Mastodawn

The truth is that you can't be "fiscally conservative & socially liberal" because if you're actually paying attention to the social issues, you will note that they are directly linked into structures of power—the same structures of power that create our "fiscal" situation.

Capitalist, colonialist exploitation depends on traumatized children. It all depends on traumatized children, & it always has.

The Epstein class fights us on "social" issues because the logical result of respecting all people would be a world where people become hard to exploit & even harder to convince to do someone else's violence.

Without suffering, the power structure collapses. The suffering is necessary to the economic system.

The statement "We are not free until we are ALL free" includes kids: the permanent oppressed underclass.

Look, I have done a lot of childcare in my life. I understand that children CANNOT be allowed to do whatever they please. I don't want feral, untended children, but I do want kids who feel a sense of ownership over their own bodies & lives.

So many cycles of violence start with neglect, abuse, manipulation, & control in childhood.

This is why the duped henchmen of the Epstein class lose their fucking shit over basic "therapy" stuff like boundaries.

They say conversations about mental & emotional health are "woo-woo" & "wishy-washy" & silly, but they are fucking TERRIFIED of that shit.

If children are not systematically abused & neglected, they will not grow into angry, reactive assholes looking for someone to hurt. They won't develop into fearful resource-hoarders. They won't be looking for someone else to project their self-hatred onto.

The Epstein Class knows that an attack on social structures of abuse threatens to topple the whole exploitation system, & that's why they've enlisted so many soldiers in this fight.

The whole concept of capitalism requires humans to be uncooperative with each other. Meanwhile, human civilization developed because we are really, really fucking good at collaborating.

The math isn't mathing.

If someone is "fiscally conservative", then ultimately they are saying we should all have to fight over resources, & in order to keep people fighting over resources, you have to keep prejudice, fear, & resentment alive, so... seems to me like being "fiscally conservative" means there is a need for people to abuse each other.

Healthy, happy people help each other, & that's what the Epstein Class can't tolerate. So they indoctrinate people to create the misery that their system demands.

It would not be inappropriate to respond to someone who says "I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative" with "who hurt you as a child?"

That person is living in fear of other people.

Maybe they WANT to be open & kind & fair to others. Maybe they know that's a better way to be, but they are so unwilling to trust anyone, that they will choose a world of infinite suffering rather than risk losing the *fantasy* of control over their life which "fiscal conservatism" allows them.

Trust is fucking hard.

But one of the reasons it's so very, very fucking hard is that we all learn AS CHILDREN (to varying degrees) that we cannot trust other people to care about or respect our needs.

It doesn't have to be that way.

We learn anti-social behavior from youth. We are taught it by the very adults who claim to be teaching us to "act right". "Tough love" is frequently just training someone that they cannot possibly trust anyone but themselves. It makes cooperation feel impossible.

To heal our world, we will have to heal ourselves.

This is why I don't consider my "mental/emotional health" posts to be in any way separate from my "political" posts.

It's all part of the same thing. Healing our trauma is part of healing our relationships with each other. And healing our relationships with each other is part of the process of dismantling oppression.

The oppression lives inside you. That's why we "decolonize" our minds, because our participation in systems of abuse starts there.

Author/book recommendation for self-healing in the context of activism & trying to change the world:

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Historically, when colonizers encountered indigenous peoples one frequently recurring theme is basically "these people are so fucking trusting" (to which the response is inevitably murder & enslavement).

Here's the question: Why would people be so fucking trusting? Well, it seems to come up in cultures where the community looks out for everyone. It is possible for humans to live in trust instead of fear, & without outsiders coming in to kill & destroy, it seems like it can work pretty well.

I was reading a book about settler colonialism in the US (Not a Nation of Immigrants by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) & she cited one of the concerns expressed by those planning the settler expansion of the US is that if they didn't remove the indigenous people, white folks might be drawn to their communal ways of life. Basically a fear of "the dirty commies", before "commies" even existed.

The architects of the current structures of colonial oppression recognized that there was another way people could choose to go, & they had to make sure that they removed that threat.

So right there you have "fiscal conservatism" backed up by genocide. In order to not have people question the social order or try to form communities of their own, you have to kill, remove, or forcibly assimilate all who would structure their society differently.

VANTABlack 4h ago

@artemis Isn't that basically what conservatives try to say communism is too? A system where you have to kill, remove, or forcibly assimilate all who would do differently?

Not saying this as an insult to what you are saying more as an interesting observation of conservatives.

Cedar Fen Farm Cedar Fen Farm 1h ago

@VANTABlack2000 @artemis

Actually, Marx does discuss removal and reducation. I think intolerance is a basic Euro intellectual mind set in some classes.