares, an unbreathable atmosphere isn't likely survivable.

Ditto for water supplies heavily contaminated with fossil fuel waste (most crude oil ports are at sea level and will be unusable as sea levels rise) or worst case scenario, radioactive ash in the atmosphere.

Frank Bennett 🇯🇵May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Agree. The rhetorical problem is that current billionaires will be dead by then, and as by nature they don't value the life of anyone else including their own offspring, the only way for this to sway them would be to support their fantasies about living forever.

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@fgbjr @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

The globe would not survive an immortal Charles Koch.

Peter Thiel is using Palantir's access to public health records for his own eugenics immortality bid. He backs that one up with plans to be cryogenically frozen.

Both billionaires believe that a societal collapse will leave their immortality planning intact. A shared delusion.

Frank Bennett 🇯🇵May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson Yeah, I know. Thiel's efforts have been particularly traumatic for families whose loved ones' corpses have been mutilated and dismembered by crackpots that have caught his eye (so to speak). I think of that every time I see his animated carcass moving its mouth and making noises.

TeamRose May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @fgbjr @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Not “Billionaires”….
“Ego-Maniacal Oligarchs”.

“Let’s call things by their proper names”…Oscar Wilde

Frank Bennett 🇯🇵May 24, 2023

@SusannaShakespeare @Npars01 @Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson "... but I repeat myself."

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

You want to know what runaway greenhouse gases do to a planetary atmosphere?

Look at Venus. Acidic. Unbreathable. Horrific winds.

Even Republican oil billionaires can see that one.

Frances Larina May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Rupert Murdoch is 92. Peter Thiel otoh, is 55. But he could easily buy his way into the good graces of some despot somewhere. The globe is a big place, and if civilization falls even just a little, it's a really, really big place.

MugsysRapSheet Blog ☑️May 24, 2023

@Npars01 @Frances_Larina @jwcph @SrRochardBunson
No, I've been trying to disspell the myth that it took WWII to end The Great Depression for years.

The Depression was over well before the war began: https://youtu.be/bYQkpQ0Mcv0

Hollywood debunks GOP myth that WWII ended Depression

YouTube

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@MugsysRapSheet @Frances_Larina @jwcph @SrRochardBunson

In some cities, Hoovervilles continued to exist well into the beginning of WW2. The end of the Great Depression didn't happen everywhere at the same time.

It dealt a blow to farming communities and they never recovered because the banks took the land and resold it to agribusiness.

MugsysRapSheet Blog ☑️May 24, 2023

@Npars01
No question WWII was a financial boom for the U.S. economy, but the country wasn't still deep in Depression when the war started (and the only thing to turn things around was the war.)

Nicole Parsons May 24, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Reminder, the species of dinosaur that survived a cometary impact on the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago were the small, feathered flying species.

Global climate catastrophe requires mobility.

Nicole Parsons May 23, 2023

@Frances_Larina @jwcph @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

Republican billionaires do seem to enjoy the sadism.

Nicole Parsons May 23, 2023

@jwcph @Frances_Larina @MugsysRapSheet @SrRochardBunson

If American democracy collapses as Lebanon has, there's a high likelihood that it concludes with a nuclear world war.

The only winning move in that "game" is not to play.

It's not too late to enact planet-saving reforms. It starts with voting en masse AND accelerating the transition to renewables.

It defunds Republican oil billionaire donors attacking democracy.

Get the boots of OPEC+ & #KochNetwork off our necks